Neoliberalism means mass unemployment. This is a deliberate feature which is a part of hijacking political power by financial
oligarchy. Neoliberals also demonize poor and unemployed. They are excluded and marginalized. You need to fight this even
neoliberals try to convince you that this is your fault. They deliberately put people over 50 in the situation: "without work, without
possibilities, without any means of escape."
Remember "No man is a failure who has friends". Like with Arctic
"isolated person is a doomed person": in this situation you are in better position to overcome huge odds if you can rely on your social network.
"Don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired.
It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself."
Age discrimination has been standard operating procedure in IT at least since 2000. And there are no significant consequences, if
any consequences at all, for doing it in the USA under "neoliberal occupation", so to speak. Outsourcing, offshoring and abuse
of H1B visas were increasing annually since year 1990.
That's why many IT professionals, who are over 50, recently found themselves excluded and marginalized: "without work,
without possibilities, without any means of escape." (Pope
Francis on danger of neoliberalism). For example, IBM has laid off hundreds of thousands in the last few decades.
Essentially this categogy of unemployed is heavily discriminated against and pushed into low paid jobs, such as truck drivers,
and McJobs -- Lowes floor save staff, flipping hamburgers, warehouse jobs etc. That's a reality of the neoliberalism in the USA. And it is
difficult to fight, regaining employment for previous specialty is possible. But it can take several years while time is
running out due to aging and dwindling retirement funds, if any.
Neoliberals like to talk bout freedom. But they understand freedom as freedom for
financial oligarchy to ignore social norms. and they are interested in maintaining high unemployment as it increases their
power and "flexibility". And they create social stigma for unemployed: unemployed means outcast under neoliberalism.
Neoliberals like to talk bout freedom. But they understand freedom as freedom for financial
oligarchy to ignore social norms. In reality,
as
Franklin D. Roosevelt stated (Four
Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), there are not one, but our fundamental freedoms (which
BTW does not include the impunity for financial oligarchy to ignore social norms) that people should have:
Neoliberalism demonizes poor and unemployed. Typical feelings experienced after loss of employment included emptiness, inadequacy, humiliation,
rage, shame, envy, and worthlessness. Additional aspects include grief over the additional losses that followed the job loss,
such as loss of social connectedness, professional status, and hardships for the family. For some people, unresolved conflicts
vis-à-vis former employers produce strong revengeful feelings. For others, self-loathing, contempt, self-criticism, and insecurity
or fear of trying new things are more prominent.
That might affect common activities such as attending children's graduations, weddings, getting through
major holidays, sustaining interest in former leisure activities or hobbies. As the period of unemployment exceeds one year most
males usually experienced increased and sometimes overwhelming sadness and grief at what had been lost. Paradoxically, reentering workforce
now led to comparisons of "there and then" with "here and now". Reactions including rage and feelings of unfairness are not uncommon.
The toxic mixture of shame and anger is especially notable.
As the period of unemployment exceeds one year most males usually experienced increased and sometimes overwhelming sadness
and grief at what had been lost. Please continue to fight. Those who fight preserve human dignity, no matter what. Such
feeling of sadness and grief, replaying actual of imaginable mistakes, are "new normal" and just yet another obstacle to overcome.
The key question here is how to survive this prolonged slump, which is very similar to the situations that often happened in Arctic
expeditions at the beginning of XX century: the ship squeezed by ice goes down and survivors face life in tents in Arctic weather.
With limited supplies and a long time before the rescuers can reach them. Often forced to survive in those tents the whole Arctic winter.
Dr. Sidney Blair, the Navy psychiatrist who coordinated personnel selection for the Operation Deep Freeze voiced the following opinion
(BOLD
ENDEAVORS. p. 260):
When I am asked, "If you want to be 100% sure that a person will adjust [ to Antarctic duty], what do you look for?"
My usual answer is that I look for somebody who loves their work. This is probably the most important thing on the list of
positive factors, they have to love their work. It is almost all right, if they love their work to the exclusion of everyone else.
Another important factor is ability to survive isolation and confinement inherent in long unemployment.
Neoliberalism tried to atomizes employees, destroy social bonds
between them, propagating " under the disguise of competition old "Man Is Wolf to Man " mentality( from Latin "Homo
homini lupus est" . Which, in essence, is an old style "divide and conquer" strategy, applied to labor force.
Moreover, there was never a trade union of IT administrators of programmers so they are by definition pretty isolated specialty,
without much inter-employee solidarity. But as Mark Twain aptly said "No man is a failure who has friends".
As Mark Twain aptly said "No man is a failure who has friends". Like with Arctic, in the situation
of unemployment an isolated person is a doomed person. You need to rely of support of other people and you better start cultivating
them (as well a funds) before the blow strikes.
Like is the case with Arctic, in the situation of unemployment an isolated person is a doomed person. You need to rely of support
of other people and you better start cultivating them (as well a funds) before the blow strikes.
Again this is a very similar to situations that occur in Arctic expeditions; in case of loss of power in older types of ships, etc.
IT specialists over 50 who succeed after long unemployment belong to the same type people who would survive in case of crash of the
ship in Arctic expedition. This is a real life experiment on what we do in moments of great challenge. Do we rise to the occasion or
fail? Are we heroes or cowards? Are we loyal to the people we love most or do we betray them? Are the most close people remain loyal
to you in such a challenging circumstances, or they are ready to betray? What is the right thing to do in such difficult circumstances?
Like Arctic explorers in the past you need to face the danger and difficult decisions. It is easy to say that one had to be brave
and strong and keep moving forward despite hardships. It is quite difficult to do. It's about ordinary people drawn into circumstances
beyond their control and the choices they must make to take back some of that control... avoiding impulsive choices, dangerous choices,
heart wrenching and even catastrophic choices that can't be undone. It's more complex that just bravery vs. cowardice.
People who are rated low in impatience and irritability and low in the characteristics associated with creation interpersonal conflicts
(e.g. egotistic, boastful, hostile, arrogant) have better chances in this situation. People who are more concerted with well-being of
other paradoxically typically fared better in situation of Arctic expedition crisis. Other-directiveness helps to survive is such
harsh environment. Traits like social compatibility or likability, emotional control, patience, tolerance to others, self-confidence
without egotism, ability to subordinate your own interests to the interests of the team, a sense of humor, and are extremely valuable
and are now checked for potential members of long duration expeditions that involve severe hardships. To those scientifically
established traits for selection of people into Arctic expeditions one can add
People who are more concerted with well-being of other paradoxically typically fared better in situation of Arctic expedition
crisis. Other-directiveness helps to survive is such harsh environment. The ability to take job loss "cool" without
excessive negative emotions (as in "sh*t happens" attitude) is also very important. Use Stoicism and
The level of self-control. There are powerful "animal" mechanisms that are still active within us and due to them we tend
to display some behaviors typical for "cornered animal" in the situation of long unemployment and unsuccessful search for a job.
Emotionally the hit of losing job is comparable with the hit of losing close relative.The ability to take those behaviors
under control are critical. See also Avoiding Anger Trap. The ability to
take job loss "cool" without excessive negative emotions (as in "sh*t happens" attitude) is very important.OtherwiseJob loss can cause heart issues, and the stress as well as bad habits that frequently come with unemployment and can build up
over time. There is even danger to your mental health with long unemployment as depression is more common among long term
unemployed:.
Michael McKee, a psychologist and stress expert at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, agreed
that attention needs to paid to the body blow that job loss can inflict on any individual’s sense of identity and self-respect.
“If you keep trying to find a job and don’t,” he noted, “or if you find a job and then lose it, and that pattern repeats and repeats,
you not only lose identity, you lose income, the structure to your day, your sense of achievement, your friends from work, your
other friends because you are embarrassed to be around them, your self-confidence, your self-respect. Then you start to lose hope
and meaning and purpose, [and] feel alienated and hopeless and helpless.”
So, McKee added, “Well-meaning programs, public and private, which help people find jobs, need to add caution to eagerness.
Caution that they not set people up for repeated failure, for long times between jobs, which is likely to accelerate the ride
to depression. Always finding another job quickly lets you keep your hope up, but struggling [can] often lead to increased fear
and anxiety.”
Related to that is the ability to use physical exercise to control your emotional state. Consider it as an effective medication
for excessive aggressiveness and anger. See also Avoiding Anger Trap.
The ability to maintain your physical and emotional tonus, which now is especially important. Stretch exercises are known to
help is such situation for many people. So called 4 x 4 running/walking (fast running for 4 minute then walking 4 minutes;
and so one 4 times -- 32 min total ) also is very helpful exercise to reduce the level of aggressiveness and anger. Swimming is another
highly recommended exercise. Generally spending some time near the water tend to help many people.
Tactfulness in interpersonal relations (see Tactful communication,
Diplomatic Communication,
Negative Politeness). This trait can't be overestimated. For married couples,
tact can avoid one of the main problem in long unemployment - stress and possible dissolution of the marriage. No matter how hard
your try to compensate this is a huge hit for your self-esteem and the truth is such a hit encourages some maladjusted compensation
mechanisms and first of all excessive aggression toward family members. You need to resist this tendency. The single best prediction
of marital longevity is that both partners are kind and emotionally generous to each other. But this is easier said that done is
such situation as long unemployment. Those who feel appreciated and valued by their spouse may feel more committed to their marriage
and have more positive outlook on overcoming existing difficulties.
Effective conflict resolution skills, especially in marriage, as
marriage comes under stress during period of long unemployment.
See
Conflict Couple A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace. It is better to assume part of household hours to
help the other partner. Nothing destructs a person so much and so quickly as prolong period of idleness and even routine tasks related
to home that you can take from your spouse are beneficial in adaptation. Consider it to be a new part time job. Expect and
prepare to problems in your marital life (Marriage and unemployment).
In fact, unemployment stimulates transition of a pre-existing marital conflict into the state when spouses are separated emotionally
but not physically, or became “upstairs/downstairs” couples who are estranged, but share the same house. This is a real danger
during long unemployment.
Stoicism, ability to withstand hardships with honor, without betrayal of yourself and those who
are close to you. The key idea if stoicism is that "virtue is sufficient for happiness". Such an attitude stresses
the value an inner freedom in the face of the external, often hostile world. Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and
fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions such lust and greed; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased
thinker allows one to better understand yourself and thus overcome hardships without betrayal of yourself and those who are close
to you. As Seneca said "The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live."
Admiral James Stockdale, who was shot down over North Vietnam, held as a prisoner and repeatedly tortured was deeply influenced by
Epictetus after being introduced to his works while at Stanford University. As he parachuted down from his plane, he reportedly
said to himself "I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus!"
The same phrase can be repeated by IT specialist who are over 50 and became unemployed. Practicing Stoicism is an
active process of preparation to overcome negative influence of hardships with honor (and viewing hardships as a test that
God send to evaluate a person) and acquiring deeper self-knowledge in the process (see
below)
The sense of humor. The sense of humor is really important for survival in such circumstances. Sense of humor
serves as an important safety valve, helping to prevent the slide into depression. The future can be scary, but people
with the sense of humor adapt easer to harsh conditions. We often cannot predict how we will be feeling – our level of
emotional stability. And sense of humor serves as a safety valve in this cases, channeling emotion into the safe path.
Even reading humor stories can help in such cases.
The ability to be easily entertained and fight the sense of boredom. This is an interesting observation:
the easier one can fight the sense of boredom, the better are chances he/she has to survive long unemployment without emotional scars.
As Nansen frequently wrote in his journal, to survive isolation and confinement, one must learn to be idle without feeling guilty
(BOLD
ENDEAVORS, p.261) See below You will survive: Fight the sense of isolation and related higher
level of aggression I remember the story of one prisoner whom only entertainment in solitary confinement to observe a female
rat in his cell. He observed how she behaved, gave birth, etc and noted that he probably would not survived without this strange
companion of his confinement. And this situation with excessive boredom is not limited to people with the long term unemployment
problem. It is pretty common for example for actors too.
Linda Fiorentino who played the famous
female sociopath character in The Last Seduction
once observed "As actors, the thing we have to fight, more than even the business part of making movies, is boredom."
Temporary work, or even volunteering are important for the same reason. You can't wait for your best chance forever. This is also
very similar to the situation actors find themselves. As
Linda Fiorentino noted "Sometimes
I have to work because I need the money. You weigh the issues and ask yourself, "Can I wake up every morning and do this?"
Interest in keeping a regular log of events. That can be done either on computer on or by writing it in the form of lab
journal (writing a regular journal make it easier to keep it private; in case of computer you need to use encrypted USB drive which
is unlocked, for example, using fingerprint or code combination). That helps to view that situation as pretty cruel experiment that
neoliberal society staged upon you, and gives you an ability see a bigger picture. The picture on the level above your personal problems.
See Start a log book
Maintaining proper (or may be even slight upscale) attire and useful work habits. Well dressed people have higher
self-esteem. As simple as that. That's an important fact that dictates that you need to be dressed up. For the same reason regular
visits to the library revive your work routines. That also forces you to dress properly and helps with self-confidence Public
library can serve as a substitute for working place just for few hours a day and along with positive influence on self-confidence
helps to fight the sense of isolation. The same role can play a course in your local community college (if you enroll in one course
in it is tax deductable; highly recommended). People are social animals in many respects (see
Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are Amy Cuddy TED Talks -
YouTube :-) See also The importance
of keeping yourself occupied
Learning to cope with chronic stress caused by long-term unemployment. The most dangerous factor here is
chronic stress caused by long-term unemployment. It really endanger your
health and create multitude of additional problems starting from insomnia.
The ability to regulate and maintain healthy sleep. Sleep is one thing that people over 50 can't take for grunted.
Problems with sleep due to "toxic worry" further aggravate the level of aggressiveness, especially in men and are pretty common
in such situations. Switching wake up hours to suit you natural internal clock might help. Now you have such a possibility.
Valerian root tablets (over the counter) can help. Not working on the computer for three hours before going to bed might help.
Ability to withstand sliding into depression which is typically associated with long-term unemployment. There several
healthy way to code with the depression and several unhealthy one. The latter typically quickly destroy the person. Unhealthy
way of coping with depression is substance abuse and we have an epidemic of opioids abuse in the USA, especially in areas
with outsourced manufacturing (the rust belt).
Like Arctic explorers with ship squeezed by ice which went down, you need to became an expect in survival in hostile environment
and keeping the friendship of a few people you can rely upon. Isolated people die in Arctic really quick. The value of the ability to
manage conflicts and to communicate tactfully in your current relationships increase tenfold in such situations:
It takes more skill, effort and commitment--and, at least in the short run, more stress--to face the challenge together
with the other person involved in the dispute. Certainly it seems as if it would be easier to fight, withdraw, or give in. Yet
in the long run, working through difficulties together will help us live a less stressful and more fulfilling life.
Fighting it out. A man sat in his train compartment looking out into the serene Russian countryside. Two women
entered to join him. One held a lap dog. The women looked at this man with contempt, for he was smoking. In desperation, one of
the women got up, lifted up the window, took the cigar off the man’s lips, and threw it out. The man sat there for a while, and
then proceeded to re-open the window, grab the woman’s dog from off her lap, and throw it out the window. No, this is not a story
from today’s Russian newspaper, instead it is from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th century novel, The Idiot. The number and seriousness
of workplace violence cases seems to be on the rise, and employers can respond with effective policies and increased education.
Yielding.While most can readily see the negative consequences and ugliness of escalating contention, we often
do not consider how unproductive and harmful withdrawing or giving in can be. Naturally, there are occasions when doing so is
not only wise, but honorable (as there are times to stand firm). If a person feels obligated to continually give in and let another
have his way, such yielding individual may stop caring and withdraw psychologically from the situation.
Avoidance. When we engage in avoidance, it only weakens already fragile relationships. These "others" (e.g.,
sympathetic co-workers) usually tend to agree with us. They do so not just because they are our friends, but mostly because they
see the conflict and possible solutions from our perspective. After all, they heard the story from us. Once a person has
the support of a friend, she may feel justified in her behavior and not try to put as much energy into solving the conflict.
Admiral James Stockdale, who was shot down over North Vietnam, held as a prisoner and repeatedly tortured was deeply influenced by
Epictetus after being introduced to his works while at Stanford University. As he parachuted down from his plane, he reportedly
said to himself "I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus!" The same words can be repeated by
IT specialist who are over 50 and became unemployed: it is the ability to fight adversity that distinguishes real men from fakes.
Stoics teach us that not everything is under our control, not it should be. There are some things we have control over (our judgments,
our own mental state) but for a lot of things we do not exercise much control -- this is what the concept of destiny is about
(external processes and objects, transformations of the society, like the USA conversion to neoliberalism in 1980th with banks running
amok for quick profits, resulting from this social cataclysms like Great Recession or, worse, civil war in some countries (all
wars are bankers wars)). Part of our unhappiness can be traced to confusing these two categories: thinking we have control over something
that ultimately we do not.
The wisdom can be viewed as the ability to distinguish things that we can control and those that we can not. This stoic attitude
was aptly captured by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr[
(1892–1971) in his famous Serenity Prayer:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Loss of job is a severe hit for a person no matter young or old. A hit comparable in its effects with the dissolution of the marriage
or a death or a jail term of a close relative. In other words it is a traumatic event with negative long term consequences. Among
them:
Lack of confidence. That is especially typical for those who are not
in a meaningful relationship. We fear abandonment and unemployment increases the sense
of isolation. While financial issues are easer to deal with as you need to take care
of a single person, emotional issues are not. On emotional side the entire situation looks
messy and, quite frankly, terribly sad, especially if a person a workaholic. Which is a
pretty common condition for IT specialists.
Fear of disclosing your situation. This is somewhat similar to having
mental disease. It is something we want to hide. Of course we do not tell everyone. You
don’t shake a person’s hand and openly state: “Hi! I’m Nick and I am unemployed for
two years now” .
Fear of the future. Everyone grapples with the future: we wonder what
it will look like, if we’ll be happy, if we'll be healthy. It’s different when you
are over 50, is unemployed and have 2 kids, a dog and a nice house. And a mortgage
not paid off. In this situation, the future can be scary. In those circumstances,
we often cannot predict how even our own future level of stability and functioning. Add
to this another person(s), and things became even more difficult. Add to this children,
and things tend to be quite painful.
But you have the ability to minimize them. Stoicism is a philosophy of life that might help, at least
for some people, is those circumstances. It tried to address the problem of loss of self-esteem but reformulating it from the
"dimension" of possession to the dimension of personal courage. After all if everything if gone a man can quit the life voluntarily.
That means that he should be able to fight to last breath against even uneven adds. The key idea of stoicism is that "personal
virtue and courage in adversity, courage in fight against uneven odds is sufficient for maintaining high self-esteem".
In other words stoicism reasserts human dignity as the ability to fight the external, often hostile world. Stoicism teaches
the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions such desperation, lust and greed; the philosophy
holds that the ability to see clearly your circumstances and fight them to the extent you can is an achievement in itself, toward
which we all should strive. No matter what is the outcome of this fight. The Stoics taught that we fail far more often than we
succeed, that to be human is to be fearful, selfish, and angry far more often than we’d like. But they also taught a realistic way to
be less fearful, less selfish, and less angry. It also teaches to prepare for adversity and do not expect that your life with
be smooth sailing to the very end.
In addition to this "glorification of human courage in fighting adversity" stoics also strive "to be free from anger, envy,
and jealousy" (The Stoic ideal of dispassion is accepted to
this day as the perfect moral state by the Eastern Orthodox
Church). AS value of a person is in his inner properties , stoics teach to accept everybody as "equals, because all men alike are
products of nature." In ancient world this was an innovative, rebellious postulates. Related to social status of unemployment is remains
to be so even now. In their view the external differences which are considered of such primary importance in Western civilization,
such as rank and wealth should not be primary criteria of judging others, not they should the primary goals in your life, or of primary
importance in social relationships.
After all it is the idea of capitalism to deprive part of the population from meaning full employment to increase obedience of theirs.
Neoliberalism requires that employees sell their labor as a condition of survival. Nothing more, nothing less. The "entrepreneur" can
exert power by denying access to work, hence income, hence survival. Watch "Office
space" which provides a pretty realistic picture how fear of loss of employment paralyzes even young, rebellious people, making
the easy prey to any corporate sociopath. The state has the ability to enforce this social order by "brute force” and in modern
times, when social safety nets are weak routinely destroys efforts of the remnants of organized labor to defend employees rights. And
neoliberalism is certainly remains the preferred order among Western elites. All in all "it is not your fault". Seriously.
In the words of Epictetus (note that the word happiness here has slightly different meaning then in regular English language), you
can be "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy..." If we assume
that "happiness" means here the ability to maintain high self-esteem this quote might be more understandable. Stoic ethics stressed
the rule: "Follow where reason leads." One must therefore strive to be free of the distortions caused by "passions", bearing in mind
that the ancient meaning of "passion" was more close to contemporary words "emotions", "anguish" or "suffering", that is, "passive
reaction to external events, which is different from the modern use of the word. In other words you need the ability to dispassionately
and persistently "stay the course" after you had chosen it with all the wisdom you are capable of; it is about "who controls whom.":
either you control your emotions, or your emotions control you.
The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic philosophy are: wisdom (Sophia), courage (Andreia), justice (Dikaiosyne),
and temperance (Sophrosyne). The ability to fight in adversarial conditions considered to be a virtue. This stoical
sentiment with more stress on desire to fight the adversity to the bitter end despite uneven odds was expressed in old Russian song
Varyag (the cruiser that became famous for her crew's stoicism at the Battle of Chemulpo Bay when she alone tried to break the blockade of the port by the whole Japanese
fleet)
All to the upper deck and man your battle posts,
The last battle for our ship is coming
Our proud "Varyag" will not surrender to the enemy,
And none of us want their mercy.
But this situation needs a different type of courage, then military courage required to face overwhelming enemy force and fight to
the bitter end despite low or even non-existent odds of the victory and survival. Unlike military battles, unemployment can last for
years. So endurance comes to the front. This is more like prolonged war, then a single battle.
Unemployment also press people to get into compromises they would never get otherwise. Stoics teach that a person should strive to
be just and moral in an unjust and immoral world (see also
Reinhold Niebuhr's book
Moral Man and Immoral Society) despite all odds:
"Moral Man and Immoral Society", by Reinhold Neibhur, was published during the years of the Great Depression. In this work, Reinhold
asserts the requirement of politics in the fight for social justice because of the depravity of human nature, that is, the arrogance
of human beings. Neibur sees the flaws of the mind when it comes to solving social injustice by moral and wise means, "since reason
is always the servant of interest in a social situation". This is his judgment of liberal Christian doctrine, which fully believes
in the intellectual ability of humans to make themselves be good, and he admits this vulnerability as our existence. In other words,
Neibhur accurately saw the evil of systems in society and its empty endeavors to better individuals and their insufficiencies.
Neibhur warns us about adopting "herd mentalities." According to him, individuals are morally able to think of the interests
of others above themselves. That is, human beings can be kind. Societies, however, find it essentially impossible to manage intelligently
the competing interests of subgroups. Societies, he contends, effectively gather up only individuals' selfish impulses, not
their abilities for charitable thoughtfulness toward others.
According to Niebuhr, this group egocentricity of individuals-in-groups is immensely powerful. "In every human group there
is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others,
therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships".
Avoidance of fight for justice is viewed by stoics a rejection of one's social duty. Stoic philosophical and spiritual practices
included contemplation of hardship, training to value the life as it is (similar to some forms of
Eastern meditation), and daily reflection on everyday
problems and possible solutions (by keeping a diary). Practicing Stoicism is an active process of preparation to overcome
hardships that your destiny could send upon you with honor and courage (and viewing hardships as a test that God send to evaluate
a person). As well as acquiring deeper self-knowledge and the knowledge of the society in the process.
In his Meditations (which were not written for print,
but as a personal diary) Marcus Aurelius defines several such practices. For example, in Book II.I:
Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men.
All of the ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can
I be angry with my kinsman, or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together...
It was stoicism that gave mankind the idea if equality of all men. In this situation it applies to those who suffer from the
long term unemployment. Below are some quotations from major Stoic philosophers, selected to illustrate common Stoic beliefs:
"Get rid of the judgment, get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt itself." (viii.40)
"Everything is right for me that is right for you, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late that comes in due time
for you. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, O Nature. From you are all things, in you are all things, to you all
things return." (iv.23)
"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else
to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting
nothing, but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word that you utter, you will live happy.
And there is no man able to prevent this." (iii.12)
"How ridiculous and how strange is to be surprised at anything that happens in life!" (xii.13)
"Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move
the soul; but the soul turns and moves itself alone." (v.19)
"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within
the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also" (vi.19)
"Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows
it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us — how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny
region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space—and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to
admire you, and who they are." (iv.3)
"The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live." (Ep.
101.15)
"That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away." (Ep.
59.18)
"Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting
that it is nothing of our own that perishes." (De
Provid. v.8)
"Virtue is nothing else than right reason." (Ep.
66.32)
A good introduction to Stoicism can be found in A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine. Here are some Amazon reviews
of the book:
...Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus our efforts on the things we can control, and
how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune.
We learn from Marcus Aurelius the importance of prizing only things of true value, and from Epictetus we learn how
to be more content with what we have.
Finally, A Guide to the Good Life shows readers how to become thoughtful observers of their own life. If we watch ourselves
as we go about our daily business and later reflect on what we saw, we can better identify the sources of distress and eventually
avoid that pain in our life...
David B Richman (Mesilla Park, NM USA)
The Best Introduction to an Ancient Philosophy, December 23, 2008 See all my reviews
I first read Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" while flying to the eastern United States for a scientific meeting. It was during
a rather difficult period in my life and I had picked up on "Meditations" because of a mention of this work by Edwin Way Teale
in "Near Horizons" as a book he turned to in times of trouble.
I was not disappointed by these insightful notes written for his own use nearly 2000 years ago by the Roman Emperor and Stoic
philosopher. It was thus that I was primed to read William B. Irvine's "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy."
This is one of those books that can be really life changing, if the reader is ready for it.
Irvine briefly discusses the history of Stoic philosophy and its relationship to other philosophies in ancient Greece and Rome.
He concentrates most of the book, however, on the Stoics of the Roman Empire, namely Seneca, Gaius Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and,
of course, Marcus Aurelius. After his historical review Irvine spends some time on the practical aspects of Stoicism, including
negative visualization (visualizing how your life could be worse),
dichotomy of control (what we can and cannot control),
fatalism (about the past and present, not the future),
self-denial (putting off pleasure so as to appreciate it more when you have it),
duty (what we owe to others),
social relations (how we relate to others),
insults (how to react to them),
grief (how to deal with loss),
anger (how to turn it to humor),
personal values (how to deal with fame and fortune, or the lack thereof),
old age (how to deal with the aging process),
and dying (how to prepare for this certainty).
The last part of the book is devoted to the practice of Stoicism in the modern world, with both its pluses and minuses.
Although I would have to practice a modified Stoicism (I doubt that most of us would like to sleep even occasionally on a board
or give up sex except for procreation), there is much of Stoicism that we can use in the modern world.
Unlike the Cynics who slept on boards all the time and generally followed ascetic practices, Stoics wanted to enjoy life and
followed something akin to the Middle Way of Buddhism.
This attitude could certainly be of use to counter the worst of this "me first" society of rampant consumerism. In truth
you really cannot take it with you when you die and to act like you can is the height of folly.
This book is a fascinating exposition of Stoic philosophy and its possible uses in the present day. The current economic
collapse and other disasters of modern living could be a fertile ground for a revival of Stoic ideas. I also recommend it as a
refreshing antidote for the hectic modern world in general. Take what is useful, and leave the rest, but read it if you would
live deliberately and thus be free!
The world entered a period of economic stagnation. American middle class families now earn less and have a lower net worth
than before the Great Recession. For individuals, this translates into less savings at the age of 50. Both in 401K and in accounts
outside 401K, such as Roth or regular investment account, such as Vanguard. That means that "downsizing" in case of chronic unemployment
need to go deeper and be more painful. To raise funds you not only need to change your house for apartment (a good move when you children
are grown up in any case) but take other measures, like getting rid off of extra car, boat, etc.
Rising unemployment level of IT professional over 50 is just a tip of the iceberg of multiple problems caused by secular stagnation.
Here is a short description:
Secular Stagnation is a term proposed by Keynesian economist
Alvin Hansen back in the 1930s to explain America’s dismal economic performance — in which sluggish growth and output, and employment
levels well below potential, coincide with a problematically low (even negative) real interest rates even in the face of extraordinarily
easy monetary policy. This is stagnation that lasts longer period then the business cycle (also called Japanification of economy).
It looks like a suppression of economic performance for long (aka secular) period of time.
The global stagnation we are experiencing is the logical result of dominance of neoliberalism and a sign of its crisis
an a ideology, somewhat similar to the crisis of Bolshevik's ideology in the USSR in 60th when everybody realized that the existing
society cannot fulfill the key promise of higher living standards and that over centralization of economic life naturally lead to
stagnation. Analogy does
not ends here, but this point is the most important.
Neoliberalism replaced over-centralization (with iron fist one party rule) with over-financialization (with iron fist rule of
financial oligarchy), with generally the same result as for the economy ( In other words neoliberalism like bolshevism is equal
to economic stagnation; extremes meet). End of cheap oil did not help either. In a sense neoliberalism might be viewed
as the elite reaction to the end of cheap oil, when it became clear that there are no enough cookies for everyone.
This growth in the financial sector's profits has not been an accident; it is the result of engineered shift in the elite
thinking, which changed government policies. The central question of politics is, in my view, "Who has a right to live and who does
not". In the answer to this question, neoliberal subscribes to Social Darwinism: citizens should be given much less rather
than more social protection. Such policies would have been impossible in 50th and 60th (A
Short History of Neo-liberalism)
In 1945 or 1950, if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today's standard neo-liberal toolkit, you would
have been laughed off the stage at or sent off to the insane asylum. At least in the Western countries, at that time, everyone
was a Keynesian, a social democrat or a social-Christian democrat or some shade of Marxist.
The idea that the market should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily
reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and
citizens given much less rather than more social protection--such ideas were utterly foreign to the spirit of the time. Even
if someone actually agreed with these ideas, he or she would have hesitated to take such a position in public and would have had
a hard time finding an audience.
And this change in government polices was achieved in classic Bolsheviks coup d'état way via forming first the Party of "professional
neoliberal revolutionaries" who pushed for this change. The crisis of "New Deal capitalism" helped, but without network of think
tanks and rich donors, the triumph of neoliberalism in the USA would have been impossible:
...one explanation for this triumph of neo-liberalism and the economic, political, social and ecological disasters that go
with it is that neo-liberals have bought and paid for their own vicious and regressive "Great Transformation". They have understood,
as progressives have not, that ideas have consequences. Starting from a tiny embryo at the University of Chicago with the
philosopher-economist Friedrich von Hayek and his students like Milton Friedman at its nucleus, the neo-liberals and their funders
have created a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centers, publications, scholars, writers and public
relations hacks to develop, package and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly.
Most economists are acutely aware of the increasing role in economic life of financial markets, institutions and operations
and the pursuit of profits via exotic instruments such as derivatives (all this constituted financialization). This dominant
feature of neoliberalism has huge the re-distributional implications, huge effects on the US economy, international dimensions
and monetary system, depth and longevity of financial crises and unapt policy responses to them.
They have built this highly efficient ideological cadre because they understand what the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio
Gramsci was talking about when he developed the concept of cultural hegemony. If you can occupy peoples' heads, their hearts and
their hands will follow.
I do not have time to give you details here, but believe me, the ideological and promotional work of the right has been
absolutely brilliant. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but the result has been worth every penny to them because
they have made neo-liberalism seem as if it were the natural and normal condition of humankind. No matter how many disasters
of all kinds the neo-liberal system has visibly created, no matter what financial crises it may engender, no matter how many losers
and outcasts it may create, it is still made to seem inevitable, like an act of God, the only possible economic and social order
available to us.
Neoliberalism naturally leads to secular stagnation due to redistribution of wealth up. which undermines purchasing power of the
99%, or more correctly 99.9 of the population. In the USA this topic became hotly debated theme in establishment circles after
Summers speech
in 2013. Unfortunately it was suppressed in Presidential campaign of 2016. Please note that Sanders speaks about Wall Street
shenanigans, but not about ideology of neoliberalism. No candidates tried to address this problem of "self-colonization" of
the USA, which is probably crucial to "making America great again" instead of continued slide into what is called "banana republic"
coined by American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter 1862–1910).
Here is how Wikipedia described the term:
Banana republic or banana state is a pejorative political science term for politically unstable countries in Latin America
whose economies are largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas. It typically has stratified social
classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy of business, political, and military elites.[1]
This politico-economic oligarchy controls the primary-sector productions to exploit the country's economy.[2]
... ... ...
In economics, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by a collusion
between the State and favoured monopolies, in which the profit derived from the private exploitation of public lands is private
property, while the debts incurred thereby are a public responsibility.
This topic is of great importance to the US elite because the USA is the citadel of Neoliberalism. It also suggest that
the natural way neoliberal economic system based on increasing of the level of inequality (redistribution of wealth up) should behave:
after the initial economic boom (like in case of steroids use) caused by financialization of economy (as well as dissolution
of the USSR), helped by off-shoring of manufacturing, the destructive effects of this temporary boost come into foreground. Redistribution
of wealth up increases inequality which after a certain delay starts to undercuts domestic demand. It also tilts the demand more
toward conspicuous consumption (note the boom of luxury cars sales in the USA).
But after inequality reaches certain critical threshold the economy faces extended period of low growth reflecting
persistently weak private demand (purchasing power of lower 90% of population). People who mostly have low level service economy
jobs (aka MC-jobs) can't buy that much. Earlier giants of American capitalism like Ford understood that, but Wall Street sharks
do not and does not want. They operate under principle "Après nous le déluge" ("After
us, the deluge").
An economic cycle enters recession when total spending falls below expected by producers and they realize that production level
is too high relative to demand. What we have under Neoliberalism is Marx's crisis of overproduction on a new level. At this level
it is intrinsically connected with the parasitic nature of complete financialization of the economy. The focus on monetary policy
and the failure to enact fiscal policy options is the key structural defect of Neoliberalism ideology and can't be changed unless
neoliberal ideology is abandoned. Which probably will not happen unless another huge crisis hits the USA. That might not happen soon.
Bolshevism lasted more then 70 years. If we assume that the "age of Neoliberalism" started at 1973 with Pinochet coup d'état
in Chile, Neoliberalism as a social system is just 43 years old (as of 2016). It still has some "time to live"(TTL) in zombies
state due to the principle first formulated by Margaret Thatcher as TINA ("There Is No Alternative") -- the main competitor, bolshevism,
was discredited by the collapse of the USSR and China leadership adoption of neoliberalism. While Soviet leadership simply abandoned
the sinking ship and became Nouveau riche in a neoliberal
society that followed, Chinese elite managed to preserved at least outer framework of the Marxist state and the political control
of the Communist party (not clear for how long). But there was a neoliberal transformation of Chinese economy, initiated, paradoxically,
by the Chinese Communist Party.
Currently, no other ideology, including old "New Deal" ideology can compete with neoliberal ideology, although things started
to change with Sanders campaign in the USA on the left and Trump campaign on the right. Most of what we see as a negative reaction
to neoliberalism in Europe generally falls into the domain of cultural nationalism.
The 2008 financial crisis, while discrediting Neoliberalism as an ideology (in the same way as WWII discredited Bolshevism), was
clearly not enough for the abandonment of this ideology. Actually Neoliberalism proved to be remarkably resilient after this crisis.
Some researchers claim that it entered "zombie state" and became more bloodthirsty and ruthless.
There is also religious overtones of Neoliberalism which increase its longevity (similar to Trotskyism, and neoliberalism can
be called "Trotskyism for rich"). So, from a small, unpopular sect with virtually no influence, neo-liberalism has become the major
world religion with its dogmatic doctrine, its priesthood, its law-giving institutions and perhaps most important of all, its hell
for heathen and sinners who dare to contest the revealed truth. Like in most cults adherents became more fanatical believers
after the prophecy did not materialized. The USA elite tried partially alleviate this problem by resorting to military Keynesianism
as a supplementary strategy. But while military budget was raised to unprecedented levels, it can't reverse the tendency. Persistent
high output gap is now a feature of the US economy, not a transitory state.
But there is another factor in play here: combination of peak (aka "plato" ;-) oil and established correlation of the speed
of economic growth and prices on fossil fuels and first of all on oil. Oil provides more than a third of the energy we use on the
planet every day, more than any other energy source (How
High Oil Prices Will Permanently Cap Economic Growth - Bloomberg). It is dominant fuel for transport and in this role it is very
difficult to replace.
That means that a substantial increase of price of oil acts as a fundamental limiting factor for economic growth. And "end of
cheap oil" simply means that any increase of supply of oil to support growing population on the planet and economic growth now requires
higher prices. Which naturally undermine economic growth, unless massive injection of currency are instituted. that probably was
the factor that prevented slide of the US economy into the recession in 2009-2012. Such a Catch-22.
Growth dampening potential of over $100-a-barrel oil is now a well established factor. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true.
Drop of oil price to below $50 as happened in late 2014 and first half of 2015 did not increase growth rate of the USA economy. It
might simply prevented it from sliding it into another phase of Great Recession. Moreover when economies activity drops, less
oil is needed. Enter permanent stagnation.
Also there is not much oil left that can be profitably extracted at prices below $80. So the current oil price slump is a temporary
phenomenon, whether it was engineered, or is a mixture of factors including temporary overcapacity . Sooner or later oil prices should
return to level "above $80", as only at this level of oil price capital expenditures in new production make sense. That des not mean
that oil prices can't be suppressed for another year or even two, but as
Herbert Stein aptly noted "If something cannot
go on forever, it will stop,"
Currently the "conversion to the cloud" in the latest IT fashion. and under this sauce a lot of salaried jobs in IT are eliminated.
Technically speaking this just a new flavor of outsourcing. While such a move have some technical merits:
This one of the few chances (similar to relocation of the datacenter) that gives a chance to get rid of old barely used servers.
Paradoxically most savings occur before you move everything to the cloud, just due to this effect.
It can improve availability and usability for several services such as email and corporate web portal.
But for everything else this is not "one size fit all" type of solution. As soon as the service requires considerable bandwidth (such
as backup) it became really brittle after move into the cloud. Also large provider which enjoy economy of scale (such a Google
with Gmail or Amazon cloud, Microsoft or Web hosting companies) typically often experience periodic catastrophic outages just became
of their huge scale: at such scale even minor mistake can has unpredictable consequences. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing
that you can change in such a situation, if your services are outsourced. You is just one of many customers and as such there
is no special loyalty toward you from the cloud provider staff. Unless you regular employees they do not care much about your company.
See "Everything in the Cloud" Utopia
But it does not matter for IT brass. In reality this conversion is used as an opening salvo in an attack of "traditional", salaried
IT workforce. Which are first transferred to the "cloud provider" and them partially eliminated when datacenter change hands due to
"move to the cloud". Many of the older folds choose to retire (and that doubles the value of sound handling of
your 401K -- think about it not so much as retirement
fund, but more as a private unemployment insurance). Combining some income stream from 401K and a low paying job helps
to survive this adversity
The trend under Neoliberalism is unmistakable: temps and contractors gradually displace permanent (salaried) employees, top
brass gets richer and richer. Less qualified and lower paid personnel with less benefits gradually is replacing old workforce,
whenever such change is even marginally possible. Management gets outsized bonuses. That's why large companies now are hunting
for the opportunity to "convert datacenter to the cloud".
In reality the conversion to the cloud is used as an opening salvo in an attack of "traditional", salaried
IT workforce. Which are first transferred to the "cloud outsourcer" and them partially eliminated when datacenter change
hands. Many older folds choose to retire (and that double the value of sound handling of
your 401K -- think about it not so much as retirement
fund, but more as a private unemployment insurance). Combining some income stream from 401K and a low paying job
helps to survive this adversity.
The trend toward less qualification in IT (aka "lumpenization of IT") as also connected with the fact that as university graduates
get into mature stage of development of major technologies and did not experience the emerging of all those technologies as old-timers
did, unless they were amateur enthusiasts who tried to build their own computers and experimented with such OSes as
MS DOS and Linux in school. That often means that they have less unique, "in-depth" knowledge
of technologies and processes that old-timers, which they acquired by being the first hand witnesses of the evolution of
IT to the present level. As such they are more predisposed to use "packaged" solutions.
But of course there are old-timers and old-timers. Large swat of IT old-times are accidental people which moved to the field during
boom years of IT (say, 1990-1998). Many of them have neither native talent which drove "real" old-timers into IT from other specialties
(often physics, or electrical engineering), nor computer science university degree which allow to see a bigger picture. Such people
are just barely competent despite all the advantages cited above that their entrance at the field at the early stage of development
of many important technologies (and first of all web-based technologies) provides.
At the same time the concerns about reliability and downtime are not as simple as having old seasoned workforce on the payroll. A
new generation of IT workers (mostly part-time and lower paid guys from outsourcers) is not greatly affecting network or server reliability
in a negative way. May be something does happen on the margins. But major business disruptions caused by the ground floor incompetence
looks completely remote to me. More often such cases are caused by gross incompetence of the top brass.
Paradoxically with the current level of hardware and software technology this new temp workers and contractors might be adequate
to maintaining status quo. Its completely other game with the development of something new, but just maintaining existing services much
like maining electrical network does not requires much talent and dedication. Business can survive with completely outsourced IT, if
all they need are basic services. And many businesses unfortunately belongs to this type. Of cause, everything became slow like
running in the dense mud, but services somehow function and the enterprise does not collapse. Also both hardware and software architecture
itself became more resilient for reasons external to the datacenter technologies used. For example, if company mail and phone network
are down, people still can communicate using their cell phones SMS messages and web based personal accounts (which is bad but those
are extraordinary circumstances which require extraordinary measures are better then nothing)
Another trend is that due to commodization of the technology the IT support on the level of the firm now matters less. Actually much
less: any complex issues are delegated and solved by vendor support, or professional consultants. Enterprise software also became more
or less standardized. Of course this is not applicable to research labs and such, but regular corporate office now runs predictable
mixture of standard software suits and components including Microsoft Office, some database (Oracle or Microsoft SQL of both), backup
software and storage area network, helpdesk software, datacenter monitoring software, videoconferencing software, and so on. Operating
systems re also pretty much standardized: only a half dozen of operating systems such as VMware, Windows, RHEL, and SLES (with some
remands of Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and remnants of mainframes OSes). Mail, DNS, proxy, firewall, NFS servers now are often implemented as
appliances.
Where huge, damaging to the company, blunders are now made is at senior level, where the IT brass became completely detached
from technology (and often from reality). In large companies, now there are way too many technically illiterate bean counters who were
promoted to senior IT positions. What is important to understand is that they rely mainly on fashion (and vendor hype as well as good
old bribing) in adopting new technologies for the firm. Recently misguided security efforts became a major threat to stability of the
enterprise IT. In soma cases causing almost paralyses. And security for some reason attract the most incompetent careerists and "good-for-nothing"
type of specialists. One typical "corporate excess" is preoccupation with firewalls.
But contrary to the speculation about the demise of IT from the IT brass incompetence, the net result of that looks stupid and highly
questionable from the ground floor are just modest cost overruns almost unnoticeable for the firm. Nothing to be exited about.
Something that should probably cost $100K is bought for $200K or, in rare cases (if you buy from IBM ;-) $300K. Plus additional
10-20% in annual maintenance fees. That's about it. So the level of inefficiency is not that great. Nothing in comparison with DoD.
Please remember the cost of IT is generally around 1% of the total cost of the operation of a large company. Most often slightly
less then 1%. So at the scale of the firm all those cost overruns is just a rounding error.
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed
a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world
where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go
and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci."
You should view your situation is as a fight against unjust and cruel
neoliberal society which put you into neoliberal Gulag.
In which human beings are considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. And the guards is no less cruel and much better equipped
then under Stalinism. Like prisoners in Gulag "masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without
possibilities, without any means of escape." (Pope
Francis on danger of neoliberalism)
The social forces working toward shrinking of middle class have been building up for a while with the growth of neoliberalism. Among
the first and foremost factor here was the complete financialization
of the economy (casino capitalism) and the steady rise in
health costs and cost of university education. Due to this neoliberal transformation which meant redistribution of profits in favor
of for the top 1% (much like in Gilded Age), not on the larger society, outsourcing pressures are now huge. All those factors
have hastened the demise of the safe, secure white-collar jobs, especially in IT.
Under neoliberalism the wealthy and their academic servants,
see inequality as a noble outcome. They want to further enrich top 1%,
shrink middle class making it less secure, and completely impoverish poor limiting payment to them to what is needed for bare survival
(actually for some category of worker Wal-Mart and other retailers already pay less then that). In other words they promote under the
disguise of "free market" Newspeak a type of economy which can be called a plantation economy. Or XIX century economy if you
want. In this type of the economy all the resources and power are in the hands of a wealthy planter class who then gives preference
for easy jobs and the easy life to their loyal toadies.
The wealthy elites like cheap labor. And it's much easier to dictate their conditions of employment
when unemployment is high. Keynesian economics values the middle class
and does not value unemployment or cheap labor. Neoliberals like a system that rewards them for their loyalty to the top 1% with an
easier life than they otherwise merit (look at academic economists as a good example of this trend ;-). In a meritocracy where
individuals receive public goods and services that allow them to compete on a level playing field, many neoliberal toadies would be
losers who cannot compete.
Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression via outsourcing, history suggests that such a policy is self-destructive,
especially in high-tech industries. High wages promote both loyalty and rapid technological change that the US Information technology
industry was famous for. Now smell of "socialist enterprise" with its slogan "they pretend that they pay us, we pretend that we
work" is distinctly felt in many large corporation with outsourced/offshored IT. Helpdesk tickets travel for several days, instead of
resolution problems are swiped under the carpet, employees are unable to get qualified help and resort to creation of "shadow
IT". And so on.
There are two major trends in job market under neoliberalism that hit especially hard older IT professionals:
Crapification of jobs. That means that if equal results can be achieved with less qualified labor that road will be
automatically taken even if it does not bring immediate financial benefits or those benefits are illusionary in a long run (but
bonuses for the top executives are real). That's alone dooms qualified older IT folks, as there is a distinct trend of commodization
of IT. Fight for profit margins that ensure bonuses are paid to the top brass is ruthless and nobody cares if they can
be accused of lack of vision is a couple of years or so. They already got most of their loot at this time.
Outsourcing and offshoring. Use of outsourcers in IT is not
only a way to get rid of qualified (and typically older, better paid and less malleable ) personnel, but also to ensure that in the
future there will be nobody to understand that really is needed for the enterprise and what happened. Which opens a range of
interesting possibilities for top layer of executives. So despite this often is a dead-end road it is also automatically taken as
it provide immediate and easily calculable financial benefits and delayed the more difficult to qualify financial losses ("after
me, deluge" type of thinking) for several years.
One of the most important measures of the health of an economy is the following criteria: how many fulfilling, living-wage jobs are
created or destroyed (most other economic factors can be distilled to this.). For example, widely used measure of economic growth, GDP
is too influenced by financial masturbation and does not distinguish useful activity from harmful or irrelevant. From this point
of view we could describe the current economic system as Crapitalism, which treats ordinary people and lower level professionals
as crap.
One of the most important measures of the health of an economy is the following criteria: how many fulfilling,
living-wage jobs are created or destroyed (most other economic factors can be distilled to this.).
We live in a society where it's hard to maintain self-respect if you don't have a job. If you've been unemployed and are over 50
you already know this, but if you haven't, here's a news flash: Coping with prolonged joblessness is a very challenging and personally
difficult task. Being unemployed is a stigma in the US neoliberal society, and being unemployed and over 50 is a double stigma. Those
who are over 50 need to face subtle -- and not so subtle -- biases including hidden caveats on job ads for positions.
Being unemployed is a stigma in the US neoliberal society, and being unemployed and over 50 is a double stigma
(being young is a virtue under neoliberalism). Those who are over 50 need to face subtle -- and not so subtle -- biases including
hidden caveats in job ads for relevant positions.
And BTW the current laws don't prohibit discrimination against the jobless. As was aptly observed in
Even Harvard couldn't protect
me
Strikingly, no other circumstance triggers a larger decline in well-being and mental health than involuntary joblessness.
Only the death of a spouse compares.
The quest for ever higher degree of efficiency and dominance of neoliberalism as an ideology makes such a society (and by extension
the economy) extraordinarily brittle. And IT is on the forefront of this process. They essentially are destroying IT as we know it.
Good, long lasting, full time jobs IT start to disappear, while percentage of IT temp jobs and low paid entry level jobs increased dramatically.
Often the attitude toward older It professionals is highly negative:
"...older people are too much trouble.” When pressed on that statement, she continued, “You older folks know too much. You call
us out on the BS — that every big outfit uses to keep the kids in line. Face it, you’re a threat to the system.” Evidently, overqualified
also means having a social conscience today. I do pity the young folks today though. They’re growing up in a new Dickensian Age.
It does not help that white collar and professional jobs in general and IT jobs in particular are now being lost in the USA due to
outsourcing. In a very deep sense many things in IT become either based on external support (and sometimes external infrastructure like
in overhyped "cloud computing") or project-based with people hired at the beginning and said good by at the end. In this environment,
losing a full time IT position for a person over 50 means significant hardship, as he is essentially forced by the new employment
situation into temp labor pool. As a result older IT specialist suffer a double hit -- a dramatic decline of earnings and
effects of adverse selection of unemployed professionals over 50 making finding any new job a real challenge.
A person over 50 is essentially forced by the new employment situation into temp labor pool.
As a result older IT specialist suffer a double hit -- a dramatic decline of earnings and effects of adverse selection of unemployed
professionals over 50 making finding any new job a real challenge.
The term adverse selection refers to a market process in which "bad" results occur when buyers and sellers have asymmetric information
(i.e. access to different information). In this case the "inferior" products or services are more likely to be selected. As
AARP noted:
One report citing September figures noted, “Good
News for Older Jobseekers Remains Elusive.” That’s one way to put it. Depressing might be another—especially if you’ve been out
of work for more than a year.
Perma-temp is now a new perm for those who no longer can find full time job. You can't change the society in which you live. At least
by yourself (that does not mean that you should vote for those who promote
neoliberalism, which is the root case of this situation). And
while you can and probably should make your voice and frustration heard via voting, on the individual day-to-day level the best philosophy
to deal with this situation is Stoicism.
The fact on the ground is that IT environment as a whole seems to be thumped by "ageism" in a higher proportion than even
racism or sexism. Age discrimination in the private sector IT is growing as range of candidates is vast when unemployment is high and
younger employees are more malleable and controllable. Look at composition of staff of Google and, previously, at Microsoft. It's
all young people...
So situation when you are over 50 and unemployed is now pretty typical. In other word there is mass unemployment among IT professionals
over 50 years old. If, despite all efforts, you got into this situation, you should try to take it easy. You are not the first and not
the last who was thrown under the bus...
Neoliberalism as a social system came as a replacement of New Deal and is about lowering standard of living of the middle class
and dramatic raising the standard of living of the top 1%. This is what is happening now and It is just a part of bigger picture.
You can change the society you live in. so don't take it to the heart. Other have been in this situation and survived, you will too.
This is the key point. You was thrown under the bus by neoliberal financial institutions of the country. Highly paid full time job
in general and in IT especially, are disappearing. Looks like the
top 1% does not need middle class anymore and is content with Latin-American social structure of the society. So
the process of Latin-americanization started
we situation in It is a part of more general process of shrinking middle class. The process which actually started decade or more
ago. In other words, there is a profound, age-neutral economic transformation of the US economy: shredding large chunk of middle class
jobs. For IT there are several additional powerful factors in play: commodization of IT, automation, which also affect IT jobs and,
of course, outsourcing.
So people who are 50 now had the bad luck to reach their peak earning years during an economic perfect storm. Which was the recent
"Great Recession" and its aftermath.
Also IT itself changes and despite the fact that most of the "cloud hype" is just hype, new technologies are gradually displacing
older as hardware (especially Intel hardware) becomes more and more powerful and cheaper. Look at consolidation of OSes in Unix world
into Linux as a telling example. "It's a true paradigm shift," says Karen Hochman, chair of the New York City chapter of MENG, all of
whose 550 members have held top corporate jobs and half of whom are out of work.
"You've got hundreds of thousands of obsolete professionals who can't find employment in positions where they've been successful.
These are people living off retirement savings 15 years before they were supposed to retire.They don't know what they're
going to do."
Such understanding and mentality of a fighter for just cause can give one some additional moral strength which helps overcome the
adverse situation. Mentality of a fighter for just cause, for human dignity, greatly helps to maintain self-discipline, morale
and physical condition. It gives another dimension to your physical exercises, attempt to maintain dignity and preserve a healthy lifestyle.
And you should consider other is the same situation as allies that can help you, not as adversaries fighting like animals for few spots
on the job market. Although you can't inflict even minor damage to
neoliberals in Congress
by your voting in two party system, when
both candidates competing for the job were already vetted by financial oligarchy via party "nomenklatura" (apparatchiks) mechanisms
borrowed by neoliberalism from bolshevism (As George Carlin explained in his famous monologue the two party system
protects interests of oligarchy extremely well and you are
f*cked no matter how you vote), it is your duty to explain to your friends and family that the situation in which you found yourself
and help to navigate their choice unless others, more radical, political actions can be taken (which sometimes is possible although
such movements are either quickly "institualized" like Tea Party or suppressed like Occupy movement).
You need to be aware that deindustrialization of the country and related job cuts often lead to long periods of unemployment, intermittent
employment and/or underemployment, and the effects transcend simply the loss of pay, medical benefits and purchasing power. Financial
strain creates stress, depression and family tensions, which can manifest in a variety of ways, from increased use of drugs and alcohol
to suicide and domestic violence (The
Social Costs of Deindustrialization):
...unemployment correlates with increased physical health problems. Reduced access to health care makes it less likely that displaced
workers and their families will receive appropriate care. The mental and physical health costs of deindustrialization do not harm
only patients; increased demand for health care combined with decreased economic resources leads to health care workers and systems
that are overburdened and ultimately unable to meet the community's needs.
Displaced workers, especially primary breadwinners, are likely to feel significant pressure and anxiety about providing for their
families. But job loss causes more than just financial distress; work plays a key role in shaping individual identity and social
relations. The loss of work can disrupt an individual's sense of self and his or her value and competence. As Al Gini writes,
"To work is to be and not to work is not to be."42
... "anxiety, depression, and other forms of anguish may be the normal result of rational calculation of these life
chances," according to Hamilton.47 Finding a new job does not entirely alleviate these fears, because the experience of
being laid off can generate persistent fear about losing the next job. The security that workers once felt, especially those who
worked for local companies that seemed to be dependable employers, disappears.
Neoliberalism -- the ideological doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human
action -- has become dominant in both political thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. It helped to crush
communism in the USSR and largely displaced Marxism.
These problems are exacerbated by the loss of social networks under neoliberalism which openly process the law of jungle, the survival
of the fittest for everybody except financial oligarchy ("masters of the universe" under neoliberalism). In other words they instill
real "Homo homini lupus est" (a Latin saying meaning "man is a wolf to [his fellow] man.") ideology. And are
pretty effective in that.
Pope Francis recently took issue with neoliberalism and related pseudo theory called "trickle-down economics", which is designed
to mask abject inequality usually created by neoliberal regimes (and resulting National Security State, where under the disguise of
protecting citizens from terrorism protects top 1% financial gains). He stressed that so-called
supply side economics is
a smoke screen for redistribution of wealth up by the financial oligarchy. As Eugene Patrick Devany noted in his comment to Paul Krugman's
post The Case for Techno-optimism
(Nov 27, 2013. NYT):
It seems that, "a persistent shortfall on the demand side" is a euphemism for the fact that half the population will remain
near bankruptcy for quite sometime.
Pope Francis said two days ago
"To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others ... a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware
of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion ..."
One may consider the Pope less qualified to "pontificate" about technology than Prof. Krugman who "tracks technology" and sees
that "smart machines are getting much better at interacting with the natural environment in all its complexity ... [and concluding]
that a real transformative leap is somewhere over the horizon" Pope Francis said,
"This epochal change has been set in motion by the enormous qualitative, quantitative, rapid and cumulative advances occurring
in the sciences and in technology, and by their instant application in different areas of nature and of life. We are in an age
of knowledge and information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power."
"This epochal change" seems to be a reference to "fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries" and to people
forced to live "with precious little dignity".
The best description of supply side or “trickle down” economics I ever heard was by JK Galbraith:
“trickle down economics is the idea that if you feed the horse enough oats eventually some will pass through to the road for the
sparrows.”
Here are several more relevant Pope Francis quotes:
... Such an [neoliberal] economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies
of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when
food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition
and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves
excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which
is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with
what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its
disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free
market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been
confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized
workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes
others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being
aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling
a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens
us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack
of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
The shift toward neoliberalism occurred in the 1970s because businesses and the super-rich began a process of political self-organization
in the early 1970s that enabled them to pool their wealth and influence to achieve dominant political power and to capture administration.
As David Swan noted in his review (E.
David Swan's review of A Brief History of Neoliberalism)
From its founding America's wealthy have feared democracy recognizing that the majority, being poor and middle class, could
vote to redistribute wealth and reduce the control held by the elites. After World War II, the middle class in the United States
grew dramatically somewhat flattening the countries power base. As a reaction to this dispersal of power the early 1970's saw the
formation of groups like The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEO's who were `committed to an aggressive pursuit of political
power for the corporation'. As the author writes, `neoliberalization was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restoration
of class power'. T
The neoliberal plan was to dissolve all forms of social solidarity in favor of individualism, private property, personal responsibility
and family values. It fell on well funded think tanks like The Heritage Foundation to sell neoliberalism to the general public
using political-philosophical arguments.
Money pouring into lobbying firms, political campaigns, and ideological think tanks created the organizational muscle which mimics
the Bolsheviks organizational muscle. And a bunch of Trotskyite turncoats such as James Burnham, who knew the political technology
of bolshevism from the first hands, were probably helpful in polishing this edifice. Carter and Clinton sold Democratic Party
to the same forces.
This rise of special interests politics has been at the expense of the middle class including IT professionals. And the neoliberal
plan was "to dissolve all forms of social solidarity in favor of individualism, private property, personal responsibility and family
values" proved to be a huge success. The whole generation is now completely poised/brainwashed by those ideas. No longer the USA
can be viewed as a Christian county by any objective observer. Neoliberalism became a new dominant enforced by the state religions which
displaced Christianity. Now we have what we have.
Consider yourself in war zone now. In a sense it is true as your survival is at risk and you can lose you "living space". That means
that you need to access all resources you have and try to make the best of them. In more then one way a way you view yourselves to be
in a war zone now. This is a civil war for the destruction of New Deal capitalism (Neoliberal
Capitalism destroying Society)
It is a form of terrorism because it abstracts economics from ethics and social costs, makes a mockery of democracy, works to
dismantle the welfare state, thrives on militarization, undermines any public sphere not governed by market values, and transforms
people into commodities. Neoliberalism’s rigid emphasis on unfettered individualism, competitiveness and flexibility displaces compassion,
sharing and a concern for the welfare of others. In doing so, it dissolves crucial social bonds and undermines the profound nature
of social responsibility and its ensuing concern for others. In removing individuals from broader social obligations, it not only
tears up social solidarities, it also promotes a kind of individualism that is almost pathological in its disdain for public goods,
community, social provisions, and public values. Given its tendency to instrumentalize knowledge, it exhibits mistrust for thoughtfulness,
complexity, and critical dialogue and in doing so contributes to a culture of stupidity and cruelty in which the dominant ethic is
organized around the discourse of war and a survival of the fittest mentality. Neoliberalism is the antithesis of democracy. – Henry
A. Giroux
Like in any war, for civilian to survive one need to rely on resources you managed to accumulate in "peace time" and first of all
your savings. Nothing is sacred in this situation: neither you401K not your house. They are just source of funds to survive. They should
not be viewed via the usual prism "Keeping up with Jones" anymore. forget about it. Move might be necessary, and not necessary
to the place with more jobs -- move to place with much loser expenses also makes perfect sense
The "buck up and get over it" is useless advice. It's silly to assume most people aren't doing the best they can. For people who
are over 50 it's not about trying or not trying. This is about premature switch to part employment., Possibly for the rest of
your working life (that means before you can get Social Security which is around 67 years old now). There's just so little available
IT jobs out there, that your chances of getting one are not that great. That does not mean that you should not try your best. You should
do you best and continue trying despite disappointment. Never give up. But some modest attempt to create income stream should
proceed outside your specialty after your unemployment benefits expire. Even reselling something like used books, cellphones or
computers on eBay beats feeling hopeless. That actually allow you to write one room of your house as business expense. Think about it.
Most fold at 50 have some equity in the house and some sizable 401K. This is now two sources of supplementary income that can tremendously
help if all you can get is a low paid job.
Create spreadsheet with your current expenses (see Insufficient
Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime). Cutting your current expenses to bare bones is a necessary step
and the earlier you can do it, the better. It is important to not to go too far here and determine what percentage you can save without
dramatically lowering your standard of living. Much depends what "emergency fund" you currently have. Please not that you can also "borrow"
from 401K without penalty based of "hardship" provisions of US tax code. It is a much better move that accumulation of credit
card debt.
You usually can sell some unused staff that you accumulated over the years on eBay. While it's not much money, there are some benefits
for this as small business activity which can improve the level of your psychological comfort as you are feel engaged in some systematic
activity.
Create a spreadsheet of your monthly expenses and analyze each item. Some steps that help to cut your expenses are easy.
Cable TV costs are often excessive and can be cut. Number of channels cut to the basic plan or just Internet. Amazon Prime
provides tremendous number of video content for less then $100 a year. Often switching to other provider get you one year promotional
price that is almost 50% lower then you current. For example switching from Optonline of Verizon in the past was close to this difference.
Homeline phone can be switched to Skype.
Cell phones can be switched to prepaid.TracFone is actually a
very good provider of prepaid plans. If you phone provider allows use of WI-FI for calling switch to it while at home, library
or other place where you have free WI-FI. One such provide is TMobile.
Learn to cook simple food and avoid going out: that's actually more healthy lifestyle. Consider it as a valuable education
in healthy living.
You can replace gym membership fees with working out in your backyard or running. Shout intern running walking (4 x 4 -- four
minute run -- four minute walk) is an excellent medication against anger and stress that can overwhelm you is such a situation..
No less effective then punching a punch bug :-)
Use hours without traffic for your commute or use train for part of the commute to save on gas.
There are several other ways to make your balance sheet more healthy depending on your situation and whether you rent or own the
house or apartment. For example, if community library is nearby, using it in can slightly cuts your air conditioning or heating
costs. Adding a thin film on your windows is another good step in the same direction. Now you have time to do this, at last.
Amazon has a lot of low cost offering under such titles as "Heat control Residential Windows Film", "Sun control Window
Firm". For example
Gila LES361
For the examples table below shows monthly expenses obtained by downsizing your life style:
Item
Monthly
Annual
Total expenses
2470
29640
Rent
800
9600
Food
800
9600
Electricity and heating (if not in rent)
100
1200
Books and once course at community colledge
50
600
Medical Insurance (hospital only)
150
1800
Car amortization/repairs/etc (one car)
100
1200
Car insurance (one car)
100
1200
Gas/transportation
60
720
Other expenses (meals, washing cloth, dry cleaning, etc)
80
960
Drugs, Doctor visits and dental costs
100
1200
Job search expenses
50
600
Cable internet
40
480
Cell phone or tablet with cell connection plus 1GB traffic a month
Volunteering is must for people who lost job and are over 50, as it helps to fight social isolation. For many people job was the
main social setting. Especially for those who are divorced or with little or no extended family. That's a real danger. Slide into opiod
abuse, alcoholism, etc are real danger in such circumstances
Volunteering is must for people who lost job and are over 50, as it helps to fight social isolation. The
latter along with suppressed anger are real dangers. Volunteering a couple of day a month for a local politician who is critical
about neoliberal is one way to channel your anger in a constructive way.
Unemployment means boredom and it destroys the person morale and self-worth assessment. That means that it is important to keep yourself
occupied. It does not really matter with what activity: Creation of personal website, carving some wood, teaching free classes in the
library, helping relative and neighbors. Fred Glogower, the Navy psychologist who was responsible for screening all the US Antarctic
personal in 90th, stated this point in a very clear way: "The key to successful winter-over at a station is to keep the people busy."
Fred Glogower, the Navy psychologist who was responsible for screening all the US Antarctic personal in 90th, stated this
point in a very clear way: "The key to successful winter-over at a station is to keep the people busy."
Experienced Antarctic managers strive to identify and assign worthwhile projects to crew members that can be completed within the
period of isolation and confinement. Working towards an established goal, such as writing a new program or participating if creation
of documentation for some open source project provides sense of accomplishment when the goal is achieved.
Clearly defined interim goals help to maintain the focus. Self-checks of your knowledge of Unix and scripting languages, rehearsing
interview with family members, passing certification exam for RHEL or their Linux distribution, etc also can help to create that sense
of mission. For this reason one need to be aware of danger of low workloads and prepare countermeasures.
Among other things this new situation means that you might benefit from getting some new skills or improving an old one to be more
viable on the marketplace to get back to work. But please do not bite nonsense about everyone needing to reinvent themselves.
The last think you need is $40K in student debt.
In no way you need to reinvent themselves. Especially via expensive collage program. The last thing you need is $40K in
student debt. Your problem are mostly connected with neoliberalism not you. Be critical about all those rosy promises: colleges,
especially private colleges, now are an educational shark and they will devour you without mercy. See
Slightly Skeptical View on Neoliberal Transformation of University Education
In this case taking a minimum wage position is out of the question for me since all my salary would actually go to pay my debt
and I would not have money even for transportation back and forth to work.
EconomistNC, May 5, 2015
As a former public servant teaching University Level Econometrics for nearly 15 years and possessing numerous 'Excellence'
awards, this development is nothing short of shameful. I have had dozens of recruiters and HR 'specialists' debase my public service
as not being 'Real World' experience despite the fact that without my commitment to 'Real World Applications' education, many
of those with whom I apply for employment would not hold a college degree. Indeed, I find many of the hiring managers with whom
I speak regarding positions for which I have both technical and applications experience, there is impenetrable discrimination
once they meet me in person.
The point made in several articles of this nature revolve around lack of knowledge and experience with newer technologies.
In an effort to address this issue, I went back to school (again) to obtain expertise in IT Networking and Security, PMP Path
Project Management and ITIL. Now I am being told that my education is of no value since I do not have the requisite 'Real World'
experience using these newly acquired skills.
Indeed, to meet the criteria for many positions I find open requires that I be a 'recent college graduate.' When I point out
that I have been continually retraining and taking online courses to keep my IT skills current, I am once again met with the lack
of 'Real World' experience requirement. For a society that purports itself to value education and hard work, for those among us
that have worked very hard for substandard pay and benefits to be so casually cast aside is absolutely inexcusable.
Sill some, modern steps to adapt can and should be taken. For example, fashion rules in programming and system administration and
getting a course or two for the latest fad can improve your prospects getting back to work. In community college it does not cost much
money and expense is tax deductible. It is also interesting opportunity professionally as often in the corporate environment longtimers
are pushed to the niche which is far from being interesting and sometimes represents a dead end for their former skills.
There are several programs which might provide some minor financial assistance, but don't count on them too much. In any case
tax deduction for one course in the community college is yours to get.
Please understand that colleges also changed and "neoliberalized" with money becoming primary driver of their activities. That
means that many of them now are greedy money extracting machines which can capitalize of your distressed situation. Don't believe hype
of magical retraining courses that charge $10K or more for a summer and teach almost nothing. This is a popular brand of educational
scams, nothing more, nothing less. And those "courses" are typically run by really ruthless education sharks. Time when in films college
professor was a positive hero are long gone. Now they can well be just another variety of white color criminals. Please read the notes
at Slightly Skeptical View on University Education.
In other words, if you are over 50 accumulation of education debt is gambling -- it does not really improve your chances of getting
back to workforce due to age discrimination issues. Making a sizable investment in re-training with an uncertain outcome, without understanding
full consequences and chances to get an entry level position in newly acquired field (and forget about any other level), might make
your situation dramatically worse. See comment from hen3ry below. You are warned...
Still there are several ways of getting positive return from educational institutions without spending much money:
With the current complexity of the environment memory is no longer reliable store of your experience. So create a log book
and write down each evening the steps you have taken. Once a week write the review of the week and once a month write the review for
the month. You will be surprised at the amount of times you step on the same rake and repeated unnecessary mistakes ;-).
Also that helps you to remember key things from one encounter from another. Logbook helps you to organize your memory and avoid repeating
the same mistakes again and again.
You use regular logbook put is somewhere were nobody else can read it. If you use computer put it on electronic USB drive with
built-in encryption and iether fingerprint authentication or numeric code authentication. Log should remain private and never shared
with anyone. That extremely essential.
Use library as your new "temporary working place". It can be a community library or nearby college library but you need
to get out of house at least for the first half of the day. This will help you in a way you don't anticipate. First
of all you can meet people, the second you preserve a resemblance of your usual schedule which positively affected your general psychological
state and prevent depression which often accompany long tome unemployment. People need community just of preserving psychic health.
Just the fact you still need to get up in the morning, take a bath, have breakfast and your morning coffee, dress up and go has a
strong positive influence. People are creatures of routine; don't break your current routine. You can also save on air-conditioning
going to the library at summer.
Pay attention to your attire when you are going to the library. Try to dress the way you used to dress going to work or slightly
better. That keeps you in tonus as being well dressed provide strong implicit feedback to you and improve your self-confidence. Like
people used to say "form liberates".
Electronic libraries as
Oreily Safari
is also a possibility but cost money. O'Reilly provides a short trial period that you can use as additional source of books. But nothing
can substitute a real library when you are unemployed.
This is a tax deductable expense. And for $400-$800 this is another opportunity to meet people and learn new skills. That also a
very helpful for your psychological condition and greatly helps you stay mentally sharp. If you worked in IT for a long time,
you usually lost a lot of your knowledge due to limitations of your regular corporate job.
Now there is a chance to get some of those losses back. Programming course such as Unix shell course or C++ course while not necessary
for you employment actually is a great way to relearn many useful thing and feel much better about yourself as you can compare yourself
with other students. In other words attending a college course increases your self-esteem, which is an important thing in your
situation.
What is also extremely important is that your status as a student gives you access to the community college computer lab and community
college library. This is a pretty powerful learning environment in itself.
Skilled became rusty if not used on a regular basis. You can recreate part of your former environment (and actually learn few new
things is the process) by creating a home lab. Used tower computers from Dell such as Optiplex and workstations. They are very inexpensive
and quite reliable. They can be bought for less then $150 each on eBay (with shipping). 4GB of RAM is more then enough to have
very complex Linux setups including virtual machine setup. You can also buy used CISCO router or switch if this is part of your skills.
It is more difficult to accommodate your needs if in-addition to linux you managed Solaris o, AIX or HP-UX. But still it is possible,
especially with Solaris on UltraSparc (and you can use Solaris on Intel instead). Still even if you limit yourself to Linux
it is better then nothing.
In any case creating home linux infrastructure is no-brainer. You can have two or three linux boxes and one Solaris box. Install
local DNS, DHCP, sendmail and other services. Create a "lab website". Install helpdesk or ticket tracking software. And you can enroll
the help of your former colleagues for thing that you currently do not understand.
Now you are ready to run some small development project or at least tinker with the boxes to prevent losing your skills.
It took all the strength I had not to fall apart
Kept trying hard to mend the peaces of my broken heart
I spent so many nights just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry
But now I hold my head up high
Gloria Gaynor
Sense of isolation and desperation in finding a new job increase the level of aggressiveness in people. It's much like an animal
which is being cornered. And this is strongly felt by family members, if any. Obeying simple guidelines might help
Avoid controversial subjects
Consider possible consequences before you say or do something. See
Humans can endure almost anything, but you need to be aware of typical pitfalls that develop in your situation. Material below is
based on the book
BOLD ENDEAVORS, Chapter 18)
Unplanned problems can occur. Financial stress can at times became unbearable.
Pre-existing behavioral problems tend to became worse. Individuals resort to cumulative stress in very individual way. Some develop
constructive coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and the adversity they face. They might engage in physical exercise, seek
a friend with which communicate of focus entirely on these personal projects. Other became too aggressive, might even slip
into depression and/or exhibit other inappropriate behaviors. most people still are able to adjust and endure this situation well.
We all get angry. It is what we to do about it that matters. Duration of unemployment is another cofactor that compounds those problems.
The realization that one might not escape without major hit from this situation is very depressing (see
BOLD ENDEAVORS, p. 307).
Trivial issues tend to be exaggerated. Relations with "significant others" might became strained.
Most people like to be informed, so hiding information about your current status is probably a wrong policy.
The longer the duration on unemployment, the more important became the "imitation of office work" via library and periodic tests
of your knowledge, such as certification exams.
Most people who are involved in personal projects with tangible results manage to preserve the same sense of self-respect as
before.
The primary lesson that can be learned form studying cases of long term unemployment is that humans are capable of enduring conditions
far more austere financially and more challenging morally that initially planned. Your self-worse does not depend on the size of your
salary. This is an important point.
People can adjust from change to living in a comfortable cabins on the ship to living in tent in Arctic. Their diaries reveal that
members can remain cheerful and even had to remind themselves about their desperate situation. Arctic expeditions prove that humans
can endure unimaginable hardships when the survival is in stake. Humans also exhibited a remarkable capacity to adaptation to living
on greatly reduced standard, incomparably lower that any unemployed face. Description o of the life in Nancen't hat on Frans Josef Land
illustrate the extremes of human mental and physical endurance and should be a required reading.
the polar whaling industry during nineteen and early twentieth century is another example of people surviving under extremely austere
and dangerous conditions,, The crews of sealing and wailing ships endure crowed and anti-sanitary conditions, bad food, harsh treatment
and long period of boredom punctuated by now and then by hard work and danger. Midshipman William Reynolds of the Wilkes Expedition
described adaptability of sailors on one of his letters home in 1839 (BOLD
ENDEAVORS, p 305):
As for bodily inconveniences, they are easily endured, and as long as extremes of endurance are not called for, all are disposed
to make light of the present and trust to better luck in the future. Sailors are your true philosophers in these cases and never
employ themselves in fancying their situation worse that it is,.
When you thing about such austere and difficult conditions as described in
BOLD ENDEAVORS, long term unemployment does not look too bad of a situation anymore.
If you are a church goer, you can utilize this institution too. Church is one of the few place when your current situation does not
have any stigma attached to it: religion is was created as an antipode to the
Homo homini lupus est attitude of the marketplace.
Moreover you can use it to create a group of people in similar situation which can a little bit help each other. Just communication
with people in similar situation helps.
It is a trivial advice, but important nuance is that you should not do it as the first step without talking to recruiter and understanding
your situation better. You need to prepare for each such talk, as if you go to the interview, despite the fact that this is your friend.
If position in his/her company does exist, those are usually more reliable and valuable lids, that those from recruiter. Create
the list and call starting from the most promising, not in alphabet order. Those who will take your calls and at least formally try
to help can be left on the list. Purge others. Inform those who responded about your the new plans and situation as you understand it
now.
Often people do not do anything unless they are more informed about the roadblocks you face, your next steps and plans. This way
they become more involved. Expect that some of your friends will do nothing. Those who will try are kind of virtual team that
you can use. Look for opportunities based of your LinkedIn account and you address book; some companies might be looking for consultants,
if not permanent staff.
In current environment the best chances are for IT consultant position. From Slashdot (see below):
Rather than applying for a full-time position, have you considered forming your own independent consulting business? You
would have to leverage your contacts in the industry, but there is a massive difference in the culture between hiring a 60-year-old
technical lead and hiring a 60-year-old's consulting business.
Vendor management contacts just won't care, in my opinion, if you're professional and can get results.
Get into contracting. If you've not done it before...look around and get with a contracting company....preferably one that
does Federal Govt Contracting.
Can you survive a clearance check?
If so, you should have no problem getting on with a company doing DoD contracting....they OFTEN look for years of experience.
If you're good, have a decent resume, they will submit you in....they want you to get the jobs so they can get $$ off you.
The market is often dying to hire people with lots of resume experience.
You definitely have a leg up on younger programmers.
Volunteering for some community work is an important source of keeping you skills in shape. Try to help some small business near
you for free. Your church, your municipality, and small business around you are suitable targets if they have the infrastructure you
know about and can improve.
This can greatly help to stay you sharp and even improve the skill valuable in the marketplace.
Unemployment excsabates midlife crisis in individuals. For approximately 10% of individuals the condition is most common from the ages
of 41 through 60 (a large study in the 1990s found that the average age at onset of a self-described midlife crisis was 45). Mid-life crises last about 3–10 years
in men and 2–5 years in women. If a mid-life crisis coincides with losing your job it can form potentially toxic combination.
Mid-life is the time from years 45 to 60 where a person is often evaluating his or her own life. Loss of employment creates an "overload"
of stressors and exacerbate mdlife crisis. Especiallly in women who often experience additional multiple stressors because of their
simultaneous roles as wives, mothers, and daughters,. Personality type and a history of psychological crisis are believed to predispose
some people to a variety of negative symptoms and behaviors. by aging itself, or aging in combination with changes, problems,
or regrets over:
Ruined carrier.
Problems in spousal relationships (or lack thereof)
Maturation and withdrawal of children (or lack of children)
Aging and serious problems with health or death of parents
Physical changes associated with aging
An American cultural stereotype of a man going through a midlife crisis may include the purchase of a luxury item such as an exotic
car, or seeking affairs with a younger woman. A woman's crisis is more related to re-evaluations of their roles. In both cases
the emotions can be intense.
One of the main characteristics of a mid-life crisis is the reavulation of self-worth. Moreover, the age period, between 50
and 60 if often the time when some chronic illness such as diabetes can come to the forefront. Individuals experiencing a mid-life crisis
may feel:
nnui, confusion, resentment or anger due to their discontent
with their marital, work, health, economic, or social status
A deep sense of remorse for goals not accomplished, bad bahaviour earlier in life. Guilt and ambitions to right the missteps
they feel they have taken early in life.
A fear of humiliation among more successful colleagues
Longing to get back the feeling of youthfulness
Need to spend more time alone or with certain peers
A heightened sense of their sexuality or lack thereof
If individual lacks introspection capabilities they often exhibit a non-healthy response to such a crisis including:
Increased consumption, up to abuse of drugs or
alcohol
Acquisition of status items such as luxury or sports cars, motorbikes, boats, expensive jewelry, clothing, gadgets. Getting
tattoos,
piercings, etc.
Thought about and having deep remorse for one's wrongs, committed at younger age.
paying special attention to physical appearance such as covering
baldness, wearing youthful designer clothes, etc.
Entering into sexual relationships with younger people (more typical for males). That might partially subconscious reaction
to the imminent menopause and end of reproductive career of their spouses. There might be mechanisms, including genetic, influencing
men to be more attracted to reproductive women, and less attached to their non-reproductive spouses.
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine Director: John Ford U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1940: 14.6%
The epic tale of the Joad family's search for jobs in Depression America. Tom (Fonda) returns from prison just in time to see
his family kicked off their farm. They strike out for California, where it's rumored there are plenty of jobs. Instead they wind
up in an itinerant camp with other desperate families. Tom finds more trouble than work and delivers an immortal speech against injustice.
On the Waterfront (1954)Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb Director: Elia Kazan U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1954: 5.6%
Terry Malloy (Brando) is the ex-prizefighter who has to choose between a cushy, no-show job and the hard work of doing the right
thing. Terry provides muscle for Johnny Friendly's mobbed-up union thugs, but he falls for the sister of one of Johnny's victims.
When he decides to testify about waterfront corruption, he is cast out of the gang. Kazan directs heavyweights who include Rod Steiger
and a real-life fighter, "Two Ton" Tony Galento.
On the Waterfront (1954)Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb Director: Elia Kazan U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1954: 5.6%
Terry Malloy (Brando) is the ex-prizefighter who has to choose between a cushy, no-show job and the hard work of doing the right
thing. Terry provides muscle for Johnny Friendly's mobbed-up union thugs, but he falls for the sister of one of Johnny's victims.
When he decides to testify about waterfront corruption, he is cast out of the gang. Kazan directs heavyweights who include Rod Steiger
and a real-life fighter, "Two Ton" Tony Galento.
The Godfather Part II (1974)Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro Director: Francis Ford Coppola U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1974: 5.6%
It all began with a layoff in turn-of-the-century New York City. In Coppola's strong sequel to The Godfather, young Vito
Corleone (De Niro) steals away to America and takes a job in a grocery store. He is fired when a local mob boss forces the store
owner to hire his nephew. Thwarted by nepotism, Vito takes up a life of crime with pals Peter Clemenza and Sal Tessio. And the rest
is cinema history.
Gung Ho (1986)Starring: Michael Keaton, Gedde Watanabe Director: Ron Howard U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1986: 7.0%
Hunt Stevenson (Keaton) is foreman of a Pennsylvania car factory that's been shut down; he has to convince Japanese auto executives
to reopen it. They agree, but only if they can subject the American workers to lower pay and new work rules. Conflict and cultural
confusion ensue. Worth watching if only to confirm that there once was a time when Japan seemed unstoppable and unions had power.
\
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)Starring: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin Director: James Foley U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1992: 7.5%
Just imagine how cutthroat this crew would be in today's housing market. Blake (Baldwin) has been sent to light a fire under the
salesmen at a tough Chicago real estate office. His pitch: a sales contest in which only the top two sellers will keep their jobs.
The salesmen in this film version of David Mamet's play are matched in desperation only by their would-be clients. To quote Blake:
"Only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted."
Everything Must Go (2010)Starring: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Christopher Jordan Wallace Director: Dan Rush U.S. Unemployment Rate, 2010: 9.6%
No hiding the indignity of a layoff in this one. It's all out in the open—literally—for Nick Halsey (Ferrell). Nick has hit the
misery trifecta: A relapsed alcoholic, he's been fired and his wife has left him. His solution? Live in his front yard with his "stuff,"
or at least hold a yard sale as long as he can legally pull it off. The tale is adapted from a Raymond Carver short story published
in the late 1970s, yet the theme of a man's struggle for dignity seems very much of these times.
It is often referenced in the media that a country is progressing by leaps and bounds in the matter of economy, but at the same
time there is always a sharp increase in the number of unemployed. Growing population, inflation, corruption, despotism and various
other factors might play a role in spawning unemployment. But, let’s forget the causes of unemployment and how it affects society
on the whole. What does unemployment does to an individual and to his immediate family? In this recession era, the psychological
effects of involuntary unemployment look daunting. Our societies have buried a thought that only our job defines our worthiness.
For many of us job isn’t what we do to pay our bills — it defines who we are. And when that socioeconomic identity is taken away,
the emotional consequences can be severe. The movies mentioned below in the list explore the various emotional stresses a person
faces due to joblessness. If I have missed out any great movie, dealing this subject, please mention it in the comments section.
Up in the Air (2009)
Jason Reitman’s part funny,
part serious work is about the corporate layoffs. Its protagonist Ryan Bingham, played charmingly by George Clooney, makes his living
by ending the careers of others. His baritone voice and authoritative manner makes him to fly around US to downsize employees for
companies whose HR departments are too cowardly to do the task themselves. It has got a bit touchy storyline and a script that loses
some fire, but captures contemporary angst of the economic fallout with wit and humanity.
Tokyo Sonata (2008)
Famous J-horror director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s bleakest indictment of modern Japan looks at the ripple effects caused within a family
by corporate downsizing. The protagonist Ryuhei is cast out when his administrative job is outsourced to China. The humiliated breadwinner
hides his unemployed state from his wife, Megumi and two sons. He suits up as usual and wanders around the city like a zombie and
learns the routine of maintaining face over downsizing. The recession-era shows how out dignity is stripped away by a job and how
the corporations turns our mind into vegetative state, devoid of basic human connections.
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
This unsentimental Chris Gardner biopic
takes an honest, intense look at the day-to-day survival that too many Americans must contend with. Every one of us could at least
see some portion of the film and remember being faced with similar obstacles in their lives. Will Smith played Gardner and scored
some great emotional points through his portrayal of an African-American male who turns out to be an extraordinary single-parent.
The film convincingly asks us to never give up on our dreams, even when we are staying financially afloat.
Time Out (2001)
Laurent Cantet’s French psychological drama tells the story of an executive who conceals, from his family that he has been fired
from his job. He later invents a phony investing scheme, calling up old friends to invest in it. The film seriously conveys absurdity
behind a white-collar corporate life and showcases how words like ‘emerging markets’ can draw in even smart guys to invest
huge load of money. Unlike a Hollywood protagonist, the central character here avoids over-the-top performance giving way to subtle
emotions. The strain and scenarios exhibited can be understood by anyone who has held a job.
Starring: Aurélien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet
Director: Laurent Cantet
French Unemployment Rate, 2001: 7.8%
Vincent (Recoing) has lost his job—he's just not telling anyone. Also unclear is what he's up to now: a new consulting job with
the U.N.? An investment scam? As his fantasy life ropes in a widening circle of friends and family members, the pressure builds and
Vincent's calm facade begins to crumble. Vincent drives from dreary office to bland apartment complex, watching family and former
colleagues through windows in the dark, having lost his identity when he was shown the door.
Office Space (1999)
Mike Judge’s satirical comedy must be
dedicated to everyone, whose life and soul is stomped out by an uncaring corporate entity. The story revolves around a frustrated
corporate employee Peter Gibbons, who through an accidental session of hypnotherapy is freed from chronic anxieties and fears of
unemployment. Stephen Root playing the fat, mumbling employee, Milton and three workers bashing a fax machine with a baseball bat
are some of the memorable situation in the movie. Even though the movie offers enough fun, you can’t miss out the bitter truths beneath
those gags.
The key here is to understand the your current situation is not the end of the life. You need to survive the current slump. Even
if you are forced to take job at much lower salary, if this is a job that corresponds to your qualification and allow to improve them,
you might be able to find something better later on. You can also learn a few new things on a new job and such knowledge is money.
You can also work less hours. Often much less hours. Time is money after all. Here is one relevant comment:
I have to ask what your expectations are and be realistic.
As an employer actively recruiting IT staff at the moment, rare in the current job market I know, and I have a choice between
a recent uni-graduate and someone with 15 yrs experience who I can hire for almost the same wages because so many skilled IT staff
have been laid off and need to pay their mortgage. For me the choice is obvious, I don't care about the age factor.
However I also interview many many people who think they deserve to get the same remuneration they got from their high-flying
finance job and wonder why they are still jobless after two years.
In worst case you will find itself in "semi-retirement" situation when the only type of jobs that are available as McJobs and entry
level temporary jobs. If you put enough efforts to adjust your cost of living with the new nasty reality you will survive even
this situation.
Here are tips for getting back on your feet and into the IT job market from someone who's been there and back By Ron Nutter , Network
World , 08/25/2008
Editor's note: On Feb. 20, IT manager and Network World columnist Ron Nutter was called into his boss's office and told
he was being let go — that day. Once the initial shock wore off, Nutter launched an aggressive search for new employment in the Kansas
City area. Over the next 76 days, Nutter applied for 85 jobs, and had 16 interviews before landing a new position. He chronicled
the job search in a daily blog. Now that he has had
some time to reflect on the experience, Nutter offers these 20 tips for surviving a layoff.
1. As you're getting laid off, be sure to take notes
This can be difficult to do, since losing a job can be a very emotional experience. But while everything is still fresh in your
mind, write down all the details that you can remember.
For example, I was told that I would be paid for the full two-week pay period, plus my remaining vacation and sick time. When
my last check arrived, there were discrepancies. Having written notes helped me when I went back and reminded my former boss and
the HR folks of their commitment.
2. Take some time for yourself
Take a few days for yourself. A traumatic event has just happened to you and you need to get over the initial shock before jumping
into the fray to search for a new job.
3. Review the papers from the company that laid you off
Several important things need to be attended to rather quickly. One is how to file for unemployment. Another is how
long your company-paid health insurance will be in force before you have to consider paying for COBRA.
4. Update your resume
This is something that we should all do, but it doesn't always get the attention that it should. I was told a long time ago that
your resume should be more than two pages with a max of three bullet points per employer. That may work in some cases but not all.
I have found that some recruiters/employers use software that does a "word count" to look for how many times a particular word,
such as Cisco, or a word describing a certain type of experience
is listed. I can attest that this is happening to a degree. When I was looking for a prior job, a recruiter had me just about totally
rewrite my resume to specifically list all the different Cisco hardware that I had worked with. It was interesting to note how the
callbacks increased after I did that.
You may find that it may be necessary to keep more than one type of resume depending on the type(s) of jobs you are looking for,
so that the resume is specifically tailored to the type of job you are pursuing.
5. Get a handle on monthly bills
Even though I had a little money put back for a "rainy" day, I went through all my recurring bills to see if there was any room
for saving money. One area I looked at was car and home insurance. I found that by shopping around, I was able to keep the same level
of auto and homeowners coverage while reducing the amount of both bills. I had been thinking about doing it for a variety of reasons,
but being unemployed helped push it to the top of the list.
6. Cut food costs
If you live by yourself, this will be easier to do. If you have a family, everyone will need to sit down and understand that they
will all have to help out until you can get another job. ... ...
7. Look at health insurance options
Your company supplied health insurance will come to an end. If it was like my former employer, the health insurance ended a few
days after I was separated from the company. Worse yet, I wasn't "due" to receive the COBRA information until after my company health
insurance had lapsed. Because my previous employer had also been doing the claims processing for my health insurance, I wasn't comfortable
with them having any further access to my medical records. Doing a little research on the Internet, I found a single health
insurance policy from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for half the price and better coverage than the COBRA policy my former employer was
going to offer me.
... ... ...
10. File for unemployment compensation
This is something that I delayed a little bit. Partially because of pride and partially because I didn't anticipate the job hunting
process to take more than three months. As someone pointed out to me, you earned this money and you should take advantage of
it. In my case, filing was complicated by the fact that I had moved from another state in the past 18 months. The unemployment
folks go back that far in figuring out where you need to file for unemployment. That potentially had me talking with three different
state unemployment departments.
I spent several days on the phone with two states that would be involved in my situation. As painful as it may be to deal with
this part of your unemployment process, the sooner you start, the sooner the money will start coming in to help pay the bills until
you get another job.
11. Check the job boards
During my job search, I looked at CareerBuilder,
Craigslist, Dice and
Monster. I found no job leads from Monster in my career area. Several of the
HR folks that I talked to during the process told me that they used Monster very little due in part to the higher fees that Monster
charged for a job posting compared with other job boards, and the generally poorer quality of applications they received. I found
some new job postings on Dice, but with a significant number of jobs cross-posted on different boards, I didn't find Dice to be a
significant source of potential job leads. One source I wouldn't have thought to check for jobs was Craigslist. More than one recruiter
told me that he had good results from posting new jobs on Craigslist. Set aside time each day to do this.
12. Make the job boards work for you
Dice has a feature where you can make your resume searchable by recruiters/companies looking to fill a position. I did get some
calls from that. CareerBuilder recently followed suit by offering that feature as well. While Dice allows companies/recruiters to
repost the same job each day so that it looks new, this makes the process of truly identifying the new jobs a little harder in some
cases. Turn the tables in your favor by making periodic changes to your resume, so that when it is being searched it will show up
as being new/changed and possibly get you looked at by a company or recruiter that might have passed you by the day before.
13. Prepare for the interview
One thing that I have done when preparing for an interview with a company is to do research on the company, the companies/sectors/industries
that they serve. If it is a publicly listed company, do a little reading on the past quarter or two of press releases to see what
changes have occurred at the company and what new directions they are heading in. From the response I have received from several
companies, it seems to make a good impression that you show interest in finding out about the company when going to interview with
them. It may seem like a small thing or something that you should do anyway but there seems to be quite a few people looking for
a job that don't do this.
Also, have several copies of your resume printed out and with you when at an interview. This becomes even more important once
you see your resume as the client/recruiter sees it, when they have downloaded it or printed it out from the job board that you applied
for the position through. The formatting is pretty much gone. To make matters worse, the paragraphs or bullet points that you had
in the resume will look like a series of poorly written run-on sentences that may cause distinctive or unique information about you
to be overlooked.
14. Deal with recruiters
I encountered a couple of recruiters that would give used car salesmen a bad name, but as a general rule I found the recruiters
pretty decent to work with. Several positions that I was approached for were not on the job boards and sometimes were only from a
single recruiter. The trick I had to learn to develop was to identify the same end job when it coming from different recruiters.
One situation that you want to avoid is to not have more than one recruiter pitching you to the same client. Most recruiters will
usually tell you early on who the actual end client is.
15. Accept help from family
While your pride may make it hard for you to accept help, keep in mind that the unemployment situation you are dealing with is
affecting them to a degree as well. Depending on the age of the family, this is something that may be new to them and that they may
have never had the need to deal with. There was a time, unfortunately long gone now, when the company you first went to work for
was the only company you would work for your entire career. How much help you accept from family is something that you will have
to decide. Look at it this way, whatever help they do give you is that much less you will have to spend for food.
16. Keep good records
This suggestion came from a letter I received from the Department of Unemployment telling me that I would need to provide some
basic information. I set up a spreadsheet in OpenOffice with three tabs. The first tab was where I kept track of the jobs I had applied
for. I tracked the date, source of the job, how the job was applied for, company name (if known), job name, contact name and job
number if provided. The next tab was where I kept track of the recruiters I talked to, HR folks that I had contact with for the jobs
I had applied directly on, and anything else such as job fairs that I attended. This information was helpful when I got audited by
the Department of Unemployment folks to make sure I was looking for another job. The last tab was where I recorded when I filed my
unemployment claim each week, when I received the check, the check number, when it was deposited.
17. Get your personal records in order
When you do get an offer and accept it, one of the things that you will have to deal with is the lovely I-9 form that says you
are allowed to work in this country. You will need a variety of things. If you can't find your Social Security card, now would be
an excellent time to order a replacement card. This will take several weeks to get processed and get it to you. The sooner you get
it, the sooner you will have it ready to produce when starting that new job. If you haven't seen a copy of the I-9 form lately, get
a copy of one so you can see what documents will be needed. Another document that you want to make sure that you have a copy of,
even if you don't need it for the I-9, is your birth certificate. This is one that might take a little while to get a copy of. I
didn't know until recently that, depending on when and/or where you were born, there are two types of birth certificates – one that
the hospital does and one done when the birth is registered with the local authorities. You will want to get one that is a copy of
what is on file with the local authorities.
18. Don't wait for the phone to ring
This may be one of the harder things to do. Keep in mind that recruiters and HR types move at their own pace. That pace
can be slow, very slow. When you first apply for a job, it could be several days or more before you get the first contact.
Waiting for the phone to ring will have you climbing the walls in short order. Sometime you will get a call within hours of applying
for a job, but expect that to be the exception. There are always things that you can do while waiting for movement on the job front
and some of them may be done at little to no cost – doing that little bit of touch-up painting you have never gotten around to, do
that trimming around the yard that always needs to be done. The point I am trying to make here is that you need to stay active, don't
just sit around and watch the clock move forward.
19. Get out the house at least once a day
At some point you will run out of things to do around the house or just simply need to get out. There will be the occasional job
fair, but that won't take a large amount of your time. While you can knock on some doors at some companies that you would like to
work at, with the price of gas hovering around $4 a gallon, depending on where you live, that can be an expensive trip to make for
an unknown return. Do some things that you like to do, such as going to a museum or sports game. The main thing is to get out to
keep from getting cabin fever.
20. Never give up
Don't leave any stone unturned. You may just find that a company that passed you by today for another applicant may come back
to you when that person leaves to move onto greener pastures. I would have never thought that could happen but I have seen it happen
twice in the past year.
Neoliberalism is the key reason fro the drop in life expectancy
Notable quotes:
"... Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep problems in a society, researchers say. ..."
"... More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said ..."
"... The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7 years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age. ..."
Life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 1.5 years in 2020, the biggest decline since at least
World War II, as the Covid-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands and exacerbated crises in
drug overdoses , homicides and some chronic diseases.
... ... ...
The full toll of the pandemic has yet to be seen, doctors and public-health officials said.
Many people skipped or delayed treatment last year for conditions such as diabetes or high
blood pressure and endured isolation, stress and interruptions in normal diet and exercise
routines.
"That has led to intermediate and longer-term effects we will have to deal with for years to
come," said Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern
University Feinberg School of Medicine and president of the American Heart Association.
Life expectancy is a measure of a nation's well-being and prosperity, based on mortality in
a given year. Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep
problems in a society, researchers say. Life expectancy fell in the U.S. by 11.8 years in
1918, during a world-wide flu pandemic. Many victims were young.
... ... ...
More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to
heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said...
Life expectancy would have fallen even more, the CDC said, if not for decreases in mortality
due to cancer, chronic lower-respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema and asthma, and
other factors.
The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were
disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7
years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age.
U.S. longevity had been largely stagnant since 2010, even declining in three of those years,
due in part to an increase in
deaths from drug overdoses , rising death rates
from heart disease for middle-aged Americans and other public health crises. "Getting back
to where we were before the pandemic is a very bad place," said Steven Woolf, director emeritus
of the Center on Society and Health at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
and author of a recent study comparing the effects of the pandemic on life expectancy in the
U.S. and other high-income countries. "We've got a larger problem here."
... ... ...
Drug-overdose deaths rose nearly 30% last year, driven by a proliferation of the deadly
synthetic opioid fentanyl as well as stress, isolation and reduced access to treatment during
the pandemic, public-health experts said. One study published this month found a 28.3%
decline in initiation of addiction treatment in California from March through October
2020..... ...
Life expectancy for white people dropped 1.2 years to 77.6 years in 2020, the lowest level
since 2002.
What is missing from this article is a comparison of the US with other advanced economies in
Europe and Asia. What is disturbing is how the US spends the most and achieves less than our
economic peers starting with expected average longevity. We had the lowest longevity averages
pre-pandemic and now we have dropped further. This is happening despite the fact that our
health care spending is twice the per capita of other advanced economies (Approx. $11K in the
US vs. $6K based on 2019 data). Contributing to our dismal longevity statistics, with respect
to other wealthy economies, are the highest rates of drug overdose deaths and suicides by
gun. This is just the tip of a long list of sad statistics where we are unfortunately number
1 or close to it. The usual (partisan) response is to claim its government's fault or the
fault of a greedy healthcare system or just say the data is wrong. So far, none of these
strategies is working very well.
Dave Berg SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Life expectancy is the wrong phrase. It's current average life duration. COVID will have no
impact on the life expectancy of babies being born right now. I have two new grandchildren,
their life expectancy will be impacted by things we don't even know about yet.
when the tax rates increase even more, it just encourages automation or DIY (bring your own sheets to avoid paying the cleaning
fee), which just grinds down growth rather than accelerates it.
Notable quotes:
"... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. ..."
Companies see automation and other labor-saving steps as a way to emerge from the health crisis with a permanently smaller
workforce
PHOTO:
JIM THOMPSON/ZUMA PRESS
... ... ...
Economic data show that companies have learned to do more with less over the last 16 months or so. Output nearly
recovered to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021 -- down just 0.5% from the end of 2019 -- even though U.S.
workers put in 4.3% fewer hours than they did before the health crisis.
... ... ...
Raytheon Technologies
Corp.
RTX
0.08%
,
the biggest U.S. aerospace supplier by sales, laid off 21,000 employees and contractors in 2020 amid a drastic
decline in air travel. Raytheon said in January that efforts to modernize its factories and back-office operations
would boost profit margins and reduce the need to bring back all those jobs. The company said that most if not all
of the 4,500 contract workers who were let go in 2020 wouldn't be called back.
... ... ..
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. HLT -0.78% said last week that most of its U.S. properties are adopting "a
flexible housekeeping policy," with daily service available upon request. "Full deep cleanings will be conducted
prior to check-in and on every fifth day for extended stays," it said.
Daily housekeeping will still be free for those who request it...
Unite Here, a union that represents hotel workers, published a report in June estimating that the end of daily
room cleaning could result in an industrywide loss of up to 180,000 jobs...
... ... ...
Restaurants have become rapid adopters of technology during the pandemic as two forces -- labor shortages that are
pushing wages higher and a desire to reduce close contact between customers and employees -- raise the return on such
investments.
...
Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a
waiter.
The hand-held screens provide a hedge against labor inflation, said John Peyton, CEO of Applebee's
parent
Dine
Brands Global
Inc.
... ... ...
The U.S. tax code encourages investments in automation, particularly after the Trump administration's tax cuts,
said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the impact of
automation on workers. Firms pay around 25 cents in taxes for every dollar they pay workers, compared with 5 cents
for every dollar spent on machines because companies can write off capital investments, he said.
A lot of employers were given Covid-aid to keep employees employed and paid in 2020. I
assume somebody has addressed that obligation since it wasn't mentioned.
But, what happens to the unskilled workers whose jobs have been eliminated? Do Raytheon
and Hilton just say "have a nice life on the streets"?
No, they will become our collective burdens.
I am all for technology and progress and better QA/QC and general performance. But the
employers that benefit from this should use part of their gains in stock valuation to keep
"our collective burdens" off our collective backs, rather than pay dividends and bonuses
first.
Maybe reinvest in updated training for those laid off.
No great outcome comes free. BUT, as the article implies, the luxury of having already
laid off the unskilled, likely leaves the employer holding all the cards.
And the wheel keeps turning...
Jeffery Allen
Question! Isn't this antithetical (reduction of employees) to the spirit and purpose of
both monetary and fiscal programs, e.g., PPP loans (fiscal), capital markets funding
facilities (monetary) established last year and current year? Employers are to retain
employees. Gee, what a farce. Does anyone really care?
Philip Hilmes
Some of this makes sense and some would happen anyway without the pandemic. I don't need my room
cleaned every day, but sometimes I want it. The wait staff in restaurants is another matter. Losing
wait staff makes for a pretty bad experience. I hate having to order on my phone. I feel like I might
as well be home ordering food through Grubhub or something. It's impersonal, more painful than telling
someone, doesn't allow for you to be checked on if you need anything, doesn't provide information you
don't get from a menu, etc. It really diminishes the value of going out to eat without wait staff.
al snow
OK I been reading all the comments I only have a WSJ access as the rate was a great deal.
Hotel/Motel started making the bed but not changing the sheets every day for many years I am fine as
long as they offer trash take out and towel/paper every day
and do not forget to tip .
clive boulton
Recruiters re-post hard to fill job listings onto multiple job boards. I don't believe the reported
job openings resemble are real. Divide by 3 at least.
The number of U.S. truck drivers sidelined due to substance abuse violations has surpassed
60,000 and continues to climb by roughly 2,000-3,000 per month, according to federal data. The
latest monthly
report by the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, administered by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration since January 2020, revealed that 60,299 CDL holders have a drug or
alcohol violation recorded in the clearinghouse as of June 1, up from 57,510 as of May 1 and up
from 18,860 recorded in the clearinghouse as of May 1, 2020.
Drivers with at least one substance abuse violation are barred from operating a commercial
truck until they complete a return-to-duty process, which includes providing a negative
follow-up test result. The percentage of drivers who are completing the RTD process has
steadily increased over the past year, however, from 5.2% as of May 1, 2020, to 22.1% as of May
1, 2021.
Marijuana consistently tops the list of substances identified in positive drug tests, far
outpacing cocaine and methamphetamine, the second- and third-highest drug violations,
respectively, among CDL holders.
The number of violations now recorded in the clearinghouse stands out for another reason:
It's coincidentally just a few hundred shy of an estimated number of drivers needed to fill a
shortfall of commercial drivers to keep pace with freight demand.
"According to a recent estimate, the trucking industry needs an additional 60,800 truck
drivers immediately -- a deficit that is expected to grow to more than 160,000 by 2028,"
testified American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear at a Capitol Hill
hearing on freight mobility in May.
"In fact, when anticipated driver retirement numbers are combined with the expected growth
in capacity, the trucking industry will need to hire roughly 1.1 million new drivers over the
next decade, or an average of nearly 110,000 per year."
Scopelitis Consulting Co-Director Sean Garney pointed out that the growing number of
prohibited drivers is not a bad thing from a safety standpoint.
"The database is doing what it's supposed to do, which is identify those who should not be
driving," Garney told FreightWaves. "Losing drivers due to positive drug tests may not
necessarily be a good thing for truck capacity, but I think what many others in this industry
also care about is safety."
The problem is that many people face long term unemployment without substantial emergency funds, which further complicates
already difficult situation.
Notable quotes:
"... More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday. ..."
Imagine you lost your job tomorrow. How long would you be able to sustain your current
lifestyle? A week? A month? A year?
As we await Friday's labor market update, Finder has just published the results of a recent
survey attempting to gauge the financial stability of the average American in the post-pandemic
era.
More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive
without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the
population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday.
Another 24% said they expected to be able to live comfortably between two months and six
months. That means an estimated 133.6MM working Americans (52.3% of the population) can live
off their savings for six months or less before going broke.
On the other end of the spectrum, roughly 8.7MM employed Americans (or 3.4% of the
population) say they don't need to rely on a rainy day fund since they have employment
insurance which will compensate them should they lose their job.
Amusingly, men appear to be less effective savers than women. Some 32.4MM women (26.7% of
American women) say their savings would stretch at most a month, compared to 40MM men (29.9% of
American men) who admit to the same. Of those people, 9.7MM women (8% of American women) say
their savings wouldn't even stretch a week, compared to 15.5MM men (11.6% of American men) who
admit to the same.
A majority of employed Americans over the age of 18 say their savings would last six months
at most. About 70.7MM men (52.8% of American men) and 62.8MM women (51.8% of American women)
fear they'd be in dire straits within six months of losing their livelihood.
Unsurprisingly, younger people tend to have less of a savings buffer - but the gap between
the generations isn't as wide as it probably should be.
While increasing one's income is perhaps the best route to building a more robust nest egg,
Finder offered some suggestions for people looking to maximize their savings.
1. Create a budget and stick to it
Look at your monthly income against all of your monthly expenses. Add to them expenses you
pay once or twice a year to avoid a surprise when they creep up. After you know where your
money is going, you can allot specific amounts to different categories and effectively track
your spending.
"... Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet. ..."
"... West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off. ..."
For the past few months, Republicans have been waging a ferocious political battle to end
federal unemployment benefits, based upon stated desires of saving the U.S. economy from a
serious labor shortage. The logic, in the words
of Republican politicians like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, goes like this: "the government pays
folks more to stay home than to go to work," and therefore, "[p]aying people not to work is not
helpful." The conservative Wall Street Journal has been beating the drum for the same argument,
saying recently that it was a " terrible
blunder " to pay jobless benefits to unemployed workers.
If the hyperbolic claims are to be believed, one might imagine American workers are
luxuriating in the largesse of taxpayer-funded payments, thumbing their noses at the earnest
"job creators" who are taking far more seriously the importance of a post-pandemic economic
growth spurt.
It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just
released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the
percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face
value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.
But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York
Times op-ed , there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker
demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, "When those
measures [of raising wages] don't result in a substantial increase in workers, that's a labor
shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy."
Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when
economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they
could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market's way of saying, if you can't afford higher
salaries, you shouldn't expect to fill jobs.
Or, to use the logic of another accepted capitalist argument, employers could liken the job
market to the surge pricing practices of ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. After
consumers complained about hiked-up prices for rides during rush hour,
Uber explained , "With surge pricing, Uber rates increase to get more cars on the road and
ensure reliability during the busiest times. When enough cars are on the road, prices go back
down to normal levels." Applying this logic to the labor market, workers might be saying to
employers: "When enough dollars are being offered in wages, the number of job openings will go
back down to normal levels." In other words, workers are surge-pricing the cost of their
labor.
But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real
labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce
insists that "[t]he worker shortage is real," and that it has risen to the level of a
"national economic emergency" that "poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and
America's great resurgence." In the Chamber's worldview, workers, not corporate employers who
refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.'s economic recovery.
Longtime labor organizer and senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies Bill Fletcher Jr. explained to me in an email
interview that claims of a labor shortage are an exaggeration and that, actually, "we suffered
a minor depression and not another great recession," as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Fletcher's view, "The so-called labor shortage needs to be understood as the result of
tremendous employment reorganization, including the collapse of industries and companies."
Furthermore, according to Fletcher, the purveyors of the "labor shortage" myth are not
accounting for "the collapse of daycare and the impact on women and families, and a continued
fear associated with the pandemic."
He's right. As one analyst
put it, "The rotten seed of America's disinvestment in child care has finally sprouted." Such
factors have received little attention by the purveyors of the labor shortage myth -- perhaps
because acknowledging real obstacles like care work requires thinking of workers as real human
beings rather than cogs in a capitalist machine.
Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of
private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with
the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions,
instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.
Already, jobless benefits were slashed to appallingly low levels after Republicans reduced a
$600-a-week payment authorized by the CARES Act to a mere
$300 a week , which works out to $7.50 an hour for full-time work. If companies cannot
compete with this exceedingly paltry sum, their position is akin to a customer demanding to a
car salesperson that they have the right to buy a vehicle for a below-market-value sticker
price (again, capitalist logic is a worthwhile exercise to showcase the ludicrousness of how
lawmakers and their corporate beneficiaries are responding to the state of the labor
market).
Remarkably, although federal jobless benefits are funded through September 2021,
more than two dozen Republican-run states are choosing to end them earlier. Not only will
this impact the bottom line for
millions of people struggling to make ends meet, but it will also undermine the stimulus
impact that this federal aid has on the economies of states when jobless workers spend their
federal dollars on necessities. Conservatives are essentially engaged in an ideological battle
over government benefits, which, in their view, are always wrong unless they are going to the
already privileged (remember the GOP's 2017
tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?).
The GOP has thumbed its nose at federal benefits for residents before. In order to
underscore their ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, recall how Republican
governors
eschewed billions of federal dollars to fund Medicaid expansion. These conservative
ideologues chose to let their own
voters suffer the consequences of turning down federal aid in service of their political
opposition to Obamacare. And they're doing the same thing now.
At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could
undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid
peanuts in income taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth
multiplied to extraordinary levels. The obscenely wealthy are spending their mountains of cash on luxury
goods and fulfilling
childish fantasies of space travel . The juxtaposition of such a phenomenon alongside the
conservative claim that jobless benefits are too generous is evidence that we are indeed in a
"national economic emergency" -- just not of the sort that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants
us to believe.
West
Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early
in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has
made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough
low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless
benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as
his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he
cut off.
When lawmakers earlier this year
debated the Raise the Wage Act , which would have increased the federal minimum wage,
Republicans wagged their fingers in warning, saying higher wages would put companies out of
business. Opponents of that failed bill claimed that if forced to pay $15 an hour, employers
would hire fewer people, close branches, or perhaps shut down altogether, which we were told
would ultimately hurt workers.
Now, we are being told another story: that companies actually do need workers and won't
simply reduce jobs, close branches, or shut down and that the government therefore needs to
stop competing with their ultra-low wages to save the economy. The claim that businesses would
no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one
multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to
shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when
they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage .
American workers are at a critically important juncture at this moment. Corporate employers
seem to be approaching a limit of how far they can push workers to accept poverty-level jobs.
According to Fletcher, "This moment provides opportunities to raise wage demands, but it must
be a moment where workers organize in order to sustain and pursue demands for improvements in
their living and working conditions."
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali,"
a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing
fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was
produced by Economy for All , a project of the
Independent Media Institute.
In IT corporate honchos shamelessly put more then a dozen of very specific skills into the
position rescription and want a cog that hit that exactly. they are not interested in IQ, ability
to learn and such things. that want already train person for the position to fill, so that have
zero need to train this persn and they expect that he will work productively from the day
one.
But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a
real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs.
Duh. This is so blindingly obvious, but NC is the only place that seems to mention this
fact.
Here in the UK, the outmigration of marginally paid workers from Eastern Europe and the
resultant "labour shortage" triggered by Brexit has made it abundantly clear that Blair's
change to open borders was not from any idealistic considerations but as a way of importing
easily exploited labor.
Business leaders quoted in the the tsunami of hand-wringing MSM articles about the current
catastrophe are offering such helpful solutions as allowing housekeepers to use pools and
gyms in off hours, free meals to waiters, etc. Anything but a living wage.
" I don't actually see any untruths to the GOP talking points. "
"" Workers are less likely to accept a job while receiving Gov't benefits" and "workers are
less likely to accept low wage crappy jobs ".
Well,if u can survive on a $300/week program that ends after several weeks pass,bless u.
No one else in America can. That's a $7.50 hr full time "summer job" with no pension or
medical benefits that teenagers with no dependents,few bills n maintenance issues might be
interested in; adults with adult responsibilities,no way. That so called RepubliCons, the
"economics experts", can make such a fraudulent claim n anyone out of elementary school
believes it has a quantum particle of reality or value is . well I'll just say a sad n
unbelievable situation.
They get 300 dollars plus regular UI. They can also get Medicaid and CHIP, or if they are
still making too much they are eligible for Obamacare exchange. Plus they're eligible for
SNAP and housing vouchers
There is one significant fallacy in this article: The author conflates Republican
opposition to enhanced benefits with opposition to unemployment benefits overall.
I very much stand with labour over business on most (probably all) points, but the
Republican argument is to end the enhanced benefits in most cases – Not to abolish
unemployment assistance. They believe the role of government is to step in to help pay basic
bills in the event of unemployment, but oppose the current higher level of benefit due to the
market distortions it causes (Hence the appearance of the term 'labour shortage'.)
I agree that it basically forces mcdonalds et al to up their wages if they want to do
business, which should be a positive for society, but I find it unlikely that the author
could have unintentionally mistunderstood the argument on such a fundamental level, and all
it does is try to drive a wedge further between each side of the argument.
Anyone that believes that workers supported their jobs being sent overseas is either
demented or delusional or suffers from a mental hernia. The same goes for the common working
stiffs supporting massive immigration to help drive down their ability to demand a livable
wage.
American labor has been sold down the river by the International Labor Leaders,
politicians and the oligarchy of US corporate CEO's.
======
Got a new hip recently. Do your P.T., take it easy, follow the warnings of what not to do
until you heal and you should discover that decades feel like they are lifted off your
shoulders.
Sierra,
You've made a very interesting point that actually never occurred to me and one in which I
never seen fully examined.
Exploiting labour and outsourcing it are two sides of the same coin with the same goal in
mind, diverting revenue streams into the C-suite and rentier class.
Obviously you cannot outsource most of the workers in the hospitality industry or the
non-virtual aspects of world's oldest profession, but a lot of the tech industry and the
virtual aspects of the latter are very amenable to being shipped overseas.
Immigrants are extremely visible and an easy target, while outsourcing is essentially an
impossible to contain concept that creates real world hardship.
Dear NC readers, do you know of any studies comparing and contrasting the economic impact of
immigration and/or limiting it and outsourcing?
Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the
perspective of private employers and their lobbyists.
You are acting if economists and lobbyists are separate groups, as opposed to largely a
subset thereof. Funny how a field entirely based on the study of incentives claims incentives
don't distort their policy prescriptions, isn't it?
As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other
marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and
enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.
One factor not mentioned is many free-riding businesses refuse to pay for training, then
wonder why there are no trained workers to hire.
Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage.
Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel.
Economics is not based on incentives. That's behavioral economics. I hate to quote Larry
Summers, but this is Summers on financial economics:
Ketchup economists reject out of hand much of this research on the ketchup market. They
believe that the data used is based on almost meaningless accounting information and are
quick to point out that concepts such as costs of production vary across firms and are not
accurately measurable in any event. they believe that ketchup transactions prices are the
only hard data worth studying. Nonetheless ketchup economists have an impressive research
program, focusing on the scope for excess opportunities in the ketchup market. They have
shown that two quart bottles of ketchup invariably sell for twice as much as one quart
bottles of ketchup except for deviations traceable to transaction costs, and that one
cannot get a bargain on ketchup by buying and combining ingredients once one takes account
of transaction costs. Nor are there gains to be had from storing ketchup, or mixing
together different quality ketchups and selling the resulting product. Indeed, most ketchup
economists regard the efficiency of the ketchup market as the best established fact in
empirical economics.
Happy to see you back at a keyboard, and hoping your recovery is progressing well. I had
the misfortune of spending two days in the hospitals while they got my blood chemistry
strightened out. Here's the kicker; the hospitalist, who I saw 3 times, submitted a bill for
a whopping $17,000. Just yesterday, the practice she works for submitted a bill that was
one-tenth her charges for the work she did, yet her bill is still sitting waiting to be
processed.
OMG, how horrible. HSS is a small hospital for a big city like NYC, only 205 beds and 25
operating rooms. No emergency room. They are not owned by PE and so I don't think play
outsourcing/markup games (they are very big on controlling quality, which you can't do if you
have to go through middlemen for staffing). Some of the MDs do that their own practices
within HSS but they are solo practitioners or small teams, which is not a model that you see
much of anywhere outside NYC
The last time I was hospitalized, all the hospitalists were in the employ of the hospital,
now they are in the employ of a nationwide hospitalist practice, which has all the smell of
private equity around it. I'm really beginning to think that a third party focusted on
healthcare might have a real shot at upsetting the political order – maybe it's time to
drag out your skunk party for 2024.
As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other
marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and
enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable
consequences.
Well I'm sorry you can't find easily exploitable labor, except I'm not immigrants face the
same ridiculous costs, and weren't hispanic workers more heavily impacted by covid due
to those marginal jobs (I'll switch your dynamic to low wage workers , and
marginal jobs, thanks), so by your logic more should have been let in to die from
these marginal jobs? but yeah we need more PMC except we don't Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage.
Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA
cartel."
Last I checked it was private equity, wall st and pharmaceutical companies and their
lobbyists that drive up costs so labor needs to charge more.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
How much of this is over specification on the part of employers in the ad for the job? We
want the perfect candidate who can do the job better than we can with no training .
OMG this is such a long-standing pet peeve! We've commented on this nonsense regularly.
Companies took the position that they don't have to train and now they are eating their
cooking.
The mismatch between job openings and job applicants is not just about wages.
In fact, if companies were willing to take a chance on people who didn't exactly match the
job requirements, the likely effect would be to raise the wages some of those that did not
qualify under the over exacting job requirements. [And likely paying these new employees less
than they had contemplated paying the perfect candidate.]
But that seems like someone making the hiring decision might, just possibly, be seen as
taking a risk.
At my empolyer we know we can't find any colleges that teach mainframe skills, so we bring
in graduates who are willing to learn those skills – we submit them to a 3-month
bootcamp and then there's a long period of mentorship under a senior person to their group
that has an opening. Since everybody and their dog are now moving headfirst into DevOps,
where all the tooling is in somewhat less ancient software, they get exposed using those
Eclipse/VScode-based tools and are able to come up to speed somewhat quicker. Still, no one
in corporate America dares to bite the bullet and re-platform their core systems with few
exceptions (SABRE) for fear of losing all the institutional knowledge that's in software,
rather than wetware (humans).
Just think what is happening right now with everyone holding an Indian outsourcing
contract. You don't have individual's cellphone numbers over in India, which would cost you
an arm and a leg to call, never mind what's going on in their facilities.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for employers not training their staffs.
In the SF Bay Area computer industry, employees and independent contractors alike continually
race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a
rain. Many companies train their customers–and charge them for it–before they'll
train their staffs. This is a principal reason there's a market for contractors. Training
oneself in new technologies lays a base for opportunities that don't appear if you spend a
decade in the same job (unless, like mainframe programming, your job is so old it's new). I
suppose this is a beneficial side of capitalism?
I get that you want experience for mid to senior level jobs but the experience
requirements for what are ostsensibly entry-level jobs have gotten absurd. The education
requirements have also gotten out of hand in some cases.
That being said, a lot of the shortages are in low-wage, part-time jobs so the issue isn't
necessarily ridiculous requirements, like you sometimes see for entry level white collar
jobs, but wages that are too low and awful working conditions.
How many people want to be treated like dirt–be it by customers, management, or
both–for not much more than minimum wage if they have other options?
A wage increase will help fill these jobs but there also needs to be a paradigm shift in
how employees are treated–the customer is not always right and allowing them to treat
employees in ways that would not be tolerated in other businesses, and certainly not in many
white-collar workplaces is a huge part of the problem and why these jobs have long had
high-turnover.
It never ends – when it was about immigrant labor under George B junior – I
think – the call was
-- - They do jobs that Americans won't -- or something to that effect.
It always bothered me that the sentence was never, in my mind, completed. It should have been
said
-- They do jobs that Americans won't do at that pay level. --
The tax system, economic system and higher education departments have been perverted by the
continuous bribery and endowments by the rentier class to our elected law makers and dept
heads for decades –
The creditor, debtor relationships distorted for eons.
The toll takers have never, in history, been in any higher level of mastery than they are
now.
It is not to throw out the constitution but, to throw out those who have perverted it.
The construction industry knows how to exploit immigrant labor, documented as well as
undocumented. I'm sure most peole born here refuse to work for the same wages.
The exploitation occurs on many levels. For small residential jobs, a lot of wage theft
occurs. For larger jobs, a lot of safety regs get ignored. When you have a population that
won't use the legal avenues available to other citizens to push back against abuse you can
get a lot done :/
When I go looking for a job if a degree isn't required I am very unlikely to pursue it
further. Same if the list of 'required' is overly detailed. I'm making assumptions in both of
these cases (that might not be correct) about pay, benefits, work environment, etc. and what
is actually going on with a job listing. Why? Chiefly my likelihood of actually getting a
reasonable offer. I expect either being seen as overqualified in the first case or the job
only being listed because of some requirement in the second.
I have to wonder if many places know how to hire. This is made much more difficult by
years of poorly written (maybe deceptive) job postings. You probably know many of the
phrases; flexible schedule, family ___, reliable transportation required, and so on. Its no
surprise if puffery doesn't bring back the drones.
If we're playing with statistics. How many of these posted job openings, how many
interviews did the companies offer v. how many offers were made until the position was
filled? If position remains open, has the company increased the base pay offer? guaranteed an
increased min. number of weekly hours? offered bonuses or increased benefits? How many times
has this same job opening using the original posting criteria been re-posted? Is this a real
single job opening that the company plans to fill in real time or just a posting that they
keep opening because they have high turnover? etc., etc., etc.
The real problem with this workers are lazy meme is that it is repeated and repeated all
year long on the local news from the viewpoint of business. It has filtered down to local
people. I hear them repeating what the local news said without giving it any critical
thought. Even those who say that we need unions and believe themselves to be on the side of
workers.
Ear wigs are good for businesses. Insidious for workers.
In the UK, in the days of Labor Strive, before Neo-liberalism , there was always newspaper
reports about "Labor Strife" and "bolshy workers." Never once did the press examine
Management had behaved and caused the workers to become "bolshy" – a direct reaction to
Management's attitudes and behavior, probably based on the worst attributes of the UK's class
system.
Definition: A bolshy person often argues and makes difficulties.
Management get the workers (Their Attitudes) it deserves.
I recommend reading "The Toyota Way" to explore a very successful management style.
This song is getting a probably getting more hits these days
Take this job and Shove It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
But I hear lots of businesses will close to to no labor, so when they close they can go work
for 7.25 an hour for one of their competitors who also needs laborors Solidarinosc!
If businesses are suffering, it's restaurants and small scale enterprise. The Covid
response was tailored to the needs of economy of scale mega biz. They likely knew multitides
of mom-n-pops would go away- and they have. But that's fine.
So if state governments can turn down federal unemployment supplements because they want
labor to go back to work for unlivable wages this means the federal government can do nothing
about it. When push comes to shove the question that must be settled is, Is it a human right
to receive employment assistance until a job is found that pays a livable wage? (Not even a
republican will actually say No). So then that puts all the stingy states on notice that
there is a human rights issue here. States will have the choice to either let businesses shut
down for lack of workers, or states can subsidize minimum wages and benefits. If states
choose, in desperation, to subsidize minimum wages, then the states can apply to the feds to
be compensated. The thing that is needed in the interim, between when the real standoff
starts and ends, is a safety net for workers who are being blocked by the state from
receiving unemployment benefits. I say call in the national guard. This is a human rights
issue.
The real exploitation happened when we allowed companies to delocalize, manufacture
product in China and sell it here with no strings attached.
James Goldsmith seems like a prophet now, he was so absolutely right.
Wow. The Clinton flack was insufferable. AND WRONG about pretty much everything. Goldsmith
was brilliant. I wasn't paying enough attention at he time, but how many high profile people
were making the arguments he was making?
I'm surprised that nobody has taken the opportunity to comment on how this discussion
shows how hypocritical Biden and the democrats were not to press for raising the minimum
wage.
The pretense (which they must have coached the "Senate scholar" on) was that raising the
minimum wage was not related to revenue (i.e., a revenue bill). But of course it is! Right
now, paying below-poverty wages enabled Walmart and other employers to make the government
pay part of their wage bill. Higher minimum wages would raise these government aid recipients
out of the poverty range, saving public revenue.
That is so obvious that the failure of the Democrats to make the point shows that they really
didn't want to raise wages after all.
I didn't expect much from Biden but he's even worse than I thought. Along with those
bought senators hiding behind Joe Manchin. Depressing to think how much worse everything will
become for working people here.
When I think about how they're complaining about Manchin now when there was a serious
primary challenge against him last year, and how the Democrat organization rallied around
Manchin and not his challenger, it is disgusting to see Slate/The Guardian/NYT/other "Blue no
matter who" mouth breathers write articles asking what can be done to salvage a progressive
agenda from the curse of bipartisanship.
I had given up on national politics long before the 2020 election circus but this latest
has confirmed my resolve. The destruction of the Democrat party can't come soon enough.
If I call them Hypocritics, when I never believed them in the first place, will they feel
any shame at all? Or must I be part of their class for them to feel even the tiniest of
niggles?
Perhaps they'll feel ashamed once they cut the check for the $600 they shorted us this
winter. Or maybe that they are reneging on the extended unemployment benefits early or
One side makes you sleep on a bed of nails and swear allegiance.The other side generously
offers to help you out, no strings attached, but you might bleed out from the thousands of
tiny means-testing cuts. Each side want the lower tiers to face the gauntlet and prove one's
worthiness, hoping to convince us that a black box algorithm is the same thing as a jury of
peers.
Exactly right! And keep in mind deluge of op-eds telling us that Biden is a
transformational president! The same authors presented a deluge of op-eds telling us how
Senator Sanders was to radical for the American people after he did well in early primaries.
That the reforms he supported like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, lowering drug
costs, help with daycare, doing something about climate change etc. were reforms that the
people would never accept because the people value their freedom and don't want to live in a
socialistic country.
It looks like none of the promises Biden made during the campaign will be implemented by
President Biden. That why he is in the White House.
Would a lot of these positions be filled if the US had single payer healthcare or similar?
Would workers accept low paying positions if they didn't have to lose so much of their pay to
crappy health insurance?
At our local Petsmart they cut staff during the pandemic. They laid off all full time
workers
And are only hiring back part time. I knew several of the laid off people and they are not
coming back. Two of the people that worked full time have found other jobs one with slightly
better pay the other with slightly better benefits. We are in California where rent is very
high so another person we know decided to use this as a chance to relocate to another state
where housing is less expensive. Our older neighbor retired, although vaccinated now, he
decided it just wasn't safe and after the CDC told everyone to take off their mask off. He is
glad he just decided to live on a little less money. I suspect there are a lot of reasons as
Yves stated above for a lack of workers, but this "they are lazy" trope is capitalistic
nonsense.
Some highlights:
>> everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will
never be industrious.
-- Arthur Young; 1771
>>Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive
experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the "poverty" of France on its good
weather and fertile soil:
'Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more,
and really live better.
>>Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society It
is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no
riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of
wealth.
I'll just point out, per the Old Testament, that wage, debt and rent slavery were the
exception, not the norm (as they are in the US) for citizens (Hebrews) in ancient
Israel/Judah.
That's because the assets in ancient Israel/Judah were roughly equally owned by all
citizens with provisions in the OT Law (eg. Leviticus 25, eg. Deuteronomy 15, eg. Deuteronomy
23:19-20) to keep it that way in the long run (but less than 50 years).
Contrast that to US where we have privileges for a private credit cartel, aka "the banks",
and no limits to the concentration of land ownership and the roots of our problems are
evident.
So begging for better jobs for citizens is, in the Biblical context, pathetically weak tea
indeed.
On a personal note I had a great job interview Thursday at the local food co-op. This is
my first in person interview since I was terminated without cause by IBM (after almost 24
years there in a server development job) almost a year ago. Despite applying for over 100
positions. I'm over 60 and haven't worked in a year so I admit I'm grateful to even get the
chance.
I have another interview with them next week and hoping to start soon as a produce clerk
making $13.50 an hour. If I can get on full time they offer a decent insurance plan including
dental. The HR person acknowledged that I was "wildly overqualified" but encouraging. The
possibility of getting health care is key; my IBM Cobra benefits will start costing me almost
$1400/monthly for myself and my husband in September after the ARA subsidy expires.
I've adjusted my expectations to reinvent myself as a manual laborer after decades in
fairly cushy corporate life. I've managed to keep my health and physical capacity so somewhat
optimistic I can meet the job requirements that include lifting 50 lb boxes of produce. But
we'll see.
You mean you haven't had a job in a year since it's highly doubtful that you have not done
any work in a year; eg. cooking, cleaning, shopping, car maintenance, gardening,
chauffeuring, mowing the lawn, home maintenance and caring for others count as work.
We need to stop conflating work (good) with wage slavery as if the former necessarily
requires the latter.
Okay sure. I haven't earned in a year. But it's still a problem I'm trying to sort
out best as I can.
Since I still live in the US where earning is highly correlated with insurance
coverage, and I still have about 5 years until we're both qualified for Medicare this may
turn out to be a great thing that has happened.
And since I don't see a path out of wage slavery today I'll be happy to accept almost any
offer from the food co-op. It's a union job with decent pay and benefits and may offer other
opportunities in the future. They mostly buy and sell products that are locally made so that
makes it easier too. The money we are all enslaving each other over is staying around here as
much as possible. Okay.
Good luck! Fyi i strongly suggest u look into taking your IBM pension asap as 1. It will
minimally impact your taxes as u r now earning less n 2. How many more years do u think it
will be there? ( I usually recommend most people take their social security at 62 for similar
reasons but in your case I'd do your research b4 making any move like that. ) Take a blank
state n Fed tax form n pencil in the new income n see what the results are.
Btw truly wonderful people are involved in food co-ops,enjoy!
No one really questions the idea of maximising profit.
How do you maximise profit?
You minimise costs, including labour costs, i.e. wages.
Where did the idea of maximising profit comes from?
It certainly wasn't from Adam Smith.
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and
fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and
high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to
ruin." Adam Smith
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
Today's problems with growth and demand.
Amazon didn't suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it's grown (not so good on
the wages).
The benefits of the system can be passed upwards in dividends or downwards in wages.
Both actually detract from the money available for re-investment as Jeff Bezos knows only too
well.
He didn't pay dividends, and paid really low wages, to maximise the amount that he could
re-invest in Amazon and look how big it's grown.
The shareholders gains are made through the value of the shares.
Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon;
his own workers don't have much purchasing power.
Where do the benefits of the system go?
Today, we pass as much as possible upwards in dividends.
In the Keynesian era they passed a lot more down in wages.
> Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from
Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.
You are missing the tree in the forest. Jeff hopes other people will pay a high enough
price for Amazon stawk. We already know Jeff doesn't give a shit about the stuff he sells, or
the inhumane working conditions that go along with the low pay and short "career". I mean,
not even the nastiest farmer would treat his mules like that, even if mules were easy and
cheap to come by.
We don't think people should get money when they are not working.
Are you sure?
What's the point in working?
Why bother?
It's just not worth all the effort when you can make money doing nothing.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
They love easy money.
With a BTL portfolio, I can get the capital gains on a number of properties and extract
the hard earned income of generation rent at the same time.
That sounds good.
What is there not to like?
We love easy money.
You've just got to sniff out the easy money.
All that hard work involved in setting up a company yourself, and building it up.
Why bother?
Asset strip firms other people have built up, that's easy money.
"West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless
benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work.
That's what has made this great country."
Have you had a look around recently?
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
America is not about work at all.
The US is largely about exploiting or being exploited with most of US doing both.
We should resent an economic system that requires we exploit others or be a pure victim
ourselves.
That said and to face some truths we'd rather not, the Bible offers some comfort, eg:
Ecclesiastes 7:16 Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin
yourself?
Ecclesiastes 5:8-9 If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province,
do not be shocked at the sight; for one official watches over another official, and there are
higher officials over them. After all, a king who cultivates the field is beneficial to the
land.
Nonetheless, we should support economic justice and recognize that most of us are net
losers to an unjust economic system even though it offers some corrupt compensation* to
divide and confuse us.
*eg positive yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of a monetary
sovereign.
Jim Justice made his money the old fashioned way, he inherited it:
From Wiki: James Conley Justice II (born April 27, 1951) is an American businessman and
politician who has been serving as the 36th governor of West Virginia since 2017. With a net
worth of around $1.2 billion, he is the wealthiest person in West Virginia. He inherited a
coal mining business from his father and built a business empire with over 94 companies,
including the Greenbrier, a luxury resort.
I wonder how much of this is also related to a change in the churn we assume existed
pre-pandemic? For example, the most recent JOLTS survey results from April
2021 show the total number of separations hasn't really changed but the number of quits
has increased.
So, one possible interpretation of that would be employers are less likely to fire people
and those who think they have skills in demand are more interested in leaving for better
opportunities now. That makes intuitive sense given what we've been through. If you had a
good gig and it was stable through 2020 you had very little reason to leave it even if an
offer was better with another company. That goes double if you were a caregiver or had
children. Which of course is why many women who were affected by the challenges of balancing
daycare and a career gave up.
This is also my experience lately. While it's only anecdotal evidence, we're having a hard
time hiring mid career engineers. Doesn't seem like pay is the issue. We offer a ton of
vacation, a separate pool of sick time, decent benefits, and wages in the six figures with a
good bonus program. We're looking to hire 3 engineers. We can't even get people to apply. In
2019 we could be sure to see a steady supply of experienced candidates looking for new
opportunities. Now? If you have an engineering position and your company is letting you work
from home it seems you don't have a good reason to jump.
Look no further than Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. They had only half the
staff they normally need at $10 an hour. So they double the wage to $20 an hour and filled
every job in less than a week. The Conservaturds will never admit they are lying.
As a small business owner providing professional services I am grateful for the comment
section here.
I have called professional peers to get a behind the corporate PR perspective of their
businesses. Although anecdotal, the overall trend in our industry is to accept the labor
shortage and downsize. Most firms have a reliable backlog of work and will benefit from an
infrastructure bill. Our firm has chosen to downsize and close vacant positions.
Remote work, although feasible, has employees thinking they are LeBron James, regardless
of their skill set. Desperate employers are feeding their belief. Two years from now it will
be interesting to see if these employees they fail forward. Company culture minimized
employee turnover pre-covid. This culture has little meaning to an employee working in his
daughter's playroom.
For context, in California, I believe the median income for licensees is approximately
$110,000 with lower level technicians easily at $75k in the urban areas.
Lastly, the "paltry" $300 per week is in additional to the state unemployment checks and
is not subject to taxes. As stated previously, $300 is equal to $7.50 per hour. Federal
minimum wage is $7.25 and is adopted by many states minimum, for what it's worth.
With respect, I do not see any there there in the comment. Adjusted for inflation the
minimum wage at its height in 1968 at 1.60, would be just under $13 per hour today. However,
even at $15 in California, it is inadequate.
Anyone making anything like the minimum wage would not be working from home, but would be
working in some kind of customer service job, and would find paying for adequate food,
clothing, and shelter very difficult. Not in getting any extras, but only in getting enough
to survive. People, and their families, do need to eat.
If the response of not paying enough, and therefore not getting new hires, is to downsize,
perhaps that is good. After all no business deserves to remain in business, especially if the
business model depends on its workers being unable to survive.
I am also fed up with the "lazy worker" meme. Or rather, propaganda. People are literally
exhausted working 2 or 3 lousy jobs and no real healthcare. Equally irritating to me is a
misguided notion that we have some magically accessible generous safety net in the US. As
though there aren't thousands and thousands on waiting lists for government subsidized
housing. Section 8 vouchers? Good luck.
We've ended "welfare as we [knew] it" (AFDC) thanks to Bill Clinton and then the screw was
turned tightly by Junior Bush (no child care, but go to work.) The upshot was bad news for
kids.
Seems to me one of the few things left is the food stamp program, and I can't imagine how
that's been reconfigured. Whomever gave that fantastic list of goodies people can get in the
US with a mere snap of the fingers isn't in the real world, imho.
Ok! Yves, lovely to see you again, my friend! (Cue the Moody Blues ) Get well!
Here is my story.
I am 56 years old, on dialysis and I was collecting SSI of 529 a month.
I was living with and taking care of my mother in her home because she had dementia.
She died in December and I had to start paying the bills. In March I inherited her IRA which
I reported to SS. I was able to roll it over into my own IRA because I am disabled, due to
the Trump tax law changes.
I reported the changes in a timely manner and because I couldn't afford to live here without
a job, I took a part time job for 9 an hour.
So now, because I inherited my mother's IRA and have too much resources I no longer qualify
for SSI and have been overpaid to the tune of almost 2 grand, which I am assuming I will have
to pay back. I have no idea how that works either. Do they just grab money out of your
account? Anyone who knows please tell me.
I would run, run, run to the nearest public assistance counselor or lawyer. In the San
Francisco Bay Area, it is should not be too hard to find one. They saved me. There are also
in California several state websites. There was a useful to me benefits planning site (It only covers nine states though).
The rules for SSI (Supplemental Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability
Insurance), Social Security, Medi-Cal or Medicaid, and Medicare are each different. Each
state has its own modifications as well, so that is fifty additional sets of modified rules
especially for the medical benefits. If they are determined to claw back the money, how it is
done might depend on the individual state. It is truly a maze of flycatchers and trapdoors
out for you and your money.
The overworked benefits clerks often do not have the knowledge to deal with anything even
slightly unusual and are not encourage or at least discouraged from finding out due to
the never shrinking pile, not from anyone's malice. This means you could lose benefits
because they did not know what they were doing or just by mistake. So, it is up to you to
find those nonprofit counselors or the for profit lawyer to help you through the laws, rules,
and whatever local regulations there are. Hopefully, you will not have to read through some
of the official printed regulations like I did. If wasn't an experience paper pusher.. The
average person would have been lost. Intelligence and competence has nothing to do with.
Hell, neither does logic, I think.
In my case, when I inherited a retirement account, SSDI was not affected, because of how
the original account was set up. However, SSDI is different from SSI although both have
interesting and Byzantine requirements. I guess to make sure we are all "deserving" of any
help.
So don't ask anonymous bozos like me on the internet and find those local counselors. If
it is nonprofit, they will probably do it completely free. If needed, many lawyers, including
tax lawyers, and CPAs will offer discounted help or will know where you can go.
What is the floor on wages?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Set disposable income to zero.
Minimum wages = taxes + the cost of living
So, as we increase housing costs, we drive up wages.
The neoliberal solution.
Try and paper over the cracks with Payday loans.
This what we call a short term solution.
Someone has been tinkering with the economics and that's why we can't see the problem.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital".
They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical
Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.
It's so well hidden no one even knows it's there and everyone trips up over the cost of
living, even the Chinese.
Angus Deaton rediscovers the wheel that was lost by the early neoclassical economists. "Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like
the banking and the health-care sectors just might" Angus Deaton, Nobel prize winner.
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages,
reducing profit.
This raises the costs of doing anything in the US, and drives off-shoring.
The Chinese learn the hard way.
Davos 2019 – The Chinese have now realised high housing costs eat into consumer
spending and they wanted to increase internal consumption. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBcIFu-_V0
They let real estate rip and have now realised why that wasn't a good idea.
The equation makes it so easy.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
The cost of living term goes up with increased housing costs.
The disposable income term goes down.
They didn't have the equation, they used neoclassical economics.
The Chinese had to learn the hard way and it took years, but they got there in the end.
They have let the cost of living rise and they want to increase internal consumption.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
It's a double whammy on wages.
China isn't as competitive as it used to be.
China has become more expensive and developed Eastern economies are off-shoring to places
like Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in
the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were
engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery
landscape...
In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program
funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and
consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot
servers grows around the country.
And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped
on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and
several others, in the next couple of weeks...
"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way
they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing
the space with the delivery bots,"
said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...
Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are
placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a
computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and
in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot
will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to
allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in
30 minutes or less.
Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at
Berkeley, where
at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In
about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000
deliveries...
"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles
and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ
their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is
making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."
A video
shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog
on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer
having to tip human food-delivery workers.
Job gains in May were led by leisure and hospitality, with the sector adding 292,000 jobs.
Payrolls grew by
559,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, up from a revised 278,000 in
April, which marked a sharp drop from March's figure.
The labor recovery has slowed from earlier in the year -- in March, the economy added
785,000 jobs
... The labor-force participation rate, the share of adults working or looking for work,
edged slightly lower in May to 61.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020.
Republicans, always eager to snatch the bread from the mouths of the poor, are blaming
unemployment benefits for the reluctance of workers to return to jobs. In some red states,
they already are snatching it.
But more men are returning to work than are women. Doesn't that prove that unemployment
benefits are not holding back former workers?
I'll bet more women will return to work in September, after schools start up in-person
classes.
William Lamb
Republican turn a blind on helping people, except themselves. They would rather have one
being a slave and get pay less then nothing with little perks in making less then high
quality item that will still have defects, even if we pride our workmanship that is suppose
to equal to none. It would like being in 1950s, when there was not much world competition,
when world economy was still recovering from WW2.
I guessed Republican want American to continue working by low paying wages so they can
enrich themselves, and show that America can still produce things with slave wages.
johm moore
Most of the jobs are insufficient to support a reasonable quality of life. A job today is
about like a half a job pre-NAFTA and the job export process in terms of the quality of life
that it supports.
Bryson Marsh
If UI was holding back employment, then why are we adding so many low wage jobs? The missing
jobs are in *middle income* sectors.
David Chait
I wouldn't call people returning to work "new" jobs, that just seems disingenuous.
rich ullsmith
Asset prices rise when the jobs report is lukewarm. Thank you, Federal Reserve. May I have
another.
Sam Trotter
It should be made mandatory to publish the offered wage/rate. I see so many fake jobs posted
on LinkedIn with no description of bill rate for contract positions or Base+Bonus for
Full-Time roles. Too many mass scam messages.
The percentage of people quitting their jobs, meanwhile, also rose to a record 2.8% among
private-sector workers. That's a full percentage point higher than a year ago, when the
so-called quits rate fell to a seven-year low.
...A recent study by Bank of America, for example, found that job switchers earned an extra
13% in wages from their new positions. That's a big chunk of money.
...Normally people who quit their jobs are ineligible for unemployment benefits, but they
can get an exemption in many states for health, safety or child-care reasons.
About half of the states, all led by Republican governors, plan to stop giving out the
federal benefit by early July to push people back into the labor force. Economists will be
watching closely to see how many people go back to work.
Just to stay at the oil field – Meth addiction and overtime work goes hand in
hand.
Meth and it's derivates was the drug of the 50s in Germany during rebuilding from the war
(Pervitin, Weckamin). They have been legal until the 70s.
It's the easy way first – just take it and you can work longer. Want to drive a truck
16 hours? Just throw a few Pervitins. Side effects and addiction come later. And the unclean
stuff from the black market kills people faster.
"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in
the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were
engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery
landscape...
In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program
funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and
consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot
servers grows around the country.
And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped
on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and
several others, in the next couple of weeks...
"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way
they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing
the space with the delivery bots,"
said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...
Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are
placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a
computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and
in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot
will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to
allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in
30 minutes or less.
Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at
Berkeley, where
at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In
about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000
deliveries...
"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles
and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ
their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is
making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."
A video
shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog
on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer
having to tip human food-delivery workers.
Canadian economist Mario Seccareccia, recipient of this year's John Kenneth Galbraith
Prize in Economics, says it's time to reconsider the idea of full employment. He spoke to Lynn
Parramore of the Institute for New
Economic Thinking about why 2021 offers a rare opportunity to rebalance the economy in
favor of Main Street.
Once upon a time – not so long ago, really – unemployment was not a thing.
In agricultural societies, even capitalistic ones, most people worked on the land. A smaller
number worked in villages and towns – shoemakers and carpenters and so on. Some might go
back and forth from the countryside to the town, depending on the availability of work. If your
work in town building houses dried up, you might come back to the country for the harvest.
Economist Mario Seccareccia, who loves history, notes that before the Industrial Revolution,
it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.
Questions: If unemployment was once unknown, why do we accept it now?
Where did unemployment come from?
In those pre-Industrial Revolution times, there were paupers, mostly people who could not
work for some reason such as a disability. These were deemed deserving of charity. A small
number of paupers were considered deviants and treated harshly, perhaps made to labor in public
work-houses under vile conditions.
Seccareccia notes that early classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo
recognized that able-bodied people could experience temporary joblessness, but not the
long-term variety. The word "unemployment" only became widely used in the nineteenth century.
As cities grew and manufacturing took off, people living in cities and towns grew apart.
Movement between the two places grew less fluid. The agricultural sector of the economy was
shrinking.
At first, if you lost your factory job, you could still probably pick up something in the
countryside to tide you over. But if you had grown up in the city, as more and more people did,
you might not know how to do rural work. By the late nineteenth century, most city dwellers
could no longer count on falling back on agricultural work during hard times.
Karl Marx noted that England's enclosure movement, which gained momentum as early as the
seventeenth century, had made things hard for agricultural workers as wealthy landowners
grabbed up the rights to common lands that workers had traditionally been allowed to use and
were a vital part of their sustenance. Uprooting peasants from the land and traditional ways of
life, Marx observed, created an "industrial reserve army" – basically a whole bunch of
people wanting to work but unable to find a job during times when industrialists held back
investment or when machines took over certain jobs.
Marx saw that this new kind of unemployment was a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Still, a
lot of mainstream bourgeois economists thought that the market would somehow sort things out
and eventually provide enough job openings to prevent mass unemployment.
It didn't turn out that way. Exhibit A: The Great Depression.
Especially after World War I, many later economists, most notably John Maynard Keynes,
warned that high rates of unemployment were getting to be the norm in the twentieth century.
Keynes predicted that a lot of people would go on being jobless unless the government did
something. This was very bad for society.
Keynes emphasized that full employment was never going to just happen on its own. Mainstream
economists thought that if wages fell enough, full employment would eventually prevail. Keynes
disputed that. As wages fell, demand contracted even further, leading to even less business
investment and so forth in a never-ending cycle. No, capitalism, with its business cycles led
to involuntary unemployment, according to Keynes.
Seccareccia observes that economist Michał Kalecki agreed that the government could
make policies to help more people stay employed at a decent wage, but there was just one
problem: wealthy capitalists weren't going to have it. They would oppose state-supported
systems to hold demand up so that fear of unemployment checked workers' demands for better pay
and improved work conditions.
For a while, after World War II, the capitalists were on the defense. The Great Depression
and the Communist threat got western countries spooked enough to go along with Keynes's
argument that governments should try to encourage employment by doing things like creating big
projects for people to work on. Safety nets were created to keep folks from falling into
poverty. The goal of full employment gained popularity and many more workers joined unions.
Capitalists v. Full Employment
Economists have bandied about various definitions of what full employment ought to look
like, explains Seccareccia: "A well-known definition came from William Beveridge, who said that
what you wanted was as many jobs open as people looking for them – or even more jobs
because every person can't take every type of job."
In the mid-twentieth century, with the economy doing well, neoclassical economists like
Milton Friedman started to push back against the idea of full employment. He discouraged the
use of fiscal and monetary policy to support employment, arguing that attempts to push down
unemployment beyond what he insisted was its "natural" rate in the economy would simply lead to
inflation.
In the 1960s, some of what Friedman warned about did actually happen. Employment was low and
prices started to go up mildly, particularly during the Vietnam War era. However, the biggest
boost to the credibility of Milton Friedman came with the OPEC cartel oil-price hikes of the
1970s that pushed the inflation rate to double-digit levels while simultaneously pushing up
unemployment. So, in the '70s, western countries started backing off from encouraging full
employment and maintaining strong safety nets. Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were
in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding government jobs, and leaving it to the market to
decide how much unemployment there would be. They said that it had to be this way to keep
inflation from rising, even though the cause of that high inflation of the '70s had nothing to
do with high public spending and excessive money creation that Friedman and his friends talked
about.
Seccareccia points to proof that the neoclassical logic didn't hold up. In the two decades
before the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8, the rate of unemployment went down, but inflation
didn't go up. That proved that the neoclassical economists were wrong. But unfortunately,
policymakers didn't really digest this before the Great Recession hit. So, they bungled the
response badly by putting the brake on public spending too quickly because of fears of
excessive budget deficits and potentially higher future inflation that never materialized. They
kept insisting that the employment level would return to that "natural" state Friedman had
talked about if they just left things to the market.
"But it didn't work out that way," says Seccareccia. "Unemployment skyrocketed and it took a
decade to return to pre-crisis levels.
Which brings us to the COVID-19 crisis.
A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Seccareccia says that we have to understand the difference between the current situation and
the Global Financial Crisis. This time, it really is different.
"The earlier crisis started in the financial sector and spread to the real economy," he
explains. "But in 2020, when the Coronavirus emerged, the financial and industrial sectors got
hammered at the same time." This meant that people in both sectors stopped spending. Households
couldn't spend even if they wanted to because traveling, dining out, and other activities were
off-limits. Businesses cut investment as uncertainty loomed and exports declined due to
restrictions at borders. Unless you were Home Depot or an e-commerce company, you couldn't sell
anything.
The COVID-19 crisis also saw workers pulled out of activities thought to be too high risk
for spreading the virus. Across the country, non-essential workers were sent home and told to
stay there. Most, especially in sectors like leisure and hospitality,
can't do their work from home . A lot of these people lost their wages, and because most of
them were low-wage to begin with, they could least afford the hit. Many were only able to
maintain their incomes through government unemployment insurance. Businesses, meanwhile, were
kept afloat with subsidies.
Seccareccia notes that unemployment had an interesting twist in the pandemic because it was
both the problem and the initial cure for the health crisis. Unemployment kept the virus from
circulating. It saved lives.
Fast-forward to late spring, 2021. As America and other western countries seek to put the
pandemic behind them, the economy is opening back up. Employers are wanting to hire, and they
are even competing with each other for workers. But many job seekers are waiting to go back to
work. There are a lot of reasons why: caregiving for kids is still a huge burden, and people
are still worried about getting sick. Transit routes have been disrupted making it harder for
people to get to work. It's also possible that some workers may be resisting jobs on offer
which come with low pay and inadequate benefits.
Employers have started complaining they can't find workers and blame the social safety net
as the problem. Some employers, like those in the hospitality industry, are offering higher pay
to lure workers back.
Just as Kalecki predicted, the wealthy capitalists are getting uneasy. The Chamber of
Commerce, for example, has pushed the U.S. to stop expanded unemployment insurance benefits so
that people will be forced to return to low-wage jobs. Some Republican-dominated states have
jumped on board with this idea. Economist Larry Summers, for his part, is warning about
inflation and telling the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates so that wages don't go up. He
complains that when he walks outside,
all he sees are people eager to fill job vacancies . It's unclear where he was living when
he said that, or which people he is talking about.
Others argue that expanded unemployment insurance isn't the problem, but the crappy jobs on
offer. Seccareccia believes that it's a good thing if employers raise their wages, even if that
means a little bit of inflation.
Rising inequality, he emphasizes, is unsustainable in a healthy society, and it's about time
ordinary people had a little power to improve their lot. "When employers are worried about
people quitting," he says, "that's when you know you're getting close to full employment. And
in a capitalist society, it's an extremely rare situation when the number of quits begins to
exceed the number of new hires as an economy nears the peak of a business cycle."
In Seccareccia's view, "there's a balancing act between workers 'fearing the sack' and
employers 'fearing the quit.'" He observes that capitalists are very good at making sure that
the former situation is more common, and they've been spectacularly successful in the last 40
years. "This is why you have flat wages and runaway inequality," says Seccareccia.
"Productivity goes up but the workers don't share in it." Profits pile up at the top.
Right now, inflation has been creeping up in some areas. In a couple of sectors, like used
cars, it's rising a lot. The question is, beyond a couple of unique cases, what will happen to
inflation overall? And will be temporary? A lot of economists think that inflation will be
short-lived and will not get very high, so it's nothing to get excited about. Some economists,
like Antonella Palumbo, think the
worry about inflation is overdone . She notes that with unemployment still high and vast
numbers of people who formerly worked but are still out of the labor force, the ranks of the
famous reserve army of unemployed are still huge. As the economy restarts, all kinds of
short-run bottlenecks are cropping up, but that reserve army is not going anywhere fast and
will continue to limit wage increases.
Seccareccia points out that wealthy capitalists trying to stop workers from getting paid
better and conservatives complaining about laziness fail to mention that meanwhile, the stock
market is soaring, making the rich richer. Plus, the housing market is booming because the more
affluent people lucky enough to have kept their jobs over the pandemic now have extra money
saved to spend on big-ticket items. "Is it really fair," he asks, "to complain about a few
hundred dollars a week received by those at the bottom of the economic ladder? Especially how
much the economy is already titled in favor of the haves?"
So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment? Should it do anything at all?
For Seccareccia's part, he thinks this is a perfect time to reconsider the idea of full
employment, which has been so long abandoned by policymakers in favor of some "natural"
unemployment rate. "Policymakers need to understand why COVID may offer a chance not seen since
the end of WWII," he says. "We could actually make the economy fairer for ordinary people."
> So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment?
My favoured solution, and that of other readers of this blog, I suspect, is the Job
Guarantee as promoted by MMT.
Because a well designed job guarantee would provide a floor on wages and benefits, the
private sector would be forced to match it at the very least. But as has been pointed out on
this blog many times before, Kalecki's point that full employment would remove employers
ability to effectively threaten workers with the sack, means that it will be very difficult
politically to see it implemented.
Next week I start my 2nd year of pandemic triggered unemployment after I was terminated
without cause. On June 26th my extended UI benefits will be halted by TX Governor Greg Abbot.
Okay.
In a year of applying for new positions I have managed to get exactly 1 phone interview
after a 40 year career in technology development, ending up with almost 24 years at IBM. In
my last year with them I received both a performance bonus and a salary hike. But I'm now
over 60 and have been unemployed longer than 3 months so that's probably fairly typical
experience. Okay.
The path to full employment is probably going to require the creation of new opportunities
in a still contracting economic system. It's not impossible if you're focused on the goal.
Here's my shortlist of policy initiatives that could dramatically and quickly grow the number
of available jobs, particularly for the under employed younger people who are paying off
student loans.
Dramatically increase social security and medicare eligibility/benefits to convince older
workers to leave the workforce.
Expand paid family leave and vacation policies to align with other industrialized nations in
order to require businesses to hire to cover needed absences.
Drop the number of hours that define full time work to allow more workers to get full
benefits.
Yeah, I'd like to be considered for another good paying job in a still viable industry. I
spent decades developing skills that are still relevant and valuable. But I'm old and I'm
expensive because I have expectations based on my own employment history that 40 years of
neoliberal policies have rendered obsolete. Okay.
I'm close enough to retirement and lucky enough in my ability to save and plan that this
won't wreck us. I try to imagine my pandemic inspired involuntary retirement as an
opportunity to become a labor rights activist. It helps.
My situation is virtually the same, although in academia as research scientist at major US
university, with last 6 years as invited scientist at German research institute. Returned to
US to the nightmare of Trump at 63, but fully (and naively) intending to continue working.
I've lost count of how many job applications I've tendered, with only one interview in two
years, then COVID. Now resigned to the fact that work for me from here on out will be
different. I continue to write papers with colleagues at university to maintain a reputation
in my field. Now recognize that people take one look at my CV, and think: "Old! Expensive!"
-- but the truth is I would be willing to work for little just to stay active in a field
applying expertise I've spent decades acquiring. I've since met many, many seniors in the
same boat: trained professionals with lots of experience who still want to work (and, in my
case, need at least some income).
But at least I had a career. I can't imagine the hopelessness of people 35-40 years my
junior, with huge debt from college, grad school, and unable to find a decent job.
Something must change. The situation as it exists is unsustainable. One bright light seems
to be increasing recognition of the way the economy actually functions, the role of public
spending, and the real limits to growth, prosperity.
Appreciate your commiseration Rolf. I expect there is an army of people like us who are in
this situation or about to be.
Fwiw (maybe not much), I'm actively trying to get hired full time at the food coop near my
house. The workers there are represented by a union and get full insurance benefits including
dental with a 40 hour work week. The Vt minimum wage of $11.75/hr doesn't matter as much as
those insurance benefits do; we're still in that 5 year gap between age 60 and age 65 where
you are on your own if you need healthcare.
And I've pretty much decided to laugh off Beaux Jivin's campaign promise to drop the
medicare eligibility age to 60 etc. It's abandoned along with many other campaign promises.
Okay.
Thanks, A/S, for your kind words. Yes, benefits are key. I really am increasingly worried
that Biden, and the Democratic Party in general, don't seem the grasp the fact that the GOP
is absolutely committed to recovering control of Congress and the White House by *any* means
necessary. Biden in particular seems to entertain the notion that he can bring the right wing
to his way of thinking by conciliation, negotiation, compromise, and good performance. But
the GOP is not interested in Dem's performance or compromise -- McConnell has made this quite
clear. So Dems have an opportunity to make significant history, a true course correction, but
only this once. To pursue "bipartisanship" with a party that has no interest in compromise is
hugely naïve -- I can't imagine Biden is that foolish, except that he did begin his
campaign with the promise that "nothing would fundamentally change".
The food coop gig sounds like a good, sound shot -- all the best to you.
Fellow army member, age 61. Lucky to have health care via spouse but definitely not enough
wealth to retire. Two interviews in last two years, both in retrospect clearly designed to
fill out an interview field when preferred (much younger) hire had already been identified.
The canard about atrophied skills might apply in the occasional instance but IMO is just more
bullsh1t in defense of existing social order.
Dem obliviousness to the reality all around us is truly horrifying. I used to argue that
the big sort would result in fenced "progressive" enclaves in which all parties – those
inside and those outside – would be thrilled to not have to interact with each other.
But it's clear to me now that progressives don't need physical separation to avoid seeing
what they don't want to; they are completely able to not see the world right in front of
them.
I guess I should include this post script regarding my IBM termination:
After I'd been unemployed for about 90 days I was contacted by a recruiter working on
behalf of IBM and my former managers. They were looking for people with exactly my skills and
experience to come back to work at IBM as temporary contractors. I agreed to a short phone
interview to learn more about the opportunity.
Once the recruiter verified my experience and contacts at IBM, I managed to confirm that
they expected to bring me back on at about 80% of my former salary. With no benefits and zero
job security. I laughed out loud at this acknowledgment of their duplicity but agreed to let
myself be considered and provided a resume. Never heard back which is probably okay.
Amateur Socialist, Rolf and Left in Wisconsin -- I take my hat off to all of you. Work
left both my partner and me a number of years ago, and we quickly learned that we had aged
out of the market and were useless to society as we thought of it. Fortunately, we relatively
quickly became eligible for Medicare, which even in its steadily diminishing state was (and
is) a significant help.
Good luck to all of you, and A/S, please let us know the outcome of your pursuit of the
job with benefits at your local Food Co-op.
I think your experience demonstrates the problem with defining full Employment as, "anyone
who wants a job has one". Using this definition, the simple way to get the economy to FE then
is to just make all the jobs so terrible and low paying that no one wants them. You dont need
a job, and you dont want just any old crappy job. You want one similiar to your old one, If
that doesnt exist anymore, one would reasonably say you dont want a job, since what you want
doesn't exist, hence we're at full employment
All of this is to say, we shouldnt necessarily just encourage the government to get us to
FE. Capitalists by themselves are quite capable of getting us there, as I'd argue they did in
the 19th century. Its government interventions like minimum wage and basic safety protocols
that keep us from reaching FE since that's what makes people actually want a job
it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.
I think there is a conflation of the language terms bandied
about–work-v-jobs-v-employment are all couched in the concept of a Consumption Based
Economy. I am tired of this.
weeding the garden is work–unless I'm paying you then it becomes a job. In both
instances, however, you are employed in the endeavor. This is grooming behavior using
language, imo, and needs to stop.
I think this muddle is a componant of the current 'Jobs Discussion".
Covid has rattled generations coming out of Displacements following the very unequal GFC,
and an undefined(maybe) examination of Meaning and Place within the current state of the
world and the Economy that has been chosen to fulfill the needs of that Economy (Societal and
Personal). More Intuitive than cognitive to many.
Selling Plastic bric-a-brac for the Man, to make the rent in an endless cycle, may have
lost its cache' subconsciously, to the 'common man' in this time of apparent Climate Crises
et al.
There is still plenty to do, and little time for Idleness( itself a "reward' promoted as a
'something' by the Consumptive Economy).
"Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding
government jobs, and leaving it to the market to decide how much unemployment there would be.
They said that it had to be this way to keep inflation from rising,"
"The market" – that's the first con people have to get over. There is.no "the
market" like there it is something like nature.
It's system of intentional, changeable human decisions backed by beliefs and emotions of all
kinds now matter how many theories or quantifications occur. And a corporate beuracracy is
still a beuracracy.
And actually this neoliberal thinking of letting some imaginary entity "the market"
"decide" (we should be lughing at this silliness!) to keep people unemployed to avoid
"inflation" only makes sense if it actually meant to signify "avoid inflation of the
population."
The modern police force is a consequence of idle and unemployed city dwellers. Idled
workers don't just sit down and die from malnutrition. Instead, they roam around looking for
food, or opportunities that would lead to procuring food. Hungry, impoverished mobs are never
a good idea: Ask Czar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm, or the French aristocrats of the 1780's
(rather, interrogate their ghosts) how idle, hungry crowds furthered their reigns. For all
that, look to the unrest of the 1930's in the US.
Given this reality–that unemployed and starving people refuse to sit down and die
peacefully–what will happen as automation starts to rob routine jobs? Already we are
seeing robots prowling the Walmart aisles, driverless vehicles delivering pizzas, and
self-checkout lines in big box stores. We who work are losing the war on unemployment, which
leads to a question: Who is the winner?
Almost as an afterthought, one wonders how much in contributions to Social Security and
Medicare have been lost because of automation. Robots don't pay taxes.
After the achievement of the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, and other labor
concessions, many influential figures believed that egalitarian access to leisure would
only increase in the 20th century. Among them was economist John Maynard Keynes, who
forecast in 1930 that labor-saving technologies might lead to a 15-hour workweek when his
grandchildren came of age. Indeed, he titles his essay, "Economic Possibility for our
Grandchildren."
The benefits of labour-saving technologies have mostly been taken as money instead of time
and by doing so the capitalist class kept power thereby leading to them getting the
lions-share of the benefits of the labour-saving techologies.
The political class could, and still can, side with people and decide that labour-saving
technologies is to be taken out as reduced amount of hours spent working for someone else. As
is the politcal class have bought the 'lump of labour'-fallacy-fallcy hook, line and sinker
so what we see is increased pension-age etc
I tried out retirement for a few months. I'm 62 and got SS and a very small pension. It's
not enough so I went back – temping. The jobs I can get as a paralegal/admin person
don't pay a lot but there seem to be quite a few of them based on companies that are merging
or have merged and have a huge mess to clean up. So they hire you for a few months to slog
through chaos and fix it. Then on to the next one. I'll keep doing this until I can move to a
cheaper part of the U.S. Remote helps in that if I don't have a Zoom interview they can't
tell how old I am. I feel for everyone who can't even get tedious work. If my SS was higher I
would stop working. If my salary had matched that of the male co-workers that had the exact
same job as me, my pension would be higher. Retiring in America for many people is part
nomadic as you have to move out of your area to survive after you leave your regular job, or
it gets rid of you and the other part is being extremely frugal. Woohoo what a life after
over 40 years of helping companies make money.
Yes a totally true statement. For it to be higher I would have had to wait until almost 67
to take it. It will go up a tad from my additional employment – maybe. Anyway it's a
mostly a set amount. I make as a temp in 2 weeks (take home) what I get in SS once per month.
If I make over about $19k annually while taking the SS, the US gov will begin to reduce the
SS payment.
Social Security takes the highest 40 quarters (10 years) of your earnings to calculate
your benefit. If your current work results in higher numbers than are being used currently,
the higher numbers will be used and your benefit will increase.
I tried to reply to your question – yes it is a true statement. What I wrote
additionally may have been moderated out for some reason so I won't repeat it. It only
mentioned dollar amounts and the US gov so maybe that was bad – not sure!
Victoria H
and I thank you for that.
But I think you, and I will 'work' until we die–
What does work mean?
noun. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. productive
or operative activity. employment, as in some form of industry, especially as a means of
earning one's livelihood: to look for work. the result of exertion, labor, or activity; a
deed or performance.
Work | Definition of Work at Dictionary.comhttps://www.dictionary.com › browse
› work
I am personally familiar with what you are going through and My wife is there right
now.
I waited till full retirement at 66 to collect–not being able to leave 2k on the
table(diff btwn 62 and 66 for me). I cannot describe the amount of effort and gyration I
needed to extend to achieve that– which may explain why I am the only one in my
'Friend Circle' to actually accomplish it.
Trigger Warning
I thought the coup de grace was when I had to sign up for–and Pay For, with cash,
Quarterly–Medicare without a SS check to have it automatically deducted from. Because
of my birthday I needed to pony up about 5 months worth of premiums(but i had 3 months to
save up for the next Q pymt). I doubt you've ever been curbed at the end of a physical
altercation, but that is what it felt like to me. Best think about all that.
Good news–do your own taxes for your enlightenment and you will see that the SS Income
Worksheet provides a path to structuring your Income to counter-balance additional
Income.
Discalimer–I am in no way an Acc'tant or Tax Man or even giving Advice. I am a
Carpenter–but Written Instructions are Written Instructions and Numbers are Numbers and
I made a paid living following both–so it's understandable enough to give you some
options to ponder.
And to Rolf/AmSoc and all the others -- IMNSHO(the first ever time I have used this
phrase) the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So
Many Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperatly needs "All Hands On
Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.
the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So Many
Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperately needs "All Hands On
Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.
These are true words, Rod. I think catastrophic changes (no hyperbole) lie ahead, for
which there is little precedent. Many make absurdly blithe assumptions, thinking they
won't be affected, or that wealth will insulate them. This is arrogant folly, and we will
need everyone to row in the same direction.
The man who owns the Heating and Air Conditioning company I have been using for the last
decade lives in the neighborhood and is 88 years old. After his brother had health problems,
and the young nephew he employed left for greener pastures,he now does pretty much all the
work himself, and let me tell you, he knows his stuff. I know I should have a back-up in
mind, just in case, but so far, haven't found anyone else I can trust.
Well said. I took retirement at 62 for several reasons,number 1 being i didn't believe it
would be around long enough to pay me back.
"All hands on deck" is imo exactly what is needed,but the mostly planned divisiveness
(fake right vs fake left aka RepubliCons vs Dumbocrats) will help ensure that never occurs,to
someone's benefit.
Just think how many people would quit working, or enter self-employment, if they weren't
dependent on employer providedmedical insurance. I don't know the answer/estimate; it would
have to be a large number, enough to significantly raise wages across the board.
Retiring in America for many people is part nomadic
This observation made me remember a critical scene from the excellent oscar winner last
year, Nomadland . Frances McDormand's character meets a friend who explains why she
took to the road: "Five hundred forty dollars a month from Social Security. After working non
stop for over 40 years. How am I supposed to live on that".
I'm paraphrasing possibly badly from memory; it's a very short scene that isn't really
pursued farther in the script. But I do remember thinking "Aha! This is the root cause of all
this misery and despair "
We moved to southern Vermont from Texas just prior to the pandemic believing we had
relocated to a cheaper part of the US as you also mentioned. But Vermont's strong public
health track record during the pandemic has unleashed a huge real estate boom here so who
knows We may end up priced out of Vermont eventually too.
Real estate is still relatively cheap in Texas (at least around Houston), with the caveat
that Republicans don't always keep the power on or the water pressure up in the middle of
winter.
Unfortunately our place was in the Austin exurb of Bastrop. Which is now part of the
Austin insane real estate boom. And yes Houston can be cheap but only if you don't mind
living near a refinery. Or in the path of many future hurricanes. Hard pass.
I keep seeing references to "flat wages." While it's technically true, I suspect it's
enormously deceptive.
Yes, we have flat wages. But the cost of necessities that add little or no value to
people's lives but which they're FORCED to pay for have shot up far, far beyond the pace of
inflation. Think medical care, housing and education, to name just three, all of which are
somehow ignored or slighted in official inflation stats.
Right now the best transition is for the government to regulate capitalism in the
direction the future (sustainability) dictates. The problem with regulating capitalism is
that most capitalists think it is already too regulated; taxes are too high, etc. They are on
the edge of revolution themselves. And regulated capitalism is almost an oxymoron to most
Americans. It's just business as usual to a European because they have better social spending
and blablablah. The statistic I remember is that the EU spends about 45% of its revenue on
social stuff; the US spends a little less than 35%. The problem, as I see it, is this: If we
in the US do not achieve adequate social spending we create the perfect breeding ground for
exploitation of the environment. People will be desperate for a job – any job. Which
will not only cause worse CO2 problems, it will poison off, or starve off, many many species
now living on the edge. We will further pollute the oceans and waterways. And we will not
only stick with our sick and poisonous agricultural practices, we will exponentiate them
– precluding all efforts to fix these unsustainable things. Capitalism as we have known
it must change. So, even the great idea of capitalism must adapt to reality. Somebody please
tell Larry. At this point "inflation" is an absolutely meaningless word. It would be a very
good thing if we followed Eisenhower's advice to LBJ and began to create social structures
that are fair to all of society – to the capitalists whose current mandate of voracious
profiteering is clearly unsustainable, as well as to "labor" – as we see it evolving
– and now, most importantly, we must include the rights of the planet itself and all of
our fellow travelers. We won't last very long if we kill them all off and trash the Earth.
The race to the bottom that all privateering capitalism eventually creates is the most absurd
thing in the history of civilization.
A good start would be breaking up all of the ubiquitous monopolies/monopsonies/cartels,
that have taken over every sector of the economy, from food processing to entertainment to
banking to manufacturing to politics to (ad infinitum/nauseum).
I went to Firehouse Subs yesterday there was a whiteboard inside on a table, facing into
the restaurant, that said they were hiring and offered starting pay of $9.00 for crew members
and $12.00 for shift managers.
Just inside the door, facing out, was a whiteboard offering starting pay of $11.00 for
crew members and $14.00 for shift managers. Seems like they're getting the message.
As an aside, I'd like to give props to Firehouse Subs for using pressed paper clam boxes
and paper bags.
Looks like this guys somewhat understands the problems with neoliberalism, but still is captured by neoliberal ideology.
Notable quotes:
"... That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent. ..."
"... Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent. ..."
"... Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick. ..."
"... Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007. ..."
The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we arc collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting
pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they're complaining or suffering because
they're losers.
We need to break free of this logic of the marketplace before it's too late.
[Neoliberalism] had decimated the economies and cultures of these regions and were set to do the same to many others.
In response, American lives and families are falling apart. Ram- pant financial stress is the new normal. We are in the third
or fourth inning of the greatest economic shift in the history of mankind, and no one seems to be talking about it or doing anything
in response.
The Great Displacement didn't arrive overnight. It has been building for decades as the economy and labor market changed in response
to improving technology, financialization, changing corporate norms, and globalization. In the 1970s, when my parents worked at GE
and Blue Cross Blue Shield in upstate New York, their companies provided generous pensions and expected them to stay for decades.
Community banks were boring businesses that lent money to local companies for a modest return. Over 20 percent of workers were unionized.
Some economic problems existed -- growth was uneven and infla- tion periodically high. But income inequality was low, jobs provided
benefits, and Main Street businesses were the drivers of the economy. There were only three television networks, and in my house
we watched them on a TV with an antenna that we fiddled with to make the picture clearer.
That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were
gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which
itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent.
Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working
multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American
born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent.
Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s
and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business
schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.
Hostile takeovers, shareholder lawsuits, and later activist hedge funds served as prompts to ensure that managers were committed
to profitability at all costs. On the flip side, CF.Os were granted stock options for the first time that wedded their individual
gain to the company's share price. The ratio of CF.O to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined
and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.
Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment
banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization
Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between
1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main
Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon
of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007.
It's hard to be in the year 2018 and not hear about the endless studies alarming the general public about coming labor automation.
But what Yang provides in this book is two key things: automation has already been ravaging the country which has led to the great
political polarization of today, and second, an actual vision into what happens when people lose jobs, and it definitely is a
lightning strike of "oh crap"
I found this book relatively impressive and frightening. Yang, a former lawyer, entrepreneur, and non-profit leader, writes
showing with inarguable data that when companies automate work and use new software, communities die, drug use increases, suicide
increases, and crime skyrockets. The new jobs created go to big cities, the surviving talent leaves, and the remaining people
lose hope and descend into madness. (as a student of psychology, this is not surprising)
He starts by painting the picture of the average American and how fragile they are economically. He deconstructs the labor
predictions and how technology is going to ravage it. He discusses the future of work. He explains what has happened in technology
and why it's suddenly a huge threat. He shows what this means: economic inequality rises, the people have less power, the voice
of democracy is diminished, no one owns stocks, people get poorer etc. He shows that talent is leaving small towns, money is concentrating
to big cities faster. He shows what happens when those other cities die (bad things), and then how the people react when they
have no income (really bad things). He shows how retraining doesn't work and college is failing us. We don't invest in vocational
skills, and our youth is underemployed pushed into freelance work making minimal pay. He shows how no one trusts the institutions
anymore.
Then he discusses solutions with a focus on Universal Basic Income. I was a skeptic of the idea until I read this book. You
literally walk away with this burning desire to prevent a Mad Max esque civil war, and its hard to argue with him. We don't have
much time and our bloated micromanaged welfare programs cannot sustain.
For April 2021 the official Current Unadjusted U-6 unemployment rate was 9.9% down from 10.9%
in March, and 11.6% in February, January was 12.0%. It was also 11.6% October "" December 2020.
But It was 18.3% in June, 20.7% in May, and 22.4% in April. It is still well above the 8.9% of
March 2020 when unemployment rates started jumping drastically due to massive shutdowns due to
the Coronavirus.
Initial Jobless Claims tumbled (positively) to their lowest since the pandemic lockdowns
began, adding just 406k Americans last week (well below the 425k expected). This is still
double the pre-pandemic norms
y_arrow 1
Truthtellers 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Companies laid off an additional 400K people last week and they actually think we are
dumb enough to believe there is a labor shortage? That line of crap is obviously just a
ploy to get employee's to accept lower salaries.
I'll believe there is a labor shortage after 16 million jobs have been added and the
weekly initial claims number is zero.
Until then, I guess if you have a "labor shortage" you better get that pay up.
AJAX-2 13 hours ago (Edited)
Another 400K+ applying for 1st time unemployment benefits and yet they piss on my leg,
tell me it's raining, while proclaiming there is a labor shortage. Bu!!****.
PerilouseTimes 9 hours ago
Close to a million people a week were signing up for unemployment for a year and
unemployment has been extended. Wouldn't that mean at least 40 million Americans are on
unemployment not to mention all the people on welfare and disability? I think the number is
closer to 100 million Americans on the government dole and that doesn't count all the
worthless government jobs out there.
Normal 12 hours ago remove link
I'm on unemployment except California seems to have quit paying people on unemployment.
I tried every-which-way to contact them but there is no way in hell to get through to a
live person. I went and typed in how to speak with a real person at the EDD, and hundreds
of people have posted that they haven't been paid in 12 weeks. I spoke with their Cal-Jobs
representative and she said that many people haven't been paid since March of last year. I
think they are forcing the so-called unemployed to their Cal-Jobs site by not paying
them.
ay_arrow
NEOSERF 13 hours ago
Worst month during the GFC appears to be about 650K...we are only 50% below that....with
21 states preparing to end the extension, things will be fantastic in these numbers shortly
if not the real world...waiting for all the cold/flu season coughing and cold weather in
November...
History repeats and the repetition is coming with some minor variations.
Notable quotes:
"... "Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004." ..."
"... There isn't much of a difference between signaling tighter money to a market that is skeptical of Fed forecasts and actually tightening. ..."
"... While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002. ..."
"... While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent. ..."
"... One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. ..."
Washington, D.C.- Dean Baker, economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) issued the
following statement in response to the Federal Reserve's decision regarding interest rates:
"The Fed's decision to raise interest rates today is an unfortunate move in the wrong direction. In setting interest rate policy
the Fed must decide whether the economy is at risk of having too few or too many jobs, with the latter being determined by the
extent to which its current rate of job creation may lead to inflation. It is difficult to see how the evidence would lead the
Fed to conclude that the greater risk at the moment is too many jobs.
"While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near
recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following
the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of
workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002.
"If we look at employment rates rather than unemployment, the percentage of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) with jobs is still
down by almost three full percentage points from the pre-recession peak and by more than four full percentage points from the
peak hit in 2000. This does not look like a strong labor market.
"On the other side, there is virtually no basis for concerns about the risk of inflation in the current data. The most recent
data show that the core personal consumption expenditure deflator targeted by the Fed increased at just a 1.2 percent annual rate
over the last three months, down slightly from the 1.3 percent rate over the last year. This means that the Fed should be concerned
about being below its inflation target, not above it.
"While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent
with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent
productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent.
"Furthermore, it is important to recognize that workers took a large hit to their wages in the downturn, with a shift of more
than four percentage points of national income from wages to profits. In principle, workers can restore their share of national
income (the equivalent of an 8 percent wage gain), but the Fed would have to be prepared to allow wage growth to substantially
outpace prices for a period of time. If the Fed acts to prevent workers from getting this bargaining power, it will effectively
lock in place this upward redistribution. Needless to say, workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution can expect
to see the biggest hit in this scenario.
"One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided
by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. If it is the case that
the economy is not strong enough to justify rate hikes, then the hike today may be the last one for some period of time. It will
be important for the Fed to carefully assess the data as it makes its decision on interest rates at future meetings.
"Recent economic data suggest that today's move was a mistake. Hopefully the Fed will not compound this mistake with more unwarranted
rate hikes in the future."
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K....
I like Dean Baker. Unlike the Fed, Dean Baker is a class warrior on the side of the wage class. He makes the point about the
path to normalization being critical that I have been discussing for quite a while. Let's hope this Fed knows better than Greenspan/Bernanke
in 2004-2006. THANKS!
likbez said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Very true !
pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
"Longer-term bond rates barely moved, showing that there was very little news." This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46%
already. So the damage was already done:
"... This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46% already..."
Exactly! Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004. Yellen's
Fed waited until the bond rate lifted off on its own (and maybe with some help from policy communications) before they raised
the FFR.
So far, there is no sign of their making a fatal error. They are not fighting class warfare for wage class either, but they
seem intent on not screwing the pooch in the way that Greenspan and Bernanke did. No double dip thank you and hold the nuts.
One of the biggest risks to U.S. recovery is the difficulty aroun...
U.S. job growth significantly undershot forecasts in April, suggesting that difficulty
attracting workers is slowing momentum in the labor market and challenging the economic
recovery.
Payrolls rose 266,000 from a month earlier, according to a Labor Department report Friday
that represented one of the largest downside misses on record. Economists in a Bloomberg survey
projected a 1 million hiring surge in April.
The unemployment rate edged up to 6.1 per cent, though the labor-force participation rate
also increased.
... The disappointing payrolls print leaves overall employment more than 8 million short of
its pre-pandemic level and is consistent with recent comments from company officials
highlighting challenges in filling open positions.
... While job gains accelerated in leisure and hospitality, employment at temporary-help
agencies and transportation and warehousing declined sharply.
...
Labor force participation, a measure of the percentage of Americans either working or
looking for work, rose to 61.7 per cent in April from 61.5 per cent, likely supported by
increased vaccinations that helped fuel the reopenings of many retail establishments,
restaurants and leisure-facing businesses.
Average weekly hours increased to match the highest in records dating back to 2006. The gain
in the workweek, increased pay and the improvement in hiring helped boost aggregate weekly
payrolls 1.2 per cent in April after a 1.3 per cent gain a month earlier.
Workforce participation for men age 25 to 54 increased last month, while edging lower for
women.
Neoliberals policies for minority students in education can be called “the soft bigotry
of low expectations.”
Racists want discrimination based on race; wokesters want discrimination based on race too.
One in the name of bigotry, one in the name of “tolerance.” Does the motive really
matter if the outcome is the same?
Notable quotes:
"... the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination ..."
My uncle did admissions at Cambridge and he actively discriminated against Public School
boys, despite being one himself. He was actually involved in hiring that black woman to be
the Master at Christ's College.
Similarly at Citi it was very obvious any remotely competent black was promoted way beyond
there competency, although that was largely limited to back and middle office roles.
Still the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is
testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination and the free market
at work.
"... Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. ..."
"... Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT hire directly. ..."
"... There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only redirects towards those. ..."
"... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves. They dictate who will work somewhere. ..."
"... It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments, real work, are so very much more difficult than lies. ..."
"... There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again, he could have just been fooling around. ..."
Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. That was very problematic,
because once you hire a person, it's hard to get rid of them, even with "at-will" employment.
There is a major problem with the article/ whole employment process:
Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT
hire directly.(Respect for the ones, who do.)
There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only
redirects towards those.
Also many company have a HR department, etc... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves.
They dictate who will work somewhere.
Wish to be workers should meet directly with the ones they supposed to work for.
To see whether racial discrimination exists, researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications
but different names attached, to see if the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that
to be the case.
Given that British blacks most often bear British sounding names and that foreign whites too bear foreign sounding names, I
don't see how the difference in treatment can be put down to racial bias. Moreover, I don't see anything wrong in giving precedence
to compatriots over foreigners. It is the opposite that is unsound.
As a French national with a foreign sounding name, I never expected to be given precedence over native French candidates and
always counted solely on my competence to get a position. If the world we live in were still normal, that would be the normal
attitude because in a normal world people are allowed to prefer their kin vs folks they don't know from Adam. It is the opposite
that isn't normal.
Discard national preference and you get foreign tribes' nepotism.
researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications but different names attached, to see if
the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that to be the case.
Because it's a lose-lose to hire a Tyrone or Abdul. Even if they're the most qualified, they're "high-maintenance," arriving
with extra-legal protections and considerations. Down the road they can always hide behind the specter of racism if their performance
is found lacking.
It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments,
real work, are so very much more difficult than lies.
Indians are fantastic fraudsters. Africans are fraud specialists. Many Asians are not so much CV fraudsters as they are test
cheaters.
Agreed as they do it in Swiss. They prefer to employ their folk, if find a suitable person and wait up to 6 months before consider
an outlander. Only then ready to employ someone else.
BUT: Will not employ a dullard just because they share a citizenship/ ancestors. About 20% are foreigners among the employed,
in Geneva probably most of the employed.
And this is strictly the opposite what is common in many place (and self-appointed "nationalists" demand): No matter how incompetent
but employ the dullard native, while send home the competent/ hardworking.
Against meritism/ competition and bad for business.
There are plenty of dishonest Europeans, but honesty as a high value seems Western. Subcons caught in a lie will grin and do
a head waggle something between a nod and a shake. Blacks will insist the lie is true. East Asians will lie until you demonstrate
they cannot get away with it. Latin Americans only lie when they speak.
There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all
of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again,
he could have just been fooling around.
Probably $25 an hour or $50K a year is more realistic. Part time jobs are even better to hem to avoid money crunch and at the
same time continue to look for an IT job. Might be a viable option for younger healthy IT specialists. CDL course from a
reputable truck driving school is around $3500 and they
provide you a truck for the DMV exam, but you can try self-study and might pass written exam from a second try as there is nothing
complex in the test, saving half of those money.
Notable quotes:
"... What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little more.' ..."
"... To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000. ..."
David Parker is the CEO of Covenant Logistics and he was blunt with analysts who follow the
company on its earnings call Tuesday.
'How do we get enough drivers? ' he said in response to a question from Stephens analyst Jack Atkins. 'I don't know.'
Parker then gave an overview of the situation facing Covenant, and by extension other
companies, in trying to recruit drivers. One problem: With rates so high, companies are
encountering the fact that a driver doesn't need to work a full schedule to
pull in a decent salary.
'We're finding out that just to get a driver, let's say the numbers are $85,000 (per year) ,' Parker said,
according to a transcript of the earnings call supplied by SeekingAlpha. '
But a lot of these drivers are happy at $70,000. Now they're not coming to
work for me, unless it's in the ($80,000s), because they're happy making $70,000.'
What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little
more.'
The result is a tightening of capacity. Parker said utilization in the first quarter at Covenant was three or four percentage
points less than it would have as a result of that development. ' It's an interesting dynamic that none of
us have calculated,' he said.
To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes
for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a
recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return
his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his
company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000.
Parker was firm that this was not a situation likely to change soon. 'There's nothing out there that tells me that drivers are
going to readily be available over the medium [term in] one to two years,' he said. 'And that's where I'm at.'
Paul Bunn, the company's COO and senior executive vice president, echoed
what other executives have said recently:
Additional stimulus benefits are making the situation tighter. He said that while offering some hope that as the benefits roll
off, 'that might help a bit.'
But what the government giveth the government can sometimes taketh away. Bunn expressed another familiar sentiment in the
industry today, that an infrastructure bill adding to demand for workers would create more difficulty to put drivers behind the
wheel. Construction, Bunn said, is 'a monster competitor of our industry' and if the bill is approved, 'that's going to be a big
pull.'
Labor is going to be a 'capacity constraint' through the
economy, Bunn said, while conceding that trucking is not unique in that. And because of that
labor squeeze, capacity in many fields is going to be limited. ' The OEMs,
the manufacturers are limited capacity ,' Bunn said. 'They're not ramping up in a major, major way because of labor, because of
commodity pricing, because of the costs.'
All that means is that capacity growth is going to be
'reasonable,' Bunn said. 'It's not going to be crazy, people growing fleets [by] significant amounts.'
'It's all you can do just to hold serve, '
he added.
After thirteen months, the BLS still cannot count the Unemployed. Headline U.3
Unemployment also remained deep in non-recovery territory. The BLS acknowledged continuing
misclassification of some "unemployed" persons as "employed," in the Household Survey. Where
the count of the understated unemployed had an "upside limit" of 636,000 persons in March 2021,
the February 2021 upside estimate of understated unemployed was 756,000. The difference would
be a potential headline U.3 of 6.44% instead of today's headline 6.05%, which was down from a
headline 6.22% in February. Fully adjusted for COVID-19 disruptions, based on BLS side-surveys
of Pandemic impact, and with more than six million people missing from the headline U.S. labor
force, actual headline U.3 unemployment still should be well above 10%, the highest
unemployment rate since before World War II, outside of the Pandemic and possibly at the trough
of the 1982-1983 recession. Broader March 2021 headline U.6 unemployment [including some
decline in short-term discouraged workers and those employed part-time for economic reasons]
eased to 10.71% from 11.07% in February. Including long-term discouraged/ displaced workers,
the March 2021 ShadowStats Alternate Measure –- moving on top of the decline in U.6
–- notched minimally lower to 25.7%, from 25.8% in February 2021, reflecting some modeled
transition of "short-term" to "long-term" discouraged workers, with the Pandemic having passed
its 12-month anniversary. The latest Unemployment Rates are posted on the ALTERNATE DATA
tab (above).
Whether "working from home" is a temporary fad or a permanent "new normal" remains to be seen; what becomes more evident is
the mounting supply glut of corporate space in Manhattan, according to
Bloomberg
,
citing a new report from real estate firm Savills.
Savills said the amount of office space available in Manhattan is at a three-decade high. The report, released on Thursday,
said the availability rate soared to 17.2% in the first quarter. The rise in the rate was primarily due to a massive surge
in sublease space, which now stands at 22 million square feet, or 62% higher than 2019 levels.
"Abundant short- and long-term options are driving price reductions," Savills noted. "Many owners are proposing
historically aggressive rates, concessions, and flexibility to secure tenants amid so much competition."
Savills said rents fell for the fifth consecutive quarter to around $76.27 a square foot, down 9% from a year earlier.
These cheaper rents are creating a massive opportunity for companies who want to enter the city.
Desperate landlords were offering generous concessions for long-term leases at newly constructed buildings: "Average tenant
improvement allowances jumped 16% and free rent surged 17% to an average of 13.5 months. The tenant-friendly market is
expected to last for at least the next 12 to 18 months," Savills said.
The Manhattan office market continues to struggle more than one year after the pandemic hit, which has emptied Manhattan's
skyscrapers. And since most employees are still working from home, just around 24.21% of workers in the New York
metropolitan area were back at their desks as of this week.
Even with the vaccine rollout now reaching 100 million Americans, companies are still opting for "hybrid" work as remote
working
dominates
.
In a past report, Jim Wenk, a vice chairman at Savills North America, said commercial real estate in the borough will have
a "very choppy period for the foreseeable future."
A
recent
survey
from the Partnership for New York City found 66% of Manhattan's most prominent employers would allow employees
to work under hybrid work arrangements, meaning they would Manhattan's most prominent employers.
As more proof the work environment is rapidly changing, major magazine publisher Conde Nast (who owns brands such as ARS
Technica, GQ, Teen Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired, among other popular magazines) is a major anchor
tenant in the new World Trade Center, recently
skipped
out
on rent as it asked for rent discounts and a reduction in square footage.
Last month, JP Morgan was
reportedly
looking
to sublet hundreds of thousands of square feet at 4 New York Plaza in the financial district and 5 Manhattan West in the
Hudson Yards area.
To make matters worse, Hudson Yards, a massive complex on Manhattan's Far West Side with condos, office space, and
retailers built over an enormous railroad yard had investors panic because the company
refuse
d to
open its books. The combination of work-at-home and folks moving to suburbs has left Hudson Yards and other places across
the borough a 'ghost town.'
This all suggests that the virus pandemic has brought years of technological change to the work model that has possibly
made companies more productive and cut costs as employees work from home or adopt a hybrid work model. Without office
workers returning to the borough, there can't be a robust recovery in the near term.
Not only was the March payrolls report a blockbuster, golidlocks number, much higher than expected but not
too
high
to spark immediate reflation/hike fears thanks to subdued wage inflation, job growth in March was also widespread unlike
February, where 75% of all new jobs
were
waiters and bartenders
. By contrast, in March the largest gains occurring across most industries with the bulk taking
place in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction.
Here is a full breakdown:
Employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 280,000 in March,
as
pandemic-related restrictions eased in many parts of the country. Nearly two-thirds of the increase was in food services
and drinking places (+176,000). Job gains also occurred in arts, entertainment, and recreation (+64,000) and in
accommodation (+40,000). Employment in leisure and hospitality is down by 3.1 million, or 18.5 percent, since February
2020.
In March, employment increased in both public and private education,
reflecting
the continued resumption of in-person learning and other school-related activities in many parts of the country. Employment
rose by 76,000 in local government education, by 50,000 in state government education, and by 64,000 in private education.
Employment is down from February 2020 in local government education (-594,000), state government education (-270,000), and
private education (-310,000).
Construction added 110,000 jobs in March,
following job losses in the
previous month (-56,000) that were likely weather-related. Employment growth in the industry was widespread in March, with
gains of 65,000 in specialty trade contractors, 27,000 in heavy and civil engineering construction, and 18,000 in
construction of buildings. Employment in construction is 182,000 below its February 2020 level.
Employment in professional and business services rose by 66,000 over the month.
In
March, employment in administrative and support services continued to trend up (+37,000), although employment in its
temporary help services component was essentially unchanged. Employment also continued on an upward trend in management and
technical consulting services (+8,000) and in computer systems design and related services (+6,000).
Manufacturing employment rose by 53,000 in March,
with job gains occurring
in both durable goods (+30,000) and nondurable goods (+23,000). Employment in manufacturing is down by 515,000 since
February 2020.
Transportation and warehousing added 48,000 jobs in March.
Employment
increased in couriers and messengers (+17,000), transit and ground passenger transportation (+13,000), support activities
for transportation (+6,000), and air transportation (+6,000). Since February 2020, employment in couriers and messengers is
up by 206,000 (or 23.3 percent), while employment is down by 112,000 (or 22.8 percent) in transit and ground passenger
transportation and by 104,000 (or 20.1 percent) in air transportation.
Employment in the other services industry increased by 42,000 over the month,
reflecting
job gains in personal and laundry services (+19,000) and in repair and maintenance (+18,000). Employment in other services
is down by 396,000 since February 2020.
Social assistance added 25,000 jobs in March,
mostly in individual and
family services (+20,000). Employment in social assistance is 306,000 lower than in February 2020.
Employment in wholesale trade increased by 24,000 in March,
with job gains
in both durable goods (+14,000) and nondurable goods (+10,000). Employment in wholesale trade is 234,000 lower than in
February 2020.
Retail trade added 23,000 jobs in March.
Job growth in clothing and
clothing accessories stores (+16,000), motor vehicle and parts dealers (+13,000), and furniture and home furnishing stores
(+6,000) was partially offset by losses in building material and garden supply stores (-9,000) and general merchandise
stores (-7,000). Employment in retail trade is 381,000 below its February 2020 level.
Employment in mining rose by 21,000 in March,
in support activities for
mining (+19,000). Mining employment is down by 130,000 since a peak in January 2019.
Financial activities added 16,000 jobs in March.
Job gains in insurance
carriers and related activities (+11,000) and real estate (+10,000) more than offset losses in credit intermediation and
related activities (-7,000). Financial activities has 87,000 fewer jobs than in February 2020.
It's hardly a surprise that with the US reopening, the one industry seeing the biggest hiring remains leisure and hospitality
where jobs rose by 280,000, as pandemic-related restrictions eased in many parts of the country, with nearly two-thirds of the
increase in "food services and drinking places", i.e., waiters and bartenders, which added +176,000 jobs in March.
And another notable change was in the total number of government workers, which surged by 136K in March, reversing the 90K
drop in February, as a result of 49.6K state education workers and 76K local government education workers added thanks to the
reopening of schools around the country.
Here is a visual breakdown of all the March job changes:
Finally,
courtesy
of Bloomberg
, below are the industries with the highest and lowest rates of employment growth for the most recent month.
7
play_arrow
Jack Offelday
1 hour ago
The "V" recovery. Where Food Service jobs are the new "Golden Age".
Creamaster
47 minutes ago
(Edited)
My wife is a nurse in an outpatient office under a large hospital umbrella here. Normally these outpatient
spots go within days to a week.
Currently they have 2 openings they have been trying to fill for a few months now. Combine that with the
fact my wife got 3 years worth of raises in a single shot, recently and out of the blue for no reason, tells
me the hospitla is really screwed trying to fill nursing spots.
After this pandemic crap, it has likely scared alot of people away from entering healthcare, and if a nurse
was on the fence about retirement , likely decided to call it quits after all this BS.
newworldorder
45 minutes ago
There are an estimated, 30 million illegals currently in the USA waiting legalization.
WHEN legalization happens, they will bring into the USA (by historical averages,) another 60 to 90 million
of their family members in 10 years.
And all of them US Minority workers, by current US Diversity Laws, - same as all Black Americans.
Medicaid
expansion enrollment grew nearly 30% year-over-year in 19-state sample, Andrew Sprung,
XPOSTFACTOID, March 17, 2021
An update on Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the pandemic struck. Below is a
sampling of 19 expansion states through January of this year, and 14 states through
February.
Maintaining the assumption, explained here ,
"relatively slow growth in California would push the national total down by about 2.5
percentage points." These tallies still point to year-over-year enrollment growth of
approximately 30% from February 2020 to February 2021.
If that's right, then Medicaid enrollment among those rendered eligible by ACA expansion
criteria (adults with income up to 138% FPL) may exceed 19 million nationally and may be
pushing 20 million. Assuming the sampling of a bit more than a third of total expansion
enrollment represents all expansion states more or less and again accounting for slower growth
in California.
"... Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.) ..."
One year ago this week, when the first sky-high unemployment insurance (UI) claims data of the pandemic were released, I said
"
I
have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this
." But in the weeks that followed,
things got worse before they got better -- and we are not out of the woods yet.
Last
week -- the week ending March 20, 2021 -- another 926,000 people applied for UI. This included 684,000 people who applied for
regular state UI and 242,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are
not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.
Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If
that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial
claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.)
Figure A
shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for March 6). Continuing claims
are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago, just before the virus hit.
FIGURE A
Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–March 6, 2021
*Use
caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*
Date
Regular state UI
PEUC
PUA
Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
2019-03-23
1,905,627
31,510
2019-03-30
1,858,954
31,446
2019-04-06
1,727,261
30,454
2019-04-13
1,700,689
30,404
2019-04-20
1,645,387
28,281
2019-04-27
1,630,382
29,795
2019-05-04
1,536,652
27,937
2019-05-11
1,540,486
28,727
2019-05-18
1,506,501
27,949
2019-05-25
1,519,345
26,263
2019-06-01
1,535,572
26,905
2019-06-08
1,520,520
25,694
2019-06-15
1,556,252
26,057
2019-06-22
1,586,714
25,409
2019-06-29
1,608,769
23,926
2019-07-06
1,700,329
25,630
2019-07-13
1,694,876
27,169
2019-07-20
1,676,883
30,390
2019-07-27
1,662,427
28,319
2019-08-03
1,676,979
27,403
2019-08-10
1,616,985
27,330
2019-08-17
1,613,394
26,234
2019-08-24
1,564,203
27,253
2019-08-31
1,473,997
25,003
2019-09-07
1,462,776
25,909
2019-09-14
1,397,267
26,699
2019-09-21
1,380,668
26,641
2019-09-28
1,390,061
25,460
2019-10-05
1,366,978
26,977
2019-10-12
1,384,208
27,501
2019-10-19
1,416,816
28,088
2019-10-26
1,420,918
28,576
2019-11-02
1,447,411
29,080
2019-11-09
1,457,789
30,024
2019-11-16
1,541,860
31,593
2019-11-23
1,505,742
29,499
2019-11-30
1,752,141
30,315
2019-12-07
1,725,237
32,895
2019-12-14
1,796,247
31,893
2019-12-21
1,773,949
29,888
2019-12-28
2,143,802
32,517
2020-01-04
2,245,684
32,520
2020-01-11
2,137,910
33,882
2020-01-18
2,075,857
32,625
2020-01-25
2,148,764
35,828
2020-02-01
2,084,204
33,884
2020-02-08
2,095,001
35,605
2020-02-15
2,057,774
34,683
2020-02-22
2,101,301
35,440
2020-02-29
2,054,129
33,053
2020-03-07
1,973,560
32,803
2020-03-14
2,071,070
34,149
2020-03-21
3,410,969
36,758
2020-03-28
8,158,043
0
52,494
48,963
2020-04-04
12,444,309
3,802
69,537
64,201
2020-04-11
16,249,334
31,426
216,481
89,915
2020-04-18
17,756,054
63,720
1,172,238
116,162
2020-04-25
21,723,230
91,724
3,629,986
158,031
2020-05-02
20,823,294
173,760
6,361,532
175,289
2020-05-09
22,725,217
252,257
8,120,137
216,576
2020-05-16
18,791,926
252,952
11,281,930
226,164
2020-05-23
19,022,578
546,065
10,010,509
247,595
2020-05-30
18,548,442
1,121,306
9,597,884
259,499
2020-06-06
18,330,293
885,802
11,359,389
325,282
2020-06-13
17,552,371
783,999
13,093,382
336,537
2020-06-20
17,316,689
867,675
14,203,555
392,042
2020-06-27
16,410,059
956,849
12,308,450
373,841
2020-07-04
17,188,908
964,744
13,549,797
495,296
2020-07-11
16,221,070
1,016,882
13,326,206
513,141
2020-07-18
16,691,210
1,122,677
13,259,954
518,584
2020-07-25
15,700,971
1,193,198
10,984,864
609,328
2020-08-01
15,112,240
1,262,021
11,504,089
433,416
2020-08-08
14,098,536
1,376,738
11,221,790
549,603
2020-08-15
13,792,016
1,381,317
13,841,939
469,028
2020-08-22
13,067,660
1,434,638
15,164,498
523,430
2020-08-29
13,283,721
1,547,611
14,786,785
490,514
2020-09-05
12,373,201
1,630,711
11,808,368
529,220
2020-09-12
12,363,489
1,832,754
12,153,925
510,610
2020-09-19
11,561,158
1,989,499
10,686,922
589,652
2020-09-26
10,172,332
2,824,685
10,978,217
579,582
2020-10-03
8,952,580
3,334,878
10,450,384
668,691
2020-10-10
8,038,175
3,711,089
10,622,725
615,066
2020-10-17
7,436,321
3,983,613
9,332,610
778,746
2020-10-24
6,837,941
4,143,389
9,433,127
746,403
2020-10-31
6,452,002
4,376,847
8,681,647
806,430
2020-11-07
6,037,690
4,509,284
9,147,753
757,496
2020-11-14
5,890,220
4,569,016
8,869,502
834,740
2020-11-21
5,213,781
4,532,876
8,555,763
741,078
2020-11-28
5,766,130
4,801,408
9,244,556
834,685
2020-12-05
5,457,941
4,793,230
9,271,112
841,463
2020-12-12
5,393,839
4,810,334
8,453,940
937,972
2020-12-19
5,205,841
4,491,413
8,383,387
1,070,810
2020-12-26
5,347,440
4,166,261
7,442,888
1,450,438
2021-01-02
5,727,359
3,026,952
5,707,397
1,526,887
2021-01-09
5,446,993
3,863,008
7,334,682
1,638,247
2021-01-16
5,188,211
3,604,894
7,218,801
1,826,573
2021-01-23
5,156,985
4,779,341
7,943,448
1,785,954
2021-01-30
5,003,178
4,062,189
7,685,857
1,590,360
2021-02-06
4,934,269
5,067,523
7,520,114
1,523,394
2021-02-13
4,794,195
4,468,389
7,329,172
1,437,170
2021-02-20
4,808,623
5,456,080
8,387,696
1,465,769
2021-02-27
4,457,888
4,816,523
7,616,593
1,237,929
2021-03-06
4,458,888
5,551,215
7,735,491
1,207,201
Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
PUA
PEUC
Regular
state UI
Jul
2019
Jan
2020
Jul
2020
Jan
2021
0
10,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
40,000,000
Chart
Data
Caution:
Trends over time in PUA claims may be distorted because when an individual is owed retroactive
payments, some states report all retroactive PUA claims during the week the individual received their
payment.
The good news in all of this
is
Congress's passage of the sweeping $1.9 trillion relief and recovery package. It is both providing crucial support to millions
of working families and setting the stage for a robust recovery. One big concern, however, is that the bill's
UI
provisions
are
set to expire the first week in September, when, even in the best–case scenario, they will still be needed. By then, Congress
needs to have put in place long-run UI reforms that include automatic triggers based on economic conditions.
"... freedom is material: a human being must be free from material privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom. ..."
Marx's concept of freedom is completely different from the liberal or pre-liberal concepts
of freedom. For Marx, freedom is material: a human being must be free from material
privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in
order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom.
Human beings can only be materially free. Don't fall for the moral victories of
liberalism, the snake oil salesmen's promise of a spot in Paradise from the Abrahamics or the
nihilist bullshittery from the Buddhists et al.
Excellent point by vk here. Despite sometimes pretending to myself that I am a Buddhist (I
am really good at meditating!), real freedom is being free from need. Abstract and
metaphysical "freedoms" are luxuries of the wealthy that few under the thumb of the
empire can afford.
I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and
vans lately. I guess from my Buddhist perspective they have been freed from the attachment to
a residence. Who could have guessed that capitalism would be such a good teacher of the path
to enlightenment?
It's freedom from Want. The Four Freedoms as articulated by FDR in 1941 were:
1.Freedom of speech
2.Freedom of worship
3.Freedom from want
4.Freedom from fear
Earlier this year on the 80th anniversary of FDR's speech, I wrote a series of comments on
the topic. They remain the four main tasks needing to be accomplished for the Common Man to
be genuinely free. At the time, they were to be the main goals of WW2; goals that were
further articulated by Henry Wallace in 1942 & '43 in his speeches and writings.
Currently, several nations have accomplished those four goals; none of them is a
NATO/Neoliberal nation however.
The jobs picture overall has been improving with
379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million
fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been revising
their employment and GDP forecasts are higher.
Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that
the jobless
rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.
Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site already
lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings and our
benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5%
year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.
As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related
occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and
pharmacy.
While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not,
which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.
"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot
more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.
That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet
-- along with their sweatpants.
Remember job interviews pre-pandemic? The jitters, the choosing of just the right suit, the
race to get there early, maybe even the drive across town or flight across the country for a
shot at a new opportunity?
Like most everything else, the pandemic changed that dynamic. The jitters may remain, but
in-person meetings are largely off the table, interviews among them. The CEO of one of the
most-trafficked jobs websites says it's likely to stay that way even after people get back to
the office.
"People being able to conduct an interview from the safety and convenience of their own
home is going to change hiring forever," said Chris Hyams, Indeed CEO, in an interview with
Yahoo Finance Live. "We believe this is the beginning of a massive secular shift."
"In April, we saw the number of requests for interviews to happen over video shoot up by
1,000%. Even as things have started to stabilize and the economy has opened up over the last 11
months, we've seen that continue to grow," Hyams said.
The jobs picture overall has been improving with
379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million
fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been
revising their employment and GDP forecasts are higher. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan
Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that the
jobless rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.
Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site
already lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings
and our benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5%
year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.
As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related
occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and
pharmacy.
While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not,
which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.
"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot
more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.
That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet
-- along with their sweatpants.
Don't you know that whining about race, from the racist or the anti-racist side, doesn't
matter, is more important than billionaires fucking us over. It's more important than
anything. It doesn't matter if we die of freezer burn sleeping on cardboard after we've been
laid-off, evicted, and starved. It doesn't matter if we die in a nuclear war that the
billionaires started because they think it would be a good idea.
Nope. All that matters is whining about race. That's the most important thing. All else is
trivial.
Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely
and manifestly incompetent" and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak
in China would never spread back to America".
The crucial factor here is that the US is not a nation per the most basic definition of
the word, "a group of people born of a common ancestry". Consequently, as illustrated by
job-killing "trade deals" and in countless other ways, there are plenty of "Americans" who
don't care a whit about the fate of Americans. That makes it entirely plausible that the Deep
State and/or one or more billionaires would release a virus in China in the full expectation
that it would hit the US and that once here it would disrupt, impoverish, and kill millions
of Americans. This was a win-win for them. The Deep State and the billionaires don't like
China, which is a non-liberal country and curtails their power by restricting the use of US
tech products. So if somehow the virus were contained in China it would be okay with them, as
it just would be a smaller win. However, what they really wanted was for the virus circle
back to the US. They knew that once here the disruption it would cause would further enrich
and empower them while giving them a pretext to dump it all on Donald Trump, whom they would
accuse of being incompetent and uncaring.
While full of good insights, the problem with this article as far as COVID is concerned is
that it misleads on the main point. COVID is not biowarfare, it is not a pandemic, it's just
the flu. The US recorded the same death rate in 2020 as in previous years and, as Dr. Colleen
Huber has documented, medical oxygen and supply sales were no different from previous
years.
All those COVID-19 deaths were simply deaths of a different name. Of course, we knew from
last March's Diamond Princess cruise–still by far the best controlled COVID
"experiment"–that the case-fatality rate of COVID-19 for the general public is in the
flu range.
But, it never was about COVID-19, which is just a glorified coronavirus of the type seen
even before the dawn of humans. Long before the virus even hit the streets, the media and
governments and medical establishments had secretly planned to to create a "panic-demic" to
scare people into a whole lot of strange and dangerous behaviors–like giving up their
liberties and economic futures. COVID-19 is just a medical nothing-burger that convinced a
lot of otherwise sane people to scare themselves into oblivion. Or did it? If the
post-election analyses are correct, Trump won in a major landslide and even those who voted
against him were already suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. So, maybe the people
weren't fooled by COVID so much as electorally raped by the vast elite cabal.
Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a
conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this
mantra.
Maye both Washington and Beijing are guilty -- of a perpetrating a hoax.
Putin surprised me. He flatly refused the offer of Schwab and his ilk. He condemned the
manner of recent pre-Covid growth, for all the growth went into a few deep pockets.
Moreover, he noted that digital tycoons are dangerous for the world.
The next strong man we elect must be an actual STRONG man. I salute Trump for his genius
in identifying the real majority in this country and for forcing the techno-oligarchs into
overdoing their election steal. Now we need someone who is willing to establish real
authority on behalf of the un-queer.
"... By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic. Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how. ..."
Yves here. While this paper does a good job of compiling and analyzing data about Covid
deaths and excess mortality, and speculating about deaths of despair, I find one of its
assumptions to be odd. It sees Covid-related deaths of despair as mainly the result of
isolation. In the US, I would hazard that economic desperation is likely a significant factor.
Think of the people who had successful or at least viable service businesses: hair stylists,
personal trainers, caterers, conference organizers. One friend had a very successful business
training and rehabbing pro and Olympic athletes. They've gone from pretty to very well situated
to frantic about how they will get by.
While Mulligan does mention loss of income in passing in the end, it seems the more
devastating but harder to measure damage is loss of livelihood, thinking that your way of
earning a living might never come back to anything dimly approaching the old normal. Another
catastrophic loss would be the possibility of winding up homeless, particularly for those who'd
never faced that risk before.
By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief
Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU
The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and
institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and
these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this
column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal
number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of
despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of
deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how.
The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary, although often untested, steps
by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some have worried that 'the cure is worse
than the disease'. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton mocked such worries as a "pet theory
about the fatal dangers of quarantine". They concluded in the summer of 2020 that "a wave of
deaths of despair is highly unlikely" because, they said, the duration of a pandemic is
measured in months whereas the underlying causes of drug abuse and suicide take many years to
accumulate (Case and Deaton 2020). With the extraordinary social distancing continuing and
mortality data accumulating, now is a good time to estimate the number of deaths of despair and
their incidence.
As a theoretical matter, I am not confident that demand and supply conditions were even
approximately constant as the country went into a pandemic recession. Take the demand and
supply for non-medical opioid use, which before 2020 accounted for the majority of deaths of
despair. 1 I acknowledge that the correlation between opioid fatalities and the
unemployment rate has been only weakly positive (Council of Economic Advisers February 2020,
Ruhm 2019). However, in previous recessions, the income of the unemployed and the nation
generally fell.
In this recession, personal income increased record amounts while the majority of the
unemployed received more income than they did when they were working (Congressional Budget
Office 2020). 2 Whereas alcohol and drug abuse can occur in isolation, many normal,
non-lethal consumption opportunities disappeared as the population socially distanced. Patients
suffering pain may have less access to physical therapy during a pandemic.
On the supply side, social distancing may affect the production of safety. 3 A
person who overdoses on opioids has a better chance of survival if the overdose event is
observed contemporaneously by a person nearby who can administer treatment or call paramedics.
4 Socially distanced physicians may be more willing to grant opioid prescriptions
over the phone rather than insist on an office visit. Although supply interruptions on the
southern border may raise the price of heroin and fentanyl, the market may respond by mixing
heroin with more fentanyl and other additives that make each consumption episode more dangerous
(Mulligan 2020a, Wan and Long 2020).
Mortality is part of the full price of opioid consumption and therefore a breakdown in
safety production may by itself reduce the quantity consumed but nonetheless increase mortality
per capita as long as the demand for opioids is price inelastic. I emphasise that these
theoretical hypotheses about opioid markets in 2020 are not yet tested empirically. My point is
that mortality measurement is needed because the potential for extraordinary changes is
real.
The Multiple Cause of Death Files (National Center for Health Statistics 1999–2018)
contain information from all death certificates in the US and would be especially valuable for
measuring causes of mortality in 2020. However, the public 2020 edition of those files is not
expected until early 2022. For the time being, my recent study (Mulligan 2020b) used the
2015–2018 files to project the normal number of 2020 deaths, absent a pandemic.
'Excess deaths' are defined to be actual deaths minus projected deaths. Included in the
projections, and therefore excluded from excess deaths, are some year-over-year increases in
drug overdoses because they had been trending up in recent years, especially among working-age
men, as illicit fentanyl diffused across the country.
I measure actual COVID-19 deaths and deaths from all causes from a Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) file for 2020 that begins in week five (the week beginning 26
January 2020) and aggregates to week, sex, and eleven age groups. To minimise underreporting, I
only use the data in this file through week 40 (the week ending 3 October). In separate
analyses, I also use medical examiner data from Cook County, Illinois, and San Diego County,
California, which indicate deaths handled by those offices through September (Cook) or June
2020 (San Diego) and whether opioids were involved, and 12-month moving sums of drug overdoses
reported by CDC (2020) through May 2020.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds what would have occurred if official COVID-19 deaths
were combined with a normal number of deaths from other causes. The demographic and time
patterns of the non-COVID-19 excess deaths (NCEDs) point to deaths of despair rather than an
undercount of COVID-19 deaths. The flow of NCEDs increased steadily from March to June and then
plateaued. They were disproportionately experienced by working-age men, including men as young
as 15 to 24. The chart below, reproduced from Mulligan (2020b), shows these results for men
aged 15–54. To compare the weekly timing of their excess deaths to a weekly measure of
economic conditions, Figure 1 also includes continued state unemployment claims scaled by a
factor of 25,000, shown together with deaths.
Figure 1 2020 weekly excess deaths by cause (men aged 15–54)
NCEDs are negative for elderly people before March 2020, as they were during the same time
of 2019, due to mild flu seasons. Offsetting these negative NCEDs are about 30,000 positive
NCEDs for the rest of the year, after accounting for an estimated 17,000 undercount of COVID-19
deaths in March and April.
If deaths of despair were the only causes of death with significant net contributions to
NCEDs after February, 30,000 NCEDs would represent at least a 45% increase in deaths of despair
from 2018, which itself was high by historical standards. At the same time, I cannot rule out
the possibility that other non-COVID-19 causes of death or even a bit of COVID-19 undercounting
(beyond my estimates) are contributing to the NCED totals.
One federal and various local measures of mortality from opioid overdose also point to
mortality rates during the pandemic that exceed those of late 2019 and early 2020, which
themselves exceed the rates for 2017 and 2018. These sources are not precise enough to indicate
whether rates of fatal opioid overdose during the pandemic were 10% above the rates from
before, 60% above, or somewhere in between.
Presumably, social isolation is part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of
deaths of despair. However, the results so far do not say how many, if any, come from
government stay-at-home orders versus various actions individual households and private
businesses have taken to encourage social distancing. The data in this paper do not reveal how
many deaths of despair are due to changes in 'demand' – such as changes in a person's
income, outlook, or employment situation – versus changes in 'supply' – such as the
production of safety and a changing composition of dangerous recreational substances.
I agree with Yves's counter-argument though I must declare an interest, having done work
on quality of life for 20 years and hope I'm not breaking site rules (given recent reminders
about what is and isn't ok).
The excess deaths (particularly among men) certainly to me seems more consistent with a
collapse in one's ability to do the "valued things in life" and prioritise (to SOME extent)
economic outcomes over relationships. After all, the old trope that men cope less well than
women with retirement is found in happiness, quality of life and other such data.
Whether or not one agrees with me, surely a test as to whether the authors or Yves has the
better explanation for the excess deaths would involve looking at well-being and mortality of
men who retire earlier than they'd like vs that of those whose spouse died earlier than
expected (including the proper control groups).
It would be interesting to find out the following:
1. Did the states with the most generous unemployment benefits (like MA or NJ) have fewer
deaths of despair that the states with much stingier benefits?
2. Did the states which imposed various shutdowns (mainly blue states) have more deaths of
despair than the states which stayed open, like SD or Florida?
My guess is that deaths of despair are too idiosyncratic to blame on Covid lockdowns, but
I am not an expert at all about this.
They could also look for the link with 0% interest on people's saved money and seeing no
f..ing end in sight as the beatings continue. Going down to zero does not make the people
jolly.
It used to be only men who would upon meeting another man, where the first question is
likely 'What do you do for a living?', but with the advent of as many women working, probably
appropriate there too.
Nobody ever asks firstly what your hobby is or what sports team you follow, as the job
query tells you everything about the person in one fell swoop.
There's a lot of people whose jobs were kind of everything in their lives, who had never
gone without work ever, that are now chronically unemployed.
Anybody who has studied suicide readily appreciates that the act is impulsive. Case &
Deaton are probably correct in the limited sense of economic despair derived from
transitioning away from fossil fuels and industrial production to jobs requiring education
unreachable to middle-aged coal miners. However, those deaths were likely derived from easy
access to opioids. Most of those job losses led workers to make disability claims (achy
backs) to extend income. The treatment for achy back is pain killers – oxy-something or
other back then. Those same pills killed the pain of failure. Over time, addiction set in
and, according to Koob & LeMoal's 2008 addiction model, increased consumption becomes
necessary to stay pain-free. Physicians would surely not up dosages indefinitely and that put
addicts on the street literally. All that took time to evolve. But times have changed. Using
your family doc to get you high is no longer an option. So, Mulligan makes sense.
As an internist with boots on the ground – I cannot express enough gratitude that
these kinds of reports are getting out.
As busy as I have been this past year with COVID, the actual patients struggling with
anxiety and depression have just dwarved the actual COVID numbers.
I cannot even begin to tell you the heartbreak of being a provider and having 20-40 year
old young men in your office crying their eyes out. Lots of job loss, lots of income issues,
lots of not being able to pay for things for your kids. All the while being completely unable
to find other work or extra work. It is truly a nightmare for these people. And the attitude
by so many of the lockdown Karens who seem to have no conception of how this is all going
down for these young people has been deeply worrisome to me.
It is really not getting better – if anything slowly getting worse.
I would agree with the article above that loneliness is a problem – this is for the
minority – mainly older people and should not be dismissed.
Loneliness is not the big problem however, in my experience. The big problem is the
economic despair for our young people and the complete loss of socialization for our
teenagers and kids.
A research team I'm part of just published data looking at the 'diseases of despair' crisis
over the last decade (full article is free and available online).
A brief summary of our findings below, and some thoughts....
Trends in the diagnosis of diseases of despair in the United States...
Background and objective Increasing mortality and decreasing life expectancy in the USA are
largely attributable to accidental...
AUDIO:
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 100 YEARS, LIFE
EXPECTANCY IS DECREASING IN THE UNITED STATES. IN THIS EPISODE, DR. LARRY SINOWAY DISCUSSES THE DECLINE AND HOW IT RELATES
TO...
view
more
CREDIT: PENN STATE CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Medical diagnoses
involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- commonly referred to
as diseases of despair -- increased in Pennsylvania health insurance claims between the years 2007 and 2018, according to
researchers from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics.
Princeton
economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015. Case and Deaton's research observed a
decline in life expectancy of middle-aged white men and women between 1999 and 2015 -- the first such decline since the flu
pandemic of 1918. They theorized that this decline is associated with the social and economic downturn in rural communities
and small towns. These changes include loss of industry, falling wages, lower marriage rates, increasing barriers to higher
education, an increase in one-parent homes and a loss of social infrastructure.
"It is theorized
that these changes have fostered growing feelings of despair including disillusionment, precariousness and resignation in many
peoples' lives," Daniel George, associate professor of humanities and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine,
said. "Despair can trigger emotional, cognitive, behavioral and even biological changes, increasing the likelihood of diseases
that can progress and ultimately culminate in deaths of despair."
With the
commonwealth's considerable rural and small-town population, particularly around Penn State campuses, Penn State Clinical and
Translational Science Institute led a research study to understand the rate of diseases of despair in Pennsylvania. Institute
researchers collaborated with Highmark Health, one of the state's largest health insurance providers. Highmark provides
employer-sponsored, individual, Affordable Care Act and Medicare plans.
Highmark Health's
Enterprise Analytics team analyzed the claims of more than 12 million people on their plans from 2007 to 2018. Penn State did
not have access to Highmark member data or individual private health information. Although the insurance claims included
members from neighboring states, including West Virginia, Delaware, and Ohio, the majority of the claims were from
Pennsylvania residents. Researchers reported their results in
BMJ Open
.
The researchers
defined diseases of despair as diagnoses related to alcohol use, substance use and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. They
searched the claims data for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes related to these diagnoses. ICD codes
form a standardized system maintained by the World Health Organization and are used in health records and for billing.
The researchers
found that the rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair increased significantly in the Highmark claims in the past
decade. Nearly one in 20 people in the study sample was diagnosed with a disease of despair. Between 2009 and 2018, the rates
of alcohol-, substance-, and suicide-related diagnoses increased by 37%, 94% and 170%. Following Case and Deaton's findings,
the researchers saw the most substantial percentage increase in disease of despair diagnoses among men ages 35 to 74, followed
by women ages 55 to 74 and 18 to 34.
The rate of
alcohol-related diagnoses significantly increased among men and women ages 18 and over. The most dramatic increases were among
men and women ages 55 to 74. Rates increased for men in this age group by 50% and 80% for women.
The rate of
substance-related diagnoses roughly doubled for men and women ages 35 to 54 and increased by 170% in ages 55 to 74. In 2018,
the most recent year of claims included in the study, rates of substance-use diagnoses were highest in 18-to-34-year-olds.
The rate of
diagnoses related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased for all age groups. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, rates increased
by at least 200%. The rate for all other age groups increased by at least 60%.
The type of
insurance patients had also mattered. People with Medicare insurance had 1.5 times higher odds of having a disease of despair
diagnosis and those with Affordable Care Act insurance had 1.3 times higher odds.
One increase
stood out to researchers: among infants, substance-related diagnoses doubled.
"This increase
was entirely attributable to neonatal abstinence syndrome and corresponded closely with increases in substance-related
disorders among women of childbearing age," Emily Brignone, senior research scientist, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics,
said.
Neonatal
abstinence syndrome occurs when a baby withdraws from substances, especially opioids, exposed to in the womb.
Future research
can concentrate on identifying "hot spots" of diseases of despair diagnoses in the commonwealth to then study the social and
economic conditions in these areas. With this data, researchers can potentially create predictive models to identify
communities at risk and develop interventions.
"We found a broad
view of who is impacted by increases in diseases of despair, which cross racial, ethnic and geographic groups," Jennifer
Kraschnewski, professor of medicine, public health sciences and pediatrics, said. "Although originally thought to mostly
affect rural communities, these increases in all middle-aged adults across the rural-urban continuum likely foreshadows future
premature deaths."
###
National Center
for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health through Penn State Clinical and Translational Science
Institute funded this research.
A podcast about
this topic is available here.
Other researchers
on this project were Lawrence Sinoway, director, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute; Curren Katz and
Robert Gladden, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics; Charity Sauder, administrative director, Penn State Clinical and
Translational Science Institute; and Andrea Murray, project manager, Penn State College of Medicine.
Disclaimer:
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the
accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the
EurekAlert system.
I have come up with a partial solution to what is coming. Feel free to add.
1. Take care of your health. Exercise. Eat healthy even if it costs a little more.
2. Stay out of debt. Live beneath your means.
3. Keep learning. Learn new skills. Learn how to fix and build things yourself. Invest in
yourself.
4. Realize that government (at all levels) will lie to you. Government will not take care of
you. Government will take everything you have if it means they stay in power just one day
longer.
5. Buy a little gold and silver. Bitcoin if you must. But realize that this is just a little
insurance and not much else.
6. Stay far away from bubbles. Hard to do when friends and relatives are getting "rich" and
think you the fool.
7. Relationships are worth far more than "stuff." Families are worth way more than
"stuff."
8. Enjoy life. It doesn't take lots of money.
9. Learn how to shoot safely and have at least one gun. Even if you think you will never
touch it again.
10. Be part of "something" bigger than yourself such as a Church or a volunteer organization.
All the issues we see today are the same issues seen 2000 years ago.
"... You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ..."
James C.
Collins related a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during
his period in the Vietnamese POW camp. [21] [
non-primary source needed ] When Collins asked which prisoners didn't make it out
of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out
by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're
going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then
Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This
is a very important lesson.
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end
-- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal
facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[22]
The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure
stories of the modern age.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the
Endurance
and
set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way
through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the
Endurance
became
locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was
finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest
seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
In
Endurance
,
the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous
voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.
The
book gave me several adrenaline rushes...it's that well written.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The
book gave me several adrenaline rushes...it's that well written.
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is an amazing account of Shackleton's journey that went into
intricate details about the twists and turns every step of the way for this small group of brave explorers. It
reads like a thrilling fiction novel, but the fact that it is non-fiction makes it even more astounding. The
description really paints a true picture of the hellacious conditions that they continued to face time and time
again. This book really put into perspective what a challenge truly is. A simple headache that we might get now
is nowhere near getting your sleeping bag drenched and still having to sleep in it in temperatures near 0 when
you don't know how the weather or current is going to change while you try to sleep. Great read and really hard
to put down because even though you think you know what's going to happen, you still have to find out how.
Would highly recommend if you're looking for a good book that you will have trouble putting down.
38 people found this helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cold
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2018
Verified Purchase
Very cold. Always cold. This is a very detailed (true) story about men
trying to survive in a very hostile environment in c. 1915. Stark and full of detail, the reader almost gets to
feel the cold, hunger and pain the crew experienced while trying to survive Antarctica and return to
civilization. it's amazing that anyone survived this ordeal let alone all of them. Sadly, many creatures and
peaceful animals paid the price for mans survival. The details often are so descriptive and redundant due to
the scope of the story, that it sometimes becomes repetitive and familiar. This is because of the constant
distress and horrible conditions the crew experienced for such a long time. It's a well documented and exciting
story with a bit of a history lesson that really held my interest. It's a popular book that is deserving of its
high ratings.
21 people found this helpful
There is no doubt in my mind that I would not be able to endure even one, the best, day of the unimaginable
hardships that the men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Exposition (1914-17) -- under the leadership of Sir Ernest
Shackleton -- struggled with for more than 400 days. They endured and survived some of the most incredible,
unbelievable, conditions ever experienced; and Alfred Lansing captures the urgency, the deprivation, and the
desperation, with spellbinding storytelling.
Recommendation: Best adventure story, ever. Should be read by all, especially those of high school age.
"In all the world there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age -- no
warmth, no life, no movement." (p. 46).
Basic Books. Kindle Edition, 268 pages.
16 people found this helpful
A
Riveting True Story of Adventure, Survival and Hope
5.0 out of 5 stars
A
Riveting True Story of Adventure, Survival and Hope
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on an expedition to make the first
land crossing of the barren Antarctic continent from the east to the west coast. The expedition failed to
accomplish its objective, but became recognized instead as an amazing feat of endurance. Shackleton and a crew
of 27 (plus one stowaway) first headed to the Weddell Sea on the ship Endurance. Their ship was trapped by pack
ice short of their destination and eventually crushed. Forced to abandon ship, the men were trapped on ice
floes for months while they drifted north. Once they were far enough north that the ice thinned somewhat, they
were forced to journey in lifeboats they'd dragged off the ship. After six terrible days, they made it to
uninhabited Elephant Island; from there Shackleton and five other men set off in an open 22-foot boat on an
incredible 800-mile voyage across the notoriously tempestuous Drake Passage to South Georgia Island, where they
hiked across the island's mountain range to reach a whaling camp. From there, they returned in a ship to rescue
the men left behind on Elephant Island.
That these men were able to survive in the harsh, barren conditions of Antarctica, where temperatures
frequently fell below zero is amazing. It's nearly unimaginable that these men could survive for almost two
years, their lives marked by a seemingly endless stretch of misery, suffering, and boredom, not to mention the
threat of starvation. At every turn, their situation seems to go from bad to worse. If this were a work of
fiction, one would be inclined to claim the story was simply too far-fetched. But Endurance isn't just a tale
of misery, it is a vivid description of their journey, the dangers they faced, and the obstacles they overcame.
Through all of this, Shackleton has never lost a man.
Alfred Lansing's book, written in 1958 from interviews and journals of the survivors, is now back in print.
It's a riveting tale of adventure, survival and hope. It is also a rare historical, non-fiction book that is as
exciting as any novel. I've read a number of stories of survival and would rate this as the best of all I have
read. This is one of the great adventure stories of our time. Don't miss it.
Read more
45 people found this helpful
I
recommend this book to add to the collection of those ...
5.0 out of 5 stars
I
recommend this book to add to the collection of those ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2015
Verified Purchase
What a page turner. Lansing is a master for the description of those
explorers hardships, desire to follow Shacketon' orders. I kept saying to myself that there are few humans
today that are as tough as those men. I recommend this book to add to the collection of those books that give
us the knowledge of what it takes to conquer a goal.
51 people found this helpful
By
far one of the best books I've ever read, & I've read many!
5.0 out of 5 stars
By
far one of the best books I've ever read, & I've read many!
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2019
Verified Purchase
I just finished reading 2 of Grann's books - Lost City of Z & The White
Darkness. The latter is the story of Henry Worsley, the grandson of Frank Worsley one of the "extraordinary"
men in Lansing's Endurance. Grann suggested Endurance as a worthy read. Sir Earnest Shackleton & Frank Worsley
were two of some 20 men who incredibly survived a journey to Antarctica that went awry from almost its onset.
Two years later all hands were rescued through the extraordinary will of the men who found themselves at the
mercy of the elements. Lansing's research & grasp of the situation in which these men found themselves in
conjunction with his writing style has put this book at the top of my all time favorites! Fabulous! Fabulous!
Anyone 12 or older will be blown away by this true story & this writer!
4 people found this helpful
ll eyes are on the declining number of unemployed. The May and June jobs reports chronicle
the reabsorption of 5.3 million who lost their jobs in the COVID-19 pandemic. Twelve million
jobs to go to reach pre-pandemic employment.
Yet prior to the pandemic, there were 18 million Americans missing from the economy. These
persons were neither employed nor seeking employment -- nor retirees, students or in-home
caregivers -- and therefore were excluded from the Bureau of Labor Statistics count of the
workforce. In order that America emerge from the pandemic stronger than before, a concerted
initiative by federal and state governments to move them back into the economy -- using
existing resources -- must begin now.
...
Research on the social determinants of health finds that employment has a
very strong correlation with positive health outcomes. To exist as a non-participant in
the economy is thus an invitation to dire health outcomes including premature death.
What's more, these individuals are needed as contributors to our national commonweal,
fueling increased economic and social progress. And people engaged in productive activities
are much less likely to engage in negative and destructive behaviors.
... The USDA's food stamp program has a robustly funded, though underutilized, employment
and training grant. States use the excuse of USDA's partial match requirement as a reason to
opt out.
"... This would be bad news for anyone with a serious health condition, but it would be especially bad news for the oldest pre-Medicare age group, people between the ages of 55 and 64. This group currently faces average premiums of close to $10,000 a year per person for insurance purchased through the ACA exchanges. Insurers could easily charge people with serious health conditions two or three times this amount if the Trump administration wins its case. ..."
"... The 55 to 64 age group will also be hard hit because they are far more likely to have serious health issues than younger people. Just 18 percent of the people in the youngest 18 to 34 age group have a serious health condition, compared to 44 percent of those in the 55 to 64 age group, as shown in the figure above. ..."
Older Workers Targeted in Trump's Lawsuit to End Obamacare
By DEAN BAKER
The Trump administration is supporting a lawsuit which seeks to overturn the Affordable
Care Act (ACA) in its entirety. The implication is that a large share of the older workers
now able to afford health insurance as a result of the ACA will no longer be able to afford
it if the Trump administration wins its lawsuit.
Furthermore, if the suit succeeds it will both end the expansion of Medicaid, which has
insured tens of millions of people, and again allow discrimination against people with
serious health conditions. Ending this discrimination was one of the major goals of the ACA.
The issue is that insurers don't want to insure people who are likely to have health issues
that cost them money. While they are happy to insure healthy people with few medical
expenses, people with heart disease, diabetes, or other health conditions are a bad deal for
insurers.
Before the ACA, insurers could charge outlandish fees to cover people with health
conditions, or simply refuse to insure them altogether. The ACA required insurers to cover
everyone within an age bracket at the same price, regardless of their health. If the Trump
administration has its way, we would go back to the world where insurers could charge people
with health issues whatever they wanted, or alternatively, just deny them coverage.
This would be bad news for anyone with a serious health condition, but it would be
especially bad news for the oldest pre-Medicare age group, people between the ages of 55 and
64. This group currently faces average premiums of close to $10,000 a year per person for
insurance purchased through the ACA exchanges. Insurers could easily charge people with
serious health conditions two or three times this amount if the Trump administration wins its
case.
And, since a Trump victory would eliminate the ACA subsidiaries, people in this age group
with health conditions could be looking to pay $20,000 to $30,000 a year for insurance, with
no help from the government. That will be especially hard since many people with serious
health conditions are unable to work full-time jobs, and some can't work at all.
[Graph]
The 55 to 64 age group will also be hard hit because they are far more likely to have
serious health issues than younger people. Just 18 percent of the people in the youngest 18
to 34 age group have a serious health condition, compared to 44 percent of those in the 55 to
64 age group, as shown in the figure above.
The ACA has many inadequacies, but it has allowed tens of millions to get insurance who
could not otherwise. Donald Trump wants to take this insurance away.
"... Old saying: A Recession is when your neighbor loses their Job. A Depression is when you lose your Job. ..."
"... A lot of mega wealthy people are cheats. They get insider info, they don't pay people and do all they can to provide the least amount of value possible while tricking suckers into buying their crap. Don't even get me started on trust fund brats who come out of the womb thinking they are Warren buffet level genius in business. ..."
"... There's a documentary about Wal-Mart that has the best title ever: The High Cost of Low Cost ..."
"... Globalism killed the American dream. We can buy cheap goods made somewhere else if we have a job here that pays us enough money. ..."
You can't just move to American cities to pursue opportunity; even the high wages paid in
New York are rendered unhelpful because the cost of housing is so high.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was vilified and ultimately murdered when he was helping organize
a Poor People's Campaign. Racial justice means economic justice.
A lot of mega wealthy people are cheats. They get insider info, they don't pay people and
do all they can to provide the least amount of value possible while tricking suckers into
buying their crap. Don't even get me started on trust fund brats who come out of the womb
thinking they are Warren buffet level genius in business.
Nailed it. As a millennial, I'm sick of being told to just "deal with it" when the cards
have always been stacked against me. Am I surviving? Yes. Am I thriving? No.
When the reserve status of the American dollar goes away, then it will become apparent how
poor the US really is. You cannot maintain a country without retention of the ability to
manufacture the articles you use on a daily basis. The military budget and all the jobs it
brings will have to shrink catastrophically.
...and sometimes you CAN'T afford to move. You can't find a decent job. You certainly
can't build a meaningful savings. You can't find an apartment. And if you have kids? That
makes it even harder. I've been trying to move for years, but the conditions have to be
perfect to do it responsibly. The American Dream died for me once I realized that no matter
the choices I made, my four years of college, my years of saving and working hard....I do NOT
have upward mobility. For me, the American Dream is dead. I've been finding a new dream. The
human dream.
This is a very truncated view. You need to expand your thinking. WHY has the system been
so overtly corrupted? It's globalism that has pushed all this economic pressure on the
millennials and the middle class. It was the elites, working with corrupt politicians, that
rigged the game so the law benefited them.
This is all reversible. History shows that capitalism can be properly regulated in a way
that benefits all. The answer to the problem is to bring back those rules, not implement
socialism.
Trump has:
- Ended the free trade deals
- Imposed Protective tarriffs to defend American jobs and workers
- Lowered corporate taxes to incentivize business to locate within us borders.
- Limited immigration to reduce the supply of low skilled labor within US borders.
The result? before COVID hit the average American worker saw the first inflation adjusted
wage increase in over 30 years!
This is why the fake news and hollywood continue to propagandize the masses into hating
Trump.
Trump is implementing economic policies good for the people and bad for the elites
Krystal Ball exposes the delusion of the American dream.
About Rising: Rising is a weekday morning show with bipartisan hosts that breaks the mold of
morning TV by taking viewers inside the halls of Washington power like never before. The show
leans into the day's political cycle with cutting edge analysis from DC insiders who can
predict what is going to happen.
It also sets the day's political agenda by breaking exclusive
news with a team of scoop-driven reporters and demanding answers during interviews with the
country's most important political newsmakers.
Got my degree just as the great recession hit. Couldn't find real work for 3 years, not
using my degree... But it was work. now after 8 years, im laid off. I did everything "right".
do good in school, go to college, get a job...
I've never been fired in my life. its always,
"Your contract is up" "Sorry we cant afford to keep you", "You can make more money collecting!
but we'll give a recommendation if you find anything."
Now I'm back where i started... only
now I have new house and a family to support... no pressure.
"The gig economy is just a way for corporations to cut the cost of employees, by turning them into subcontractors. They blur
the line between employee and subcontractors by having tight rules like an employer, and since most people have a employee
mentality, the company nurtures the idea that they somehow are more like employees, then they get mostly good workers, working
hard for very little compensation. The Gig economy is just another sign of our failing way of life."
Notable quotes:
"... The gig economy would be great if we lived in a society where health care is free, food is cheap, housing is common, and nobody suffers from economic Issues Which is not what we are living in ..."
"... Neo-liberals - we support freedom and stuff. Removes mask Is actually corporation lapdogs. ..."
Unlike most developments in the employment market, the Gig Economy has received a great deal
of press attention and established itself firmly as a point of reference in the popular
consciousness. In recent years, increasing numbers of people have turned to services such as
Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Just Eat, TaskRabbit and Fiverr as either a side hustle or their main
source of income.
Following on from my video on neoliberalism and neoliberal capitalism, in today's episode of
What the Theory?, we look deeper into how the gig economy (or sharing economy) works and what
differentiates it from the rest of the economy. We ask whether the gig economy is truly an
opportunity for those wanting a more flexible work arrangement or whether it is simply a means
for multinational corporations to circumvent hard-won workers rights and labour laws.
Finally, we also consider whether there might be some historical precedents to the sharing
economy in the early industrial period and look at some of the challenges facing those
attempting to organise Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers and other gig economy workers into trade
unions in order to negotiate for better rates of pay and conditions.
Unregulated capitalism? You mean like child labor and passing the hat when a worker dies
in an accident? They don't want workers. They want people who are desperate.
Well, how far it all goes is something that remains to be seen. I don't think we'll get as
far as child labour but the curation of dependence is something that's definitely in
progress.
Daxton Lyon except the majority of entrepreneurs and business owners didn't come Into
their business ownership via merit. You are forgetting that most of these people are born
into a situation where they have access to capital, access to legal services and education.
Sure there are a minority of people who make it from nothing but that number is diminishingly
small.
Daxton Lyon "You don't like the gig? Do something else." Too bad the economy is currently
setup to where around half of individuals are limited to gig and don't have the resources and
money to do anything else.
Daxton Lyon "If any of you did, your panzy responses regarding corporate greed would be
squashed!" No, they wouldn't, but keep performing those red herrings and hasty,
extremely-worshipping generalizations about entrepreneurship to distract from the point; I'm
sure they'll catch on.
The gig economy would be great if we lived in a society where health care is free, food is
cheap, housing is common, and nobody suffers from economic Issues Which is not what we are
living in
Don't understand the protests? What you're seeing is people pushed to the edge
By KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR – Los Angeles Times
What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on
George Floyd's neck while Floyd croaked, "I can't breathe"?
If you're white, you probably muttered a horrified, "Oh, my God" while shaking your
head at the cruel injustice. If you're black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed,
maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, "Not @#$%!
again!" Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as
he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn't for that video
emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis
cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store's video showed he wasn't. And how the
cop on Floyd's neck wasn't an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked
calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.
Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming
the black man who asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black
Yale University grad student napping in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a
white student. Because you realize it's not just a supposed "black criminal" who is
targeted, it's the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.
You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the
cops.
What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations
with raised fists? If you're white, you may be thinking, "They certainly aren't social
distancing." Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, "Well, that
just hurts their cause." Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger
saying, "That's putting the cause backward."
You're not wrong -- but you're not right, either. The black community is used to the
institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though
we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness -- write
articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on
CNN, support candidates who promise change -- the needle hardly budges.
But COVID-19 has been slamming the consequences of all that home as we die at a
significantly higher rate than whites, are the first to lose our jobs, and watch
helplessly as Republicans try to keep us from voting .
Bert Schlitz , May 31, 2020 7:14 pm
The protests are self centered crap blacks do year after year. Considering 370 whites over
100 Latinos were killed by cops, many as bad as that guy in minnie. Blacks have a Trumptard
mentality. We have a ecological disaster, a economic disaster and pandemic(when th they are
spreading). Yet let's whine about one bad cop related homicide.
This may begin the breakup of the Democratic party and the blacks. The differences are just
to large.
Kaleberg , May 31, 2020 9:40 pm
It's rather sad that it takes a massive civil disturbance to get the authorities to arrest a
man videotaped killing another. You'd think that would just happen as a matter of course, but
that's how it works in this country.
THE WAY BACK -- THE ONLY WAY BACK -- BOTH ECONOMICALLY AND POLITICALLY (pardon me if I take
up a lot of space -- almost everyone else has said most of what they want to say)
The minimum wage itself should only mark the highest wage that we presume firms with highest
labor costs can pay* -- like fast food with 25% labor costs. Lower labor cost businesses --
e.g., retail like Walgreens and Target with 10-15% labor costs can potentially pay north of
$20/hr; Walmart with 7% labor costs, $25/hr!
That kind of income can only be squeezed out of the consumer market (meaning out of the
consumer) by labor union bargaining.
Raise fast food wages from $10/hr to $15/hr and prices go up only a doable 12.5%. Raise
Walgreens, Target from $10/hr to $20/hr and prices there only go up a piddling 6.25%. Keeping
the math easy here -- I know that Walgreens and Target pay more to start but that only
reinforces my argument about how much labor income is being left on the (missing) bargaining
table.
Hook up Walmart with 7% labor costs with the Teamsters Union and the wage and benefit sky
might be the limit! Don't forget (everybody seems to) that as more income shifts to lower wage
workers, more demand starts to come from lower wage workers -- reinforcing their job security
as they spend more proportionately at lower wage firms (does not work for low wage employees of
high end restaurants -- the exception that actually proves the rule).
Add in sector wide labor agreements and watch Germany appear on this side of the Atlantic
overnight.
* * * * * *
If Republicans held the House in the last (115th) Congress they would have passed
HR2723-Employee Rights Act -- mandating new union recertification/decertification paper ballots
in any bargaining unit that has had experienced "turnover, expansion, or alteration by merger
of unit represented employees exceeding 50 percent of the bargaining unit" by the date of the
enactment -- and for all time from thereafter. Trump would have signed it and virtually every
union in the country would have experienced mandated recert/decert votes in every bargaining
unit. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2723/text
Democrats can make the most obvious point about what was lacking in the Republican bill by
pretending to be for a cert/recert bill that mandates union ballots only at places where there
is no union now. Republicans jumping up and down can scream the point for us that there is no
reason to have ballots in non union places and not in unionized workplaces -- and vice
versa.
* * * * * *
Biggest problem advocating the vastly attractive and all healing proposal of federally
mandated cert/recert/decert elections seems to be that nobody will discuss it as long as nobody
else discusses it -- some kind of innate social behavior I think, from deep in our (pea sized)
midbrains. How else can you explain the perfect pitch's neglect. I suspect that if I waved a
$100 bill in front of a bunch of progressives and offered it to the first one would say the
words out loud: "Regularly scheduled union elections are the only way to restore shared
prosperity and political fairness to America", that I might not get one taker. FWIW.
Another big problem when I try to talk to workers about this on the street -- just to get a
reaction -- is that more than half have no idea in the world what unions are all about. Those
who do understand, think the idea so sensible they often think action must be pending.
econ101 should tell you that the eitc is a subsidy to the corporations that hire droves of
low-paid workers, with meagre spillover to the workers themselves. More effective and
persistent improvements to social justice would come from significant increases to the minimum
wage, societal support to unionization, and other efforts to increase the threshold of what is
considered by society to be the bare minimum of compensation for work.
The concomitant decline in the value of the dollar and the terms of trade would be small
compared to the reduction in inequality.
Bernard , June 1, 2020 5:21 pm
such a third world country as America , riots are the only way to get heard for some. the
Elite have been looting us blind for decades, the Covid bail outs to Corporations by the Elites
in DC as the latest installment of Capitalist theft know as Business as Usual.
it's all about the money.
sick,sick country praising capitalism over everything else.
the comfortable white people are afraid of losing what they have. Divide and Conquer is the
Republican and now Democratic way they run America.
to the rich go the spoils. the rest, well. screw them .
the Lee Atwater idea to use coded language when St. Reagan implemented the destruction of
America society, coincided with St. Thatcher's destruction of England.
the White elites post Civil War in the South knew how to divide the poor whites and the poor
blacks.
that is how we got to where we are now.
Did you see any of the bankers go to jail for the 2008 ripoff?
not one and they got bonuses for their "deeds."
America, such a nation of Grifters, Thieves and Scam artist. like Pelosi , McConnel and all
the people in DC and the Business men who sold out our country and the American people for
"small change".
God forbid Corporations should ever have to pay for the damage they have done to America and
its" people. My RIGHT to Greed trumps your right to clean air, water, safe neighborhoods, says
Capitalism!
the Rich get richer and the poor get poorer, Everybody Knows!!!
But let's not focus on things lest some uncomfortable truths.
The nightly news, when talking about the effect of the pandemic on the populace in, say, Southeast Asian, African,
South American, countries, invariably refer to the tenuous hold on life of their working poor; they don't really have
a job. Each day they rise and go forth looking for work that pays enough that they and their family can continue to
subsist. It is, in some countries, a long-standing problem.
Sound too familiar? Sometime in the late 80s (??) Americans began to see day labors line up at Home Depot and Lowe's
lots in numbers not seen since The Great Depression. Manufacturing Corporations began subbing out their work to
sub-contractors, otherwise known as employees without benefits; Construction Contractors subbed out construction work to
these employees without benefits; Engineering Firms subbed out engineering to these employees without benefits;
Landscapers' workers were now sub-contractors/independent contractors; Here, in the SF Bay Area, time and again, we
saw vans loads of undocumented Hispanics under a 'Labor Contractor' come in from the Central Valley to build condos; the
white Contractor for the project didn't have a single employee; none of the workers got a W-2. Recall watching, sometime
in the 90s (??), a familiar, well dressed, rotund guest from Wall Street, on the PBS News Hour, forcefully proclaiming
to the TV audience:
American workers are going to have to learn to compete with the Chinese; Civil Service employees, factory
employees, are all going to have to work for less
All this subcontracting, independent contractors, was a scam, a scam meant to circumvent paying going wages and
benefits, to enhance profit margins; a scam that transferred more wealth to the top.
Meanwhile back at The Ranch, after the H1B Immigration Act of 1990, Microsoft could hire programmers from India for
one-half the cost of a citizen programmer. Half of Bill Gates' fortune was resultant these labor savings; the other half
was made off those not US Citizens. Taking a cue, Banks, Bio-Techs, some City and State Governments began
subcontracting out their programming to H1Bs. Often, the subcontractors/labor contractors (often themselves immigrants)
providing the programmers, held the programmers' passports/visas for security.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
friends of Bush/Cheney made fortunes on clean up contracts they subbed out for next to nothing; the
independent/subcontractor scam was now officially governmentally sanctioned.
By about 2000 we began to hear the term gig-workers applied to these employees without benefits. Uber appeared in
2007 to be followed by Lift. Both are scams based on paying less than prevailing wages, on not providing worker
benefits,
These days, the nightly news, when talking about the effect of the pandemic on the populace in America, shows footage
of Food Banks in California with lines 2! miles long. Many of those waiting in these lines didn't have a real job
before; they were gig-workers; they can't apply for Unemployment Benefits. It is estimated that 1.6 million American
workers (1% of the workforce) are gig-workers; they don't have a real job. That 1% is in addition to the 16 million
American workers (10% of the workforce) that are independent contractors. Of the more than 40 million currently
unemployed Americans, some 17 million are either gig-workers or subcontractors/independent contractors. All of these are
scams meant to transfer more wealth to the top. All of these are scams with American Workers the victims; scams, in a
race to the bottom.
Democrats in the so called battle ground states would clean up at the polls with this. Why do you think
those states strayed? It was because Obama and Hillary had no idea what they really needed. Voters had no
idea what they SPECIFICALLY needed either -- UNIONS! They had been deunionized so thoroughly for so long
that they THEMSELVES no long knew what they were missing (frogs in the slowly boiling pot).
In 1988 Jesse Jackson took the Democratic primary in Michigan with 54% against Dukakis and Gephardt.
Obama beat Wall Street Romney and red-white-and-blue McCain in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. But nobody
told these voters -- because nobody seems to remember -- what they really needed. These voter just knew by
2016 that Democrats had not what they needed and looked elsewhere -- anywhere else!
Strom presents an easy as can be, on-step-back treatment that should go down oh, so smoothly and
sweetly. What do you think?
Matthew young
,
May 31, 2020 10:51 am
Not overnight, but a few days in 1972 when Nixon fouled the defaults and none of us knew how badly at
the time.
Reseting prices takes a long time, it is not magic and Nixon had fouled the precious metals market,
overnight. That and all the commodities market needed a restructure to adapt to our new regime.
Our way out was to export price instability to Asia. My suggestion this time is to think through the
math a bit before we all suddenly freak and do another over nighter. Think about how one might spread the
partial default over a 15 year period.
All of us, stuck with 40 years of flat earth economic planning without a clue. Now we have a year at
best to nail down the Lucas criteria and get a default done with some science behind it.
I doubt it. I figure we will all go to monetary meetup with our insurance contracts ready to be
confirmed. That is impossible and Trump will be stuck doing a volatile, overnight partial default, like
Nixon.,
EMichael
,
May 31, 2020 12:02 pm
Dennis,
The states you mentioned have overwhelmingly voted Rep for the last 3 decades in their state races. One
of them has instituted right to work laws, and the other two have come very close to doing the same.
The white working class cares nothing about unions at all. They have been voting against them for
decades. It's why union rights and membership has deteriorated for 5 decades.
run75441
,
May 31, 2020 12:32 pm
EM:
Notably, I had posted the 2016 presidential election numbers numbers for MI, PA, and WI which
resulted in an "anyone but Trump or Clinton vote" and gave th election to Trump. The "anyone but Trump
or Clinton vote" resulted in a historical high for the "others" category and was anywhere from 3 to 6
times higher than previously experienced in other presidential elections. It also resulted in those
three states casting Electoral votes for a Republican presidential candidate since 1992 – MI, 1988 –
PA, and 1988 – WI. While this does defeat your comment above on those states voting Republican, it does
not take away from your other comment on Sarandon. People punished themselves with Trump in spite of
every obvious clue he demonstrated of being a loon. In this case the white working class voted against
themselves for Trump and those of Sarandon's ilk helped them along by voting for "others."
EMichael
,
May 31, 2020 12:45 pm
Run, I stated in "state elections".
Y'know one other thing I have seen in MI voting is that the amount of people who voted did not cast a
voted for President also was the highest ever. Thinking these are the same people like Sarandon. It was
close to 90,000 in MI.
"87,810: Number of voters this election who cast a ballot but did not cast a vote for president. That
compares to 49,840 undervotes for president in 2012.
5 percent: Proportion of voters who opted for a third-party candidate in this election, compared to 1
percent in 2012."
Thanks for your comment and the link. Wow! Where to start, huh?
SEIU was a player from the get go, but I don't want to go there just now.
Before Reagan, there was the first rust belt move to the non-union south. Why was the south so
anti-union? I think this stuff is engendered from infancy and most of us are incapable of thinking anew
when it comes to stuff our parents 'taught' us. MLK was the best thing that ever happened to the dirt-road
poor south, yet they hated him and they hated the very unions that might have lifted them up. They did
seem to take pleasure in the yanks' loss of jobs.
I think the Reagan era was prelude to what is going on now, i.e., going backward while yelling whee
look at me go. No doubt, Reagan turned union members against their own unions. But, the genesis of demise
probably lay with automation and the early offshoring to Mexico. By Reagan, the car plants were losing
jobs to Toyota and Honda and automation. By 1990, car plants that had previously employed 5,000, now
automated, produced more cars employing only 1200. At the time, much of the nation's wealth was still
derived from car production.
Skipping forward a bit, the democrats blew it for years with all their talk about the 'middle-class'
without realizing it was the 'disappearing middle-class'. They ignored the poor working-class vote and
lost election after election.
I've come to not like the term labor, think it affords capital an undeserved status, though much
diminished, I think thought all workers would be better off in a union. Otherwise, as we are witnessing,
there is no parity between workers and wealth; we are in a race to the bottom with the wealth increasingly
go to the top.
ken melvin
,
May 31, 2020 1:15 pm
Matthew – thanks for your comment
I think that we are into a transition (about 45 yrs into) as great as the industrial revolution. We, as
probably those poor souls of the 18th and 19th centuries did, are floundering, unable to come to terms
with what is going on.
I also think that those such as the Kochs have a good grasp of what is going on and are moving to
protect themselves and their class.
ken melvin
,
May 31, 2020 1:21 pm
EMichael, thanks for the comment
Are you implying that the politicians are way behind the curve? If so, I think that you are right.
Let me share what I was thinking last night about thinking:
Descartes' problem was that he desperately wanted to make philosophy work within the framework of his
religion, Catholicism. Paul Krugman desperately wants to make economics all work within the Holy Duality
of Capitalism and Free Markets. Even Joe Stiglitz can't step out of this text. All things being possible,
it is possible that either could come up with a solution to today's economic problems that would fit
within the Two; but the odds are not good. Better to think anew.
We see politicians try and try to find solutions for today's problems from within their own
dogmas/ideologies. Even if they can't, they persist, they still try to impose these dogmas/ideologies in
the desperate hope they might work if only applied to a greater degree. How else explain any belief that
markets could anticipate and respond to pandemics? That markets could best respond to housing demand?
Racism Is the Biggest Reason the U.S. Safety Net Is So Weak
Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, who died last week, found that ethnic divisions made the country less
effective at providing public goods.
7:50 AM · May 31, 2020
The Alesina/Glaeser/Sacerdote paper on why America doesn't have a European-style welfare state -- racism
-- had a big impact on my own thinking 2/
For a long time anyone who pointed out that the modern GOP is basically a party that serves plutocratic
ends by weaponizing white racism was treated as "shrill" and partisan. Can we now admit the obvious? 3/
EMichael
,
May 31, 2020 1:53 pm
Ken,
Half the politicians are behind the curve. When George Wallace showed the GOP how to win elections
(Don't ever get outniggerred) the Dem Party failed to see and react to it. Then the Kochs of the world
stepped in with the John Birch society (fromerly the KKK) and started playing race against class, which
resulted in the white working class supporting anti-labor pols and legislation.
The election of Obama caused the racists to go totally off the reservation with the Tea Party (formerly
the KKK and the John Birch Society) and lead us to where we are now.
Of course, the corporate world followed the blueprint.
Way past time for the Dem Party to start attacking on a constant basis the racist GOP. And also to
start appealing more to workers, though the 2016 platform certainly did that to a large degree, and the
2020 platform looks to be mush more supportive of labor than ever.
"It's a detailed and aggressive agenda that includes doubling the minimum wage and tripling funding for
schools with low-income students. He is proposing the most sweeping overhaul of immigration policy in a
generation, the biggest pro-union push in three generations, and the most ambitious environmental agenda
of all time.
If Democrats take back the Senate in the fall, Biden could make his agenda happen. A primary is about
airing disagreements, but legislating is about building consensus. The Democratic Party largely agrees on
a suite of big policy changes that would improve the lives of millions of Americans in meaningful ways.
Biden has detailed, considered plans to put much of this agenda in place. But getting these plans done
will be driven much more by the outcome of the congressional elections than his questioned ambition.
A big minimum wage increase
Biden's commitment to raising the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 to $15 an hour is one of
the least talked-about plans at stake in the 2020 election.
In the 2016 cycle when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders disagreed about raising the minimum wage to
$15 per hour, the debate was the subject of extensive coverage. By the 2020 cycle, all the major
Democratic candidates were on board, so it didn't come up much. But it's significant that this is no
longer controversial in Democratic Party circles. If the party is broadly comfortable with the wage hike
as a matter of both politics and substance, Democrats in Congress are likely to make it happen if it's at
all possible.
Noji Olaigbe, left, from the Fight for $15 minimum wage movement, speaks during a McDonald's workers'
strike in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 23, 2019. David Santiago/Miami Herald/Tribune News
Service/Getty Images
The $15-an-hour minimum wage increase is also a signature issue for Biden. He endorsed New York's
version of it in the fall of 2015, back when he was vice president and his boss Barack Obama was pushing a
smaller federal raise.
A big minimum wage hike polls well, it aligns with Biden's thematic emphasis on "the dignity of work,"
and it's a topic on which he's genuinely been a leader. It reflects his political sensibilities, which are
moderate but in a decidedly more populist mode than Obama's technocratic one.
Biden has a big Plan A to support organized labor, and a Plan B that's still consequential and
considerably more plausible politically.
Beyond a general disposition to be a good coalition partner to organized labor, the centerpiece of his
union agenda is support for the PRO Act, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this year.
That bill, were it to become law, would be the biggest victory for unions and collective bargaining
since the end of World War II -- overriding state "right to work" laws, barring mandatory anti-union
briefings from management during organizing campaigns, imposing much more meaningful financial penalties
on companies that illegally fire workers for pro-union activity, and allowing organizing through a
streamlined card check process. Separately, Biden and House Democrats have lined up behind a Public
Service Freedom to Negotiate Act that would bolster public sector workers' collective bargaining rights. "
One of the big issues here is Biden not committing to killing the filibuster, in addition to Dem
Senators not in agreement either. That would be a disaster for any legislation.
Makes sense not to run on ending the filibuster now, as there is a chance trump can win and teh GOP
keeps the Senate. But if the opposite happens and Biden wins and Dems take the Senate, they will have to
pivot quickly to getting rid of the filibuster. Apply any and all possible pressure to those Dem Senators
who do not agree with that. Threaten them with losing committee posts; primary opponents; the kitchen
sink.
Yes, it poses a risk in the event the Reps get a trifecta again, but it is time to flood progressive
legislation into law, and getting rid of the filibuster is the only way.
And if they can hit the trifecta and bring this platform to fruition, they won't have to worry about a
GOP trifecta for a long, long time. Possibly forever.
Why Doesn't the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?
By Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote
Abstract
European countries are much more generous to the poor relative to the US level of generosity. Economic
models suggest that redistribution is a function of the variance and skewness of the pre-tax income
distribution, the volatility of income (perhaps because of trade shocks), the social costs of taxation and
the expected income mobility of the median voter. None of these factors appear to explain the differences
between the US and Europe. Instead, the differences appear to be the result of racial heterogeneity in the
US and American political institutions. Racial animosity in the US makes redistribution to the poor, who
are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters. American political institutions limited the
growth of a socialist party, and more generally limited the political power of the poor.
rick shapiro
,
May 31, 2020 2:07 pm
This dynamic is not limited to low-skill jobs. I have seen it at work in electronics engineering. When
I was a sprat, job shoppers got an hourly wage nearly twice that of their company peers, because they had
no benefits or long-term employment. Today, job shoppers are actually paid less than company engineers;
and the companies are outsourcing ever more of their staffing to the brokers.
Without labor market frictions, the iron law of wages drives wages to starvation levels. As sophisticated
uberization software eliminates the frictions that have protected middle class wages in the recent past,
we will all need to enlist unionization and government wage standards to protect us.
ken melvin
,
May 31, 2020 2:29 pm
Rick
The big engineering offices of the 70s were decimated and worse by the mid-90s; mostly by the advent of
computers w/ software. One engineer could now do the work of 10 and didn't need any draftsman.
rick shapiro
,
May 31, 2020 2:40 pm
I was speaking of engineers with equal skill in the same office. Many at GE Avionics were laid off, and
came back as lower paid contract empoyees.
ken melvin
,
May 31, 2020 2:46 pm
Rick
Die biden
ken melvin
,
May 31, 2020 2:52 pm
beiden
The both
ken melvin
,
May 31, 2020 3:05 pm
EMichael
Minimum wage, the row about the $600, all such things endanger the indentured servant economic model
so favored in the south. Keep them poor and hungry and they will work for next to nothing. 'Still they
persist.' On PBS, a black woman cooking for a restaurant said that she was being paid less than $4/hr.
Don't understand the protests? What you're seeing is people pushed to the edge
By KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR – Los Angeles Times
What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck
while Floyd croaked, "I can't breathe"?
If you're white, you probably muttered a horrified, "Oh, my God" while shaking your head at the cruel
injustice. If you're black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly
wanted to throw something), while shouting, "Not @#$%! again!" Then you remember the two white vigilantes
accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it
wasn't for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those
Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store's video showed he wasn't. And how the cop
on Floyd's neck wasn't an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and
devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.
Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming the black man who
asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black Yale University grad student napping
in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a white student. Because you realize it's not just a
supposed "black criminal" who is targeted, it's the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.
You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops.
What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists?
If you're white, you may be thinking, "They certainly aren't social distancing." Then you notice the black
faces looting Target and you think, "Well, that just hurts their cause." Then you see the police station
on fire and you wag a finger saying, "That's putting the cause backward."
You're not wrong -- but you're not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional
racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional
things to raise public and political awareness -- write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic,
explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change -- the needle hardly
budges.
But COVID-19 has been slamming the consequences of all that home as we die at a significantly higher
rate than whites, are the first to lose our jobs, and watch helplessly as Republicans try to keep us from
voting .
run75441
,
May 31, 2020 9:39 pm
anne:
If you rcomments are not appearing they are going to spam, Just let me know and I will fish them out
of spam. Just approved 4 of yours.
Bert Schlitz
,
May 31, 2020 7:14 pm
The protests are self centered crap blacks do year after year. Considering 370 whites over 100 Latinos
were killed by cops, many as bad as that guy in minnie. Blacks have a Trumptard mentality. We have a
ecological disaster, a economic disaster and pandemic(when th they are spreading). Yet let's whine about
one bad cop related homicide.
This may begin the breakup of the Democratic party and the blacks. The differences are just to large.
Kaleberg
,
May 31, 2020 9:40 pm
It's rather sad that it takes a massive civil disturbance to get the authorities to arrest a man
videotaped killing another. You'd think that would just happen as a matter of course, but that's how it
works in this country.
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By Peter Dorman, professor of economics at The Evergreen State College. Originally
published at Econospeak
Donald Trump, cheering on
his "warriors" who demand that states lift their lockdown and distancing orders (where they
have them), would have you believe this is about bringing the economy back to life so ordinary
people can get their jobs and normal lives back. Elitist
liberals who work from home and have country estates to retreat to don't care, but "real"
people do.
The reality is different. The shuttering of stores, restaurants, hotels and workplaces
didn't begin with government orders and won't end with them. If the rate of new infection
and death is too high, a lot of people won't go along. Not everyone, but enough to make a huge
economic difference. Ask any small business owner what it would mean for demand to drop by
25-50%. Lifting government orders won't magically restore the economic conditions of
mid-winter. So what's it about? Even as it makes a big PR show of supporting state by state
"liberation" in America, the Trump administration is
advising state governments on how to remove workers from unemployment insurance once orders
are lifted. Without government directives, employers can demand workers show up, and if they
refuse they no longer qualify. And why might workers refuse? Perhaps because their workplaces
are still unsafe and they have vulnerable family members they want to keep from getting
infected? Not good enough -- once the state has been "liberated".
How should we respond to this travesty? First, of course, by telling the truth that an
anti-worker, anti-human campaign is being conducted under the guise of defending workers. If
the Democrats weren't themselves such a tool of business interests we might hear that narrative
from them, but the rest of us are free to speak out and should start doing it, loudly, wherever
we can.
Second, one of the laws of the land is the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which
gives workers the right to
refuse imminently hazardous work. This hasn't been used very often, nor is there much case
law around it, but the current pandemic is a good reason to pull it out of storage.
If there are public interest law firms looking for something useful to do during distancing,
they could advertise their willingness to defend workers who need to stay home until work is
safe -- while still getting their paycheck. If employers thought the choice was between public
support for workers sitting out the pandemic or their support for them we might hear less about
"liberation".
They want to throw people off of unemployment while using the virus threat to stop any
serious protests against that. It is literally biological warfare against working people.
Same class war as before, but now with CBW.
Taught it for years. This is the biggest net and is the # 1 Cited Violation for 1910/1926
and MSHA–ever.
OSHA 654 5(a)1 The General Duty Clause.
OSHA Laws & Regulations OSH Act of 1970
OSH Act of 1970
Table of Contents
General Duty Clause
Complete OSH Act Version ("All-in-One")
SEC.
5.
Duties
(a)
Each employer --
(1)
29 USC 654
shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free
from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical
harm to his employees;
(2)
shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.
(b)
Each employee shall comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules,
regulations, and orders issued pursuant to this Act which are applicable to his own actions
and conduct.
Quick Take –Two way street.
Employers mus t mitigate hazards. Employees must comply with mitigation.
No Employer Mitigation=Breaking the Law=No Employee requirement to work in Unsafe
Conditions.
"Lifting all boats" was always a lie. It was simply a way to sell trickle down by claiming
that the objectively observable inequality it produced would somehow help everyone,
eventually, sort of. There was not and has never been a plan by the Conservative Movement to
lift all boats. Only a plan to feign interest in doing so.
I agree with most of your comment except the "smarter" part.
They don't seem smart to me, they openly plunder and loot and spit in the populace's
faces. They don't even pretend to believe in or work for a "common good" anymore, really.
That is the story of the 21st Century in the US, starting with Baby Bush II. (Okay, I get
that the Obama crew seemed "smart" or sophisticated to the PMC and comfortable liberals, but
how smart were they if they led to the open Kleptocratic Disruption of Trumpism and the God
Emperor?)
What the Elites have that the proles don't is in-group solidarity. (And a captured Media
establishment.) They protect their own, while the hoi polloi fight one another for
scraps.
What is the death rate among the working age population?
Seem like a tough hill to die on given the curve has flattened, hospitals are not
overflowing, and the economy is teetering on the edge of depression.
No one has a vaccine, this isn't going away any time soon. It's time to focus on
protecting the most vulnerable instead of pretending this effects everyone equally.
Allow states to cut benefits? Come on, UI benefits are taxed for pete's sake. 'Available
to work' basically means you have start at 8am the next day which is doesn't align with any
reality of hiring except in low end service sector jobs.
The other really significant thing is that 're-opening' doesn't necessarily mean returning
to business. For example, Musk insists on re-opening Tesla the assumption being that sales
are there to be had if they re-open. But if not no sales, no need for employees back down the
drain we go.
Same for restaurants. retail, hotels, transit and white collar jobs – attorneys,
architects, CPAs
The poorest and the most desperate actually. Some people still have not received any money
from the state or federal governments. The quarantine started about two months ago. So no
job, no income, no money, and no joke. No matter how shrewd or smart you are sometimes you
are not making the decisions. Reality makes them for you.
Well till the markets crashes again and they need to save the assets of the
wealthiest.
I just got a text from a buddy who is an electrician. His company just told him they are
not expecting to take any major work till second quarter of next year. They will only be
taking emergency calls. This is in Chicago.
Granted, it's a union site, but one point that they make is how union saturation raises
the wages for all workers within a given region.
In Appalachia, I was offered $15hr. to work as an electrician. In Chicagoland, starting
wages were close to or more than double that. Guess where I went in order to establish a
salary history? And no, the cost of living is really not too different between those two
places, but opportunities sure were.
(moderators: in response to an "Eat the Rich!" comment, I posted a link with recipes: I
apologize for this. Admittedly, it was in poor taste.)
apenultimate
on Thu, 05/14/2020 - 9:50am The past week's unemployment claims came out today, and add
another 2.98 million to the pile. This brings total unemployment claims for the past 8 weeks
(two months or so) to 36.5 million.
Determining unemployment percentages depends on what data you use. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) shows the employment numbers for the United States in August 2019 as ~157
million ( https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm ). Admittedly,
that's not March 2020 statistics, but employment numbers would not change all that much in half
of a year.
The St. Louis Federal Reserve has a different set of statistics that show 205.5 million
Americans employed in March 2020 ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S
). (They show the August 2019 period with employment at 206 million.)
Why the huge difference? I have no idea. But going forward, I'll use both to determine
unemployment numbers. Remember that in early March 2020, unemployment was already around
3%.
Using the BLS statistics, we get an unemployment rate of 23.16% for the past 8 weeks. Add on
the previous 3% of people unemployed, and you reach 26.16% unemployment.
Using the St. Louis Fed statistics, we get an unemployment rate of 17.76% for the past 8
weeks. Add on the previous 3% of people unemployed, and you reach 20.76% unemployment.
The peak rate of unemployment during The Great Depression was 24.9%. The peak rate of
unemployment during the the Great Recession in 2008 was 10%.
According to BLS statistics, we are already greater than Great Depression unemployment
numbers.
According to the St. Louis Fed, we are already more than double Great Recession numbers and
only about 4 percentage points away from Great Depression peaks.
The Labor Department last week reported April unemployment for the United states at 14.7%,
but this according to their own admission was undercounting the real rates. Be careful of any
numbers coming out of the mainstream media or government sources.
Some jobs will definitely come back, but many will not. For example, JC Penny's reported
that they are permanently closing 200 of their 850 nationwide stores. Those jobs will not be
coming back. There are weekly reports of many cafes, restaurants, and small businesses
shuttering their doors for good. Those jobs will not be coming back.
Even for the companies that do not shut down, it may be a long haul before economic activity
has picked up enough to bring workers back. In most cases, it will not be a quick recovery.
Hang on for a very rough ride. 2 users have voted.
• Headline April 2020 Unemployment Really Was Around 20%, Not 15%
• Bureau of Labor Statistics Disclosed Erroneous Unemployment Surveying for a Second
Month
• About 7.5 Million People in the April Household Survey Were Misclassified as Employed
Instead of Unemployed, per the BLS
• Headline April U.3 Unemployment at 14.7%, Should Have Been 19.5%
• The BLS Had Disclosed the Same Surveying Error Last Month; Where Headline March 2020 U.3
Was 4.4%, It Should Have Been 5.3%
• Per the BLS, Headline Data Will Not Be Corrected: "To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc
actions are taken to reclassify survey responses."
• Nonetheless, Headline April Unemployment Soared to Historic Highs from March: U.3 from
4.4% to 14.7%, U.6 from 8.7% to 22.8% and ShadowStats from 22.9% to 35.4%
• More Realistic, Those Same Unemployment Numbers, Corrected: U.3 from 5.3 % to 19.5%, U.6
from 9.6% to 27.7% and ShadowStats from 23.7% to 39.6%
• April 2020 Payrolls Collapsed by an Unprecedented 20.5 Million Jobs
• Annual Growth in April 2020 Money Supply Measures Soared to Historic Highs
• U.S. Economic Activity Has Collapsed to Great Depression Levels, with the Federal
Reserve Creating Unlimited Money
stated in the very beginning of this video, that of people who were employed in February of
this year, nearly 40% of those earning $40,000 or less have become unemployed. This is an
unprecedented human tragedy that Congress in all their bailouts now totalling about $8 Trillion
have seen fit to throw a one time pittance of $1,200. With mountains of cash going to
corporations and lobbyists, Congress insultingly gave real suffering Americans a few pennies
and in effect told them that their lives do not matter to Washington DC.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has warned that
around half of the world's workforce, or 1.6 billion workers, are at imminent risk of losing
their livelihood because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In its latest
report, the UN agency stated that those hardest hit by the financial effects of the Covid-19
outbreak have been 'informal economy' workers, including the self-employed and those on a
short-term contract.
"The first month of the crisis is estimated to have resulted in a drop of 60 percent in
the income of informal workers globally," the ILO said of the economic damage already
caused by the pandemic.
The deepening crisis in many parts of the world has left more than 436 million businesses
facing financial hardship and possible closure, the ILO stated, which will inevitably hurt
workers. The report listed the worst-hit sectors as manufacturing, accommodation and food
services, wholesale and retail trade, and real estate.
"For millions of workers, no income means no food, no security and no future," ILO
Director-General Guy Ryder said of the stark impact of an economic dip.
He added that, according to ILO data, there is expected to be a "massive" rise in
poverty levels worldwide, unless governments recognize the need to reconstruct their economies
around better working practices and "not a return to the pre-pandemic world of precarious
work for the majority."
Since the novel coronavirus emerged in China late last year, over 3.1 million cases have
been confirmed around the world, and more than 216,000 people have died. Drastic lockdowns to
limit its spread have taken a dire toll on the global economy, prompting market turmoil and
numerous projections of the heavy recession to strike this year.
"... Polls of life satisfaction taken since the outbreak began have reflected a rapid erosion as 33 million Americans have joined the unemployment rolls over the last months. NY Gov Andrew Cuomo said during a recent daily briefing that NY is seeing a spike in drug and alcohol abuse as people sit around all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go. ..."
"... But of course the tremendous levels of financial uncertainty coupled with the unique characteristics of this crisis make it pretty much impossible to model - any research is really an educated guess, at best. ..."
"... "Unemployment is going to have a very important impact on deaths of despair." ..."
"... His proposed strategies including investing more resources in helping unemployed people find meaningful work, and/or training the armies of contact tracers that de Blasio has now promised to hire to spot people at risk of self-harm. ..."
Doctors ,
scientists policymakers and even 'non-experts' posting on social media have argued that
shuttering the health-care system to all non-emergency care risks sparking other public health
crises from a spike in heart attacks and advanced cancer diagnoses, to so-called "deaths of
despair."
In some
areas, a spike in suicides has already been recorded since the start of the outbreak. And
now, a newly published paper released Friday has attempted to quantify deaths that might occur
because of the mental-health ramifications of widespread economic chaos caused by the crisis.
The research - which hasn't yet been peer-reviewed - found the isolation, grief and economic
hardship related to COVID-19 are conspiring to supercharge America's already-burgeoning
mental-health crisis, likely setting the stage for tens of thousands of suicides down the
line.
Specifically, the researchers tabulated that as many as 75k additional "deaths of despair"
could be caused by the outbreak and the economy-crushing measures implemented to stop the
spreads. "Deaths of despair" typically refer to suicides and substance-abuse-related deaths,
according to
Bloomberg .
The research was carried out by the Well Being Trust and researchers affiliated with the
American Academy of Family Physicians. One of the report's authors said he hopes the research
is eventually proven to be incorrect.
"I hope in 10 years people look back and say, 'Wow, they way overestimated it,'" said John
Westfall, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and
Primary Care, who co-wrote the report.
But the sizable spike in suicides, overdoses etc since the last major crisis (the financial
crisis) is reason to be concerned.
Even as the American economy rebounded after the last recession, suicides and overdoses cut
into Americans' life expectancy. Mental health experts worry that the economic uncertainty and
social isolation of the pandemic will make things worse at a time when the health care system
is already overwhelmed. The suicide rate in the US has already been rising for two decades, and
in 2018 hit its highest level since 1941, Bloomberg reported, citing a piece published by JAMA
Psychiatry (a prestigious medical journal) back in April.
"There's a paradox," said Jeffrey Reynolds, president of a Long Island-based nonprofit
social services agency, the Family and Children's Association. " Social isolation protects us
from a contagious, life-threatening virus, but at the same time it puts people at risk for
things that are the biggest killers in the United States: suicide, overdose and diseases
related to alcohol abuse."
Polls of life satisfaction taken since the outbreak began have reflected a rapid erosion as
33 million Americans have joined the unemployment rolls over the last months. NY Gov Andrew
Cuomo said during a recent daily briefing that NY is seeing a spike in drug and alcohol abuse
as people sit around all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
"One of the main things people should take away from this paper is that employment
matters," said Benjamin Miller, chief strategy officer at the Well Being Trust and a clinical
psychologist who worked on the paper. "It matters for our economic livelihood, and for our
mental and emotional health."
But of course the tremendous levels of financial uncertainty coupled with the unique
characteristics of this crisis make it pretty much impossible to model - any research is really
an educated guess, at best.
Still, the researchers believe it's a useful warning, and something important for policy
makers to keep in mind.
"It's useful to have a wake-up call," said Ken Duckworth, chief medical officer at the
National Alliance on Mental Illness. "Unemployment is going to have a very important impact
on deaths of despair."
Benjamin Miller, chief strategy officer at the Well Being Trust and a clinical psychologist
who worked on the paper, proposed several solutions that could be enacted to, uh, depress the
number of suicides.
His proposed strategies including investing more resources in helping unemployed people find
meaningful work, and/or training the armies of contact tracers that de Blasio has now promised
to hire to spot people at risk of self-harm.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but Angus Deaton talking about his "Deaths of Despair" work
Boston
review article
JC: In the book you focus on these deaths of despair: 158,000 in 2018, about 100,000 of
which are above and beyond what we would normally expect, an excess that is almost entirely
among white non-Hispanic men and women without a college degree. The category covers three
different causes of death: alcohol, opioids, and suicide. Could you talk about why you
group them together?
AD: Initially, "deaths of despair" was a label of convenience. It helped express the
sense that these deaths were sort of caused by your own hand -- unlike COVID-19, say.
...
these previous drug epidemics -- in the United States after the Civil War, or in China
when the empire was disintegrating -- tended to arise during periods of social
disintegration. The simplified story is that some bad Big Pharma manufacturers started
pushing opioids on all of us. But in reality, Purdue Pharmaceuticals and other companies
went to places where there was already lots of despair. They were looking for despair. They
were looking for regions where you could harass doctors into prescribing these drugs.
Our claim in the book is that without this underlying despair -- pain, morbidity, people
not going to church, people's lives coming apart -- there wouldn't have been this open
field for opioids. On the other hand, if the FDA had not been so much in the hands of the
industry, and if we were not operating a rent-seeking, capitalistic health care system,
then we wouldn't have got those efforts to capitalize on the despair. Other countries
didn't get them to anything like the same extent.
...
JC: One of the issues that you emphasize in the book is the generational aspect of
deaths of despair: how it keeps getting worse for younger generations. The idea that this
is a process that is worsening over time resonates strongly with Raj Chetty's account of
the fading American dream. I am thinking of the study by Chetty and colleagues about
absolute mobility, guided by the question: Are you going to do better than your parents?
When I was born in 1951, there was a 90 percent chance of doing better than your parents.
If you were born in 1980, chances had fallen to 50 percent.
...
The Democrats largely decided to abandon the working class and build a coalition of
educated elites and minorities (including working-class minorities), and the Republicans
basically followed business and religious organizations.
And the health care crises make things worse. Health care costs were 5 percent of GDP
back in 1970, and now they're 18 percent of GDP. Everything is heaping up on these
people.
...
The pillars that structured working-class life seem to have gone, or at least been
eroded. And we see the fundamental force of that in the labor market. Decent wages and jobs
help to bring respectability and meaning into life. We're not against some of the
explanations that focus more on social norms. I think the birth control pill was very
important, changing the norms about when and whether you could have children, whether you'd
live together without being married. We write about how the pill was very socially
divisive. For women who could get educated, it enormously enhanced opportunities to have
relationship fulfilment and children as well as really good jobs. But for many
working-class women for whom college was not an option, it did the opposite.
But declining wages were an incredibly important part of the loss.
...
But there's a much more negative scenario, too, which economic historian Robert Allen
writes about. In the early nineteenth century in Britain, real wages stagnated for fifty
years. Handloom weavers were being replaced by machines in factories in the Industrial
Revolution, and wages could only rise when they were all gone, and the way of life and
around handloom weaving had been destroyed.
[c1ue note: the putting out system was a major cause of the above]
...
A lot of evidence suggests that in recessions, mortality rates typically go down. The
Great Depression was a very good time for life expectancy. But suicides do go up. It's not
a simple story. They say in New York that what would normally be filling hospital beds
would normally be filling with traffic and construction accidents, and there aren't
any.
By
Richard D. Wolff,
Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, and Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School
University, NYC. Wolff's weekly show, Economic Update, is syndicated on over 100 radio stations and goes
to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV and his two recent books with Democracy at Work are
Understanding Marxism and Understanding Socialism both available at
democracyatwork.info
.
We are entering an even Greater Depression than the 1930s, with hundreds of millions thrown out of work
across the world. Capitalism is a broken, unstable system that is beyond repair – but there are
alternatives.
Ninety-one years after the start of the Great Depression (capitalism's worst downturn until now), we are
entering an even Greater Depression. The 1930s were so awful that leaders of capitalist economies ever
since have said they had learned how to avoid any future depressions. All promised to take the steps
needed to avoid them. Those promises have all been broken. Capitalism remains intrinsically unstable.
Read more
Richard D. Wolff: Viruses like Covid-19 are a part of
nature we must accept. But Capitalism-2020 must be destroyed
That instability is revealed in its recurring cycles, recessions, downturns, depressions, crashes,
etc. They have plagued capitalism wherever it has settled in as the prevailing economic system. Now that
the whole world's prevailing economic system is capitalism, we suffer
global
instability. To date, capitalist instability has resisted every effort (monetary and fiscal policies,
Keynesian economics, privatization, deregulation, etc.) to overcome or stop it. And now it is here yet
again.
Across the world, hundreds of millions of workers are unemployed. The tools, equipment, and raw
materials in their factories, offices and stores sit idle, gathering dust and rust. The goods and
services they might have produced do not now emerge to help us through these awful times. Perishable
plants and animals that cannot now be processed are destroyed even as scarcities multiply.
Workers lose their jobs if and when employers – mostly private capitalists – fire them. Employers hire
workers when workers add more value to what the employer sells than the value of those workers' wages.
Hiring then adds to profits. Employers fire workers when they add less than the value of the wages paid
to them. Firing then reduces losses. Employers protect and reproduce their enterprises by maximizing
profits and minimizing losses.
Profit, not the full employment of workers nor of means of production, is "the bottom line" of
capitalists, and thus of capitalism. That is how the system works. Capitalists are rewarded when their
profits are high and punished when they are not.
No-one wants unemployment. Workers want their jobs back; employers want the workers back producing
profitable output; governments want the tax revenues that depend on workers and capitalist employers
actively collaborating to produce.
Yet the capitalist system has regularly produced economic downturns everywhere for three centuries –
on average, every four to seven years. We have had three crashes so far this century: 'dot.com' in 2000,
'sub-prime mortgage' in 2008, and now 'corona' in 2020. That averages out at one crash just under every
seven years – capitalism's 'norm'. Capitalists do not want unemployment, but they regularly generate it.
It is a basic contradiction of their system.
Today's massive US capitalist crisis – over 30 million unemployed and counting, a quarter of the
workforce – shows dramatically that maximizing profit is not maximizing society's well-being. First and
foremost, consider that the unemployed millions continue much of their consumption while ceasing much of
their production. A portion of the wealth produced by those still employed must be
redistributed
to sustain the unemployed. Society thus suffers the usually intense struggles
over the shares of profits versus wages that will be redistributed to the unemployed. These struggles,
both public – over tax structures, for example – and private – for instance, over household budgets – can
be profoundly destabilizing for societies.
Redistribution struggles could be alleviated if, for example, public employment replaced private
unemployment. If the state became the employer of last resort, those fired by private employers could
immediately be rehired by the state to do useful social work.
Then any government paying unemployment benefits would instead pay wages, obtain in return real goods
and services, and distribute them to the public. The 1930s New Deal did exactly that for millions fired
by private employers in the US. A similar alternative (not part of the New Deal) would be to organize the
unemployed into worker co-ops performing socially useful work under contract with the government.
This last alternative is the best, because it would develop a new worker co-op sector of the US
economy. That would provide the US public with direct experience in comparing the capitalist with the
worker co-op sector in terms of working conditions, product quality and price, civic responsibility, etc.
On that concrete, empirical basis, societies could offer people a real, democratic choice as to what
mix of capitalist and worker co-op sectors of the economy they prefer.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
"... First of all, because Stoics believe that our true good resides in our own character and actions, they would frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what's "up to us" and what isn't. Modern Stoics tend to call this "the dichotomy of control" and many people find this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly under my control, never completely ..."
"... Marcus likes to ask himself, "What virtue has nature given me to deal with this situation?" That naturally leads to the question: "How do other people cope with similar challenges?" Stoics reflect on character strengths such as wisdom, patience and self-discipline, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try to exemplify these virtues and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life, during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope. Even historical figures or fictional characters can serve as role models. ..."
"... fear does us more harm than the things of which we're afraid. ..."
"... Finally, during a pandemic, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your own death. Since the day you were born, that's always been on the cards. Most of us find it easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the No1 most popular coping strategy in the world. We live in denial of the self-evident fact that we all die eventually. ..."
"... "All that comes to pass", he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as "familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn". Marcus Aurelius, through decades of training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of someone who has done so countless times already in the past. ..."
T he Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the last famous
Stoic philosopher of antiquity. During the last 14 years of his life he faced one of the worst
plagues in European history. The Antonine Plague, named after him, was probably caused by a
strain of the smallpox virus. It's estimated to have killed up to 5 million people, possibly
including Marcus himself.
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From AD166 to around AD180, repeated outbreaks occurred throughout the known world. Roman
historians describe the legions being devastated, and entire towns and villages being
depopulated and going to ruin. Rome itself was particularly badly affected, carts leaving the
city each day piled high with dead bodies.
In the middle of this plague, Marcus wrote a book, known as The Meditations, which records
the moral and psychological advice he gave himself at this time. He frequently applies Stoic
philosophy to the challenges of coping with pain, illness, anxiety and loss. It's no stretch of
the imagination to view The Meditations as a manual for developing precisely the mental
resilience skills required to cope with a pandemic.
First of all, because Stoics believe that our true good resides in our own character and
actions, they would frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what's "up to us" and
what isn't. Modern Stoics tend to call this "the dichotomy of control" and many people find
this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly
under my control, never completely up to me, but my own thoughts and actions are
– at least the voluntary ones. The pandemic isn't really under my control but
the way I behave in response to it is.
Much, if not all, of our thinking is also up to us. Hence, "It's not events that upset us
but rather our opinions about them." More specifically, our judgment that something is really
bad, awful or even catastrophic, causes our distress.
This is one of the basic psychological principles of Stoicism. It's also the basic
premise of modern cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of
psychotherapy. The pioneers of CBT, Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck, both describe Stoicism as
the philosophical inspiration for their approach. It's not the virus that makes us afraid but
rather our opinions about it. Nor is it the inconsiderate actions of others, those ignoring
social distancing recommendations, that make us angry so much as our opinions about them.
Many people are struck, on reading The Meditations, by the fact that it opens with a chapter
in which Marcus lists the qualities he most admires in other individuals, about 17 friends,
members of his family and teachers. This is an extended example of one of the central practices
of Stoicism.
Marcus likes to ask himself, "What virtue has nature given me to deal with this
situation?" That naturally leads to the question: "How do other people cope with similar
challenges?" Stoics reflect on character strengths such as wisdom, patience and
self-discipline, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try
to exemplify these virtues and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life,
during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope. Even historical
figures or fictional characters can serve as role models.
With all of this in mind, it's easier to understand another common slogan of Stoicism:
fear does us more harm than the things of which we're afraid. This applies to
unhealthy emotions in general, which the Stoics term "passions" – from pathos ,
the source of our word "pathological". It's true, first of all, in a superficial sense. Even if
you have a 99% chance, or more, of surviving the pandemic, worry and anxiety may be ruining
your life and driving you crazy. In extreme cases some people may even take their own
lives.
In that respect, it's easy to see how fear can do us more harm than the things of which
we're afraid because it can impinge on our physical health and quality of life. However, this
saying also has a deeper meaning for Stoics. The virus can only harm your body – the
worst it can do is kill you. However, fear penetrates into the moral core of our being. It can
destroy your humanity if you let it. For the Stoics that's a fate worse than death.
Finally, during a pandemic, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your
own death. Since the day you were born, that's always been on the cards. Most of us find it
easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the No1 most popular coping strategy in the
world. We live in denial of the self-evident fact that we all die eventually. The
Stoics believed that when we're confronted with our own mortality, and grasp its implications,
that can change our perspective on life quite dramatically. Any one of us could die at any
moment. Life doesn't go on forever.
We're told this was what Marcus was thinking about on his deathbed. According to one
historian, his circle of friends were distraught. Marcus calmly asked why they were weeping for
him when, in fact, they should accept both sickness and death as inevitable, part of nature and
the common lot of mankind. He returns to this theme many times throughout The Meditations.
"All that comes to pass", he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as
"familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn". Marcus Aurelius, through decades of
training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of
someone who has done so countless times already in the past.
Donald Robertson is cognitive behavioural therapist and the author of several books on
philosophy and psychotherapy, including Stoicism and the Art of Happiness and How to Think Like
a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
It goes without saying that the consequences to workers are damaging to catastrophic.
Normally, being unemployed for more than six months is a near-insurmountable barrier to getting
hired again. Perhaps coronavirus will create a better new normal on this front, of companies
taking a more understanding view of crisis-induced resume gaps.
By Cheryl Carleton,
Assistant Professor of Economics, Villanova University. Originally published at The
Conversation
The labor market is changing rapidly with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
When
the economy starts to open up again, employers will need to consider rehiring or replacing
workers, or hiring workers with a different mix of skills. The cost of replacing an employee is
high for employers, and being out of work is harmful for workers, who may be replaced with
artificial intelligence or contractors and risk losing their skills.
There is no denying that the U.S. was experiencing a tight
labor market and a low rate of unemployment before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. For
some fields, particularly health care and services deemed essential by local governments, the
labor market continues to be tight.
A sudden massive loss of demand for their goods and services is forcing companies to make
quick decisions, and some employers may underestimate the cost to replace good employees.
Knowing these costs may encourage them to keep more of their workers on the payroll.
Where Are the Costs?
There are costs involved in losing a worker and replacing them, such as completing paperwork
when they leave, advertising the open position, reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates and
training the new worker.
Once a new worker is hired, others must also spend time training them, and it will take some
time for the new worker to achieve the same level of productivity as the worker who left.
Another cost is the loss in social capital . Social capital is
the relationships between individuals at work that take time to build and add to the
productivity of the firm.
The Center for American Progress drilled in deeper. They found the costs of replacing
workers who earn less than US$30,000 per year to be 16% of annual salary, or $3,200 for an
individual earning $20,000 per year.
For those earning $30,000 to $50,000 per year, it is estimated to cost about 20% of annual
salary, or $8,000 for an individual earning $40,000. For highly educated executive positions,
replacement costs are estimated to be 213% of annual salary – $213,000 for a CEO earning
$100,000 per year.
The much
higher cost for replacing CEOs is partly due to the fact that they require higher levels of
education, greater training, and firms may lose clients and institutional knowledge with such
turnovers.
Employee Alternatives
This high cost of losing and replacing workers has important implications for organizations,
consumers and workers, especially now with
an estimated 15 million unemployed .
For those workers where the costs to replace them are high, firms will try to accommodate
them. Strategies may include maintaining pay, increasing benefits and retraining. These actions
are also costly, so firms will
weigh them against the cost of simply
hiring new workers .
This means businesses face high costs to replace workers in the future, and high costs to
retain current workers, leading to higher costs for consumers who buy the firms' goods and
services.
While the above consequences might sound great for workers that organizations choose to
keep, these are not the only ways in which firms can respond.
The high cost of replacing workers, along with the increased uncertainty about the economy
may cause businesses to use
more automation and robots . Though such switches may entail a significant upfront cost,
once they are made the firms then have more control over their production processes.
Another alternative for firms is to hire fewer permanent employees and turn instead
to contract workers . With
contract workers, employers are not responsible for benefits, and they can more simply increase
or decrease the number of workers as needed.
While this may increase employment for some workers, it will decrease it for others and it
has serious implications for the availability of health and pension benefits as well as
unemployment benefits, as the current crisis has revealed.
Businesses might also consider limiting the scope of what some workers do to limit the cost
of replacing them. If the scope of a worker's job is limited, then fewer areas will be impacted
by the individual leaving, and the costs to train a replacement will be lower. For workers,
however, it means fewer opportunities to gain experience.
For example, instead of training workers on several or all parts of the production process,
the business may limit them to one specific aspect. It will then be less costly for the firm to
replace them and the worker will have less experience to add to their resume. This also means
less bargaining power for employees.
Some Win, But Others Lose
The high cost of losing and then hiring new workers along with increased restrictions on
hiring nonresidents might mean higher wages and increased benefits for some workers.
However, the high degree of uncertainty in the current labor market, along with the
potential increase in contract
workers and
automation means that some workers will not realize these potential gains, and all of us as
consumers will most likely end up paying higher prices for the goods and services we buy.
. A firsthand account from a U.S. Naval officer is eye opening (emphasis mine).
He'd seen his ship, one of the Navy's fleet of 11 minesweepers, sidelined by repairs and
maintenance for more than 20 months. Once the ship, based in Japan, returned to action, its
crew was only able to conduct its most essential training -- how to identify and defuse
underwater mines -- for fewer than 10 days the entire next year . During those
training missions, the officer said, the crew found it hard to trust the ship's faulty
navigation system: It ran on Windows 2000.
Sonar which identifies dishwashers, crab traps and cars as possible mines, can hardly be
considered a rebuilt military. The Navy's eleven minesweepers built more than 25 years ago,
have had their decommissioning continually delayed because no replacement plan was implemented.
I'll await the deeper understanding of 'deterrence' from b, even as I consider willingness to
commit and brag about war crimes as beyond the point of no return.
Posted by: psychedelicatessen | Jan 19 2020 9:14 utc |
98
The Quiet Crisis: Deaths Caused By Alcoholism Have More Than Doubled by Tyler Durden Sat, 01/18/2020 -
21:15 0 SHARES
Opioid overdoses may have leveled off last year after soaring over the last ten, but
Americans are still dying in droves from another, far more popular substance: alcohol.
According to a series of studies
cited by MarketWatch , the number of Americans drinking themselves to death has more than
doubled over the last two decades, according to a sobering new report. That far outpaces the
rate of population growth during the same period.
Researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism studied the cause of
death for Americans aged 16 and up between 1999 and 2017. They determined that while 35,914
deaths were tied to alcohol in 1999, it doubled to 72,558 in 2017. The rate of deaths per
100,000 soared by 50.9% from 16.9 to 25.5.
Over that 20-year period, the study determined that alcohol was involved in more than 1
million deaths. Half of these deaths resulted from liver disease, or a person drinking
themselves to death, or a drug overdose that involved alcohol.
For more context: In 2017 alone, 2.6% of roughly 2.8 million deaths in the US were
alcohol-related.
One doesn't need to be a chronic alcoholic to suffer from alcohol: Nine states - Maine,
Indiana, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia - saw a
"significant" increase in adults who binge drink, a dangerous activity that can lead to deadly
car crashes and other fatal accidents, according to a report released Thursday by the CDC.
And across the country, Americans who binge drink are consuming more drinks per person: That
number spiked from 472 in 2011 to 529 in 2017, a 12% increase.
Historically, men have been more predisposed to
"deaths of despair" than women: But a study published in "Alcoholism: Clinical and
Experimental Research" found that the largest increase in recent years in these types of deaths
occurred among non-hispanic white women.
Public health crises tied to substance abuse have been plaguing American for decades. So,
what is it about our contemporary society that's causing deaths to skyrocket?
This happens in poor economies. Happened in Russia from 1992 on. Not every area is
affected in The US. Just those with the functional equivalent of a 3rd world or developing
world economy.
I'm watching somebody kill themselves with alcohol as we speak. People have catered to her
alcaholism for 15 years. Her original ezcuse was a family death. Her husband has died now.
Alcaholics always have an excuse though. Alcaholism always seeks excuse.
I am a callous bitch and just cut right to the point. "All of us have to decide to live or
die. Life is a choice. If you decide to die, you will. I hope you havent already
aubconsciously made that decision (can tell by dreams). You should search for a reason to
live. Whatever you choose I will respect that."
Liver deaths? You mean Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease caused by sugary drinks laced
with HFCS has made a spike in liver disease death, so naturally the lazy investigator blames
it on alcohol.
adults who binge drink, a dangerous activity that can lead to deadly car crashes and other
fatal accidents, according to a report released Thursday by the CDC.
a dangerous activity CORRECTION STUPIDITY or CHEAP CHARLIE for not willing to take a UBER
or YELLOW CAB home
What are we talking here $50 at most
Any idea what a DWI will set you back cause I know for a fact in stupidity and 1980's USD
and it taught me
Don't do the crime if you can't spend the dime for a taxi
Some people have a hard time living in crazy town.
I mean, constant war, dollar value sinking, inflation sucking the life outta you, ****
food and a fake society. All the while everywhere you look people are pretending they're
killing it while up to their eyeballs in debt.
I'm actually pretty happy these numbers are this low.
"... a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness. ..."
"... And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves. ..."
"... The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling. ..."
"... Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation. ..."
"... So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church. ..."
George Monbiot on human loneliness and its toll. I agree with his observations. I have been cataloguing them in my head for
years, especially after a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are
a sign of loneliness.
A couple of recent trips to Rome have made that point ever more obvious to me: Compared to my North Side neighborhood in Chicago,
where every other person seems to have a dog, and on weekends Clark Street is awash in dogs (on their way to the dog boutiques
and the dog food truck), Rome has few dogs. Rome is much more densely populated, and the Italians still have each other, for good
or for ill. And Americans use the dog as an odd means of making human contact, at least with other dog owners.
But Americanization advances: I was surprised to see people bring dogs into the dining room of a fairly upscale restaurant
in Turin. I haven't seen that before. (Most Italian cafes and restaurants are just too small to accommodate a dog, and the owners
don't have much patience for disruptions.) The dogs barked at each other for while–violating a cardinal rule in Italy that mealtime
is sacred and tranquil. Loneliness rules.
And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the
WWW all by themselves.
That's why the comments about March on Everywhere in Harper's, recommended by Lambert, fascinated me. Maybe, to be less lonely,
you just have to attend the occasional march, no matter how disorganized (and the Chicago Women's March organizers made a few
big logistical mistakes), no matter how incoherent. Safety in numbers? (And as Monbiot points out, overeating at home alone is
a sign of loneliness: Another argument for a walk with a placard.)
In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct
us to stand on our own two feet.
With different imagery, the same is true in this country. The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to
practice it is galling.
Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living
at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation.
So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines
preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church.
We're told that getting ahead at work and reorienting our lives around our jobs will make us
happy. So why hasn't it? Many of those who work in the corporate world are constantly peppered
with questions about their " career progression ." The Internet is
saturated with
articles providing tips and tricks on how to develop a never-fail game plan for
professional development. Millions of Americans are engaged in a never-ending cycle of
résumé-padding that mimics the accumulation of Boy Scout merit badges or A's on
report cards except we never seem to get our Eagle Scout certificates or academic diplomas.
We're told to just keep going until we run out of gas or reach retirement, at which point we
fade into the peripheral oblivion of retirement communities, morning tee-times, and long
midweek lunches at beach restaurants.
The idealistic Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer's bestselling book Into the Wild
defiantly declares, "I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one." Anyone
who has spent enough time in the career hamster wheel can relate to this sentiment. Is
21st-century careerism -- with its promotion cycles, yearly feedback, and little wooden plaques
commemorating our accomplishments -- really the summit of human existence, the paramount
paradigm of human flourishing?
Michael J. Noughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St.
Thomas, Minnesota, and board chair for Reel Precision Manufacturing, doesn't think so. In his
Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World , Noughton provides a
sobering statistic: approximately two thirds of employees in the United States are "either
indifferent or hostile to their work." That's not just an indicator of professional
dissatisfaction; it's economically disastrous. The same survey estimates that employee
disengagement is costing the U.S. economy "somewhere between 450-550 billion dollars
annually."
The origin of this problem, says Naughton, is an error in how Americans conceive of work and
leisure. We seem to err in one of two ways. One is to label our work as strictly a job, a
nine-to-five that pays the bills. In this paradigm, leisure is an amusement, an escape from the
drudgery of boring, purposeless labor. The other way is that we label our work as a career that
provides the essential fulfillment in our lives. Through this lens, leisure is a utility,
simply another means to serve our work. Outside of work, we exercise to maintain our health in
order to work harder and longer. We read books that help maximize our utility at work and get
ahead of our competitors. We "continue our education" largely to further our careers.
Whichever error we fall into, we inevitably end up dissatisfied. The more we view work as a
painful, boring chore, the less effective we are at it, and the more complacent and
discouraged. Our leisure activities, in turn, no matter how distracting, only compound our
sadness, because no amount of games can ever satisfy our souls. Or, if we see our meaning in
our work and leisure as only another means of increasing productivity, we inevitably burn out,
wondering, perhaps too late in life, what exactly we were working for . As Augustine
of Hippo noted, our hearts are restless for God. More recently, C.S. Lewis noted that we yearn
to be fulfilled by something that nothing in this world can satisfy. We need both our work and
our leisure to be oriented to the transcendent in order to give our lives meaning and
purpose.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the labor Americans perform
isn't actually good . There are "bad goods" that are detrimental to society and human
flourishing. Naughton suggests some examples: violent video games, pornography, adultery dating
sites, cigarettes, high-octane alcohol, abortifacients, gambling, usury, certain types of
weapons, cheat sheet websites, "gentlemen's clubs," and so on. Though not as clear-cut as the
above, one might also add working for the kinds of businesses that contribute to the
impoverishment or destruction of our communities,
as Tucker Carlson has recently argued .
Why does this matter for professional satisfaction? Because if our work doesn't offer goods
and services that contribute to our communities and the common good -- and especially if we are
unable to perceive how our labor plays into that common good -- then it will fundamentally
undermine our happiness. We will perceive our work primarily in a utilitarian sense, shrugging
our shoulders and saying, "it's just a paycheck," ignoring or disregarding the fact that as
rational animals we need to feel like our efforts matter.
Economic liberalism -- at least in its purest free-market expression -- is based on a
paradigm with nominalist and utilitarian origins that promote "freedom of indifference." In
rudimentary terms, this means that we need not be interested in the moral quality of our
economic output. If we produce goods that satisfy people's wants, increasing their "utils," as
my Econ 101 professor used to say, then we are achieving business success. In this paradigm, we
desire an economy that maximizes access to free choice regardless of the content of that
choice, because the more choices we have, the more we can maximize our utils, or sensory
satisfaction.
The freedom of indifference paradigm is in contrast to a more ancient understanding of
economic and civic engagement: a freedom for excellence. In this worldview, "we are made
for something," and participation in public acts of virtue is essential both to our
own well-being and that of our society. By creating goods and services that objectively benefit
others and contributing to an order beyond the maximization of profit, we bless both ourselves
and the polis . Alternatively, goods that increase "utils" but undermine the common
good are rejected.
Returning to Naughton's distinction between work and leisure, we need to perceive the latter
not as an escape from work or a means of enhancing our work, but as a true time of rest. This
means uniting ourselves with the transcendent reality from which we originate and to which we
will return, through prayer, meditation, and worship. By practicing this kind of true leisure,
well
treated in a book by Josef Pieper , we find ourselves refreshed, and discover renewed
motivation and inspiration to contribute to the common good.
Americans are increasingly aware of the problems with Wall Street conservatism and globalist
economics. We perceive that our post-Cold War policies are hurting our nation. Naughton's
treatise on work and leisure offers the beginnings of a game plan for what might replace
them.
Casey Chalk covers religion and other issues for The American Conservative and is a
senior writer for Crisis Magazine. He has degrees in history and teaching from the University
of Virginia, and a masters in theology from Christendom College.
"... "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." ..."
"... Recently I read Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It's about Peter Barton, the founder of Liberty Media, who shares his thoughts about dying from cancer. ..."
For the longest time, I believed that there's only one purpose of life: And that is to be happy. Right? Why else go through all
the pain and hardship? It's to achieve happiness in some way. And I'm not the only person who believed that. In fact, if you look
around you, most people are pursuing happiness in their lives.
That's why we collectively buy shit we don't need, go to bed with people we don't love, and try to work hard to get approval of
people we don't like.
Why do we do these things? To be honest, I don't care what the exact reason is. I'm not a scientist. All I know is that it has
something to do with history, culture, media, economy, psychology, politics, the information era, and you name it. The list is endless.
Just a few short years ago, I did everything to chase happiness.
You buy something, and you think that makes you happy.
You hook up with people, and think that makes you happy.
You get a well-paying job you don't like, and think that makes you happy.
You go on holiday, and you think that makes you happy.
But at the end of the day, you're lying in your bed (alone or next to your spouse), and you think: "What's next in this endless
pursuit of happiness?"
Well, I can tell you what's next: You, chasing something random that you believe makes you happy.
It's all a façade. A hoax. A story that's been made up.
Did Aristotle lie to us when he said:
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence."
I think we have to look at that quote from a different angle. Because when you read it, you think that happiness is the main goal.
And that's kind of what the quote says as well.
But here's the thing: How do you achieve happiness?
Happiness can't be a goal in itself. Therefore, it's not something that's achievable. I believe that happiness is merely a byproduct
of usefulness. When I talk about this concept with friends, family, and colleagues, I always find it difficult to put this into words.
But I'll give it a try here. Most things we do in life are just activities and experiences.
You go on holiday.
You go to work.
You go shopping.
You have drinks.
You have dinner.
You buy a car.
Those things should make you happy, right? But they are not useful. You're not creating anything. You're just consuming or doing
something. And that's great.
Don't get me wrong. I love to go on holiday, or go shopping sometimes. But to be honest, it's not what gives meaning to life.
What really makes me happy is when I'm useful. When I create something that others can use. Or even when I create something I
can use.
For the longest time I foud it difficult to explain the concept of usefulness and happiness. But when I recently ran into a quote
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the dots connected.
Emerson says:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some
difference that you have lived and lived well."
And I didn't get that before I became more conscious of what I'm doing with my life. And that always sounds heavy and all. But
it's actually really simple.
It comes down to this: What are you DOING that's making a difference?
Did you do useful things in your lifetime? You don't have to change the world or anything. Just make it a little bit better than
you were born.
If you don't know how, here are some ideas.
Help your boss with something that's not your responsibility.
Take your mother to a spa.
Create a collage with pictures (not a digital one) for your spouse.
Write an article about the stuff you learned in life.
Help the pregnant lady who also has a 2-year old with her stroller.
Call your friend and ask if you can help with something.
Build a standing desk.
Start a business and hire an employee and treat them well.
That's just some stuff I like to do. You can make up your own useful activities.
You see? It's not anything big. But when you do little useful things every day, it adds up to a life that is well lived. A life
that mattered.
The last thing I want is to be on my deathbed and realize there's zero evidence that I ever existed.
Recently I read
Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It's about Peter Barton, the founder of Liberty Media, who shares his
thoughts about dying from cancer.
It's a very powerful book and it will definitely bring tears to your eyes. In the book, he writes about how he lived his life
and how he found his calling. He also went to business school, and this is what he thought of his fellow MBA candidates:
"Bottom line: they were extremely bright people who would never really anything, would never add much to society, would leave
no legacy behind. I found this terribly sad, in the way that wasted potential is always sad."
You can say that about all of us. And after he realized that in his thirties, he founded a company that turned him into a multi-millionaire.
Another person who always makes himself useful is Casey Neistat
. I've been following him for a year and a half now, and every time I watch his
YouTube show , he's doing something.
He also talks about how he always wants to do and create something. He even has a tattoo on his forearm that says "Do More."
Most people would say, "why would you work more?" And then they turn on Netflix and watch back to back episodes of Daredevil.
A different mindset.
Being useful is a mindset. And like with any mindset, it starts with a decision. One day I woke up and thought to myself: What
am I doing for this world? The answer was nothing.
And that same day I started writing. For you it can be painting, creating a product, helping elderly, or anything you feel like
doing.
Don't take it too seriously. Don't overthink it. Just DO something that's useful. Anything.
Darius Foroux writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance. His ideas and work have been featured
in TIME, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Observer, and many more publications. Join
his free weekly newsletter.
This article was originally published on October 3, 2016, by Darius Foroux, and is republished here with permission. Darius Foroux
writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance.
Workers aged 65 and older will be responsible for more than half of all UK employment
growth over the next 10 years and almost two-thirds of employment growth by 2060, according
to new figures.
Since 2008, we've been witnessing a "reverse stagflation", i.e. low unemployment with low
wages (a phenomenon which is impossible according to modern bourgeois economic theory).
The reason for this is what I mentioned earlier: no more technological progress and
negative birth rates. The USA is still benefitting from mass immigration from Central
America, but this demographic bonus won't last for much: now even the Third World countries
are barely above the minimum 2 children per woman (including most of Latin American nations).
Only a bunch of African nations (which have high mortality rates either way, so it doesn't
matter) and India still have the "demographic bonus" in a level such as to be
capitalistically viable.
This problem is not new in cotemporary history. It happened once: in the USSR.
In the 1970s, only 6% of the Soviet population was necessary to produce everything the
USSR needed, so the only solution available was to expand the economy extensively, i.e. by
reproducing the same infrastructure more times over.
The problem with that is that the USSR had reached its limits demographically. Its
population growth entered into stagnant to negative territory. Decades passed until the point
where it didn't even matter if they came up with a revolutionary technology, since there were
simply not enough children to teach and train to such new tech. Add to that the pressure from
the Cold War (which drained its R&D to the military sector), and it begun to wither
away.
Now we can predict the same thing is happening to capitalism. Contrary to the USSR, the
capitalist nations had the advantage of having available the demographic bonuses of the Third
World - specially China - to maintain their dynamism even when some countries like Japan and
Germany reached negative birth rates. Now China's demographic bonus is over and also much of
Latin America. To make things even worse for the capitalists, China managed to scape the
"middle income trap" and go to the route of becoming a superpower, thus adding to the
demographic strains of the capitalist center.
The solution, it seems, is to do pension reforms and force the old people back to work.
France is going to destroy its pension system; Brazil already did that; the USA was a pioneer
in forcing its old population to work to the death; Italy destroyed its pension system after
2008; the UK is preparing the terrain now that its social-democracy is definitely
destroyed.
As always I find your application of Marxist critique succinct and correct. This coming
decade, with its unravelling of the financialization phase of our current phase of capitalism
(i.e the US consolidation phase following British imperialism, c.1914-2020s), will be its
terminal decade. The signal that we had entered the financialization phase were the shocks of
1970-73, and the replacement of industrial manufacture (i.e. money>commodity>money+x,
or M-C-M') with finance/speculation (i.e. money>money+x, M-M') has unfolded more or less
according to Marx's analysis in Capital vol.3. This is as much a crisis of value
creation as anything else. In Australia (where I am) the process is particularly transparent:
we have almost no manufacturing sector left and so we exchange labour-value created in China
for mineral resources and engage in the ponzi-scheme of banking and property speculation,
which produces no value whatsoever. Either way the M-C-M' phase in Australia has vanished and
government dedicates itself to full-spectrum protection of the finance economy and mining.
All the while a veneer of productivity is created by immigration, which destroys cities
(because there's no infrastructure to accomodate them), inflates prices and creates the
illusion of 'growth'. This is propped up by a media who perpetuate xenophobia by creating
panic about refugees (5%) while saying zip about the fact that Australia only has economic
growth at all because we bring in 250K new consumers every year. This collapsing
financialization phase will only accelerate this decade and we will wake to find we don't
make anything and have crumbling 1980s-era infrastructure: Australia will suffer badly as the
phase plays out, not least because of a colonial-settler looting mentality around the
'economy' that persists at every level of government.
What I like about the point you're making in your post (#32) is the wider expansive
question of productivity -- or, how do we continue to produce value? It is often overlooked
that Marx sought to liberate human beings from expropriative labour of every kind (which
occurred as much under the Soviets as it does today); this means that capital's aorta
connecting labour to value via money must be severed (rather than the endless attempts to
reform capitalism to make it 'fairer' etc, a sell-out for which Gramsci savaged the union
movement). The relation between work and value must be critiqued relentlessly. To salvage any
kind of optimism about the future we need to invest all our intellectual energy in this
critique and find a radically new way of construing the link between time, labour and value
that does not include social domination.
In the meantime the scenario to which you have drawn our attention -- the parasitic
vampirism now attacking the elderly and the retired -- is an inevitable consequence of our
particular moment in late capitalism, hurtling at speed toward a social catastrophe of debt,
wealth inequality, neo-feudalism and biopolitical police state, all characterized by an image
of 70-year-olds trudging to work in an agony of physical suffering and mental meaninglessness
which will end in a forgotten grave.
I had hoped to welcome 2020 with a optimistic post.
Alas, the current news cycle has thrown up little cause for optimism.
Instead, what has caught my eye today: 2019 closes with release of a new study showing the FDA's failure to police opioids manufacturers
fueled the opioids crisis.
This is yet another example of a familiar theme: inadequate regulation kills people: e.g. think Boeing. Or, on a longer term,
less immediate scale, consider the failure of the Environmental Protection Agency, in so many realms, including the failure to curb
emissions so as to slow the pace of climate change.
In the opioids case, we're talking about thousands and thousands of people.
On Monday, Jama
Internal Medicine published research concerning the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) program to reduce opioids abuse.
The FDA launched its risk evaluation and mitigation strategy – REMS – in 2012. Researchers examined nearly 10,000 documents, released
in response to a Freedom of Information ACT (FOA) request, to generate the conclusions published by JAMA.
In 2011, the F.D.A. began asking the makers of OxyContin and other addictive long-acting opioids to pay for safety training
for more than half the physicians prescribing the drugs, and to track the effectiveness of the training and other measures in
reducing addiction, overdoses and deaths.
But the F.D.A. was never able to determine whether the program worked, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health found in a new review, because the manufacturers did not gather the right kind of data. Although the agency's approval
of OxyContin in 1995 has long come under fire, its efforts to ensure the safe use of opioids since then have not been scrutinized
nearly as much.
The documents show that even when deficiencies in these efforts became obvious through the F.D.A.'s own review process, the
agency never insisted on improvements to the program, [called a REMS]. . .
The FDA's regulatory failure had serious public health consequences, according to critics of US opioids policy, as reported by
the NYT:
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis,
said the safety program was a missed opportunity. He is a leader of
a group of physicians who had encouraged the F.D.A.
to adopt stronger controls, and a frequent critic of the government's response to the epidemic.
Dr. Kolodny, who was not involved in the study, called the program "a really good example of the way F.D.A. has failed to regulate
opioid manufacturers. If F.D.A. had really been doing its job properly, I don't believe we'd have an opioid crisis today."
Now, as readers frequently emphasize in comments: pain management is a considerable problem – one I am all too well aware of,
as I watched my father succumb to cancer. He ultimately passed away at my parents' home.
Although these drugs "can be clinically useful among appropriately selected patients, they have also been widely oversupplied,
are commonly used nonmedically, and account for a disproportionate number of fatal overdoses," the authors write.
The FDA was unable, more than 5 years after it had instituted its study of the opioids program's effectiveness, to determine whether
it had met its objectives, and this may have been because prior assessments were not objective, according to CNN:
Prior analyses had largely been funded by drug companies, and a 2016 FDA advisory committee "noted methodological concerns
regarding these studies," according to the authors. An inspector general report also concluded in 2013 that the agency "lacks
comprehensive data to determine whether risk evaluation and mitigation strategies improve drug safety."
In addition to failing to evaluate the effective of the limited steps it had taken, the FDA neglected to take more aggressive
steps that were within the ambit of its regulatory authority. According to CNN:
"FDA has tools that could mitigate opioid risks more effectively if the agency would be more assertive in using its power to
control opioid prescribing, manufacturing, and distribution," said retired FDA senior executive William K. Hubbard in an
editorial that accompanied the study. "Instead of bold, effective action, the FDA has implemented the Risk Evaluation and
Mitigation Strategy programs that do not even meet the limited criteria set out by the FDA."
One measure the FDA could have taken, according to Hubbard: putting restrictions on opioid distribution.
"Restricting opioid distribution would be a major decision for the FDA, but it is also likely to be the most effective policy
for reducing the harm of opioids," said Hubbard, who spent more than three decades at the agency and oversaw initiatives in areas
such as regulation, policy and economic evaluation.
Perhaps the Johns Hopkins study will spark moves to reform the broken FDA, so that it can once again serve as an effective regulator.
This could perhaps be something we can look forward to achieving in 2020 (although I won't hold my breath).
Or, perhaps if enacting comprehensive reform is too overwhelming, especially with a divided government, as a starting point: can
we agree to stop allowing self-interested industries to finance studies meant to assess the effectiveness of programs to regulate
that very same industry? Please?
Gig workers getting screwed. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it - the
modern gig economy is nothing more than the "putting out" system redux from the early days of
the industrial revolution.
And much like the looms and thread from the putting out system, the owners control pricing
for gig workers as well as cut off any possibility of upward advancement. Vice article on
gig workers
Note this isn't one company - it is all of them. When Uber first started, they were paying
over $1/mile for drivers - it is now down to $0.60. Equally, the various other gig startups
pay more to lure workers in, then cut when they need/want to.
When she initially joined Instacart a year ago, Dorton says she could earn up to $800
during a 40 hour workweek picking up groceries at Costco and Sam's Club and dropping them
off at customers' homes. But in recent months, her weekly income has fallen to $400 for 60
hours of grocery shopping. "I made more delivering pizza and waiting tables," Dorton told
Motherboard.
Yes, but with the delivery services contributing to the everlasting restaurant crunch, there
are fewer jobs delivering pizza and waiting tables. That's a feature.
The most depressing feature of the current explosion in robot-apocalypse literature is that
it rarely transcends the world of work. Almost every day, news articles appear detailing some
new round of layoffs. In the broader debate, there are apparently only two camps: those who
believe that automation will usher in a world of enriched jobs for all, and those who fear it
will make most of the workforce redundant.
This bifurcation reflects the fact that "working for a living" has been the main occupation
of humankind throughout history. The thought of a cessation of work fills people with dread,
for which the only antidote seems to be the promise of better work. Few have been willing to
take the cheerful view of Bertrand Russell's provocative 1932 essay In Praise of
Idleness . Why is it so difficult for people to accept that the end of necessary labor
could mean barely imaginable opportunities to live, in John Maynard Keynes's words, "wisely,
agreeably, and well"?
The fear of labor-saving technology dates back to the start of the Industrial Revolution,
but two factors in our own time have heightened it. The first is that the new generation of
machines seems poised to replace not only human muscles but also human brains. Owing to
advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, we are said to be entering an era of
thinking robots; and those robots will soon be able to think even better than we do. The worry
is that teaching machines to perform most of the tasks previously carried out by humans will
make most human labor redundant. In that scenario, what will humans do?
The other fear factor is the increasing precariousness of wage labor – though this
concern is seemingly belied by headline statistics suggesting that unemployment is at a
historic low. The problem is that an economy at "full employment" now contains a large penumbra
of what economist Guy Standing calls the "precariat":
under-employed people who work less and for lower pay than they would like. A growing number of
workers, seeming to lack any kind of job (and pay) security, are thus forced to work well below
their ability.
It is natural that one would interpret the onset of precariousness as the first stage in a
broader trend toward workforce redundancy, especially if one pays attention to alarmist
predictions of the next category of "jobs at risk." But this conclusion is premature. The
penetration of robotics into the world of work has not yet been sufficient to explain the rise
of the precariat. So far, "cost cutting" in the West has largely taken the form of offshoring
to the East, where labor is cheaper, rather than replacing humans with machines. But
"onshoring" work that was previously offshored will offer cold comfort to workers if machines
get most of the jobs.
ROBO-RAPTURE
According to the first view – let us call it "job enrichment" – technology will
eventually create more, better human jobs than it destroys, as has always been the case in the
past. Simple, mundane tasks may increasingly be automated, but human labor will then be freed
up for more "interesting" and "creative" cognitive work.
In late 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) published
Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained , which claimed that as much as 50% of working hours in the
global economy could theoretically be automated; the authors suggested, however, that not more
than 30% actually would be. Further, they estimated that less than 5% of occupations could be
fully automated; but that in 60% of occupations, at least 30% of the required tasks
could be.
In line with the usual mainstream assessment, MGI believes that while there will be no net
loss of jobs in the long run, the "transition may include a period of higher unemployment and
wage adjustments." It all depends, the authors say, on the rate at which displaced workers are
re-employed: a low re-employment rate will lead to a higher medium-term unemployment rate, and
vice versa .
MGI's proposal for massive investment in education to lower the unemployment cost of the
transition is also conventional. The faster the labor reabsorption, the higher the wage growth.
Lower re-employment levels will cause wages to fall, with a greater share of the gains from
automation accruing to capital, not labor. But the authors hasten to add:
"Even if the particulars of historical experience turn out to differ from conditions today,
one lesson seems pertinent: although economies adjust to technological shocks, the transition
period is measured in decades, not years, and the rising prosperity may not be shared by
all."
This assessment is typical, and it has led many to call on governments to invest heavily in
so-called "upskilling" programs. In a
commentary for Project Syndicate , Zia Qureshi of the Brookings
Institution argues that, "with smart, forward-looking policies, we can ensure that the future
of work is a better job." In this view, automation is simply the continuation of the move
toward more, higher-quality jobs that has characterized capitalist growth since the Industrial
Revolution.
History is on the optimists' side. Mechanization has been the durable engine of productivity
and wage growth as well as reductions in working hours, albeit usually with a considerable lag.
Although the Roberts loom cost hundreds of thousands of handloom weavers their jobs in the
nineteenth century, the broader wave of new industrial technologies enabled a much larger
population to be maintained at a higher standard of living.
ROBO-REDUNDANCY
But, according to the second view – call it "job destruction" – this time is
different. The programming of machines to perform ever more complex tasks with ever-increasing
speed, accuracy, precision, and reliability will result in mass unemployment. In Rise of the
Robots , author and entrepreneur Martin Ford addresses the techno-optimists head-on.
"There is a widely held belief – based on historical evidence stretching back at least as
far as the industrial revolution – that while technology may certainly destroy jobs,
businesses, and even entire industries, it will also create entirely new occupations often in
areas that we can't yet imagine." The problem, Ford argues, is that information technology has
now reached the point where it can be considered a true utility, much like electricity.
It stands to reason that the successful new industries that will emerge in the years ahead
will have taken full advantage of this powerful new utility and the distributed machine
intelligence that accompanies it. That means they will rarely – if ever – be highly
labor-intensive. The threat is that as creative destruction unfolds, the "destruction" will
fall primarily on labor-intensive businesses in traditional areas like retail and food
preparation, whereas the "creation" will generate new industries that simply don't employ many
people.
On this view, the economy is heading for a tipping point where job creation will begin to
fall consistently short of what is required to employ the workforce fully. We will soon reach
the stage where the machine-driven destruction of existing human jobs far outpaces the creation
of new human jobs, resulting in inexorably rising mass "technological unemployment."
THE
UPSKILLING MIRAGE
Optimists' response to such concerns is that the workforce simply needs to be trained or
upskilled in order to "race with the machines." Typical of this outlook is the following
headline on a
commentary published by the World Economic Forum: "How new technologies can create huge
numbers of meaningful jobs." According to the author, concerns about "the looming devastation
that self-driving technology will have on the 3.5 million truck drivers in the US" are
"misdirected." Augmented-reality technology, we are told, can create loads of new jobs by
enabling people to work from home. All that will be needed is training of the kind offered by
"Upskill, an augmented reality company in the manufacturing and field services sectors," which
"uses wearable technologies to provide step-by-step instructions to industrial workers."
The author, himself the co-founder of an augmented-reality company, goes on to argue that,
"With the pace of technological progress only accelerating and with increasing specialization
becoming the norm in every industry, reducing the time necessary to retrain workers is pivotal
to maintaining the competitiveness of industrialized economies." There is no mention of the
wages that will be offered to these "upskilled" workers in their "meaningful" new jobs. We are
simply told that they will be relocated to "lower cost areas more in need of job creation."
Only at the very end of the commentary does the author acknowledge that, in fact, "Technology
is a force that has the potential to eliminate entire industries through robotics and
automation, and for that we should be concerned."
The retraining argument should give us pause. In portraying upskilling as the solution to
the labor displacement caused by new technologies, optimists rarely admit that if predictions
about "thinking robots" turn out to be anywhere near true, workers would need to be trained in
technical skills to an extent that is unprecedented in human history.
Moreover, the time it takes to upgrade the skills of the workforce will inevitably exceed
the time it takes to automate the economy. This will be true even if claims about an imminent
deluge of automation are greatly exaggerated. In the interval, there will be under- and
unemployment. In fact, this has already been happening. Although automation is not yet bearing
down on workers to the extent that has been predicted, it has nonetheless pushed more of them
into less-skilled jobs; and its mere possibility may be exerting downward pressure on wages.
There are already signs of the new class structure envisioned by the pessimists: "lovely jobs
at the top, lousy jobs at the bottom."
A more fundamental question is what we mean by upskilling, and what its consequences might
be. Often, heavy emphasis is placed on the importance of better technological education at all
levels of society, as if all people will need to succeed in the future is to be taught how to
write and understand computer code.
As the technology writer James Bridle has shown , this line of argument has a
number of limitations. While encouraging people to take up computer programming might be a good
start, such training offers only a functional understanding of technological systems. It does
not equip people to ask higher-level questions along the lines of, "Where did these systems
come from, who designed them and what for, and which of these intentions still lurk within them
today?" Bridle also points out that arguments for technological education and upskilling are
usually offered in "nakedly pro-market terms," following a simple equation: "the information
economy needs more programmers, and young people need jobs in the future."
THE MISSING
DIMENSION
More to the point, the upskilling discourse totally ignores the possibility that automation
could also allow people simply to work less. The reason for this neglect is twofold: it is
commonly assumed that human wants are insatiable, and that we will thus work ad
infinitum to satisfy them; and it is simply taken for granted that work is the primary
source of meaning in human lives. 1
Historically, neither of these claims holds true. The consumption race is a rather recent
phenomenon, dating no earlier than the late nineteenth century. And the possibility that we
might one day liberate ourselves from the "curse of work" has fascinated thinkers from
Aristotle to Russell. Many visions of Utopia betray a longing for leisure and liberation from
toil. Even today, surveys show that people in most developed countries
would prefer to work less, even in the workaholic United States, and might even accept less pay
if it meant logging fewer hours on the clock.
The deeply economistic nature of the current debate excludes the possibility of a
life beyond work . Yet if we want to meet the challenges of the future, it is not enough to
know how to code, analyze data, and invent algorithms. We need to start thinking seriously and
at a systemic level about the operational logic of consumer capitalism and the possibility of
de-growth.
In this process, we must abandon the false dichotomy between "jobs" and "idleness."
Full employment need not mean full-time employment, and leisure time need not
be spent idly. (Education can play an important role in ensuring that it is not.) Above all,
wealth and income will need to be distributed in such a way that machine-enabled productivity
gains do not accrue disproportionately to a small minority of owners, managers, and
technicians.
So disturbing, and this problem is only going to increase in the US as people realize they
can no longer afford to rent anywhere, and there are millions of Boomers who rent, with no
available affordable housing to move into, and no livable wage jobs (despite education) for
those who would gladly continue working – due to an as yet to be headlined age
discrimination which started during the dot.com boom Clinton/Gore ushered in, and exploded
during Obama's reign. Sickeningly, in Silicon Valley, 35 year olds feel over the hill.
None of the candidates want to even address this rental housing issue (for all ages) with
Federal Tax Policy even? Renters are the only ones who invest major sums of money into
housing, with no equity whatsoever?
Yes, it is the canary growing fainter and struggling for life in the dark gloom of the
coal mine. The most basic human requirement for survival is shelter, after food and water.
Clothing is also in that category. The poor and homeless ( absolutely including the working
poor) at first , when attention started to be given to the " national crisis and (in some
people's minds) and national disgrace", was just, you know, the usual suspects. From hobos (
whom many saw as romanticized free spirits or stubborn old guys) to including the abandoned
mentally ill, drug addicts, criminals, people with "something to hide", teens on the run from
neglect or abuse to? The numbers of people who are essentially w/o shelter is not going to
remain out of sight, out of mind. Now, we know that mothers, fathers, grandparents, children
and grandchildren are homeless. And, if they are not, many are living in what , once upon a
time, poor or desolate housing. Many are living in ,what was once called a boarding house, in
a room with their kids. They supposedly have access to "common areas". This is not people who
often even have more than a casual aquaintanceship with their "landlords". This is not the
"Golden Girls" living the high life in sunny Florida with the owner, who is an adorable
rascal. No doubt, some examples of older, single women housing together is a good fit for
some.
Most older people on limited incomes don't live in a golden fantasy world. Besides young
people not being able to afford outrageous rents, now include the older people. Couple this
with the "reports" that there are people hungry in this country. Age has become no restrictor
on this tragic fact. This can not stand. Trickle down the ,as was mentioned , breads and
circuses in all of their guises. Cheap, junk fast food will become not so cheap when in dire
poverty. Housing is just cold, hearted cash for the owners. Who gets to watch the circuses
and gladiators ? Got cable tv( even if you personally choose not to not the point)? Afford
the cost of any pro sports tickets ? Attend any cultural events that include paying for
tickets? Yep, am not going to include the all American past time of watching a game at the
local pub. Many people can not afford the luxury of the food and drinks OK, it's time to stop
now with my pov. I am fortunate to not be in the above circumstances. Too many are,
though.
God knows what's being planned behind closed doors for this increasing tragedy, the
reality is too clear for Congress not to be aware of it. Meanwhile, I'm fully sure that
amoral predators who are investing in those areas they're betting the homeless will be forced
to dwell and die in, or choose to be euthanized at.
Meanwhile, Congress does absolutely nothing about putting a stop to obscenely biased,
corrupted and deadly in its blatant discrimination AI, which is increasingly decimating
millions of jobs, and virtually tagging people with social scores they'll never get
out from under, no matter how false. This, ever since Obama glibly announced there would be
many jobs lost, and some pain, due to technologyThe Technocracy . A
Bipartisan, Horrid Congress accepted it as a necessary reality.
The only thing missing was a police officer going in after with a drawn gun. When millions
of people were being kicked out of their homes about a decade a go, I saw a photo that won an
award at the time. It showed a cop, with pistol drawn, going into a house that had the family
kicked out from it. Surrounding him was all the left overs from a family's life and it was
very sad.
It is heart rending. Even watching renters who leave before being evicted is heart
rending, they're forced to throw away many belongings, like perfectly good mattresses and
basic necessities. Lived at an apartment complex turned into ratty ass condos for mostly
foreign property 'flippers' who continued renting them out, then 'flipping' them. The
despair, fear, and loss during a huge job downturn was horrid to witness, as many had lived
there over ten years. I was lucky to be on my feet somewhat at the time, no longer.
Every fricking sign, particularly in Silicon Valley, that advertises Apartment
Homes ™ should be torn down and destroyed. The average US renters have
always been treated as second class leechers, I've witnessed it my entire adult life, now
they're being treated even worse.
Thanks Clinton/Gore, Obomber/Biden,
Nanny Pelosi , et al; and we thought that was only the mark of Republicans busy at
work.
Thinking on this subject even more, it occurs to me why the powers that be are so invested
in pitting each generation against the other. An empowered US renters' 'lobby' could be
enormous. It would cross all age – along with race, gender, religion, and geographic
– spectrums. Renters, along with the homeless are increasing in vast numbers of all
ages. The last thing the powers that be would want, is for those vast millions to stick
together against them, and age is the easiest barrier for the powers that be to keep renters
separated by.
Economy Adds 266,000 Jobs in November, Unemployment Edges Down to 3.5 Percent
By Dean Baker
The share of women in payroll employment is likely to exceed 50 percent in December.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 266,000 jobs in November.
While this figure is inflated by the return of roughly 50,000 striking GM autoworkers, upward
revisions to the prior two months' data brought the three-month average to a solid 205,000.
The unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent, returning to a 50-year low.
The job growth was widely spread across industries. Manufacturing added 54,000 jobs,
somewhat more than the number of returning strikers. It appears that the sector may again be
on a modest growth path, with the number of jobs up 13,000 from its level three months ago
and 76,000 from its year-ago level. Food manufacturing is providing the bulk of these gains,
adding 19,300 jobs in the last three months and 25,900 over the last year.
Health care added 45,200 jobs in November after adding just 11,900 in October. Job growth
for the two months together falls slightly below the 34,500 average for the last year.
Restaurants added 25,300 jobs, roughly its average for the last year. The high-paying
professional and technical services sector added 30,600 jobs, after three months of weak
growth.
Construction employment remains weak, with the sector adding just 1,000 jobs in November.
Job growth has averaged just 5,600 a month since June. Support activities for mining, which
has been losing jobs since February, lost another 5,700 jobs in November. Employment in that
sector is now down 23,700 (6.6 percent) over the last year. Retail added 2,000 jobs for the
month, but employment is still down 31,400 (0.2 percent) over the last year.
In spite of the strong job growth and low unemployment rate, there continues to be no
evidence of accelerating wage growth. The average hourly wage increased 3.1 percent over the
last year. The annual rate of growth over the last three months (September, October, and
November), compared to the prior three months (June, July, August), was just 3 percent.
Women's share of payroll employment edged closer to 50 percent in November, with the
figure now standing at 49.992 percent, up from 49.977 percent in October. This should mean
that the share will cross 50 percent in December.
The data in the household survey was generally positive. The overall
employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) remained at a recovery high of 61.0 percent for the
third straight month. The EPOP for prime-age workers (ages 25 to 54) also remained at its
recovery high of 80.3 percent. The EPOP for prime-age men edged up 0.2 percent to 86.7
percent, a high reached in March, while the EPOP for women slipped 0.1 percentage point to
74.1 percent, which is still a full percentage point above its year-ago level.
The average duration of unemployment spells fell in November, as did the share of the
long-term unemployed. There was a modest increase of 0.1 weeks in the median duration.
Perhaps the most disturbing item in this report was the dip in the share of unemployment
due to voluntary quits from 14.5 percent to 13.3 percent. This is extraordinarily low, given
the 3.5 percent unemployment rate. On the other hand, it is consistent with what we're seeing
with wage growth, which remains modest, and with no evidence of acceleration.
Another discouraging item in the household data is the decline in the share of the
workforce that chooses to work part-time. This fell by 15,000 in November. For the year
average to date, this figure is up by less than 0.5 percent, meaning that it is dropping as a
share of total employment. The share of voluntary part-time employment had increased sharply
after the Affordable Care Act took effect, the recent decline is likely an indication of the
increasing difficulty of getting health care coverage outside of employment.
[Graph]
This should be seen as a mostly positive report. The pace of job growth clearly has slowed
some from its 2018 rate, but with the economy presumably approaching full employment, this
was inevitable. The major downside is that workers seem to remain insecure about their
employment prospects, as evidenced by the low quit rates and the relatively modest pace of
wage growth.
The truth is that good, middle class jobs are very difficult to get. Almost impossible.
You are very lucky being a retiree with Vanguard funds chest ;-)
Recent graduates are in a very bad position, with only graduates from Ivy league colleges
resume not being instantly tossed into waist basket.
McJobs, Amazon warehouse jobs, Home Depot jobs, low level construction jobs (in $15-$20
per hour range), etc are available for graduates. But that's it. Looks like the USA is
looking now like a big amazon warehouse.
People over 50 are actually doomed, if they lost the job, to much lower standard of
living. Even if they are professionals.
"... "Employment in the United States has increased steadily over the last seven years, one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history. There are about 10 million more working Americans today than when President Obama took office. ..."
"... "David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., estimated in a famous paper that increased trade with China did eliminate roughly one million factory jobs in the United States between 2000 and 2007. However, an important implication of his findings is that such job losses largely ended almost a decade ago. ..."
"... It is also worth noting that even though our trade deficit has declined from its 2006 peak (the non-oil deficit has recently been rising again), workers are constantly being displaced by imports. The Bureau of Labor Statistic reports there have been an average of 110,000 layoffs or discharges a month in manufacturing thus far this year. If just a quarter of these are trade-related, it would imply that more than 300,000 workers a year are losing their jobs due to trade. ..."
"... The second point is the wage effect, which can go beyond the direct impact of job loss. The oil market can give us a useful way of thinking about this issue. Suppose that Saudi Arabia or some other major producer ramps up its oil production by 1 million barrels of oil a day. This will put downward pressure on world prices, which will have the effect of lowering prices in the United States as well. This could mean, for example, that instead of getting $50 for a barrel of oil, producers in North Dakota will only get $40 a barrel. This will mean less money for workers and companies in the oil industry. In the case of workers, it will mean fewer jobs and lower pay. ..."
"... This can happen even if there is very little direct impact of trade. The increased supply of Saudi oil may result in some modest reduction in U.S. exports of oil, but the impact on price will be much larger. The analogous story with trade in manufactured goods is that the potential to import low cost goods from Mexico, China, or other countries can have the effect of lowering wages in the United States, even if the goods are not actually imported. ..."
"... Finally, the balance of trade will have an impact on the overall level of employment in the economy when the economy is below its full employment level of output. Until the Great Recession, most economists did not think that trade could affect the overall level of employment, but only the composition. This meant that trade could cause us to lose manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, but these job losses would be offset by gains in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. This could still mean bad news for the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs, but the net effect for the country as a whole would still be positive. ..."
"... The Great Recession changed this view, as many economists came to believe that the United States is facing a period of secular stagnation: a sustained period in which lack of demand in the economy constrains growth and employment. In this context, the trade deficit is a major cause of the lack of demand since it is spending that is creating demand in other countries rather than the United States. If we could reduce the annual trade deficit by $100 billion then as a first approximation it will have the same impact on the economy as a stimulus of $100 billion. ..."
"... There is no generally accepted explanation as to why so many prime age workers would suddenly decide they didn't feel like working, but one often invoked candidate is the loss of manufacturing jobs. The argument in this story is that the manufacturing sector provided relatively good paying jobs for people without college degrees. With so many of these jobs now gone, these workers can't find jobs. If this argument is true, then it means that trade has cost the country a large number of jobs even if the economy is back at full employment. ..."
Given his history of promoting racism, xenophobia, sexism and his recently exposed boasts about sexual assaults, not many people
want to be associated with Donald Trump. However that doesn't mean everything that comes out of his mouth is wrong.
In the debate on Sunday Donald Trump made a comment to the effect that because of the North American Free Trade Agreement and
other trade deals, "we lost our jobs." The New York Times was quick to say * this was wrong.
"We didn't.
"Employment in the United States has increased steadily over the last seven years, one of the longest periods of economic
growth in American history. There are about 10 million more working Americans today than when President Obama took office.
"David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., estimated in a famous paper that increased trade with China did eliminate roughly
one million factory jobs in the United States between 2000 and 2007. However, an important implication of his findings is that
such job losses largely ended almost a decade ago.
"And there's no evidence the North American Free Trade Agreement caused similar job losses.
"The Congressional Research Service concluded in 2015 that the 'net overall effect of Nafta on the U.S. economy appears to
have been relatively modest.' "
There are a few things to sort out here. First, the basic point in the first paragraph is absolutely true, although it's not
clear that it's relevant to the trade debate. The United States economy typically grows and adds jobs, around 1.6 million a year
for the last quarter century. So any claim that trade has kept the U.S. from creating jobs is absurd on its face. The actual issue
is the rate of job creation and the quality of the jobs.
Here there are three issues to consider.
1) The direct job loss – the jobs that were displaced due to imports substituting for domestically produced goods and services;
2) The wage effects – the downward pressure on the wages of workers that retain their jobs that can result from job loss and
also the threat of job loss;
3) The impact of a trade deficit on the level of demand in the economy.
Taking these in turn we now have some pretty solid evidence on some of the job loss attributable to trade. David Autor's work
** found that imports from China cost the economy more than 2 million jobs in the years from 2000-2007.
"Estimates of the net impact of aggregate demand and reallocation effects imply that import growth from China between 1999
and 2011 led to an employment reduction of 2.4 million workers" (page 29).
These are workers who are directly displaced by import competition. In addition, as the article goes on to note, there were
more workers who likely lost their jobs to the multiplier effect in the local economies most directly affected by imports.
The impact of trade with China was more dramatic than trade with Mexico and other countries because of the huge growth in imports
over a short period of time. However, even if the impact from trade with other countries was smaller, it still would have a substantial
effect on the communities affected.
It is also worth noting that even though our trade deficit has declined from its 2006 peak (the non-oil deficit has recently
been rising again), workers are constantly being displaced by imports. The Bureau of Labor Statistic reports there have been an
average of 110,000 layoffs or discharges a month in manufacturing thus far this year. If just a quarter of these are trade-related,
it would imply that more than 300,000 workers a year are losing their jobs due to trade.
Of course people lose jobs for other reasons also, like increased productivity. So the fact there is job loss associated with
trade doesn't make it bad, but it is not wrong to see this as a serious problem.
The second point is the wage effect, which can go beyond the direct impact of job loss. The oil market can give us a useful
way of thinking about this issue. Suppose that Saudi Arabia or some other major producer ramps up its oil production by 1 million
barrels of oil a day. This will put downward pressure on world prices, which will have the effect of lowering prices in the United
States as well. This could mean, for example, that instead of getting $50 for a barrel of oil, producers in North Dakota will
only get $40 a barrel. This will mean less money for workers and companies in the oil industry. In the case of workers, it will
mean fewer jobs and lower pay.
This can happen even if there is very little direct impact of trade. The increased supply of Saudi oil may result in some modest
reduction in U.S. exports of oil, but the impact on price will be much larger. The analogous story with trade in manufactured
goods is that the potential to import low cost goods from Mexico, China, or other countries can have the effect of lowering wages
in the United States, even if the goods are not actually imported.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor of industrial relations at Cornell, documented one way in which the potential to import can
have the effect of lowering wages. She found *** that employers regularly used the threat of moving operations to Mexico as a
way to thwart unionization drives. While most workers are not typically involved in unionization drives, it is easy to imagine
this dynamic playing out in other contexts where employers use the real or imagined threat from import competition as a reason
for holding down wages. The implication is the impact of trade on wages is likely to be even larger than the direct effect of
the goods actually brought into the country.
Finally, the balance of trade will have an impact on the overall level of employment in the economy when the economy is below
its full employment level of output. Until the Great Recession, most economists did not think that trade could affect the overall
level of employment, but only the composition. This meant that trade could cause us to lose manufacturing jobs in the Midwest,
but these job losses would be offset by gains in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. This could still mean bad news for the
manufacturing workers who lost their jobs, but the net effect for the country as a whole would still be positive.
The Great Recession changed this view, as many economists came to believe that the United States is facing a period of secular
stagnation: a sustained period in which lack of demand in the economy constrains growth and employment. In this context, the trade
deficit is a major cause of the lack of demand since it is spending that is creating demand in other countries rather than the
United States. If we could reduce the annual trade deficit by $100 billion then as a first approximation it will have the same
impact on the economy as a stimulus of $100 billion.
From this perspective, the trade deficit is a major source of job loss. Our current trade deficit of $500 billion a year (@2.8
percent of GDP) is a major drag on demand and employment. For this reason, a politician would be absolutely right to cite trade
as a big factor in the weakness of the labor market.
It is worth noting that many economists (including many at the Federal Reserve Board) now believe that the economy is close
to its full employment level of output, in which case trade is not now a net cause of job loss even if it had been earlier in
the recovery. There are two points to be made on this view.
First, there are many prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, who argue that the economy is still well
below its full employment level of output. So this is at least a debatable position.
Second, if we accept that the economy is near full employment it implies that close to 2 million prime age workers (ages 25-54)
have permanently left the labor market compared to 2007 levels of labor force participation. (The gap is close to 4 million if
we use 2000 as our comparison year.)
There is no generally accepted explanation as to why so many prime age workers would suddenly decide they didn't feel like
working, but one often invoked candidate is the loss of manufacturing jobs. The argument in this story is that the manufacturing
sector provided relatively good paying jobs for people without college degrees. With so many of these jobs now gone, these workers
can't find jobs. If this argument is true, then it means that trade has cost the country a large number of jobs even if the economy
is back at full employment.
In short, there are good reasons for a politician to complain about trade as a major source of our economic problems. There
is much research and economic theory that supports this position.
In a bid to end the massive welfare state, the Trump administration is expected to announce
new measures Wednesday that would end food stamp benefits for nearly 750,000 low-income folks.
The new rules will make it difficult for "states to gain waivers from a requirement that
beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program," according to
Bloomberg sources.
Republicans have long attempted to abolish the welfare state, claiming that the
redistribution of wealth for poor people keeps them in a state of perpetual poverty. They also
claim the welfare state is a system of command and control and has been used by Democrats for
decades as a political weapon against conservatives, hence why most inner cities vote
Democrat.
House Republicans tried to cut parts of the federal food assistance program last year, but
it was quickly rejected in the Senate.
The new requirements by the Trump administration would only target "able-bodied" recipients
who aren't caring for children under six.
Sources said the measure would be one of three enacted by the Trump administration to wind
down the massive federal food assistance program.
The measures are expected to boot nearly 3.7 million recipients from the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Though it comes at a time when employment is in a
downturn, manufacturing has stumbled into a recession
, and the US economy could be entering a mild recession in the year ahead. As to why President
Trump wants hundreds of thousands of low-income folks off SNAP ahead of an election year while
the economy is rapidly decelerating could be an administrative error that may lead to social
instabilities in specific regions that will be affected the hardest. Then again, no turmoil
could come out of it, and it's hailed as a success during the election year.
The Department of Agriculture estimates that the new measures could save the agency $1.1
billion in year one, and $7.9 billion by year five.
Nearly 36.4 million Americans in the "greatest economy ever" are on food stamps. At least
half of all Americans have low-wage jobs, barely enough to cover living expenses, nevertheless,
service their
credit cards with record-high interest rates . The economy as a whole is undergoing
profound structural changes with automation and artificial intelligence. Tens of millions of
jobs will be lost by 2030. It's likely the collision of these forces means the welfare state is
going nowhere and will only grow in size when the next recession strikes.
Cutting food stamps for low-income folks is the right move into creating a more leaner
government, but there are severe social implications that could be triggered if the new
measures are passed.
And while President Trump wants to slash the welfare state for poor people, his supply-side
policies and bailouts of corporate America have been record-setting in some respects.
Actions by the administration clearly show that corporate welfare for Wall Street elites is
more important than welfare for low-income folks. Perfect Storm: Trump Admin To Cut 750,000
From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession
this is one of the most shameful acts for any president, especially a billionaire. If he
wants to save a billion/year, cut it from military. Or increase staff at SNAP to check for
fraud, but this is really shameful. I think it would've been better to raise tariff on China
and use that money to increase SNAP not decrease it
What's the need in cutting foodstamps? You can take every able-bodied recipient and have
them work a reasonable number of hours per week in a fair exchange. Plenty of work to be had
and you could do it WPA style where those of certain skills could apply them.
And if you want to cut welfare, START WITH CORPORATE WELFARE
This is a positive development in terms of the nuclear family. Women can't just abscond
with the kids and her husband's alimony if she knows she will have to actually get a job to
pay for her own food. I'm sick of paying taxes to support whore women and their bastard
children.
"The Department of Agriculture estimates that the new measures could save the agency $1.1
billion in year one, and $7.9 billion by year five."
Today's Repo operation by the Fed is $70.1 Billion. The $1.1 Billion in annual savings due
to this cut is about 1.5% of what the Fed pumped into the Repo market just today. I'm all for
cutting out the fraud. If you can work, then you should work. Don't work? Don't eat! But our
economy is a Service Sector for the most part now, and the wages suck for a big part in the
Service Sector. Wages overall have been nearly flat for about 30 years. How about we cut the
welfare **** to the banks, Wall Street? That would save trillions not just billions. Typical
DC. Fix problems while ******* over the little people, and continuing corporate welfare all
the while. This **** so needs to burn up!
great... outsource manufacturing, sign new trade deals to off shore more jobs, ramp up the
stock market for the rich, waste trillions on destabilizing other nations, give israel all
they want, print money to infinity, ask for zero interest rate.. and a billion per year to
feed poor people is too much.. Trump is in touch with the little guy
Trump will lose 2020... give the 750,000 guns and ammo and some food and water... and a
map to DC... Soros can provide the buses...
In a bid to end the massive welfare state, the Trump administration is expected to
announce new measures Wednesday that would end food stamp benefits for nearly 750,000
low-income folks
and yet Trump is crying for negative interest rates so the 0.1% can continue getting the
welfare they deserve ?
The new rules will make it difficult for "states to gain waivers from a requirement that
beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program," according to
Bloomberg sources.
And... those are actually the OLD rules, which are still on the books, but which Obama
waived by EO. I'm glad 750,00 are being cut from the roles.
Trump Admin To Cut 750,000 From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession
OK, so I have to ask: What recession? Well, the coming one, obviously! So let's logic this
out. You wouldn't cut food stamps IN a recession (political suicide), so what's your
alternative? You're either in a recession or you're on your way to the next one which will
happen eventually, right? So, when would you be able to cut food stamps? I guess never by
that logic.
Despite spending 40 to 60 hours a week picking up riders in his 2015 Subaru Forester, Mr.
Ellenbogen is barely surviving financially. He had to give up his apartment and move into his
mother's condo in Verona, N.J. He relies on Medicaid for health care.
"It's something I'm accepting because I'm in need of money," he said of his Lyft gig. "I'm
capable of better things, but this is what's available to me."
Economists debate how to define this kind of employment, often categorized as
"nontraditional jobs" or "alternative work arrangements," and how to calculate the proportion
of the older work force engaged in it.
Popularly seen as the province of the young, it now provides work for a growing number of
people in their 50s, 60s and beyond.
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics includes independent contractors (who may be
self-employed but well compensated) and estimates that 11.4 percent of those aged 50 to 62 have
nontraditional jobs. The Government Accountability Office, using an even broader definition
including part-timers, says the figure is 31.2 percent.
Among workers over 62, economists at The New School's Retirement Equity Lab have found that
9 percent were in "on-call, temp, contract or gig jobs" in 2015; the researchers
believe the percentage has grown since then .
Their study defines nontraditional jobs as those that provide no health insurance or
retirement benefits. "They're probably low-paid," said Alicia Munnell, director of the center.
"Some have erratic schedules."
... ... ...
The majority of those in nontraditional jobs at ages 50 to 62 rely on them for most of their
employment, and their retirement income at 62 is 26 percent lower than that of employees
holding traditional jobs. (Nontraditional jobholders have somewhat higher rates of depression,
as well.)
... ... ...
Nontraditional jobs include food service and retail, as well as gig jobs; among the fastest
growing categories are janitorial work, and personal care and health aide positions. "They're
not easy on older bodies," Dr. Ghilarducci pointed out. "They require a lot of physical
stamina."
... ... ...
Mr. Ellenbogen, for instance, has a master's degree in social psychology from the
University of Vermont. After getting laid off from sales positions and finding a return to
business coaching unprofitable, he became a commission-only sales rep for Home Depot, with no
base salary or benefits.
The company let him go, he said, when retina surgery left him unable to drive for two
months. After he recovered, the only work he could find was with Lyft, where about a quarter of
drivers are over 50, the company reported last year.
Mr. Ellenbogen has searched for jobs on LinkedIn, on Indeed, in local newspapers. The New
Start Career Network at Rutgers University has provided free weekly sessions with a coach.
Nothing has materialized, so Mr. Ellenbogen keeps driving, trying to delay claiming Social
Security to maximize his benefits.
The investigation, if it results in criminal charges, could become the largest prosecution
yet of drug companies alleged to have contributed to the opioid epidemic, escalating the
legal troubles of businesses that already face complex, multibillion-dollar civil litigation
in courts across the country. Prosecutors are examining whether the companies violated the
federal Controlled Substances Act, a statute that federal prosecutors have begun using
against opioid makers and distributors this year.
By using statutes typically used to target drug dealers, prosecutors are finally seeing
these companies for what they are: drug pushers. This approach is unusual but not
unprecedented, according to the Journal:
Earlier this year, federal prosecutors filed major criminal cases in Manhattan and Ohio
that, for the first time, employed criminal statutes that are more commonly applied to drug
dealers, legal experts say.
When prosecutors from the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against
a pharmaceutical distributor and two executives earlier this year, the Manhattan U.S.
attorney's office said the case was unusual.
"This prosecution is the first of its kind," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said
in April, "executives of a pharmaceutical distributor and the distributor itself have been
charged with drug trafficking."
The investigation marks a significant broadening of the federal government's focus on
pinpointing which parties contributed to the opioid crisis.
The six companies to receive subpoenas from the US attorney's office for the eastern
district of New York are: AmerisourceBergen Corp., Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc., Johnson &
Johnson, Mallinckrodt, McKesson Corp. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., as reported by
the WSJ, citing regulatory filings.
This investigation is in its early stages; whether or not other companies have thus far also
received subpoenas is not apparent. As federal prosecutors proceed, they will likely widen
their probe, drawing in more companies and individuals.
Separately, most states, as well as roughly 2,600 city, county, and municipal governments
have sued major players throughout the opioids supply chain. Despite intense pressure on
parties to settle, these negotiations have stalled and numerous lawsuits remain pending (see
Four Companies Settle Just Before Bellwether Opioids Trial Was to Begin Today in Ohio
.)
Purdue separately faces civil and criminal probes from the U.S. attorneys offices in New
Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut and U.S. Justice Department in Washington and has said that a
proposed plan to turn over its operations to creditors is
contingent on resolving the federal investigations .
President Donald Trump is donating his third-quarter salary to help tackle the nation's
opioid epidemic.
A White House official says Trump has given the $100,000 he would be paid in the quarter
to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, which oversees federal public health
offices and programs, including the surgeon general's office.
The White House says the funds are being earmarked "to continue the ongoing fight against
the opioid crisis."
Jerri- Lynn here. Well. Thanks for your concern!!
More from AP:
Trump has made tackling the misuse of opioids an administration priority. More than 70,000
Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses, the bulk of them involving opioids.
Trump is required to be paid, but he has pledged to donate his salary while in office to
worthy causes. Trump donated his second-quarter salary to the surgeon general's office.
The US trend is in contrast to the state of play in other advanced countries; US life
expectancy began to lose pace in the 1980s, according to the JAMA study, and by 1998, had
declined to a level below the OECD average. Since 2014, US life expectancy rates have declined
for three consecutive years.
But a new analysis of more than a half-century of federal mortality data, published on
Tuesday in JAMA , found that the increased death rates among people in midlife extended
to all racial and ethnic groups, and to suburbs and cities. And while suicides, drug
overdoses and alcoholism were the main causes, other medical conditions, including heart
disease, strokes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also contributed, the authors
reported.
From the JAMA study's abstract:
Findings Between 1959 and 2016, US life expectancy increased from 69.9 years to 78.9 years
but declined for 3 consecutive years after 2014. The recent decrease in US life expectancy
culminated a period of increasing cause-specific mortality among adults aged 25 to 64 years
that began in the 1990s, ultimately producing an increase in all-cause mortality that began
in 2010. During 2010-2017, midlife all-cause mortality rates increased from 328.5
deaths/100 000 to 348.2 deaths/100 000. By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing
across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse
list of organ system diseases. The largest relative increases in midlife mortality rates
occurred in New England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%) and the Ohio
Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%). The increase in
midlife mortality during 2010-2017 was associated with an estimated 33 307 excess US
deaths, 32.8% of which occurred in 4 Ohio Valley states.
This trend has occurred despite the US spending the highest per capita on health of any
country in the world – a point made in a JAMA editorial published simultaneously with the
study, Confronting the Rise and Fall
of US Life Expectancy.
Now, no one would dispute that the US health care system is a mess. From the NYT:
"The whole country is at a health disadvantage compared to other wealthy nations," the
study's lead author, Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, said. "We are
losing people in the most productive period of their lives. Children are losing parents.
Employers have a sicker work force."
The study makes for depressing reading; you can download the full version for free by
registering at the above link.
If you lack time for that, some summary from the NYT:
"Mortality has improved year to year over the course of the 20th century," said Dr. Samuel
Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania. "The 21st century is a major
exception. Since 2010 there's been no improvement in mortality among working-aged
people."
Death rates are actually improving among children and older Americans, Dr. Woolf noted,
perhaps because they may have more reliable health care -- Medicaid for many children and
Medicare for older people. Jerri-Lynn here: my emphasis.
But the problem isn't wholly related to the dysfunctional US health care system. Extreme
inequality doesn't just harm the poorest and weakest among us. Over to the NYT:
"The fact that it's so expansive and involves so many causes of death -- it's saying that
there's something broader going on in our country," said Ellen R. Meara, a professor of
health policy at Dartmouth College. "This no longer limited to middle-aged whites."
The states with the greatest relative increases in death rates among young and middle-aged
adults were New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, West Virginia and Ohio.
Dr. Woolf said one of the findings showed that the excess deaths were highly concentrated
geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky
and Indiana.
"What's not lost on us is what is going on in those states," he said. "The history of when
this health trend started happens to coincide with when these economic shifts began -- the
loss of manufacturing jobs and closure of steel mills and auto plants."
What do the billionaires and their toadies have to say to that?
And, to return to where I began, note that Ohio is ground zero for the opioids epidemic.
A former Obama official was interviewed today about these investigations. When asked
point-black on whether or not pharma executives should go to jail on these charges, there was
tremendous hemming and hawing about the "goal is to prevent this from happening again in the
future" which is the same stance regarding financial executives after the GFC.
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/783223378/feds-may-pursue-criminal-charges-against-opioid-makers
So the drug laws incarcerate millions of poor and minority people for minor drug
possession offences but effectively running a drug cartel inside US corporations would not be
worth jailing somebody for? No wonder people are simply ready to toss the entire system.
Here's an excellent article about fentanyl smuggling from China. The opioid crisis is
not just about US companies. The larger question is why our government largely ignored
fentanyl smuggling for years during the Obama administration despite warnings from
DEA.
Pain patients who function quite well with medication are caught between the more strident
of the War on Drugs Crusaders and the addicts who use opioids recreationally, causing most to
think of anyone on pain medication as drug abusers. Pain patients using medication as
prescribed are not drug abusers and a safe harbor needs to be created to protect this
vulnerable population. They are genuinely in fear and despair has set in. They are
consciously and openly stating an intent to commit suicide. We should not forget them as this
war continues. They saw what Duarte promoted and understand they are powerless in a fight
where their lives are at stake.
Cutting off the supply through criminal prosecutions of manufacturers will harm the most
vulnerable. Perhaps that is the plan.
The issue appears to be "prescription" and "control"
You intimate the drugs will be removed from the market, as opposed to being subject to
proper and necessary stringent controls.
The issue at hand with the manufacturers is: Have the Manufacturers caused bypass on
controls. As I understand it, the drugs are not banned at this point in time.
The manufacturers appear to be investigated for promoting mis-prescription of their
products.
There have been unintended consequences from the war on drugs. To your point, we have seen
providers, insurers, and pharmacies set their own limits to avoid liability. Going after the
risk-averse pharmaceutical manufacturers will force them to decide whether the profit is
worth the risk of financial ruin and possible prison. And legitimate patients are caught in
the middle.
Anecdotally, we have this result that impacts the most vulnerable – not the
powerful, who will always get their drugs, whether they need them or not:
The misconception that opioid prescriptions lead to opiate addiction has been
widespread, and overarching state and federal measures to combat the opioid overdose crisis
are reaching a fever pitch. There's the Oregon Health Authority's (OHA) now-tabled proposal
to force-taper all Medicaid patients on opioids for certain chronic pain conditions;
Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Gardner's controversial proposal to limit all acute
pain medication prescriptions to a seven day fill, which sparked massive pushback from the
chronic pain and disability communities; and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who favors a
three-day fill limit. In contrast, the American Medical Association (AMA) has come out
against arbitrary pill limits, as has a group called Health Professionals for Patients in
Pain (HP3).
Very few opioid addictions begin with a patient who has a doctor's prescription: Up to
80 percent of people with an opioid addiction illegally obtained pills from another source
like a friend or relative first. While the opioid overdose epidemic from illegal heroin and
fentanyl is a serious problem, federal and state actions to decrease the number of opioid
prescriptions and/or pills in circulation overall will have -- and are already having -- a
hugely negative impact on chronic pain patients who take opioid medications. While the
number of pain prescriptions has declined since 2010, the number of deaths due to overdoses
involving heroin and synthetic fentanyl has increased.
According to Thomas Kline, MD, a physician in North Carolina who maintains a list of
chronic pain patients who committed suicide after being forced off of their medications,
the anti-opioid hysteria that has taken root in the medical field and the federal
government has resulted in "people [being] killed."
"Very few opioid addictions begin with a patient who has a doctor's prescription".
This is very similar to the original marketing line of OxyContin, and I have a hard time
believing it. But it's only a gut feeling along with vague memories of educational materials
I've seen before but would have to look up.
I think there are pretty forceful (though not equally funded) agendas on both sides of the
issue that would want to down- or over-play the impact of prescribed opioids.
Either way, I don't think it's necessary to use that quote in order to make the case that
people in pain still deserve access to these drugs.
Other sources flatly contradict this claim. This is from an article by a professor of
medicine:
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four in five new heroin
users started out by misusing prescription painkillers, and 94 percent of opioid-addicted
patients said that they switched to heroin because prescription opioids were more expensive
and harder to obtain.
Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative, at
Brandeis University, has worked with hundreds of patients addicted to opioids. He told me
that, though many fatal overdoses have resulted from opioids other than OxyContin, the
crisis was initially precipitated by a shift in the culture of prescribing -- a shift
carefully engineered by Purdue. "If you look at the prescribing trends for all the
different opioids, it's in 1996 that prescribing really takes off," Kolodny said. "It's not
a coincidence. That was the year Purdue launched a multifaceted campaign that misinformed
the medical community about the risks." When I asked Kolodny how much of the blame Purdue
bears for the current public-health crisis, he responded, "The lion's share."
I work as a pharmacist in northern Ontario, where the opioid problem is quite acute. To be
fair, this region had some insane narcotic prescribing habits -- dose/increases that seemed
unreasonably high (since well before I started practicing 10 years ago).
Now we're seeing a combination of new grad physicians seemingly afraid to prescribe
opioids, and older doctors either under investigation by their regulatory body, or retiring
as fast as they can to avoid getting nailed.
Their patients in the (sadly frequent) worst case, suddenly find themselves without a
doctor in an area which already has a shortage. Or they're put through a forced rapid taper
off these meds which seems only a bit less stressful.
Chronic pain patients can definitely benefit from tapering their dose, as opioid-induced
hyperalgesia is definitely a thing, and overdose risk increases with dose even taking into
consideration tolerance.
A lot of patients with pain can benefit from methadone or Suboxone, which is often the
only option remaining as addiction treatment centres are everywhere. But even if those drugs
work for them there's still a lot of inconvenience and stigma attached to them.
I wish the attitude was more accomodating to the patients who have been on these huge
doses for years. (usually in their 50s or 60s). Like, say to doctors "try not to get anybody
else hooked on opiates, but be gentle with the patients that already are".
But it seems like the approach taken is mostly based on avoidance of liability. And the
profits of addictions chains that provide dubiously valuable treatment.
I guess there's no perfect solution. It's a shitshow up here.
Yeah, off the top of my head the biggest financial issues that could be helped by a
government that gave crap would be:
1) increase the welfare/disability payments which have lost ground to inflation since the 90s
I believe
2) do something for the awful living conditions and opportunities for our first nations
reserves, which are (were?) the biggest centres of despair and addiction
3) free pharmacare would help, though our most vulnerable do already have coverage
4) actually fund mental health programs/psychotherapy
The vaunted Canadian healthcare system doesn't cover much that doesn't happen in a
doctor's office or hospital. It's it's not heading in the right direction.
What do the billionaires and their toadies have to say to that? Jerri-Lynn
Scofield
Certainly toadies, intentional or otherwise, must include those who support unethical
finance – the means by which so many jobs were outsourced in the first place.
Our finance system was designed or evolved to only create wealth – not to share
it justly – and we are reaping the bitter fruit of that shortsightedness.
Better late than never, I suppose. But, to look only to preventing such things from
recurring in the future is to give the current crop of miscreants a pass, as was done with
torturing and financial crimes since the turn of the century.
A criminal probe is definitely appropriate. It's already been established that drug
companies and their distributors have flooded the country with
76 billion opioid pills between 2006 through 2012. 76 billion pills amounts to
approximately 33 opiate pills per year for every man woman and child in the United States
during the 7 year time period covered in this article. And that's only oxycodone and
hydrocodone – it doesn't include the various types of fentanyl.
There is good evidence that providing treatment for the addicted rather than criminalising
them is the way to go with a big fringe benefits in terms of less crime etc for the rest of
the community, for example the work of Dr John Marks in Widness, England.
Methadone destroys your bones. They become brittle and crumble. Suboxone does very little
for pain relief. Suboxone only blocks the craving for opioids. It is obvious most of you
posters have little contact with addicts and rely on articles published by individuals who
use govt' info to BS the population.
WHY have there not been at least Criminal Manslaughter charges filed against some of
the actors in the dreadful life drama. The doctors, The manufacturers, the distributors. If I
give scrip opioids to another and thy die from taking them , I will be charged with a
Homicide.
Following decades of increased life expectancy rates, Americans have been dying earlier for
three consecutive years since 2014, turning the elusive quest for the 'American Dream' into a
real-life nightmare for many. Corporate America must accept some portion of the blame for the
looming disaster.
Something is killing Americans and researchers have yet to find the culprit. But we can risk
some intuitive guesses.
According to researchers from the Center on Society and Health, Virginia Commonwealth
University School of Medicine, American life expectancy has not kept pace with that of other
wealthy countries and is now in fact decreasing.
The National Center for Health Statistics reported that life expectancy in the United States
peaked (78.9 years) in 2014 and subsequently dropped for 3 consecutive years, hitting 78.6
years in 2017. The decrease was most significant among men (0.4 years) than women (0.2 years)
and happened across racial-ethnic lines: between 2014 and 2016, life expectancy decreased among
non-Hispanic white populations (from 78.8 to 78.5 years), non-Hispanic black populations (from
75.3 years to 74.8 years), and Hispanic populations (82.1 to 81.8 years).
"By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug
overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases," wrote
researchers Steven H. Woolf and Heidi Schoomaker in a
study that appears in the latest issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association.
At the very beginning of the report, Woolf and Schoomaker reveal that the geographical area
with the largest relative increases occurred "in the Ohio Valley and New England."
"The implications for public health and the economy are substantial," they added, "making
it vital to understand the underlying causes."
Incidentally, it would be difficult for any observer of the U.S. political scene to read
that passage without immediately connecting it to the 2016 presidential election between Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Taking advantage of the deep industrial decline that has long plagued the Ohio Valley, made
up of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Trump successfully
tapped into a very real social illness, at least partially connected to
economic stagnation , which helped propel him into the White House.
Significantly, thirty-seven states witnessed significant jumps in midlife mortality in the
years leading up to 2017. As the researchers pointed out, however, the trend was concentrated
in certain states, many of which, for example in New England, did not support Trump in
2016.
"Between 2010 and 2017, the largest relative increases in mortality occurred in New
England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%, Massachusetts 12.1%) and the
Ohio Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%), as well as
in New Mexico (17.5%), South Dakota (15.5%), Pennsylvania (14.4%), North Dakota (12.7%),
Alaska (12.0%), and Maryland (11.0%). In contrast, the nation's most populous states
(California, Texas, and New York) experienced relatively small increases in midlife
mortality.
Eight of the 10 states with the highest number of excess deaths were in the industrial
Midwest or Appalachia, whereas rural US counties experienced greater increases in midlife
mortality than did urban counties.
A tragic irony of the study suggests that greater access to healthcare, notably among the
more affluent white population, actually correlates to an increase in higher mortality rates.
The reason is connected to the out-of-control prescription of opioid drugs to combat pain and
depression.
"The sharp increase in overdose deaths that began in the 1990s primarily affected white
populations and came in 3 waves," the report explained: (1) the introduction of OxyContin in
1996 and overuse of prescription opioids, followed by (2) increased heroin use, often by
patients who had become addicted to prescription opioids, and (3) the subsequent emergence of
potent synthetic opioids (eg, fentanyl analogues) -- the latter triggering a large post-2013
increase in overdose deaths.
"That white populations first experienced a larger increase in overdose deaths than
nonwhite populations may reflect their greater access to health care (and thus prescription
drugs)."
In September, Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, reached a
tentative settlement with 23 states and more than 2,000 cities and counties that sued the
company, owned by the Sackler family, over its role in the opioid crisis
Other factors also helped to drive up the U.S. mortality rate, including alcoholic liver
disease and suicides, 85% of which occurred with a firearm or other method.
The United States spends more on health care than any other country, yet its overall health
report card fares worse than those of other wealthy countries. Americans experience higher
rates of illness and injury and die earlier than people in other high-income
nations.
Researchers were perplexed but not surprised by the data as there existed clear signs back
in the 1980s that the United States was heading for a cliff as far as longevity rates go.
So what is it that's claiming the life of Americans, many at the prime of their life, at a
faster pace than in the past? The reality is that it is likely to be an accumulation of
negative factors that are finally beginning to take a toll. For example, apart from the opioid
crisis, there has also been an almost total collapse of union representation across Corporate
America, which has essentially crushed any form of workplace democracy. This author, a former
member of three worker unions, witnessed this egregious abuse of corporate power firsthand,
which is apparent by the total stagnation of wages for many decades.
Today's real average wage – that is, after accounting for inflation – has about
the same purchasing power it did about half a century ago . Meanwhile, in the majority of
cases, increases in salary have a marked tendency to go to the highest-paid tier of
executives.
In a
report by Pew Research, "real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago:
The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would
today."
One needs only consider the growing mountain of tuition debt now
consuming the paychecks of many university graduates, many of whom have yet to land their dream
6-figure job from their relatively worthless liberal education, to better understand the quiet
desperation that exists across the country.
At the same time, the exponential rise in the use of social media, which has been proven to
trigger depression
and loneliness in users, also deserves serious consideration. What society is experiencing
with its massive online presence is a total overhaul as to the way human beings relate to each
other. Presently, it would be very difficult to argue that the changes have been positive; in
fact, they seem to be contributing to the
early demise of millions of Americans in the prime of life.
Taken together, abusive labor practices that ignores workplace democracy, the epidemic of
opioid usage, compounded by the anti-social features of 'social media' suggests a perfect storm
of factors precipitating the rise of early deaths in the United States. Since all of these
areas fall in one way or another under the control of corporate power, this powerful agency
must find ways to help address the problem. The future success of America depends upon it.
With a college degree and half a brain things are still pretty good. They look pretty good
for trades guys too, as long as they are honest hard workers. I just got a quote from some
guy to dig up a 70 foot driveway and replace it with topsoil... $14,000. Nobody is hurting
too bad where I am except serious white trash with no job skills. Well, blacks and latinos
without job skills are hurting too, the difference is, they're resigned to their fate after
300+ years of getting abused. It's the Trump trailer trash who are mad that they aren't
throwing around big money any more for stealing copper or whatever the **** these trash did
before now.
You think life expectancy has dropped off now? Give it 10 or 20 years. Fentynal+a cheap
plastic mask with nitrogen or co2 emitter will be easily available on the internet...Most
people over 50 are ill equipped to deal with burgeoning economic realities. I'm 51 and I see
it all around me in NW Montana, dudes that are 50 or 100 pounds overweight, smoking, drinking
whisky and taking pills, not showing up for work. The economy here is booming and yet there
are men and women, mostly my age or older wandering around with tombstone eyes all day,
bumming money in front of the grocery stores. I spend more time than I like in Portland OR,
and it's even more apparent there. There are kids that panhandle, but 90% of the people
camping on the street are 45+. Dis Eases of dispair.
When men abandon their families to pursue money and fame, their families move on, and
then, when the men found they were chasing fool's gold, they despaired and died, since they
had fucked themselves, their children and the women who were willing to love them.
There wasn't any reason to live, if one doesn't believe in repairing such social crimes,
or second chances. And there's a time limit for such rehabilitation; wait too long to get
smart, and your chances are gone.
I know of three such cases in my immediate family.
In "Democracy in America", Alexis de Tocqueville commented on Americans' obsession with
money and means of procuring it. I would hypothesize that the deteriorating economic means of
ordinary Americans is behind the increase in midlife mortality. The pursuit of money has
resulted in a lifestyle that is not conducive to a happy and healthy life.
Stress causes the body to release cortisol which responds by building up belly fat for the
emergency times ahead. Sleep and stress reduction can reduce the waist line, slowly.
"there has also been an almost total collapse of union representation across Corporate
America, which has essentially crushed any form of workplace democracy. This author, a former
member of three worker unions, witnessed this egregious abuse of corporate power firsthand,
which is apparent by the total stagnation of wages for many decades." This cracked me up.
companies are NOT Democratic and never should be.
Isn't Capitalism wonderful? We mandate that a company may not make a decision not in the interests of the shareholder.
And then whinge because Big Pharma does just that. It makes drugs that maximize
profits. Why did you expect anything different?
And what about insurance companies? How are shareholders of insurance companies served if
the insurance companies pay up for claims? Anyway, let me present a physicians
point of view , that the AMA represents the shareholders of Big Pharma, not the
doctors. BTW. Black salve works against Big C. (I have to use euphemisms because it is illegal to
utter the words "Cures Big C". Why? I dunno. ( Bloodroot , a common plant.)
How unpatriotic it would be to praise Unions! So I shan't. Instead I recommend Guilds. A complete monopoly of particular trades by their
own Guild House. The guild controls the training of their members. It controls who gets to
work where. It controls their accommodation and pension. It controls for the benefit of it's
members. It is Vast.
It negotiates with politicians on protecting it's own interests by Law. (Hey, why should
only multi-national companies lobby in their own interest!)
For instance. A electrical guild would negotiate a contract with a builders guild for
cheap housing. (You scratch my back, I scratch yours.) It would negotiate with the teacher's
guild for the correct education of their children.
Big international companies are going to love it. But why do we need to consider their
emotions?
This rampant social illness is why Trump ran for President. He knew there were a lot of
hurting people out there who needed to believe in something, anything, and most importantly
he knew they would devour every scoop of manure he shoveled their way.
"real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate
recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today."
No big drama here considering growth in wealth inequality for the period.
Job Growth Remains Slow in September, but Unemployment Rate Falls to 3.5 Percent
By Dean Baker
Manufacturing employment hit a record low as a share of private sector employment.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 136,000 jobs in September,
after adding 168,000 in August. The 157,000 average for the last three months is considerably
slower than the 179,000 average for the last year, but this slowing is expected in a tight
labor market.
The September job growth led to a 0.2 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate to
3.5 percent, a fifty-year low. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) rose 0.1 percentage
point to 61.0 percent, a new high for the recovery that is 0.6 percentage points above the
year-ago level.
The EPOPs for both prime-age (ages 25 to 54) men and women rose by 0.1 percentage point in
September. The 74.0 percent rate for women is a new high for the recovery, although still
below the peak of 74.9 percent hit in April of 2000. The 86.4 percent rate for men is 0.3
percentage points below the March level and 1.6 percentage points below the prerecession
peak.
The unemployment rate for Hispanics fell to 3.9 percent, the lowest on record, 0.6
percentage points below the year-ago level. The unemployment rate for workers without a high
school degree also fell sharply to 4.8 percent, 0.8 percentage points below the year-ago
level. The share of unemployment due to voluntary quits, a measure of workers' confidence in
their labor market prospects, jumped 1.7 percentage points to 14.6 percent, a level more
typical for a strong labor market.
Other data in the household survey were more mixed. While the mean duration of
unemployment spells edged down 0.1 weeks to 22.0 weeks, the median duration rose 0.5 weeks to
9.4 weeks. The share of long-term unemployed also rose by 2.1 percentage points to 22.7
percent.
The number of involuntary part-time workers edged down by 31,000. The number of workers
choosing to work part-time also fell, dropping by 124,000 in September. The percentage of the
workforce choosing to work part-time has been dropping over the last year, after rising
sharply following the implementation of the ACA. This likely due to workers having greater
difficulty getting health care outside of employment.
Another negative item is an increase in the number of multiple job holders, especially
among women. The share of employed women who have multiple jobs rose to 5.9 percent, 0.5
percentage points above the year-ago level. The vast majority of these women report that they
work a second job in addition to a full-time job.
The picture on the establishment side is more negative. Slower job growth is to be
expected in a tighter labor market, but it has virtually stopped altogether on the
goods-producing side. The goods-producing sector has added a total of just 2,000 jobs over
the last three months, with construction adding 8,000 jobs, manufacturing adding 4,000, and
mining and logging losing 10,000. A big part of this is the fallout from the trade war and
the resulting drop in investment. Also, lower world oil prices are a big hit to the mining
sector. The manufacturing share of private sector employment sunk to a new all-time low in
September of 9.96 percent.
On the service side, job growth in the high-paying professional and technical services
sector has slowed sharply in the last two months, added an average of 13,900, compared to an
average of 23,900 over the last year. Restaurant employment has also slowed sharply, with the
sector adding an average of just 1,500 jobs over the last four months. This should be
expected in a tight labor market, where workers have higher-paying options. Retail lost
11,400 jobs in September, bringing its losses over the last year to 60,900, just under 0.4
percent of total employment.
A big job gainer in recent months is health care, which added 38,800 jobs in September
after adding 37,200 in August. The sector has accounted for almost a third of job growth in
the private sector over the last two months.
In contrast to the evidence of a tight labor market in the household survey, wage growth
appears to be slowing slightly. The average hourly wage rose 2.9 percent over the last year,
although the annualized rate of wage growth, comparing the last three months (July, August,
September) with the prior three months (April, May, June), was a slightly higher 3.4
percent.
[Graph]
This is a generally positive report with some serious warning signs. The goods sector is
very weak and likely to get weaker, according to a wide variety of measures of manufacturing.
The evidence of slowing wage growth is also striking in a labor market with 3.5 percent
unemployment.
"... Meanwhile, greed -- once best known for its place on the list of Seven Deadly Sins -- became a point of pride for Wall Street's Masters of the Universe. With a sophisticated smile, the rallying cry of the rich and fashionable became "1 got mine -- the rest of you are on your own." ..."
And yet America's policies were headed in the wrong direction. The big banks kept lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would
gut families' last refuge in the bankruptcy courts -- the same bill we describe in this book. (It went by the awful name Bankruptcy
Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, but it should have been called the Gut the Safety Net and Pay OIT the Big Banks Act.).
The proposed law would carefully preserve bankruptcy protections for the likes of Donald Trump and his friends, while ordinary families
that had been crushed by debts from medical problems or job losses were thrown under the bus.
When we wrote The Two-Income Trap, it was already pretty clear that the big banks would win this battle. The fight kept going
for two more years, but the tide of blame-the-unlucky combined with relentless lobbying and campaign contributions finally overwhelmed
Congress.
In 2005, the Wall Street banking industry got the changes they wanted, and struggling families lost out. After the law was rewritten,
about 800,000 families a year that once would have turned to bankruptcy to try to get back on their feet were shut out of the system.1
That was 800,000 families -- mostly people who had lost jobs, suffered a medical catastrophe, or gone through a divorce or death
in the family. And now, instead of reorganizing their finances and building some security, they were at the mercy of debt collectors
who called twenty or thirty times a day -- and could keep on calling and calling for as long as they thought they could squeeze another
nickel from a desperate family.
As it turned out, the new law tore a big hole in the last safety net for working families, just in time for the Great Recession.
Meanwhile, the bank regulators kept playing blind and deaf while the housing bubble inflated. Once it burst, the economy collapsed.
The foreclosure problem we flagged back in 2003 rolled into a global economic meltdown by 2008, as millions of people lost their
homes, and millions more lost their jobs, their savings, and their chance at a secure retirement. Overall, the total cost of the
crash was estimated as high as S14 trillion.2
Meanwhile, America's giant banks got bailed out, CEO pay shot up, the stock market roared back, and the investor class got rich
beyond even their own fevered dreams.3
A generation ago, a fortune-teller might have predicted a very different future. With so many mothers headed into the workforce,
Americans might have demanded a much heavier investment in public day care, extended school days, and better family leave policies.
Equal pay for equal work might have become sacrosanct. As wages stagnated, there might have been more urgency for raising the minimum
wage, strengthening unions, and expanding Social Security. And our commitment to affordable college and universal preschool might
have become unshakeable.
But the political landscape was changing even faster than the new economic realities. Government was quickly becoming an object
of ridicule, even to the president of the United States. Instead of staking his prestige on making government more accountable and
efficient, Ronald Reagan repeated his famous barb "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Tin from the government
and I'm here to help."'8 After generations of faithfulness to the promise of the Constitution to promote general welfare, at the
moment when the economic foundations of the middle class began to tremble, our efforts to strengthen each other and offer a helping
hand had become the butt of a national joke.
Those who continued to believe in what we could do together faced another harsh reality: much of government had been hijacked
by the rich and powerful. Regulators who were supposed to watch out for the public interest shifted their loyalties, smiling benignly
as giant banks jacked up short-term profits by cheating families, looking the other way as giant power companies scam mod customers,
and partying with industry executives as oil companies cut comers on safety and environmental rules. In this book we told one of
those stories, about how a spineless Congress rewrote the bankruptcy laws to enrich a handful of credit card companies.
Meanwhile, greed -- once best known for its place on the list of Seven Deadly Sins -- became a point of pride for Wall Street's
Masters of the Universe. With a sophisticated smile, the rallying cry of the rich and fashionable became "1 got mine -- the rest
of you are on your own."
These shifts played nicely into each other. Every' attack on "big government" meant families lost an ally, and the rules tilted
more and These shifts played nicely into each other. Every attack on "big government" meant families lost an ally, and the rules
tilted more and more in favor of those who could hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers. Lower taxes for the wealthy -- and more money
in the pockets of those who subscribed to the greed-is-good mantra. And if the consequence meant less money for preschools or public
colleges or disability coverage -- the things that would create more security for an overstretched middle class -- then that was
just too bad.
Little by little, as the middle class got deeper and deeper in trouble, government stopped working for the middle class, or at
least it stopped working so hard. The rich paid a little less and kept a little more. Even if they didn't say it in so many words,
they got exactly what they wanted. Remember the 90 percent -- America's middle class, working class, and poor -- the ones who got
70 percent of all income growth from 1935 through 1980?
From 1980-2014, the 90 percent got nothing.9 None. Zero. Zip. Not a penny in income growth. Instead, for an entire generation,
the top 10 percent captured all of the income growth in the entire country. l(X) percent.
It didn't have to be this way. The Two-Income Trap is about families that w'ork hard, but some things go wrong along the way --
illnesses and job losses, and maybe some bad decisions. But this isn't what has put the middle class on the ropes. After all, people
have gotten sick and lost jobs and made less-than-perfect decisions for generations -- and vet, for generations America's middle
class expanded. creating more opportunity to build real economic security and pass on a brighter future to their children.
What would it take to help strengthen the middle class? The problems facing the middle-class family are complex and far-reaching,
and the solutions must be too. We wish there could be a simple silver bullet, but after a generation of relentless assault, there
just isn't. But there is one overriding idea. Together we can. It's time to say it out loud: a generation of I-got-mine policy-making
has failed -- failed miserably, completely, and overwhelmingly. And it's time to change direction before the entire middle class
has been replaced by hundreds of millions of Americans barely hanging on by their fingernails.
Americas middle class was built through investments in education, infrastructure, and research -- and by' making sure we all have
a safety net. We need to strengthen those building blocks: Step up investments in public education. Rein in the cost of college and
cut out- standing student loans. Create universal preschool and affordable child care. Upgrade infrastructure -- mass transit, energy,
communications -- to make it more attractive to build good, middle-class jobs here in America. Recognize that the modem economy can
be perilous, and a strong safety net is needed now more than ever. Strengthen disability coverage, retirement coverage, and paid
sick leave. And for heavens sake, get rid of the awful banker-backed bankruptcy law, so that when things go wrong, families at least
have a chance at a fresh start. We welcome the re-issue of The Two-Income Trap because we see the original book as capturing a critical
moment, those last few minutes in which the explanation of why so many hardworking, plav-by- tho-mlcs people were in so much trouble
was simple: It was their own fault. If only they would just pull up their socks, cinch their belts a little tighter, and stop buying
so much stuff, they -- and our country -- would be just fine. That myth has died. And we say', good riddance.
"... The main culprit for the economy's falling growth rate and the general middle-class economic squeeze is debt - or more specifically, the burden of having to pay it back, with penalties, fees and lower credit ratings. The mainstream press depicts the rising market price of homes as a benefit to homeowners, a capital gam as if they almost were real estate speculators or capitalists in miniature, not wage-eamers running up debt. GDP statisticians include the rise hi valuation of owner-occupied real estate and the rising rents it saves homeowners from having to pay as adding to GDP. ..."
"... "What has occurred is an inversion of values about the proper aim of economies. Today, it is to get rich by means of a financialized rentier economy. From the point of view of rentiers and other investors, the production-and-consumption economy is the overhead. The costs of labor and capital are to be minimized by squeezing out more economic rent. By contrast, our approach treats the production-and-consumption sector as primary, and the FIRE sector and other rent extracting sectors as overhead." ..."
"... "Each debt is a credit on the other side of the balance sheet, because behind each borrower is a lender." ..."
Those who praise the post-2008 economy as a successful recovery point to the fact that the
stock market has soar ed to all-time highs, while the unemployment rate has fallen to a
decade-low. But is the stock market a good proxy for how the overall economy is doing? The low
reported unemployment rate sidesteps the predominance of minimum-wage jobs. part-time "gig''
work, and the fact that the Federal Reserve's Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S.
Households in 201S reports that 39% of Americans do not have $400 cash available for a medical
or other emergency, and that a quarter of adults skipped medical care hi 2018 because they
could not afford it. 1 The latest estimates by the U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report that nearly half (48 percent) of households headed by someone 55 and older
lack any retirement savings or pension benefits.2 Even in what the press calls an economic
boom, most Americans feel stressed and many are chronically angry and worried. According to a
2015 survey by the American Psychological Association, financial worry is the "number one cause
of stress in America today."3 The Fed describes them as suffering from '•financial
fragility." What is fragile is their economic status and self-worth, teetering 011 the brink of
downward mobility. Living hi today's fmancialized economy creates stresses that seem more
damaging emotionally than living hi a poor country. America certainly is not a poor counfry,
but it has become so debt-ridden, and its wealth and income growth so highly concentrated, that
much of its population is emotionally worse off than that of almost any other country hi the
world.
The U.S. economy's soaring wealth and income finds its counterpart on the liabilities side
of the balance sheet. Rising stock prices have been fueled by corporate stock buyback programs
and debt leveraging, not earnings from new tangible investment and employment. And rising real
estate prices reflect the decline hi interest rates, enabling a given rental flow to be
capitalized hito higher bank loans and market prices. Additionally, the wave of foreclosures
011 junk mortgages and debt- strapped new home buyers has reduced home ownership rates, forcing
more of the population into a rental market, whose rising charges for housing have supported
general real estate prices. Thus, these capital gains do not reflect a thriving economy, but a
higher-cost one that is polarizing between creditors and debtors, property owners and renters,
and the financial sector vis-a-vis the rest of the economy.
The main culprit for the economy's falling growth rate and the general middle-class economic
squeeze is debt - or more specifically, the burden of having to pay it back, with penalties,
fees and lower credit ratings. The mainstream press depicts the rising market price of homes as
a benefit to homeowners, a capital gam as if they almost were real estate speculators or
capitalists in miniature, not wage-eamers running up debt. GDP statisticians include the rise
hi valuation of owner-occupied real estate and the rising rents it saves homeowners from having
to pay as adding to GDP. But
2 William E. Gibson, "Nearly Half of Americans 55+ Have No Retirement Savings or Pension
Benefits," AARP, March 28, 2019.
https://www.aarp.org/retirement/retirement-savings/info-2019/no-retirement-money-saved.html
3 Source: American Psychological Association (2015). "American Psychological Association
survey shows money stress weighing on Americans' Health Nationwide," February 4, 2015.
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/02/monev-stiess.aspx.
"What has occurred is an inversion of values about the proper aim of economies. Today, it
is to get rich by means of a financialized rentier economy. From the point of view of
rentiers and other investors, the production-and-consumption economy is the overhead. The
costs of labor and capital are to be minimized by squeezing out more economic rent. By
contrast, our approach treats the production-and-consumption sector as primary, and the FIRE
sector and other rent extracting sectors as overhead."
"Each debt is a credit on the other side of the balance sheet, because behind each
borrower is a lender."
Yes it is, but only for couples with low level of marital satisfaction.
Notable quotes:
"... They also looked at marital breakup more generally, focusing on when couples decided to end their relationships (not necessarily if or when they got divorced). Their findings revealed that when men were unemployed, the likelihood that either spouse would leave the marriage increased. What about the woman's employment status? For husbands, whether their wife was employed or not was seemingly unimportant-it was unrelated to their decision to leave the relationship. It did seem to matter for wives, though, but it depended upon how satisfied they were with the marriage. ..."
"... When women were highly satisfied, they were inclined to stay with their partner regardless of whether they had employment. However, when the wife's satisfaction was low, she was more likely to exit the relationship, but only when she had a job. ..."
The first study considers government data from all 50 U.S. states between the years 1960 and 2005.1 The researchers predicted
that higher unemployment numbers would translate to more divorces among heterosexual married couples. Most of us probably would have
predicted this too based on common sense-you would probably expect your partner to be able to hold down a job, right? And indeed,
this was the case, but only before 1980. Surprisingly, since then, as joblessness has increased, divorce rates have actually
decreased.
How do we explain this counterintuitive finding? We don't know for sure, but the researchers speculate that unemployed
people may delay or postpone divorce due to the high costs associated with it. Not only is divorce expensive in terms of legal fees,
but afterward, partners need to pay for two houses instead of one. And if they are still living off of one salary at that point,
those costs may be prohibitively expensive. For this reason, it is not that uncommon to hear about estranged couples who can't stand
each other but are still living under the same roof.
The second study considered data from a national probability sample of over 3,600 heterosexual married couples in the U.S. collected
between 1987 and 2002. However, instead of looking at the overall association between unemployment and marital outcomes, they considered
how gender and relationship satisfaction factored into the equation. 2
They also looked at marital breakup more generally, focusing on when couples decided to end their relationships (not necessarily
if or when they got divorced). Their findings revealed that when men were unemployed, the likelihood that either spouse would leave
the marriage increased. What about the woman's employment status? For husbands, whether their wife was employed or not was seemingly
unimportant-it was unrelated to their decision to leave the relationship. It did seem to matter for wives, though, but it depended
upon how satisfied they were with the marriage.
When women were highly satisfied, they were inclined to stay with their partner regardless of whether they had employment.
However, when the wife's satisfaction was low, she was more likely to exit the relationship, but only when she had a job.
"... A good economy compensates for much social dysfunction. ..."
"... More than that, it prevents the worst of behaviors that are considered an expression of dysfunction from occurring, as people across all social strata have other things to worry about or keep them busy. Happy people don't bear grudges, or at least they are not on top of their consciousness as long as things are going well. ..."
"... This could be seen time and again in societies with deep and sometimes violent divisions between ethnic groups where in times of relative prosperity (or at least a broadly shared vision for a better future) the conflicts are not removed but put on a backburner, or there is even "finally" reconciliation, and then when the economy turns south, the old grudges and conflicts come back (often not on their own, but fanned by groups who stand to gain from the divisions, or as a way of scapegoating) ..."
"... "backwaters of America, that economy seems to put out fewer and fewer chairs." ~~Harold Pollack~ ..."
"... Going up through the chairs has become so impossible for those on the slow-track. Not enough slots for all the jokers within our once proud country of opportunities, ..."
"... George Orwell: "I doubt, however, whether the unemployed would ultimately benefit if they learned to spend their money more economically. ... If the unemployed learned to be better managers they would be visibly better off, and I fancy it would not be long before the dole was docked correspondingly." ..."
"... Perhaps you are commenting on the aspect that when (enough) job applicants/holders define down their standards and let employers treat them as floor mats, then the quality of many jobs and the labor relations will be adjusted down accordingly, or at the very least expectations what concessions workers will make will be adjusted up. That seems to be the case unfortunately. ..."
A good economy compensates for much social dysfunction.
A bad economy moves people toward the margins, afflicts those
near the margins and kills those at the margins.
This is what policy makers should consider as they pursue policies that do not put the citizen above all else.
cm -> Avraam Jack Dectis...
"A good economy compensates for much social dysfunction."
More than that, it prevents the worst of behaviors that are considered an expression of dysfunction from occurring, as
people across all social strata have other things to worry about or keep them busy. Happy people don't bear grudges, or at least
they are not on top of their consciousness as long as things are going well.
This could be seen time and again in societies with deep and sometimes violent divisions between ethnic groups where in
times of relative prosperity (or at least a broadly shared vision for a better future) the conflicts are not removed but put on
a backburner, or there is even "finally" reconciliation, and then when the economy turns south, the old grudges and conflicts
come back (often not on their own, but fanned by groups who stand to gain from the divisions, or as a way of scapegoating)
Dune Goon said...
"backwaters of America, that economy seems to put out fewer and fewer chairs." ~~Harold Pollack~
Going up through the chairs has become so impossible for those on the slow-track. Not enough slots for all the jokers within
our once proud country of opportunities, not enough elbow room for Daniel Boone, let alone Jack Daniels! Not enough space
in this county to wet a tree when you feel the urge! Every tiny plot of space has been nailed down and fenced off, divided up
among gated communities. Why?
Because the 1% has an excessive propensity to reproduce their own kind. They are so uneducated about the responsibilities of
birth control and space conservation that they are crowding all of us off the edge of the planet. Worse yet we have begun to *ape
our betters*.
"We've only just begun!"
~~The Carpenters~
William said...
"Many of us know people who receive various public benefits, and who might not need to rely on these programs if they made
better choices, if they learned how to not talk back at work, if they had a better handle on various self-destructive behaviors,
if they were more willing to take that crappy job and forego disability benefits, etc."
George Orwell: "I doubt, however, whether the unemployed would ultimately benefit if they learned to spend their money
more economically. ... If the unemployed learned to be better managers they would be visibly better off, and I fancy it would
not be long before the dole was docked correspondingly."
cm said in reply to William...
A valid observation, but what you are commenting on is more about getting or keeping a job than managing personal finances.
Perhaps you are commenting on the aspect that when (enough) job applicants/holders define down their standards and let
employers treat them as floor mats, then the quality of many jobs and the labor relations will be adjusted down accordingly, or
at the very least expectations what concessions workers will make will be adjusted up. That seems to be the case unfortunately.
"... In a recent interview Mr. Deaton suggested that middle-aged whites have "lost the narrative of their lives." That is, their economic setbacks have hit hard because they expected better. Or to put it a bit differently, we're looking at people who were raised to believe in the American Dream, and are coping badly with its failure to come true. ..."
"... the truth is that we don't really know why despair appears to be spreading across Middle America. But it clearly is, with troubling consequences for our society... ..."
"... Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn self-destructive; others turn on the elites they feel have betrayed them. ..."
"... What we are seeing is the long term impacts of the "Reagan Revolution." ..."
"... The affected cohort here is the first which has lived with the increased financial and employment insecurity that engendered, as well as the impacts of the massive offshoring of good paying union jobs throughout their working lives. Stress has cumulative impacts on health and well-being, which are a big part of what we are seeing here. ..."
"... Lets face it, this Fed is all about goosing up asset prices to generate short term gains in economic activity. Since the early 90s, the Fed has done nothing but make policy based on Wall Street's interests. I can give them a pass on the dot com debacle but not after that. This toxic relationship between wall street and the Fed has to end. ..."
"... there was a housing bubble that most at the Fed (including Bernanke) denied right upto the middle of 2007 ..."
"... Yellen, to her credit, has admitted multiple times over the years that low rates spur search for yield that blows bubbles ..."
"... Bursting of the bubble led to unemployment for millions and U3 that went to 10% ..."
"... "You are the guys who do not consider the counterfactual where higher rates would have prevented the housing bubble in 2003-05 and that produced the great recession in the first place." ..."
"... Inequality has been rising globally, almost regardless of trade practices ..."
"... It is not some unstoppable global trend. This is neoliberal oligarchy coup d'état. Or as it often called "a quite coup". ..."
"... First of all, whether a job can or is offshored has little to do with whether it is "low skilled" but more with whether the workflow around the job can be organized in such a way that the job can be offshore. This is less a matter of "skill level" and more volume and immediacy of interaction with adjacent job functions, or movement of material across distances. ..."
"... The reason wages are stuck is that aggregate jobs are not growing, relative to workforce supply. ..."
"... BTW the primary offshore location is India, probably in good part because of good to excellent English language skills, and India's investment in STEM education and industry (especially software/services and this is even a public stereotype, but for a reason). ..."
"... Very rough figures: half a million Chicago employees may make less than $800 a week -- almost everybody should earn $800 ... ..."
"... Union busting is generally (?) understood as direct interference with the formation and operation of unions or their members. It is probably more common that employers are allowed to just go around the unions - "right to work", subcontracting non-union shops or temp/staffing agencies, etc. ..."
"... Why would people join a union and pay dues when the union is largely impotent to deliver, when there are always still enough desperate people who will (have to) take jobs outside the union system? Employers don't have to bring in scabs when they can legally go through "unencumbered" subcontractors inside or outside the jurisdiction. ..."
"... Credibility trap, fully engaged. ..."
"... The anti-knowledge of the elites is worth reading. http://billmoyers.com/2015/11/02/the-anti-knowledge-of-the-elites/ When such herd instinct and institutional overbearance connects with the credibility trap, the results may be impressive. http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/gold-daily-and-silver-weekly-charts-pop.html ..."
"... Suicide, once thought to be associated with troubled teens and the elderly, is quickly becoming an age-blind statistic. Middle aged Americans are turning to suicide in alarming numbers. The reasons include easily accessible prescription painkillers, the mortgage crisis and most importantly the challenge of a troubled economy. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention claims suicide rates now top the number of deaths due to automobile accidents. ..."
"... The suicide rate for both younger and older Americans remains virtually unchanged, however, the rate has spiked for those in middle age (35 to 64 years old) with a 28 percent increase (link is external) from 1999 to 2010. ..."
"... When few people kill themselves "on purpose" or die from self-inflicted but probably "unintended" harms (e.g. organ failure or accidental death caused by substance abuse), it can be shrugged off as problems related to the individual (more elaboration possible but not necessary). ..."
"... When it becomes a statistically significant phenomenon (above-noise percentage of total population or demographically identifiable groups), then one has to ask questions about social causes. My first question would be, "what made life suck for those people"? What specific instrument they used to kill themselves would be my second question (it may be the first question for people who are charged with implementing counter measures but not necessarily fixing the causes). ..."
"... Since about the financial crisis (I'm not sure about causation or coincidence - not accidental coincidence BTW but causation by the same underlying causes), there has been a disturbing pattern of high school students throwing themselves in front of local trains. At that age, drinking or drugging oneself to death is apparently not the first "choice". Performance pressure *related to* (not just "and") a lack of convincing career/life prospects has/have been suspected or named as a cause. I don't think teenagers suddenly started to jump in front of trains that have run the same rail line for decades because of the "usual" and centuries to millennia old teenage romantic relationship issues. ..."
"There is a darkness spreading over part of our society":
Despair, American Style, by Paul
Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: A couple of weeks ago President Obama mocked Republicans who are "down on America," and reinforced
his message by doing a pretty good Grumpy Cat impression. He had a point: With job growth at rates not seen since the 1990s, with
the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance hitting record highs, the doom-and-gloom predictions of his political
enemies look ever more at odds with reality.
Yet there is a darkness spreading over part of our society. ... There has been
a lot of comment ... over a new paper by the economists Angus Deaton (who just won a Nobel) and Anne Case, showing that mortality
among middle-aged white Americans has been rising since 1999..., while death rates were falling steadily both in other countries
and among other groups in our own nation.
Even more striking are the proximate causes of rising mortality. Basically, white Americans are, in increasing numbers, killing
themselves... Suicide is way up, and so are deaths from drug poisoning and ... drinking... But what's causing this epidemic of
self-destructive behavior?...
In a recent interview Mr. Deaton suggested that middle-aged whites have "lost the narrative of their lives." That is, their
economic setbacks have hit hard because they expected better. Or to put it a bit differently, we're looking at people who were
raised to believe in the American Dream, and are coping badly with its failure to come true.
That sounds like a plausible hypothesis..., but the truth is that we don't really know why despair appears to be spreading
across Middle America. But it clearly is, with troubling consequences for our society...
I know I'm not the only observer who sees a link between the despair reflected in those mortality numbers and the volatility
of right-wing politics. Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn self-destructive; others turn on the elites
they feel have betrayed them. No, deporting immigrants and wearing baseball caps bearing slogans won't solve their problems,
but neither will cutting taxes on capital gains. So you can understand why some voters have rallied around politicians who at
least seem to feel their pain.
At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education,
and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I'm not sure whether they're enough to cure existential despair.
bakho said...
There are a lot of economic dislocations that the government after the 2001 recession stopped doing much about it. Right after
the 2008 crash, the government did more but by 2010, even the Democratic president dropped the ball. and failed to deliver. Probably
no region of the country is affected more by technological change that the coal regions of KY and WV. Lying politicians promise
a return to the past that cannot be delivered. No one can suggest what the new future will be. The US is due for another round
of urbanization as jobs decline in rural areas. Dislocation forces declining values of properties and requires changes in behavior,
skills and outlook. Those personal changes do not happen without guidance. The social institutions such as churches and government
programs are a backstop, but they are not providing a way forward. There is plenty of work to be done, but our elites are not
willing to invest.
DrDick -> bakho...
The problem goes back much further than that. What we are seeing is the long term impacts of the "Reagan Revolution."
The affected cohort here is the first which has lived with the increased financial and employment insecurity that engendered,
as well as the impacts of the massive offshoring of good paying union jobs throughout their working lives. Stress has cumulative
impacts on health and well-being, which are a big part of what we are seeing here.
ilsm said...
Thuggee doom and gloom is about their fading chance to reinstate the slavocracy.
The fever swamp of right wing ideas is more loony than 1964.
Extremism is the new normal.
bmorejoe -> ilsm...
Yup. The slow death of white supremacy.
Peter K. -> Anonymous...
If it wasn't for monetary policy things would be even worse as the Republicans in Congress forced fiscal austerity on the economy
during the "recovery."
sanjait -> Peter K....
That's the painful irony of a comment like that one from Anonymous ... he seems completely unaware that, yes, ZIRP has done
a huge amount to prevent the kind of problems described above. He like most ZIRP critics fails to consider what the counterfactual
looks like (i.e., something like the Great Depression redux).
Anonymous -> sanjait...
You are the guys who do not consider the counterfactual where higher rates would have prevented the housing bubble in 2003-05
and that produced the great recession in the first place. Because preemptive monetary policy has gone out of fashion completely.
And now we are going to repeat the whole process over when the present bubble in stocks and corporate bonds bursts along with
the malinvestment in China, commodity exporters etc.
Peter K. -> Anonymous...
"liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... it will purge the rottenness out of the system.
High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted,
and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."
sanjait -> Anonymous...
"You want regulation? I would like to see
1) Reinstate Glass Steagall
2) impose a 10bp trans tax on trading financial instruments."
Great. Two things with zero chance of averting bubbles but make great populist pablum.
This is why we can't have nice things!
"3) Outlaw any Fed person working for a bank/financial firm after they leave office."
This seems like a decent idea. Hard to enforce, as highly intelligent and accomplished people tend not to be accepting of such
restrictions, but it could be worth it anyway.
likbez -> sanjait...
" highly intelligent and accomplished people tend not to be accepting of such restrictions, but it could be worth it anyway."
You are forgetting that it depends on a simple fact to whom political power belongs. And that's the key whether "highly intelligent
and accomplished people" will accept those restrictions of not.
If the government was not fully captured by financial capital, then I think even limited prosecution of banksters "Stalin's
purge style" would do wonders in preventing housing bubble and 2008 financial crush.
Please try to imagine the effect of trial and exile to Alaska for some period just a dozen people involved in Securitization
of mortgages boom (and those highly intelligent people can do wonders in improving oil industry in Alaska ;-).
Starting with Mr. Weill, Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Rubin, Mr. Phil Gramm, Dr. Summers and Mr. Clinton.
Anonymous -> Peter K....
"2003-2005 didn't have excess inflation and wage gains."
Monetary policy can not hinge just on inflation or wage gains. Why are wage gains a problem anyway?
Lets face it, this Fed is all about goosing up asset prices to generate short term gains in economic activity. Since the
early 90s, the Fed has done nothing but make policy based on Wall Street's interests. I can give them a pass on the dot com debacle
but not after that. This toxic relationship between wall street and the Fed has to end.
You want regulation? I would like to see
1) Reinstate Glass Steagall
2) impose a 10bp trans tax on trading financial instruments.
3) Outlaw any Fed person working for a bank/financial firm after they leave office. Bernanke, David Warsh etc included. That includes
Mishkin getting paid to shill for failing Iceland banks or Bernanke making paid speeches to hedge funds.
Anonymous -> EMichael...
Fact: there was a housing bubble that most at the Fed (including Bernanke) denied right upto the middle of 2007
Fact: Yellen, to her credit, has admitted multiple times over the years that low rates spur search for yield that blows bubbles
Fact: Bursting of the bubble led to unemployment for millions and U3 that went to 10%
what facts are you referring to?
EMichael -> Anonymous...
That FED rates caused the bubble.
to think this you have to ignore that a 400% Fed Rate increase from 2004 to 2005 had absolutely no effect on mortgage originations.
Then of course, you have to explain why 7 years at zero has not caused another housing bubble.
Correlation is not causation. Lack of correlation is proof of lack of causation.
pgl -> Anonymous...
"You are the guys who do not consider the counterfactual where higher rates would have prevented the housing bubble
in 2003-05 and that produced the great recession in the first place."
You are repeating the John B. Taylor line about interest rates being held "too low and too long". And guess what - most economists
have called Taylor's claim for the BS it really is. We should also note we never heard this BS when Taylor was part of the Bush
Administration. And do check - Greenspan and later Bernanke were raising interest rates well before any excess demand was generated
which is why inflation never took off.
So do keep repeating this intellectual garbage and we keep noting you are just a stupid troll.
Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Midlife increases in suicides and drug poisonings have been previously noted. However, that these upward trends were persistent
and large enough to drive up all-cause midlife mortality has, to our knowledge, been overlooked. If the white mortality rate for
ages 45−54 had held at their 1998 value, 96,000 deaths would have been avoided from 1999–2013, 7,000 in 2013 alone. If it had
continued to decline at its previous (1979‒1998) rate, half a million deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999‒2013,
comparable to lives lost in the US AIDS epidemic through mid-2015. Concurrent declines in self-reported health, mental health,
and ability to work, increased reports of pain, and deteriorating measures of liver function all point to increasing midlife distress.
Abstract
This paper documents a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United
States between 1999 and 2013. This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other
rich country saw a similar turnaround. The midlife mortality reversal was confined to white non-Hispanics; black non-Hispanics
and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 65 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall.
This increase for whites was largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic
liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall
increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases. Rising midlife mortality rates
of white non-Hispanics were paralleled by increases in midlife morbidity. Self-reported declines in health, mental health, and
ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work, as well as clinically measured
deteriorations in liver function, all point to growing distress in this population. We comment on potential economic causes and
consequences of this deterioration.
ilsm -> Sarah...
Murka is different. Noni's plan would work if it were opportune for the slavocracy and the Kochs and ARAMCO don't lose any
"growth".
Maybe cost plus climate repair contracts to shipyards fumbling through useless nuclear powered behemoths for war plans made
in 1942.
Someone gotta make big money plundering for the public good, in Murka!
CSP said...
The answers to our malaise seem readily apparent to me, and I'm a southern-born white male working in a small, struggling Georgia
town.
1. Kill the national war machine
2. Kill the national Wall Street financial fraud machine
3. Get out-of-control mega corporations under control
4. Return savings to Main Street (see #1, #2 and #3)
5. Provide national, universal health insurance to everyone as a right
6. Provide free education to everyone, as much as their academic abilities can earn them
7. Strengthen social security and lower the retirement age to clear the current chronic underemployment of young people
It seems to me that these seven steps would free the American people to pursue their dreams, not the dreams of Washington or
Wall Street. Unfortunately, it is readily apparent that true freedom and real individual empowerment are the last things our leaders
desire. Shame on them and shame on everyone who helps to make it so.
DeDude -> CSP...
You are right. Problem is that most southern-born white males working in a small, struggling Georgia town would rather die
than voting for the one candidate who might institute those changes - Bernie Sanders.
The people who are beginning to realize that the american dream is a mirage, are the same people who vote for GOP candidates
who want to give even more to the plutocrats.
kthomas said...
The kids in Seattle had it right when WTO showed up.
Why is anyone suprised by all this?
We exported out jobs. First all the manufacturing. Now all of the Service jobs.
But hey...we helped millions in China and India get out of poverty, only to put outselves into it.
America was sold to highest bidder a long long time ago. A Ken Melvin put it, the chickens came home to roost in 2000.
sanjait -> kthomas...
So you think the problem with America is that we lost our low skilled manufacturing and call center tech support jobs?
I can sort of see why people assume that "we exported out jobs" is the reason for stagnant incomes in the U.S., but it's still
tiresome, because it's still just wrong.
Manufacturing employment crashed in the US mostly because it has been declining globally. The world economy is less material
based than ever, and machines do more of the work making stuff.
And while some services can be outsourced, the vast majority can't. Period.
Inequality has been rising globally, almost regardless of trade practices. The U.S. has one of the more closed economies in
the developed world, so if globalization were the cause, we'd be the most insulated. But we aren't, which should be a pretty good
indication that globalization isn't the cause.
cm -> sanjait...
Yes, the loss of "low skilled" jobs is still a loss of jobs. Many people work in "low skilled" jobs because there are not enough
"higher skill" jobs to go around, as most work demanded is not of the most fancy type.
We have heard this now for a few decades, that "low skilled" jobs lost will be replaced with "high skill" (and better paid)
jobs, and the evidence is somewhat lacking. There has been growth in higher skill jobs in absolute terms, but when you adjust
by population growth, it is flat or declining.
When people hypothetically or actually get the "higher skills" recommended to them, into what higher skill jobs are they to
move?
I have known a number of anecdotes of people with degrees or who held "skilled" jobs that were forced by circumstances to take
commodity jobs or jobs at lower pay grades or "skill levels" due to aggregate loss of "higher skill" jobs or age discrimination,
or had to go from employment to temp jobs.
And it is not true that only "lower skill" jobs are outsourced. Initially, yes, as "higher skills" obviously don't exist yet
in the outsourcing region. But that doesn't last long, especially if the outsourcers expend resources to train and grow the remote
skill base, at the expense of the domestic workforce which is expected to already have experience (which has worked for a while
due to workforce overhangs from previous industry "restructuring").
likbez -> sanjait...
"Inequality has been rising globally, almost regardless of trade practices."
It is not some unstoppable global trend. This is neoliberal oligarchy coup d'état. Or as it often called "a quite coup".
sanjait -> cm...
"Yes, the loss of "low skilled" jobs is still a loss of jobs. Many people work in "low skilled" jobs because there
are not enough "higher skill" jobs to go around, as most work demanded is not of the most fancy type.
We have heard this now for a few decades, that "low skilled" jobs lost will be replaced with "high skill" (and better
paid) jobs, and the evidence is somewhat lacking. "
And that is *exactly my point.*
The lack of wage growth isn't isolated to low skilled domains. It's weak across the board.
What does that tell us?
It tells us that offshoring of low skilled jobs isn't the problem.
"And it is not true that only "lower skill" jobs are outsourced. Initially, yes, as "higher skills" obviously don't exist
yet in the outsourcing region."
You could make this argument, but I think (judging by your own hedging) you know this isn't the case. Offshoring of higher
skilled jobs does happen but it's a marginal factor in reality. You hypothesize that it may someday become a bigger factor ...
but just notice that we've had stagnant wages now for a few decades.
My point is that offshoring IS NOT THE CAUSE of stagnating wages. I'd argue that globalization is a force that can't really
be stopped by national policy anyway, but even if you think it could, it's important to realize IT WOULD DO ALMOST NOTHING to
alleviate inequality.
cm -> sanjait...
I was responding to your point:
"So you think the problem with America is that we lost our low skilled manufacturing and call center tech support jobs?"
With the follow-on:
"I can sort of see why people assume that "we exported out jobs" is the reason for stagnant incomes in the U.S., but
it's still tiresome, because it's still just wrong."
Labor markets are very sensitive to marginal effects. If let's say "normal" or "heightened" turnover is 10% p.a. spread out
over the year, then the continued availability (or not) of around 1% vacancies (for the respective skill sets etc.) each month
makes a huge difference. There was the argument that the #1 factor is automation and process restructuring, and offshoring is
trailing somewhere behind that in job destruction volume.
I didn't research it in detail because I have no reason to doubt it. But it is a compounded effect - every percentage point
in open positions (and *better* open positions - few people are looking to take a pay cut) makes a big difference. If let's say
the automation losses are replaced with other jobs, offshoring will tip the scale. Due to aggregate effects one cannot say what
is the "extra" like with who is causing congestion on a backed up road (basically everybody, not the first or last person to join).
"Manufacturing employment crashed in the US mostly because it has been declining globally. The world economy is less
material based than ever, and machines do more of the work making stuff."
Are you kidding me? The world economy is less material based? OK maybe 20 years after the paperless office we are finally printing
less, but just because the material turnover, waste, and environmental pollution is not in your face (because of offshoring!),
it doesn't mean less stuff is produced or material consumed. If anything, it is market saturation and aggregate demand limitations
that lead to lower material and energy consumption (or lower growth rates).
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, several nations (US and Germany among others) had programs to promote new car sales
(cash for clunkers etc.) that were based on the idea that people can get credit for their old car, but its engine had to be destroyed
and made unrepairable so it cannot enter the used car market and defeat the purpose of the program. I assume the clunkers were
then responsibly and sustainably recycled.
cm -> sanjait...
"The lack of wage growth isn't isolated to low skilled domains. It's weak across the board.
What does that tell us?
It tells us taht offshoring of low skilled jobs isn't the problem."
This doesn't follow. First of all, whether a job can or is offshored has little to do with whether it is "low skilled"
but more with whether the workflow around the job can be organized in such a way that the job can be offshore. This is less a
matter of "skill level" and more volume and immediacy of interaction with adjacent job functions, or movement of material across
distances. Also consider that aside from time zone differences (which are of course a big deal between e.g. US and Europe/Asia),
there is not much difference whether a job is performed in another country or in a different domestic region, or perhaps just
"working from home" 1 mile from the office, for office-type jobs. Of course the other caveat is whether the person can physically
attend meetings with little fuss and expense - so remote management/coordination work is naturally not a big thing.
The reason wages are stuck is that aggregate jobs are not growing, relative to workforce supply. When the boomers
retire for real in another 5-10 years, that may change. OTOH several tech companies I know have periodic programs where they offer
workers over 55 or so packages to leave the company, so they cannot really hurt for talent, though they keep complaining and are
busy bringing in young(er) people on work visa. Free agents, it depends on the company. Some companies hire NCGs, but they also
"buy out" older workers.
cm -> cm...
Caveat: Based on what I see (outside sectors with strong/early growth), domestic hiring of NCGs/"fresh blood" falls in two
categories:
Location bound jobs (sales, marketing, legal, HR, administration, ..., also functions attached to those or otherwise preferring
"cultural affinity") - which are largely staffed with locals, also foreigners (visa as well as free agent (green card/citizen))
"Technical functions" and "technical" back office (i.e. little or no customer contact) - predominantly foreigners on visa
(e.g. graduates of US colleges), though some "free agent" hiring may happen depending on circumstances
Then there is also the gender split - "technical/engineering" jobs are overweighed in men, except technical jobs in traditionally
"non-technical/non-product" departments which have a higher share of women.
All this is of course a matter of top-down hiring preferences, as generally everything is either controlled top-down or tacitly
allowed to happen by selective non-interference.
cm -> sanjait...
"You could make this argument, but I think (judging by your own hedging) you know this isn't the case. Offshoring of
higher skilled jobs does happen but it's a marginal factor in reality. You hypothesize that it may someday become a bigger
factor ... but just notice that we've had stagnant wages now for a few decades."
I've written a lot of text so far but didn't address all points ...
My "hedging" is retrospective. I don't hypothesize what may eventually happen but it is happening here and now. I don't presume
to present a representative picture, but in my sphere of experience/observation (mostly a subset of computer software), offshoring
of *knowledge work* started in the mid to late 90's (and that's not the earliest it started in general - of course a lot of the
early offshoring in the 80's was market/language specific customization, e.g. US tech in Europe etc., and more "local culture
expertise" and not offshoring proper). In the late 90's and early 2000's, offshoring was overshadowed by the Y2K/dotcom booms,
so that phase didn't get high visibility (among the people "affected" it sure did). Also the internet was not yet ubiquitous -
broadband existed only at the corporate level.
15-20 years ago it was testing and "low level" programming, perhaps self contained limited-complexity functions or modules
written to fairly rigid specifications, or troubleshooting and bug fixes implemented here or there.
Then 10-15 years ago it advanced to offshore product maintenance, following up on QA issues, small development projects,
or assisting/supporting roles in "real" projects (either conducted offshore or people visiting the domestic offices for weeks
to months).
This went on in parallel with domestic visa workers from the first 15-20 years ago wave either being encouraged or themselves
expressing a desire to go back home (personal, career, family reasons etc.) and "spread the knowledge" and advancing into technical/organization
management roles.
Then 5-10 years ago with clearly grown offshore skills (my theory is that people everywhere are cut from the same cloth,
and we are now at 10+ years industry experience in this narrative), the offshore sites started taking on ownership of product
components, while all the "previous" functions of testing, R&D support, tech pub (which I didn't mention earlier), etc. remained
and evolved further. Also IT (though IT support is more timezone bound and is thus present in all time zones).
Since then there has been little change, it is pretty much a steady state.
BTW the primary offshore location is India, probably in good part because of good to excellent English language skills,
and India's investment in STEM education and industry (especially software/services and this is even a public stereotype, but
for a reason).
Syaloch -> sanjait...
Whether low skilled jobs were eliminated due to offshoring or automation doesn't really matter. What matters is that the jobs
disappeared, replaced by a small number of higher skill jobs paying comparable wages plus a large number of low skill jobs offering
lower wages.
The aggregate effect was stagnation and even decline in living standards. Plus any new jobs were not necessarily produced in
the same geographic region as those that were lost, leading to concentration of unemployment and despair.
sanjait -> Syaloch...
"Whether low skilled jobs were eliminated due to offshoring or automation doesn't really matter. "
Well, actually it does matter, because we have a whole lot of people (in both political parties) who think the way to fight
inequality is to try to reverse globalization.
If they are incorrect, it matters, because they should be applying their votes and their energy to more effective solutions,
and rejecting the proposed solutions of both the well-meaning advocates and the outright demagogues who think restricting trade
is some kind of answer.
Syaloch -> sanjait...
I meant it doesn't matter in terms of the despair felt by those affected. All that matters to those affected is that they have
been obsoleted without either economic or social support to help them.
However, in terms of addressing this problem economically it really doesn't matter that much either. Offshoring is effectively
a low-tech form of automation. If companies can't lower labor costs by using cheaper offshore labor they'll find ways to either
drive down domestic wages or to use less labor. For the unskilled laborer the end result is the same.
Syaloch -> Syaloch...
See the thought experiment I posted on the links thread, and then add the following:
Suppose the investigative journalist discovered instead that Freedonia itself is a sham, and that rather than being imported
from overseas, the clothing was actually coming from an automated factory straight out of Vonnegut's "Player Piano" that was hidden
in a remote domestic location. Would the people who were demanding limits on Freedonian exports now say, "Oh well, I guess that's
OK" simply because the factory was located within the US?
Dan Kervick -> kthomas...
I enjoyed listening to this talk by Fredrick Reinfeldt at the LSE:
Reinfeldt is a center-right politicians and former Swedish Prime Minister. OF course, what counts as center-right in Sweden
seems very different from what counts as center-right in the US.
Perhaps there is some kind of basis here for some bipartisan progress on jobs and full employment.
William said...
I'm sure this isn't caused by any single factor, but has anyone seriously investigated a link between this phenomena and the
military?
Veterans probably aren't a large enough cohort to explain the effect in full, but white people from the south are the most
likely group to become soldiers, and veterans are the most likely group to have alcohol/drug abuse and suicide problems.
This would also be evidence why we aren't seeing it in other countries, no one else has anywhere near the number of vets we
have.
cm -> William...
Vets are surely part of the aggregate problem of lack of career/economic prospects, in fact a lot of people join(ed) the military
because of a lack of other jobs to begin with. But as the lack of prospects is aggregate it affects everybody.
" At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to
education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I'm not sure whether they're enough to cure existential despair."
UNOINIZED and (therefore shall we say) politicized: you are in control of your narrative -- win or lose. Can it get any more hopeful
than that? And you will probably win.
Winning being defined as labor eeking out EQUALLY emotionally satisfying/dissatisfying market results -- EQUAL that is with
the satisfaction of ownership and the consumer. That's what happens when all three interface in the market -- labor interfacing
indirectly through collective bargaining.
(Labor's monopoly neutralizes ownership's monopsony -- the consumers' willingness to pay providing the checks and balances
on labor's monopoly.)
If you feel you've done well RELATIVE to the standards of your own economic era you will feel you've done well SUBJECTIVELY.
For instance, my generation of (American born) cab drivers earned about $750 for a 60 hour (grueling) work week up to the early
80s. With multiples strip-offs I won't detail here (will on request -- diff for diff cities) that has been reduced to about $500
a week (at best I suspect!) I believe and that is just not enough to get guys like me out there for that grueling work.
Let's take the minimum wage comparison from peak-to-peak instead of from peak-to-trough: $11 and hour in 1968 -- at HALF TODAY'S
per capita income (economic output) -- to $7.25 today. How many American born workers are going to show up for $7.25 in the day
of SUVs and "up-to-date kitchens" all around us. $8.75 was perfectly enticing for Americans working in 1956 ($8.75 thanks to the
"Master of the Senate"). The recent raise to $10 is not good enough for Chicago's 100,000 gang members (out of my estimate 200,000
gang age minority males). Can hustle that much on the street w/o the SUBJECTIVE feeling of wage slavery.
Ditto hiring result for two-tier supermarket contracts after Walmart undercut the unions.
Without effective unions (centralized bargaining is the gold standard: only thing that fends off Walmart type contract muscling.
Done that way since 1966 with the Teamsters Union's National Master Freight Agreement; the long practiced law or custom from continental
Europe to French Canada to Argentina to Indonesia.
It occurred to me this morning that if the quintessential example of centralized bargaining Germany has 25% or our population
and produces 200% more cars than we do, then, Germans produces 8X as many cars per capita than we do!
And thoroughly union organized Germans feel very much in control of the narrative of their lives.
No longer thoroughly, with recent labor market reforms the door has likewise been blown open to contingent workforces, staffing
agencies, and similar forms of (perma) temp work. And moving work to nations with lower labor standards (e.g. "peripheral" Europe,
less so outside Europe) has been going on for decades, for parts, subassembly, and even final assembly.
Very rough figures: half a million Chicago employees may make less than $800 a week -- almost everybody should earn $800
...
... putative minimum wage? -- might allow some slippage in high labor businesses like fast food restaurants; 33% labor costs!
-- sort of like the Teamsters will allow exceptions when needed from Master agreements if you open up your books, they need your
working business too, consumer ultimately sets limits.
Average raise of $200 a week -- $10,000 a year equals $5 billion shift in income -- out of a $170 billion Chicago GDP (1% of
national) -- not too shabby to bring an end to gang wars and Despair American Style.
Just takes making union busting a felony LIKE EVERY OTHER FORM OF UNFAIR MARKET MUSCLING (even taking a movie in the movies).
The body of laws are there -- the issues presumably settled -- the enforcement just needs "dentures."
Union busting is generally (?) understood as direct interference with the formation and operation of unions or their members.
It is probably more common that employers are allowed to just go around the unions - "right to work", subcontracting non-union
shops or temp/staffing agencies, etc.
Why would people join a union and pay dues when the union is largely impotent to deliver, when there are always still enough
desperate people who will (have to) take jobs outside the union system? Employers don't have to bring in scabs when they can legally
go through "unencumbered" subcontractors inside or outside the jurisdiction.
cm -> cm...
It comes down to the collective action problem. You can organize people who form a "community" (workers in the same business
site, or similar aggregates more or less subject to Dunbar's number or with a strong tribal/ethnic/otherwise cohesion narrative).
Beyond that, if you can get a soapbox in the regional press, etc., otherwise good luck. It probably sounds defeatist but I don't
have a solution.
When the union management is outed for corruption or other abuses or questioable practices (e.g. itself employing temps or
subcontractors), it doesn't help.
Syaloch said...
There was a good discussion of this on last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher.
Surprisingly, I pretty much agree with David Frum's analysis -- and Maher's comment that Trump, with his recent book, "Crippled
America", has his finger on the pulse of this segment of the population. Essentially what we're seeing is the impact of economic
stagnation upon a culture whose reserves of social capital have been depleted, as described in Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone".
When the going gets tough it's a lot harder to manage without a sense of identity and purpose, and without the support of family,
friends, churches, and communities. Facebook "friends" are no substitute for the real thing.
Peter K. said...
Jared Bernsetin:
"...since the late 1970s, we've been at full employment only 30 percent of the time (see the data note below for an explanation
of how this is measured). For the three decades before that, the job market was at full employment 70 percent of the time."
We need better macro (monetary, fiscal, trade) policy.
Maybe middle-aged blacks and hispanics have better attitudes and health since they made it through a tough youth, have more
realistic expectations and race relations are better than the bad old days even if they are far from perfect. The United States
is becoming more multicultural.
Suicide, once thought to be associated with troubled teens and the elderly, is quickly becoming an age-blind statistic.
Middle aged Americans are turning to suicide in alarming numbers. The reasons include easily accessible prescription painkillers,
the mortgage crisis and most importantly the challenge of a troubled economy. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention claims
suicide rates now top the number of deaths due to automobile accidents.
The suicide rate for both younger and older Americans remains virtually unchanged, however, the rate has spiked for those
in middle age (35 to 64 years old) with a 28 percent increase (link is external) from 1999 to 2010. The rate for whites in
middle-age jumped an alarming 40 percent during the same time frame. According to the CDC, there were more than 38,000 suicides
(link is external) in 2010 making it the tenth leading cause of death in America overall (third leading cause from age 15-24).
The US 2010 Final Data quantifies the US statistics for suicide by race, sex and age. Interestingly, African-American suicides
have declined and are considerably lower than whites. Reasons are thought to include better coping skills when negative things
occur as well as different cultural norms with respect to taking your own life. Also, Blacks (and Hispanics) tend to have stronger
family support, community support and church support to carry them through these rough times.
While money woes definitely contribute to stress and poor mental health, it can be devastating to those already prone to depression
-- and depression is indeed still the number one risk factor for suicide. A person with no hope and nowhere to go, can now easily
turn to their prescription painkiller and overdose, bringing the pain, stress and worry to an end. In fact, prescription painkillers
were the third leading cause of suicide (and rising rapidly) for middle aged Americans in 2010 (guns are still number 1). ...
cm -> Fred C. Dobbs...
When few people kill themselves "on purpose" or die from self-inflicted but probably "unintended" harms (e.g. organ failure
or accidental death caused by substance abuse), it can be shrugged off as problems related to the individual (more elaboration
possible but not necessary).
When it becomes a statistically significant phenomenon (above-noise percentage of total population or demographically identifiable
groups), then one has to ask questions about social causes. My first question would be, "what made life suck for those people"?
What specific instrument they used to kill themselves would be my second question (it may be the first question for people who
are charged with implementing counter measures but not necessarily fixing the causes).
Since about the financial crisis (I'm not sure about causation or coincidence - not accidental coincidence BTW but causation
by the same underlying causes), there has been a disturbing pattern of high school students throwing themselves in front of local
trains. At that age, drinking or drugging oneself to death is apparently not the first "choice". Performance pressure *related
to* (not just "and") a lack of convincing career/life prospects has/have been suspected or named as a cause. I don't think teenagers
suddenly started to jump in front of trains that have run the same rail line for decades because of the "usual" and centuries
to millennia old teenage romantic relationship issues.
"... If returns to experience are in decline, if wisdom no longer pays off, then that might help suggest why a group of mostly older people who are not, as a group, disadvantaged might become convinced that the country has taken a turn for the worse. It suggests why their grievances should so idealize the past, and why all the talk about coal miners and factories, jobs in which unions have codified returns to experience into the salary structure, might become such a fixation. ..."
The Despair of Learning That Experience No Longer Matters
April 10, 2017
.....................
The arguments about Case and Deaton's work have been an echo of the one that consumed so much of the primary campaign, and
then the general election, and which is still unresolved: whether the fury of Donald Trump's supporters came from cultural and
racial grievance or from economic plight. Case and Deaton's scholarship does not settle the question. As they write, more than
once, "more work is needed."
But part of what Case and Deaton offer in their new paper is an emotional logic to an economic argument.
If returns to experience are in decline, if wisdom no longer pays off, then that might help suggest why a group of mostly
older people who are not, as a group, disadvantaged might become convinced that the country has taken a turn for the worse. It
suggests why their grievances should so idealize the past, and why all the talk about coal miners and factories, jobs in which
unions have codified returns to experience into the salary structure, might become such a fixation.
Whatever comes from the deliberations over Case and Deaton's statistics, there is within their numbers an especially interesting
story.
"... Instead of submitting a general application, as used to be the case in the past, and have the ability to work with the company to find the role that works best. HR has ruined a lot of good companies and their recruiting processes by going to rigid job descriptions instead of just hiring smart people and letting them work. ..."
The Economic Cycle Research Institute's
(ECRI) Lakshman Achuthan recently sat down with CNBC's
Michael Santoli to discuss the jobs growth downturn. Keep in mind, this conversation was held on
Wednesday, several days before Friday's
disappointing
jobs report.
Achuthan told Santoli there's a "
very clear cyclical downturn
in jobs growth, there's really no debating that, and it looks set to continue
."
Achuthan said January 2019 marked the cyclical peak in jobs growth, has been moving lower ever
since, and the trend is far from over.
Both nonfarm payrolls and the household survey
year-over-year growth are in cyclical downturns,
he said.
While the economic narratives via the mainstream financial press continue to cheerlead that the
consumer will lift all tides thanks to the supposedly strong jobs market, Achuthan believes the
downturn in jobs growth will start to "undermine consumer confidence." And it's the loss in consumer
confidence that could tilt the economy into recession.
He also said when examining cyclically
sensitive sectors of the economy, there are already "questionable jobs numbers," such as a significant
surge in the construction unemployment rate.
Achuthan said nonfarm payroll growth has plunged to a 17-month low, and the household survey is
even weaker. He said the top nonfarm payroll line would be revised down by half a million jobs in the
coming months, which would underline the weakness in employment.
Achuthan emphasized to Santoli that
ECRI's recession call won't be "taken off the table.
We've been talking
about a growth rate cycle slowdown.
We're slow-walking toward -- some recessionary window of vulnerability
-- we're
not there today -- but this piece of the puzzle [jobs growth downturn] is looking a bit wobbly. This is the main message that Wall
Street is missing."
As Wall Street bids stocks to near-record highs on "trade optimism" and the belief that the consumer
will save the day, in large part because of solid jobs growth.
ECRI's Leading Employment
Index, which correctly anticipated this downturn in jobs growth, is at its worst reading since the
Great Recession
.
And Wall Street's bet today is that the Fed can achieve a soft landing –
as in 1995-96 – when it started the rate cut cycle the same month the inflation downturn was signaled
by the U.S. Future Inflation Gauge (USFIG) turning lower.
And now it should become increasingly clear to readers why President Trump has sounded the alarm about the need for 100bps rate
cuts, quantitative easing, and emergency payroll tax cuts - it's because he's been briefed about the economic downturn that has
already started.
I don't agree with him that the Fed can do anything to correct this,
nor do they have an incentive to do so. The Fed is not on the
consumer's side. They will appropriate funds to whoever they want to,
just like 08, and give the middle finger to everyone else.
Job quality is horrible, particularly for US citizen STEM workers.
This has been the case since the downturn that began in the late
1990s. Trump needs to fully cancel the OPT program and almost
eliminate the H-1B program. Major employers don't even bother
considering US citizen STEM talent before they hire foreign
nationals.
Yes, but they don't bother to come out and tell you its a fake ad. One of the tragedies of the online job application process is that it forces a person, with little to no knowledge of a company and its internals, to pick, out of potentially hundreds of roles, which one would be best for them.
Instead of submitting a general application, as used to be the case in the past, and have the ability to work with the company to find the role that works best. HR has ruined a lot of good companies and their recruiting processes by going to rigid job descriptions instead of just hiring smart people and letting them work.
Clowns should be increasingly used in redundancy (layoff, firing) meetings until it
becomes the norm and employers start to compete with each other to offer the best clown
redundancy experience and promote it as a benefit.
It would also create clown jobs, which would probably require more clown schools, meaning
that the tuition prices would go through the roof and young people dreaming of becoming
redundancy clowns would either have to come from wealth or take out massive clown loans to
fund their education for clown universities and grad schools. Shareholders can only take so
much top line costs and Wall Street pressure would force corporations to improve return on
investment and reduce redundancy clown labor expenses. Sadly, redundancy clowns would find
themselves training their own replacements – HB1 clowns from "low cost" countries.
Employers would respond to quality criticisms of the HB1 clown experience by publishing
survey results showing very similar almost ex-employee satisfaction with the new clowns.
Eventually, of course, redundancy clowns will be replaced by AI and robots. It's just the
future and we will need to think about how to adapt to it today by putting in place a UBI for
the inevitable redundant redundancy clowns.
"... The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. ..."
"... The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed). ..."
"... But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated. ..."
"... The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them). ..."
"... The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). ..."
"... The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%. ..."
The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. Here's why: the 3.7% is
the U-3 rate, per the labor dept. But that's the rate only for full time employed. What the
labor dept. calls the U-6 includes what it calls discouraged workers (those who haven't looked
for work in the past 4 weeks). Then there's what's called the 'missing labor force'–i.e.
those who haven't looked in the past year. They're not calculated in the 3.7% U-3 unemployment
rate number either. Why? Because you have to be 'out of work and actively looking for work' to
be counted as unemployed and therefore part of the 3.7% rate.
The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It
should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking
for work even if unemployed).
But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept.
counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job.
It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise
the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and
'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated.
The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security
disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment
insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the
government and courts are going after them).
The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household
surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others
working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according
to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as
well). The labor dept. just makes assumptions about that number (conservatively, I may
add) and plugs in a number to be added to the unemployment totals. But it has no real idea of
how many undocumented or underground economy workers are actually employed or unemployed since
these workers do not participate in the labor dept. phone surveys, and who can blame them.
The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I
call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%.
Finally, there's the corroborating evidence about what's called the labor force
participation rate. It has declined by roughly 5% since 2007. That's 6 to 9 million workers who
should have entered the labor force but haven't. The labor force should be that much larger,
but it isn't. Where have they gone? Did they just not enter the labor force? If not, they're
likely a majority unemployed, or in the underground economy, or belong to the labor dept's
'missing labor force' which should be much greater than reported. The government has no
adequate explanation why the participation rate has declined so dramatically. Or where have the
workers gone. If they had entered the labor force they would have been counted. And their 6 to
9 million would result in an increase in the total labor force number and therefore raise the
unemployment rate.
All these reasons–-i.e. only counting full timers in the official 3.7%;
under-estimating the size of the part time workforce; under-estimating the size of the
discouraged and so-called 'missing labor force'; using methodologies that don't capture the
undocumented and underground unemployed accurately; not counting part of the SSI increase as
unemployed; and reducing the total labor force because of the declining labor force
participation-–together means the true unemployment rate is definitely over 10% and
likely closer to 12%. And even that's a conservative estimate perhaps." Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Jack Rasmus
Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, 'Central Bankers at the End of
Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression', Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs
at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle
is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com .
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By Laura Ungar, who health issues out of Kaiser Health News' St. Louis office, and Trudy
Lieberman, a journalist for more than 45 years, and a past president of the Association of
Health Care Journalists. Originally published by Kaiser Health
News .
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Army veteran Eugene Milligan is 75 years old and blind. He uses a
wheelchair since losing half his right leg to diabetes and gets dialysis for kidney
failure.
And he has struggled to get enough to eat.
Earlier this year, he ended up in the hospital after burning himself while boiling water for
oatmeal. The long stay caused the Memphis vet to fall off a charity's rolls for home-delivered
Meals on Wheels , so he had
to rely on others, such as his son, a generous off-duty nurse and a local church to bring him
food.
"Many times, I've felt like I was starving," he said. "There's neighbors that need food too.
There's people at dialysis that need food. There's hunger everywhere."
Indeed, millions of seniors across the country quietly go hungry as the safety net designed
to catch them frays. Nearly 8% of Americans 60 and older were "food insecure" in 2017,
according to a recent study released
by the anti-hunger group Feeding America. That's 5.5 million seniors who don't have
consistent access to enough food for a healthy life, a number that has more than doubled since
2001 and is only expected to grow as America grays.
While the plight of hungry children elicits support and can be tackled in schools, the
plight of hungry older Americans is shrouded by isolation and a generation's pride. The problem
is most acute in parts of the South and Southwest. Louisiana has the highest rate among states,
with 12% of seniors facing food insecurity. Memphis fares worst among major metropolitan areas,
with 17% of seniors like Milligan unsure of their next meal.
And government relief falls short. One of the main federal programs helping seniors is
starved for money. The Older Americans Act -- passed more than half a century ago as part of
President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reforms -- was amended in 1972 to provide for
home-delivered and group meals, along with other services, for anyone 60 and older. But its
funding has lagged far behind senior population growth, as well as economic inflation.
The biggest chunk of the act's budget, nutrition services, dropped by 8% over the past 18
years when adjusted for inflation, an AARP report
found in February. Home-delivered and group meals have decreased by nearly 21 million since
2005. Only a fraction of those facing food insecurity get any meal services under the act; a
U.S. Government
Accountability Office report examining 2013 data found 83% got none.
With the act set to expire Sept. 30, Congress is now considering its reauthorization and how
much to spend going forward.
Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 45% of eligible adults 60
and older have signed up for another source of federal aid: SNAP, the food stamp program for
America's poorest. Those who don't are typically either unaware they could qualify, believe
their benefits would be tiny or can no longer get to a grocery store to use them.
Even fewer seniors may have SNAP in the future. More than 13% of SNAP households with
elderly members would lose benefits under a recent Trump administration proposal.
For now, millions of seniors -- especially low-income ones -- go without. Across the nation,
waits are common to receive home-delivered meals from a crucial provider, Meals on Wheels, a
network of 5,000 community-based programs. In Memphis, for example, the wait to get on the
Meals on Wheels schedule is more than a year long.
"It's really sad because a meal is not an expensive thing," said Sally Jones Heinz,
president and CEO of the Metropolitan
Inter-Faith Association , which provides home-delivered meals in Memphis. "This shouldn't
be the way things are in 2019."
Since malnutrition exacerbates diseases and prevents healing, seniors without steady,
nutritious food can wind up in hospitals, which drives up Medicare and Medicaid costs, hitting taxpayers with an even
bigger bill . Sometimes seniors relapse quickly after discharge -- or worse.
Widower Robert Mukes, 71, starved to death on a cold December day in 2016, alone in his
Cincinnati apartment.
The Hamilton County Coroner listed the primary cause of death as "starvation of unknown
etiology" and noted "possible hypothermia," pointing out that his apartment had no electricity
or running water. Death records show the 5-foot-7-inch man weighed just 100.5 pounds.
A Clear Need
On a hot May morning in Memphis, seniors trickled into a food bank at the Riverside
Missionary Baptist Church, 3 miles from the opulent tourist mecca of Graceland. They picked up
boxes packed with canned goods, rice, vegetables and meat.
Marion Thomas, 63, placed her box in the trunk of a friend's car. She lives with chronic
back pain and high blood pressure and started coming to the pantry three years ago. She's
disabled, relies on Social Security and gets $42 a month from SNAP based on her income,
household size and other factors. That's much less than the average $125-a-month benefit for
households with seniors, but more than the $16 minimum that one in five such households get.
Still, Thomas said, "I can't buy very much."
A day later, the Mid-South Food Bank brought a "mobile pantry" to Latham Terrace, a senior
housing complex, where a long line of people waited. Some inched forward in wheelchairs; others
leaned on canes. One by one, they collected their allotments.
The need is just as real elsewhere. In Dallas, Texas, 69-year-old China Anderson squirrels
away milk, cookies and other parts of her home-delivered lunches for dinner because she can no
longer stand and cook due to scoliosis and eight deteriorating vertebral discs.
As seniors ration food, programs ration services.
Although more than a third of the Meals on Wheels money comes from the Older Americans Act,
even with additional public and private dollars, funds are still so limited that some programs
have no choice but to triage people using score sheets that assign points based on who needs
food the most. Seniors coming from the hospital and those without family usually top waiting
lists.
More than 1,000 were waiting on the Memphis area's list recently. And in Dallas, $4.1
million in donations wiped out a 1,000-person waiting list in December, but within months it
had crept back up to 100.
Nationally, "there are tens of thousands of seniors who are waiting," said Erika
Kelly , chief membership and advocacy officer for Meals on Wheels America. "While they're
waiting, their health deteriorates and, in some cases, we know seniors have died."
Edwin Walker, a deputy assistant secretary for the federal Administration on Aging,
acknowledged waits are a long-standing problem, but said 2.4 million people a year benefit from
the Older Americans Act's group or home-delivered meals, allowing them to stay independent and
healthy.
Seniors get human connection, as well as food, from these services. Aner Lee Murphy, a
102-year-old Meals on Wheels client in Memphis, counts on the visits with volunteers Libby and
Bob Anderson almost as much as the food. She calls them "my children," hugging them close and
offering a prayer each time they leave.
But others miss out on such physical and psychological nourishment. A devastating phone call
brought that home for Kim Daugherty, executive director of the Aging Commission of the
Mid-South , which connects seniors to service providers in the region. The woman on the
line told Daugherty she'd been on the waiting list for more than a year.
"Ma'am, there are several hundred people ahead of you," Daugherty reluctantly explained.
"I just need you all to remember," came the caller's haunting reply, "I'm hungry and I need
food."
A Slow Killer
James
Ziliak , a poverty researcher at the University of Kentucky who worked on the Feeding
America study, said food insecurity shot up with the Great Recession, starting in the late
2000s, and peaked in 2014. He said it shows no signs of dropping to pre-recession levels.
While older adults of all income levels can face difficulty accessing and preparing healthy
food, rates are highest among seniors in poverty. They are also high among minorities. More
than 17% of black seniors and 16% of Hispanic seniors are food insecure, compared with fewer
than 7% of white seniors.
A host of issues combine to set those seniors on a downward spiral, said registered
dietitian Lauri Wright , who
chairs the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of North Florida. Going to
the grocery store gets a lot harder if they can't drive. Expensive medications leave less money
for food. Chronic physical and mental health problems sap stamina and make it tough to cook.
Inch by inch, hungry seniors decline.
And, even if it rarely kills directly, hunger can complicate illness and kill slowly.
Malnutrition blunts immunity, which already tends to weaken as people age. Once they start
losing weight, they're more likely to grow frail and are more likely to die within a year, said
Dr. John Morley, director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University.
Seniors just out of the hospital are particularly vulnerable. Many wind up getting
readmitted, pushing up taxpayers' costs for Medicare and Medicaid. A
recent analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that Medicare could save $1.57 for
every dollar spent on home-delivered meals for chronically ill seniors after a
hospitalization.
Most hospitals don't refer senior outpatients to Meals on Wheels, and advocates say too few
insurance companies get involved in making sure seniors have enough to eat to keep them
healthy.
When Milligan, the Memphis veteran, burned himself with boiling water last winter and had to
be hospitalized for 65 days, he fell off the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association's radar. The
meals he'd been getting for about a decade stopped.
Heinz, Metropolitan's CEO, said the association is usually able to start and stop meals for
short hospital stays. But, Heinz said, the association didn't hear from Milligan and kept
trying to deliver meals for a time while he was in the hospital, then notified the Aging
Commission of the Mid-South he wasn't home. As is standard procedure, Metropolitan officials
said, a staff member from the commission made three attempts to contact him and left a card at
the blind man's home.
But nothing happened when he got out of the hospital this spring. In mid-May, a nurse
referred him for meal delivery. Still, he didn't get meals because he faced a waitlist already
more than 1,000 names long.
After questions from Kaiser Health News, Heinz looked into Milligan's case and realized
that, as a former client, Milligan could get back on the delivery schedule faster.
But even then the process still has hurdles: The aging commission would need to conduct a
new home assessment for meals to resume. That has yet to happen because, amid the wait,
Milligan's health deteriorated.
A Murky Future
As the Older Americans Act awaits reauthorization this fall, many senior advocates worry
about its funding.
In June, the U.S. House passed a $93 million increase to the Older Americans Act's nutrition
programs, raising total funding by about 10% to $1 billion in the next fiscal year. In
inflation-adjusted dollars, that's still less than in 2009. And it still has to pass in the
Republican-controlled Senate, where the proposed increase faces long odds.
U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the Civil Rights and Human
Services Subcommittee, expects the panel to tackle legislation for reauthorization of the act
soon after members return from the August recess. She's now working with colleagues "to craft a
strong, bipartisan update," she said, that increases investments in nutrition programs as well
as other services.
"I'm confident the House will soon pass a robust bill," she said, "and I am hopeful that the
Senate will also move quickly so we can better meet the needs of our seniors."
In the meantime, "the need for home-delivered meals keeps increasing every year," said
Lorena Fernandez, who runs a meal
delivery program in Yakima, Wash. Activists are pressing state and local governments to
ensure seniors don't starve, with mixed results. In Louisiana, for example, anti-hunger
advocates stood on the state Capitol steps in May and unsuccessfully called on the state to
invest $1 million to buy food from Louisiana farmers to distribute to hungry residents.
Elsewhere, senior activists across the nation have participated each March in "March for Meals"
events such as walks, fundraisers and rallies designed to focus attention on the problem.
Private fundraising hasn't been easy everywhere, especially rural communities without much
wealth. Philanthropy has instead tended to flow to hungry kids, who outnumber hungry seniors
more than 2-to-1, according to Feeding America.
"Ten years ago, organizations had a goal of ending child hunger and a lot of innovation and
resources went into what could be done," said Jeremy Everett, executive director of Baylor
University's Texas Hunger Initiative. "The same thing has not happened in the senior adult
population." And that has left people struggling for enough food to eat.
As for Milligan, he didn't get back on Meals on Wheels before suffering complications
related to his dialysis in June. He ended up back in the hospital. Ironically, it was there
that he finally had a steady, if temporary, source of food.
It's impossible to know if his time without steady, nutritious food made a difference. What
is almost certain is that feeding him at home would have been far cheaper.
Coulnd't get the JOLTS, November 2016 links to work, but the skills gap is
wild.
At an institution of higher ed I'm familiar with, both faculty and
administrative positions continue to be unfilled. There are very few candidates
even for entry level positions. Failed searches are now the norm. It's feast or
famine: either people are perfect for the job and have many options, or have no
related experience at all.
I wonder if the labor force participation rate is starting to catch up with
the job market. That is, there are a lot of healthy adults who have dropped out
of the workforce who would be the people you'd want in those positions.
Or that the job market is not nearly as liquid as they'd have you believe,
and people can't relocate from where they are because of adult children who
live with them, or things of that nature. All kinds of weird things now in the
job market. I know someone who commutes a significant distance to work that has
to look for another job because their workplace's health care plan only covers
a geographic area close to that job.
Discrimination thru stupid job descriptions is catching up to the
economy paying $12 per hour five years experience required nonsense job
descriptions designed to help the accredited and credentialed have a leg up
There seem to be three types of employment categories
real jobs that might last through 12 quarters
gigs
and surfdumb/$lavery gigs where your hours are messed with, your schedule
is messed with & you are expected to pay for the stupid uniform some bean
counter thinks is branding
IMUO it is not a skills gap it is the demanding of irrelevant capacities
and experience that almost always have very little to do with the actual
tasks required
"... Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so that people from other countries can have higher incomes, and leftists often agree because hey "free movement" and because after all the professional class jobs aren't at risk ..."
"... "I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people." ..."
"... No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g. outsource Brad DeLong . ..."
"... To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to live independently. ..."
"... Attempts at repairing historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and even as hostile since they can easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than those who racial politics focuses upon. ..."
"... The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back. ..."
"... The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who do you recommend they vote for? ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone must play the role of outsider. ..."
"... I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community. ..."
"... Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.) ..."
"... Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz status. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
fn: "Of course there is a subtext to these racist hate campaigns that someone else here raised
and rich ran with a bit, which is the hatred of the unemployed. I think a lot of people voting
leave imagine that the next thing on the agenda is slashing the dole to force poor white people
to do the work the Eastern Europeans did. "
Yes, in part. In part, also, people imagine that
poor citizens will get jobs that previously were done by migrants. This has a hatred of slackers
element that is bad, but as economics, it's pretty well-founded that if you reduce the size of
the labor pool relative to the population then unemployment will go down and wages will go up.
Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so that people
from other countries can have higher incomes, and leftists often agree because hey "free movement"
and because after all the professional class jobs aren't at risk. But strangely enough some
people seem to resent this.
Lupita: "I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash
and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world
powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating
trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people."
... ... ...
Rich Puchalsky 08.04.16 at 12:03 pm
"I can't recall any particular instance where someone made this argument."
No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole.
But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g.
outsource
Brad DeLong.
engels 08.04.16 at 12:25 pm
While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't recall any particular instance
where someone made this argument
Maybe this kind of thing rom Henry Farrell? (There may well be better examples.)
Is some dilution of the traditional European welfare state acceptable, if it substantially increases
the wellbeing of current outsiders (i.e. for example, by bringing Turkey into the club). My answer
is yes, if European leftwingers are to stick to their core principles on justice, fairness, egalitarianism
etc
Large numbers of low-income white southern Americans consistently vote against their
own economic interests. They vote to award tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations, to
cut unemployment benefits, to bust unions, to reward companies for outsourcing jobs, to resist
wage increases, to cut funding for health care for the poor, to cut Social Security and Medicare,
etc.
The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government
being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world.
Why might this be?
In the case of Mexico, because Peña Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that? It places
Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni.
Patrick 08.04.16 at 4:32 pm
To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws
them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture
of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view
taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis
of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the
hard work needed to live independently.
They see it as little different from letting your kid move back on after college and smoke
weed in your basement. They don't generally mind people being on unemployment transitionally,
but they're supposed to be a little embarrassed about it and get it over with as soon as
possible.
They not only worry that increased government social spending will incentivize bad
behavior, they worry it will destroy the cultural values they see as vital to Americas past
prosperity. They tend to view claims about historic or systemic injustice necessitating
collective remedy because they view the world as one in which the vagaries of fate decree that
some are born rich or poor, and that success is in improving ones station relative to where
one starts.
Attempts at repairing historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and
even as hostile since they can easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than
those who racial politics focuses upon. Left wing insistence on borrowing the nastiest
rhetoric of libertarians ("this guy is poor because his ancestors couldn't get ahead because
of historical racial injustice so we must help him; your family couldn't get ahead either but
that must have been your fault so you deserve it") comes across as both antithetical to their
values and as downright hostile within the values they see around them.
All of this can be easily learned by just talking to them.
It's not a great world view. It fails to explain quite a lot. For example, they have literally
no way of explaining increased unemployment without positing either that everyone is getting
too lazy to work, or that the government screwed up the system somehow, possibly by making it
too expensive to do business in the US relative to other countries. and given their faith in
the power of hard work, they don't even blame sweatshops- they blame taxes and foreign
subsidies.
I don't know exactly how to reach out to them, except that I can point to some things people
do that repulse them and say "stop doing that."
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 5:50 pm
The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is
overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot
to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw
them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back.
The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely
middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who
do you recommend they vote for?
There is serious deficit of both trust and information among the poor. Poor whites hardly have
a monopoly; black misleadership is epidemic in our era of Cory Booker socialism.
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 7:05 pm
Politics is founded on the complex social psychology of humans as social animals. We elevate
it from its irrational base in emotion to rationalized calculation or philosophy at our peril.
T 08.04.16 at 9:17 pm
@Layman
I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican to another.
They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush. They've figured out that the
mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud. So, is your argument is that Trump even
more racist? That kind of goes against the whole point of the OP. Not saying that race doesn't
matter. Of course it does. But Trump has a 34% advantage in non-college educated white men. It
just isn't the South. Why does it have to be just race or just class?
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim, but
my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
T 08.05.16 at 3:12 pm
@patrick @layman
Patrick, you're right about the Trump demographic. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/
Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole point
is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party since
Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than Bush
for reasons other than race? Are the folks that voted for the other candidates in the primary
less racist so Trump supporters are just the most racist among Republicans? Cruz less racist?
You have to explain the shift within the Republican party because that's what happened.
Anarcissie 08.06.16 at 3:00 pm
Faustusnotes 08.06.16 at 1:50 pm @ 270 -
Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among
the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether
an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage
together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that
groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone
must play the role of outsider. While Berne's theories are a bit too nifty for me to love
them, I have observed a lot of the behaviors he predicts. If one wanted to be sociobiological,
it is not hard to hypothesize evolutionary pressures which could lead to this sort of behavior
being genetically programmed. If a group of humans, a notably combative primate, does not have
strong social cohesion, the war of all against all ensues and everybody dies. Common affections
alone do not seem to provide enough cohesion.
In an earlier but related theory, in the United States, immigrants from diverse European communities
which fought each other for centuries in Europe arrived and managed to now get along because they
had a major Other, the Negro, against whom to define themselves (as the White Race) and thus to
cohere sufficiently to get on with business. The Negro had the additional advantage of being at
first a powerless slave and later, although theoretically freed, was legally, politically, and
economically disabled - an outsider who could not fight back very effectively, nor run away. Even
so, the US almost split apart and there continue to be important class, ethnic, religious, and
regional conflicts. You can see how these two theories resonate.
It may be that we can't have communities without this dark side, although we might be able to
mitigate some of its destructive effects.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to serve
their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy
like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz
status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus a component
of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master class. The business
end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities: slaves, sharecroppers,
poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled communities, predatory
institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
engels 08.07.16 at 1:02 am
But how did that slavery happen
Possible short answer: the level of technological development made slavery an efficient way
of exploiting labour. At a certain point those conditions changed and slavery became a drag on
further development and it was abolished, along with much of the racist ideology that legitimated
it.
Lupita 08.07.16 at 3:40 am
But how did that slavery happen
In Mesoamerica, all the natives were enslaved because they were conquered by the Spaniards.
Then, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas successfully argued before the Crown that the natives had souls
and, therefore, should be Christianized rather than enslaved. As Bruce Wilder states, this did
not serve the interests of the slaveholding elite, so the African slave trade began and there
was no Fray Bartolomé to argue their case.
It is interesting that while natives were enslaved, the Aztec aristocracy was shipped to Spain
to be presented in court and study Latin. This would not have happened if the Mesoamericans were
considered inferior (soulless) as a race. Furthermore, the Spaniards needed the local elite to
help them out with their empire and the Aztecs were used to slavery and worse. This whole story
can be understood without recurring to racism. The logic of empire suffices.
Workers of all ages are caught in a vice. Older workers need to keep working longer in an economy which values younger
workers (and their cheaper healthcare premiums). Younger workers are caught in the vice of "you don't have enough experience" and
"how do I get experience if nobody will hire me?"
Middle-aged workers are caught between the enormous Millennial generation seeking better jobs and the equally numerous baby Boom
generation seeking to work a few more years to offset their interest-starved retirement funds. (Thank you, predatory and rapacious
Federal Reserve for siphoning all our retirement fund interest to your cronies the Too Big to Fail Banks.)
Workers 55 and older are undeniably working longer. Here is the labor participation rate for 55+ workers:
... And here's why so many workers have to work longer--earned income's share of the GDP has been in a free-fall for decades
as Fed-funded financiers and corporations skim an ever greater share of the nation's GDP.
I am 62, very much an older worker with a startling 46 years in the work force (first formal paycheck, 1970 from Dole Pineapple).
(Thanks to the Fed's zero-interest rate policy, I should be able to retire at 93 or so--unless the Fed imposes a negative-rate policy
on me and the other serfs.)
But I recall with painful clarity the great hardships and difficulties I experienced in the recessions of 1973-74, 1981-82 and
1990-91 when I was in younger demographics. My sympathies are if anything more with younger workers, as it is increasingly difficult
to get useful on-the-job experience if you're starting out.
That said, here are some suggestions for 55+ workers seeking to find work in a very competitive job/paid work market.
1. Target sectors that haven't changed much. There's a reason so many older guys find a niche in Home Depot and
Lowe's--power saws, lumber, appliances, etc. haven't changed that much (except their quality has declined) for 40 years.
The same can be said of many areas of retail sales, house-cleaning, caring for children, etc.
Everyone knows the young have an advantage in sectors dominated by fast-changing technology, so avoid those sectors and stick
to sectors where your knowledge and experience is still applicable and valued by employers.
2. If at all possible, get your healthcare coverage covered by a spouse or plan you pay. Those $2,000/month premiums
for older workers are a big reason why employers would rather hire a $200/month premium younger worker, or limit the hours of older
workers to part-time so no healthcare coverage is required.
Telling an employer you already have healthcare coverage may have a huge impact on your chances of getting hired.
3. If you have any computer-network-social media skills, you can get paid to help everyone 55+ with fewer skills.
Your computer skills may not be up to the same level as a younger person's, but they are probably far more advanced than
other 55+ folks. Many older people are paying somebody $35/hour or more to help them set up email, fix their buggy PCs and Macs,
get them started on Facebook, etc. It might as well be you.
4. Focus on fields where managerial experience and moxie is decisive. Even highly educated young people have
a tough time managing people effectively because they're lacking experience. Applying biz-school case studies to the real world isn't
as easy as it looks. (I found apologizing to my older employees necessary and helpful. Do they teach this in biz school? I doubt
it.)
The ability to work with (and mentor) a variety of people is an essential skill, and it's one that tends to come with age and
experience.
5. Reliability matters. The ability to roll with the punches, show up on time, do what's needed to get the job
done, and focus on outcomes rather than process are still core assets in a work force.
Being 55+ doesn't automatically mean someone has those skills, but they tend to come with decades of work.
6. If nobody will hire you, start your own enterprise to fill scarcities and create value in your community.
The classic example is a handyperson, as it's very difficult for a young person to acquire the spectrum of experience needed to efficiently
assess a wide array of problems and go about fixing them.
#3 above is another example of identifying one's strengths and then seeking a scarcity to fill. Value, profits and high wages
flow to scarcity. Don't try to compete in supplying what's abundant; seek out scarcities and work on addressing those in a reliable
fashion.
Every age group has its strengths and weaknesses, and the task facing all of us is to 1) identify scarcities we can fill and 2)
seek ways to play to our strengths.
Shizzmoney
That's easy: the elitist old people in power will start a war, force the young people into that war, where they will all be
killed and the old people get their jobs.
Also, for those young people who protest the war, the government and corporate military security forces will detain and kill
them, too.
Exactly. Value youth? Is that why we saddle them with $250,000 worth of student loan debt and a degree in women's studies to
find no jobs because we let in illegals and skilled workers with Visas from foreign countries? Seems like we hate our youth. Of
course, they deserve it since they have been focused on being social justice fucktards rather than getting any marketable skills
and paying attention to what the gov't is doing to their future. Schadenfreude.
deja
No, they are stupid enough to saddle themselves with $250,000 worth of student loan debt for a degree in womens' studies.
cougar_w
The OP doesn't make much sense to me. Most of the work people my age do, the young people either don't want or are not qualified
for. Maintaining vital COBOL apps or air traffic controller software from the 70's? Really? And the ones are, they don't mind
working with older employees and seem to enjoy our "gravity".
I work in IT so maybe things are a bit different. Grey beards are huge around here and always will be.
But this has been a challenge for centuries, young people have to find their own way and "their way" (being probably a dream
from childhood or an inspiration from a college professor) might not be practical at first. They bounce around a little until
marriage hits them and then they find something that works for supporting a family. Same as it ever was. The idea that "their
way" is some kind of unswerving life's mission is usually part of the corporate "just do it" meme that sells $400 specialty running
shoes. Yeah whatever, just figure it out actually, life will tell you what you are supposed to be doing, and who you are supposed
to be doing it with.
GeezerGeek
The market for COBOL programmers had a sudden surge around Y2K, but only certain industries still maintain their old COBOL
apps. Curiously, a certain computer/software has recently tried pushing a visual version of COBOL, much like Gates did when he
came out with Visual Basic back in the early 1990s. I retired after 40 years in IT in 2011, so I am a bit out of touch where COBOL
is concerned. Does anyone even teach it anymore in college? Maybe if someone modified it to create phone apps and games it would
once again be popular.
Abbie Normal
Then it's a good thing I didn't follow my undergrad English Prof's advice and switch my major from science to arts, because
he thought there was some "real intelligence" in my writing style that even his grad students lacked. Maybe I should look him
up....
eatthebanksters
I have two buddies, one a 61 year old attonery who has never lost a case and the other a 59 year old facilities director. The
lawyer has been seeking work for 6 years and has pretty much given up...he can't even get hired at lesser jobs because he is overqualified
and 'will leave when something better comes along'. The facilities director has a great resume and knows his stuff but has been
out of work for almost two years. He has come in 'second' more times than I can count. He is working od jobs and living with a
friends mother, exchanging work on the house for rent and meals. Welcome to Obama's economy.
N0TaREALmerican
He'd work if he'd accept less money, but he feels "entitled to earn what HE thinks he's worth". Just another lazy old-fart
who feels the world owns him something. Welcome to a competitive economy old-fart, nobody said life was fair. Stop bitching and
work for less.
mary mary
If you ever need an attorney, you might look for an experienced attorney who worked so hard that he never lost a case.
If you ever inherit a zillion bucks and buy a bunch of properties, you might confer with an experienced facility manager who
actually managed a bunch of properties.
I doubt an attorney who never lost a case achieved that record by going around saying, "somebody owes me something".
I doubt a facilities manager who managed a bunch of properties achieved that by going around saying, "somebody owes me something".
Baa baa
What a load of crap. Most will take anything. I know, I am one. Don't lecture me about being "entitled" you punk. Your post
reeks of the entitlement generation. Slug through 50 years of working, rearing a family, kids to college... I am beginning to
wonder if the hundreds of thousands spent on the education and well-being of your ingrate ass was a misallocation of funds.
corporatewhore
Give credit where credit is due. This inability to find work at an older age has been going on for years and can't be blamed
on Obama. Senior buyers at Macy's, older workers at Monsanto or television weather people at KSDK in St Louis all suffer the same
fate. Labor cost and benefits are all less for the younger generation no matter what level of experience or capability. We develop
a mindset throughout our productive career that we are indispensable and worth it because of our knowledge, contacts and industry
wherewithal. It's all an illusion and we are NOT prepared or equipped to face the reality at an older age that we are completely
dispensable.
At an older age if you want meaning you have to find it and think out of the paradigm that you've been led to believe is real.
No one owes you anything for your experience or wealth of knowledge. Figure it out and rethink yourself as to what you love to
do and want to do not what you must do to make money.
At 58 in 2008 I was fucked over by my corporation and wallowed in miserableness and poverty while i worked every contact and
firm I knew. Nothing resulted. I had to work 3 part time jobs until I earned 2 full time ones and work over 90 hours per week
because I enjoy it. It is work that covers the bills and allows me to create what I want to work on for the future while I still
can walk think and breathe.
Best advice to your children: Go in business for yourself because just as it happened to me, it will happen to you when you
become 55.
Nobody For President
Thanks for that, corporate whore. That sounds like an honest reprise of an incredibly hard time in your life, and I totally
agree. I'm telling all (4) my grandkids, from 7 to 20, to live your life, not someone else's. The oldest one gets it, and I think
the other ones will also, if I live long enough, because I walked that walk.
I'm old, and work full time (more or less) and make a living - not a killing, but a living - at it.
nuubee
Good news old people, the economy currently doesn't value anything you can produce, unless you can print money.
Cautiously Pessimistic
You get up every morning
From your 'larm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above
And people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty
And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
... ... ...
mary mary
MSM says Baby Boomers "have stolen everything", but in fact Baby Boomers are having to extend their careers because they're
broke. This is the easily foreseeable result of 20+ years of the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low, making Baby Boomers
suffer the double-whammy of (1) not having their deferred income (pensions) grow, while (2) inflation in fact continued at 6%
annual, thanks also to the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low.
Yes, someone "have stolen everything". That someone is the owners of the Fed.
"... Being an unemployed techie myself, I cannot begin to describe what a godsend this book is. NETSLAVES finally reveals the truth about what it is to be part of what is likely the most under-appreciated sect of the working class. ..."
"... It is a comment on upper and middle management corporate business practices in general, and the dismal fate of the vast armies of workers used as cannon fodder since day one for the follies of unscrupulous robber barons; or morons who just happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time to make market killings; or Scrooges who will never learn what it is to have a heart. Baldwin and Lessard are heirs to the muckrakers of the early 20th Century. Corporate E-merica, take heed. ..."
Being an unemployed techie myself, I cannot begin to describe what a godsend this book is. NETSLAVES finally reveals the
truth about what it is to be part of what is likely the most under-appreciated sect of the working class.
The stale stories of "dorm-room success" have been supplanted by the pathetically sad/darkly humorous accounts of those who
have been saddled with with million-dollar job titles, bleeding ulcers, and ramen noodle grocery budgets.
NETSLAVES is an entertaining and enligtening read, written by two men who have actually been passengers in every sewer pipe
that is the new-media industry. This book is a must for every modern library, as it can be considered a "warning shot" for those
with IT aspirations, or as a source of vindication for those of us who have been dismissed and trampled on. Bravo!
A customer, November 24, 1999
Handwriting on the Wall
NetSlaves tells it like it is for the millions of us on the business end of the IPO and monopoly screwdrivers. Apply these
lessons to the law, publishing, automotive, chemical, airline industries, etc., etc. This book is not just a cerebral and satirical
indictment of the internet industry.
It is a comment on upper and middle management corporate business practices in general, and the dismal fate of the vast
armies of workers used as cannon fodder since day one for the follies of unscrupulous robber barons; or morons who just happen
to find themselves in the right place at the right time to make market killings; or Scrooges who will never learn what it is to
have a heart. Baldwin and Lessard are heirs to the muckrakers of the early 20th Century. Corporate E-merica, take heed.
"... I know what it feels like to be marginalized because you're out of work. To be judged by others as if there's something wrong with you. To grow increasingly depressed, demoralized and despairing as three months turns into six months and that goes on for a year or more; as rejection after rejection becomes crushing, humiliating, and leaves you feeling worthless. ..."
"... All money-related impacts aside, you lose confidence. You wear out. You start to give up ..."
"... Now and then, an acquaintance will make an off-hand remark about those who borrow money or live on credit cards. The assumption is that credit purchases are frivolous, or that the person who racks up consumer debt does so out of irresponsibility and poor judgment. ..."
"... Never assume. Yours truly? I borrowed to put food on the table. I borrowed to pay for school supplies for my kids. I borrowed to enable them to take advantage of academic opportunities that they earned through their own hard work. I also counted my blessings. While I had no family to assist, my kids were healthy and doing well, I was basically healthy despite chronic pain, and I was able to use credit. Borrowing is a double-edged sword of course, especially if it continues for an extended period. But for my little household, debt was the only path to survival. For all I know, it will be again. ..."
"... These days? I still live on a tight budget, I dream of recovering from the years of financial devastation "someday," and I take every gig I can get. Willingly. I've gained new skills along the way and continue to refine them, I'm always looking for another project and thrilled when I nab one, and I'm accustomed to a 12- to 14-hour workday. I put in long hours throughout my corporate career and I have no problem doing so now. In fact, I'm grateful for these workdays and I take none of them for granted. Moreover, I suggest that few of us should take our sources of income as a given ..."
"... The longer that Americans are unemployed, the more likely they are to report signs of poor psychological well-being," says the study. "About one in five Americans who have been unemployed for a year or more say they currently have or are being treated for depression - almost double the rate among those who have been unemployed for five weeks or less. ..."
"... To be in this position - wanting to work, needing to work, knowing you still have much to contribute but never getting a foot in the door - is deeply frustrating, horribly depressing, and leaves us feeling powerless. Add up these elements and you have the formula for despair. ..."
"... One small act of compassion can breathe new hope into the worst situation. And here's what I know with 100% certainty. We may be unemployed, we may be depressed but we aren't powerless if we come together and try to help one another. ..."
Are you over 50, unemployed, depressed and feeling powerless? For that matter, are you any age
and feeling hopeless because you can't seem to land a job?
Frustrated Middle Age Man
The recession may be officially over, and for some segments of the population, things are
looking up. But too many are still sinking or hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Long-term
unemployment or underemployment has become a way of life.
This issue, for me, is personal.
I know what it feels like to be marginalized because you're out of work. To be judged by
others as if there's something wrong with you. To grow increasingly depressed, demoralized and
despairing as three months turns into six months and that goes on for a year or more; as
rejection after rejection becomes crushing, humiliating, and leaves you feeling worthless.
All money-related impacts aside, you lose confidence. You wear out. You start to give up.
And you don't even make it into the "statistics." It's been too long since your last employment
relationship.
Overqualified, Over-Educated, Over 50
Despite my fancy educational background and shiny corporate career history, for a number of years
I was unable to obtain work that was even remotely close to using my skills. Paying me a living
wage? Let's not even discuss it. I must have applied to 100 positions over the course of several
years, attended the usual networking events, and schmoozed every contact I could come up with.
No go. I suffered from the three O's: Overqualified, Over-educated and Over 50, though I may not
have looked it. That last? If you ask me, age was the kicker. Throughout that period, as
post-divorce skirmishes continued to flare (further complicating matters), I nonetheless took
every project I could eke out of the woodwork, supplemented by debt.
Hello, bank bail-out? How about a few bucks for those of us who foot the bill in tax dollars?
The Borrowing Trap
Now and then, an acquaintance will make an off-hand remark about those who borrow money or live
on credit cards. The assumption is that credit purchases are frivolous, or that the person who
racks up consumer debt does so out of irresponsibility and poor judgment.
Never assume. Yours truly? I borrowed to put food on the table. I borrowed to pay for school
supplies for my kids. I borrowed to enable them to take advantage of academic opportunities that
they earned through their own hard work. I also counted my blessings. While I had no family to
assist, my kids were healthy and doing well, I was basically healthy despite chronic pain, and I
was able to use credit. Borrowing is a double-edged sword of course, especially if it continues
for an extended period. But for my little household, debt was the only path to survival. For all
I know, it will be again.
Fighting Your Way Back
These days? I still live on a tight budget, I dream of recovering from the years of financial
devastation "someday," and I take every gig I can get. Willingly. I've gained new skills along
the way and continue to refine them, I'm always looking for another project and thrilled when I
nab one, and I'm accustomed to a 12- to 14-hour workday. I put in long hours throughout my
corporate career and I have no problem doing so now. In fact, I'm grateful for these workdays and
I take none of them for granted. Moreover, I suggest that few of us should take our sources of
income as a given.
You know the expression - "There but for the grace of God go I." Misfortune can visit any one of
us. Layoff. Accident or illness. Gray divorce. The phone call or email with no warning, saying
"you're done" as you're replaced by someone 20 years younger.
And yes, I've internalized the wisdom of this little gem: "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a
door." But I also know it isn't always possible, and the secret to success is not as simple as
hard work. It's aided by the assistance of others, not to mention - luck.
Forbes staff writer Susan Adams cites a Gallup poll as follows:
The longer that Americans are unemployed, the more likely they are to report signs of poor
psychological well-being," says the study. "About one in five Americans who have been
unemployed for a year or more say they currently have or are being treated for depression -
almost double the rate among those who have been unemployed for five weeks or less.
She goes on to note:
The long-term unemployed, unfortunately, have good reason to be depressed. They suffer
plenty of discrimination in the job market. A 2012 study by economist Rand Ghayad found that
employers preferred candidates with no relevant experience, but who had been out of work for
less than six months, to those with experience who had been job hunting for longer than that.
.... ... ...
How many of you have found yourselves laid off and unable to get another job?
How many of you are
struggling in midlife to create a career where once you were responsible for taking care of a
family?
How many of you have knocked on doors and connected until your blue in the face, only to give
up?
How many of you have drained away any savings you may have had or incurred crushing debt?
Have you had more success at creating new ventures for yourself - a business or freelance work?
Were you able to rely on the assistance of family or friends for a temporary period?
If you're over 50, have you found it harder? Have you had an experience similar to Cindy's?
I'm certain that many of you have fought your way back; I'm still fighting after years, but I
have seen progress. Slower than I'd like, but progress all the same.
If someone helped you out, have you paid it forward by making connections for others?
Please do read this comment from Cindy. I have responded as best I can. I'm sure she would
welcome your suggestions.
A Note on Despair
To be in this position - wanting to work, needing to work, knowing you still have much to
contribute but never getting a foot in the door - is deeply frustrating, horribly depressing, and
leaves us feeling powerless. Add up these elements and you have the formula for despair.
It's brutally hard to fight your way back from despair. But sometimes, an act of compassion can
help.
I've been on the receiving end of those incredible kindnesses - from strangers, from readers, and
from one friend in particular, herself too long living on the edge.
One small act of compassion can breathe new hope into the worst situation. And here's what I know
with 100% certainty. We may be unemployed, we may be depressed but we aren't powerless if we
come together and try to help one another.
Don't panic is always a good advice. Following it is another story...
Notable quotes:
"... Using contacts, no matter how far in the past they rest, is nothing to be ashamed of! You've probably spent most of your life working, and meeting a lot of people along the way. ..."
"... Your resume should be tailored to each and every job you apply for. While it is important to showcase your talent and skills, how you present the information is equally important. ..."
When you find yourself over 50 and unemployed, the thought of finding another job may seem daunting and hopeless.
It is quite easy to become discouraged because many people fear being stereotyped because of their age, the tough job market,
or the prospect of being interviewed by someone half their age. However, there are some things the older unemployed should keep in
mind while on the job search. Using the following tips will increase your chances of a short job search and create an overall more
pleasant experience.
Quit telling yourself that no one hires older workers. This is simply just not true. In some cases older
workers have to exert more effort to overcome discrimination, but this is certainly not the case for every employer. There are
even entire websites with jobs posted specifically for older workers, and a quick Google search will render you a list of those
websites. Take advantage of such resources!
Take advantage of new technology. Learn to blog and micro-blog, via Twitter, about your profession and interests.
You should even create a LinkedIn profile (a website similar to Facebook
yet has a more career oriented function) to assist it meeting people in your desired field. All of which will help you stay fine
tuned on your skills, while developing new ones. Learning to use social networking will indicate to potential employers that you
can adapt to change and learn new things, particularly technology, fairly quickly.
Use all those hard earned contacts. Using contacts, no matter how far in the past they rest, is nothing
to be ashamed of! You've probably spent most of your life working, and meeting a lot of people along the way. It is completely
acceptable to reach out to former colleagues, class mates, co-workers and employers for job possibilities. Using resources like
Facebook or LinkedIn are great ways to find those long lost contacts as well. Chances are they would love to hear from you and
help you out if possible.
Don't clutter your resume. Your resume should be tailored to each and every job you apply for. While
it is important to showcase your talent and skills, how you present the information is equally important. This means keep
it straight to the point and relate your past experience to the skills necessary for the job you are applying for. Essentially,
don't do a history dump of every job you've ever had, instead, make each word count!
Don't act superior to the interviewer. It is likely that the people interviewing you will be younger than
you. But this does not mean you should look down upon them. Obviously they have earned their position, and if you play your cards
right, in due time, you will earn yours! Even if you've worked more years than your interviewer has been alive, it's not okay
to tell him or her that you can "teach" them anything. A better idea would be to state your experience working in a multi-generational
work place.
Use these tips to help make your job search less stressful and more positive. Whatever you do, don't throw in the towel before
you've even tried. Your experience and knowledge will be recognized. All you need is the right employer to identify it.
This is essentially a scam. Help in landing $13 per hour job is not a big achievement.
Notable quotes:
"... Older workers like Lane make up a larger percentage of the persistently jobless than ever before. Nearly 40 percent of unemployed workers are over the age of 45 - a 30 percent rise from the 1980s. ..."
"... P2E is an intensive, individualized five-week bootcamp that teaches job skills and works to build job-seekers' confidence and emotional health. "We acknowledge that there are serious emotional issues for people who'd been unemployed for that long," Carbone said. ..."
"... The privately-funded program makes deals with businesses who hire P2E graduates for "internships," a few-week trial period for the would-be employee, whose salary is subsidized by the WorkPlace. Often, it leads to full-time work. According to P2E, 80 percent of their participants have been granted trial periods, and of those, more than 85 percent have been hired by employers. ..."
"... This acceptance of a new economic reality is at the heart of P2E; the program isn't solving the problems of precarity, real-wage decline, or manufacturing losses so much as doing damage control. ..."
"... "I'd say 100 percent of the people who went through Platform are making less than they did previously," said Carbone. "We get them prepared for the fact that their standard of living will go down, that they probably have to change careers." ..."
When Bret Lane was laid off from his telecommunications sales job after 16 years, he wasn't worried.
He'd never been unemployed for more than a few days since he started working as a teenager. But months
passed, and he couldn't find a job. One day, he heard the Purina plant in his Turlock, Calif., neighborhood
was hiring janitors for $14 an hour. When he arrived early at 4 a.m., he counted more than 400 people
lined up to interview.
"That's when I realized things had gotten serious," said Lane, 53, who called being out of work
"pure hell."
Lane's experience is hardly unique.
As of September 2013, 4
million people had been unemployed for six months or more. The economy has been slow to regain the
8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession, making prospects grim for many of the long-term
unemployed.
Older workers like Lane make up a larger percentage of the persistently jobless than ever before.
Nearly 40 percent of unemployed workers are over the age of 45 - a 30 percent rise from the 1980s.
And for this group, the job hunt can be particularly long and frustrating. Unemployed people aged
45-54 were jobless for 45 weeks on average, and those 55 to 64 were jobless for 57 weeks, according
to an October 2013
Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
Younger workers didn't have such a hard time, perhaps because many employers perceive them to
be more energetic or productive than older workers, said Linda Barrington, an economist at Cornell
University's Institute for Compensation Studies. Employers "acting on such inaccurate assessments
or stereotypes is what benefits younger workers and disadvantages older workers," she said.
Addressing the emotional side of unemployment
An innovative program based in Bridgeport, Conn., is helping to get those who are over 50 and
unemployed for long periods back into the market. Platform to Employment started in 2011 when a Connecticut
job center called the WorkPlace was overwhelmed by calls from "99ers"-people who had been unemployed
for 99 weeks, exhausting their unemployment benefits-many of whom were older workers.
The exact number of 99ers across the country is unknown; the Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn't
distinguished between 99ers and those out of work for a year since 2010, an oversight that
some say renders this group even more politically invisible. Already, the long-term unemployed
face biases in hiring. It's both legal and common for employers to write "unemployed need not apply"
on job postings.
There has been virtually no public policy tackling long-term unemployment since the recession
hit, said P2E founder Joe Carbone, and his program seeks to fill that gap. "These people have lost
access to opportunity, which is a basic American tenet," said Carbone. "We find a way to make them
competitive and feel hopeful."
P2E is an intensive, individualized five-week bootcamp that teaches job skills and works to build
job-seekers' confidence and emotional health. "We acknowledge that there are serious emotional issues
for people who'd been unemployed for that long," Carbone said.
The privately-funded program makes deals with businesses who hire P2E graduates for "internships,"
a few-week trial period for the would-be employee, whose salary is subsidized by the WorkPlace. Often,
it leads to full-time work. According to P2E, 80 percent of their participants have been granted
trial periods, and of those, more than 85 percent have been hired by employers.
Accepting a new economic reality
Bret Lane washes out his coffee pot at his home after a shift at a call center in San Diego, Calif.,
on Oct. 31. Lane was laid off after 16 years as a salesman in telecommunications and was unemployed
until he got a job at a call center. Sandy
Huffaker / Getty Images for NBC News
The program has spread to 10 other cities across the United States, including San Diego, where
Lane, a P2E graduate, has been employed full-time at a call center since May. After a year and nine
months of unemployment, Lane sold his two-bedroom house, pared down his possessions to fit in a 5x10
storage unit, and drove to San Diego to live with his sister. That's when he saw an ad in the paper
for Platform to Employment.
He learned how to make his online resume more searchable by adding keywords, as well as how to
create an impressive LinkedIn profile. "It also occurred to me that I was being discriminated against"
because of age, rather than being rejected for not being good enough. Lane now makes about half of
his previous salary and still lives with his sister, but he's "happy to be working again."
This acceptance of a new economic reality is at the heart of P2E; the program isn't solving the
problems of precarity, real-wage decline, or manufacturing losses so much as doing damage control.
"I'd say 100 percent of the people who went through Platform are making less than they did previously,"
said Carbone. "We get them prepared for the fact that their standard of living will go down, that
they probably have to change careers."
This guidance is necessary, Barrington said. "A lot of [the long-term unemployed] came into the
workforce still thinking you could work for the same company for your whole life," she said. "Someone
has to sit you down and tell you that's not going to happen."
She added that businesses need to be reminded of the value of older workers, who often bring intangible
skills, such as punctuality, responsibility, and "being able to write a memo," that younger employees
may not yet have.
Heidi DeWyngaert, President of Bankwell, a holding company of several banks in Connecticut, said
one of her banks hired an older worker from P2E who is succeeding on the job precisely for these
reasons. "She's mature, reliable and responsible with a great attitude," said DeWyngaert.
The program has gained so much prominence that it's become competitive in its own right. Early
last year, after P2E was featured on 60 Minutes, the Bridgeport office was flooded with inquiries.
The program routinely gets 1,000 applicants for around 20 spots.
Hoping to spark a national conversation
Vanessa Jackson, 57, saw the segment and kept track of P2E's growth until it expanded to her area
in Chicago. Jackson had been unemployed off and on since 2008, when she lost her $100,000 job as
a marketing manager during a corporate downsizing. "I thought, of course, I would get another comparable
job," she said.
But it didn't happen. She decided to get an MBA to "ride out the recession," but that just landed
her more debt. She finally got a part-time job as a deli clerk, until she broke her arm and went
on disability for 10 months. Her $300,000 401(k) account dwindled to $60,000. She sold her house
in the suburbs and moved in with her boyfriend on the South Side of Chicago.
"It was the most desperate thing in the world," Jackson said. It pained her to remember the days
when recruiters would tell her she was one of "the top African-American women in marketing."
P2E "revived my energy," she said. "It lifted the depression that was very much there."
Jackson now works part-time as a project coordinator at a home care service agency for $13 an
hour, which she admits is inadequate for her level of education. Still, she almost missed out on
the opportunity. When P2E came to Chicago earlier this year, she wasn't selected at first. "It felt
like applying for a job in itself," she said. "I beseeched [Chicago program manager Michael Morgan].
He said 'I admire your ambition' and let me in."
Carbone is all too aware of P2E's limited reach. "We've helped hundreds of people, but that doesn't
put even a small dent in the amount who need help," he said. Carbone hopes to spark a national conversation
and, eventually, get the attention of Washington.
"Let's be clear," Carbone said. "I wouldn't be doing this if there were appropriate and relevant
government policies."
2000 | Rated R directed by Steven Soderbergh
Based on the true story of an unemployed mother of three who forced her way into a job as a legal clerk and built an anti-pollution
case against a California utility company. Erin Brockovich has become a name for someone with tenacity and perseverance.
The Journey of Natty Gann
1985 | Rated PG directed by Jeremy Kagan
Disney's family-friendly adventure demonstrates how tough the Great Depression was on kids, namely the teenage girl of the title
who journeys across America to reunite with her father. Grounded by strong performances, including a young John Cusack, this gem
serves as a fine introduction of a difficult subject to younger viewers.
Tootsie
1982 | Rated PG directed by Sydney Pollack
This light-hearted, quirky comedy stars Dustin Hoffman as an unemployed actor who pretends to be a woman for a full-time role in
a soap opera. Beneath the hilarity is a sobering reminder that landing a job sometimes requires thinking outside the box, to say
the least.
Up in the Air
2009 | Rated R directed by Jason Reitman
George Clooney is stellar as a veteran hatchet man who has lost his ability to form meaningful relationships, living a life on the
road. Ultimately this is a poignant drama about identity and what defines us. If we are nothing more than our occupation, what remains
when that is gone?
Russ Breimeier, a freelance film critic who lives in Indianapolis, was unemployed for two years until recently landing a part-time
job.
Probably not. But the quantities necessary might diminish considerably...
Notable quotes:
"... Adapted from the new book The Future of the Professions by Richard Susskind & Daniel Susskind (Oxford University Press, 2015).Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... The proof is in how there is one premium cost if the medical provider is on their own and magically it is cheaper if theu are part of a group or hospital.. Same doctor same practices lower rates prima facia evidence of insurance company rate fraud ..."
"... Re solidarity, you might be surprised. One reason law school enrollments are down is that it is becoming public knowledge that employment for graduates in upwardly mobile career positions is way down ..."
"... Many are shunted into low level proletarian type legal work, churning out evidence for use in lawsuits owned and managed by large firms. Lawyers who do this earn less then a good paralegal with less job security and no benefits. ..."
"... So much of the 'grunt work' of professions – once the entry and training province of new graduates – is now being done overseas by shops that specialize in legal research, or reading x-rays, or accounting and tax preparation. ..."
"... The 'grunt work' that grounds one in the full knowledge of the profession and how it works is slowly removed from the profession. That omission leaves future practitioners with an incomplete understanding. ..."
"... This loss makes them more reliant on big data as both assistant and excuse/defense, and makes them less master craftsmen (if I may use the term without giving offense) and more the front-end interface of one-size-fits-all processes. Very good for corporate profits. Not so good for the professions or their clients. ..."
"... Long ago, firms started off-shoring basic, tedious, repetitive tasks, generally considered as unrewarding, such as software testing or error correction to India. The idea was to focus on "high added-value" jobs such as system architects or project management, and leave low-level operations, supposedly requiring less qualifications, to cheaper Indian contractors. Decades later, there is a shortage of qualified people for those high-skilled jobs - precisely because fewer and fewer young people have had the possibility ..."
"... The result? It is now necessary to import expensive project managers and system architects from foreign countries. ..."
"... Bottom line: the race to the bottom for wages is "on". ..."
"... Professionals would be the next logical choice of squeezing cost out of work; unions, middle management, big industry, airlines, manufacturing and construction have all paid their price at the alter of the 1%. ..."
"... I also agree with the concept of there being less for the bottom 90% to spend. And as more automation kicks in, there will be even less bad choice jobs for these folks to scramble for. Just waiting for truck drivers to be slowly replaced with auto-drive trucks. ..."
"... " . Prefer a fence at the top of the cliff to an ambulance at the bottom " ..."
"... The rich and the truly rich will always have skilled, artistic human professionals to serve their personally tailored bespoke needs. It is the rest of us who will be assigned the doctorobots, the lawyer machines, etc. ..."
"... Part of the "crapification of everything" except for managers and owners, it is part of their cost cutting plan. ..."
"... First they came for the blue collar workers, and I did nothing? Then they came for the white collar workers, and I did nothing? Now they are coming for the professionals, and they are laughing at my passivity? ..."
"... They have played all the classes, higher than the one they are currently discarding, and the remaining consumers are happy to throw their neighbors under the bus. But your turn will come. Karma. ..."
"... Once corporations start setting guidelines and dictating the drugs you can and can't use for treatment, do you think they'll do it according to what's cost effective and least risky for the patient based on current science or do you think they'll do it based on their own profits? ..."
Posted on
January 9, 2016 by Yves Smith Yves here. Many
members of the top 10% regard their role in society as relatively secure, particularly if the are in a niche that serves the capital-deploying
1% or better yet, 0.1%. But a new book suggest their position is not secure. And trends in motion confirm this dour reading, such
as the marked decline in law school enrollments, and the trend in the US to force doctors to practice out of hospitals or HMOs, where
they are salaried and are required to adhere to corporate care guidelines. For instance, my MD is about to have her practice bought
out, and is looking hard as to whether she can establish a concierge practice. Mind you, she appears regularly on TV and writes a
monthly column for a national magazine [not that is how I found her or why I use her]. Yet she has real doubts as to whether she
can support all the overhead. If someone with a profile can't make a go at it solo in a market like Manhattan, pray tell, who can?
The end of the professional era is characterized by four trends: the move from bespoke service; the bypassing of traditional gatekeepers;
a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to professional work; and the more-for-less challenge.
The Move From Bespoke (Custom) Service
For centuries, much professional work has been handled in the manner of a craft. Individual experts and specialists-people who
know more than others-have offered an essentially bespoke service ("bespoke" is British for "custom"). In the language of the tailor,
their product has been "made-to-measure" rather than "off-the-peg." For each recipient the service has been disposable (used once
only), handcrafted ordinarily by a solitary scribe or sole trusted adviser, often in the spirit of an artist who starts each project
afresh with a blank canvas.
Our research strongly suggests that bespoke professional work in this vein looks set to fade from prominence, as other crafts
(like tailoring and tallow chandlering) have done over the centuries. Significant elements of professional work are being routinized:
in checklists, standard form materials, and in various sorts of systems, many of which are available online. Meanwhile, the work
that remains for human beings to handle conventionally is often not conducted by individual craftspeople, but collaboratively in
teams, sometimes collocated, but more often virtually. And, with the advance of increasingly capable machines, some work may not
be conducted by human beings at all.
Just as we witnessed the "death of gentlemanly capitalism" in the banks in the 1980s, we seem to be observing a similar decline
in bespoke professionalism.
The Bypassed Gatekeepers
In the past, when in need of expert guidance we turned to the professions. Their members knew things that others did not, and
we drew on their knowledge and experience to solve our problems. Each profession acted as a "gatekeeper" of its own, distinct body
of practical expertise. Today this set-up is under threat.
We are already seeing some work being wrested from the hands of traditional professions. Some of the competition is coming from
within. We observe professionals from different professions doing each other's work. They even speak of "eating one another's lunch."
Accountants and consultants, for example, are particularly effective at encroaching on the business of lawyers and actuaries. We
also see intra-professional friction, when, for example, nurses take on work that used to be exclusive to doctors, or paralegals
are engaged to perform tasks that formerly were the province of lawyers.
But the competition is also advancing from outside the traditional boundaries of the professions-from new people and different
institutions. We see a recurring need to draw on people with very different skills, talents, and ways of working. Practicing doctors,
priests, teachers, and auditors did not, for example, develop the software that supports the systems that we describe. Stepping forward
instead are data scientists, process analysts, knowledge engineers, systems engineers, and many more. Today, professionals still
provide much of the content, but in time they may find themselves down-staged by these new specialists. We also see a diverse set
of institutions entering the fray-business process outsourcers, retail brands, Internet companies, major software and service vendors,
to name a few. What these providers have in common is that they look nothing like twentieth-century doctors, accountants, architects,
and the rest.
More than this, human experts in the professions are no longer the only source of practical expertise. There are illustrations
of practical expertise being made available by recipients of professional work-in effect, sidestepping the gatekeepers.
On various platforms, typically online, people share their past experience and help others to resolve similar problems. These "communities
of experience," as we call them, are springing up across many professions (for example, PatientsLikeMe and the WebMD communities
in medicine). We say more about them in a moment. More radical still are systems and machines that themselves generate practical
expertise. These are underpinned by a variety of advanced techniques, such as Big Data and artificial intelligence. These platforms
and systems tend not to be owned and run by the traditional professions. Whether those who do so will in turn become "new gatekeepers"
is a subject of some concern.
The keys to the kingdom are changing. Or, if not changing, they are at least being shared with others.
You nailed it on medical professionals would like to add, that at least here in flori duh there seems to be massive pricing
fraud by malpractice and liability insurance providers which state regulators allow to continue to force small or single practitioners
to join groups by financial obliteration at least in floriduh, there is the usual massive distortion suggesting insurance companies
are paying out huge amounts when there in fact seems to be collusion amongst insurance companies neglecting the legal requirement
to try to settle on good faith and end up forcing people to settle for pennies on the dollar yet the insurance companies keep
picking the pockets of medical professionals
The proof is in how there is one premium cost if the medical provider is on their own and magically it is cheaper if theu
are part of a group or hospital.. Same doctor same practices lower rates prima facia evidence of insurance company rate fraud
Yes some of it is only logical though, if masses of the population see their income declining and yet the costs of medical
care keeps increasing eventually noone can afford to see the doctor never mind the ACA etc.. And it can get to be this way with
a lot of professional services less urgent and distorted than medical care, like soon noone can afford an accountant, you use
turbo tax, a lawyer – no middle class people start to make their own wills. Many professions seek ever further protections of
government for their guilds (more and more requirements to practice to try to preserve their privilege) and yet with nothing protecting
the income of the other 80% (read: unions, that would be their role) unless they plan to only serve the fellow 20%
So solidarity? Yea, but making the solidarity argument with many (not all) members of such professions is a waste of time as
they instinctively side with the 1s.
Re solidarity, you might be surprised. One reason law school enrollments are down is that it is becoming public knowledge
that employment for graduates in upwardly mobile career positions is way down
Many are shunted into low level proletarian type legal work, churning out evidence for use in lawsuits owned and managed
by large firms. Lawyers who do this earn less then a good paralegal with less job security and no benefits.
It has been said Paralegals are being squeezed out, to make way for the huge increase in law graduates from prior class booms.
Why not use cheap lawyers, with better credential, and desperate for employment?
So much of the 'grunt work' of professions – once the entry and training province of new graduates – is now being done
overseas by shops that specialize in legal research, or reading x-rays, or accounting and tax preparation.
There are 3 downsides to this, in my opinion. New college grads have fewer entry slots. The 'grunt work' that grounds one
in the full knowledge of the profession and how it works is slowly removed from the profession. That omission
leaves future practitioners with an incomplete understanding.
This loss makes them more reliant on big data as both assistant and excuse/defense, and makes them less master craftsmen
(if I may use the term without giving offense) and more the front-end interface of one-size-fits-all processes. Very good for
corporate profits. Not so good for the professions or their clients.
Your first two points (no entry-level jobs for beginners, no acquisition of professional basics) are essential - and their
detrimental effects are already painfully felt in some professions.
Case in point: software development.
Long ago, firms started off-shoring basic, tedious, repetitive tasks, generally considered as unrewarding, such as software
testing or error correction to India. The idea was to focus on "high added-value" jobs such as system architects or project management,
and leave low-level operations, supposedly requiring less qualifications, to cheaper Indian contractors. Decades later, there
is a shortage of qualified people for those high-skilled jobs - precisely because fewer and fewer young people have had the possibility
to
(a) start in the profession at entry-level positions (when job postings all require qualifications as senior software engineer
and five years experience, what do you do?)
(b) learn the ropes and practice the skills from the ground up (the necessary step before rising in the professional hierarchy).
The result? It is now necessary to import expensive project managers and system architects from foreign countries.
From what I read, the UK has been especially hit by this phenomenon, because it was particularly enthusiastic about off-shoring
IT to India.
I can't find the cite, but last year I read that some of the Indian companies that American law firms have outsourced to are
now moving offices "stateside" to hire American attorneys, here.
The Washington State Bar has initiated a
legal technician
program , and I find the timing questionable, even if the premise of the program is good-hearted. As the market is awash in
underemployed, licensed attorneys, the Bar is going ahead and turning veteran paralegals into the people to undercut the market
even further. It seems like bad timing to let someone who has years of experience, and no law school debt get over on a bunch
law school grads who are facing a life of being hounded for their debts. I spoke to someone at the Bar who made a good defense,
that the legal technician is like an ARNP. Only later did it occur to me that there are very few out-of-work doctors.
From another perspective, the legal technician answers another problem of the collapsing paralegal market. Much of the collapse
has been driven by advances in document management, especially scanning that 'reads' the text and makes it searchable. But hey,
here is a shiny new program. Go ahead and set up a parenting plan with your abusive ex for $75! What could go wrong?
The key to really get the legal field de-humanized would be robot judges and robotic juries. I hope someone is already working
on it.
Don't worry what's old is new again. At some point in the future we'll all be scratching glyphs on clay tablets .once the 2nd
law of thermodynamics really kicks in ..plenty of work then!
Work! What about George Jetson? The go west value system we are stuck with these days is almost perfectly incompatible with
a future that requires very little human labor.
Professionals would be the next logical choice of squeezing cost out of work; unions, middle management, big industry,
airlines, manufacturing and construction have all paid their price at the alter of the 1%.
Public sector unions are hanging on but as the majority of local & state taxpayers have less to give, these wages, benefits
and especially pensions will be cut. Those earning less and less will gleefully pull down those public employees who are 'living
like kings'.
I also agree with the concept of there being less for the bottom 90% to spend. And as more automation kicks in, there will
be even less bad choice jobs for these folks to scramble for. Just waiting for truck drivers to be slowly replaced with auto-drive
trucks.
This leads us to an enhanced confrontation at the Federal level on how to go forward. The earned income tax credit, a good
concept also under siege, I believe, will have to be supplemented with a minimum guaranteed income.
By this time, 20 years, the DEMs will be the party of business and the GOP will be entirely dependent on fed govt subsidies.
Oh the irony.
Reading Rise of a The Robots right now, and the law and accounting profession have and will continue to be hurt hard by computers
armed with big data, and the education and medical profession are next. Has to be. It's already a travesty that education and
medical costs continue to rise as incomes stagnate and drop, and that just cannot continue. Well, maybe it can, until all of those
guns out there are used by the people as they rise up. Look at the buffoon who many are considering for the Republican nominee,
more out of blind, misinformed anger, than anything. Scary.
The rich and the truly rich will always have skilled, artistic human professionals to serve their personally tailored bespoke
needs. It is the rest of us who will be assigned the doctorobots, the lawyer machines, etc.
The French phrase "Everything changes and remains the same" remains true today.
Whereas today the top of society has its professionals to isolate and protect them from the remainder of the population and
the rules nobility and the church had its knights, nobles, obedient serfs and peasants to fight and protect "their" nobility.
Names and titles changed but the rules remained. Those who have will get those who don't will not.
Correct. The same applies in education. The wealthy know what kinds of schools serve their children best: those with better
teacher to student ratios, rich arts curricula, and a progressive approach to instruction. Just see what Obama's kids got at their
fancy Quaker school. The rest get standardized lesson plans, big class sizes, deep cuts in music and the arts, and high-stakes
testing.
Part of the "crapification of everything" except for managers and owners, it is part of their cost cutting plan.
Why would you trust a medical system run by politicians and insurance companies a system promoted by those same managers
and owners. Like hiring the Three Stooges as your plumber, electrician and roofer. Gullibility will be the death of us that
and malice.
First they came for the blue collar workers, and I did nothing? Then they came for the white collar workers, and I did
nothing? Now they are coming for the professionals, and they are laughing at my passivity?
They have played all the classes, higher than the one they are currently discarding, and the remaining consumers are happy
to throw their neighbors under the bus. But your turn will come. Karma.
In Oregon some doctors are unionizing to resist medical assembly line medicine.
From NYTimes:
Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine
"Dr. Alexander and his colleagues say they are in favor of efficiency gains. It's the particular way the hospital has interpreted
this mandate that has left them feeling demoralized. If you talk to them for long enough, you get the distinct feeling it is
not just their jobs that hang in the balance, but the loss of something much less tangible - the ability of doctors everywhere
to exercise their professional judgment."
I find myself thinking about an episode of the original Connections series, that was produced in the 70s.
There it was mused about how corporate management would idle their days away waiting for the computer in the basement to crunch
the numbers and come up with company decisions they were then to implement.
Instead what happened was that the professional managerial class, the MBAs, dug in while computers instead replaced the laborers
via robotics.
Or shorter: The common argument that 'we (by that I mean you) have to become more employable' is about to hit home among the
people with long education. Will they recognize the similarity to what has already happened to others and/or will they themselves
make themselves more 'employable'?
I think one of the major consequences we are seeing as a result of a misguided professional system is the lack of basic legal
services for millions of people. This resulted in people being thrown out of their homes as the result of very obvious fraud and
yet having no recourse unless they were able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees.
I think the popular new series 'Making of a Murderer' emphasizes this problem. I don't think a show that emphasizes the problems
that the very poor have with justice from the lack of being able to pay for legal services would have been this popular 10 years
ago.
Once corporations start setting guidelines and dictating the drugs you can and can't use for treatment, do you think they'll
do it according to what's cost effective and least risky for the patient based on current science or do you think they'll do it
based on their own profits?
What happens when they own their own pharmacies – as they're all scrambling to do right now – and try to jack up reimbursement
through that unit too? Do you think patients were served when Philidor started (criminally) altering scripts and making substitutions?
For profit healthcare is really sickcare, isn't it? Why cure a disease when treating it brings in more revenue? Why sell cheap
human insulin when you can patent a variety on the molecule, jack up the price and carve up the market?
Keep the sucker paying the vig
These guys aren't adopting better guidelines for treating chronic disease based on the best available science. In fact, as
they corporatize they're getting worse. I've talked to these clowns. They're typically ten years behind the state of the art in
their field. Patients do the reading and then they stare at us like we're morons. Fifteen years later they swear they knew the
truth all along.
If these corporate suits are setting the guidelines for care, how come there's no common national board standard for care,
no portfolio investment model approach where they model the disease with the best available experts, determine how to intervene
in the various genetic pathways that are perturbed and then pick the simplest, cheapest methods/chemicals to try first?
That sounds like a pretty reasonable, scientific approach to treatment – but, if that's your standard, then these people are
in breech of fiduciary duty left and right and it all has to do with that old canard "maximizing shareholder value." What about
maximizing customer service? Corporate medicine will lead to tobacco-level deaths. I know doctors who have been personally injured
in this system already. Corporations want to avoid risk to their profit – *not* their patient. Imagine what *those* mandatory
arbitration clauses are going to look like. Imagine what the sequel to _Merchants of Doubt_ will look like in the era of corporate
medicine and Supreme Court decisions that bust doctors' unions.
I'm still burning from Peter Thiel's comments on monopolies in the New York Times this morning. Does he have any clue how bad
the service is in regional hospital cartels already and how fast prices are rising?
It's not even a matter of price in the drug markets now. It's basic availability. Aside from the persistent shortages of cheap,
effective generics due to the kickback scheme in PMOs/PBMs, we now have explicit regulatory interference. The FDA has been moving
to withdraw entire lines of medication from compounding pharmacies even when there's no rival big pharma product competing against
them or any indication of patient risk. These are decades-old treatments. (It's the CDC's job to set treatment guidelines, by
the way, not the FDA's).
It's just a knee-jerk reaction at this point to protect imaginary future profits, I suppose. You can't make up this stuff.
The FDA has even imposed a 30% sales volume rule for "safety." It has nothing to do with purity or contamination of compounded
products. If Tesla sold exploding cars, how would restricting 30% of their sales volume to California improve consumer safety?
It's clearly a market-rigging reg – and it's because the corporate medicine lobby wants it.
What does this have to do with corporate medicine? Compounding pharmacies in big chain hospitals – which are often pitifully
narrow in their professional scope – are all magically exempt (oligopolistic and more expensive too). Isn't that wonderful?
The current corporatization of medicine rests on the notion that the chief challenge faced by those of us with serious illnesses
is that we simply don't read enough fine print or fill out enough paperwork.
If you think that corporations have done a fine job handling your retirement investments in this era of lax accounting standards,
wait until you see what they do with your actual body.
This article is based on the faulty perception that this is all normal benign efficiency working it's way out of an antiquated
system, perhaps with a few -to be expected- hiccups. It isn't.
What we are experiencing is wholesale greed and corruption on an international scale working it's way into the core of our
civilization like mold or cancer, and perverting technology as well as the process of social change and adjustment to that change
– for it's exclusive benefit – as it goes. It is unconscionable that we could call this progress or adjustment in anything but
the most cruelly ironic sense.
The shift from reactive to proactive my foot! 60 years ago doctors were getting out proactive messages far better
than today via education, television, the media and so on. And they gave a damn!!! Today, insurance companies are devising ever
new ways to minimize what they spend on your care, maximize what they charge you for it, and call it, "proactive." Proactive theft,
or genocide for fun and profit, would be closer to the mark.
Secular stagnation of the US economy might be parcially driven by high (above $50 per barrel) oil prices. That nessesarity
generates high level of unemployment, especially chromic unemployment and "perma-temps".
Masterpiece, offers solution for THE problem of our time/div> I am astonished at the quality of this book, which is about the
eighth book in a personal reading program that included Paul Roberts' The End of Oil, Kenneth Deffeyes' Beyond Oil, Jared Diamon's
Collapse, Cottrell's Energy and Society, Michael Klare's Blood and Oil, and others, all extremely good and relevant books.
The task this author undertakes is to help readers find a new perspective from which to constructively and usefully interpret
inevitable and major changes the world around us. By taking this approach, the author is providing the very essential tool we
need to cope with these changes.
The issue is our ecological footprint.
Catton uses the term "Age of Exuberance" to represent the time since 1492 when first a newly discovered hemisphere and then
the invention of fossil-fuel-driven machines allowed Old-World humans to escape the constraints imposed by a population roughly
at earth's carrying capacity, and instead to grow (and philosophize and emote) expansively.
He then reminds us that we are soon to be squeezed by the twin jaws of excessive population and exhausted resources, as our
current population is utterly dependent on the mining and burning of fossil energy and its use to exploit earth's resources in
general.
In spring 2005, the buzz about "the end of cheap energy" is reaching quite a pitch, and when and if the "peak oil" scenario
(or other environmental limit-event) is reached, the impact on our social / political world will be enormous. Already the US is
brandishing and using its superior weaponry to sieze control of oil assets; this same kind of desperate struggle may well erupt
at all levels of society if we don't find a way to identify the problem, anticipate its consequences, and find solutions.
Catton offers a perspective based on biology / ecology -- not bad, since we are indeed animals in an ecology and we are indeed
subject to the iron laws of nature and physics.
With this perspective we can avoid ending up screaming nonsense at each other when changes begin to get scary. My urgent recommendation
is, read this G.D. book and do it now.
"... It has to be explained that Stoics believe that nothing external to the individual is secure, and thus the truly important thing is virtue, based on ethics and moral. ..."
"... Stoicism is the appropriate philosophy for what awaits us. It brings out the best of us and it eases the anguish. The illusion of control is our worst enemy. Matters are completely out of our control and Nature will deal with them as she pleases. ..."
I wholeheartedly agree that even a cursory look at things reveals the overwhelming scope
of things and quickly leads to despair.
It doesn't have to lead to despair. I recommend
Stoicism
, which is the way
Greeks and Romans coped with their own decline.
In the words of Seneca:
"Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave
in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes." (De Provid.
v.8)
It has to be explained that Stoics believe that nothing external to the individual is secure,
and thus the truly important thing is virtue, based on ethics and moral.
Virtue can not be
taken from an individual whatever the circumstances, and helps him deal with adversity. That is
what Seneca means with
"nothing of our own that perishes"
.
Stoicism is the appropriate philosophy for what awaits us. It brings out the best of us
and it eases the anguish. The illusion of control is our worst enemy. Matters are completely out
of our control and Nature will deal with them as she pleases.
"... I am lucky in that I lived very frugally my whole life as I have always feared what was coming, and what in my opinion has now come. I am retired, and have been for over 4 years, but not by choice. ..."
"... For me, the misery index is High. I am lucky that I am not in danger of homelessness, but I have to be very careful about what I spend as prices keep going up and up and most things I consume. Meaning, food, utilities, taxes, etc. These days food doesn't go up by cents, but rather usually a dollar at a time. Carrots at my local Costco just went from $6.99 to $7.99 for example. ..."
"... I think that for everyone but the top 10%, the Misery Index is High ..."
From just outside Boulder, CO: John Edwards said "there are two Americas". I am thinking
he was more than correct, but that it should be 4 Americas: the top ,1%, the rest of the top
10%, the people who were prudent and saved and are older who are suffering but still can
afford to live, and the truly poor who can't come up with $400 in an emergency, which would
include the homeless. I am lucky in that I lived very frugally my whole life as I have
always feared what was coming, and what in my opinion has now come. I am retired, and have
been for over 4 years, but not by choice. Nobody here wants to hire an over 60 IT
worker.
I measure the "economy" and the it's health by what I refer to as the "misery index". It
isn't measured in numbers but rather in how one feels about their life and the world around
them. For me, the misery index is High. I am lucky that I am not in danger of
homelessness, but I have to be very careful about what I spend as prices keep going up and up
and most things I consume. Meaning, food, utilities, taxes, etc. These days food doesn't go
up by cents, but rather usually a dollar at a time. Carrots at my local Costco just went from
$6.99 to $7.99 for example.
I think that for everyone but the top 10%, the Misery Index is High . But, around
here, it is I believe one of the more affluent areas of the country. People are buying up
$1.5 million dollar houses like crazy, and tearing down $1 million dollar old houses to build
new custom houses. Tesla's and Mercedes are everywhere. Google has taken over Boulder and the
young Tech workers are numerous. My little town of about 10,000 people is building new homes
on every square inch of available land. They are talking about another 500 new homes of close
to a million dollars to well over a million dollars. Traffic is outrageous, and bad air
pollution days seem to be more and more numerous these days.
So, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Depends on who you are.
I think though that we are in the midst of a class war. The racial issues we are
experiencing are to distract people and divide people. Divide people on race, divide people
on age, divide people on ideology. No matter what, just divide people so while the common
"man" is fighting each other, the rich plunder more and more.
Finally, from my perspective, as a student of history, especially Nazi Germany, and Russia
under Stalin, I am more and more frightened each day by the acceptance of the Trump rhetoric.
It is messianic and dangerous.
"... A lesson of use at job interviews, schools and even in families. I am thankful for an added knowledge and understanding of the many problems associated with these Endeavors. This book should be a "must" to all young people. ..."
Bold Endeavors by Jack Stuster proved to be a real page-turner! Since childhood reading about adventures and explorers had
been my favorite literature. In this book the persons behind these endeavors came to life.
They were of flesh and blood and you as a reader took part of their everyday life, their hardships and personal problems. A
thrilling experience. A lesson in the importance of relationships not only among people in isolation
A lesson of use at job interviews, schools and even in families. I am thankful for an added knowledge and understanding
of the many problems associated with these Endeavors. This book should be a "must" to all young people.
Unemployment benefits currently are usually is just six month or so; this is the time when you can plan you "downsizing". You do
not need to rush but at the same time do not expect that you will get job offers quickly, if at all. Usually it does not happen.
many advertised positions are fakes, another substantial percentage is already reserved for H1B candidates and posting them is the
necessary legal formality.
Often losing job logically requires selling your home and moving to a modest apartment, especially if no children are living with
you. At 50 it is abut time... You need to do it later anyway, so why not now. But that's a very tough decision to make... Still, if the current housing market is close to the top
(as it is in 2019), this is one of the best moves
you can make. Getting from your house several hundred thousand dollars allows you to create kind of private pension to compensate for
losses in income till you hit your Social Security check, which currently means 66.
$300K investment in A quality bonds that returns 3% per year is enough to provides you with $24K per year "private pension" from 50 to
age of 66 when social security kicks in. That allows you to pay for the apartment and amenities. The food is extra but with this
level of income you qualify for food assistance.
This way you can take lower paid job, of much lower paid job (which mean $15 per hour), of temp job and survive.
And if this are many form you house sell your 401k remains intact and can supplement your SS income later on. Simple Excel spreadsheet can provide you with
a complete picture of what you can afford and what not. Actually the ability to walk of fresh air for 3 or more hours each day worth a lot
of money ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Losing a job in your 50s is a devastating moment, especially if the job is connected to a long career ripe with upward mobility. As a frequent observer of this phenomenon, it's as scary and troublesome as unchecked credit card debt or an expensive chronic health condition. This is one of the many reasons why I believe our 50s can be the most challenging decade of our lives. ..."
"... The first thing you should do is identify the exact day your job income stops arriving ..."
"... Next, and by next I mean five minutes later, explore your eligibility for unemployment benefits, and then file for them if you're able. ..."
"... Grab your bank statement, a marker, and a calculator. As much as you want to pretend its business as usual, you shouldn't. Identify expenses that don't make sense if you don't have a job. Circle them. Add them up. Resolve to eliminate them for the time being, and possibly permanently. While this won't necessarily lengthen your fuse, it could lessen the severity of a potential boom. ..."
Losing a job in your 50s is a devastating moment, especially if the job is connected to a long career ripe with upward mobility.
As a frequent observer of this phenomenon, it's as scary and troublesome as unchecked credit card debt or an expensive chronic health
condition. This is one of the many reasons why I believe our 50s can be the most challenging decade of our lives.
Assuming you can clear the mental challenges, the financial and administrative obstacles can leave you feeling like a Rube Goldberg
machine.
Income, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, bills, expenses, short-term savings and retirement savings are
all immediately important in the face of a job loss. Never mind your Parent PLUS loans, financially-dependent aging parents, and
boomerang children (adult kids who live at home), which might all be lurking as well.
When does your income stop?
From the shocking moment a person learns their job is no longer their job, the word "triage" must flash in bright lights like
an obnoxiously large sign in Times Square. This is more challenging than you might think. Like a pickpocket bumping into you right
before he grabs your wallet, the distraction is the problem that takes your focus away from the real problem.
This is hard to do because of the emotion that arrives with the dirty deed. The mind immediately begins to race to sources of
money and relief. And unfortunately that relief is often found in the wrong place.
The first thing you should do is identify the exact day your job income stops arriving . That's how much time you have
to defuse the bomb. Your fuse may come in the form of a severance package, or work you've performed but haven't been paid for yet.
When do benefits kick in?
Next, and by next I mean five minutes later, explore your eligibility for unemployment benefits, and then file for them if
you're able. However, in some states severance pay affects your immediate eligibility for unemployment benefits. In other words,
you can't file for unemployment until your severance payments go away.
Assuming you can't just retire at this moment, which you likely can't, you must secure fresh employment income quickly. But quickly
is relative to the length of your fuse. I've witnessed way too many people miscalculate the length and importance of their fuse.
If you're able to get back to work quickly, the initial job loss plus severance ends up enhancing your financial life. If you take
too much time, by your choice or that of the cosmos, boom.
The next move is much more hands-on, and must also be performed the day you find yourself without a job.
What nonessentials do I cut?
Grab your bank statement, a marker, and a calculator. As much as you want to pretend its business as usual, you shouldn't.
Identify expenses that don't make sense if you don't have a job. Circle them. Add them up. Resolve to eliminate them for the time
being, and possibly permanently. While this won't necessarily lengthen your fuse, it could lessen the severity of a potential boom.
The idea of diving into your spending habits on the day you lose your job is no fun. But when else will you have such a powerful
reason to do so? You won't. It's better than dipping into your assets to fund your current lifestyle. And that's where we'll pick
it up the next time.
We've covered day one. In my next column we will tackle day two and beyond.
Peter Dunn is an author, speaker and radio host, and he has a free podcast: "Million Dollar Plan." Have a question for Pete
the Planner? Email him at [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not
necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.
"Bankruptcy-related job losses are rising at rates not seen since 2009, invoking grim
reminders of the Great Recession"
By Quentin Fottrell, Personal Finance Editor...Aug 7, 2019...8:24 p.m. ET
"The recent spate of bankruptcies in corporate America is taking its toll.
In the first seven months of the year, U.S.-based companies announced 42,937 job cuts due
to bankruptcy, up 40% on the same period last year and nearly 20% higher than all
bankruptcy-related job losses last year, a report released Tuesday concluded. Despite
record-low unemployment, bankruptcy filings have not claimed this many jobs since the Great
Recession.
"It is the highest seven-month total since 2009 when 50,258 cuts due to bankruptcy were
announced," according to the report by outplacement and business coaching firm Challenger,
Gray & Christmas. "In fact, it is higher than the annual totals for bankruptcy cuts every
year since 2009."...
Revised Profit Data Are Good News But Don't Reverse Decades of Wage Stagnation
By Dean Baker
In July, the U.S. Department of Commerce released data showing GDP growth had slowed
sharply in the second quarter. Most economic reporting appropriately highlighted the data
showing that we were not getting the investment boom that the Republicans had promised would
result from their tax cut.
But there was also an important item in the annual GDP data revisions that many overlooked
in the report: The revised profit data for 2018 showed that the profit share of corporate
income had fallen by 0.4 percentage points from the prior year. This is a big deal for two
reasons: It means that workers are now clearly getting their share of the gains from growth,
and it tells us an important story about the structure of the economy.
On the first point, we know that the wages of the typical worker have not kept pace with
productivity growth over the last four decades. While productivity growth has not been great
over most of this period (1995-2005 was the exception), wages have lagged behind even the
slow productivity growth over most of this period.
The one exception was the years of low unemployment from 1996 to 2001, when the wages of
the typical worker rose in line with productivity growth. With unemployment again falling to
relatively low levels in the last four years, many of us expected that wages would again be
keeping pace with productivity growth.
The earlier data on profits suggested that this might not be the case. It showed a small
increase in the profit share of corporate income, suggesting that corporations were able to
increase their share of income at the expense of labor, even with an unemployment rate below
4 percent.
The revised data indicate this is not the case. The low unemployment rate is creating an
environment in which workers have enough bargaining power to get their share of productivity
gains and even gain back some of the income share lost in the Great Recession.
This brings up the second issue. Most of the upward redistribution over this period was
not from ordinary workers to profits, but rather to high-end workers. The big winners in the
last four decades have been CEOs, hedge fund and private equity partners, and at a somewhat
lower level, highly paid professionals like doctors and dentists.
The shift to profits takes place only in this century after much of the upward
redistribution had already occurred. One obvious explanation was the weak labor market
following the Great Recession. With unemployment remaining stubbornly high, wages were not
keeping pace with productivity growth or even inflation. An alternative explanation was that
growing monopolization of major sectors (think of Google, Facebook and Amazon) was allowing
capital to gain at the expense of labor.
The revised profit data seem to support the first story. In the last four years, the
profit share has fallen by 3.2 percentage points. (It had dropped another percentage point in
the first quarter of 2019, although the quarterly data are highly erratic.) At this rate, in
four more years, the run-up in profit shares in this century will be completely reversed.
If the weak labor market following the Great Recession is the story of the rise in profit
shares, there is still the problem of the run-up in profit share in 2003-2007, the years
preceding the Great Recession. One explanation is that the profits recorded in these years
were inflated by phony profits recorded by the financial sector.
Banks like Citigroup and Bank of America were recording large profits in these years on
loans that subsequently went bad. This would be equivalent to a business booking large
profits on sales to customers that did not exist. Their books would show large profits when
the sales were recorded, but then they would show large losses when the business had to
acknowledge that the customer didn't exist, and therefore write off a previously booked
sale.
Profits that are based on sales to nonexistent customers don't come at the expense of
workers, nor do profits that are booked on loans that go bad. (The subsequent recession was,
of course, very much at the expense of workers.) For this reason, we should be somewhat
skeptical of the shift from wages to profits in the years of the housing bubble.
In any case, the revised profits data are good news. They show a tight labor market is
working the way it is supposed to. But this doesn't mean everyone is doing great. You don't
reverse four decades of wage stagnation with four relatively good years.
However, things are at least moving in the right direction now, and that is good news.
That has not generally been the case over the last 40 years.
"... A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes . What's more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides , even though the murder rate gets so much more attention. ..."
"... In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%). ..."
"... Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally , it ranks 27th. ..."
"... The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country. ..."
"... Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets. ..."
"... Evidence from the United States , Brazil , Japan , and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. ..."
"... One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher . ..."
"... The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled " deaths of despair " -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter. ..."
"... Trump has neglected his base on pretty much every issue; this one's no exception. ..."
Yves here. This post describes how the forces driving the US suicide surge started well before the Trump era, but explains how
Trump has not only refused to acknowledge the problem, but has made matters worse.
However, it's not as if the Democrats are embracing this issue either.
BY Rajan Menon, the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New
York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention
Originally published at
TomDispatch .
We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like
Anthony Bourdain and
Kate Spade die by their own hand.
Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That's odd given the magnitude of the problem.
In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves.
In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly
seven times greater than the number
of American soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.
A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every
12 minutes . What's more, after decades
of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since
the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do
homicides , even
though the murder rate gets so much more attention.
In other words, we're talking about a national
epidemic of self-inflicted
deaths.
Worrisome Numbers
Anyone who has lost a close relative or friend to suicide or has worked on a suicide hotline (as I have) knows that statistics
transform the individual, the personal, and indeed the mysterious aspects of that violent act -- Why this person? Why now? Why in
this manner? -- into depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how serious the suicide epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.
According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study , between
1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate. In
30 states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third. Nationally, it increased
33% . In some states the upsurge was far
higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).
Alas, the news only gets grimmer.
Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th
among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between
35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest
rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Globally , it ranks 27th.
More importantly, the trend in the United States doesn't align with what's happening elsewhere in the developed world. The World
Health Organization, for instance, reports
that Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the U.S.,
as do all but
six countries in the European Union. (Japan's is only slightly lower.)
World Bank statistics show that, worldwide,
the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016. It's been falling in
China ,
Japan
(where it has declined steadily for nearly a
decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most of Europe, and even countries like
South Korea and
Russia that
have a significantly higher suicide rate than the United States. In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26% from a
high point of 42 per 100,000 in
1994 to 31 in 2019.
We know a fair amount about the patterns
of suicide in the United States. In 2017, the rate was highest for men between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per 100,000) and those 75
and older (39.7 per 100,000).
The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New
Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own
guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a
higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half
of all such acts in this country.
There are gender-based differences as well.
From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of
those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last.
Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is
lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill
themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower
among people in higher-income brackets.
The Economics of Stress
This surge in the suicide rate has taken place in years during which the working class has experienced greater economic hardship
and psychological stress. Increased competition from abroad and outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job
loss, particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining that had long been mainstays of employment for such
workers. The jobs still available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.
Technological change, including computerization, robotics, and the coming of artificial intelligence, has similarly begun to displace
labor in significant ways, leaving Americans without college degrees, especially those 50 and older, in
far more difficult straits when it comes to
finding new jobs that pay
well. The lack of anything resembling an
industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe
has made these dislocations even more painful for American workers, while a sharp decline in private-sector union membership
-- down
from nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today -- has reduced their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.
Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged
over the last four decades (even as
CEO salaries have soared). And a decline in worker productivity doesn't explain it: between 1973 and 2017 productivity
increased by 77%, while a worker's average hourly wage only
rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it
harder for working-class
Americans to get by, let alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.
The gap in earnings between those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased -- a lot. Since 1979, the
wages of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by a pitiful
1.2%. Those in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of 6%. By contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by
34.3% and those near the peak of the wage pyramid -- the top 1% and especially the rarefied 0.1% -- made far more
substantial
gains.
And mind you, we're just talking about wages, not other forms of income like large stock dividends, expensive homes, or eyepopping
inheritances. The share of net national wealth held by the richest 0.1%
increased from 10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016.
By contrast, the share of the bottom 90% shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%. As for the top 1%, by 2016 its share
had increased to almost 39% .
The precise relationship between economic inequality and suicide rates remains unclear, and suicide certainly can't simply be
reduced to wealth disparities or financial stress. Still, strikingly, in contrast to the United States, suicide rates are noticeably
lower and have been declining in
Western
European countries where income inequalities are far less pronounced, publicly funded healthcare is regarded as a right (not
demonized as a pathway to serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive, and
apprenticeships and worker
retraining programs more widespread.
Evidence from the United States
, Brazil ,
Japan , and
Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases,
so does the suicide rate. If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies -- should Democrats ever retake the White
House and the Senate -- could make a positive difference. A study
based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10%
appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college degrees.
The Race Enigma
One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways)
than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly
higher . It increased from 11.3 per 100,000
in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000.
Black men are
10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.
The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate
effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne
Case and Angus Deaton have labeled "
deaths of despair
" -- those caused by suicides plus
opioid overdoses
and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and
its ripple effects do appear to matter.
According to a study by the
St. Louis Federal Reserve , the white working class accounted for 45% of all income earned in the United States in 1990, but
only 27% in 2016. In those same years, its share of national wealth plummeted, from 45% to 22%. And as inflation-adjusted wages have
decreased for
men without college degrees, many white workers seem to have
lost hope of success of
any sort. Paradoxically, the sense of failure and the accompanying stress may be greater for white workers precisely because they
traditionally were much
better off economically than their African American and Hispanic counterparts.
In addition, the fraying of communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has increased
social isolation
among them, and the evidence that it -- along with
opioid addiction and
alcohol abuse -- increases the risk of suicide
is strong . On top of that,
a significantly higher proportion of
whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun
ownership is more widespread.
Trump's Faux Populism
The large increase in suicide within the white working class began a couple of decades before Donald Trump's election. Still,
it's reasonable to ask what he's tried to do about it, particularly since votes from these Americans helped propel him to the White
House. In 2016, he received
64% of the votes of whites without college degrees; Hillary Clinton, only 28%. Nationwide, he beat Clinton in
counties where deaths of despair rose significantly between 2000 and 2015.
White workers will remain crucial to Trump's chances of winning in 2020. Yet while he has spoken about, and initiated steps aimed
at reducing, the high suicide rate among
veterans , his speeches and tweets have never highlighted the national suicide epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers.
More importantly, to the extent that economic despair contributes to their high suicide rate, his policies will only make matters
worse.
The real benefits from the December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by the president and congressional Republicans flowed
to those on the top steps of the economic ladder. By 2027, when the Act's provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans are expected
to have captured
81.8% of the gains. And that's not counting the windfall they received from recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and
the GOP
doubled the annual amount exempt from estate taxes -- wealth bequeathed to heirs -- through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual
to $11.2 million (or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this act of generosity? Not workers, that's for sure,
but every household with an estate worth $22 million or more will.
As for job retraining provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president
proposed
cutting that program by 40% in his 2019 budget, later settling for keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the cards as
long as Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget Office
projects that his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget
deficits in the years to come. (The shortfall last year was
$779 billion and it is expected to
reach $1 trillion by 2020.) Inevitably, the president and congressional Republicans will then demand additional reductions in spending
for social programs.
This is all the more likely because Trump and those Republicans also
slashed corporate taxes
from 35% to 21% -- an estimated
$1.4
trillion in savings for corporations over the next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has
no end
date . The president assured his base that the big bucks those companies had stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce
a wave of job creation -- all without adding to the deficit. As it happens, however, most of that repatriated cash has been used
for corporate stock buy-backs, which totaled more than
$800 billion last year. That, in turn, boosted share prices, but didn't exactly rain money down on workers. No surprise, of course,
since the wealthiest 10% of Americans own at least
84% of all stocks and the bottom
60% have less than
2% of them.
And the president's corporate tax cut hasn't produced the tsunami of job-generating investments he predicted either. Indeed, in
its aftermath, more than 80% of American
companies stated that their plans for investment and hiring hadn't changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs has proven
unremarkable compared to President Obama's
second term, when the economic recovery that Trump largely inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow
2.3%
in 2017 and
2.9% in 2018 (though not
3.1% as the president claimed). There wasn't, however, any "unprecedented economic boom -- a boom that has rarely been seen before"
as he insisted in this year's State of the Union
Address .
Anyway, what matters for workers struggling to get by is growth in real wages, and there's nothing to celebrate on that front:
between 2017 and mid-2018 they actually
declined by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for African Americans, while they rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%. And though
Trump insists that his beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers, they will actually raise the prices of goods, hurting the
working class and other low-income Americans
the most .
Then there are the obstacles those susceptible to suicide face in receiving insurance-provided mental-health care. If you're a
white worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a deductible and co-payments that are high and your income, while low,
is too high to qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven't done anything for you. Never mind the president's
tweet proclaiming that "the Republican Party Will Become 'The Party of Healthcare!'"
Let me amend that: actually, they have done something. It's just not what you'd call helpful. The
percentage of uninsured
adults, which fell from 18% in 2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to
Obamacare , had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.
The bottom line? On a problem that literally has life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of his base, Trump has been
AWOL. In fact, to the extent that economic strain contributes to the alarming suicide rate among white workers, his policies are
only likely to exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic proportions.
Trump is running on the claim that he's turned the economy around; addressing suicide undermines this (false) claim. To state
the obvious, NC readers know that Trump is incapable of caring about anyone or anything beyond his in-the-moment interpretation
of his self-interest.
Not just Trump. Most of the Republican Party and much too many Democrats have also abandoned this base, otherwise known as
working class Americans.
The economic facts are near staggering and this article has done a nice job of summarizing these numbers that are spread out
across a lot of different sites.
I've experienced this rise within my own family and probably because of that fact I'm well aware that Trump is only a symptom
of an entire political system that has all but abandoned it's core constituency, the American Working Class.
Yep It's not just Trump. The author mentions this, but still focuses on him for some reason. Maybe accurately attributing the
problems to a failed system makes people feel more hopeless. Current nihilists in Congress make it their duty to destroy once
helpful institutions in the name of "fiscal responsibility," i.e., tax cuts for corporate elites.
I'd assumed, the "working class" had dissappeared, back during Reagan's Miracle? We'd still see each other, sitting dazed on
porches & stoops of rented old places they'd previously; trying to garden, fix their car while smoking, drinking or dazed on something?
Those able to morph into "middle class" lives, might've earned substantially less, especially benefits and retirement package
wise. But, a couple decades later, it was their turn, as machines and foreigners improved productivity. You could lease a truck
to haul imported stuff your kids could sell to each other, or help robots in some warehouse, but those 80s burger flipping, rent-a-cop
& repo-man gigs dried up. Your middle class pals unemployable, everybody in PayDay Loan debt (without any pay day in sight?) SHTF
Bug-out bags® & EZ Credit Bushmasters began showing up at yard sales, even up North. Opioids became the religion of the proletariat
Whites simply had much farther to fall, more equity for our betters to steal. And it was damned near impossible to get the cops
to shoot you?
Man, this just ain't turning out as I'd hoped. Need coffee!
We especially love the euphemism "Deaths O' Despair." since it works so well on a Chyron, especially supered over obese crackers
waddling in crusty MossyOak™ Snuggies®
This is a very good article, but I have a comment about the section titled, "The Race Enigma." I think the key to understanding
why African Americans have a lower suicide rate lies in understanding the sociological notion of community, and the related concept
Emil Durkheim called social solidarity. This sense of solidarity and community among African Americans stands in contrast to the
"There is no such thing as society" neoliberal zeitgeist that in fact produces feelings of extreme isolation, failure, and self-recriminations.
An aside: as a white boy growing up in 1950s-60s Detroit I learned that if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had
to do was to hang out with black people.
" if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had to do was to hang out with black people."
amen, to that. in my case rural black people.
and I'll add Hispanics to that.
My wife's extended Familia is so very different from mine.
Solidarity/Belonging is cool.
I recommend it.
on the article we keep the scanner on("local news").we had a 3-4 year rash of suicides and attempted suicides(determined by chisme,
or deduction) out here.
all of them were despair related more than half correlated with meth addiction itself a despair related thing.
ours were equally male/female, and across both our color spectrum.
that leaves economics/opportunity/just being able to get by as the likely cause.
Actually, in the article it states:
"There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost
four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last."
which in some sense makes despair the wrong word, as females are actually quite a bit more likely to be depressed for instance,
but much less likely to "do the deed". Despair if we mean a certain social context maybe, but not just a psychological state.
Suicide deaths are a function of the suicide attempt rate and the efficacy of the method used. A unique aspect of the US is
the prevalence of guns in the society and therefore the greatly increased usage of them in suicide attempts compared to other
countries. Guns are a very efficient way of committing suicide with a very high "success" rate. As of 2010, half of US suicides
were using a gun as opposed to other countries with much lower percentages. So if the US comes even close to other countries in
suicide rates then the US will surpass them in deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Firearms
Now we can add in opiates, especially fentanyl, that can be quite effective as well.
The economic crisis hitting middle America over the past 30 years has been quite focused on the states and populations that
also tend to have high gun ownership rates. So suicide attempts in those populations have a high probability of "success".
I would just take this opportunity to add that the police end up getting called in to prevent on lot of suicide attempts, and
just about every successful one.
In the face of so much blanket demonization of the police, along with justified criticism, it's important to remember that.
As someone who works in the mental health treatment system, acute inpatient psychiatry to be specific, I can say that of the
25 inpatients currently here, 11 have been here before, multiple times. And this is because of several issues, in my experience:
inadequate inpatient resources, staff burnout, inadequate support once they leave the hospital, and the nature of their illnesses.
It's a grim picture here and it's been this way for YEARS. Until MAJOR money is spent on this issue it's not going to get better.
This includes opening more facilities for people to live in long term, instead of closing them, which has been the trend I've
seen.
One last thing the CEO wants "asses in beds", aka census, which is the money maker. There's less profit if people get better
and don't return. And I guess I wouldn't have a job either. Hmmmm: sickness generates wealth.
You stated, "Let's also ignore the fact that the sons and grandsons of the unionised
postwar generation for the most part subsequently rejected blue collar work no matter what
the pay. This is a sign of decadence I will grant you, and I am guilty as charged. "
This canard doesn't hold up in the face of empirical evidence. One example: 20,000 waiting
in line for lousy warehouse jobs at Amazon. The fact is, open borders and illegal immigration
are NeoLiberal tactics to promote wage arbitrage. In California, those impacted the most by
illegal immigration are African Americans. Whole sectors, such as hotel maintenance and
janitorial service, had been unionized, and had principally employed black workers whose
salaries enabled them to move into the middle class. The hotel industry welcomed the influx
of illegal immigrants willing to work for drastically lower wages. Black workers were
replaced and the union destroyed. Unfortunately, many in the US and globally have been so
propagandized about illegal immigration that even mentioning illegal immigration gets one
falsely labeled racist. in the US, Democrats use illegal immigration as a "demographic
strategy," which enables Democrats to remain in power while remaining wholly loyal to Wall
Street and doing nothing to ameliorate the misery of the bottom 90%.
"... finance...is not value added....it is value SUBTRACTED! ..."
"... A job at McDonald's then was merely a job you had to make a little money on the side while attending colleges that were FREE to very low cost. Now, McDonald's is one of many low wage jobs in this GIG economy that are utilized as life sustaining. ..."
"... Production of debt instead of production of things. US is one of the largest producers of debt. Financialization as planned by the bankers. ..."
when you can create $10 Trillion out of thin air and then give it to a select few...what
did you think would happen. Instead of arresting the criminal bankers....we rescued them!
They are criminal by nature and are programmed to steal ever more! I know hundreds of NYC
bankers and lawyers.....they are NOT NICE PEOPLE!
This is one time that a ZH headline was not click bait. Not only is FIRE bigger than manufacturing, even .GOV is bigger than manufacturing now
too. We're fucked, big time.
Another boomer who lives in a state of alternate reality. Boomers were privy to government jobs and manufacturing in the US aplenty. They also were
privy to government subsidies that don't exist today.
A job at McDonald's then was merely a job you had to make a little money on the side while
attending colleges that were FREE to very low cost. Now, McDonald's is one of many low wage
jobs in this GIG economy that are utilized as life sustaining.
Offshoring, the disappearance of government subsidies and social programs (thanks to
boomers love for BILL CLINTON), wealth inequality (See the FED/Obama bank bailout/QE),
stagnant wages, student loan debt, 22 TRILLION US DEBT, & 9/11 & 17 years of WAR
& MORE WAR, has caused this country to become BANKRUPT.
Living in your parents basement, or with roommates, one paycheck from the streets to
living on the streets is how it is for that kid YOU destroyed through your voting for
sociopaths who took away the very jobs and entitlements YOU were privy to that no longer
exist.
I like your sarcasm, but the truth is something different entirely. Median home in 2000 - 164K. Now - 313K. Median income during the same period rose 3k. Clarified.
Bs. If they feared that then they wouldn't have ever raised rates effectively killing the
refi market and putting downward pressure on prices for the past 2 years.
Yeah it is. I wouldn't have a kid and raise it in this country today if my life depended on it. May be
that's why birth rates in the US are at historic lows.
if the country was run by shoe shine boys there would be shoe shine palaces on every
corner and a law requiring everyone to get a shoeshine 3 times/day. the usa is run by
banksters. you get the result described.
Curse of consumerist car-focussed societies everywhere. Same for Japan, China. Don't think
that skin pigments will protect against it, though.
The only counter-trends are societies like the Amish, or maybe orthodox Jews. Their
inoculation against most aspects of consumer society has the side effect of exponential
population growth.
We originally posted this chart in February 2011 ,
which we just updated also breaking out the real estate industry from FIRE (finance,
insurance, and real estate). It is still just as shocking as it was back when we first
produced it.
Economy Jumps The Shark. The U.S. economy jumped the shark in 1990 when FIRE overtook the manufacturing sector in
terms of its contribution to GDP.
The key factor here is that the USA is a neoliberal state which means profits before people
and outsourcing to area with lower labor cost. Like leopard can't change its spots, neoliberalism
can't change it "free movement of goods and labor" principles, or it stop being
neoliberalism.
No jobs will come back to the USA as financial oligarchy is transnational body that uses the
USA military as an enforcer for their gang. It does not care one bit about the common people in
the USA.
Pause on the sound and fury for necessary precision. Even if the Trump administration slaps
25% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the US, the IMF has projected that would trim just a
meager slither – 0.55% – off China's GDP. And America is unlikely to profit,
because the extra tariffs won't bring back manufacturing jobs to the US – something that
Steve Jobs told Barack Obama eons ago.
What happens is that global supply chains will be redirected to economies that offer
comparative advantages in relation to China, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia
and Laos. And this redirection is already happening anyway – including by Chinese
companies.
BRI represents a massive geopolitical and financial investment by China, as well as its
partners; over 130 states and territories have signed on. Beijing is using its immense pool of
capital to make its own transition towards a consumer-based economy while advancing the
necessary pan-Eurasian infrastructure development – with all those ports, high-speed
rail, fiber optics, electrical grids expanding to most Global South latitudes.
The end result, up to 2049 – BRI's time span – will be the advent of an
integrated market of no less than 4.5 billion people, by that time with access to a Chinese
supply chain of high-tech exports as well as more prosaic consumer goods.
Anyone who has followed the nuts and bolts of the Chinese miracle launched by Little
Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in 1978 knows that Beijing is essentially exporting the mechanism that
led China's own 800 million citizens to, in a flash, become members of a global middle
class.
As much as the Trump administration may bet on "maximum pressure" to restrict or even block
Chinese access to whole sectors of the US market, what really matters is BRI's advance will be
able to generate multiple, extra US markets over the next two decades.
We don't do
'win-win'
There are no illusions in the Zhongnanhai, as there are no illusions in Tehran or in the
Kremlin. These three top actors of Eurasian integration have exhaustively studied how
Washington, in the 1990s, devastated Russia's post-USSR economy (until Putin engineered a
recovery) and how Washington has been trying to utterly destroy Iran for four decades.
Beijing, as well as Moscow and Tehran, know everything there is to know about Hybrid War,
which is an American intel concept. They know the ultimate strategic target of Hybrid War,
whatever the tactics, is social chaos and regime change.
The case of Brazil – a BRICS member like China and Russia – was even more
sophisticated: a Hybrid War initially crafted by NSA spying evolved into lawfare and regime
change via the ballot box. But it ended with mission accomplished – Brazil has been
reduced to the lowly status of an American neo-colony.
Let's remember an ancient mariner, the legendary Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng He, who for
three decades, from 1405 to 1433, led seven expeditions across the seas all the way to Arabia
and Eastern Africa, reaching Champa, Borneo, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz,
Aden, Jeddah, Mogadiscio, Mombasa, bringing tons of goods to trade (silk, porcelain, silver,
cotton, iron tools, leather utensils).
That was the original Maritime Silk Road, progressing in parallel to Emperor Yong Le
establishing a Pax Sinica in Asia – with no need for colonies and religious proselytism.
But then the Ming dynasty retreated – and China was back to its agricultural vocation of
looking at itself.
They won't make the same mistake again. Even knowing that the current hegemon does not do
"win-win". Get ready for the real hardcore yet to come.
The Swine fever is sweeping china hog farms and since the start of 2019 200+ millions hogs
have been culled. Chinese hog production is down from 2016 high of 700 million to below 420
million by the end of the year. The fever is not under control.
Soybeans from Ukraine are unloaded at the port in Nantong, in eastern China. Imports of
soy used to come from the US, but have slumped since the trade war began. Should point out
that the Ukraine soy production matures at a different time of the year than the US soybean.
The USA planting season starts in Late april, may and june. Because of the harvest time
differences worldwide the USA supplies 80% of the late maturing soybeans needed by
October/Nov and December.
Perhaps this is one of the "casualties" ( https://www.rt.com/news/459355-us-austria-embassy-mcdonalds/
) of economic war given the significance of China and just how important it is to the U.S. in
it's purchases of $USD to maintain the illusion of it's reserve currency status and
"vigor"...
Surprised this didn't happen first at the U.S. Embassies in Russia and China?... Obviously
Ronald McDonald has turned into a charity of sorts helping out Uncle $am in his ailing
"health" these dayz!...
SUPER SIZE ME!... Cause I'm not lovin it anymore!... I'm needin it!!!!
I've never understood this "jobs aren't coming back" argument. Do you really think that it
will stop tariffs? They're happening. Better start preparing.
Oh, right, tariffs WILL bring back American jobs! Then why didn't the Administration
impose them fully in 2017? Why negotiate at all; just impose all the tariffs!?! lol
Pepe is correct as usual. Even if America tariffs the world the jobs aren't coming back as
corporations will be unable to turn profits in such a highly taxed country like America would
be. What could happen however is America can form an internal free market again going
isolationist with new home grown manufacturing.
You VERY obviously have ZERO knowledge of Chinas history and its discoveries/inventions
etc USED BY THE WEST.
I suggest that you keep your eyes open for "History Erased-China" on Y Tube. The series
shows what would happen in todays world if countries and their contributions to the world did
not happen.
"... I see a lot of people saying, "They should just move to where the jobs are." 1) They would need accurate and defined information about where the jobs are that are looking for their skills 2) They would need some money to get there 3) They would need a place to stay and the rents and mortages are sky high 'where the jobs are' 4) They would have to be welcome. Two previous mass migrations within the USA come to mind: Black Americans out of the South and the dust bowl migrations to California. They were not welcomed with "open arms". ..."
"... I think the author understates the importance of Corporations being Good Citizens and Good Persons. ..."
"... My father was selected to go to Akron for training and if he passed the tests and did well in the training he might get a chance at Managing a Firestone Store. He was gone for weeks at a time for this process and was even required to go to Akron for more training after becoming a store manager. My father was an intelligent person but did not have a college degree. But I can see now that Firestone did an outstanding job training their store managers in all aspects of the job. Just think about that for a while. ..."
"... Corporations today hate themselves because its only about the money. I guess the point I am trying to make is this loss of Corporate Responsibility to the Nation and its Citizens was something that did exist but is now long gone. ..."
"... All across the West you can find old ghost towns. Towns that flourished until the gold or silver ran out of the local hill. The towns then were deserted. The similar thing can happen when a major employer runs out of "gold'. What the article ignores is all of the other reasons towns die. ..."
"... I would much rather rural stay rural and not become urban. There is more to the quality of life than a constant red hot economy. ..."
"... "The schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, liberals get elected and raise taxes, etc." One only needs to look at Kansas to see that this sentence is flawed. It needs to be changed and re-ordered to properly represent cause and effect. "Conservatives cut taxes, the schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, etc." ..."
"... The days of being qualified for good, well paying work without having more than a mediocre high school are in the past. This doesn't necessarily mean college because the trades require more education than ever before. Cutting school funding to pay for tax cuts is a loser's game. Trickle down economics has failed. ..."
I recently read and reviewed Tim Carney's
excellent book Alienated America , a sort of combination of the "how we got Trump" genre with the sociological works of
researchers like Robert Putnam and Charles Murray. Carney's exploration of the Trump phenomenon, and his grappling with the timeless
question of economic security versus personal responsibility in regard to the formation of virtue, family, and community, are among
the best you'll find. There is a deeper subtext in his book, however, that is not excavated. But first, a quick recap.
As in most treatments of inequality, geographic immobility, deindustrialization, and related issues, Alienated America
features the requisite visits to faded old towns with ghostly main streets, and paeans to the blue-collar jobs that once allowed
men with high school educations to comfortably own homes, raise families, and retire with pensions.
Through a long analysis, including a fascinating visit to a fracking camp in North Dakota -- awash in money but utterly lacking
in neighborliness and community -- Carney concludes that wealth alone does not produce human flourishing. It is rather community
and what social researchers call "civil society" that makes the American Dream possible. Obviously, money helps, but it is not sufficient,
nor, in Carney's telling, even necessary.
... ... ...
Indeed,
large
numbers of human settlements never do, and never have . A one-dimensional, economically undiversified city is essentially a housing
tract for a factory or a wharf or whatever industry drives its economy. What is left when that economic engine breaks down? A company
town without a company. This is the fate that has befallen many of America's declining places, and it is hard to argue that this
economic reality doesn't play a direct role in the decline of the family and of civil society. Is this a "materialist" explanation?
Perhaps. But it may also be true.
There are those who
admirably hope and work
for revival, for restoration in places like Gary, Detroit, or any number of gutted small towns. But many of the buildings in
these ghostly, empty blocks, even with their mighty and almost pleasantly timeworn facades, are far beyond the point where renovation
is economical. For now, poverty is a sort of preservative. More money, for many hollowed-out cities, would simply mean more demolition.
The unwinding of rural and post-industrial America is a human tragedy, not to be written off, much less tacitly celebrated. Yet the
facts of the post-industrial landscape may not care about remaining working-class feelings. This does not mean that any of these
places "
deserve to die ." But it may well mean that their collapse is beyond the ability of policy -- or church -- to alter.
Addison Del Mastro is assistant editor of The American Conservative . He tweets at@ad_mastro.
Interesting and probably spot on. It doesn't take a degree in economics or history to understand how prosperity came and went;
a passing knowledge of the 20th century will suffice. Dating back to the '20s we experienced a classic example of the boom/bust
cycle, with the bust of the 30s lasting basically the entire decade. The good times rwith the onset of WWII and continued afterward
because we, of all the major combatant nations, actually experienced minimal economic, social, and cultural disruption. The devastation
elsewhere was sufficient to provide us a head-start worth a couple decades of strong growth. It wound down around the beginning
of the 70s, coincident with the end of the Vietnam War. We retained some strong advantages, though, and they were sufficient to
provide more growth – on paper at least – even as today's yawning income-distribution gap began to open up. The the Cold War ended
and the days of free-trade saving the world (aka 'Globalism') commenced. It seemed great for awhile but now we're left holding
an empty bag and the rest of the world has sidelined our old industrial workforce through off-shoring for the sake of cheaper
labor. Nope, there's no turning back.
Re: The revival of the American Dream requires the re-churching of America.
Maybe, but it also requires jobs paying a living wage that offer a reasonable degree of long-term security (It's the latter
is lacking in short-lived fracking boom towns)
Having lived in the inner Chicago burbs since the mid 1970's I have watched Chicago turn from being an industrial powerhouse to
a have and have not economy. If you're working in professional/service sector or part of the management of multinational globalist
activity you're doing reasonably well. What's swept under the rug is that Chicago and their ilk hide the vast swaths of decayed
blight and human warehousing with pretty downtown / privileged few neighborhoods. Most of our once great second city serves little
purpose other than to provide housing for the poverty class. So called "Revitalization" only provides window dressing for the
parade of the chosen few.
Prior to living in Chicago, my folks lived in a small city in western IL that was a poster child for the small town decay referred
to above that Mr. Williamson thinks should die.
The town was famous for their productivity. Civic pride was evident in most all aspects of community life there. A major steel
mill anchored the economy as well as numerous smaller hardware manufacturers. The steel mill went belly up, the hardware manufacturers
became distributors of Asian made goods.
The gravy train just dried up. Times aren't so good now for the town that holds so many fond memories for me. Progress. I guess.
"Americans are the descendants of people who crossed oceans and continents for a better life, why are Americans who live
in this dying towns so different? I just don't get it."
Because there is no longer a place with a better life. People left families and homes because life could be dramatically better
someplace else.
An unemployed steel-worker used to making $60,000/year in a $100,000 house isn't going to find life somehow better making $8/hour
as a barista in San Francisco with a $2000/month rent.
I see a lot of people saying, "They should just move to where the jobs are."
1) They would need accurate and defined information about where the jobs are that are looking for their skills
2) They would need some money to get there
3) They would need a place to stay and the rents and mortages are sky high 'where the jobs are'
4) They would have to be welcome. Two previous mass migrations within the USA come to mind: Black Americans out of the South and
the dust bowl migrations to California. They were not welcomed with "open arms".
First let me say that I agree with the author almost 90+%. But I think the author understates the importance of Corporations
being Good Citizens and Good Persons. That is clearly what has happened to America. As the son of a former Firestone Store
Manager, I can attest that Firestone trained all of their store managers in Akron, OH.
My father was selected to go to Akron for training and if he passed the tests and did well in the training he might get
a chance at Managing a Firestone Store. He was gone for weeks at a time for this process and was even required to go to Akron
for more training after becoming a store manager. My father was an intelligent person but did not have a college degree. But I
can see now that Firestone did an outstanding job training their store managers in all aspects of the job. Just think about that
for a while.
The Company cared what the Company looked like everywhere, not just in Akron, OH. There was almost no turnover in my father's
store of employees. He was finally burnt out from dealing with the public in retail sales but they promoted him to District Manager
a job that he kept till he passed away. No employer today gives a crap about any employee or any client. Of course you can't learn
to love someone else till you learn to love yourself. Corporations today hate themselves because its only about the money.
I guess the point I am trying to make is this loss of Corporate Responsibility to the Nation and its Citizens was something that
did exist but is now long gone.
While some will surely say I am crazy, I strongly believe that a very high progressive tax rate on individuals and corporations
would help to change this attitude and at least get money into circulation. We also have to remove the corrupt and criminal group
that has taken over the US Corporations and with that the Governments both National and Local or the US is doomed.
All across the West you can find old ghost towns. Towns that flourished until the gold or silver ran out of the local hill.
The towns then were deserted. The similar thing can happen when a major employer runs out of "gold'. What the article ignores
is all of the other reasons towns die.
The schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, liberals get elected and raise taxes, etc. A town can survive with a big company
leaving, but if all of the social factors cause the best, brightest and hardest working people to pull up roots and leave, maybe
the town didn't die, it committed suicide.
I would much rather rural stay rural and not become urban. There is more to the quality of life than a constant red hot
economy. And really, today, many rural areas are more rural than they were a generation ago. Yes, farms are bigger and so
there are fewer people on more land and so many small rural towns have dried up. Personally, I love it. More room to hunt and
fish, less hectic, more fresh air, and more freedom.
"The schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, liberals get elected and raise taxes, etc." One only needs to look at
Kansas to see that this sentence is flawed. It needs to be changed and re-ordered to properly represent cause and effect. "Conservatives
cut taxes, the schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, etc."
The days of being qualified for good, well paying work
without having more than a mediocre high school are in the past. This doesn't necessarily mean college because the trades require
more education than ever before. Cutting school funding to pay for tax cuts is a loser's game. Trickle down economics has failed.
As is usual, the headline economic number is always the
rosiest number .
Wages for production and nonsupervisory workers accelerated to a 3.4 percent annual pace,
signaling gains for lower-paid employees.
That sounds pretty good. Except for the part where it is a lie. For starters, it doesn't account for
inflation .
Labor Department numbers released Wednesday show that real average hourly earnings, which
compare the nominal rise in wages with the cost of living, rose 1.7 percent in January on a
year-over-year basis.
1.7% is a lot less than 3.4%. While the financial news was bullish, the
actual professionals took the news differently.
Wage inflation was also muted with average hourly earnings rising six cents, or 0.2% in April
after rising by the same margin in March. Average hourly earnings "were disappointing," said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at
BMO Capital Markets in New York.
Secondly, 1.7% is an average, not a median.
For instance, none of this applied to you if you are an
older
worker .
Weekly earnings for workers aged 55 to 64 were only 0.8% higher in the first quarter of 2019
than they were in the first quarter of 2007, after accounting for inflation, they found.
For comparison, earnings rose 4.7% during that same period for workers between the ages of 35
and 54.
On the other hand, if you worked for a
bank your wages went up at a rate far above average. This goes double if you are in
management.
Among the biggest standouts: commercial banks, which employ an estimated 1.3 million people in
the U.S. Since Trump took office in January 2017, they have increased their average hourly wage
at an annualized pace of almost 11 percent, compared with just 3.3 percent under Obama.
Finally, there is the reason for this incredibly small wage increase fo regular workers.
Hint: it wasn't because of capitalism and all the bullsh*t jobs it creates.
The tiny wage increase that the working class has seen is because of what the capitalists said
was a
terrible idea .
For Americans living in the 21 states where the federal minimum wage is binding, inflation
means that the minimum wage has lost 16 percent of its purchasing power.
But elsewhere, many workers and employers are experiencing a minimum wage well above 2009
levels. That's because state capitols and, to an unprecedented degree, city halls have become
far more active in setting their own minimum wages. ... Averaging across all of these federal, state and local minimum wage laws, the effective minimum
wage in the United States -- the average minimum wage binding each hour of minimum wage work --
will be $11.80 an hour in 2019. Adjusted for inflation, this is probably the highest minimum
wage in American history. The effective minimum wage has not only outpaced inflation in recent years, but it has also
grown faster than typical wages. We can see this from the Kaitz index, which compares the
minimum wage with median overall wages.
So if you are waiting for capitalism to trickle down on you, it's never going to happen.
span y gjohnsit on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:21pm
Thousands of South Carolina teachers rallied outside their state capitol Wednesday, demanding
pay raises, more planning time, increased school funding -- and, in a twist, more legal
protections for their freedom of speech SC for Ed, the grassroots activist group that organized Wednesday's demonstration, told CNN
that many teachers fear protesting or speaking up about education issues, worrying they'll
face retaliation at work. Saani Perry, a teacher in Fort Mill, S.C., told CNN that people in
his profession are "expected to sit in the classroom and stay quiet and not speak [their]
mind."
To address these concerns, SC for Ed is lobbying for the Teachers' Freedom of Speech Act,
which was introduced earlier this year in the state House of Representatives. The bill would
specify that "a public school district may not willfully transfer, terminate or fail to renew
the contract of a teacher because the teacher has publicly or privately supported a public
policy decision of any kind." If that happens, teachers would be able to sue for three times
their salary.
Teachers across the country are raising similar concerns about retaliation. Such fears
aren't unfounded: Lawmakers in some states that saw strikes last year have introduced bills
this year that would punish educators for skipping school to protest.
Millennial and generation Z workers are becoming increasingly miserable with their jobs and careers. Since we are told several
times a day by the media that the economy is booming, why are so many young workers so disastrously melancholy all the time?
"When you're struggling with your mental health it can be much harder to stay in work or manage your spending, while being
in debt can cause huge stress and anxiety – so the two issues feed off each other, creating a vicious cycle which can destroy
lives," said Helen Undy the institute's chief executive.
"Yet despite how connected these problems are, financial services rarely think about our mental health, and mental health
services rarely consider what is happening with our money."
So why are we constantly being told everything is fine? The mainstream media loves to say that the U.S. is nearly ten years into
one of the longest economic expansions in history, unemployment is the lowest it's been in almost half a century, and employees have
more job choices than they've had in years. But there's just one problem. That's not actual truthful when taking all of the data
into consideration. Sure, unemployment is low the way the government calculates it, but there's a reason for that.
102 million Americans are no longer "in the workforce" and therefore, unaccounted for.
When a working-age American does not have a job, the federal number crunchers put them into one of two different categories.
Either they are categorized as "unemployed" or they are categorized as "not in the labor force".
But you have to add both of those categories together to get the total number of Americans that are not working.
Over the last decade, the number of Americans that are in the "unemployed" category has been steadily going down, but the number
of Americans "not in the labor force" has been rapidly going up.
In both cases we are talking about Americans that do not have a job. It is just a matter of how the federal government chooses
to categorize those individuals. –
Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog
That could partially explain the misery some are feeling, but those who have jobs aren't happy either. They are often reeling
from student loan and credit card debt. Being depressed makes shopping feel like a solution, but when the bill comes, the depression
once again sets in making this a difficult cycle to break for so many just trying to scrape by.
Depression and suicide rates are rising sharply
and other than putting the blame on superficial issues, researchers are at a loss as to the real reason why. But could it possibly
be that as the elite globalists continue to take over the world and enslave mankind, people are realizing that they aren't meant
to be controlled or manipulated, but meant to be free?
There's something we are all missing all around the globe. Could it possibly be free will and a life of freedom from theft and
violent coercion and force that's missing?
When even your own article lies to everyone... so the modern person that does well are those who lie the best and are the best
con artists. Trump is an example. Low talent High con.
Example the US unemployment number.
Only the pool of unemployed that is Presently eligible for unemployment benefits is counted in the Unemployment number. That
means self employed, commissioned workers, contractors etc are not included in the pool of unemployment even if they are out of
work because they are unemployment ineligible.
Thus, over time, as unemployment benefits are lost, the unemployment pool shrinks. This is called a mathematical regression.
How far does it shrink? To the point of equilibrium which is roughly 4% in which new persons enter the work force to the same
extent of those losing benefits and being removed and become invisible.
Thus, Unemployment is a bogus number grossly understating truthful Unemployment. This method was first used under Obama and
persists today under the Orange poser.
Nepotism and Affirmative action
Why would this make people unhappy? Chronic underemployment. Advancement is mostly by nepotism or affirmative action the flip
side of the same coin. The incoming Harvard Class this year was 30% legacy student... and 30% affirmative action and the rest
be damned. Happy?
Feminism has gripped the workplace.
Men hate working for female bosses. They don't trust them, they don't trust their judgment which often looks political and
never logical. Men feel those women were promoted because of gender.
I saw this years ago in a clean room at National Semiconductor. A woman was put in charge of a team of roughly 30 white nerd
males. She was at them constantly for not locking doors behind them and other menial infractions. She could not comprehend the
complexity of the work or how inspiration operates but she would nag them and bully them.
At another facility there was a genius that would come to work and set up a sleeping bag and go to sleep under his desk. He
was a Unix programmer and system engineer. So when something went wrong they would wake him and he would get up, solve the problem
and go back to sleep.
Then the overstuffed string of pearls showed up as the new unit boss. She was infuriated that somebody would dare sleep on
the clock and so blatantly. So she would harass him and wake him. Then one day she got so mad she started kicking him while he
was sleeping. He grabbed his sleeping bag and briefcase and stormed out.
Ultimately the woman's boss took her to task and explained to her that it didn't matter if that employee slept under his desk
because when he worked to solve problems only he could solve he saved the company millions. She was fired. As a token stipulation
the sleeping genius came back and a sign was posted on his desk. "Kicking this employee is grounds for immediate dismissal."
Usually the nerd walks and just gets replaced by some diversity politician and string of pearls then sets the tone by making
the workplace ****. Women simply are not as intelligent as men and pretending they are just wrecks morale of the people who are
really intelligent. The rise of the shoulder padded woman string of pearls bully is a scourge to one and all.
Simple answer: because people are spineless and terrible negotiators.
Long answer: for years the adage has been "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" or "find a good job and
never leave" or "work your way to the top" or "be a hard worker, trust your leadership, keep your head down, and don't make waves."
********.
If you do what you love, you'll learn to hate it. Welcome to misery.
Upward mobility doesn't happen unless you leave. If you're a good little productive worker drone, management has no incentive
to give you more than 1-3% raises every year to keep you 'loyal.' Once you've wasted 20 or so years being a robot, welcome to
misery.
Nobody gets promoted unless you're a useless ***-kisser who fails to be productive and hasn't done anything egregious enough
to get canned. Once you've been passed by for that promotion you want enough times, welcome to misery.
The people making the decisions at the top are the useless ***-kissers that can't do what you do but they talk a good game.
Most of them are case studies in the Peter Principle. Once you realize that the 'top' consists of nothing but fuckwads, welcome
to misery.
The only way to get ahead and get what you want out of a career is to develop the skills you need and market yourself top someone
who'll pay you what you're worth.
Develop strong negotiation skills early, know your market value, and don't be afraid of change.
Employer loyalty is a farce; if you think your employer is loyal to you, I've got some oceanfront property in New Mexico to
sell you.
The New York Times has an
illuminating article today summarizing recent research on the gender effects of
mandatory overwork in professional jobs. Lawyers, people in finance and other
client-centered occupations are increasingly required to be available round-the-clock, with
50-60 or more hours of work per week the norm. Among other costs, the impact on wage inequality
between men and women is severe. Since women are largely saddled with primary responsibility
for child care, even when couples ostensibly embrace equality on a theoretical level, the
workaholic jobs are allocated to men. This shows up in dramatic differences between typical
male and female career paths. The article doesn't discuss comparable issues in working class
employment, but availability for last-minute changes in work schedules and similar demands are
likely to impact men and women differentially as well.
What the article doesn't point out is that the situation it describes is a classic prisoners
dilemma.* Consider law firms. They compete for clients, and clients prefer attorneys who are
available on call, always prepared and willing to adjust to whatever schedule the client throws
at them. Assume that most lawyers want sane, predictable work hours if they are offered without
a severe penalty in pay. If law firms care about the well-being of their employees but also
about profits, we have all the ingredients to construct a standard PD payoff matrix:
There is a penalty to unilateral cooperation, cutting work hours back to a work-life balance
level. If your firm does it and the others don't, you lose clients to them.
There is a benefit to unilateral defection. If everyone else is cutting hours but you don't,
you scoop up the lion's share of the clients.
Mutual cooperation is preferred to mutual defection. Law firms, we are assuming, would
prefer a world in which overwork was removed from the contest for competitive advantage. They
would compete for clients as before, but none would require their staff to put in soul-crushing
hours. The alternative equilibrium, in which competition is still on the basis of the quality
of work but everyone is on call 24/7 is inferior.
If the game is played once, mutual defection dominates. If it is played repeatedly there is
a possibility for mutual cooperation to establish itself, but only under favorable conditions
(which apparently don't exist in the world of NY law firms). The logical solution is some
form of binding regulation.
The reason for bringing this up is that it strengthens the case for collective action rather
than placing all the responsibility on individuals caught in the system, including for that
matter individual law firms. Or, the responsibility is political, to demand constraints on the
entire industry. One place to start would be something like France's
right-to-disconnect law .
*I haven't read the studies by economists and sociologists cited in the article, but I
suspect many of them make the same point I'm making here.
The neoliberal war on labor in the USA is real. And it is especially real for It folk over 50. No country for the old
men, so to speak...
Notable quotes:
"... Obviously you need a financial cushion to not be earning for months and to pay for the training courses. ..."
"... Yeah, people get set in their ways and resistant to make changes. Steve Jobs talked about people developing grooves in their brain and how important it is to force yourself out of these grooves.* ..."
"... Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. ..."
"... The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a person in a wheelchair. ..."
"... IBEW (licensed electricians) has no upper age limit for apprentices They have lots of American engineers who applied in their 30s after realizing most companies want diverse HI-B engineers. ..."
"... At 40+, I still can learn advanced mathematics as well as I ever did. In fact, I can still compete with the Chinese 20 year olds. The problem is not mental horsepower, it's time and energy. I rarely have time to concentrate these days (wife, kids, pets), which makes it hard to get the solid hours of prime mental time required to really push yourself at a hard pace and learn advanced material. ..."
"... That's a huge key and I discovered it when I was asked to tutor people who were failing chemistry. I quickly discovered that all it took for most of them to "get it" was to keep approaching the problem from different angles until a light came on for them and for me the challenge of finding the right approach was a great motivator. Invariably it was some minor issue and once they overcame that, it became easy for them. I'm still astonished at that to this day. ..."
"... Sorry man, English teaching is huge, and will remain so for some time to come. I'm heavily involved in the area and know plenty of ESL teachers. Spain for me, and the level of English here is still so dreadful and they all need it, the demand is staggering and their schools suck at teaching it themselves. ..."
"... You have to really dislike your circumstances in the US to leave and be willing to find some way to get by overseas. ..."
"... We already saw this in South Africa. Mandela took over, the country went down the tubes, the wealthy whites left and the Boers were left to die in refugee camps. They WANT to leave and a few went to Russia, but most developed countries don't want them. Not with the limited amount of money they have. ..."
"... Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country except for blacks and rednecks I have met in the Philippines who were stationed there in the military and have a $1000 a month check. Many of them live in more dangerous and dirty internal third worlds in America than what they can have in Southeast Asia and a good many would be homeless. They are worldly enough to leave. ..."
" He's 28 years old getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the
skilled trades as well. What then?"
I know a UK guy (ex City type) who retrained as an electrician in his early 50s.
Competent guy. Obviously no one would take him on as an apprentice, so he wired up all his
outbuildings as his project to get his certificate. But he's getting work now, word gets
around if you're any good.
Obviously you need a financial cushion to not be earning for months and to pay for the
training courses.
Yeah, people get set in their ways and resistant to make changes. Steve Jobs talked about
people developing grooves in their brain and how important it is to force yourself out of
these grooves.*
I know a Haitian immigrant without a college degree who was working three jobs and then
dropped down to two jobs and went to school part time in his late 40's and earned his degree
in engineering and is a now an engineer in his early 50's.
*From Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pp.330-331:
"It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something
amazing," Jobs said wistfully to the writer David Sheff, who published a long and intimate
interview in Playboy the month he turned thirty. "Of course, there are some people who are
innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they're rare." The
interview touched on many subjects, but Jobs's most poignant ruminations were about growing
old and facing the future:
Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really
etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like
grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of
have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a
tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back. . .
.
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look
back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and
throw them away.
The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to
continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye. I have to
go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere.
Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.
"fluid intelligence" starts crystallizing after your 20's". Nonsense, I had
a great deal of trouble learning anything from my teen years and 20's because I didn't know
how to learn. I went for 30 years and eventually figured out a learning style that worked for
me. I have learned more and mastered more skills in the past ten years ages 49-59 than I had
in the previous 30.
You can challenge yourself like I did and after a while of doing this (6 months) you will
find it a lot easier to learn and comprehend than you did previously. (This is true only if
you haven't damaged your brain from years of smoking and drinking). I constantly challenged
myself with trying to learn math that I had trouble with in school and eventually mastered
it.
The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the
muscles of a person in a wheelchair.
IBEW (licensed electricians) has no upper age limit for apprentices They have lots of
American engineers who applied in their 30s after realizing most companies want diverse HI-B
engineers.
Upper age limits for almost every occupation disappeared decades ago in America because of
age discrimination laws.
I can't see how any 28 year old could possibly be too soft to go into any kind of manual
labor job.
@anonymous
Yeah, there was a recent study showing that 70 year olds can form neural connections as
quickly as teenagers.
At 40+, I still can learn advanced mathematics as well as I ever did. In fact, I can still
compete with the Chinese 20 year olds. The problem is not mental horsepower, it's time and
energy. I rarely have time to concentrate these days (wife, kids, pets), which makes it hard
to get the solid hours of prime mental time required to really push yourself at a hard pace
and learn advanced material.
This is why the Chinese are basically out of date when they are 30, their companies assume
that they have kids and are not able to give 110% anymore.
eventually figured out a learning style that worked for me.
That's a huge key and I discovered it when I was asked to tutor people who were failing
chemistry. I quickly discovered that all it took for most of them to "get it" was to keep
approaching the problem from different angles until a light came on for them and for me the
challenge of finding the right approach was a great motivator. Invariably it was some minor
issue and once they overcame that, it became easy for them. I'm still astonished at that to
this day.
The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you
waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a
person in a wheelchair.
Yeah. He's 28 years old and apparently his chosen skillset is teaching
EASL in foreign countries. That sector is shrinking as English becomes the global lingua
franca and is taught in elementary schools worldwide. He's really too old and soft for his
Plan B (military), and getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled
trades as well. What then?
do you know anything first hand about the teaching- english- as-a- second- language
hustle?
Asking sincerely – as I don't know anything about it. However I kinda suspect that
'native speakers' will be in demand in many parts of the globe for some time to come [as an
aside – and maybe Linh has written of this and I missed it – but last spring I
was in Saigon for a couple of weeks and, hanging out one day at the zoo & museum complex,
was startled to see about three groups of Vietnamese primary-school students being led around
by americans in their early 20s, narrating everything in american english . Apparently
private schools offering entirely english-language curriculum are the big hit with the middle
& upper class elite there. Perhaps more of the same elsewhere in the region?]
At any rate the young man in this interview has a lot more in the way of qualifications
and skill sets than I had when I left the States 35 years ago, and I've done just fine. I'd
advise any prospective expats to get that TEFL certificate as it's one extra thing to have in
your back pocket and who knows?
PS: "It really can't be overstated how blessed you are to have American citizenship"
– well, yes it can. Everyone knows that the best passport on earth is from Northwest Euroland, one of those places with free university education and free health care and where
teenage mothers don't daily keel over dead from heroin overdoses in Dollar Stores .. Also
more places visa-free
When
you left the States 35 years ago, the world was 3 billion people smaller. The labor market
has gotten a tad more competitive. I don't see any indication of a trade or other refined
skillset in this article.
People who teach EASL for a living are like people who drive cars for a living: you don't
do it because you're really good at teaching your native language, you do it because
you're not marketable at anything else.
I think being Australian is the best citizenry you can have. The country is far from
perfect, but any lower middle class American white like myself would prefer to be lower
middle class there than in Detroit or Phoenix, where being lower income means life around the
unfettered urban underclass that is paranoia inducing.
Being from the US is not as bad as being Bangladeshi, but if you had to be white and urban
and poor you'd be better off in Sydney than Flint.
The most patriotic Americans have never been anywhere, so they have no idea whether
Australia or Tokyo are better. They have never traveled.
Yeah. He's 28 years old and apparently his chosen skillset is teaching
EASL in foreign countries. That sector is shrinking as English becomes the global lingua
franca and is taught in elementary schools worldwide. He's really too old and soft for his
Plan B (military), and getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled
trades as well. What then?
do you know anything first hand about the teaching- english- as-a- second- language
hustle?
Asking sincerely – as I don't know anything about it. However I kinda suspect that
'native speakers' will be in demand in many parts of the globe for some time to come [as an
aside – and maybe Linh has written of this and I missed it – but last spring I
was in Saigon for a couple of weeks and, hanging out one day at the zoo & museum complex,
was startled to see about three groups of Vietnamese primary-school students being led around
by americans in their early 20s, narrating everything in american english .
Apparently private schools offering entirely english-language curriculum are the big hit
with the middle & upper class elite there. Perhaps more of the same elsewhere in the
region?]
At any rate the young man in this interview has a lot more in the way of qualifications
and skill sets than I had when I left the States 35 years ago, and I've done just fine. I'd
advise any prospective expats to get that TEFL certificate as it's one extra thing to have in
your back pocket and who knows?
ps: "It really can't be overstated how blessed you are to have American citizenship"
– well, yes it can. Everyone knows that the best passport on earth is from Northwest
Euroland, one of those places with free university education and free health care and where
teenage mothers don't daily keel over dead from heroin overdoses in Dollar Stores ..
People who teach EASL for a living are like people who drive cars for a
living: you don't do it because you're really good at teaching your native language, you do
it because you're not marketable at anything else.
well that's the beauty of it: you don't have to be good at anything other than just being
a native speaker to succeed as an EASL teacher, and thousands more potential customers are
born every day. I'd definitely advise any potential expats to become accomplished, and, even
better, qualified, in as many trades as possible. But imho the real key to success as a long
term expat is your mindset: determination and will-power to survive no matter what. If you
really want to break out of the States and see the world, and don't have inherited wealth,
you will be forced to rely on your wits and good luck and seize the opportunities that arise,
whatever those opportunities may be.
Sorry man, English teaching is huge, and will remain so for some time to
come. I'm heavily involved in the area and know plenty of ESL teachers. Spain for me, and the
level of English here is still so dreadful and they all need it, the demand is staggering and
their schools suck at teaching it themselves.
You are one of those people who just like to shit on things:) and people make a lot of
money out of it, not everyone of course, like any area. But it's perfectly viable and good to
go for a long time yet. It's exactly that English is the lingua Franca that people need to be
at a high level of it. The Chinese market is still massive. The bag packer esl teachers are
the ones that give off this stigma, and 'bag packer' and 'traveller' are by now very much
regarded as dirty words in the ESL world.
Most Americans lack the initiative to move anywhere. Most will complain but will never
leave the street they were born on. Urban whites are used to adaptation being around other
cultures anyhow and being somewhat street smart, but the poor rural whites in the exurbs or
sticks whose live would really improve if they got the hell out of America will never move
anywhere.
You have to really dislike your circumstances in the US to leave and be willing to find
some way to get by overseas.
Lots of people will talk about leaving America without having a clue as to how hard this
is to actually do. Australia and New Zealand are not crying out for white proles with high
school education or GED. It is much more difficult to move overseas and stay overseas than
most Americans think.
Except of course for the ruling elite. And that is because five-star hotels look the same
everywhere and money is an international language.
We already saw this in South Africa. Mandela took over, the country went down the tubes,
the wealthy whites left and the Boers were left to die in refugee camps. They WANT to leave
and a few went to Russia, but most developed countries don't want them. Not with the limited
amount of money they have.
Australia and NZ would rather have refugees than white people in dire circumstances.
Even immigrating to Canada, a country that I worked in, is much much harder than anyone
imagines.
Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country except for
blacks and rednecks I have met in the Philippines who were stationed there in the military
and have a $1000 a month check. Many of them live in more dangerous and dirty internal third
worlds in America than what they can have in Southeast Asia and a good many would be
homeless. They are worldly enough to leave.
But most Americans whose lives would be vastly improved overseas think they are living in
the greatest country on earth.
"... "The decision to close our local stores is a difficult one," said Lifeway Chief Executive Officer Brad Waggoner. "While we had hoped to keep some stores open, current market projections show this is no longer a viable option." ..."
"... And yes, Internet retailing has been growing, but it still accounts for less than 10 percent of all U.S. retail sales. In addition, it is important to point out that Internet retailers had a very disappointing holiday season just like brick and mortar retailers did. ..."
"... Ultimately, the truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily slowing down in recent months. During the months of December, January and February, the amount of stuff being moved around the country by truck, rail and air was lower than during all of those same months a year earlier. The following comes from Wolf Richter ..."
"... Unfortunately, it appears that things are only going to get rougher for the U.S. economy in the months ahead. So more retail workers are going to get laid off, more stores are going to close, and there are going to be a lot more stories about our ongoing "retail apocalypse" in the mainstream media. ..."
Just like we witnessed during the last recession, major retailers are laying off tens of
thousands of workers, and it looks like this will be the worst year for store closings in all
of U.S. history. Many are referring to this as
"the retail apocalypse" , and without a doubt this is one of the toughest stretches for
retailers that we have ever seen. But many believe that what we have witnessed so far is
just the beginning . After all, if
retailers are struggling this much now, how bad will things be once the next recession really
gets rolling? Of course the truth is that things have been rocky for the retail industry for
quite a few years, but the numbers are telling us that this crisis is really starting to
accelerate.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, retail layoffs were up a whopping 92 percent
in January and February compared to the same period a year ago. The following comes from
NBC News
More than 41,000 people have lost their jobs in the retail industry so far this year -- a
92 percent spike in layoffs since the same time last year,
according to a new report.
And the layoffs continue to mount, with JCPenney announcing this week it would be closing
18 stores in addition to three previously announced closures, as part of a "standard annual
review."
Yes, competition from Internet commerce is hurting the traditional retail industry, but it
certainly doesn't explain a 92 percent increase.
And very few retailers have been able to avoid this downsizing trend. At this point, even
the largest retailer in the entire country has begun "quietly closing
stores"
Walmart is closing at least 11 US stores across eight states.
The stores include one Walmart Supercenter in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Walmart
Neighborhood Market stores in Arizona, California, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Virginia, and Washington.
For decades, Wal-Mart has been expanding extremely aggressively.
They have plenty of cash, and so the only way that it would make sense for them to close
stores is if they anticipated that we are heading into a recession.
The company was unable to find a buyer for the retail business and will begin winding down
its operations beginning this week, the company said in statement released Monday. The
decision to liquidate will bring an end to the brick-and-mortar business that began in 1962
with one location in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Lifeway Christian Bookstores announced last week it would be closing the doors of all 170
brick and mortar stores, in a pivot to focusing on digital and e-commerce.
"The decision to close our local stores is a difficult one," said Lifeway Chief Executive
Officer Brad Waggoner. "While we had hoped to keep some stores open, current market
projections show this is no longer a viable option."
Whenever I do an article like this, I always have some readers that try to convince me that
this is only happening because of the growth of Internet retailing.
And yes, Internet retailing has been growing, but it still accounts for less than 10 percent
of all U.S. retail sales. In addition, it is important to point out that Internet retailers had
a very disappointing holiday season just like brick and mortar retailers did.
Ultimately, the truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily slowing down in recent
months. During the months of December, January and February, the amount of stuff being moved around
the country by truck, rail and air was lower than during all of those same months a year
earlier. The following comes from
Wolf Richter
Now it's the third month in a row, and the red flag is getting more visible and a little
harder to ignore about the goods-based economy: Freight shipment volume in the US across all
modes of transportation – truck, rail, air, and barge – in February fell 2.1%
from February a year ago, according to the
Cass Freight Index , released today. The three months in a row of year-over-year declines
are the first such declines since the transportation recession of 2015 and 2016.
I have a feeling that when we get the final numbers for March that they will show that this
streak has now extended to four months.
Right now, unsold goods
are starting to pile up in U.S. warehouses at a rate that we haven't seen since the last
recession. Many retailers that are barely clinging to life will simply not survive if economic
conditions continue to deteriorate.
Unfortunately, it appears that things are only going to get rougher for the U.S. economy in
the months ahead. So more retail workers are going to get laid off, more stores are going to close, and there
are going to be a lot more stories about our ongoing "retail apocalypse" in the mainstream
media.
"... Was the American Middle Class a Cold War thing? ..."
"... The British middle class seems to have been mostly people living on investments -- not in the manorial style, but with enough to have a flat, and a servant -- in a style that you might associate with Sherlock Holmes. A middle class that included people with jobs definitely seems post-WWII, and, of course, since the wage stagnation starting in the mid 1970's, it's mostly ended by now. ..."
feel that being middle class is not what
it once was and that we are all running in place as fast as we can to stay the same, to quote Alice in
Wonderland's Red Queen," Brenda Madison, an art director and graphic designer in Laguna Beach (Orange
County), told me. "Never did I think I would worry that Social Security and Medicare may not be available in
my future or that a medical injury or unexpected repair would bankrupt us."
She and her husband, now in their middle years, "are not sure we will be able to retire in our home."
Patricia Moore is a single mother of three who lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles and a
licensed vocational nurse working in hospice about to take the licensing exam to be a registered nurse. Due
to a shortage of space, she sleeps on the couch and is "still struggling to make ends meet." Her rent is
$1,598 a month, her pay is about $3,200, and her student loan payback is $375 a month. Moore recently has
had to resort to a GoFundMe campaign so she could stay home with her daughter during a monthlong health
crisis, and has at times had to donate plasma. She said she is unable to provide "the extras for her kids."
Moore began to enter her youngest son in focus groups in office buildings or hotels in neighborhoods like
Beverly Hills. Sometimes he would make $75 an hour and the whole family would eat from buffets, the kind
with cantaloupe, and maybe they'd also get a gift card. At first, he tested toys and then video games but
also an MRI to map his brain. It was only because of these gigs that Moore could finally say, "Go buy
yourself something," to her children.
These were Americans for whom the meaning of middle-class life had altered from something stable to
implied economic fragility.
Their burdens were the price of health and child care, educational debt or a housing market gone berserk.
They wanted job security, pensions and Social Security and unions, but these things seemed like a fantasy
out of a mid-century American novel like "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." The middle class' long
historical association with the status quo -- strongly identifying with institutions or corporations,
rejecting restive discontent -- has made their new wobbliness all the more startling to them.
But when did that vulnerability start? Toward the end of the past century into this one, there was a rise
in what author Barbara Ehrenreich has called a "fear of falling," an anxiety among the
professional-managerial class about downward mobility. I think of fear of falling as the opposite side of
the coin of American individualism and its historic promise of social and economic progress.
Since the 1980s, some members of the middle class have gone "from a kind of security to being reduced to
the kind of economic unstable state that working-class Americans have had to experience forever," explained
Caitlin Zaloom, an anthropologist at New York University who studies the middle-class financial experience.
The office or academic job started to resemble the precarious work life that working poor Americans have
long understood to be their lot, she said. And then there are the robots waiting in the wings to take their
ostensible share of middle-class jobs, and soon.
This new fragility is one theory to explain the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Trump voters were
sometimes mistaken for all hillbilly elegiac or Rust Belt proletariat. In truth, an estimated
38 percent of white people
with bachelor degrees voted for the man -- closer to "office worker elegy."
Indeed, as much as Trump's messaging has been jingoistic or racist, he has also been addressing middle-class
anxiety when he continually repeated that the system is "rigged."
While some have protested that Trump's success has more to do with loss of status or rank bigotry, Johns
Hopkins University sociologist
Stephen
L. Morgan has conducted studies that reveal one substantial motivator of the Trump vote was
economic. He noted that a successful national Democratic candidate would be one who appealed "to people who
have not fared well in the postindustrial economy," such as those in some once-prosperous areas of the
Midwest.
Ordinary middle-class people's struggles can be, of course, ameliorated by broad shifts, such as adopting
a form of universal basic income or a flat monthly cash stipend for familial caregivers of their young or
elderly kin. And we should at least explore adopting Medicare for all, to address rising health care costs.
We also need to more effectively push for longer paid parental leave -- or, in many cases, any paid parental
leave.
But if we can't get relief from federal programs or our employers, we will need to craft local or state
solutions. Retaining rent stabilization laws is key in our cities, as is building more affordable housing
for, say, teachers and municipal workers, so they can continue to live in the places they serve.
Finally, I saw when reporting my book that, when squeezed, people revealed their financial woes to
others, they tended to then recognize that their obstacles were partially systemic. That, in turn, meant
they didn't simply internalize their real-world burdens into self-punishment. They seemed more able to patch
together personal solutions -- small-scale child care fixes like sharing pickup with their neighbors, for
instance.
Simply voicing hopes and difficulties, and making them audible for their leaders to name and address, is
a small part of what must happen for things to change. Although for some, these needed transformations may
seem to be coming too late.
As Madison put it, "We are trying not to think too much about the future."
My ground level observations indicate that there is a lot of "denial" going on in the minds of the
putative 'middle class.'
One major barrier to the public 'conversations' about the economic malaise affecting America today is the
still prevalent custom of shaming the victims of bad luck. I see this tying all the way back to the
Calvinist theological concept of "Election," which is an aspect of "Predestination." In effect, one suffers
in life because the Deity chooses to make it so. Thus, those who do well in life can "legitimately" look
down on those who suffer. It is a perfect excuse for callousness of heart.
We read Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" in class in my High School. Written
around 1900, it still has merit as a descriptive and predictive tome.
Some of what is perceived as shaming, may just be understood as trying to understand how those with
good professions etc. end up that way (and no I don't judge those without "good professions" – I don't
think we choose our fate to any real degree see. It's just takes more to understand why is all). Now from
the inside some good professions are not really, or have become so niche that that is the story but
This:"Finally, I saw when reporting my book that, when squeezed, people revealed their financial woes to
others, they tended to then recognize that their obstacles were partially systemic. That, in turn, meant
they didn't simply internalize their real-world burdens into self-punishment. They seemed more able to patch
together personal solutions -- small-scale child care fixes like sharing pickup with their neighbors, for
instance."
commiseration is new, in my experience. not too long ago, one didn't speak about economic difficulties in
polite company at least in the middle class(poor people, oth, sometimes do)
that they're finding such behaviour is worrying, as it means the precariousness is spreading which causes
cognitive dissonance, since it's counterintuitive according the the Narrative we're all supposed to cling
to.
to wit, in my recent exposure to network tv in hotels and dr's offices, i note that -- like in the Matrix–a
grand illusion of the late 90's is laid across the world.
I hear locally upper middle class soccer moms having lunch, and it's oneupmanship all around everything's
fine, and we went to the most wonderful resort, in our new suv, and our son married a doctor and they
honeymooned as missionaries (!) but it's all nonsense, and everyone knows it.(the quick flash of panic in
their eyes, "will the card work?")
That was the norm not so long ago all the way down to the dregs of the former middle class. i see the
rending of that pretension the misty veil of utopian just-worldism as what's at the root of so many of these
dislocations an eruptions of late.
"Believe Real Hard" just doesn't cut it any more, and those soccer moms don't know how to think about it.
Per Ambrit's reference to Calvinism, at some point reality intrudes and one must climb down from the pillar.
Becoming They and The Other. It can't happen to me -- I am a Exceptional! ™ (and white). Could Compassion be on the horizon– on the wax as more and more realize they are in the global
Lemming-fall rat-race to the bottom ?
They're not attending/joining churches because that costs money and they don't have the money.
Once there are more "churches" that only cost what people can afford, more people will attend. Just
a prediction.
it's not all illusions, a part of the population is doing pretty well, they take vacations and crap
(who even has ANY paid time off anymore anyway? not me. even STAYCATIONS are off the table! Heck getting
a cold is pretty much off the table ..). But others
But yea the Big Lie Narrative of these times is that the economy is doing well, Trump's economic
performance will get him reelected (this economy is total garbage, so F trump and the horse he rode in
on), unemployment is low and other BS.
Lots of sad reading here. But seriously – $117,400 a year qualifies as "low income."? I know that it is
true but at the same time that is so stupid on the face of it. I do have to admit here to a weakness for
nostalgia – especially for places that I have never experienced but have read about. Sometimes out of idle
curiosity I might flick through a few videos like that on America in earlier times and you can see one such
clip at
Having said this, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if neoliberalism had spluttered out during the
1970s as a nonstarter of an idea and instead a different timeline had formed. In this one, instead of wages
flate-lining back in the 70s, they had kept apace with GDP like they had the previous thirty years. People,
more secure in their wages, would never have embarked on the credit boom like they did when wages dropped.
In this timeline too the rich are still taxed at 70% which mopped up all the surplus that would otherwise
have instead gone on to founding think tanks and money in politics. With an affluent population, there was
never was a need to import so much from China and the unions were still strong enough to stop industries
being shipped off to there. It would have been a completely different America.
But that is another timeline and we are instead in one where people will soon be in a position where they
have nothing else to lose. And that is a very dangerous proposition that. And they still have potentially a
very powerful weapon – their numbers. And their votes.
The 70s were going to be a very tough decade: The loss of our huge post-WW2 advantages in
manufacturing, oil shocks, a very expensive war to pay for, and Watergate probably fits in their
somewhere.
I am not sure what we did in the 70s and after was exactly neoliberalism, but any restraint shown in
the face of the new realities (Carter and his sweaters, Bush breaking his tax pledge) were massively
unpopular, and I think that was going to be the case in general – regardless of what path we went down.
The very idea that neo-liberalism was the cause (as opposed to an interaction with) of the root
problems I think is indicative of over optimism about our situation. Contrary, I do think it is very
reasonable to say that neo-liberalism made the problems worse.
The distinction is important, you can reject our current situation and policies, and still not be
particularly convinced that the opposing voices are being more realistic.
After reading "Democracy in Chains" by Nancy MacLean, I'm leaning toward neoliberalism as a cause.
It kicked into high gear with Reagan's election in 1980, and Bill Clinton made sure there was no
stopping it.
In reference to this from the original post: "In truth, an estimated 38 percent of white people
with bachelor degrees voted for [Trump]," I have to say, I think you call those people Republicans,
and don't kid yourself. They will do it again.
Carla, thank you, exactly so. The technique of it all was quite insidious, as it was an appeal
disguised and self righteous to greed to a two groups: baby boomers and their parents sociology
primed for such pitches. Once that genie got out of the bottle there was no getting it back in.
So, will the millenials kill-off the Genie for good .. or will they, in their turn, rub that
lamp all the more, to parlay their 3 wishes towards other equally speciously sparklely endeavors
??
we can't 'rub the lantern'; when those in power in 1981 set off down the neoliberal road,
the conditions of their wish were fulfilled by debt-enslavement of everyone who came after
them to support enriching those who clawed their way to the top.
the only millennial oligarch is Zuckerberg and I don't think anyone believes he is going
to maintain his power even half as long as, say, Bill Gates. the only millenials who believe
in neoliberalism are paid shills for the elite like Ben Shapiro or Charlie Kirk and by the
same Zuckerberg:Gates ratio, they have less than half as much power as a Rush Limbaugh.
Neoliberalism is dead, we're in the gramscian interregnum, at this point I just hope and
plead with the infinite that we get Bernie in 2020 instead of Cotton/Creshaw primarying Trump
or something awful like that because the familyblogging Democrats refuse to pass the torch in
favor of one more term of grift.
Rev Kev, who I was responding to, correctly noted that the 1970s were when wages began to drop.
Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton of course come later. This doesn't mean that their policies were not
problematic, but it does make it difficult to blame them as the causal agents of something that
started in the 1970s.
If you want to blame Johnson/Nixon and their Vietnam War policies, that would make some sense,
but they don't seem to me to be poster children for Neoliberalism with one being associated with
the Great Society and the other the author of price controls to suppress inflation.
When things get a bit tough (and note that in the 70's for all the hype they were not in fact
that tough – until govt policy of a NL kind stepped in) – then you have policy choices. If you
go NL, then that is a choice, and causally so. (It was usual to hide this causality in TINA.)
Financialization of the housing market creates obscene rents, leading to less household formation,
then the need to "do something" about population decline. Japan is 20 years ahead of us in that regard,
Indeed it does here in the SF Bay Area. The surprise of it all is part of the denial – the wife and I
look at our family income (usually 10-20% less than that) and are straight up perplexed that it doesn't
go as far as it "should". We certainly have a pleasant enough middle-class life, but it feels precarious
in a way that we never expected. And we only have that because we have subsidized housing (we live in a
house the family has owned for years, so are paying well below the insane market rates). If we had to pay
market rates we would be poor, or close to it.
We certainly rant to one another about the systemic issues behind this situation, but there are a lot
of California liberals who bitterly cling to questionable ideas like a balanced budget or Kamala Harris.
I've been wondering when I'll hear a candidate advocating lower home and rent prices – where I live we
absolutely need that if we're to keep a semblance of civilization and democracy.
You have hit on a major 'disrupter' of the body social. "Civilization and democracy" are being
willfully sacrificed to the Gods of Profit. That betrayal is a core part of neo-liberalism.
Re; lower home and rent prices. For the last 40 years, as the prosperous Great Lakes region became
the rust belt, we who live here have been constantly told: if you want a job, just MOVE to where the
jobs are.
Now are we allowed to say to the mortgage-or-rent-impoverished middle class folks who live on the
coasts, "If you want lower house and rent prices, just move to where the lower priced houses and
apartments are" ? We got plenty of room for y'all here, honest. And we're mostly midwest-nice, too.
But seriously – $117,400 a year qualifies as "low income."?
If you are very lucky, and I mean
lucky
, you might find an old junior one bedroom apartment
for the low, low price of $1,500 a month. No patio, no dishwasher, no nothing except a parking spot. This
is not exaggeration, sarcasm or humor, but reality. In some places in California it's closer to three
thousand dollars.
Most of us Californians do not make even fifty thousand and, if we do, we have to live closer to the
cities where the well paying jobs are. I keep waiting for the housing bust to arrive for last time the
rents dropped as much as thirty percent. Hopefully, I will still be in my apartment, or at least in an
apartment when that happens.
Another factor is cities not allowing for higher density housing. If somebody has a brownstone or
something similar, they will fight tooth and nail against that 6 story apartment building that would
allow a lot more people to live in the neighborhood. Under-investment in rapid mass transit also hurts
workers commuting to jobs and forces far more cars on the roads and parking spaces.
it was certainly precarious in the great depression, seems to thrive in boom periods. the white middle
class, and some of the black middle class did well in the 50's and early 60's. that was when the us was
economically at the pinnacle of the world, and i think that was because most of the other first world
economies were rebuilding from the rubble of ww2.
The only item I can think of that was an import from the Soviet Union and on retail shelves for
sale here during the Cold War, was Stolichnaya vodka, and as far as the Peoples Republic of China
goes, fireworks.
If I didn't finish the food on my plate, my parents would admonish me with tales of people starving
to death in China, and indeed they were.
For me as a child, the starvation place was Africa. I wonder about the psychological motivations
that made our parents ignore the suffering right nearby in our own neighborhoods and focus instead
on some far away place.
Today, that starvation is all around us. I personally feel guilty now that we cannot give very much
to beggars and homeless etc. due to our own straitened circumstances. The myth of "The Exceptional
Ones" (TM) is still a strong part of the social narrative today.
I try to do my infinitesmal part, ambrit .. by taking any surplus from the garden, when there
IS a surplus that is .. and donate it to the local foodbank. Last year it was 5 full lugs of
grapes fresh off the vine, a few yrs before that it was an over abundance of beets. This season
it might be potatoes THATs My lifestyle !
All on less than a $35,000 yr combined income. But that means no trips to Cancun, no new Car
every couple of years, no DeathCare expenditures, and no mortgage.
I feel humbled every time I make a delivery, especially when I see families in obvious distress
w/ young children .. looking for sustenance that they cannot otherwise afford to buy .. it
breaks my heart.
Yes to that. We got a bumper crop of 'volunteer' Muscadines last year. They made good
jelly. I should build a trellis or wire support network for the vines this year. With this
weather, we should get another good crop.
Living the 'prepper' life has it's compensations.
Our's were primarily muscat as well, what we donated. I ended up canning the rest,
turning them into muscat conserves half of which we've already given away to friends and
aquaintances. The other grapes, the Mars variety, became raisins, for home consumption.
Everyone should learn how to can .. cuz you never know when just-in-time .. just STOPS
!
Possibly this was a major influence. When the USA had identified large foreign enemies that must be
countered (Russia and China) there was an impetus to build in America and keep the USA population engaged
with the Russian and "Red" Chinese threat.
The USA was also an oil exporter until 1971, which allowed some control of oil prices.
Globalization was not prominent and I remember the poor quality Japanese tools of the 1960's (and
Chinese manufactured stuff rarely seen by me (firecrackers?))
Furthermore we had two large countries that economically were not as advanced as the USA and were not
viewed as particularly successful with their flawed Communist systems.
Effectively, China and Russia were playing the game with one hand tied behind their back.
This may also have allowed USA unions to be strong, increasing wages for union and non-union workers.
Perhaps the USA is currently making some other countries focus inwardly on their countries as the USA
did in the 1950's and 1960's.
By forcing sanctions on various countries (Iran, Russia, Venezuela) the USA may make them less
dependent on global resources and more like the more self sufficient USA of the 50's and 60's.
Very, very possibly. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I'm reading a lot of
fin de siècle
novels
and literature, e.g. Booth Tarkington.
The British middle class seems to have been mostly people living
on investments -- not in the manorial style, but with enough to have a flat, and a servant -- in a style
that you might associate with Sherlock Holmes. A middle class that included people with jobs definitely
seems post-WWII, and, of course, since the wage stagnation starting in the mid 1970's, it's mostly ended
by now.
"While some have protested that Trump's success has more to do with loss of status or rank bigotry, Johns
Hopkins University sociologist Stephen L. Morgan has conducted studies that reveal one substantial motivator
of the Trump vote was economic. He noted that a successful national Democratic candidate would be one who
appealed "to people who have not fared well in the postindustrial economy," such as those in some
once-prosperous areas of the Midwest."
But this is circular reasoning, why would people in the "middle class" think that Trump's policies are
better for them than Clinton's policies?
It's not like Trump is a sort of middle class guy himself, in facts H. Clinton is probably more "middle
classey" than Trump.
Plus, what does the term "middle class" mean specifically? How are these people different from "working
class" or small bourgoise?
Middle class to me growing up, meant that the school custodian across the street and 3 doors down from
us, could afford to buy a home, or you played little league with the son of a gas station owner, who made
enough from his 2 service bays always full (cars weren't nearly as reliable in the 60's) to also own a
home.
My doubt about the middle class is this: it is a term that various schools/sociologists/economists
used to mean very different things, so when someone speaks of the middle class it's difficult for me
to understand what he/she is speaking about.
For example:
1) In marxism it generally means the small bourgoise, meaning the small shopkeeper, the farmer who
owns his land etc;
2) at times, it just means people of the working class who have good jobs, that is different from
the definition (1). The disappearence of the middle class just means the disappearence of good jobs;
3) sometimes (wrongly IMHO) "workers" are supposed to be only blue collar and only without high
education, so "middle class" means people who have a degree and are white collars;
etc.
At times these categories can somehow mix but the class interest of someone who is a small business
owner is different from the class interest of someone who has a good employee job which might be
different from the interest of someone who could have a degree and a sucky white collar job.
So this very general idea of middle class is very confusing IMHO.
@MisterMr -- I think that because EVERYTHING in the good ole US of A is about money, the
understanding of a term like "middle class" becomes just about money, too.
When I was young (yes, a long time ago), I was given to understand that "middle class" meant
basically people with white collar jobs or jobs that required some professional accreditation:
teachers, nurses, lawyers, accountants, etc. "Working class" meant people with blue-collar jobs,
even if some of them regularly made more money than a teacher or, say, a nurse. "Upper class"
included high-earning professionals, CEO's, and of course those with inherited wealth. Poor, then
as now, was the one thing you definitely didn't want to be.
But, as I said, money has obliterated all those fine distinctions of snobbery. Now there is only
one: $.
The label of "Middle Class" in America can be used as either for the social class or for the
economic class with the white collar workers generally being both and the blue collar workers
being, before the 1950s, working class with working class wages. For about two decades the high
and low ends of the income range collapsed with most people being squeezed into the economic
middle class regardless of social class.
Now, income disparity has destroyed the economic middle class and the classic pyramid shaped
map of the social and economic system reappearing. The tiny wealthy elites; the slightly larger
service and professional class providing what the elites want; the small number of bureaucrats,
lawyers, doctors, mechanics, religious workers and so that any large societies need just to
function at all; the greatest numbers are the laboring class, and I don't mean the working
class.
The mental map of most Americans is stuck on the almost flat pyramid of 1970 in which all
classes were getting wealthier collapsing together economically, with the exception of the
wealthy not gaining wealth at the same rate as the bottom 99%. Even the poorest blacks finally
started to improve economically.
That picture is buried somewhere deeeep in our collective heads where the only real
differences was what type of job you were going to have and where mistakes, failure, and
disaster did not mean poverty. At worst, it meant a change of work or a temporary set back or a
change of social class but not economic class.
Find that image in your head, yank it out, put a stake in its heart, burn it, and scatter the
ashes. That picture died around 1973. Whatever the truth of that image it is long dead.
But too many people are trying to pretend that we are not living in a zero sum game of winner
take all.
Trump had the advantage that he was not tagged, directly or indirectly, with Bill Clinton's NAFTA,
welfare reform or supporting "Free trade" that seemed to only work well in economists' minds (TPP).
Clinton also supported the Iraq War, Libya and other military adventures, and Trump couldn't vote
for/against these operations that directly affected their communities.
Campaigning Trump called these wars "mistakes" while Hillary C would not.
Someone summed the election as "With Hillary you know you are screwed, with Trump you might not be."
Thanks, however it is a fact that a situation of bad economy and increasing inequality, that
ideally is supposed to be the main reason to vote left, is causing an upsurge in right-leaning
populism instead.
there is no populist right that brings home the bacon in the U.S. either as far as I can see.
Theoretically there could be, but theoretically a lot of things, including much more plausibly
and likely the rise of a left that brings home the bacon. IOW the trains don't even run on time
now.
Trump's economy is scarcely better than Obama's (depends on which year though, in the worst of the
Great Recession only then was it worse). So if it's really about the economy: then Trump will lose the
next election.
IMHO it IS about the economy, but not in the direct sense we mean: if the economy goes on as it is,
Trump will be able to spin it as good, whereas a democrat would be toast.
But I expect a recession to hit earlier, in which case I think Trump will not be re-elected.
Whenever I read articles illustrating the dawning awareness of the middling classes to their extreme
precarious social status, I can't help but marvel at the audacity of elites jumping to the front of the
protest line proclaiming their desire to "lead" the distraught masses. Even more so, those same distraught
workers giving their oppressors the opportunity to do so. That is the definition of a dysfunctional society-
rewarding failure. The elites might think themselves clever, and exceptional, for dreaming up such scams,
but that dynamic alone goes a long way to explaining the rapid decline of America's prominence in the world.
America is consumed by a cynical rot that has firmly entered into the body politic. There is no easy way
to excise this cancer, but the answer must lie in some form of national mission. The current American
leadership have chosen a militaristic vision of conquest for the nation masked with a marketing program of
bringing democracy to the world. This contradictory scam will not work, and there is ample evidence showing
just how destructive and impotent this strategy truly is. The rest of the world is moving on, and if
Americans don't wise up to the the destructive nature of their system, they will be left behind.
Corporations must be in the service of the nation, not the other way around. Corporations must be allowed
to die and change, the nation, and its people must prevail over time. It is an obscene contradiction that
the American system is reversing this dynamic. The people are allowed to die, while the corporations, and
those that control them are allowed to persist.
As a working class American, my only desire at this point is for an American elite leadership that has a
vision larger and broader than worshiping a bank account. If American workers don't demand a better
leadership, history will show them to be worse than peasants, they will be proven to be willful consumerist
dupes.
America is in an identity crisis- a cultural crisis. That does not bode well for the nation and makes it
ill equipped to deal with other nations and the world's problems- let alone our own.
"The current American leadership have chosen a militaristic vision of conquest for the nation masked
with a marketing program of bringing democracy to the world."
That train officially left the station around 1898.
1. The author doesn't really explore how rent extraction through housing is the single biggest destroyer
of American household wealth, with housing costs outpacing wages almost everywhere.
2. "Explore" Medicare for all? Build "affordable" housing, but only for certain deserving individuals
like teachers?
It's disappointing that the author chooses to end this with such centrist Dem proposals.
There needs to be a right to housing, which means a right to build housing: abolish any zoning that
excludes dense residential development. Seize land by eminent domain if necessary.
===There needs to be a right to housing, which means a right to build housing: abolish any zoning that
excludes dense residential development. Seize land by eminent domain if necessary===
Thanks Joe. While I am not an expert in housing, the lack of affordable housing seems to be tied to:
1. As you say zoning laws that exclude dense residential development.
2. Land Use regulations which are probably tied to #1 above.
3. The high costs incurred by residential developers in navigating the byzantine and bureaucratic maze of
permits and regulations at the federal, state, and local levels.
4. The speculative nature of the housing market i.e. IMO the housing bubble is driven by monetary
policies and the actions of "behind the scenes" lever pullers. If housing is treated as a commodity by
the finance sector then the machinations of Wall Street can impact housing prices as they did in the 2008
crash.
5. To my point above, in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago there is a lot of empty office space and
light industrial space. So excess supply would tell you that the prices for these properties should go
down. Not the case. They are still expensive. If a homeowner is trying to sell their house they will
lower the price until it is sold or not sell it. But the same rules do not apply to businesses.
To #5 above, again if we "believe" what we are told in Econ 101 about free markets and supply and
demand then an excess supply should result in a downward price drop until the excess supply is cleared.
God help me! I just typed the previous sentence from memory as if verbatim from my Econ 101 class 30
years ago!! #head on desk! So if office and industrial prices are not dropping then someone has to be
holding the "bank notes" as is not concerned about if or when they sell.
Basically in short it seems zoning issues and cost issues are the big obstacles in dense residential
development. I am not an advocate of relaxing regulations which could result in shoddy and unsafe
construction but maybe there is a middle ground. Something needs to be done.
It's not just dense housing, it ALL housing .. in terms of livability (environs with nature as an
active component), and Affordable design/construction with energy efficiency in mind .. on a large
enough scale to benefit the public ! There is, for all practical purposes none of that to be had. As
it currently stands, you have to be richer than God to do ANYTHING other than the unimaginative and
wasteful development that has been built up to this point.
So instead of "Where's My flying car??" .. the question might now more accurately be "Where's My
passive solar, earthen-berm, strawbale, rammed-earth, or cob house/apartment???"
to expand and maybe add onto this, AirBnb/vacation rentals + rental 'business as income' (at
institutional eg Berkshire Hathaway and the associated securitized offerings as well as individuals
and small biz creating the 'income stream' via LLC pass through) is a major driver affecting the
speculation. What happened to all the foreclosures from a decade ago? They were turned into rentals,
they still exist.
I am all for an affordable housing mandate, but not in an Obamacare fashion by building tons more
housing at crappy inflated prices with some means-tested voucher all so the rentiers can keep their
profits. Destroy the rentiers and make housing right, make it a policy that is enforced with
regulations and limits on numbers of rental units.
==AirBnb/vacation rentals + rental 'business as income' (at institutional eg Berkshire Hathaway
and the associated securitized offerings as well as individuals and small biz creating the 'income
stream' via LLC pass through) is a major driver affecting the speculation===
To your point there was a recent article on NC that discussed your comment above.
Across the street from the townhouse subdivision where my wife and I live is a subdivision of
$275K – $350K houses. One of the more expensive houses was sold a year ago to a company that uses
it for a rental.
I talked to the previous owner frequently while walking our dog, and he sold the house after it
had been on the market for only about a month. As far as the previous owner was concerned the house
sold for close to his asking price so he was happy. He had no concern about selling the house to a
company that was going to use it for a rental. The previous owner had been living in that house in
that neighborhood for 25 years and seemed to know most everybody in his subdivision. He and his
wife raised their two sons in that house and also put a lot of time and effort into the landscaping
around the house.
The rental company that bought the house does the absolute minimal landscaping of the house and
barely mows the lawn on a semi regular basis. The company clearly does not have any regard for the
"appearance" of the house or the neighborhood. Which is a shame because the other houses near it
are well maintained which, due to the lack of landscape maintenance, makes the "rental company"
house an eyesore as far as grass, weeds, etc. are concerned.
I do not begrudge the previous owner for selling to the rental company. His asking price was met
so he was happy. And in the last few years, other houses in that subdivision have taken 1-2 years
to sell. What I have an issue with is these vulture rental companies acting as mercenaries and
treating houses and the neighborhood as so much fodder on a balance sheet.
One could also make the argument that without the rental company sticking it's nose where it
does not belong, the (ahem, cough, cough) free market would have been allowed to work somewhat. By
that I mean if this particular house had also taken a long time to sell like the others in that
neighborhood, and had subsequent price reductions in order to sell it, then maybe the average
housing price in that neighborhood/town/suburb would have gone down helping affordability.
"In fact, the typical CEO made a whopping 312 times their median employees' salary in 2017, according to the
Economic Policy Institute."
Note that is vs median salary not lowest paid.
The self serving disconnect between the management class and labor class is truly amazing.
Work is not valued. And the contribution to productivity is extracted and given to ownership. It's not
income inequality we should emphasize but simple fairness. Let's call it Income Fairness.
"fairness" is too vague and insubstantial a concept around which to base any kind of rights, much less
what some should get or we should do as a society.
we once thought it was "fair" as a society to enslave people. after we stopped that (and not because
it wasn't "fair", but as a political move), we thought it was "fair" to continue to deny them many of
their rights because they weren't "white".
huge numbers of us still think it is fair that people die from various issues caused by their
"unwillingness to work" or "unwillingness to work smarter". how many times do people say "if you don't
get more education, you can just shut up about earning enough to live on. working at McDonald's, you are
slacking and therefore can not demand anything. go to school, fool!" people argue all of the time that a
"living wage" is not fair, because a person who does low-value jobs isn't making enough money for their
employer to justify the wage (basically, profit produced by that employee would either be nil or zero).
and that is perfectly "fair" to these arguers.
fair is the idea that some deserve more and some less, due to something being "earned" by someone. it
is a nice idea to teach children. real world morality is much more complicated than that, and a society
of justice and laws and policies and bureaucracies can not be based around that. waaay too nebulous, and
open to interpretation. everyone -knows what "fair" is- when they see it, because everyone's definition
of "fairness" is different. as some kind of lofty ideal, it is fine. in practice, it is meaningless.
Is this simply a Rip van Winkle account of the middle-class situation that has been well-reported and
vigorously commented upon for some time? What am I missing?
The shift came when ol' Rip realized that the rumbling sound he heard was not the sound of the ghostly
sailors bowling but the sound of distant cannon fire.
The middle class stands upon the floor provided by the working class. And that floor is failing, as the
human capital of society is gradually, but with increasing rapidity, plundered, from the bottom up.
The poor used to have more than they do now, and be less dependent on government redistributions of
income.
Even the middle class owns less productive capital, as the small business owners who used to populate the
main streets of American towns have been driven out of business by the Walmarts. Those businessmen were the
social elites of their communities, giving those communities leadership, shape, structure and dimension.
Owning less productive capital, their communities pretty much hollowed out, the middle class have lost
much of their self sufficiency, and have become increasingly dependent on the whims of distant oligarchs.
First the Walmarts. Now the Amazons. And there will be even fewer resources available to support the
necessary services local communities provide.
The middle class are right to be afraid. The distant oligarchs and their bankers will only allow so much
debt before they pull out the rug.
Too bad no one paid attention what was happening to the working poor. Long ago, the 1% used to command 7%
of the nation's income. Now they command 21%. That 14% had to come from someone.
With almost 40 years of work under my belt, I have been passing along some advice to my kids to help them
navigate the current "middle class conundrums":
1. Owning a home is unlikely to make you wealthy. With just a few major city core exceptions, don't
expect it to go up by more than inflation over the decades. So buy or rent just what you need and do real
analysis of what you need and why.
2. Only live in a big expensive city if you need to for your chosen career. The smaller cities have a lot
of opportunity for people with good work habits, even in the "Rust Belt" and the living costs are far lower.
3. College degrees are useful. Getting them with large debt loads is a bad idea though. Don't take on
more student debt than about 2/3 of your expected starting salary for a four year degree and take on little
or not debt for a 2-year degree.
4. Going to a name-brand school is worthwhile if you don't have to rack up significant extra debt.
Otherwise, pick college and university by major and cost. Your internal traits make a far bigger difference
than the school you went to.
5. Only go to graduate school if your desired career path requires it. Otherwise, you are losing years of
earning power while incurring costs and debt. If you want a grad degree just for the joy of it, do it as
night school as a hobby.
6. Start a Roth IRA with monthly contributions early, even if it is only $50/month. It builds habits and
over the years will likely ensure you are in the top 25% in assets.
7. We are in a golden age of investing right now compared to 30 years ago. You can have worldwide,
multi-asset class diversified investments at an annual expense ratio of 0.25% which was unheard of at the
beginning of my career. So inexpensive Target Date funds or similar vehicles from companies like Vanguard
mean you can do fire-and-forget investing while you focus on the rest of your life.
8. Don't assume the full value of a company or state pension will be there when you retire. These are
rife with deliberate and accidental mismanagement and partial defaults are likely with many of them. Instead
save so that you are not reliant on them for a basic acceptable standard of living.
8. You don't need financial advisors for investing, just to help you with personal finance instead. But
that is not what they are usually selling, so 99% of the purported financial advisors are to be avoided as
they are hazardous to your finances.
10. Try to get a positive cash flow in your life as early as possible to dramatically reduce stress. That
is difficult if you have kids, large student loans, or large mortgage/rent costs, so those are the big
decisions you need to make on life-finance balance.
Regarding Social Security, it is currently structured to provide 75% to 80% of its current benefits
starting in 2034. That is still a significant safety net, but would require Congress to act to get it back
to around 100%.
Medicare is just part and parcel of the US healthcare cost issues. If the US can get down to less than
14% of GDP in healthcare expenditures while providing universal coverage, then the Medicare/Medicaid funding
issue effectively goes away. This is not impossible as the US is the only developed country that is above
14%.
Elizabeth Warren had a good speech at UC-Berkeley. She focused on the middle class family balance sheet
and risk shifting. Regulatory policies and a credit based monetary system have resulted in massive real
price increases in inelastic areas of demand such as healthcare, education and housing eroding purchasing
power. Further, trade policies have put U.S. manufacturing at a massive disadvantage to the likes of China,
which has subsidized state-owned enterprises, has essentially slave labor costs and low to no environmental
regulations. Unrestrained immigration policies have resulted in a massive supply wave of semi- and unskilled
labor suppressing wages.
Recommended initial steps to reform:
1. Change the monetary system-deleverage economy with the Chicago Plan (100% reserve banking) and fund
massive infrastructure lowering total factor costs and increasing productivity. This would eliminate
2. Adopt a healthcare system that drives HC to 10% to 12% of GDP. France's maybe? Medicare model needs
serious reform but is great at low admin costs.
3. Raise tariffs across the board or enact labor and environmental tariffs on the likes of China and other
Asian export model countries.
4. Take savings from healthcare costs and interest and invest in human capital–educational attainment and
apprenticeships programs.
5. Enforce border security restricting future immigration dramatically and let economy absorb labor supply
over time.
As I have said in other comments, I like Liz Warren a lot within the limits of what she is good at
doing (i.e. not President) such as Secretary of the Treasury etc. And I think she likes the media
spotlight and to hear herself talk a little to much, but all quibbling aside, can we clone her??? The
above comment and video just reinforce "Stick to what you are really good at Liz!".
I am not a Liz Warren fan boi to the extent Lambert is of AOC, but it seems that most of the time when
I hear Warren, Sanders, or AOC say something my first reaction is "Yes, what she/he said!".
"... While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. ..."
"... Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy. ..."
"... In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism. ..."
"... We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism. ..."
"... While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."' ..."
In Chapter 1, we traced the rise of our neoliberal conjuncture back to the crisis of liberalism during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, culminating in the Great Depression. During this period, huge transformations in capitalism proved impossible
to manage with classical laissez-faire approaches. Out of this crisis, two movements emerged, both of which would eventually shape
the course of the twentieth century and beyond. The first, and the one that became dominant in the aftermath of the crisis, was the
conjuncture of embedded liberalism. The crisis indicated that capitalism wrecked too much damage on the lives of ordinary citizens.
People (white workers and families, especially) warranted social protection from the volatilities and brutalities of capitalism.
The state's public function was expanded to include the provision of a more substantive social safety net, a web of protections for
people and a web of constraints on markets. The second response was the invention of neoliberalism. Deeply skeptical of the common-good
principles that undergirded the emerging social welfare state, neoliberals began organizing on the ground to develop a "new" liberal
govemmentality, one rooted less in laissez-faire principles and more in the generalization of competition and enterprise. They worked
to envision a new society premised on a new social ontology, that is, on new truths about the state, the market, and human beings.
Crucially, neoliberals also began building infrastructures and institutions for disseminating their new' knowledges and theories
(i.e., the Neoliberal Thought Collective), as well as organizing politically to build mass support for new policies (i.e., working
to unite anti-communists, Christian conservatives, and free marketers in common cause against the welfare state). When cracks in
embedded liberalism began to surface -- which is bound to happen with any moving political equilibrium -- neoliberals were there
with new stories and solutions, ready to make the world anew.
We are currently living through the crisis of neoliberalism. As I write this book, Donald Trump has recently secured the U.S.
presidency, prevailing in the national election over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Throughout the election, I couldn't
help but think back to the crisis of liberalism and the two responses that emerged. Similarly, after the Great Recession of 2008,
we've saw two responses emerge to challenge our unworkable status quo, which dispossesses so many people of vital resources for individual
and collective life. On the one hand, we witnessed the rise of Occupy Wall Street. While many continue to critique the movement for
its lack of leadership and a coherent political vision, Occupy was connected to burgeoning movements across the globe, and our current
political horizons have been undoubtedly shaped by the movement's success at repositioning class and economic inequality within our
political horizon. On the other hand, we saw' the rise of the Tea Party, a right-wing response to the crisis. While the Tea Party
was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was
perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-,
it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism.
Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering.
Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. There were just too many fissures and fault lines in
the glossy, cosmopolitan world of left neoliberalism and marketized equality. Indeed, while Clinton ran on status-quo stories of
good governance and neoliberal feminism, confident that demographics and diversity would be enough to win the election, Trump effectively
tapped into the unfolding conjunctural crisis by exacerbating the cracks in the system of marketized equality, channeling political
anger into his celebrity brand that had been built on saying "f*** you" to the culture of left neoliberalism (corporate diversity,
political correctness, etc.) In fact, much like Clinton's challenger in the Democratic primary, Benie Sanders, Trump was a crisis
candidate.
Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders'
energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood"
path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy.
Universal health care. Free higher education. Fair trade. The repeal of Citizens United. Trump offered a different response to
the crisis. Like Sanders, he railed against global trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, Trump's
victory was fueled by right neoliberalism's culture of cruelty. While Sanders tapped into and mobilized desires for a more egalitarian
and democratic future, Trump's promise was nostalgic, making America "great again" -- putting the nation back on "top of the world,"
and implying a time when women were "in their place" as male property, and minorities and immigrants were controlled by the state.
Thus, what distinguished Trump's campaign from more traditional Republican campaigns was that it actively and explicitly pitted
one group's equality (white men) against everyone else's (immigrants, women, Muslims, minorities, etc.). As Catherine Rottenberg
suggests, Trump offered voters a choice between a multiracial society (where folks are increasingly disadvantaged and dispossessed)
and white supremacy (where white people would be back on top). However, "[w]hat he neglected to state," Rottenberg writes,
is that neoliberalism flourishes in societies where the playing field is already stacked against various segments of society,
and that it needs only a relatively small select group of capital-enhancing subjects, while everyone else is ultimately dispensable.
1
In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg
argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many
concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism.
We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left
neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested
in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right
and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political
philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism.
While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking
with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the
chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."'
Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism, put it this way:
The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness
of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately
great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under
capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.4
I think that, for the first time in the history of U.S. capitalism, the vast majority of people might sense the lie of liberal,
capitalist democracy. They feel anxious, unfree, disaffected. Fantasies of the good life have been shattered beyond repair for most
people. Trump and this hopefully brief triumph of right neoliberalism will soon lay this bare for everyone to see. Now, with Trump,
it is absolutely clear: the rich rule the world; we are all disposable; this is no democracy. The question becomes: How will we show
up for history? Will there be new stories, ideas, visions, and fantasies to attach to? How can we productively and meaningful intervene
in the crisis of neoliberalism? How can we "tear a hole in the grey curtain" and open up better worlds? How can we put what we've
learned to use and begin to imagine and build a world beyond living in competition? I hope our critical journey through the neoliberal
conjuncture has enabled you to begin to answer these questions.
More specifically, in recent decades, especially since the end of the Cold War, our common-good sensibilities have been channeled
into neoliberal platforms for social change and privatized action, funneling our political energies into brand culture and marketized
struggles for equality (e.g., charter schools, NGOs and non-profits, neoliberal antiracism and feminism). As a result, despite our
collective anger and disaffected consent, we find ourselves stuck in capitalist realism with no real alternative. Like the neoliberal
care of the self, we are trapped in a privatized mode of politics that relies on cruel optimism; we are attached, it seems, to politics
that inspire and motivate us to action, while keeping us living in competition.
To disrupt the game, we need to construct common political horizons against neoliberal hegemony. We need to use our common stories
and common reason to build common movements against precarity -- for within neoliberalism, precarity is what ultimately has the potential
to thread all of our lives together. Put differently, the ultimate fault line in the neoliberal conjiuicture is the way it subjects
us all to precarity and the biopolitics of disposability, thereby creating conditions of possibility for new coalitions across race,
gender, citizenship, sexuality, and class. Recognizing this potential for coalition in the face of precarization is the most pressing
task facing those who are yearning for a new world. The question is: How do we get there? How do we realize these coalitional potentialities
and materialize common horizons?
Ultimately, mapping the neoliberal conjuncture through everyday life in enterprise culture has not only provided some direction
in terms of what we need; it has also cultivated concrete and practical intellectual resources for political interv ention and social
interconnection -- a critical toolbox for living in common. More specifically, this book has sought to provide resources for thinking
and acting against the four Ds: resources for engaging in counter-conduct, modes of living that refuse, on one hand, to conduct one's
life according to the norm of enterprise, and on the other, to relate to others through the norm of competition. Indeed, we need
new ways of relating, interacting, and living as friends, lovers, workers, vulnerable bodies, and democratic people if we are to
write new stories, invent new govemmentalities, and build coalitions for new worlds.
Against Disimagination: Educated Hope and Affirmative Speculation
We need to stop turning inward, retreating into ourselves, and taking personal responsibility for our lives (a task which is ultimately
impossible). Enough with the disimagination machine! Let's start looking outward, not inward -- to the broader structures that undergird
our lives. Of course, we need to take care of ourselves; we must survive. But I firmly believe that we can do this in ways both big
and small, that transform neoliberal culture and its status-quo stories.
Here's the thing I tell my students all the time. You cannot escape neoliberalism. It is the air we breathe, the water in which
we swim. No job, practice of social activism, program of self-care, or relationship will be totally free from neoliberal impingements
and logics. There is no pure "outside" to get to or work from -- that's just the nature of the neoliberalism's totalizing cultural
power. But let's not forget that neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power is also a source of weakness. Potential for resistance
is everywhere, scattered throughout our everyday lives in enterprise culture. Our critical toolbox can help us identify these potentialities
and navigate and engage our conjuncture in ways that tear open up those new worlds we desire.
In other words, our critical perspective can help us move through the world with what Henry Giroux calls educated hope. Educated
hope means holding in tension the material realities of power and the contingency of history. This orientation of educated hope knows
very well what we're up against. However, in the face of seemingly totalizing power, it also knows that neoliberalism can never become
total because the future is open. Educated hope is what allows us to see the fault lines, fissures, and potentialities of the present
and emboldens us to think and work from that sliver of social space where we do have political agency and freedom to construct a
new world. Educated hope is what undoes the power of capitalist realism. It enables affirmative speculation (such as discussed in
Chapter 5), which does not try to hold the future to neoliberal horizons (that's cruel optimism!), but instead to affirm our commonalities
and the potentialities for the new worlds they signal. Affirmative speculation demands a different sort of risk calculation and management.
It senses how little we have to lose and how much we have to gain from knocking the hustle of our lives.
Against De-democratization: Organizing and Collective Coverning
We can think of educated hope and affirmative speculation as practices of what Wendy Brown calls "bare democracy" -- the basic
idea that ordinary' people like you and me should govern our lives in common, that we should critique and try to change our world,
especially the exploitative and oppressive structures of power that maintain social hierarchies and diminish lives. Neoliberal culture
works to stomp out capacities for bare democracy by transforming democratic desires and feelings into meritocratic desires and feelings.
In neoliberal culture, utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective utopian sensibilities are directed
away from the promise of collective governing to competing for equality.
We have to get back that democractic feeling! As Jeremy Gilbert taught us, disaffected consent is a post-democratic orientation.
We don't like our world, but we don't think we can do anything about it. So, how do we get back that democratic feeling? How do we
transform our disaffected consent into something new? As I suggested in the last chapter, we organize. Organizing is simply about
people coming together around a common horizon and working collectively to materialize it. In this way, organizing is based on the
idea of radical democracy, not liberal democracy. While the latter is based on formal and abstract rights guaranteed by the state,
radical democracy insists that people should directly make the decisions that impact their lives, security, and well-being. Radical
democracy is a practice of collective governing: it is about us hashing out, together in communities, what matters, and working in
common to build a world based on these new sensibilities.
The work of organizing is messy, often unsatisfying, and sometimes even scary. Organizing based on affirmative speculation and
coalition-building, furthermore, will have to be experimental and uncertain. As Lauren Berlant suggests, it means "embracing the
discomfort of affective experience in a truly open social life that no
one has ever experienced." Organizing through and for the common "requires more adaptable infrastructures. Keep forcing the existing
infrastructures to do what they don't know how to do. Make new ways to be local together, where local doesn't require a physical
neighborhood." 5 What Berlant is saying is that the work of bare democracy requires unlearning, and detaching from, our
current stories and infrastructures in order to see and make things work differently. Organizing for a new world is not easy -- and
there are no guarantees -- but it is the only way out of capitalist realism.
Getting back democratic feeling will at once require and help us lo move beyond the biopolitics of disposability and entrenched
systems of inequality. On one hand, organizing will never be enough if it is not animated by bare democracy, a sensibility that each
of us is equally important when it comes to the project of determining our lives in common. Our bodies, our hurts, our dreams, and
our desires matter regardless of our race, gender, sexuality, or citizenship, and regardless of how r much capital (economic,
social, or cultural) we have. Simply put, in a radical democracy, no one is disposable. This bare-democratic sense of equality must
be foundational to organizing and coalition-building. Otherwise, we will always and inevitably fall back into a world of inequality.
On the other hand, organizing and collective governing will deepen and enhance our sensibilities and capacities for radical equality.
In this context, the kind of self-enclosed individualism that empowers and underwrites the biopolitics of disposability melts away,
as we realize the interconnectedness of our lives and just how amazing it feels to
fail, we affirm our capacities for freedom, political intervention, social interconnection, and collective social doing.
Against Dispossession: Shared Security and Common Wealth
Thinking and acting against the biopolitics of disposability goes hand-in-hand with thinking and acting against dispossession.
Ultimately, when we really understand and feel ourselves in relationships of interconnection with others, we want for them as we
want for ourselves. Our lives and sensibilities of what is good and just are rooted in radical equality, not possessive or self-appreciating
individualism. Because we desire social security and protection, we also know others desire and deserve the same.
However, to really think and act against dispossession means not only advocating for shared security and social protection, but
also for a new society that is built on the egalitarian production and distribution of social wealth that we all produce. In this
sense, we can take Marx's critique of capitalism -- that wealth is produced collectively but appropriated individually -- to heart.
Capitalism was built on the idea that one class -- the owners of the means of production -- could exploit and profit from the collective
labors of everyone else (those who do not own and thus have to work), albeit in very different ways depending on race, gender, or
citizenship. This meant that, for workers of all stripes, their lives existed not for themselves, but for others (the appropriating
class), and that regardless of what we own as consumers, we are not really free or equal in that bare-democratic sense of the word.
If we want to be really free, we need to construct new material and affective social infrastructures for our common wealth. In
these new infrastructures, wealth must not be reduced to economic value; it must be rooted in social value. Here, the production
of wealth does not exist as a separate sphere from the reproduction of our lives. In other words, new infrastructures, based on the
idea of common wealth, will not be set up to exploit our labor, dispossess our communities, or to divide our lives. Rather, they
will work to provide collective social resources and care so that we may all be free to pursue happiness, create beautiful and/or
useful things, and to realize our potential within a social world of living in common. Crucially, to create the conditions for these
new, democratic forms of freedom rooted in radical equality, we need to find ways to refuse and exit the financial networks of Empire
and the dispossessions of creditocracy, building new systems that invite everyone to participate in the ongoing production of new
worlds and the sharing of the wealth that we produce in common.
It's not up to me to tell you exactly where to look, but I assure you that potentialities for these new worlds are everywhere
around you.
It is unclear how long this vulnerability exists, but this is pretty serious staff that shows
how Hillary server could be hacked via Abedin account. As Abedin technical level was lower then
zero, to hack into her home laptop just just trivial.
Microsoft also patched
Exchange against a vulnerability that allowed remote attackers with little more than an
unprivileged mailbox account to gain administrative control over the server. Dubbed
PrivExchange, CVE-2019-0686 was publicly disclosed last month , along with
proof-of-concept code that exploited it. In Tuesday's
advisory , Microsoft officials said they haven't seen active exploits yet but that they
were "likely."
This is a constructive suggestion that is implementable even under neoliberalism. As everything is perverted under
neoliberalism that might prompt layoffs before the age of 55.
Notable quotes:
"... Older workers often struggle to get rehired as easily as younger workers. Age discrimination is a well-known problem in corporate America. What's a 60-year-old back office worker supposed to do if downsized in a merger? The BB&T-SunTrust prospect highlights the need for a new type of unemployment insurance for some of the workforce. ..."
"... One policy might be treating unemployed older workers differently than younger workers. Giving them unemployment benefits for a longer period of time than younger workers would be one idea, as well as accelerating the age of Medicare eligibility for downsized employees over the age of 55. The latter idea would help younger workers as well, by encouraging older workers to accept buyout packages -- freeing up career opportunities for younger workers. ..."
The proposed merger between SunTrust and BB&T makes sense for both firms -- which is why
Wall Street sent both stocks higher on Thursday after the announcement. But employees of the
two banks, especially older workers who are not yet retirement age, are understandably less
enthused at the prospect of downsizing. In a nation with almost 37 million workers over the age
of 55, the quandary of SunTrust-BB&T workforce will become increasingly familiar across the
U.S. economy.
But what's good for the firms isn't good for all of the workers. Older workers often
struggle to get rehired as easily as younger workers.
Age discrimination is a well-known problem in corporate America. What's a 60-year-old back
office worker supposed to do if downsized in a merger? The BB&T-SunTrust prospect
highlights the need for a new type of unemployment insurance for some of the workforce.
One policy might be treating unemployed older workers differently than younger workers.
Giving them unemployment benefits for a longer period of time than younger workers would be one
idea, as well as accelerating the age of Medicare eligibility for downsized employees over the
age of 55. The latter idea would help younger workers as well, by encouraging older workers to
accept buyout packages -- freeing up career opportunities for younger workers.
The economy can be callous toward older workers, but policy makers don't have to be. We
should think about ways of dealing with this shift in the labor market before it happens.
"... By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans. ..."
"... Kleber filed suit, pursuing claims for both disparate treatment and disparate impact under the ADEA. The Chicago Tribune notes in Hinsdale man loses appeal in age discrimination case that challenged experience caps in job ads that "Kleber had out of work and job hunting for three years" when he applied for the CareFusion job. ..."
"... Unfortunately, the seventh circuit has now held that the disparate impact section of the ADEA does not extend to job applicants. .Judge Michael Scudder, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority 8-4 opinion, which reverses an earlier 2-1 panel ruling last April in Kleber's favor that had initially overruled the district court's dismissal of Kleber's disparate impact claim. ..."
"... hiring discrimination is difficult to prove and often goes unreported. Only 3 percent have made a formal complaint. ..."
"... The decision narrowly applies to disparate impact claims of age discrimination under the ADEA. It is important to remember that job applicants are protected under the disparate treatment portion of the statute. ..."
"... I forbade my kids to study programming. ..."
"... I'm re reading the classic of Sociology Ain't No Makin It by Jay MacLeod, in which he studies the employment prospects of youths in the 1980s and determined that even then there was no stable private sector employment and your best option is a government job or to have an excellent "network" which is understandably hard for most people to achieve. ..."
"... I think the trick is to study something and programming, so the programming becomes a tool rather than an end. ..."
"... the problem is it is almost impossible to exit the programming business and join another domain. Anyone can enter it. (evidence – all the people with "engineering" degrees from India) Also my wages are now 50% of what i made 10 years ago (nominal). Also I notice that almost no one is doing sincere work. Most are just coasting, pretending to work with the latest toy (ie, preparing for the next interview). ..."
"... I am an "aging" former STEM worker (histology researcher) as well. Much like the IT landscape, you are considered "over-the-hill" at 35, which I turn on the 31st. ..."
"... Most of the positions in science and engineering fields now are basically "gig" positions, lasting a few months to a year. ..."
The case was brought by Dale Kleber, an attorney, who applied for a senior position in
CareFusion's legal department. The job description required applicants to have "3 to 7 years
(no more than 7 years) of relevant legal experience."
Kleber was 58 at the time he applied and had more than seven years of pertinent experience.
CareFusion hired a 29-year-old applicant who met but did not exceed the experience
requirement.
The purpose of the ADEA is to prohibit employment discrimination against people who are 40
years of age or older. Congress enacted the ADEA in 1967 because of its concern that older
workers were disadvantaged in retaining and regaining employment. The ADEA also addressed
concerns that older workers were barred from employment by some common employment practices
that were not intended to exclude older workers, but that had the effect of doing so and were
unrelated to job performance.
It was with these concerns in mind that Congress created a system that included liability
for both disparate treatment and disparate impact. What's the difference between these two
concepts?
According to the EEOC:
[The ADEA] prohibits discrimination against workers because of their older age with
respect to any aspect of employment. In addition to prohibiting intentional discrimination
against older workers (known as "disparate treatment"), the ADEA prohibits practices that,
although facially neutral with regard to age, have the effect of harming older workers more
than younger workers (known as "disparate impact"), unless the employer can show that the
practice is based on an [Reasonable Factor Other Than Age (RFAO)]
The crux: it's much easier for a plaintiff to prove disparate impact, because s/he needn't
show that the employer intended to discriminate. Of course, many if not most employers are
savvy enough not to be explicit about their intentions to discriminate against older people as
they don't wish to get sued.
District, Panel, and Full Seventh Circuit Decisions
The district court dismissed Kleber's disparate impact claim, on the grounds that the text
of the statute- (§ 4(a)(2))- did not extend to outside job applicants. Kleber then
voluntarily dismissed his separate claim for disparate treatment liability to appeal the
dismissal of his disparate impact claim. No doubt he was aware – either because he was an
attorney, or because of the legal advice received – that it is much more difficult to
prevail on a disparate treatment claim, which would require that he establish CareFusion's
intent to discriminate.
Or at least that was true before this decision was rendered.
Unfortunately, the seventh circuit has now held that the disparate impact section of the
ADEA does not extend to job applicants. .Judge Michael Scudder, a Trump appointee, wrote the
majority 8-4 opinion, which reverses an earlier 2-1 panel ruling last April in Kleber's favor
that had initially overruled the district court's dismissal of Kleber's disparate impact
claim.
The majority ruled:
By its terms, § 4(a)(2) proscribes certain conduct by employers and limits its
protection to employees. The prohibited conduct entails an employer acting in any way to
limit, segregate, or classify its employees based on age. The language of § 4(a)(2) then
goes on to make clear that its proscriptions apply only if an employer's actions have a
particular impact -- "depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to deprive any individual of em- ployment
opportunities or otherwise adversely affect[ing] his status as an employee." This language
plainly demonstrates that the requisite impact must befall an individual with "status as an
employee." Put most simply, the reach of § 4(a)(2) does not extend to applicants for
employment, as common dictionary definitions confirm that an applicant has no "status as an
employee." (citation omitted)[opinion, pp. 3-4]
By contrast, in the disparate treatment part of the statute (§ 4(a)(1)):
Congress made it unlawful for an employer "to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any
individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation,
terms, conditions, or privi- leges of employment, because of such individual's age."[opinion,
p.6]
The court compared the disparate treatment section – § 4(a)(1) – directly
with the disparate impact section – § 4(a)(2):
Yet a side-by-side comparison of § 4(a)(1) with § 4(a)(2) shows that the
language in the former plainly covering appli-cants is conspicuously absent from the latter.
Section 4(a)(2) says nothing about an employer's decision "to fail or refuse to hire any
individual" and instead speaks only in terms of an employer's actions that "adversely affect
his status as an employee." We cannot conclude this difference means nothing: "when 'Congress
includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another' -- let
alone in the very next provision -- the Court presumes that Congress intended a difference in
meaning." (citations omitted)[opinion, pp. 6-7]
The majority's conclusion:
In the end, the plain language of § 4(a)(2) leaves room for only one interpretation:
Congress authorized only employees to bring disparate impact claims.[opinion, p.8]
People 55 or older comprised 22.4 percent of U.S. workers in 2016, up from 11.9 percent in
1996, and may account for close to one-fourth of the labor force by 2022, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The greying of the workforce is "thanks to better health in older age and insufficient
savings that require people to keeping working longer," according to the Chicago Tribune.
Yet:
numerous hiring practices are under fire for negatively impacting older applicants. In
addition to experience caps, lawsuits have challenged the exclusive use of on-campus
recruiting to fill positions and algorithms that target job ads to show only in certain
people's social media feeds.
Unless Congress amends the ADEA to include job applicants, older people will continue to
face barriers to getting jobs.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
The [EEOC], which receives about 20,000 age discrimination charges every year, issued a
report in June citing surveys that found 3 in 4 older workers believe their age is an
obstacle in getting a job. Yet hiring discrimination is difficult to prove and often goes
unreported. Only 3 percent have made a formal complaint. Allowing older applicants to
challenge policies that have an unintentionally discriminatory impact would offer another
tool for fighting age discrimination, Ray Peeler, associate legal counsel at the EEOC, has
said.
The decision narrowly applies to disparate impact claims of age discrimination under the
ADEA. It is important to remember that job applicants are protected under the disparate
treatment portion of the statute. There is no split among the federal appeals courts on this
issue, making it an unlikely candidate for Supreme Court review, but the four judges in
dissent read the statute as being vague and susceptible to an interpretation that includes
job applicants.
Their conclusion: "a decision finding disparate impact liability for job applicants under
the ADEA is unlikely in the near future."
Alas, for reasons of space, I will not consider the extensive dissent. My purpose in writing
this post is to discuss the majority decision, not to opine on which side made the better
arguments.
There were 3 judges who dissented in whole and one who dissented in part. Of the three
full dissensions, two were Clinton appointees (including the Chief Justice, who was one of
the dissenters) and one was a Reagan appointee. The partial dissenter was also a Reagan
appointee.
"depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or
otherwise adversely affect[ing] his status as an employee."
–This language plainly demonstrates that the requisite impact must befall an
individual with "status as an employee."
So they totally ignore the first part of the sentence -- "depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to
deprive any individual of employment opportunities " -- "employment opportunities" clearly
applies to applicants.
Its as if these judges cannot make sense of the English language. Hopefully the judges on
appeal will display better command of the language.
I agree. "Employment opportunities," in the "plain language" so meticulously respected by
the 7th Circuit, must surely refer at minimum to 'the chance to apply for a job and to have
one's application fairly considered'. It seems on the other hand a stretch to interpret the
phrase to mean only 'the chance to keep a job one already has'. Both are important, however;
to split them would challenge even Solomonic wisdom, as I suppose the curious decision
discussed here demonstrates. I am less convinced that the facts as presented here establish a
clear case of age discrimination. True, they point in that direction. But a hypothetical
58-year old who only earned a law degree in his or her early 50s, perhaps after an earlier
career in paralegal work, could have legitimately applied for a position requiring 3 to 7
years of "relevant legal experience." That last phrase, is of course, quite weasel-y: what
counts as "relevant" and what counts as "legal" experience would under any circumstances be
subject to (discriminatory) interpretation. The limitation of years of experience in the job
announcement strikes me as a means to keep the salary within a certain budgetary range as
prescribed either by law or collective bargaining.
Almost like the willful misunderstanding of "A well regulated militia being necessary to
the security of a free State "? Of course, that militia also meant slave patrols and the
occasional posse to put down the native "savages," but still.
Being pro-Labor will not get you Federalist Society approval to be nominated to the bench
by Trump.
This decision came down via the ideological makeup of the court, not the letter of the
law.
Their stated pretext is obviously b.s.. It contradicts itself.
I'm re reading the classic of Sociology Ain't No Makin It by Jay MacLeod, in which he
studies the employment prospects of youths in the 1980s and determined that even then there
was no stable private sector employment and your best option is a government job or to have
an excellent "network" which is understandably hard for most people to achieve. So I'm
genuinely interested in what possible options there are for anyone entering the job market
today or God help you, re-entering. I am guessing the barriers to entry to those trades are
quite high but would love to be corrected.
what is the point of being jackpot ready if you can't even support yourself today? To
fantasize about collapse while sleeping in a rented closet and driving for Uber? In that case
one's personal collapse has already happened, which will matter a lot more to an individual
than any potential jackpot.
Plumbers and electricians can make money now of course (although yea barriers to entry do
seem high, don't you kind of have to know people to get in those industries?). But
permaculture?
I think the trick is to study something and programming, so the programming becomes a tool
rather than an end. A couple of my kids used to ride horses. One of the instructors and stable owners said
that a lot of people went to school for equine studies and ended up shoveling horse poop for
a living. She said the thing to do was to study business and do the equestrian stuff as a
hobby/minor. That way you came out prepared to run a business and hire the equine studies
people to clean the stalls.
Do you actually see that many jobs requiring something and programming though? I haven't
really. There seems no easy transition out of software work which that would make possible
either. Might as well just study the "something".
Programming is a means to an end, not the end itself. If all you do is program, then you
are essentially a machine lathe operator, not somebody creating the products the lathe
operators turn out.
Understanding what needs to be done helps with structured programs and better input/output
design. In turn, structured programming is a good tool to understand the basics of how to
manage tasks. At the higher level, Fred Brooks book "The Mythical Man-Month" has a lot of
useful project management information that can be re-applied for non computer program
development.
We are doing a lot of work with mobile computing and data collection to assist in our
regular work. The people doing this are mainly non-computer scientists that have learned
enough programming to get by.
The engineering programs that we use are typically written more by engineers than by
programmers as the entire point behind the program is to apply the theory into a numerical
computation and presentation system. Programmers with a graphic design background can assist in creating much better user
interfaces.
If you have some sort of information theory background (GIS, statistics, etc.) then big
data actually means something.
the problem is it is almost impossible to exit the programming business and join another
domain. Anyone can enter it. (evidence – all the people with "engineering" degrees from
India) Also my wages are now 50% of what i made 10 years ago (nominal). Also I notice that almost
no one is doing sincere work. Most are just coasting, pretending to work with the latest toy
(ie, preparing for the next interview).
Now almost every "interview" requires writing a coding exam. Which other profession will
make you write an exam for 25-30 year veterans? Can you write your high school exam again today? What if your profession requires you to
write it a couple of times almost every year?
I am an "aging" former STEM worker (histology researcher) as well. Much like the IT
landscape, you are considered "over-the-hill" at 35, which I turn on the 31st. While I do not
have children and never intend to get married, many biotech companies consider this the age
at which a worker is getting long in the tooth. This is because there is the underlying
assumption that is when people start having familial obligations.
Most of the positions in
science and engineering fields now are basically "gig" positions, lasting a few months to a
year. A lot of people my age are finding how much harder it is to find any position at all in
these areas as there is a massive pool of people to choose from, even for permatemp work
simply because serfs in their mid-30s might get uppity about benefits like family health
plans or 401k
I am 59 and do not mind having employers discriminate against me due to age. ( I also need
a job) I had my own business and over the years got quite damaged. I was a contractor
specializing in older (historical) work.
I was always the lead worker with many friends and
other s working with me. At 52 I was given a choice of very involved neck surgery or quit. (
no small businesses have disability insurance!)
I shut down everything and helped my friends
who worked for me take some of the work or find something else. I was also a nationally
published computer consultant a long time ago and graphic artist.
Reality is I can still do
many things but I do nothing as well as I did when I was younger and the cost to employers
for me is far higher than a younger person. I had my chance and I chose poorly. Younger
people, if that makes them abetter fit, deserve a chance now more than I do.
I'm sorry for your challenges but I don't think there were many good careers you could
have chosen and it would have required a crystal ball to know which were the good ones.
Americans your age entered the job market just after the very end of the Golden Age of labor
conditions and have been weathering the decline your entire working lives. At least I entered
the job market when everyone knew for years things were falling apart. It's not your fault.
You were cheated plain and simple.
I don't see how it's possible to predict the labor market years in advance. Why blame
yourself for poor choices when so much chance is involved?
With a Jobs Guarantee, such questions would not arise. I also don't think it's only a
question of doing, but a question of sharing ("experience, strength, and hope," as AA -- a
very successful organization! -- puts it, in a way of thinking that has wide
application).
Unelected plutocrat and his international syndicate funded by former IBM artificial
intelligence developer and social darwinian. data manipulation electronic platforms and
social media are at the levels of power in the USA. Anti justice, anti enlightenment,
etc.
Since the installation of GW Bush by the Supreme Court, almost 20 yrs. ago, they have
tunneled deeply, speaking through propaganda machines such as Rush Limbaugh gaining traction
.making it over the finish line with KGB and Russian oligarch backing. The net effect on us?
The loss of all built on the foundation of the enlightenment and an exceptional nation no
king, a nation of, for and by the people, and the rule of law. There is nothing
Judeo-Christian about social darwinism but is eerily similar to National Socialism (Nazis).
The ruling againt the plaintiff by the 7th circuit in the U.S. and their success in creating
chaos in Great Britain vis a vis "Brexit" by fascist Lafarge Inc. are indicators how easy
their ascent.
ows how powerful they have become.
Where are the Bipartisan Presidential Candidates and Legislators on oral and verbal
condemnation of Age Discrimination , along with putting teeth into Age Discrimination
Laws, and Tax Policy. – nowhere to be seen , or heard, that I've noticed;
particularly in Blue ™ California, which is famed for Age Discrimination of
those as young as 36 years of age, since Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed anyone over 35, over
the hill in the early 2000's , and never got crushed for it by the media, or the
Politicians, as he should have (particularly in Silicon Valley).
I know those Republicans are venal, but I dare anyone to show me a meaningful Age
Discrimination Policy Proposal, pushed by Blue ™ Obama, Hillary, even
Sanders and Jill Stein. Certainly none of California's Nationally known (many well over
retirement age) Gubernatorial and Legislative Democratic Politicians: Jerry Brown, Gavin
Newsom, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Ro Khanna (or the
lesser known California Federal State and Local Democratic Politicians) have ever addressed
it; despite the fact that homelessness deaths of those near 'retirement age' have been
frighteningly increasing in California's obscenely wealthy homelessness 'hotspots,' such as
Silicon Valley.
Such a tragic issue, which has occurred while the last over a decade of Mainstream News
and Online Pundits, have Proclaimed 50 to be the new 30. Sadistic. I have no doubt this is
linked to the ever increasing Deaths of Despair and attempted and successful suicides of
those under, and just over retirement age– while the US has an average Senate age of
65, and a President and 2020 Presidential contenders, over 70 (I am not at all saying older
persons shouldn't be elected, nor that younger persons shouldn't be elected, I'm pointing out
the imbalance, insanity, and cruelty of it).
Further, age discrimination has
been particularly brutal to single, divorced, and widowed females , whom have most
assuredly made far, far less on the dollar than males (if they could even get hired for the
position, or leave the kids alone, and housekeeping undone, to get a job):
Patrick Button, an assistant economics professor at Tulane University, was part of a
research project last year that looked at callback rates from resumes in various
entry-level jobs. He said women seeking the positions appeared to be most affected.
"Based on over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in
hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age, but considerably less
evidence of age discrimination against men," according to an abstract of the study.
Jacquelyn James, co-director of the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College, said age
discrimination in employment is a crucial issue in part because of societal changes that
are forcing people to delay retirement. Moves away from defined-¬benefit pension plans
to less assured forms of retirement savings are part of the reason.
> "Based on over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination
in hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age, but considerably less
evidence of age discrimination against men," according to an abstract of the study.
Well, these aren't real women, obviously. If they were, the Democrats would
already be taking care of them.
From the article: The greying of the workforce is "thanks to better health in older age
and insufficient savings that require people to keeping working longer," according to the
Chicago Tribune.
Get on the clue train Chicago Tribune, because your like W and Trump not knowing how a
supermarket works, that's how dense you are. Even if one saved, and even if one won the luck
lottery in terms of job stability and adequate income to save from, healthcare alone is a
reason to work, either to get employer provided if lucky, or to work without it and put most
of one's money toward an ACA plan or the like if not lucky. Yes the cost of almost all other
necessities has also increased greatly, but even parts of the country without a high cost of
living have unaffordable healthcare.
Benefits may be 23-30% or so of payroll and represent another expense management
opportunity for the diligent executive. One piece of low-hanging fruit is the age-related
healthcare cost. If you hire young people, who under-consume healthcare relative to older
cohorts, you save money, ceteris paribus. They have lower premiums, lower loss experience and
they rebound more quickly, so you hit a triple at your first at-bat swinging at that fruit.
Yes, metaphors are fungible along with every line on the income statement.
If your company still has the vestiges of a pension or similar blandishment, you may even
back-load contributions more aggressively, of course to the extent allowable. That added
expense diligence will pay off when those annuated employees leave before hitting
the more expensive funding years.
NB, the above reflects what I saw and heard at a Fortune 500 company.
A reason why the court system is overburdened is lack of clarity in laws and regulations.
Fix the disparity between the two sections of the law so that courts don't have to decide
which section rules.
It amazes me how often the government will give itself exemptions to its own laws and
principles, and also how often "progressive" nonprofits and political groups will also give
themselves such exemptions, for instance, regarding health insurance, paid overtime, paid
training, etc. that they are legally required to provide.
There are specific physical demands in things like policing. So it doesn't make much sense
to hire 55 year old rookie policemen when many policemen are retiring at that age.
Its an interesting quandary. We have older staff that went back to school and changed
careers. They do a good job and get paid at a rate similar to the younger staff with similar
job-related experience. However, they will be retiring at about the same time as the much
more experienced staff, so they will not be future succession replacements for the senior
staff.
So we also have to hire people in their 20s and 30s because that will be the future when
people like me retire in a few years. That could very well be the reason for the specific
wording of the job opening (I haven't read the opinion). I know of current hiring for a
position where the firm is primarily looking for somebody in their 20s or early 30s for
precisely that reason. The staff currently doing the work are in their 40s and 50s and need
to start bringing up the next generation. If somebody went back to school late and was in
their 40s or 50s (so would be at a lower billing rate due to lack of job related experience),
they would be seriously considered. But the firm would still be left with the challenge of
having to hire another person at the younger age within a couple of years to build the
succession. Once people make it past 5 years at the firm, they tend to stay for a long time
with senior staff generally having been at the firm for 20 years or more, so hiring somebody
really is a long-term investment.
People who are kicked out of their IT jobs around 55 now has difficulties to find even
full-time McJobs... Only part time jobs are available. With the current round of layoff and job
freezes, neoliberalism in the USA is entering terminal phase, I think.
A survey by
Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found on average Americans are retiring at age
63, with more than half indicating they retired sooner than they had planned. Among them, most
retired for health or employment-related reasons.
... ... ...
On April 3, 2018, Linda LaBarbera received the phone call that changed her life forever. "We
are outsourcing your work to India and your services are no longer needed, effective today,"
the voice on the other end of the phone line said.
... ... ...
"It's not like we are starving or don't have a home or anything like that," she says. "But
we did have other plans for before we retired and setting ourselves up a little better while we
both still had jobs."
... ... ...
Linda hasn't needed to dip into her 401(k) yet. She plans to start collecting Social
Security when she turns 70, which will give her the maximum benefit. To earn money and keep
busy, Linda has taken short-term contract editing jobs. She says she will only withdraw money
from her savings if something catastrophic happens. Her husband's salary is their main source
of income.
"I am used to going out and spending money on other people," she says. "We are very generous
with our family and friends who are not as well off as we are. So we take care of a lot of
people. We can't do that anymore. I can't go out and be frivolous anymore. I do have to look at
what we spend - what I spend."
Vogelbacher says cutting costs is essential when living in retirement, especially for those
on a fixed income. He suggests moving to a tax-friendly location if possible.
Kiplinger ranks Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Florida as the top five
tax-friendly states for retirees. If their health allows, Vogelbacher recommends getting a
part-time job. For those who own a home, he says paying off the mortgage is a smart financial
move.
... ... ...
Monica is one of the 44 percent of unmarried persons who rely on Social Security for 90
percent or more of their income. At the beginning of 2019, Monica and more than 62 million
Americans received a 2.8 percent cost
of living adjustment from Social Security. The increase is the largest since 2012.
With the Social Security hike, Monica's monthly check climbed $33. Unfortunately, the new
year also brought her a slight increase in what she pays for Medicare; along with a $500
property tax bill and the usual laundry list of monthly expenses.
"If you don't have much, the (Social Security) raise doesn't represent anything," she says
with a dry laugh. "But it's good to get it."
"... Four years in GTS ... joined via being outsourced to IBM by my previous employer. Left GTS after 4 years. ..."
"... The IBM way of life was throughout the Oughts and the Teens an utter and complete failure from the perspective of getting work done right and using people to their appropriate and full potential. ..."
"... As a GTS employee, professional technical training was deemed unnecessary, hence I had no access to any unless I paid for it myself and used my personal time ... the only training available was cheesy presentations or other web based garbage from the intranet, or casual / OJT style meetings with other staff who were NOT professional or expert trainers. ..."
"... As a GTS employee, I had NO access to the expert and professional tools that IBM fricking made and sold to the same damn customers I was supposed to be supporting. Did we have expert and professional workflow / document management / ITIL aligned incident and problem management tools? NO, we had fricking Lotus Notes and email. Instead of upgrading to the newest and best software solutions for data center / IT management & support, we degraded everything down the simplest and least complex single function tools that no "best practices" organization on Earth would ever consider using. ..."
"... And the people management paradigm ... employees ranked annually not against a static or shared goal or metric, but in relation to each other, and there was ALWAYS a "top 10 percent" and a "bottom ten percent" required by upper management ... a system that was sociopathic in it's nature because it encourages employees to NOT work together ... by screwing over one's coworkers, perhaps by not giving necessary information, timely support, assistance as needed or requested, one could potentially hurt their performance and make oneself look relatively better. That's a self-defeating system and it was encouraged by the way IBM ran things. ..."
Four years in GTS ... joined via being outsourced to IBM by my previous employer. Left
GTS after 4 years.
The IBM way of life was throughout the Oughts and the Teens an utter and complete
failure from the perspective of getting work done right and using people to their appropriate
and full potential. I went from a multi-disciplinary team of engineers working across
technologies to support corporate needs in the IT environment to being siloed into a
single-function organization.
My first year of on-boarding with IBM was spent deconstructing application integration and
cross-organizational structures of support and interwork that I had spent 6 years building
and maintaining. Handing off different chunks of work (again, before the outsourcing, an
Enterprise solution supported by one multi-disciplinary team) to different IBM GTS work silos
that had no physical special relationship and no interworking history or habits. What we're
talking about here is the notion of "left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing"
...
THAT was the IBM way of doing things, and nothing I've read about them over the past
decade or so tells me it has changed.
As a GTS employee, professional technical training was deemed unnecessary, hence I had
no access to any unless I paid for it myself and used my personal time ... the only training
available was cheesy presentations or other web based garbage from the intranet, or casual /
OJT style meetings with other staff who were NOT professional or expert trainers.
As a GTS employee, I had NO access to the expert and professional tools that IBM
fricking made and sold to the same damn customers I was supposed to be supporting. Did we
have expert and professional workflow / document management / ITIL aligned incident and
problem management tools? NO, we had fricking Lotus Notes and email. Instead of upgrading to
the newest and best software solutions for data center / IT management & support, we
degraded everything down the simplest and least complex single function tools that no "best
practices" organization on Earth would ever consider using.
And the people management paradigm ... employees ranked annually not against a static
or shared goal or metric, but in relation to each other, and there was ALWAYS a "top 10
percent" and a "bottom ten percent" required by upper management ... a system that was
sociopathic in it's nature because it encourages employees to NOT work together ... by
screwing over one's coworkers, perhaps by not giving necessary information, timely support,
assistance as needed or requested, one could potentially hurt their performance and make
oneself look relatively better. That's a self-defeating system and it was encouraged by the
way IBM ran things.
The "not invented here" ideology was embedded deeply in the souls of all senior IBMers I
ever met or worked with ... if you come on board with any outside knowledge or experience,
you must not dare to say "this way works better" because you'd be shut down before you could
blink. The phrase "best practices" to them means "the way we've always done it".
IBM gave up on innovation long ago. Since the 90's the vast majority of their software has
been bought, not built. Buy a small company, strip out the innovation, slap an IBM label on
it, sell it as the next coming of Jesus even though they refuse to expend any R&D to push
the product to the next level ... damn near everything IBM sold was gentrified, never cutting
edge.
And don't get me started on sales practices ... tell the customer how product XYZ is a
guaranteed moonshot, they'll be living on lunar real estate in no time at all, and after all
the contracts are signed hand the customer a box of nuts & bolts and a letter telling
them where they can look up instructions on how to build their own moon rocket. Or for XX
dollars more a year, hire a Professional Services IBMer to build it for them.
I have no sympathy for IBM. They need a clean sweep throughout upper management,
especially any of the old True Blue hard-core IBMers.
Step back and think about this for a minute. There are plenty of examples of people who were
doing their jobs, IN SPADES, putting in tons of unpaid overtime, and generally doing whatever
was humanly possible to make sure that whatever was promised to the customer was delivered
(within their span of control... I'm not going to get into a discussion of how IBM pulls the
rug out from underneath contracts after they've been signed).
These people were, and still are, high performers, they are committed to the job and the
purpose that has been communicated to them by their peers, management, and customers; and
they take the time (their OWN time) to pick up new skills and make sure that they are still
current and marketable. They do this because they are committed to doing the job to the best
of their ability.... it's what makes them who they are.
IBM (and other companies) are firing these very people ***for one reason and one reason
ONLY***: their AGE. They have the skills and they're doing their jobs. If the same person was
30 you can bet that they'd still be there. Most of the time it has NOTHING to do with
performance or lack of concurrency. Once the employee is fired, the job is done by someone
else. The work is still there, but it's being done by someone younger and/or of a different
nationality.
The money that is being saved by these companies has to come from somewhere. People that
are having to withdraw their retirement savings 20 or so years earlier than planned are going
to run out of funds.... and when they're in nursing homes, guess who is going to be
supporting them? Social security will be long gone, their kids have their own monetary
challenges.... so it will be government programs.... maybe.
This is not just a problem that impacts the 40 and over crowd. This is going to impact our
entire society for generations to come.
The business reality you speak of can be tempered via government actions. A few things:
One of the major hardships here is laying someone off when they need income the most -
to pay for their children's college education. To mitigate this, as a country we could make a
public education free. That takes off a lot of the sting, some people might relish a change
in career when they are in their 50s except that the drop in salary is so steep when changing
careers.
We could lower the retirement age to 55 and increase Social Security to more than a
poverty-level existence.Being laid off when you're 50 or 55 - with little chance to be hired
anywhere else - would not hurt as much.
We could offer federal wage subsidies for older workers to make them more attractive to
hire. While some might see this as a thumb on the scale against younger workers, in reality
it would be simply a counterweight to the thumb that is already there against older
workers.
Universal health care equalizes the cost of older and younger workers.
The other alternative is a market-based life that, for many, will be cruel, brutish, and
short.
As a new engineering graduate, I joined a similar-sized multinational US-based company in the
early '70s. Their recruiting pitch was, "Come to work here, kid. Do your job, keep your nose
clean, and you will enjoy great, secure work until you retire on easy street".
Soon after I started, the company fired hundreds of 50-something employees and put we
"kids" in their jobs. Seeing that employee loyalty was a one way street at that place, I left
after a couple of years. Best career move I ever made.
As a 25yr+ vet of IBM, I can confirm that this article is spot-on true. IBM used to be a
proud and transparent company that clearly demonstrated that it valued its employees as much
as it did its stock performance or dividend rate or EPS, simply because it is good for
business. Those principles helped make and keep IBM atop the business world as the most
trusted international brand and business icon of success for so many years. In 2000, all that
changed when Sam Palmisano became the CEO. Palmisano's now infamous "Roadmap 2015" ran the
company into the ground through its maniacal focus on increasing EPS at any and all costs.
Literally. Like, its employees, employee compensation, benefits, skills, and education
opportunities. Like, its products, product innovation, quality, and customer service. All of
which resulted in the devastation of its technical capability and competitiveness, employee
engagement, and customer loyalty. Executives seemed happy enough as their compensation grew
nicely with greater financial efficiencies, and Palisano got a sweet $270M+ exit package in
2012 for a job well done. The new CEO, Ginni Rometty has since undergone a lot of scrutiny
for her lack of business results, but she was screwed from day one. Of course, that doesn't
leave her off the hook for the business practices outlined in the article, but what do you
expect: she was hand picked by Palmisano and approved by the same board that thought
Palmisano was golden.
In 1994, I saved my job at IBM for the first time, and survived. But I was 36 years old. I
sat down at the desk of a man in his 50s, and found a few odds and ends left for me in the
desk. Almost 20 years later, it was my turn to go. My health and well-being is much better
now. Less money but better health. The sins committed by management will always be: "I was
just following orders".
"... Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original version of this story. ..."
Consider, for example, a planning presentation that former IBM executives said was drafted by heads of a business unit carved
out of IBM's once-giant software group and charged with pursuing the "C," or cloud, portion of the company's CAMS strategy.
The presentation laid out plans for substantially altering the unit's workforce. It was shown to company leaders including Diane
Gherson, the senior vice president for human resources, and James Kavanaugh, recently elevated to chief financial officer. Its language
was couched in the argot of "resources," IBM's term for employees, and "EP's," its shorthand for early professionals or recent college
graduates.
Among the goals: "Shift headcount mix towards greater % of Early Professional hires." Among the means: "[D]rive a more aggressive
performance management approach to enable us to hire and replace where needed, and fund an influx of EPs to correct seniority mix."
Among the expected results: "[A] significant reduction in our workforce of 2,500 resources."
A slide from a similar presentation prepared last spring for the same leaders called for "re-profiling current talent" to "create
room for new talent." Presentations for 2015 and 2016 for the 50,000-employee software group also included plans for "aggressive
performance management" and emphasized the need to "maintain steady attrition to offset hiring."
IBM declined to answer questions about whether either presentation was turned into company policy. The description of the planned
moves matches what hundreds of older ex-employees told ProPublica they believe happened to them: They were ousted because of their
age. The company used their exits to hire replacements, many of them young; to ship their work overseas; or to cut its overall headcount.
Ed Alpern, now 65, of Austin, started his 39-year run with IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman. He ended as a project manager
in October of 2016 when, he said, his manager told him he could either leave with severance and other parting benefits or be given
a bad job review -- something he said he'd never previously received -- and risk being fired without them.
Albert Poggi, now 70, was a three-decade IBM veteran and ran the company's Palisades, New York, technical center where clients
can test new products. When notified in November of 2016 he was losing his job to layoff, he asked his bosses why, given what he
said was a history of high job ratings. "They told me," he said, "they needed to fill it with someone newer."
The presentations from the software group, as well as the stories of ex-employees like Alpern and Poggi, square with internal
documents from two other major IBM business units. The documents for all three cover some or all of the years from 2013 through the
beginning of 2018 and deal with job assessments, hiring, firing and layoffs.
The documents detail practices that appear at odds with how IBM says it treats its employees. In many instances, the practices
in effect, if not intent, tilt against the company's older U.S. workers.
For example, IBM spokespeople and lawyers have said the company never considers a worker's age in making decisions about layoffs
or firings.
But one 2014 document reviewed by ProPublica includes dates of birth. An ex-IBM employee familiar with the process said executives
from one business unit used it to decide about layoffs or other job changes for nearly a thousand workers, almost two-thirds of them
over 50.
Documents from subsequent years show that young workers are protected from cuts for at least a limited period of time. A 2016
slide presentation prepared by the company's global technology services unit, titled "U.S. Resource Action Process" and used to guide
managers in layoff procedures, includes bullets for categories considered "ineligible" for layoff. Among them: "early professional
hires," meaning recent college graduates.
In responding to age-discrimination complaints that ex-employees file with the EEOC, lawyers for IBM say that front-line managers
make all decisions about who gets laid off, and that their decisions are based strictly on skills and job performance, not age.
But ProPublica reviewed spreadsheets that indicate front-line managers hardly acted alone in making layoff calls. Former IBM managers
said the spreadsheets were prepared for upper-level executives and kept continuously updated. They list hundreds of employees together
with codes like "lift and shift," indicating that their jobs were to be lifted from them and shifted overseas, and details such as
whether IBM's clients had approved the change.
An examination of several of the spreadsheets suggests that, whatever the criteria for assembling them, the resulting list of
those marked for layoff was skewed toward older workers. A 2016 spreadsheet listed more than 400 full-time U.S. employees under the
heading "REBAL," which refers to "rebalancing," the process that can lead to laying off workers and either replacing them or shifting
the jobs overseas. Using the job search site LinkedIn, ProPublica was able to locate about 100 of these employees and then obtain
their ages through public records. Ninety percent of those found were 40 or older. Seventy percent were over 50.
IBM frequently cites its history of encouraging diversity in its responses to EEOC complaints about age discrimination. "IBM has
been a leader in taking positive actions to ensure its business opportunities are made available to individuals without regard to
age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation and other categories," a lawyer for the company wrote in a May 2017 letter. "This policy
of non-discrimination is reflected in all IBM business activities."
But ProPublica found at least one company business unit using a point system that disadvantaged older workers. The system awarded
points for attributes valued by the company. The more points a person garnered, according to the former employee, the more protected
she or he was from layoff or other negative job change; the fewer points, the more vulnerable.
The arrangement appears on its face to favor younger newcomers over older veterans. Employees were awarded points for being relatively
new at a job level or in a particular role. Those who worked for IBM for fewer years got more points than those who'd been there
a long time.
The ex-employee familiar with the process said a 2014 spreadsheet from that business unit, labeled "IBM Confidential," was assembled
to assess the job prospects of more than 600 high-level employees, two-thirds of them from the U.S. It included employees' years
of service with IBM, which the former employee said was used internally as a proxy for age. Also listed was an assessment by their
bosses of their career trajectories as measured by the highest job level they were likely to attain if they remained at the company,
as well as their point scores.
The tilt against older workers is evident when employees' years of service are compared with their point scores. Those with no
points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff had worked at IBM an average of more than 30 years; those with a high number of points
averaged half that.
Perhaps even more striking is the comparison between employees' service years and point scores on the one hand and their superiors'
assessments of their career trajectories on the other.
Along with many American employers, IBM has argued it needs to shed older workers because they're no longer at the top of their
games or lack "contemporary" skills.
But among those sized up in the confidential spreadsheet, fully 80 percent of older employees -- those with the most years of
service but no points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff -- were rated by superiors as good enough to stay at their current
job levels or be promoted. By contrast, only a small percentage of younger employees with a high number of points were similarly
rated.
"No major company would use tools to conduct a layoff where a disproportionate share of those let go were African Americans or
women," said Cathy Ventrell-Monsees, senior attorney adviser with the EEOC and former director of age litigation for the senior lobbying
giant AARP. "There's no difference if the tools result in a disproportionate share being older workers."
In addition to the point system that disadvantaged older workers in layoffs, other documents suggest that IBM has made increasingly
aggressive use of its job-rating machinery to pave the way for straight-out firings, or what the company calls "management-initiated
separations." Internal documents suggest that older workers were especially targets.
Like in many companies, IBM employees sit down with their managers at the start of each year and set goals for themselves. IBM
graded on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being top-ranked.
Those rated as 3 or 4 were given formal short-term goals known as personal improvement plans, or PIPs. Historically many managers
were lenient, especially toward those with 3s whose ratings had dropped because of forces beyond their control, such as a weakness
in the overall economy, ex-employees said.
But within the past couple of years, IBM appears to have decided the time for leniency was over. For example, a software group
planning document for 2015 said that, over and above layoffs, the unit should seek to fire about 3,000 of the unit's 50,000-plus
workers.
To make such deep cuts, the document said, executives should strike an "aggressive performance management posture." They needed
to double the share of employees given low 3 and 4 ratings to at least 6.6 percent of the division's workforce. And because layoffs
cost the company more than outright dismissals or resignations, the document said, executives should make sure that more than 80
percent of those with low ratings get fired or forced to quit.
Finally, the 2015 document said the division should work "to attract the best and brightest early professionals" to replace up
to two-thirds of those sent packing. A more recent planning document -- the presentation to top executives Gherson and Kavanaugh
for a business unit carved out of the software group -- recommended using similar techniques to free up money by cutting current
employees to fund an "influx" of young workers.
In a recent interview, Poggi said he was resigned to being laid off. "Everybody at IBM has a bullet with their name on it," he
said. Alpern wasn't nearly as accepting of being threatened with a poor job rating and then fired.
Alpern had a particular reason for wanting to stay on at IBM, at least until the end of last year. His younger son, Justin, then
a high school senior, had been named a National Merit semifinalist. Alpern wanted him to be able to apply for one of the company's
Watson scholarships. But IBM had recently narrowed eligibility so only the children of current employees could apply, not also retirees
as it was until 2014.
Alpern had to make it through December for his son to be eligible.
But in August, he said, his manager ordered him to retire. He sought to buy time by appealing to superiors. But he said the manager's
response was to threaten him with a bad job review that, he was told, would land him on a PIP, where his work would be scrutinized
weekly. If he failed to hit his targets -- and his managers would be the judges of that -- he'd be fired and lose his benefits.
Alpern couldn't risk it; he retired on Oct. 31. His son, now a freshman on the dean's list at Texas A&M University, didn't get
to apply.
"I can think of only a couple regrets or disappointments over my 39 years at IBM,"" he said, "and that's one of them."
'Congratulations on Your Retirement!'
Like any company in the U.S., IBM faces few legal constraints to reducing the size of its workforce. And with its no-disclosure
strategy, it eliminated one of the last regular sources of information about its employment practices and the changing size of its
American workforce.
But there remained the question of whether recent cutbacks were big enough to trigger state and federal requirements for disclosure
of layoffs. And internal documents, such as a slide in a 2016 presentation titled "Transforming to Next Generation Digital Talent,"
suggest executives worried that "winning the talent war" for new young workers required IBM to improve the "attractiveness of (its)
culture and work environment," a tall order in the face of layoffs and firings.
So the company apparently has sought to put a softer face on its cutbacks by recasting many as voluntary rather than the result
of decisions by the firm. One way it has done this is by converting many layoffs to retirements.
Some ex-employees told ProPublica that, faced with a layoff notice, they were just as happy to retire. Others said they felt forced
to accept a retirement package and leave. Several actively objected to the company treating their ouster as a retirement. The company
nevertheless processed their exits as such.
Project manager Ed Alpern's departure was treated in company paperwork as a voluntary retirement. He didn't see it that way, because
the alternative he said he was offered was being fired outright.
Lorilynn King, a 55-year-old IT specialist who worked from her home in Loveland, Colorado, had been with IBM almost as long as
Alpern by May 2016 when her manager called to tell her the company was conducting a layoff and her name was on the list.
King said the manager told her to report to a meeting in Building 1 on IBM's Boulder campus the following day. There, she said,
she found herself in a group of other older employees being told by an IBM human resources representative that they'd all be retiring.
"I have NO intention of retiring," she remembers responding. "I'm being laid off."
ProPublica has collected documents from 15 ex-IBM employees who got layoff notices followed by a retirement package and has talked
with many others who said they received similar paperwork. Critics say the sequence doesn't square well with the law.
"This country has banned mandatory retirement," said Seiner, the University of South Carolina law professor and former EEOC appellate
lawyer. "The law says taking a retirement package has to be voluntary. If you tell somebody 'Retire or we'll lay you off or fire
you,' that's not voluntary."
Until recently, the company's retirement paperwork included a letter from Rometty, the CEO, that read, in part, "I wanted to take
this opportunity to wish you well on your retirement While you may be retiring to embark on the next phase of your personal journey,
you will always remain a valued and appreciated member of the IBM family." Ex-employees said IBM stopped sending the letter last
year.
IBM has also embraced another practice that leads workers, especially older ones, to quit on what appears to be a voluntary basis.
It substantially reversed its pioneering support for telecommuting, telling people who've been working from home for years to begin
reporting to certain, often distant, offices. Their other choice: Resign.
David Harlan had worked as an IBM marketing strategist from his home in Moscow, Idaho, for 15 years when a manager told him last
year of orders to reduce the performance ratings of everybody at his pay grade. Then in February last year, when he was 50, came
an internal video from IBM's new senior vice president, Michelle Peluso, which announced plans to improve the work of marketing employees
by ordering them to work "shoulder to shoulder." Those who wanted to stay on would need to "co-locate" to offices in one of six cities.
Early last year, Harlan received an email congratulating him on "the opportunity to join your team in Raleigh, North Carolina."
He had 30 days to decide on the 2,600-mile move. He resigned in June.
David Harlan worked for IBM for 15 years from his home in Moscow, Idaho, where he also runs a drama company. Early last year,
IBM offered him a choice: Move 2,600 miles to Raleigh-Durham to begin working at an office, or resign. He left in June. (Rajah Bose
for ProPublica)
After the Peluso video was leaked to the press, an IBM spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the "
vast
majority " of people ordered to change locations and begin reporting to offices did so. IBM Vice President Ed Barbini said in
an initial email exchange with ProPublica in July that the new policy affected only about 2,000 U.S. employees and that "most" of
those had agreed to move.
But employees across a wide range of company operations, from the systems and technology group to analytics, told ProPublica they've
also been ordered to co-locate in recent years. Many IBMers with long service said that they quit rather than sell their homes, pull
children from school and desert aging parents. IBM declined to say how many older employees were swept up in the co-location initiative.
"They basically knew older employees weren't going to do it," said Eileen Maroney, a 63-year-old IBM product manager from Aiken,
South Carolina, who, like Harlan, was ordered to move to Raleigh or resign. "Older people aren't going to move. It just doesn't make
any sense." Like Harlan, Maroney left IBM last June.
Having people quit rather than being laid off may help IBM avoid disclosing how much it is shrinking its U.S. workforce and where
the reductions are occurring.
Under the federal WARN Act , adopted in the wake
of huge job cuts and factory shutdowns during the 1980s, companies laying off 50 or more employees who constitute at least one-third
of an employer's workforce at a site have to give advance notice of layoffs to the workers, public agencies and local elected officials.
Similar laws in some states where IBM has a substantial presence are even stricter. California, for example, requires advanced
notice for layoffs of 50 or more employees, no matter what the share of the workforce. New York requires notice for 25 employees
who make up a third.
Because the laws were drafted to deal with abrupt job cuts at individual plants, they can miss reductions that occur over long
periods among a workforce like IBM's that was, at least until recently, widely dispersed because of the company's work-from-home
policy.
IBM's training sessions to prepare managers for layoffs suggest the company was aware of WARN thresholds, especially in states
with strict notification laws such as California. A 2016 document entitled "Employee Separation Processing" and labeled "IBM Confidential"
cautions managers about the "unique steps that must be taken when processing separations for California employees."
A ProPublica review of five years of WARN disclosures for a dozen states where the company had large facilities that shed workers
found no disclosures in nine. In the other three, the company alerted authorities of just under 1,000 job cuts -- 380 in California,
369 in New York and 200 in Minnesota. IBM's reported figures are well below the actual number of jobs the company eliminated in these
states, where in recent years it has shuttered, sold off or leveled plants that once employed vast numbers.
By contrast, other employers in the same 12 states reported layoffs last year alone totaling 215,000 people. They ranged from
giant Walmart to Ostrom's Mushroom Farms in Washington state.
Whether IBM operated within the rules of the WARN act, which are notoriously fungible, could not be determined because the company
declined to provide ProPublica with details on its layoffs.
A Second Act, But Poorer
W ith 35 years at IBM under his belt, Ed Miyoshi had plenty of experience being pushed to take buyouts, or early retirement packages,
and refusing them. But he hadn't expected to be pushed last fall.
Miyoshi, of Hopewell Junction, New York, had some years earlier launched a pilot program to improve IBM's technical troubleshooting.
With the blessing of an IBM vice president, he was busily interviewing applicants in India and Brazil to staff teams to roll the
program out to clients worldwide.
The interviews may have been why IBM mistakenly assumed Miyoshi was a manager, and so emailed him to eliminate the one U.S.-based
employee still left in his group.
"That was me," Miyoshi realized.
In his sign-off email to colleagues shortly before Christmas 2016, Miyoshi, then 57, wrote: "I am too young and too poor to stop
working yet, so while this is good-bye to my IBM career, I fully expect to cross paths with some of you very near in the future."
He did, and perhaps sooner than his colleagues had expected; he started as a subcontractor to IBM about two weeks later, on Jan.
3.
Miyoshi is an example of older workers who've lost their regular IBM jobs and been brought back as contractors. Some of them --
not Miyoshi -- became contract workers after IBM told them their skills were out of date and no longer needed.
Employment law experts said that hiring ex-employees as contractors can be legally dicey. It raises the possibility that the layoff
of the employee was not for the stated reason but perhaps because they were targeted for their age, race or gender.
IBM appears to recognize the problem. Ex-employees say the company has repeatedly told managers -- most recently earlier this
year -- not to contract with former employees or sign on with third-party contracting firms staffed by ex-IBMers. But ProPublica
turned up dozens of instances where the company did just that.
Only two weeks after IBM laid him off in December 2016, Ed Miyoshi of Hopewell Junction, New York, started work as a subcontractor
to the company. But he took a $20,000-a-year pay cut. "I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," he says. (Demetrius
Freeman for ProPublica)
Responding to a question in a confidential questionnaire from ProPublica, one 35-year company veteran from New York said he knew
exactly what happened to the job he left behind when he was laid off. "I'M STILL DOING IT. I got a new gig eight days after departure,
working for a third-party company under contract to IBM doing the exact same thing."
In many cases, of course, ex-employees are happy to have another job, even if it is connected with the company that laid them
off.
Henry, the Columbus-based sales and technical specialist who'd been with IBM's "resiliency services" unit, discovered that he'd
lost his regular IBM job because the company had purchased an Indian firm that provided the same services. But after a year out of
work, he wasn't going to turn down the offer of a temporary position as a subcontractor for IBM, relocating data centers. It got
money flowing back into his household and got him back where he liked to be, on the road traveling for business.
The compensation most ex-IBM employees make as contractors isn't comparable. While Henry said he collected the same dollar amount,
it didn't include health insurance, which cost him $1,325 a month. Miyoshi said his paycheck is 20 percent less than what he made
as an IBM regular.
"I took an over $20,000 hit by becoming a contractor. I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," Miyoshi said.
And lower pay isn't the only problem ex-IBM employees-now-subcontractors face. This year, Miyoshi's payable hours have been cut
by an extra 10 "furlough days." Internal documents show that IBM repeatedly furloughs subcontractors without pay, often for two,
three or more weeks a quarter. In some instances, the furloughs occur with little advance notice and at financially difficult moments.
In one document, for example, it appears IBM managers, trying to cope with a cost overrun spotted in mid-November, planned to dump
dozens of subcontractors through the end of the year, the middle of the holiday season.
Former IBM employees now on contract said the company controls costs by notifying contractors in the midst of projects they have
to take pay cuts or lose the work. Miyoshi said that he originally started working for his third-party contracting firm for 10 percent
less than at IBM, but ended up with an additional 10 percent cut in the middle of 2017, when IBM notified the contractor it was slashing
what it would pay.
For many ex-employees, there are few ways out. Henry, for example, sought to improve his chances of landing a new full-time job
by seeking assistance to finish a college degree through a federal program designed to retrain workers hurt by offshoring of jobs.
But when he contacted the Ohio state agency that administers the Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, program, which provides
assistance to workers who lose their jobs for trade-related reasons, he was told IBM hadn't submitted necessary paperwork. State
officials said Henry could apply if he could find other IBM employees who were laid off with him, information that the company doesn't
provide.
TAA is overseen by the Labor Department but is operated by states under individual agreements with Washington, so the rules can
vary from state to state. But generally employers, unions, state agencies and groups of employers can petition for training help
and cash assistance. Labor Department data compiled by the advocacy group Global Trade Watch shows that employers apply in about
40 percent of cases. Some groups of IBM workers have obtained retraining funds when they or their state have applied, but records
dating back to the early 1990s show IBM itself has applied for and won taxpayer assistance only once, in 2008, for three Chicago-area
workers whose jobs were being moved to India.
Teasing New Jobs
A s IBM eliminated thousands of jobs in 2016, David Carroll, a 52-year-old Austin software engineer, thought he was safe.
His job was in mobile development, the "M" in the company's CAMS strategy. And if that didn't protect him, he figured he was only
four months shy of qualifying for a program that gives employees who leave within a year of their three-decade mark access to retiree
medical coverage and other benefits.
But the layoff notice Carroll received March 2 gave him three months -- not four -- to come up with another job. Having been a
manager, he said he knew the gantlet he'd have to run to land a new position inside IBM.
Still, he went at it hard, applying for more than 50 IBM jobs, including one for a job he'd successfully done only a few years
earlier. For his effort, he got one offer -- the week after he'd been forced to depart. He got severance pay but lost access to what
would have been more generous benefits.
Edward Kishkill, then 60, of Hillsdale, New Jersey, had made a similar calculation.
A senior systems engineer, Kishkill recognized the danger of layoffs, but assumed he was immune because he was working in systems
security, the "S" in CAMS and another hot area at the company.
The precaution did him no more good than it had Carroll. Kishkill received a layoff notice the same day, along with 17 of the
22 people on his systems security team, including Diane Moos. The notice said that Kishkill could look for other jobs internally.
But if he hadn't landed anything by the end of May, he was out.
With a daughter who was a senior in high school headed to Boston University, he scrambled to apply, but came up dry. His last
day was May 31, 2016.
For many, the fruitless search for jobs within IBM is the last straw, a final break with the values the company still says it
embraces. Combined with the company's increasingly frequent request that departing employees train their overseas replacements, it
has left many people bitter. Scores of ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said that managers with job openings told them they
weren't allowed to hire from layoff lists without getting prior, high-level clearance, something that's almost never given.
ProPublica reviewed documents that show that a substantial share of recent IBM layoffs have involved what the company calls "lift
and shift," lifting the work of specific U.S. employees and shifting it to specific workers in countries such as India and Brazil.
For example, a document summarizing U.S. employment in part of the company's global technology services division for 2015 lists nearly
a thousand people as layoff candidates, with the jobs of almost half coded for lift and shift.
Ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said the lift-and-shift process required their extensive involvement. For example, shortly
after being notified she'd be laid off, Kishkill's colleague, Moos, was told to help prepare a "knowledge transfer" document and
begin a round of conference calls and email exchanges with two Indian IBM employees who'd be taking over her work. Moos said the
interactions consumed much of her last three months at IBM.
Next Chapters
W hile IBM has managed to keep the scale and nature of its recent U.S. employment cuts largely under the public's radar, the company
drew some unwanted attention during the 2016 presidential campaign, when then-candidate
Donald Trump lambasted it for eliminating 500 jobs in Minnesota, where the company has had a presence for a half century, and
shifting the work abroad.
The company also has caught flak -- in places like
Buffalo, New
York ;
Dubuque, Iowa ; Columbia,
Missouri , and
Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- for promising jobs in return for state and local incentives, then failing to deliver. In all, according
to public officials in those and other places, IBM promised to bring on 3,400 workers in exchange for as much as $250 million in
taxpayer financing but has hired only about half as many.
After Trump's victory, Rometty, in a move at least partly aimed at courting the president-elect, pledged to hire 25,000 new U.S.
employees by 2020. Spokesmen said the hiring would increase IBM's U.S. employment total, although, given its continuing job cuts,
the addition is unlikely to approach the promised hiring total.
When The New York Times ran a story last fall saying IBM now has
more employees in India than the U.S.,
Barbini, the corporate spokesman, rushed to declare, "The U.S. has always been and remains IBM's center of gravity." But his stream
of accompanying tweets and graphics focused
as much on the company's record for racking up patents as hiring people.
IBM has long been aware of the damage its job cuts can do to people. In a series of internal training documents to prepare managers
for layoffs in recent years, the company has included this warning: "Loss of a job often triggers a grief reaction similar to what
occurs after a death."
Most, though not all, of the ex-IBM employees with whom ProPublica spoke have weathered the loss and re-invented themselves.
Marjorie Madfis, the digital marketing strategist, couldn't land another tech job after her 2013 layoff, so she headed in a different
direction. She started a nonprofit called Yes She Can Inc. that provides job skills development for young autistic women, including
her 21-year-old daughter.
After almost two years of looking and desperate for useful work, Brian Paulson, the widely traveled IBM senior manager, applied
for and landed a position as a part-time rural letter carrier in Plano, Texas. He now works as a contract project manager for a Las
Vegas gaming and lottery firm.
Ed Alpern, who started at IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman, watched his son go on to become a National Merit Scholar at
Texas A&M University, but not a Watson scholarship recipient.
Lori King, the IT specialist and 33-year IBM veteran who's now 56, got in a parting shot. She added an addendum to the retirement
papers the firm gave her that read in part: "It was never my plan to retire earlier than at least age 60 and I am not committing
to retire. I have been informed that I am impacted by a resource action effective on 2016-08-22, which is my last day at IBM, but
I am NOT retiring."
King has aced more than a year of government-funded coding boot camps and university computer courses, but has yet to land a new
job.
David Harlan still lives in Moscow, Idaho, after refusing IBM's "invitation" to move to North Carolina, and is artistic director
of the Moscow Art Theatre (Too).
Ed Miyoshi is still a technical troubleshooter working as a subcontractor for IBM.
Ed Kishkill, the senior systems engineer, works part time at a local tech startup, but pays his bills as an associate at a suburban
New Jersey Staples store.
This year, Paul Henry was back on the road, working as an IBM subcontractor in Detroit, about 200 miles from where he lived in
Columbus. On Jan. 8, he put in a 14-hour day and said he planned to call home before turning in. He died in his sleep.
Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original
version of this story.
Do you have information about age discrimination at IBM?
Peter Gosselin joined ProPublica as a contributing
reporter in January 2017 to cover aging. He has covered the U.S. and global economies for, among others, the Los Angeles Times and
The Boston Globe, focusing on the lived experiences of working people. He is the author of "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives
of American Families."
Ariana Tobin is an engagement reporter at ProPublica,
where she works to cultivate communities to inform our coverage. She was previously at The Guardian and WNYC. Ariana has also worked
as digital producer for APM's Marketplace and contributed
to outlets including The
New Republic , On Being , the
St. Louis
Beacon and Bustle .
There's not a word of truth quoted in this article. That is, quoted from IBM spokespeople. It's the culture there now. They don't
even realize that most of their customers have become deaf to the same crap from their Sales and Marketing BS, which is even worse
than their HR speak.
The sad truth is that IBM became incapable of taking its innovation (IBM is indeed a world beating, patent generating machine)
to market a long time ago. It has also lost the ability (if it ever really had it) to acquire other companies and foster their
innovation either - they ran most into the ground. As a result, for nearly a decade revenues have declined and resource actions
grown. The resource actions may seem to be the ugly problem, but they're only the symptom of a fat greedy and pompous bureaucracy
that's lost its ability to grow and stay relevant in a very competitive and changing industry. What they have been able to perfect
and grow is their ability to downsize and return savings as dividends (Big Sam Palmisano's "innovation"). Oh, and for senior management
to line their pockets.
Nothing IBM is currently doing is sustainable.
If you're still employed there, listen to the pain in the words of your fallen comrades and don't knock yourself out trying
to stay afloat. Perhaps learn some BS of your own and milk your job (career? not...) until you find freedom and better pastures.
If you own stock, do like Warren Buffett, and sell it while it still has some value.
This is NOTHING NEW! All major corporations have and will do this at some point in their existence. Another industry that does
this regularly every 3 to 5 years is the pharamaceutical industry. They'll decimate their sales forces in order to, as they like
to put it, "right size" the company.
They'll cloak it as weeding out the low performers, but they'll try to catch the "older" workers in the net as well.
"... I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so awful. ..."
"... Every former or prospective IBM employee is a potential future IBM customer or partner. How you treat them matters! ..."
"... I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to stop the bleeding. ..."
I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years
with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a
biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already
engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract
and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so
awful.
They actually did a presentation of their interim results - but it was a 52 slide package
that they had presented to me in my previous job but with the names and numbers changed.
see more
Intellectual Capital Re-Use! LOL! Not many people realize in IBM that many, if not all of the
original IBM Consulting Group materials were made under the Type 2 Materials clause of the
IBM Contract, which means the customers actually owned the IP rights of the documents. Can
you imagine the mess if just one customer demands to get paid for every re-use of the IP that
was developed for them and then re-used over and over again?
Beautiful! Yea, these companies so fast to push experienced people who have dedicated their
lives to the firm - how can you not...all the hours and commitment it takes - way
underestimate the power of the network of those left for dead and their influence in that
next career gig. Memories are long...very long when it comes to experiences like this.
I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how
much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to
stop the bleeding.
Under neoliberlaism the idea of loyalty between a corporation and an employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
Notable quotes:
"... Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking ..."
"... With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor ..."
"... This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products ..."
"... The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. ..."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because
I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business.
The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing
of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative
was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing,
movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty",
that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking .
I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because
of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation.
The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy
their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough
doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal
was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily
made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not
recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so
common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable
as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would
bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new
one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by
a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE
CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in
the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that
representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made
by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers;
way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job. This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is
lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge
Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward
outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the
Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically
uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your
middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You
nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s
and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than
actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I
work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years
now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived
through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen
age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions,
bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions
to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they
can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone
knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more. I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also
likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the
guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be
honest with your workers. High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company
like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend
IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM
as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire.
Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because
of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family."
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to
their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer.
Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your
job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they
accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for
the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to
do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion,
etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when
the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven
for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities
for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and
had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones,
internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies,
sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages
for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian
countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians
told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan. The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare
of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation.
And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses
did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably
live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were
allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent,
and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have
a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That
is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong
government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system
to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per
share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the
US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that
applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than
there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers.
For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If
companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least
start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor
pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the
rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation
for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have
quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on
vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation
of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving
the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc.
The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague.
I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with
30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is
going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years
at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing
that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation
times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age
related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers
without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are
given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone.
Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their
violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor
law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It
is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them
for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead
thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months
shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer
support position for the very product I helped develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I
realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email
describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the
job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer
have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the
company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical
benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have
funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their
not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure
date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no
choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That
said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was
"holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story .
"... As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees. ..."
"... The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts. ..."
American companies pay health insurance premiums based on their specific employee profiles. Insurance companies compete with each
other for the business, but costs are actual. And based on the profile of the pool of employees. So American companies fire older
workers just to lower the average age of their employees. Statistically this is going to lower their health care costs.
As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees.
They have an incentive to fire sick employees and employees with genetic risks. Those are harder to implement as ways to
lower costs. Firing older employees is simple to do, just look up their ages.
The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement
is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts.
By the way, most tech companies are actually run by older people. The goal is to broom out mid-level people based on age. Nobody
is going to suggest to a sixty year old president that they should self fire, for the good of the company.
"... It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole 11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon. ..."
"... I used to say when I was there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers". ..."
"... 1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated and even rewarded this abuse of Americans. ..."
"... Well, starting in the 1980s, the American management was allowed by Reagan to get rid of its workforce. ..."
"... It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster ..."
"... Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's. ..."
"... Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret not having retired before that changed. ..."
"... Yeah, severance started out at 2 yrs pay, went to 1 yr, then to 6 mos. and is now 1 month. ..."
"... You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee. ..."
dragonflap• 7
months ago I'm a 49-year-old SW engineer who started at IBM as part of an acquisition in 2000. I got laid off in 2002 when IBM
started sending reqs to Bangalore in batches of thousands. After various adventures, I rejoined IBM in 2015 as part of the "C" organization
referenced in the article.
It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email
crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the
corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole
11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon.
The lead-in to this piece makes it sound like IBM was forced into these practices by inescapable forces. I'd say not, rather
that it pursued them because a) the management was clueless about how to lead IBM in the new environment and new challenges so
b) it started to play with numbers to keep the (apparent) profits up....to keep the bonuses coming. I used to say when I was
there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers".
And then there's the Pig with the Wooden Leg shaggy dog story that ends with the punch line, "A pig like that you don't eat
all at once", which has a lot of the flavor of how many of us saw our jobs as IBM die a slow death.
IBM is about to fall out of the sky, much as General Motors did. How could that happen? By endlessly beating the cow to get
more milk.
IBM was hiring right through the Great Depression such that It Did Not Pay Unemployment Insurance. Because it never laid people
off, Because until about 1990, your manager was responsible for making sure you had everything you needed to excel and grow....and
you would find people that had started on the loading dock and had become Senior Programmers. But then about 1990, IBM starting
paying unemployment insurance....just out of the goodness of its heart. Right.
1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker
as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated
and even rewarded this abuse of Americans.
I found that other Ex-IBMer's respect other Ex-IBMer's work ethics, knowledge and initiative.
Other companies are happy to get them as a valueable resource. In '89 when our Palo Alto Datacenter moved, we were given two
options: 1.) to become a Programmer (w/training) 2.) move to Boulder or 3.) to leave.
I got my training with programming experience and left IBM in '92, when for 4 yrs IBM offerred really good incentives for leaving
the company. The Executives thought that the IBM Mainframe/MVS z/OS+ was on the way out and the Laptop (Small but Increasing Capacity)
Computer would take over everything.
It didn't. It did allow many skilled IBMers to succeed outside of IBM and help built up our customer skill sets. And like many,
when the opportunity arose to return I did. In '91 I was accidentally given a male co-workers paycheck and that was one of the
reasons for leaving. During my various Contract work outside, I bumped into other male IBMer's that had left too, some I had trained,
and when they disclosed that it was their salary (which was 20-40%) higher than mine was the reason they left, I knew I had made
the right decision.
Women tend to under-value themselves and their capabilities. Contracting also taught me that companies that had 70% employees
and 30% contractors, meant that contractors would be let go if they exceeded their quarterly expenditures.
I first contracted with IBM in '98 and when I decided to re-join IBM '01, I had (3) job offers and I took the most lucrative
exciting one to focus on fixing & improving DB2z Qry Parallelism. I developed a targeted L3 Technical Change Team to help L2 Support
reduce Customer problems reported and improve our product. The instability within IBM remained and I saw IBM try to eliminate
aging, salaried, benefited employees. The 1.) find a job within IBM ... to 2.) to leave ... was now standard.
While my salary had more than doubled since I left IBM the first time, it still wasn't near other male counterparts. The continual
rating competition based on salary ranged titles and timing a title raise after a round of layoffs, not before. I had another
advantage going and that was that my changed reduced retirement benefits helped me stay there. It all comes down to the numbers
that Mgmt is told to cut & save IBM. While much of this article implies others were hired, at our Silicon Valley Location and
other locations, they had no intent to backfill. So the already burdened employees were laden with more workloads & stress.
In the early to mid 2000's IBM setup a counter lab in China where they were paying 1/4th U.S. salaries and many SVL IBMers
went to CSDL to train our new world 24x7 support employees. But many were not IBM loyal and their attrition rates were very high,
so it fell to a wave of new-hires at SVL to help address it.
It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth
sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They
have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster
Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are
based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost
reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been
driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's.
Bravo ProPublica for another "sock it to them" article - journalism in honor of the spirit of great newspapers everywhere that
the refuge of justice in hard times is with the press.
Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret
not having retired before that changed.
You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services
operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee.
As a permanent old contractor and free-enterprise defender myself, I don't blame IBM a bit for wanting to cut the fat. But
for the outright *lies, deception and fraud* that they use to break laws, weasel out of obligations... really just makes me want
to shoot them... and I never even worked for them.
Where I worked, In Rochester,MN, people have known what is happening for years. My last years with IBM were the most depressing
time in my life.
I hear a rumor that IBM would love to close plants they no longer use but they are so environmentally polluted that it is cheaper
to maintain than to clean up and sell.
One of the biggest driving factors in age discrimination is health insurance costs, not salary. It can cost 4-5x as much to
insure and older employee vs. a younger one, and employers know this. THE #1 THING WE CAN DO TO STOP AGE DISCRIMINATION IS TO
MOVE AWAY FROM OUR EMPLOYER-PROVIDED INSURANCE SYSTEM. It could be single-payer, but it could also be a robust individual market
with enough pool diversification to make it viable. Freeing employers from this cost burden would allow them to pick the right
talent regardless of age.
The American business have constantly fought against single payer since the end of World War II and why should I feel sorry
for them when all of a sudden, they are complaining about health care costs? It is outrageous that workers have to face age discrimination;
however, the CEOs don't have to deal with that issue since they belong to a tiny group of people who can land a job anywhere else.
Single payer won't help. We have single payer in Canada and just as much age discrimination in employment. Society in general
does not like older people so unless you're a doctor, judge or pharmacist you will face age bias. It's even worse in popular culture
never mind in employment.
Thanks for the great article. I left IBM last year. USA based. 49. Product Manager in one of IBMs strategic initiatives, however
got told to relocate or leave. I found another job and left. I came to IBM from an acquisition. My only regret is, I wish I had
left this toxic environment earlier. It truely is a dreadful place to work.
The methodology has trickled down to smaller companies pursuing the same net results for headcount reduction. The similarities
to my experience were painful to read. The grief I felt after my job was "eliminated" 10 years ago while the Recession was at
its worst and shortly after my 50th birthday was coming back. I never have recovered financially but have started writing a murder
mystery. The first victim? The CEO who let me go. It's true. Revenge is best served cold.
Well written . people like me have experienced exactly what you wrote. IBM is a shadow of it's former greatness and I have
advised my children to stay away from IBM and companies like it as they start their careers. IBM is a corrupt company. Shame on
them !
I suspect someone will end up hunt them down with an axe at some point. That's the only way they'll probably learn. I don't
know about IBM specifically, but when Carly Fiorina ran HP, she travelled with and even went into engineering labs with an armed
security detail.
Was let go after 34 years of service. Mine Resource Action latter had additional lines after '...unless you are offered ...
position within IBM before that date.' , implying don't even try to look for a position. They lines were ' Additional business
controls are in effect to manage the business objectives of this resource action, therefore, job offers within (the name of division)
will be highly unlikely.'.
I've worked for a series of vendors for over thirty years. A job at IBM used to be the brass ring; nowadays, not so much.
I've heard persistent rumors from IBMers that U.S. headcount is below 25,000 nowadays. Given events like the recent downtime
of the internal systems used to order parts (5 or so days--website down because staff who maintained it were let go without replacements),
it's hard not to see the spiral continue down the drain.
What I can't figure out is whether Rometty and cronies know what they're doing or are just clueless. Either way, the result
is the same: destruction of a once-great company and brand. Tragic.
Well, none of these layoffs/ageist RIFs affect the execs, so they don't see the effects, or they see the effects but attribute
them to some other cause.
(I'm surprised the article doesn't address this part of the story; how many affected by layoffs are exec/senior management?
My bet is very few.)
I was a D-banded exec (Director-level) who was impacted and I know even some VPs who were affected as well, so they do spread
the pain, even in the exec ranks.
That's different than I have seen in companies I have worked for (like HP). There RIFs (Reduction In Force, their acronym for
layoff) went to the director level and no further up.
IMHO this is perilous for RHEL. It would be very easy for IBM to fire most of the
developers and just latch on to the enterprise services stuff to milk it till its dry.
Why would you say that? IBM is renowned for their wonderful employee relations.
</s>
If I were a Red Hat employee over 40, I'd be sweating right now.
blockquote> We run just about everything on CentOS around here, downstream of
RHEL. Should we be worried?
I don't think so, at least no more than you should have already been. IBM has adopted RHEL
as their standard platform for a lot of things, all the way up to big-iron mainframes. Not to
mention, over the two decades, they've done a hell of a lot of enhancements to Linux that are
a big part of why it scales so well (Darl Mcbride just felt like someone walked over his
grave. Hey, let's jump on it a bit too!).
Say what you like about IBM (like they've turned into a super-shitty place to work for or
be a customer of), but they've been a damn good friend to Linux. If I actually worked for Red
Hat though, I would be really unhappy because you can bet that "independence" will last a few
quarters before everyone gets outsourced to Brazil.
Brazil is too expensive. Last time I heard, they were outsourcing from Brazil to chapear
LA countries...
IBM are paying around 12x annual revenue for Red Hat which is a significant multiple so
they will have to squeeze more money out of the business somehow. Either they grow
customers or they increase margins or both.
IBM had little choice but to do something like this. They are in a terminal spiral
thanks to years of bad leadership. The confused billing of the purchase smacks of rush, so
far I have seen Red Hat described as a cloud company, an info sec company, an open source
company...
So IBM are buying Red Hat as a last chance bid to avoid being put through the PE
threshing machine. Red Hat get a ludicrous premium so will take the money.
And RH customers will want to check their contracts...
They will lay off Redhat staff to cut costs and replace them with remote programmers
living in Calcutta. To big corporations a programmer is a fungible item, if you can swap
programmer A woth programmer B at 1/4 the cost its a big win and you beat earnings estimate
by a penny.
No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness
will kill Red Hat. Time to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.
This will kill both companies. Red has trouble making money and IBM has trouble not
messing up what good their is and trouble making money. They both die, but a slow, possibly
accelerating, death.
F or nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.
As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million
U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and
an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.
But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most
of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large number of experienced and aging U.S. employees.
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would "correct seniority mix." It
slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced
and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated
more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.
In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age
discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information
provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
Among ProPublica's findings, IBM:
Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they've been victims of age bias, and required
them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress. Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques
that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the
departures went toward hiring young replacements. Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings.
The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements. Encouraged
employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many
of the workers to train their replacements. Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then
brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.
IBM declined requests for the numbers or age breakdown of its job cuts. ProPublica provided the company with a 10-page summary
of its findings and the evidence on which they were based. IBM spokesman Edward Barbini said that to respond the company needed to
see copies of all documents cited in the story, a request ProPublica could not fulfill without breaking faith with its sources. Instead,
ProPublica provided IBM with detailed descriptions of the paperwork. Barbini declined to address the documents or answer specific
questions about the firm's policies and practices, and instead issued the following statement:
"We are proud of our company and our employees' ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the
law. Our ability to do this is why we are the only tech company that has not only survived but thrived for more than 100 years."
With nearly 400,000 people worldwide, and tens of thousands still in the U.S., IBM remains a corporate giant. How it handles the
shift from its veteran baby-boom workforce to younger generations will likely influence what other employers do. And the way it treats
its experienced workers will eventually affect younger IBM employees as they too age.
Fifty years ago, Congress made it illegal with the Age Discrimination
in Employment Act , or ADEA, to treat older workers differently than younger ones with only a few exceptions, such as jobs that
require special physical qualifications. And for years, judges and policymakers treated the law as essentially on a par with prohibitions
against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and other categories.
In recent decades, however, the courts have responded to corporate pleas for greater leeway to meet global competition and satisfy
investor demands for rising profits by expanding the exceptions and
shrinking
the protections against age bias .
"Age discrimination is an open secret like sexual harassment was until recently," said Victoria Lipnic, the acting chair of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, the independent federal agency that administers the nation's workplace anti-discrimination
laws.
"Everybody knows it's happening, but often these cases are difficult to prove" because courts have weakened the law, Lipnic said.
"The fact remains it's an unfair and illegal way to treat people that can be economically devastating."
Many companies have sought to take advantage of the court rulings. But the story of IBM's downsizing provides an unusually detailed
portrait of how a major American corporation systematically identified employees to coax or force out of work in their 40s, 50s and
60s, a time when many are still productive and need a paycheck, but face huge hurdles finding anything like comparable jobs.
The dislocation caused by IBM's cuts has been especially great because until recently the company encouraged its employees to
think of themselves as "IBMers" and many operated under the assumption that they had career-long employment.
When the ax suddenly fell, IBM provided almost no information about why an employee was cut or who else was departing, leaving
people to piece together what had happened through websites, listservs and Facebook groups such as "Watching IBM" or "Geographically
Undesirable IBM Marketers," as well as informal support groups.
Marjorie Madfis, at the time 57, was a New York-based digital marketing strategist and 17-year IBM employee when she and six other
members of her nine-person team -- all women in their 40s and 50s -- were laid off in July 2013. The two who remained were younger
men.
Since her specialty was one that IBM had said it was expanding, she asked for a written explanation of why she was let go. The
company declined to provide it.
"They got rid of a group of highly skilled, highly effective, highly respected women, including me, for a reason nobody knows,"
Madfis said in an interview. "The only explanation is our age."
Brian Paulson, also 57, a senior manager with 18 years at IBM, had been on the road for more than a year overseeing hundreds of
workers across two continents as well as hitting his sales targets for new services, when he got a phone call in October 2015 telling
him he was out. He said the caller, an executive who was not among his immediate managers, cited "performance" as the reason, but
refused to explain what specific aspects of his work might have fallen short.
It took Paulson two years to land another job, even though he was equipped with an advanced degree, continuously employed at high-level
technical jobs for more than three decades and ready to move anywhere from his Fairview, Texas, home.
"It's tough when you've worked your whole life," he said. "The company doesn't tell you anything. And once you get to a certain
age, you don't hear a word from the places you apply."
Paul Henry, a 61-year-old IBM sales and technical specialist who loved being on the road, had just returned to his Columbus home
from a business trip in August 2016 when he learned he'd been let go. When he asked why, he said an executive told him to "keep your
mouth shut and go quietly."
Henry was jobless more than a year, ran through much of his savings to cover the mortgage and health insurance and applied for
more than 150 jobs before he found a temporary slot.
"If you're over 55, forget about preparing for retirement," he said in an interview. "You have to prepare for losing your job
and burning through every cent you've saved just to get to retirement."
IBM's latest actions aren't anything like what most ex-employees with whom ProPublica talked expected from their years of service,
or what today's young workers think awaits them -- or are prepared to deal with -- later in their careers.
"In a fast-moving economy, employers are always going to be tempted to replace older workers with younger ones, more expensive
workers with cheaper ones, those who've performed steadily with ones who seem to be up on the latest thing," said Joseph Seiner,
an employment law professor at the University of South Carolina and former appellate attorney for the EEOC.
"But it's not good for society," he added. "We have rules to try to maintain some fairness in our lives, our age-discrimination
laws among them. You can't just disregard them."
When it comes to employment claims, studies have found that arbitrators overwhelmingly favor
employers.
Research by Cornell University law and labor relations specialist Alexander Colvin found
that workers win
only 19 percent of the time when their cases are arbitrated. By contrast,
they win 36 percent of the time when they go to federal court, and 57 percent in state
courts. Average payouts when an employee wins follow a similar pattern.
Given those odds, and having signed away their rights to go to court, some laid-off IBM
workers have chosen the one independent forum companies can't deny them: the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. That's where Moos, the Long Beach systems security
specialist, and several of her colleagues, turned for help when they were laid off. In their
complaints to the agency, they said they'd suffered age discrimination because of the company's
effort to "drastically change the IBM employee age mix to be seen as a startup."
In its formal reply to the EEOC, IBM said that age couldn't have been a factor in their
dismissals. Among the reasons it cited: The managers who decided on the layoffs were in their
40s and therefore older too.
This makes for absolutely horrifying, chills-down-your-spine reading. A modern corporate horror story - worthy of a 'Black Mirror'
episode. Phenomenal reporting by Ariana Tobin and Peter Gosselin. Thank you for exposing this. I hope this puts an end to this
at IBM and makes every other company and industry doing this in covert and illegal ways think twice about continuing.
Agree..a well written expose'. I've been a victim of IBM's "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) strategy, not because of my real
performance mind you, but rather, I wasn't billing hours between projects and it was hurting my unit's bottom line. The way IBM
instructs management to structure the PIP, it's almost impossible to dig your way out, and it's intentional. If you have a PIP
on your record, nobody in IBM wants to touch you, so in effect you're already gone.
I see the PIP problem as its nearly impossible to take the fact that we know PIP is a scam to court. IBM will say its an issue
with you, your performance nose dived and your manager tried to fix that. You have to not only fight those simple statements,
but prove that PIP is actually systematic worker abuse.
Cindy, they've been doing this for at least 15-20 years, or even longer according to some of the previous comments. It is
in fact a modern corporate horror story; it's also life at a modern corporation, period.
After over 35 years working there, 19 of them as a manager sending out more of those notification letters than I care to remember,
I can vouch for the accuracy of this investigative work. It's an incredibly toxic and hostile environment and has been for the
last 5 or so years. One of the items I was appraised on annually was how many US jobs I moved offshore. It was a relief when I
received my notification letter after a two minute phone call telling me it was on the way. Sleeping at night and looking myself
in the mirror aren't as hard as they were when I worked there.
IBM will never regain any semblance of their former glory (or profit) until they begin to treat employees well again.
With all the offshoring and resource actions with no backfill over the last 10 years, so much is broken. Customers suffer almost
as much as the employees.
I don't know how in the world they ended up on that LinkedIn list. Based on my fairly recent experience there are a half dozen
happy employees in the US, and most of them are C level.
Well done. It squares well with my 18 years at IBM, watching resource action after resource action and hearing what my (unusually
honest) manager told me. Things got progressively worse from 2012 onward. I never realized how stressful it was to live under
the shadow of impending layoffs until I finally found the courage to leave in 2015. Best decision I've made.
IBM answers to its shareholders, period. Employees are an afterthought - simply a means to an end. It's shameful. (That's not
to say that individual people managers feel that way. I'm speaking about IBM executives.)
Well, they almost answer to their shareholders, but that's after the IBM executives take their share. Ginni's compensation is
tied to stock price (apparently not earnings) and buy backs maintain the stock price.
If the criteria for layoff is being allegedly overpaid and allegedly a poor performer, then it follows that Grinnin' Jenny should
have been let go long ago.
Just another fine example of how people become disposable.
And, when it comes to cost containment and profit maximization, there is no place for ethics in American business.
Businesses can lie just as well as politicians.
Millennials are smart to avoid this kind of problem by remaining loyal only to themselves. Companies certainly define anyone
as replaceable - even their over-paid CEO's.
The millennials saw what happen to their parents and grandparents getting screwed over after a life time of work and loyalty.
You can't blame them for not caring about so called traditional American work ethics and then they are attacked for not having
them when the business leaders threw away all those value decades ago.
Some of these IBM people have themselves to blame for cutting their own economic throats for fighting against unions, putting
in politicians who are pro-business and thinking that their education and high paying white collar STEM jobs will give them economic
immunity.
If America was more of a free market and free enterprise instead of being more of a close market of oligarchies and monopolies,
and strong government regulations, companies would think twice about treating their workforce badly because they know their workforce
would leave for other companies or start up their own companies without too much of a hassle.
Under the old IBM you could not get a union as workers were treated with dignity and respect - see the 3 core beliefs. Back
then a union would not have accomplished anything.
Doesn't matter if it was the old IBM or new IBM, you wonder how many still actually voted against their economic interests in
the political elections that in the long run undermine labor rights in this country.
So one shouldn't vote? Neither party cares about the average voter except at election time. Both sell out to Big Business - after
all, that's where the big campaign donations come from. If you believe only one party favors Big Business, then you have been
watching to much "fake news". Even the unions know they have been sold out by both and are wising up. How many of those jobs were
shipped overseas the past 25 years.
No, they should have been more active in voting for politicians who would look after the workers' rights in this country for the
last 38 years plus ensuring that Congressional people and the president would not be packing the court system with pro-business
judges. Sorry, but it is the Big Business that have been favoring the Republican Party for a long, long time and the jobs have
been shipped out for the last 38 years.
Age discrimination has been standard operating procedure in IT for at least 30 years. And
there are no significant consequences, if any consequences at all, for doing it in a blatant
fashion. The companies just need to make sure the quota of H1B visas is increased when they
are doing this on an IBM scale!
Age discrimination and a myriad other forms of discrimination have been standard operating
procedure in the US. Period. Full stop. No need to equivocate.
If that were the case....then why buy them? The whole POINT of acquiring a company is so
that you can leverage what the acquired company has to improve your business.
As time moves on, it's going to be obvious that some of the things RH does (partnerships,
etc) compete with some of IBM's partnerships and/or products.
At some point management will look at where there is crossover and kill the ones not
making money or hurting existing products.
Point is, over time RH is NOT going to just continue on as an independent entity with no
effect from it's parent or vice versa.
And....let's remember this is a ACQUISITION! Not a merger.
I recall, back in the mid-1960s, encountering employees of major major corporations like IBM,
US Steel, the Big Three in Detroit, etc, There was a certain smugness there. I recall hearing
bragging about the awesome retirement incomes. Yes, I was jealous. But I also had a clear eye
as to the nature of the beast they were working for, and I kept thinking of the famous
limerick:
There was a young lady of Niger Who smiled as she rode on a Tiger; They came back from the ride With the lady inside, And the smile on the face of the Tiger.
As an ex-IBM employee, I was given a package ( 6 months pay and a "transition" course)
because I was getting paid too much or so I was told. I was part of a company (oil industry)
that outsourced it's IT infrastructure support personnel and on several occasions was told by
my IBM management that they just don't know what to do with employees who make the kind of
money I do when we can do it much cheaper somewhere else (meaning offshore).
Eventually all
the people who I worked with that were outsourced to IBM were packaged off and all of our
jobs were sent offshore. I just turned 40 and found work back in the oil industry. In the
short time I was with IBM I found their benefits very restricted, their work policies very
bureaucratic and the office culture very old boys club.
If you weren't part of IBM and were
an outsourced employee, you didn't fit in. At the time I thought IBM was the glory company in
IT to work for, but quickly found out they are just a dinosaur. It's just a matter of time
for them.
I think a lot of the dislike for Indian developers is it's usually the outsourced, cheap as possible code monkey developers.
Which can be a problem anywhere, for sure, but at least seem exacerbated by US companies outsourcing there. In my limited experience,
they're either intelligent and can work up to working reasonably independently and expanding on a ticket intelligently. Or they're
copy a pasta code monkey and need pretty good supervision of the code that's produced.
Add in the problem if timezones and folks
who may not understand English that great, or us not understanding their English, and it all gives them a bad name. Yet I agree,
I know some quite good developers. Ones that didn't go to a US college.
My impression, totally anecdotal, is that unless you can hire or move a very good architect/lead + project/product manager
over there so you can interact in real-time instead of with a day delay, it's just a huge PITA and slows things down.
Personally
I'd rather hire a couple of seemingly competent 3 years out of college on their 2nd job (because they rarely stay very long at
their first one, right?) and pay from there.
"... There's not an intrinsic advantage to being of a certain nationality, American included. Sure, there are a lot of bad companies and bad programmers coming from India, but there are plenty of incompetent developers right here too. ..."
"... A huge problem with the good developers over there is the lack of English proficiency and soft skills. However, being born or graduated in Calcutta (or anywhere else for that matter) is not a determination of one's skill. ..."
"... I get what the intention of the first comment was intended to be, but it still has that smugness that is dangerous to the American future. As the world becomes more interconnected, and access to learning improves, when people ask you why are you better than that other guy, the answer better be something more than "well, I'm American and he is from Calcutta" because no one is going to buy that. The comment could've said that to a bean counter a solid developer with 10 years of experience is worth the same as a junior dev who just came out of school and make the same point. What exactly was the objective of throwing in Calcutta over there? ..."
"... I have dealt with this far too much these VPs rarely do much work and simply are hit on bottom line ( you are talking about 250k+), but management in US doesn't want to sit off hours and work with India office so they basically turn a blind eye on them. ..."
No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness will kill Red Hat. Time
to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.
I agree. Redhat has dev offices all over. A lot of them in higher cost areas of the US and Europe. There's no way
IBM doesn't consolidate and offshore a bunch of that work.
This. To a bean counter a developer in a RH office in North America or Europe who's been coding for RH for 10 years
is valued same as a developer in Calcutta who just graduated from college. For various definitions of word 'graduated'.
I'm just waiting until some major company decides that some of the nicer parts of middle America/Appalachia can be a
LOT cheaper, still nice, and let them pay less in total while keeping some highly skilled employees.
I don't know about that. Cities can be expensive but part of the reason is that a lot of people want to live there, and
supply/demand laws start acting. You'll be able to get some talent no doubt, but a lot of people who live nearby big cities
wouldn't like to leave all the quality of life elements you have there, like entertainment, cultural events, shopping, culinary
variety, social events, bigger dating scene, assorted array of bars and night clubs, theatre, opera, symphonies, international
airports... you get the drift.
I understand everyone is different, but you would actually need to pay me more to move to a smaller town in middle America.
I also work with people who would take the offer without hesitation, but in my admittedly anecdotal experience, more tech people
prefer the cities than small towns. Finally, if you do manage to get some traction in getting the people and providing the
comforts, then you're just going to get the same increase in cost of living wherever you are because now you're just in one
more big city.
Costs of life are a problem, but we need to figure out how to properly manage them, instead of just saying "lets move them
somewhere else". Also we shouldn't discount the capability of others, because going by that cost argument outsourcing becomes
attractive. The comment you're replying to tries to diminish Indian engineers, but the reverse can still be true. A developer
in India who has been working for 10 years costs even less than an American who just graduated, for various definitions of
graduated. There's over a billion people over there, and the Indian Institutes of Technology are nothing to scoff at.
There's not an intrinsic advantage to being of a certain nationality, American included. Sure, there are a lot of bad
companies and bad programmers coming from India, but there are plenty of incompetent developers right here too. It's just
that there are a lot more in general over there and they would come for cheap, so in raw numbers it seems overwhelming, but
that sword cuts both ways, the raw number of competent ones is also a lot.
About 5% of the American workforce are scientists and engineers, which make a bit over 7 million people. The same calculation
in India brings you to almost 44 million people.
A huge problem with the good developers over there is the lack of English proficiency and soft skills. However, being
born or graduated in Calcutta (or anywhere else for that matter) is not a determination of one's skill.
I get what the intention of the first comment was intended to be, but it still has that smugness that is dangerous to
the American future. As the world becomes more interconnected, and access to learning improves, when people ask you why are
you better than that other guy, the answer better be something more than "well, I'm American and he is from Calcutta" because
no one is going to buy that. The comment could've said that to a bean counter a solid developer with 10 years of experience
is worth the same as a junior dev who just came out of school and make the same point. What exactly was the objective of throwing
in Calcutta over there? Especially when we then move to a discussion about how costly it is to pay salaries in America.
Sounds a bit counterproductive if you ask me.
I think a lot of the dislike for Indian developers is that they usually are the outsourced to cheap as possible code monkey
developers. Which can be a problem anywhere, for sure, but at least seem exacerbated by US companies outsourcing there. In my
limited experience, they're either intelligent and can work up to working reasonably independently and expanding on a ticket intelligently.
Or they're copy a pasta code monkey and need pretty good supervision of the code that's produced. Add in the problem if timezones
and folks who may not understand English that great, or us not understanding their English, and it all gives them a bad name.
Yet I agree, I know some quite good developers. Ones that didn't go to a US college.
My impression, totally anecdotal, is that unless you can hire or move a very good architect/lead + project/product manager
over there so you can interact in real-time instead of with a day delay, it's just a huge PITA and slows things down. Personally
I'd rather hire a couple of seemingly competent 3 years out of college on their 2nd job (because they rarely stay very long at
their first one, right?) and pay from there.
Companies/management offshore because it keep revenue per employee and allows them to be promoted by inflating their direct
report allowing them to build another "cheap" pyramid hierarchy. A manager in US can become a director or VP easily by having
few managers report to him from India. Even better this person can go to India ( they are most often Indian) and claim to lead
the India office and improve outsourcing while getting paid US salary.
I have dealt with this far too much these VPs rarely do much work and simply are hit on bottom line ( you are talking about
250k+), but management in US doesn't want to sit off hours and work with India office so they basically turn a blind eye on them.
Outstanding. I had to train people in IBM India to do my job when (early) "retired". I actually found a new internal job in IBM,
the hiring manager wrote/chat that I was a fit. I was denied the job because my current group said I had to transfer and the receiving
group said I had to be on a contract, stalemate! I appealed and group HR said sorry, can't do and gave me one reason after another,
that I could easily refute, then they finally said the job was to be moved overseas. Note most open jobs posted were categorized
for global resources. I appealed to Randy (former HR SVP) and no change. At least I foced them to finally tell the truth. I had
also found another job locally near home and received an email from the HR IBM person responsible for the account saying no, they
were considering foreigners first, if they found no one suitable they would then consider Americans. I appealed to my IBM manager
who basically said sorry, that is how things are now. All in writing, so no more pretending it is a skill issue. People, it is
and always has been about cheap labor. I recall when a new IBM technology began, Websphere, and I was sent for a month's training.
Then in mid-2000's training and raises pretty much stopped and that was when resource actions were stepped up.
IBM is bad, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. I worked for a major international company that dumped almost the entire IT
workforce and replaced them with "managed services", almost exclusively H-1B workers from almost exclusively India. This has been
occurring for decades in many, MANY businesses around the country large and small. Even this article seems to make a special effort
to assure us that "some" workers laid off in America were replaced with "younger, less experienced, lower-paid American workers
and moving many other jobs overseas." How many were replaced with H-1B, H-4 EAD, OPT, L-1, etc? It's by abusing these work visa
programs that companies facilitate moving the work overseas in the first place. I appreciate this article, but I think it's disingenuous
for ProPublica to ignore the elephant in the room - work visa abuse. Why not add a question or two to your polls about that? It
wouldn't be hard. For example, "Do you feel that America's work visa programs had an impact on your employment at IBM? Do you
feel it has had an impact on your ability to regain employment after leaving IBM?" I'd like to see the answer to THOSE questions.
These practices are "interesting". And people still wonder why there are so many deadly amok
runs at US companies? What do they expect when they replace old and experienced workers with
inexperienced millenials, who often lack basic knowledge about their job? Better performance?
This will run US tech companies into the ground. This sort of "American" HR management is
gaining ground here in Germany as well, its troubling. And on top they have to compete against
foreign tech immigrants from middle eastern and asian companies. Sure fire recipe for social
unrest and people voting for right-wing parties.
I too was a victim of IBM's underhanded trickery to get rid of people...39 years with IBM,
a top performer. I never got a letter telling me to move to Raleigh. All i got was a phone
call asking me if i wanted to take the 6 month exception to consider it. Yet, after taking the
6 month exception, I was told I could no longer move, the colocation was closed. Either I find
another job, not in Marketing support (not even Marketing) or leave the company. I received no
letter from Ginni, nothing. I was under the impression I could show up in Raleigh after the
exception period. Not so. It was never explained....After 3 months I will begin contracting
with IBM. Not because I like them, because I need the money...thanks for the article.
dropped in 2013 after 22 years. IBM stopped leading in the late 1980's, afterwards it
implemented "market driven quality" which meant listen for the latest trends, see what other
people were doing, and then buy the competition or drive them out of business. "Innovation that
matters": it's only interesting if an IBM manager can see a way to monetize it.
That's a low standard. It's OK, there are other places that are doing better. In fact, the
best of the old experienced people went to work there. Newsflash: quality doesn't change with
generations, you either create it or you don't.
Sounds like IBM is building its product portfolio to match its desired workforce. And of
course, on every round of layoffs, the clear criterion was people who were compliant and
pliable - who's ready to follow orders ? Best of luck.
I agree with many who state the report is well done. However, this crap started in the early
1990s. In the late 1980s, IBM offered decent packages to retirement eligible employees. For
those close to retirement age, it was a great deal - 2 weeks pay for every year of service
(capped at 26 years) plus being kept on to perform their old job for 6 months (while
collecting retirement, until the government stepped in an put a halt to it). Nobody eligible
was forced to take the package (at least not to general knowledge). The last decent package
was in 1991 - similar, but not able to come back for 6 months.
However, in 1991, those offered the package were basically told take it or else. Anyone
with 30 years of service or 15 years and 55 was eligible and anyone within 5 years of
eligibility could "bridge" the difference.
They also had to sign a form stating they would not sue IBM in order to get up to a years
pay - not taxable per IRS documents back then (but IBM took out the taxes anyway and the IRS
refused to return - an employee group had hired lawyers to get the taxes back, a failed
attempt which only enriched the lawyers).
After that, things went downhill and accelerated when Gerstner took over. After 1991,
there were still a some workers who could get 30 years or more, but that was more the
exception. I suspect the way the company has been run the past 25 years or so has the Watsons
spinning in their graves. Gone are the 3 core beliefs - "Respect for the individual",
"Service to the customer" and "Excellence must be a way of life".
could be true... but i thought Watson was the IBM data analytics computer thingy... beat two
human players at Jeopardy on live tv a year or two or so back.. featured on 60 Minutes just
around last year.... :
IBM's policy reminds me of the "If a citizen = 30 y.o., then mass execute such, else if they
run then hunt and kill them one by one" social policy in the Michael York movie "Logan's
Run."
From Wiki, in case you don't know: "It depicts a utopian future society on the surface,
revealed as a dystopia where the population and the consumption of resources are maintained
in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of 30. The story follows the actions
of Logan 5, a "Sandman" who has terminated others who have attempted to escape death, and is
now faced with termination himself."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
If anything, IBM is behind the curve. I was terminated along with my entire department from a
major IBM subcontractor, with all affected employees "coincidentally" being over 50. By
"eliminating the department" and forcing me to sign a waiver to receive my meager severance,
they avoided any legal repercussions. 18 months later on the dot (the minimum legal time
period), my workload was assigned to three new hires, all young. Interestingly, their
combined salaries are more than mine, and I could have picked up all their work for about
$200 in training (in social media posting, something I picked up on my own last year and am
doing quite well, thank you).
And my former colleagues are not alone. A lot of friends of mine have had similar
outcomes, and as the article states, no one will hire people my age willingly in my old
capacity. Luckily again, I've pivoted into copywriting--a discipline where age is still
associated with quality ("dang kids can't spell anymore!"). But I'm doing it freelance, with
the commensurate loss of security, benefits, and predictability of income.
So if IBM is doing this now, they are laggards. But because they're so big, there's a much
more obvious paper trail.
One of the most in-depth, thoughtful and enlightening pieces of journalism I've seen. Having
worked on Capitol Hill during the early 1980's for the House and Senate Aging Committees, we
worked hard to abolish the remnants of mandatory retirement and to strengthen the protections
under the ADEA. Sadly, the EEOC has become a toothless bureaucracy when it comes to age
discrimination cases and the employers, as evidenced by the IBM case, have become
sophisticated in hiding what they're doing to older workers. Peter's incredibly well
researched article lays the case out for all to see. Now the question is whether the
government will step up to its responsibilities and protect older workers from this kind of
discrimination in the future. Peter has done a great service in any case.
The US tech sector has mostly ignored US citizen applicants, of all ages, since the early
2000s. Instead, preferring to hire foreign nationals. The applications of top US citizen
grads are literally thrown in the garbage (or its electronic equivalent) while companies like
IBM have their hiring processes dominated by Indian nationals. IBM is absolutely a
poster-child for H-1B, L-1, and OPT visa abuse.
Bottom line is we have entered an era when there are only two classes who are protected in
our economy; the Investor Class and the Executive Class. With Wall Street's constant demand
for higher profits and increased shareholder value over all other business imperatives, rank
and file workers have been relegated to the class of expendable resource. I propose that all
of us over fifty who have been riffed out of Corporate America band together for the specific
purpose of beating the pants off them in the marketplace. The best revenge is whooping their
youngster butts at the customer negotiating table. By demonstrating we are still flexible and
nimble, yet with the experience to avoid the missteps of misspent youth, we prove we can
deliver value well beyond what narrow-minded bean counters can achieve.
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my
choice and never felt mistreated because I had no expectation of lifetime employment,
especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business. The
company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales
expense including the firing of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well
documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of
a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing, movement of work around the globe was already
commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way
relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking. I was always
prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date.
I stayed because of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation. The
"resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired
me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about
people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with
the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready
for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not
anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough doing what you already know. Perhaps
companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in
previous year, and my last PBC appraisal was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not
the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily made IBM a
less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing
more. I cannot/would not recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many
old white guys" that has become so common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort
of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any
more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If
you worked hard, and tried, we would bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or
business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new one. Our people
were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just
one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age
discrimination. I was terminated by a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The
EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE CAUSE (NYDHR's
emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in
or is engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for
NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that representatives of the college made
statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys".
Witnesses said these statements were made by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a
dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in
favor of younger, cheaper workers; way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers
today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job.
This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan
Revolution era where deregulation is lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized.
We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge Republicans at
every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing
tax codes that reward outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust
unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the Supreme Court with radical
ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years
of basically uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous
for workers and our quality of life. As goes your middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs..
too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to
match a part in a play. In the 60s and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom
IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than actually build a
credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud
salespeople. (I work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many,
many layoff programs over 20 years now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the
Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived through what this article
so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I
have seen age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it
is rampant throughout the company. Promotions, bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good
reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions to
levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how
they treat us so they think they can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually
are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or
more.
I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I
do have a problem with how IBM also likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40
intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the guts to
tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas
workers come in...c'mon just be honest with your workers.
High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you
can have the last laugh on a company like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing
software, I will never again recommend IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if
IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron
Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire. Even
though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because of my
experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family." The way I saw it,
every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost)
even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty
between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a
motel and its guests. It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs
to continually assess their skills and their value to their employer. If they are not
commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new
employer. Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed,
or if they can hire someone who can do your job just as well for less pay. That is free
enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with
a younger you? If all that they accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what
this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for the same work, why is
firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves
and not expect their employer to do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true
whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their
employees based on age, gender, race, religion, etc. is a political question. Morally, I
don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when the
government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates
more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes
and that is a fact that has been proven for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and
skilled workers creates opportunities for those that wish to be employed and for those that
wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and had a monopoly on
telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was
deregulated, cell phones, internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires
while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate
raiders just took over the companies, sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What
quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages for the workers
have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like
Germany and the Scandinavian countries where the workers have good wages and a far better
standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians told Trump that they will
not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan.
The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The
economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined
low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And
the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations,
corporate scandals were far and few, businesses did not go under so quickly, prices of goods
and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably live off
them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In
Under Reagan, the jobs were allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were
reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent, and the economic
conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the
first president to have a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican
Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are
economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from,
lots of mom and pop stores, strong government regulation of the economy, able to live off
your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system to back you up
against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into
office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation
concerned more about earnings per share than employees, customers, or social responsibility.
In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the US - can't believe a
word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job
stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly
white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than there used to be
and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that
there is a shortage of STEM workers. For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer
science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If companies would
openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM
workers", we could at least start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the
lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor pool as possible,
unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral
is in the toilet. Bonuses for the rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets
millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation for years. Adjusting for
inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at
least 1/2 have quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now
we have one or two and if someone is sick or on vacation, our support structure is to hope
nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation of
being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to
find a different job, leaving the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay,
vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc. The younger people are
generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a
busier colleague. I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they
are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with 30-40 year guys who are on their way
out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may
differ from firm to firm, but this is going on in every large tech company old enough to have
a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from
being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the
satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing that could
have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to
economics, like increased vacation times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that
older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age related discrimination
laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers
with the skills and younger workers without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's
the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are given and there is a
national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same
light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national
medical insurance program for everyone. Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world,
but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983
F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The
New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor law, and also refused
to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester
County. It is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to
America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them for $170 million on a botched upgrade of
the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my
manager being that my team lead thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was
included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months shy of 55. Younger
coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a
decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two
years later - ironically in a customer support position for the very product I helped
develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being
reinstated, a couple years into it I realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the
job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email describing a
"Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30.
I still dislike the job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty
for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer have to despair over numerous week long
24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare
options with another person leaving the company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had,
and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical benefit account
the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of
it. That would have funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm
eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their not having to give me that had
something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at
Fidelity, where it associates my departure date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that
money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no choice in
the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both
disingenuous and offensive. That said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's
terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor
that they discovered that IBM was "holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told
about. This might be similar or same story.
Great article. And so so close to home. I worked at IBM for 23 years until I became yet
another statistic -- caught up in one of their many "RA's" -- Resource Actions. I also can
identify with the point about being encouraged to find a job internally yet hiring managers
told to not hire. We were encouraged to apply for jobs outside the US -- Europe mainly -- as
long as we were willing to move and work at the prevailing local wage rate. I was totally
fine with that as my wife had been itching for some time for a chance to live abroad. I
applied for several jobs across Europe using an internal system IBM set up just for that
purpose. Never heard a word. Phone calls and internal e-mails to managers posting jobs in the
internal system went unanswered. It turned out to be a total sham as far as I was concerned.
IBM has laid off hundreds of thousands in the last few decades. Think of the MILLIONS of
children, spouses, brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles, and other family members of laid-off
people that were affected. Those people are or will be business owners and in positions to
make technology decisions. How many of them will think "Yeah, right, hire IBM. They're the
company that screwed daddy/mommy". I fully expect -- and I fully hope -- that I live to see
IBM go out of business. Which they will, sooner or later, as they are living off of past
laurels -- billions in the bank, a big fat patent portfolio, and real estate that they
continue to sell off or rent out. If you do hire IBM, you should fully expect that they'll
send some 20-something out to your company a few weeks after you hire them, that person will
be reading "XYZ for Dummys" on the plane on the way to your offices and will show up as your
IBM 'expert'.
> I was given the choice, retire or get a bad review and get fired, no severance. I
retired and have not been employed since because of my age. Got news for these business
people, experience trumps inexperience. Recently, I have developed several commercial Web
sites using cloud technology. In your face IBM.
> This could well have been written about Honeywell. Same tactics exactly. I laid myself
off and called it retirement after years of shoddy treatment and phonied up employee
evaluations. I took it personally until I realized that this is just American Management in
action. I don't know how they look themselves in the mirror in the morning.
> As an HR professional, I get sick when I hear of these tactics. Although this is not the
first company to use this strategy to make a "paradigm shift". Where are the geniuses at
Harvard, Yale, or the Wharton school of business (where our genius POTUS attended)? Can't
they come up with a better model of how to make these changes in an organization without
setting up the corp for a major lawsuit or God forbid ......they treat their employees with
dignity and respect.
> They are not trained at our business schools to think long-term or look for solutions to
problems or turn to the workforce for solutions. They are trained to maximizes the profits
and let society subsidies their losses and costs.
> Isn't it interesting that you are the first one (here or anywhere else that I've seen)
to talk about the complicity of Harvard and Yale in the rise of the Oligarchs.
Perhaps we should consider reevaluation of their lofty perch in American Education. Now if
we could only think of a way to expose the fraud.
My employer outsourced a lot of our IT to IBM and Cognizant in India. The experience has
been terrible and 4 years into a 5 year contract, we are finally realizing the error and insourcing rapidly.
Back in 1999 ATT moved about 4000 of us tech folks working on
mainframe computers to IBM. We got pretty screwed on retirement benefits from ATT. After we
moved over, IBM started slowly moving all of our workload overseas. Brazil and Argentina
mainly.
It started with just tier 1 help desk. Then small IBM accounts started to go over
there. They were trained by 'unwilling' US based people. Unwilling in the sense that if you
didn't comply, you weren't a team player and it would show on your performance review.
Eventually the overseas units took on more and more of the workload. I ended up leaving in
2012 at the age of 56 for personal reasons.
Our time at ATT was suppose to be bridged to IBM
but the only thing bridged was vacation days. A lawsuit ensued and IBM/ATT won. I'm guessing
it was some of that 'ingenious' paperwork that we signed that allowed them to rip us off like
that. Thanks again for some great investigation.
"... In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the workplace. By the end of the 1980's unions were totally emasculated and you had workers "going postal" in an abusive workplace. When unions were at their peak of power, they could appeal to the courts and actually stop a factory from moving out of the country by enforcing a labor contact. ..."
"... The American workplace is a nuthouse. Each and every individual workplace environment is like a cult. ..."
"... The American workplace is just a byproduct of the militarization of everyday life. ..."
"... Silicon Valley and Wall Street handed billions of dollars to this arrogant, ignorant Millennial Elizabeth Holmes. She abused any employee that questioned her. This should sound familiar to any employee who has had an overbearing know-it-all, bully boss in the workplace. Hopefully she will go to jail and a message will be sent that any young agist bully will not be given the power of god in the workplace. ..."
In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This
sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the
workplace. By the end of the 1980's unions were totally emasculated and you had workers
"going postal" in an abusive workplace. When unions were at their peak of power, they could
appeal to the courts and actually stop a factory from moving out of the country by enforcing
a labor contact.
Today we have a President in the White House who was elected on a platform of "YOU'RE
FIRED." Not surprisingly, Trump was elected by the vast majority of selfish lowlives in this
country. The American workplace is a nuthouse. Each and every individual workplace
environment is like a cult.
That is not good for someone like me who hates taking orders from people. But I have seen
it all. Ten years ago a Manhattan law firm fired every lawyer in a litigation unit except an
ex-playboy playmate. Look it up it was in the papers. I was fired from a job where many of my
bosses went to federal prison and then I was invited to the Christmas Party.
What are the salaries of these IBM employees and how much are their replacements making?
The workplace becomes a surrogate family. Who knows why some people get along and others
don't. My theory on agism in the workplace is that younger employees don't want to be around
their surrogate mother or father in the workplace after just leaving the real home under the
rules of their real parents.
The American workplace is just a byproduct of the militarization of everyday life. In the
1800's, Herman Melville wrote in his beautiful book "White Jacket" that one of the most
humiliating aspects of the military is taking orders from a younger military officer. I read
that book when I was 20. I didn't feel the sting of that wisdom until I was 40 and had a 30 year old appointed as
my supervisor who had 10 years less experience than me.
By the way, the executive that made
her my supervisor was one of the sleaziest bosses I have ever had in my career. Look at the
tech giant Theranos. Silicon Valley and Wall Street handed billions of dollars to this
arrogant, ignorant Millennial Elizabeth Holmes. She abused any employee that questioned her.
This should sound familiar to any employee who has had an overbearing know-it-all, bully boss
in the workplace. Hopefully she will go to jail and a message will be sent that any young agist bully will not be given the power of god in the workplace.
Employment at less than a living wage is not "employment."
True, this "living wage" issue has become now America's chronic illness. Once one begins
to look at the real estate dynamics, even for a good earners living in such places as
Seattle, Portland (not to speak of L.A. or SF) becomes simply not affordable, forget buying
anything decent. Hell, many rents are higher than actual mortgages, however insane they
already are.
"... Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*? Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world? ..."
...You can't put lipstick on an American fascist pig only because he pretends detente with Russia. It's tantamount to
selling one's soul for an illusion. It's tantamount to treason if you live anywhere except in the U.S. OR Israel! And even if
you live in the U.S. you are enabling the 1% and Zionist power.
That's it. I'm tired of Trumpgod can do no wrong when everything he stands for is wrong. Get the snow out of your eyes!
Guerrero | Jul 17, 2018 7:21:47 PM | 149
Circe @135
For sure I am in agreement: the "Trumpgod" is a shamanistic construction of a demoralized population.
Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*?
Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world?
If that is how this Universe really works, and one has only force to work with, in the material realm, Donald Trump would
seem well enough suited to the role of either lesser or greater-evil; either-way, hopefully leading-to dimunition of error,
self-deception, and suffering of the children of Eve and Adam.
@149 Guerrero said: "Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is
constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*?"
Not often one sees metaphysics enter the realm of geo-political debate in this or any
political forum. But, heck, why not? The unseen forces guiding the survival instincts of the
universe (of which the Earth is a part) may indeed be at work. Trump - whatever one sees in
him - seems to be the man for the times. Paradigms are bending, cracking, the conversation is
changing.
I'll never forget the shock in the MSM, almost to the point of stupefaction, at Trump
accusing Obama during the election campaign of being the "founder of ISIS."
What was even more amazing was how weak Obama's response was. I don't think anybody
posting here would disagree that ISIS was Obama's baby - whether through adoption or
progeny.
But what serious candidate for President before Trump would ever say such a thing publicly
- even if he knew it to be true? Whether by design or through blundering, boorish idiocy born
of whatever flaws and motives you want to ascribe to him, Trump is very boisterously
upsetting the political apple cart and with it the entire world order.
If it is indeed for show as the world elites close their grip on the people of the planet
- it is quite a show. But I don't think so...
On the matter of immigration, even many commentators who support ease of migration also
oppose the extension of government benefits to immigrants.
The idea, of course, is that free movement of labor is fine, but taxpayers shouldn't have to
subsidize it. As a matter of policy, many also find it prudent that immigrants ought to be
economically self sufficient before being offered citizenship. Switzerland, for instance,
makes
it harder to pursue citizenship while receiving social benefits.
This discussion often centers around officially recognized "welfare" and social-benefits
programs such as TANF and Medicaid. But it is also recognized that taxpayer-funded benefits
exist in the form of public schooling, free clinics, and other in-kind benefits.
But there is another taxpayer-supporter program that subsidizes immigration as well: the US
military.
Translation: the US government has begun laying off immigrants from taxpayer-funded
government jobs.
It's unclear how many of these jobs have been employed, but according to the Department of
Homeland security, "[s]ince Oct. 1, 2002, USCIS has naturalized 102,266
members of the military ."
The Military as a Jobs Program
Immigrants, of course, aren't the only people who benefit from government jobs funded
through military programs.
The military has long served as a jobs programs helpful in mopping up excess labor and
padding employment numbers. As Robert Reich noted in
2011 , as the US was still coming out of the 2009 recession:
And without our military jobs program personal incomes would be dropping faster. The
Commerce Department reported Monday the only major metro areas where both net earnings and
personal incomes rose last year were San Antonio, Texas, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and
Washington, D.C. -- because all three have high concentrations of military and federal
jobs.
He's right. While the private sector must cut back and re-arrange labor and capital to deal
with the new economic realities post-recession, government jobs rarely go away.
Because of this, Reich concludes "America's biggest -- and only major -- jobs program is the
U.S. military."
Reich doesn't think this is a bad thing. He only highlights the military's role as a de
facto jobs program in order to call for more de jure jobs programs supported by federal
funding.
Given the political popularity of the military, however, it's always easy to protect funding
for the military jobs programs than for any other potential jobs programs. All the Pentagon has
to do is assure Congress that every single military job is absolutely essential, and Congress
will force taxpayers to cough up the funding.
Back during the debate over sequestration, for example, the Pentagon routinely warned
Congress that any cutbacks in military funding would lead to major jobs losses, bringing
devastation to the economy.
In other words, even the Pentagon treats the military like a jobs program when it's
politically useful.
Benefits for enlisted people go well beyond what can be seen in the raw numbers of total
employed. As Kelley Vlahos
points out at The American Conservative , military personnel receive extra hazard pay "even
though they are far from any fighting or real danger." And then there is the "Combat Zone Tax
Exclusion (CZTE) program which exempts enlisted and officers from paying federal taxes in these
45 designated countries. Again, they get the tax break -- which accounted for about $3.6
billion in tax savings for personnel in 2009 (the combat pay cost taxpayers $790 million in
2009)– whether they are really in danger or not."
Nor do the benefits of military spending go only to enlisted people. The Pentagon has long
pointed to its spending on civilian jobs in many communities, including manufacturing jobs and
white-collar technical jobs.
This, of course, has long been politically useful for the Pentagon as well, since as
political scientist Rebecca Thorpe has shown in her book
The American Warfare State , communities that rely heavily on Pentagon-funded employment
are sure to send Congressmen to Washington who will make sure the taxpayer dollars keep flowing
to Pentagon programs.
Whether you're talking to Robert Reich or some Pentagon lobbyist on Capitol Hill, the
conclusion is clear: the military is both a jobs program and a stimulus program. Cut military
spending at your peril!
Military Spending Destroys Private Sector Jobs
The rub, however, is that military spending doesn't actually improve the economy. And much
the money spent on military employment would be best spent on the private, voluntary
economy.
This has long been recognized by political scientist Seymour Melman who has discussed the
need for "economic conversion," or converting military spending into other forms of spending.
Melman
observes :
Since we know that matter and energy located in Place A cannot be simultaneously located
in Place B, we must understand that the resources used up on military account thereby
represent a preemption of resources from civilian needs of every conceivable kind.
Here, Melman is simply describing in his own way what Murray Rothbard explained in
Man, Economy, and State . Namely, government spending distorts the economy as badly as taxation
-- driving up prices for the private sector, and withdrawing resources from private sector
use.
The military actually destroys jobs in the civilian economy. The higher profits from
cost-plus military manufacturing cause manufacturers to abandon more competitive civilian
endeavors; and the permanent war economy takes engineers, capital and resources away from
civilian production.
But, as a classic case of "the seen" vs. "the unseen," it's easy to point to jobs created by
military spending. How many jobs were lost as a result of that same spending? That remains
unseen, and thus politically irrelevant.
Military fan boys will of course assure us that every single military job and every single
dollar spent on the military is absolutely essential. It's all the service of "fighting for
freedom." For instance, Mitchell Blatt writes , in the
context of immigrant recruits, "I'm not worried about the country or origin of those who are
fighting to defend us. What matters is that our military is as strong as it can be." The idea
at work here is that the US military is a lean machine, doing only what is necessary to get the
job done, and as cost effectively as possible. Thus, hiring the "best" labor, from whatever
source is absolutely essential.
This, however, rather strains the bounds of credibility. The US military is more
expensive than the next eight largest militaries combined . The US's navy is ten times
larger than the next largest navy. The US's air force is the largest in the world, and the
second largest air force belongs, not to a foreign country, but to the US Navy.
Yet, we're supposed to believe that any cuts will imperil the "readiness" of the US
military.
Cut Spending for Citizens and Non-Citizens Alike
My intent here is not to pick on immigrants specifically. The case of military layoffs for
immigrants simply helps to illustrate a couple of important points: government jobs with the
military constitute of form of taxpayer-funded subsidy for immigrants. And secondly, the US
military acts as a job program, not just for immigrants but for many native-born Americans.
In truth, layoffs in the military sector ought to be far more widespread, and hardly limited
to immigrants. The Trump Administration is wrong when it suggests that the positions now held
by immigrant recruits ought to be filled by American-born recruits. Those positions should be
left unfilled. Permanently.
No you retarded fuck, the military is a taxpayer-funed merc army supporting the overseas
hegemonic goals of American-style Corporatism . That the military is full of the sons and
daughters of poor people is only because rich whites won't send their trustfund babies to
kill brown people for oil.
No, asshole. It's about money. About cash and gold. Profit. Markets. Growth. About cheap
or free resources. Access to labor. New customers.
War makes companies rich, it might be the ONLY way they can get rich. War is waged when GM
wants to sell trucks to the Pentagon. When Boeing wants to sell jets. When MIT wants money
for arms research. When NATO wants a reason to exist. The dogs of war are loosed when oil
gets tight. When countries won't "accept our cultural freedoms". When trade agreements aren't
enough to open up new markets.
Isreal has fleeting nothing to do with it, except maybe when war aligns with their
perceived need for hegemony in their own sphere. But by loading all this on Isreal you
encourage others to miss the real fox in the henhouse. You could wipe Isreal off the Earth
tomorrow and still have wars for profit for a thousand years to come.
This nation was born in war. It has practiced war since that day and will be at war with
the rest of the world until humans are killed to the last and the last ounce of profit from
war is had.
or from systematic corruption of all US Institutions and the politicization of all US
Institutions... you need a job, you want to work here, you say this, and you do this, ... tow
the line, no politics, no whistleblowing,... and we won't blackball your ass from the
industry... got it... u got debts, keep ur nose clean!
Yes the pay sucks but you get more done before 8am than most people do in a week. But
seriously its a pretty good gig in the long run. Medical care a decent retirement system,
travel a chance to meet and integrate with different cultures and kill them...its pretty
cool.
Excluding a small percentage, the military is much like the DMV. We have a cartoon vision
of all enlisted being GI Joe, ready to grab a gun and fight evil. This in not the case at
all. Most positions are very simple, repetitive bureaucratic positions. Really is a giant
Jobs program to keep people busy.
"The idea at work here is that the US military is a lean machine, doing only what is
necessary to get the job done, and as cost effectively as possible."
Nonetheless, you might have noticed that happy days aren't exactly here again. The real U.S.
unemployment figure -- all who are counted as unemployed in the "official" rate, plus
discouraged workers, the total of those employed part-time but not able to secure full-time
work and all persons marginally attached to the labor force (those who wish to work but have
given up) -- is 7.6
percent . (This is the "U-6" rate.) That total, too, is less than half of its 2010 peak and
is the lowest in several years. But this still doesn't mean the number of people actually
working is increasing.
Fewer people at work and they are making less
A better indication of how many people have found work is the "civilian labor force
participation rate." By this measure, which includes all people age 16 or older who are not in
prison or a mental institution, only 62.7 percent of the potential U.S. workforce
was actually in the workforce in May, and that was slightly lower than the previous month. This
is just about equal to the lowest this statistic has been since the
breakdown of Keynesianism in the 1970s, and down significantly from the peak of 67.3
percent in May 2000. You have to go back to the mid-1970s to find a time when U.S. labor
participation was lower. This number was consistently lower in the 1950s and 1960s, but in
those days one income was sufficient to support a family. Now everybody works and still can't
make ends meet.
And that brings us to the topic of wages. After reaching a peak of 52 percent in 1969, the
percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product going to wages has fallen to 43 percent , according to research by
the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve. The amount of GDP going to wages during the past
five years has been the
lowest it has been since 1929 , according to a New York Times report. And within
the inequality of wages that don't keep up with inflation or productivity gains, the worse-off
are doing worse.
The Economic Policy Institute
noted , "From 2000 to 2017, wage growth was strongest for the highest-wage workers,
continuing the trend in rising wage inequality over the last four decades." The strongest wage
growth was for those in the top 10 percent of earnings, which skewed the results sufficiently
that the median wage increase for 2017 was a paltry 0.2 percent, the EPI reports. Inflation may
have been low, but it wasn't as low as that -- the typical U.S. worker thus suffered a de facto
wage decrease last year.
What this sobering news tells us is that good-paying jobs are hard to come by. An EPI
researcher, Elise Gould,
wrote :
"Slow wage growth tells us that employers continue to hold the cards, and don't have to
offer higher wages to attract workers. In other words, workers have very little leverage to
bid up their wages. Slow wage growth is evidence that employers and workers both know there
are still workers waiting in the wings ready to take a job, even if they aren't actively
looking for one."
The true unemployment rates in Canada and Europe
We find similar patterns elsewhere. In Canada, the official unemployment rate held at
5.8 percent in
April , the lowest it has been since 1976, although there was a slight decrease in the
number of people working in March, mainly due to job losses in wholesale and retail trade and
construction. What is the actual unemployment rate? According to Statistics Canada's R8
figure , it is 8.6 percent. The R8 counts count people in part-time work, including those
wanting full-time work, as "full-time equivalents," thus underestimating the number of
under-employed.
At the end of 2012, the R8 figure was 9.4
percent , but an analysis published by The Globe and Mail analyzing unemployment
estimated the
true unemployment rate for that year to be 14.2 percent. If the current statistical
miscalculation is proportionate, then the true Canadian unemployment rate currently must be
north of 13 percent. "[T]he narrow scope of the Canadian measure significantly understates
labour underutilization," the Globe and Mail analysis conclude.
Similar to its southern neighbor, Canada's labor force participation
rate has steadily declined, falling to 65.4 percent in April 2018 from a high of 67.7
percent in 2003.
The most recent official unemployment figure in Britain 4.2 percent. The true figure is
rather higher. How much higher is difficult to determine, but a
September 2012 report by Sheffield Hallam University found that the total number of
unemployed in Britain was more than 3.4 million in April of that year although the Labour Force
Survey, from which official unemployment statistics are derived, reported only 2.5 million. So
if we assume a similar ratio, then the true rate of unemployment across the United Kingdom is
about 5.7 percent.
The European Union reported an official unemployment rate of 7.1
percent (with Greece having the highest total at 20.8 percent). The EU's Eurostat service
doesn't provide an equivalent of a U.S. U-6 or a Canadian R8, but does separately
provide totals for under-employed part-time workers and "potential additional labour
force"; adding these two would effectively double the true EU rate of unemployed and so the
actual figure must be about 14 percent.
Australia's official seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 5.6 percent , according to the
country's Bureau of Statistics. The statistic that would provide a more realistic measure, the
"extended labour force under-utilisation" figure, seems to be well hidden. The most recent
figure that could be found was for February 2017, when the rate was given as 15.4 percent. As
the "official" unemployment rate at the time was 5.8 percent, it is reasonable to conclude that
the real Australian unemployment rate is currently above 15 percent.
Mirroring the pattern in North America, global employment is on the decline. The
International Labour Organization estimated the world labor force participation rate
as 61.9 percent for 2017, a steady decline from the 65.7 percent estimated for 1990.
Stagnant wages despite productivity growth around the world
Concomitant with the high numbers of people worldwide who don't have proper employment is
the stagnation of wages. Across North America and Europe, productivity is rising much faster
than wages. A 2017 study found that across those regions median real wage growth since the
mid-1980s has not kept
pace with labor productivity growth.
Not surprisingly, the United States had the largest gap between wages and productivity.
Germany was second in this category, perhaps not surprising, either, because German workers
have suffered a
long period of wage cuts (adjusted for inflation) since the Social Democratic Party
codified austerity by instituting Gerhard Schröder's "Agenda 2010" legislation. Despite
this disparity, the U.S. Federal Reserve issued a report in 2015 declaring the problem of
economic weakness is due to wages not
falling enough . Yes, the Fed believes your wages are too high.
The lag of wages as compared to rising productivity is an ongoing global phenomenon. A
separate statistical analysis from earlier this decade also
demonstrated this pattern for working people in Canada, the United States, Britain, France,
Germany, Italy and Japan. Workers in both Canada and the United States take home hundreds of
dollars less per week than they would if wages had kept up with productivity gains.
In an era of runaway corporate globalization, there is ever more precarity. On a global
scale, having regular employment is actually unusual. Using International Labour Organization
figures as a starting point, John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney calculate that the
"global reserve army of labor" -- workers who are underemployed, unemployed or "vulnerably
employed" (including informal workers) -- totals 2.4 billion. In contrast, the world's wage
workers total 1.4 billion. Writing in their book The Endless Crisis: How
Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China , they
write:
"It is the existence of a reserve army that in its maximum extent is more than 70 percent
larger than the active labor army that serves to restrain wages globally, and particularly in
poorer countries. Indeed, most of this reserve army is located in the underdeveloped
countries of the world, though its growth can be seen today in the rich countries as well."
[page 145]
Having conquered virtually every corner of the globe and with nowhere left to expand into
nor new markets to take, capitalists will continue to cut costs -- in the first place, wages
and benefits -- in their ceaseless scrambles to sustain their accustomed profits. There is no
reform that can permanently alter this relentless internal logic of capitalism. Although she
was premature, Rosa Luxemburg's forecast of socialism or barbarism draws nearer.
"... The weakest part of this piece is that it makes all kinds of suppositions about about the true nature of mankind, that remind me of paleo diet nonsense. Humans evolved constantly so we were selected for domestication. It changed us. We are not the great apes of the savannah, but agriculturalists living in complex societies. This is our true nature and the conflict in our societies is between those who are more domesticated and those who are less domesticated. ..."
"... This text shows us a little of the biblical allegory of Pandora's box, even though we know that it is based on the sins that are present inside the box. How is a short story, so I can invent upon an invention without a known author, that in fact as we open Pandora's Box, we will not spread hatred for Earth, there is no need to spread what is already widespread, but we will find the truth. And the truth is that we are animals like those we despise. Human culture is an illusion to keep sane people. ..."
"... "Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better." ..."
"... Despite some glaring inaccuracies and over-generalizations, overall the piece is interesting and thought-provoking. ..."
"... Freedom is in inverse proportion to security. An individual in solitary-confinement in a maximum security prison has 100% security but 0% freedom. At the opposite extreme is the "hermit" living in self-imposed exile with 100% freedom but never entirely sure of when & where his next meal is coming from and if attacked by a predator, human or animal, he is entirely on his own. Between those two extremes there is a reasonable middle-ground. ..."
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Contemporary baptized, corporatized and sanitized man rarely has the occasion to question his identity, and when he does a typical
response might be, "I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and
a Lutheran."
His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to. Few if any of
these were ever negotiated- they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.
But is free the right adjective for him, or would modern domesticated simian be more apt? He has been told what to do, believe,
think and feel since he can remember. A very clever rancher has bred billions of these creatures around the globe and created the
most profitable livestock imaginable. They work for him, fight for him, die for him, believe his wildest tales, laugh at his jokes
and rarely get out of line. When domesticated man does break one of the rules there are armies, jailers, psychiatrists and bureaucrats
prepared to kill, incarcerate, drug or hound the transgressor into submission.
One of the most fascinating aspects of domesticated man's predicament is that he never looks at the cattle, sheep and pigs who
wind up on his plate and make the very simple deduction that he is just a talking version of them, corralled and shepherded through
his entire life. How is this accomplished? Only animals that live in hierarchical groups can be dominated by man. The trick is to
fool the animal into believing that the leader of the pack or herd is the person who is domesticating them. Once this is accomplished
the animal is under full control of its homo sapien master. The domesticated man is no different, originally organized in groups
with a clear hierarchy and maximum size of 150- it was easy to replace the leader of these smaller groups with one overarching figure
such as God, King, President, CEO etc.
The methodology for creating this exceptionally loyal and obedient modern breed, homo domesticus, can be described as having seven
pillars from which an immense matrix captures the talking simians and their conscious minds and hooks them into a complex mesh from
which few ever escape. The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately
branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can't accept the 'complexity of modern life', i.e. conspiracy nuts.
Plato described this brilliantly in his Allegory of the Cave , where people only see man made shadows of objects, institutions,
Gods and ideas:
"–Behold! human beings living in an underground cave here they have been from their childhood necks chained so that they cannot
move, and can only see before them. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance the screen which marionette players have
in front of them, over which they show the puppets and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the
fire throws on the opposite wall "
It began with the word, which forever changed the ability of men to manipulate each other. Before language, every sensation was
directly felt through the senses without the filter of words. But somewhere around 50,000 years ago language began to replace reality
and the first pieces of code were put in place for the creation of the Matrix. As soon as the words began to flow the world was split,
and from that fracturing was born man's angst and slavery. The words separated us from who we really were, creating the first screen
onto which the images from Plato's cave were cast. Gurdjieff said it well, "Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering.
A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself."
It's no accident that in Hesiod's ages of man the Golden Age knew no agriculture, which appeared in the Silver age, and by the
time we reach the Bronze age the dominant theme is toil and strife. The two key elements to the enslavement of man were clearly language
and agriculture. In the hunter gatherer society, taking out the boss was no more complicated than landing a well placed fastball
to the head. Only since the advent of farming was the possibility of creating full time enforcers and propagandists made possible,
and hence enslavement inevitable.
The search for enlightenment rarely if ever bears fruits in those temples of words, our schools and universities. Almost all traditions
point to isolation and silence as the only paths to awakening; they are the true antidotes to modern slavery. As Aristotle wrote,
"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
So from the institution from which we are mercilessly bombarded with words and enslaved to time, we begin our descent through
the seven layers of the Matrix.
Education
There are things we are born able to do like eating, laughing and crying and others we pick up without much of an effort such
as walking, speaking and fighting, but without strict institutional education there is no way that we can ever become a functioning
member of the Matrix. We must be indoctrinated, sent to Matrix boot camp, which of course is school. How else could you take a hunter
and turn him into a corporate slave, submissive to clocks, countless bosses, monotony and uniformity?
Children naturally know who they are, they have no existential angst, but schools immediately begin driving home the point of
schedules, rules, lists and grades which inevitably lead the students to the concept of who they aren't. We drill the little ones
until they learn to count money, tell time, measure progress, stand in line, keep silent and endure submission. They learn they aren't
free and they are separated from everyone else and the world itself by a myriad of divides, names and languages.
It can't be stressed enough how much education is simply inculcating people with the clock and the idea of a forced identity.
What child when she first goes to school isn't taken back to hear herself referred to by her full name?
It's not as if language itself isn't sufficiently abstract- nothing must be left without a category. Suzy can't just be Suzy-
she is a citizen of a country and a state, a member of a religion and a product of a civilization, many of which have flags, mascots,
armies, uniforms, currencies and languages. Once all the mascots, tag lines and corporate creeds are learned, then history can begin
to be taught. The great epic myths invented and conveniently woven into the archetypes which have come down through the ages cement
this matrix into the child's mind.
Even the language that she speaks without effort must be deconstructed for her. An apple will never again be just an apple- it
will become a noun, a subject, or an object. Nothing will be left untouched, all must be ripped apart and explained back to the child
in Matrixese.
We are taught almost nothing useful during the twelve or so years that we are institutionalized and conditioned for slavery- not
how to cook, farm, hunt, build, gather, laugh or play. We are only taught how to live by a clock and conform to institutionalized
behaviors that make for solid careers as slaveocrats.
Government
In the countries that claim to be democratic the concept of a government created to serve the people is often espoused. Government,
and the laws they create and enforce are institutionalized social control for the benefit of those who have seized power. This has
always been the case and always will be. In the pre-democratic era it was much clearer to recognize who had power, but the genius
of massive democratic states are the layers upon layers of corporatocracy and special interests which so brilliantly conceal the
identify of those who really manage the massive apparatus of control.
The functions of the state are so well ensconced in dogmatic versions of history taught in schools that almost no one questions
why we need anything beyond the bare essentials of government to maintain order in the post-industrial age. The history classes never
point the finger at the governments themselves as the propagators and instigators of war, genocide, starvation and corruption. In
Hollywood's version of history, the one most people absorb, 'good' governments are always portrayed as fighting 'bad' ones. We have
yet to see a film where all the people on both sides simply disengage from their governments and ignore the calls to violence.
The state apparatus is based on law, which is a contract between the people and an organism created to administer common necessities-
an exchange of sovereignty between the people and the state. This sounds reasonable, but when one looks at the mass slaughters of
the 20th century, almost without exception, the perpetrators are the states themselves.
The loss of human freedom is the only birthright offered to the citizens of the modern nation. There is never a choice. It is
spun as a freedom and a privilege when it is in fact indentured servitude to the state apparatus and the corporatocracy that controls
it.
Patriotism
Patriotism is pure abstraction, a completely artificial mechanism of social control. People are taught to value their compatriots
above and beyond those of their own ethnic background, race or religion. The organic bonds are to be shed in favor of the great corporate
state. From infancy children are indoctrinated like Pavlov's dogs to worship the paraphernalia of the state and see it as a mystical
demigod.
What is a country? Using the United States as example, what actually is this entity? Is it the USPS, the FDA, or the CIA? Does
loving one's country mean one should love the IRS and the NSA? Should we feel differently about someone if they are from Vancouver
instead of Seattle? Loving a state is the same as loving a corporation, except with the corporations there is still no stigma attached
to not showing overt sentimental devotion to their brands and fortunately, at least for the moment, we are not obligated at birth
to pay them for a lifetime of services, most of which we neither need nor want.
Flags, the Hollywood version of history and presidential worship are drilled into us to maintain the illusion of the 'other' and
force the 'foreigner/terrorist/extremist' to wear the stigma of our projections. The archaic tribal energy that united small bands
and helped them to fend off wild beasts and hungry hordes has been converted into a magic wand for the masters of the matrix. Flags
are waved, and we respond like hungry Labradors jumping at a juicy prime rib swinging before our noses. Sentimental statist propaganda
is simply the mouthguard used to soften the jolt of our collective electroshock therapy.
Religion
As powerful as the patriotic sects are, there has always been a need for something higher. Religion comes from the Latin 're-ligare'
and it means to reconnect. But reconnect to what? The question before all religions is, what have we been disconnected from? The
indoctrination and alienation of becoming a card carrying slave has a cost; the level of abstraction and the disconnect from any
semblance of humanity converts people into nihilistic robots. No amount of patriotic fervor can replace having a soul. The flags
and history lessons can only give a momentary reprieve to the emptiness of the Matrix and that's why the priests are needed.
The original spiritual connection man had with the universe began to dissolve into duality with the onset of language, and by
the time cities and standing armies arrived he was in need of a reconnection, and thus we get our faith based religions. Faith in
the religious experiences of sages, or as William James put it, faith in someone else's ability to connect. Of course the liturgies
of our mainstream religions offer some solace and connection, but in general they simply provide the glue for the Matrix. A brief
perusal of the news will clearly show that their 'God' seems most comfortable amidst the killing fields.
If we focus on the Abrahamic religions, we have a god much like the state, one who needs to be loved. He is also jealous of the
other supposedly non-existent gods and is as sociopathic as the governments who adore him. He wipes out his enemies with floods and
angels of death just as the governments who pander to him annihilate us with cultural revolutions, atom bombs, television and napalm.
Their anthem is, "Love your country, it's flag, its history, and the God who created it all"- an ethos force fed to each new generation.
Circus
The sad thing about circus is that it's generally not even entertaining. The slaves are told it's time for some fun and they move
in hordes to fill stadiums, clubs, cinemas or simply to stare into their electrical devices believing that they are are being entertained
by vulgar propaganda.
As long as homo domesticus goes into the appropriate corral, jumps when she is told to and agrees wholeheartedly that she is having
fun, than she is a good slave worthy of her two days off a week and fifteen days vacation at the designated farm where she is milked
of any excess gold she might have accumulated during the year. Once she is too old to work and put to pasture, holes are strategically
placed in her vicinity so she and her husband can spend their last few dollars trying to get a small white ball into them.
On a daily basis, after the caffeinated maximum effort has been squeezed out of her, she is placed in front of a screen, given
the Matrix approved beverage (alcohol), and re-indoctrinated for several hours before starting the whole cycle over again. God forbid
anyone ever took a hallucinogen and had an original thought. We are, thankfully, protected from any substances that might actually
wake us up and are encouraged stick to the booze. The matrix loves coffee in the morning, alcohol in the evening and never an authentic
thought in between.
On a more primal level we are entranced with the contours of the perfect body and dream of 'perfect love', where our days will
be filled with soft caresses, sweet words and Hollywood drama. This is maybe the most sublime of the Matrix's snares, as Venus's
charms can be so convincing one willingly abandons all for her devious promise. Romantic love is dangled like bait, selling us down
the path of sentimentally coated lies and mindless consumerism.
Money
Money is their most brilliant accomplishment. Billions of people spend most of their waking lives either acquiring it or spending
it without ever understanding what it actually is. In this hologram of a world, the only thing one can do without money is breath.
For almost every other human activity they want currency, from eating and drinking to clothing oneself and finding a partner. Religion
came from innate spirituality and patriotism from the tribe, but money they invented themselves- the most fantastic and effective
of all their tools of domestication.
They have convinced the slaves that money actually has some intrinsic value, since at some point in the past it actually did.
Once they were finally able to disconnect money completely from anything other than their computers, they finally took complete control,
locked the last gate and electrified all the fences. They ingeniously print it up out of the nothing and loan it with interest in
order for 18-year-olds to spend four years drinking and memorizing propaganda as they begin a financial indebtedness that will most
likely never end.
By the time the typical American is thirty the debt is mounted so high that they abandon any hope of ever being free of it and
embrace their mortgages, credit cards, student loans and car loans as gifts from a sugar daddy. What they rarely asks themselves
is why they must work to make money while banks can simply create it with a few key strokes. If they printed out notes on their HP's
and loaned them with interest to their neighbors, they would wind up in a penitentiary, but not our friends on Wall Street- they
do just that and wind up pulling the strings in the White House. The genius of the money scam is how obvious it is. When people are
told that banks create money out of nothing and are paid interest for it the good folks are left incredulous. "It can't be that simple!"
And therein lies the rub- no one wants to believe that they have been enslaved so easily .
Culture
"Culture is the effort to hold back the mystery, and replace it with a mythology."
– Terence McKenna
As Terence loved to say, "Culture is not your friend." It exists as a buffer to authentic experience. As they created larger and
larger communities, they replaced the direct spiritual experience of the shaman with priestly religion. Drum beats and sweat were
exchanged for digitized, corporatized noise. Local tales got replaced by Hollywood blockbusters, critical thinking with academic
dogma.
If money is the shackles of the matrix, culture is its operating system. Filtered, centralized, incredibly manipulative, it glues
all their myths together into one massive narrative of social control from which only the bravest of souls ever try to escape. It's
relatively simple to see the manipulation when one looks at patriotism, religion or money. But when taken as a whole, our culture
seems as natural and timeless as the air we breathe, so intertwined with our self conception it is often hard to see where we individually
finish and our culture begins.
Escaping the Grip of Control
Some might ask why this all-pervasive network of control isn't talked about or discussed by our 'great minds'. Pre-Socratic scholar
Peter Kingsley explains it well:
"Everything becomes clear once we accept the fact that scholarship as a whole is not concerned with finding, or even looking
for, the truth. That's just a decorative appearance. It's simply concerned with protecting us from truths that might endanger
our security; and it does so by perpetuating our collective illusions on a much deeper level than individual scholars are aware
of."
Whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn't a fish. To leave the 'water', or Plato's cave takes courage and the knowledge that
there is something beyond the web of control. Over 2,300 hundred years ago Plato described the process of leaving the Matrix in the
Allegory of the Cave as a slow, excruciating process akin to walking out onto a sunny beach after spending years in a basement watching
Kabuki.
How can this awakening be explained? How do you describe the feeling of swimming in the ocean at dusk to someone who has never
even seen the sea? You can't, but what you can do is crack open a window for them and if enough windows are opened, the illusion
begins to lose its luster.
I'll take Neil Postman, Chesterton or C.S. Lewis over Bonomo any day.
His article merely takes a blowtorch to all and everything and worse showing very little understanding of the things he attacks
is cringe worthy. There's no real analysis, no consideration of the ramifications for doing away with the state, community and
faith. This is shoddy thinking at best.
And his last part "Escaping the Grip of Control" is just so much gibberish. It's not thought out at all.
The weakest part of this piece is that it makes all kinds of suppositions about about the true nature of mankind, that remind
me of paleo diet nonsense. Humans evolved constantly so we were selected for domestication. It changed us. We are not the great
apes of the savannah, but agriculturalists living in complex societies. This is our true nature and the conflict in our societies
is between those who are more domesticated and those who are less domesticated.
"I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran."
His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to. Few if
any of these were ever negotiated- they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.
To talk about themselves and their superiority as human beings, civilization and biology, we have an average of 50 or more reviews.
Have to discuss the illusion of the human ego, 12 comments, some of which were based on" not-so-children's arguments."
This text shows us a little of the biblical allegory of Pandora's box, even though we know that it is based on the sins
that are present inside the box. How is a short story, so I can invent upon an invention without a known author, that in fact
as we open Pandora's Box, we will not spread hatred for Earth, there is no need to spread what is already widespread, but we will
find the truth. And the truth is that we are animals like those we despise. Human culture is an illusion to keep sane people.
Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending
is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better.
"Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending
is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better."
These "sensitive" people break my heart.
I think Mr. Bonhomme has the right to say whatever you want. Perhaps, the "descriptions" also served to you, what do you think
??
It's sadly obvious that most of the negative replies to Mr. Bonomo's article, comes from complete tools.I can see that most, if
not all of you tools have been thoroughly educated by sitting in front of your TV's and burping and farting large amount of odorous
gases from your beer infused bodies.A friendly bit of advice, remove your collective heads from your asses and get a real life.
Hahah.. did Bonomo's essay really scare you that much or did it merely strike such a chord of cognitive dissonance that it
left you squirming in mental anguish? Lighten up dude!
Despite some glaring inaccuracies and over-generalizations, overall the piece is interesting and thought-provoking.
"The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately branded as
mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can't accept the 'complexity of modern life', i.e. conspiracy nuts."
Perhaps he means someone like a homeless person or pan-handler living on the street. Certainly few if anyone would consider
a radical thinker like Noam Chomsky "mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers".
Mr. Bonomo, interesting take on things but ultimately I don't quite agree. Here is the subparagraph of my worldview that addresses
the whole free-versus-slave thing: Freedom is in inverse proportion to security. An individual in solitary-confinement in
a maximum security prison has 100% security but 0% freedom. At the opposite extreme is the "hermit" living in self-imposed exile
with 100% freedom but never entirely sure of when & where his next meal is coming from and if attacked by a predator, human or
animal, he is entirely on his own. Between those two extremes there is a reasonable middle-ground.
The hunter-gatherers are (or were) about as free as it is possible to be and each individual not having to live as a hermit
– but their lives were, as per Thomas Hobbs, "nasty, brutish and short." I've read that around the time of Christ the average
lifespan was 20-22. (That's probably factoring in a lot of infant-mortality).
My life is clean, comfortable, reasonably if not perfectly safe and I'm on-track to live well into my eighties. But I'm a "wage-slave"
to a job that I hate, despise and loath and frankly, at home, my wife rules the roost. If I protest too much she could divorce
me and take much of what I've worked roughly thirty-four years for so she's got me over a barrel.
Well, years later I just want to thank you for this essay. It stated more clearly than I could the truth of the world. The only
thing missing is the identity of the perpetrators, and many of us know who they are.
"... We are complicated pieces in an even more complicated puzzle. ..."
"... Peterson states that "life is tragic." His point is that people need to be ready to deal with adversity. Anyone can handle good times, because that's what we are able to rest and relax during. The true test of a person comes when they lose a loved one or a job or their health. They need to make a decision: what will they do in response. ..."
"... His 12 Rules serve as a guide on how to go from that point of failure to a point of redemption, offering a series of suggestions and guidelines to take a life that is becoming corrupted by hatred of the world and everything in it and turn it into a vessel for growth and self-improvement. ..."
... Approaching Peterson a skeptic, I was not sure that reading a book would have the power
to change anything in my life. The first few chapters were met with nods, hesitancy, and the
concession of points that sounded good. I wasn't hostile to him, and I found many of his points
quite clever.
But when Peterson delved deeper into the archetypes and depth psychology I became
suspicious. I had a moderate distrust of the Jungian method; I use it to teach literature, but
I did not believe in using archetypes to assess personality.
Peterson's point is that we are all part of something great and interconnected. Because it
is so massive, we need to be working to make sense of it. It won't happen automatically, and if
we go for an easy explanation we may find ourselves walking dark, treacherous paths of
misanthropy and rejection.
We are complicated pieces in an even more complicated puzzle. Peterson's approach
is one of self improvement. When we take steps to sort ourselves out, we also need to enter a
symbiotic process of bringing order to our world.
The purpose of this is not to achieve some sort of superiority. It is to achieve survival.
The world will change, and we will be forced to adapt.
Peterson states that "life is tragic." His point is that people need to be ready to deal
with adversity. Anyone can handle good times, because that's what we are able to rest and relax
during. The true test of a person comes when they lose a loved one or a job or their health.
They need to make a decision: what will they do in response.
Peterson uses haunting examples to illustrate what happens when this goes wrong. Using
everything from Dostoevsky to the Soviet Union (and countless other insights from modern and
historical figures), he creates case studies of what happens when things go wrong and people
turn to dysfunction rather than improving their situation.
His 12 Rules serve as a guide on how to go from that point of failure to a point of
redemption, offering a series of suggestions and guidelines to take a life that is becoming
corrupted by hatred of the world and everything in it and turn it into a vessel for growth and
self-improvement.
Is it a perfect guide to living life? No. Is it helpful? Does it give insight to great
truths? Yes.
"... his theme of the inevitability of suffering. ..."
"... This book is too long, too verbose, too complicated for its purported goals ..."
"... Unfortunately, this book reads a lot like one of those lectures. While Peterson still provides, as ever, a number of valuable insights, he often does so in chapters that are only ostensibly related to the point he's making. ..."
"... His advice is mostly of the "No more Mr. Nice Guy" type, which I think has much to recommend. ..."
"... Whenever he talks about things like competitiveness, aggression, and sexual selection he tends to commit the naturalistic fallacy (X is right because that's how we evolved, or that's how our distant ancestors behaved, or, worst of all, that's what women evolved to find attractive). ..."
"... JP advocates the life of action and achievement, but he gives no *inspiring* reason to choose this kind of life over any of the other kinds recommended at various times by the world's philosophies and religions. ..."
"... While I enjoy Peterson's YouTube videos, I cannot say the same for this book ..."
"... While there are some good bits of insight in regards to raising children and dealing with various types of people, it's not worth reading 300+ pages of this man's thoughts when they could just as easily be viewed on YouTube. ..."
"... Interesting, but ultimately flawed and superficial. Peterson's arguments should be studied by basic students of logic - you'll find classic examples of statement and false dilemmas presented left and right. ..."
This book = 12 Rules (rock solid advice) + Peterson's Philosophic musings
Jordan Peterson is a beacon of light in this chaotic world, a psychologist whose writing
combines science and common sense. One of his talents is his ability to articulate complex
ideas to a wide audience. Regardless of whether you have a background in psychology or not,
you will understand this book. It covers his twelve rules for life, which are intended not
only as a guide for life of the individual, but as a remedy for society's present ills.
Peterson believes that the cure for society starts with curing the individual, the smallest
unit of society. Peterson's well-known advice to clean your room is a reflection of the truth
that if you can't even manage the most basic and mundane responsibilities of life, then you
have no business dictating to others how to fix society.
One of the main themes of this book is: Personal change is possible. There's no doubt you
can be slightly better today than you were yesterday. Because of Pareto's Principle (small
changes can have disproportionately large results), this movement towards the good increases
massively, and this upward trajectory can take your life out of hell more rapidly than you
could believe. Life is tragic and full of suffering and malevolence. But there's something
you can start putting right, and we can't imagine what good things are in store for us if we
just fix the things that are within our power to do so.
The 12 Rules for Life:
In Peterson's own words, it's 12 rules to stop you from being pathetic, written from the
perspective of someone who himself tried to stop being pathetic and is still working on it.
Peterson is open about his struggles and shortcomings, unlike many authors who only reveal a
carefully curated façade.
Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. People have bad posture, and
the meaning behind it can be demonstrated by animal behaviors. Peterson uses the example of
the lobster. When a lobster loses a fight, and they fight all the time, it scrunches up a
little. Lobsters run on serotonin and when he loses, levels go down, and when he wins, levels
go up and he stretches out and is confident. Who cares? We evolutionarily diverged from
lobsters 350 million years ago, but it's still the same circuit. It's a deep instinct to size
others up when looking at them to see where they fit in the social hierarchy. If your
serotonin levels fall, you get depressed and crunch forward and you're inviting more
oppression from predator personalities and can get stuck in a loop. Fixing our posture is
part of the psycho-physiological loop that can help you get started back up again.
Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. People often
have self-contempt whether they realize it or not. Imagine someone you love and treat well.
You need to treat yourself with the same respect. Take care of yourself, your room, your
things, and have respect for yourself as if you're a person with potential and is important
to the people around you. If you make a pattern of bad mistakes, your life gets worse, not
just for you, but for the people around you. All your actions echo in ways that cannot be
imagined. Think of Stalin's mother and the mistakes she made in life, and how the ripple
effects went on to affect the millions of people around him.
Rule 3: Choose your friends carefully. It is appropriate for you to evaluate your
social surroundings and eliminate those who are hurting you. You have no ethical obligation
to associate with people who are making your life worse. In fact, you are obligated to
disassociate with people who are trying to destroy the structure of being, your being,
society's being. It's not cruel, it's sending a message that some behaviors are not to be
tolerated.
Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is
today . You need to improve, and you may even be in real bad shape, but many unfairly
compare themselves to some more seemingly successful person. Up till around age 17, random
comparisons to other people can make sense, but afterwards, especially age 30+, our lives
become so idiosyncratic that comparisons with others become meaningless and unhelpful. You
only see a slice of their life, a public facet, and are blind to the problems they
conceal.
Rule 5: Don't let children do things that make you dislike them. You aren't as nice
as you think, and you will unconsciously take revenge on them. You are massively more
powerful than your children, and have the ability and subconscious proclivity for tyranny
deeply rooted within you.If you don't think this is true, you don't know yourself well
enough. His advice on disciplinary procedure: (1) limit the rules. (2) use minimum necessary
force and (3) parents should come in pairs.It's difficult and exhausting to raise children,
and it's easy to make mistakes. A bad day at work, fatigue, hunger, stress, etc, can make you
unreasonable.
Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Life is
tragic and there's malevolence. There's plenty to complain about, but if you dwell on it, you
will become bitter and tread down a path that will take you to twisted places. The diaries of
the Columbine killers are a chilling look into minds that dwelled on the unholy trinity of
deceit, arrogance, and resentment) . So instead of cursing the tragedy that is life,
transform into something meaningful. Start by stop doing something, anything, that you know
to be wrong. Everyday you have choices in front of you. Stop doing and saying things that
make you weak and ashamed. Do only those things that you would proudly talk about in
public.
Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). Meaning is how you
protect yourself against the suffering that life entails. This means that despite the fact
that we're all emotionally wounded by life, we've found something that makes it all
worthwhile. Meaning, Peterson says, is like an instinct, or a form of vision. It lets you
know when you're in the right place, and he says that the right place is midway between chaos
and order. If you stay firmly ensconced within order, things you understand, then you can't
grow. If you stay within chaos, then you're lost. Expediency is what you do to get yourself
out of trouble here and now, but it comes at the cost of sacrificing the future for the
present. So instead of doing what gets you off the hook today, aim high. Look around you and
see what you can make better. Make it better. As you gain knowledge, consciously remain
humble and avoid arrogance that can stealthily creep on you. Peterson also says to be aware
of our shortcomings, whatever they may be; our secret resentments, hatred, cowardice, and
other failings. Be slow to accuse others because we too conceal malevolent impulses, and
certainly before we attempt to fix the world.
Rule 8: Tell the truth -- or, at least, don't lie. Telling the truth can be hard in
the sense that it's often difficult to know the truth. However, we can know when we're lying.
Telling lies makes you weak. You can feel it, and others can sense it too. Meaning, according
to Peterson, is associated with truth, and lying is the antithesis of meaning. Lying
disassociates you with meaning, and thus reality itself. You might get away with lying for a
short while, but only a short time. In Peterson's words "It was the great and the small lies
of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths of millions of people."
Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.
A good conversation consists of you coming out wiser than you went into it. An example is
when you get into an argument with your significant other, you want to win, especially if you
get angry. If you're more verbally fluent than the other person then you can win. One problem
is that the other person might see something better than you, but they can't quite articulate
it as well. Always listen because there's a possibility they're going to tell you something
that will prevent you from running headfirst into a brick wall. This is why Peterson says to
listen to your enemies. They will lie about you, but they will also say true things about
yourself that your friends won't. Separate the wheat from the chaff and make your life
better.
Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech: There is some integral connection between
communication and reality (or structures of belief as he likes to say). Language takes chaos
and makes it into a 'thing.' As an example, imagine going through a rough patch in your life
where you can't quite put your finger on what's wrong. This mysterious thing that's bothering
you -- is it real? Yes, if it's manifesting itself as physical discomfort. Then you talk
about it and give it a name, and then this fuzzy, abstract thing turns into a specific thing.
Once named, you can now do something about it. The unnameable is far more terrifying than the
nameable. As an example, the movie the Blair Witch project didn't actually name or describe
the evil. Nothing happens in the movie, it's all about the unnameable. If you can't name
something, it means it's so terrifying to you that you can't even think about it, and that
makes you weaker. This is why Peterson is such a free speech advocate. He wants to bring
things out of the realm of the unspeakable. Words have a creative power and you don't want to
create more mark and darkness by imprecise speech.
Rule 11: Don't bother children when they are skateboarding. This is mainly about
masculinity. Peterson remembers seeing children doing all kinds of crazy stunts on
skateboards and handrails, and believes this is an essential ingredient to develop
masculinity, to try to develop competence and face danger. Jordan Peterson considers the act
of sliding down a handrail to be brave and perhaps stupid as well, but overall positive. A
lot of rebellious behavior in school is often called 'toxic masculinity,' but Peterson would
say to let them be. An example would be a figure skater that makes a 9.9 on her performance,
essentially perfect. Then the next skater that follows her seems to have no hope. But she
pushes herself closer to chaos, beyond her competence, and when successful, inspires awe.
Judges award her 10's. She's gone beyond perfection into the unknown and ennobled herself as
well as humanity as well.
Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. This chapter is mainly
autobiographical and he writes about tragedy and pain. When tragic things are in front of you
and you're somewhat powerless, you must keep your eyes open for little opportunities that
highlight the redemptive elements of life that make it all worthwhile. The title of this
chapter comes from his experience of observing a local stray cat, and watching it adapt to
the rough circumstances around it. Another thing you must do when life is going to pieces is
to shorten your temporal horizon. Instead of thinking in months, you maybe think in hours or
minutes instead. You try to just have the best next minute or hour that you can. You shrink
the time frame until you can handle it, this is how you adjust to the catastrophe. You try to
stay on your feet and think. Although this chapters deals about harsh things, it's an overall
positive one. Always look for what's meaningful and soul-sustaining even when you're where
you'd rather not be.
Helpful, Fascinating--And Not Political (To My Surprise)
A friend of mine has been pushing me to look into Jordan Peterson for the past six months.
I thought, since my friend is conservative, that Peterson offered right-wing politics, and it
is true that he has recently been in the news for his thoughts on certain charged topics.
However, Peterson does not, in fact, offer politics, which is refreshing in these days of
rage. Rather, "12 Rules For Life" is a self-help book constructed like a Russian matryoshka
doll, a nested construct. It talks, and works, on multiple levels, some of which may have
political implications, but if so, they are incidental to what the book offers to each human
person, both the broken and the whole.
The nested, complex nature of this book really should be no surprise, because Peterson's
life's work is the study of the infinitely layered human mind, and his one earlier book,
"Maps of Meaning," was an exhaustive analysis of intricate human myths, their roots in our
moral beliefs, and their implications for today. In Peterson's view, all moral traditions
are, at their root, exemplifications and explications of the opposition of order and chaos,
as well as a way of creating shared beliefs, which are immensely valuable to any human
society. His basic point in his Rules is that every individual can avoid the extremes of
menacing chaos and tyrannical order by following the Way, the line between order and chaos,
"through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic
path." This is to "live properly," and if we can do this, we can "collectively flourish."
Thus, his 12 Rules are guides to this end.
As I says, this is not a political book, but politics is downstream of this book -- that
is, if you buy into what Peterson is offering, it probably changes some of your political
views. Peterson's basic principle is the imperative need to recognize that reality exists,
and given that so much of politics today is built around a wholesale denial of reality,
Peterson's statements often seem political. In fact, they are political, even if that is not
Peterson's intent, or at least not his major intent. This is especially true of his view of
men and women, which permeates the book.
But let's treat the book as it is, rather than treating it as some form of archetype, for
it is, if nothing else, highly original, and it is therefore hard to summarize. Peterson,
both an academic and a practicing clinical psychologist, has spent a lifetime talking
extensively to many people, most of them troubled, and he thinks very deeply about every word
he says (as is clearly evident if you watch interviews with him available online). That
doesn't mean he's didactic -- his writing tone is conversational and packed with anecdotes,
carefully chosen to illustrate or add impact to the points he makes. But it does mean that
nearly every sentence is crowded with meaning.
Rule 1 is "Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back." This is the backbone of all the
rules, really, for in its Peterson explains that we are how we are. We are not malleable
beyond a certain point. His illustration is lobsters, who were already incredibly ancient at
the dawn of the dinosaurs, yet who have much in common with humans -- so much so that
anti-depressants perk defeated lobsters up. Lobsters have a dominance hierarchy. And,
critically, male and female lobsters are radically different -- they act differently, yes,
but more broadly, male and female lobster teleology, their purpose, is different, and that is
reflected in how each behaves. For lobsters, and all other creatures, "The dominance
hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a
billion years. It's permanent. It's real. It is [rather than capitalism, or patriarchy, or
some other ephemeral manifestation] a near-eternal aspect of the environment. . . . Dominance
hierarchies are older than trees." Males, lobster or not, who fall in the dominance hierarchy
have bad lives that get worse, often in a self-reinforcing loop; and they rise in the
dominance hierarchy by fighting and winning, which means they get the best food, the best
mental and physical health, the best shelter, and the best females. Similarly, females who
rise (who fight only in their maternal stage, but compete otherwise) in the dominance
hierarchy have the best mental health, and better physical circumstances by virtue of
attracting high-quality suitors, that is, those high in the dominance hierarchy, whom they
identify and pursue; those who fall; the reverse. Whether we like to admit it or not, humans
are essentially the same as lobsters. They always have been, and they always will be.
Unlike lobsters, though, humans can self-diagnose that they are at the bottom of the
hierarchy, or heading there in a downward spiral, and they can take action to improve their
situation. (Peterson's book is about taking action, most of all.) Falling in a human
dominance hierarchy basically means you are being bullied, and though some can't fight back,
almost always, it's that people won't fight back. While fighting back can be as simple as
changing your view of life, "to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide
open," and "accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood," ultimately "[t]here
is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and
strength of character." Given that I have always believed that violence, or at least its
threat, is the solution to most problems of human oppression, this certainly resonates with
me, though reconciling that with turning the other cheek is difficult, and not something
Peterson has much use for, despite obvious deep sympathy with Christianity. Through standing
up for oneself, straight with your shoulders back, using force as necessary (and the
willingness to use force likely means it will not be necessary), leads the path to human
flourishing, for all.
In Rule 2, "Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping," Peterson
addresses why people sabotage themselves. He first delves deeply into human mythos, closely
analyzing the first chapters of Genesis in particular, though also offering nods to other
traditions, such as the Vedic. This is in service of a deeper exploration of the eternal
opposition of order and chaos. Order is masculine; when good, it is the structure of society,
the ice on which we skate; when bad, it is tyranny and stultification. Chaos is feminine;
when good, it is the origin of all things and the maker of all things new, the substance from
which all things are made; when bad, it is the dangerous unknown, the chthonic underworld,
and the dark water under the ice. Calling these categories of reality masculine and feminine
is not arbitrary; in fact, it comports with what may be the ultimate fundamental fact of
human existence, the division into two very different sexes, male and female, "natural
categories, deeply embedded in our perceptual, emotional and motivational structures." (You
now begin to see why the transgender ideologues are not thrilled with Peterson.) As with Adam
and Eve and their self-sabotage, we sabotage ourselves, not viewing ourselves as worthy of
respect, since we are capable of stupidity and evil. "And with this realization we have
well-nigh full legitimization of the idea, very unpopular in modern intellectual circles, of
Original Sin." But we can choose to embody the Image of God, instead. "Back is the way
forward -- as T. S. Eliot insisted [in "Little Gidding"] -- but back as awake beings,
exercising the proper choice of awake beings."
For Christians, though, this poses a perceived difficulty. Yes, as Peterson notes,
Christianity reduced evil and barbarism in the areas it conquered. But it encouraged
excessive self-sacrifice through erroneous thinking. "Christ's archetypal death exists as an
example of how to accept finitude, betrayal and tyranny heroically -- how to walk with God
despite the tragedy of conscious self-knowledge -- and not as a directive to victimize
ourselves in the service of others." We have to care for others as we care for ourselves;
only in that way can both of us flourish. Peterson explores this line of thought at
considerable length; it is impossible to shorten his words and retain the meaning, but it is
both fully compatible with Christian belief and an antidote to a certain line of Christian
excessive self-abnegation (a failing I found in Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of
Christ, though I hesitate to criticize a book of such renown).
Rule 3 advises us to choose and to see our friends clearly. You must not only see the best
in people. You can show them to what they should aspire, but you cannot lift them up unless
they wish to be so lifted. "Not everyone who is failing is a victim, and not everyone at the
bottom wishes to rise." "But Christ himself, you might object, befriended tax-collectors and
prostitutes. How dare I cast aspersions on the motives of those who are trying to help? But
Christ was the archetypal perfect man. And you're you. How do you know that your attempts to
pull someone up won't instead bring them -- or you -- further down?" Again, nearly every word
is perfect: "Success: that's the mystery. Virtue: that's what inexplicable. . . . . Things
fall apart, of their own accord, but the sins of men speed their degeneration. And then comes
the flood."
Rule 4 returns to an internal focus, advising us to "Compare Yourself To Who You Were
Yesterday, Not To Who Someone Else Is Today." Just because you can always find an area where
someone, or everyone, is better, does not mean that area is or should be relevant to you. A
myriad of games are possible in each person's life; choose your game, choose your starting
point, and improve yourself, incrementally and gradually. In fact, you should reward yourself
for doing so, as silly as that sounds. And if you resent someone else, you need to realize it
is either stupid immaturity, in which case you should stop it, or it is a legitimate
complaint, in which case you must address it, or it will only get worse and cause more
problems.
Next, on Rule 5, "Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them,"
Peterson switches gears, from the world of adults to the world of children as it intersects
with adults. He strongly objects to certain psychological tendencies in child-rearing,
especially the protection of children from dangers at the expense of making them fully
functioning and competent human beings (a problem mainly with male children and their
mothers, he says). Children must be socialized; they are not inherently good (or inherently
bad, for that matter). Individual problems do not call for social restructuring, which is
mostly stupid. "Each person's private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution,
because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous." Socialization means limitations;
limitations facilitate creative achievement, not crimp it. Along the way, Peterson discusses
tangential topics, such as that hierarchies are rarely, if ever, arbitrary. He recognizes, of
course, that each child is very different (as I know, having five myself), but certain basic
approaches (including "discipline and punish," I assume a joke at Foucault's expense) are the
most likely to lead to success, for all of child, parents, and society.
In Rule 6, Peterson returns to adult self-help, "Set Your Own House In Perfect Order
Before You Criticize The World." He evaluates here, as he does in more than one place in this
book, the nihilism of the smarter Columbine killer, Eric Harris. This is of course topical,
with the present focus on school shootings. True, they have not actually increased in recent
decades, but they have increased from forty or fifty years ago, when children carrying guns
to school was unexceptional, and the reason is almost certainly some form of this nihilism.
Peterson is violently opposed to the idea that humans are some kind of plague, as Harris
maintained, and he identifies this sort of thinking, common among certain elites today, who
adhere to the self-definition of Goethe's Mephistopheles as "the spirit who negates," as
among the worst in the modern world. (Peterson would prefer Normal Borlaug to William Vogt,
in Charles Mann's excellent recent "The Wizard and the Prophet.") Yes, life is very hard, and
suffering, great suffering, is nearly inevitable for everyone. But transformation, not
vengeance, is the answer. Abel, not Cain. Rather than blaming everyone else for what is
wrong, stop today what you know to be wrong, and start doing what you know to be right.
Thereby, you help yourself, and you strike a blow for Being, for the Way, and against
nihilism.
Peterson continues the focus on suffering in Rule 7, "Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What
Is Expedient)." Here, he dives into Egyptian mythology, as well as several passages from the
New Testament. He returns to, and expands on, his earlier thoughts about the impact of
Christianity and the resulting new problems, noting that "In consequence [of Christianity],
the metaphysical conception of the implicit transcendent worth of each and every soul
established itself against impossible odds as the fundamental presumption of Western law and
society. That was not the case in the world of the past, and is not the case yet in most
places in the world of the present." (I've been saying this for years, but it's nice to find
someone prominent who agrees with me!) But in addition to the tendency toward
self-abnegation, long a potential problem for flourishing in this life, Christianity's
decline has left a void. Here Peterson talks of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Milton, Solzhenitsyn,
and much more, including his own personal moral development, and returns again to suffering
and nihilism, which are bad, but which at least point out, when addressed directly, that
there is something good that opposes them. Expedience is lying and not facing up to your sins
and the reality of things. Meaning is the balance between chaos and order, and it leads to
good. "Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are
guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any
precedence over precisely that." And by much the same token, but more personal and humanized,
Rule 8: "Tell The Truth -- Or At Least, Don't Lie." Deceit leads to evil, which leads to, and
is embodied, suffering.
Rule 9 tells us to "Assume That The Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You
Don't." Here a plea for, in essence, humility, along with some fascinating ideas about how to
conduct disagreements with one's spouse, and related thoughts on memory and wisdom. Rule 10
says "Be Precise In Your Speech." As I say, Peterson embodies this rule. I like to say (which
probably says something about me), in the context of political arguments, that I am a
professional killer. I have nothing on Peterson, though. You can see the wheels turning when
he is asked a question, and what comes out is precise and irrefutable, each word weighted
with meaning and exquisitely interlocked, intertwining and supporting, with every other. (He
never seems to say "um," that's for certain.) Lack of precision leads to chaos; lack of
precision may be a failure of vocabulary, but it is more often a failure to communicate at
all, to identify and address problems between two people before they grow to enormous,
malevolent proportions. But, "If we speak carefully and precisely, we can sort things out,
and put them in their proper place, and set a new goal, and navigate to it -- often
communally, if we negotiate; if we reach consensus. If we speak carelessly and imprecisely,
however, things remain vague. The destination remains unproclaimed. The fog of uncertainty
does not lift, and there is no negotiating through the world."
Next to last, in Rule 11, Peterson returns to children, "Do Not Bother Children When They
Are Skateboarding." Danger, especially for men, is part of growth. And young men are the
element of society at greatest risk today -- this is not a major theme of this book, but it
is a major theme of Peterson's public thought. They are protected from developing properly,
they are deliberately socialized like and as girls, yet they are blamed for the world's ills,
and as a result, some turn to nihilism, and fascism, encouraged by certain other men who, in
essence, Peterson calls evil.
Here, Peterson returns emphatically to his proclamation of the deep and abiding
differences between men and women. "[Some] insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social
construct. It isn't. This isn't a debate. The data are in." For example, in the "emancipated"
Scandinavian countries, girls choose traditionally feminine pursuits and behaviors at
extremely high rates. And in the United States, it is just a lie that there are few women law
firm partners due to discrimination; the reason is, purely, women's choice. (I know this from
personal experience, although you are forbidden to say it at a law firm -- you would be fired
instantly, yet another of many distortions of reality today, and a form of coerced lying and
mass collective self-delusion.) The dominance hierarchy is only one example of this, but it
is enormously important, like it or not, for young men, and making it so they can't win in
any aspect of it is catastrophic for men -- and for women, who have a reduced selection of
competent partners to meet their different, but complementary, needs.
The movie Frozen is "deeply propagandistic," an embodied falsehood, not because a woman
necessarily needs a man to rescue her, though she probably does to some extent, as does a man
need a woman to make him whole, but because it pretends that masculine traits are of no
consequence to human flourishing. The "oppression of the patriarchy" is a pack of lies. "The
so-called oppression of the patriarchy was instead an imperfect collective attempt by men and
women, stretching over millennia, to free each other from privation, disease and drudgery."
The miserable result of denying this is what we see today. "We do not teach our children that
the world is flat. Neither should we teach them unsupported ideologically-predicated theories
about the nature of men and women -- or the nature of hierarchy." He even boldly directly
attacks transgender ideology. "Gender is constructed, but an individual who desires gender
re-assignment surgery is to be unarguably considered a man trapped in a woman's body (or vice
versa). The fact that both of these cannot logically be true, simultaneously, is just
ignored."
The answer is simple. Rather than feeding or believing all these lies, men and women
should each do, and be, what they are. "A woman should look after her children -- although
that is not all she should do. And a man should look after a woman and children -- although
that is not all he should do. But a woman should not look after a man, because she must look
after children, and a man should not be a child. This means he must not be dependent." In
this is found what men should do, not in a turn to nihilism or fascism, and equally not in a
turn to emasculation and feminization to avert stupid accusations of "toxic masculinity."
Finally, in Rule 12, "Pet A Cat When You Encounter One On The Street," Peterson turns most
personal, describing the trials and suffering of his daughter from juvenile rheumatoid
arthritis. It is moving stuff, and Peterson returns again to his theme of the inevitability
of suffering. But being open to cats, and myriad other joys, means you can "get a reminder
that for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of Being might make up for the ineradicable
suffering that accompanies it."
Peterson ends with a series of fascinating brief questions and answers, along with short
explanations of the answers, posed from himself to himself, on everything from "What shall I
do with my life?" (Answer: "Aim for Paradise, and concentrate on today"), to "What shall I do
with a torn nation?" (Answer: "Stitch it back together with careful words of truth"), to
"What shall I do with my infant's death?" (Answer: "Hold my other loved ones and heal their
pain"). These are meant to, in a type of stream of consciousness, embody some of the basic
principles underlying the rules in the book. Really, though, they are more; they are nearly
an entire philosophy of life, which is probably why this book is so popular. If you are
broken, there is much in it for you. But Peterson's point is that everyone is broken,
sometimes more, sometimes less -- so there is something in this book for everyone.
There is a lot to like in this book. I apparently needed a bit of nudging about some
things that maybe should have been self-evident. I especially liked the part in 'Rule 4'
where he instructs on negotiating with your inner/child self on getting a few little things
done without self-bullying. To me, that was the best part of the book.
Therein lies one of my complaints. This book is too long, too verbose, too complicated for
its purported goals. If you want to make the average person's life better (and of course sell
more books), I think you could have cut out about 75% of the book. We already know (well, I
do) that Jordan Peterson is well-read, erudite, incredibly introspective and ambitious. Of
course if there were any doubt about that, you could read about how he'd "flown a hammerhead
roll in a carbon fiber stunt plane....consulted for the UN Secretary General's High-level
Panel on Sustainable Development....identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs in sixty
different countries...." Really? Who was responsible for putting that on the last printed
page? That alone almost made me throw the book away.
Finally, I am an atheist. I have to say that hearing his complaints and criticism of atheists
makes me wonder if all that erudition has done him any favors. He seems to have lost the
ability to look out the windows of his own two eyes, without all of this information he's
gleaned from other scholars, and realize that once you have an explanation for how the
natural world works you can figure out how to optimize your place in it. Being
self-destructive, or generally destructive, makes no sense and is not in your
self-interest.
So I looked to his book for some guidance on how to continue improving my life in this
rational universe. And I found a few nuggets. I'm not positive the hours of slogging through
the unnecessary parts was worth it. My jury's still out....
The jury's back. I think for my purposes, 'Wear Sunscreen' by Mary Schmich (the 1997
'Commencement Address' often mistakenly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut) does as good a job, in a
couple of pages that can be taped to my wall, than this tome. Maybe better. And it's
free.
Standard JP; no major revelations, little structure
If you're a fan of Peterson's, there's a lot to like here, and a good deal of it will be
familiar.
I was hoping that the written format would help reign in some of Peterson's desultory
tendencies. When delivering a lecture, Peterson often allows himself to get off on tangents,
and that is, in part, why his talks are so engaging and entertaining - you get the sense that
you're watching someone engage in the hard work of real thought before your very eyes. That
same tendency also highlights Peterson's wide-ranging erudition on religion, culture and
history.
Unfortunately, this book reads a lot like one of those lectures. While Peterson still
provides, as ever, a number of valuable insights, he often does so in chapters that are only
ostensibly related to the point he's making. His rules themselves are simple, logical and
sensible, but he often focuses on the rules themselves for only a paragraph or two in each
chapter. The rest is typical freewheeling Peterson - engaging and interesting, sure, but
often failing to build a comprehensive, convincing argument. Major themes repeat themselves
throughout chapters, which isn't a problem in and of itself - Peterson clearly has a few key
concepts he's trying to instill to his readers - but the repetition of these concepts and the
less-than-strict adherence to the given topic of each chapter can result in a generally samey
feel: sure, life is a struggle between order and chaos; okay, dominance hierarchies are found
across almost all life on earth - but I forget, is this the chapter about standing up
straight, or the one about telling the truth?
This is by no means a bad book, but I was eager to hear Peterson's thoughts presented in a
more logical, organized, intentional manner, and that's not quite what this book is or
does.
Let me say up front that I'm going to judge this book by a very high standard here. I have
no doubt that this is one of the better books of its kind.
Jordan Peterson offers some useful, if not completely original, practical advice. His advice
is mostly of the "No more Mr. Nice Guy" type, which I think has much to recommend. Therefore,
I praise the book wholeheartedly as a kind of how-to guide for getting certain things out of
life, the kinds of things that most people want.
But Peterson falls down whenever he waxes philosophical or moralistic. Whenever he talks
about things like competitiveness, aggression, and sexual selection he tends to commit the
naturalistic fallacy (X is right because that's how we evolved, or that's how our distant
ancestors behaved, or, worst of all, that's what women evolved to find attractive). You'd be
excused if you came away with the message that qualities like gentleness and compassion (what
JP calls "agreeableness") are contemptible and bad, because they may not always further
certain of your interests. But I for one would much rather live in a world where the average
level of agreeableness were high than its opposite.
Kant says in one of his ethical treatises that the purpose of reason is to live a moral
life, not to make men happy, and that the happiest are usually those who use their instinct
rather than their reason. JP seems to confuse morality with that which leads to practical
success.
JP advocates the life of action and achievement, but he gives no *inspiring* reason to
choose this kind of life over any of the other kinds recommended at various times by the
world's philosophies and religions. He only dangles the prospect of (to use a phrase from C.S. Lewis) "girls and gold and guns" thinking that this settles the issue. Perhaps he does
not think very highly of his audience.
I must mention I find his frequent, extensive use of the Bible to justify his biological
reductionism rather irritating and inappropriate. I'd have given the book one more star if
these parts had been edited out.
As I said at the beginning, I don't doubt that this is one of the better, perhaps one of
the best books of its kind. But, at least by my lights, it is overrated to a very great
degree, and I'd be surprised of JP is much talked about or read ten, or even five years from
now.
While I enjoy Peterson's YouTube videos, I cannot say the same for this book. His style of
writing is exactly like listening one of his lectures, which I do not feel translates well on
paper. This style might be good for a lecture to get people thinking, but I found myself
wondering why the heck he was expounding upon some things and not resolving them, while
clarifying other concepts that did not feel as profound. Additionally, I cannot agree with
his analysis of men and women (Men representing order and Women representing chaos), or some
of his other theological points he tries to make (Eve shaming Adam to make him self-conscious
into eating the forbidden fruit). It feels as though in these respects he oversteps his area
of knowledge and delves into pop-psychology. While there are some good bits of insight in
regards to raising children and dealing with various types of people, it's not worth reading
300+ pages of this man's thoughts when they could just as easily be viewed on YouTube.
Interesting, but ultimately flawed and superficial. Peterson's arguments ...
Interesting, but ultimately flawed and superficial. Peterson's arguments should be studied
by basic students of logic - you'll find classic examples of statement and false dilemmas
presented left and right.
There are some points that Peterson makes they are reasonable, but he attempts to extend
them beyond all rational limits. As I said, mildly interesting but fundamentally flawed as an
intellectual or philosophical work.
Would have been a great blog post....otherwise pure drudgery.
As some reviewers recommend, you have to put in the "work" to really read and appreciate
the book. Well, I put in the work and it felt like work. Pure drudgery for me. This book
could have been a good blog entry - 12 solid bullet points with the why and the how. If you
are interested in the 12 Rules, pick any number of reviews here that summarize the book and
you will get a more useful read, and certainly a better use of your time.
Rule number 1 - stand up straight. I get it, I agree with it. I don't need to be beaten
over the head with pages and pages of background into the biology of the lobster to
understand how this can change my life.
I like the idea and tried hard to like the book. Even tried the audio version read by the
author - no better. Poorly executed and I can only guess what prompted all those 5 star
reviews....maybe a pat on the back for having put in the "work"? "Hey, look at me...with my
shoulders proudly back...I'm the alpha Lobster...I'm so enlightened thanks to this brilliant
author."
Unlike almost every modern book in the self-help genre, happiness is a not a major theme here, and to Peterson it is not
necessarily even a primary goal.
His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers don't get it.
Notable quotes:
"... Pain is its one incontrovertible fact (he remarks at one point that it is a miracle that anything in the world gets done at all: such is the ubiquity of human suffering) ..."
"... You will suffer. Accept that, and shift your focus to the one thing that is within your control: your attitude. ..."
His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers
don't get it.
"Aphorisms," wrote James Geary, "are like particle accelerators for the
mind." When particles collide inside an accelerator, new ones are formed as the energy of the
crash is converted into matter. Inside an aphorism, it is minds that collide, and what spins
out is that most slippery of things, wisdom.
... ... ...
These reviewers have done a disservice to their readers. In large measure, they have failed
to engage with a work that is complex, challenging, and novel. Peterson is sketching out a
draft for how we can survive, look in the mirror, and deal with psychological pain.
To understand his message, the first task is not to be distracted by the title or genre, and
look for the metaphorical glue that binds it all together. 12 Rules sets out an
interesting and complex model for humanity, and it really has nothing to do with petting a cat
or taking your tablets or being kind to lobsters. It is about strength, courage,
responsibility, and suffering, but it is deep and difficult, and it is not easy to pigeonhole.
In a sense, 12 Rules contains a number of hidden structures and hidden processes, and
confusingly, these are not always made explicit in the text.
The first of these is Deep Time.
We are biological creatures, evolved beings who can only be truly understood through a model
that encapsulates the notion of geological time. The concept of Deep Time is very recent: just
a few generations ago science thought that the earth was a few thousand years old. The
realization that the planet has been around for billions of years and that life itself not much
younger has brought about a shift in the story of ourselves and our place in the world. We are
the products of processes that are old, old, old. We stretch back across unfathomable reaches,
incomprehensible spans, but we carry that history within us.
... ... ..
Unlike almost every modern book in the self-help genre, happiness is a not a major theme
here, and to Peterson it is not necessarily even a primary goal. Like Freud, Peterson sees life
as suffering. Pain is its one incontrovertible fact (he remarks at one point that it is a
miracle that anything in the world gets done at all: such is the ubiquity of human suffering). 12 Rules is not about the pursuit of pleasure, and indeed parts of his message are
pure Stoicism. Resistance to life's depredations is futile. You will suffer. Accept that, and
shift your focus to the one thing that is within your control: your attitude.
...
His much-derided directive to "tidy your room" makes sense at every level. Indeed, if your room
is too big, start with "tidy your desk," and then move forward. Find meaning in the tiniest
acts of kindness, and push on from there. Concede the transience of pleasure and the
inevitability of death. This isn't happiness, but it is a step closer to the Good Life, and
contra the reviewers, readers are responding. Active, purposeful "Being in the World" is the
dominant theme, and much of the book is taken up with exploring the whys and wherefores of
this. Courage and strength and kindness, yes, to be sure, but importantly, courage "in spite
of" and kindness "in spite of."
Following Carl Rogers, meaning is to be found in active
engagement in a wondrous and hazardous world, and here there is no shirking the "hazardous." It
seems to me that Peterson is calling for a return to ataraxia , that imperturbability
and equanimity that has been out of fashion amongst the intelligentsia (at least in the West)
for a century or more.
The underlying political philosophy is conservative, without question. As Christian Gonzalez
identified in TheAmerican Conservative , Peterson's closest contemporary
equivalent is Roger Scruton. "We have learned to live together and organize our complex
societies slowly and incrementally, over vast stretches of time," he writes, "and we do not
understand with sufficient exactitude why what we are doing works."
Peterson on the American
culture wars sounds like Scruton on the English Common Law: we are "from the soil," we need
time, it is senseless to break what we barely understand. Each person's private trouble cannot
be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous. Those
left-leaning critics who see "just another reactionary" have failed to understand the
complexity. What permeates this project is an implicit biopsychosocial model of the
human condition (Peterson spares the reader that dread term but it is the only description I
know for his integrative model).
... ... ...
Tim Rogers is a consultant psychiatrist in Edinburgh. He's written for Encounter
magazine, and has published in both Quillette and Areo .
In my opinion, the ego becomes "mental" when it starts believing in duality, that it's the
centre of the personality and in control. It's just the centre of the field of consciousness.
"The axiom of Maria. A precept in alchemy: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of
the third comes the one as the fourth."
Jung used the axiom of Maria as a metaphor for the whole process of individuation. One is the
original state of unconscious wholeness; two signifies the conflict between opposites; three
points to a potential resolution; the third is the transcendent function; and the one as the
fourth is a transformed state of consciousness, relatively whole and at peace."
"In my opinion, the ego becomes "mental" when it starts believing in duality, that it's
the centre of the personality and in control. It's just the centre of the field of
consciousness."
Stuart begins: Our ego is a vestigal organ, long since gone by the by, and all that
remains is a cell-wall-less gooey-plasma ready at the moment to luminesce and retire into
nothingness.
I take it as axiotmatic that our Whole Mind cannot lose it Self.
OK, Rob from Canada, now to your opinions:
One: "the ego becomes "mental" when it starts believing in duality".
Two: "(the ego is) the centre of the personality".
Three: "(the ego is) in control".
Four: "(the ego) is the centre of the field of consciousness".
Regarding Point One: Please explain how fracturing an entirely mistaken ideal can lead to
dualism and not chaos?
Two: "Who says?"
Three: "Of What?"
Four: An unconscious ideal cannot attain consciousness, except in illusions.
Hi Stuart! Here's my take on the issue of ego being mental, and from my own experience it is
correct. With very little practice one can observe his thoughts and internal dialogue. It
doesn't require meditation. It's simply a matter of paying attention to our internal
dialogue. We all talk to ourselves. That internal dialogue is the ego talking to itself. The
ego is a mental construction based on the brain's interpretation of it's experience since
birth. So what are we witnessing the ego's internal dialogue and thoughts with? That's where
our "spirituality" lies, regardless of religion or no religion. We all have immediate access
to the witness to our own ego but few use it. The "witness" is silent. It observes and knows,
but doesn't know how or why it knows. Call it "knowingness". That witnessing awareness is
silent. Zen Buddhists call it the practice of "no mind". In modern sports it's called being
in "The Zone". Though silent is is a very aware state of consciousness.
Instead of using our brain to think when we want to use it to think, we let the brain's ego
think us and think our lives for us. Our ego is our own worst enemy. The ego never sees the
"big picture" of all involved. The ego/mind is always insecure and spends it's life trying to
compensate is some way or another to overcome it's basic insecurity.
Humans for the most part, identify with their mental chatter (the ego). Any real spiritual
teaching, teaches us to identify, instead, with the observer of the ego, which is
transcending the ego.
All the problems we face on this planet are because of insecure individual egos, grouping to
form tribal egos, such as tribes of nationalism, tribes of religious beliefs, tribes of
political beliefs, tribes of sports team fans. Egos tend to be competitive and want to be
"one up" in some way. One can easily see that the party of Democrats has an ego identity as
does the party of Republicans. Egos are mental creations. Mental creations are not
necessarily true. They are beliefs about our perception, whether actually correct or not. The
witness or observer we all have and share knows the truth of the moment and the appropriate
action to take. Of all the books on Spiritual Practices I've read through the years (I'm 80),
I recommend Eckhart Tolle's "The Power Of Now". The best to you!
To Barry, thank you for your post. I have read Tolle's book too, about 8 years ago, and found
it really making good sense to me. Your explanation of our internal dialogue not being who we
really are, is very clear and well-said. These can be hard concepts to get one's head around.
You did an admirable job of it in your post.
Thanks again for posting your thoughts.
Barry, I pride myself in speaking to an octogenarian! "And from my own experience" .
"Here's my take on the issue of ego being mental, and from my own experience it is
correct. With very little practice one can observe his thoughts and internal dialogue. It
doesn't require meditation. It's simply a matter of paying attention to our internal
dialogue. We all talk to ourselves. That internal dialogue is the ego talking to itself. The
ego is a mental construction based on the brain's interpretation of it's experience since
birth."
Barry, the internal dialogue of what you speak, is to me, your conscience and your inner
self, not the ego talking to a hallucination of itself; for what can an illusion manifest but
more illusions of : it : self.
The ego is a misprojection from our higher mind; ergo, not mind, but misunderstanding,
illusion, maya, separate from reality, separate from us, not us, not anyone, just lost
awareness with no where to settle but nonexistence from which it came.
Cool. I´d take it a bit further, though. Putting the mind on emptiness, the place
without characteristics, in a deep meditative state. One sees the way things really exist,
the way consciousness creates our reality, the truth of emptiness and karma. Its called
entering the stream. The beginning of the transformation to the divine being. Its an
experience that changes you forever.
Beyond words. Meditation is essential.
It takes a lot of courage for an addict to recover and stay clean. And it is sadly not news that drug addiction and high levels
of prescription drug use are signs that something is deeply broken in our society. There are always some people afflicted with deep
personal pain but our system is doing a very good job of generating unnecessary pain and desperation.
Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend's bathroom looking down at the sink.
"I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back," Ohlman recalled. She
doesn't remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how long she lay drugged-out on the floor.
"But I remember being pissed because I could still get up, you know?"
She wanted to be dead, she said, glancing down, a wisp of straight brown hair slipping from behind an ear across her thin face.
At that point, said Ohlman, she'd been addicted to opioids -- controlled by the drugs -- for more than three years.
"And doing all these things you don't want to do that are horrible -- you know, selling my body, stealing from my mom, sleeping
in my car," Ohlman said. "How could I not be suicidal?"
For this young woman, whose weight had dropped to about 90 pounds, who was shooting heroin just to avoid feeling violently ill,
suicide seemed a painless way out.
"You realize getting clean would be a lot of work," Ohlman said, her voice rising. "And you realize dying would be a lot less
painful. You also feel like you'll be doing everyone else a favor if you die."
Ohlman, who has now been sober for more than four years, said many drug users hit the same point, when the disease and the pursuit
of illegal drugs crushes their will to live. Ohlman is among at least
40 percent of active
drug users who wrestle with depression, anxiety or another mental health issue that increases the risk of suicide.
Measuring Suicide Among Patients Addicted To Opioids
Massachusetts, where Ohlman lives, began formally
recognizing
in May 2017 that some opioid overdose deaths are suicides. The state confirmed only about 2 percent of all overdose deaths as suicides,
but Dr. Monica Bhare l, head of the
Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said it's difficult to determine a person's true intent.
"For one thing, medical examiners use different criteria for whether suicide was involved or not," Bharel said, and the "tremendous
amount of stigma surrounding both overdose deaths and suicide sometimes makes it extremely challenging to piece everything together
and figure out unintentional and intentional."
Research on drug addiction and suicide suggests much higher numbers.
"[Based on the literature that's available], it looks like it's anywhere between 25 and 45 percent of deaths by overdose that
may be actual suicides," said
Dr. Maria Oquendo
, immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Oquendo pointed to one study of overdoses
from prescription opioids that found nearly 54 percent were unintentional. The rest were either suicide attempts or undetermined.
Several large studies show an increased risk of suicide among drug users addicted to opioids, especially women. In
a study of about 5 million veterans, women were eight
times as likely as others to be at risk for suicide, while men faced a twofold risk.
The opioid epidemic is occurring at the same time suicides have
hit a 30-year high , but Oquendo said few doctors
look for a connection.
"They are not monitoring it," said Oquendo, who chairs the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. "They are
probably not assessing it in the kinds of depths they would need to prevent some of the deaths."
That's starting to change. A few hospitals in Boston, for example, aim to ask every patient admitted about substance use, as well
as about whether they've considered hurting themselves.
"No one has answered the chicken and egg [problem]," said
Dr. Kiame Mahaniah , a family physician who runs the
Lynn Community Health Center in Lynn, Mass. Is it that patients "have mental health issues that lead to addiction, or did a life
of addiction then trigger mental health problems?"
With so little data to go on, "it's so important to provide treatment that covers all those bases," Mahaniah said.
'Deaths Of Despair'
When doctors do look deeper into the reasons patients addicted to opioids become suicidal, some economists predict they'll find
deep reservoirs of depression and pain.
In a seminal paper published in 2015, Princeton economists
Angus Deaton and
Anne Case tracked falling marriage rates,
the loss of stable middle-class jobs and rising rates of self-reported pain. The authors say opioid overdoses, suicides and diseases
related to alcoholism are all often "deaths of despair."
"We think of opioids as something that's thrown petrol on the flames and made things infinitely worse," Deaton said, "but the
underlying deep malaise would be there even without the opioids."
Many economists agree on remedies for that deep malaise. Harvard economics professor
David Cutle r said solutions include a good education, a steady
job that pays a decent wage, secure housing, food and health care.
"And also thinking about a sense of purpose in life," Cutler said. "That is, even if one is doing well financially, is there a
sense that one is contributing in a meaningful way?"
Tackling Despair In The Addiction Community
"I know firsthand the sense of hopelessness that people can feel in the throes of addiction," said
Michael Botticelli , executive director of the Grayken Center
for Addiction at Boston Medical Center; he is in recovery for an addiction to alcohol.
Botticelli said recovery programs must help patients come out of isolation and create or recreate bonds with family and friends.
"The vast majority of people I know who are in recovery often talk about this profound sense of re-establishing -- and sometimes
establishing for the first time -- a connection to a much larger community," Botticelli said.
Ohlman said she isn't sure why her attempted suicide, with multiple injections of heroin, didn't work.
"I just got really lucky," Ohlman said. "I don't know how."
A big part of her recovery strategy involves building a supportive community, she said.
"Meetings; 12-step; sponsorship and networking; being involved with people doing what I'm doing," said Ohlman, ticking through
a list of her priorities.
There's a fatal overdose at least once a week within her Cape Cod community, she said. Some are accidental, others not. Ohlman
said she's convinced that telling her story, of losing and then finding hope, will help bring those numbers down.
(propublica.org)As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines swelled
to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped
underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of
great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.
But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing
landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large
number of experienced and aging U.S. employees .
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning
document, would "correct seniority mix." It slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as
three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger,
less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica
estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American
employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those
years. In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended
to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of
internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided
via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
"... The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs ..."
"... Ego is the Enemy ..."
"... The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living ..."
"... Massimo Pigliucci does considerably better in his How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life ..."
"... Ego is the Enemy ..."
"... he Obstacle is the Way ..."
"... Acknowledging that we are powerless to rectify a wrong can be true, denying that a wrong is wrong never is. ..."
"... Both men praise the stoic practice of negative visualization as a way of preparing for (and perhaps avoiding) serious suffering. ..."
"... The Obstacle is the Way ..."
"... How to Be a Stoic ..."
"... Stoicism is about endurance, not hope. Stoicism for the masses arms readers for small problems, but leaves them unprepared for the biggest disruption of all. ..."
"... Christians cannot escape this reality. We know that we are created beings, sustained moment to moment by God. In his first Epistle, St. John the Evangelist writes almost the same thing as Epictetus: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world -- the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches -- comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever" (1 John 2:15-17, NRSVCE). ..."
No matter how much planning
my teacher did for our fourth-grade field trip to the Circle Line Ferry, my personal commitment
to Stoicism must have come as a surprise.
We students had all packed lunches, which went in three big coolers, which were loaded onto
our buses and were supposed to have come onto the ferry. Only two of the coolers were actually
transferred, and the teachers were breaking the bad news to the children with no lunches,
trying to forestall meltdowns. "All right, then," I said. "I just won't be hungry." My teacher
seemed confused, so I explained, in my little, piping voice, "There's no point in being hungry
if I don't have any food. I can't control whether there's lunch, I can only control if I'm
upset about it. So I won't be."
"... It tells me that the bottom line is that Christmas has become a harder season for White families. We are worse off because of BOTH social and economic liberalism which has only benefited an elite few. The bottom half of the White population is now in total disarray – drug addiction, demoralization, divorce, suicide, abortion, atomization, stagnant wages, declining household income and investments – and this dysfunction is creeping up the social ladder. The worst thing we can do is step on the accelerator. ..."
As we move into 2018, I am swinging away from the Republicans. I don't support the Paul Ryan
"Better Way" agenda. I don't support neoliberal economics. I think we have been going in the
wrong direction since the 1970s and don't want to continue going down this road.
Opioid Deaths: As we all know, the opioid epidemic has become a national crisis and the White working class
has been hit the hardest by it. It is a "sea of despair" out there.
White Mortality: As the family crumbles, religion recedes in his life, and his job prospects dwindle, the
middle aged White working class man is turning to drugs, alcohol and suicide: The White suicide
rate has soared since 2000:
Median Household Income: The average household in the United States is poorer in 2017 than it was in 1997:
Real GDP: Since the late 1990s, real GDP and real median household income have parted
ways:
Productivity and Real Wages: Since the 1970s, the minimum wage has parted ways with
productivity gains in the US economy:
Stock Market: Since 2000, the stock market has soared, but 10% of Americans own 80% of
stocks. The top 1% owns 38% of stocks. In 2007, 3/4th of middle class households were invested
in the stock market, but now only 50% are investors. Overall, 52% of Americans now own stocks,
which is down from 65%. The average American has less than $1,000 in their combined checking
and savings accounts.
Do you know what this tells me?
It tells me that the bottom line is that Christmas has become a harder season for White
families. We are worse off because of BOTH social and economic liberalism which has only
benefited an elite few. The bottom half of the White population is now in total disarray
– drug addiction, demoralization, divorce, suicide, abortion, atomization, stagnant
wages, declining household income and investments – and this dysfunction is creeping up
the social ladder. The worst thing we can do is step on the accelerator.
Paul Ryan and his fellow conservatives look at this and conclude we need MORE freedom. We
need lower taxes, more free trade, more deregulation, weaker unions, more immigration and less
social safety net spending. He wants to follow up tax reform with entitlement reform in 2018. I
can't but see how this is going to make an already bad situation for the White working class
even worse.
I'm not rightwing in the sense that these people are. I think their policies are harmful to
the nation. I don't think they feel any sense of duty and obligation to the working class like
we do. They believe in liberal abstractions and make an Ayn Rand fetish out of freedom whereas
we feel a sense of solidarity with them grounded in race, ethnicity and culture which tempers
class division. We recoil at the evisceration of the social fabric whereas conservatives
celebrate this blind march toward plutocracy.
Do the wealthy need to own a greater share of the stock market? Do they need to own a
greater share of our national wealth? Do we need to loosen up morals and the labor market? Do
we need more White children growing up in financially stressed, broken homes on Christmas? Is
the greatest problem facing the nation spending on anti-poverty programs? Paul Ryan and the
True Cons think so.
Yeah, I don't think so. I also think it is a good thing right now that we aren't associated
with the mainstream Right. In the long run, I bet this will pay off for us. I predict this
platform they have been standing on for decades now, which they call the conservative base, is
going to implode on them. Donald Trump was only the first sign that Atlas is about to
shrug.
(Republished from Occidental Dissent by permission of author or representative)
"... The U.S. has a retirement crisis on its hands, and with the far right controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, as well as dozens of state governments, things promise to grow immeasurably worse. ..."
"... It wasn't supposed to be this way. Past progressive presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, took important steps to make life more comfortable for aging Americans. FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law as part of his New Deal, and when LBJ passed Medicare in 1965, he established a universal health care program for those 65 and older. But the country has embraced a neoliberal economic model since the election of Ronald Reagan, and all too often, older Americans have been quick to vote for far-right Republicans antagonistic to the social safety net. ..."
"... Since then, Ryan has doubled down on his delusion that the banking sector can manage Social Security and Medicare more effectively than the federal government. Republican attacks on Medicare have become a growing concern: according to EBRI, only 38 percent of workers are confident the program will continue to provide the level of benefits it currently does. ..."
"... As 2017 winds down, Americans with health problems are still in the GOP's crosshairs -- this time because of so-called tax reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (both the House and Senate versions) includes provisions that would undermine Obamacare and cause higher health insurance premiums for older Americans. According to AARP, "Older adults ages 50-64 would be at particularly high risk under the proposal, facing average premium increases of up to $1,500 in 2019 as a result of the bill." ..."
"... Countless Americans who are unable to afford those steep premiums would lose their insurance. The CBO estimates that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would cause the number of uninsured under 65 to increase 4 million by 2019 and 13 million by 2027. The bill would also imperil Americans 65 and over by cutting $25 billion from Medicare . ..."
"... Analyzing W2 tax records in 2012, U.S. Census Bureau researchers Michael Gideon and Joshua Mitchell found that only 14 percent of private-sector employers in the U.S. were offering a 401(k) or similar retirement packages to their workers. That figure was thought to be closer to 40 percent, but Gideon and Mitchell discovered the actual number was considerably lower when smaller businesses were carefully analyzed, and that larger companies were more likely to offer 401(k) plans than smaller ones. ..."
"... Today, millions of Americans work in the gig economy who don't have full-time jobs or receive W2s, but instead receive 1099s for freelance work. ..."
"... The combination of stagnant wages and an increasingly high cost of living have been especially hellish for Americans who are trying to save for retirement. The United States' national minimum wage, a mere $7.25 per hour, doesn't begin to cover the cost of housing at a time when rents have soared nationwide. Never mind the astronomical prices in New York City, San Francisco or Washington, D.C. Median rents for one-bedroom apartments are as high as $1,010 per month in Atlanta, $960 per month in Baltimore, $860 per month in Jacksonville and $750 per month in Omaha, according to ApartmentList.com. ..."
"... yeah, Canada has a neoliberal infestation that is somewhere between the US and the UK. France has got one too, but it is less advanced. I'll enjoy my great healthcare, public transportation, and generous paid time off while I can. ..."
"... Europeans may scratch their heads, but they should recall their own histories and the long struggle to the universal benefits now enjoyed. Americans are far too complacent. This mildness is viewed by predators as weakness and the attacks will continue. ..."
"... Not sure if many of the readers here watch non-cable national broadcast news, but Pete Peterson and his foundation are as everpresent an advertiser as the pharma industry. Peterson is the strongest, best organized advocate for gutting social services, social security, and sending every last penny out of the tax-mule consumer's pocket toward wall street. The guy needs an equivalent counterpoint enemy. ..."
"... The social advantages that we still enjoy were fought in the streets, and on the "bricks" flowing with the participants blood. 8 hr. day; women's right to vote; ability and right for groups of laborers to organize; worker safety laws ..and so many others. There is no historical memory on how those rights were achieved. We are slowly slipping into an oligarchy greased by the idea that the physical possession of material things is all that matters. Sheeple, yes. ..."
"... Mmm, I think American voters get what they want in the end. They want their politicians because they believe the lies. 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of wealth. A huge percentage of poor people believe they or their kids will (not can, but will) become wealthy. Most Americans can't find France on a map. ..."
"... I may have been gone for about thirty years, but that has only sharpened my insights into America. It's very hard to see just how flawed America is from the inside but when you step outside and have some perspective, it's frightening. ..."
"... Our government, beginning with Reagan, turned its back on promoting the general welfare. The wealthy soon learned that their best return on investment was the "purchase" of politicians willing to pass the legislation they put in their hands. Much of their investment included creating the right wing media apparatus. ..."
"... The Class War is real. It has been going on for 40 years, with the Conservative army facing virtually no resistance. Conservatives welcome Russia's help. Conservatives welcome barriers to people voting. Conservatives welcome a populace that believes lies that benefit them. Conservatives welcome the social and financial decline of the entire middle class and poor as long as it profits the rich financially, and by extension enhances their power politically. ..."
"... "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery" Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774 ME 1:193, Papers 1:125 ..."
"... yes, my problem with the post as well, completely ignores democrat complicity the part where someone with a 26k salary will pay 16k in insurance? No they won't, the system would collapse in that case which will be fine with me. ..."
"... As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more than expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social media-addled Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly suspect not. ..."
"... This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and then got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because, you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do. ..."
Yves here. I imagine many readers are acutely aware of the problems outlined in this article, if not beset by them already. By
any rational standard, I should move now to a much cheaper country that will have me. I know individuals who live most of the year
in third-world and near-third world countries, but they have very cheap ways of still having a toehold in the US and not (yet or
maybe ever) getting a long-term residence visa. Ecuador is very accommodating regarding retirement visas, and a Social Security level
income goes far there, but yours truly isn't retiring any time soon. And another barrier to an international move (which recall I
did once, so I have some appreciation for what it takes), is that one ought to check out possible destinations but if you are already
time and money and energy stressed, how do you muster the resources to do that at all, let alone properly?
Aside from the potential to greatly reduce fixed costs, a second impetus for me is Medicare. I know for most people, getting on
Medicare is a big plus. I have a very rare good, very old insurance policy. When you include the cost of drug plans, Medicare is
no cheaper than what I have now, and considerably narrows my network. Moreover, I expect it to be thoroughly crapified by ten years
from now (when I am 70), which argues for getting out of Dodge sooner rather than later.
And that's before you get to another wee problem Lambert points out that I would probably not be happy in a third world or high
end second world country. But the only bargain "world city" I know of is Montreal. I'm not sure it would represent enough of an all-in
cost saving to justify the hassle of an international move and the attendant tax compliance burdens .and that charitably assumes
I could even find a way to get permanent residence. Ugh.
By Alex Henderson, who has written for the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the Pasadena Weekly and many other publications.
Follow him on Twitter @alexvhenderson. Originally published at
Alternet
Millions can no longer afford to retire, and may never be able when the GOP passes its tax bill.
The news is not good for millions of aging Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the United States who are moving closer to retirement
age. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual report on retirement preparedness for 2017, only 18 percent of
U.S.-based workers feel "very confident" about their
ability to retire comfortably ; Craig Copeland,
senior research associate for EBRI and the report's co-author, cited "debt, lack of a retirement plan at work, and low savings" as
"key factors" in workers' retirement-related anxiety. The Insured Retirement Institute finds a mere 23 percent of Baby Boomers and
24 percent of Gen Xers are confident that their savings will last in retirement. To make matters worse, more than 40 percent of Boomers
and over 30 percent of Gen Xers report having
no retirement savings whatsoever .
The U.S. has a
retirement crisis on its hands, and with the far right controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, as well
as dozens of state governments, things promise to grow immeasurably worse.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Past progressive presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, took
important steps to make life more comfortable for aging Americans. FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law as part of
his New Deal, and when LBJ passed Medicare in 1965, he established a universal health care program for those 65 and older. But the
country has embraced a neoliberal economic model since the election of Ronald Reagan, and all too often, older Americans have been
quick to vote for far-right Republicans antagonistic to the social safety net.
In the 2016 presidential election, 55 percent of voters 50 and older
cast their ballots for Donald Trump
against just 44 percent for Hillary Clinton. (This was especially true of older white voters; 90 percent of black voters 45 and older,
as well as 67 percent of Latino voters in the same age range voted Democratic.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) economic proposals may have been wildly popular with millennials, but no demographic has a greater
incentive to vote progressive than Americans facing retirement. According to research conducted by the American Association of Retired
Persons, the three greatest concerns of Americans 50 and older are Social Security, health care costs and caregiving for loved ones
-- all areas that have been targeted by Republicans.
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a
devotee of social Darwinist Ayn Rand , has made no secret of his desire to
privatize
Social Security and replace traditional Medicare with a voucher program. Had George W. Bush had his way and turned Social Security
over to Wall Street, the economic crash of September 2008 might have left millions of senior citizens homeless.
Since then, Ryan has doubled down on his delusion that the banking sector can manage Social Security and Medicare more effectively
than the federal government. Republican attacks on Medicare have become a growing concern: according to EBRI, only 38 percent of
workers are confident the program will continue to provide the level of benefits it currently does.
The GOP's obsession with abolishing the Affordable Care Act is the most glaring example of its disdain for aging Americans. Yet
Obamacare has been a blessing for Boomers and Gen Xers who have preexisting conditions. The ACA's guaranteed issue plans make no
distinction between a 52-year-old American with diabetes, heart disease or asthma and a 52-year-old who has never had any of those
illnesses. And AARP notes that under the ACA, the uninsured rate for Americans 50 and older decreased from 15 percent in 2013 to
9 percent in 2016.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the replacement bills Donald Trump hoped to ram through Congress this year would
have resulted in staggering
premium hikes for Americans over 50. The CBO's analysis of the American Health Care Act, one of the earlier versions of Trumpcare,
showed that a 64-year-old American making $26,500 per year could have gone from paying $1,700 annually in premiums to just over $16,000.
The CBO also estimated that the GOP's American Health Care Act would have deprived
23 million Americans of health insurance by 2026.
As 2017 winds down, Americans with health problems are still in the GOP's crosshairs -- this time because of so-called tax
reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (both the House and Senate versions) includes provisions that would undermine Obamacare and cause
higher health insurance premiums for older Americans. According to AARP, "Older adults ages 50-64 would be at
particularly high risk under the proposal, facing average premium increases of up to $1,500 in 2019 as a result of the bill."
The CBO estimates that the bill will cause premiums to spike an average of 10 percent overall, with average premiums increasing
$890 per year for a 50-year-old, $1,100 per year for a 55-year-old, $1,350 per year for a 60-year-old and $1,490 per year for a 64-year-old.
Premium increases, according to the CBO, would vary from state to state; in Maine, average premiums for a 64-year-old would rise
as much as $1,750 per year.
Countless Americans who are unable to afford those steep premiums would lose their insurance. The CBO estimates that the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act would cause the number of uninsured under 65 to increase 4 million by 2019 and 13 million by 2027. The bill would
also imperil Americans 65 and over by
cutting $25 billion from
Medicare .
As morally reprehensible as the GOP's tax legislation may be, it is merely an acceleration of the redistribution of wealth from
the bottom to the top that America has undergone since the mid-1970s. (President Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid right-winger
with authoritarian tendencies, but he expanded Medicare and supported universal health care.) Between the decline of labor unions,
age discrimination, stagnant wages, an ever-rising cost of living, low interest rates, and a shortage of retirement accounts, millions
of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers may never be able to retire.
Traditional
defined-benefit
pensions were once a mainstay of American labor, especially among unionized workers. But according to Pew Charitable Trusts,
only
13 percent of Baby Boomers still have them (among millennials, the number falls to 6 percent). In recent decades, 401(k) plans
have become much more prominent, yet a majority of American workers don't have them either.
Analyzing W2 tax records in 2012, U.S. Census Bureau researchers Michael Gideon and Joshua Mitchell found that only 14 percent
of private-sector employers in the U.S. were offering a 401(k) or similar retirement packages to their workers. That figure was thought
to be closer to 40 percent, but Gideon and Mitchell discovered the actual number was considerably lower when smaller businesses were
carefully analyzed, and that larger companies were more likely to offer 401(k) plans than smaller ones.
Today, millions of Americans work in the gig economy who don't have full-time jobs or receive W2s, but instead receive 1099s
for freelance work. Tax-deferred SEP-IRAs were once a great, low-risk way for freelancers to save for retirement without relying
exclusively on Social Security, but times have changed since the 1980s and '90s when interest rates were considerably higher for
certificates of deposit and savings accounts. According to Bankrate.com,
average rates for one-year
CDs dropped from 11.27 percent in 1984 to 8.1 percent in 1990 to 5.22 percent in 1995 to under 1 percent in 2010, where it currently
remains.
The combination of stagnant wages and an increasingly high cost of living have been especially hellish for Americans who are
trying to save for retirement. The United States' national minimum wage, a mere $7.25 per hour, doesn't begin to cover the cost of
housing at a time when rents have soared nationwide. Never mind the astronomical prices in New York City, San Francisco or Washington,
D.C. Median rents for one-bedroom apartments
are as high as $1,010 per month in Atlanta, $960 per month in Baltimore, $860 per month in Jacksonville and $750 per month in Omaha,
according to ApartmentList.com.
That so many older Americans are renting at all is ominous in its own right. FDR made home ownership a primary goal of the New
Deal, considering it a key component of a thriving middle class. But last year, the Urban Institute found that 19 million Americans
who previously owned a home are now renting, 31 percent between the ages of 36 and 45. Laurie Goodman, one of the study's authors,
contends the Great Recession has "permanently raised the number of renters," and that the explosion of foreclosures has hit Gen Xers
especially hard.
The severity of the U.S. retirement crisis is further addressed in journalist
Jessica Bruder's new book
"Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century," which follows Americans in their 50s, 60s and even 70s
living in RVs or vans , barely eking out a living doing
physically demanding, seasonal temp work from harvesting sugar beets to cleaning toilets at campgrounds. Several had high-paying
jobs before their lives were blown apart by the layoffs, foreclosures and corporate downsizing of the Great Recession. Bruder speaks
with former college professors and software professionals who now find themselves destitute, teetering on the brink of homelessness
and forced to do backbreaking work for next to nothing. Unlike the big banks, they never received a bailout.
These neo-nomads recall the transients of the 1930s, themselves victims of Wall Street's recklessness. But whereas FDR won in
a landslide in 1932 and aggressively pursued a program of progressive economic reforms, Republicans in Congress have set out to shred
what little remains of the social safety net, giving
huge tax breaks
to millionaires and billionaires . The older voters who swept Trump into office may have signed their own death warrants.
If aging Americans are going to be saved from this dystopian future, the U.S. will have to forge a new Great Society. Programs
like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will need to be strengthened, universal health care must become a reality and age discrimination
in the workplace will have to be punished as a civil rights violation like racial and gender-based discrimination. If not, millions
of Gen Xers and Boomers will spend their golden years scraping for pennies.
I certainly will never go back to the States for these and other reasons. I have a friend, also an American citizen, who travels
frequently back to California to visit his son. He is truly worried about getting sick or having an accident when he is there
since he knows it might bankrupt him. As he jokes, he would be happy to have another heart attack here in France since it's free!
For those of you who have traveled the world and talked to people, you probably know that most foreigners are perplexed by
America's attitude to health care and social services. The richest nation in the world thinks that health and social security
(in the larger sense of not being forced into the street) are not rights at all. Europeans scratch their heads at this.
The only solution is education and information, but they are appalling in America. America remains the most ignorant and worst
educated of the developed nations and is probably beaten by many developing nations. It is this ignorance and stupidity that gets
Americans to vote for the likes of Trump or any of the other rapacious millionaires they send to office every year.
A first step would be for Americans to insist that Congress eliminate its incredibly generous and life-long healthcare plans
for elected officials. They should have to do what the rest of Americans do. Of course, since about 95% of Congress are millionaires,
it might not be effective. But it's a start.
France has its share of problems, but boy do they pale next to the problems in America or even Canada. Life here is overall
quite pleasant and I have no desire to go back to N.A.
yeah, Canada has a neoliberal infestation that is somewhere between the US and the UK. France has got one too, but it is
less advanced. I'll enjoy my great healthcare, public transportation, and generous paid time off while I can.
The newest neoliberal effort in Canada was put forward by our
Minister of Finance (a millionaire) who is touting a bill that will get rid of defined benefit pension plans given to public
employees for so-called target benefit pension plans. The risk for target plans is taken by the recipient. Morneau's former firm
promotes target benefit pension plans and the change could benefit Morneau himself as he did not put his assets from his firm
in a blind trust. At the very least, he has a conflict of interest and should probably resign.
There is always an insidious group of wealthy people here who would like to re-make the world in their own image. I fear for
the future.
Europeans may scratch their heads, but they should recall their own histories and the long struggle to the universal benefits
now enjoyed. Americans are far too complacent. This mildness is viewed by predators as weakness and the attacks will continue.
We really should be able to turn this around, and have an obligation to ourselves and our 'nation state' , IF there were a
group of folks running on a fairness, one-for-all, all-for-one platform. That sure isn't the present two-sides-of-the-same-coin
Democraps and Republicrunts.
Not sure if many of the readers here watch non-cable national broadcast news, but Pete Peterson and his foundation are
as everpresent an advertiser as the pharma industry. Peterson is the strongest, best organized advocate for gutting social services,
social security, and sending every last penny out of the tax-mule consumer's pocket toward wall street. The guy needs an equivalent
counterpoint enemy.
Check it out, and be vigilant in dispelling his message and mission. Thanks for running this article.
Running away: the almost-haves run to another nation state, the uber-wealthy want to leave the earth, or live in their private
Idaho in the Rockies or on the Ocean. What's left for the least among us? Whatever we create? https://www.pgpf.org/
I think pathologically optimistic is a better term than complacent. Every time someone dumps on them, their response is usually
along the lines of "Don't worry, it'll get better," "Everything works itself out in the end," "maybe we'll win the lottery," my
personal favorite "things will get better, just give it time" (honestly it's been 40 years of this neoliberal bullcrap, how much
more time are we supposed to give it?), "this is just a phase" or "we can always bring it back later and better than ever." The
last one is most troubling because after 20 years of witnessing things in the public sphere disappearing, I've yet to see a single
thing return in any form at all.
I'm not sure where this annoying optimism came from but I sure wish it would go away.
The "optimism" comes from having a lack of historical memory. So many social protections that we have/had is seen as somehow
coming out of the ether benevolently given without any social struggles. The lack of historical education on this subject in particular
is appalling. Now, most would probably look for an "APP" on their "dumbphones" to solve the problem.
The social advantages that we still enjoy were fought in the streets, and on the "bricks" flowing with the participants
blood. 8 hr. day; women's right to vote; ability and right for groups of laborers to organize; worker safety laws ..and so many
others. There is no historical memory on how those rights were achieved. We are slowly slipping into an oligarchy greased by the
idea that the physical possession of material things is all that matters. Sheeple, yes.
WOW! You must have been outside the U.S. for a long time. Your comment seems to suggest we still have some kind of democracy
here. We don't get to pick which rapacious millionaires we get to vote for and it doesn't matter any way since whichever one we
pick from the sad offerings ends up with policies dictated from elsewhere.
Mmm, I think American voters get what they want in the end. They want their politicians because they believe the lies.
19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of wealth. A huge percentage of poor people believe they or their kids will (not
can, but will) become wealthy. Most Americans can't find France on a map.
So, yes, you DO get to pick your rapacious millionaire. You send the same scumbags back to Washington every year because it's
not him, it the other guys who are the problem. One third of Americans support Trump! Really, really support him. They think he
is Jesus, MacArthur and Adam Smith all rolled up into one.
I may have been gone for about thirty years, but that has only sharpened my insights into America. It's very hard to see
just how flawed America is from the inside but when you step outside and have some perspective, it's frightening.
The Democrat party isn't a reform party. Thinking it is so, is because of the "No Other Choice" meme. Not saying that the Republican
party works in my favor. They don't. Political reform goes deeper than reforming either main party. It means going to a European
plurality system (with its own downside). That way growing Third parties will be viable, if they have popular, as opposed to millionaire,
support. I don't see this happening, because of Citizens United, but if all you have is hope, then you have to go with that.
Had George W. Bush had his way and turned Social Security over to Wall Street, the economic crash of September 2008 might
have left millions of senior citizens homeless.
Substitute Bill Clinton for George Bush in that sentence and it works just as well. Neoliberalism is a bipartisan project.
And many of the potential and actual horrors described above arise from the price distortions of the US medical system with
Democratic acquiescence in said system making things worse. The above article reads like a DNC press release.
And finally while Washington politicians of both parties have been threatening Social Security for years that doesn't mean
its third rail status has been repealed. The populist tremors of the last election -- which have caused our elites to lose their
collective mind -- could be a mere prelude to what will happen in the event of a full scale assault on the safety net.
Substitute Obama's quest for a Grand Bargain as well.
Our government, beginning with Reagan, turned its back on promoting the general welfare. The wealthy soon learned that
their best return on investment was the "purchase" of politicians willing to pass the legislation they put in their hands. Much
of their investment included creating the right wing media apparatus.
The Class War is real. It has been going on for 40 years, with the Conservative army facing virtually no resistance. Conservatives
welcome Russia's help. Conservatives welcome barriers to people voting. Conservatives welcome a populace that believes lies that
benefit them. Conservatives welcome the social and financial decline of the entire middle class and poor as long as it profits
the rich financially, and by extension enhances their power politically.
If retirees flee our country that will certainly please the Conservatives as that will be fewer critics (enemies). Also less
need or demand for social programs.
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished
period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing
[a people] to slavery" Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774 ME 1:193, Papers 1:125
yes, my problem with the post as well, completely ignores democrat complicity the part where someone with a 26k salary
will pay 16k in insurance? No they won't, the system would collapse in that case which will be fine with me.
"President Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid right-winger with authoritarian tendencies, but he expanded Medicare and
supported universal health care."
"Gimme that old time Republican!"
One of the reasons I love NC is that most political economic analysis is often more harsh on the Democrats than the Repubs
so I am a bit dismayed how this article is way too easy on Team D. How many little (and not so little) knives in the back from
Clinton and Obama? Is a knife in the chest that much worse?
This entire thread is simply heartbreaking, Americans have had their money, their freedom, their privacy, their health, and
sometimes their very lives taken away from them by the State. But the heartbreaking part is that they feel they are powerless
to do anything at all about it so are just trying to leave.
But "People should not fear the government; the government should fear the people"
As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more
than expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social
media-addled Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly
suspect not.
This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and
then got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because,
you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others
about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do.
"... And, recent studies have shown, the longer you're out of work - especially if you're older and out of work - the harder it becomes to get a job offer. ..."
I thought this was an interesting article. Apologies if this has been posted on NC
already.
A stunning 33% of job seekers ages 55 and older are long-term unemployed, according to
the AARP Public Policy Institute. The average length of unemployment for the roughly 1.2
million people 55+ who are out of work: seven to nine months. "It's emotionally devastating
for them," said Carl Van Horn, director of Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for
Workforce Development, at a Town Hall his center and the nonprofit WorkingNation held
earlier this year in New Brunswick, N.J.
... ... ...
The fight faced by the long-term unemployed
And, recent studies have shown, the longer you're out of work - especially if you're older and out of work - the harder
it becomes to get a job offer.
The job-finding rate declines by roughly 50% within eight months of unemployment, according to a 2016 paper by economists
Gregor Jarosch of Stanford University and Laura Pilossoph of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "Unemployment duration
has a strongly negative effect on the likelihood of subsequent employment," wrote researchers from the University of
Maryland and the U.S. Census Bureau in another 2016 paper.
"Once upon a time, you could take that first job and it would lead to the next job and the job after that," said Town
Hall panelist John Colborn, chief operating officer at the nonprofit JEVS Human Services, of Philadelphia. "The notion of a
career ladder offered some hope of getting back into the labor market. The rungs of the ladder are getting harder and harder
to find and some of them are broken."
In inner cities, said Kimberly McClain, CEO of The Newark Alliance, "there's an extra layer beyond being older and out of
work. There are issues of race and poverty and being defined by your ZIP Code. There's an incredible sense of urgency."
... ... ...
Filling a work gap
If you are over 50, unemployed and have a work gap right now, the Town Hall speakers said, fill it by volunteering,
getting an internship, doing project work, job-shadowing someone in a field you want to be in or taking a class to re-skill.
These kind of things "make a candidate a lot more attractive," said Colborn. Be sure to note them in your cover letter and
résumé.
Town Hall panelist Amanda Mullan, senior vice president and chief human resources officer of the New Jersey Resources
Corp. (a utility company based in Wall, N.J.), said that when her company is interviewing someone who has been out of work
lately, "we will ask: 'What have you done during that time frame?' If we get 'Nuthin,' that shows something about the
individual, from a motivational perspective."
... ... ...
The relief of working again
Finally finding work when you're over 50 and unemployed for a stretch can be a relief for far more than financial
reasons.
"Once I landed my job, the thing I most looked forward to was the weekend," said Konopka. "Not to relax, but because I
didn't have to think about finding a job anymore. That's 24/7 in your head. You're always thinking on a Saturday: 'If I'm
not doing something to find a job, will there be a posting out there?'"
At 5:30 every morning, Tony Gwiazdowski rolls out of bed, brews a pot of coffee and carefully arranges his laptop, cell phone
and notepad like silverware across the kitchen table.
And then he waits.
Gwiazdowski, 57, has been waiting for 16 months. Since losing his job as a transportation sales manager in February 2009, he wakes
each morning to the sobering reminder that, yes, he is still unemployed. So he pushes aside the fatigue, throws on some clothes and
sends out another flurry of resumes and cheery cover letters.
But most days go by without a single phone call. And around sundown, when he hears his neighbors returning home from work, Gwiazdowski
-- the former mayor of Hillsborough -- can't help but allow himself one tiny sigh of resignation.
"You sit there and you wonder, 'What am I doing wrong?'" said Gwiazdowski, who finds companionship in his 2-year-old golden retriever,
Charlie, until his wife returns from work.
"The worst moment is at the end of the day when it's 4:30 and you did everything you could, and the phone hasn't rung, the e-mails
haven't come through."
Gwiazdowski is one of a growing number of chronically unemployed workers in New Jersey and across the country who are struggling
to get through what is becoming one long, jobless nightmare -- even as the rest of the economy has begun to show signs of recovery.
Nationwide, 46 percent of the unemployed -- 6.7 million Americans -- have been without work for at least half a year, by far the
highest percentage recorded since the U.S. Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948.
In New Jersey, nearly 40 percent of the 416,000 unemployed workers last year fit that profile, up from about 20 percent in previous
years, according to the department, which provides only annual breakdowns for individual states. Most of them were unemployed for
more than a year.
But the repercussions of chronic unemployment go beyond the loss of a paycheck or the realization that one might never find the
same kind of job again. For many, the sinking feeling of joblessness -- with no end in sight -- can take a psychological toll, experts
say.
Across the state, mental health crisis units saw a 20 percent increase in demand last year as more residents reported suffering
from unemployment-related stress, according to the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies.
"The longer the unemployment continues, the more impact it will have on their personal lives and mental health," said Shauna Moses,
the association's associate executive director. "There's stress in the marriage, with the kids, other family members, with friends."
And while a few continue to cling to optimism, even the toughest admit there are moments of despair: Fear of never finding work,
envy of employed friends and embarassment at having to tell acquaintances that, nope, still no luck.
"When they say, 'Hi Mayor,' I don't tell a lot of people I'm out of work -- I say I'm semi-retired," said Gwiazdowski, who maxed
out on unemployment benefits several months ago.
"They might think, 'Gee, what's wrong with him? Why can't he get a job?' It's a long story and maybe people really don't care
and now they want to get away from you."
SECOND TIME AROUND
Lynn Kafalas has been there before, too. After losing her computer training job in 2000, the East Hanover resident took four agonizing
years to find new work -- by then, she had refashioned herself into a web designer.
That not-too-distant experience is why Kafalas, 52, who was laid off again eight months ago, grows uneasier with each passing
day. Already, some of her old demons have returned, like loneliness, self-doubt and, worst of all, insomnia. At night, her mind races
to dissect the latest interview: What went wrong? What else should she be doing? And why won't even Barnes & Noble hire her?
"It's like putting a stopper on my life -- I can't move on," said Kafalas, who has given up karate lessons, vacations and regular
outings with friends. "Everything is about the interviews."
And while most of her friends have been supportive, a few have hinted to her that she is doing something wrong, or not doing enough.
The remarks always hit Kafalas with a pang.
In a recent study, researchers at Rutgers University found that the chronically unemployed are prone to high levels of stress,
anxiety, depression, loneliness and even substance abuse, which take a toll on their self-esteem and personal relationships.
"They're the forgotten group," said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers,
and a co-author of the report. "And the longer you are unemployed, the less likely you are to get a job."
Of the 900 unemployed workers first interviewed last August for the study, only one in 10 landed full-time work by March of this
year, and only half of those lucky few expressed satisfaction with their new jobs. Another one in 10 simply gave up searching.
Among those who were still unemployed, many struggled to make ends meet by borrowing from friends or family, turning to government
food stamps and forgoing health care, according to the study.
More than half said they avoided all social contact, while slightly less than half said they had lost touch with close friends.
Six in 10 said they had problems sleeping.
Kafalas says she deals with her chronic insomnia by hitting the gym for two hours almost every evening, lifting weights and pounding
the treadmill until she feels tired enough to fall asleep.
"Sometimes I forget what day it is. Is it Tuesday? And then I'll think of what TV show ran the night before," she said. "Waiting
is the toughest part."
AGE A FACTOR
Generally, the likelihood of long-term unemployment increases with age, experts say. A report by the National Employment Law Project
this month found that nearly half of those who were unemployed for six months or longer were at least 45 years old. Those between
16 and 24 made up just 14 percent.
Tell that to Adam Blank, 24, who has been living with his girlfriend and her parents at their Martinsville home since losing his
sales job at Best Buy a year and half ago.
Blank, who graduated from Rutgers with a major in communications, says he feels like a burden sometimes, especially since his
girlfriend, Tracy Rosen, 24, works full-time at a local nonprofit. He shows her family gratitude with small chores, like taking out
the garbage, washing dishes, sweeping floors and doing laundry.
Still, he often feels inadequate.
"All I'm doing on an almost daily basis is sitting around the house trying to keep myself from going stir-crazy," said Blank,
who dreams of starting a social media company.
When he is feeling particularly low, Blank said he turns to a tactic employed by prisoners of war in Vietnam: "They used to build
dream houses in their head to help keep their sanity. It's really just imagining a place I can call my own."
LESSONS LEARNED
Meanwhile, Gwiazdowski, ever the optimist, says unemployment has taught him a few things.
He has learned, for example, how to quickly assess an interviewer's age and play up or down his work experience accordingly --
he doesn't want to appear "threatening" to a potential employer who is younger. He has learned that by occasionally deleting and
reuploading his resume to job sites, his entry appears fresh.
"It's almost like a game," he said, laughing. "You are desperate, but you can't show it."
But there are days when he just can't find any humor in his predicament -- like when he finishes a great interview but receives
no offer, or when he hears a fellow job seeker finally found work and feels a slight twinge of jealousy.
"That's what I'm missing -- putting on that shirt and tie in the morning and going to work," he said.
The memory of getting dressed for work is still so vivid, Gwiazdowski says, that he has to believe another job is just around
the corner.
"You always have to hope that that morning when you get up, it's going to be the day," he said.
"Today is going to be the day that something is going to happen."
I collect from the state of iowa, was on tier I and when the gov't recessed without passing extension, iowa stopped paying
tier I claims that were already open, i was scheduled to be on tier I until july 15th, and its gone now, as a surprise, when i
tried to claim my week this week i was notified. SURPRISE, talk about stress.
This is terrible....just wait until RIF'd teachers hit the unemployment offices....but then, this is what NJ wanted...fired
teachers who are to blame for the worst recession our country has seen in 150 years...thanks GWB.....thanks Donald Rumsfeld......thanks
Dick Cheney....thanks Karl "Miss Piggy" Rove...and thank you Mr. Big Boy himself...Gov Krispy Kreame!
For readers who care about this nation's unemployed- Call your Senators to pass HR 4213, the "Extenders" bill. Unfortunately,
it does not add UI benefits weeks, however it DOES continue the emergency federal tiers of UI. If it does not pass this week many
of us are cut off at 26 wks. No tier 1, 2 -nothing.
The longer you are unemployed, the more you are effected by those factors.
Notable quotes:
"... The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they suffer few, and minor, ill effects. ..."
"... Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system. ..."
"... Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress. Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises. ..."
"... Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem. ..."
"... One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available. ..."
"... Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. ..."
"... Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either. ..."
"... You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard. ..."
It's almost impossible to describe the various psychological impacts, because there are so many. There are sometimes serious consequences,
including suicide, and, some would say worse, chronic depression.
There's not really a single cause and effect. It's a compound effect, and unemployment, by adding stress, affects people, often
badly.
The world doesn't need any more untrained psychologists, and we're not pretending to give medical advice. That's for professionals.
Everybody is different, and their problems are different. What we can do is give you an outline of the common problems, and what
you can do about them.
The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent
they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they
suffer few, and minor, ill effects.
For others, there are a series of issues, and the big three are:
Stress
Anger, and other negative emotions
Depression
Stress
Stress is Stage One. It's a natural result of the situation. Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as
long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation
over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system.
Over an extended period, the body's natural hormonal balances are affected, and this can lead to problems. These are actually
physical issues, but the effects are mental, and the first obvious effects are, naturally, emotional.
Anger, and other negative emotions
Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite
intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress.
Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those
affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises.
If the actual situation was already bad, this mental state makes it a lot worse. Constant aggravation doesn't help people to keep
a sense of perspective. Clear thinking isn't easy when under constant stress.
Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these
conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem.
One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress
over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available.
If you have reservations about seeking help, bear in mind it can't possibly be any worse than the problem.
Depression
Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. This is the next stage, and it's caused by hormonal imbalances which
affect serotonin. It's actually a physical problem, but it has mental effects which are sometimes devastating, and potentially life
threatening.
The common symptoms are:
Difficulty in focusing mentally, thoughts all over the place in no logical order
Fits of crying for no known reason
Illogical, or irrational patterns of thought and behavior
Sadness
Suicidal thinking
It's a disgusting experience. No level of obscenity could possibly describe it. Depression is misery on a level people wouldn't
conceive in a nightmare. At this stage the patient needs help, and getting it is actually relatively easy. It's convincing the person they need to do something about it that's difficult. Again, the mental state is working against the person. Even admitting there's a problem is hard for many people in this condition.
Generally speaking, a person who is trusted is the best person to tell anyone experiencing the onset of depression to seek help. Important: If you're experiencing any of those symptoms:
Get on the phone and make an appointment to see your doctor. It takes half an hour for a diagnosis, and you can be on your
way home with a cure in an hour. You don't have to suffer. The sooner you start to get yourself out of depression, the better.
Avoid any antidepressants with the so-called withdrawal side effects. They're not too popular with patients, and are under
some scrutiny. The normal antidepressants work well enough for most people.
Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly
the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either.
Alcohol, in particular, makes depression much worse. Alcohol is a depressant, itself, and it's also a nasty chemical mix with
all those stress hormones.
If you've ever had alcohol problems, or seen someone with alcohol wrecking their lives, depression makes things about a million
times worse.
Just don't do it. Steer clear of any so-called stimulants, because they don't mix with antidepressants, either.
Unemployment and staying healthy
The above is what you need to know about the risks of unemployment to your health and mental well being.
These situations are avoidable.
Your best defense against the mental stresses and strains of unemployment, and their related problems is staying healthy.
We can promise you that is nothing less than the truth. The healthier you are, the better your defenses against stress, and the
more strength you have to cope with situations.
Basic health is actually pretty easy to achieve:
Diet
Eat real food, not junk, and make sure you're getting enough food. Your body can't work with resources it doesn't have. Good food
is a real asset, and you'll find you don't get tired as easily. You need the energy reserves.
Give yourself a good selection of food that you like, that's also worth eating.
The good news is that plain food is also reasonably cheap, and you can eat as much as you need. Basic meals are easy enough to
prepare, and as long as you're getting all the protein veg and minerals you need, you're pretty much covered.
You can also use a multivitamin cap, or broad spectrum supplements, to make sure you're getting all your trace elements. Also
make sure you're getting the benefits of your food by taking acidophilus or eating yogurt regularly.
Exercise
You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic
exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard.
Don't just sit and suffer
If anything's wrong, check it out when it starts, not six months later. Most medical conditions become serious when they're allowed
to get worse.
For unemployed people the added risk is also that they may prevent you getting that job, or going for interviews. If something's
causing you problems, get rid of it.
Nobody who's been through the blender of unemployment thinks it's fun.
Anyone who's really done it tough will tell you one thing:
Don't be a victim. Beat the problem, and you'll really appreciate the feeling.
"... According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers -- I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion ..."
"... toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen. ..."
"... ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later, all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring. ..."
"... I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance ..."
"... That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. ..."
"... I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for food stamps. ..."
Nichole Gracely has a master's degree and was one of Amazon's best order pickers. Now, after
protesting the company, she's homeless.
I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon.
According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers -- I was a machine,
and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that
I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion.
During peak season, I trained incoming temps regularly. When that was over, I'd be an ordinary
order picker once again, toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours,
with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen.
Superb performance did not guarantee job security. ISS is the temp agency that provides warehouse
labor for Amazon and they are at the center of the SCOTUS case Integrity Staffing Solutions
vs. Busk. ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work.
They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later,
all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring.
I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived
under constant surveillance. Amazon could mandate overtime and I would have to comply with any
schedule change they deemed necessary, and if there was not any work, they would send us home
early without pay. I started to fall behind on my bills.
At some point, I lost all fear. I had already been through hell. I protested Amazon. The
gag order was lifted and I was free to speak. I spent my last days in a lovely apartment constructing
arguments on discussion boards, writing articles and talking to reporters. That was 2012 and
Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. I walked away
from Amazon's warehouse and didn't have any other source of income lined up.
I cashed in on my excellent credit, took out cards, and used them to pay rent and buy food
because it would be six months before I could receive my first unemployment compensation check.
I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular
income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania
as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for
food stamps.
I furthered my Amazon protest while homeless in Seattle. When the Hachette dispute flared
up I "flew a sign," street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: "I was an order
picker at amazon.com. Earned degrees. Been published. Now,
I'm homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps."
I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and
I make more money per hour than I will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money
and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.
I flew my protest sign outside Whole Foods while Amazon corporate employees were on lunch
break, and they gawked. I went to my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per
hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with them. And that was in Seattle.
One woman asked, "What are you writing?" I told her about the descent from working poor to homeless,
income inequality, my personal experience. She mentioned Thomas Piketty's book, we chatted a
little, she handed me $10 and wished me luck. Another guy said, "Damn, that's a great story!
I'd read it," and handed me a few bucks.
U6 underemployment rate rose +0.1% from 7.9% to 8.0%
Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and
participation rates
Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: rose +53,000 from 5.175 million to 5.238
million
Part time for economic reasons: rose +48,000 from 4.753 million to 4.801 million
Employment/population ratio ages 25-54: rose +0.2% from 78.8% to 79.0%
Average Weekly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose +$.0.5 from a
downwardly revised $22.19 to $22.24, up +2.4% YoY. (Note: you may be reading different
information about wages elsewhere. They are citing average wages for all private workers. I
use wages for nonsupervisory personnel, to come closer to the situation for ordinary
workers.)
Holding Trump accountable on manufacturing and mining jobs
Trump specifically campaigned on bringing back manufacturing and mining jobs. Is he keeping
this promise?
Manufacturing jobs rose by +31,000 for an average of +15,000 a month vs. the last seven
years of Obama's presidency in which an average of 10,300 manufacturing jobs were added
each month.
Coal mining jobs fell -400 for an average of -15 a month vs. the last seven years of
Obama's presidency in which an average of -300 jobs were lost each month
September was revised upward by +20,000. October was revised downward by -17,000, for a
net change of +3,000.
likbez December 9, 2017 7:52 pm
There are now large categories of jobs, both part-time and full time, that can't provide
for living and are paying below or close to minimum wage (plantation economy jobs). it
looks like under neoliberalism this is the fastest growing category of jobs.
Examples are Uber and Lift jobs (which are as close to predatory scam as one can get) .
Many jobs in service industry, especially retail. See for example
On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice
it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked
for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to.
My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few
factors regardless of outsourcing or not.
Notable quotes:
"... On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not. ..."
On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice
it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've
worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced
to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely
on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not.
The first is a golden rule of sorts on doing anything:
Cheap
Quality
Fast
You can only pick two; NO exceptions. I've encountered so many upper management types that foolishly think they can get away
with having all three. In my experience 9/10 of the time it turns out a lack of quality bites them in the butt sometime down the
road when they assumed they somehow managed to achieve all three.
The second is communication. Mostly everyone in at least the US has experienced the pain of being subjected to some company's
outsourced customer service and/or tech support that can't effectively communicate with both parties on the same page of understanding
one another. I really shouldn't need to explain why communication, understanding one another is so important. Sadly this is something
I have to constantly explain to my current boss with events like today where my non-outsourced colleague rebooted a number of
production critical servers when he was asked to reboot just one secondary server.
Third is the employee's skill in doing the job. Again, another obvious one, but I've observed that it isn't always on the hiring
menu. Additionally I've seen some people that interview well, but couldn't create a "Hello World" HTML page for a web developer
position as an example. There's no point in hiring or keeping a hired individual to do a job that they lack the skill to do; even
if it's an entry-level position with training, that person should be willing to put for the effort to learn and take notes. I
accept that everyone has their own unique skills that can aide or hinder their ability to learn and be proficient with a particular
task. However, I firmly believe anyone can learn to do anything as long as they put their mind to it. I barely have any artistic
ability and my drawing skills are stick figures at best (XKCD is miles ahead of me); if I were to put forth the effort to learn
how to draw and paint, I could become a good artist. I taught an A+ technician certification class at a tech school a while back
and I had a retired Marine that served in the Vietnam War as one of my students. One could argue his best skill was killing and
blowing stuff up. He worked hard and learned to be a technician and passed CompTIA's certification test without a problem. That
leads me to the next point.
Lastly is attitude of the end employee doing the actual work. It boggles my mind how so many managers loose the plot when it
comes to employee morale and motivation. Productivity generally is improved when those two are improved and it usually doesn't
have to involve spending a bunch of money. The employee's attitude should be getting the work done correctly in a reasonable amount
of time. Demanding it is a poor approach. Poisoning an employee will result in poisoning the company in a small manner all the
way up to the failure of the company. Employees should be encouraged through actual morale improvements, positive motivation,
and incentives for doing more work at the same and/or better quality level.
Outsourcing or keeping things in house can be successful and possibly economical if approached correctly with the appropriate
support of upper management.
How dramatic? Isn't outsourcing done (like it or not) to reduce costs?
Outsourcing is done to reduce the projected costs that PHBs see. In reality, outsourcing can lead to increased costs and delays
due to time zone differences and language/cultural barriers.
I have seen it work reasonably well, but only when the extra effort and delays caused by the increased need for rework that
comes from complex software projects. If you are working with others on software, it is so much quicker to produce quality software
if the person who knows the business requirements is sitting right next to the person doing design and the person cutting code
and the person doing the testing, etc, etc.
If these people or groups are scattered around the world with different cultures and native languages, communication can suffer,
increasing misunderstanding and reducing the quality. I have personally seen this lead to massive increase in code defects in
a project that went from in house development to outsourced.
Also, time zone differences cause problems. I have noticed that the further west people live, the less likely they are to take
into account how far behind they are. Working with people who fail to realise that their Monday morning is the next day for someone
else, or that by the time they are halfway through Friday, others are already on their weekend is not only frustrating, it leads
to slow turn around of bug fixes, etc.
Yeah, I'm told outsourcing keeps costs down, but I am yet to see conclusive evidence of that in the real world. At least in
complex development. YMMV for support/call centre stuff.
"... What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams, server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything worked, and I mean everything. ..."
"... Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free ticket for people to turn a blind eye. ..."
"... Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no." As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups. Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team is. ..."
"... The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue. ..."
What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams,
server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything
worked, and I mean everything. Every application, every piece of network gear, and how every server was configured -- these
people could save a business in times of disaster.
Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT
groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does
work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and
know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free
ticket for people to turn a blind eye.
Specialization
You know the story: Company installs new application, nobody understands it yet, so an expert is hired. Often, the person with
a certification in using the new application only really knows how to run that application. Perhaps they aren't interested in
learning anything else, because their skill is in high demand right now. And besides, everything else in the infrastructure is
run by people who specialize in those elements. Everything is taken care of.
Except, how do these teams communicate when changes need to take place? Are the storage administrators teaching the Windows
administrators about storage multipathing; or worse logging in and setting it up because it's faster for the storage gurus to
do it themselves? A fundamental level of knowledge is often lacking, which makes it very difficult for teams to brainstorm about
new ways evolve IT services. The business environment has made it OK for IT staffers to specialize and only learn one thing.
If you hire someone certified in the application, operating system, or network vendor you use, that is precisely what you get.
Certifications may be a nice filter to quickly identify who has direct knowledge in the area you're hiring for, but often they
indicate specialization or compensation for lack of experience.
Resource Competition
Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no."
As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups.
Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team
is.
The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's
worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may
get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management
or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate
the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue.
Most often, I've seen competition between server groups result in horribly inefficient uses of hardware. For example, what
happens in your organization when one team needs more server hardware? Assume that another team has five unused servers sitting
in a blade chassis. Does the answer change? No, it does not. Even in test environments, sharing doesn't often happen between IT
groups.
With virtualization, some aspects of resource competition get better and some remain the same. When first implemented, most
groups will be running their own type of virtualization for their platform. The next step, I've most often seen, is for test servers
to get virtualized. If a new group is formed to manage the virtualization infrastructure, virtual machines can be allocated to
various application and server teams from a central pool and everyone is now sharing. Or, they begin sharing and then demand their
own physical hardware to be isolated from others' resource hungry utilization. This is nonetheless a step in the right direction.
Auto migration and guaranteed resource policies can go a long way toward making shared infrastructure, even between competing
groups, a viable option.
Blamestorming
The most damaging side effect of splitting into too many distinct IT groups is the reinforcement of an "us versus them" mentality.
Aside from the notion that specialization creates a lack of knowledge, blamestorming is what this article is really about. When a project is delayed, it is all too easy to blame another group. The SAN people didn't allocate storage on time,
so another team was delayed. That is the timeline of the project, so all work halted until that hiccup was restored. Having someone
else to blame when things get delayed makes it all too easy to simply stop working for a while.
More related to the initial points at the beginning of this article, perhaps, is the blamestorm that happens after a system
outage.
Say an ERP system becomes unresponsive a few times throughout the day. The application team says it's just slowing down, and
they don't know why. The network team says everything is fine. The server team says the application is "blocking on IO," which
means it's a SAN issue. The SAN team say there is nothing wrong, and other applications on the same devices are fine. You've ran
through nearly every team, but without an answer still. The SAN people don't have access to the application servers to help diagnose
the problem. The server team doesn't even know how the application runs.
See the problem? Specialized teams are distinct and by nature adversarial. Specialized staffers often relegate
themselves into a niche knowing that as long as they continue working at large enough companies, "someone else" will take care
of all the other pieces.
I unfortunately don't have an answer to this problem. Maybe rotating employees between departments will help. They gain knowledge
and also get to know other people, which should lessen the propensity to view them as outsiders
"This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people with the right skills"
. In the IT job markets such postings are often called purple squirrels
Notable quotes:
"... In particular, there seems to be an extremely popular variant of the above where the starting proposition "God makes moral people rich" is improperly converted to "Rich people are more moral" which is then readily negated to "Poor people are immoral" and then expanded to "Poor people are immoral, thus they DESERVE to suffer for it". It's essentially the theological equivalent of dividing by zero ..."
"... That said, the ranks of the neoliberals are not small. They constitute what Jonathan Schell calls a "mass minority." I suspect the neoliberals have about the same level of popular support that the Nazis did at the time of their takeover of Germany in 1932, or the Bolsheviks had in Russia at the time of their takeover in 1917, which is about 20 or 25% of the total population. ..."
"... The ranks of the neoliberals are made to appear far greater than they really are because they have all but exclusive access to the nation's megaphone. The Tea Party can muster a handful of people to disrupt a town hall meeting and it gets coast to coast, primetime coverage. But let a million people protest against bank bailouts, and it is ignored. Thus, by manipulation of the media, the mass minority is made to appear to be much larger than it really is. ..."
Over the past three decades, large parts of our culture here in the US have internalized the lessons of the new Social Darwinism,
with a significant body of literature to explain and justify it. Many of us have internalized, without even realizing it,
the ideas of "dog eat dog", "every man for himself", "society should be structured like the animal kingdom, where the weak and
sick simply die because they cannot compete, and this is healthy", and "everything that happens to you is your own fault. There
is no such thing as circumstance that cannot be overcome, and certainly no birth lottery."
The levers pulled by politicians and the Fed put these things into practice, but even if we managed get different (better)
politicians or Fed chairmen, ones who weren't steeped in this culture and ideology, we'd still be left with the culture in the
population at large, and things like the "unemployed stigma" are likely to die very, very hard. Acceptance of the "just-world
phenomenon" here in the US runs deep.
perfect stranger:
"Religion is just as vulnerable to corporate capture as is the government or the academy."
This is rather rhetorical statement, and wrong one. One need to discern spiritual aspect of religion from the religion as a
tool.
Religion, as is structured, is complicit: in empoverishment, obedience, people's preconditioning, and legislative enabler in
the institutions such as Supreme – and non-supreme – Court(s). It is a form of PR of the ruling class for the governing class.
DownSouth:
perfect stranger,
Religion, just like human nature, is not that easy to put in a box.
For every example you can cite where religion "is complicit: in empoverishment, obedience, people's preconditioning, and legislative
enabler in the institution," I can point to an example of where religion engendered a liberating, emancipatory and revolutionary
spirit.
Examples:
•Early Christianity •Nominalism •Early Protestantism •Gandhi •Martin Luther King
Now granted, there don't seem to be any recent examples of this of any note, unless we consider Chris Hedges a religionist,
which I'm not sure we can do. Would it be appropriate to consider Hedges a religionist?
perfect stranger:
Yes, that maybe, just maybe be the case in early stages of forming new religion(s). In case of Christianity old rulers from
Rome were trying to save own head/throne and the S.P.Q.R. imperia by adopting new religion.
You use examples of Gandhi and MLK which is highly questionable both were fighters for independence and the second, civil rights.
In a word: not members of establishment just as I said there were (probably) seeing the religion as spiritual force not tool of
enslavement.
In particular, there seems to be an extremely popular variant of the above where the starting proposition "God makes moral
people rich" is improperly converted to "Rich people are more moral" which is then readily negated to "Poor people are immoral"
and then expanded to "Poor people are immoral, thus they DESERVE to suffer for it". It's essentially the theological equivalent
of dividing by zero
DownSouth:
Rex,
I agree.
Poll after poll after poll has shown that a majority of Americans, and a rather significant majority, reject the values, attitudes,
beliefs and opinions proselytized by the stealth religion we call "neoclassical economics."
That said, the ranks of the neoliberals are not small. They constitute what Jonathan Schell calls a "mass minority." I
suspect the neoliberals have about the same level of popular support that the Nazis did at the time of their takeover of Germany
in 1932, or the Bolsheviks had in Russia at the time of their takeover in 1917, which is about 20 or 25% of the total population.
The ranks of the neoliberals are made to appear far greater than they really are because they have all but exclusive access
to the nation's megaphone. The Tea Party can muster a handful of people to disrupt a town hall meeting and it gets coast to coast,
primetime coverage. But let a million people protest against bank bailouts, and it is ignored. Thus, by manipulation of the media,
the mass minority is made to appear to be much larger than it really is.
The politicians love this, because as they carry water for their pet corporations, they can point to the Tea Partiers and say:
"See what a huge upwelling of popular support I am responding to."
JTFaraday:
Well, if that's true, then the unemployed are employable but the mass mediated mentality would like them to believe they
are literally and inherently unemployable so that they underestimate and under-sell themselves.
This is as much to the benefit of those who would like to pick up "damaged goods" on the cheap as those who promote the unemployment
problem as one that inheres in prospective employees rather than one that is a byproduct of a bad job market lest someone be tempted
to think we should address it politically.
That's where I see this blame the unemployed finger pointing really getting traction these days.
attempter:
I apologize for the fact that I only read the first few paragraphs of this before quitting in disgust.
I just can no longer abide the notion that "labor" can ever be seen by human beings as a "cost" at all. We really need to refuse
to even tolerate that way of phrasing things. Workers create all wealth. Parasites have no right to exist. These are facts, and
we should refuse to let argument range beyond them.
The only purpose of civilization is to provide a better way of living and for all people. This includes the right and full
opportunity to work and manage for oneself and/or as a cooperative group. If civilization doesn't do that, we're better off without
it.
psychohistorian:
I am one of those long term unemployed.
I suppose my biggest employment claim would be as some sort of IT techie, with numerous supply chain systems and component
design, development, implementation, interfaces with other systems and ongoing support. CCNP certification and a history of techiedom
going back to WEYCOS.
I have a patent (6,209,954) in my name and 12+ years of beating my head against the wall in an industry that buys compliance
with the "there is no problem here, move on now" approach.
Hell, I was a junior woodchuck program administrator back in the early 70's working for the Office of the Governor of the state
of Washington on CETA PSE or Public Service Employment. The office of the Governor ran the PSE program for 32 of the 39 counties
in the state that were not big enough to run their own. I helped organize the project approval process in all those counties to
hire folk at ( if memory serves me max of $833/mo.) to fix and expand parks and provide social and other government services as
defined projects with end dates. If we didn't have the anti-public congress and other government leadership we have this could
be a current component in a rational labor policy but I digress.
I have experience in the construction trades mostly as carpenter but some electrical, plumbing, HVAC, etc. also.
So, of course there is some sort of character flaw that is keeping me and all those others from employment ..right. I may have
more of an excuse than others, have paid into SS for 45 years but still would work if it was available ..taking work away from
other who may need it more .why set up a society where we have to compete as such for mere existence???????
One more face to this rant. We need government by the people and for the people which we do not have now. Good, public focused,
not corporate focused government is bigger than any entities that exist under its jurisdiction and is kept updated by required
public participation in elections and potentially other things like military, peace corps, etc. in exchange for advanced education.
I say this as someone who has worked at various levels in both the public and private sectors there are ignorant and misguided
folks everywhere. At least with ongoing active participation there is a chance that government would, once constructed, be able
to evolve as needed within public focus .IMO.
Ishmael:
Some people would say I have been unemployed for 10 years. In 2000 after losing the last of my four CFO gigs for public companies
I found it necessary to start consulting. This has lead to two of my three biggest winning years. I am usually consulting on cutting
edge area of my profession and many times have large staffs reporting to me that I bring on board to get jobs done. For several
years I subcontacted to a large international consulting firm to clean up projects which went wrong. Let me give some insight
here.
First, most good positions have gate keepers who are professional recruiters. It is near impossible to get
by them and if you are unemployed they will hardly talk to you. One time talking to a recruiter at Korn Fery I was interviewing
for a job I have done several times in an industry I have worked in several times. She made a statement that I had never worked
at a well known company. I just about fell out of my chair laughing. At one time I was a senior level executive for the largest
consulting firm in the world and lived on three continents and worked with companies on six. In addition, I had held senior
positions for 2 fortune 500 firms and was the CFO for a company with $4.5 billion in revenue. I am well known at several PE
firms and the founder of one of the largest mentioned in a meeting that one of his great mistakes was not investing in a very
successful LBO (return of in excess of 20 multiple to investors in 18 months) I was the CFO for. In a word most recruiters
are incompetent.
Second, most CEO's any more are just insecure politicians. One time during an interview I had a CEO asked
me to talk about some accomplishments. I was not paying to much attention as I rattled off accomplishments and the CEO went
nuclear and started yelling at me that he did not know where I thought I was going with this job but the only position above
the CFO job was his and he was not going anywhere. I assured him I was only interested in the CFO position and not his, but
I knew the job was over. Twice feed back that I got from recruiters which they took at criticism was the "client said I seemed
very assured of myself."
Third, government, banking, business and the top MBA schools are based upon lying to move forward. I remember
a top human resource executive telling me right before Enron, MCI and Sarbanes Oxley that I needed to learn to be more flexible.
My response was that flexibility would get me an orange jump suit. Don't get me wrong, I have a wide grey zone, but it use
to be in business the looked for people who could identify problems early and resolve them. Now days I see far more of a demand
for people who can come up with PR spins to hide them. An attorney/treasurer consultant who partnered with me on a number of
consulting jobs told me some one called me "not very charming." He said he asked what that meant, and the person who said that
said, "Ish walks into a meeting and within 10 minutes he is asking about the 10,000 pound guerilla sitting in the room that
no one wants to talk about." CEO do not want any challenges in their organization.
Fourth, three above has lead to the hiring of very young and inexperienced people at senior levels. These
people are insecure and do not want more senior and experienced people above them and than has resulted in people older than
45 not finding positions.
Fifth, people are considered expendable and are fired for the lamest reasons anymore. A partner at one of
the larger and more prestigious recruiting firms one time told me, "If you have a good consulting business, just stick
with it. Our average placement does not last 18 months any more." Another well known recruiter in S. Cal. one time
commented to me, "Your average consulting gig runs longer than our average placement."
With all of that said, I have a hard time understanding such statements as "@attempter "Workers create all wealth. Parasites
have no right to exist." What does that mean? Every worker creates wealth. There is no difference in people. Sounds like communism
to me. I make a good living and my net worth has grown working for myself. I have never had a consulting gig terminated by the
client but I have terminated several. Usually, I am brought in to fix what several other people have failed at. I deliver basically
intellectual properties to companies. Does that mean I am not a worker. I do not usually lift anything heavy or move equipment
but I tell people what and where to do it so does that make me a parasite.
Those people who think everyone is equal and everyone deserves equal pay are fools or lazy. My rate is high, but what usually
starts as short term projects usually run 6 months or more because companies find I can do so much more than what most of their
staff can do and I am not a threat.
I would again like to have a senior challenging role at a decent size company but due to the reasons above will probably never
get one. However, you can never tell. I am currently consulting for a midsize very profitable company (grew 400% last year) where
I am twice the age of most people there, but everyone speaks to me with respect so you can never tell.
Lidia:
Ishmael, you're quite right. When I showed my Italian husband's resume to try and "network" in the US, my IT friends assumed
he was lying about his skills and work history.
Contemporaneously, in Italy it is impossible to get a job because of incentives to hire "youth". Age discrimination is
not illegal, so it's quite common to see ads that ask for a programmer under 30 with 5 years of experience in COBOL (the purple
squirrel).
Hosswire
Some good points about the foolishness of recruiters, but a great deal of that foolishness is forced by the clients themselves.
I used to be a recruiter myself, including at Korn Ferry in Southern California. I described the recruiting industry as "yet more
proof that God hates poor people" because my job was to ignore resumes from people seeking jobs and instead "source" aka "poach"
people who already had good jobs by dangling a higher salary in front of them. I didn't do it because I disparaged the unemployed,
or because I could not do the basic analysis to show that a candidate had analogous or transferrable skills to the opening.
I did it because the client, as Yves said, wanted people who were literally in the same job description already.
My theory is that the client wanted to have their ass covered in case the hire didn't work out, by being able to say that they
looked perfect "on paper." The lesson I learned for myself and my friends looking for jobs was simple, if morally dubious.
Basically, that if prospective employers are going to judge you based on a single piece of paper take full advantage of the fact
that you get to write that piece of paper yourself.
Ishmael:
Hosswire - I agree with your comment. There are poor recruiters like the one I sited but in general it is the clients fault.
Fear of failure. All hires have at least a 50% chance of going sideways on you. Most companies do not even have the ability to
look at a resume nor to interview. I did not mean to same nasty things about recruiters, and I even do it sometimes but mine.
I look at failure in a different light than most companies. You need to be continually experimenting and changing to survive
as a company and there will be some failures. The goal is to control the cost of failures while looking for the big pay off on
a winner.
Mannwich:
As a former recruiter and HR "professional" (I use that term very loosely for obvious reasons), I can honestly say that you
nailed it. Most big companies looking for mid to high level white collar "talent" will almost always take the perceived
safest route by hiring those who look the best ON PAPER and in a suit and lack any real interviewing skills to find the real stars.
What's almost comical is that companies almost always want to see the most linear resume possible because they want to see "job
stability" (e.g. a CYA document in case the person fails in that job) when in many cases nobody cares about the long range view
of the company anyway. My question was why should the candidate or employee care about the long range view if the employer clearly
doesn't?
Ishmael:
Manwhich another on point comment. Sometimes either interviewing for a job or consulting with a CEO it starts getting to the
absurd. I see all the time the requirement for stability in a persons background. Hello, where have they been the last 15 years.
In addition, the higher up you go the more likely you will be terminated sometime and that is especially true if you are hired
from outside the orgnanization. Companies want loyalty from an employee but offer none in return.
The average tenure for a CFO anymore is something around 18 months. I have been a first party participant (more than once)
where I went through an endless recruiting process for a company (lasting more than 6 months) they final hire some one and that
person is with the company for 3 months and then resigns (of course we all know it is through mutual agreement).
Ishmael:
Birch:
The real problem has become and maybe this is what you are referring to is the "Crony Capitalism." We have lost control of
our financial situation. Basically, PE is not the gods of the universe that everyone thinks they are. However, every bankers
secret wet dream is to become a private equity guy. Accordingly, bankers make ridiculous loans to PE because if you say no to
them then you can not play in their sand box any more. Since the govt will not let the banks go bankrupt like they should then
this charade continues inslaving everyone.
This country as well as many others has a large percentage of its assets tied up in over priced deals that the bankers/governments
will not let collapse while the blood sucking vampires suck the life out of the assets.
On the other hand, govt is not the answer. Govt is too large and accomplishes too little.
kevin de bruxelles:
The harsh reality is that, at least in the first few rounds, companies kick to the curb their weakest links and perceived
slackers. Therefore when it comes time to hire again, they are loath to go sloppy seconds on what they perceive to be
some other company's rejects. They would much rather hire someone who survived the layoffs working in a similar position in a
similar company. Of course the hiring company is going to have to pay for this privilege. Although not totally reliable, the fact
that someone survived the layoffs provides a form social proof for their workplace abilities.
On the macro level, labor has been under attack for thirty years by off shoring and third world immigration. It is no surprise
that since the working classes have been severely undermined that the middle classes would start to feel some pressure. By mass
immigration and off-shoring are strongly supported by both parties. Only when the pain gets strong enough will enough people rebel
and these two policies will be overturned. We still have a few years to go before this happens.
davver:
Let's say I run a factory. I produce cars and it requires very skilled work. Skilled welding, skilled machinists. Now I introduce
some robotic welders and an assembly line system. The plants productivity improves and the jobs actually get easier. They require
less skill, in fact I've simplified each task to something any idiot can do. Would wages go up or down? Are the workers really
contributing to that increase in productivity or is it the machines and methods I created?
Lets say you think laying off or cutting the wages of my existing workers is wrong. What happens when a new entrant into the
business employs a smaller workforce and lower wages, which they can do using the same technology? The new workers don't feel
like they were cut down in any way, they are just happy to have a job. Before they couldn't get a job at the old plant because
they lacked the skill, but now they can work in the new plant because the work is genuinely easier. Won't I go out of business?
Escariot:
I am 54 and have a ton of peers who are former white collar workers and professionals (project managers, architects, lighting
designers, wholesalers and sales reps for industrial and construction materials and equipment) now out of work going on three
years. Now I say out of work, I mean out of our trained and experienced fields.
We now work two or three gigs (waiting tables, mowing lawns, doing free lance, working in tourism, truck driving, moving company
and fedex ups workers) and work HARD, for much much less than we did, and we are seeing the few jobs that are coming back on line
going to younger workers. It is just the reality. And for most of us the descent has not been graceful, so our credit is a wreck,
which also breeds a whole other level of issues as now it is common for the credit record to be a deal breaker for employment,
housing, etc.
Strangely I don't sense a lot of anger or bitterness as much as humility. And gratitude for ANY work that comes our way. Health
insurance? Retirement accounts? not so much.
Mickey Marzick:
Yves and I have disagreed on how extensive the postwar "pact" between management and labor was in this country. But if you
drew a line from say, Trenton-Patterson, NJ to Cincinatti, OH to Minneapolis, MN, north and east of it where blue collar manufacturing
in steel, rubber, auto, machinery, etc., predominated, this "pact" may have existed but ONLY because physical plant and
production were concentrated there and workers could STOP production.
Outside of these heavy industrial pockets, unions were not always viewed favorably. As one moved into the rural hinterlands
surrounding them there was jealously and/or outright hostility. Elsewhere, especially in the South "unions" were the exception
not the rule. The differences between NE Ohio before 1975 – line from Youngstown to Toledo – and the rest of the state exemplified
this pattern. Even today, the NE counties of Ohio are traditional Democratic strongholds with the rest of the state largely Republican.
And I suspect this pattern existed elsewhere. But it is changing too
In any case, the demonization of the unemployed is just one notch above the vicious demonization of the poor that has
always existed in this country. It's a constant reminder for those still working that you could be next – cast out into
the darkness – because you "failed" or worse yet, SINNED. This internalization of the "inner cop" reinforces the dominant ideology
in two ways. First, it makes any resistance by individuals still employed less likely. Second, it pits those still working against
those who aren't, both of which work against the formation of any significant class consciousness amongst working people. The
"oppressed" very often internalize the value system of the oppressor.
As a nation of immigrants ETHNICITY may have more explanatory power than CLASS. For increasingly, it would appear that
the dominant ethnic group – suburban, white, European Americans – have thrown their lot in with corporate America. Scared of the
prospect of downward social mobility and constantly reminded of URBAN America – the other America – this group is trapped with
nowhere to else to go.
It's the divide and conquer strategy employed by ruling elites in this country since its founding [Federalist #10] with the
Know Nothings, blaming the Irish [NINA - no Irish need apply] and playing off each successive wave of immigrants against
the next. Only when the forces of production became concentrated in the urban industrial enclaves of the North was this
strategy less effective. And even then internal immigration by Blacks to the North in search of employment blunted the formation
of class consciousness among white ethnic industrial workers.
Wherever the postwar "pact of domination" between unions and management held sway, once physical plant was relocated elsewhere
[SOUTH] and eventually offshored, unemployment began to trend upwards. First it was the "rustbelt" now it's a nationwide
phenomenon. Needless to say, the "pact" between labor and management has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
White, suburban America has hitched its wagon to that of the corporate horse. Demonization of the unemployed coupled with demonization
of the poor only serve to terrorize this ethnic group into acquiescence. And as the workplace becomes a multicultural matrix this
ethnic group is constantly reminded of its perilous state. Until this increasingly atomized ethnic group breaks with corporate
America once and for all, it's unlikely that the most debilitating scourge of all working people – UNEMPLOYMENT – will be addressed.
Make no mistake about it, involuntary UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLYEMT is a form of terrorism and its demonization is terrorism in
action. This "quiet violence" is psychological and the intimidation wrought by unemployment and/or the threat of it is intended
to dehumanize individuals subjected to it. Much like spousal abuse, the emotional and psychological effects are experienced way
before any physical violence. It's the inner cop that makes overt repression unnecessary. We terrorize ourselves into submission
without even knowing it because we accept it or come to tolerate it. So long as we accept "unemployment" as an inevitable consequence
of progress, as something unfortunate but inevitable, we will continue to travel down the road to serfdom where ARBEIT MACHT FREI!
FULL and GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT are the ultimate labor power.
Eric:
It's delicate since direct age discrimination is illegal, but when circumstances permit separating older workers they have
a very tough time getting back into the workforce in an era of high health care inflation. Older folks consume more health
care and if you are hiring from a huge surplus of available workers it isn't hard to steer around the more experienced. And nobody
gets younger, so when you don't get job A and go for job B 2 weeks later you, you're older still!
James:
Yves said- "This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people
with the right skills"
In the IT job markets such postings are often called purple squirrels. The HR departments require the applicant to be expert
in a dozen programming languages. This is an excuse to hire a foreigner on a temp h1-b or other visa.
Most people aren't aware that this model dominates the sciences. Politicians scream we have a shortage of scientists, yet it
seems we only have a shortage of cheap easily exploitable labor. The economist recently pointed out the glut of scientists that
currently exists in the USA.
This understates the problem. The majority of PhD recipients wander through years of postdocs only to end up eventually changing
fields. My observation is that the top ten schools in biochem/chemistry/physics/ biology produce enough scientists to satisfy
the national demand.
The exemption from h1-b visa caps for academic institutions exacerbates the problem, providing academics with almost unlimited
access to labor.
The pharmaceutical sector has been decimated over the last ten years with tens of thousands of scientists/ factory workers
looking for re-training in a dwindling pool of jobs (most of which will deem you overqualified.)
I wonder how the demonization of the unemployed can be so strong even in the face of close to 10% unemployment/20% underemployment.
It's easy and tempting to demonize an abstract young buck or Cadillac-driving welfare queen, but when a family member
or a close friend loses a job, or your kids are stuck at your place because they can't find one, shouldn't that alter your perceptions?
Of course the tendency will be to blame it all on the government, but there has to be a limit to that in hard-hit places like
Ohio, Colorado, or Arizona. And yet, the dynamics aren't changing or even getting worse. Maybe Wisconsin marks a turning point,
I certainly hope it does
damien:
It's more than just stupid recruiting, this stigma. Having got out when the getting was good, years ago, I know
that any corporate functionary would be insane to hire me now. Socialization wears off, the deformation process reverses, and
the ritual and shibboleths become a joke. Even before I bailed I became a huge pain in the ass as economic exigency receded, every
bosses nightmare. I suffered fools less gladly and did the right thing out of sheer anarchic malice.
You really can't maintain corporate culture without existential fear – not just, "Uh oh, I'm gonna get fired,"
fear, but a visceral feeling that you do not exist without a job. In properly indoctrinated workers that feeling is divorced
from economic necessity. So anyone who's survived outside a while is bound to be suspect. That's a sign of economic security,
and security of any sort undermines social control.
youniquelikeme:
You hit the proverbial nail with that reply. (Although, sorry, doing the right thing should not be done out of malice) The real fit has to be in the corporate yes-man culture (malleable ass kisser) to be suited for any executive position
and beyond that it is the willingness to be manipulated and drained to be able to keep a job in lower echelon.
This is the new age of evolution in the work place. The class wars will make it more of an eventual revolution, but it is coming.
The unemployment rate (the actual one, not the Government one) globalization and off shore hiring are not sustainable for much
longer.
Something has to give, but it is more likely to snap then to come easily. People who are made to be repressed and down and
out eventually find the courage to fight back and by then, it is usually not with words.
down and out in Slicon Valley:
This is the response I got from a recruiter:
"I'm going to be overly honest with you. My firm doesn't allow me to submit any candidate who hasn't worked in 6-12
months or more. Recruiting brokers are probably all similar in that way . You are going to have to go through a connection/relationship
you have with a colleague, co-worker, past manager or friend to get your next job .that's my advice for you. Best of luck "
I'm 56 years old with MSEE. Gained 20+ years of experience at the best of the best (TRW, Nortel, Microsoft), have been issued
a patent. Where do I sign up to gain skills required to find a job now?
Litton Graft :
"Best of the Best?" I know you're down now, but looking back at these Gov'mint contractors you've enjoyed the best socialism
money can by.
Nortel/TRW bills/(ed) the Guvmint at 2x, 3x your salary, you can ride this for decades. At the same time the
Inc is attached to the Guvmint ATM localities/counties are giving them a red carpet of total freedom from taxation. Double subsidies.
I've worked many years at the big boy bandits, and there is no delusion in my mind that almost anyone, can do what I do and
get paid 100K+. I've never understood the mindset of some folks who work in the Wermacht Inc: "Well, someone has to do this work"
or worse "What we do, no one else can do" The reason no one else "can do it" is that they are not allowed to. So, we steal from
the poor to build fighter jets, write code or network an agency.
Hosswire:
I used to work as a recruiter and can tell you that I only parroted the things my clients told me. I wanted to
get you hired, because I was lazy and didn't want to have to talk to someone else next.
So what do you do? To place you that recruiter needs to see on a piece of paper that you are currently working? Maybe get an
email or phone call from someone who will vouch for your employment history. That should not be that hard to make happen.
Francois T :
The "bizarre way that companies now spec jobs" is essentially a coded way for mediocre managers to say without saying so explicitly
that "we can afford to be extremely picky, and by God, we shall do so no matter what, because we can!"
Of course, when comes the time to hire back because, oh disaster! business is picking up again, (I'm barely caricaturing here;
some managers become despondent when they realize that workers regain a bit of the higher ground; loss of power does that to lesser
beings) the same idiots who designed those "overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies
can't find people with the right skills" are thrown into a tailspin of despair and misery. Instead of figuring out something as
simple as "if demand is better, so will our business", they can't see anything else than the (eeeek!) cost of hiring workers.
Unable to break their mental corset of penny-pincher, they fail to realize that lack of qualified workers will prevent them to
execute well to begin with.
And guess what: qualified workers cost money, qualified workers urgently needed cost much more.
This managerial attitude must be another factor that explain why entrepreneurship and the formation of small businesses is
on the decline in the US (contrary to the confabulations of the US officialdumb and the chattering class) while rising in Europe
and India/China.
Kit:
If you are 55-60, worked as a professional (i.e., engineering say) and are now unemployed you are dead meat. Sorry to be blunt
but thats the way it is in the US today. Let me repeat that : Dead Meat.
I was terminated at age 59, found absolutely NOTHING even though my qualifications were outstanding. Fortunately, my company
had an old style pension plan which I was able to qualify for (at age 62 without reduced benefits). So for the next 2+ years my
wife and I survived on unemployment insurance, severance, accumulated vacation pay and odd jobs. Not nice – actually, a living
hell.
At age 62, I applied for my pension, early social security, sold our old house (at a good profit) just before the RE crash,
moved back to our home state. Then my wife qualified for social security also. Our total income is now well above the US median.
Today, someone looking at us would think we were the typical corporate retiree. We surely don't let on any differently but
the experience (to get to this point) almost killed us.
I sympathize very strongly with the millions caught in this unemployment death spiral. I wish I had an answer but I just don't.
We were very lucky to survive intact.
Ming:
Thank you Yves for your excellent post, and for bringing to light this crucial issue.
Thank you to all the bloggers, who add to the richness of the this discussion.
I wonder if you could comment on this Yves, and correct me if I am wrong I believe that the power of labor was sapped by the
massive available supply of global labor. The favorable economic policies enacted by China (both official and unofficial), and
trade negotiations between the US government and the Chinese government were critical to creating the massive supply of labor.
Thank you. No rush of course.
Nexus:
There are some odd comments and notions here that are used to support dogma and positions of prejudice. The world can be viewed
in a number of ways. Firstly from a highly individualised and personal perspective – that is what has happened to me and here
are my experiences. Or alternatively the world can be viewed from a broader societal perspective.
In the context of labour there has always been an unequal confrontation between those that control capital and those that offer
their labour, contrary to some of the views exposed here – Marx was a first and foremost a political economist. The political
economist seeks to understand the interplay of production, supply, the state and institutions like the media. Modern day economics
branched off from political economy and has little value in explaining the real world as the complexity of the world has been
reduced to a simplistic rationalistic model of human behaviour underpinned by other equally simplistic notions of 'supply and
demand', which are in turn represented by mathematical models, which in themselves are complex but merely represent what is a
simplistic view of the way the world operates. This dogmatic thinking has avoided the need to create an underpinning epistemology.
This in turn underpins the notion of free choice and individualism which in itself is an illusion as it ignores the operation
of the modern state and the exercise of power and influence within society.
It was stated in one of the comments that the use of capital (machines, robotics, CAD design, etc.) de-skills. This is hardly
the case as skills rise for those that remain and support highly automated/continuous production factories. This is symptomatic
of the owners of capital wanting to extract the maximum value for labour and this is done via the substitution of labour for capital
making the labour that remains to run factories highly productive thus eliminating low skill jobs that have been picked up via
services (people move into non productive low skilled occupations warehousing and retail distribution, fast food outlets,
etc). Of course the worker does not realise the additional value of his or her labour as this is expropriated for the shareholders
(including management as shareholders).
The issue of the US is that since the end of WW2 it is not the industrialists that have called the shots and made investments
it is the financial calculus of the investment banker (Finance Capital). Other comments have tried to ignore the existence of
the elites in society – I would suggest that you read C.W.Mills – The Power Elites as an analysis of how power is exercised
in the US – it is not through the will of the people.
For Finance capital investments are not made on the basis of value add, or contribution through product innovation and the
exchange of goods but on basis of the lowest cost inputs. Consequently, the 'elites' that make investment decisions, as
they control all forms of capital seek to gain access to the cheapest cost inputs. The reality is that the US worker (a
pool of 150m) is now part of a global labour pool of a couple of billion that now includes India and China. This means that the
elites, US transnational corporations for instance, can access both cheaper labour pools, relocate capital and avoid worker protection
(health and safety is not a concern). The strategies of moving factories via off-shoring (over 40,000 US factories closed or relocated)
and out-sourcing/in-sourcing labour is also a representations of this.
The consequence for the US is that the need for domestic labour has diminished and been substituted by cheap labour to
extract the arbitrage between US labour rates and those of Chinese and Indians. Ironically, in this context capital has
become too successful as the mode of consumption in the US shifted from workers that were notionally the people that created the
goods, earned wages and then purchased the goods they created to a new model where the worker was substituted by the consumer
underpinned by cheap debt and low cost imports – it is illustrative to note that real wages have not increased in the US since
the early 1970's while at the same time debt has steadily increased to underpin the illusion of wealth – the 'borrow today and
pay tomorrow' mode of capitalist operation. This model of operation is now broken. The labour force is now being demonized as
there is a now surplus of labour and a need to drive down labour rates through changes in legislation and austerity programs to
meet those of the emerging Chinese and Indian middle class so workers rights need to be broken. Once this is done a process of
in-source may take place as US labour costs will be on par with overseas labour pools.
It is ironic that during the Regan administration a number of strategic thinkers saw the threat from emerging economies and
the danger of Finance Capital and created 'Project Socrates' that would have sought to re-orientate the US economy from one that
was based on the rationale of Finance Capital to one that focused in productive innovation which entailed an alignment of capital
investment, research and training to product innovative goods. Of course this was ignored and the rest is history. The race to
the lowest input cost is ultimately self defeating as it is clear that the economy de-industrialises through labour and capital
changes and living standards collapse. The elites – bankers, US transnational corporations, media, industrial military complex
and the politicians don't care as they make money either way and this way you get other people overseas to work cheap for you.
S P:
Neoliberal orthodoxy treats unemployment as well as wage supression as a necessary means to fight "inflation." If there was
too much power in the hands of organized labor, inflationary pressures would spiral out of control as supply of goods cannot keep
up with demand.
It also treats the printing press as a necessary means to fight "deflation."
So our present scenario: widespread unemployment along with QE to infinity, food stamps for all, is exactly what you'd expect.
The problem with this orthodoxy is that it assumes unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources, particularly oil
and energy. Growth is not going to solve unemployment or wages, because we are bumping up against limits to growth.
There are only two solutions. One is tax the rich and capital gains, slow growth, and reinvest the surplus into jobs/skills
programs, mostly to maintain existing infrastructure or build new energy infrastructure. Even liberals like Krugman skirt around
this, because they aren't willing to accept that we have the reached the end of growth and we need radical redistribution
measures.
The other solution is genuine classical liberalism / libertarianism, along the lines of Austrian thought. Return to sound money,
and let the deflation naturally take care of the imbalances. Yes, it would be wrenching, but it would likely be wrenching for
everybody, making it fair in a universal sense.
Neither of these options is palatable to the elite classes, the financiers of Wall Street, or the leeches and bureaucrats of
D.C.
So this whole experiment called America will fail.
"... By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog ..."
"... The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. ..."
"... The pattern of human concerns ..."
"... The pattern of human concerns ..."
"... Journal of Happiness Studies ..."
"... The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective states). ..."
"... Psychological Bulletin ..."
"... 1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to unemployment". ..."
"... 2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general loss of "morale". ..."
"... in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime indicator of status and prestige. ..."
"... Psychological Bulletin ..."
"... Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such attendance". ..."
"... In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work, often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this point. ..."
"... The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status, social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over history. ..."
"... I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people, often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here loses one of its main anchor points. ..."
"... This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings. ..."
"... When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices. Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out for it. ..."
"... When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. ..."
"... Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when you think about it, that the working class is about work . ..."
Posted on
November 21, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. Reader
UserFriendly sent this post with the message, "I can confirm this." I can too. And before you
try to attribute our reactions to being Americans, note that the study very clearly points out
that its finding have been confirmed in "all of the world's regions".
By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment
and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog
Here is a summary of another interesting study I read last week (published March 30, 2017)
– Happiness at Work
– from academic researchers Jan‐Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward. It explores the
relationship between happiness and labour force status, including whether an individual is
employed or not and the types of jobs they are doing. The results reinforce a long literature,
which emphatically concludes that people are devastated when they lose their jobs and do not
adapt to unemployment as its duration increases. The unemployed are miserable and remain so
even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. Further, they do not seem to sense
(or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose. The overwhelming
proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to
gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support. The overwhelming conclusion
is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and that result is robust across
different countries and cultures. Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the
quality of life relative to being unemployed. And, nothing much has changed in this regard over
the last 80 or so years. These results were well-known in the 1930s, for example. They have a
strong bearing on the debate between income guarantees versus employment guarantees. The UBI
proponents have produced no robust literature to refute these long-held findings.
While the 'Happiness Study' notes that "the relationship between happiness and employment is
a complex and dynamic interaction that runs in both directions" the authors are
unequivocal:
The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the
analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. When considering the world's
population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more
favorably than those who are unemployed. The importance of having a job extends far beyond
the salary attached to it, with non-pecuniary aspects of employment such as social status,
social relations, daily structure, and goals all exerting a strong influence on people's
happiness.
And, the inverse:
The importance of employment for people's subjective wellbeing shines a spotlight on the
misery and unhappiness associated with being unemployed.
There is a burgeoning literature on 'happiness', which the authors aim to contribute to.
They define happiness as "subjective well-being", which is "measured along multiple
dimensions":
life evaluation (by way of the Cantril "ladder of life"), positive and negative affect to
measure respondents' experienced positive and negative wellbeing, as well as the more
domain-specific items of job satisfaction and employee engagement. We find that these diverse
measures of subjective wellbeing correlate strongly with each other
Cantril's 'Ladder of Life Scale' (or "Cantril Ladder") is used by polling organisations to
assess well-being. It was developed by social researcher Hadley Cantril (1965) and documented
in his book The pattern of human concerns .
You can learn more about the use of the 'Cantril Ladder' HERE
.
As we read, the "Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale consists of the following":
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The
top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder
represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you
personally feel you stand at this time? (ladder-present) On which step do you think you
will stand about five years from now? (ladder-future)
[Reference: Cantril, H. (1965) The pattern of human concerns , New Brunswick,
Rutgers University Press.]
[Reference: Bjørnskov, C. (2010) 'How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life
Satisfaction Data?', Journal of Happiness Studies , 11 (1), 41-60.]
The Cantril scale is usually reported as values between 0 and 10.
The authors in the happiness study use poll data from 150 nations which they say "is
representative of 98% of the world's population". This survey data is available on a mostly
annual basis since 2006.
The following graph (Figure 1 from the Study) shows "the self-reported wellbeing of
individuals around the world according to whether or not they are employed."
The "bars measure the subjective wellbeing of individuals of working age" by employment
status .
The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large
indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective
states).
People employed "evaluate the quality of their lives around 0.6 points higher on average as
compared to the unemployed on a scale from 0 to 10."
The authors also conduct more sophisticated (and searching) statistical analysis
(multivariate regression) which control for a range of characteristics (gender, age, education,
marital status, composition of household) as well as to "account for the many political,
economic, and cultural differences between countries as well as year-to-year variation".
The conclusion they reach is simple:
the unemployed evaluate the overall state of their lives less highly on the Cantril ladder
and experience more negative emotions in their day-to-day lives as well as fewer positive
ones. These are among the most widely accepted and replicated findings in the science of
happiness Here, income is being held constant along with a number of other relevant
covariates, showing that these unemployment effects go well beyond the income loss associated
with losing one's job.
These results are not surprising. The earliest study of this sort of outcome was from the famous study published by Philip
Eisenberg and Paul Lazersfeld in 1938. [Reference: Eisenberg, P. and Lazarsfeld, P. (1938) 'The psychological effects of
unemployment', Psychological Bulletin , 35(6), 358-390.]
They explore four dimensions of unemployment:
I. The Effects of Unemployment on Personality.
II. Socio-Political Attitudes Affected by Unemployment.
III. Differing Attitudes Produced by Unemployment and Related Factors.
IV. The Effects of Unemployment on Children and Youth.
On the first dimension, they conclude that:
1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to
unemployment".
2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is
shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in
the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general
loss of "morale".
Devastation, in other words. They were not surprised because they note that:
in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime
indicator of status and prestige.
This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched
cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and
feelings of these standings. That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study in
1938.
It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural
shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might currently
hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create major social
tensions. Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld also considered an earlier 1937 study by Cantril who explored
whether "the unemployed tend to evolve more imaginative schemes than the employed".
[Reference: Cantril, H. (1934) 'The Social Psychology of Everyday Life', Psychological
Bulletin , 31, 297-330.]
The proposition was (is) that once unemployed, do people then explore new options that were
not possible while working, which deliver them with the satisfaction that they lose when they
become jobless. The specific question asked in the research was: "Have there been any changes of interests
and habits among the unemployed?" Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read
anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the
need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such
attendance".
On the third dimension, Eisenberg and Lazersfeld examine the questions – "Are there
unemployed who don't want to work? Is the relief situation likely to increase this number?",
which are still a central issue today – the bludger being subsidized by income
support.
They concluded that:
the number is few. In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work,
often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this
point.
So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on their
own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond the income
we earn. The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status,
social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over
history. The happiness paper did explore "how short-lived is the misery associated with being out of
work" in the current cultural settings.
The proposition examined was that:
If the pain is only fleeting and people quickly get used to being unemployed, then we
might see joblessness as less of a key public policy priority in terms of happiness.
They conclude that:
a number of studies have demonstrated that people do not adapt much, if at all, to being
unemployed there is a large initial shock to becoming unemployed, and then as people stay
unemployed over time their levels of life satisfaction remain low . several studies have
shown that even once a person becomes re-employed, the prior experience of unemployment
leaves a mark on his or her happiness.
So there is no sudden or even medium-term realisation that being jobless endows the
individual with a new sense of freedom to become their creative selves, freed from the yoke of
work. To bloom into musicians, artists, or whatever.
The reality is that there is an on-going malaise – a deeply entrenched sense of
failure is overwhelming, which stifles happiness and creativity, even after the individual is
able to return to work.
This negativity, borne heavily by the individual, however, also impacts on society in
general.
The paper recognises that:
A further canonical finding in the literature on unemployment and subjective wellbeing is
that there are so-called "spillover" effects.
High levels of unemployment "increase fear and heighten the sense of job insecurity". Who
will lose their job next type questions?
The researchers found in their data that the higher is the unemployment rate the greater the
anxiety among those who remain employed.
Conclusion
The overwhelming conclusion is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and
that result is robust across different countries and cultures.
Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being
unemployed.
The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term
unemployment. They do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of
creativity and purpose.
The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and
life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) allows us to understand that it is the government that chooses
the unemployment rate – it is a political choice.
For currency-issuing governments it means their deficits are too low relative to the
spending and saving decisions of the non-government sector.
For Eurozone-type nations, it means that in surrendering their currencies and adopting a
foreign currency, they are unable to guarantee sufficient work in the face of negative shifts
in non-government spending. Again, a political choice.
The Job
Guarantee can be used as a vehicle to not only ensure their are sufficient jobs available
at all times but also to start a process of wiping out the worst jobs in the non-government
sector.
That can be done by using the JG wage to ensure low-paid private employers have to
restructure their workplaces and pay higher wages and achieve higher productivity in order to
attract labour from the Job Guarantee pool.
The Series So Far
This is a further part of a series I am writing as background to my next book with Joan
Muysken analysing the Future of Work . More instalments will come as the research
process unfolds.
The blogs in these series should be considered working notes rather than self-contained
topics. Ultimately, they will be edited into the final manuscript of my next book due in 2018.
The book will likely be published by Edward Elgar (UK).
Perhaps I'm utterly depressed but I haven't had a job job for over 5 years. Plenty of
work, however, more than I can handle and it requires priorisation. But I am deliberately not part of the organized herd. I stay away from big cities –
it's scary how managed the herd is in large groups – and I suppose that unemployment
for a herd animal is rather distressing as it is effectively being kicked out of the
herd.
Anyway my advice, worth what you pay for it but let he who has ears, etc. – is to go
local, very local, grow your own food, be part of a community, manage your own work, and
renounce the energy feast herd dynamics. "Unemployment", like "recession", is a mechanism of
control. Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in
car payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?
I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people,
often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what
you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the
point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here
loses one of its main anchor points.
Worse, there is a deliberate stigma attached with being long term unemployed. In that article
you have seen the word bludger being used. In parts of the US I have read of the shame of
'living off the county'. And yes, I have been there, seen that, and got the t-shirt. It's
going to be interesting as mechanization and computers turn large portions of the population
from workers to 'gig' workers. Expect mass demoralization.
yes the lives many of us have lived, no longer exist though we appear not notice, as we
"can" live in many of same "ways" ..rather well known psychologist defined some 40 years ago, best to "drop through
cracks"
Well, you also lose money, maybe you become homeless etc. as you have nowhere else to turn
(if there are kids involved to support it gets even scarier though there are some programs).
Or maybe you become dependent on another person(s) to support you which is of course
degrading as you know you must rely on them to live, whether it's a spouse or lover when you
want to work and bring in money, or mom and dads basement, or the kindest friend ever who
lets you sleep on their couch. I mean these are the things that really matter.
Privileged people whose main worry in unemployment would be losing identity, wow out of
touch much? Who cares about some identity for parties, but the ability to have a stable
decent life (gig work hardly counts) is what is needed.
I normally wouldn't comment like this, but you have brought up some extremely important
points about identity that I would like to address.
Recently I had the most intense mushroom experience of my entire life–so intense
that my identity had been completely stripped and I was left in a formless state, at the
level of seeing my bare, unvarnished animal neural circuitry in operation. Suddenly with a
flash of inspiration I realized that the identity of everyone, all of us, is inextricably
tied up in what we do and what we do for other people.
Following from that, I understood that if we passively rely on others for survival,
whether it be relying on friends, family, or government, then we do not have an identity or
reason for existing. And the inner self, the animal core of who we are, will realise this
lack of identity (even if the concious mind denies it), and will continually generate
feelings of profound depression and intense nihilism that will inevitably destroy us if the
root cause is not addressed.
Before this experience I was somewhat ambivalent about my politics, but immediately after
I knew that the political right was correct on everything important, from attitudes on sex to
economic philosophy. People need a core of cultural stability and hard work to grow and
become actualized. The alternative is rudderless dissatisfaction and envy that leads
nowhere.
On the topic of giving "out of kindnes and goodwill", giving without demanding anything in
return is a form of abuse, as it deprives those who receive our feel-good generosity the
motivation to form a coherent identity. If the parents of a basement-dweller were truly good
people, instead of supporting said dweller they'd drag her out by the ear and make her grow
food in the yard or some such. Likewise, those who have supported you without also giving
concrete demands and expecations in return have been unkind, and for your own good I hope
that you will immediately remove yourself from their support. On the other hand, if you have
been thoughtlessly giving because it warms the cockles of your heart, then stop it now. You
are ruining other people this way, and if your voting habits are informed by this kind of
malevolence I'd encourage you to change those as well.
Anyway the original poster is right about everything. Working and having a purpose in life
is an entirely different animal from making money and being "successful" in the
government-sponsored commercial economy. Society and government deliberately try to conflate
the two for various reasons, primarily graft of labor and genius, but that is only a
deliberate mis-framing that needlessly harms people when the mainstream economic system is in
catastrophic decline, as ours is today. You should try to clear up this misconception within
yourself as a way of getting better.
Well, I hope this message can give you a few different thoughts and help you find your way
out of the existential angst you're caught in. Don't wallow in helplessness. Think of
something useful to do, anything, whether it earns you money or not, and go out and start
doing it. You'll be surprised at how much better you feel about yourself in no time.
The problem is you said – I – had an extreme experience [burning bush], the
truth was reviled to – I – and I alone during this extreme chemically altered
state. Which by the way just happens to conform to a heap of environmental biases I
collected. This is why sound methodology demands peer review. disheveled some people think Mister Toads Wild ride at Disneyland on psychotropics is an
excellent adventure too.
I think your observation about the importance of work to identity is most perceptive. This
post makes too little distinction between work and a job and glosses over the place of work
in defining who we are to ourselves and to others. I recall the scene in the movie "About a
Boy" when the hero meets someone he cares about and she asks him what he does for a
living.
I believe there's another aspect of work -- related to identity -- missing in the analysis
of this post. Work can offer a sense of mission -- of acting as part of an effort toward a
larger goal no individual could achieve alone. However you may regard the value in putting
man on the moon there is no mistaking the sense of mission deeply felt by the engineers and
technicians working on the project. What jobs today can claim service to a mission someone
might value?
Agreed on your points. Wage slavery is nothing to aspire to. Self-determination within a
context of an interdependent community is a much better way to live. We do our thing in the city, however.
Finding that "interdependent community" is the hard part. My experience has been that this
endeavour is almost chance based; Serendipity if you will.
Here Down South, the churches still seem to have a stranglehold on small and mid scale social
organization. One of the big effects of 'churching' is the requirement that the individual
gave up personal critical thinking. Thus, the status quo is reinforced. One big happy 'Holy
Circlejerk.'
This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched
cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and
feelings of these standings.
That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study
in 1938.
It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural
shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might
currently hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create
major social tensions.
I would agree about the entenched cultural norms, etc. But not the pessimism and timeline
for change. An individual can communicate a complex idea to millions in seconds, things move
fast these days.
For me, it seems that what we (we being UBI/radical change proponents) are lacking is a
compelling easily accessible story. Not just regarding UBI (as that is but one part of the
trully revolutionary transformations that must occur) but encompassing everything.
We have countless think pieces, bits of academic writing, books, etc that focus on
individual pieces and changes in isolation. But we've largely abandoned the all-encompassing
narrative, which at their heart is precisely what religion offers and why it can be so
seductive, successful, and resilient for so long.
The status quo has this type of story, it's not all that compelling but given the fact
that it is the status quo and has inertia and tradition on its side (along with the news
media, political, entertainment, etc) it doesn't have to be.
We need to abandon the single narrow issue activism that has become so prominent over the
years and get back to engaging with issues as unseparable and intimately interconnected.
Tinkering around the edges will do nothing, a new political religion is what is
required.
Sorry, I disagree vehemently. Deeply held cultural attitudes are very slow to change and
the study found that work being critical to happiness examined a large number of
societies.
Look at feminism. I was a half-generation after the time when women were starting to get a
shot at real jobs. IIRC, the first class that accepted women at Harvard Law School was in the
1950 and at Harvard Business School, 1965. And the number of first attendees was puny. The
1965 class at HBS had 10 8 women out of a graduating class of over 800; my class in 1981 had
only 11% women.
In the 1980s, you saw a shift from the belief that women could do what men could do to
promotion of the idea that women could/should be feminine as well as successful. This looked
like seriously mixed messages, in that IMHO the earlier tendency to de-emphasize gender roles
in the workplace looked like a positive development.
Women make less than 80% of what men do in the US. Even female doctors in the same
specialities make 80% of their male peers.
The Speenhamland in the UK had what amounted to an income guarantee from the 1790s to
1832. Most people didn't want to be on it and preferred to work. Two generations and being on
the support of local governments was still seen as carrying a stigma.
More generally, social animals have strongly ingrained tendencies to resent situations
they see as unfair. Having someone who is capable of working not work elicits resentment from
many, which is why most people don't want to be in that position. You aren't going to change
that.
And people need a sense of purpose. There are tons of cases of rich heirs falling into
drug addiction or alcoholism and despair because they have no sense of purpose in life. Work
provides that, even if it's mundane work to support a family. That is one of the great
dissservices the Democrats have done to the citizenry at large: sneering at ordinary work
when blue-collar men were the anchors of families and able to take pride in that.
Regarding the large number of societies, we often like to think we're more different than
we actually are focusing on a few glaringly obvious differences and generalizing from there.
Even going back a few hundred years when ideas travelled slower we were still (especially the
"west" though the "east" wasn't all that much more different either) quite similar. So I'm
less inclined to see the large number of societies as evidence.
Generally on societal changes and movements: The issue here is that the leadership has not
changed, they may soften some edges here or there (only to resharpen them again when we're
looking elsewhere) but their underlying ideologies are largely unchanged. A good mass of any
population will go along to survive, whether they agree or not (and we find increasing
evidence that many do not agree, though certainly that they do not agree on a single
alternative).
It may be impossible to implement such changes in who controls the levers of power in a
democratic fashion but it also may be immoral not implement such changes. Of course this is
also clearly a similar path to that walked by many a demonized (in most cases rightfully so)
dictator and despot. 'Tread carefully' are wise words to keep in mind.
Today we have a situation which reflects your example re: social animals and resentment of
unfairness: the elite (who falls into this category is of course debatable, some individuals
moreso than others). But they have intelligently, for their benefit, redirected that
resentment towards those that have little. Is there really any logical connection between not
engaging in wage labor (note: NOT equivalent to not working) and unfairness? Or is it a myth
crafted by those who currently benefit the most?
That resentment is also precisely why it is key that a Basic income be universal with no
means testing, everyone gets the same.
I think we should not extrapolate too much from the relatively small segment of the
population falling into the the inherited money category. Correlation is not causation and
all that.
It also seems that so often individuals jump to the hollywood crafted image of the
layabout stoner sitting on the couch giggling at cartoons (or something similarly negative)
when the concept of less wage labor is brought up. A reduction of wage labor does not equate
to lack of work being done, it simply means doing much of that work for different reasons and
rewards and incentives.
As I said in the Links thread today, we produce too much, we consume too much, we grow too
much. More wage labor overall as a requirement for survival is certainly not the solution to
any real problem that we face, its a massively inefficient use of resources and a massive
strain on the ecosystems.
I am really gobsmacked at the sense of entitlement on display here. Why are people
entitled to an income with no work? Being an adult means toil: cleaning up after yourself,
cleaning up after your kids if you have them, if you are subsistence farmer, tending your
crops and livestock, if you are a modern society denizen, paying your bills and your taxes on
time. The idea that people are entitled to a life of leisure is bollocks. Yet you promote
that.
Society means we have obligations to each other. That means work. In rejecting work you
reject society.
And the touting of "creativity" is a top 10% trope that Thomas Frank called out in Listen,
Liberal. It's a way of devaluing what the bottom 90% do.
My argument with the article is that, to me, it smacks of Taylorism. A follow-on study
would analyze how many hours a laborer must work before the acquired sense of purpose and
dignity and associated happiness began to decline. Would it be 30 hours a week of
backbreaking labor before dignity found itself eroded? 40? 50? 60? When does the worker
break? Just how far can we push the mule before it collapses?
The author alludes to this: "The overwhelming proportion relate their social status and
life happiness to gaining a job"
Work equals happiness. Got it.
But, as a former robotics instructor, and as one who watches the industry (and former
students), I see an automated future as damn near inevitable. Massive job displacement is
coming, life as a minimum wage burger flipper will cease, with no future employment prospects
short of government intervention (WPA and CCC for all, I say). I'm not a Luddite, obviously,
but there are going to be a lot of people, billions, worldwide, with no prospect of
employment. Saying, "You're lazy and entitled" is a bit presumptuous, Yves. Not everyone has
your ability, not everyone has my ability. When the burger flipping jobs are gone, where do
they go? When roombas mop the floors, where do the floor moppers go?
We could use a new Civilian Conservation Corps and and a Works Progress Administration.
There's lots of work that needs doing that isn't getting done by private corporations.
The outrage at non-work wealth and income would be more convincing if it were aimed also
at owners of capital. About 30% of national income is passive -- interest, rents, dividends.
Why are the owners of capital "entitled to an income with no work?" It's all about the
morality that underlies the returns to capital while sugaring over a devaluation of labor. As
a moral issue, everyone should share the returns on capital or we should tax away the
interest, rents, and dividends. If it's an economic issue, berating people for their beliefs
isn't a reason.
The overwhelming majority do work. The top 0.1% is almost entirely private equity managers
who are able to classify labor income as capital gains through the carried interest loophole.
Go look at the Forbes 400.
The 1% are mainly CEOs, plus elite professionals, like partners at top law and consulting
firms and specialty surgeons (heart, brain, oncology). The CEOs similarly should be seen as
getting labor income but have a lot of stock incentive pay (that is how they get seriously
rich) which again gets capital gains treatment.
You are mistaking clever taking advantage of the tax code for where the income actually
comes from. Even the kids of rich people are under pressure to act like entrepreneurs from
their families and peers. Look at Paris Hilton and Ivanka as examples. They both could have
sat back and enjoyed their inheritance, but both went and launched businesses. I'm not saying
the kids of the rich succeed, or would have succeed to the extent they do without parental
string-pulling, but the point is very few hand their fortune over to a money manager and go
sailing or play the cello.
What's your take on Rutger Bergman's ted talk? i think most jobs aren't real jobs at all,
like marketing and ceo's. why can't we do 20 hour work weeks so we don't have huge amounts of unemployment? Note, I was "unemployed" for years since "markets" decide not to fund science in the US.
Yay Germany At least I was fortunate enough to not be forced to work at Walmart or McDonalds
like the majority of people with absolutely no life choices. Ah the sweet coercion of
capitalism.
Your hopes for a UBI are undone by some of the real world observations I've made over many
years, with regard to how a guaranteed income increase, of any measure, for a whole
population of an area, affects prices. Shorter: income going up means prices are raised by
merchants to capture the new income.
Examples: A single industry town raises wages for all employees by 2% for the new calendar
year. Within the first 2 weeks of the new year, all stores and restaurants and service
providers in the town raise their prices by 2%. This happens every year there is a general
wage increase.
Example: Medicare part D passes and within 2 years, Pharma now having new captive
customers whose insurance will pay for drugs, raise prices higher and higher, even on generic
drugs.
A more recent example: ACA passes with no drug price ceilings. Again, as with the passage
of Medicare part D, Pharma raises drug prices to unheard of levels, even older and cheap but
life saving drugs, in the knowledge that a new, large group will have insurance that will pay
for the drugs – a new source of money.
Your assumption that any UBI would not be instantly captured by raised prices is naive, at
best. It's also naive to assume companies would continue to pay wages at the same level to
people still employed, instead of reducing wages and letting UBI fill in the rest. Some
corporations already underpay their workers, then encourage the workers to apply for food
stamps and other public supports to make up for the reduced wage.
The point of the paper is the importance of paid employment to a person's sense of well
being. I agree with the paper.
For the vast majority, a UBI would be income-neutral – it would have to be, to avoid
massive inflation. So people would receive a UBI, but pay more tax to compensate. The effect
on prices would be zero.
The advantage of a UBI is mostly felt at the lower end, where insecure/seasonal work does
now pay. At the moment, a person who went from farm labourer to Christmas work to summer
resort work in the UK would certainly be working hard, but also relentlessly hounded by the
DWP over universal credit. A UBI would make this sort of lifestyle possible.
Davidab,
Good for you, but your perspicacity is not scalable. People are social animals and your attitude toward "the herd", at least as expressed here,
is that of a predator, even if your taste doesn't run toward predation. Social solutions will necessarily be scalable or they won't be solutions for long.
> the organized herd a herd animal trapped in the herd
I don't think throwing 80% to 90% of the population into the "prey" bucket is especially
perspicacious politically (except, of course, for predators or parasites). I also don't think it's especially perspicacious morally. You write:
Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in car
payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?
Let me translate that: "Trapped in the herd as many are to support spouses and children."
In other words, taking the cares of the world on themselves in order to care for others.
Unemployed stay at home dad here. My children are now old enough to no longer need a stay
at home dad. Things I have done: picked up two musical instruments and last year dug a
natural swimming pond by hand. Further, one would need to refute all the increased happiness
in retirement (NBER). Why social security but not UBI? I get being part of the precariat is
painful and this is a reality for most the unemployed no matter where you live in the world.
A UBI is unworkable because it will never be large enough to make people's lives
unprecarious. Having said that, I am almost positive if you gave every unemployed person 24 k
a year and health benefits, there would be a mass of non working happy creative folks.
UBI seems to me to encourage non-virtuous behavior – sloth, irresponsibility,
fecklessness, and spendthriftness. I like the Finnish model – unemployment insurance is
not limited – except if you refuse work provided by the local job center. Lots of work
is not being done all over America – we could guarantee honest work to all with some
imagination. Start with not spraying roundup and rather using human labor to control weeds
and invasive species.
I do agree that universal health insurance is necessary and sadly Obamacare is not
that.
The crux of this problem is the definition used for "non-virtuous behaviour."
A new CCC is a good place to start though. (Your Tax Dollars At Work! [For some definition of
tax dollars.])
As for BJ above, I would suppose that child rearing was his "employment" for years. good so
far, but his follow-up is untypical. The 'Empty Nester' mother is a well known meme.
Spendthriftness on 24K a year? Seriously? If we are disgorging unprofessional opinions, I will add my own: sloth and
irresponsibility are more signs of depression rather than freedom from having to work. In
fact, I believe (and I think much of the stuff here) supports the idea that people want to be
seen as useful in some way. Doesn't include me! :) .. unfortunately, I have the charmingly named "dependents" so there
you have it.
I lived 6 years as a grad student on 24k a year and would say it was easy. Only thing I
would have to had worried about was awful health insurance. A two household each with 24k
would be even easier, especially if you could do it in a low cost area. So I am not sure what
you mean by spendthrift. But again it will never happen, so we will be stuck with what we
have or most likely an even more sinister system. I guess I am advocating for a JG with
unlimited number of home makers per household.
except if you refuse work provided by the local job center
And who's to say that the local "job center" has work that would be appropriate for every
person's specific talents and interests? This is no better than saying that you should be
willing to go work for some minimum-wage retail job with unpredictable scheduling and other
forms of employer abuses after you lose a high-paying job requiring special talents. I have
to call bullshit on this model. I went through a two-year stretch if unemployment in no small
part because the vast majority of the available jobs for my skill set were associated with
the MIC, surveillance state or the parasitic FIRE sector. I was able to do this because I had
saved up enough FY money and had no debts or family to support.
I can also attest to the negative aspects of unemployment that the post describes. Its all
true and I can't really say that I'e recovered even now, 2.5 years after finding another
suitable job.
The job center in the neighbouring Sweden had the same function. Had is the important
word. My guess is that the last time someone lost their unemployment insurance payout due to
not accepting a job was in the early 1980s. Prior to that companies might, maybe, possibly
have considered hiring someone assigned to them – full employment forced companies to
accept what was offered. Companies did not like the situation and the situation has since
changed.
Now, when full employment is a thing of the past, the way to lose unemployment insurance
payouts is by not applying to enough jobs. An easily gamed system by people not wanting to
work: just apply to completely unsuitable positions and the number of applications will be
high. Many companies are therefore overwhelmed by applications and are therefore often forced
to hire more people in HR to filter out the unsuitable candidates.
People in HR tend not to know much about qualifications and or personalities for the job so
they tend to filter out too many. We're all familiar with the skills-shortage .
Next step of this is that the companies who do want to hire have to use recruitment agencies.
Basically outsourcing the HR to another company whose people are working on commission.
Recruiters sometimes know how to find 'talent', often they are the same kind of people with
the same skills and backgrounds as people working in HR.
To even get to the hiring manager a candidate has to go through two almost identical and
often meaningless interviews. Recruiter and then HR. Good for the GDP I suppose, not sure if
it is good for anything else.
But back on topic again, there is a second way of losing unemployment insurance payout:
Time. Once the period covered has passed there is no more payouts of insurance. After that it
it is time to live on savings, then sell all assets, and then once that is done finally go to
the welfare office and prove that savings are gone and all assets are sold and maybe welfare
might be paid out. People on welfare in Sweden are poor and the indignities they are being
put through are many. Forget about hobbies and forget about volunteering as the money for
either of those activities simply aren't available. Am I surprised by a report saying
unemployed in Sweden are unhappy? Nope.
meanwhile NYTimes testimonials Friday, show average family of 4 healthprofit costs
(tripled, due to trump demise ACA) to be $30,000. per year, with around $10,000. deductible
end of any semblance of affordable access, "murKa"
Where does a character like Bertie Wooster in "Jeeves" fit in your notions of virtuous
behavior? Would you consider him more virtuous working in the management of a firm,
controlling the lives and labor of others -- and humorously helped by his his brilliant
valet, Jeeves, getting him out of trouble?
For contrast -- in class and social status -- take a beer-soaked trailer trash gentleman
of leisure -- and for sake of argument blessed with less than average intelligence -- where
would you put him to work where you'd feel pleased with his product or his service? Would you
feel better about this fellow enjoying a six-pack after working 8 hours a day 5 days a week
virtuously digging and then filling a hole in the ground while carefully watched and goaded
by an overseer? [Actually -- how different is that from "using human labor to control weeds
and invasive species"? I take it you're a fan of chain-gangs and making the poor pick up
trash on the highways?]
What about some of our engineers and scientists virtuously serving the MIC? Is their
behavior virtuous because they're not guilty of sloth, irresponsibility [in executing their
work], fecklessness, and spendthriftness? On this last quality how do you feel about our
government who pay the salaries for all these jobs building better ways to kill and maim?
It is a design by David Pagan Butler. It is his plunge pool design, deepend is 14 by 8 by
7 deep. I used the dirt to make swales around some trees. Win win all around.
The answer is yes my spouse works. So I do have a schedule of waking up to make her lunch
everyday, meeting her at lunch to walk, and making dinner when she gets home, but we do all
those things on her days off so .
But again we would need to explain away, why people who are retired are happier? Just
because they think they payed into social security? Try explaining to someone on the SS dole
how the government spends money into existence and is not paid by taxes or that the
government never saved their tax money, so there are not entitled to this money.
I hated working for other people and doing what they wanted. I began to feel some
happiness when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects. Things improved
even more when I could assure myself of some small guaranteed income by claiming Social
Security at age 62. To arise in the morning when I feel rested, with interesting projects
like gardens, fences, small buildings ahead and work at my own pace is the essence of delight
for me. I've been following your arguments against UBI for years and disagree vehemently.
I feel I would behave the same as you, if I had the chance. *But* no statements about
human beings are absolute, and because UBI would work for either of us does not mean it would
work for the majority. Nothing devised by man is perfect.
first you had to buy the half acre in a suitable location, then you had to work many years
to qualify for social security, the availability of which you paid for and feel you deserve.
You also have to buy stuff for fences gardens and small buildings. At most that rhymes with a
ubi but is significantly different in it's make up.
> when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects
That is, when you acquired the half acre, which not everyone can do. It seems to
me there's a good deal of projecting going on with this thread from people who are, in
essence, statistical outliers. But Mitchell summarizes the literature:
So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on
their own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond
the income we earn.
If the solution that works for you is going to scale, that implies that millions more will
have to own land. If UBI depends on that, how does that happen? (Of course, in a
post-collapse scenario, the land might be taken , but that same scenario makes the
existence of institutions required to convey the UBI highly unlikely. )
Very glad to hear that Bill Mitchell is working on the "Future of Work" book, and to have
this post, and the links to the other segments. Thank you, Yves!
I don't agree with this statement. Never will. I'm the complete opposite. Give me more
leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments and doing things that
I enjoy. I recall back to when I was a student, I relished in the free time I got (believe me
University gave me a lot of free time) between lectures, meaning I could enjoy this time
pursuing creative activities. Sure I might be different than most people but I know countless
people who are the same.
My own opinion is that root problem lies in the pathology of the working mentality, that
'work' and having a 'job' is so engrained into our society and mindset that once you give
most people the time to enjoy other things, they simply can't. They don't know what to do
with themselves and they eventually become unhappy, watching daytime TV sat on the sofa.
I recall back to a conversation with my mother about my father, she said to me, 'I don't
know how your father is going to cope once he retires and has nothing to do' and it's that
very example of where work for so many people becomes so engrained in their mindset, that
they are almost scared of having 'nothing to do' as they say. It's a shame, it's this
systemic working mentality that has led to this mindset. I'm glad I'm the opposite of this
and proud by mother brought me up to be this way. Work, and job are not in my vocabulary. I
work to live, not live to work.
I agree with Andrew. I think this data on the negative effects says more about how being
employed fundamentally breaks the human psyche and turns them into chattel, incapable of
thinking for themselves and destroying their natural creativity. The more a human is molded
into a "good worker" the less they become a full fledged human being. The happiest people are
those that have never placed importance on work, that have always lived by the maxim "work to
live, not live to work". From my own experience every assertion in this article is the
opposite of reality. It is working that makes me apathethic, uncreative, and miserable. The
constant knowing that you're wasting your life, day after day, engaged in an activity merely
to build revenue streams for the rich, instead of doing things that help society or that
please you on a personal level, is what I find misery inducing.
I agree. If financial insecurity is removed from the equation -- free time can be used creatively
for self-actualization, whatever form that may take: cultivating the arts, hobbies, community
activities, worthy causes and projects. The ideology wafting from Mitchell's post smells to me like a rationale for wage slavery
(market driven living, neo-liberalism, etc.)
Besides how are people supposed to spend their time "exploring other opportunities" when
unemployed anyway? To collect unemployment which isn't exactly paying that much anyway, they
have to show they are applying to jobs. To go to the movies the example given costs money,
which one may tend to be short on when unemployed. They probably are looking for work
regardless (for the income). There may still be some free time. But they could go back to
school? Uh in case one just woke up from a rock they were under for 100 years, that costs
money, which one may tend to be short on when unemployed, plus there is no guarantee the new
career will pan out either, no guarantee someone is just chomping at the bit to hire a newly
trained 50 year old or something. I have always taken classes when unemployed, and paid for
it and it's not cheap.
Yes to use one's time wisely in unemployment in the existing system requires a kind of
deep psychological maturity that few have, a kind of Surrender To Fate, to the uncertainty of
whether one will have an income again or not (either that or a sugar daddy or a trust fund).
Because it's not easy to deal with that uncertainty. And uncertainty is the name of the game
in unemployment, that and not having an income may be the pain in it's entirety.
Sadly this breaking down into a "good worker" begins for most shortly after they begin
school. This type of education harms society in a myriad of ways including instilling a
dislike of learning, deference to authority (no matter how irrational and unjust), and a
destruction of a child's natural curiosity.
I don't buy your premise that people are "creative". The overwhelming majority do not have
creative projects they'd be pursuing if they had leisure and income. Go look at retirees,
ones that have just retired, are healthy, and have money.
You are really misconstruing what the studies have found and misapplied it to your
situation. Leisure time when you have a job or a role (being a student) is not at all the
same as having time when you are unemployed, with or without a social safety net.
Work: that can be me hiring someone to cut my yard, or another type of one-off thing
filled with precariousness.
Job: that less temporary work, but by no means permanent. Just a step up from the
precariousness of work.
Career: that is work in the same field over a long period of time and it is more likely
that someone will develop an identity through performing the work. Still precarious, but
maybe more fulfilling.
Sense of purpose: I was always under the impression that is something you have to give
yourself. If it can be taken away by someone what was the purpose?
one often has a role when unemployed: finding work. But it's not a very fulfilling one!
But if one is trying to find work, it's not exactly the absence of a role either even if it
still leaves significantly more free time than otherwise, maybe winning the lottery is the
absence of a role.
But then it's also not like we give people a UBI even for a few years (at any time in
adult life) to get an education. Only if they take out a student loan approaching the size of
a mortgage or have parents willing to pony up are they allowed that (to pay not just for the
education but to live because having a roof over one's head etc. is never free, a UBI via
debt it might be called).
> Give me more leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments
and doing things that I enjoy.
Nothing to breed resentment of "the creative class" here! Blowback from Speenhamland
brought on the workhouses, so be careful what you wish for.
UBI won't happen and JG has been tried (and failed).
The argument that JG would allow the public sector to hire more people is demeaning to
people already employed in the public sector and demonstrably false – people are hired
into the public sector without there being a JG. It is most certainly possible to be against
a JG while wanting more people working in the public sector.
The way forward is to have a government acting for people instead of for corporations.
Increase the amount of paid vacations, reduce the pension age and stop with the Soviet style
worship of work: While some people are apparently proud of their friends and relatives who
died while at work it is also possible to feel sad about that.
The JG was tried in Communist countries in Europe, Asia and Americas. The arguments then
and there were the same as here and now, made by the same type of social 'scientists'
(economists).
Would a JG be different here and now as the Republicans and Democrats are representing the
best interests of the people? Or are they representing the same kind of interests as the
Communist parties did?
Data, please. The USSR fell because it was spending on its military to keep up with the
US, a much larger economy. Countering your assertion we have this:
As long as people argue that "it's not fair" to fix the inequality issue and employ things
like debt jubilee or student loan forgiveness, or if we fix the ridiculous cost of health
care what will all those insurance agents do then we will wind up with the real kind of class
warfare, rather than the current punching from the top down, the punching will come from the
bottom, because the situation is not fair now, it's just TINA according to those who profit
from it. In my own life there is a balance of creativity and work, and I find work enables my
creativity by putting some pressure on my time, i.e., I get up earlier, I practice at 8:30 am
instead of sleeping til 10 and winding up with S.A..D., I go to bed rather than watch tv or
drink to excess.. in other words i have some kind of weird schedule, I have days off sort of
When I've been unemployed I feel the way s described in the article. I find the arguments in
favor of ubi tend to come from people who already have assets, or jobs, or family who they
take care of which is actually a job although uncommonly described as such. The only truth I
see in real life is that the unemployed I am intimately familiar with first are mentally
oppressed by the notion that to repair their situation will require they work every waking
hour at substandard wages for the rest of their life and that is a major barrier to getting
started, and that is a policy choice the gov't and elite classes purposefully made which
created the precariat and will be their undoing if they are unable to see this.
Interesting point. I read a science fiction story in which the protagonist arrives for
work at his full time job at 10:00 AM, and he's finished for the day at 4:00 PM. I can't
remember the name of the story or novel, unfortunately.
Agreed. And they already have it in places like Denmark. Why don't we talk about that? It
actually exists unlike utopian schemes for either total UBI or total work guarantee
(government job creation is not utopian, but imagining it will employ everyone is, and I
would like the UBI to be more widely tried, but in this country we are nowhere close). Funny
how utopia becomes more interesting to people than actual existing arrangements, even though
of course those could be improved on too.
The Danish work arrangement is less than a 40 hour week, and mothers especially often work
part-time but both sexes can. It's here in this country where work is either impossibly
grueling or you are not working. No other choice. In countries with more flexible work
arrangements more women actually work, but it's flexible and flexible for men who choose to
do the parenting as well. I'm not saying this should be for parents only of course.
My own situation is that I am unhappy in my well-paying job and would like nothing more
than to devote myself to other interests. I'm thirty years on in a relationship with someone
who grew up in bad financial circumstances and panics whenever I talk about leaving my job. I
tell her that we have 2 years of living expenses in the bank but I can't guarantee making the
same amount of money if I do leave my job. She has a job that she loves and is important and
pays barely 1/2 of my own income. So she worries about her future with me. She worries about
losing her home. I suppose that makes me the definition of a wage slave. And it makes for an
increasingly unhappy marriage. I admire those who have faced similar circumstances and found
a way through this. Sorry to vent, but this topic and the comments hit a nerve with me and
I'm still trying to figure this out.
Otis;
We are presently going through a period where that "two year cushion" has evaporated, for
various reasons. We are seeing our way through this, straight into penury and privation.
Take nothing for granted in todays' economy.
yes find the lower paying job that you like more first. If you just quit for nothing in
the hopes of finding one it might not happen. Of course unemployment also happens sometimes,
whether we want it or not.
The newer generations are worse when it comes to lifestyle. Those of that are older can at
least remember a time without cellphones internet streaming services leasing a new car every
2 years etc.
What about the young? My niece and her husband should be all set , his mom sunk money into
a home on the condition she moved into a mother in law apartment. So far so good right? 2
years in they are imploding even with the free child care she provides. Combined their
wireless bill a month is over $300. The sit on the couch side by side and stream netflix
shows to dueling iphones in front of a 65 inch tv that is not even turned on. Wearing
headphones in silence.
Both driving new vehicles , both have gym memberships they don't use . They buy lattes 3
or 4 times a day which is probably another 500 a month.
My uncle passed away recently and my niece asked if she was in the will. It was literally
her only communication on the subject. They are going under and could easily trim a few
thousand a month from the budget but simply won't. No one in the family is going to lift a
finger for them at this point they burned every possible bridge already. I have seen people
living in cars plenty lately but I think these will be the first I see to living in brand new
cars .
Somewhere along the line they got the impression that the american dream was a leased car
a starbucks in one hand and an iphone in the other .
Confront them with the concept of living within a paycheck and they react like a patient
hearing he has 3 months to live.
Yeah being poor, never mind growing up poor, just well and truly sucks and it can really
@@@@ you up. Gives people all sorts of issues. I'm rather like her, but I have had the joy of
multi-hour commutes to unexciting soul crushing work. Happy, happy, joy, joy! However don't
forget that with the current political economy things are likely to go bad in all sorts of
ways. This whole site is devoted to that. My suggestion is to keep the job unless you have
something lined up. Not being able to rent has it own stresses too. Take my word for it.
I may be engaging in semantics but I think conflating work and jobs makes this article a
bit of a mixed bag. I know plenty of people who are terribly unhappy in their jobs, but
nonetheless extract a sense of wellbeing from having a stable source of INCOME to pay their
bills (anecdotally speaking, acute stress from recent job losses is closely linked to
uncertainty about how bills are going to be paid, that's why those with a safety net of
accumulated savings report less stress than those without). Loss of status, social standing
and identity and the chronic stress borne from these become evident much later I.e. when the
unemployment is prolonged, accompanied of course by the still unresolved top-of-mind concern
of "how to pay the bills".
As such, acute stress for the recently unemployed is driven by financial/income
uncertainty (I.e. how am I going to pay the bills) whereas chronic stress from prolonged
unemployment brings into play the more identity driven aspects like loss of social standing
and status. For policy interventions to have any effects, policy makers would have to
delineate the primary drivers of stress (or lack of wellbeing as the author calls it) during
the various phases of the unemployment lifecycle. An Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) like
we have here in South Africa appears to address the early stages of unemployment, and the
accompanying acute stress, quite well by providing the income guarantee (for six months) that
cushions the shock of losing a job. What's still missing of course are interventions that
promote the quick return to employment for those on UIF, so maybe a middle of the road
solution between UBI and a jobs guarantee scheme is how policy makers should be framing this,
instead of the binary either/or we currently have.
Lots' of people think they're unhappy with their jobs. Let them sit unemployed for 9
months and ask them if they want that job back. The usual parade of anecdata is on display here in the comments. Mitchell's real data and
analysis in the article above still stand.
If you'd read through my comment, and not rushed through it with a view of dishing out a
flippant response, you'd have seen that nowhere do I question the validity of his data, I
merely question how the argument is presented in some areas (NC discourages unquestioning
deference to the views of experts no??). By the way, anecdotes do add to richer understanding
of a nuanced and layered topic (as this one is) so your dismissal of them in your haste to
invalidate people's observations is hardly helpful.
Yes people many not like their jobs but prefer the security of having them to not. Yes
even if the boss sexually harasses one (as we are seeing is very common). Yes even if there
is other workplace abuse. Yes even when it causes depression or PTSD (but if one stays with
such a job long term it ruins the self confidence that is one prerequisite to get another
job!). Yes even if one is in therapy because of job stress, sexual harassment or you name it.
The job allows the having health insurance, allows the therapy, allows the complaining about
the job in therapy to make it through another week.
When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices.
Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with
steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out
for it.
I would love to see some more about happiness or its lack in retirement–referenced
by stay-at-home dad BJ , above.
I wonder, too, about the impact of *how* one loses one's job. Getting laid off vs fired vs
quitting vs involuntary retirement vs voluntary, etc feel very different. Speaking from
experience on that, too. I will search on these points and post anything of interest.
There are also other things that are degrading about the very process of being unemployed
not mentioned here. What about the constant rejection that it can entail? One is unemployed
and looking for work, one sends out resumes, many of them will never be answered, that's
rejection. Then if one is lucky they get interviews, many will never lead to jobs, yet more
rejection. Does the process of constant rejection itself have a negative effect on a human
being whether it's looking for jobs or dates or whatever? Isn't it learned helplessness to if
one keeps trying for something and keeps failing. Isn't that itself demoralizing entirely
independent of any doubtful innate demoralizing quality of leisure.
I am not so sure if I agree with this article. I think it really depends on whether or not
you have income to support yourself, hate or love your job, and the amount of outside
interests you have, among other things. Almost everyone I know who lives in the NYC area and
commutes into the city .doesn't like their job and finds the whole situation "soul-crushing".
Those that live in Manhattan proper are (feel) a bit better off. I for one stopped working
somewhat voluntarily last year. I write somewhat because I began to dislike my job so much
that it was interfering with my state of well being, however, if I had been allowed to work
remotely I probably would have stuck it out for another couple of years.
I am close enough to
62 that I can make do before SS kicks in although I have completely changed my lifestyle
– i.e. I've given up a materialistic lifestyle and live very frugally.
Additionally I
saved for many years once I decided to embark on this path. I do not find myself depressed at
all and the path this year has been very enriching and exciting (and scary) as I reflect on
what I want for the future. I'm pretty sure I will end up moving and buying a property so
that I can become as self sufficient as possible. Also, I probably will get a job down the
line – but if I can't get one because I am deemed too old that will be ok as well. The
biggest unknown for me is how much health insurance will cost in the future .
The article made clear that the studies included "unemployed but with income" from
government support. It is amazing the degree to which readers ignore that and want to make
the findings about "unemployed with no income".
That's because we Americans all have work=good=worthy=blessed by God while
workless=scum=worthless=accursed by God engraved into our collective soul. Our politics, our
beliefs, are just overlays to that.
Even when we agree that the whole situation just crushes people into paste, and for which
they have no defense regardless of how hard they work, how carefully they plan, or what they
do, that underlay makes use feel that this is their/our fault. Any suggestions that at least
some support can be decoupled from work, and that maybe work, and how much you earn, should
not determine their value, brings the atavistic fear of being the "undeserving poor,"
parasites and therefore reprobated scum.
So we don't hear what you are saying without extra effort because it's bypassing our
conscious thoughts.
Add my voice to those above who feel that forced labor is the bane of existence, not the
wellspring. All this study says to me is that refusing to employ someone in capitalist
society does not make them happy. It makes them outcasts.
So, I say yes to a JG, because anyone who wants work should be offered work. But at the
same time, a proper JG is not forced labor. And the only way to ensure that it is not forced
labor, is to decouple basic needs from wage slavery.
I am critical of those who distinguish between the job and the income. Of course the
income is critical to the dignity of the job. For many jobs, it is the primary source of that
dignity. The notion that all jobs should provide some intrinsic dignity unrelated to the
income, or that people whose dignity is primarily based on the income they earn rather than
the work they do are deluded, is to buy in to the propaganda of "passion" being a requirement
for your work and to really be blind to what is required to make a society function. Someone
has to change the diapers, and wipe the butts of old people. (yes, I've done both.) It
doesn't require passion and any sense of satisfaction is gone by about the second day. But if
you could make a middle class living doing it, there would be a lot fewer unhappy people in
the world.
It is well known that auto factory jobs were not perceived as good jobs until the UAW was
able to make them middle class jobs. The nature of the actual work itself hasn't changed all
that much over the years – mostly it is still very repetitive work that requires little
specialized training, even if the machine technology is much improved. Indeed, I would guess
that more intrinsic satisfaction came from bashing metal than pushing buttons on a CNC
machine, and so the jobs may even be less self-actualizing than they used to be.
The capitalist myth is that the private sector economy generates all the wealth and the
public sector is a claim on that wealth. Yet human development proves to us that this is not
true – a substantial portion of "human capital" is developed outside the paid economy,
government investment in R&D generates productivity growth, etc. And MMT demonstrates
that we do not require private sector savings to fund public investment.
We are still a ways from having the math to demonstrate that government investment in
caring and nurturing is always socially productive – first we need productivity numbers
that reflect more than just private sector "product." But I think we are moving in that
direction. Rather than prioritize a minimum wage JG of make-work, we should first simply pay
people good wages to raise their own children or look after their elderly and disabled
relatives. The MMT JG, as I understand it, would still require people to leave their kids
with others to look after them in order to perform some minimum wage task. That is just
dumb.
Maybe it's dumb, it's certainly dumb in a system like the U.S. where work is brutal and
often low paid and paid childcare is not well remunerated either. But caretakers also working
seems to work in countries with greater income equality, good job protections, flexible work
arrangements, and a decent amount of paid parental leave – yea Denmark, they think
their children should be raised by professionals, but also work-life balance is still pretty
good.
My take is that capitalism has made the benefits and malus of having a job so ingrained
into culture and so reinforced. Having a job is so closely linked to happiness because it
gives you the money needed to pursue it.
A job affords you the ability to pursue whatever goals you want within a capitalist
framework. "Everything" costs money and so having a job gives you the money to pay for those
costs and go on to fulfill your pursuit of happiness.
Analyzing whether people are happy or not under these conditions seem apparent that it is
going to lead to results heavily biased towards finding happiness through employment.
The unemployed are often living off someone else's income and feel like an undeserving
parasite. Adults are generally ingrained with the culture that they have to grow up and be
independent and be able to provide for a new family that they will start up. Becoming
unemployed is like being emasculated and infantile, the opposite of what is expected of
adults.
There's also that not having a job is increasingly being punished especially in the case
of America. American wages have stayed either largely static or have worsened, making being
unemployed that much more of a burden on family or friends. Unemployment has been demonized
by Reaganism and has become systematically punishable for the long term unemployed. If you
are unemployed for too long, you start losing government support. This compounds the frantic
rush to get out of unemployment once unemployed.
There is little luxury to enjoy while unemployed. Life while unemployed is a frustrating
and often disappointing hell of constant job applications and having many of them lead to
nothing. The people providing support often start to become less so over time and become more
convinced of laziness or some kind of lack of character or willpower or education or ability
or whatever. Any sense of systemic failure is transplanted into a sense of personal failure,
especially under neoliberalism.
I am not so sure about the case of Europe and otherwise. I am sure that the third world
often has little or no social safety nets so having work (in exploitative conditions in many
cases) is a must for survival.
Anyways, I wonder about the exact methodologies of these studies and I think they often
take the current feelings about unemployment and then attempt to extrapolate talking points
for UBI/JG from them. Yes, UBI wouldn't change culture overnight and it would take a very,
very long time for people to let down their guard and adjust if UBI is to be implemented in a
manner that would warrant trust. This article seems to understand the potential for that, but
decides against it being a significant factor due to the studies emphasizing the malus of
unemployment.
I wonder how different the results would be if there were studies that asked people how
they would feel if they were unemployed under a UBI system versus the current system. I know
a good number of young people (mostly under 30) who would love to drop out and just play
video games all day. Though the significance of such a drastic demographic shift would
probably lead to great political consequences. It would probably prove the anti-UBI crowd
right in that under a capitalist framework, the capitalists and the employed wouldn't
tolerate the unemployed and would seek to turn them into an underclass.
Personally I think a combination of UBI and JG should be pursued. JG would work better
within the current capitalist framework. I don't think it is without its pitfalls due to
similar possible issues (with the similar policy of full employment) either under
Keynesianism (e.g. Milton Friedman sees it as inefficient) or in the USSR (e.g. bullshit
jobs). There is the possibility of UBI having benefits (not having the unemployed be a burden
but a subsidized contributer to the economy) so I personally don't think it should be fully
disregarded until it is understood better. I would like it if there were better scientific
studies to expand upon the implications of UBI and better measure if it would work or not.
The upcoming studies testing an actual UBI system should help to end the debates once and for
all.
My $0.02:
I have a creative pursuit (no money) and a engineering/physical science technical career
(income!). I am proficient in and passionate about both. Over the last few years, the
technical career became tenuous due to consolidation of regional consulting firms (endemic to
this era)- wages flat to declining, higher work stress, less time off, conversation to
contact employment, etc.- which has resulted in two layoffs.
During the time of tenuous employment, my art took on a darker tone. During unemployment the
art stopped altogether.
I'm recently re-employed in a field that I'm not proficient. Both the peter principle and
imposter syndrome apply. My art has resumed, but the topics are singular about despair and
work, to the point that I feel like I'm constantly reworking the same one piece over and over
again. And the quality has plummeted too.
In some fields (e.g. engineering), being a wage slave is the only realistic option due to
the dominance of a small number of large firms. The big players crowd out independents and
free lancers, while pressuring their own employees through just-high-enough wages and
limiting time off. Engineering services is a relationship- based field, and the big boys (and
they are nearly all boys) have vastly bigger networks to draw work from than a small firm
unless that small firm has a big contact to feed them work (until they get gobbled up). The
big firms also have more areas of expertise which limits how useful a boutique firm is to a
client pool, except under very narrow circumstances. And if you are an introvert like most
engineering people, there's no way to compete with big firms and their marketing staff to
expand a network enough to compete.
In that way, consulting is a lot like art. To make a living at it you need either contacts or
a sponsor. Or an inheritance.
I would be interested to know what the definition of unemployment was for the purpose of
this study (I couldn't find it in the supplied links). If it's simply "people who don't have
a job," for example, then it would include the likes of the idle rich, retirees, wards of the
state, and so on. Binary statements like this one do make it sound like the broad definition
is the one in use:
When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the
quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed.
The conclusion seems at odds with results I've seen for some of those groups – for
example, I thought it was fairly well accepted that retirees who are supported by a
government plan that is sufficient for them to live on were generally at least as happy as
they had been during their working life.
If, on the other hand, the study uses a narrow definition (e.g. people who are of working
age, want a job or need one to support themselves financially, but can't find one) then the
conclusion seems a lot more reasonable. But that's a heavily loaded definition in economic
and cultural terms. In that case, the conclusion (people are happier if they have a job) only
holds true in the current prevailing model of society. It doesn't rule out the possibility of
structuring society or the economy differently in such a way that people can be non-working
and happy. The existence of one such population already (retirees) strongly suggests that
outcomes like this are possible. A UBI would be an example of just such a restructuring of
society, and therefore I don't think that this study and its result are necessarily a valid
argument against it.
Which makes a person happier -- being considered worthless by one's society or valuable?
How many studies do we need to answer that question? Apparently, a lot, because studies like
this one keep on going. The underlying assumption is that jobs make one valuable. So if you
don't have a job you're worthless. Now, who's happier on the whole, people with jobs or the
unemployed? That's surely good for a few more studies. Did you know that members of socially
devalued groups (minorities, non-heteros, and the like) have higher rates of dysfunction,
rather like the unemployed? Hmm, I wonder if there's maybe a similar principle at work. And
my solution is not to turn all the people of color white nor to change all the women to men
nor to "cure" gays. Well, maybe a few more conclusive studies of this kind will convince me
that we must all be the same, toeing the line for those whom it has pleased God to dictate
our values to us.
I am convinced that we shouldn't outlaw jobs, because I believe the tons of stories about
happy people in their jobs However, I also believe we shouldn't force everyone into jobs,
because I know tons of stories about happy people without jobs. You know, the stories that
the JG people explain away: parents caring for their children (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a
job!"), volunteers working on local planning issues (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a job, too.
In fact, we'll make everything worth doing a job. The important thing is to be able to force
people to work schedules and bosses, because otherwise, they'll all lie around doing nothing
and be miserable"), the retired (JG -- "that's not really the same, but they'd be better off
staying in a job"). And this is all before we get to those who can't really hold a job
because of disability or geography or other responsibilities.
I support the JG over the current situation, but as to what we should be working for, the
more I read the JG arguments, the more paternalistic and just plain narrow minded judgmental
they seem.
Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic
anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of
rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when
you think about it, that the working class is about work .
* To put this another way, anybody who has really suffered the crawling
inwardness of anxiety, in the clinical sense, knows that it affects every aspect of one's
being. Anxiety is not something deplorables deploy as cover for less than creditable
motives.
Nick 7 months ago Totally
agree with you. Personally I'll always wear shirt and trousers to work regardless of the
dress code. It seems to put me into 'work mode' leaving casual wear to provide me with a
disconnect from work for evenings and weekends.
I find this approach to be even more important when I'm working from home. My Son seems
to respect the 'do not disturb daddy' when I'm in formal wear.
Lindsay Hill Nick7 months
ago I hadn't thought about it in the context of working from home. Makes total sense
- gives you that physical cue to switch between 'work mode' and 'home mode'
"... Personnel turnover in Indian firms is sky high. As soon as software engineers finish taking part in a project, they jot the reference on their CV, and rush to find another project, in a different area, to extend their skill set, beef up their CV and improve their chances of a higher salary in the IT market. ..."
"... The consequence is that Indian IT firms in charge of the outsourced projects/products just cannot rely upon the implicit knowledge within the heads of their employees. In a sense, they cannot afford to have "key personnel", experienced people who know important, undocumented aspects of a piece of software and can be queried to clear up things -- all employees must be interchangeable. Hence the strict reliance on well-documented processes. ..."
"... Outsourcing your core competencies or your competitive advantage -- that's the real beauty of outsourcing! What could go wrong? ..."
I've seen a couple of BPOs, Business Process Outsourcing deals.
The key for success of BPO in the short term is to define the process -- document every step
of the process of having something done and then introduce control-functions to ensure that the
process is being followed. Possibly also develop some tools in supporting the process.
If the process is understood and documented well -- so well that rare/expensive skill is no
longer needed to follow the process -- then it is possible to look for the lowest possible cost
employee to follow the process.
As far as I can tell the most common mistake in BPO deals is that the process being outsourced
isn't understood well. The documentation tends to be extensive but if the understanding is lacking
then the process might be providing different results than wished for. Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) are introduced and then the gaming of the KPIs is begun .
Even if the initial process was understood well and documented well then the next problem is that
due to distance (provider to client) there might be difficulties in adapting the process to changing
circumstances.
And yes, there are similarities in BPOs and automation. Understanding of the process is key,
without understanding of the process then the end result is usually bad. The key to learning and
understanding is often humility and humility is often (in my experience) lacking in executives,
senior management and project managers involved in BPO deals and/or efficiency projects.
See, you put it right on "the process is not understood well". My point is, in many companies
it's questionable whether the process can even be ever understood well, unless you have significant
in-company knowledge, which makes outsourcing a key risk, even in absence of anything else.
Yup,you got it -- Business Process Outsourcing. I've seen the ill-understood processes ruined
when, e.g., software development was transferred to India. I saw this starting in 2000 up til
the present day. Yankee management LOVED the idea of cheap labor, but never got back the software
it originally intended and designed.
It was the culture: Yankees are software cowboys -- able to change project as needed; Indians
loved the process of development. The Indians sounded good but never go the job done.
In the 1990s, I was quite impressed that the first company to reach a CMM level 5 was from
India (a subsidiary from IBM, if I remember correctly) -- and thereafter seeing Indian software
firms achieving ISO 9000/CMM compliance before large Western corporations.
Later, I worked in several projects that were partly outsourced/externalized to India (the
usual suspects like HCL or Wipro), and I understood. Personnel turnover in Indian firms is
sky high. As soon as software engineers finish taking part in a project, they jot the reference
on their CV, and rush to find another project, in a different area, to extend their skill set,
beef up their CV and improve their chances of a higher salary in the IT market.
Remaining in one domain area, with one set of technologies, is not considered a good thing
for advancement in the Indian IT market, or when trying to get directly hired by a Western firm.
They often have to support an extended family that paid for their computer science studies, so
fast career moves are really important for them.
The consequence is that Indian IT firms in charge of the outsourced projects/products just
cannot rely upon the implicit knowledge within the heads of their employees. In a sense, they
cannot afford to have "key personnel", experienced people who know important, undocumented aspects
of a piece of software and can be queried to clear up things -- all employees must be interchangeable.
Hence the strict reliance on well-documented processes.
To expand on that I'd say that interchangeable employees have limited or no bargaining power
leading to it being easier to keep salaries low. What is left for the interchangeable employee
to do to increase earnings? Yep, change jobs leading to more focus on making employees interchangeable
.
The game (war) between the company and its employees escalates. Power is everything and all CEOs
know that you don't get paid what you're worth -- you're paid what you negotiate. Maintaining
power is worth the cost of churn.
Pity the "build or buy" decision calculus has been perverted beyond what the firm needs as
inputs into its final market ready products, but is increasingly being used as a defensive move
by big companies to kill off competition from smaller firms via knock off products or "acqui-hiring"
of talent.
Aqui-hiring aka acquiring the smaller firm, pretending to integrate its product into the big
company's product line, starving the product of resources to slowly kill it off, then pulling
the plug citing "dissapointing sales and take up in the market" to protect big company's market
share
Then redeploying the acqui-hired "talent" (I.e. founders of the acquired firm) to work on the
next generation of big company's products (except now they do so in a bureaucratic, red tape laden
maze of "corporate innovation management" processes).
I thought one would outsource the core competitive disadvantages. That is, a smaller firm would
outsource (buy) when they could not competitively create a subassembly/subcomponent because the
sourcing firm had successfully achieved superior economies of scale (EoS) . This is why multiple
automobile manufacturers purchase their subcomponents (say, coils or sparkplugs or bearings) from
a supplier instead of manufacturing them in-house as the supplier achieves superior EoS by supplying
the entire industry.
Even commenter Larry's above example ("offload liability risk with our larger insurance policy")
is an EoS advantage/disadvantage, no?
Problems occur when one side of the dance is dominated by one or two very large players (think
WalMart or Takata) or political will (defined here as $) is involved.
When Corporate America started offshoring R&D, scientist jobs, engineering jobs, programming
jobs, medical jobs, legal jobs, etc., etc., etc. beginning in the late 1970s, but exploding under
Jack Welch at GE in 1984-1985 [and I was offered a position helping in the process -- so nobody
dare contradict me] it simply exacerbates those offshored manufacturing jobs, for without them
in the past, too many American inventors would never have come to fruition -- this of course requires
some knowledge of the history of technology.
The one absolute in human nature and human commerce: the greater the inequality, the lower
the innovation -- IN EVERYTHING, IN EVERY AREA!
In other words, the greatest innovation in America (and everywhere else throughout history)
took place when this nation was at its lowest in inequality indices and closest to socialism:
the 1950s to 1960s and early 1970s -- and almost everything has simply been incremental since
then.
As Leonardo da Vinci once remarked:
" Realize that everything connects to everything else. "
In other words, the greatest innovation in America (and everywhere else throughout history)
took place when this nation was at its lowest in inequality indices and closest to socialism:
the 1950s to 1960s and early 1970s
I disagree with this statement and would ask you to provide specific references for such a
sweeping claim.
and almost everything has simply been incremental since then.
And would argue, with diagrams on a chalkboard if necessary, that all human knowledge is incremental.
At least, that which requires more than simple immediate sensory perception.
"... By Sophie Linden, an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA. Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... HoneyBook's research is just one insight into wage gaps. As a largely deregulated economy with unparalleled growth, it is important to make visible the economic and social divides embedded in the independent workforce. We can start by debunking the claim that freelancing is a more equitable field to work in, and with it, the idea that any economy is without prejudice. ..."
"... I would also argue that so called 'regular' employment is trending towards a "freelance" structure. Job tenures are supposedly shrinking and often going away completely. Now, that salaryman window tribe dweller is often outside of that window, washing it on a piecework basis, with no safety line. The underlying rationale for the rise of the 'freelance' work structure is to first crapify the freelance 'experience,' with lower wages a must, and then, second, extend the 'neo-crapified' work rules into the previously "safe" 'regular' work world. ..."
"... Freelancers driving the price of their labor down to $5 per hour because they have to compete against all the other people who can't find steady work is not a feminist issue– its a class issue. And that is no less true if males make $2 more per hour because of sexual discrimination. The real enemy is the billionaire who owns the corporation, the politicians, and the enforcers that grind workers down into virtual servitude. ..."
"... When a fat pig movie director pushes you down on the "casting couch" there has always been the choice to reach for the Mace or the revolver in the purse. Submitting is prostitution, choice is rejecting greed for riches and fame and joining with others to throw the boot off your neck. ..."
"... When they turn 50, if they survive that long, they'll be replaced by younger cheaper labor. Nothing really changes, except the words we use to describe our sad condition and the lower and lower age at which we're discarded. ..."
"... Freelancing is much like entrepreneurship in that it has been way oversold to the public. Most people don't do well either as freelancers or as entrepreneurs and would likely be better off as normal employees. The emphasis on "alternative" work arrangements has taken public attention away from improving the lot of traditional employees and contributes to the devaluation of ordinary workers by suggesting that they are lazy or stupid because they didn't become freelancers or gigsters or entrepreneurs of some sort. ..."
Yves here. Holey moley. One
of the good things about working for fancy firms early in my professional life was I saw how
much they charged, even when the work was often pedestrian or even dubious. So I was never shy
about setting a healthy price for my time. But regardless, how could anyone bid under the
minimum wage?
The only time I could see that making any kind of sense would be if you were
breaking into a new area and would have reason to expect the client would give you a very
valuable reference, or better yet, referrals, if they liked what you did. But my experience has
always been that clients who go cheap never appreciate the work done for them.
By Sophie Linden, an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA.
Originally published at
Alternet
Surround yourself with positivity, exploit all marketing outlets, choose a specialized skill
-- this is the repetitive wisdom passed on to every budding creative entrepreneur. Less often
do we hear advice like, "increase the price of an invoice," or "make it non-negotiable,"
especially as it relates to the gendered wages within self-employment.
The freelance market is arguably trending across industries, with some figureheads going so
far as to say " freelance is
feminist ," mainly because women make up a slight majority. Unfortunately, before feminists
get too heady on the issue, we need to look at whether the freelance market is any more
"freeing" to the women in it, or if it is liberating any of its entrepreneurial workforce.
Right now, it's just another deregulated economy in which workers are underpaid and largely
invisible.
A recent study published by HoneyBook gives some visibility to the subject, showing that
women in the "creative economy" are actually paid significantly less than their male
counterparts, sometimes taking in an average of $5 an hour .
There are many reasons for concern about this wage discrepancy. Not only because HoneyBook
found that 63% of men and
women believed they were earning equal pay, but also because of the growing workforce
within the world of freelance, where there are already 57.3 million
freelancers in the U.S .
Industry data from UpWork and the Freelance Labor Union suggests that freelancers will be
the majority by 2027, growing three times faster than the U.S. workforce overall, and
contributing over $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy annually. While scenes of cramped coffee
shops may be an indicator of this burgeoning workforce, these numbers are still astounding.
Without sites like UpWork and HoneyBook, they would also be hard to track.
HoneyBook is the self-employed's business management tool, hosting clients similar to those
in the aforementioned study. Labeled under the guise of "creative entrepreneurs," they are
working professionals navigating gigs in industries like photography, graphic design and
writing. With its niche data, the site analyzed over 200,000 client invoices from October
2016-2017 to look at wage discrepancy, finding that on average women made 32% less than their male competitors
. This gap is even larger than the national average, where women earn 24% less than men
nationally , 76 cents to the dollar. Troubling news for the largest, opportunist workforce
around: that is, women in freelance.
In 2015, women made up 53% of the
freelance market . This slight dominance encouraged Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelance
Labor Union, to preemptively call freelancing "feminist." Horowitz argued that the lifestyle of
a freelancer was more palatable to the roles women desired, whether that was co-careers or
gendered domestic labor. She also argued that freelance work allowed women to avoid male
privilege in the workplace, notably
the boys club at board meetings .
While some of Horowitz's arguments hold value, we can clearly see how freelance work is
still an unequal field, at least if pay is any measure of equality among genders. Women who do
enter the field already consider themselves to have
less bargaining power . Meanwhile, the majority of invoices in HoneyBook's study quoted a
non-negotiable price, meaning women are more likely to charge less for the job. Clearly, the
reasons for the gender pay gap are embedded and multi-layered. Nevertheless, the study shows
that freelance is not entirely the liberated, equal rights, equal pay landscape Horowitz claims
it to be.
Asked why they enter the market, freelancers often cite
the flexibility of the work in a number of terms: the ability to be their own boss, as well
as the ability to choose their projects and work location. In essence, men and women draw upon
idealistic dreams of escaping workplace power-dynamics to find economic independence in their
pajamas --
a depiction that has been repeatedly critiqued . Freelancers still enter a labor force that
has few
congressional protections and is arguably as successful
as the social networks you were economically born into. Essentially it is prey to the same
laissez-faire ideals that have manipulated structural inequity across generations of workers in
the U.S. It just imagines itself differently -- now under the guise of "creative"
entrepreneurship.
HoneyBook's research is just one insight into wage gaps. As a largely deregulated
economy with unparalleled growth, it is important to make visible the economic and social
divides embedded in the independent workforce. We can start by debunking the claim that
freelancing is a more equitable field to work in, and with it, the idea that any economy is
without prejudice.
I would also argue that so called 'regular' employment is trending towards a
"freelance" structure. Job tenures are supposedly shrinking and often going away completely.
Now, that salaryman window tribe dweller is often outside of that window, washing it on a
piecework basis, with no safety line.
The underlying rationale for the rise of the 'freelance' work structure is to first crapify
the freelance 'experience,' with lower wages a must, and then, second, extend the
'neo-crapified' work rules into the previously "safe" 'regular' work world.
The only rational response to managements' claim that "we can get someone to replace you
if you do not agree to our demands," is to simply walk away from the "golden opportunity."
Sooner or later, all exploitative systems fall apart due to their own internal
contradictions. It can be painful, but: No pain (economic micro-dislocation,) no gain
(guillotines in Town Square.)
On the feminism front, and please remember that this is an older man writing, I would find
any situation where the individual allows outside forces to define said individuals self
definition, as the opposite of "liberating." Except in rare cases, what else is 'freelancing'
but a "race to the bottom?" If one is to accept the 'freelancing' ethos as presently
presented, one may as well embrace the 'contemplative life' and accept fasting and privation
as a path to communion with the godhead.
Freelancers driving the price of their labor down to $5 per hour because they have to
compete against all the other people who can't find steady work is not a feminist
issue– its a class issue. And that is no less true if males make $2 more per hour
because of sexual discrimination. The real enemy is the billionaire who owns the corporation,
the politicians, and the enforcers that grind workers down into virtual servitude.
There is
always choice. There are always drugs to be transported and sold, money to be laundered, or
accounting fraud to be fabricated. There is always choice even if the consequences are
severe. It's long been known that the fastest (and only) way for a woman to become a movie
star is on her back.
When a fat pig movie director pushes you down on the "casting couch" there has always
been the choice to reach for the Mace or the revolver in the purse. Submitting is
prostitution, choice is rejecting greed for riches and fame and joining with others to throw
the boot off your neck.
There is no organization called the Freelance Labor Union. Horowitz's organization is
called the Freelancers Union and it is little more than a buyers club. It has yet to call a
strike or organize a picket line. Nor does it call out the companies that exploit
freelancers.
$583,283.25 – using the annuity formula from Stewart's 4th edition precalc book (it
is surely the same formula in all his books ) & taking that 5 bucks an hour TIMES 2080
hours of pay in a year (40*52) = amount to save every year, for 30 years, at 4% interest.
Now, realistically, whoever underpaid you just bought a few more trinkets for today's
mansion, jet, yacht or mistress but you could have saved that money!
When they turn 50, if they survive that long, they'll be replaced by younger cheaper
labor. Nothing really changes, except the words we use to describe our sad condition and the
lower and lower age at which we're discarded.
Freelancing is much like entrepreneurship in that it has been way oversold to the
public. Most people don't do well either as freelancers or as entrepreneurs and would likely
be better off as normal employees. The emphasis on "alternative" work arrangements has taken
public attention away from improving the lot of traditional employees and contributes to the
devaluation of ordinary workers by suggesting that they are lazy or stupid because they
didn't become freelancers or gigsters or entrepreneurs of some sort.
Many young people seem to have fallen into the trap of putting too much emphasis on work
flexibility over a steady paycheck. These kinds of alternative work arrangements might be fun
and cool when you are in your 20s but not so much after 30 and especially if you want to
start a family and need a steady and reliable source of income.
I was a free lance in publishing for about twenty-five years. The tell here is the mention
of pajamas: Are we still in the world of people who want to work in their pajamas? One thing
I learned right away is that you have to get up each morning, dress like an adult, schedule
the number of billable hours that you want to charge for, and send in invoices regularly. The
successful free lances, male and female, did so. The people who started work at three in the
afternoon, after cocoa with marshmallows all day, didn't succeed.
I suspect that hourly charges among free lances are falling: That is part of our friend
"right to work," which keeps wages down. It is also part of the massive amount of outsourcing
going on. In publishing, responsibilities that always were kept in house and should remain in
house are being outsourced.
I'll also note that one of the reasons that I became a free lance, besides knowing what I
could charge for my work, is that many offices are toxic environments socially and
politically. There is a lot of stress on conformity. There is no concern for original
thinking. Inventing the wheel is considered original.
And as someone who has worked in publishing for many years and knows many talented and
powerful women in publishing, I left my last job shortly after the head of the division
introduced the new editor in chief for books as a woman. That's right. The first words: M.K.
is a woman.
M.K. turned out to be a nonentity who exploited the organization for personal ends. She
was a great absentee manager! And I no longer had a desire to be around the endless re-runs
of resentments of fellow employees.
I can remember meeting freelancers in the 1980s and 1990s. The good ones were GOOD. As in,
they had waiting lists -- you had to book them a couple of months in advance. And they
charged accordingly.
These days, that seldom happens. Why? Because there are too many people who can't find
jobs, or they only get hired for part-time work, and they have to fill the rest of their
time. Such trends do not make for increasing hourly rates.
Arizona Slim: My dance card was always filled. But as you mention above, after age 50, I
kept thinking, Am I a daring American entrepreneur and sole proprietor, or am I just
terminally unemployed (and unemployable)?
OK, what's to stop women from charging higher rates? Lower self esteem? Are their lower
wages for each hour worked? Or, do they work fewer hours?
"they are working professionals navigating gigs in industries like photography, graphic
design and writing ." Clean, no lifting, paid to create gigs where you don't get your hands
dirty, or put your body in perilous exhausting situations.
If women want to earn money, learn to be a plumber. Yes, you will get a face full of shit
occasionally, will bleed, get burned and will earn $75 an hour, often in cash.
There's a shortage of linepersons to install power lines. Up on that lift bucket, 80 feet
in the air, leaning out and ratcheting in 10,000 volt live wires covered with a rubber shock
cloth, you can make astounding amounts of money. Why aren't more women up there? Companies go
out of their way to hire women.
No mention of the free labor slave pit called "internships." How many of us have gone
through that
voluntary servitude?
I have training in the trades and have worked as a bike mechanic. On the positive side,
there's a pride of workmanship that you do not get from office work or from freelancing while
sitting at a computer. And there's the camaraderie. I never experienced anything like it --
except in that hot, greasy, dirty bike shop.
On the negative side, you can get too old and broken down to do the work. OTOH, you can be
a sit-down freelancer until you die.
What stops women from negotiating male-equivalent wages varies. Timidity and poor
negotiating skills is part of it. As Yves said above, it helps immensely to have been exposed
to the billing practices of real winners in this game. And they are disproportionately men,
specifically, men who operate like real machers.
The biggest factor is IMO, information deficit. Professional class people throughout many
industries are idiots when it comes to freely discussing remuneration with their fellow wage
slaves. Everyone acts as though their compensation package were as private and faintly dirty
as .. another package.
It's idiotic. The vast majority of us would be better off if we blurted it out over lunch
ever few months. And walking away a few tifmes is key. It's good for you. Likewise, if you do
need to take a poorly paid gig some times, treat it as slightly less than full time. Keep
lining up others. Create the bare minimum of deliverables as swiftly as you can, and get out.
Those who underpay you do not deserve your maximum effort, and they're invariably shitty
references, so do not anguish over doing only the job they've paid for.
Just don't stiff or cheat anyone lower down the line if you take an underpaid gig. I
watched a guy do that recently on a contract job that put him into contact with me, an
under-remunerated grad student. He didn't cheat me, he cheated the agency I worked for of
some small use fee. Right in front of me. His consulting firm is not one I'll be looking to
work for any time soon.
Also, always write a late charge fee in your contract. 120 day "billing cycles" are
abusive garbage in the age of computers. After thirty days, the price goes up.
Women who let themselves get stiffed all the time are a real danger to the interests of
the guys in their line of work, not just themselves. I wish more guys could see that.
Fluffy: Yes. Know rates, and have a group of friendly free lances who will tell you what
they are being offered these days. And what hourly they will turn down.
Firing clients is a necessity. I learned that from a sole proprietor who I worked for in a
small typesetting / editorial / graphic design shop. The customer isn't always right. There
are psychic benefits to firing a bad customer. And word sort-a gets around that there are
people who / companies that you refuse to take work from.
I suspect it's utter mythology that women do not attempt to attain far better paying
manual labor jobs than they do.
Speaking of high voltage wires, I know a woman who was in the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Union (Brotherhood says it all!). She worked on large commercial
construction, such as the NUMI Plant (now Tesla). While she endured it through to her
retirement she had a horridly abusive (and life threatening on one occasion) go of it. Sexual
harassment (made worse by the fact that she had an hourglass figure), an actual physical
threat, knife included, while being locked in a room with someone she had already reported as
having harassed her, but was forced to work with him anyway; utter resentment of women on the
job; and stunning racism (the black males in that Brotherhood , did not fare much
better as to the racism) in the tolerant Bay Area.
As to plumbing, the bay area has current and frequent plumbing school ads on TV which
feature no women at all, and a real bro-bro atmosphere which all women who've been sexually
harassed are familiar with. At one point in my life, despite having a licensed profession, I
offered to apprentice to a plumber who just laughed at me (at the time, I was able to do
twenty chin-ups).
And, my experience (pre putting myself through college to attain a livable wage), trying
to get a job doing manual labor that actually paid a decent wage was utterly unsuccessful. I
did have a nursery job, and a very brief job at a thoroughbred stable (the owner was a horrid
human being so I quit). At both of those jobs, the only males were illegal immigrants from
Mexico, and the wages in both jobs were under regular minimum wage ag wages.
Further, to imply that 'sit' down jobs don't have their fair share of health damage, is
like saying that emotional abuse does not exist, and is not deadly when one's spirit is
killed in a situation where the other wields far more economic and social power.
Many, unfortunately too many woman included, still feel that a white or non-black male
will do a better job, no matter what that job is. For instance (and I don't know what it's
like now) I recollect while waitressing that only males were offered high end, far better
tipping, jobs in pricier restaurants. At the time, I never saw a female waitress in a high
end restaurant.
Yves here. On the one hand, as someone who is getting to be pretty long in
tooth, I'm not sure about calling un and under-employed older workers
"spare". But when the alternative is being thrown on the trash heap, maybe
that isn't so unflattering.
Even though this analysis is from Australia,
most of if not all of its finding would almost certainly prove out in the
US. However, there is a whole 'nother set of issues here. Australia is 85%
urban, with most of the population living in or near four large cities. So
its labor mobility issues are less pronounced than here. Moreover, a lot of
the whinging in the US about worker shortages, as even readers of the Wall
Street Journal regularly point out in its comment section is:
1. Not being willing to pay enough to skilled workers, which includes
not being willing to pay them to relocate
2. Not being willing to train less skilled workers, as companies once
did as a matter of course
A few weeks back, the Benevolent Society
released a report
which found that age-related discrimination is
particularly rife in the workplace, with over a quarter (29%) of survey
respondents stating they had been turned down for a job because of their old
age, whereas 14% claimed they had been denied a promotion because of their
old age.
Today, the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) has warned that Australia
is facing a pension crisis unless employers stop their "discrimination"
against older workers. From
The ABC
:
[RAI] has warned the Federal Government's pension bill would rise from
$45 billion to $51 billion within three years, unless efforts were made
to help more mature workers gain employment, particularly in regional
communities.
Chief executive Jack Archer said continued unemployment of people
older than 55 would cut economic growth and put a greater strain on
public resources.
"We hear that there is a lot of people who would like to work, who
would love to stay in the workforce either part-time or full-time even
though they're in their late 50s, 60s and even into their 70s," he said.
"But we're not doing a very good job of giving them the training,
giving them the incentives around the pension, and working with employers
to stop the discrimination around employing older workers"
"It basically means you've got a lot of talent on the bench, a lot of
people who could be involved and contributing who are sitting around
homes and wishing they were doing something else," he said
Mr Archer said as the population aged the workforce shrank, and that
risked future economic growth.
But he said that could be reversed provided employers embraced an
older workforce
"[When] those people are earning [an income], their pension bills will
either disappear or be much lower and the government will get a benefit
from that."
For years the growth lobby and the government has told us that Australia
needs to run high levels of immigration in order to alleviate so-called
'skills shortages' and to mitigate an ageing population. This has come
despite the Department of Employment
showing
that Australia's skills shortage
"remains low by historical
standards"
and Australia's labour underutilisation rate tracking at
high levels:
Economic models are often cited as proof that a strong immigration
program is 'good' for the economy because they show that real GDP per capita
is moderately increased via immigration, based on several dubious
assumptions.
The most dubious of these assumptions is that population ageing will
necessarily result in fewer people working, which will subtract from per
capita GDP (due to the ratio of workers to dependents falling).
Leaving aside the fact that the assumed benefit to GDP per capita from
immigration is only transitory, since migrants also age (thereby requiring
an ever-bigger immigration intake to keep the population age profile from
rising), it is just as likely that age-specific workforce participation will
respond to labour demand, resulting in fewer people being unemployed. This
is exactly what has transpired in Japan where an ageing population has
driven the unemployment rate down to only 2.8% – the lowest level since the
early-1990s:
The ABS
last month
revealed
that more Australians are working past traditional retirement
age, thereby mitigating concerns that population ageing will necessarily
reduce the employment-to-population ratio:
Clearly, however, there is much further scope to boost workforce
participation among older workers.
Rather than relying on mass immigration to fill phantom 'labour
shortages' – in turn displacing both young and older workers alike – the
more sensible policy option is to moderate immigration and instead better
utilise the existing workforce as well as use automation to overcome any
loss of workers as the population ages – as has been
utilised in Japan.
It's worth once again highlighting that
economists at MIT
recently found that there is absolutely no
relationship between population ageing and economic decline. To the
contrary, population ageing seems to have been associated with improvements
in GDP per capita, thanks to increased automation:
If
anything, countries experiencing more rapid aging have grown more in
recent decades we show that since the early 1990s or 2000s, the periods
commonly viewed as the beginning of the adverse effects of aging in much
of the advanced world, there is no negative association between aging and
lower GDP per capita on the contrary, the relationship is significantly
positive in many specifications.
The last thing that Australia should be doing is running a mass
immigration program which, as
noted many times
by the Productivity Commission cannot provide a
long-term solution to ageing, and places increasing strains on
infrastructure, housing and the natural environment.
The sustainable 'solution' to population ageing is to better utilise the
existing workforce, where significant spare capacity exists.
At what point might an impatient constituency demand greater
accountability by its elected representatives? In the business world, the
post-2000 accounting scandals like Enron resulted in legislation to make
company execs sign off on financial statements under threat of harsh
personal penalties for misrepresentation. If legislators were forced by
constituents to enact similar legislation about their own actions, the
transparency could be very enlightening and a type of risk reduction due to
acknowledgement of material factors. Imagine seeing in print the real
reasons for votes, the funding sources behind those votes and prospect of
jail time for misrepresentation about what is just their damn job. Call it
Truth-In-Legislating, similar to the prior Truth-In-Lending act.
It's a nice idea, but I don't think that very many executives have
been penalized under the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Jamie Dimon certainly wasn't
penalized for the actions of the London Whale. I guess we'll see what
happens in the near future to the executives of Wells Fargo. I suspect
that a Truth-In-Legislating law would be filled with loopholes or would
be hampered by enforcement failures, like current Congressional ethics
rules and the Sarbanes Oxley Act.
At what point might an impatient constituency demand greater
accountability by its elected representatives?
At that point when they start shooting them (as they did in Russian in
the very early 1900s, or lop their heads off, as they once did in
France).
Personally, I'll never work for any Ameritard corporation ever again,
as real innovation is not allowed, and the vast majority are all about
financialization in some form or other!
My work life the past thirty years became worse and worse and worse,
in direct relation to the majority of others, and my last jobs were
beyond commenting up.
My very last position, which was in no manner related to my
experience, education, skill set and talents -- like too many other
American workers -- ended with a most tortuous layoff: the private equity
firm which was owner in a failed "pump and dump" brought a "toxic work
environment specialist" whose job was to advise the sleazoid senior
executives (and by that time I was probably one of only four actual
employee workers there, they had hired a whole bunch of executives,
though) on how to create a negative work environment to convince us to
leave instead of merely laying us off (worked for two, but not the last
lady there I myself).
The American workplace sucks big time as evidenced by their refusal to
raise wages while forever complaining about their inability to find
skilled employees -- they are all criminals today!
I lived and worked in Australia in the late '70s and early '80s. Times
were different. Back then, the government jobs came with mandatory
retirement. I believe (but could be wrong) that it was at 63, but you could
request staying until 65 (required approval). After that, one could continue
working in the private sector, if you could find a job.
The population was much less than it is now. I believe the idea was to
make room for the younger generation coming up. Back then, government
workers, as well as many private sector workers, had defined benefit pension
plans. So retiring younger typically worked out ok.
I had one friend who continued working until about 70 because she wanted
to; liked her job; and wasn't interested in retiring. However, I knew far
more people who were eager to stop at 63. But back then, it appeared to me
that they had the financial means to do so without much worry.
Things have changed since then. More of my friends are putting off
retirement bc they need the money now. Plus defined benefit pension plans
have mostly been dispensed with and replaced by, I believe (I'm not totally
clear on this), the Aussie version of a 401 (k) (someone can correct me if
I'm wrong).
What the article proposes makes sense. Of course here in the USA, older
workers/job seekers face a host of discriminatory practices, especially for
the better paying jobs. Nowadays, though, US citizens in their golden years
can sell their house, buy an RV, and become itinerant workers – sometimes at
back breaking labor, such as harvesting crops or working at an Amazon gulag
– for $10 an hour. Yippee kay-o kay-aaay!
So let us also talk about cutting Medicare for all of those lazy slacker
Seniors out there. Woo hoo!
There is really two issues:
1) for those whom age discrimination in employment is hitting in their
50s or even younger, before anyone much is retiring, it needs to be
combatted
2) eventually (sometimes in their 60's and really should be at least by
65) people ought to be allowed to retire and with enough money to not be
in poverty. This work full time until you drop garbage is just that (it's
not as if 70 year olds can even say work 20 hours instead, no it's the
same 50+ hours or whatever as everyone else is doing). And most people
won't live that much longer, really they won't, U.S. average lifespans
aren't that long and falling fast. So it really is work until you die
that is being pushed if people aren't allowed to retire sometime in their
60s. Some people have good genes and good luck and so on (they may also
have a healthy lifestyle but sheer luck plays a large role), and will
live far beyond that, but averages
Working past 65 is one of those things where it just depends. I
know people who are happily (and don't "really" need the money)
working past 65 bc they love their jobs and they're not taking a toll
on their health. They enjoy the socialization at work; are
intellectually stimulated; and are quite happy. That's one issue.
But when people HAVE TO work past 65 – and I know quite a few in
this category – when it starts taking a toll on their health, that is
truly bad. And I can reel off several cases that I know of personally.
It's just wrong.
Whether you live much longer or not is sort of up to fate, no
matter what. But yes, if work is taking a toll on your heath, then you
most likely won't live as long.
In January, economists from MIT published a paper, entitled Secular
Stagnation? The Effect of Aging on Economic Growth in the Age of
Automation, which showed that there is absolutely no relationship between
population aging and economic decline. To the contrary, population aging
seems to have been associated with improvements in GDP per capita, thanks
to increased automation:
From the cited article.
I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but there's no reason to
ditch your most knowledgeable, most skilled workers toward the eve of their
careers except if you don't want to pay labor costs. Which we know that
most firms do not, in their mission for profit for shareholders or the
flashy new building or trying to
Innuhvate
.
There's a myth that innovation comes from the 20 something in their
basement, but that's just not the case. Someone who has, for instance,
overseen 100 construction projects building bridges needs to be retained,
not let go. Maybe they can't lift the sledge anymore, but I'd keep them on
as long as possible.
1. Not being willing to pay enough to skilled workers, which includes not
being willing to pay them to relocate
2. Not being willing to train less skilled workers, as companies once did
as a matter of course
3.
older workers have seen all the crap and evil management has
done, and is usually in a much better position than young less established
employees to take effective action against it
This. Don't expect rational actors, in management or labor. If
everyone was paid the same, regardless of age or training or education or
experience etc then the financial incentives for variant outcomes would
decrease. Except for higher health costs for older workers. For them, we
could simply ban employer provide health insurance then that takes that
variable out of the equation too. So yes, the ideal is a rational Marxism
or the uniformity of the hive-mind-feminism. While we would have "from
each according to their ability, to each according to their need" we will
have added it as an axiom that all have the same need. And a whip can
encourage the hoi polloi to do their very best.
Fully agee! To your list I would add a corollory to your item #3 --
older workers having seen all the crap and evil management has done are
more likely to inspire other employees to feel and act with them. -- This
corollory is obvious but I think it bears stating for emphasis of the
point.
I believe your whole list might be viewed as symtoms resulting from
the concept of workers as commodity -- fungible as cogs on a wheel. Young
and old alike are dehumanized.
The boss of the branch office of the firm I last worked for before I
retired constantly emphasized how each of us must remain "fungible" [he's
who introduced me to this word] if we wanted to remain employed. The firm
would win contracts using one set of workers in its bids and slowly
replace them with new workers providing the firm a higher return per hour
billed to the client. I feel very lucky I managed to remain employed -- to
within a couple of years of the age when I could apply for Medicare.
[Maybe it's because I was too cowed to make waves and avoided raises as
best I could.]
[I started my comment considering the idea of "human capital" but ran
into trouble with that concept. Shouldn't capital be assessed in terms of
its replacement costs and its capacity for generating product or other
gain? I had trouble working that calculus into the way firms treat their
employees and decided "commodity" rather than "capital" better fit how
workers were regarded and treated.]
"skills vs. demand imbalance" not labor shortage. Capital wants to tip
the scale the other way, but isn't willing to invest the money to train the
people, per a comment I made last week. Plenty of unemployed or
under-employed even in Japan, much less Oz.
Keeping the elderly, who already have the skills, in the work place
longer is a way to put off making the investments. Getting government to tax
the poor for their own training is another method. Exploiting poor nations
education systems by importing skills yet another.
Some business hope to develop skills that only costs motive power
(electric), minimal maintenance, and are far less capital intensive and
quicker to the market than the current primary source's 18 years. Capitalism
on an finite resource will eat itself, but even capitalism with finite
resources will self-destruct in the end.
Importantly, the chart labeled as Figure 2 uses GDP
per capita
on
the y-axis.
Bearing in mind that GDP growth is composed of labor force growth times
productivity, emerging economies that are growing faster than the rich world
in both population and GDP look more anemic on a per capita basis, allowing
us rich country denizens to feel better about our good selves. :-)
But in terms of absolute GDP growth, things ain't so bright here in the
Homeland. Both population and productivity growth are slowing. Over the past
two-thirds century, the trend in GDP groaf is relentlessly down, even as
debt rises in an apparent attempt to maintain unsustainable living
standards. Chart (viewer discretion advised):
Van Onselen doesn't address the rich world's busted pension systems. To
the extent that they contain a Ponzi element premised on endless growth,
immigration would modestly benefit them by adding new
victims
workers to support the greying masses of doddering Boomers.
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four?
There's been an increase in the employment of older people in the U.S. in
the U.S. population. To provide a snapshot, below are three tables referring
to the U.S. by age cohorts of 1) the total population, 2) Employment and 3)
employment-population ratios (percent).based on Bureau of Labor Statistics
weightings for population estimates and compiled in the Merge Outgoing
Rotation Groups (MORG) dataset by the National Bureau of Economic Research
(NBER) from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS).
The portion of the population 16 to 54 has declined while those over 54
has increased.
1. Percent Population in Age Cohorts: 1986 & 2016
1986 2016 AGE
18.9 15.2 16-24
53.7 49.6 25-54
12.2 16.3 55-64
9.4 11.2 65-74
5.8 7.7 75 & OVER
100.0 100.0 ALL
The portion of the population 16 to 54 employed has declined while the
portion over 54 has increased..
2 Percent Employed in Age Cohorts: 1986 & 2016
1986 2016 AGE
18.5 12.5 16-24
68.4 64.7 25-54
10.4 16.9 55-64
2.3 4.8 65-74
0.4 1.0 75 & OVER
100.0 100.0 ALL
The employment-population ratios (percents) show significant declines for
those under 25 while increases for those 55 and above.
3. Age-Specific Employment Population Ratios (Percents)
1986 2016 AGE
59.5 49.4 16-24
77.3 77.9 25-54
51.8 61.8 55-64
14.8 25.9 65-74
3.8 7.9 75 & OVER
60.7 59.7 ALL
None of the above data refute claims about age and experience inequities.
Rather these provide a base from which to explore such concerns. Because
MORG data are representative samples with population weightings, systematic
contingency analyses are challenging.
In the 30 year interval of these data there have been changes in
population and employment by education status, gender, race, citizenship
status along with industry and occupation, all items of which are found in
the publicly available MORG dataset.
I think you are missing the point. Life expectancy at birth has
increased by nearly five years since 1986. That renders simple
comparisons of labor force participation less meaningful. The implication
is that many people are not just living longer but are in better shape in
their later middle age. Look at the dramatic drop in labor force
participation from the 25-54 age cohort v. 55 to 64. How can so few
people in that age group be working given that even retiring at 65 is
something most people cannot afford? And the increase over time in the
current 55=64 age cohort is significantly due to the entry of women into
the workplace. Mine was the first generation where that became
widespread.
The increase in the over 65 cohort reflects desperation. Anyone who
can work stays working.
Even if life-expectancy is increasing due to improved health, the
percentage of those in older cohorts who are working is increasing at
an even faster rate. If a ratio is 6/8 for a category and goes up to
10/12 the category has increased (8 to 12 or 50%) and the subcategory
has increased (6 to 10 i or 67% and the ratios go from 6/8 or 75/100
to 10/12 or 83.3/100)
I assume you are referencing the employment-population (E/P) ratio
when noting "the dramatic drop in labor force participation from the
25-54 age cohort v. 55 to 64." However the change in the E/P ratio for
25-54 year olds was virtually unchanged (77.3/100 in 1986 to 77.9/100
in 2016) and for the 55-64 year olds the E/P ratio INCREASED
significantly, from 51.8/100 in 1986 to 61.8/100 in 2016.
You query: "How can so few people in that age group be working
given that even retiring at 65 is something most people cannot
afford?" That's a set of concerns the data I've compiled cannot and
thus cannot address. It would take more time to see if an empirical
answer could be constructed, something that doesn't lend itself to
making a timely, empirically based comment. The data I compiled was
done after reading the original post.
You note: ". . . ;;[T] the increase over time in the current 55-64
age cohort is significantly due to the entry of women into the
workplace." Again, I didn't compute the age-gender specific E/P
ratios. I can do that if there's interest. The OVERALL female E/P
ratio (from FRED) did not significantly increase from December 1986 (
51.7/100) to December 2016 (53.8/100).
Your write: "The increase in the over 65 cohort reflects
desperation. Anyone who can work stays working." Again, the data I was
using provided me no basis for this interpretation. I suspect that the
MORG data can provide some support for that interpretation. However,
based on your comments about longer life expectancy, it's likely that
a higher proportion of those in professional-middle class or in the
upper-middle class category Richard Reeves writes about (Dream
Hoarders) were able and willing to continue working. For a time in
higher education some institutions offered incentives for older
faculty to continue working thereby they could continue to receive a
salary and upon becoming eligible for Social Security draw on that
benefit. No doubt many, many vulnerable older people, including
workers laid off in the wake of the Great Recession and otherwise
burdened lengthened their or sought employment.
Again the MORG data can get somewhat closer to your concerns and
interests, but whether this is the forum is a challenge given the
reporting-comment cycle which guides this excellent site.
I don't understand how the media promotes the "society is aging, we need
more immigrants to avoid a labor shortage" argument and the "there will be
no jobs in the near future due to automation, there will be a jobs shortage"
argument at the same time. Dean Baker has discussed this issue:
In any event, helping to keep older workers in the workforce can be a
good thing. Some people become physically inactive after retirement and
their social networks decline which can cause depression and loneliness.
Work might benefit some people who would otherwise sink into inactivity and
loneliness.
Of course, results might vary based on individual differences and those
who engaged in hard physical labor will likely have to retire earlier due to
wear and tear on their bodies.
Increase in life expectancy is greatly influenced by a decrease in
childhood mortality. People are living longer because they aren't dying
in large numbers in childhood anymore in the US. So many arguments that
start out "we're living longer, so something" confuse a reduction in
childhood mortality with how long one can expect to live to in old age,
based on the actuarial charts. Pols who want to cut SS or increase the
retirement age find this confusion very useful.
"
Life expectancy at birth is very sensitive to reductions in the
death rates of children, because each child that survives adds many years
to the amount of life in the population. Thus, the dramatic declines in
infant and child mortality in the twentieth century were accompanied by
equally stunning increases in life expectancy.
"
I've noticed ever since the 1990s that "labor shortage" is a signal for
cost-cutting measures that trigger a recession. Which then becomes the
excuse for shedding workers and really getting the recession on.
It is not just older workers who are spare. There are other forms of
discrimination that could fall by the wayside if solving the "labor
shortage" was the sincere objective.
Often productively, sales, and profits decrease with those cost
cuttings, which justified further cuts which decreases productivity,
sales, and profits which justifies
It's a pattern I first noticed in the 1990s and looking back in the
80s too. It's like some malevolent MBAs went out and convinced the whole
of American middle and senior business management that this was the Way
to do it. It's like something out of the most hidebound, nonsensical
ideas of Maoism and Stalinism as something that could not fail but only
be failed. It is right out of the Chicago Boys' economics playbook.
Thirty-five years later and the Way still hasn't succeeded, but they're
still trying not to fail it.
Love your reflections. Yeah, it's like a religion that they can't
pay more, can't train, must cut people till they are working to their
max at ordinary times (so have no slack for crises), etc. etc., and
that it doesn't work doesn't change the faith in it AT ALL.
This is ranting, but most jobs can be done at most ages. If want someone
to be a SEAL or do 12 hours at farm labor no of course not, but just about
everything else so what's the problem?
All this "we have a skilled labor shortage" or "we have a labor surplus"
or "the workers are all lazy/stupid" narratives" and "it's the unions'
fault" and "the market solves everything" and the implicit "we are a true
meritocracy and the losers are waste who deserve their pain" and my favorite
of the "Job creators do make jobs" being said, and/or believed all at the
same time is insanity made mainstream.
Sometimes I think whoever is running things are told they have to drink
the Draught of UnWisdom before becoming the elites.
So I'm a middle aged fella – early thirties – and have to admit that in
my industry I find that most older workers are a disaster. I'm in tech and
frankly find that most older workers are a detriment simply from being out
of date. While I sympathize, in some cases experience can be a minus rather
than a plus. The willingness to try new things and stay current with modern
technologies/techniques just isn't there for the majority of tech workers
that are over the hill.
"... In the 1970s a programming shop was legacy American, with only a thin scattering of foreigners like myself. Twenty years later programming had been considerably foreignized , thanks to the H-1B visa program. Now, twenty years further on, I believe legacy-American programmers are an endangered species. ..."
"... So a well-paid and mentally rewarding corner of the middle-class job market has been handed over to foreigners -- for the sole reason, of course, that they are cheaper than Americans. The desire for cheap labor explains 95 percent of U.S. immigration policy. The other five percent is sentimentality. ..."
"... Now they are brazen in their crime: you have heard, I'm sure, those stories about American workers being laid off, with severance packages conditional on their helping train their cheaper foreign replacements. That's our legal ..."
"... A "merit-based" points system won't fix that. It will quickly and easily be gamed by employers to lay waste yet more middle-class occupational zones for Americans. If it was restricted to the higher levels of "merit," we would just be importing a professional overclass of foreigners, most East and South Asians, to direct the labors of less-meritorious legacy Americans. How would that ..."
"... Measured by the number of workers per year, the largest guestworker program in the entire immigration system is now student visas through the Optional Practical Training program (OPT). Last year over 154,000 aliens were approved to work on student visas. By comparison, 114,000 aliens entered the workforce on H-1B guestworker visas. ..."
"... A History of the 'Optional Practical Training' Guestworker Program , ..."
"... incredible amount ..."
"... on all sorts of subjects ..."
"... for all kinds of outlets. (This ..."
"... no longer includes ..."
"... National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and ..."
"... and several other ..."
"... . He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: ..."
"... ( also available in Kindle ) and ..."
"... Has it ever occurred to anyone other than me that the cost associated with foreign workers using our schools and hospitals and pubic services for free, is more than off-set by the cheap price being paid for grocery store items like boneless chicken breast, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce etc, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive even for the wealthy? ..."
Item-wise, the biggest heading there is the second one, "Interior Enforcement." That's very
welcome.
Of course we need improved border security so that people don't enter our country without
permission. That comes under the first heading. An equally pressing problem, though, is the
millions of foreigners who are living and working here, and using our schools and hospitals and
public services, who should not be here.
The President's proposals on interior enforcement cover all bases: Sanctuary
cities , visa
overstays , law-enforcement
resources , compulsory E-Verify , more
deportations , improved visa security.
This is a major, wonderful improvement in national policy, when you consider that less than
a year ago the
White House and
Justice Department were run by committed open-borders
fanatics. I thank the President and his staff for having put so much work into such a
detailed proposal for restoring American sovereignty and the rights of American workers and
taxpayers.
That said, here come the quibbles.
That third heading, "Merit-Based Immigration System," with just four items, needs work.
Setting aside improvements on visa controls under the other headings, this is really the only
part of the proposal that covers legal immigration. In my opinion, it does so imperfectly.
There's some good meat in there, mind. Three of the four items -- numbers one, three, and
four -- got a fist-pump from me:
cutting down chain
migration by limiting it to spouse and dependent children; eliminating the Diversity
Visa Lottery ; and limiting the number of refugees admitted, assuming this means severely
cutting back on the numbers, preferably all the way to
zero.
Good stuff. Item two, however, is a problem. Quote:
Establish a new, points-based system for the awarding of Green Cards (lawful permanent
residents) based on factors that allow individuals to successfully assimilate and support
themselves financially.
sounds OK, bringing in talented, well-educated, well-socialized people, rather than
what the late Lee
Kuan Yew referred to as " fruit-pickers ." Forgive
me if I have a rather jaundiced view of this merit-based approach.
For most of my adult life I made a living as a computer programmer. I spent four years
doing this in the U.S.A. through the mid-1970s. Then I came back in the late 1980s and
worked at the same trade here through the 1990s. (Pictured right–my actual H-1B visa ) That gave me two
clear snapshots twenty years apart, of this particular corner of skilled middle-class
employment in America.
In the 1970s a programming shop was legacy American, with only a thin scattering of
foreigners like myself. Twenty years later programming had been considerably foreignized ,
thanks to the H-1B visa program. Now, twenty years further on, I believe legacy-American
programmers are an endangered species.
So a well-paid and mentally rewarding corner of the middle-class job market has been
handed over to foreigners -- for the sole reason, of course, that they are cheaper than
Americans. The desire for cheap labor explains 95 percent of U.S. immigration policy. The other
five percent is sentimentality.
On so-called "merit-based immigration," therefore, you can count me a cynic. I have no doubt
that American firms could recruit all the computer programmers they need from among our legacy
population. They used to do so, forty years ago. Then they discovered how to game the
immigration system for cheaper labor.
A "merit-based" points system won't fix that. It will quickly and easily be gamed by
employers to lay waste yet more middle-class occupational zones for Americans. If it was
restricted to the higher levels of "merit," we would just be importing a professional overclass
of foreigners, most East and South Asians, to direct the labors of less-meritorious legacy
Americans. How would that contribute to social harmony?
With coming up to a third of a
billion people, the U.S.A. has all the talent, all the merit , it needs. You might
make a case for a handful of certified geniuses like Einstein or worthy dissidents like
Solzhenitsyn, but those cases aside, there is no reason at all to have guest-worker programs.
They should all be shut down.
Some of these cheap-labor rackets don't even need congressional action to shut them down; it
can be done by regulatory change via executive order. The scandalous OPT-visa scam, for
example, which brings in cheap workers under the guise of student visas.
Here is John Miano writing about the OPT program last month, quote:
Measured by the number of workers per year, the largest guestworker program in the
entire immigration system is now student visas through the Optional Practical Training
program (OPT). Last year over 154,000 aliens were approved to work on student visas. By
comparison, 114,000 aliens entered the workforce on H-1B guestworker visas.
Because there is no reporting on how long guestworkers stay in the country, we do not know
the total number of workers in each category. Nonetheless, the number of approvals for work
on student visas has grown by 62 percent over the past four years so their numbers will soon
dwarf those on H-1B visas.
End quote. (And a cheery wave of acknowledgement to John Miano here from one of the
other seventeen people in the U.S.A. that knows the correct placement of the hyphen in
"H-1B.")
Our legal immigration system is addled with these scams. Don't even get me started
on
the EB-5 investor's visa . It all needs sweeping away.
So for preference I would rewrite that third heading to include, yes, items one, three, and
four -- cutting down chain migration, ending the Diversity Visa Lottery, and ending refugee
settlement for anyone of less stature than Solzhenitsyn; but then, I'd replace item two with
the following:
End all guest-worker programs, with exceptions only for the highest levels of
talent and accomplishment, limit one hundred visas per annum .
So much for my amendments to the President's October 8th proposals. There is, though, one
glaring omission from that 70-item list. The proposal has no mention at all of birthright
citizenship.
Yes, yes, I know: some constitutional authorities argue that birthright citizenship is
implied in the
Fourteenth Amendment , although it is certain that the framers of that Amendment did not
have foreign tourists or illegal entrants in mind. Other scholars think Congress could
legislate against it.
The only way to find out is to have Congress legislate. If the courts strike down the
legislation as unconstitutional, let's then frame a constitutional amendment and put it to the
people.
Getting rid of birthright citizenship might end up a long and difficult process. We might
ultimately fail. The only way to find out is to get the process started . Failure to
mention this in the President's proposal is a very glaring omission.
I agree with ending birthright citizenship. But Trump should wait until he can put at
least one more strict constitutionalist in the supreme court. There will be a court
challenge, and we need judges who can understand that if the 14th Amendment didn't give
automatic citizenship to American Indians it doesn't give automatic citizenship to children
of Mexican citizens who jumped our border.
John's article, it seems to me, ignores the elephant in the room: the DACA colonists.
Trump is offering this proposal, more or less, in return for some sort of semi-permanent
regularization of their status. Bad trade, in my opinion. Ending DACA and sending those
illegals back where they belong will have more real effect on illegal and legal
immigration/colonization than all sorts of proposals to be implemented in the future, which
can and will be changed by subsequent Administrations and Congresses.
Trump would also be able to drive a much harder bargain with Congress (like maybe a
moratorium on any immigration) if he had kept his campaign promise, ended DACA the afternoon
of January 20, 2017, and busloads of DACA colonists were being sent south of the Rio
Grande.
The best hope for immigration patriots is that the Democrats are so wedded to Open Borders
that the entire proposal dies and Trump, in disgust, reenacts Ike's Operation Wetback.
Well, in the real world, things just don't work that way. It's pay me now or pay me
later. Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans
refuse to do are run out the country, then what?
Right, prior to 1965, Americans didn't exist. They had all starved to death because, as
everyone knows, no Americans will work to produce food and, even if they did, once Tyson
chicken plants stop making 50 percent on capital they just shut down.
If there were no Somalis in Minnesota, even Warren Buffett couldn't afford grapes.
Illegal immigrants picking American produce is a false economy.
Illegal immigrants are subsidized by the taxpayer in terms of public health, education,
housing, and welfare.
If businesses didn't have access to cheap and subsidized illegal alien labor, they would
be compelled to resort to more farm automation to reduce cost.
Cheap illegal alien labor delays the inevitable use of newer farm automation
technologies.
Many Americans would likely prefer a machine touch their food rather than a illegal alien
with strange hygiene practices.
In addition, anti-American Democrats and neocons prefer certain kinds of illegal aliens
because they bolster their diversity scheme.
@Realist "Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs
Americans refuse to do are run out the country, then what?"
Eliminate welfare...then you'll have plenty of workers. Unfortunately, that train left the
station long ago. With or without welfare, there's simply no way soft, spoiled, lazy,
over-indulged Americans who have never hit a lick at anything their life, will ever perform
manual labor for anyone, including themselves.
@Randal Probably people other than you have worked out that once their wages are not
being continually undercut by cheap and easy immigrant competition, the American working
classes will actually be able to earn enough to pay the increased prices for grocery store
items, especially as the Americans who, along with machines, will replace those immigrants
doing the "jobs Americans won't do" will also be earning more and actually paying taxes on
it.
The "jobs Americans/Brits/etc won't do" myth is a deliberate distortion of reality that
ignores the laws of supply and demand. There are no jobs Americans etc won't do, only jobs
for which the employers are not prepared to pay wages high enough to make them worthwhile for
Americans etc to do.
Now of course it is more complicated than that. There are jobs that would not be
economically viable if the required wages were to be paid, and there are marginal
contributions to job creation by immigrant populations, but those aspects are in reality far
less significant than the bosses seeking cheap labour want people to think they are.
As a broad summary, a situation in which labour is tight, jobs are easy to come by and
staff hard to hold on to is infinitely better for the ordinary working people of any nation
than one in which there is a huge pool of excess labour, and therefore wages are low and
employees disposable.
You'd think anyone purporting to be on the "left", in the sense of supporting working
class people would understand that basic reality, but far too many on the left have been
indoctrinated in radical leftist anti-racist and internationalist dogmas that make them
functional stooges for big business and its mass immigration program.
Probably people other than you have worked out that once their wages are not being
continually undercut by cheap and easy immigrant competition, the American working classes
will actually be able to earn enough to pay the increased prices for grocery store items,
especially as the Americans who, along with machines, will replace those immigrants doing
the "jobs Americans won't do" will also be earning more and actually paying taxes on
it.
There might be some truth in this. When I was a student in England in the 60′s I
spent every summer working on farms, picking hops, apples, pears, potatoes and made some
money and had a lot of fun too and became an expert farm tractor operator.
No reason why US students and high school seniors should not pick up a lot of the slack.
Young people like camping in the countryside and sleeping rough, plus lots of
opportunity to meet others, have sex, smoke weed, drink beer, or whatever. If you get a free
vacation plus a nice check at the end, that makes the relatively low wages worthwhile. It is
not always a question of how much you are paid, but how much you can save.
We can fix the EB-5 visa scam. My suggestion: charge would-be "investors" $1 million to
enter the US. This $1 is not refundable under any circumstance. It is paid when the
"investor's" visa is approved. If the "investor" is convicted of a felony, he is deported. He
may bring no one with him. No wife, no child, no aunt, no uncle. Unless he pays $1 million
for that person.
We will get a few thousand Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes a year under this
program
As to fixing the H-1B visa program, we charge employer users of the program say $25,000
per year per employee. We require the employers to inform all employees that if any is asked
to train a replacement, he should inform the DOJ immediately. The DOJ investigates and if
true, charges managerial employees who asked that a replacement be trained with fraud.
As to birthright citizenship: I say make it a five-year felony to have a child while in
the US illegally. Make it a condition of getting a tourist visa that one not be pregnant. If
the tourist visa lasts say 60 days and the woman has a child while in the US, she gets
charged with fraud.
None of these suggestions requires a constitutional amendment.
In the United States middle class prosperity reached its apogee in 1965 – before the
disastrous (and eminently foreseeable) wage-lowering consequence of the Hart-Celler Open
Immigration Act's massive admission of foreigners increased the supply of labor which began
to lower middle class prosperity and to shrink and eradicate the middle class.
It was in 1965 that ordinary Americans, enjoying maximum employment because employers were
forced to compete for Americans' talents and labor, wielded their peak purchasing
power . Since 1970 wages have remained stagnant, and since 1965 the purchasing power of
ordinary Americans has gone into steep decline.
It is long past time to halt Perpetual Mass Immigration into the United States, to end
birthright citizenship, and to deport all illegal aliens – if, that is, our leaders
genuinely care about and represent us ordinary Americans instead of continuing their
legislative, policy, and judicial enrichment of the 1-percenter campaign donor/rentier class
of transnational Globali$t Open Border$ E$tabli$hment $ellout$.
Re the birthright citizenship argument, that is not settled law in that SCOTUS has never
ruled on the question of whether a child born in the US is thereby a citizen if the parents
are illegally present. Way back in 1897, SCOTUS did resolve the issue of whether a child born
to alien parents who were legally present was thereby a citizen. That case is U.S. vs Wong
Kim Ark 169 US 649. SCOTUS ruled in favor of citizenship. If that was a justiciable issue how
much more so is it when the parents are illegally present?
My thinking is that the result would be the same but, at least, the question would be
settled. I cannot see justices returning a toddler to Beijing or worse. They would never have
invitations to cocktail parties again for the shame heaped upon them for such uncaring
conduct. Today, the title of citizen is conferred simply by bureaucratic rule, not by
judicial order.
Arguments Against Fourteenth Amendment Anchor Baby Interpretation
J. Paige Straley
Part One. Anchor Baby Argument, Mexican Case.
The ruling part of the US Constitution is Amendment Fourteen: "All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Here is the ruling part of the Mexican Constitution, Section II, Article Thirty:
Article 30
Mexican nationality is acquired by birth or by naturalization:
A. Mexicans by birth are:
I. Those born in the territory of the Republic, regardless of the nationality of
their parents:
II. Those born in a foreign country of Mexican parents; of a Mexican father and
a foreign mother; or of a Mexican mother and an unknown father;
III. Those born on Mexican vessels or airships, either war or merchant vessels. "
A baby born to Mexican nationals within the United States is automatically a Mexican
citizen. Under the anchor baby reasoning, this baby acquires US citizenship at the same time
and so is a dual citizen. Mexican citizenship is primary because it stems from a primary
source, the parents' citizenship and the law of Mexico. The Mexican Constitution states the
child of Mexican parents is automatically a Mexican citizen at birth no matter where the
birth occurs. Since the child would be a Mexican citizen in any country, and becomes an
American citizen only if born in America, it is clear that Mexico has the primary claim of
citizenry on the child. This alone should be enough to satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment
jurisdiction thereof argument. Since Mexican citizenship is primary, it has primary
jurisdiction; thus by the plain words of the Fourteenth such child is not an American citizen
at birth.
[MORE]
There is a second argument for primary Mexican citizenship in the case of anchor babies.
Citizenship, whether Mexican or American, establishes rights and duties. Citizenship is a
reciprocal relationship, thus establishing jurisdiction. This case for primary Mexican
citizenship is supported by the fact that Mexico allows and encourages Mexicans resident in
the US, either illegal aliens or legal residents, to vote in Mexican elections. They are
counted as Mexican citizens abroad, even if dual citizens, and their government provides
widespread consular services as well as voting access to Mexicans residing in the US. As far
as Mexico is concerned, these persons are not Mexican in name only, but have a civil
relationship strong enough to allow a political voice; in essence, full citizenship. Clearly,
all this is the expression of typical reciprocal civic relationships expressed in legal
citizenship, further supporting the establishment of jurisdiction.
Part Two: Wong Kim Ark (1898) case. (Birthright Citizenship)
The Wong Kim Ark (WKA) case is often cited as the essential legal reasoning and precedent
for application of the fourteenth amendment as applied to aliens. There has been plenty of
commentary on WKA, but the truly narrow application of the case is emphasized reviewing a
concise statement of the question the case was meant to decide, written by Hon. Horace Gray,
Justice for the majority in this decision.
"[W]hether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the
time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and
residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in
any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his
birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution." (Italics added.)
For WKA to justify birthright citizenship, the parents must have " permanent domicile and
residence " But how can an illegal alien have permanent residence when the threat of
deportation is constantly present? There is no statute of limitation for illegal presence in
the US and the passage of time does not eliminate the legal remedy of deportation. This alone
would seem to invalidate WKA as a support and precedent for illegal alien birthright
citizenship.
If illegal (or legal) alien parents are unemployed, unemployable, illegally employed, or
if they get their living by illegal means, then they are not ". . .carrying on business. .
.", and so the children of indigent or criminal aliens may not be eligible for birthright
citizenship
If legal aliens meet the two tests provided in WKA, birthright citizenship applies.
Clearly the WKA case addresses the specific situation of the children of legal aliens, and so
is not an applicable precedent to justify birthright citizenship for the children of illegal
aliens.
Part three. Birth Tourism
Occasionally foreign couples take a trip to the US during the last phase of the wife's
pregnancy so she can give birth in the US, thus conferring birthright citizenship on the
child. This practice is called "birth tourism." WKA provides two tests for birthright
citizenship: permanent domicile and residence and doing business, and a temporary visit
answers neither condition. WKA is therefore disqualified as justification for a "birth
tourism" child to be granted birthright citizenship.
@Carroll Price Unfortunately, that train left the station long ago. With or without
welfare, there's simply no way soft, spoiled, lazy, over-indulged Americans who have never
hit a lick at anything their life, will ever perform manual labor for anyone, including
themselves. Then let them starve to death. The Pilgrims nipped that dumb ass idea (welfare)
in the bud
An equally pressing problem, though, is the millions of foreigners who are living and
working here, and using our schools and hospitals and public services, who should not be
here.
Has it ever occurred to anyone other than me that the cost associated with
foreign workers using our schools and hospitals and pubic services for free, is more than
off-set by the cheap price being paid for grocery store items like boneless chicken breast,
grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce etc, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive even
for the wealthy?
Let alone relatively poor people (like myself) and those on fixed incomes? What
un-thinking Americans want, is having their cake and eating it too. Well, in the real world,
things just don't work that way. It's pay me now or pay me later. Once all the undocumented
workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans refuse to do are run out the
country, then what? Please look up;History; United States; pre mid-twentieth century. I'm
pretty sure Americans were eating chicken, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce, etc. prior to
that period. I don't think their diet consisted of venison and tree bark.
But since I wasn't there, maybe I'm wrong and that is actually what they were eating.
I know some people born in the 1920′s; I'll check with them and let you know what they
say.
(wired.com)
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 23, 2017 @09:30PM from the looking-inside dept.
Amazon aggressively recruited thousands of retirees living in mobile homes to migrate to
Amazon's warehouses for seasonal work, according to a story shared by nightcats . Wired reports: From a hiring perspective,
the RVers were a dream labor force. They showed up on demand and dispersed just before
Christmas in what the company cheerfully called a "taillight parade." They asked for
little in the way of benefits or protections . And though warehouse jobs were physically
taxing -- not an obvious fit for older bodies -- recruiters came to see CamperForce workers'
maturity as an asset. These were diligent, responsible employees. Their attendance rates were
excellent. "We've had folks in their eighties who do a phenomenal job for us," noted Kelly
Calmes, a CamperForce representative, in one online recruiting seminar... In a company
presentation, one slide read, "Jeff Bezos has predicted that, by the year 2020, one out of
every four workampers in the United States will have worked for Amazon." The article is
adapted from a new book called " Nomadland
," which also describes seniors in mobile homes being recruited for sugar beet harvesting and
jobs at an Iowa amusement park, as well as work as campground hsots at various national parks.
Many of them "could no longer afford traditional housing," especially after the financial
downturn of 2008. But at least they got to hear stories from their trainers at Amazon about the
occasional "unruly" shelf-toting "Kiva" robot: They told us how one robot had tried to drag
a worker's stepladder away. Occasionally, I was told, two Kivas -- each carrying a tower of
merchandise -- collided like drunken European soccer fans bumping chests. And in April of that
year, the Haslet fire department responded to an accident at the warehouse involving a can of
"bear repellent" (basically industrial-grade pepper spray). According to fire department
records, the can of repellent was run over by a Kiva and the warehouse had to be
evacuated.
"... Karen Panetta, the dean of graduate engineering education at Tufts University and the vice president of communications and public relations at the IEEE-USA, believes the outcome for tech will be Logan's Run -like, where age sets a career limit... ..."
"... It's great to get the new hot shot who just graduated from college, but it's also important to have somebody with 40 years of experience who has seen all of the changes in the industry and can offer a different perspective." ..."
Will the median age of tech firms rise as the Millennial generation
grows older...? The median age range at Google, Facebook, SpaceX, LinkedIn,
Amazon, Salesforce, Apple and Adobe, is 29 to 31, according to a study last
year by PayScale, which analyzes self-reported data...
Karen Panetta, the dean
of graduate engineering education at Tufts University and the vice president
of communications and public relations at the IEEE-USA, believes the outcome
for tech will be Logan's Run -like, where age sets a career limit...
Tech firms want people with the current skills sets and those "without those
skills will be pressured to leave or see minimal career progression," said Panetta...
The idea that the tech industry may have an age bias is not scaring the new
college grads away. "They see retirement so far off, so they are more interested
in how to move up or onto new startup ventures or even business school," said
Panetta.
"The reality sets in when they have families and companies downsize
and it's not so easy to just pick up and go on to another company," she said.
None of this may be a foregone conclusion.
Millennials may see the experience
of today's older workers as a cautionary tale, and usher in cultural changes... David Kurtz, a labor relations partner at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete,
suggests tech firms should be sharing age-related date about their workforce,
adding "The more of a focus you place on an issue the more attention it gets
and the more likely that change can happen.
It's great to get the new hot shot
who just graduated from college, but it's also important to have somebody with
40 years of experience who has seen all of the changes in the industry and can
offer a different perspective."
"McDonald's has repeatedly said that adding kiosks won't result in mass layoffs, but will instead
move some cashiers to other parts of the restaurant where it's adding new jobs, such as table service.
The burger chain reiterated that position again on Friday."
Is McDonald's denial believable? What would you expect the company to say?
McDonald's has to deny the story or it might have a hiring problem, a morale problem, and other
problems.
"Our CEO, Steve Easterbrook, has said on many occasions that self-order kiosks in McDonald's restaurants
are not a labor replacement," a spokeswoman told Business Insider. "They provide an opportunity to
transition back-of-the-house positions to more customer service roles such as concierges and table
service where they are able to truly engage with guests and enhance the dining experience."
Move cashiers to table service? Really?
Yeah, right.
An interesting political rule from the British sitcom "Yes, Minister" is to "never believe anything
until it's officially denied".
Will Humans Be Necessary?
When someone can be replaced by a robot, how can the push for $15 be justified?
Let's start with jobs likely to be eliminated, starting with the present and with those lower-level
jobs.
Already, don't you prefer a ATM to a teller, self-checkout to the supermarket checker, drive-through
tolls rather than stop for the toll-taker, automated airline check-in rather than waiting for a clerk,
shopping on Amazon rather than fighting traffic, parking, and the check-out experience with a live
clerk, assuming the store has what you want in your size? Indeed,
malls are
closing while online retailers led by Amazon
are growing.
As minimum wage and mandated benefits rise,
fast-food restaurants especially are accelerating use of, for example, order-taking kiosks, which
McDonald's
is rolling out in 2,500 stores, robotic burger flippers and fry cooks, even
pizza, ramen and sushi makers . Even that fail-safe job, barista, is at-risk, Bosch now makes
an automated barista . Mid-range
restaurants such as Olive Garden, Outback, and Applebee are
replacing waiters
with tabletop tablets . Will you really miss having your conversation interrupted by a waiter
hawking hors de oeuvres and expecting a 15+% tip? If you owned a fast-food franchise, mighn't you
be looking to replace people with automated solutions? Can it really be long until there are completely
automated fast-food and even mid-range restaurants?
BlackRock, the world's largest fund company
has replaced seven of its 53 analysts with AI-driven stock-picking.
The remaining jobs
In such a world, how can a human justify asking to be paid to work?
Four scenarios
The range of scenarios would seem circumscribed by these. How likely do you think each of these
are?
Continue on the current path: The world continues to slowly make progress, e.g., birth rates
declining in developing nations, slowed global warming, more education and health care. Those positives
would be mitigated by declining jobs, more
concentration of wealth.
World socialism.
Mass population reduction, for example, by nuclear war, pandemic, or, per Clive Cussler, highly
communicable biovirus simultaneously put into the water supply of a half-dozen cruise ships?
A world run by machines and the few people they deem worthy.
Here is a debate between an optimistic and a
pessimist on the future
of the world.
The truth may well be something we can't even envision. After all, he who lives by the crystal
ball usually eats broken glass.
Note that Psychology Today author Marty Nemko did not ask about $15. He wonders if pay for some
jobs is worth anything at all.
When all the jobs are taken over by machines there won't be anybody with money left to buy
or pay for anything at all. WTF then? A world of no work is a world of little or no income. The
ones who survive are the ones who know how to provide for themselves without the use of currency
(barter, trade, farming, etc ).
Before that happens, these machines will be heavily vandalized. It's all part of the inevitable
ISEP problem (It's Someone Else's Problem).
For one firm to do this, it's understandable, but for an entire sector, they're ripping their
face off and everyone else's. But those making the decisions are unwilling or unable to care about
even their long-term positions. To start, they largely exist to kick the can down the road until
... you guess it! ... it's ISEP. It's a problem for the next round of overcompensated intellectual-light
and morally-bankrupt executives.
But don't think "the market" is going to fix that. Markets never do. Markets have failures
all the time yet people still pretend like they have this inherent magical property. Markets would
be fine ... in a human-free world ... because anything a sociopath touches will be turned to sh*t.
And power, be it government or "market" will attract these people. Any ideology can work, but
only until the sociopaths game the sh*t out of the system and destroy it from the inside.
Now, the less stupid people in these positions will realize the ISEP problem but know full
well the government of the future can be extorted into, effectively, bailing them out somehow.
Think of the "mandate" of ObamaCare and realize "thinkers" at the Heritage Institute saw this
down the road back in the early 1980s. Right now, I'm starting to wonder if this whole "livable
wage" is just a proxy bailout on behalf of large actors like McDonald's (who can no longer expect
growth as the incomes and costs at the bottom shrink in the former and explode in the latter).
That leadership knows full well that even if they took a leadership position on living wages,
they'll be expected to be the only ones. The sociopaths at the other firms will think ... you
got it! ... ISEP. Those firms can continue on f**king their employees while a large firm like
McDonald's is expected to shoulder the entire burden or drive them into bankruptcy. In either
of those cases, the status quo remains across the industry.
FIRE-HC-E (Financial, Insurance, Real Estate, Healthcare, Education; the major rackets of ourlives)
is destroying the markets for not just McDonald's employees, but also markets for other brick-and-mortar
companies like Apple or Home Depot. This is why I focus heavily on our poor leadership because
the leadership of the industrial sectors as a whole just sat back and watched as the likes of
Wall Street slowly eroded the bedrock of the economy.
The author, Mike Shedlock, links to a POS article in Psychology Today, authored by Marty Nemko
Ph.D. Did anyone else read that? It says under An
optimistic vision
"Longer term, it's even possible that we'll be able to accomplish more of what we want by using
gene therapy or
a chip embedded in our brain -Research to make that happen is already being funded by the
federal government." Ah, no thank you!
Mike also asks " how can the push for $15 be justified? And links to the Psycholgy Today article
which say "we may also need a guaranteed basic income paid heavily by successful corporations
and wealthy individuals". Which view do you support Mike?
Psychology Today article also states "What about journalism? Even in major media outlets, many
journalism jobs have already been lost to the armies of people willing to write for free. In addition,
software such as Quill can replace some human journalists" Maybe in this case, that's not a bad
thing.
Thousands of workers face unemployment as retailers
struggle to adapt to online shopping. But even as
e-commerce grows, it isn't absorbing these workers.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. - Dawn Nasewicz comes from a family of
steelworkers, with jobs that once dominated the local
economy. She found her niche in retail.
She manages a store, Ooh La La, that sells prom dresses
and embroidered jeans at a local mall. But just as the jobs
making automobile springs and rail anchors disappeared, local
retail jobs are now vanishing.
"I need my income," said Ms. Nasewicz, who was told that
her store will close as early as August. "I'm 53. I have no
idea what I'm going to do."
Ms. Nasewicz is another retail casualty, one of tens of
thousands of workers facing unemployment nationwide as the
industry struggles to adapt to online shopping.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
A sporting goods store in a Johnstown, Pa., mall is having a
going-out-of-business sale. Credit George Etheredge for The
New York Times
Small cities in the Midwest and Northeast are particularly
vulnerable. When major industries left town, retail accounted
for a growing share of the job market in places like
Johnstown, Decatur, Ill., and Saginaw, Mich. Now, the work
force is getting hit a second time, and there is little to
fall back on.
Moreover, while stores in these places are shedding jobs
because of e-commerce, e-commerce isn't absorbing these
workers. Growth in e-commerce jobs like marketing and
engineering, while strong, is clustered around larger cities
far away. Rural counties and small metropolitan areas account
for about 23 percent of traditional American retail
employment, but they are home to just 13 percent of
e-commerce positions.
E-commerce has also fostered a boom in other industries,
including warehouses. But most of those jobs are being
created in larger metropolitan areas, an analysis of Census
Bureau business data shows.
Almost all customer fulfillment centers run by the online
shopping behemoth Amazon are in metropolitan areas with more
than 250,000 people - close to the bulk of its customers -
according to a list of locations compiled by MWPVL
International, a logistics consulting firm. An Amazon
spokeswoman noted, however, that the company had recently
opened warehouses in two distressed cities in larger
metropolitan areas, Fall River, Mass., and Joliet, Ill.
The Johnstown metropolitan area, in western Pennsylvania,
has lost 19 percent of its retail jobs since 2001, and the
future is uncertain. At least a dozen of Ooh La La's
neighbors at the mall have closed, and a "Going out of
business" banner hangs across the front of the sporting goods
store Gander Mountain.
"Every time you lose a corner store, every time you lose a
restaurant, every time you lose a small clothing store, it
detracts from the quality of life, as well as the job loss,"
said John McGrath, a professor of management at the
University of Pittsburgh Johnstown.
This city is perhaps still best known for a flood that
ravaged it nearly 130 years ago. After rebuilding, Johnstown
eventually became prosperous from its steel and offered a
clear path to the middle class. For generations, people could
walk out of high school and into a steady factory job.
But today, the area bears the marks of a struggling town.
Its population has dwindled, and addiction treatment centers
and Dollar Generals stand in place of corner grocers and
department stores like Glosser Brothers, once owned by the
family of Stephen Miller, President Trump's speechwriter and
a policy adviser.
When Mr. Trump spoke about "rusted-out factories scattered
like tombstones across the landscape of our nation" in his
Inaugural Address, people like Donald Bonk, a local economic
development consultant, assumed that Mr. Miller - who grew up
in California but spent summers in Johnstown - was writing
about the old Bethlehem Steel buildings that still hug long
stretches of the Little Conemaugh River.
The county voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, eight years
after it helped to elect Barack Obama. (It also voted for
Mitt Romney in 2012, but not by as wide a margin.)
Here and in similar towns, when the factory jobs left, a
greater share of the work force ended up in retail.
Sometimes that meant big-box retailers like Walmart, which
were often blamed for destroying mom-and-pop stores but at
least created other jobs for residents. The damage from
e-commerce plays out differently. Digital firms may attract
customers from small towns, but they are unlikely to employ
them.
Some remaining retailers are straining for solutions. ...
"... What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but a conversation about what a welfare state is for. In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation, a reduction in the working week, and a diminution of the work ethic. Williams and Srnicek believe that without these other provisions, UBI could essentially act as an excuse to get rid of the welfare state. ..."
"... What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but an entirely different conversation about what a welfare state is for. As David Lammy MP said, after the Grenfell Tower disaster: "This is about whether the welfare state is just about schools and hospitals or whether it is about a safety net." The conversation, in light of UBI, could go even further: it's possible for the welfare state not just to act as a safety net, but as a tool for all of us to do less work and spend more time with our loved ones, pursuing personal interests or engaging in our communities. ..."
Lane Kenworthy's article shows how America is already great, with many more people working
in poverty than in the UK, Ireland or Australia. Maybe the robots stole better paying jobs? Maybe
they need more education and to skill up?
Love the idea of a universal basic income? Be careful what you wish for
Ellie Mae O'Hagan
Friday 23 June 2017 10.36 EDT
Yes, UBI could be an important part of a radical agenda. But beware: its proponents include
neoliberals hostile to the very idea of the welfare state
For some time now, the radical left has been dipping its toes in the waters of universal basic
income (or unconditional basic income, depending on who you talk to). The idea is exactly as it
sounds: the government would give every citizen – working or not – a fixed sum of money every
week or month, with no strings attached. As time goes on, universal basic income (UBI) has gradually
been transitioning from the radical left into the mainstream: it's Green party policy, is picking
up steam among SNP and Labour MPs and has been advocated by commentators including this newspaper's
very own John Harris.
Supporters of the idea got a boost this week with the news that the Finnish government has
piloted the idea with 2,000 of its citizens with very positive results. Under the scheme, the
first of its kind in Europe, participants receive €560 (£473) every month for two years without
any requirements to fill in forms or actively seek work. If anyone who receives the payment finds
work, their UBI continues. Many participants have reported "decreased stress, greater incentives
to find work and more time to pursue business ideas." In March, Ontario in Canada started trialling
a similar scheme.
Given that UBI necessarily promotes universalism and is being pursued by liberal governments
rather than overtly rightwing ones, it's tempting to view it as an inherently leftwing conceit.
In January, MEPs voted to consider UBI as a solution to the mass unemployment that might result
from robots taking over manual jobs.
From this perspective, UBI could be rolled out as a distinctly rightwing initiative. In fact
it does bear some similarity to the government's shambolic universal credit scheme, which replaces
a number of benefits with a one-off, lower, monthly payment (though it goes only to people already
on certain benefits, of course). In the hands of the right, UBI could easily be seen as a kind
of universal credit for all, undermining the entire benefits system and providing justification
for paying the poorest a poverty income.
In fact, can you imagine what UBI would be like if it were rolled out by this government, which
only yesterday promised to fight a ruling describing the benefits cap as inflicting "real misery
to no good purpose"?
Despite the fact that the families who brought a case against the government had children too
young to qualify for free childcare, the Department for Work and Pensions still perversely insisted
that "the benefit cap incentivises work". It's not hard to imagine UBI being administered by the
likes of A4e (now sold and renamed PeoplePlus), which carried out back-to-work training for the
government, and saw six of its employees receive jail sentences for defrauding the government
of £300,000. UBI cannot be a progressive initiative as long as the people with the power to implement
it are hostile to the welfare state as a whole.
What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but a conversation about what a welfare
state is for. In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick
Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation,
a reduction in the working week, and a diminution of the work ethic. Williams and Srnicek believe
that without these other provisions, UBI could essentially act as an excuse to get rid of the
welfare state.
What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but an entirely different conversation
about what a welfare state is for. As David Lammy MP said, after the Grenfell Tower disaster:
"This is about whether the welfare state is just about schools and hospitals or whether it is
about a safety net." The conversation, in light of UBI, could go even further: it's possible for
the welfare state not just to act as a safety net, but as a tool for all of us to do less work
and spend more time with our loved ones, pursuing personal interests or engaging in our communities.
UBI has this revolutionary potential – but not if it is simply parachuted into a political
economy that has been pursuing punitive welfare policies for the last 30 years.
On everything from climate change and overpopulation to yawning inequality and mass automation,
modern western economies face unprecedented challenges. These conditions are frightening but they
also open up the possibility of the kind of radical policies we haven't seen since the postwar
period. UBI could be the start of this debate, but it must not be the end.
> "One of the reasons I support UBI is that it
refocuses political discussions to some of the fundamental
issues, as this article points out."
I agree.
UBI might probably be the most viable first step of
Trump's MAGA. But he betrayed his electorate. Similarly it would be a good step in Obama's "change we
can believe in" which never materialized.
The level of automation that currently exists makes UBI
quite a possibility.
But...
The problem is the key idea of neoliberalism is
"socialism for rich and feudalism and/or plantation
slavery for poor."
So neither Republicans, nor Clinton Democrats are
interested in UBI. It is anathema for neoliberals.
"... Baker correctly diagnoses the impact of boomers aging, but there is another effect - "knowledge work" and "high skill manufacturing" is more easily outsourced/offshored than work requiring a physical presence. ..."
Baker correctly diagnoses the impact of boomers aging, but
there is another effect - "knowledge work" and "high skill
manufacturing" is more easily outsourced/offshored than
work requiring a physical presence.
Also outsourcing
"higher wage" work is more profitable than outsourcing
"lower wage" work - with lower wages also labor cost as a
proportion of total cost tends to be lower (not always).
And outsourcing and geographically relocating work
creates other overhead costs that are not much related to
the wages of the local work replaced - and those overheads
are larger in relation to lower wages than in relation to
higher wages.
libezkova -> cm... May 20, 2017 at 08:34 PM
"Also outsourcing "higher wage" work is more profitable than outsourcing "lower wage" work"
I had another
topic lined up today, but this (
hat
tip alert reader ChrisAtRU
) is so remarkable - and so necessary to
frame
contextualize immediately - I thought I should bring it your
attention, dear readers. The headline is
"Toward a Marshall Plan for America
," the authors are a gaggle of CAP
luminaries with Neera Tanden leading and Rey Teixeira trailing, and the
"Marshall Plan" indeed includes something called a "Jobs Guarantee." Of
course, I trust Clinton operatives like Tanden, and Third Way types like
Teixeira, about as far as I can throw a concert grand piano. Nevertheless,
one sign of an idea whose time has come is that sleazy opportunists and
has-beens try to get out in front of it to seize credit[1] and stay
relevant. So, modified rapture.
In this brief post, I'm going to look at the political context that drove
CAP - taking Tanden, Teixeira, and the gaggle as a proxy for CAP - to
consider a Jobs Guarantee (JG), briefly describe the nature and purpose of a
JG, and conclude with some thoughts on how Tanden, Teixeira would screw the
JG up, like the good liberals they are.
Political Context for CAP's JG
Let's begin with the photo of Prairie du Chien, WI at the top of CAP's JG
article. Here it is:
I went to Google Maps Street View, found
Stark's Sports Shop
(and Liquor Store), and took a quick look round
town. Things don't look too bad, which is to say things look pretty much
like they do in my own home town, in the fly-over state of Maine; many local
businesses. The street lamps make my back teeth itch a little, because along
with bike paths to attract professionals, they're one of those panaceas to
"bring back downtown," but as it turns out Prairie du Chien has marketed
itself to summer tourists quite successfully as "
the
oldest Euro-American settlement established on the Upper Mississippi River,"
so those lamps are legit! (Of course, Prairie du Chien, like so much of
flyover country,
is fighting an opioid problem
, but that doesn't show up in Street View,
or affect the tourists in any way.)
In 2012, [Lydia Holt] voted for Barack Obama because he promised her
change, but she feels that change hasn't reached her here. So last year
she chose a presidential candidate unlike any she'd ever seen, the
billionaire businessman who promised to help America, and people like
her, win again. Many of her neighbors did, too .
In this corner of middle America, in this one, small slice of the
nation that sent Trump to Washington, they are watching and they are
waiting, their hopes pinned on his promised economic renaissance. And if
four years from now the change he pledged hasn't found them here, the
people of Crawford County said they might change again to someone else.
"[T]hings aren't going the way we want them here," she said, "so we
needed to go in another direction."
And the issues:
[Holt] tugged 13 envelopes from a cabinet above the stove, each one
labeled with a different debt: the house payment, the student loans, the
vacuum cleaner she bought on credit.
Lydia Holt and her husband tuck money into these envelopes with each
paycheck to whittle away at what they owe. They both earn about $10 an
hour and, with two kids, there are usually some they can't fill. She did
the math; at this rate, they'll be paying these same bills for 87 years.
Kramer said she's glad the Affordable Care Act has helped millions get
insurance, but it hasn't helped her he and her husband were stunned to
find premiums over $1,000 a month. Her daughter recently moved into their
house with her five children, so there's no money to spare. They opted to
pay the penalty of $2,000, and pray they don't get sick until Trump, she
hopes, keeps his promise to replace the law with something better.
Among them is a woman who works for $10.50 an hour in a sewing
factory, who still admires Obama, bristles at Trump's bluster, but can't
afford health insurance. And the dairy farmer who thinks Trump is a jerk
- "somebody needs to get some Gorilla Glue and glue his lips shut" - but
has watched his profits plummet and was willing to take the risk.
So that's Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. CAP frames the electoral context
this way:
While the election was decided by a small number of votes overall,
there was a significant shift of votes in counties in critical Electoral
College states, including Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
Wisconsin.
(I could have told them that.
In fact, I did!
) And the reasons for the shift:
What was going on in these heavily white working-class counties that
might explain support for Trump? Without diminishing the importance of
cultural and racial influences, it is clear to us that lingering [sic]
economic pressures among important voting blocs helped to create a larger
opening for Trump's victory.
We do not yet know the exact reasons for the drop in turnout among
young people and black voters. But with President Obama not on the ticket
to drive voter enthusiasm, it is quite possible that lingering job and
wage pressures in more urban areas with lots of young people, and in
areas with large populations of African-Americans, yielded similar, if
distinct, economic anxiety in ways that may have depressed voter turnout
among base progressives. The combined effect of economic anxiety may have
been to drive white noncollege voters toward Trump and to drive down
voter engagement and participation among base progressives.
Either way, issues related to lost jobs, low wages, high costs, and
diminished mobility played a critical role in setting the stage for a
narrow populist victory for Trump.
(I could have told them that, too.
In fact, I did!
) Note the lingering
"Obama Coalition"
/
identity
politics
brain damage that casually assumes "base progressives" equate
to African-Americans and youth. Nevertheless, mild kudos to CAP for fighting
through to the concept that "economic pressures among important voting blocs
helped to create a larger opening for Trump's victory." The CAP paper then
goes on to recommend a JG as an answer to such "economic pressures."[2]
How would the JG work from the perspective of a working person (not an
owner?) Or from the perspective of the millions of permanently
disemployed?
The MMT Primer
:
If you are involuntarily unemployed today (or are stuck with a
part-time job when you really want to work full time) you only have
three choices:
Employ yourself (create your own business-something that
usually goes up in recessions although most of these businesses
fail)
Convince an employer to hire you, adding to the firm's
workforce
Convince an employer to replace an existing worker, hiring you
The second option requires that the firm's employment is below
optimum-it must not currently have the number of workers desired to
produce the amount of output the firm thinks it can sell. …
If the firm is in equilibrium, then, producing what it believes it
can sell, it will hire you only on the conditions stated in the third
case-to replace an existing worker. Perhaps you promise to work
harder, or better, or at a lower wage. But, obviously, that just
shifts the unemployment to someone else.
It is the "dogs and bones" problem: if you bury 9 bones and send 10
dogs out to go bone-hunting you know at least one dog will come back
"empty mouthed". You can take that dog and teach her lots of new
tricks in bone-finding, but if you bury only 9 bones, again, some
unlucky dog comes back without a bone.
The only solution is to provide a 10
th
bone. That is
what the JG does: it ensures a bone for every dog that wants to hunt.
It expands the options to include:
There is a "residual" employer who will always provide a job to
anyone who shows up ready and willing to work.
It expands choice. If you want to work and exhaust the first 3
alternatives listed above, there is a 4
th
: the JG.
It expands choice without reducing other choices. You can still try
the first 3 alternatives. You can take advantage of all the safety net
alternatives provided. Or you can choose to do nothing. It is up to
you.
If I were one of the millions of people permanently disemployed, I
would welcome that additional choice. It's certainly far more humane than
any policy on offer by either party. And the JG is in the great tradition
of programs the New Deal sponsored, like the CCC, the WPA,
Federal Writers' Project
, and the
Federal Art Project
. So what's not to like? (
Here's
a list
of other JGs). Like the New Deal, but not temporary!
Intuitively: What the JG does is set a baseline[3] for the entire
package offered to workers, and employers have to offer a better package,
or not get the workers they need. When I came up here to Maine I'd quit
my job voluntarily and so wasn't eligible for unemployment. Then the
economy crashed, and I had no work (except for blogging) for two years.
There were no jobs to be had. I would have screamed with joy for a
program even remotely like this, and I don't even have dependents to take
care of. It may be objected that the political process won't deliver an
offer as good as the Primer suggests. Well, don't mourn. Organize. It may
be objected that a reform like the JG merely reinforces the power of the
0.01%. If so, I'm not sure I'm willing to throw the currently disemployed
under the bus because "worse is better," regardless. Anyhow, does
"democratic control over the living wage"
really
sound all that
squillionaire-friendly to you? Aren't they doing everything in their
power to fight anything that sounds like that? The JG sounds like the
slogan Lincoln ran on, to me:
"Vote yourself a farm!"
[3]
So, what does the JG for the economy? MMT was put together by
economists; from an economists perspective, what is it good for? Why did
they do that?
The Primer
once more:
some supporters emphasize that a program with a uniform basic
wage[4] also helps to promote economic and price stability.
The JG/ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer as
employment in the program grows in recession and shrinks in economic
expansion, counteracting private sector employment fluctuations. The
federal government budget will become more counter-cyclical because
its spending on the ELR program will likewise grow in recession and
fall in expansion.
Furthermore, the uniform basic wage will reduce both inflationary
pressure in a boom and deflationary pressure in a bust. In a boom,
private employers can recruit from the program's pool of workers,
paying a mark-up over the program wage. The pool acts like a "reserve
army" of the employed, dampening wage pressures as private employment
grows. In recession, workers down-sized by private employers can work
at the JG/ELR wage, which puts a floor to how low wages and income can
fall.
Research by Pavlina Tcherneva and Rania Antonopoulos indicates that
when asked, most people want to work. Studying how job guarantees
affect women in poor countries, they find the programs are popular
largely because they recognize-and more fairly distribute and
compensate-all the child- and elder care that is now often performed
by women for free (out of love or duty), off the books, or not at all.
We propose today a new jobs guarantee, and we further expect a
robust[3] agenda to be developed by the commission.
The low wages and low employment rates for those without college
degrees only exist because of a failure of imagination. There is no
shortage of important work that needs to be done in our country. There
are not nearly enough home care workers to aid the aged and disabled.
Many working families with children under the age of 5 need access to
affordable child care. Schools need teachers' aides, and cities need
EMTs. And there is no shortage of people who could do this work. What has
been missing is policy that can mobilize people.
To solve this problem, we propose a large-scale, permanent program of
public employment and infrastructure investment-similar to the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression but modernized
for the 21st century. It will increase employment and wages for those
without a college degree while providing needed services that are
currently out of reach for lower-income households and cash-strapped
state and local governments. Furthermore, some individuals may be hired
into paying public jobs in which their primary duty will be to complete
intensive, full-time training for high-growth, in-demand occupations.
These "public apprenticeships" could include rotations with public and
private entities to gain on-the-ground experience and lead to guaranteed
private-sector employment upon successful completion of training.
Such an expanded public employment program could, for example, have a
target of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age workers without a
bachelor's degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent. Currently, this would
require the creation of 4.4 million jobs. At a living wage-which we can
approximate as $15 per hour plus the cost of contributions to Social
Security and Medicare via payroll taxes-the direct cost of each job would
be approximately $36,000 annually. Thus, a rough estimate of the costs of
this employment program would be about $158 billion in the current year.
This is approximately one-quarter of Trump's proposed tax cut for the
wealthy on an annual basis.
With tis background, let's look at how liberals would screw the JG up.
How a CAP JG Would Go Wrong
Before getting into a little policy detail, I'll examine a few
cultural/framing issues. After all, CAP
does
want the program's
intended recipients to accept it with good grace, no? Let me introduce the
over-riding concern, from Joan C. Williams in
The Financial Times
:
"They don't want compassion. They want respect"
:
Williams warns that Republican errors alone won't give Democrats back
the WWC.
Or any part of the WC; as even CAP recognizes, although WWC
disproportionately voted Trump, and non-WWC disproportionately stayed home.
While [Williams] agrees that the Democrats have mobilised their base
since Trump's election, she has "one simple message" for the party: it
needs to show the WWC respect, "in a tone suitable for grown-ups".
Democrats must say: "We regret that we have disrespected you, we now hear
you." She asks: "Is this so hard? Although the risk is that the response
will be, 'Oh, those poor little white people with their opioid epidemics,
let's open our hearts in compassion to them.' That's going to infuriate
them. They don't want compassion, they want respect."
To show respect, it would really behoove liberals to deep-six the phrase
"economic anxiety," along with "economic frustrations," "economic concerns,"
"economic grievances," and "lingering economic pressures."[4] All these
phrases make successful class warfare a psychological condition, no doubt to
be treated by a professional (who by definition is not anxious, not
frustrated, has no grievances, and certainly no economic pressures, because
of their hourly rate (or possibly their government contract).
To show respect, it would also behoove liberals to deep-six the concept
that markets come first; people who sell their labor power by the hour tend
to be sensitive about such things. Take, for a tiny example, the caption
beneath the image of Prairie du Chein. Let me quote it:
A customer crosses the street while leaving a shop along the main
business district in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, January 2017.
Really? A
customer
? Does the human figure have to be a
customer
? Why?
Along the same lines, drop the "affordable" crap; ObamaCare should have
ruined that branding already; what seems like it's affordable to CAP writers
in the Beltway probably isn't affordable at all to somebody making $10 an
hour. Anyhow, if something like childcare or for that matter #MedicareForAll
ought to be a universal direct material benefit, then deliver it!
To show respect, abandon the "Marshall Plan" framing immediately. Because
it means the "winners" are going to graciously help the "losers," right? And
prudentially, liberals don't really want to get the working class asking
themselves who conducted a war against them, and why, right?
To show respect, make the JG a truly universal benefit, a real guarantee,
and don't turn it into an ObamaCare-like Rube Goldberg device of
means-testing, worthiness detection, gatekeeping, and various complex forms
of insult and degradation, like narrow networks. This passage from CAP has
me concerned:
Such an expanded public employment program could, for example, have
a target
of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age
workers without a bachelor's degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent.
That 'target" language sounds to me very much like the "dogs and bones"
problem. Suppose currently we have 6 bones and 10 dogs. The "target" is 7
bones. Suppose we meet it? There are still 3 dogs without bones! Some
guarantee! The JG should be simple: A job for everyone who wants one. None
of this targeting or slicing and dicing demographics. The JG isn't supposed
to be an employment guarantee for macro-economists (who basically have one
anyone).
To show respect, make the JG set the baseline for wages (and working
conditions). This passage from CAP has me concerned:
Second, because it would employ people to provide services that are
currently needed but unaffordable, it would not compete with existing
private-sector employment.
This language seems a bit slippery to me. If Walmart is paying $10.00 an
hour, is the JG really going to pay $9.50?
Finally, you will notice that the CAP JG is shorn of any macro-economic
implications. Note, for example, that replacing our current cruel system of
regulating the economy by throwing people out of work isn't mentioned. Note
also that CAP also accepts the false notion that Federal taxes pay for
Federal spending. That puts CAP in the austerity box, meaning that the JG
might be cut back just when it is most needed, not least by working people.
Conclusion
I do want to congratulate CAP, and without irony, for this passage:
[The JG] would provide the dignity of work, the value of which is
significant. When useful work is not available, there are large negative
consequences, ranging from depression, to a decline in family stability,
to "deaths of [sic] despair."
It's good to see the Case-Deaton study penetrating the liberal hive mind.
Took long enough. Oh, and this makes the JG a moral issue, too. The pallid
language of "economic anxiety" should be reformulated to reflect this, as
should the program itself.
NOTES
[1] The JG originally comes from the MMT community;
here is a high-level summary
. Oddly, or not, there's no footnote
crediting MMTers. Interestingly, Stephanie Kelton, who hails from the
University of Missouri at Kansas City's MMT-friendly economics department,
before Sanders brought her onto the staff at the Senate Budget committee,
was not able to persuade Sanders of the correctness and/or political utility
of MMT generally or the JG in particular.
[2] I guess
those famous Democrat 2016 post mortems
will
never
be
published, eh? This will have to do for a poor substitute. Or maybe the
Democrats just want us to read
Shattered
.
[3] In my view, "robust" is a bullshit tell. Back when I was a hotshot
consultant, the operational definition of "robust" was "contained in a very
large three-ring binder."
[4] Dear God. Are these people demented? Nobody who is actually under
"economic pressure" would use these words. And so far as I can tell,
"lingering" means permanent.
About Lambert Strether
Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic
cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs
that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class.
Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a
Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and
a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative
Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different
flavors of neoliberalism ("Because markets"). I don't much care about the
"ism" that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put
common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR
saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or
communism razing it. I don't much care, as long as the benefits are
delivered. To me, the key issue - and this is why Medicare for All is
always first with me - is the tens of thousands of excess "deaths from
despair," as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent
studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very
least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and
organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics - even the worthy
fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton's wars created -
bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news
flow - currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate
Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by
out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press - a
news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as
of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political
economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life
expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful
that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open
the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed;
let's call such voices "the left." Volatility creates opportunity,
especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and
opposes all such programs, isn't allowed to get back into the saddle.
Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the
horse race, since I've been blogging about it daily for fourteen years,
but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.
Yes, a great essay. And thank you commentariat.
Of course, there is a potential conflict from those who want a basic
income, but don't want to work. Such a position frames such people
badly, but a basic income remains an essential part of a JG world IMO.
The JG would provide incentive if you didn't lose the safety net and
could add to it by working in a JG program.
Most here in this place accept that a sovereign government can pay for
programs which are not funded by taxes (or debt) and the JG and basic
income concepts could be a way to test this in a controlled way.
The main reason I think that politicians continue to have blinkers (LA
LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU) with respect to MMT is that they are scared
witless of a government with unlimited spending powers. That's why we
can't have nice things.
don't want to work, hmm I don't even know if I could work in a
job without a decent amount of slack (A.D.D. mind may not be
capable of it or something and often not for lack of trying, though
I do a decent amount of unpaid work in my precious leisure time).
Or at least not the full 40 hours, so if the job guarantee bosses
are slave drivers, I don't know, I'd probably be fired from my job
guaranteed job period.
But what if a job was aligned with one's interest? Don't know,
never experienced that.
But all that aside and never even mind unemployment, given how
horrible the job circumstances are that I see many people caught in
(and I definitely don't mean having slack – that's a good thing, I
mean verbal ABUSE, I mean working endless hours of unpaid overtime
etc.), any alternative would seem good.
The "target" language also makes me worry that they're defining optimal
employment by the inflation-obsessed standards of Chicago-school economists,
thus coming up short in the name of protecting the investor class.
Minor quibble: Does Maine constitute flyover country? Usually that term
means the parts of the country that the well-to-do "fly over" from east
coast cities to west coast ones, with perhaps an exception for Chicago. You
wouldn't fly over Maine for any of those routes. Not to mention, Maine is a
popular vacationing/summer home state for rich New Englanders, so it doesn't
exactly have an "other" status for them the way rural Wisconsin would.
I think Maine is legit flyover country as flying over Maine was once
mandatory on the transatlantic route in order to Gander Airport in
Newfoundland. I know, I know, it's a bit of a stretch but I'm trying
here!
As for Maine's other status, you're spot on about "down east"
(coastal) Maine and some of the lakes being popular with the landed
gentry, but the interior of the state is sparsely populated, poor, white,
and marginalized. Many of the paper mills have gone belly-up and the
economy in many places consists of picking potatoes or cutting down
trees.
I used to do a lot of business travel to Nova Scotia. Hard to get
there from the US without flying over Maine. But I think Lambert meant
flyover in the pejorative "why would you live here when you could be an
artisanal pickle maker in Brooklyn" sense.
Matt Bruenig had other issues with the article:
More Job Guarantee Muddle
. While he points out that the jobs
suggested in the article should be permanent rather than temporary jobs,
I go on with my own little sense of discomfort that they all involve
putting the otherwise jobless in charge of caring for the helpless. I
don't find that a good idea. I've spent enough time both working with and
volunteering in human service organizations to have observed that it's
not really appropriate work for a lot of people, even for many
good-hearted volunteers. It really dampens my enthusiasm for a JG that I
have yet to see an argument for it that doesn't invoke child and elderly
care as just great jobs that the jobless can be put to doing.
Just another quibble with this post. I first heard of a job guarantee
and heard arguments for it in the U.S. civilian society from Michael
Harrington in the early 1980s (guaranteed jobs have been a feature of the
state capitalist societies that call themselves socialist throughout the
20th c.), so I don't find it particularly odd when the MMT community
isn't mentioned as originating the idea. In fact, I tend to respond with
"Hey, MMTers, learn some history."
Thanks for this article Lambert. Why should we trust CAP to handle this
when they have done nothing toward this end in their entire history. In
fact, in undeniable fact, if we don't do something about demand in this
country we will have no economy left at all. For these guys to even approach
a JG you know they are panicked. Nobody goes over this fact because it turns
them all into instant hypocrites. I spent yesterday listening to some MMTers
on U-Tube, Wray and some others. They all clearly and succinctly explain the
systemic reasons for JG. Not nonsense. In fact, MMT approaches a JG as the
opposite of nonsense on so many levels. As you have pointed out – these CAP
people are a little late to reality. And their dear leader Obama is first in
line for the blame, followed closely by Bill Clinton and his
balance-the-budget cabal of bankster idiots. And etc. And these JG jobs
could be just the jobs we need to turn global warming around. It could be
the best spent money ever. It is a very straight-forward calculation.
I don't know how you even bother. America is so far away from this
intellectually and culturally, there is no chance. Right now the "jobs
guarantee" is get arrested for something bogus and be sentenced to prison to
do forced labor for outsourcing corporations (yes this is real). Look where
the GOP stands on basic issues which were settled long ago in Europe, they
are in the Stone age. The Dems are right wing everywhere else.
With US institutions usually run horribly how do you expect this to be
well run? Is the VA a shining example? I certainly would not have hope for
this at the federal level.
I feel the same way often but I've got to allow myself some hope once
in a while. This development is at least turn in the right direction for
the moment, nothing else. There's nothing wrong with being
(aprehensively) pleased about that.
I'd like to get a basic unemployment welfare scheme going first. We
don't even have that! We have an "insurance" program which requires
you to first have held a job which paid enough for long enough, and
then get fired, not quit. And it only pays for six months. Again, this
was settled in other rich countries a long time ago.
There is a job guarantee in Castro's Cuba. So wonderful, people are
swimming from Miami to Havana ever day.
Though you have it exactly right in the US the job guarantee is to
be a felon on a privatized prison farm usually called a "plantation". I
am looking forward to my neighbors finally being put to work. At least it
is only building a Presidential Library for Obama, not a pyramid for
Pharaoh.
My prediction: by the time this makes it through Congress, it will be a
guarantee for no more than 15 hours per week at slightly below the minimum
wage and you'll only be able to be in the program for nine months,
total during your lifetime. Or am I being overly cynical?
Maybe we need to update that old saw: "First they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they co-opt your idea and strip the soul out of it, then
you kinda win but not really, but hey that's progress, right?"
Even though I'm cynical, I'm with Lambert in being for just about
anything that makes us bottom-20%ers lives better, even if it is highly
flawed. Heck, I'd even be for a BIG on that basis, even if Yves is right
about the negative side-effects of that policy.
If I understood correctly, Norway is running such a program since many
years.
Basically, when you are out of a job, you get unemployment benefits (a low
but decent salary, health care and other modern facilities unheard of is the
US) – which last
forever
.
On the other hand, any public institution can call you in to help a hand:
washing dishes at the school kitchen one day, waiting on the elderly the
other day, helping out in the local library wherever hands are needed but
not available.
So it is not really a JG, but you are guaranteed to help out your local
community, and you are guaranteed a minimal income. That seems close enough
to me.
Thanks, Lambert, for a very interesting post. I combed through CAP's
panel of "experts." I was not impressed.
I'm going to start my own think tank. Gonna call it CRAP: Center for Real
American Progress.
Of course in the north in the winter you could go back to shoveling snow
with snow shovels (no machines allowed) and ban use by public employees of
riding lawnmowers in the summer in favor of powered walk behind mowers. From
what I have read this is what china did on the 3 gorges dam, partly making
the project a jobs project by doing things in a human intensive way. (of
course you could go back to the hand push non powered reel mower but then
you have to worry about folks and heart attacks. (Or use those in their 20s
for this. Growing up in MI and In this is how we mowed the yard. (in the
1950s and 1960) and for snow shoveling, my dad got a snow blower when I went
off to college.
Now if you really want a low productivity way of cutting grass get one of
the hand grass trimmers and set to work cutting it by that, it would employ
a lot of folks and not have the exertion problem of a push mower (Again I
used these in the 1960s in MI before we had the string trimmers and edgers
etc. (also recall the old hand powered lawn edgers.)
It sounds like the CAP JG proposal is "top down" in that the "palette" of
jobs to be funded is decided by the same agency (or an agency at the same
level of government) as the fund disbursement authority, or is specified in
the law itself.
IIRC, the JG concept proposed in the MMT primer would devolve the
decision of "how to usefully employ willing underutilized workers" to local
level. Funding would still be Federal. There would be some kind of "request
for proposals/peer review" process to decide which locally-wanted projects
would receive JG dollars (presumably in order to be a guarantee, enough
projects would be approved for every locality to employ the available
under-utilized willing workforce. If a locality only proposed one project,
that would be funded)
It that right, Lambert? Is "top down" another way that centrists could
screw up a JG? And might the "local devolution" aspect of the NEP/MMT Primer
concept appeal to folks on the right?
Great write up. I obviously have a long-running disagreement on the
policy prescription of JG, but I do find it interesting talking about how
groups like CAP present it outside the specific confines of MMT (and,
apparently, without even tipping the hat to them ?).
One concrete bit of info I would love to know is how they estimate 4.4
million workers for take-up. First, it's a hilarious instance of false
precision. Second, it's remarkably low. $15/hr is approximately the median
wage. Tens of millions of workers would sign up, both from the ranks of the
crap jobs and from the ranks of those out of the labor force.
Perhaps this report raises the possibility that this low
pressure low growth economy may actually lead to a new
high in the prime working age cohort, still with little
wage growth.
Boomers are retiring and that increases employment in
prime age (25-54) cohort. So to take only prime age is a
little bit disingenuous. This effect needs to be taken
into consideration.
Those who were born before 1950 were probably the most
numerous. They all will be over 67 at the end of the year.
Paul Krugman Gets Retail Wrong: They are Not Very Good Jobs
Paul Krugman used his column * this morning to ask why we don't pay as much attention to the
loss of jobs in retail as we do to jobs lost in mining and manufacturing. His answer is that in
large part the former jobs tend to be more white and male than the latter. While this is true,
although African Americans have historically been over-represented in manufacturing, there is
another simpler explanation: retail jobs tend to not be very good jobs.
The basic story is that jobs in mining and manufacturing tend to offer higher pay and are far
more likely to come with health care and pension benefits than retail jobs. A worker who loses
a job in these sectors is unlikely to find a comparable job elsewhere. In retail, the odds are
that a person who loses a job will be able to find one with similar pay and benefits.
A quick look at average weekly wages ** can make this point. In mining the average weekly wage
is $1,450, in manufacturing it is $1,070, by comparison in retail it is just $555. It is worth
mentioning that much of this difference is in hours worked, not the hourly pay. There is nothing
wrong with working shorter workweeks (in fact, I think it is a very good idea), but for those
who need a 40 hour plus workweek to make ends meet, a 30-hour a week job will not fit the bill.
This difference in job quality is apparent in the difference in separation rates by industry.
(This is the percentage of workers who lose or leave their job every month.) It was 2.4 percent
for the most recent month in manufacturing. By comparison, it was 4.7 percent in retail, almost
twice as high. (It was 5.2 percent in mining and logging. My guess is that this is driven by logging,
but I will leave that one for folks who know the industry better.)
Anyhow, it shouldn't be a mystery that we tend to be more concerned about the loss of good
jobs than the loss of jobs that are not very good. If we want to ask a deeper question, as to
why retail jobs are not very good, then the demographics almost certainly play a big role.
Since only a small segment of the workforce is going to be employed in manufacturing regardless
of what we do on trade (even the Baker dream policy will add at most 2 million jobs), we should
be focused on making retail and other service sector jobs good jobs. The full agenda for making
this transformation is a long one (higher minimum wages and unions would be a big part of the
picture, along with universal health care insurance and a national pension system), but there
is one immediate item on the agenda.
All right minded people should be yelling about the Federal Reserve Board's interest rate hikes.
The point of these hikes is to slow the economy and reduce the rate of job creation. The Fed's
concern is that the labor market is getting too tight. In a tighter labor market workers, especially
those at the bottom of the pecking order, are able to get larger wage increases. The Fed is ostensibly
worried that this can lead to higher inflation, which can get us to a wage price spiral like we
saw in the 70s.
As I and others have argued, *** there is little basis for thinking that we are anywhere close
to a 1970s type inflation, with inflation consistently running below the Fed's 2.0 percent target,
(which many of us think is too low anyhow). I'd love to see Krugman pushing the cause of full
employment here. We should call out racism and sexism where we see it, but this is a case where
there is a concrete policy that can do something to address it. Come on Paul, we need your voice.
PK: Consider what has happened to department stores. Even as Mr. Trump was boasting about saving
a few hundred jobs in manufacturing here and there, Macy's announced plans to close 68 stores
and lay off 10,000 workers. Sears, another iconic institution, has expressed "substantial doubt"
about its ability to stay in business.
Overall, department stores employ a third fewer people now than they did in 2001. That's half
a million traditional jobs gone - about eighteen times as many jobs as were lost in coal mining
over the same period.
And retailing isn't the only service industry that has been hit hard by changing technology.
Another prime example is newspaper publishing, where employment has declined by 270,000, almost
two-thirds of the work force, since 2000. ...
(To those that had them, they were probably
pretty decent jobs, albeit much less 'gritty'
than mining or manufacturing.)
There is a lot of elitism to go around. People will be much more reluctant to express publicly
the same as in private (or pseudonymously on the internet?). But looking down on other people
and their work is pretty widespread (and in either case there is a lot of assumption about the
nature of the work and the personal attributes of the people doing it - usually of a derogatory
type in both cases).
I find it plausible that Krugman was referring those widespread stereotypes about job categories
that (traditionally?) have not required a college degree, or have been relatively at the low end
of the esteem scale in a given industry (e.g. in "tech" and manufacturing, QA/testing related
work).
It must be possible to comment on such stereotypes, but there is of course always the risk
of being thought to hold them oneself, or indeed being complicit in perpetuating them.
As a thought experiment, I suggest reviewing what you yourself think about occupations not
held by yourself, good friends, and family members and acquaintainces you like/respect (these
qualifications are deliberate). For example, you seem to think not very highly of maids.
Of course, being an RN requires significantly more training than being a maid, and not just
once when you start in your career. But at some level of abstraction, anybody who does work where
their autonomy is quite limited (i.e. they are not setting objectives at any level of the organization)
is "just a worker". That's the very stereotype we are discussing, isn't it?
Krugman thinks nurses are the equivalent of maids...
[ The problem is that Paul Krugman dismissed the work of nurses and maids and gardeners as
"menial." I find no evidence that Krugman understands that even after conditionally apologizing
to nurses. ]
"... things might have worked out with better luck on timing), you need your head examined to start a small business ..."
"... If you can tolerate the BS, it is vastly better to be on a payroll. 90% of all new businesses fail and running one is no picnic. ..."
"... And new business formation has dived in the US, due mainly IMHO to less than robust demand in many sectors of the economy. ..."
"... You're so right. It used to be that there were set asides for small businesses but nowadays Federal and State Governments are only interested in contracts with large businesses. The SBA classification for small business is based on NAICS code (used to be SIC code) is usually $1-2 million or up to 500 employees. I wonder how they can be small businesses! ..."
"... To survive, small businesses need to sell their goods/services to large businesses. Most of the decision makers who purchase these items are unreachable or already have their favorites. Unless your small business has invented a better mousetrap you're SOL! ..."
As someone who has started three businesses, two of them successful (I went to Australia right
before the Gulf War started, which led to new business in Sydney coming to a complete halt for
six months; things might have worked out with better luck on timing), you need your head examined
to start a small business. The most common characteristic of people running their own business
was that they'd been fired twice.
If you can tolerate the BS, it is vastly better to be on a payroll. 90% of all new businesses
fail and running one is no picnic.
And new business formation has dived in the US, due mainly IMHO to less than robust demand
in many sectors of the economy.
Unless your family fully bankrolls you until BK kicks in (snark). I would have loved to write
as a career. Unfortunately, at the time, promises that had been made were broken and I had to
go to work for a F500 just to survive right after my undergraduate degree was completed. Fate
and Karma.
You're so right. It used to be that there were set asides for small businesses but nowadays
Federal and State Governments are only interested in contracts with large businesses. The SBA
classification for small business is based on NAICS code (used to be SIC code) is usually $1-2
million or up to 500 employees. I wonder how they can be small businesses!
To survive, small businesses need to sell their goods/services to large businesses. Most
of the decision makers who purchase these items are unreachable or already have their favorites.
Unless your small business has invented a better mousetrap you're SOL!
Gregor Jarosch (2015, Chicago, Stanford): Jarosch writes a model to explain why losing your
job leads to a very long-lasting decline in your lifetime wages. His hypothesis is that this is due
to people climbing a ladder of jobs that are increasingly secure, so that when one has the
misfortune of losing a job, this leads to a fall down the ladder and a higher likelihood of having
further spells of unemployment in the future. He uses administrative social security data to find
some evidence for this hypothesis.
"Sure, it's lovely that unemployment in Seattle dips under
3%. But an attempt to tie that drop in the unemployment rate
to the minimum wage isn't going to work. For we can as easily
note that the unemployment rate has dropped everywhere in the
US over this same time period and the minimum wage hasn't
risen everywhere over that time period. We've not even got a
consistent correlation between minimum wages and unemployment
that is.mWhat we've actually got to do is try to work out
some method of what would have happened in Seattle from all
of the effects of everything else other than the minimum
wage, then compare it to what did happen with the minimum
wage. The difference between these two will be the effect of
the minimum wage rise. Seattle City Council know this, which
is why they asked the University of Washington to run exactly
such a study."
This is from Jamie Dimon's letter to stockholders:
"If the work participation rate for this group [men ages
25-54] went back to just 93% – the current average for the
other developed nations – approximately 10 million more
people would be working in the United States. Some other
highly disturbing facts include: Fifty-seven percent of these
non-working males are on disability"
I don't know where he got the statistic from, but if it is
true it is potent evidence that the main factor behind the 60
year long decline in prime age labor force participation by
men is an increase in those on disability, probably due to
both the expansion of the program, and better longevity and
diagnostics -- and probably also tied in to opiate addiction
as well.
So does Jamie sitting on his mountain of other people's money
have some magic solution that will get this EPOP back to 93%?
I guess if we all bank at JPMorganChase, all will be fine?
C'mon Jamie.
There has been a bit of a discussion on this - most of which
I sort of found unconvincing. Sorry but I am not the expert
on this one. And I doubt Jamie Dimon is not either.
"This is another common explanation for the drop in male
participation. But again it doesn't explain more than a
fraction of the phenomenon.
There's not much doubt that Social Security Disability
Insurance takes people out of the workforce, often by
inelegant design. In order to qualify for disability
payments, people typically have to prove that they cannot
work full-time. SSDI critics say this policy sidelines many
people who might otherwise be able to contribute to the
economy.
But how many people does SSDI really remove? From 1967 to
2014, the share of prime-age men getting disability insurance
rose from 1 percent to 3 percent. There is little chance that
this increase is entirely the result of several million
fraudulent attempts to get money without working. But even if
it were, SSDI would still only explain about one-quarter of
the decline in the male participation rate over that time.
There are many good reasons to reform disability insurance.
But it's not the singular driving force behind the decline of
working men."
Donald Trump's election as president should have reminded liberals that Americans want more than
money from their work. They responded to Trump's promise of jobs more than to Hillary Clinton's promise
of government benefits because in addition to money, people also need dignity, a sense of self-reliance
and respect within their community. For centuries, jobs have provided all of those.
To say that work is disappearing would be an exaggeration. But despite the low unemployment rate,
fewer Americans have jobs than in years past:
[chart]
This new class of non-workers may be able to survive on the government dole, the charity of friends
and family or via black-market activities like drug sales. But they've probably lost some of the
dignity and respect that used to come with working for a living. Falling employment has been linked
to declining marriage rates, reduced happiness and opiate abuse. Some economists even blame disappearing
jobs for the recent rise in mortality rates afflicting white Americans.
What's more, the longer people stay out of the labor force, the more trouble they will have getting
back into it. They lose work ethic, skills and connections, and employers become suspicious of the
large gaps in the resumes. Economists Brad DeLong and Larry Summers have shown that this so-called
labor-market hysteresis can have potentially large, long-lasting negative effects on the economy.
When the economy is in recession, the best approach is probably a combination of fiscal and monetary
stimulus. But when the labor-force dropout problem is chronic, as it is now, a different kind of
policy may be needed -- a government-job guarantee.
The U.S. has used an approach like this before. In 1935, the administration of President Franklin
Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration, which employed millions of American men,
mostly in public-works projects. WPA employees received hourly wages similar to other unskilled workers
in the surrounding area. Most of them built infrastructure and buildings, but a few were paid to
make art and write books. The total cost of the program was high -- $1.3 billion a year, or about
1.7 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. An equivalent expenditure now would be a little more
than $300 billion, or about half of federal defense spending. But the popularity of the program is
hard to deny, given Roosevelt's resounding victory in his reelection bid in 1936.
The idea of a new work program isn't a new one -- economists on all sides of the political spectrum
have been kicking it around for years now. It has received support from Stephanie Kelton, an adviser
to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and from Kevin Hassett, who is reportedly Trump's pick
to lead the Council of Economic Advisers. Jeff Spross has an excellent article in Democracy exploring
the idea in depth.
William Darity of Duke University has been a particularly avid promoter of a job guarantee. He
describes it thus:
Any American 18 years or older would be able to find work through a federally funded public service
employment program -- a "National Investment Employment Corps." Each National Investment Employment
Corps job would offer individuals non-poverty wages, a minimum salary of $20,000, plus benefits including
federal health insurance. The types of jobs offered could address the maintenance and construction
of the nation's physical and human infrastructure, from building roads, bridges, dams and schools,
to staffing high quality day care.
There is no shortage of work to be done. Even beyond the tasks Darity lists, the U.S. is full of
jobs that need doing, from elder care to renovation of old decaying buildings, to cleanup of lead
and other pollution, to construction and staffing of transit systems.
Darity estimates the cost of the program at $750 billion a year, Spross at $670 billion. That's
about equivalent to all of the U.S.'s current anti-poverty programs, and would be about twice the
size of the old WPA. So this would be a very big deal. But the true cost to society would be considerably
less, because the jobs would provide value. Better infrastructure, more child care and elder care,
and a cleaner, healthier environment would make the nation a richer, better place to live -- in other
words, those benefits should defray much of the program's cost. Also, the program would take people
off of the welfare rolls and cut government anti-poverty spending. Finally, even when the economy
isn't in a recession, more income will probably increase demand in the local economy.
All told, the program could end up being a bargain. And if the guarantee is limited to distressed,
low-employment areas, which could lower the costs down even more, and allow for pilot programs to
establish the viability of the concept.
Many people on the left and elsewhere don't like this idea. They doubt that government make-work
will provide dignity. And they believe strongly in the theory that automation will soon put large
numbers of people out of a job entirely. The only solution, they say, is to change U.S. culture and
values to make work less important, and to rely on programs like universal basic income. On the right,
some would inevitably see the plan as a first step on the road to socialism.
Maybe the critics will prove right in the long run. But for now, forcing a dramatic change on
American culture is a lot harder than simply giving people jobs. Robot-driven unemployment and new
social values are still mostly in the realm of science fiction, while the American public wants jobs
now. A job guarantee looks like a very good thing to try.
Peter K. said in reply
to Peter K....
Do both, the UBI and Job Guarantee.
Why doesn't Noah Smith discuss Fed Fail in detail and about how conservatives forced unprecedented
austerity on the economy.
This is not just "natural" or the evolution of technology, demographics and innovation.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
What is full employment anyway, and how
would we know if we are there?
What are people talking about when they
say "full employment?" Maybe they don't
know either? Whatever it is, "full
employment" is thought to be important
for policy, particularly monetary
policy. Indeed, it typically enters the
monetary policy discussion as "maximum
employment," the second leg of the Fed's
dual mandate - the first leg being
"price stability."
Perhaps surprisingly, there are still
people who think the US economy is not
at "full employment." I hate to pick on
Narayana, but he's a convenient example.
He posted this on his
Twitter account:
Are we close to full emp? In steady
state, emp. growth will be about 1.2M
per year. It's about *twice* that in
the data. (1) Employment is growing
much faster than long run and
inflation is still low. Conclusion:
we're well below long run steady
state. end
Also in
an interview on Bloomberg,
Narayana
gives us the policy conclusion.
Basically, he thinks there is still
"slack" in the economy. My understanding
is that "slack" means we are below "full
employment."
So what is Narayana saying? I'm assuming
he is looking at payroll employment -
the employment number that comes from
the
establishment survey.
In his
judgement, in a "steady state," which
for him seems to mean the "full
employment" state, payroll employment
would be growing at 1.2M per year, or
100,000 per month. But over the last
three months, the average increase in
payroll employment has exceeded 200,000
per month. So, if we accept all of
Narayana's assumptions, we would say the
US economy is below full employment - it
has some catching up to do. According to
Narayana, employment can grow for some
time in excess of 100,000 jobs per
month, until we catch up to full
employment, and monetary policy should
help that process along by refraining
from interest rate hikes in the
meantime.
Again, even if we accept all of
Narayana's assumptions, we could
disagree about his policy
recommendation. Maybe the increase in
the fed funds rate target will do little
to impede the trajectory to full
employment. Maybe it takes monetary
policy a period of time to work, and by
the time interest rate hikes have their
effect we are at full employment. Maybe
the interest rate hikes will allow the
Fed to make progress on other policy
goals than employment. But let's explore
this issue in depth - let's investigate
what we know about "full employment" and
how we would determine from current data
if we are there or not.
Where does Narayana get his 1.2M number
from? Best guess is that he is looking
at demographics. The working age
population in the United States (age
15-64) has been growing at about 0.5%
per year. But labor force participation
has grown over time since World War II,
and later cohorts have higher labor
force participation rates. For example,
the labor force participation rate of
baby-boomers in prime working age was
higher than the participation rate of
the previous generation in prime working
age. So, this would cause employment
growth to be higher than population
growth. That is, Narayana's assumptions
imply employment growth of about 0.8%
per year, which seems as good a number
as any. Thus, the long-run growth path
for the economy should exhibit a growth
rate of about 0.8% per year - though
there is considerable uncertainty about
that estimate.
But, we measure employment in more than
one way. This chart shows year-over-year
employment growth from the establishment
survey, and from the household survey
(CPS):
For the last couple of years, employment
growth has been falling on trend, by
both measures. But currently,
establishment-survey employment is
growing at 1.6% per year, and household
survey employment is growing at 1.0% per
year. The latter number is a lot closer
to 0.8%. The establishment survey is
what it says - a survey of
establishments. The household survey is
a survey of people. The advantages of
the establishment survey are that it
covers a significant fraction of all
establishments, and reporting errors are
less likely - firms generally have a
good idea how many people are on their
payrolls. But, the household survey has
broader coverage (includes the
self-employed for example) of the
population, and it's collected in a
manner consistent with the unemployment
and labor force participation data -
that's all from the same survey. There's
greater potential for measurement error
in the household survey, as people can
be confused by the questions they're
asked. You can see that in the noise in
the growth rate data in the chart.
Here's another interesting detail:
This chart looks at the ratio of
household-survey employment to
establishment-survey employment. Over
long periods of time, these two measures
don't grow at the same rate, due to
changes over time in the fraction of
workers who are in establishments vs.
those who are not. For long-run
employment growth rates, you should put
more weight on the household survey
number (as this is a survey of the whole
working-age population), provided of
course that some measurement bias isn't
creeping into the household survey
numbers over time. Note that, since the
recession, establishment-survey
employment has been growing at a
significantly higher rate than
household-survey employment.
So, I think that the conclusion is that
we should temper our view of employment
growth. Maybe it's much closer to a
steady state rate than Narayana thinks.
But, on to some other measures of labor
market performance. This chart shows the
labor force participation rate (LFPR)
and the employment-population ratio
(EPOP).
Here, focus on the last year. LFPR is
little changed, increasing from 62.9% to
63.0%, and the same is true for EPOP,
which increased from 59.8% to 60.0%.
That looks like a labor market that has
settled down, or is close to it.
A standard measure of labor market
tightness that labor economists like to
look at is the ratio of job vacancies to
unemployment, here measured as the ratio
of the job openings rate to the
unemployment rate:
So, by this measure the labor market is
at its tightest since 2001. Job openings
are plentiful relative to would-be
workers.
People who want to argue that some slack
remains in the labor market will
sometimes emphasize unconventional
measures of the unemployment rate:
In the chart, U3 is the conventional
unemployment rate, and U6 includes
marginally attached workers (those not
in the labor force who may be receptive
to working) and those employed part-time
for economic reasons. The U3 measure is
not so far, at 4.7%, from its previous
trough of 4.4% in March 2007, while the
gap between current U6, at 9.2% and its
previous trough, at 7.9% in December
2006, is larger. Two caveats here: (i)
How seriously we want to take U6 as a
measure of unemployment is an open
question. There are problems even with
conventional unemployment measures, in
that we do not measure the intensity of
search - one person's unemployment is
different from another's - and survey
participants' understanding of the
questions they are asked is problematic.
The first issue is no worse a problem
for U6 than for U3, but the second issue
is assuredly worse. For example, it's
not clear what "employed part time for
economic reasons" means to the survey
respondent, or what it should mean to
the average economist. Active search, as
measured in U3, has a clearer meaning
from an economic point of view, than an
expressed desire for something one does
not have - non-satiation is ubiquitous
in economic systems, and removing it is
just not feasible. (ii) What's a normal
level for U6? Maybe the U6 measure in
December 2006 was undesirably low, due
to what was going on in housing and
mortgage markets.
Another labor market measure that might
be interpreted as indicating labor
market slack is long term unemployment
(unemployed 27 weeks or more) - here
measured as a rate relative to the labor
force:
This measure is still somewhat elevated
relative to pre-recession times.
However, if we look at short term
unemployment (5 weeks or less), this is
unusually low:
As well, the insured unemployment rate
(those receiving unemployment insurance
as a percentage of the labor force) is
very low:
To collect UI requires having worked
recently, so this reflects the fact that
few people are being laid off -
transitions from employment to
unemployment are low.
An interpretation of what is going on
here is that the short-term and
long-term unemployed are very different
kinds of workers. In particular, they
have different skills. Some skills are
in high demand, others are not, and
those who have been unemployed a long
time have skills that are in low demand.
A high level of long-term unemployed is
consistent with elevated readings for U6
- people may be marginally attached or
wanting to move from part-time to
full-time work for the same reasons that
people have been unemployed for a long
time. What's going on may indicate a
need for a policy response, but if the
problem is skill mismatch, that's not a
problem that has a monetary policy
solution.
So, if the case someone wants to make is
that the Fed should postpone interest
rate increases because we are below full
employment - that there is still slack
in the labor market - then I think
that's a very difficult case to make. We
could argue all day about what an output
gap is, whether this is something we
should worry about, and whether monetary
policy can do much about an output gap,
but by conventional measures we don't
seem to have one in the US at the
current time. In terms of raw economic
performance (price stability aside),
there's not much for the Fed to do at
the current time. Productivity growth is
unusually low, as is real GDP growth,
but if that's a policy problem, it's in
the fiscal department, not the monetary
department.
But there is more to Narayana's views
than the state of the labor market. He
thinks it's important that inflation is
still below the Fed's target of 2%.
Actually, headline PCE inflation, which
is the measure specified in the Fed's
longer-run goals statement,
is
essentially at the target, at 1.9%. I
think what Narayana means is that, given
his Phillips-curve view of the world, if
we are close to full employment,
inflation should be higher. In fact, the
long-run Fisher effect tells us that,
after an extended period of low nominal
interest rates, the inflation rate
should be low. Thus, one might actually
be puzzled as to why the inflation rate
is so high. We know something about
this, though. Worldwide, real rates of
interest on government debt have been
unusually low, which implies that, given
the nominal interest rate, inflation
will be unusually high. But, this makes
Narayana's policy conclusion close to
being correct. The Fed is very close to
its targets - both legs of the dual
mandate - so why do anything?
A neo-Fisherian view says that we should
increase (decrease) the central bank's
nominal interest rate target when
inflation is too low (high) - the
reverse of conventional wisdom. But
maybe inflation is somewhat elevated by
increases in the price of crude oil,
which have since somewhat reversed
themselves. So, maybe the Fed's nominal
interest rate target should go up a bit
more, to achieve its 2% inflation target
consistently.
Though Narayana's reasoning doesn't lead
him in a crazy policy direction, it
would do him good to ditch the Phillips
curve reasoning - I don't think that's
ever been useful for policy. If one had
(I think mistakenly) taken Friedman to
heart (as appears to be the case with
Narayana), we might think that
unemployment above the "natural rate"
should lead to falling inflation, and
unemployment below the natural rate
should lead to rising inflation. But,
that's not what we see in the data.
Here, I use the CBO's measure of the
natural rate of unemployment (quarterly
data, 1990-2016):
According to standard Friedman
Phillips-curve logic, we should see a
negative correlation in the chart, but
the correlation is essentially zero.
One thing I wonder
about is the
possibility that
policy implementing
economists are a bit
insulated from
reality. It seems
possible their
personal experiences
might reinforce a
feeling that
everything is all
right.
Meanwhile
countervailing data
may subconsciously be
given short shrift. A
shrinking middle
class, stagnant wages,
declining labor force
participation of adult
males all seem
ignored.
Could it be argued
that full employment
is characterized by a
robust and growing
middle class?
Economics is both a
hard and social
science and social
criteria may belong in
the definition of full
employment.
Is it wise to try to
throttle growth as
soon as policy
mandates are achieved,
thus seeking to
maintain a virtuous
steady state
equilibrium? Might it
not be better to
attempt more of a sine
wave economic policy,
deliberately
overshooting targets
to bring the marginal
sidelined workers into
the economy where they
can gain experience
and then, if
necessary, briefly
overshooting
constraining measures
to quickly contain
possible excesses?
"the U.S. middle class - with household incomes ranging from two-thirds to double the national
median"
Median household income in the US in 2015 was less the $60K. Two-thirds is $40K. That's almost
poverty not middle class.
Sociologically the middle class is a quasi-elite of professionals and managers, who are largely
immune to economic downturns and trends such as out-sourcing.
The definition game? Define something to something else as is being talked about and then claim,
claims based on a completely different definition are false?
Actually with the change in ratio professionals and managers now tend to upper middle class, (29%
of us is upper middle now, 32% middle).
One of the influences is that post WWII it was possible to be middle class and work on an assembly
line in a job that was described as check your brain at the door. Automation and process changes
have wiped the high pay of such jobs out. Steel makers for example thru mainly process changes
(electric furnaces using scrap, continuous casting and the like) mean that it takes 1/5 the hours
to produce a ton of steel in did in the 1970s.
The movement of assembly line jobs to the middle class occured because there was a period where
the US was much less involved with the rest of the world economically, because their industries
had all been destroyed. The change started during the Johnson admin, and showed up in the high
inflation of the Nixon admin.
Most "professionals and managers" are nowhere near being immune to downturns and outsourcing,
in aggregate.
You could likewise claim that "low skilled" or any other occupations are "immune" as somewhere
around 70-80% of their members continue being employed through tough times, in aggregate.
If you take "tech", companies laying off around 5-10% or even more of their staff in busts
is a frequent enough occurrence. And that's in addition to the "regular" age discrimination and
cycling of workers justified with "outdated skills". Being young and (supposedly) impressionable
is a skill!
"the U.S. middle class - with household incomes ranging from two-thirds to double the national
median"
That's almost tautological. By definition, there can't be a whole lot of change in the population
of groups defined relative to median. Income and wealth of those groups, though, can be enlightening.
Substitute "mean" for "median" and watch what happens. When inequality is driven by extremes
at the tail, using "median" means that you don't see much change in the demographics. (Hint: if
"middle class" is defined as half to twice the average income, there are damned few in that bracket.)
"It can
do so by increasing the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour
and indexing it to inflation. The best existing research
suggests that modest increases such as this have had little
or no employment-reducing impact. And the government should
also increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax
credit for workers, for people who don't have children (a
strategy Brooks endorses)."
Here we go again. First, I thought we had left EITC behind
as any kind of substantial answer to underpaid Americans:
redistributing all of 1/2 of one percent of overall income
when 45% of our workforce is earning less than what we think
the minimum wage should be, $15 an hour.
$15 may be the most fast food can pay. Sometimes in
McDonald's there are more people behind the counter than in
front (most customers come through the drive through). If
fast food (33% labor costs) can pay $15, then maybe Target
(10%-15%) can pay $20, and maybe super efficient WalMart (7%)
can pay $25.
Always keeping in mind that labor bought and sold sort of
on margin. Doubling Walmart's pay could add only 7% to
prices.
Bottom 45% of workforce now takes 10% share of overall
income -- used to be 20%. Top 1% now 20% instead of 10%. How
to get that 10% back -- how to supply the economic and
political muscle to TAKE IT BACK: just put some teeth in the
(federal) law that already says union busting is illegal.
States can do this without any fear of confronting federal
preemption. States can make it a crime for wholesalers for
instance to pressure individual retailers from combining
their bargaining power -- same such law can overlap federal
labor area; especially since fed left blank for 80 years.
Blank or not: may overlap as with min wage.
No need for complicated policy researches; no need to
spend a dime: states just make union busting a felony and let
people organize if they wish to -- and get out of their way.
:-)
Back to min wage. If you sell fewer labor hours for more
dollars that works out better for labor than for potatoes --
because in the labor market the potatoes get the money to
spend -- and they are more likely to spend it more on other
potatoes than more upscale. Why min wage raises often
followed by higher min wage employment. (Higher wage jobs
lost -- everybody looking in wrong place.)
Re: The Man Who Made Us See That Trade Isn't Always Free -
Noah Smith
"Instead, he and his co-authors found that trade
with China in the 2000s left huge swathes of the U.S.
workforce permanently without good jobs -- or, in many cases,
jobs at all.
"This sort of concentrated economic devastation sounds
like it would hurt not just people's pocketbooks, but the
social fabric. In a series of follow-up papers, Autor and his
team link Chinese import competition to declining marriage
rates and political polarization. Autor told me that these
social ills make the need for new thinking about trade policy
even more urgent."
Here we go again. US manufacturing going from 16% of
employment from 2000 to 12% in 2016 (half due automation)
nowhere near as sucking-all-the-oxygen-out-of-life as the the
bottom 45% of earners taking 10% of overall income, down from
20% over two generations -- more and more being recognized
due to the loss of collective bargaining power ...
... for which loss the usual litany of causatives NEVER
seem to include one mention of the complete lack of teeth
protecting union organizing from market power in US labor
law.
Simple answer: no studies or research needed, not a dollar
appropriated: simply make union busting a felony at state
level -- and get out of people's way.
States can do this without conflict with federal
preemption. States can make it a crime for wholesalers for
instance to pressure individual retailers from combining
their bargaining power -- same such law can overlap federal
labor area; especially since fed left blank for 80 years.
Blank or not: may overlap as with min wage.
Don't do this and you'll never bring back collective
bargaining power -- and all the genuine populist politics
that goes with it!
"... Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple. You can't create jobs by cutting the amount you paid workers. Taxes are prices that workers .pay You dodge taxes by underpaying workers. If taxes are cut, both paying workers is cut AND paying workers to dodge taxes is cut. ..."
Forecasting is done to change human behavior to invalidate
the forecasts.
Thus forecasts are by design never accurate
about the future.
This is different than designing systems using natural
laws.
A plane is designed to fly, because every forecast for it
crashing has resulted in design changes to invalidate that
forecast.
Conservatives hate forecasts because they hate changing
their plans. To forecast slower gdp growth and job creation,
or even contraction from tax cuts and spending cuts is
unacceptable. Thus they strive to change forecasts or
discredit them to get their policy implemented.
My forecast in the late 90s and early 00s was for economic
disaster as a result of conservative policy eventually being
implemented.
Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple. You can't create
jobs by cutting the amount you paid workers. Taxes are prices
that workers .pay You dodge taxes by underpaying workers. If taxes
are cut, both paying workers is cut AND paying workers to
dodge taxes is cut.
That would have been the forecast in the 60s.
Today even Krugman and Bernie support job killing tax cuts
based on that creating jobs. Lots of bad forecasting is done
to back tax cuts. The tax cuts fail to create jobs, so the
bad forecasts are blamed so every forecast is ignored, even
the good ones.
When Congressional critters learned to read,
45th POTUS was suddenly and permanently unable to drain the
swamp of critters who grow fat on the pork-barrel-legislation
that drains the public treasure of We the Workers and Savers.
These parasitic critters will grow fat and strong, strong
enough to gobble up the the once brave workers who feed the
fat in DC.
Noni Mausa :
March 13, 2017 at 04:13 PM
What the wealthy right wing has decided in the past 40 years is that they don't need citizens. At
least, not as many citizens as are actually citizens. What they are comfortable with is a large population
of free range people, like the longhorn cattle of the old west, who care for themselves as best they
can, and are convenient to be used when the "ranchers" want them.
Of course, this is their approach to foreign workers, also, but for the purpose of maintaining
a domestic society within which the domestic rich can comfortably live, only native born Americans
really suit.
With the development of high productivity production, farming, and hands-off war technology the
need for a large number of citizens is reduced. The wealthy can sit in their towers and arrange the
world as suits them, and use the rest of the world as a "farm team" to supply skills and labour as
needed.
Proof of this is the fact that they talk about the economy's need for certain skills, training,
services and so on, but never about the inherent value of citizens independent of their utility to
someone else.
No wonder the unemployed increasingly kill themselves, or others. The whole economy tells them,
indirectly but unmistakably, that their human value does not exist. ken melvin : ,
March 13, 2017 at 04:48 PM
Can someone get me from $300 billion tax cut for the rich to getting the markets work for health
care?
It isn't about 'markets', never is. It is about extraction of as much profit as possible using
whatever means necessary. This is what the CEOs of insurance companies get payed to do. Insurance
policies they don't pay out, the ones Ryan is referring to, are as good as any for scoring.
"It isn't about 'markets', never is. It is about extraction of as much profit as possible using
whatever means necessary. This is what the CEOs of insurance companies get payed to do."
What surprises me most in this discussion is how Obamacare suddenly changed from a dismal and
expensive failure enriching private insurers to a "good deal".
When the PPACA band-aid is pulled off the US health care mess the gusher will be blamed on "the
Russians running the White House".
Cuba does better than the US despite being economically sanctioned for 55 years. Distribution
of artificially scarce health care resources is utterly broken. This failed market is financed
by a mix of 'for profit' insurance and medicare (which sublets a big part to 'for profit' insurance).
Coverage!!! PPACA added taxpayers' money to finance a bigger failed market. It did nothing
to address the market fail!
Single payer would not address the market failure. Single payer would put the government financing
most of the failed market.
Democrats have put band-aids on severe bleeds since Truman made the cold war more important
than Americans.
Cuba is the shining example of how doing the first 20% of healthcare well for everyone gets you
80% of the benefit cheap.
The US is the shining example of how refusing to do the first 20% of healthcare well for everyone
only gets you 80% of the benefit no matter how much you spend.
Mark's very nice argument does nothing to address The Official Trump Counter Argument:
[Shorter version: Obamacare is doomed, going to blow up. Any replacement is therefore better
than Obamacare; Facts seldom win arguments against beliefs]
"During a listening session on healthcare at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump
said Republicans "are putting themselves in a very bad position by repealing Obamacare."
Trump said that his administration is "committed to repealing and replacing" Obamacare and
that the House Obamacare replacement will lead to more choice at a lower cost. He further stated,
"[T]he press is making Obamacare look so good all, of a sudden. I'm watching the news. It looks
so good. They're showing these reports about this one gets so much, and this one gets so much.
First of all, it covers very few people, and it's imploding. And '17 will be the worst year. And
I said it once; I'll say it again: because Obama's gone."
He continued, "And the Republicans, frankly, are putting themselves in a very bad position
- I tell this to Tom Price all the time - by repealing Obamacare. Because people aren't gonna
see the truly devastating effects of Obamacare. They're not gonna see the devastation. In '17
and '18 and '19, it'll be gone by then. It'll - whether we do it or not, it'll be imploded off
the map."
He added, "So, the press is making it look so wonderful, so that if we end it, everyone's going
to say, 'Oh, remember how great Obamacare used to be? Remember how wonderful it used to be? It
was so great.' It's a little bit like President Obama. When he left, people liked him. When he
was here, people didn't like him so much. That's the way life goes. That's human nature."
Trump further stated that while letting Obamacare collapse on its own was the best thing to
do politically, it wasn't the right thing to do for the country.
The drive to "efficiency" produced monstrously perverted results in IT hiring. Design for 100% match of the resume is absurd.
Notable quotes:
"... Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that tech companies were looking for people with more years of experience with certain programming languages than the programming languages even existed ..."
"... That's a very good and historically accurate point (in 90th Java was a crush ;-). And this type of parasitism continues to flourish even now. ..."
"... Also it is not necessary to have exactly all the asked experiences, at least when your resume will be selected/reviewed by a human. Of course if the recruiting process has been made "efficient" that will filter resumes by strict criteria, then the honest/modest applicants will be disproportionately screened out. ..."
"... In a lot of big corps, the early stages of recruiting (processing/screening incoming resumes) are often outsourced to HR who obviously have little idea about the subject matter of the work, and can only go by buzzwords, possibly using computer software (OCR processing of resumes). ..."
"... I can tell you that, from a consulting standpoint, I have been on several contracts where we've interviewed someone who had great skills, and the person who showed up had zero. So now companies will Skype with people to make sure they're talking to the actual consultant. ..."
"... Sadly, that is true of far too many companies of all sorts today, who refuse to train their workers and expect them to come preprogrammed with the company's proprietary software. ..."
"Back in the mid/late
90's, there was a running joke that tech companies were
looking for people with more years of experience with certain programming languages than the programming languages even
existed (in a form to be usable for commercial work)."
That's a very good and historically accurate point (in 90th
Java was a crush ;-). And this type of parasitism continues
to flourish even now. Just with the new buzzwords...
When employee's complain that that can't fill open positions
that often means that they painstakingly define the position
is such a way that the person deemed suitable can hit ground
running on the first day or week on the job. No retraining
period is needed. Like a new brake pads in a car. Totally
replaceable.
To say nothing that in reality Google and other giants
(Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc) are to a large extent
"cemeteries" for IT talent. What's so exciting is creating
Gmail and many other Google products ? Absolutely nothing.
This is a pretty disgusting reimplementation work.
One issue that you both don't mention is lags. Translating a
demand for skill into available skill takes years to decades
in the best of circumstances. Even for many so called "low
skilled" jobs, people have to be trained commonly for several
years. For "knowledge work" or "new technology paradigms",
you basically have to bring up a new generation of
school/college graduates.
Expecting training to happen
"just like that", or to be funded by the workers themselves,
is a non-starter.
And when the business has to pay for the training (with
the risk that some of the cost cannot be recouped because
trained up people may leave), then we are back at "lack of
profitability".
Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that
tech companies were looking for people with more years of
experience with certain programing languages than the
programming languages even existed (in a form to be usable
for commercial work).
"Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that
tech companies were looking for people with more years of
experience with certain programing languages than the
programming languages even existed (in a form to be usable
for commercial work)."
The trouble is, I think that was no
joke, it was literally true. Which means that were
deliberately recruiting liars. Maybe that explains a lot.
Yes, the joke was based on true anecdotes. Not sure about
"deliberately", my most plausible assumption is that they
just plugged the "skill" description into the standard job ad
templates.
Looking for about 5 years experience - enough to
(presumably) be able to do stuff, but not yet too
old/tainted.
Also it is not necessary to have exactly all the asked
experiences, at least when your resume will be
selected/reviewed by a human. Of course if the recruiting
process has been made "efficient" that will filter resumes by
strict criteria, then the honest/modest applicants will be
disproportionately screened out.
In a lot of big corps, the early stages of recruiting
(processing/screening incoming resumes) are often outsourced
to HR who obviously have little idea about the subject matter
of the work, and can only go by buzzwords, possibly using
computer software (OCR processing of resumes).
I have heard
the story often that hiring managers are presented with
unsuitable resumes/candidates, and often find better matches
going through the raw data themselves. But that costs time
("inefficient").
I can tell you that, from a consulting standpoint, I have
been on several contracts where we've interviewed someone who
had great skills, and the person who showed up had zero. So
now companies will Skype with people to make sure they're
talking to the actual consultant.
Sadly, that is true of far too many companies of all sorts
today, who refuse to train their workers and expect them to
come preprogrammed with the company's proprietary software.
Unemployment versus Underemployment: Assessing Labor Market Slack
:
The U-3 unemployment rate has returned to prerecession levels and is
close to estimates of its longer-run sustainable level. Yet other
indicators of slack, such as the U-6 statistic, which includes people
working part-time but wanting to work full-time (often referred to as
part-time for economic reasons, or PTER), has not declined as quickly
or by as much as the U-3 unemployment rate.
If unemployment and PTER reflect the same business-cycle effects, then they should move pretty
much in lockstep. But as the following chart shows, such uniformity hasn't generally been the case.
In the most recent recovery, unemployment started declining in 2010, but PTER started to move
substantially lower beginning only in 2013. The upshot is that for each unemployed worker, there are
now many more involuntary part-time workers than in the past.
Unemployment and Unemployment-Underemployment * rates,
1994-2017
* Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers,
plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a
percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally
attached workers; age 16 and over.
Unemployment and Unemployment-Underemployment * rates,
1994-2017
* Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers,
plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a
percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally
attached workers; age 16 and over.
"during the last recession, firms reduced the hours of
workers in low-skill jobs more than they cut the number of
low-skill jobs"
I believe this is the correct explanation.
I used to tack growth in hours vs. growth in payrolls, and
what I found was that, had the 2008 recession followed the
pattern of previous recessions, the peak unemployment rate
would have been considerably higher. Let me do a little
digging ....
The value reached its lowest level ever in 2009. In other
words, relative more hours than jobs were cut in the Great
Recession, even compared to other recessions.
Dean covers a ton of material here. One is his points is
right in one sense. We are below full employment so we need
some sort of aggregate demand expansion. Would trade
protection do this for the US? Perhaps if we had fixed
exchange rates and we did not suffer a trade war. But as Dean
has noted elsewhere, we need more expansionary monetary
policy. Dean repeats something that Jared Bernstein wrote:
'If we wanted better data on bilateral trade flows, then it
would be desirable to pull out the re-exports from both our
exports to Canada and our imports from Germany. This
adjustment would make our trade deficit with Canada appear
larger and trade deficit with Germany smaller, but would
leave our total trade balance unchanged.'
So Dean and Jared thinks that a US multinational that buys
a product from Mexico at $80 which ultimately sells in Canada
for $100 charges the Canadian distribution affiliate only
$80? Dean knows better as he in the past has written about
transfer pricing. No - transfer pricing games do affect the
current reporting of the trade balance. Dean needs to read
Brad Setser.
According to CBO
, potential GDP for the 4
th
quarter of 2016
was $19,049 billion. This is 1.0 percent higher than the estimate of GDP for
the quarter of $18,860.8 billion. This means that if CBO is right, if there
had been more demand in the economy, for example due to imports being
replaced by domestically produced goods, GDP could have been 1.0 percent
higher last quarter.
Of course CBO's estimates of potential GDP are not
especially accurate. Its most recent estimates for potential GDP in 2016 are
more than 10 percent below what it had projected for potential GDP in 2016
back in 2008, before the severity of the crash was recognized. It is
possible it overstated potential by a huge amount in 2008, but it is also
possible it is understating potential today. It also hugely understated
potential GDP in the mid-1990s, with 2000 GDP coming in more than 5 percent
above the estimate of potential that CBO made in 1996. In other words, it
would not be absurd to think that the economy could sustain a level of
output that is 2.0 percent above the current level. (The fact that the
employment rate of prime age workers [ages 25-54] is still 4.0 percentage
points below the 2000 peak is certainly consistent with this view.)
Suppose that GDP were consistently 2.0 percent higher than current
projections over the next decade due to a lower trade deficit. This would
imply an additional $4.6 trillion in output over this period. If the
government captures 30 percent of this in higher taxes and lower spending on
transfer programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps, this would
imply a reduction in the projected deficit of $1.38 trillion over the
decade. That's not quite the $1.74 trillion projected by Navarro, but close
enough to make the derision unwarranted.
In terms of how you get a lower trade deficit, Navarro's strategy of
beating up on China is probably not the best way to go. But there is in fact
precedent for the United States
negotiating a lower
value for the dollar
under President Reagan, which had the desired
effect of reducing the trade deficit.
There is no obvious reason it could not pursue a similar path today,
especially since it is widely claimed in business circles that China
actually wants to raise the value of its currency. The U.S. could help it.
The second area of seemingly gratuitous Trump trade bashing comes from a
Wall Street Journal
news article
on the Trump administration's efforts to correct for
re-exports in trade measures. Before getting to the article, it is important
to understand what is at issue.
Most of what the United States exports to countries like Mexico, Japan,
or elsewhere are goods and services produced in the United States. However,
some portion of the goods that we export to these countries consists of
items imported from other countries which are just transshipped through the
United States.
The classic example would be if we offloaded 100 BMWs on a ship in New
York and then 20 were immediately sent up to Canada to be sold there. The
way we currently count exports and imports, we would count the 20 BMWs as
exports to Canada and also as imports from Germany. These re-exports have
zero impact on our aggregate trade balance, but they do exaggerate out
exports to Canada and our imports from Germany.
If we wanted better data on bilateral trade flows, then it would be
desirable to pull out the re-exports from both our exports to Canada and our
imports from Germany. This adjustment would make our trade deficit with
Canada appear larger and trade deficit with Germany smaller, but would leave
our total trade balance unchanged.
This better measure of trade flows would be useful information to have if
we wanted to know what happened to trade with a specific country following a
policy change, for example the signing of a trade deal like NAFTA. The
inclusion of re-exports in our export data would distort what had happened
to actual flows of domestically produced exports and imports for domestic
consumption.
The United States International Trade Commission already produces a
measure of trade balances
that
excludes imports that are re-exported. However this measure is still not an
accurate measure of bilateral trade balances since it still includes the
re-exports on the import side. In the case mentioned above, it would include
the BMWs imported from Germany that were immediately sent to Canada, as
imports. In principle, we should be able to construct a measure that
excludes these items on the import side as well. If this is what the Trump
administration is trying to do, then it is asking for a perfectly reasonable
adjustment to the data.
This is where we get to the WSJ article. According to the piece, the
Trump administration was asking the Commerce Department to produce measures
of bilateral trade balances that took out the re-exports on the export side,
but left them in on the import side. This would have the effect of
artificially inflating our trade deficit with a bogus number. If this is in
fact what the Trump administration is trying to do, then we should be
shooting at them with all guns. (This is metaphorical folks, I'm not
advocating violence.)
However some skepticism might be warranted at this point. No one with a
name actually said the Trump administration asked for this bogus measure of
trade balances. The sole source listed is "one person familiar with the
discussions."
There was an official statement from the Commerce Department's Bureau of
Economic Analysis (BEA), which collects and compiles the data:
"Any internal discussions about data collection methods are no more than
the continuation of a longstanding debate and are part of the bureau's
normal process as we strive to provide the most precise statistics
possible."
I take very seriously efforts to mess with the data. We are fortunate to
have independent statistical agencies with dedicated civil servants who take
their work very seriously. However we should wait until we have a bit more
solid evidence before assuming that the Trump administration is trying to
interfere in their independence, as opposed to trying to make a totally
legitimate adjustment to the data that the BEA staff would almost certainly
agree is an improvement.
Abe
Lincoln was protectionist
•
2 hours ago
Yes - Pres. Trump is MUCH MUCH better at economics than many so-called
American economists.
Also ignores transfer pricing. US corporations
are good at gaming their own tax system but face tough regulations
elsewhere. Their solution to pulling profits out of their foreign
operations and putting them in a non-taxed US is to export phantom
products to foreign countries from their American subsidiaries. The US
is Ireland on a large scale - the real trade deficit with China is
probably closer to $10 in imports for every $1 of export rather than
the official $4 in imports to $1 in exports.
urban legend
•
5 hours ago
Economists often seem to pooh-pooh the employment-to-population ratio
as some kind of unrealistic never-again-to-be achieved holy grail --
as if the phenomenon of women going back into the labor force had been
completely expended and there would thereafter be no change in the
education level of working age adults. In fact, women entering the
labor force continued to grow, and faster than men dropping out, and
the education level (and employability) of working age adults has been
improving, especially in Southern states that had relatively low high
school or college graduation rates and, therefore, low
employment-to-population ratios that pulled down the national rate.
While looking at the employment rate of all non-institutional adults
16 and older may be complicated by baby boomers hitting senior status,
the prime working age (25-54) employment rate should be even higher
than it was in 2000, not just the same or lower. We saw an inkling
then of what full employment might look like, and an inflation problem
did not raise its ugly head.
It's also to be noted that while in January 1994 when the
"marginally attached to the labor force" and "discouraged worker"
measures were first reported, only two million members of the 16+
adult population were counted as marginally attached and only 600,000
were considered to be discouraged. Yet as demand grew, almost 20
million people crawled out from outside the labor force or from being
counted as potential workers by any measurement and took jobs when
they became available. That's 18 million more than BLS statistics
suggested would be the outermost limit to the size of the labor force.
In other words, it seems absurd, indeed absurd enough to consider
it almost to be offered in bad faith, to suggest that we are anywhere
remotely close to full employment. One must ask what the agenda is for
it to continue to be suggested, since slowing growth has certain
consequences that may help the wealthier members of our society while
hurting everyone else.
pieceofcake
urban legend
•
5 hours ago
'In other words, it seems absurd, indeed absurd enough to consider
it almost to be offered in bad faith, to suggest that we are
anywhere remotely close to full employment.'
If We would be
anywhere remotely close to full employment - there would be NO
'gig-economy' - no companies on the Internet which help you to
(still) write all these resumes - and probably NO Uber - as - do
you know anybody who is willing to work as a Uber driver if he or
she can have a real Job?
And about the wealthier members of our society - Yeah they did
that!
pieceofcake
pieceofcake
•
5 hours ago
- and since I'm back again in the homeland - I have been the
guest of 63 Uber-Drivers in 16 different cities -(right now I'm
in Redwood City CA) - and the overwhelming majority of the
drivers agreed with me - that there might be no better measure
for the real unemployment situation in the homeland and the
terrible Job market - that so many Americans - who actually have
learned some real Jobs - end up driving idiots like me around.
For heavens sake - the other day I even had a History Prof. -
and if I will get Mr. Baker one day as my driver - I tell'ya - I
will get really worried.
Revoking trade deals will not help American middle classes
The advent of global supply chains has changed production patterns in the US
by Larry Summers
FEBRUARY 5, 2017
Trade agreements have been central to American politics for some years. The idea that renegotiating
trade agreements will "make America great again" by substantially increasing job creation and economic
growth swept Donald Trump into office.
More broadly, the idea that past trade agreements have damaged the American middle class and that
the prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership would do further damage is now widely accepted in both
major US political parties.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, participants in political debate are entitled
to their own opinions but not their own facts. The reality is that the impact of trade and globalisation
on wages is debatable and could be substantial. But the idea that the US trade agreements of the
past generation have impoverished to any significant extent is absurd.
There is a debate to be had about the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and inequality.
Increased imports have displaced jobs. Companies have been able to drive harder bargains with workers,
particularly in unionised sectors, because of the threat they can outsource. The advent of global
supply chains has changed production patterns in the US.
My judgment is that these effects are considerably smaller than the impacts of technological progress.
This is based on a variety of economic studies, experience in hypercompetitive Germany and the observation
that the proportion of American workers in manufacturing has been steadily declining for 75 years.
That said I acknowledge that global trends and new studies show that the impact of trade on wages
is much more pronounced than a decade ago.
But an assessment of the impact of trade on wages is very different than an assessment of trade
agreements. It is inconceivable that multilateral trade agreements, such as the North American Free
Trade Agreement, have had a meaningful impact on US wages and jobs for the simple reason that the
US market was almost completely open 40 years ago before entering into any of the controversial agreements.
American tariffs on Mexican goods, for example, averaged about 4 per cent before Nafta came into
force. China had what was then called "most favoured nation" trading status with the US before its
accession to the World Trade Organization and received the same access as other countries. Before
the Korea Free Trade Agreement, US tariffs on Korea averaged a paltry 2.8 per cent.
The irrelevance of trade agreements to import competition becomes obvious when one listens to
the main arguments against trade agreements. They rarely, if ever, take the form of saying we are
inappropriately taking down US trade barriers.
Rather the naysayers argue that different demands should be made on other countries during negotiations
- on issues including intellectual property, labour standards, dispute resolution or exchange rate
manipulation. I am sympathetic to the criticisms of TPP, but even if they were all correct they do
not justify the conclusion that signing the deal would increase the challenges facing the American
middle class.
The reason for the rise in US imports is not reduced trade barriers. Rather it is that emerging
markets are indeed emerging. They are growing in their economic potential because of successful economic
reforms and greater global integration.
These developments would have occurred with or without US trade pacts, though the agreements have
usually been an impetus to reform. Indeed, since the US does very little to reduce trade barriers
in our agreements, the impetus to reform is most of what foreign policymakers value in them along
with political connection to the US.
The truth too often denied by both sides in this debate is that incremental agreements like TPP
have been largely irrelevant to the fate of middle class workers. The real strategic choice Americans
face is whether the objective of their policies is to see the economies of the rest of the world
grow and prosper. Or, does the US want to keep the rest of the world from threatening it by slowing
global growth and walling off products and people?
Framed this way the solution appears obvious. A strategy of returning to the protectionism of
the past and seeking to thwart the growth of other nations is untenable and would likely lead to
a downward spiral in the global economy. The right approach is to maintain openness while finding
ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress, trade or other challenges.
" The right approach is to maintain
openness while finding ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress,
trade or other challenges."
People like Summers, DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying
this for 30 years ever since NAFTA was passed.
The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy who cried wolf.
I would actually agree with the stance in general, if there
would be an actuall intention to help the affected
people/populations, but there is none. Retraining for yet
another job that doesn't exist (in sufficient volume so you
can realistically get it) is not help. It is just cover for
victim blaming - see we forgive you for choosing an incorrect
career, here is your next chance, don't blow that one too
(which we know "you will" as there are not enough jobs there
either).
Must-Read: Five things are going on with respect to
America's blue-, pink-, and--increasingly--white lower-middle
and middle-middle working classes. Three of them are real,
and two of them are fake:
Technology: It has--worldwide--greatly amplified
manufacturing labor productivity, accompanied by limited
demand for manufactured goods: few of us want more than one
full-sized refrigerator, and very very few of us want more
than two. That means that if you are hoping to be relatively
high up in the wage distribution by virtue of your position
as a hard-to-replace cog on a manufacturing assembly line,
you are increasingly out of luck. If you are hoping for high
blue-collar wages to lift your own via competition, you are
increasingly out of luck.
Legal and institutional bargaining power: The fact that
bargaining power has flowed to finance and the executive
suite and away from the shop- and assembly-floor is the
second biggest deal here. It could have been otherwise--this
is, primarily, a thing that has happened in English-speaking
countries. It has happened much less elsewhere. It could have
happened much less here.
Macro policy: Yes, the consequences of the Reagan deficits
were to cream midwestern manufacturing and destroy worker
bargaining power in export and import-competing industries.
Yes, the low-pressure economies of Volcker, late Greenspan,
and Bernanke wreaked immense damage. Any more questions?
Globalization: Globalization deepens the division of
labor, and does so in a way that is not harmful to
high-paying manufacturing jobs in the global north. The
high-paying manufacturing jobs that require skills and
expertise (as opposed to the lower-paying ones that just
require being in the right place at the right time with some
market power) are easier to create and hold on to if you can
be part of a globalized value chain than otherwise. This is
largely fake.
Trade agreements: This is a nothingburger: completely
fake.
As somebody who strongly believes that supply curves slope
up--are neither horizontal nor vertical--and that demand
curves slope down--are neither horizontal nor vertical--I
think that Larry Summers is misguided here when he talks
about how "companies have been able to drive harder bargains
with workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of
the threat they can outsource." This was certainly true since
the 1950s with the move of American manufacturing to the
south, and the rise of deceptively-named "right-to-work"
laws. But the threat to outsource is zero-sum on a national
level: the balance of payments balances. Individual sectors
lose--and manufacturing workers have been big losers. But
that is, I think, only because of our macro policies. If we
were a normal global North manufacturing power--a Germany or
a Japan--exporting capital and running a currency policy that
did not privilege finance, he would not be talking a out how
"companies have been able to drive harder bargains with
workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of the
threat they can outsource." He would be talking about how the
opportunity to participate in global value chains increases
the productivity of semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing
workers in the U.S.
Thus I think Larry conceded too much here. Blame macro
policy. Blame technology. Blame the conflict between the
market society's requirements that only property rights
matter and that everything pass a profitability test against
people's strong beliefs that even if they have no property
rights they have rights to stable communities, stable
industries, and stable occupations. But, to channel Pascal
Lamy, look not at the finger but at the moon here.
However, Larry is right on his main point: NAFTA really
ain't the problem:
Lawrence Summers: Revoking Trade Deals Will Not Help
American Middle Classes: "There is a debate to be had about
the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and
inequality...
For Delong to be right on trade, thousands of rust belt
politicians, journalists, and business leaders and a few
hundred thousand workers would have to be delusional.
He is
right in the sense that it is too late to revoke NAFTA, the
damage is done.
I expect that if you look at the pre-bellum South, there will
be plenty of examples of stagnant wages, low interest
rates...
In Mexico, wages never rose regardless of monetary
policy.
The point that I've been making for a while: despite a few
progressive economists delusions for rapid economic growth to
tighten wages, it won't happen for the following reasons.
1) most employers will just say 'no,' probably encouraged
centrally by the US Chamber of Commerce and other industry
associations. Collusion? You bet.
2) employers will just move jobs abroad, where there's
plenty of slack. Flexible labor markets has been one of the
big goals of globalization, promoted by the usual suspects
including 'librul' economists like Krugman.
3) immigration, which will be temporarily constrained as
Trump deports people, but will ultimately be resumed as
employers demand cheap, malleable labor.
I disagree. It happened in late 90s. The ideas you mention
are factors, including the decline of unions.
What has
happened in recent decades is that asset bubbles - like the
dot.com and housing bubbles - have popped sending a high
pressure economy into a low pressure one with higher
unemployment.
Neoliberal economists often talk about "flexible labor
markets" as desirable but I don't think Krugman ever has.
Maybe he has in a roundabout, indirect way.
Fed funds
rates were consistently about double the rate of inflation.
The fact that the economy boomed and wages increased was due
to the tech boom--an unrepeatable anomaly. The Fed and
Clinton administration unsuccessfully attempted to stifle it
with high rates and budget balancing.
To make sure that wages never rose again, Clinton signed
China PNTR, granting China access to WTO, ushering in the
great sucking sound of jobs going to China. Krugman cheered.
"Fed funds rates were consistently about double the rate
of inflation."
That doesn't matter. What matters is if they were
tightening or loosening. Where they reducing access to credit
or expanding it.
The real history is that Democrats on the FOMC wanted to
raise rates - as Dean Baker has discussed.
Greenspan decided not to raise rates for various reasons
and unemployment stayed low at around 4 percent with wages
sharing in productivity gains until the Dot.com stock bubble
popped.
I see no reason why you should believe labor markets will
never get tight again and that even if they do it won't lead
to increased worker bargaining power and higher wages.
There are numerous reasons why wages won't increase even if
labor markets tighten...you just don't want to acknowledge
the nefarious consequences of neoliberal policies: business
collusion, offshoring, immigration, and the tax system's
preference for returns of returns to capital over wages,
which preferences technology.
The real interest rate was around 2.5% per your own argument
which was a lot lower than real rates in the 1980's. So by
any reasonable standard - we did have easy money.
"Another round of tax and regulatory giveaways can create a
short-term boom," as part of the race to the bottom for
wages...IOW Republicans and their Democratic allies will have
succeeded when American wages are about the same as wages in
China or Mexico. But, per their logic, then jobs will be
plentiful because there will be no need to off-shore.
Yep...slavery is the most direct method of keeping wages low.
The policies I outlined--monopsony, offshoring, and
immigration--are all a fall back, to be used when industry
can't use their best policy.
If the neoliberal elite can't part with at least a small part
of their privileges, the political destabilization will
continue and they might lose everything.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete
destruction rather than surrender any material part of their
advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
You may know that JK Galbraith served on the US' evaluation
of strategic bombings effect in WW II.
He is one of the
minority whose opinion was suppressed by the military
industry complex which concluded outside the A bomb no
relation to bombing and victory was proven, including both
industry output and energy production in Germany.
Allied bombing did kill a lot of civilians, which if
Germans or Japan had won bomber commanders would have been
hanged.
"...the political destabilization will continue and they
might lose everything."
Or they might find a way to end the
political destabilization. You know, we're not arresting you,
we just want to know, in the war on Muslim terrorists and
Mexican criminals, are you with us or against us? You'd be
surprised (or maybe you wouldn't!) how the question is enough
to quiet everybody down.
Tech jobs took it on the chin last year. Layoffs at computer, electronics, and telecommunications companies were
up 21 percent to 96,017 jobs cut in 2016
, compared to 79,315 the prior year.
Tech layoffs accounted for 18 percent of the total 526,915 U.S. job cuts announced in 2016, according to Challenger,
Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement firm based in Chicago.
Of the 2016 total, some 66,821 of the layoffs came from computer companies, up 7% year over year.
Challenger attributed much
of that increase to cuts made by Dell Technologies, the entity formed by the $63 billion convergence of Dell and EMC. In preparation
for that combination, layoffs were instituted across EMC and its constituent companies, including VMware.
Revoking trade deals will not help American middle classes
The advent of global supply chains has changed production
patterns in the US
by Larry Summers
FEBRUARY 5, 2017
Trade agreements have been central to American politics
for some years. The idea that renegotiating trade agreements
will "make America great again" by substantially increasing
job creation and economic growth swept Donald Trump into
office.
More broadly, the idea that past trade agreements have
damaged the American middle class and that the prospective
Trans-Pacific Partnership would do further damage is now
widely accepted in both major US political parties.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed,
participants in political debate are entitled to their own
opinions but not their own facts. The reality is that the
impact of trade and globalisation on wages is debatable and
could be substantial. But the idea that the US trade
agreements of the past generation have impoverished to any
significant extent is absurd.
There is a debate to be had about the impact of
globalisation on middle class wages and inequality. Increased
imports have displaced jobs. Companies have been able to
drive harder bargains with workers, particularly in unionised
sectors, because of the threat they can outsource. The advent
of global supply chains has changed production patterns in
the US.
My judgment is that these effects are considerably smaller
than the impacts of technological progress. This is based on
a variety of economic studies, experience in hypercompetitive
Germany and the observation that the proportion of American
workers in manufacturing has been steadily declining for 75
years. That said I acknowledge that global trends and new
studies show that the impact of trade on wages is much more
pronounced than a decade ago.
But an assessment of the impact of trade on wages is very
different than an assessment of trade agreements. It is
inconceivable that multilateral trade agreements, such as the
North American Free Trade Agreement, have had a meaningful
impact on US wages and jobs for the simple reason that the US
market was almost completely open 40 years ago before
entering into any of the controversial agreements.
American tariffs on Mexican goods, for example, averaged
about 4 per cent before Nafta came into force. China had what
was then called "most favoured nation" trading status with
the US before its accession to the World Trade Organization
and received the same access as other countries. Before the
Korea Free Trade Agreement, US tariffs on Korea averaged a
paltry 2.8 per cent.
The irrelevance of trade agreements to import competition
becomes obvious when one listens to the main arguments
against trade agreements. They rarely, if ever, take the form
of saying we are inappropriately taking down US trade
barriers.
Rather the naysayers argue that different demands should
be made on other countries during negotiations - on issues
including intellectual property, labour standards, dispute
resolution or exchange rate manipulation. I am sympathetic to
the criticisms of TPP, but even if they were all correct they
do not justify the conclusion that signing the deal would
increase the challenges facing the American middle class.
The reason for the rise in US imports is not reduced trade
barriers. Rather it is that emerging markets are indeed
emerging. They are growing in their economic potential
because of successful economic reforms and greater global
integration.
These developments would have occurred with or without US
trade pacts, though the agreements have usually been an
impetus to reform. Indeed, since the US does very little to
reduce trade barriers in our agreements, the impetus to
reform is most of what foreign policymakers value in them
along with political connection to the US.
The truth too often denied by both sides in this debate is
that incremental agreements like TPP have been largely
irrelevant to the fate of middle class workers. The real
strategic choice Americans face is whether the objective of
their policies is to see the economies of the rest of the
world grow and prosper. Or, does the US want to keep the rest
of the world from threatening it by slowing global growth and
walling off products and people?
Framed this way the solution appears obvious. A strategy
of returning to the protectionism of the past and seeking to
thwart the growth of other nations is untenable and would
likely lead to a downward spiral in the global economy. The
right approach is to maintain openness while finding ways to
help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress,
trade or other challenges.
" The right approach is to maintain openness while finding
ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical
progress, trade or other challenges."
People like Summers,
DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying this for 30 years
ever since NAFTA was passed.
The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy
who cried wolf.
Economix - Explaining the Science of Everyday Life
Undoing the Structural Damage to Potential Growth
By JARED BERNSTEIN MARCH 3, 2014 11:00 AM
What follows is macroeconomics, but I'll start with the
micro - a microcosm, in fact, of the larger idea I'm hoping
to get at here.
I think it was around 1998, and I was on a tram between
terminals at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Two young men, who
clearly worked for the airport (they had a bunch of badges
dangling around their necks) were trying to figure out how
they knew each other, while I eavesdropped. Turned out they
had met each other in prison.
At the time, I was beginning a research project on the
benefits of full employment, and my first thought was, "Aha -
another example of how tight labor markets pull in the
hard-to-employ." This was also the era of work-based welfare
reform, and while analysts worried that employers would avoid
those with welfare histories, strong demand turned out to an
antidote to such preferences.
Basically, profiling based on gender, race and experience
is a luxury that employers can't afford when the job market
is really tight. That is not to imply, of course, that
employers broadly discriminate, but there is strong evidence
that many do, most recently against the long-term unemployed.
In tight markets, however, they face a choice of indulging
their preferences or leaving profits on the table, and
profits usually win.
Now, put this story aside for a second and let's turn to
the macro. A few months ago, I reported on a study by a few
Federal Reserve economists with pretty striking results of
the damage done to the economy's future growth rate by the
deep and protracted downturn known as the Great Recession.
The Congressional Budget Office just published a similar
analysis, resulting in the chart below showing growth in
gross domestic product as projected in 2007, before the
recession, and a revised projection from this year. By 2017,
the budget office predicts that the new and decidedly
not-improved level of G.D.P. will be 7.3 percent below the
old projection.
What does 7.3 percent of lost gross domestic product
actually mean? Well, last year G.D.P. amounted to about $16.8
trillion, and 7.3 percent of that comes to around $1.2
trillion. Conventional estimates translate that into more
than 10 million jobs.
It would be very good to avoid that fate. The thing is,
both the Fed economists and the Congressional Budget Office
basically argue that while their estimates are admittedly
uncertain, that fate cannot be avoided - it's baked into the
economic cake by the assumption that once your trend growth
rate slows as ours has, it does not come back barring some
positive, unforeseen shock. Here is how the Fed guys put it:
Policy makers cannot undo labor market damage once it has
occurred, but must instead wait for it to fade away on its
own accord; in other words, there is no special advantage,
given this specification, to running a high-pressure economy.
I disagree! I think the damage can be at least partly
reversed precisely by running "a high-pressure economy." I
saw it myself that day in the airport.
Technically, I'm talking about "reverse hysteresis." When
a cyclical problem morphs into a structural one, economists
invoke the concept of hysteresis. When this phenomenon takes
hold, the rate at which key economic inputs like labor supply
and capital investment enter the economy undergoes a
downshift that lasts through the downturn and well into the
expansion, reducing the economy's speed limit. But what I'm
suggesting here is that by running the economy well below
conventional estimates of the lowest unemployment rate
consistent with stable inflation, and doing so for a while,
we can pull workers back in, raise their career trajectories,
improve their pay and their living standards, and turn that
downshift to an upshift that raises the level and growth rate
of G.D.P.
Won't that be inflationary? Three points. First, if
anything, the current economy is suffering from inflation
that is too low (same with Europe), so near-term
growth-oriented policy seems clearly safe in this regard.
Second, the precise relationship between full employment and
inflation is poorly understood. When that latter-1990s story
above was taking place, economists frequently and incorrectly
warned that full employment would dangerously juice
inflation. Third, the correlation between these two variables
- inflation and labor market tightness - has become far
weaker in recent years (i.e., the Phillips Curve has
flattened, for those who like the jargon).
How do we reverse the hysteresis process (which is to ask:
How do we get back to very tight labor markets)? In earlier
posts, I've suggested a number of policies that would help,
including investment in public goods, direct job creation,
reducing the trade deficit and work-sharing. Still, you may
well be wondering, "Wait a minute - this dude wants us to go
with him down this path because of a conversation he
overheard 16 years ago?"
O.K., I'll admit that the economic journals are not
busting with evidence in support of reverse hysteresis. But
those of us who closely monitored full-employment economies
have observed and documented significantly positive labor
supply and investment outcomes. (True, a lot of that
investment has flowed into bubbles; I'm not saying this idea
solves every problem.)
The employment rates for young African-American adults,
like the guys I saw in the airport, averaged around 70
percent in the 1970s and '80s, but hit 80 percent in the late
1990s; they are in the mid-60s now. The employment rates for
single mothers also hit new highs in those years. The labor
force participation rate, itself an important victim of
hysteresis right now, hit its all-time high at the end of the
1990s expansion. In other words, full employment pulled a lot
of new people into the job market.
As part of the full-employment project I'm running at the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (and have written
about before on this blog), a number of top economists are
looking into the relationships between fiscal policy, and
hysteresis and reverse hysteresis. They are coming up with
some compelling findings, which I'll share once they are
ready. For now, allow me to assert the following: We have
shown we can do a lot of economic damage. With the political
will, sorely lacking these days, it can also be undone.
"What does 7.3 percent of lost gross domestic product
actually mean? Well, last year G.D.P. amounted to about $16.8
trillion, and 7.3 percent of that comes to around $1.2
trillion. Conventional estimates translate that into more
than 10 million jobs."
Obama's Economic Disappointment by Narayana Kocherlakota
In January 2009, at the beginning of Obama's first term,
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a 10-year
forecast for the U.S. economy, including such indicators as
unemployment, gross domestic product, the budget deficit,
government debt and interest rates. Here's a table comparing
the CBO's expectations for the year 2015 to what has actually
happened:
NGDP forecast to grow 33 percent, actually grew 22
percent.
"A final argument for gradually adjusting policy relates
to the desirability of achieving a prompt return of inflation
to the FOMC's 2 percent goal, an objective that would be
advanced by allowing the unemployment rate to decline for a
time somewhat below estimates of its longer-run sustainable
level. To a limited degree, such an outcome is envisioned in
many participants' most recent SEP projections. A tight labor
market may also work to reverse some of the adverse
supply-side developments resulting from the financial crisis.
The deep recession and slow recovery likely have held back
investment in physical and human capital, restrained the rate
of new business formation, prompted discouraged workers to
leave the labor force, and eroded the skills of the long-term
unemployed.15 Some of these effects might be reversed in a
tight labor market, yielding long-term benefits associated
with a more productive economy. That said, the quantitative
importance of these supply-side mechanisms are difficult to
establish, and the relevant research on this point is quite
limited."
"... First of all, the unemployment rate in the USA actually increased from 4.7% to 4.8%, despite the job growth. ..."
"... Simply put, due to the way the Bureau of Labour Statistics is gathering its data, almost 700,000 people have been 'removed' from the civilian population. The total size of the civilian population is rebalanced on a yearly basis, in January. ..."
"... The smaller size of the civilian population caused the labor force participation rate to increase by 0.2%, and this by itself caused the unemployment rate to increase as well, despite the job creation number. ..."
"... But perhaps even more important is the extremely disappointing update on the average hourly earnings ('AHE') . The AHE increase fell to just 0.1% in January on a month/month comparison, but the real catch is in the details. ..."
Ever since the gold report was published, the gold price moved up. This caught several investors
by surprise, as some of them even continued to dump gold, scared by what appeared to be a good jobs
report.
'Appeared to be', because?
Yes, 227,000 new jobs
were created , and we can't deny that's a positive evolution. However, the increased job number
is also the only positive thing in the jobs report, and there are two other issues that haven't really
been highlighted.
Two issues that could, and probably will, have an impact on the interest rate decisions later
this year.
First of all, the unemployment rate in the USA actually increased from 4.7% to 4.8%, despite
the job growth.
How is that possible?
Simply put, due to the way
the Bureau of Labour Statistics
is gathering its data, almost 700,000 people have been 'removed' from the civilian population.
The total size of the civilian population is rebalanced on a yearly basis, in January.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
The smaller size of the civilian population caused the
labor force participation rate
to increase by 0.2%, and this by itself caused the unemployment rate to increase as well, despite
the job creation number.
And as the unemployment rate is one of the key factors the Federal Reserve is looking at to determine
whether or not a rate hike is appropriate, this small increase could have an impact on the decision
making process. And keep in mind this is the second consecutive increase in the unemployment rate
as the December unemployment rate also came in higher than the unemployment rate in November (and
this did not include any population rebalancing exercise).
But perhaps even more important is the extremely disappointing update on the
average hourly earnings
('AHE') . The AHE increase fell to just 0.1% in January on a month/month comparison, but the
real catch is in the details.
Exactly because the 0.1% increase is focusing on a monthly update, the revision of the wage increase
in December is actually telling you something more serious is going on. The December wages have been
revised down by 0.2%, so if that would NOT have happened, the average hourly wage would have DECREASED
in January.
"... Start focusing on the predators at the top of the pyramid scheme and then watch how those same culprits and their networks "come to the rescue" in order to capitalize on the "pain and suffering" they help to create. I see a pattern, don't you? ..."
"... Don't forget student debt. Not only are many recent graduates underemployed or unemployed, they're in the hole tens of thousands. Further incentive not to make any sort of financial commitment. Student debt should be cancelled to promote earlier family formation. ..."
"... It's almost a negative feedback loop. ..."
"... Very true. Capitalism only works as long as enough people (or states) are able to take up ever-larger debt, to close the gap (called "profit") between expensive goods and comparatively cheap labour. ..."
"... Good to point out Gat Gourmet. Almost all outsourced jobs in the beginning of places where I have worked were once part of the company. ..."
"... Still, it's hard not to notice there could be nothing more convenient to the corporate and governmental powers-that-be than a nonprofit that takes it upon itself to placate, insure, and temper the precarious middle-class. ..."
"... So which ivy-league management school / guru is most culpable in unleashing the whole lean-mean-outsourcing-machine monster because it's slowly destroying my ability to remain in IT. ..."
"... "how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment has declined and is expected to fall further." – ..."
"... Story of my life! I'm still trying to get paid for freelance work that I did in December. This payment delay is wreaking havoc with MY cash flow. ..."
"... Another area of friction and waste with IT consulting and other contracting, is that an employee of a company simply and efficiently plugs into their existence administrative system (HR, timekeeping, payroll, etc). ..."
"... I work in engineering at a gigantic multinational vehicle manufacturer and the role of "consultants" has been expanding with time. Rather than consultants being people with specific technical expertise who work on one subsystem component with clear interfaces to other things, it now encapsulates project managers and subsystem / function responsible people who need to have large networks inside the company to be effective. ..."
"... Considering the huge amount of time it takes to get a new hire up and running to learn the acronyms and processes and the roles of different departments, it's a bit absurd to hire people for such roles under the assumption that they can be quickly swapped out with a consultant from Company B next week. ..."
"... It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability and seeks to avoid it as much as possible. ..."
"... Because they, unlike us, understand class. I can state for a fact that the Big Three auto companies are well aware of how much cheaper health care costs are for them in Canada and how much better off they would be here, cost-wise, with a national health care system where McDonald's and Wal-mart have to pay the same per hour or per employee cost as they do. But it turns out cost isn't everything. Corporate (capitalist) solidarity rules. ..."
"... Michelle Malkin ..."
"... “The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destructionâ€. ..."
The Wall Street Journal has an important new story,
The End of Employees
, on how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment
has declined and is expected to fall further.
Some key sections of the article:
Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people. The outsourcing wave
that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to India is now just as likely
to happen inside companies across the U.S. and in almost every industry.
The men and women who unload shipping containers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouses are provided
by trucking company Schneider National Inc.’s logistics operation, which in turn subcontracts with
temporary-staffing agencies. Pfizer Inc. used contractors to perform the majority of its clinical
drug trials last year .
The shift is radically altering what it means to be a company and a worker. More flexibility for
companies to shrink the size of their employee base, pay and benefits means less job security for
workers. Rising from the mailroom to a corner office is harder now that outsourced jobs are no longer
part of the workforce from which star performers are promoted
For workers, the changes often lead to lower pay and make it surprisingly hard to answer the simple
question “Where do you work?†Some economists say the parallel workforce created by the rise
of contracting is helping to fuel income inequality between people who do the same jobs.
No one knows how many Americans work as contractors, because they don’t fit neatly into the
job categories tracked by government agencies. Rough estimates by economists range from 3% to 14%
of the nation’s workforce, or as many as 20 million people.
As you can see, the story projects this as an unstoppable trend. The article is mainly full of success
stories, which naturally is what companies would want to talk about. The alleged benefits are two-fold:
that specialist contractors can do a better job of managing non-core activities because they are specialists
and have higher skills and that using outside help keeps companies lean and allows them to be more "agile".
The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth
.
The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how complex they are.
While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple to hand off, the larger ones are
not. For instance, for IT outsourcing, a major corporation will need to hire a specialist consultant
to help define the requirements for the request for proposal and write the document that will be the
basis for bidding and negotiation. That takes about six months. The process of getting initial responses,
vetting the possible providers in depth, getting to a short list of 2-3 finalists, negotiating finer
points with them to see who has the best all-in offer, and then negotiating the final agreement typically
takes a year. Oh, and the lawyers often fight with the consultant as to what counts in the deal.
On the one hand, the old saw of "a contract is only as good at the person who signed it" still holds
true. But if a vendor doesn't perform up to the standards required, or the company's requirements change
in some way not contemplated in the agreement, it is vasty more difficult to address than if you were
handling it internally. And given how complicated contracting is, it's not as if you can fire them.
So as we've stressed again and again, these arrangements increase risks and rigidity. And companies
can mis-identify what is core or not recognize that there are key lower-level skills they've mis-identified.
For instance, Pratt & Whitney decided to contract out coordination of deliveries to UPS. Here is the
critical part:
For years, suppliers delivered parts directly to Pratt’s two factories, where materials handlers
unpacked the parts and distributed them to production teams. Earl Exum, vice president of global
materials and logistics, says Pratt had “a couple hundred†logistics specialists. Some handlers
were 20- or 30-year veterans who could “look at a part and know exactly what it is,†he adds .
Most of the UPS employees had no experience in the field, and assembly kits arrived at factories
with damaged or missing parts. Pratt and UPS bosses struggled to get the companies’ computers in
sync, including warehouse-management software outsourced by UPS to another firm, according to Pratt..
The result was $500 million in lost sales in a quarter. Pratt & Whitney tried putting a positive
spin on the tale, that all the bugs were worked out by the next quarter. But how long will it take Pratt
& Whitney to recover all the deal costs plus the lost profits?
There's even more risk when the company using contractor doesn't have much leverage over them. As
a Wall Street Journal reader, Scott Riney, said in comments:
Well managed companies make decisions based on sound data and analysis. Badly managed companies
follow the trends because they're the trends. A caveat regarding outsourcing is that, as always,
you get what you pay for. Also, the vendor relationship needs to be competently managed. There was
the time a certain, now bankrupt technology company outsourced production of PBX components to a
manufacturer who produced components with duplicate MAC addresses. The contract manufacturer's expertise
obviously didn't extend to knowing jack about hardware addressing, and the management of the vendor
relationship was incompetent. And what do you do, in a situation like that, if your firm isn't big
enough that your phone calls get the vendor's undivided attention? Or if you're on different continents,
and nothing can get done quickly?
We've discussed other outsourcing bombs in past posts, such as when British Airways lost "tens of
millions of dollars" when its contractor, Gate Gourmet, fired employees. Baggage handlers and ground
crew struck in sympathy, shutting down Heathrow for 24 hours. Like many outsourced operations, Gate
Gourmet had once been part of British Airways.
And passengers blamed the airline
, not the wprkers.
Now admittedly, there are low-risk, low complexity activities that are being outsourced more, such
as medical transcription, where 25% of all medical transcriptionists now work for agencies, up by 1/3
since 2009. The article attributes the change to more hospitals and large practices sending the work
outside. But even at its 2009 level, the use of agencies was well established. And you can see that
it is the sort of service that smaller doctor's offices would already be hiring on a temp basis, whether
through an agency or not, because they would not have enough activity to support having a full-time
employee. The story also describes how SAP has all its receptionists as contractors, apparently because
someone looked at receptionist pay and concluded some managers were paying too much. So low level clerical
jobs are more and more subject to this fad. But managing your own receptionists is hardly going to make
a company less flexible.
Contracting, like other gig economy jobs, increase insecurity and lower growth.
I hate to belabor the obvious, but people who don't have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major
financial commitments, like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids, or even buying
consumer durables. However, one industry likely makes out handsomely: Big Pharma, which no doubt winds
up selling more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or
depression. The short-sightedness of this development on a societal level is breath-taking, yet overwhelmingly
pundits celebrate it and political leaders stay mum.
With this sort of rot in our collective foundation, the rise of Trump and other "populist" candidates
should not come as a surprise.
I would add this. It was deplorable for Trump to have fired Acting AG Sally Yates after she ordered
Justice Department lawyers to stop defending Mr. Trump’s executive order banning new arrivals to the
U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.
But Sally Yates was a hero for another reason. Yates was cracking down on systemic abuses by holding
top healthcare executives personally accountable for false Medicare and Medicaid claims and illegal
physician relationships.
I remember hoping: Well, maybe Obama will actually get some decent folks into the Judiciary bring
kids home from Iraq, maybe try for Medicare over 55 (to the advantage of the insurance & Pharma sectors?)
But the one thing I'd actually expected him to accomplish was enact
https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/2044
which would get the Kleptocrats a
few more years out of the moldering corpse of American Labor (and not hurt multinationals, who'd off-shored,
outsourced or speciously re-classified their largely undocumented, 3rd party, contingency/ gig employees
decades previously).
Wage-theft Democrats was a new concept to some of us more easily deluded working
class Yankees, reeling from Bush. I think a strong fantasy life's essential nowadays.
I imagine that this is among the pesky downsides of living in our YOOJ autocratic neo-Confederate
theocratic kleptocracy; wage theft has always been right at the top of both parties' platforms?
If they can't hide it, who will they blame it on?
"people who don’t have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major financial commitments,
like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids"
"more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or depression."
Decline in family formation and a populace seeking to anesthetize itself are indications of a civilization
in decline. Our problem is much bigger than employment.
You can employ deplorables, you can enslave deplorables, you can kill deplorables. The only way
that a "return maximizing" system won't choose killing, is if the unit cost of killing is higher
than enslavement or employment. I can hope that the bureaucratic effect of increasing costs will
work faster on the cost of killing or enslavement. Reducing the cost of employment (regulations)
wouldn't hurt.
We'd guessed this was why Dickens, Niccolò Machiavelli, Frederick Douglass, E. A. Blair &
Marx were being burnt by the DeVos Christians. Why teach management for FREE, when the drooling
Know Nothings will PAY to send their dead-eyed vipers to seminars or A Beka online curricula?
Eliminate environmental protections and the entire industry that investigates, researches,
enforces, litigates, and mitigates environmental impacts are likewise eliminated. These are generally
highly skilled professions, and has wide ranging impacts from workers all the way to the global
ecosystem. Then there are economic ripple effects on top of that.
If we are going to eliminate an entire career tree, health insurance is a better choice.
Not sure what this has to do with the article, but yes people will LOSE jobs to Trump, skilled
and socially beneficial jobs like at the EPA.
For heaven knows what, jobs building useless walls to nowhere I guess, which somehow in
Trumps warped mind is a more productive line of work (it won't even work to curtail immigration).
Thank you for your astute, pertinent & seldom mentioned comment (which to those of us in
QA, is something we've believed central to the issue, not a tangent or unexpected side benefit
of our sharecropper corporatocracy).
We'd noticed contract buy-outs & forced early-retirement
in the steel industry, in the 90's, our clients' engineers (scruffy & cantankerous, who'd stand
by us if we were right & replace us if we got out of hand) were all replaced by clueless, gullible
desk jockeys, devoid of empirically honed judgement eventually, we'd have 2-3 gnarled old
timers, amidst crews of neophytes (first they tried very well trained & knowledgeable foreign
nationals, then pensioners, let go from the vendors) finally, they tried to 1099 the desperate
ones, on the run from skip-chasers, deputies & repo-men.
They'd try sending us half way across
the country, mention nothing, then see what we'd do (once we figured out we'd earned no overtime?)
We'd be in Indian or Russian owned mills where 80% of the employees were totally undocumented
foreign nationals, many of the balance wildly underpaid temps.
And the good-old-boy management
resembled characters outa Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lots of our counterparts were straight back
from Afghanistan & Iraq, verifying that most of their gig- economy contingency employment had
all been the same, regardless of industry sector: off-shored aircraft, as well as bridge, structural,
water, nuclear, inspectors what regulation?
Leveraging guilt to rationalize the Invitation of the least educated into your nation from the
most barbaric failed states and cultures in the world is another sign of civic decay.
Yup, many of the Taxi and Uber drivers around here arrived and took out private loans to
get "educated" and now are deep in debt and are too ashamed to go home.
Start focusing on the predators at the top of the pyramid scheme and then watch how those
same culprits and their networks "come to the rescue" in order to capitalize on the "pain
and suffering" they help to create. I see a pattern, don't you?
Barbarians are at the gates but you may be looking in the wrong place. Beware all types
of people are "vulnerable" and they will more easily identify with other human beings living
under a variety of diminished circumstances. Victim shaming won't be a viable option in the
not so distant future.
Dave, I hope you are not including Syria in your "failed states and cultures" description.
Syrians are
very well educated
and will add much to any nation's economy.
It is not a sign of "civic decay"
in the Syrian culture, but a sign of civic decay in a nation that will not accept people from
a war zone. An invitation should not be dependent on one's education but on one's need and desire
to survive a war zone..
Iraqis were also comparatively educated, right up through university, under its autocratic
leader. Libyans were, by and large, well educated, or at least getting so, under its autocratic
leader. The most poorly educated, probably, are those countries which have been under US or
European hegemony for generations: a lot of Central and south America, a lot of Africa, etc.
Not to mention the US itself, which has been colonizing its own hinterland for many decades.
The same applies to countries like Canada, Australia, etc. particularly in terms of their indigenous
populations.
Don't forget student debt. Not only are many recent graduates underemployed or unemployed, they're
in the hole tens of thousands. Further incentive not to make any sort of financial commitment. Student
debt should be cancelled to promote earlier family formation.
This trend matches up with the trends of dropping life expectancy, especially among the lower half
of income earners, and with slowing economies globally.
It's almost a negative feedback loop.
Politcal implications: the rise of far right politics; if you are a monarchist, or want to create
an aristocracy, these trends are probably in your interest.
Sure, it is partly psychological but it also has direct connection (by DESIGN) to the fact that
such people don't have healthcare, even with Obamacare insurance. The idiots that sing the praises
of Obamacare and how millions now have insurance seem to think that means those people have HEALTHCARE
to go with it.
Insurance is theft. Insurance is not even remotely "healthcare". Much of those newly insured have
their insurance, thanks to a government subsidy, but STILL lack healthcare because their premiums
and deductibles are too high to allow them to see doctors. Thus, they're dying or going to die sooner
due to untreated maladies, but at least they paid insurance company CEOs their bonuses with their
subsidized insurance payments!
Mutual insurance however is (was) socialist by nature. The true mutuals were crushed out of
existence by share for share conversions to private companies that ripped off policy holders and
gave a big payday to the C suites and the lawyers. Thanks to inept state insurance commissioners
and assemblies for that one.
while having health insurance doesnt mean you have health care, not having it does mean not
having health care at all, short of having a life or death condition, as hospitals (for now an
way) are only required to stabilize you. they arent required to cure you.
but then the high deductible insurance is one of those scams that some politicians gave us
because they could suggest that the patient (customer) could just shop around for better deals.
course that depends on us patients knowing what medical treatment is best for us, and which is
the cheapest of those., the former pretty much requires patients to be as knowledgeable as doctors.
the latter means we have to know what the treatments cost. could luck with that
I would force policy-makers in every advanced western nation to read and reflect on the last paragraph,
because it describes a mindset and a series of practices that are now found everywhere in western economies.
As David Harvey reminds us in his book on the Contradictions of Capitalism, Marx identified long ago
that there was a contradiction between holding down employees wages, and still expecting them to have
the purchasing power to buy the goods their cheap labour was making.
This problem has become more acute
with time, simply because we buy a lot more "stuff" than they did in the 19th century, and we take a
lot longer to pay for it, often on credit. Houses, cars, household goods, even computers, are now significant
expenditure decisions, repaid at least over months, if not years and even decades. The social corollary
of mass home ownership, after all, is some assurance that you will be employed over the life of the
mortgage. Otherwise, not only won't you buy the house, you won't improve or extend it, or even maintain
it, so a whole series of other purchases won't get made, and the construction and maintenance industries
will have less work. Instead, you'll save money, so removing purchasing power from the economy.
I assume there are people in large private sector companies clever enough to under stand this, but as
always they are focused on how much money they can extract from the system in the next few years. After
that, if the system crashes, well, who cares, They're all right.
Very true. Capitalism only works as long as enough people (or states) are able to take up ever-larger
debt, to close the gap (called "profit") between expensive goods and comparatively cheap labour.
Watching developments in recent years, this very source of profit and thus base of the economic system
is, even on a global level, quite limited
Sure. Marx Capital 1 on the crisis of production. Marx capital 2 on the crisis of realization but
this constitutes just one undesirable aspect-this one indeed very macro- among the many others which
the expansion of the "contracting-subcontracting chain" has brought and will bring about.
The Wall
Street Journal article is-as it is to expect- late, blind to the core problems of workers and incapable
to see and understand the true practical raison ( & reasons) d'être of outsourcing. I guess Yves
Smith purpose was just to broadly replicate WSJ article
Good to point out Gat Gourmet. Almost all outsourced jobs in the beginning of places where I have
worked were once part of the company. The entire art department save two management employees were played
off and rehired by a new company doing the same work with less benefits.
Then that company was later disolved. I have seen this many times in the corporate design field now. Usually ends with disaster
and he hire of folks some back to full time but most to freelance. So I guess in a way it works out
for the company in the end and not for the worker. Amazing the amount of money a company is willing
to lose this way then use the same to pay workers better.
An excellent critique, for those who were wondering. The take away paragraph, summing up
the actual work done and purpose of, the Freelancers Union:
Still, it's hard not to notice there could be nothing more convenient to the corporate
and governmental powers-that-be than a nonprofit that takes it upon itself to placate, insure,
and temper the precarious middle-class.
So which ivy-league management school / guru is most culpable in unleashing the whole lean-mean-outsourcing-machine
monster because it's slowly destroying my ability to remain in IT.
I don't know the answer to your question, but you would have to go back over twenty years to find
it. What I find remarkable is that even though everybody affected in the early stages could see what
a dumb, destructive idea it was, the MBA types never caught on, even though most of them were not
so far up the hierarchy they could not ultimately be affected.
Contractors need Guilds or Trade Associations that are well organized and legally able to set minimum
standards for billing and performance. This is an area where Trade Unions have failed with respect to
some professions, and apparently (from what I've heard) the RICO statutes need to be amended to allow
for this. It's time to rig the other side to make companies think twice before replacing employees with
temp workers or contractors, to keep jobs within the US, and to provide a cushion and a "floor" to those
that take the risk of entrepreneurship, preventing a race to the bottom.
Yes! Geographically bound temp unions or hiring halls for all temp workers allied with low-wage
worker associations. This is NOT something that established unions want, so who will agitate for
it?
Something like the I.W.W is what I'd like to see. Yea I know the response is: they are still
around? Well not what they were long ago of course, but with the prison strike, yes around and
rising.
"how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment
has declined and is expected to fall further." –
This line pissed me off this morning more than most other mornings. I literally just said goodbye
to a long-time colleague (Big Pharma) who is being outsourced as of today. The kicker(s):
The job is not high tech
Employee(s) trained their replacement who are H-1B from India
The company is moving the division to India
Of note, my state (MA) is responsible for over one-quarter of all H-1B's every year. Thankfully a
few in the industry are helping get the word out, like Nanex's Eric Hunsader yesterday. The outsourcing,
off-shoring, and H-1B abuse has to stop, but not sure The People have the will to hold political office
holders accountable enough to truly change this paradigm.
Agreed, but I've been saying the exact same thing since 1980, so I've been lobbying and being
a volunteer activist against this for many years, and yet I still run into women (not too many men
anymore) in their 60s and 70s who believe offshoring of American jobs, and insourcing foreign visa
replacement workers is fantastic (truly, we are a dumbed down society today, where they routinely
protest on behalf of the financial hegemons).
Best book on this (and I am no conservative and have never voted r-con) is Michelle Malkin's book
(with John Miano),
Sold Out!
This has been going on for a long time, and by design: with every "jobless recovery" one-fifth
of the workforce is laid off, and one-half of that one-fifth will never find another job, while one-half
of the remainder, will only find lower-paying jobs.
And each and every time, more jobs are restructured as temporary or contractor type jobs. We've
had a lot of "jobless recoveries" to date.
A recent study from Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger found that 94% of the new jobs created over
the past some years were all part-time, while a study from Rutgers University a year or so ago found
that one-third of the new jobs created couldn't be verified as actually existing!
Nothing particularly new here, as it has been going on for quite some time (another great book
is Ron Hira's book,
Outsourcing America
).
In every category of labor – blue and white collar – the press is on to increase the supply and reduce
the demand for labor.
The book ends: The Clintons in 92′ put thru the WTO / NAFTA – shut down 10's of millions of jobs
and factories – blue & white collar. Obama did the same, with anticipating Hillary would be elected,
put forth the TTP to enable unlimited H1-b for tech workers from off shore. The Neo Liberal Democrats
were at the forefront of of this 25 year Plan for labor devaluation (with Republican help).
The Immigration Policy by government both illegal and legal were at the epicenter of increasing the
supply in all categories with various programs while Obama also increased the regulations to wipe out
more factories and deliberately reduce demand.
The solution is eliminate immigration in all forms until the 95 Million are employed and wages rise
by the equivalent of what was lost in the past 15 years plus Tariffs to enable a marginal cost compared
to imports to allow domestic factories to expand demand.
Increase the demand and lower the supply of labor will mean potentially a switch will occur from
1099 to W-2 as companies have to secure labor reliability in a short labor market which is squeezed.
The Millennials sooner or later will figure it out. Identity Politics which enables a greater supply
of labor and diversion of attention to intangible values at the expense of tangible values has to be
substituted for Labor Only Politics.
These young people have been duped based on the recent focus of the demonstrations. They don't understand
they were screwed deliberately and with great malice by "Going with Her".
I've been keeping count over the years, and as close as I can find, over 170,000 production facilities
were shipped out of the country. (Or, as David Harvey phrased it: "Identity politics instead of class
analysis.")
One aspect of outsourcing that the article does not hit upon is the impact on company cash flows,
which has some importance to large outsourcing initiatives. A company must pay its employees within
6 (it might be 7) days of the end of the pay cycle, which is typically two week. By contrast, when outsourcing,
at the end of the month the contractor will provide an invoice, the company will then pay according
to its payment cycle. This could be 30, 45, 60, 90, or even 120 days. The contractor still must pay
its bills, in essence it's providing a low cost loan to firm (which often has a lower cost of capital).
This approach, including the extension of payments has been largely driven by financial/business consultants.
It can actually get worse – they might not pay you at all, hoping that you'll file a lawsuit,
which will be interpreted according to the contract, rather than legislation which covers employment
issues. The litigation costs might exceed any payments you'd receive.
My guess is that this wouldn't happen to an individual working under a 1099 (as word might
get around), and very large firms often have leverage (not providing continuing services), but
medium-size firms often get held up for months and years (especially once the contract has
ended).
Another thing the article glosses over is that most outsourcing is simply wage cutting. I have
never once seen confirmation of the notion that "specialist" firms provide better services at comparable
labor costs than firms can do in-house. The double-bubble is that firms (and public sector employers)
often spend more on outsourcing than they would doing the work in house despite the wage savings,
which all accrue to the outsourcer of course.
When the airlines went on their deliberate BK spree in the 90's, they outsourced flying to
regional carriers. Regional a/c (45-90 seaters) have higher CASM's than the a/c the airlines actually
owned. In brief, it is cheaper to transport 100 passengers on a 100 seat a/c than to transport
100 passengers on two 50 seat a/c. That's been a fact since the Wright brothers broke the ground.
FWIW, SouthWest never went the regional route, never went BK and pays their unionized employees
quite well.
The BK spree was all about breaking labor, not operational efficiencies that would actually
save money.
but now it seems the majors are not to happy with the regionals , cause customers cant tell
the difference between them, the next problem is that for some reason the regionals cant find
pilots. seems that pilots dont want to work for less than 30,000 a year.
Another area of friction and waste with IT consulting and other contracting, is that an employee
of a company simply and efficiently plugs into their existence administrative system (HR, timekeeping,
payroll, etc).
With a consultant, there has to be reconciliation between the vendor's records and the
company's records, which means work hours burned matching everything up. And that assumes they do match
up neatly; If the vendor says "our consultant worked 50 hours this week, pay them as such" and whoever
oversees the consultant at the company claims they only approved for 40 hours, now you've got a mess
on your hands, could potentially go to the lawyers.
The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth.
The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how
complex they are. While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple
to hand off, the larger ones are not.
I work in engineering at a gigantic multinational vehicle manufacturer and the role of "consultants"
has been expanding with time. Rather than consultants being people with specific technical expertise
who work on one subsystem component with clear interfaces to other things, it now encapsulates project
managers and subsystem / function responsible people who need to have large networks inside the company
to be effective.
Considering the huge amount of time it takes to get a new hire up and running to learn
the acronyms and processes and the roles of different departments, it's a bit absurd to hire people
for such roles under the assumption that they can be quickly swapped out with a consultant from Company
B next week.
It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability and seeks
to avoid it as much as possible.
"
It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability. "
No doubt correct. But why is that? Over time, mandates on employers - particularly large employers
- just keep escalating. Health care; pensions; overtime; layoff notifications: regulators just keep
raising the ante. Employers respond by trying to reduce their profile and present a smaller target
to their predators. Staying under 50 employees wins a lot of exemptions from federal regulations.
Taken to an extreme, some developing countries (Argentina being one example) have European-style
labor regulations guaranteeing job security and mandating generous compensation when employees are
laid off. With hardscrabble small businesses being in no position to shoulder such risks, the result
is that about 40 percent of employment is
trabajo en negro
, with no benefits or protections
whatsoever - a perfect example of unintended consequences.
Editorial comments such as "these [contracting] arrangements increase risks and rigidity" ignore
that government employment regulations
also
increase risks and rigidity. There's a balance
of power. Overreaching, such as Obama's surprise order to vastly increase the number of employees
subject to overtime pay, leads to employer pushback in the form of more contracting and outsourcing.
Getting whacked out of the blue with a big new liability is unfair.
Concur about costs, and health care is the big one. Every other industrialized nation we compete
against has national health care. Given that, why doesn't business support Medicare for all and
get health costs off their books? Plus it would be a damsite easier to start up a business if
one had health care.
Because they, unlike us, understand class. I can state for a fact that the Big Three
auto companies are well aware of how much cheaper health care costs are for them in Canada
and how much better off they would be here, cost-wise, with a national health care system
where McDonald's and Wal-mart have to pay the same per hour or per employee cost as they
do. But it turns out cost isn't everything. Corporate (capitalist) solidarity rules.
Yes, yes, damn yes!! It's about your class, not your race, not your education, not
your gender. As Lambert might say, identity politics (your race, your education, your
gender) is used to keep your eye
off
the prize: economic opportunity
and security.
It is also easier to have part-time workers because they are still covered by health insurance
in some sort of national health insurance system. In the US, the part-time workers will have
high turnover as they look for full-time jobs to get access to health insurance.
Workers are also more likely to start their own businesses to provide services since the
health insurance is just a fee they pay instead of an astronomical non-group insurance bill.
COBRA insurance premiums are ginormous if you need to continue coverage after you leave a company.
Economists have been decrying the lack of employee mobility and small business formation
over the past decade or so. Health insurance is probably a primary reason for this. Obamacare
hasn't been around long enough and with enough certainty to change that dynamic yet.
It's probably part of it, though I suspect the bad labor market is part of it as well.
It's one thing to quit a job to start a business when you think "if it doesn't work out,
I can always go back to my old career and easily be hired", another when quitting a good
job means one might not land another ever.
haven't seen any more info on Hollande's "Flex – Security" plans to give corporations a way
to lay off workers to improve the corporation's revenue. French Labor was having none of it and
then Hollande went negative in the polls and was done for. Our contracting out former corporation
departments sounds like bad quality control at best. If the state – whatever state you can name
– is going to prop up all corporations everywhere because they can no longer successfully compete
then something is fundamentally wrong with the system that demands such murderous and mindless
competition.
well there also that wage theft rules, that employers don't like. course if you look at work
mans comp, you will find that it no longer works to protect employees any more. and maybe that
is also why employers are get rid of employees. plus there is all of that needing to manage them.
but you still end up having to manage vendors too, and while i suppose you could hire another
vendor to manage the vendors (not really sure this will work out well), it still leaves the biggest
problem
since consumers are about 70% of the entire economy (always wonder if this is true. because
almost all corporate 'investment' is done because of customer demand), seems like this business
fad, will end up with fewer customers (which seems to be the way its working too, as evidenced
by the falling sales figures from companies, even Apple), so it like business is like lemmings,
going a cliff, because some one else started
So are you a proponent of Medicare-for-all? It would be a tremendous benefit to corporations
to get out of the healthcare business and also increase employees' willingness to become freelancers
and consultants, since they'd never have to worry about healthcare.
The truth is that citizens expect a certain amount of social welfare and security. This can
be provided by 1) individuals themselves, 2) private players e.g. corporations, or 3) public players
e.g. govt. Each has downsides. If you expect individuals to provide for themselves, it will less
inefficient than having professional managers, and individuals will cut down on other consumption
and save more, thereby hurting an economy such as ours which is highly dependent on consumption.
This leaves companies and government. If companies lobby against public welfare programs like
nationalized health insurance, unemployment insurance, social security, etc., they shouldn't be
surprised if government foists those requirements back on them through back-door regulations.
To be fair to companies, most of the ones engaged in the "real economy" e.g. manufacturing,
actually wouldn't mind medicare for all, or some other program that relieves them of the burden
of providing healthcare to their employees. But they're being drowned out by the financial economy
of Wall St., banking, insurance, etc. who depend on putting more money in the hands of individuals
from whom they can extract much higher fees than they ever could from govt or corporate HR depts.
If companies don't want increased health mandates, for example, their enemy wasn't Obama: it
was the private health insurance companies that didn't want a public plan.
Yeah when I worked for one of the big 3 at an assembly plant, I felt that the use of temporary
contractors could have very negative implications.
Most of the staff though were reasonably well paid, although asked to work long hours. I think
though that overall, highly paid permanent workers pay for themselves many times over.
One aspect of the whole fandango that I don't get is how the IRS allows whole departments within
a company to be outsourced: If people show up at your plant or office every day to work on your tasks,
they are your employee, not a contractor. Is this melting away of the idea of an employee because of
lack of enforcement or some change in IRS rules that I am not aware of?
Basically, if you control a worker's day, and if that worker works regularly for you, the person
is your employee. I don't see how companies get away with this sleight of hand–avoiding, at the most
basic legal level, who is on staff or not. [Unless the result, as many note above, is to increase class
warfare.]
The company doesn't get away with it if someone is willing to whistleblow to the IRS and said
company fails the IRS 20-Factor Test (IC vs. employee). The nice thing there too, is that the tax
burden will be on the company and not the employee. While I don't advocate being a stoolie, if a
company wants to screw me over turn-about is fair play. I do the best I can to avoid those kinds
of companies in the first place.
"
One aspect of the whole fandango that I don’t get is how the IRS allows whole departments
within a company to be outsourced
. . "
If I understand your question correctly it is because a federal regulation was enacted by congress
(I believe one of them was faux-progressive, Jim McDermott, no longer in congress but co-founder
of the India Caucus, to replace American workers with foreign visa workers from India) which
forbids
oversight of the foreign visa program
- and yes, they established a federal regulation killing
oversight of the program by the government!
Someone quoted Norm Matloff (a known bigot) above. You are now quoting anchor child Filipino
bigot
Michelle Malkin
of all people ? It's not helping your case.
The H1-B program is a few hundred thousand
legal
tax paying people a year. There are
21 million Mexican illegals in this country. What do you think has more downward pressure on wages
? .005% H1-B (yeah, you read that right) of the total immigrant/wage pressure ? It's idiotic and
a purely bigoted worldview.
We are supposed to regard "a few hundred thousand" as bupkis when they are concentrated
in one sector?
The H1-B visa program has has a huge impact on wages in the IT sector and has virtually
eliminated entry-level computer science jobs. This is strategically foolhardy, in that the
US is not creating the next generation of people capable of running critical infrastructure.
And the illegal immigrants do pay taxes: sales, gas, and property taxes through their rents.
And many actually do pay FICA. The Treasury recognizes that certain Social Security numbers
are reused many times, and it's almost certainly for illegal immigrants. In fact, the IRS encourages
illegal immigrants to "steal" Social Security numbers:
That article whinges about possible tax credit scamming, but even that estimate is well
below what they pay in FICA, $12 billion. And pretty much none of them will draw benefits.
This is from memory, but I believe they collect over $4 billion from these SSN per year.
And most of these jobs are seasonal and/or too low wage for them to pay much in the way of
income taxes when they are being paid in cash.
H1-B is not in one industry, the .005% is spread across entry level jobs in all industries:
finance, automotive, insurance, arts, film, automation, etc. The total amount of H1-B is
minuscule, vanishingly close to zero in a country of 300+ million and 20+ million illegals.
You don't seem to be complaining about the tens of
millions
that used to concentrated
in one sector..actual manufacturing. Wonder why ? Here's a hint: that sector
used
to make computer peripherals, keyboards, mice, terminals, monitors, LCD's, chips, motherboards,
pretty much everything in the USA.
Employees in china, taiwan, etc pay zero USA taxes and they displaced millions of manufacturing
jobs. And ironically, you are using an entirely outsourced computer (that actually displaced
tens of millions of jobs in the aggregate) to complain about the minuscule .005% H1-B effect.
A few hundred thousand entry level coding jobs (which are ridiculously simple and lo-tech,
google
13 year olds
getting Microsoft certified to see how low down on the value
chain this is). You genuinely think writing a few for-loops (I am simplifying a little but
you get the idea) is hard ?
Certainly, way way less capital intensive and way way less barrier to entry than Hi-Tech
manufacturing. It's all going to be outsourced much faster than manufacturing was, since
there is literally no barrier to entry. And H1-B is a good thing, relatively speaking, compared
to full on outsourcing (just like manufacturing was).
Like I said, the only explanation for these anti H1-B posts is plain old bigotry. No
other explanation comes close.
Might as well finish my train of thought..then I'm outta here.
There are less H1-B visas this year than
refugees
, Refugees (not to mention
the 20 million illegals) also put downward pressure on wages across all industries, but
of course, those are all food servicing/picking/janitorial jobs and who cares about those
people right ? (sarcasm for the impaired)
So, coming back to H1-B's..let's take the logical alternative and ban all H1-B's entirely
and deport the ones on H1-B visas. What happens then ?
1) They can do the job exactly as well remotely (all they need is email/internet/skype).
2) They get paid even less (but more than zero).
3) They pay no taxes.
4) Their output is words..code is the same as prose and math. Good luck banning math/words..if
it can be printed on a t-shirt, it ain't bannable. (See the famous bernstein crypto case
from the early 90's for a illustration of this).
5) And finally..there are zero new jobs added for native USA'ians (which would now cost
more, given the alternative).
It makes the situation far worse than it is today. There is fewer local coffee shop
selling coffee, fewer rental units getting rented, fewer groceries getting bought, cars
being purchased, etc.
For a easily displaceable and low barrier to entry coding gig, there isn't any easy
answer. H1-B's are actually the best
solution
(or at the very least neutral),
not the problem.
The H1-B visa program is operated so as to wreck the bargaining power of native born young
U.S. workers. Young Americans are increasingly likely to be nonwhite AND from the less valued
(not Asian) subgroups of nonwhite. The damage H1-Bs do to our white Baby Boomers is almost
incidental at this point; they are aging out of the workforce. And given the intense age bigotry
of the IT subculture, they are not a factor within it at all at this point.
H1-B visas lock our striving, capable working class young people out of upward mobility.
Kids who are now graduating from say, San Jose State with skills as good as those of South
Asians don't get jobs that they are qualified for, because they are shut out of entry to the
business. They are disdained in Silicon Valley because the majority of entry level conduits
to employment are now locked up (via social contacts, and "who-you-know" relationships) by
men from the subcontinent.
Your race argument is pernicious and I suspect, promoted in the full the knowledge of this
fact. It is a great shame that we are relying on kooks like Malkin to promote obvious truths,
but the shame belongs to our morally derelict 'liberal' chattering class, not those who listen
to her and her ilk for lack of other sources.
An underappreciated aspect of contracting versus cultivating your own employees is that it hollows
out the organization to the point that it may no longer have competence to perform its mission. Having
an apparent success at contracting out menial tasks, the temptation is to keep going and begin to contract
out core functions. This pleases the accountants but leaves the whole organization dependent on critical
talent that has very little institutional loyalty. When an inevitable technical paradigm shift occurs,
who can you count on to give you objective and constructive advice?
Costs of training and cultivating employees are high, and it is tempting to think that these costs
can be eliminated by using contractors. It is strictly an apparent, short-term gain which will in due
time be revealed as a strategic mistake. Do we have to learn every lesson the hard way?
yes, and when I read that Pfizer farms out research, I also wondered if retention of the outsource
company contract is results-related. could new drug results hinge on a company wanting to keep their
Pfizer contract by telling them what they want to hear?
Agreed. Every time a company offshores jobs or goes through another round of layoffs, it loses
its institutional memory. This is particularly acute in the mainframe IT systems that prop up the
TBTFs (yep, they offshored these too). After a while, nobody understands exactly how these systems
work and can only get to the bottom of them by reading code, which is a pretty flawed way to learn
the business. This has been going on for years and nobody cares.
Centralized bargaining - a.k.a., sector wide labor agreements - is the only strategic answer to contracting
out. Done in continental Europe, French Canada, Argentina, Indonesia.
(Take a vacation from reality with Soma - one gram and I don't give a damn.)
The one word I don't see in your excellent writeup is
loyalty
. Companies, like countries
depend to a great extent on social constraints to keep people committed to the group. You cannot monitor
all people all the time and doing so causes them to turn against you. But companies staffed with contractors
and temps and temps supervising contractors have no loyalty to the company. Ergo no one employee has
any reason to go the extra inch or to turn down the chance to sell out for personal gain should the
opportunity arise.
All that imposes real costs that companies conveniently ignore because they are not always realized
in share price.
I was going to add the same thought, but use the label "goodwill." It is something that appears
on balance sheets in enormous amounts depending on what the accountants think it may represent.
There is a "goodwill bank" in the labor pool of any given company, and when the balance hits zero,
the company will fail, "emigrate" its capital, or go public to the greater fools. Companies are engaged
in a savage race to the bottom that is inherent in corporate structure: executives are now playing
with somebody else's money, and somebody else's life. If corporate liability were suddenly returned
to the days of the partnership, what a change we would see. And those days were not so long ago:
Wall Street remembers the 1960s.
PS What a treat to come here and see informative journalism and commentary instead of the monkey
cage.
My daughter was recruited and interviewed by Genentech and then sent to work for an organization
called PPD. PPD did nothing in this relationship, other than take money from Genentech pocketed about
1/2 of that and then pay her the rest. I really couldn't figure out what the heck the point of this
was, other than some long running strategy to ultimately depress salaries of Genentech chemists.
One of my kids works in a unionized metal foundry (they still exist in the US!). When they need
new workers, they bring several in through a temp agency for several months. If they can cut it and
are acceptable, then they get pulled into the union or into the plant management team. This allows
them to try out several people on a rent-to-own basis, but in the long run they become loyal company
employees with very low turnover.
Contract-to-hire is not new. The problem from an employee perspective is trying to evaluate
when a company is actually serious about hiring if the contractee does a good job, and when it's
just empty promises and they have no intent of making full time job offers at all.
BTW – the Genentech scientists probably get a bunch of benefits like bonuses and stock options,
etc. that are not available to the contract workers. They probably have more protections if they
are terminated or laid off whereas the contract workers would be done that day. The really good contract
workers may get offers to work at the company for the long-run.
Outsourcing is done in the public realm, too; my first job after grad school was with a major housing
authority – except it wasn't for them (despite me having a "housingauthority.org" email address). I
worked for a contractor of the housing authority, who paid us shit and treated us like cattle. I lasted
three months.
One area not discussed in this post is municipal outsourcing. What this means in practice is the
loss of organizational memory . assuming that records are not adequately maintained since the "old-timers"
were still around. But with the loss of human memory banks, no new ones (digital?) have taken their
place. Further, when consultants are hired for a specific project, when they have completed that project,
what they have learned as ancillary knowledge is lost cuz the end-product is all that counts, not the
process.
i.e. Rip up the entire street to find where the pipe is because the old public works director
who was replaced with a bright young woman with a degree before he qualified for his pension, got
even and deleted the maps on the software. :-)
Didn't Yves mention this loss of institutional memory in reference to fianancial services, or
was it banks, and their IT?
Further to government outsourcing:
Back a few years my wife and I worked for a school district on the East coast of Canada. The janitorial
service had been outsourced a few years previously, with the former head janitor becoming the main
contractor, who then hired other cleaning staff to work for him. He/she was already being squeezed
to reduce his rates, leading to work not done or his working from 8AM to midnight to save an after-school
employee. So–lower employment overall, all at minimum wage, including the main contractor.
One district had bucked the province-wide trend by keeping its own cleaning staff. Visiting the
schools in that district those few years later, one could see the result, in vastly superior level
of cleanliness, better co-ordination between admin and teaching staff with cleaners, and much better
relations with students as well.
The staff weren't bosses, the cleaners weren't minions, and the students weren't customers. They
were a team.
I don't think there will be a change in this because it's too profitable for the CEOs to strip mine
the companies assets (knowledgeable employees are an asset) for maximum "shareholder value" (always
replace "shareholder value" with "my compensation"). I suppose this will change when all companies are
stripped to the bone and go under. But we now call these "too big to fail" and prop them up with taxpayer
dollars.
We need to change incentives. These might help:
Make corporations really pay taxes so that it makes sense to invest in the company rather than strip
it.
Don't prop up TBTF companies, let them fail so that many small companies can grow.
Stop all the fraud and corruption. Send corrupt CEOs to jail.
Medicare for All would be a boon for businesses, especially the smaller and mid-sized ones.
Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest, was once asked where he ranked shareholders vs employees. He replied
employees were first (because if the employees are not happy, then the customers are not happy), customers
(they pay the bills), and shareholders (they buy and sell shares in seconds). If the company is successful,
the shareholders will come. We somehow need to get back to these company values. A successful company
starts with the employees.
This is a pretty ugly development in our history. The 'end of employees' is a very accurate description
of what is going on in our gig economy related to a specific legal contradiction. In the U.S., we've
adopted a vast body of labor laws ( many in response to the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression
) that are primarily designed to protect "employees" from exploitation. Buried deep in our tax law is
a second designation for worker called "independent contractor", defined as a self-employed person providing
services to other businesses that is exempt from most labor laws on the principle that a self-employed
person can't exploit themselves. The key here is labor laws protect 'employees' from 'employer' abuses.
Changing a workers classification from employee to ( self-employed ) contractor, will change an employers
classification to customer, and remove the workers legal protections from exploitation. Labor law protections
include minimum wage and hours, workplace safety and health, wrongful dismissal protections, anti-discrimination
protections, employee benefits security, and worker compensation protections. This contradiction is
allowing many companies to sidestep centuries of laws enacted to stabilize and and protect our society.
Some companies push this power imbalance even further by transferring many of the business costs associated
with their revenue to employee contractors ( see Uber ).
Hopefully when there is enough public outcry, regulators and prosecutors will decide to challenge
these interpretations of existing laws and force businesses back in line regardless of their political
influence.
Incidentally, the slippery logic that removes labor law protections by classifying a worker
as self-employed ( both employer and employee ) might also grant businesses protections from their
workers via consumer protection laws against fraud and unfair practices ( when businesses become
customers of their now self-employed former employees ).
As has been stated several times, sometimes government entities are the worst offenders here. Grover
Norquist & Co. insisted on shrinking the size of government. The obedient elected officials and managers
immediately replaced employees with contractors and could claim that they had indeed reduced the size
of government. Unfortunately the budget probably went up since we now have to provide profit for the
rent extracting contract vendors.
A few years ago I was working for a family of local weekly papers, run on a shoestring (of course)
with pathetic salaries for the tiny staff. At one point, they heard about possibly outsourcing design–layout
of modular pages–to cheap labor in Romania. But when they ran the numbers .our in-house designers were
already cheaper than the Romanians!
Second point: At my current magazine I am one of just two full-time staffers on the edit side. Our
copy-editor/proofreader is paid on an hourly basis, and works off-site. Our designer works on a monthly
retainer, off-site. And so on.
That makes the relationship between us and our workers competitive and antagonistic: They try to
do the least amount of work, and we try to pay the least amount of money. So when the publisher wants
to be "innovative" or try something different, the designer resists. He doesn't want to spend any more
time on us than he normally does. So we don't do anything well, we get by with just good enough.
Point 3 – institutional knowledge: One of our key competitive advantages has been/is being eroded
because there are things we haven't done in two years due to turnover. When I arrived and took up one
such project, hugely important to the company's bottom line, no one could tell me how it was done. Everyone
who had been involved in it was gone. We've now spent several months reinventing this particular wheel.
But the publisher doesn't see that as money. He only sees money as money.
BTW – the financial sector is ripe for this. Automation is taking over many positions and people
in active investing is getting slashed big-time. Ironically, places like Vanguard may actually be some
of the last bastions of actual employees.
The problem with these short term contract jobs are immense. Employees that don't have a steady income
have difficulty getting loans for cars or homes. They certainly have less protection too. Our son worked
for SKY TV as a part time employee through a temp agency for 3 years, working 40 hour weeks. But when
an unstable full time employee assaulted him, in front or several witnesses, he was the one fired on
the spot without explanation. He was a non-person. The temp agency didn't want to get involved for fear
of losing their contract. With no union, no rights and little money, there was little he could do. They
knew he couldn't afford a lawyer and involving the police wouldn't get his job back. This goes on all
the time now. 20 years ago would have been unthinkable. I see a revolution coming, in many countries
Given the long evident fact that our corporate owners and their servants in government will not do
a bloody thing to make life better for us, what can we do? As a first step toward any solution, we need
to recognize that nothing is possible within the narrow boundaries of our political and economic system.
What you describe as a first step seems a lot like a claim of inevitable failure. Rather than
expect failure, I recommend as a first step that we try to block a few of Trump's predatory cabinet
nominations. Andrew Puzder, the nominee to head the Labor Department, and Steven Mnuchin, nominated
to be the Secretary of the Treasury, seem to be very relevant to the scope of this article. Also
Tom Price, nominated to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Tell your Senators that you
don't want them to be confirmed. It's easy, although you might need to make a few extra phone calls,
because the Congressional phone lines are often busy these days.
I ask, Why can't banks be fully automated? You wouldn't need CEOs and COOs and CFOs in banks because
IT can do all those jobs automatically. Then we would find out that we only need ONE bank–the central
bank and, voila, the banks no longer can create money by making loans. (I'm sure there is a weak point
in this argument!!!) However, I can see something like this happening in the future if only we separate
investment banking from commercial banking.
Marx saw capitalism as an endless class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
He wasn’t far wrong.
1920s – high inequality, high banker pay, low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons, reckless bankers,
globalisation phase (bourgeoisie in the ascendency)
1970s â€" low inequality, worker and union power, high taxes on the wealthy (proletariat in the ascendency)
(probably more true in the UK than the US)
2000s â€" high inequality, high banker pay, low taxes on the wealthy, robber CEOs, reckless bankers,
globalisation phase (bourgeoisie in the ascendency)
The pendulum swings back and forth and always swings too far in both directions.
If the human race could take a more sensible, big picture view they might see it as a balance between
the supply side (bourgeoisie) and the demand side (proletariat).
The neoliberal era has been one where a total ignorance of debt has held sway.
Redistributive capitalism was removed to be replaced with a capitalism where debt based consumption
has become the norm. without a single mainstream economist realising the problem.
The world is maxing out on debt, this system is set to fail due to a lack of demand. The Bourgoisie
have been in the ascendency and made their usual mistake.
“The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining
to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably
down the path to his own destructionâ€.
Keynes thought income was just as important as profit, income looks after the demand side of the
equation and profit looks after the supply side.
He has the idea of balance.
Just maximising profit â€" The Bourgeoisie looking after their own short term, self interest with
no thought of the longer term.
1) Money at the top is mainly investment capital as those at the top can already meet every need,
want or whim. It is supply side capital.
2) Money at bottom is mainly consumption capital and it will be spent on goods and services. It is
demand side capital.
You need to keep the balance.
Too much capital at the bottom and inflation roars away.
Too much capital at the top and there is no where sensible to invest and the Bourgeoisie indulge
in rampant speculation leading to the inevitable Wall Street Crash, 1929 and 2008.
Today’s negative yield investments?
Too much capital at the top, no one wants it and you have to pay people to take it off your hands.
"You need to keep the balance." The post war era was balance, that was the middle of the pendulum
swing, we have never seen you're next sentence:
"Too much capital at the bottom and inflation roars away." When? Name one instance outside of
extraordinary political situations like weimar germany and zimbabwe where this has occurred?
Inflation is the boogey man that the elite throw around to scare us into submission. They don't
care when its inflation of house prices, they don't care when its inflation of healthcare costs,
education costs, etc. etc. But they damn sure start sweating a lot when its the cost of labor that
goes up. Shocker.
"Gate Gourmet had once been part of British Airways. And passengers blamed the airline."
You can transfer expenses, you can transfer legal and regulatory liability risk, you can transfer
financial risk, but it is virtually impossible to transfer reputational risk. Companies who think they
can do so (or ignore the fact) do so at their own peril.
My d-i-l, a research professional, has survived five down-sizings, assuming an additional work load
each time. The last time she also got a small promotion (well, you'd think they'd give her something
positive after all this). To myself I thought, they're going to wear this woman out till she has nothing
left to give and dump her.
It's worse. The corporation (company is a concept from
my
early working days) just announced
that everyone would have to bid for their projects(jobs). What this means of course is "how much are
you willing to give?" not to mention pitting one employee against another.
I "work" (temp/contract/no benefits) at a large multinational electronics company in cust service
and have seen this first hand. In response to a couple years of dropping profits, they outsourced the
entire department (couple hundred employees) to the Philippines. They cut full time employees, replace
them with temps for half the pay, because people will do it, and we live in desperate times with no
bargaining power.
As someone mentioned, its a negative feedback loop, less demand, less employment, less demand, until
the whole world is greece. We won't make it through another world war, the world is too globalized,
too connected, too advanced technologically. We need a relatively peaceful populist revolution – which
we seem to be seeing the first real signs of – or our species is done for.. and the sad part is I'm
not even exaggerating.
One point you missed is that a company cannot manage, let alone write a contract very well unless
it has sufficient expertise on staff. It is not sufficient to hire a consultant unless that arrangement
is more or less permanent. Too many things can go wrong, as they often do even with competent staff
when projects are complex or innovative.
"... Your analysis is wrong. The wealthy elites backed Jeb! Bush and Rubio. Trump picked up the economic nationalism of Jeff Session, Steve Bannon and talk radio. The rubes voted for Trump in the primary even though the wealthy spent a lot on their candidates. The rubes want to scapegoat both parties (Bill Clinton and the corrupt Republican insiders - drain the swamp). ..."
"... Trump channeled the anger of the rubes. Hillary didn't get the turnout that hope and change Obama got. She flip-flopped on the TPP while Obama spent his remaining months trying to pass it. Now it's dead. ..."
"... The actual solutions will require sacrifice from the rich. Even more important (and difficult); it will require that we abandon the narrative of the rugged individual who "takes care of himself" and "don't need no gobinment". The future belongs to countries that can build up effective systems to educate each individual to the fullest extend of their capabilities (not their wallets) - thereby making sure that critical human resources do not go to waste. The future doesn't belong to the dying empire of the US. ..."
"... Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual GDP growth over his 8 years after the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. ..."
"... This is very true. Even if you want to quibble about whether trade is somewhat more important than Delong says it is. The real problem is the US does not have a functioning workforce policy. ..."
"... And trade is more easily scapegoated- I mean who can argue against technological progress? The overall problem will not be addressed by focusing all attention on job loss due to trade. ..."
"... Excellent comment by jonny bakho. Much better than Delong's I think. ..."
"... But it is also true that scapegoating trade can get you votes, so there is a political problem. ..."
Worker dislocation by factory closings and layoffs is an issue the US does not address very well
for lack of a workforce policy
Dislocations can be caused by offshoring and trade
Dislocations can be caused by technological advance.
We make more goods today with fewer workers; from 30 percent to 8.6 percent
As DeLong points out, 18 of the 21% loss is due to technology.
0.1% is due to NAFTA and trade agreements.
The problem of worker dislocation will never be addressed if all the focus is on the 0.1% and
the 18% is ignored.
The wealthy elites are happy to scapegoat NAFTA because addressing dislocation properly would
require transfer payments. The wealthy always want to avoid paying their fair share so they are
more than happy to blame NAFTA and cheer on the pols who scapegoat trade. The wealthy don't tolerate
pols that propose to truly address the issue in ways that involve transfer payments.
It is easy to drum up anti trade sentiments using xenophobia, racism and nativism. It is more
difficult to get people to be introspective and consider changing what they do
Your analysis is wrong. The wealthy elites backed Jeb! Bush and Rubio. Trump picked up the
economic nationalism of Jeff Session, Steve Bannon and talk radio. The rubes voted for Trump in
the primary even though the wealthy spent a lot on their candidates. The rubes want to scapegoat
both parties (Bill Clinton and the corrupt Republican insiders - drain the swamp).
Dean Baker:
"The 2016 GDP growth brought the average for the eight years of the Obama administration to
1.7 percent."
Trump channeled the anger of the rubes. Hillary didn't get the turnout that hope and change
Obama got. She flip-flopped on the TPP while Obama spent his remaining months trying to pass it.
Now it's dead.
You are absolutely correct. The actual solutions will require sacrifice from the rich. Even
more important (and difficult); it will require that we abandon the narrative of the rugged individual
who "takes care of himself" and "don't need no gobinment". The future belongs to countries that
can build up effective systems to educate each individual to the fullest extend of their capabilities
(not their wallets) - thereby making sure that critical human resources do not go to waste. The
future doesn't belong to the dying empire of the US.
Yes. The wealthy will need to sacrifice to fund these programs. And yes, the idea of every man
for himself (rugged individual) needs to be abandoned.
Unfortunately, racism gets in the way of educating ALL Americans and hurts all poor people,
not just blacks and Hispanics. Abandoning white male patriarchy will require sacrifice on the
part of many.
"It is easy to drum up anti trade sentiments using xenophobia, racism and nativism."
Only in bad times. People want scapegoats.
Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual GDP growth over his 8 years after the largest financial
crisis since the Great Depression.
More people voted for Hillary, but Sanders ran a popular campaign. Trump wont the primary and
electoral college by playing to the uneducated's fears and attacking the elite as corrupt.
Yes he scapegoated trade and offshoring, but he provided an explanation for the stagnating
incomes and shrinking middle class that voters have been experiencing for decades.
"Worker dislocation by factory closings and layoffs is an issue the US does not address
very well for lack of a workforce policy.
Dislocations can be caused by offshoring and trade
Dislocations can be caused by technological advance
We make more goods today with fewer workers; from 30% to 8.6%. As Delong points out 18 of
the 21% loss is due to technology.
.1% is due to Nafta and trade agreements.
The problem of worker dislocation will never be addressed if all the focus is on the 0.1%
and the 18% is ignored."
This is very true. Even if you want to quibble about whether trade is somewhat more important
than Delong says it is. The real problem is the US does not have a functioning workforce policy.
And trade is more easily scapegoated- I mean who can argue against technological progress?
The overall problem will not be addressed by focusing all attention on job loss due to trade.
Excellent comment by jonny bakho. Much better than Delong's I think.
"... we have, in addition to 7.5 million officially unemployed (a number that is closer to 15 million when all the hidden unemployment is accounted for), 23.5 million Americans aged 25-to-54 who reside outside the confines of the labor force. And at a time when job openings are at record highs. ..."
"... Even the most ardent ''supply-sider" would admit that labor input is key to the outlook and this should really be at the top of the agenda - closing the widening and unprecedented gap between job openings and new hiring. There simply is no replacement for excellent education achievement with respect to maximizing labor productivity. ..."
"... So about all those job openings? Do they all pay a living wage ? ..."
"... So about all those job openings? They are FAKE job openings. They basically want to hire someone with $100K/year worth of experience & qualifications for $30K/year. And then when no one applies, the companies whine that they need H1B visa to fill the void. ..."
"... It boggles my mind, the kind of bullshit experienced by an acquaintance who is a Waitress, on top of all the shitty employers and scummy customers, she has to pay taxes on Estimated Tips, by a Percentage of Transactions regardless of whether she actually Received a Tip. ..."
"... The government assumes a tip exists at 8% and the waitress must pay on the assumption or the business owner gets pissed off because he/she will catch shit from the IRS at Tax time. Black people only tip on the 29th of February if it is a full moon, a trick they learned from the cheap Canadian bastards who got the idea from the Asians who also, mostly, do not tip. An establishment owner selling Beer/ Wine/ Liquor is responsible for the customers action after leaving the establishment, if they get in a wreck / DUI, ..."
"... That is just the Bar / Restaurant biz. Mc Donalds and the Fast food scam clan are often getting 50% of an employees wages paid through special programs for hiring recently released Felons, drug rehab grads and recent immigrants to name a few, so you already paid for half that burger and fries before you ordered it and Mc Donald is doing quite nicely, thank you. I could go on into the Construction and Manufacturing realms but life is short. ..."
Some observations on recent negative trends in productivity, employment mismatch, and
labor training and education from the increasingly more bearish David Rosenberg, who
notes that the Trump's proposed policies may end up helping growth on the margins, but
fail to focus on what is really important, making tens of millions of US workers
competitive and qualified for today's jobs market.
From Breakast with Rosie, via
Gluskin Sheff
I don't think we have a productivity problem - in fact, the demise of productivity is
vastly overstated and that is because the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is likely
vastly overstating labor input, and I'm talking here about how hours worked are
estimated.
But the real travesty, and what I think deserves top priority (but I don't see it),
is that
we have, in addition to 7.5 million officially unemployed (a number that
is closer to 15 million when all the hidden unemployment is accounted for), 23.5 million
Americans aged 25-to-54 who reside outside the confines of the labor force.
And
at a time when job openings are at record highs.
The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a
record high
. The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the
skill set is absent is at an unprecedented level - and this was an overriding theme in
the latest edition of the Fed's Beige Book.
The question is what is in the policy playbook to redress this situation?
What we need is a policy playbook that makes education, apprenticeship and training a
major priority - the one plank that I had hoped would be yanked out of Bernie Sanders'
platform.
While deregulation and simplifying the tax code obviously are constructive segments
of the Trump plan, they are not the most important obstacles in the way of growth.
Neither is globalization.
Even the most ardent ''supply-sider" would admit that labor input is key to the
outlook and this should really be at the top of the agenda - closing the widening and
unprecedented gap between job openings and new hiring. There simply is no replacement
for excellent education achievement with respect to maximizing labor productivity.
I see scant attention being paid to this file - su
rely this is more important
than U.S. involvement in Brexit or trying to play a role in breaking up the European
Union, don't you think?
This figure is what terrifies Yellen and Obama. Steve Mnuchin and Trump have both called
the formula Obama changed to estimate the unemployment/employment rates pretty much total
bullshit.
Once the figures are revised back to 2006 we will probably find a steady 9%+ REAL
unemployment rate since 2007, and that tarnishes Janet's bullspray from her mouth and Obama's
precious and fading fast legacy.
Wulfkind -> FredFlintstone
•Jan 21, 2017 4:53 PM
So about all those job openings? Do they all pay a living wage ? That is to say...can they
pay a person enough money to cover all normal living expenses ( not including debt you didn't
need to obtain but including debt like a mortgage or rent )....with enough left over to save ?
Also....will those jobs be linked to inflation so over time your once living wage does not
stagnate and drop below inflation so that you are actually taking a pay cut every year from
then on out ?
My suspicion is no. These fools only count the number of job postings without looking into the
quality of said jobs. And if they are shit jobs they'll just go to wetbacks anyway and thus
not help real Americans.
Thus....the high number of people not in the labor force.
rbg81 -> Wulfkind
•Jan 21, 2017 5:24 PM
So about all those job openings?
They are FAKE job openings. They basically want to hire someone with $100K/year worth of
experience & qualifications for $30K/year. And then when no one applies, the companies whine
that they need H1B visa to fill the void.
Or undocumented who will work 14 hour days for minimum wage (or less) and not complain.
therover -> rejected
•Jan 21, 2017 5:13 PM
So glad I am on the same side of the fence as you. I keep telling people when they ask
where my 17 year old son is going to school or what his SAT scores none of their business and
fuck that path of higher education bullshit where you spend 100K+ on some degree that will
probably get you no where.
That 100K+ that I have saved up is going to build him a woodshop filled with tools so he can
hone his creative skills in wood working or lead to a path toward carpentry, or it's going to
buy him a van filled with plumbing equipment so he can work with his uncle as a plumber.
As part of that path, going to community college for some business courses and striving to
getting first a 2 year associates that if needed, can matriculate to a 4 year degree in
business ( for his OWN BUSINESS). Not spending tons of cash right out of the gate on a 4 year
school. Shit..I know that scenario... been there done that. Plus every parent knows their
child (at least the should) and my guy takes his time with stuff so I know that first year or
so at that 50K plus a year school will be wasted.
Bottom line is he will be getting something other than a worthless degree when he ends up
flipping pancakes at an IHOP or waiting on tables at an Applebees. Not to say they are
meaningless/dead end jobs...they are if you spent 100K+ on a degree and STILL HAVE THAT JOB.
Peak Finance •Jan 21, 2017 4:51 PM
I simply don't believe this:
The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record
high. The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is
absent is at an unprecedented level
I think this is a lie to justify the continuation of immigration and the hateful
damaging H1B program. I remember their bullshit lies from the early 00's , posting want adds
for people with "10 years of Java Experience" when Java had come out like 2 year prior, and
other impossible requests, and then being unable to fill those jobs were allowed to ship in
people from overseas.
Falling Down -> Peak Finance
•Jan 21, 2017 5:00 PM
Correct.
The only real shortages are in certain skilled trades, in certain metros.
i know several people from my parents generation who got jobs in major corporations upon
high school graduation who were hired by the companies for their aptitude and trained into the
skill the comapny needed. a couple were trianed engineers and another a chemist besides pipe
fitter, ironworker and mechanic.
companies don't do that anymore because stockholders won't let them do it. there are some
privately held companies who still do it.
Giant Meteor -> besnook
•Jan 21, 2017 5:27 PM
Companies don't do that anymore because that would step on the toes of the Educational
Industrial Complex gravy train. Professional courtesy is all. Loyalty and human potential is
no longer factored in ... Lets not even get started on the government jerbs ....
Twee Surgeon -> Giant Meteor
•Jan 21, 2017 6:42 PM
A major problem too, is getting past the Human Resources Department in a larger company in
the Productive industries (Machine,Construction,Refinery, etc.)
First you meet the ancient grey goddess with the chains on her eyeglasses and she will direct
you to the Interviewer who will be Jennifer Eye-candy, Kanisha Token-Black or Juan De
Bilingualo, who all have a diploma from a college but know nothing about the industry at hand,
you are more likely to get hired on the Excellence of your new Nike tennis shoes than anything
related to the Skills required for the position.
If you can get past the women in Human Resources and talk to the guy that actually runs the
shop and look each other in the eye and talk about 'Making Stuff', then you might have the
job. That is how that works.
QQQBall -> besnook
•Jan 21, 2017 7:26 PM
besnook. Exactly. not just engineers, but service reps, sales people, etc., that then were
promoted up thru the ranks of the same company. My lady retired from AT&T as a project manager
at like 54 yo.
She was hired after taking a test that only 4 peeps in the room passed. worked her way up -
they had reciprocal/mutually beneficial investments in each other. She is smart and had a
degree from UC here in Kali. Now, no loyalty either way in most cases.
Twee Surgeon -> DrData02
•Jan 21, 2017 6:21 PM
Exactly, people are finding other ways to get by. I'm not sure how many ZH'ers have
experienced the modern non-corporate job market.
Unless you have a .gov job you are pretty much The next disposable android who can be worked
to death and replaced when the bearings are shot or an inconvenience arrives. Employers don't
want to Hire because it's too expensive due to various regulations, taxations and obligations
to the City, State, County and Federal government, all of which are Constantly Expanding and
must pay for the ever increasing pay-roll size and the unfunded liabilities and the pension
plan and the grant for the new skate board park etc, and so on, forever and ever.
It boggles my mind, the kind of bullshit experienced by an acquaintance who is a Waitress, on
top of all the shitty employers and scummy customers, she has to pay taxes on Estimated Tips,
by a Percentage of Transactions regardless of whether she actually Received a Tip.
The
government assumes a tip exists at 8% and the waitress must pay on the assumption or the
business owner gets pissed off because he/she will catch shit from the IRS at Tax time. Black
people only tip on the 29th of February if it is a full moon, a trick they learned from the
cheap Canadian bastards who got the idea from the Asians who also, mostly, do not tip.
An establishment owner selling Beer/ Wine/ Liquor is responsible for the customers action
after leaving the establishment, if they get in a wreck / DUI,
Whatever, and that was all from
Ronald Ray-guns era, the Small Business and Independence messiah. (The Dramm shop Act, I
think, Google has that hidden though.)
That is just the Bar / Restaurant biz. Mc Donalds and the Fast food scam clan are often
getting 50% of an employees wages paid through special programs for hiring recently released
Felons, drug rehab grads and recent immigrants to name a few, so you already paid for half
that burger and fries before you ordered it and Mc Donald is doing quite nicely, thank you.
I could go on into the Construction and Manufacturing realms but life is short.
The Problem
with the USA is the Government, I'm not holding my breath for Trump to make a change, I
remember the song and Dance when Ronny won the White house. Nothing fucking changed for most
people. It just began the Road to Barry Obama and here we are.
Donewithit22
•Jan 21, 2017 5:35 PM
This is only a problem when people start to realize the systems that we have in place are
by nature a ponzi scheme. I partner and I dropped out of the workforce 2011ish. We realized by
the time we paid for health care, which was now mandated, city tax, state tax, fed tax, s/s
tax etc....what was the point of going to work.....
We both have degree and are in our mid 30's.
we sold everything we had bought land and have build a homestead doing most things
ourselves. we do odd jobs for extra cash and we live better , less stress then we used too. we
are going on vacation to Peru in about 3 weeks for 15 days and we often do a few days here or
there just to see the US. We love not being in the labor pool and we are both sorry we didnt
do this sooner.
thisguyoverhere
•Jan 21, 2017 5:38 PM
In the skilled trades there are many former welders, ironworkers, boilermakers and fitters,
over 60 years old, working as consultants. These men (and some women) command high rates, the
respect of their union halls or fellow tradesman because of their body of knowledge and
experience.
Much of that knowledge will not be passed on, will be lost because these experienced 'field
engineers' (the real thing, no bull$hit diploma) are sick of the politics and seeing the
honest labor of skilled workers being siphoned off while some spoiled brat takes a sallary in
'the office'.
I have a degree. I learned more usefull skills in 6 months than 4 years of school.
We have a structural problem within our framework of 'educating' the next generation.
The result, many today have the cultivated tastes, but no capital to purchase the lifestyle.
Son of Captain Nemo
•Jan 21, 2017 5:55 PM
"The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record high.
The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is absent is at
an unprecedented level - and this was an overriding theme in the latest edition of the Fed's
Beige Book."
Because U.S. corporations would rather spend the time and expense seeking the lowest labor
rate to do the job than retraining an existing workforce that has been dormant or obsolete
because of lack of work or "No work" at all...
This includes bending the rules for H1B and related visas... Even if we have a war on terror
and a Department of Homeland Security we've been waging since 2002 which places "very high
standards" on what moves in and out of the Country since 9/11!
Go figure!!!
Duc888
•Jan 21, 2017 8:03 PM
Speaking specifically of those aged 16 to say......30 Largely unemployable. Lord knows I've
tried to employ a dozen or so in the last few years.
Won't put down the gdamned smart phone.
Don't want to get their hands dirty.
Apparently they've spent so much time pushing buttons on a game controller while growing up
they skipped what young guys have done while growing up in the last 75+ years, you know,
taking shit apart, putting shit back together, screwing it up, modifying shit, putting it back
together a second time and generally learning how shit works.
Complete and total lack of knowledge of the use of common hand tools and rudimentary
pneumatic powered tools.
Absolutely no attention span.
Absolutely no common sense.
See know value in actually learning any skills involved in a trade, they want / need
instant gratification.
Absolutely no critical thinking skills, (If I do this...the likely outcome will be
A._______ B._________ or C.________
They have no training in creating some type of mental flow
chart in their head to have at least some basic predictive skills.}
9. They have more excuses for missing work than any ten guys I knew while growing up.
10. most do not have access to reliable transportation to get to the work site / job.
Seems like the feminization has worked wonderfully.
People are Choosing to Work Part-Time, Why Is that So Hard
for Economic Reporters to Understand?
It is really amazing how major news outlets can't seem to
find reporters who understand the most basic things about the
economy. I guess this is evidence of the skills shortage.
Bloomberg takes the hit today in a piece * discussing
areas where the economy is likely to make progress in a Trump
administration and areas where it is not. In a middle "muddle
through" category, we find "Full-Time Work Is Likely to Stay
Elusive for Part-Timers." The story is:
"Trump has highlighted the number of part-time workers in
the U.S. economy, saying 'far too many people' are working in
positions for which they are overqualified and underpaid.
While the proportion of full-time workers in the labor force
remains below its pre-recession high, it's made up most of
the ground lost during the downturn. But it hasn't budged
much in the last two years, even as the job market has gotten
tighter. Some economists point to the gig economy as the
driving force (pun intended) behind part-timers. Others see a
broader shift in the labor market that's left many workers
stuck with shorter hours, lower wages and weaker benefits."
Okay, wrong, wrong, and wrong. In its monthly employment
survey (the Current Population Survey - CPS), the Bureau of
Labor Statistics asks people whether they are working more or
less than 35 hours a week. If they are working less than 35
hours they are classified as part-time. The survey then asks
the people who are working part-time why they are working
part-time. It divides these workers into two categories,
people who work part-time for economic reasons (i.e. they
could not find full-time jobs) and people who work part-time
for non-economic reasons. In other words the second group has
chosen to work part-time.
If we look at the numbers for involuntary part-time
workers, it dropped from 6.8 million in December of 2014 to
5.6 million in December of 2016. That is a drop of 1.2
million, or almost 18 percent. That would not seem to fit the
description of not budging much. Of course Bloomberg may have
been adding in the number of people who chose to work part,
which grew by 1.4 million over this two year period, leaving
little net change in total part-time employment.
Of course there is a world of difference between a
situation where people need full-time jobs, but work
part-time, because that is the only work they can find and a
situation in which people work part-time because they don't
want to spend 40 hours a week on the job. Most of us would
probably consider it a good thing if people who wanted to
spend time with their kids, or did not want to full time for
some other reason, had the option to work part-time. This is
what in fact has been happening and it has been going on for
three years, not two.
Come on Bloomberg folks -- did you ever hear of the
Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare")? As a result of
Obamacare workers are no longer dependent on employers for
health care insurance. This means that many people have opted
to work part rather than full time. This has opened up full
time jobs ** for people who need them, even though it has
left total part-time employment little changed.
In total, the number of people involuntarily working
part-time has fallen by 2.2 million since the ACA has been in
effect, while the number choosing to work part-time has risen
by 2.4 million. The sharpest increase in voluntary part-time
employment has been among young mothers *** and older workers
**** just below Medicare age.
It is really incredible that this shift from involuntary
part-time to voluntary part-time is not more widely known. It
is a very important outcome from the ACA.
My impression here is that in this particular issue Dean
Baker is out of touch with reality.
Question: how many people in this 1.2 million drop because
they retired at 62 forced to take a half of their SS pension,
or left workforce?
Also, can you consider Wal-Mart or Shop Right cashier
working 36 hours for $7.5 an hour and without any benefits
(as he/she can't afford them) fully employed.
Single mothers are probably the most important category to
analyze here.
This is an example of how the libertarian and Republican
conceptions of liberty and freedom are so off the mark.
When people can afford to work part time instead of full time
to do things like raise children, attain higher education or
start companies, that is freedom. When the inaccessibility of
health insurance forces them to work full time when they
would otherwise prefer not, that is not enhanced freedom.
Today Jared Bernstein (see sidebar on right of this blog)
questions Paul Krugman's sudden concern about crowding
out. I agree.
In the first place, conditions have not
changed drastically in the last two months. Krugman's
would have more credibility on this subject had he voiced
similar concerns at any point before the election. I don't
remember him having any problems with Hillary's
infrastructure spending plan for example.
Also, looking at two of my favorite metrics for
underemployment -- Not in Labor Force but Want a Job Now,
and Part Time for Economic reasons -- are each about
1,000,000 above their numbers in the late 1990s and the
2005-06 peaks. Since the jobs situation is clearly
decelerating from its peak two years ago, I do not believe
this 2,000,000 shortfall is ever going to be filled before
the next recession.
In short, I really don't see the basis for a "crowding
out" argument at this time.
If we are below full employment (I think we are in part
for reasons you note) then concerns about crowding out are
indeed premature. But if we were at full employment (again
I have my doubts) then this issue should be part of (not
the end all) policy discussions.
A new study
published by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates the
U.S. holds between 54 million and 68 million "independent
workers," which it defines as "someone who chooses how
much to work and when to work, who can move between jobs
fluidly and who has multiple employers or clients over the
course of the year." It includes individuals working on
short-term contracts and those who rent or sell goods and
services.
"A full-time job with one employer has been considered
the norm for decades, but increasingly, this fails to
capture how a large share of the workforce makes a
living," the report said. "Digital platforms are
transforming independent work, building on the ubiquity of
mobile devices, the enormous pools of workers and
customers they can reach and the ability to harness rich
real-time information to make more efficient matches." ...
To me the "crowding out" argument put forward by Krugman
and conservative economists demonstrates a bias against
the government. They want monetary policy not fiscal
policy to be the means by which investment and employment
levels are managed by the government.
J.W. Mason has
interesting blog post about the Zero Lower Bound.
"In the dominant paradigm, this is a specific technical
problem of getting interest rates below zero. Solve that,
and we are back in the comfortable Walrasian world. But
for those of us on the heterodox side, it is never the
case that the central bank can reliably keep output at
potential - maybe because market interest rates don't
respond to the policy rate, or because output doesn't
respond to interest rates, or because the central bank is
pursuing other objectives, or because there is no
well-defined level of "potential" to begin with. (Or, in
reality, all four.) So what people like Gourinchas and
Rey, or Paul Krugman, present as a special, temporary
state of the economy, we see as the general case.
One way of looking at this is that the ZLB is a device
to allow economists like Krugman and Gourinchas and Rey -
who whatever their scholarly training, are aware of the
concrete reality around them - to make Keynesian arguments
without forfeiting their academic respectability."
What's shocking to me is that, according to 'liberal'
economists like PK and pgl, the goal of monetary and
fiscal policy is not just full employment but rising real
wages.
So far the economy has somehow managed to reach
low unemployment, though nowhere near maximum employment
(the Fed's mandate.) And real wages, except for
supervisory personnel, have yet to show real growth.
Nonetheless PK and pgl want to preempt any move to
maximum employment and rising real wages by advocating
that Trump avoid any fiscal stimulus!!!
Methinks that these 'liberals' are really conservatives
in sheeps clothing...or maybe working in New York has
given them too close an affinity to the Wall Street
worldview.
The common thread between your comment and Peter K's, I
think, is that there is intelligent deficit spending and
then there is counterproductive deficit spending.
It's
pretty clear that significant infrastructure spending,
like the building of canals in the 19th century (because
water transportation is so cheap in terms of energy
needs), doesn't crowd out, because of all of the growth it
produces. On the other hand, if government just gives away
money that will be parked unproductively, that will tend
to crowd out.
The bottom line is that Krugman's concern is premature.
There may be a hidden agenda, of course, that his real
concern is that the GOP wants big deficits in order to
"starve the beast" and attempt to justify cuts in programs
like social insurance.
Exactly. I prefer Bernie's approach: work with Trump if he
wants to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, oppose
him if he simply wants to enrich the wealthy.
Stimulus
that boosts employment and wages is still needed. Opposing
any stimulus now is not appropriate.
I expect enough Democrats will be readily available to
assist Trump. If not, there are parliamentary procedures
that can be used...procedures that Democrats refused to
sully themselves using for the common good.
"if government just gives away money that will be parked
unproductively, that will tend to crowd out."
I guess I
agree with you that government or private investment has
to be judged on the merits of each case.
But just look at the epic housing bubble. It would have
been better if the government had taken that money and
just gave it out to the average citizen to spend.
I think Krugman is basically lobbying for the Fed to
Volckerize any potential positive economic impact of Trump
spending with a big anti-inflationary rate hike, which he
& his party cronies can then blame on crowding out and the
"market" response to excessive government borrowing. They
want a quick hard recession that they can use to win
Congress in 2018. Remember that the orthodox BS about
monetary policy is that the Fed doesn't in any way set,
determine or engineer rates, but just uses
anti-price-stickiness nudges to help the market achieve
the "neutral" equilibrium rate rate it is in some sense
"trying" to get to on its own. So, if the Fed trashes the
economy, they & Krugman will say its hands are clean.
Remember:
1. Krugman is a party hack in the first place;
2. Krugman represents the faction of the party that has
no solid ideas about how to fix what is wrong with our
country and our planet; so they can only succeed
politically if the other side fails worse;
3. Krugman is on record as believing that the US has
suffered something like a coup engineered by a conspiracy
between the FBI and Vladimir Putin. So at this point,
given the politically extreme circumstances he thinks
prevail, there is no reason to think he is beyond making
things up for the cause, as exigencies require.
Of course you are right, Krugman advocates different
economics depending on whether a Democrat or Republican is
in office.
But I am not strongly against the idea of the
Fed raising rates too quickly, despite the morale
shadiness of the idea.
They seem intent on doing it anyway even if Hillary had
won.
Yes ultimately I guess I would be in favor Yellen
"helping" Trump (or low wage workers) as Trump regularly
accused her of doing for Obama during the campaign.
It would improve workers' bargaining power and lives.
But a Republican loss in 2018 would also help.
Hobson's choice. Pick your poison.
More fundamentally, I think Krugman is pushing a
conservative view of economics which happens to line up
with mainstream academic economics.
"More fundamentally, I think Krugman is pushing a
conservative view of economics which happens to line up
with mainstream academic economics."
Yes, this is a real
problem. Krugman has a fundamentally conservative ("New
Keynesian") view of the economy and how it should work.
It's a free enterprise & market economy that generally
just needs some helpful stimulatory nudges from the
government: monetary nudges most of the time; fiscal
nudges when we're in the special circumstances of a
liquidity trap.
The problem is that by laying down all of these
orthodox, conservative markers, our ability to do anything
truly dramatic and socially innovative is damaged over the
long haul.
New Keynesianism was neither Keynesian
nor New Classical, but somewhere in between the two. It
modified the New Classical approach based on rational
expectations and efficient markets by accepting that
prices were sometimes sticky in the short run and markets
sometimes imperfect. Two of the leading figures of New
Keynsianism were Paul Krugman and Gregory Mankiw.
Ultimately, the differences between the New Classicals
and the New Keynsianians are relatively minor. Both accept
the long-run optimizing efficiency of a liberal capitalist
economy, but disagree only over how much government and
central bank gear-greasing is needed.
Krugman is not really an old-fashioned Keynesianism. He
was one of the creators of "New Keynesiansim". Also read
his introduction to Keynes's General Theory. He pours cold
water on the really important policy suggestions at the
end of the book in Book VI, which he mistakenly suggests
Keynes's did not seriously intend.
Even more
old-fashioned "Hicksian" Old Keynesianism is just one
version of conventional liberal macro, which is primarily
a tool for the countercyclical stabilization of our
day-to-day capitalist economy. That's not enough to fix
what is wrong with our planet or or domestic society, both
of which are facing deeper, more structural economic
crises that are very grave. We're going to have to be much
more radical and ambitious.
"One implication Paul
draws from these dynamics is that Republicans, motivated
not by improving the economy but by bashing Obama and the
D's, inveighed against deficits when we needed them and
are about to shift to not caring about them when deficits
– again, according to the model – could actually do some
harm.
But how reliable is this crowd-out hypothesis? It's
actually pretty hard to find a correlation between larger
budget deficits and higher interest rates in the data.
...
So is Paul making a mistake to continue to depend on
the model that has heretofore served him-and anyone else
willing to listen-so well? My guess is that deficit
crowd-out is not likely to be a big problem, as in posing
a measurable threat to growth, anytime soon, even if
deficits, which are headed up anyway according to CBO,
were to rise more than expected.
The global supply of loanable funds is robust and, in
recent years, rising rates have drawn in more capital
(pushing out the LM curve). Larger firms have enjoyed many
years of profitability without a ton of investment so they
could use retained earnings (the fact of unimpressive
investment at very low rates presents another challenge to
this broad model). And most importantly, while we're
surely closer to full employment, there are still a lot of
prime-age workers who could be drawn in to the job market
if demand really did accelerate.
(This, by the way, is the only part of Paul's rap today
that I found a bit confusing. He's a strong advocate of
the secular stagnation hypothesis, wherein secular forces
suppress demand and hold rates down, even in mature
recoveries. His prediction today seems at odds with that
view.)"
Bernstein isn't that radical. He was chief economist
for Joe Biden in the White House.
I think the epic housing bubble, financial crisis and
slow recovery are causing to people to push back against
the New Keynesian compromise and search for a better
economics, which just may be an older type of economics.
This is incorrect. Full Time employment has accelerated
after a slowdown earlier this year while part time
employment yry was noticeably lower in the 4th quarter.
That created the illusion of slowdown in NFP. The U-6 was
quite quite different.
This will probably reverse in the first half of 2017 as
yry full time employment growth goes ahead of 2016
boosting overhead NFP and continuing to lower U-6 down to
8.7-8% by June.
You are undermining your argument with those graphs. The
point is, NFP will likely reaccelerate unless there is
another slowdown. Most likely that gap will close in the
coming year.
I think need to let the inventory slump go. It was a
mistake and it being recorrected.
New Deal democrat -> John San Vant...
, -1
I hope I am wrong and you are right.
But ... If you
check out YoY growth in payrolls, it tends to be very
regular and in-noisy, peaking in roughly mid-cycle. The
only exceptions have been where we managed to avoid a
recession during a Fed tightening cycle.
YoY employment peaked at the end of 2014, and has been
decelerating ever since. So unfortunately I disagree with
you.
It seems the lightning speed spread of contingent labor in
the 2010s should be evidence of this. Contingent labor as
in being "on call" for positions such as retail clerk. A person
who must be available for uncertain hours loses the opportunity
to find a second job. The employer demanding contingent labor
is essentially demanding uncompensated work hours.
In any event, the practice seems to have become near universal
by a couple years ago, suggesting a level of employer market
power far in excess of what one would think by looking at
numbers like the official unemployment rate. It may also suggest
that labor market monopsony may exist at quite small employer
size.
What you describe is in general not due to monopsony. There
is still a substantial number of independent retail and other
companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions
and job function designs.
It is just regular supply and
demand dynamics, in combination with social feedback (actors
observing what "peers" are getting away with and trying the
same, and after a while it works its ways into a new normal).
In corporate lingo it is known as "best practices" - don't
innovate process, just copy what has worked elsewhere.
retail and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating
"
Although they have an app for coordinating plus incentive
to coordinate, they fully understand that by the time they
begin coordinating the game is over. The game for brick and
mortar retail is now hanging by a tread.
16% of retail is now intertube orders being shipped out
by USPS, Fedex, Amazon airship drone & UPS. For the next 2
years the 16% will double each year then slowly expand toward
the 99% asymptote. Sure!
When you ski at Aspen you will see old-time-y shops for
retail, shops that only the wealthy will use for more than
window-shop. Plenty time for best practices but
cm,
"companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions
and job function designs."
That happens by default.
Wall-Mart dominates retail (5K stores I think out of over
11,593 stores and clubs in 28 countries) and it is a very
cruel company. Other companies copy Wall-Mart practices.
They have no "social conscience" at all and try to drive
their labor as hard as possible paying as little as possible.
In other words, they can be viewed as a corporate psychopath.
It seems the lightning speed spread of contingent labor in
the 2010s should be evidence of this. Contingent labor as
in being "on call" for positions such as retail clerk. A
person who must be available for uncertain hours loses the
opportunity to find a second job. The employer demanding
contingent labor is essentially demanding uncompensated
work hours.
In any event, the practice seems to have become near
universal by a couple years ago, suggesting a level of
employer market power far in excess of what one would
think by looking at numbers like the official unemployment
rate. It may also suggest that labor market monopsony may
exist at quite small employer size.
What you describe is in general not due to monopsony.
There is still a substantial number of independent retail
and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating
their actions and job function designs.
It is just
regular supply and demand dynamics, in combination with
social feedback (actors observing what "peers" are getting
away with and trying the same, and after a while it works
its ways into a new normal).
In corporate lingo it is known as "best practices" -
don't innovate process, just copy what has worked
elsewhere.
retail and other companies that are not (explicitly)
coordinating
"
Although they have an app for coordinating plus
incentive to coordinate, they fully understand that by the
time they begin coordinating the game is over. The game
for brick and mortar retail is now hanging by a tread.
16% of retail is now intertube orders being shipped out
by USPS, Fedex, Amazon airship drone & UPS. For the next 2
years the 16% will double each year then slowly expand
toward the 99% asymptote. Sure!
When you ski at Aspen you will see old-time-y shops for
retail, shops that only the wealthy will use for more than
window-shop. Plenty time for best practices but
cm,
"companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their
actions and job function designs."
That happens by
default.
Wall-Mart dominates retail (5K stores I think out of
over 11,593 stores and clubs in 28 countries) and it is a
very cruel company. Other companies copy Wall-Mart
practices.
They have no "social conscience" at all and try to
drive their labor as hard as possible paying as little as
possible. In other words, they can be viewed as a
corporate psychopath.
Fred C. Dobbs :
As observed, Dems don't like deficits
when GOPsters do them, and the GOP doesn't like them unless they do them.
PK: 'And meanwhile I
and other Keynesians are getting mail accusing us of being the hypocrites: "You were for deficits
when Obama was in, now they're bad!"
But as I just said, the situation has changed.' ...
As even I have noted, deficits are *useful* when employment is down and infrastructure needs building.
We haven't done enough of that lately, for sure.
It may not be overwhelming in its effect, but he did DO something, and had an effect, made
an example.
Gee, what a terrible thing to do.
What the Wall Street Dems have done is feel the average worker's pain, hand out some questionably
progressive programs like the Heritage Foundation's ACA, and explain why it was all necessary
in the name of free trade and globalization.
>" Remember when the "Wall Street
Dems" saved the ENTIRE US-branded auto manufacturing industry?"
Did not they save their friends
investment portfolios (and some saved their own). Collapse of auto sector means plunge of S&P500,
because of interconnection with other sectors. the lowest point of S&P 500 during this period
was around 670. I think they have no other options.
"... On Thursday, at a rough estimate, 75,000 Americans were laid off or fired by their employers. Some of those workers will find good new jobs, but many will end up earning less, and some will remain unemployed for months or years. ..."
"... In an average month, there are 1.5 million "involuntary" job separations (as opposed to voluntary quits), or 75,000 per working day. ..."
"... Krugman refuses to admit the possibility that Trump may actually have shifted the cost-benefit of moving jobs abroad. Now corporations will have to weigh the cost of being condemned in the court of public opinion for moving jobs abroad...negative publicity that they can ill afford. ..."
The Age of Fake Policy, by Paul Krugman, NY Times
:
On
Thursday, at a rough estimate, 75,000 Americans were laid off or
fired by their employers. Some of those workers will find good new
jobs, but many will end up earning less, and some will remain
unemployed for months or years.
If that sounds terrible to you..., I'm just assuming that Thursday
was a normal day in the job market. ...
In an average month,
there are
1.5 million "involuntary" job separations
(as opposed to
voluntary quits), or 75,000 per working day.
Hence my number.
...
assuming that Thursday was a normal day in the job market.
... In an average month, there are 1.5 million
"involuntary" job separations (as opposed to voluntary
quits), or 75,000 per
"
Bless your fat bones pK!
At last you have saved the day!
Tell me something! How many of the 75,000 were fired
because their employer figured he could stay in business
longer if he didn't have to raise their wages by virtue of
the *minimum wage regulation*?
How many of such lost jobs could have been saved had
our governmental gals and guys opted for maximum wage
regulation instead? For example a maximum wage regulation
that would have cut your fat salary in half to reduce the
inequality in this fair city? A maximum wage regulation
would require less overhead in light of the fewer wage
earners at the top of the heap but generate more of wage
dispersion since there is more fat to cut at the apex of
the pyramid than fat to gain at entry level salaries.
Can't you just see it now? pK and his wealthy
colleagues staging a violent demonstration? An objection
from the mob? pK heaving industrial strength cherry bombs
at innocent constables?
Just in case you are an honest broker and just not
actually aware of the policy preference differences
between Republicans and Democrats (and between someone
like Kudlow and someone like Krugman) - one of these key
policy difference is that Democrats have a policy platform
to raise, rather than lower, the top marginal rate (the
amount of money that triggers the highest tax rate on all
dollars earned after reaching that point). A higher
marginal rate, usually any rate that exceeds 70%, is in
practice a maximum wage.
Also - the minimum wage is really low in historic
value. It isn't likely to be what causes job loss.
JohnH :
, -1
Krugman refuses to admit the possibility that Trump
may actually have shifted the cost-benefit of moving jobs
abroad. Now corporations will have to weigh the cost of
being condemned in the court of public opinion for moving
jobs abroad...negative publicity that they can ill afford.
By contrast, Obama had eight years to use the bully
pulpit...but could never figure out what it was...
Now if Krugman and Democrats only had a plan for saving
jobs. Sadly, they can muster nothing more than a 'just
suck it up,' because the jobs are gone for good...
ilsm -> JohnH...
, -1
jumped shark, a lot of folks took a few days off from
embarrassing themselves after the crooked neocon was
beaten.
Where is Democrats' War on Climate Change? Where is
Krugman's?
[Of course, pgl, the 'progressive liberal' mocks job
creation potential of solar power...just like Trump.]
Instead of bashing Trump 24/7, Democrats and Krugman
would be better served promoting a green, high employment
future.
anne -> pgl...
, -1
Important point.
Knowing how large infrastructure
spending will be relative to the size of an economy is
important. Chinese planners will be spending $860 billion
between 2017 and 2020 on alternative energy and high-speed
rail projects or $360 and $500 billion respectively.
The $860 billion comes to $215 billion yearly or 2.6%
of current Gross Domestic Product taken in simple dollar
terms.
Fake News on Germany's Unemployment Rate at the New
York Times
Alright, that is not entirely fair, but when the NYT
told readers * that Germany's unemployment rate is 6.0
percent it seriously misled readers. The issue is that
this figure refers to Germany's unemployment rate as
calculated by Germany's government. This measure counts
workers who are employed part-time, but want full-time
jobs, as being unemployed. By contrast, the standard
measure of the unemployment rate in the United States
counts these workers as being employed.
This would be reasonable if the German government
measure was the only one available, but it isn't. The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
calculates a harmonized unemployment rate that is
essentially the same as the unemployment rate generally
used for the United States. By this measure ** Germany's
unemployment rate is just 4.0 percent.
The NYT can be partially forgiven since this was a
Reuters story that it made available on its web site. (I
don't know if it ran in the print edition.) Still, it
would not be hard to add a sentence either explaining the
difference or alternatively including the OECD measure.
In this same vein, and it's a new year, let me also
harp on the practice of printing other country's growth
rates as quarterly figures. While the rate of GDP growth
is always expressed as an annual rate in the United
States, most other countries express their growth as a
quarterly rate. Typically this raises the U.S. growth rate
by a factor of four. For example, a 0.5 percent quarterly
growth rate translates into a 2.0 percent annual rate. (To
be precise, the growth rate should be taken to the fourth
power. For low growth rates this will typically be the
same as multiplying by four.)
Anyhow, articles often appear in the NYT and elsewhere
that just print the growth rate as a quarterly rate,
frequently without even pointing out that it is a
quarterly rate. This gives readers an inaccurate
impression of the growth rate in other countries.
It really should not be too much to expect a newspaper
to convert the growth rates in annualized rates. After
all, the reporters are more likely to have the time to do
this than the readers. And, this is supposed to be about
providing information to readers, right?
Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini,
a large IT outsourcing firm
Notable quotes:
"... Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements , and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs . ..."
"... Foreign workers are willing to do a job at a lower salary in most if not all cases b/c the cost of living in their respective countries is a fraction of ours. ..."
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday December 25, 2016 @05:05PM from the Bob-Cratchit-vs-Scrooge dept.
ComputerWorld reports:
In early December, Carnival Corp.
told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large
IT outsourcing firm. The employees had a choice: Either agree to take a job with the contractor or
leave without severance. The employees had until the week before Christmas to make a decision about
their future with the cruise line.
By agreeing to a job with Paris-based Capgemini, employees are guaranteed employment for six
months, said Roger Frizzell, a Carnival spokesman.
"Our expectation is that many will continue to work on our account or placed into other open
positions within Capgemini" that go well beyond the six-month period, he said in an email.
Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities"
just meant training their own replacements , and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot
reader dcblogs . "After receiving
his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer.
It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's
CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services
to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely
hope that you can fulfill these terms."
Foreign workers are willing to do a job at a lower salary in most if not all cases b/c
the cost of living in their respective countries is a fraction of ours.
I would be willing to do my job at a fraction of what I am paid currently should that (that
being how expensive it is to live here) change. It is equally infuriating to me when American
companies use loopholes in our ridiculously complicated tax code to shelter revenues in foreign
tax shelters to avoid paying taxes while at the same time benefiting from our infrastructure,
emergency services, military, etc..
Its assholes like you that always spout off about free market this or that, about some companies
fiduciary responsibilities to it's shareholders blah blah blah... as justification for shitty
behavior.
It is equally infuriating to me when American companies use loopholes in our ridiculously
complicated tax code to shelter revenues in foreign tax shelters to avoid paying taxes
So who are you infuriated at? The companies that take advantage of those loopholes, or the
politicians that put them there? Fury doesn't help unless it is properly directed. Does your fury
influence who you vote for?
... while at the same time benefiting from our infrastructure, emergency services, military,
etc.
No. Taxes are only sheltered on income generated overseas, using overseas infrastructure, emergency
services, etc. I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product
made in China and sold in France.
I suppose it's related to the idea that intellectual property "rights" granted by a country
of origin should still have the same benefits and drawbacks when transferred to another country.
Or at the very least should be treated as an export at such time a base of operations moves out
of country.
Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written in the
US, using US infrastructure, etc . And the company is making the bogus claim that their
Irish subsidiary owns the rights to that software. It's a scam - not a loophole.
They are the same thing. The only way to ensure that there are no tax dodges out there is to
simplify the tax code, and eliminate the words: "except", "but", "excluding", "omitting", "minus",
"exempt", "without", and any other words to those same effects.
Americans are too stupid to ever vote for a poltiician that states they will raise taxes. This
means that either politicians lie, or they actively undermine the tax base. Both of those situations
are bad for the majority of americans, but they vote for the same scumbags over and over, and
will soundly reject any politician who openly advocates tax increases. The result is a race to
the bottom. Welcome to reaping what you sow, brought to you by Democracy(tm).
Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written
in the US, using US infrastructure, etc .
That makes no sense. Plenty of non-American companies develop software in America. Yet only
if they are incorporated in America do they pay income tax on their overseas earnings, and it
is irrelevant where their engineering and development was done.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with "using infrastructure". It is just an extraterritorial
money grab that is almost certainly counterproductive since it incentivizes American companies
to invest and create jobs overseas.
Yes, taxes are based on profits. So Google, for instance, makes a bunch of money in the US.
Their Irish branch then charges about that much for "consulting" leaving the American part with
little to no profits to tax.
"I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product made in
China and sold in France."
Because the manufacturing and sales are controlled by a US based company, as is the profit
benefit which results. If a US entity, which receives the benefits of US law, makes a profit by
any means, why should it not be taxed by the US?
"... In Bristol County, which includes Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton, manufacturing employed nearly a quarter of the workforce in 2000; now it provides jobs for only one in 10 workers. ..."
"... Most of the manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 are unlikely to return, economists said. Automation has made manufacturing much more specialized, requiring more education and fewer workers, leaving parts of the country struggling to figure out how to reinvent their economies. ..."
"... "We will probably never have as many manufacturing jobs as we had in 1960," Dunn said. "The question is how do we train workers and provide them opportunities to feel productive. What's clear from the election is an increasing number of people don't have those opportunities or don't feel that those opportunities will be available." ..."
"... Characteristics of people dying by suicide after job loss, financial difficulties and other economic stressors during a period of recession (2010–2011): A review of coroners׳ records ..."
FALL RIVER - In this struggling industrial city, changes in trade policy are being measured
not only in jobs lost, but also in lives lost - to suicide.
The jobs went first, the result of trade deals that sent them overseas. Once-humming factories
that dressed office workers and soldiers, and made goods to furnish their homes, stand abandoned,
overtaken by weeds and graffiti.
And now there is research on how the US job exodus parallels an increase in suicides. A one percentage
point increase in unemployment correlated with an 11 percent increase in suicides, according to
Peter Schott, a Yale University economist who coauthored the report with Justin Pierce, a researcher
at the Federal Reserve Board.
The research doesn't prove a definitive link between lost jobs and suicide; it simply notes
that as jobs left, suicides rose. Workers who lost their jobs may have been pushed over the edge
and turned to suicide or drug addiction, lacking financial resources or community connections
to get help, the authors suggest.
The research contributes to a growing body of work that shows the dark side of global trade:
the dislocation, anger, and despair in some parts of the country that came with the United States'
easing of trade with China in 2000. The impact of job losses was greatest in places such as Fall
River and other cities in Bristol County, along with rural manufacturing counties in New Hampshire
and Maine, vast stretches of the South, and portions of the Rust Belt.
"There are winners and losers in trade," Schott said. "If you go to these communities, you can
see the disruptions."
The unemployment rate in Fall River remains persistently high and at 5.5 percent in September
was a good two points above the Massachusetts average. Nearly one in three households gets some
sort of public assistance.
Opposition to global trade policies became a rallying cry in Donald Trump's campaign, propelling
him into the White House with strategic wins in the industrial Midwest and the South. Trump has
threatened to impose tariffs on Chinese goods and has bashed recent US trade pacts. ...
... Previous trade deals, including the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and
Mexico, chipped away at US manufacturing towns. But economists say the decision to normalize relations
with China was far more disruptive. Some economists have estimated the United States may have
lost at least 1 million manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2007 due to freer trade with China.
In Bristol County, which includes Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton, manufacturing employed
nearly a quarter of the workforce in 2000; now it provides jobs for only one in 10 workers.
Most of the manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 are unlikely to return, economists said.
Automation has made manufacturing much more specialized, requiring more education and fewer workers,
leaving parts of the country struggling to figure out how to reinvent their economies.
"We will probably never have as many manufacturing jobs as we had in 1960," Dunn said.
"The question is how do we train workers and provide them opportunities to feel productive. What's
clear from the election is an increasing number of people don't have those opportunities or don't
feel that those opportunities will be available."
Officials in Fall River and Bristol County said they are trying to provide appropriate training,
including computer programming, a prerequisite for many manufacturing jobs.
They also point out there have been recent victories.
Amazon.com opened a distribution warehouse in Fall River and has been hiring in recent
months to fill 500 jobs.
Companies are eyeing Taunton for its cheaper land, access to highways, and state tax breaks.
Norwood-based Martignetti Cos., among the state's largest wine and spirits distributors,
last year agreed to move its headquarters to a Taunton industrial park.
Mayor Tom Hoye said Taunton has also been more active in recent years, holding community meetings
and expanding social services for residents facing distress and drug addiction.
Despite the hits the city and its residents have taken, there is reason to be optimistic about
the future, he said.
Jobs are returning, and the county's suicide rate dropped from 13 per 100,000 people in 2014
to 12 per 100,000 in 2015.
"We're reinventing ourselves," Hoye said on a recent morning as he sat in an old elementary
school classroom that has served as the temporary mayor's office for several years.
"It's tough to lift yourself out of the hole sometimes. But we're much better off than we were
10 years ago."
'The research doesn't prove a definitive
link between lost jobs and suicide; it
simply notes that as jobs left,
suicides rose.'
Pierce, Justin R., and Peter K. Schott (2016). "Trade Liberalization and Mortality:
Evidence from U.S. Counties," Finance and Economics Discussion Series
2016-094. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Characteristics of people dying by suicide after job loss, financial difficulties and other
economic stressors during a period of recession (2010–2011): A review of coroners׳ records
Caroline Coope, et al
Journal of Affective Disorders
Volume 183, 1 - September 2015
"... I would say both parties are for the rich and both do their best to distract their respective base with talk of abortion or race, while neither would like these red meat distractions disappear by being in any solved. ..."
"... Why do they like these particular distractions? Because the rich don't care about either. ..."
"... Trump broke the mold by talking about jobs in a meaningful way immigration and exporting factories both boost unemployment, suppressing wages while boosting profits; these topics have been forbidden since Ross Perot spoke of millions of jobs going south on account of Nafta, exactly what happened. ..."
"... 8mm official unemployment. 16mm reduced participation since 2005 in 25-54 age group. ..."
"... 24mm total, not counting part timers that want full time and 10mm fewer voted for dems in 2016 than 2008. ..."
"... Exactly the same number that voted for Romney voted for trump, so Hillary lost obamas third term not because of a wave of trump racists but because there was somehow dissatisfaction among former dem voters regarding the great jobs program, low cost healthcare, and prosecution of bankers and other elites that drove the economy off the cliff. Granted, nominating the second most unpopular person in America might not guarantee success ..."
Really? When did they do something that benefitted the poor?
I would say both parties are for the rich and both do their best to distract their respective
base with talk of abortion or race, while neither would like these red meat distractions disappear
by being in any solved.
Why do they like these particular distractions? Because the rich don't care about either.
Trump broke the mold by talking about jobs in a meaningful way immigration and exporting factories
both boost unemployment, suppressing wages while boosting profits; these topics have been forbidden
since Ross Perot spoke of millions of jobs going south on account of Nafta, exactly what happened.
8mm official unemployment. 16mm reduced participation since 2005 in 25-54 age group.
24mm total, not counting part timers that want full time and 10mm fewer voted for dems in 2016
than 2008.
Exactly the same number that voted for Romney voted for trump, so Hillary lost obamas
third term not because of a wave of trump racists but because there was somehow dissatisfaction
among former dem voters regarding the great jobs program, low cost healthcare, and prosecution
of bankers and other elites that drove the economy off the cliff. Granted, nominating the second
most unpopular person in America might not guarantee success
I mis spoke.
Nominating her had risks, but it assured Bernie would not be president, and Bernie was a far greater
risk to bankers and the other dem paymasters than trump. Remember, for them it was existential,
bernie would have jailed bankers. Trump is one of the oligarchs.
With her nom bankers let out a sigh of relief and could thankfully murmur, 'mission accomplished!'
If Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, and he had been "Bobby Kennedy'd", people besides
the conspiracy enthusiasts would have started to notice a pattern. Instead, there are millions
of people who actually believe that Sanders lost the primaries to Clinton fair and square. Some
of us know better. . . .
As for patterns, Trump's nominations for cabinet level offices are showing a pattern: billionaires,
hecto-millionaires, overt vassals of the ultra-rich, and at least one (alleged) criminal: Ryan
Zinke.
True. Because of estate recovery, I am doing without medical "insurance" of any kind. As I
tell Phyllis, if I get anything serious, just put me in my ragged old canvas chair in the back
yard and keep the beer coming until I stop complaining.
This entire Medicade story is curious. I had thought that any self respecting oligarchy would
want reasonably powerful clients to buttress the oligarch's power and influence. Instead, the
Medicade Oligarchy buys into a "power base" of the poor and disenfranchised. The funds for this
complex relationship are supplied, as best as I can discern, by the central government. What will
the Medicade Oligarchs do when the "X" Oligarchs cut off or even just restrict the flow of funds
from the central government?
Not just estate recovery. Loading Medicaid with more claimants, particularly poor, ethnic minority
claimants, was a great way to stress it's gonig to need a neo-liberal cure, if the neo-cons don't
use the opportunity Obama gave them to out right kill it. Medicaid isn't Medicare, and the retired
folks know it. They, the retires, would kill it in a second if they could get an extra $100 per
annum in free drugs.
I'm not too sure about the "Retired" "Poor" divide anymore. The two groups are converging and
merging. Any animus experienced here would be the result of restriction of total benefits available.
In other words, an artificially engineered conflict.
Once the "old folks" realize that they, as a class, are the poor, all bets will be off.
Nor is Medicare Medicare, in the sense of being a fully public program. Medicare Advantage,
Medicare supplemental insurance, and prescription drug insurance are all privatized.
Yes, I had a problem with that phrase, as well; especially as older people (read "retired")
are known to have the highest percentage of actual voters. Assuming that the 90% is an overstatement,
I don't believe it negates the point that all ages and all races can find common ground on certain
issues–Medicare for All being one of those issues. Seniors would definitely get behind an improved
Medicare, just as students, unemployed, working poor, and others would support such a sensible
universal health care program.
They old though – retired folks love them some voting. Work or have worked for wages, or had
vital domestic labor supported by a wage earning family member would surely get us over 90 IMO.
(sorry for quibbling Lambert. I think we all get the point. Thanks for the lovely essay)
In my opinion, probably not. The government's 20th century
"growth as a factory" underestimates service sector growth
and our continued share shrink in 20th century industrial
production means our "potential" growth is by this factory
methiod, in decline. If we grow 3% it is a gaudy number by
the government's own statistical backwardness.
To regenerate American factory growth is not possible
right now under a market system. I mean, it simply isn't.
If we tried, we would crater industrial growth as well
with consumption cuts.
likbez -> AngloSaxon...
, -1
Growth of the service sector is also under attack due to
increasing "robotization", replacing salaried workers with
"perma-temps" and underpaid contractors (Uber) as well as
offshoring of help desk and such.
"... Excellent critique. Establishment Democrats are tone-deaf right now; the state of denial they live in is stunning. I'd like to think they can learn after the shock of defeat is over, but identity politics for non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual is what the Democratic party is about today and has been the last decade or so. ..."
"... That's the effect of incessant Dem propaganda pitting races and sexes against each other. ..."
"... And Democrats' labeling of every Republican president/candidate as a Nazi - including Trump - is desensitizing the public to the real danger created by discriminatory policies that punish [white] children and young adults, particularly boys. ..."
"... So, to make up for the alleged screw job that women and minorities have supposedly received, the plan will be screwing white/hetro/males for the forseeable future. My former employer is doing this very plan, as we speak. Passed over 100 plus males, who have been turning wrenches on airplanes for years, and installed a female shop manager who doesn't know jack-$##t about fixing airplanes. No experience, no certificate......but she has a management degree. But I guess you don't know how to do the job to manage it. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders was that standard bearer, but Krugman and the Neoliberal establishment Democrats (ie. Super Delegates) decided that they wanted to coronate Clinton. ..."
"... Evolution of political parties happens organically, through evolution (punctuated equilibrium - like species and technology - parties have periods of stability with some sudden jumps in differentiation). ..."
"... If Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (highly likely), it will be the best thing to happen to Republicans since Lincoln. They will lose even more seats. ..."
"... The Coastal Pelosi/Schumer wing is still in power, and it will take decimation at the ballot box to change the party. The same way the "Tea Party" revolution decimated the Republicans and led to Trump. Natural selection at work. ..."
"... The central fact of the election is that Hillary has always been extraordinarily unlikable, and it turned out that she was Nixonianly corrupt ..."
"... I'm from Dallas. Three of my closest friends growing up (and to this day), as well as my brother in law, are hispanic. They, and their families, all vote Republican, even for Trump. Generally speaking, the longer hispanics are in the US, the more likely they tend to vote Republican. ..."
"... The Democratic Establishment and their acolytes are caught in a credibility trap. ..."
"... I also think many Trump voters know they are voting against their own economic interest. The New York Times interviewed a number who acknowledge that they rely on insurance subsidies from Obamacare and that Trump has vowed to repeal it. I know one such person myself. She doesn't know what she will do if Obamacare is repealed but is quite happy with her vote. ..."
"... Krugman won his Nobel for arcane economic theory. So it isn't terribly surprising that he spectacularly fails whenever he applies his brain to anything remotely dealing with mainstream thought. He is the poster boy for condescending, smarter by half, elite liberals. In other words, he is an over educated, political hack who has yet to learn to keep his overtly bias opinions to himself. ..."
"... Funny how there's all this concern for the people whose jobs and security and money have vanished, leaving them at the mercy of faceless banks and turning to drugs and crime. Sad. Well, let's bash some more on those lazy, shiftless urban poors who lack moral strength and good, Protestant work ethic, shall we? ..."
"... Clinton slammed half the Trump supporters as deplorables, not half the public. She was correct; about half of them are various sorts of supremacists. The other half (she said this, too) made common cause with the deplorables for economic reasons even though it was a devil's bargain. ..."
"... I have never commented here but I will now because of the number of absurd statements. I happen to work with black and Hispanic youth and have also worked with undocumented immigrants. To pretend that trump and the Republican Party has their interest in mind is completely absurd. As for the white working class, please tell me what programs either trump or the republican have put forward to benefit them? I have lost a lot of respect for Duy ..."
"... The keys of the election were race, immigration and trade. Trump won on these points. What dems can do is to de-emphasize multiculturalism, racial equality, political correctness etc. Instead, emphasize economic equality and security, for all working class. ..."
"... Krugman more or less blames media, FBI, Russia entirely for Hillary's loss, which I think is wrong. As Tim said, Dems have long ceased to be the party of the working class, at least in public opinion, for legitimate reasons. ..."
"... All Mr. Krugman and the Democratic establishment need to do is to listen, with open ears and mind, to what Thomas Frank has been saying, and they will know where they went wrong and most likely what to do about it, if they can release themselves from their fatal embrace with Big Money covered up by identity politics. ..."
"... Pretty sad commentary by neoliberal left screaming at neoliberal right and vice versa. ..."
"... The neoliberals with their multi-culti/love them all front men have had it good for a while, now there's a reaction. Deal with it. ..."
Excellent critique. Establishment Democrats are tone-deaf right now; the state of denial they
live in is stunning. I'd like to think they can learn after the shock of defeat is over, but identity
politics for non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual is what the Democratic party is about today
and has been the last decade or so.
The only way Dems can make any headway by the midterms is if Trump really screws up,
which is a tall order even for him. He will pick the low-hanging fruit (e.g., tax reform, Obamacare
reform, etc), the economy will continue to recover (which will be attributed to Trump), and Dems
will lose even more seats in Congress. And why? Because they refuse to recognize that whites from
the middle-class and below are just as disadvantaged as minorities from the same social class.
If white privilege exists at all (its about as silly as the "Jews control the banks and media"
conspiracy theories), it exists for the upper classes. Poor whites need help too. And young men
in/out of college today are being displaced by women - not because the women have superior academic
qualification, but because they are women. I've seen it multiple times firsthand in some of the
country's largest companies and universities (as a lawyer, when an investigation or litigation
takes place, I get to see everyone's emails, all the way to CEO/board). There is a concerted effort
to hire only women and minorities, especially for executive/managerial positions. That's not equality.
That's the effect of incessant Dem propaganda pitting races and sexes against each other.
This election exposed the media's role, but its not over. Fortunately, Krugman et al. are
showing the Dems are too dumb to figure out why they lost. Hopefully they keep up their stupidity
so identity politics can fade into history and we can get back to pursuing equality.
"There is a concerted effort to hire only women and minorities, especially for executive/managerial
positions."
Goooooolllllllllllllly, gee. Now why would that be? I hope you're not saying there shouldn't
be such an effort. This is a good thing. It exactly and precisely IS equality. It may be a bit
harsh, but if certain folks continually find ways to crap of women and minorities, then public
policies would seem warranted.
Are you seriously telling us that pursuing public policies to curb racial and sexual discrimination
are a waste of time?
How, exactly, does your vision of "pursuit of equality" ameliorate the historical fact of discrimination?
You don't make up for past discrimination with discrimination. You make up for it by equal application
of the law. Today's young white men are not the cause of discrimination of the 20th century, or
of slavery. If you discriminate against them because of the harm caused by other people, you're
sowing the seeds of a REAL white nationalist movement. And Democrats' labeling of every Republican
president/candidate as a Nazi - including Trump - is desensitizing the public to the real danger
created by discriminatory policies that punish [white] children and young adults, particularly
boys.
Displacement of white men by lesser-qualified women and minorities is NOT equality.
So, to make up for the alleged screw job that women and minorities have supposedly received,
the plan will be screwing white/hetro/males for the forseeable future. My former employer is doing
this very plan, as we speak. Passed over 100 plus males, who have been turning wrenches on airplanes
for years, and installed a female shop manager who doesn't know jack-$##t about fixing airplanes.
No experience, no certificate......but she has a management degree. But I guess you don't know
how to do the job to manage it.
God forbid somebody have to "pay some dues" before setting them loose as suit trash.
Back when cultural conservatives ruled the roost (not that long ago), they didn't pursue equality
either. Rather, they favored (hetero Christian) white men. So hoping for Dem stupidity isn't going
to lead to equality. Most likely it would go back to favoring hetero Christian white men.
"...should they find a new standard bearer that can win the Sunbelt states and bridge the divide
with the white working class? I tend to think the latter strategy has the higher likelihood of
success."
Easy to say. What would that standard bearer or that strategy look like?
Bernie Sanders was that standard bearer, but Krugman and the Neoliberal establishment Democrats
(ie. Super Delegates) decided that they wanted to coronate Clinton. Big mistake that we are
now paying for...
Basic political math - Sanders would have been eaten alive with his tax proposals by the GOP anti-tax
propaganda machine on Trump steroids.
His call to raise the payroll tax to send more White working class hard-earn money to Washington
would have made election night completely different - Trump would have still won, it just wouldn't
have been a surprise but rather a known certainty weeks ahead.
Evolution of political parties happens organically, through evolution (punctuated equilibrium
- like species and technology - parties have periods of stability with some sudden jumps in differentiation).
Old politicians are defeated, new ones take over. The old guard, having been successful in
the past in their own niche rarely change.
If Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (highly likely), it will be the best thing to happen to Republicans
since Lincoln. They will lose even more seats.
The Coastal Pelosi/Schumer wing is still in power, and it will take decimation at the ballot
box to change the party. The same way the "Tea Party" revolution decimated the Republicans and
led to Trump. Natural selection at work.
In 1991, Republicans thought they would always win, Democrats thought the country was relegated
to Republican Presidents forever. Then along came a new genotype- Clinton. In 2012, Democrats
thought that they would always win, and Republicans were thought to be locked out of the electoral
college. Then along came a new genotype, Trump.
A new genotype of Democrat will have to emerge, but it will start with someone who can win
in flyover country and Texas. Hint: They will have to drop their hubris, disdain and lecturing,
some of their anti-growth energy policies, hate for the 2nd amendment, and become more fiscally
conservative. They have to realize that *no one* will vote for an increase in the labor supply
(aka immigration) when wages are stagnant and growth is anemic. And they also have to appreciate
people would rather be free to choose than have decisions made for them. Freedom means nothing
unless you are free to make mistakes.
But it won't happen until coastal elites like Krugman and Pelosi have retired.
My vote for the Democratic Tiktaalik is the extraordinarily Honorable John Bel Edwards, governor
of Louisiana. The central fact of the election is that Hillary has always been extraordinarily
unlikable, and it turned out that she was Nixonianly corrupt (i.e., deleted E-mails on her
illegal private server) as well - and she still only lost by 1% in the tipping point state (i.e.,
according to the current count, which could very well change).
You know what will win Texas? Demographic change. Economic growth. And it is looking pretty inevitable
on both counts.
I'm also pretty damned tired of being dismissed as "elitist", "smug" and condescending. I grew
up in a red state. I know their hate. I know their condescension (they're going to heaven, libruls
are not).
It cuts both ways. The Dems are going into a fetal crouch about this defeat. Did the GOP do
that after 2008? Nope. They dug in deeper.
Ahh yes, all Texas needs is demographic change, because all [Hispanics, Blacks, insert minority
here] will always and forever vote Democrat. Even though the Democrats take their votes for granted
and Chicago/Baltimore etc. are crappy places to live with no school choice, high taxes, fleeing
jobs, and crime. Even though Trump outperformed Romney among minorities.
Clinton was supposed to be swept up in the winds of demographics and the Democrats were supposed
to win the White House until 2083.
Funny things happen when you take votes for granted. Many urban areas are being crushed by
structural deficits and need some Detroit type relief. I predict that some time in the next 30
years, poles reverse, and urban areas are run by Republicans.
If you are tired of being dismissed as "elitist", "smug" and condescending, don't be those
things. Don't assume people will vote for your party because they have always voted that way,
or they are a certain color. Respect the voters and work to earn it.
The notion that hispanic=democrat that liberals like bob have is hopelessly ignorrant.
I'm from Dallas. Three of my closest friends growing up (and to this day), as well as my
brother in law, are hispanic. They, and their families, all vote Republican, even for Trump. Generally
speaking, the longer hispanics are in the US, the more likely they tend to vote Republican.
The Democratic Party's plan to wait out the Republicans and let demographics take over is ignorant,
racist and shortsighted, cooked up by coastal liberals that haven't got a clue, and will ultimately
fail.
In addition to losing hispanics, Democrats will also start losing the African American vote
they've been taking for granted the last several decades. Good riddance to the Democratic party,
they are simply unwilling to listen to what the people want.
This is a really shoddy piece that repeats the medias pulling of Clintons quote out of context.
She also said "that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them
down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens
to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even
matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope
that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid
to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize
with as well."
Now maybe it is okay to make gnore this part of the quote because you think calling racism
"deplorable" is patently offensive. But when the ignored context makes the same points that Duy
says she should have been making, that is shoddy.
There are zero electoral college votes in the State of Denial. Hopefully you understand a)the
difference between calling people deplorable and calling *behavior* deplorable; b) Godwin's Law:
when you resort to comparing people to Hitler you've lost the argument. Trump supporters were
not racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or any other phobic. As a moderate, educated, female Trump
supporter counseled: He was an a-hole, but I liked his policies.
Even my uber liberal friends cannot tell me what Clinton's economic plan was. Only that they
are anti-Trump.
Trump flanked Clinton on the most popular policies (the left used to be the anti-trade party
of union Democrats): Lower regulation, lower taxes, pro-2nd amendment, trade deals more weighted
in favor of US workers, and lower foreign labor supply. Turn's out, those policies are sufficiently
popular that people will vote for them, even when packaged into an a-hole. Trump's anti-trade
platform was preached for decades by rust belt unions.
The coastal Democrats have become hostages to pro-big-government municipal unions crushing
cities under structural deficits, high taxes, poorly run schools, and overbearing regulations.
The best thing that can happen for the Democrats is for the Republicans to push for reforms of
public pensions, school choice, and break municipal unions. Many areas see the disaster in Chicago
and Baltimore, run by Democrats for decades, and say no thank you. Freed of the need to cater
to urban municipal unions, Democrats may be able to appeal to people elsewhere.
Tim, I believe you've missed the point: by straightforward measures, Democratic voters in USA
are substantially under-represented. The problem is likely to get much worse, as the party whose
policies abet minority rule now controls all three branches of the federal government and a substantial
majority of state governments.
This is an outstanding takedown on what has been a never-ending series of garbage from Krugman.
I used to hang on every post he'd made for years after the 2008 crisis hit. But once the Clinton
coronation arose this year, the arrogant, condescending screed hit 11 - and has not slowed down
since. Threads of circular and illogical arguments have woven together pathetic - and often non-liberal
- editorials that have driven me away permanently.
Since he's chosen to ride it all on political commentary, Krugman's credibility is right there
with luminaries such as Nial Ferguson and Greg Mankiw.
Seems that everyone who chooses to hitch their wagon to the Clintons ends up covered in bilge.....
funny thing about that persistent coincidence...
"And it is an especially difficult pill given that the decline was forced upon the white working
class.... The tsunami of globalization washed over them....in many ways it was inevitable, just
as was the march of technology that had been eating away at manufacturing jobs for decades. But
the damage was intensified by trade deals.... Then came the housing crash and the ensuing humiliation
of the foreclosure crisis."
All the more amazing then that Trump pulled out such a squeaker of an election beating Clinton
by less than 2% in swing states and losing the popular vote overall. In the shine of Duy's lights
above, I would have imagined a true landslide for Trump... Just amazing.
"I don't know that the white working class voted against their economic interest".
I think you're pushing too hard here. Democrats have been for, and Republicans against many
policies that benefit the white working class: expansionary monetary policy, Obamacare, housing
refinance, higher minimum wage, tighter worker safety regulation, stricter tax collection, and
a host of others.
I also think many Trump voters know they are voting against their own economic interest.
The New York Times interviewed a number who acknowledge that they rely on insurance subsidies
from Obamacare and that Trump has vowed to repeal it. I know one such person myself. She doesn't
know what she will do if Obamacare is repealed but is quite happy with her vote.
There is zero evidence for this theory. It ignores the fact that Trump lied his way to the White
House with the help of a media unwilling to confront and expose his mendacity. And there was the
media's obsession with Clinton's Emails and the WikiLeaks daily release of stolen DNC documents.
And finally the Comey letter which came in the middle of early voting keeping the nation in suspense
for 11 days and which was probably a violation of the hatch act. Comey was advised against his
unjustified action by higher up DOJ officials but did it anyway. All of these factors loomed much
larger than the deplorables comment. Besides, the strong dollar fostered by the FOMC's obsession
with "normalization" helped Trump win because the strong dollar hurts exporters like farmers who
make up much of the rural vote as well as hurting US manufacturing located in the midwest states.
The FOMC was objectively pro Trump.
I was surrounded by Trump voters this past election. Trust me, an awful lot of them are deplorable.
My father is extremely anti semetic and once warned me not to go to Minneapolis because of there
being "too many Muslims." One of our neighbors thinks all Muslims are terrorists and want to do
horrible things to all Christians.
I know, its not a scientific study. But I've had enough one on one conversations with Trump
supporters (not just GOP voters, Trump supporters) to say that yes, as a group they have some
pretty horrible views.
Yep. I've got plenty of stories myself. From the fact that there are snooty liberals it does NOT
follow that the resentment fueling Trump's support is justified.
One should note that the "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name
it ... " voted for Obama last time around.
When the blue collar voter (for lack of a better class) figures out that the Republicans (Trump)
are not going to help them anymore than the Dems did -- it will be time for them to understand
they can only rely on themselves, namely: through rebuilding labor union density, which can be
done AT THE STATE BY PROGRESSIVE STATE LEVEL.
To keep it simple states may add to federal protections like the minimum wage or safety regs
-- just not subtract. At present the NLRB has zero (no) enforcement power to prevent union busting
(see Trump in Vegas) -- so illegal labor market muscling, firing of organizers and union joiners
go completely undeterred and unrecoursed.
Recourse, once we get Congress back might include mandating certification elections on finding
of union busting. Nothing too alien: Wisconsin, for instance, mandates RE-certification of all
public employee unions annually.
Progressive states first step should be making union busting a felony -- taking the power playing
in our most important and politically impacting market as seriously as taking a movie in the movies
(get you a couple of winters). For a more expansive look (including a look at the First Amendment
and the fed cannot preempt something with nothing, click here):
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2016/11/first-100-days-progressive-states-agenda.html
Labor unions -- returned to high density -- can act as the economic cop on every corner --
our everywhere advocates squelching such a variety of unhealthy practices as financialization,
big pharam gouging, for profit college fraud (Trump U. -- that's where we came into this movie).
6% private union density is like 20/10 bp; it starves every other healthy process (listening blue
collar?).
Don't panic if today's Repub Congress passes national right-to-work legislation. Germany, which
has the platinum standard labor institutions, does not have one majority union (mostly freeloaders!),
but is almost universally union or covered by union contracts (centralized bargaining -- look
it up) and that's what counts.
Trump took both sides of every issue. He wants high and low interest rates. He wants a depression
first, (Bannonomics) and inflation first, (Trumponomics), he wants people to make more and make
less. He is nasty and so he projected that his opponent was nasty.
Now he has to act instead of just talk out of both sides of his mouth. That should not be as
easy to do.
Hi Tim, nice post, and I particularly liked your last paragraph. The relevant question today if
you have accepted where we are is effectively: 'What would you prefer - a Trump victory now? Or
a Trump type election victory in a decade or so? (with todays corresponding social/economic/political
trends continuing).
I'm a Brit so I was just an observer to the US election but the same point is relevant here in
the UK - Would I rather leave the EU now with a (half sensible) Tory government? Or would I rather
leave later on with many more years of upheaval and a (probably by then quite nutty) UKIP government?
I know which one I prefer - recognise the protest vote sooner, rather than later.
Sure they're angry, and their plight makes that anger valid.
However, not so much their belief as to who and what caused their plight, and more importantly,
who can and how their plight would be successfully reversed.
Most people have had enough personal experiences to know that it is when we are most angry
that we do the stupidest of things.
Krugman won his Nobel for arcane economic theory. So it isn't terribly surprising that he
spectacularly fails whenever he applies his brain to anything remotely dealing with mainstream
thought. He is the poster boy for condescending, smarter by half, elite liberals. In other words,
he is an over educated, political hack who has yet to learn to keep his overtly bias opinions
to himself.
Tim's narrative felt like a cold shower. I was apprehensive that I found it too agreeable on one
level but were the building blocks stable and accurate?
Somewhat like finding a meal that is satisfying, but wondering later about the ingredients.
But, like Tim's posts on the Fed, they prompt that I move forward to ponder the presentation
and offer it to others for their comment. At this time, five-stars on a 1-5 system for bringing
a fresh approach to the discussion. Thanks, Professor Duy. This to me is Piketty-level pushing
us onto new ground.
Funny how there's all this concern for the people whose jobs and security and money have vanished,
leaving them at the mercy of faceless banks and turning to drugs and crime. Sad. Well, let's bash
some more on those lazy, shiftless urban poors who lack moral strength and good, Protestant work
ethic, shall we?
Clinton slammed half the Trump supporters as deplorables, not half the public. She was correct;
about half of them are various sorts of supremacists. The other half (she said this, too) made
common cause with the deplorables for economic reasons even though it was a devil's bargain.
Now, there's a problem with maternalism here; it's embarrassing to find out that the leader
of your political opponents knows you better than you know yourself, like your mother catching
you out in a lie. It was impolitic for Clinton to have said this But above all remember that when
push came to shove, the other basket made common cause with the Nazis, the Klan, and so on and
voted for a rapey fascist.
"Economic development" isn't (and can't) be the same thing as bringing back lost manufacturing
(or mining) jobs. We have had 30 years of shifting power between labor and capital. Restoring
labor market institutions (both unions and government regulation) and raising the floor through
higher minimum wages, single payer health care, fair wages for women and more support for child
and elder care, trade policies that care about working families, better safe retirement plans
and strengthened Social Security, etc. is key here, along with running a real full employment
economy, with a significant green component. See Bob Polllin's excellent program in
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/back-full-employment
That program runs up against racism, sexism, division, and fear of government and taxation,
and those are powerful forces. But we don't need all Trump supporters. We do need a real, positive
economic program that can attract those who care about the economics more than the cultural stuff.
How about people of color drop the democrats and their hand wringing about white people when they
do nothing about voter suppression!! White fragility is nauseating and I'm planning to arm myself
and tell all the people of color I know to do the same. I expect nothing from the democrats going
forward.
I have never commented here but I will now because of the number of absurd statements. I happen
to work with black and Hispanic youth and have also worked with undocumented immigrants. To pretend
that trump and the Republican Party has their interest in mind is completely absurd. As for the
white working class, please tell me what programs either trump or the republican have put forward
to benefit them? I have lost a lot of respect for Duy
I think much of appeal of DJT was in his political incorrectness. PC marginalises. Very. Of white
working class specifically. it tells one, one cannot rely on one's ideas any more. In no uncertain
terms. My brother, who voted for Trump, lost his job to PC without offending on purpose, but the
woman in question felt free to accuse him of violating her, with no regard to his fate. He was
never close enough to do that. Is that not some kind of McCarthyism?
Just to be correct. Clinton was saying that half (and that was a terrible error-should have said
"some") were people that were unreachable, but that they had to communicate effectively with the
other part of his support. People who echo the media dumb-ing down of complex statements are part
of the problem.
Still, I believe that if enough younger people and african-americans had come out in the numbers
they did for Obama in some of those states, Clinton would have won. Certainly, the media managed
to paint her in more negative light than she objectively deserved-- even if she deserved some
negatives.
I am in no way a fan of HRC. Still, the nature of the choice was blurred to an egregious degree.
"The tough reality of economic development is that it will always be easier to move people to
jobs than the jobs to people."
This is indisputable, but I have never seen any discussion of the point that moving is not
cost-free. Back in the '90s I had a discussion with a very smart person, a systems analyst, who
insisted that poor people moved to wherever the welfare benefits were highest.
I tried to point out that moving from one town to another costs more than a bus ticket. You
have to pay to have your possessions transported. You have to have enough cash to pay at least
two months' rent and maybe an additional security deposit.
You have to have enough cash to pay for food for at least one month or however long it takes
for your first paycheck or welfare check to come in. There may be other costs like relocating
your kids to a new school system and maybe changing your health insurance provider.
There probably are other costs I'm not aware of, and the emotional cost of leaving your family
and your roots. The fact that some people succeed in moving is a great achievement. I'm amazed
it works at all in Europe where you also have the different languages to cope with.
I'm not sure the Hillary non-voters - which also include poor black neighborhoods - were voting
against their economic interests. Under Obama, they didn't do well. Many of them were foreclosed
on while Obama was giving the money to the banks. Jobs haven't improved, unless you want to work
at an Amazon warehouse or for Uber and still be broke. Obama tried to cut social security. He
made permanent Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Wars and more wars. Health premiums went up - right
before the election. The most Obama could say in campaigning for Hillary was "if you care about
my legacy, vote for Hillary." He's the only one that cares about his legacy. I don't know that
it's about resentment but about just having some hope for economic improvement - which Trump offered
(no matter how shallow and deceptive) and Hillary offered nothing but "Trump's an idiot and I'm
not."
I believe Bernie would have beat Trump's ass if 1) the DNC hadn't put their fingers on the
scale for Hillary and 2) same with the media for Hillary and Trump. The Dems need more than some
better campaign slogans. They really need a plan for serious economic equality. And the unions
need to get their shit together and stop thinking that supporting corrupt corporate Dems is working.
Or perhaps the rank and file need to get their shit together and get rid of union bosses.
The keys of the election were race, immigration and trade. Trump won on these points. What
dems can do is to de-emphasize multiculturalism, racial equality, political correctness etc. Instead,
emphasize economic equality and security, for all working class.
Lincoln billed the civil war as a war to preserve the union, to gain wide support, instead
of war to free slaves. Of course, the slaves were freed when the union won the war. Dems can benefit
from a similar strategy
Krugman more or less blames media, FBI, Russia entirely for Hillary's loss, which I think
is wrong. As Tim said, Dems have long ceased to be the party of the working class, at least in
public opinion, for legitimate reasons.
Besides, a lot voters are tired of stale faces and stale ideas. They yearn something new, especially
the voters in deep economic trouble.
Maybe it's time to try some old fashioned mercantilism, protectionism? America first is an
appealing idea, in this age of mindless globalization.
All Mr. Krugman and the Democratic establishment need to do is to listen, with open ears and
mind, to what Thomas Frank has been saying, and they will know where they went wrong and most
likely what to do about it, if they can release themselves from their fatal embrace with Big Money
covered up by identity politics.
But they cannot bring themselves to admit their error, and to give up their very personally
profitable current arrangement. And so they are caught up in a credibility trap which is painfully
obvious to the objective observer.
Pretty sad commentary by neoliberal left screaming at neoliberal right and vice versa.
It seems quite clear that the vast majority of commenters live as much in the ivory tower/bubble
as is claimed for their ideological opponent.
It is also quite interesting that most of these same commenters don't seem to get that the
voting public gets what the majority of it wants - not what every single group within the overall
population wants.
The neoliberals with their multi-culti/love them all front men have had it good for a while,
now there's a reaction. Deal with it.
"... A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt-And Why They Shouldn't ..."
"... Thank you to Kristen de K., John Martin, Charmika Stewart, and Arianna Scott for their very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article. ..."
"... writes the blog ..."
"... . He is interested in moral practice as a way of life, and in how secular and religious people can find common ethical ground (a question which Socrates raised in Plato's ..."
"... ). In real life, he is a PhD student in computer science at George Mason University, where he does research on machine learning and evolutionary algorithms. ..."
We Stoics always have to navigate a fragile balance when we present our ideas to the world. Many
of our most powerful and appealing psychological tools revolve around accepting events that
happen and recognizing that they are ultimately outside of our control. The reason that Stoicism
is relevant to such a large and diverse array of people today is exactly because it purports to offer
a powerful solution to almost any source of distress: "retire into yourself" ( Meditations
, 7.28). We are perpetually at risk, however, of having our doctrine of "indifference"
toward externals misconstrued for a "neglect" of externals. The benefits of inner peace speak for
themselves-but the extreme emphasis that our philosophy puts on personal virtue as an "inner citadel"
puts us in an understandably delicate position, politically speaking.
Any speech extolling the merits of inner peace and apatheia goes wrong-and in fact becomes
positively toxic-the moment that the audience begins to suspect that our school advocates for
complacency in the face of social injustice. A great deal of the world's harms are not
inevitable, and in fact are immanently preventable (fate permitting), if only we humans
could get our act together. If Stoicism teaches that we should be passive toward these
fixable harms, or if our school is quick to "blame the victim" for their own unhappiness while simultaneously
ignoring injustice, then our philosophy is immoral, and ought to be immediately rejected as such.
Of course, Stoicism teaches no such thing! To the contrary, we believe that no man or woman can
be moral (or Happy) unless they work tirelessly for the benefit of all humanity. Justice and Benevolence
must be a guide to all of our actions-"any action of yours," in fact, "which has no reference, whether
direct or indirect, to these social ends, tears your life apart!" ( Meditations , 9.23).
We do not believe that our doctrine of inner peace is mutually exclusive with Justice in any way
whatsoever. "It is difficult, to be sure, to unite and combine these two states of mind," says Epictetus,
"the vigilance of one who feels attracted by outside objects, and the composure of one who feels
indifferent to them; but all the same it is not impossible" ( Discourses , 2.5.9).
People are right to be concerned, though, that Stoicism might teach an inappropriately shallow
sort of fatalism. The more unilateral emphasis we put on the inner fortress as a shield against injustice,
the more rational reason people have for fearing that we are abandoning our natural responsibility
to work diligently in defense of the downtrodden. Moreover, there are well-founded reasons for being
concerned that the ancients themselves failed to emphasize Justice as much as they should have. "About
the institution of slavery," say the authors of the introduction to the Chicago University Press's
series of Seneca translations, "there is silence, and worse than silence: Seneca argues that true
freedom is internal freedom, so the external sort does not really matter."
I believe that contemporary Stoics need to be absolutely unambiguous about the fundamental moral
imperatives that are essential to our ethics. Say it loud and clear: the way that we treat each other-and
the way that we allow others to be treated by our society-is not "indifferent" at all. Stoicism is
a system of virtue ethics, not only therapy, and as such it demands that each practitioner strive
to be a force for Justice and Benevolence at all levels of society.
The Need for Charity
There is a little anecdote, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, where we find Zeno confronting a man
who had been strongly critical of Antisthenes. Zeno apparently felt that the man had not done his
due diligence as a critic, and he reprimanded the man strongly for it: "are you not ashamed," he
said, "to pick out and mention anything wrong said by Antisthenes, while you suppress his good things
without giving them a thought?" ( Lives of the Eminent Philosophers , 7.1.19). Donald Robertson
likes
to
retell
this story and interpret it as illustrating a strong normative principle: if we are going to
criticize a person or school, we ought to engage the best of their thinking along with the worst,
and to acknowledge what their ideas have to teach us about virtue. This is an idea that philosophers
sometimes refer to as the "
principle of charity
." Far from prohibiting or undermining criticism, the principle of charity is supposed to make
us better, more just, and more incisive critics of flawed ideas.
Threading the needle of Stoic Justice becomes doubly difficult when a Stoic tries to go about
offering advice to activists about how they can better run their movement. In many cases, criticism
of activism effectively amounts to telling victims of hardship, injustice, and oppression how we
think they ought to bear their plight more virtuously. This is a very difficult thing for anyone
to do in a fair and sensitive way-it requires a lot of research and a generous dose of the principle
of charity. It is virtually impossible to achieve, moreover, if it is not clear whether you actually,
in fact, care about the injustice in question in the first place.
Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of can of worms that Bill Irvine stirred up at Stoicon
2016 in his presentation
on what he has called "insult pacifism." If you missed the talk, it closely follows a post he
published the previous week on the Oxford University Press blog, titled "
How would the
ancient Stoics have dealt with hate speech? "
Irvine's central point is that we can teach people to be resilient to injustice. Insults don't
need to be emotionally damaging, and when we judge them to be inherently bad and horrible,
we end up suffering unnecessarily. Channeling the advice of the Stoics, Irvine argues that a stance
of non-retaliation, or of "receiving these people's insults as jokes" (as Seneca puts it in De
Constantia ), can not only protect us from emotional disturbance, but can in fact send a highly
effective normative signal: "on failing to provoke a rise in his target," says Irvine, "an insulter
is likely to feel foolish."
I am completely on board with the notion of insult pacifism. I was raised to value the principle
that evil is best repaid with kindness (Romans 12:20), and "that ye resist not evil: but whosoever
shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:39). I'm delighted at
Irvine's effort to popularize similar Stoic ideas in his books and elsewhere. In my own
personal practice, in fact, I am currently trying to use pacifism toward automotive insults
to counter my own tendency toward road rage: pacifism comes highly recommended when you
are barreling down the highway in a 3,000 pound projectile!
Irvine's manner of treating the topic leaves a great deal to be desired, however, and I fear that
it only reinforces the notion that Stoics are disinterested in Justice in general, and that modern
Stoicism, far from taking a charitable interest in contemporary activism, is indifferent or even
hostile to the concerns of marginalized people.
Irvine's Criticism of Social Justice
First, Irvine's Stoicon presentation is lopsided in that he is largely silent on the need for
Stoics to work for Justice at all-a weakness that is shared by his 2013 book, A Slap in the Face:
Why Insults Hurt-And Why They Shouldn't (Oxford University Press). But his approach indeed becomes
"worse than silence" when he chooses to frame his talk as a one-sided criticism of contemporary social
justice activism.
In the chapter of his book titled "Societal Responses to Insults"-which could have included a
discussion on how we can work to make the world a better, more Just place for everyone-Irvine opts
only to zero in on what he calls the "political correctness code" that emerged in the 1970's and
has since, in his opinion, gotten way out of hand. "If Stoic philosopher Epictetus had been alive
to watch the rise of hate speech laws, and, more generally, the political correctness movement,"
concludes Irvine, "he would have shaken his head in disbelief. According to him, the best way to
spare people the pain of being insulted is not to change the world so that they never feel insults;
it is instead to change people so that they are, in effect, immune to insults" (p. 182).
Now, there is plenty worth criticizing when it comes to activism on college campuses and society
more broadly. Whatever nuances may be involved, I don't for a moment pretend that all of the widely
publicized cases in which students have inappropriately stifled free speech, inhibited their own
exposure to challenging ideas, or capriciously assaulted the academic freedom of university professors
in the name of "safe spaces" are defensible (if this specific issue is of relevance to you, I encourage
you to have a look at the 102-page report
that PEN America released this week; a short summary can be found
here ). I myself accept the Stoic view that anger is always irrational and vicious-a position
which, if I'm not careful,
easily gets me into hot water with the activist community!
The problem is not that Irvine has criticized these abuses of popular social justice ideas, or
even that he apparently finds the concept of microaggressions to be useless (though, personally,
I would implore him not to throw the baby out with the bathwater). Rather, the problem is that, in
the same way that he has approximately nothing to say in defense of Justice despite our school's
well-known reputation for a shallow fatalism, Irvine chooses to show no sympathy-and instead only
active contempt-for the fundamental concerns that motivate activism.
For contrast, I invite you to have a look at the nuanced
criticism of trigger warnings that Massimo Pigliucci wrote last year-which delved headlong into
similarly sensitive waters, but only served to spark a very productive and cordial conversation among
a diverse readership. I think it forms an exemplary model of how Stoics can treat such difficult
topics while remaining true to Zeno's advice, and while making it clear that we do care deeply about
Justice.
Irvine, meanwhile, admits that he is "puzzled" by the surge in concern over social justice issues
on college campuses. He is perplexed that students feel "humiliated and even downtrodden" by the
behavior of their peers, when in previous decades these issues were not very high in the public consciousness.
Rather than engaging the
many complex reasons that these
students and other activists might give for their societal concerns, Irvine chooses to blanketly
suggest that the systemic injustice so many are working to dismantle is simply a product of the imagination
of feeble-minded youths: the infamous "hypersensitivity" of the activist. He lays the blame for the
most recent round of sensitivity in efforts to teach people to recognize microaggressions, which
are "such will-o'-the-wisp things that it takes training to spot them." And the idea of microaggressions,
he believes, is motivated-not by a concern that the longstanding systemic injustices that plague
the United States are enabled and aggravated by deep and pernicious social norms-but by a singular
and simple purpose: to find new and innovative ways to feel "insulted."
In short, just as Zeno worried, Irvine opts to "pick out and mention" everything that is wrong
with contemporary activism, but to "suppress the good things without giving them a thought." He allows
the imprudent behavior of a misguided minority of activists-behavior which otherwise very much deserves
to be criticized-to completely overshadow and eclipse the efforts of those who are working seriously
and virtuously to bring Justice to the world. This approach is incomplete, reactive, and cavalier,
and it is doubly problematic in a talk that explicitly purports to give marginalized people
advice on how best to cope with oppression and hate speech.
Pigliucci, meanwhile, also strongly rejects what he sees as the general thrust of student activism
with regard to trigger warnings. But he takes care to acknowledge the legitimate concerns, where
they exist, that motivate the various voices involved in the controversy. Faculty have a human and
professional duty, he says, "to be sensitive, rather than dismissive, to students' concerns." The
result is not just a presentation that is less likely to offend, but one that comes across as better
researched, commonsensical, and highly persuasive. These are the fruits of charity.
No doubt, Irvine only meant to use a few vicious behaviors by some college students as an illustrative
example for his ideas. I'm sure that Irvine does believe that Justice is important (even
if he chooses not to emphasize it for fear of exacerbating existing abuses in the activist community).
Instead, however, his contribution to Stoicon gave a strong impression that modern Stoicism is indifferent
or even hostile to the social concerns of historically marginalized groups and minorities-such as
women, people of color, and LGBTs. Between his deafening silence on the moral imperative to Justice
and his uncharitable characterization of activist's concerns, his presentation lends credence to
the erroneous idea that because Stoics believe that "true freedom is internal freedom," they also
believe "the external sort does not really matter."
The Alienating Effect on Minorities
As Irvine delivered his pithy summary of campus activism, the predominantly white male audience
laughed heartily-oblivious, it seems, to the sensitivity of the subject.
In the meantime, my wife-a black, female graduate student who is probably better educated in the
scientific literature on microaggressions than both Irvine and 90% of the Stoicon audience-was having
a very different social experience. She had come along to New York as a favor to me, to see what
this philosophy is that I've become so interested in lately, and to learn about how it relates to
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and REBT. But in that moment, she became acutely aware of one simple
fact: it did not appear that ethnic minorities or their distinctive concerns are welcome or wanted,
much less understood, in the modern Stoic community. "Alienating" is perhaps too weak a word to describe
how she experienced Stoicon.
Stoicism is remarkable among the world's major religio-philosophical traditions for its history
of including the voices not just of emperors and wealthy statesmen but also of people with physical
disabilities, mental illness, and chronic pain,
victims of torture and PTSD, and
prisoners
serving life sentences. But when marginalized people encounter Stoicism today, do they come away
believing that Stoicism has something to offer them? Or do they come away with the impression-right
or wrong-that Stoicism is just one more system created by privileged people who are out of touch
with the severity of the world's fixable injustices?
If people find modern Stoicism's advice for victims of injustice off-putting, it may have more
to do with the choices we make about how to go about presenting that advice than with what the ancients
have said. Being resilient to insults and being an active agent for Justice are not inimical objectives,
and while I accept Irvine's call to the former, I would caution him that he has gone too far in his
neglect of the latter.
Stoics for Justice
Stoicism is not a political theory. I agree with Pigliucci when he
says that demanding a specific social vision from our school is a "category mistake." To the
contrary, he says that "one can be a Stoic conservative or progressive, as well as a Stoic atheist
or theist. But as long as we all practice virtue and attempt to become better people, we will be
more likely to engage in constructive dialogue over what and how to change society for the better."
I believe that Stoicism can do amazing things in the world of politics and philanthropy if we
create a space for those "constructive dialogues" to take place-especially if those dialogues are
rooted in Zeno's principle of charity, and if they implement the Socratic model, in which we "stop
at point after point, and make out what each person is willing to admit and what he denies" (Cicero,
De Finibus , 2.3).
Moreover, I strongly suspect that the Stoic emphasis on the four cardinal virtues offers a uniquely
powerful antidote to the pervasive miscommunication, polarization, and rancor that seemingly attend
all political arguments. A Stoic is someone who cares about personal resilience and Temperance, but
who also cares deeply about Justice. If we present ourselves this way, the world should
never have reason to be confused on this point, or to doubt our support for both social
justice (whatever exactly that means) and personal virtue. Our school teaches that virtue
is one, after all, and that if we separate it into pieces, we destroy it.
In my opinion, Stoicon left something to be desired when it comes to getting these values across
(notwithstanding Christopher Gill's
excellent and helpful
presentation on the history of Stoic activism). But the conversations at Stoicon were neither
the first nor the last word on the matter.
That is why, starting now, some of us are coming together to form a Facebook group called "
Stoics for Justice
," as a space to push Stoic philanthropy forward and to find ways of working together to pursue
the "common benefit" (as Marcus liked to say). Whether you prefer radical activism aimed at disrupting
oppressive power structures, or whether you see your role in the world as focused on community building,
education, and hands-on philanthropy-or, yes, even therapeutic training in becoming resilient to
insults-you should be able to find a role to play in any hypothetical Stoic-led movement for Justice
and Benevolence.
Come join us at Stoics for Justice and let us know how you think we might move Stoic philanthropy
forward on the issues you care about most!
Thank you to Kristen de K., John Martin, Charmika Stewart, and Arianna Scott for their very
helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.
Eric "Siggy" Scott writes the blog Euthyphroria . He
is interested in moral practice as a way of life, and in how secular and religious people can find
common ethical ground (a question which Socrates raised in Plato's Euthyphro ). In real
life, he is a PhD student in computer science at George Mason University, where he does research
on machine learning and evolutionary algorithms.
" My thoughts after reading this book: we do not know what the future holds and we have
to accept the fact that life is full of surprises whether bad or good, we have to face them.
Life is short so we better make every moment count. We have to be steadfast, strong and in
control of ourselves. And finally, we are often not satisfied with what life has to offer because
we always let our emotions dominate us rather than seeing the logic behind every situation.
I know it will take time for me to internalize all of these, but it makes sense to me now why
most stoics lead a happier life than most of us.
5 stars
Excellent guide to stoicism! By
Athea Howard on November 1, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition |
Verified Purchase This is a very readable, easily understood book; a short guide to the philosophy
of stoicism. The author gives a history of this philosophy, some good suggestions of practical
uses of stoicism, and ends with how he personally practices stoicism. I have to conclude that
stoicism has a great deal to contribute to a psychologically balanced, happy attitude. It makes
us aware of how we often sabotage ourselves by negative or unrealistic thinking.
By
Karl Janssen
on July 20, 2015
Format: Paperback
Verified Purchase
Applying ancient
philosophy to modern life
"
Stoicism is an ancient school of philosophy founded in
Athens in the 3rd century BC. It is a practical
philosophy, intended as a guide for how to live one's
life. The Stoics stressed that we have no control over
what happens in our lives, only control over our
perceptions. They advocated living one's life in
accordance with nature (not "nature" as in grass and
trees, but "nature" as in the order of the universe). By
concentrating one's thoughts and choices on what is good
and virtuous, and disregarding the "indifferent"
distractions of everyday life, one can avoid negative
emotions like fear, anger, grief, and frustration, and
live a life of happiness and tranquility.
In recent years, there has been a burgeoning resurgence in
Stoicism, with modern writers producing manuals on how to
apply Stoic principles to life in today's world, such as
William B. Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life. Along
similar lines, Stoicism Today is a blog published out of
the University of Exeter in England, edited and largely
written by a team of British philosophers. This 2014 book,
edited by Patrick Ussher, is the first volume of writings
reprinted from the blog. 36 articles are included in the
collection, covering a mixed bag of Stoic-related topics.
The collection starts out strong with essays summarizing
and explaining the core concepts of Epictetus, Marcus
Aurelius, and Seneca. These ancient Roman writers are the
most prominent Stoics whose teachings survive today. The
21st-century writers clarify the ancient Stoic precepts
and discuss their applicability to modern life. Though the
bloggers hold PhDs in philosophy and command a thorough
understanding of their subject, they do a great job of
expressing these complex concepts in language that is
accessible to the general reader, without dumbing down the
subject matter.
While the first half of the book provides a good, broad
education on Stoicism, the second half covers a diverse
assortment of topics and perspectives. A section called
"Life Stories" consists of accounts by people of various
walks of life on how they use Stoicism in their daily
lives and work, including a lawyer, a doctor, and a woman
who suffered a traumatic brain injury. The most
fascinating and inspiring story is that of Sam Sullivan, a
quadriplegic who became mayor of Vancouver. Next is a
section on how Stoicism can be applied to parenthood and
the education of children. This is followed by a section
on Stoicism and psychotherapy which will mostly appeal to
psychiatric professionals, as it will likely be over the
head of most general readers. Three articles deal with the
concept of Stoic "mindfulness" and its relation or lack of
relation to Buddhism. Finally, the book falls apart
somewhat with its final section on Stoicism in popular
culture. It includes an excerpt from a Stoicism-infused
novel about prison inmates which is OK, but also a sample
chapter from a horrible science fiction novel. The book's
final selection is a pretty good examination of the
portrayal of Stoicism in the Star Trek television series.
This collection by its very nature is a hodgepodge, and
the selections vary greatly in quality as well as subject
matter. The core team of philosophers are good writers for
the most part, but the ensemble cast of guest bloggers is
hit and miss. Nevertheless, if you've read all the Stoic
classics and are looking for further advice on how to put
Stoicism into practice, you're bound to find something
here that will interest you.
Had A Calming Effect
By
Elizabeth
Echavarria
on
March 24, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
|
Verified
Purchase
After
getting through some of the stories I was able to gain some
perspective on what it means to be stoic and utilize some stoic
principles in my own life.
"... In my recent remarks, I was passing on the advice I think the ancient Stoics would offer to modern targets of insults... The Stoics' advice: shrug or, better still, laugh them off. This advice is a consequence of the Stoic insistence that we divide the things in our life into two categories: those we can control and those we can't. We can't control whether other people insult us. We can very much control, though, how we respond to those insults, and in particular, we can respond in a way that minimizes the harm they do us. College students would do well to give this Stoic strategy a try. ..."
"... When we examine the lives of Stoics, we find that many of them were targets of injustice. Musonius Rufus, for example, was exiled to the desolate island of Gyaros, but he did not spend his time there complaining about the unfairness of it all. This is in large part because he refused to play the role of victim, a refusal that doubtless made his exile far more endurable than it otherwise would have been. More generally, when we look at the Stoics, we cannot find a "victim" among them-and if we could, Stoicism probably wouldn't have remained a viable philosophy of life for two thousand years. ..."
"... is professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and the author of ..."
"... For more on his life and other writings, visit his author website . ..."
Let me begin by thanking Eric O. Scott for taking the time to respond to my
Oxford University
Press blog and my
STOICON talk
(I start talking at 58:00; sorry about the poor quality of the audio!). As I like to
tell my students, if what we seek is the truth, we have the most to gain from those who challenge
our views, since they will be the quickest to discover our mistakes.
The Stoics were very much interested in transforming themselves into better human beings. As
part of their program of self-transformation, they attempted to develop their own character. Such
efforts might have included doing things that they were afraid of doing, simply as an exercise
in overcoming fear. Or it might have included intentionally interacting with difficult people,
simply so they could practice preventing anger from arising within them.
But besides being concerned with their own well being, Stoics felt a social duty to make their
world a better place. This could be done, they knew, by introducing other people to Stoicism,
but it could also involve helping extract non-Stoics from the trouble they got themselves into
as a result of their misguided views regarding what in life is valuable. Marcus Aurelius is a
prime example of a Stoic who took his social duty very seriously, but despite being the emperor,
he failed to bring about a just society. The Rome that he ruled still allowed or even encouraged
slavery and acts of human cruelty.
It is easy for us to judge Marcus harshly, but before we do so, we should realize that future
generations are likely to do the same to us. Eric Scott says we live in an unjust world. I agree
entirely, but I think I have a different perception of that injustice than he does. It is this
difference in perception, which I will now explain, that makes me critical of some of the campus
protests that have recently been in the news.
... ... ...
In my recent remarks, I was passing on the advice I think the ancient Stoics would offer
to modern targets of insults... The Stoics' advice: shrug or, better still, laugh them off. This
advice is a consequence of the Stoic insistence that we divide the things in our life into two
categories: those we can control and those we can't. We can't control whether other people insult
us. We can very much control, though, how we respond to those insults, and in particular, we can
respond in a way that minimizes the harm they do us. College students would do well to give this
Stoic strategy a try.
I was surprised, by the way, that Scott would refer to those who experience injustice as "victims."
They are certainly targets , but the Stoics would tell us that they are victims only
if they choose to see themselves as such. They would add that if you choose to play the role of
victim, your suffering will be intensified.
When we examine the lives of Stoics, we find that many of them were targets of injustice.
Musonius Rufus, for example, was exiled to the desolate island of Gyaros, but he did not spend
his time there complaining about the unfairness of it all. This is in large part because he refused
to play the role of victim, a refusal that doubtless made his exile far more endurable than it
otherwise would have been. More generally, when we look at the Stoics, we cannot find a "victim"
among them-and if we could, Stoicism probably wouldn't have remained a viable philosophy of life
for two thousand years.
I cannot help but agree. Identity politics and political correctness diminishes agency and
casts entire groups as "victims" – this strikes me as in opposition to the stoic call to individuality
and self examination, and as William argues, formulating strategies for living that sometimes
reveal harsh truths.
As William also points out there is much logical incoherence and moral inconsistency at
the heart of political correctness. I would draw your attention to Professor Jordan Peterson,
a Canadian academic and Psychologist currently challenging key tenants of campus style social
justice and at risk of losing his position at the University of Toronto.
Outstanding post! "Political Correctness" and "Social Justice" are only concerned with
silencing debate, and they need to be confronted wherever and whenever they try and push
their misguided beliefs.
When a friend who is not a Stoic is experiencing external challenges such as the loss of
a loved one or debilitating physical illness, I could respond in one of two ways:
1) I could tell this person that their hardship is illusory for it is outside of the sphere
of choice, and thus they are being irrational by causing themselves needless suffering. I could
talk about how they would be better served by hardening themselves against all externals, and
about how people in developing nations have it far worse so their concerns are unimportant.
I could talk about how they are exemplifying a politically correct culture of crybullies that
is just attention seeking and needs to get over it.
2) Or instead I could listen to their story, I could offer my sympathy and condolences.
I could empathize by imagining what it would be like to be in their position. I could seek
to understand why this person is so affected by this event. And then perhaps after all that,
I could ask them what is in their control to do now, or perhaps make a suggestion for how they
might respond wisely and effectively to the external event.
Which option is more virtuous? I would propose the latter is the clear winner for a practicing
Stoic.
Even if you feel like your friend is upset over nothing - for as Epictetus recommended to
say to all externals, "this is nothing to me" - it is still more virtuous to empathize and
at least *pretend* for the moment that externals really do cause people to feel bad.
Then after some time, perhaps it would be useful and wise to offer a perspective that could
help your friend to become more resourceful and respond more effectively.
Even you completely disagree with a particular activist or an entire activist movement,
justice is still one of the four central virtues of Stoicism. Seneca frequently talked in his
letters about being human to people, even when they suffer "needlessly" from externals. Marcus
Aurelius talked about loving all people as our brother (or sister), even those annoying people
who bother you every day because they don't know good from evil.
When we ignore justice, or diminish the experiences of those who suffer from unjust systems,
we lose out on an opportunity to practice virtue with practical wisdom. I think the Stoic Sage
is clearly the person who listens and empathizes first, and that's the type of person I aim
to become.
Review your premiss: The concept of a 'just' of 'fair' world is very modern. The Spartans
trained their youth that the world was NOT fair or just. No Stoic ever claimed our world to
be either fair of just: they spoke of fortune and of doing what is right for you, the individual.
Thus: if YOU think you or others are not being treated fairly or justly, you would do better
to change you thinking than to attempt to change the world.
Palamedes: "if YOU think you or others are not being treated fairly or justly, you would
do better to change you thinking than to attempt to change the world."
But doesn't a the virtuous person always do both at once? Why must it be either or?
Stoicism teaches that virtue is the only good-and surely you don't believe that it is
virtuous to be an idle bystander to injustice!
"... ' through him [Severus] I have come to understand Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dio, Brutus, and have grasped the idea of a state based on equality before the law, which is administered according to the principles of equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy, which values above all the liberty of its subjects' ..."
"... Antipater, one of the Hellenistic heads of the Stoic school (in 159-129 BCE), argued that when we are doing business, for instance, selling a house, we should be open and honest about the faults of the property, even if we make less money ..."
"... he maintained that anyone who becomes a tyrant (unjust ruler) puts himself outside the brotherhood of humanity or the 'body' of rational human agents. More controversially he maintained that this principle justified the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE ( On Duties ..."
"... how we should have vote in the British referendum on our membership of the EU (June 2016) or the recent US presidential election (November 2016), but they certainly can provide ideas on which we can reflect in making such decisions. In particular, I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind or co-citizenship of the world has a special value for us in the present political climate. ..."
"... I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind can help to place these questions in a broader perspective and can lead us to recognize that treating whole classes of people who differ from us in one of these ways as somehow less than human or wholly outside the boundaries of our ethical concern is morally unacceptable. ..."
"... The middle path is where wisdom, courage, justice and moderation lead, where Stoic wisdom is based on the knowledge that we are all part of the One and the One is the living conscious Cosmos. ..."
"... In accord with classical Stoicism, good governance is what is to be encouraged regardless of if it is based on a monarchy, a dictatorship, a senate of powerful individuals or some form of elected term limited dictatorship that we in the West tend to call democracy. After all democracy is not and never has been the be-all-to-end-all. ..."
"... In accord with Stoic ideas, diplomacy will achieve much where 'regime change' will bring nothing but chaos. ..."
"... The intellectual drive towards globalisation is leading to an opposite drive towards division and warfare whereby countries are breaking down into 'warring' clans and tribes be they based on territory, nationality, ethnic divisions or just opposing political parties. ..."
"... We have need as Stoics not to just consider intellectualised principles, but to also consider the nature of the animal that we are and so to encourage the 'establishments' to govern us appropriately. ..."
The second strand of ethical development centres on our relationship to other people. The Stoics
believed that, alongside the natural motive of self-preservation, there is a second natural motive,
namely to care for others of our kind. The instinct, found in all animals, including human beings,
to love and care for our children, is a clear example of this motive. As we develop, human beings
express this motive in more complex and rational ways, which also express a growing understanding
of the virtues. This leads to two main kinds of outcome. One is social involvement (in family,
communal, or political life), in a form that expresses understanding of the virtues. Another is
the recognition that all human beings – because they are all capable of this process of rational,
ethical development – are, in a sense, brothers and sisters to us, or fellow-members of a single
world-community. Although different Stoic sources emphasize one or other of these outcomes, they
are often seen as compatible or mutually supporting. Social or political involvement in a specific,
local context is achieved in the best way (the way that expresses the virtues), if it is combined
with recognition of the fundamental kinship or co-citizenship of all human beings as rational
agents.
This Stoic theory of ethical development makes sense, I think, of their thinking on political
involvement. Our evidence for their ideas on this topic is rather limited, and, as with other
topics, different Stoics seem to have interpreted these ideas in somewhat different ways. But
there are some consistent themes.
First of all, the Stoics thought that, other things being equal, we should get involved in
community and political life in our specific or local context – unlike the Epicureans, for instance,
who thought such involvement was likely to undermine our own peace of mind.
Secondly, our involvement should be carried out in a way that also expressed and promoted our
understanding of the virtues (wisdom, courage, justice, self-control).
Thirdly, our involvement at a local level should also reflect the recognition that, although
different kinds of people have different claims on us, all human beings as such have a kinship
and in a sense co-citizenship with us. These principles have a direct bearing on the sense in
which Stoicism encourages us to be political active; it also has a bearing on how far one can
be a Stoic and also a political activist, which usually means challenging the established political
order in some way. I'll give some examples of how the ancient Stoics put these ideas into practice
and then discuss how they might help us to formulate our own approach now.
First, were ancient Stoics active in politics and if so how? In looking at this question
it's worth bearing in mind that, for much of the time that ancient Stoicism was most active (from
the third century BCE to the second century CE), Greece and later Rome were ruled by kings or
emperors, even though at other times, Athens had been a democracy and Rome a republic. It's also
worth noting that, for the most part, and unlike some other ancient philosophies, Stoicism did
not consistently recommend one form of government as the best one absolutely.
Rather, they maintained that, whatever context we find ourselves in (with exceptions noted
shortly), we should be involved politically in a way that is consistent with our specific situation
in life, character and talents, and our ethical principles. In Hellenistic Greece (that is, third
to first century BCE), the main options were either involvement in local or community politics
or being a philosophical advisor to a king, and some Stoics played both these roles.
Also, simply being a philosophical teacher in Athens was regarded as a kind of public or political
role. It's worth remembering that this often meant teaching and arguing in a public place, such
as the colonnade or Stoa after which the school was named. In Rome, a number of members of the
political élite adopted Stoicism as their philosophy, and combined this with various forms of
political involvement. These included being a leading politician and general under the Republic
(Cato the younger, first century BCE), advising an emperor (Seneca, advisor to Nero, first century
CE), and being the emperor himself (Marcus Aurelius, second century CE). At the other end of the
social scale, Epictetus, an ex-slave (first-second century CE), took on the role of a philosophical
teacher; he had no direct involvement in politics, but taught many students who went into political
life. So, ancient Stoics seem overall to have practised what they preached, and to have become
involved in politics to the extent that was feasible in their context and personal situation.
How far did this involvement express distinctively Stoic values? And did it lead them to engage
in political activ ism , that is, challenging political authority on the grounds of injustice?
This is, in fact, a very well-marked feature of political life in the late Roman republic and
Empire. It mainly took the form of exemplary gestures, designed to signal moral disapproval of
a given political ruler or regime, typically a dictator or emperor. Although Stoicism did not
reject sole rule as a constitutional form (or indeed any given constitutional form), they rejected
tyrannical abuse of power, seeing it as an exercise of injustice in the political sphere.
This is the common thread underlying a series of famous exemplary gestures.
Cato committed suicide (in 46 BCE), in a very deliberate and obvious way, rather than submit
to what he saw as Julius Caesar's illegitimate and unjust replacement of the Roman republic by
dictatorship. A number of Roman senators, such as Helvidius Priscus and Thrasea Paetus (both first
century CE), signalled their disapproval of the injustice of the emperor in power, for instance,
Nero or Domitian. They did so by refusing to attend the senate, by remaining silent there, or
walking out in protest – and these gestures were recognized as challenges to the regime and often
led to exile or execution. (There was in fact a general expulsion of philosophers in 89 CE under
Domitian, in response to this kind of attitude.)
Seneca's attempt to retire from his role of Nero's adviser, when it was clear his attempt to
control Nero's excesses had failed, was taken as a gesture of disapproval and led to his enforced
suicide in 65 CE. These are clear cases where Stoic principle (the refusal to be complicit in
an unjust political order) led certain Romans from being politically active to being political
activists , using exemplary gestures in the way that Gandhi did successfully in his campaign
of passive resistance to the British rule of India which he saw as unjust.
This passage of Marcus Aurelius Meditations sums up the two features of Stoic political
thought considered so far. ' through him [Severus] I have come to understand Thrasea, Helvidius,
Cato, Dio, Brutus, and have grasped the idea of a state based on equality before the law, which
is administered according to the principles of equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy,
which values above all the liberty of its subjects' (1.14).
Marcus refers to a number of the well-known Stoic activists I have just discussed. Marcus also
sums up his own credo as an emperor. Although not all Stoics would necessarily have shared this
approach, it clearly represents a Stoic type of ideal, namely Marcus' attempt to play his role
in life (as an emperor) in a way that was consistent with expressing the virtues in a political
context.
What about the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humanity or co-citizenship in the world? What
role did this play in their political thinking? Sometimes it provides a kind of objective or broader
framework for more localized political action, placing this in a broader moral framework: as in
this quotation from Marcus. 'As Antoninus, my city and fatherland is Rome, as a human being, it
is the universe. It is only what benefits these cities which is good for me' (6.44.6). At other
times this idea is brought more directly into moral or political decision-making. Antipater,
one of the Hellenistic heads of the Stoic school (in 159-129 BCE), argued that when we are doing
business, for instance, selling a house, we should be open and honest about the faults of the
property, even if we make less money , bearing in mind that all those involved are members
of the brotherhood of humankind and deserve just treatment (Cicero, On Duties 3.52).
Cicero (106-43 BCE), though not a Stoic himself, sometimes adopted Stoic principles; he maintained
that anyone who becomes a tyrant (unjust ruler) puts himself outside the brotherhood of humanity
or the 'body' of rational human agents. More controversially he maintained that this principle
justified the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE ( On Duties 3.22-28, 32).
These examples give us some idea how the idea of the brotherhood of humankind was used to support
both political involvement and social and political activism in the sense I am considering here.
Finally, what lessons can we learn from Stoic thinking and practice on this subject that might
help us today? I would not want to suggest that Stoic political principles provide a straightforward
answer to any given political question, for instance how we should have vote in the British
referendum on our membership of the EU (June 2016) or the recent US presidential election (November
2016), but they certainly can provide ideas on which we can reflect in making such decisions.
In particular, I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind or co-citizenship of the
world has a special value for us in the present political climate.
Many of the most intense debates today on both sides of the Atlantic centre on how we should
respond to the claims of refugees from war-zones, how we should respond to people who want to
become immigrants in our country, or how we should treat people whose religion is different from
our own, or from that prevalent in our country.
I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind can help to place these questions
in a broader perspective and can lead us to recognize that treating whole classes of people who
differ from us in one of these ways as somehow less than human or wholly outside the boundaries
of our ethical concern is morally unacceptable. More generally, I believe the Stoic approach
of locating questions of political involvement and activism within the broader framework of human
ethical development is a helpful one.
I think there is considerable value in trying to view one's life as an on-going project of
ethical progress, centred on bringing together our growing understanding of the virtues and of
how to treat other people better; and that this view can help us to adopt a more thoughtful and
constructive view of political engagement than is often held.
Old Rambo here is a prime example of where Stoicism without its faith can take us. Stoicism
is neither 'left' nor 'right' of the political spectrum – it is for what is appropriate
and such is mostly the middle path.
The middle path is where wisdom, courage, justice and moderation lead, where Stoic
wisdom is based on the knowledge that we are all part of the One and the One is the living
conscious Cosmos.
Take out the faith and the basis of what is virtue can be easily lost. Which is why if
one is going to go down the path of Neo-Stoicism one needs to have a very strong basis for
one's moral compass otherwise much of the Stoic practices and training can lead to the 'idiote'
believing that they are 'perceiving' matters correctly and that they are making 'correct
value judgments' when all the time their judgments are based only on what they erroneously
believe is in their own individual best interest having not correctly considered what is
in the interest of the whole.
Christopher Gill says, " treating whole classes of people who differ from us in one
of these ways as somehow less than human or wholly outside the boundaries of our ethical
concern is morally unacceptable."
C. Florius Lupus says, "When people become a threat to us, to our kinship or to justice
itself, then logic and reason demand that they have to be destroyed. It would not be stoic,
if we let irrational affections and feelings prevent us from doing what is necessary, even
if it requires harsh actions against other human beings."
Ron Peters says, "Rather, he's warning against the kind of blanket hatred of all Muslims
that is being encouraged by many high-profile, thoughtless and cruel politicians in the
UK, the EU and US. And that kind of hatred is simply unjust and insupportable by Stoics."
As we can see this subject is mostly considered against what are intellectualised emotionally
driven generalisations.
Yes, hatred of whole groups of people is irrational and mostly fear based with the fear
being driven by the natural 'tribalism' that is part of our make up where we are naturally
careful, even wary of those who live amongst our 'tribe' but who are 'different' and/or make
little or no effort to fit in.
It is perceived that such 'outsiders' are a threat to our collective control over our 'tribe's
territory'. Whether it be through warfare or invasion, in accordance with our nature as 'animals',
group instincts start to kick in whereby our natural inclination to be sociable to our fellow
kind (humanity) is overridden by the drive to see the 'invader' as not of our 'tribe' (less
than human), whereby we start to pull the circle of universal inclusion back in so as to be
able to allow the instincts that support us in self-defence to override the instincts that
support us as 'social animals'.
So we have need to be careful both regards the risk of triggering the 'they are not us'
instincts through oration and regards letting situations get out of control whereby the 'they
are not us' instinct is going to be triggered regardless – just by the sheer mass of any migration
of 'others' into our 'national' territories, especially where a minority of the 'outsiders'
are known to be a threat in the manner of 'wolves in sheep's clothing'.
If the leaders and the thinkers are seen to be blinded to such considerations by fear of
being accused of being xenophobic or racist then those who feel 'threatened' will feel even
more insecure and fearful and so will surrender yet further to the defensive instincts of humankind
– defensive instincts that have been built into us all by the processes of Nature, the very
Nature that we as Stoics turn to for guidance as to what is appropriate.
Politicians need to be allowed to look to the need to control any influx of 'outsiders'
so as not to cause mass insecurity without being berated by those who have not looked to the
wider picture. Western politicians also need to stop the crusade whereby they peddle their
chosen system of government and so upset the balance in other counties so causing the mass
migrations.
In accord with classical Stoicism, good governance is what is to be encouraged regardless
of if it is based on a monarchy, a dictatorship, a senate of powerful individuals or some form
of elected term limited dictatorship that we in the West tend to call democracy. After all
democracy is not and never has been the be-all-to-end-all.
We also need to look to what we consider to be good governance. Some peoples, because of
their culture and their history, need the 'strong leader' form of governance. We in the West
have been gradually trying to remove all such 'strong leaders' from power – with disastrous
effects. Better some issues of individual freedoms etcetera rather than whole counties being
decimated due to the loss of the necessary 'tough' leadership that keeps warring tribes from
tearing each other apart.
In accord with Stoic ideas, diplomacy will achieve much where 'regime change' will bring
nothing but chaos.
Evolution ensures the 'survival of the fittest' through competition and diversity. Any drive
to force what are 'tribal' animals to live totally as one people with no 'boundaries' will
lead to great suffering.
As with much in Stoicism, opposites are compatible. So there is a need to accept division
as well as unity.
The intellectual drive towards globalisation is leading to an opposite drive towards
division and warfare whereby countries are breaking down into 'warring' clans and tribes be
they based on territory, nationality, ethnic divisions or just opposing political parties.
We have need as Stoics not to just consider intellectualised principles, but to also
consider the nature of the animal that we are and so to encourage the 'establishments' to govern
us appropriately.
As Dutch says, "Getting from those largely self-regarding fundamental principles to the
philosophy's broader ethical outlook as discussed here takes time and a fair bit of study."
This is why the Stoic is taught to view themselves as a servant of the whole while also
being an autonomous individual – where 'one' is both the whole and the individual.
"... Someone needs to buy Paul Krugman a one way ticket to Camden and have him hang around the devastated post-industrial hell scape his policies helped create. ..."
"... Krugman should be temporarily barred from public discourse until he apologizes for pushing NAFTA and all the rest. Hundreds of millions of people were thrust into dire poverty because of the horrible free trade policies he and 99.9% of US economists pushed. ..."
"... Extremes meet: extreme protectionism is close to extreme neoliberal globalization in the level of devastation, that can occur. ..."
"... But please do not forget that Krugman is a neoliberal stooge and this is much worse then being protectionist. This is close to betrayal of the nation you live it, people you live with, if you ask me. ..."
"... To me academic neoliberals after 2008 are real "deplorables". And should be treated as such, despite his intellect. There not much honor in being an intellectual prostitute of financial oligarchy that rules the country. ..."
Economists are still oblivious to the devastation created by 40 years of free trade.
Someone needs to buy Paul Krugman a one way ticket to Camden and have him hang around the
devastated post-industrial hell scape his policies helped create.
Krugman should be temporarily barred from public discourse until he apologizes for pushing
NAFTA and all the rest. Hundreds of millions of people were thrust into dire poverty because of
the horrible free trade policies he and 99.9% of US economists pushed.
They have learned nothing and they have forgotten much.
Oh yea - bring on the tariffs which will lead to a massive appreciation of the dollar. Which in
turn will lead to massive reductions in US exports. I guess our new troll is short selling Boeing.
likbez -> pgl, -1
I tend to agree with you. Extremes meet: extreme protectionism is close to extreme neoliberal
globalization in the level of devastation, that can occur.
But please do not forget that Krugman is a neoliberal stooge and this is much worse then
being protectionist. This is close to betrayal of the nation you live it, people you live with,
if you ask me.
To me academic neoliberals after 2008 are real "deplorables". And should be treated as
such, despite his intellect. There not much honor in being an intellectual prostitute of financial
oligarchy that rules the country.
"... By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street ..."
"... should head down ..."
"... not ..."
"... A population of less than 100 million in 1945 became more than 200 million in 1976 and over 320 million in 2016! Tripling your population in 70 years is a really bad idea. At this rate over a billion US citizens will exist in 2086. ..."
"... 'Merika is the third most populous nation in the world followed by Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria. ..."
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco
based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive
international work experience. Originally published at
Wolf Street
Hardly any improvement for individuals since the Great Recession.
When Donald Trump campaigned on how "terrible" the jobs situation was, while
the Obama Administration touted the jobs growth since the employment bottom of
the Great Recession in 2010, it sounded like they were talking about two
entirely different economies at different ends of the world. But they weren't.
Statistically speaking, they were both right.
Since 2011, the US economy created 14.6 million "nonfarm payrolls" as
defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics – whether or not they're low-wage or
less than full-time jobs. But for individuals, this job market, statistically
speaking, looks almost as tough as it was during the Great Recession.
Obviously, a lot of people have found jobs, and some of them have found good
jobs since then, and there are a ton of "job openings." But the Census Bureau
just told us why the job market is still, to use Trump's term, "terrible" when
it released its
population estimates
for 2016, just before clocking out for the holidays.
According to this report: From the beginning of 2010 – in terms of jobs, the
darkest days of the Great Recession – through December 2016, the US "resident
population" (not counting overseas-stationed military personnel) grew by 16
million people.
But since the beginning of 2010 through November 2016, nonfarm payrolls grew
by only 13.8 million.
Note that in 2010, nonfarm payrolls declined by 900,000, after having
plunged by over 5 million in 2009. The first year with growth in nonfarm
payrolls was 2011.
The chart below shows this peculiar relationship between the "resident
population" of the US (top green line) and nonfarm payrolls (bottom blue line).
Both rose. But the bottom line (nonfarm payrolls) didn't rise nearly enough.
The difference between the two is the number of people that are
not
on nonfarm payrolls. They might be students, unemployed, retirees, or working
in a job that the "nonfarm payrolls" do not capture (more on that in a moment).
This is reflected by the red line, whose slope
should head down
in an
economy where jobs grow faster than the population:
For the first five years of this seven-year period, the number of people
not
occupying a job as captured by nonfarm payroll data, kept growing (red
numbers), even as the touted jobs growth was kicking in. Why? Because
population growth outpaced jobs growth over the five years from 2010 through
2014.
Only in 2015 and 2016 has growth in "nonfarm payrolls" edged past population
growth. Those were the only two years since the Great Recession when people on
an individual basis actually had improving chances of getting a job.
The nonfarm payrolls data is not a complete measure of the US jobs
situation. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics
, it excludes "proprietors, the unincorporated
self-employed, unpaid volunteer or family employees, farm employees, and
domestic employees. It also excludes military personnel, and employees of a big
part of the intelligence community, including the CIA, the NSA, the National
Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
There are many folks who'd contend that this population growth is mostly
young people who are not yet in the work force and old people who refuse to
die, and that for working age people (say, 18 to 65), the jobs growth has been
phenomenal.
But that's not the case. According to the Census report, in 2016, the
percentage of people 18 and over grew to 249.5 million, making up 77.2% of the
total US population, up from 76.8% in 2015 (247.3 million), and up from 76.2%
in 2010! The millennials have moved into adulthood, elbowing each other while
scrambling for jobs.
And boomers are not retiring from the working life. Why should they. Many of
them are fit and don't want to sit around bored, and many of them
have to
work because they can't afford to quit working, even if they would like to. So
the number of workers 65+ has soared 45% since the end of 2009, from 6.2
million to 9.0 million. So now there are nearly 3 million more of them on
nonfarm payrolls than there had been in 2010:
The natural growth rate of the population (births minus deaths) has been
declining for years. In 2016, it dropped to 0.38%, a new low. The growth rate
from immigration, which fluctuates somewhat with the economy, edged down to
0.31%. So total population growth dropped to a new low of 0.69%. Of note: the
natural growth rate via births won't impact the labor force until the babies
are young adults. But the vast majority of new immigrants are of working age,
and they add to the labor force immediately.
So the number of jobs since 2010 has risen by 13.8 million – which the
economists are endlessly touting, along with the even better sounding 14.8
million since 2011. But the population has increased by 16 million since 2010.
Most of them are people of working age, jostling for position to grab one of
these jobs that would put them on the nonfarm payrolls. And this is why the job
market for many individuals is "terrible," as Trump said.
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and
doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress.
Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric,
software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics,
international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de
plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry James's The Ambassadors: "Live all
you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether.
http://www.correntewire.com
KK
,
December 26, 2016 at 5:55 am
A population of less than 100 million in 1945 became more than 200
million in 1976 and over 320 million in 2016! Tripling your population in 70
years is a really bad idea. At this rate over a billion US citizens will exist
in 2086.
There are resource limits to growth. And a car, house, vacation,
pension, healthcare,and large family will cease to be possible for all or even
the majority. Study how the average Indian or Chinese family live and that
albeit with a few bits of technology is the future.
A lot of "pro-natalists" are religious fundamentalists who do actually
see the population/resource crunch coming for which they are trying to
stack the numbers on their team.
But I think most of the "pro-natalists" are rich people who, more
than anything else, want cheap labor. And there is no better way to
get cheap labor than to force population growth ever higher.
We are not importing foreign workers because the natives refuse to
breed 'enough' children. The natives (of all races) are limiting their
family sizes because they are worried about having more children than
they can support, just like they did in the great depression. Left to
themselves, that would start to tighten up the labor market and
produce powerful forces raising wages. But not if we keep forcing ever
more foreign workers into the labor pool. Which is of course the whole
idea.
'Merika is the third most populous nation in the
world followed by Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria.
Seems to be a mind-jarring fat to most when I bring it up .
Alot of poorer countries in the "developing world" ensured they stayed
poorer by letting their population growth get out of control. A big, if not
the main, reason for China's economic success since 1975 was in getting its
population growth under control, that is a big reason for the contrast
between China and India.
Unlike, for example, Japan, the rulers of the United States decided to
emulate the developing countries that let their populations expand too much,
importing people from the developing world to get the job done.
The planet can take care of itself. I think you mean "the key to saving
ourselves." Also I think
consumption patterns
of the
"global North" are more of a problem than simply population.
That resident population number appears to include under-16-year-olds who
are in most cases not looking for employment. I have no idea how that number
has changed. Ditto, it includes the voluntarily retired.
This article appears to be another argument for immigration. I am very much
a progressive liberal, excepting the standard progressive immigration stance
that more is better and that illegal immigration is o.k.
What would our job market look like without immigrants, even just legal
immigrants?
Between 1970 and 2014, the percentage of foreign-born workers in the
civilian labor force more than tripled, from 5 percent to 17 percent. In 2014
immigrants accounted for 17% of the work force; 27.6 million out of 159.5
million. What is that number was cut in half?
The number of US unemployed peaked in 2009 at 15,352,000. Today its
7,400,000 (if you believe the official numbers).
That means if we had cut immigration by just 30% there would be 0
unemployment. Of course this is a simplistic analysis but it is interesting to
compare the two. And of course with near 0 unemployment wages would be pushed
up.
No wonder the powers that be keep yammering about immigration but never do
anything about it. More people in the country willing to work for less money
means increased profits for the rich.
Did you not read the article or simply fail to grasp it? Richter points
out that the population has grown faster than the number of jobs and also
that immigration is the largest part of that pop. growth (especially the
adult population). He nowhere makes an argument for more illegal (or legal)
immigration.
On immigration, how about we ask ourselves why it is that so many people
are immigrating here and what we might do to discourage them? For instance,
a kind of Marshall Plan for Central and South America would probably go a
long way, as most people prefer to stay where they are from, if they can
make a reasonable life there.
Call me crazy, but considering that the Clinton campaign had access to a
certain portion of this information, their inability to understand the appeal
of Sanders and Trump is clearly delusional.
Certainly the latest data just came out, but some of this about the period
until 2014 and even a little after had to be out there. They had to know that
until recently there really were not enough jobs to go around, and that there
was a good chance that any gains in the last year or so were not enough to
remotely cover the deficit up to that point. I get they might not have had the
information that beyond not being enough most of the jobs created were part
time and benefit free. That doesn't explain not seeing and getting that most
Americans have seen little or no recovery.
It appears the DLC Democratic Party must be similar to that narrative
driven NY Times environment, you only survive if you embrace the narrative even
as the success of the enterprise you are apart loses more and more.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends on his not understanding it."
― Upton Sinclair
All career elected politicians on both sides of the aisle are paid to not
understand the jobs problem by donors with very large wallets who do not
want the jobs problem solved. Follow the money. Who wants cheap labor and
what's the best way to get it if you can't offshore operations?
We cannot rebuild the DLC or any leftist party until we figure out how to
fund campaigns without donor money that is interested in maintaining the
status quo.
I will comment elsewhere, but I keep on hearing arguments on the lines
that if only Hillary Clinton had understood the problems of the white
working class she would have won or something along these lines.
The Trump and Sanders campaigns were protest vehicles -- and there were
precursors in previous elections -- over how the country has been run for
the past several decades. Since 1981 either the Clintons or the Bushes have
either lived in the White House or held really high ranking positions in the
US government.
Members of neither family can credibly run against globalization (or
"invade the world/ invite the world" as Steve Sailer puts it) or really
other major policies pursued by the US government since the 1980s. They own
it.
They have to run on a globalization platform. Hillary Clinton in fact did
surprisingly well at the polls, considering this.
There can be types of verbal Marshall Plans, too. Some percentage of the US
transient population has self-deported already, although likely not enough to
upset the temporary Obama Rush of 1,500+ per day streaming in to claim amnesty
prior to January 20th. Announce that undocumented entrants will be turned back,
instead of throwing benefits at them, and that will help stem the human tide.
Supplement that with specific policies to aid and abet Mexico and Central
American governments in their internal and border control efforts to stop the
human tide further south. Publicize those efforts and stick to them.
Both policies would change the dynamic and would allow some degree of US
control over its own population growth. Then put in place specific, actionable
steps to identify and facilitate thoughtful population growth to meet US needs
and to allow for legitimate humanitarian relief instead of bleeding heart
efforts that externalized ill-considered policies.
(reuters.com)
241
Posted by
BeauHD
on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @10:30PM
from the
lick-and-a-promise
dept.
IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty has
pledged to
"hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States
"
as she and other technology executives prepared to meet with President-elect
Donald Trump on Wednesday. Reuters reports:
IBM had nearly 378,000 employees
at the end of 2015, according to the company's annual report. While the firm
does not break out staff numbers by country, a review of government filings
suggests IBM's U.S. workforce declined in each of the five years through 2015.
When asked why IBM planned to increase its U.S. workforce after those job cuts,
company spokesman Ian Colley said in an email that Rometty had laid out the
reasons in her USA Today piece. Her article did not acknowledge that IBM had
cut its U.S. workforce, although it called on Congress to quickly update the
Perkins Career and Technical Education Act that governs federal support for
vocational education. "We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving,"
she said. "As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data
science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills --
which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting."
She said IBM intended to invest $1 billion in the training and development of
U.S. employees over the next four years. Pratt declined to say if that
represented an increase over spending in the prior four years.
"Get rid of the judgment, get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt itself." (viii.40)
"Everything is right for me that is right for you, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early
or too late that comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring,
O Nature. From you are all things, in you are all things, to you all things return." (iv.23)
"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly,
without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were
bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live
now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word that you utter, you will live happy.
And there is no man able to prevent this." (iii.12)
"How ridiculous and how strange is to be surprised at anything that happens in life!" (xii.13)
"Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to
the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul; but the soul turns and moves itself alone." (v.19)
"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers
of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your
own compass also" (vi.19)
"Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten.
The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The
people who praise us - how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it
all takes place. The whole earth a point in space-and most of it uninhabited. How many people
there will be to admire you, and who they are." (iv.3)
"The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live." (Ep.
101.15)
"That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away." (Ep.
59.18)
"Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave
in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes." (De
Provid. v.8)
"Virtue is nothing else than right reason." (Ep.
66.32)
"... The fact remains, however, that every single developed country got there by using protectionist policies to nurture the develop local industries. Protectionism in developed countries does have strongly negative consequences, but it is beneficial for developing economies. ..."
"... You are exactly right about Japan and I lived through that period. Please name one advanced economy which did not rely on protectionist laws to support domestic industries. All of the European industrial countries did it. The US did it. Japan and Korea did it. China is currently doing it and India has done it. ..."
"... Nobody cared about US labor or about hollowing out the US economy. Krugman frequently noted that the benefits to investors and 'strategic' considerations for free trade were more important that job losses. ..."
"... This extra demand for dollars as a commodity is what drives the price of the dollar higher, leading to the strategic benefits and economic hollowing out that I noted above. ..."
"... There really is no "post-industrialization era", no matter what fantasies the FIRE sector wants to sell. To the extent there is, the existing global trade agreements (including the WTO, World Bank, IMF, and related organization) accomplish that as well by privileging the position of first world capital. ..."
"... "Over the long haul, clearly automation's been much more important - it's not even close," said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change. No candidate talked much about automation on the campaign trail. Technology is not as convenient a villain as China or Mexico, there is no clear way to stop it, and many of the technology companies are in the United States and benefit the country in many ways. ..."
"... Globalization is clearly responsible for some of the job losses, particularly trade with China during the 2000s, which led to the rapid loss of 2 million to 2.4 million net jobs, according to research by economists including Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of M.I.T. ..."
"... People who work in parts of the country most affected by imports generally have greater unemployment and reduced income for the rest of their lives, Mr. Autor found in a paper published in January. Still, over time, automation has had a far bigger effect than globalization, and would have eventually eliminated those jobs anyway, he said in an interview. "Some of it is globalization, but a lot of it is we require many fewer workers to do the same amount of work," he said. "Workers are basically supervisors of machines." ..."
"... Clarification of 3: that is, infant industry protection as traditionally done, i.e. "picking winners", won't help. What would help is structural changes that make things relatively easier for small enterprises and relatively harder for large ones. ..."
"... Making direct lobbying of state and federal politicians by industry groups and companies a crime punishable by 110% taxation of net income on all the participants would be a start. ..."
"... "Over time, automation has generally had a happy ending: As it has displaced jobs, it has created new ones. But some experts are beginning to worry that this time could be different. Even as the economy has improved, jobs and wages for a large segment of workers - particularly men without college degrees doing manual labor - have not recovered." ..."
"... So why have manufacturing jobs plummeted since 2000? One answer is that the current account deficit is the wrong figure, since it also includes our surplus in trade in services. If you just look at goods, the deficit is closer to 4.2% of GDP. ..."
"... trade interacts with automation. Not only do we lose jobs in manufacturing to automation, but trade leads us to re-orient our production toward goods that use relatively less labor (tech, aircraft, chemicals, farm produces, etc.), while we import goods like clothing, furniture and autos. ..."
"... There are industries that are closely connected with the sovereignty of the country. That's what neoliberals tend to ignore as they, being closet Trotskyites ("Financial oligarchy of all countries unite!" instead of "Proletarian of all countries unite!" ;-) do not value sovereignty and are hell bent on the Permanent Neoliberal Revolution to bring other countries into neoliberal fold (in the form of color revolutions, or for smaller countries, direct invasions like in Iraq and Libya ). ..."
"... Neoliberal commenters here demonstrate complete detachment from the fact that like war is an extension of politics, while politics is an extension of economics. For example, denying imports can and is often used for political pressure. ..."
"... Now Trump want to play this game selectively designating China as "evil empire" and providing a carrot for Russia. Will it works, or Russia can be wiser then donkeys, I do not know. ..."
"... The US propagandists usually call counties on which they impose sanction authoritarian dictatorships to make such actions more politically correct, but the fact remains: The USA as a global hegemon enjoys using economic pressure to crush dissidents and put vassals in line. ..."
"... Neoliberalism as a social system is past it pinnacle and that creates some problems for the USA as the central player in the neoliberal world. The triumphal march of neoliberalism over the globe ended almost a decade ago. ..."
The Case for Protecting Infant Industries : I must say, it's been almost breathtaking to see
how fast the acceptable terms of debate have shifted on the subject of trade. Thanks partly to
President-elect Donald Trump's populism and partly to academic
research
showing that the costs of free trade could be higher than anyone predicted, economics commentators
are now happy to lambast
the entire idea of trade. I don't want to do that -- I think a nuanced middle ground is best.
But I do think it's worth reevaluating one idea that the era of economic dogmatism had seemingly
consigned to the junk pile -- the notion of infant-industry protectionism. ...
DrDick -> pgl...
The fact remains, however, that every single developed country got there by using protectionist
policies to nurture the develop local industries. Protectionism in developed countries does have
strongly negative consequences, but it is beneficial for developing economies.
You are exactly right about Japan and I lived through that period. Please name one advanced
economy which did not rely on protectionist laws to support domestic industries. All of the European
industrial countries did it. The US did it. Japan and Korea did it. China is currently doing it
and India has done it.
JohnH -> pgl... , -1
Japan and other developed countries took advantage of the strong dollar/reserve currency, which
provided their industries de facto protection from US exports along with a price umbrella that
allowed them export by undercutting prices on US domestic products. The strong dollar was viewed
as a strategic benefit to the US, since it allowed former rivals to develop their economies while
making them dependent on the US consumer market, the largest in the world. The strong dollar also
allowed the US to establish bases and fight foreign wars on the cheap, while allowing Wall Street
to buy foreign economies' crown jewels on the cheap.
Nobody cared about US labor or about hollowing out the US economy. Krugman frequently noted
that the benefits to investors and 'strategic' considerations for free trade were more important
that job losses.
Even pgl's guy, Milton Friedman, recognized that "overseas demand for dollars allows the United
States to maintain persistent trade deficits without causing the value of the currency to depreciate
or the flow of trade to re-adjust." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_use_of_the_U.S._dollar
This extra demand for dollars as a commodity is what drives the price of the dollar higher,
leading to the strategic benefits and economic hollowing out that I noted above.
John San Vant -> JohnH... , -1
That is because you get a persistent trade surplus in services, which offsets the "Goods" trade
deficit. The currency depreciated in the 2000's because said surplus in services began to decline
creating a real trade deficit.
There really is no "post-industrialization era", no matter what fantasies the FIRE sector
wants to sell. To the extent there is, the existing global trade agreements (including the WTO,
World Bank, IMF, and related organization) accomplish that as well by privileging the position
of first world capital.
anne -> DrDick... , -1
There really is no "post-industrialization era", no matter what fantasies the Finance, Insurance,
and Real Estate sectors want to sell....
[ Interesting assertion. Do develop this further. ]
The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It's Automation.
By Claire Cain Miller
The first job that Sherry Johnson, 56, lost to automation was at the local newspaper in Marietta,
Ga., where she fed paper into the printing machines and laid out pages. Later, she watched machines
learn to do her jobs on a factory floor making breathing machines, and in inventory and filing.
"It actually kind of ticked me off because it's like, How are we supposed to make a living?"
she said. She took a computer class at Goodwill, but it was too little too late. "The 20- and
30-year-olds are more up to date on that stuff than we are because we didn't have that when we
were growing up," said Ms. Johnson, who is now on disability and lives in a housing project in
Jefferson City, Tenn.
Donald J. Trump told workers like Ms. Johnson that he would bring back their jobs by clamping
down on trade, offshoring and immigration. But economists say the bigger threat to their jobs
has been something else: automation.
"Over the long haul, clearly automation's been much more important - it's not even close,"
said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change.
No candidate talked much about automation on the campaign trail. Technology is not as convenient
a villain as China or Mexico, there is no clear way to stop it, and many of the technology companies
are in the United States and benefit the country in many ways.
Mr. Trump told a group of tech company leaders last Wednesday: "We want you to keep going with
the incredible innovation. Anything we can do to help this go along, we're going to be there for
you."
Andrew F. Puzder, Mr. Trump's pick for labor secretary and chief executive of CKE Restaurants,
extolled the virtues of robot employees over the human kind in an interview with Business Insider
in March. "They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show
up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case," he said.
Globalization is clearly responsible for some of the job losses, particularly trade with
China during the 2000s, which led to the rapid loss of 2 million to 2.4 million net jobs, according
to research by economists including Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of M.I.T.
People who work in parts of the country most affected by imports generally have greater
unemployment and reduced income for the rest of their lives, Mr. Autor found in a paper published
in January. Still, over time, automation has had a far bigger effect than globalization, and would
have eventually eliminated those jobs anyway, he said in an interview. "Some of it is globalization,
but a lot of it is we require many fewer workers to do the same amount of work," he said. "Workers
are basically supervisors of machines."
When Greg Hayes, the chief executive of United Technologies, agreed to invest $16 million in
one of its Carrier factories as part of a Trump deal to keep some jobs in Indiana instead of moving
them to Mexico, he said the money would go toward automation.
"What that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs," he said on CNBC....
Clarification of 3: that is, infant industry protection as traditionally done, i.e. "picking winners",
won't help. What would help is structural changes that make things relatively easier for small
enterprises and relatively harder for large ones.
Making direct lobbying of state and federal politicians by industry groups and companies a
crime punishable by 110% taxation of net income on all the participants would be a start.
What's Different About Stagnating Wages for Workers Without College Degrees
There seems to be a great effort to convince people that the displacement due to the trade
deficit over the last fifteen years didn't really happen. The New York Times contributed to this
effort with a piece * telling readers that over the long-run job loss has been primarily due to
automation not trade.
While the impact of automation over a long enough period of time certainly swamps the impact
of trade, over the last 20 years there is little doubt that the impact of the exploding trade
deficit has had more of an impact on employment. To make this one as simple as possible, we currently
have a trade deficit of roughly $460 billion (@ 2.6 percent of GDP). Suppose we had balanced trade
instead, making up this gap with increased manufacturing output.
Does the NYT want to tell us that we could increase our output of manufactured goods by $460
billion, or just under 30 percent, without employing more workers in manufacturing? That would
be pretty impressive. We currently employ more than 12 million workers in manufacturing, if moving
to balanced trade increase employment by just 15 percent we would be talking about 1.8 million
jobs. That is not trivial.
But this is not the only part of the story that is strange. We are getting hyped up fears over
automation even at a time when productivity growth (i.e. automation) has slowed to a crawl, averaging
just 1.0 percent annually over the last decade. The NYT tells readers:
"Over time, automation has generally had a happy ending: As it has displaced jobs, it has
created new ones. But some experts are beginning to worry that this time could be different. Even
as the economy has improved, jobs and wages for a large segment of workers - particularly men
without college degrees doing manual labor - have not recovered."
Hmmm, this time could be different? How so? The average hourly wage of men with just a high
school degree was 13 percent less in 2000 than in 1973. ** For workers with some college it was
down by more than 2.0 percent. In fact, stagnating wages for men without college degrees is not
something new and different, it has been going on for more than forty years. Hasn't this news
gotten to the NYT yet?
Inequality, technology, globalization, and the false assumptions that sustain current inequities
by Jared Bernstein
December 22nd, 2016 at 3:24 pm
Here's a great interview* with inequality scholar Branko Milanovic wherein he brings a much-needed
historical and international perspective to the debate (h/t: C. Marr). Many of Branko's points
are familiar to my readers: yes, increased trade has upsides, for both advanced and emerging economies.
But it's not hard to find significant swaths hurt by globalization, particularly workers in rich
economies who've been placed into competition with those in poorer countries. The fact that little
has been done to help them is one reason for president-elect Trump.
As Milanovic puts it:
"The problems with globalization arise from the fact that gains from it are not (and can never
be) evenly distributed. There would be always those who gain less than some others, or those who
lose even in absolute terms. But to whom can they "appeal" for redress? Only to their national
governments because this is how the world is politically organized. Thus national governments
have to engage in "mop up" operations to fix the negative effects of globalization. And this they
have not done well, led as they were by the belief that the trickle-down economics will take care
of it. We know it did not."
But I'd like to focus on a related point from Branko's interview, one that gets less attention:
the question of whether it was really exposure to global trade or to labor-saving technology that
is most responsible for displacing workers. What's the real problem here: is it the trade deficit
or the robots?
Branko cogently argues that "both technological change and economic polices responded to globalization.
The nature of recent technological progress would have been different if you could not employ
labor 10,000 miles away from your home base." Their interaction makes their relative contributions
hard to pull apart.
I'd argue that the rise of trade with China, from the 1990s to the 2007 crash, played a significant
role in moving US manufacturing employment from its steady average of around 17 million factory
jobs from around 1970 to 2000, to an average today that's about 5 million less (see figure below;
of course, manufacturing employment was falling as a share of total jobs over this entire period).
Over at Econlog I have a post that suggests the answer is no, CA deficits do not cost jobs.
But suppose I'm wrong, and suppose they do cost jobs. In that case, trade has been a major
net contributor to American jobs during the 21st century, as our deficit was about 4% of GDP during
the 2000 tech boom, and as large as 6% of GDP during the 2006 housing boom. Today it is only 2.6%
of GDP. So if you really believe that rising trade deficits cost jobs, you'd be forced to believe
that the shrinking deficits since 2000 have created jobs.
So why have manufacturing jobs plummeted since 2000? One answer is that the current account
deficit is the wrong figure, since it also includes our surplus in trade in services. If you just
look at goods, the deficit is closer to 4.2% of GDP.
But even that doesn't really explain very much, because it's slightly lower than the 4.35%
of GDP trade deficit in goods back in 2000. So again, the big loss of manufacturing jobs is something
of a mystery. Yes, we import more goods than we used to, but exports of goods have risen at about
the same rate since 2000. So why does it seem like trade has devastated our manufacturing sector?
Perhaps because trade interacts with automation. Not only do we lose jobs in manufacturing
to automation, but trade leads us to re-orient our production toward goods that use relatively
less labor (tech, aircraft, chemicals, farm produces, etc.), while we import goods like clothing,
furniture and autos.
So trade and automation are both parts of a bigger trend, Schumpeterian creative destruction,
which is transforming big areas of our economy. It's especially painful as during the earlier
period of automation (say 1950-2000) the physical output of goods was still rising fast. So the
blow of automation was partly cushioned by a rise in output. (Although not in the coal and steel
industries!) Since 2000, however, we've seen slower growth in physical output for a number of
reasons, including slower workforce growth, a shift to a service economy, and a home building
recession (which normally absorbs manufactured goods like home appliances, carpet, etc.) We are
producing more goods than ever, but with dramatically fewer workers.
Update: Steve Cicala sent me a very interesting piece on coal that he had published in Forbes.
Ironically, environmental regulations actually helped West Virginia miners, by forcing utilities
to install scrubbers that cleaned up emissions from the dirtier West Virginia coal. (Wyoming coal
has less sulfur.) He also discusses the issue of competition from natural gas.
The historical record is totally unambiguous. Protectionism always leads to wealth and industrial
development. Free trade leads you to the third world. This was true four hundred years ago with
mercantilist England and the navigation acts; it was true with Lincoln's tariffs in the 1860's,
it was true of East Asia post 1945.
Economists better abandon silly free trade if they want to have any credibility and not be
seen as quacks.
Washington (CNN)President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is discussing a proposal to
impose tariffs as high as 10% on imports, according to multiple sources.
A senior Trump transition official said Thursday the team is mulling up to a 10% tariff aimed
at spurring US manufacturing, which could be implemented via executive action or as part of a
sweeping tax reform package they would push through Congress.
Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus floated a 5% tariff on imports in meetings
with key Washington players last week, according to two sources who represent business interests
in Washington. But the senior transition official who spoke to CNN Thursday on the condition of
anonymity said the higher figure is now in play.
Such a move would deliver on Trump's "America First" campaign theme, but risks drawing the
US into a trade war with other countries and driving up the cost of consumer goods in the US.
And it's causing alarm among business interests and the pro-trade Republican establishment.
The senior transition official said the transition team is beginning to find "common ground"
with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, pointing in particular
to the border adjustment tax measure included in House Republicans' "Better Way" tax reform proposal,
which would disincentivize imports through tax policy.
Aides to Ryan and Brady declined to say they had "common ground" with Trump, but acknowledged
they are in deep discussions with transition staffers on the issue.
Curbing free trade was a central element of Trump's campaign. He promised to rip up the North
American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. He also vowed to take a tougher line against
other international trading partners, almost always speaking harshly of China but often including
traditional US allies such as Japan in his complaint that American workers get the short end of
the stick under current trade practices.
Gulf with GOP establishment
It is an area where there is a huge gulf between Trump's stated positions and traditional GOP
orthodoxy. Business groups and GOP establishment figures -- including Ryan and Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell -- have been hoping the transition from the campaign to governing would
bring a different approach.
Ryan did signal in a CNBC interview earlier this month that Trump's goals of spurring US manufacturing
could be accomplished through "comprehensive tax reform."
"I'll tell him what I've been saying all along, which is we can get at what he's trying to
get at better through comprehensive tax reform," Ryan said.
The pro-business GOP establishment says the new Trump administration could make clear it would
withdraw from NAFTA unless Canada and Mexico entered new talks to modernize the agreement to reflect
today's economy. That would allow Trump to say he kept a promise to make the agreement fairer
to American workers without starting a trade war and exacerbating tensions with America's neighbors
and vital economic partners.
But there remain establishment jitters that Trump, who views his tough trade message as critical
to his election victory, will look for ways to make an early statement that he is serious about
reshaping the trade playing field.
And when Priebus told key Washington players that the transition is mulling a 5% tariff on
imports, the reaction was one of fierce opposition, according to two sources who represent business
interests in Washington and spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations with the
Trump team were confidential.
Priebus, the sources said, was warned such a move could start trade wars, anger allies, and
also hurt the new administration's effort to boost the rate of economic growth right out of the
gate.
Role of Wilbur Ross
One of the sources said he viewed the idea as a trial balloon when first raised, and considered
it dead on arrival given the strong reaction in the business community -- and the known opposition
to such protectionist ideas among the GOP congressional leadership.
But this source voiced new alarm Tuesday after being told by allies within the Trump transition
that defending new tariffs was part of the confirmation "murder board" practice of Wilbur Ross,
the President-elect's choice for commerce secretary.
At least one business community organization is worried enough about the prospect of the tariff
it already has prepared talking points, obtained by CNN Wednesday night.
"This $100 billion tax on American consumers and industry would impose heavy costs on the
US economy, particularly for the manufacturing sector and American workers, with highly negative
political repercussions," according to the talking points. "Rather than using a trade policy
sledgehammer that would inflict serious collateral damage, the Trump administration should
use the scalpel of US trade remedy law to achieve its goals."
The talking points also claim the tariffs would lead to American job loss and result in a tax
to consumers, both of which would harm the US economy.
Trump aides have signaled that Ross is likely to be a more influential player in trade negotiations
than recent Commerce secretaries. Given that, the aides know his confirmation hearings are likely
to include tough questioning -- from both Democrats and Republicans -- about Trump's trade-related
campaign promises.
"The way it was cast to me was that (Trump) and Ross are all over it," said one source. "It
is serious."
The second source was less certain about whether the tariff idea was serious or just part of
a vigorous debate about policy options. But this source said the unpredictability of Trump and
his team had the business interests nervous.
The business lobbying community is confident the GOP leadership would push back on any legislative
effort to impose tariffs, which organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable,
the National Association of Manufactures and others, including groups representing farmers, believe
would lead to retaliation against US industries heavily dependent on exports.
But the sources aligned with those interests told CNN the conversation within the Trump transition
includes using executive authority allowed under existing trade laws. Different trade laws enacted
over the course of the past century allow the president to impose tariffs if he issues a determination
the United States is being subjected to unfair trade practices or faces an economic or national
security threat because of trade practices.
There are industries that are closely connected with the sovereignty of the country. That's
what neoliberals tend to ignore as they, being closet Trotskyites ("Financial oligarchy of all
countries unite!" instead of "Proletarian of all countries unite!" ;-) do not value sovereignty
and are hell bent on the Permanent Neoliberal Revolution to bring other countries into neoliberal
fold (in the form of color revolutions, or for smaller countries, direct invasions like in Iraq
and Libya ).
For example, if you depends of chips produced outside the country for your military or space
exploration, then sabotage is possible (or just pure fraud -- selling regular ships instead of
special tolerant to cosmic radiation or harsh conditions variant; actually can be done with the
support of internal neoliberal fifth column).
The same is probably true for cars and auto engines. If you do not produce domestically a variety
at least some domestic brans of cars and trucks, your military trucks and engines will be foreign
and that will cost you tremendous amount of money and you might depend for spare parts on you
future adversary. Also such goods are overprices to the heaven. KAS is a clear example of this
as they burn their money in the war with Yemen as there is no tomorrow making the US MIC really
happy.
So large countries with say over 100 million people probably need to think twice before jumping
into neoliberal globalization bandwagon and relying in imports for strategically important industries.
Neoliberal commenters here demonstrate complete detachment from the fact that like war
is an extension of politics, while politics is an extension of economics. For example, denying
imports can and is often used for political pressure.
That was one of factors that doomed the USSR. Not that the system has any chance -- it was
doomed after 1945 as did not provide for higher productivity then advanced capitalist economies.
But this just demonstrates the power of the US sanctions mechanism. Economic sanctions works
and works really well. The target country is essentially put against the ropes and if you unprepared
you can be knocked down.
For example now there are sanctions against Russia that deny them advanced oil exploration
equipment. And oil is an important source of Russia export revenue. So the effect of those narrow
prohibitions multiples by factor of ten by denying Russia export revenue.
That's how an alliance between Russia and China was forged by Obama administration. because
China does produce some of this equipment now. And Russia paid dearly for that signing huge multi-year
deals with China on favorable for China terms.
Now Trump want to play this game selectively designating China as "evil empire" and providing
a carrot for Russia. Will it works, or Russia can be wiser then donkeys, I do not know.
And look what countries are on the USA economic sanctions list: many entries are countries
that are somewhat less excited about the creation of the global neoliberal empire led by the USA.
KAS and Gulf monarchies are not on the list. So much about "spreading democracy".
The US propagandists usually call counties on which they impose sanction authoritarian
dictatorships to make such actions more politically correct, but the fact remains: The USA as
a global hegemon enjoys using economic pressure to crush dissidents and put vassals in line.
The problem with tariffs on China is an interesting reversion of the trend: manufacturing is
already in China and to reverse this process now is an expensive proposition. So alienating Chinese
theoretically means that some of USA imports might became endangered, despite huge geopolitical
weight of the USA. They denied export of rare metals to Japan in the past. They can do this for
Apple and without batteries Apple can just fold.
Also it is very easy to prohibit Apple sales in China of national security grounds (any US
manufacturer by definition needs to cooperate with NSA and other agencies). I think some countries
already prohibit the use of the USA companies produced cell phones for government officials.
So if Trump administration does something really damaging, for Chinese there are multiple ways
to skin the cat. Neoliberalism as a social system is past it pinnacle and that creates some problems
for the USA as the central player in the neoliberal world. The triumphal march of neoliberalism
over the globe ended almost a decade ago.
Growing inequality. We are already at Gini coefficients normally only found in banana republics.
Notable quotes:
"... from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as "alternative work" soared during the Obama era, from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or "gig" work is defined as "temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers", and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits. ..."
"... The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015-with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm. ..."
Just over six years ago, in December of 2010, we wrote "
Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society ", in which we predicted - and
showed - that in light of the underlying changes resulting from the second great depression, whose
full impacts remain masked by trillions in monetary stimulus and soon, perhaps fiscal, America is
shifting from a traditional work force, one where the majority of new employment is retained on a
full-time basis, to a "gig" economy, where workers are severely disenfranchised, and enjoy far less
employment leverage, job stability and perks than their pre-crash peers. It also explains why despite
the 4.5% unemployment rate, which the Fed has erroneously assumed is indicative of job market at
"capacity", wage growth not only refuses to materialize, but as we showed yesterday, the growth in
real disposable personal income was
the lowest since 2014 .
When we first penned our article, it was dubbed "fringe" tinfoil hattery, or in the latest vernacular,
"fake news."
Fast forward 6 years, when a
report by Harvard and Princeton economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger , confirms exactly
what we warned. In their study, the duo show that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans
workers engaged in what they refer to as "alternative work" soared during the Obama era, from 10.7%
in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or "gig" work is defined as "temporary help agency workers,
on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers", and is generally
unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits.
The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased
from 2005 to 2015-with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided
by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a
janitorial services firm.
Krueger, who until 2013 was also the top White House economist serving as chairman of the Council
of Economic Advisers under Obama, was "surprised" by the finding.
Quoted by
quartz , he said " We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative
work category ," said Krueger. "And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors,
freelancers and contract company workers." In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created
between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.
While the finding is good news for some, such as graphic designers and lawyers who hate going
to an office, for whom new technology and Obamacare has made it more appealing to become an independent
contractor. But for those seeking a steady administrative assistant office job, the market is grim.
It also explains why despite an apparent recovery in the labor market, wage growth has been non-existant,
due to the lack of career advancement and salary increase options for this vast cohort which was
hired over the past decade.
The decline of conventional full-time work has impacted every demographic. Whether this change
is good or bad depends on what kinds of jobs people want. " Workers seeking full-time, steady work
have lost," said Krueger. He then added, perhaps sarcastically, that "while many of those who value
flexibility and have a spouse with a steady job have probably gained."
Yes, well, spousal support aside, it also confirms another troubling finding this website reported
first earlier this month, namely that the
number of multiple jobholders has recently hit the highest number this century.
"... At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash. ..."
"... The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches. ..."
"... If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won) there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative policy by the the next election. ..."
"... I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are going to completely sell out the "Trump voters." ..."
"... But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone is against it. ..."
"... If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in recent memory was Bush 41. ..."
"... Upper class tax cuts were central to his policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy shares in Arizona swampland. ..."
"... trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires. ..."
"... That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different from the individuals hopes and desires. ..."
"... And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society. ..."
"... Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment. ..."
"... The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes). ..."
"... Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents (see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president. ..."
"... The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying gathered money to burn. ..."
At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in
the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash.
The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional
GOP policies and approaches. It was the old tea-partiers insisting that their anti-rich/Anti-Wall
street sentiments be inserted into the GOP.
If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won)
there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative
policy by the the next election.
I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are
going to completely sell out the "Trump voters."
George W. Bush wasn't completely horrible (besides Iraq, John Roberts, tax cuts for the rich,
the Patriot act and the surveillance state, Katrina, etc. etc. etc.). He was good on immigration,
world AIDS prevention, expensive Medicare drug expansion, etc.
But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone
is against it.
To some extent Bush demoralized the Republican base and they didn't turn out in 2008.
If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy
is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in
recent memory was Bush 41.
About the only thing that can derail Trump is a big recession in 2019.
"The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional
GOP policies and approaches."
While generally enthusiastically embracing them. Upper class tax cuts were central to his
policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy
shares in Arizona swampland.
He never came out directly saying or tweeting that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich than
anybody else - he said he would give bigger tax cuts. It is true that people with a college education
had an easy time figuring him out even before the election. But the populist messages he campaigned
on were anti-establishment including suggesting that the "hedge-fund guys" were making a killing
by being taxed at a lower rate.
trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius
of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able
to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires.
"his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires"
That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed
as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different
from the individuals hopes and desires. The reason Trump was able to beat even a Tea party
darling, was the backlash against big money having taken over the Tea party. The backlash against
Trump_vs_deep_state being "taken over by big money" interest will be interesting to observe, especially if
the Dems find the right way to play it.
Following up on Johnny Bakho's comment below, let's assume that average wage growth YoY for nonsupervisory
workers never reaches 3% before the next recession hits. Wage growth rates always decline in recessions,
usually by over 2%.
If in the next recession, we see actual slight nominal wage decreases, is a debt-deflationary
wage-price spiral inevitable? Or could there be a small decline of less than -1% without triggering
such a spiral.
"is a debt-deflationary wage-price spiral inevitable?"
Good question. It all depends on the response of policy makers. If we continue with the stupid
fiscal austerity that began in 2011, it may be inevitable. Which is why doing public infrastructure
investment is a very good idea.
And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising
prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we
do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society.
Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice
infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly
don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment.
For Clinton dems, the ones the wiki revealed are con artists, doing for the peeps [like Bernie
stood for] is too far ideologically for the faux centrists.
They are neoliberals market monetarists who keep the bankers green and everyone else takes
the back seats.
At this point in time pretty much anything the policy makers do will be countered by the Fed.
The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional
course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes).
Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents
(see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies
and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president.
As long as the FED thinks the natural rate of the employment to population ratio is only 60% -
you'd be right. But then the FED is not thinking clearly.
like many of my fellow socialists, i fulminated about bernanke's coddling of banks and asset holders.
i was somewhat wrong. bernanke was a evidently a strong voice for banking regulation and an end
to the moral hazard of TBTF. it is a pity that obama did not listen to him.
The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher
education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good
fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying
gathered money to burn.
Will the Fed use rulemaking to control bubbling in the financial asset marketplaces as they
wont want to rause rates too much. I hope they are paying attention
Bad News for America's Workers
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
NEW YORK – As US President-elect Donald Trump fills his
cabinet, what have we learned about the likely direction
and impact of his administration's economic policy?
To be sure, enormous uncertainties remain. As in many
other areas, Trump's promises and statements on economic
policy have been inconsistent. While he routinely accuses
others of lying, many of his economic assertions and
promises – indeed, his entire view of governance – seem
worthy of Nazi Germany's "big lie" propagandists.
Trump will take charge of an economy on a strongly
upward trend, with third-quarter GDP growing at an
impressive annual rate of 3.2% and unemployment at 4.6% in
November. By contrast, when President Barack Obama took
over in 2009, he inherited from George W. Bush an economy
sinking into a deep recession. And, like Bush, Trump is
yet another Republican president who will assume office
despite losing the popular vote, only to pretend that he
has a mandate to undertake extremist policies.
The only way Trump will square his promises of higher
infrastructure and defense spending with large tax cuts
and deficit reduction is a heavy dose of what used to be
called voodoo economics. Decades of "cutting the fat" in
government has left little to cut: federal government
employment as a percentage of the population is lower
today than it was in the era of small government under
President Ronald Reagan some 30 years ago.
With so many former military officers serving in
Trump's cabinet or as advisers, even as Trump cozies up to
Russian President Vladimir Putin and anchors an informal
alliance of dictators and authoritarians around the world,
it is likely that the US will spend more money on weapons
that don't work to use against enemies that don't exist.
If Trump's health secretary succeeds in undoing the
careful balancing act that underlies Obamacare, either
costs will rise or services will deteriorate – most likely
both.
During the campaign, Trump promised to get tough on
executives who outsource American jobs. He is now holding
up the news that the home heating and air conditioning
manufacturer Carrier will keep some 800 jobs in my home
state of Indiana as proof that his approach works. Yet the
deal will cost taxpayers $7 million, and still allow
Carrier to outsource 1,300 jobs to Mexico. This is not a
sound industrial or economic policy, and it will do
nothing to help raise wages or create good jobs across the
country. It is an open invitation for a shakedown of the
government by corporate executives seeking handouts.
Similarly, the increase in infrastructure spending is
likely to be accomplished through tax credits, which will
help hedge funds, but not America's balance sheet: such
programs' long track record shows that they deliver little
value for money. The cost to the public will be especially
high in an era when the government can borrow at near-zero
interest rates. If these private-public partnerships are
like those elsewhere, the government will assume the
risks, and the hedge funds will assume the profits.
The debate just eight years ago about "shovel-ready"
infrastructure seems to be a distant memory. If Trump
chooses shovel-ready projects, the long-term impact on
productivity will be minimal; if he chooses real
infrastructure, the short-term impact on economic growth
will be minimal. And back-loaded stimulus has its own
problems, unless it is managed extremely carefully.
If Trump's pick for US Treasury Secretary, the Goldman
Sachs and hedge-fund veteran Steven Mnuchin, is like
others from his industry, the expertise he will bring to
the job will be in tax avoidance, not constructing a
well-designed tax system. The "good" news is that tax
reform was inevitable, and was likely to be undertaken by
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his staff – giving the
rich the less progressive, more capital-friendly tax
system that Republicans have long sought. With the
abolition of the estate tax, the Republicans would finally
realize their long-held ambition of creating a dynastic
plutocracy – a far cry from the "equality of opportunity"
maxim the party once trumpeted....
What the US economy doesn't need from Donald Trump
The only way he can square higher infrastructure and
defence spending with tax cuts is voodoo economics
By Joseph Stiglitz - Guardian
As Donald Trump fills his cabinet, what have we learned
about the likely direction and impact of his
administration's economic policy?
To be sure, enormous uncertainties remain. As in many
other areas, Trump's promises and statements on economic
policy have been inconsistent. While he routinely accuses
others of lying, many of his economic assertions and
promises – indeed, his entire view of governance – seem
worthy of Nazi Germany's "big lie" propagandists.
Trump will take charge of an economy on a strongly
upward trend, with third-quarter GDP growing at an
impressive annual rate of 3.2% and unemployment at 4.6% in
November. By contrast, when Barack Obama took over in
2009, he inherited from George W Bush an economy sinking
into a deep recession. And, like Bush, Trump is yet
another Republican president who will assume office
despite losing the popular vote, only to pretend that he
has a mandate to undertake extremist policies.
The only way Trump will square his promises of higher
infrastructure and defence spending with large tax cuts
and deficit reduction is a heavy dose of what used to be
called voodoo economics. Decades of "cutting the fat" in
government has left little to cut: federal government
employment as a percentage of the population is lower
today than it was in the era of small government under
Ronald Reagan about 30 years ago.
With so many former military officers serving in
Trump's cabinet or as advisers, even as Trump cozies up to
the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and anchors an
informal alliance of dictators and authoritarians around
the world, it is likely that the US will spend more money
on weapons that don't work to use against enemies that
don't exist. If Trump's health secretary succeeds in
undoing the careful balancing act that underlies
Obamacare, either costs will rise or services will
deteriorate – most likely both.
During the campaign, Trump promised to get tough on
executives who outsource American jobs. He is now holding
up the news that the home heating and air-conditioning
manufacturer Carrier will keep around 800 jobs in my home
state of Indiana as proof that his approach works. Yet the
deal will cost taxpayers $7m, and still allow Carrier to
outsource 1,300 jobs to Mexico. This is not a sound
industrial or economic policy, and it will do nothing to
help raise wages or create good jobs across the country.
It is an open invitation for a shakedown of the government
by corporate executives seeking handouts.
Similarly, the increase in infrastructure spending is
likely to be accomplished through tax credits, which will
help hedge funds, but not America's balance sheet: such
programmes' long track record shows that they deliver
little value for money. The cost to the public will be
especially high in an era when the government can borrow
at near-zero interest rates. If these private-public
partnerships are like those elsewhere, the government will
assume the risks, and the hedge funds will assume the
profits....
As soon as he awakes, Brian Porrell checks his e-mail,
sometimes firing off a message before he gets out of bed.
He makes calls during his commute to the Waltham staffing
firm WinterWyman, spends 10 to 12 hours at the office and
out visiting clients, and keeps his phone by his side at
night, checking work e-mails while he watches sports on
TV.
Like many workers today, Porrell, 30, is on the job
wherever he is - and he doesn't count out-of-office
exchanges in his 50-plus hour week.
The millennial generation, the first to grow up with
smartphones in their hands, is often stereotyped as lazy
and entitled. But workplace experts say workaholics are
common among 19-to-35-year-olds, perhaps more so than
among older members of Generation X and baby boomers.
In one online study, more than 4 in 10 millennials
consider themselves "work martyrs" - dedicated,
indispensable, and racked with guilt if they take time
off.
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What's more, nearly half of millennials want to be seen
that way, according to the survey of 5,600 workers by
Project: Time Off, a Washington, D.C., coalition that
promotes vacation time.
So why are millennials bent on being workaholics? Even
though the economy has improved markedly in recent years,
young people in the workforce today have record levels of
student loan debt. They are also less likely than previous
generations to earn more than their parents, according to
a Stanford University report. The percentage of children
who are better off than their parents has dropped
dramatically - 50 percent of those born in the 1980s have
a higher standard of living than their parents, compared
with 90 percent of those born in the 1940s.
(December 8, 2016 - Today's children face tough
prospects of being better off than their parents,
Stanford researchers find
http://stanford.io/2ghwtmj
via @Stanford)
The way millennials were raised may play into their
always-on mindset, too, said Bob Kelleher, a Boston-based
employee engagement consultant and author. Many of them
were highly scheduled, he said, going to soccer camps,
enrolling in SAT prep courses, and competing on the debate
team in order to get into a good college.
And some have delayed several of the responsibilities of
adulthood, he noted, living with their parents and putting
off marriage and kids. That frees them up to work even
more.
"This is a driven generation," he said.
Jane Alexander, 26, a staffing manager at WinterWyman,
said she is often one of the first to arrive and the last
to leave the office but acknowledged she will probably
work less when she has kids. "That is part of why I want
to crank it now while I do have time," she said.
The concept of 24/7 work has become so prevalent that
workplace analysts are starting to talk about "work-life
blending" instead of "work-life balance."
The ability to work anytime, anywhere, helps propel
this blending of work and life, in part because answering
a work text at a coffee shop doesn't feel as much like
work as sitting in a cubicle. Indeed, nearly one in five
people said they don't consider after-hours texts from
clients or customers to be work, according to Workforce
Institute at Kronos Inc., a think tank set up by the
Chelmsford human resources software provider.
"If a friend texted me at the gym I would answer their
text. Answering a work e-mail is just a natural extension
of that," said Jessica Molson, a 24-year-old integration
manager at Beacon Communities, the Boston real estate
developer and property management firm. "I don't think of
it as working; it's just communicating."
Molson finds herself answering e-mails and jumping on
conference calls even when she's on vacation, once
distracting other participants with the sound of seagulls
in the background while she was in Florida with her
family. But going on a real vacation is a rarity for
Molson, who tends to take long weekends because she's
afraid of missing something at work - and also because she
loves what she does.
Like many millennials, Molson came of age when the
economy was reeling, and the uncertain job market had a
profound effect on her.
"I'm very anxious to rack up as much experience as
possible," she said.
Millennials are also more likely to forfeit paid days
off than older generations of workers, with a quarter of
18-to-25-year-olds reporting they weren't using any of
their paid vacation days this year, according to the
personal finance website Bankrate.com. The rise of
companies offering unlimited vacation time may contribute
to that, workplace consultants say, noting that when there
is no set bank of "use it or lose it" vacation time,
people are less likely to take days off than they
otherwise would be.
But not being able to truly get away from work can have
serious downsides. Employees who don't disconnect
experience more stress and anxiety, which leads to reduced
productivity and a higher rate of burnout, said Dan
Schawbel, research director at Future Workplace, an
executive development firm in New York.
"If all you're doing is trying to be the perfect
employee, it's actually not going to work out in your
favor because it's going to make you less happy," said
Schawbel, who describes working too much as "a weakness
disguised as a strength."
Seeing co-workers hunched over their desks late at
night can cause others to feel they should be doing the
same and increase guilt, or resentment, among employees
who strive to keep their work and home lives separate.
It can also lead people working around the clock to
hold it against their employer - "even if it's your own
fault," Schawbel noted. Indeed, people who see being a
"work martyr" as a good thing are more likely to be
unhappy with their jobs, and less likely to receive
bonuses, according to the Project: Time Off study.
That can lead to retention problems, particularly among
millennials, who aren't afraid to quit. Two out of three
young workers expect to leave their current job by 2020,
according to a recent study by Deloitte.
Still, workaholics aren't necessarily unhappy - many
are ambitious or simply enjoy their work. At Beacon
Communities, several employees work 60 to 70 hours a week
no matter what adjustments supervisors make. Adding more
people to an overachiever's team doesn't help, said chief
administrative officer Darlene Perrone: "They just find
another project." ...
I have enormous problems with generationism. Anything that
starts with {generation} is/are(n't) I know what is coming
is mostly nonsense. It is exactly the same as if you
replaced {generation} with {race} {gender} {nationality}
it is sure to be wrong for a significant (perhaps even a
majority) of the addressed category.
There does seem to be a fruitful direction to take in
"generational" analysis, though.
It may be that the mechanism by which increasing
inequality works is by reducing the prospects of new young
workers while generally maintaining the income of older
ones. Thus by age cohort, lifetime incomes follow a lower
and lower track as the young age compared to older
workers.
If that is what is happening, and someone with
sufficiently fine data may be able to show it, then it
would be trivial to forecast future inequality by
re-composing forecasts of lifetime income profiles for the
various cohorts and the inflow of new young cohorts.
The possibility is that there is a much more severe
inequality on the way that is embedded in the current age
cohorts, if we could display them.
I agree with this. I don't believe all the bullshit
categories come up with like Generation X, Millenials etc.
However, the ruling classes like to use age divisions to
divide and conquer so we will keep on hearing about how
unengaged, bored, lazy, vapid, greedy and irresponsible
young people are. And we have heard it going back at least
to Plato and Socrates!
Today's children face tough prospects
of being better off than their parents
http://stanford.io/2ghwtmj
via @Stanford - Dec 8
Parents often expect that their
kids will have a good shot at making more money than they
ever did.
But young people entering the workforce today are far
less likely to earn more than their parents when compared
to children born two generations before them, according to
a new study by Stanford researchers.
In a new study, Stanford economist Raj Chetty found
that the link between income and life expectancy varies
from one area to another within the United States.
The findings show that the fraction of kids earning
more than their parents has fallen dramatically – from 90
percent for kids born in the 1940s to 50 percent for kids
born in the 1980s.
"It's basically a coin flip as to whether you'll do
better than your parents," said economics Professor Raj
Chetty, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for
Economic Policy Research and one of the study's authors.
One of the most comprehensive studies of
intergenerational income mobility to date, the study used
a combination of Census data and anonymized Internal
Revenue Service records to measure the rate of "absolute
income mobility" – or the percentage of children who
earned more than their parents – for people born between
1940 and 1984.
What emerged from the empirical analysis was an
economic portrait of the fading American Dream, and
growing inequality appeared to be the main cause for the
steady decline.
"One of the defining features of the American Dream is
the ideal that children have a higher standard of living
than their parents," Chetty said. "We assessed whether the
U.S. is living up to this ideal, and found a steep decline
in absolute mobility that likely has a lot to do with the
anxiety and frustration many people are feeling, as
reflected in the election." ...
The paper was co-authored by David Grusky, a SIEPR
senior fellow, sociology professor and director of the
Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality; Maximilian
Hell, a sociology doctoral student at Stanford; Professor
Nathaniel Hendren and doctoral student Robert Manduca,
both of Harvard; and Jimmy Narang, a former SIEPR
predoctoral fellow who is currently a doctoral student at
the University of California, Berkeley.
The study – and more information about the team's
research – can be found on The Equality of Opportunity
Project website run by Chetty and Hendren.
One of the basic themes
of Donald J. Trump's election campaign was that the United
States was being ripped off by foreign countries and that
his administration would reduce our trade deficit.
Yet the budget policies he is now proposing would be
sharply at odds with that goal. By advocating an expansive
budget through tax cuts and infrastructure spending, Mr.
Trump's plan would most likely lower national savings and
propel the United States dollar ever higher, creating the
very conditions to widen rather than to narrow the trade
deficit.
Mr. Trump seems to be overlooking a matter of basic
arithmetic. While a country's trade balance is the
difference between a country's exports and imports, it is
also the difference between the amount it saves and
invests, as can be derived from rearranging the components
of a country's aggregate demand equation. If a country
saves more than it invests, it will run a trade surplus.
Conversely, a country that saves less than it invests will
run a trade deficit.
Seemingly oblivious to this basic math, Mr. Trump is
proposing far-reaching and seemingly unfunded cuts in both
corporate and household tax rates. Worse yet, he is
simultaneously proposing large increases in both public
infrastructure and military spending.
He is doing so in the unrealistic hope that these
policies will cause the economy to accelerate from its
present 2 percent growth rate to between 3 and 4 percent.
And he is counting on such faster economic growth to
generate additional tax revenue.
Should a significant pickup in economic growth not
materialize, the net effect of these tax cuts and public
spending policies will almost certainly lead to a
significant widening of the budget deficit and to a
corresponding decline in public savings. That, in turn,
would in all probability lead to a significant widening of
the trade deficit as the country's overall savings rate
would decline.
A further basic weakness of Mr. Trump's budget proposal
is that it would add stimulus to the economy at the very
time that the economy is at or very close to full
employment. That policy is bound to raise concerns about
inflation and to push the Federal Reserve to raise
interest rates more than it is currently contemplating in
order to meet its inflation target.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the global
economy right now is the divergence of monetary policy
stances among the world's major central banks. The United
States Federal Reserve is now embarked on a path of
raising interest rates at a time when the European Central
Bank and the Bank of Japan are still engaged in aggressive
rounds of quantitative easing in an effort to kick-start
their moribund economies.
Forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at
a faster pace than it is presently contemplating will only
serve to widen the difference between it and the other
major central banks. This would more than likely put
further upward pressure on the dollar.
Since the November election, the United States dollar
has already appreciated significantly, to its strongest
level in the past 14 years. The last thing that the
country needs if it is to reduce its trade deficit is a
further dollar appreciation. Such an appreciation would
make our exports across the board more expensive in
foreign markets and make our imports cheaper in United
States dollar terms. That would hardly seem to be the way
to reduce the country's trade deficit. ...
Much of President-elect Donald J. Trump's pledge to
be a job creator rests on his call for a $1 trillion in
infrastructure spending over 10 years. While few question
the need for such investment, many have questioned how he
would finance it and what it would fund. Can Trump's plan
effectively repair the nation's infrastructure?
"A further basic weakness of Mr. Trump's budget proposal
is that it would add stimulus to the economy at the very
time that the economy is at or very close to full
employment. That policy is bound to raise concerns about
inflation and to push the Federal Reserve to raise
interest rates more than it is currently contemplating in
order to meet its inflation target."
Centrist fail.
Krugman might be right that Trump's policies don't add
much actual stimulus.
(He's better on economics than on politics.)
And so Obama's Fed might actually raise rates too
quickly.
Combined with a strong dollar and weakening exports
this could bring on a recession.
(EMichael is horrified at the fact that Obama's Fed
might be considered anti-worker.)
Mohammed El-Erian talks about the international aspect
in today's links.
He says the same thing as Krugman and pgl (except adds
the Republican BS about tax cuts and deregulation being
pro-growth.)
"Mr. Trump seems to be overlooking a matter of basic
arithmetic. While a country's trade balance is the
difference between a country's exports and imports, it is
also the difference between the amount it saves and
invests,"
Exactly, his understanding of economics is at
the 5'th grade level. Furthermore, just as he thinks he
known "more than the generals", he also thinks he knows
more than the economists. We have elected a narcissistic
moron like Turkey's Ergodan and the Philippine's Duterte.
We will se the same erratic and destructive policies they
have seen, because he is equally incapable of leading a
nation. The hope is that our institutions checks and
balances will prevent us from slipping into the same type
of semi-democracy.
"If a country
saves more than it invests, it will run a trade surplus.
Conversely, a country that saves less than it invests will
run a trade deficit."
But:
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the value of all goods
and services sold within a country during one year. GDP
measures flows rather than stocks (example: the public
deficit is a flow, the government debt is a stock). Flows
are derived from the National Accounting relationship
between aggregate spending and income. Ergo:
(1) Y = C + I + G + (X – M)
where Y is GDP (expenditure), C is consumption spending, I
is private investment spending, G is government spending,
X is exports and M is imports (so X – M = net exports).
Another perspective on the national income accounting
is to note that households can use total income (Y) for
the following uses:
(2) Y = C + S + T
where S is total saving and T is total taxation (the other
variables are as previously defined).
You can then bring the two perspectives together
(because they are both just "views" of Y) to write:
(3) C + S + T = Y = C + I + G + (X – M)
You can then drop the C (common on both sides) and you
get:
(4) S + T = I + G + (X – M)
Then you can convert this into the following sectoral
balances accounting relations, which allow us to
understand the influence of fiscal policy over private
sector indebtedness. Hence, equation (4) can be rearranged
to get the accounting identity for the three sectoral
balances – private domestic, government budget and
external:
(S – I) = (G – T) + (X – M)
The sectoral balances equation says that total private
savings (S) minus private investment (I) has to equal the
public deficit (spending, G minus taxes, T) plus net
exports (exports (X) minus imports (M)), where net exports
represent the net savings of non-residents.
Thus, (S-I) can be positive if (G-T) ( the federal
deficit) is greater than (X-M) ( an assumed trade
deficit).
Also:
"Should a significant pickup in economic growth not
materialize, the net effect of these tax cuts and public
spending policies will almost certainly lead to a
significant widening of the budget deficit and to a
corresponding decline in public savings."
But (S – I) = (G – T) + (X – M), i.e., a federal
deficit increase that exceeds a trade deficit increase
means greater public savings.
"a federal deficit increase that exceeds a trade deficit
increase means greater public savings."
Or "export" of
treasuries, dollars and other pieces of paper that allow
the private sector and government to run deficits at the
same time. Nobody in the US need to save as long as we
either print more money or sell more paper assets to
savers in the non-US part of the world.
The New York Times had an interesting piece *
discussing the National Institutes of Health collaboration
with private companies in the development of new cancer
drugs. As the piece points out, this collaboration has
proven very profitable for the drug companies, but leads
to drugs that are very expensive because the drug
companies are allowed to have patent monopolies, with no
restriction on the price they charge.
It also suggests an alternative path. It shows,
contrary to conventional wisdom in right-wing circles,
everything the government funds is not worthless garbage.
If the tables were turned, and all the funding came from
the government (rather than relying on government imposed
patent monopolies), then the new drugs could be sold at
generic prices since everyone already would have been paid
for their research.
In many cases, the generic price would be less than one
percent of the patent protected price. New cancer drugs
that might sell for $100,000 for a year's treatment, might
sell for hundreds of dollars. ** Policy types who don't
work for the pharmaceutical industry should be looking
into more efficient alternatives for financing drug
research.
Harnessing the U.S. Taxpayer to Fight Cancer and Make
Profits
By MATT RICHTEL and ANDREW POLLACK
Enthusiasm for cancer immunotherapy is soaring, and so
is Arie Belldegrun's fortune.
Dr. Belldegrun, a physician, co-founded Kite Pharma, a
company that could be the first to market next year with a
highly anticipated new immunotherapy treatment. But even
without a product, Dr. Belldegrun has struck gold.
His stock in Kite is worth about $170 million.
Investors have profited along with him, as the company's
share price has soared to about $50 from an initial price
of $17 in 2014.
The results reflect widespread excitement over
immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to
attack cancer and has rescued some patients from
near-certain death. But they also speak volumes about the
value of Kite's main scientific partner: the United States
government.
Kite's treatment, a form of immunotherapy called CAR-T,
was initially developed by a team of researchers at the
National Cancer Institute, led by a longtime friend and
mentor of Dr. Belldegrun. Now Kite pays several million a
year to the government to support continuing research
dedicated to the company's efforts.
The relationship puts American taxpayers squarely in
the middle of one of the hottest new drug markets. It also
raises a question: Are taxpayers getting a good deal?
Defenders say that the partnership will likely bring a
lifesaving treatment to patients, something the government
cannot really do by itself, and that that is what matters
most.
Critics say that taxpayers will end up paying twice for
the same drug - once to support its development and a
second time to buy it - while the company reaps the
financial benefit.
"If this was not a government-funded cancer treatment -
if it was for a new solar technology, for example - it
would be scandalous to think that some private investors
are reaping massive profits off a taxpayer-funded
invention," said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology
International, an advocacy group concerned with access to
medicines.
The debate goes squarely to one of the nation's most
vexing challenges: rising health care and drug prices.
Kite is one of a growing number of drug and biotech
companies relying on federal laboratories. Analysts expect
the company to charge at least $200,000 for the new
treatment, which is intended as a one-time therapy for
patients.
While the law allows the government to demand
drug-price concessions from its private-sector partners,
the government has declined to do so with Kite and
generally disdains the practice.
Insisting on lower prices, federal researchers say,
would drive away innovative partners that speed the
drug-development process and benefit patients. But with
the government doing so much pivotal research, others say
that the private sector cannot afford to walk away.
"The market is so reliant on the knowledge and know-how
that comes out of the government and academic labs," said
Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, director of the Program on
Regulation, Therapeutics and Law at Brigham & Women's
Hospital in Boston....
President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is close
to picking economic commentator Larry Kudlow to be
chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers,
according to a report in the Detroit News.
Kudlow, 69, has served as an informal adviser to the Trump
campaign, primarily focused on tax policy and teaming
primarily with Stephen Moore, a visiting fellow at the
Heritage Foundation and fellow alumnus of President Ronald
Reagan's economic team. Moore was cited by the newspaper
as saying Thursday the selection of Kudlow would be
announced in the next 48 hours.
Kudlow's appointment, which would require Senate
confirmation, marks another non-traditional pick by the
incoming administration. Kudlow doesn't hold a Ph.D. in
economics, unlike former heads of the CEA. For five years,
he hosted a show on CNBC on business and politics, and
he's worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
During Reagan's first term, Kudlow was associate director
for economics and planning in the White House's Office of
Management and Budget. ...
Kudlow & Cramer (was) a CNBC American business
and politics television program hosted by
conservatives Lawrence Kudlow and Jim Cramer, which aired
weekdays from 2002 to 2005. (Wikipedia)
Misrepresenting 24/7 we see. No - Krugman got this right.
And yes Jared was nicer to Kudlow than I could ever be.
But soft? A day without a PeterK lie is like a day without
sunshine.
You
candidate was to weak to win the semifinals, and he would
have been crushed in the finals. He didn't have what it
takes to win in little league, and he wouldn't have had
what it takes to win in the big league either. Maybe the
democrats could have found someone who would have won
against Trump; but it sure as hell wasn't any of the
losers of their primary contest.
Someone Has to Tell John Williams Inflation Is Not
Accelerating
The Federal Reserve Board raising interest rates last
and seem poised to do so again in the not distant future.
The rationale is that the economy is now near or at full
employment and that if job growth continues at its recent
pace it will lead to a harmful acceleration in the
inflation rate.
We have numerous pieces raising serious questions about
whether the labor market is really at full employment,
noting for example the sharp drop * in employment rates
(for all groups) from pre-recession levels and the high
rate of involuntary part-time ** employment. But the story
of accelerating inflation is also not right.
This is particularly important, since John Williams,
the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank,
cited accelerating inflation as a reason to support last
week's rate hike, and possibly future rate hikes, in an
interview in the New York Times this morning. Williams has
been a moderate on inflation, so there are many members of
the Fed's Open Market Committee who are more anxious to
raise rates than him.
A close look at the data does not provide much evidence
of accelerating inflation. The core personal consumption
expenditure deflator, the Fed's main measure of inflation,
has risen 1.7 percent over the last year, which is still
under the 2.0 percent target. This target is an average,
which means that the Fed should be prepared to allow the
inflation rate to rise somewhat above 2.0 percent, with
the idea that inflation will drop in the next recession.
Anyhow, the 1.7 percent rate is slightly higher than a
low of 1.3 percent reached in the third quarter of 2015,
but it is exactly the same as the rate we saw in the third
quarter of 2014. In other words, there has been zero
acceleration in the rate of inflation over the last two
years.
Furthermore, even this modest acceleration has been
entirely due to the more rapid increase in rent over the
last two years. The inflation rate in the core consumer
price index, stripped of its shelter component, actually
has been falling slightly over the last year. It now
stands at 1.1 percent over the last year.
[Consumer Price Index Minus Food, Energy and Shelter,
2006-2016]
It is reasonable to pull shelter out of the CPI because
rents do not follow the same dynamic as most goods and
services. In fact, higher interest rates, by reducing
construction, are likely to increase the pace of increase
in rents rather than reduce them.
This issue is hugely important, since if the Fed
prevents the labor market from tightening further it will
be preventing millions of people from getting jobs. These
people are disproportionately African American and
Hispanic and also less-educated workers. The decision to
tighten will also lessen the bargaining power of a much
larger group of workers, making it more difficult for them
to get pay increases.
The weak labor market of the Great Recession resulted
in a large redistribution from wages to profits. The
tightening of the labor market in the last two years has
reversed part of this shift. If the Fed raises interest
rates enough to prevent further tightening, then it will
be locking in place this redistribution to profits. That
would be bad news for tens of millions of workers,
especially if the decision was based on a misreading of
inflation data.
President-elect Donald Trump boasted about his wealth
during his campaign. Now he's surrounding himself with
people who have similarly unimaginable riches.
Collectively, the wealth of his Cabinet choices so far
is about five times greater than President Obama's Cabinet
and about 34 times greater than the one George W. Bush led
at the end of his presidency.
And Trump still has four more key advisory spots left
to fill.
The net worth of the Cabinet Trump had selected as of
Monday was at least $13.1 billion, based on available
estimates, or more than the annual gross domestic product
of about 70 small countries.
That included the $3.7 billion Trump is estimated to be
worth, according to Forbes. (Trump has claimed to be worth
much more - around $10 billion.)
It also included the $5.1 billion in net worth that
Forbes estimated belongs to the family of Betsy DeVos, the
former Michigan Republican Party chair and education
activist selected to be education secretary.
Investor Wilbur Ross, picked to become commerce
secretary, is estimated to be worth $2.5 billion,
according to Forbes.
Linda McMahon, a former WWE executive and U.S. Senate
candidate, has been picked to serve as small business
administrator. She and her husband Vincent McMahon are
worth at least an estimated $1.35 billion, according to
Bloomberg.
Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson, nominated to become
secretary of state, is estimated to be worth $365 million,
according to Bloomberg.
Steven Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive in
line to become Treasury secretary, is worth at least $46
million, according to Politico.
Retired neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate
Ben Carson, who is in line to become the housing and urban
development secretary, was worth $26 million, according to
a Forbes estimate from 2015.
The pick for transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, the
former labor secretary, was worth an estimated $16.9
million as of 2008, when she last held public office,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a
Washington-based nonprofit that tracks campaign finance
data.
Two other Cabinet picks - Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions
for attorney general and Georgia Representative Tom Price
for health and human services secretary - were estimated
to be worth about $7.5 million and $13.6 million,
respectively, as of 2014, according to the center.
Former Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick
Perry, selected to be energy secretary, is estimated to be
worth about $3 million, according to the Associated Press.
U.S. Representative from South Carolina Mick Mulvaney,
picked to become director of the Office of Management and
Budget, was worth an estimated $2.6 million as of 2014,
according to the center.
Fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, picked to fill the
role of labor secretary, is also a multi-millionaire,
according to Politico.
U.S. Representative from Montana Ryan Zinke, picked to
become interior secretary, was worth an estimated $675,000
as of 2014, according to the center. ...
(Andrew Mellon tops the
list. Treasury
secretary under Harding, Coolidge and
Hoover, worth $50 billion in current
dollars. No one else is even close.)
Mellon was the third-richest American of his time -
behind only John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford - and has
been ranked the 14th richest American of all time, in
inflation-adjusted dollars.
'Collectively, the wealth of his Cabinet choices so far is
about five times greater than President Obama's Cabinet
and about 34 times greater than the one George W. Bush led
at the end of his presidency.'
So, the Obama cabinet is
worth $2.6B apparently.
That would largely be due to Penny Pritzker,
#3 on the MarketWatch list above,
who is said to be worth $1.85B.
And, believe it or not, the Bush Jr
cabinet was apparently only worth
$382M, a pittance.
When Yellen says there's no need for fiscal stimulus -
which should be blasphemous to all "real" progressives* -
what she's saying is that the Fed can just use
uncoventional monetary policy again the next time there is
a downturn.
They gave us the recovery they wanted this past time
after all.
* of course pgl refuses to discuss this episode. His
lies of omission are the biggest of all. Krugman too
refuses to address Yellen's blasphemy. Only DeLong was
brave enough and honest enough to disagree.
"Prostate cancer laser treatment 'truly
transformative'"
By James Gallagher, HEalth and science reporter...BBC
News...12-20-2016...7 hours ago
"The approach, tested across Europe, uses lasers and a
drug made from deep sea bacteria to eliminate tumours, but
without causing severe side effects.
Trials on 413 men - published in The Lancet Oncology -
showed nearly half of them had no remaining trace of
cancer.
Lifelong impotence and incontinence are often the price
of treating prostate cancer with surgery or radiotherapy.
Up to nine-in-10 patients develop erectile problems and
up to a fifth struggle to control their bladders.
That is why many men with an early stage tumour choose
to "wait and see" and have treatment only when it starts
growing aggressively.
"This changes everything," said Prof Mark Emberton, who
tested the technique at University College London.
Triggered to kill
The new treatment uses a drug, made from bacteria that
live in the almost total darkness of the seafloor and
which become toxic only when exposed to light.
Ten fibre optic lasers are inserted through the
perineum - the gap between the anus and the testes - and
into the cancerous prostate gland.
When the red laser is switched on, it activates the
drug to kill the cancer and leaves the healthy prostate
behind..."
"But I'm also hearing from Berniebros, insisting that
anything I say must be wrong, because I criticized their
hero. And this suggests to me that we may need a
clarification of the doctrine that facts have a well-known
liberal bias. More specifically, they seem to have a
center-left bias: conservatives are big on empirical
denial, but so is some of the U.S. left."
I'd say the center-left is big on empirical denial,
especially when it comes to the rise of populism and
globalization.
They'd rather focus on Putin's hackers.
But some are coming around or at least asking
questions. See Tim Duy, DeLong, and Noah Smith.
"he search has gained an extraordinary sense of urgency
as a wave of reactionary populism sweeps the globe,
casting the elite establishment as the main beneficiary of
economic forces that have hurt the working masses.
Americans' election of Donald J. Trump, who has vowed to
radically constrain trade, and the stunning vote in
Britain to abandon the European Union, have resounded as
emergency sirens for global leaders. They must either
update capitalism to share the spoils more equitably, or
risk watching angry mobs dismantle the institutions that
have underpinned economic policy since the end of World
War II."
The center-left, like Krugman, EMichael, pgl, Bakho,
etc. argue that's just racism. That's it.
There's been an upsurge in racism and tribalism
worldwide for some inexplicable reason. Fox News.
Or Obama.
Even the U.S you had Father Coughlin, the populist Huey
Long, and Charles Lindbergh's America First movement which
was isolationist just like Trump.
"Europe as a whole was
badly hit, in both rural and industrial areas. Democracy
was discredited and the left often tried a coalition
arrangement between Communists and Socialists, who
previously had been harsh enemies. Right wing movements
sprang up, often following Italy's fascist mode."
By Brian Wheeler...BBC News, Washington
DC...12-20-2016...6 hours ago
"Gun ownership has traditionally been associated with
the right wing in America but the election of Donald Trump
has prompted some left-wingers to join gun clubs - and
even start preparing for the collapse of society.
"I really didn't expect to be thinking about purchasing
a gun. It was something that my father did and I rolled my
eyes at him."
Clara, a 28-year-old nursing student, grew up in the
Mid-West, where "the folks that had guns were seen as
hicks" or were just "culturally different", she says.
But since the election of Donald Trump in November she
has started going to a gun range for the first time and is
shopping around for a semi-automatic pistol.
"It's been seeing the way that Trump's election has
mobilised a lot of the far right and given them hope," she
says, citing a rise in reports of hate crimes and neo-Nazi
activity.
As a transgender woman, she does not fear for her
personal safety in the Californian city where she now
lives but she says she knows people in rural areas "who
woke up and found a bunch of swastikas and words like
'faggot' and 'trannie' scrawled all over their building".
She foresees a wide-ranging struggle between the Trump
administration and the left over issues such as
immigration and racial politics.
But won't buying a gun just increase tensions?
"Things are already escalating and they will continue
to do so and me not engaging or being prepared to defend
my friends by force... isn't going to stop people from
being attacked or harassed," Clara says.
Gun sales in America hit record levels in October amid
fears a Hillary Clinton election victory would lead to
increased controls.
Many expected the election of Donald Trump, whose
candidacy was backed by the National Rifle Association, to
bring an end to the panic buying. Shares in gun
manufacturers dropped by as much as 18% following his
victory.
But instead FBI background checks for gun transactions
soared to a new record for a single day - 185,713 - during
the Black Friday sales on 25 November, according to gun
control news site The Trace.
Some of this has been put down to gun retailers selling
off stock at reduced prices, but there have also been
reports of more "non-traditional" buyers, such as African
Americans and other minorities, turning up at gun shops
and shooting ranges..."
"The Single Greatest Force in American Politics?
Partisanship"
by Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann...Dec 20
2016...8:56 am ET
"Why partisanship is the single greatest force in
American politics"
Want to know why partisanship -- or party
identification -- is the single greatest force in American
politics today? Just check out these shifting attitudes
about the economy and nation's direction in the latest
NBC/WSJ poll:
... 68% of Republicans believe the economy will get
better in the next 12 months (versus just 14% of GOPers
who said this a year ago in the Dec. 2015 NBC/WSJ poll).
... By contrast, only 19% of Democrats said the economy
will improve next year (compared with 37% of them who said
this last December).
... Right now, 52% of Republicans say the country is
headed in the right direction (versus just 5% who said
this in December 2015).
... Conversely, only 18% of Democrats say the country
is headed in the right direction (compared with 37% of
them who said this a year ago).
Folks, the underlying dynamics of the U.S. economy have
remained pretty much the same over the past year. The only
thing that has changed is the party that will be in the
White House next year. It's all confirmation that so much
public opinion is shaped through Americans' partisan
lenses, and little else. Want another example of this from
our NBC/WSJ poll? A combined 86% of Democrats say they are
bothered a great deal/quite a bit by Russia's interference
in the 2016 presidential election, versus just 29% of
Republican respondents who say this..."
"Asymmetrical warfare: Democrats have knives,
Republicans have guns"
"But if partisanship is the greatest force in American
politics, there's maybe a more important dynamic at play
-- the asymmetrical warfare between the two parties. As
the New York Times' David Leonhardt writes in comparing
how Barack Obama is leaving the White House versus how
Republican Pat McCory is leaving power in North Carolina,
Democrats are wielding knives while Republicans have guns.
Think of the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff. Mitch McConnell
denying Obama's Supreme Court pick to even get a hearing.
And now what's playing out in North Carolina. Republicans
are playing a different game than Democrats are playing."
"Trump's popularity improves -- but he's still the most
unpopular president-elect in the history of our poll"
"Also from our NBC/WSJ poll: 40% of Americans now have
a positive view of Donald Trump, versus 46% who have a
negative view. That's up considerably from his 29%-62%
rating in the October NBC/WSJ poll. Still, Trump's 40%-46%
fav/unfav score is the WORST in the history of our poll
for a president-elect and the first time it's a
net-negative. Bill Clinton's was 60%-19% in Dec. 1992,
George W. Bush's was 48%-35% in Dec. 2000, and Barack
Obama's was 67%-16% in Dec. 2008.
My prescription and takeaway is for the next four years
for the Democratic Party especially those in D.C. is for
Hyper Partisanship, no holds barred bare knuckle
deliberate faithless drug out deliberations and
negotiations with the GOP, and the ceaseless cacaphonic
BLAME, BLAME, BLAME media game of imagined, fake, and real
failures of every Republican especially Donald Trump and
his family.
There you have it, your assignment for the
next next Presidential Election.
This is, of course, the opposite of the Democratic Party
Obama-way and the Clinton-way that reasonably expected the
American Electorate to see through and reject those same
tactics used on President Obama and Hillary Clinton when
they relied upon logic not lies, facts not falsehoods, and
intellectual and scientific critical thinking instead of
rants, ravings, and unhinged screeds to win the argument
and sway the Electorate.
IOW, time to stick it to Middle
America Fly Over country and make them see how wrong they
were to vote for Trump while aiding the BiCoastal States,
and the majority of voters in the last Election, survive
the next 4 years.
First and foremost start by insisting on cutting off or
at least severely reducing any and all AG support welfare
and corporate welfare for noncompetitive manufacturers
before any support for cutting Obamacare, SS, and
Medicare, which are the highest items on Ryan's and the
GOP's agenda.
Trump and his assembled Cabinet picks and Team are a full
month away from taking the Oath of Office and have loaded
the DEMS up with issues at the heart of every American
Worker, Blue and Middle Class: Class Warfare and Pay
Inequality
"Why Donald Trump Could Spell Doom for CEO Pay
Transparency"
by Martha C. White...Dec 20 2016...7:49 am ET
"Outsized CEO pay is an issue coming under increasing
scrutiny, and Donald Trump has already promised to do away
with legislation that would require companies to be more
transparent.
However, compensation experts say an executive branch
filled with corporate titans could benefit the relative
few atop the corporate ladder at the expense of everyone
else.
The implicit assumption is that these CEOs will look
out for their own.
Furthermore, because Trump is one of those CEOs
himself, it might very well "put a halo effect around the
whole issue [of executive pay] for a while," said John
Challenger, CEO of executive outplacement firm Challenger,
Gray & Christmas.
Repeal of Dodd-Frank?
"I think the first year will be a true measure of who
he is as a policy person," said Lawrence Mishel, president
of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think
tank...
...Starting next year, the Securities and Exchange
Commission planned to require companies to disclose how
much their CEO makes as a ratio of median employee pay,
giving shareholders - and ordinary Americans - a window
into how companies treat their CEO compared to the
rank-and-file workers, but the future of that rule is in
limbo.
Donald Trump, although he railed against fat CEO pay
packages during his campaign, calling them "disgraceful,"
also vowed to "dismantle" the Dodd-Frank Act, which
provided the mandate for the new SEC rule...
...For the future, many expect the SEC's push for
increased transparency to be scuttled, in keeping with
Donald Trump's promise to roll back regulations of all
types...
..."they believe now that it's likely to be pulled out
is when you look at the cabinet Trump is putting together,
there are a lot of billionaires, a lot of CEOs," Kropp
said.
"It seems to me that the pressure is going to abate.
There's going to be less scrutiny," Challenger
predicted..."
This doubling of the sub fleet was outlined in a defense
White Paper earlier this year. Basically, its due to
concerns about China. The article doesn't say, but I
assume these are AIP powered.
Australia, France sign submarine deal
"Australia and France on Tuesday signed the final
agreement for French naval contractor DCNS to build 12
submarines in what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called
a "critically important step in the development of our
security."
The 34.9 billion euro ($36.3 billion) deal, including
separate agreements with US and Australian contractors, is
one of the world's largest defense contracts.
Turnbull described the deal as the "last foundation
stone needed to ensure Australia is able to develop a
cutting-edge sovereign submarine capability."
The submarines will be a conventionally-powered version
of France's 4,700-tonne nuclear-fuelled Barracuda complete
with stealth technology. France and Australia agreed in
April to the deal, for which Germany and Japan were also
contending.
Most of the submarine production will be in the
southern city of Adelaide and create 2,800 high-skilled
jobs, Turnbull said.
US defense giant Lockheed Martin will produce the
combat systems for the Barracudas."
A war of words has erupted between a group of prominent
Australian businessmen and seemingly the entire southern
state over the Federal Government's controversial French
submarines deal.
(Adelaide, South Australia, is to be
a recipient of much employment related
to this deal.)
The group, which includes entrepreneur Dick Smith, Gary
Johnston of Jaycar Electronics and adman John Singleton,
took out a full-page advertisement in
The Australian on Tuesday slamming the move to go with
French producer DCNS, suggesting buying off-the-shelf
nuclear subs would be a better option.
They warned the current deal, announced on April 28
this year, will "condemn our sailors to their graves". The
group says it can't understand the Federal Government's
decision to award a multi-billion deal to French supplier
DCNS, which will be required to deliver 12 diesel-powered
submarines for which there are no drawings and no plans.
They said under the deal, the navy's next fleet of
conventionally-powered subs would come into service at a
time when the rest of the world would be operating nuclear
fleets, which would be "like putting a propeller plane up
against a modern jet".
"We will be condemning our sailors to their graves,"
the advertisement said. It also questioned the economics
of the decision, saying it would be cheaper to subsidise
car industry jobs, if creating jobs was the desired
outcome. Mr Johnston said DCNS was being asked to build a
diesel-powered version of what is essentially a
nuclear-powered sub.
"It's a bit like trying to turn a cat into a dog. It's
crazy. Why would you do it?" he told Sky News. "They
haven't got a drawing, they haven't got a plan. Their
current nuclear submarine, the Barracuda, is sitting on a
slipway. It won't even be tested until next year."
DCNS declined to comment on the row, but the Federal
Government said the decision to award the contract to the
company came after a competitive evaluation process, which
involved the best experts available. It said the new subs
would be regionally superior and would allow Australia to
pursue its national and international interests. ...
The government estimates building the submarines in
Adelaide will create 2800 jobs.
That would be the equivalent of giving every single one
of those 2800 workers a cheque for $5.4 million - or
handing every single man, woman and child in South
Australia a cheque for nearly $9000.
Speaking on 2GB, Mr Johnston said "if we were smart" we
would simply buy the French or British nuclear sub, or
even the "ultimate" US Virginia class nuclear submarine,
which has 33 years of fuel.
"You don't have to have a nuclear industry in Australia
- you just simply buy the thing and 33 years later you
trade it in on a new one," he said.
"It's unbelievable how these things are just such an
order of magnitude better than a diesel sub. Every one of
the enemy we would hopefully not ever encounter, but if we
do, would have nuclear submarines which will blow diesel
submarines out of the water."
But the group was dismissed as "sad old men" by South
Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, who rubbished their
proposal to go nuclear. "[It] looked like it was scribbled
on the back of a serviette after a long lunch," Mr
Weatherill tweeted on Tuesday.
Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, who holds
the South Australian seat of Sturt, described the
criticism as "misinformed, misguided" and "entirely
wrong". "We don't have nuclear energy in Australia and
therefore we can't have nuclear submarines," Mr Pyne told
ABC radio on Wednesday.
"The advice from defence was entirely clear and that
was that the French DCNS design was the best for what we
needed.
"Quite clearly we are not getting a Short Fin Barracuda
submarine, we are getting a unique design for Australian
conditions. We've chosen DCNS because we believe that they
have the best record and the best designs in terms of
large submarines both nuclear and non nuclear." ...
#- Richard Harold "Dick" Smith, AC (*) is an Australian
entrepreneur, businessman, aviator, philanthropist, and
political activist. He is the founder of Dick Smith
Electronics, Dick Smith Foods and Australian Geographic,
and was selected as the 1986 Australian of the Year. In
2010 he founded the media production company Smith&Nasht
with the intention of producing films about global issues.
In 2015 he was awarded the Companion of the Order of
Australia (*), and is a fellow of the Committee for
Skeptical Inquiry. (Wikipedia)
This should serve as a warning to those here that put
their faith in some Republican senators such as S. Lindsey
Graham and S. John McCain, they can not trusted, they are
straw men, sent out to make their Party look less extreme
than it is in fact.
Roman politics involved fierce competition among
ambitious men. But for centuries that competition was
constrained by some seemingly unbreakable rules. Here's
what Adrian Goldsworthy's "In the Name of Rome" says: *
"However important it was for an individual to win fame
and add to his own and his family's reputation, this
should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic.
The same belief in the superiority of Rome that made
senators by the second century BC hold themselves the
equals of any king ensured that no disappointed Roman
politician sought the aid of a foreign power."
In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire
By Adrian Goldsworthy
General in exile: Sertorius and the Civil War
Quintus Sertorius (c. 125–72 BC)
The Roman political élite was not unique in its
competitiveness and desire to excel. The aristocracies of
most Greek cities – and indeed of the overwhelming
majority of other communities in the Mediterranean world –
were just as eager to win personal dominance and often
unscrupulous in their methods of achieving this. Roman
senators were highly unusual in channelling their
ambitions within fairly narrow, and universally
recognized, boundaries. The internal disorder and
revolution which plagued the public lives of most city
states were absent from Rome until the last century of the
Republic. Even then, during civil wars of extreme savagery
when the severed heads of fellow citizens were displayed
in the Forum, the Roman aristocracy continued to place
some limits on what means were acceptable to overcome
their rivals. A common figure in the history of the
ancient world is the aristocratic exile – the deposed king
or tyrant, or the general forced out when he was perceived
to be becoming too powerful – at the court of a foreign
power, usually a king. Such men readily accepted foreign
troops to go back and seize power by force in their
homeland – as the tyrant Pisistratus had done at Athens –
or actively fought against their own city on their new
protector's behalf, like Alcibiades.
Rome's entire history contains only a tiny handful of
individuals whose careers in any way followed this
pattern. The fifth-century BC, and semi-mythical, Caius
Marcius Coriolanus probably comes closest, for when
banished from Rome he took service with the hostile
Volscians and led their army with great success. In the
story he came close to capturing Rome itself, and was only
stopped from completing his victory by the intervention of
his mother. The moral of the tale was quintessentially
Roman. However important it was for an individual to win
fame and add to his own and his family's reputation, this
should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic.
The same belief in the superiority of Rome that made
senators by the second century BC hold themselves the
equals of any king ensured that no disappointed Roman
politician sought the aid of a foreign power. Senators
wanted success, but that success only counted if it was
achieved at Rome. No senator defected to Pyrrhus or
Hannibal even when their final victory seemed imminent,
nor did Scipio Africanus' bitterness at the ingratitude of
the State cause him to take service with a foreign king.
The outbreak of civil war did not significantly change
this attitude, since both sides invariably claimed that
they were fighting to restore the true Republic. Use was
often made of non-Roman troops, but these were always
presented as auxiliaries or allies serving from their
obligations to Rome and never as independent powers
intervening for their own benefit. Yet the circumstances
of Roman fighting Roman did create many highly unorthodox
careers, none more so than that of Quintus Sertorius, who
demonstrated a talent for leading irregular forces and
waging a type of guerrilla warfare against conventional
Roman armies. Exiled from Sulla's Rome, he won his most
famous victories and lived out the last years of his life
in Spain, but never deviated from the attitudes of his
class or thought of himself as anything other than a Roman
senator and general....
Paul Krugman has drawn on the writing of Adrian
Goldsworthy to make sense of and point out what he
obviously considers to be a possible undermining of the
American republic. The complete Goldsworthy passage
strikes me as critical in understanding Krugman.
Though
Krugman has mentioned Goldsworthy before, I only began to
read "In the Name of Rome" yesterday.
"F-35 program is not 'out of control', JSF chief fires
back at Trump"
By Ryan Maass ... Dec. 20, 2016 ... 1:01 PM
"WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The F-35 program is not
"out of control" as President-elect Donald Trump suggests,
the head of the F-35 program office asserted.
F-35 executive director Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan
maintained the program was going as planned in response to
the incoming president's controversial tweet, which
appeared to threaten the plane's funding.
"The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions
of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other)
purchases after January 20th," Trump tweeted on Dec. 12.
The Lockheed Martin-led effort has been characterized
by numerous delays since its inception. Despite the
setbacks, however, Bogdan contends the program's leaders
have reined in the finances for the production of the
5th-generation fighter.
"I have no doubt, that given the controversy on the
F-35 program over the years, that there's a perception
that this program is out of control," Bogdan told
reporters. "That's in the past."
The program director went on to say industry partners
have made necessary adjustments and cut excessive
expenditures. However, he also conceded the development
phase of the program could face additional delays..."
A Reason writer returns to Appalachia to ask: Why
don't people who live in places with no opportunity just
leave?
...............
So why don't people just leave? That question is actually
surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80
percent of McDowell's population, including my
grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek
opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.
......................
So why don't people just leave? That question is actually
surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80
percent of McDowell's population, including my
grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek
opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.
[
This is critically important to understand. What has been
and is necessary in economically depressed areas where
development over several years time would be unlikely is
to assist migration. This is precisely what was done in
East Germany to pronounced benefit through Germany but is
little recognized or accepted by American analysts. ]
Simon Wren-Lewis: Understanding Free Trade: * "There
you have, in one calm and measured paragraph, the
contradiction at the heart of the argument...
...put forward by Liam Fox and others that leaving the
European Union will allow the UK to become a 'champion of
free trade'. You cannot be a champion of free trade, and
have sovereignty in the form of taking back control. It is
not a contradiction, of course, if you are happy to accept
the regulatory standards of the US, China or India. That
appears to be the position of Leave leaders like MP Jacob
Rees Mogg. Ellie Mae O'Hagan spells out what this may mean
in practice. Lead in toys--bring them in so we can sign a
trade agreement with China. And you can be sure that this
will be the nature of the discussion every time a trade
deal is signed. In each case we will be told that we have
to accept this drop in regulatory standards, because
British export jobs are on the line.
This is the point of Dani Rodrik's famous impossible
trilemma: ** you cannot have all three of the nation
state, democratic politics and deep economic integration
(aka free trade). His trilemma replaces sovereignty, by
which is meant in this context the nation state being able
to do what it likes, by democracy. In the past I have
always found this problematic. Surely a democracy can
decide to give away a bit of its sovereignty in return for
the benefits of international cooperation (in the form of
trade deals, or indeed any other kind of international
cooperation). After all, every adult in a relationship
knows that this relationship means certain restrictions on
doing just what they would like...
Having carefully read the essay by Simon Wren-Lewis, along
with this passage from Brad DeLong, the argument here
against leaving the European Union makes no sense. Though
I think the UK would fare better in the EU, the bitter
argument by Wren-Lewis leaves me indifferent. The idea
that the UK apart from the EU would suddenly be exploited
by the likes of India or China has no logic that I can
find.
I have not understood the bitterness of Wren-Lewis
to the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn since the Brexit
vote, especially so since Corbyn wanted the UK to remain
part of the EU.
"Trump meets with Carlos Slim as Mexican leaders seek
better relations"
By Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Joshua
Partlow...December 19 at 7:29 PM
"In the closing days of his campaign, Donald Trump
vilified one of the world's richest men - Mexican
billionaire Carlos Slim - as part of a globalist cabal
conspiring to extinguish his populist candidacy.
Yet over the weekend, Slim journeyed to Mar-a-Lago,
Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for what the
president-elect described as "a lovely dinner with a
wonderful man."
The peacemaking gesture - the culmination of weeks of
back-channel negotiations that included a secret visit to
Mexico City by a Trump envoy - signals a possible thawing
between Trump and Mexico's business and political elite,
which he had used relentlessly as a foil throughout his
campaign.
The communications raised hopes in Mexico's business
community that Trump might reconsider his vow to tear up
the North American Free Trade Agreement and be persuaded
to adopt less hard-line immigration and economic policies,
which were cornerstones of his campaign..."
"Do not worry. We are going to build the wall,"
Trump said, reiterating his promise to erect a
wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out
undocumented immigrants and to make Mexico pay for it.
Obama Administration Intends to Transfer 17 or 18
Guantánamo Detainees
http://nyti.ms/2i9aL0z
NYT - CHARLIE SAVAGE - December 19, 2016
WASHINGTON - When Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy
visited the White House in October for a state dinner, he
made a commitment to President Obama: Italy, which
resettled a Yemeni detainee from Guantánamo Bay last
summer, would take one more person on the transfer list.
But before the deal was completed, Mr. Renzi resigned.
So a day after his successor, Paolo Gentiloni, formed a
government on Dec. 14, Secretary of State John Kerry
called to congratulate Mr. Gentiloni - and to urge him to
follow through on the commitment, according to an official
familiar with the negotiations. Mr. Gentiloni agreed,
leading a rush to finalize the details and paperwork.
The effort was part of a burst of urgent, high-level
diplomatic talks aimed at moving as many as possible of
Guantánamo's 22 prisoners who are recommended for
transfer. By law, the Pentagon must notify Congress 30
days before a transfer, so the deadline to set in motion
deals before the end of the Obama administration was
Monday.
By late in the day, officials said, the administration
had agreed to tell Congress that it intended to transfer
17 or 18 of the 59 remaining detainees at the prison; they
would go to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates. If all goes as planned, that will leave 41 or 42
prisoners in Guantánamo for Donald J. Trump's
administration. Mr. Trump has vowed to keep the prison
operating and "load it up with some bad dudes." ...
The Shiller 10-year price-earnings ratio is currently
28.08, so the inverse or the earnings rate is 3.56%. The
dividend yield is 1.98%. So an expected yearly return over
the coming 10 years would be 3.56 + 1.98 or 5.54% provided
the price-earnings ratio stays the same and before
investment costs.
Against the 5.54% yearly expected return on stock over
the coming 10 years, the current 10-year Treasury bond
yield is 2.56%.
"The Subpoena That Rocked The Election Is Legal
Garbage, Experts Say"
'The warrant assumes that the mere existence of emails
from or to Hillary Clinton is probable cause that a crime
occurred'
by Matt Ferner, National Reporter, Ryan Grim,
Washington bureau chief & Nick Baumann, Senior Enterprise
Editor all of The Huffington Post...12/20/2016... 02:25 pm
ET...Updated 16 minutes ago
"The warrant connected to the FBI search that Hillary
Clinton says cost her the election shouldn't have been
granted, legal experts who reviewed the document released
on Tuesday told The Huffington Post.
FBI Director James Comey shook up the presidential race
11 days before the election by telling Congress the agency
had discovered new evidence in its previously closed
investigation into the email habits of Clinton, who was
significantly ahead in the polls at the time.
When Comey made the announcement, the bureau did not
have a warrant to search a laptop that agents believed
might contain evidence of criminal activity. The FBI set
out to rectify that two days later, on Oct. 30, when
agents applied for a warrant to search the laptop, which
was already in the FBI's possession. The FBI had seized
the computer as part of an investigation into former Rep.
Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma
Abedin.
The unsealed warrant "reveals Comey's intrusion on the
election was as utterly unjustified as we suspected at
time," Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said on
Twitter Tuesday.
Clinton's lead in the polls shrank in the wake of
Comey's announcement. Then, just days ahead of election,
the FBI announced its search was complete, and it had
found no evidence of criminal activity. Clinton officials
believe that second announcement damaged her as much as,
or more than, the first, by enraging Trump supporters who
believed the fix was in.
The legal experts' argument against the validity of the
subpoena boils down to this: The FBI had already publicly
announced that it could not prove Clinton intended to
disclose classified information. Without that intent, and
without evidence of gross negligence, there was no case.
The warrant offers no suggestion that proving those
elements of the crime would be made easier by searching
new emails.
The essence of the warrant application is merely that
the FBI has discovered new emails sent between Clinton and
Abedin.
That's not enough. The idea that the mere existence of
emails involving Clinton may be evidence of a crime is
startling, said Ken Katkin, a professor at Salmon P. Chase
College of Law.
"The warrant application seems to reflect a belief that
any email sent by Hillary Clinton from a private email
server is probably evidence of a crime," Katkin said. "If
so, then it must be seen as a partisan political act,
rather than a legitimate law enforcement action."
The warrant never should have been granted, attorney
Randol Schoenberg argued. "I see nothing at all in the
search warrant application that would give rise to
probable cause, nothing that would make anyone suspect
that there was anything on the laptop beyond what the FBI
had already searched and determined not to be evidence of
a crime, nothing to suggest that there would be anything
other than routine correspondence between Secretary
Clinton and her longtime aide Huma Abedin," Schoenberg
wrote in an email.
"I am appalled," he added, noting that the name of the
agent in charge had been redacted in the copy of the
document publicly released.
Katkin agreed. "This search warrant application appears
to have been meritless. The FBI should not have sought it,
and the magistrate judge should not have granted it," he
:
...Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox, who approved the
search warrant, didn't immediately respond to a request
for comment.
"The Fourth Amendment requires you to pretty much know
that what you're looking for is there ― not speculation.
This is just speculation," Cunningham said."
"Jack Bogle tells you the secret to becoming a winning
investor"
By Chuck Jaffe, Columnist...Dec 20, 2016...11:40 a.m.
ET
..."On smart beta investing in general:
Bogle: Smart beta is stupid.
So not one of these new index products is intriguing?
Bogle: No, no, no, no, no. Academics can find
anything with these masses of data they have on their
computers. They can find something that works in the past,
it's as easy as rolling off a log. But it almost never
works in the future – and not for very long - because they
all forget the most important single thing that happens in
our markets reversion to the mean. As the Good Book
says, 'And the first shall be last and the last shall be
first.'...
On what to expect from the market:
Bogle: The key to stock market investment returns is
today's dividend yield [around 2%] plus future earnings
growth. Nobody knows what that earnings growth will be,
but I am guessing it will be maybe in the range of 4% to
5%. That seems like an informed reasonable expectation.
You compare that with history and we are looking at
something very different. An average dividend yield not of
2% but of maybe 4.5%, and earnings growth has averaged
over 6% over the last 50 years.
So we have lower earnings forecast and a much lower
dividend yield built in. No one is going to change that.
It's like buying a bond, what is the interest rate when
you buy in. So we're talking about lower returns from
investment side, from what corporations do.
The other side of total return on stocks is what we
call speculative return, and that's how bullish or bearish
investors are, which is measured by the price/earnings
multiple -- how many times earnings your companies sell at
or the total stock market sells at. Over the long-term
past, that number has been about 15 times earnings. Today,
depending on who you are listening to, it could be as high
as 25 times earnings. ...I look backward at reported
earnings after all the bad stuff and I'm looking at a p/e
of 25. So the market is at least fully valued and I think
it is reasonable to expect possibly negative returns but
certainly no positive speculative return.
So we're looking at future market returns, if we are
lucky, of 4-5% before the costs of investing are
deducted."
I mean that I am suffering, physically, about the
ramifications of Donald Trump being officially elected as
the next President of the United States of America. I feel
despondent, looking through gloomy glass, looking for a
bright shiny object to deflect, even if only for a moment.
I mean if we immediately try to impeach him, we would have
Mike Pence (ak Tung) as president. Maybe we could embroil
him in a four year impeachment process.
As he slashes
his way, destroying Social Security and Medicare.
"U.S. Rig Count Up on Land, Flat Offshore
permian"
By MarEx...2016-12-16
"For the seventh week in a row, the benchmark Baker
Hughes Rig Count trended upwards, bringing the combined
count of active oil and gas rigs in the U.S. to 637.
However, only 22 of these were offshore rigs, essentially
unchanged from the same period last year.
The largest part of the onshore increase was in Texas,
where activity in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford fields
has brought the state's count by 14 rigs in one week.
Taken together, the Permian and Eagle Ford accound for
nearly half of U.S. drilling activity, with 302 rigs
between them. Compared with offshore projects, onshore
shale drilling campaigns like those in the Eagle Ford are
remarkably inexpensive and brief; a shale well's breakeven
price point is typically in the range of $30-40, depending
on the field, and it is often a matter of weeks between
setting up a rig and pumping first oil.
West Texas Intermediate crude prices were at $52 per
barrel on Friday, well above the price point that would
induce shale producers to begin new drilling, analysts
say. In addition, Goldman Sachs raised its outlook for
crude oil prices for mid-2017, predicting WTI prices at
$57.50 by the second quarter. Goldman cited the recent
OPEC and non-OPEC agreements to cut production by 1.6
million barrels per day, and said that it expects
compliance with the cut agreement in excess of 80 percent.
However, assuming that the OPEC agreement holds and
that competitors do not raise output to offset it, a price
of $57.50 is still below the level at which many offshore
projects become competitive, says Wood Mackenzie. In July,
the firm found that only 20 percent of deep- and
ultra-deepwater projects at the pre-FID stage are
commercially viable at $60 per barrel – suggesting that
offshore activity may remain quiet until prices rise
further."
"...The autonomy technology being developed by ONR is
called Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and
Sensing, or CARACaS. The components that make up CARACaS
(some are commercial off-the-shelf) are inexpensive
compared to the costs of maintaining manned vessels..."
The Republican controlled House and Senate has been largely busy passing bills in the few days
left in 2016. This particular one caught my eye.
Michigan had put in place a new Unemployment System (Michigan Data Automated System or MiDAS)
to help in detecting unemployment fraud.
With the passage of Senate Bill 1008 by the Republican led House , $10 million is transferred
from the Unemployment Contingent Fund to the General Fund to be done with in the General Fund as
determined by the Republican held Legislature.
Just a little history;
MiDAS was put in place (2013) by Governor Rick Snyder of Flint, Michigan fame to automate the
system away from the manual process. The system sends out a series of questions, which the Unemployment
Applicant has to answer picking from listed answers. There is no room for explanation. The claimants
chosen answers from the list of answers are then loaded into the MiDAS data base and notification
is sent to the former employer who then confirms the answers the claimant has listed in the system.
If there is any discrepancy, MiDAS assumes the claimant has committed a potential fraud.
Another questionnaire is then sent to the claimant, which is also limited to listed responses.
If you do not respond in 10 days, it is assumed a fraud has been committed as determined by MiDAS.
A notice is "supposedly" sent out and the claimant has 30 days to answer. If no notice is sent out
and the claimant does not answer, MiDAS assumes fraud and the issue goes to collections where just
about anything can take place to collect the unemployment funds already given to the claimant. There
is little or no human interaction throughout the process and little can be done to explain circumstance
during the process.
"
The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency , partly at the request of the federal government
and partly on its own, reviewed 22,427 cases in which a computer determined a claimant had committed
civil fraud between October 2013 and October 2015 and found that 20,965 of those cases did not
involve fraud. Unemployment Insurance Agency spokesman Dave Murray said on Wednesday. That's an
error rate of more than 93%."
The $10 million will be transferred from the Unemployment Contingent Fund which had already grown
by 400%
after the MiDAS caused spike in fraud cases of which nearly all of them unfounded.
Senate Bill 1008 is balancing the state budget on the backs of innocent citizens wrongfully accused
of false unemployment claims.
Governor Rick Snyder spent $47 million of taxpayer funds to install MiDAS which has been shown
to be correct in determining fraud < 7% of the time. Rather than give the funds to those who were
unjustly denied Unemployment Compensation by MiDAS, the Republican led Michigan legislature and Republican
governor Rick Snyder are keeping much of it in the Unemployment Contingent (used to train workers
and for rainy days) and will also transfer $10 million of it to the General Fund to help balance
the budget. This is the same as using the additional Medicaid funding received from the expansion
to balance the budget rather than set it aside for later years which would have kept Michigan from
having to add to Medicaid funding till 2027. It too was used to balance the budget. By doing so in
both cases, the Republicans do not have to raise taxes on the rich in income.
Longtooth , December 18, 2016 8:14 pm
What? You mean to tell me that a conservative right wing republican controlled government is
trying to eliminate or grossly reduce a valued safety net feature provided by government (public
funds)?
What is the world coming to?
P.S. Did you perhaps think conservatives favor and support public funds use in safety nets
for labor (as opposed to capital owner's safety nets)? Whatever gave you that idea? Reagan's "welfare
queen" speech perhaps?
run75441 , December 18, 2016 10:24 pm
Actually, it is the failure of Snyder and the Repubs to acknowledge the error of "MiDAS" in
swindling all Michigan citizens in general and have chosen to keep the funds they have swindled
rather than acknowledge the error publically and give the funds to those hurt by "MiDAS." Mistakes
do happen and it would have been easy enough to fix by adding an area for explanation and in doing
two mailings of the questionnaire to the Unemployment applicant. The state is attempting to eliminate
people using a computer system which does not allow for applicant error and inturn is not 100%
fool-proof in mailing out notification.
The state has already acknowledged that 93% of the time it has made an error and yet they have
failed to reconcile it.
beene , December 19, 2016 7:26 am
Run, if you want to correct problems like this; where error is a feature. Make it a criminal
fraud to sell the state or federal government a program that the error rate is more than 4%.
Beverly Mann , December 19, 2016 9:13 am
The problem with that suggestion, Beene, is that fraud-criminal or civil-requires knowledge
of falsity, or intent to steal. The idea of declaring a particular error rate a criminal fraud
is a non sequitur; it's absurd.
But selling a system that so clearly had no ability to accomplish its supposed purpose, and
whose purpose seems to have actually been to simply kill the unemployment compensation program-and
whose method was accusing virtually everyone of fraud who applied for unemployment compensation-does
not appear to be mere incompetence. It does appear to be knowing-i.e., a fraud.
And I would think it is prosecutable. The Justice Dept. apparently hasn't pursued the matter,
and of course under Sessions it won't. But two years from now, there will be a Democrat about
to be inaugurated as governor and, hopefully also, a Dem as AG. Ingram County (Lansing, the state
capitol) is always Dem, I believe, and even now it's prosecutors probably could launch a criminal-fraud
inquiry-and it should. But the statute of limitations probably will not have run by, say, mid-2019,
so it will still be prosecutable then by a Dem AG's office. And presumably, this will be a big
campaign issue statewide in 2018.
Which brings me to this: In virtually every instance (the one exception is Romney during his
first two years as governor after running as a moderate, before starting to run as far-right presidential
primary candidate) of some rightwing successful businessperson winning a state governorship (and
now, president), on the claim that he's been such a success at business, and, well, shouldn't
the government be run like a business, that person has proved utterly incompetent. Snyder and
Illinois governor Bruce Rauner are exhibits A and B; Florida governor Rick Scott is Exhibit C.
As for people who were falsely accused of fraud under what itself was a fraudulent system,
they should file a class action lawsuit in state court against the folks who sold the state that
snake oil.
Warren , December 19, 2016 9:44 am
You seem to be assuming the problem is with the computer system. If the computer system is
simply implementing the law, then there is no fraud by the company that created it. Perhaps the
problem is in the law itself, or with the people who do not return the forms when they are supposed
to.
Bill White , December 19, 2016 1:44 pm
There is a very interesting book, written by the estimable Math Babe (www.mathbabe.org), Cathie
O'Neill about this phenomenon called Weapons of Math Destruction. I can't recommend it enough.
Combining the supposed lack of bias of statistics, conservative's ardent desire to treat the government
as just another tool for personal monetary profit and the right's natural desire to kick people
when they are down and steal their lunch money means these stories will just proliferate.
The headline in last Sunday's San Jose Mercury News was all about AI as the next wave of technological
profit making. The future is not likely to be comforting. Instead of asking where our jetpacks
are, we will be asking where all our stuff went.
"... One bankruptcy attorney told the Detroit Metro Times he had as many as 30 cases in 2015 tied to debt from the UIA; before the automated system was implemented, he said he would typically have at most one per year with such claims. The newspaper also found claimants who were charged with fraud despite never having received a single dollar in unemployment insurance benefits. ..."
"... A pair of lawsuits were filed in 2015 against the UIA over Midas. According to a pending federal case, in which the state revealed it had discontinued using Midas for fraud determinations, the system "resulted in countless unemployment insurance claimants being accused of fraud even though they did nothing wrong". ..."
"... Blanchard told the Guardian in February that many unemployment applicants may not have realized they were even eligible to appeal against the fraud charge, due to the setup of Midas. Attorneys representing claimants have said that many refuse to ever apply for unemployment benefits again. ..."
"... Levin, who represents part of metropolitan Detroit, said in his statement that Michigan officials had to fully account for the money that has flowed into the unemployment agency's contingent fund. ..."
Michigan government
agency wrongly accused individuals in at least 20,000 cases of fraudulently seeking unemployment
payments, according to a review by the state.
The review released this week found that an automated system had erroneously accused claimants
in 93% of cases – a rate that stunned even lawyers suing the state over the computer system and faulty
fraud claims.
"It's literally balancing the books on the backs of Michigan's poorest and jobless," attorney
David Blanchard, who is pursuing a class action in federal court on behalf of several claimants,
told the Guardian on Friday.
The
Michigan unemployment insurance agency (UIA) reviewed 22,427 cases in which an automated computer
system determined a claimant had committed insurance fraud, after federal officials, including the
Michigan congressman Sander Levin, raised concerns with the system.
The review found that the overwhelming majority of claims over a two-year period between October
2013 and August 2015 were in error. In 2015, the state revised its policy and required fraud determinations
to be reviewed and issued by employees. But the new data is the first indication of just how widespread
the improper accusations were during that period .
The people accused lost access to unemployment payments, and reported facing fines as high as
$100,000. Those who appealed against the fines fought the claims in lengthy administrative hearings.
And some had their federal and state taxes garnished. Kevin Grifka, an electrician who lives
in metro Detroit, had his entire federal income tax garnished by the UIA, after it accused him of
fraudulently collecting $12,000 in unemployment benefits.
The notice came just weeks before Christmas in 2014.
"To be honest with you, it was really hard to see your wife in tears around Christmas time, when
all of this went on for me," Grifka said.
The computer system claimed that he had failed to accurately represent his income over a 13-week
period. But the system was wrong: Grifka, 39, had not committed insurance fraud.
In a statement issued on Friday, Levin called on state officials to review the remaining fraud
cases that were generated by the system before the policy revision.
"While I'm pleased that a small subset of the cases has been reviewed, the state has a responsibility
to look at the additional 30,000 fraud determinations made during this same time period," he said.
Figures released by the state show 2,571 individuals have been repaid a total of $5.4m. It's unclear
if multiple cases were filed against the same claimants.
The findings come as Michigan's Republican-led legislature passed a bill this week to use
$10m from the unemployment agency's contingent fund – which is composed mostly of fines generated
by fraud claims – to balance the state's budget. Since 2011, the balance of the contingent fund has
jumped from $3.1m to $155m, according to
a report from a Michigan house agency.
The system, known as the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System (Midas), caused an immediate
spike in claims of fraud when it was implemented in October 2013 under the state's Republican governor,
Rick Snyder, at a cost of $47m.
In the run-up to a scathing report on the system issued last year by Michigan's auditor general,
the UIA began requiring employees to review the fraud determinations before they were issued.
The fraud accusations can carry an emotional burden for claimants.
"These accusations [have] a pretty big burden on people," Grifka said. While he said the new findings
were validating and his own case had been resolved, he called for state accountability.
"There's no recourse from the state on what they're doing to people's lives. That's my biggest
problem with all of this."
Steve Gray, director of the University of Michigan law school's unemployment insurance clinic,
told the Guardian earlier this year that he routinely came across claimants facing a significant
emotional toll. As a result, he said, the clinic added the number for a suicide hotline to a referral
resource page on the program's website.
"We had just a number of clients who were so desperate, saying that they were going to lose their
house they've never been unemployed before, they didn't know," said Gray, who filed a complaint
with the US labor department in 2015 about the Midas system.
The fines can be enormous. Residents interviewed by local news outlets have highlighted fraud
penalties from the UIA
upwards of $100,000 . Bankruptcy petitions filed as a result of unemployment insurance fraud
also increased during the timeframe when Midas was in use.
One bankruptcy attorney
told the Detroit Metro Times he had as many as 30 cases in 2015 tied to debt from the UIA; before
the automated system was implemented, he said he would typically have at most one per year with such
claims. The newspaper also found claimants who were charged with fraud despite never having received
a single dollar in unemployment insurance benefits.
A pair of lawsuits were filed in 2015 against the UIA over Midas. According to a pending federal
case, in which the state revealed it had discontinued using Midas for fraud determinations, the system
"resulted in countless unemployment insurance claimants being accused of fraud even though they did
nothing wrong".
Blanchard told the Guardian in February that many unemployment applicants may not have realized
they were even eligible to appeal against the fraud charge, due to the setup of Midas. Attorneys
representing claimants have said that many refuse to ever apply for unemployment benefits again.
A spokesman for the unemployment insurance agency, Dave Murray, said it appreciated Levin's work
on the issue and said it was continuing "to study fraud determinations".
The agency had already made changes to the fraud determination process, he said, and "we appreciate
that the state legislature this week approved a bill that codifies the reforms we've set in place".
Levin, who represents part of metropolitan Detroit, said in his statement that Michigan officials
had to fully account for the money that has flowed into the unemployment agency's contingent fund.
"While I am pleased that $5m has been repaid, it strikes me as small compared to the amount of
money that was collected at the time," he said. "Only a full audit will ensure the public that the
problem has been fully rectified."
ManuSHeloma 12 Feb 2016 9:02
Another failure of Gov Snyder's administration: first Flint water, now this. What can the people
of Michigan expect next? The recall of Snyder should be automated.
stuinmichigan pepspotbib 12 Feb 2016 10:02
It's not just Snyder and his lackies. You should see the radically gerrymanderd Michigan legislature,
run by rightist extremists, directed by the Koch Brothers, the DeVos family and others, via the
ALEC program that provides them with the radical right legislation they have passed and continue
to pass. Snyder ran saying that sort of stuff was not really on his agenda, but continues to sign
it. He's either a liar, an unprincipled idiot, or both. It's bad here. And it's getting worse.
DarthPutinbot 12 Feb 2016 9:09
What the f*ck is wrong in Michigan? Split it up among the surrounding states and call it good.
Michigan destroyed Detroit and cutoff their water. Michigan deliberately poisoned the residents
of Flint. Too many Michigan lawyers are crooks or basically inept. The court system screws over
parents in divorce cases. And now, Michigan is wrongly trying to collect money from people on
trumped up fraud charges. Stop it. The federal government needs to take over the state or bust
it up.
Non de Plume 12 Feb 2016 9:23
Hell, when the system *works* it's ridiculous. Watching my Dad - who had worked continuously since
14 years old save a few months in the early 90s - sitting on hold for hours... At least once a
week, to 'prove' he still deserved money from a system he paid into. Hours is not an exaggeration.
And now this. Goddammit Lansing! How many other ways can you try to save/take money from the
poor and end up costing us so much more?!?
Bailey Wilkins stuinmichigan 12 Feb 2016 21:56
Nothing against The Guardian's reporting, but if you follow the links, you'll see FOX 17 has been
covering the story locally since last May. It's their investigation that got the attention of
all the other publications (including Detroit Metro Times.) Local papers could have done a better
job though, agreed on that.
talenttruth 12 Feb 2016 12:48
Leering, Entitled Republican bastards like Governor Snyder simply HATE poor people. And THAT is
because all such bullies are cowards, through-and-through, always selecting as their "victims"
those who can't fight back. And, since such Puritan Cretins as Snyder "Believe" that they are
rich because of their superior merit, it stands to reason (doesn't it) that "poor people" (actually,
all us Little Folk) have NO merit, because we didn't inherit a Trust Fund, Daddy's Business or
other anciently stolen wealth. These people deserve stunningly BAD Karma. Unfortunately, Karma
has its own timeline and doesn't do what seems just, on a timely basis (usually).
Jim Uicker 12 Feb 2016 13:29
With today's sophisticated algorithms, computers are used to flag insurance claims all the time.
The hit rate is usually much better than 8%. But how can they even consider automating the adjudication
of fraud? Fraud is a crime; there should be a presumption of innocence and a right to due process.
Without telling people they had a right to appeal, didn't this system violate the constitutional
rights of Michigan's most vulnerable citizens: those with no job and therefore no money to defend
themselves?
And what about the employers who paid unemployment insurance premiums month after month, expecting
the system to protect their employees from business conditions that would necessitate layoffs?
Michigan has defrauded them as well, by collecting premiums and not paying claims.
Jim Uicker 12 Feb 2016 13:51
Even if the problem with Midas can be entirely blamed on the tech workers who built and tested
the software, there is no excuse for the behavior of the Snyder administration when they became
aware of the problem. Just like the cases of legionnaires disease, where the state failed to alert
the public about the outbreak and four more people died, the Snyder administration is again trying
to sweep its mistakes under the rug.
Before taking Midas offline, the UIA refused to comment on the Metro Times investigation, and
Snyder himself artfully avoided reporters' questions after being made aware of the result of an
investigation by a local television station. Now the state only revealed that it shut down Midas
to a pending lawsuit.
The state spent $47 million dollars on a computer system and then took it offline because it
didn't work. The flaws in the system are now costing the state many millions more. This level
of secrecy is evidence of bad government. The state is supposed to be accountable to taxpayers
for that money! Even if the Snyder administration isn't responsible for all of these tragedies,
it is definitely responsible for covering them up.
Jefferson78759 12 Feb 2016 13:55
This is the GOP "governing"; treat the average person like a criminal, "save" money on essential
infrastructure like water treatment, regardless of the consequences.
I get why the 1% votes GOP but if you're an average person you're putting your financial and
physical well being on the line if you do. Crazy.
MaryLee Sutton Henry 12 Feb 2016 22:30
I was forced to plead guilty by a public defender to the UIA fraud charge & thrown in jail for
4 days without my Diabetic meds or diet in Allegan county. As it stands right now the State of
Michigan keeps sending me bills that are almost $1000 more then what the county says I own. I
have done community service, and between witholding tax refunds and payments I have paid over
$1200 on a $4300 total bill. I have literally spend hours on the phone with UIA and faxing judgements
trying to straighten this out, yet still get bills for the higher amount from UIA. Its a nightmare,
I have a misdominer, until its paid and refuse to pay no more then $50 per month until they straighten
this out. Maybe joining the class action law suit would help. Does anyone have any better ideas??
Teri Roy 13 Feb 2016 13:27
My son and I both got hit, I was able to dispute mine but he has autism and they would not dismiss
his, so at 24 yrs old he's paying back 20 grand in pentailies and interest. Just not right
Outragously Flawless 14 Feb 2016 9:42
I also received a letter stating I owe and hadn't file taxes since 2007. I had to find all of
my taxes from 2007 to 2013 my question is why did they wait over 5yrs to contact me, or is that
the set up H&R block does my taxes and they didn't have records that far back.#sneakyass government
Marcus Aurelius (121-180CE) was emperor of Rome at the height of its influence and power. One
can only imagine the pressures that a person in his position might have experienced. The military
might of the empire was massive, and much could happen in the fog of war. Conspiracies ran rampant
through the imperial court. What might be lurking right around the corner seemed unforeseeable.
Economies flourished and fell into ruin. Barbarians at the Gates! And if Marcus was stressed out,
how much more might the ordinary Roman suffer from this uncertainty?
But, as we start 2015, is Marcus's world really all that different from ours?
Today, global financial markets seem to move of their own accord as life savings vanish . Conflict
around the world and violence at home seems hopelessly incomprehensible for most of us . US elections
have seen some of their lowest voter turnout in recent memory, and the country seems more polarized
than ever. The constant flow of information from the media and internet can make one feel small
and ineffectual.
If all these stresses push one into a state of despair, or at least a sense of futility, maybe
we can follow Marcus' advice and turn to philosophy. In particular, the philosophy of Stoicism.
The principles of Stoicism
Stoicism was founded in Athens around 300 BCE, and had its zenith during the Roman Imperial
period of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, in the writings of such thinkers as Seneca and Epictetus,
as well as Marcus Aurelius.
Stoicism promised that a good life is available to us even in the face of overwhelming circumstances,
which might partly explain its attractiveness to even the mighty emperor of the most powerful
empire of its time.
Central to this life, according to the Stoics, is a certain set of cognitive approaches to
what goes on in the world around us.
First, we must recognize that the vast majority of circumstances and events are out of our
control. What is in our control is how we react to them. Thus, what matters to having a good life
is not what happens to us, but rather how we deal with it.
The second major point is that those things under our control - - our thoughts - are both the
source of our suffering, and something that we can learn to control. When we learn to have the
appropriate reactions and thoughts, we can then live a happy and fruitful life even in the face
of enormous difficulties.
In the words of Epictetus:
If you think that things naturally enslaved are free or that things not your own are your own,
you will be thwarted, miserable, and upset, and will blame both gods and men. But if you think
that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is, just as it is, not your
own, then no one will ever coerce you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, you will
not accuse anyone, you will not do a single thing unwillingly, you will have no enemies, and
no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.
Stoicism applied to contemporary life
A growing number of deeply thoughtful people, from scholars to practicing therapists, are following
Marcus' advice today. For example, a group at the University of Essex in the UK has developed
"Stoic Week," and produced guidelines
for anyone to participate in stoic practices for a week and share their experiences.
Having just concluded its third iteration, this experiment in stoic living has indicated that
stoicism may in fact be a helpful tool in modern life.
Preliminary results from the first stoic week suggest that the majority of participants had
significant reductions in negative feelings associated with stress and anxiety, etc.
The practice of stoicism is also now being pursued in the US. The University of Wyoming hosts
a Stoic Camp, first run in May of 2014, putting students and faculty together to live by stoic
principles on a 24 hour basis.
Stoic camp in Wyoming
Based in the Snowy Range outside of Centennial, WY, the initial camp hosted only students from
Wyoming, but further iterations will accept students from other universities.
On a typical day, campers rise early in order to practice meditation based in the ancient texts
and use this practice to help structure the rest of the day. Each morning and afternoon, the camp
breaks into groups to read and discuss portions of Marcus's Meditations and consider
how they reflected his stoic values and advice. By repeating this process, these ideas can become
part of our cognitive equipment. Campers also engaged in outdoor activities to emphasize our affinity
with nature and the universe as a whole.
So, these cognitive realizations and tools may help us to live a happy, fruitful life. As the
Stoics emphasize, however, such a life cannot consist in making the world bend to our will . Rather
it must consist in making ourselves more fit to live well in the world as it is.
As Marcus says, "Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live ... while you have life
in you, while you still can, make yourself good."
Comment: As a follow up on Marcus's quote, read what George I. Gurdjieff wrote about The Last
Hour of Life:
Imagine, that you have only a few minutes, maybe an hour left to live; somehow you have discovered
exactly when you will die. What would you do with this precious hour of your stay on Earth?
Would you be able to complete all your things in this last hour, do you have a conscious idea
about how to do it?
And letting go your last breath would you feel satisfaction from knowing that you have done
everything possible in this life to fulfill that you are constantly present, always vibrating,
always waiting, like the son is waiting for the father-sailor? In the manifested world everything
has its beginning and its end. In the Real World everything is always present and one beautiful
day you will be allowed to forget everything and leave the world "forever".
Freedom is worth a million times more than [political] liberation. The free man, even in
slavery, remains a master of himself. For example, if I give you something, let's say, a car,
in which there is no fuel, the car cannot move. Your car needs a special fuel, but it is only
you who is able to define what kind of fuel is needed and where to get it.
You have to define yourself how to digest my ideas to make them yours, so that they belong
only to you. Your car cannot work on the same fuel my car is working on. I suggest to you only
the primary material. You have to get from it what you can use. So, more bravely, sit down
at the steering wheel.
The organic life is very fragile. The planetary body can die at any moment. It is always
one step from death. And if you could manage to live one more day, it is only a chance accidentally
given to you by nature. If you will be able to live even one more hour, you can consider yourself
to be a lucky person. From the moment of conception we are living on borrowed time.
Living in this world you have to feel death each second, so settle all your life affairs,
even in your last hour. But how can anyone know exactly his last hour? For the sense of security
make up your things with nature and yourself in every hour given to you, then you will never
be met unprepared. The man has to be taught this starting from the [esoteric] school: how to
breath, to eat, to move and to die right. This has to become a part of an educational programme.
In this programme it is necessary to include the teaching about how to realize the presence
of "I" and also how to establish consciousness.
Question: How to act if you do not feel that there is something unfinished?
Gurdjieff answered after a pause. He took a deep breath and replied:
Ask yourself who will be in difficulty if you die like a dog. At the moment of death you
have to be wholly aware of yourself and feel that you have done everything possible to use
all, within your abilities, in this life which was given to you.
Now you do not know much about yourself. But with each day you dig deeper and deeper into
this bag of bones and start knowing more and more details. Day by day you will be finding out
what you should have done and what you have to re-do among the things you have done. A real
man is one who could take from life everything that was valuable in it, and say: "And now I
can die". We have to try to live your lives so that we could say any day: "Today I can die
and not be sorry about anything".
Never spend fruitlessly the last hour of your life because it can become the most important
hour for you. If you use it wrongly, you may be sorry about it later. This sincere excitement
that you feel now can become for you a powerful source of the force that can prepare you for
perfect death. Knowing that the next hour can become the last one for you, absorb the impressions
which it will bring to you as a real gourmet. When lady death will call you, be prepared, always.
The master knows how to take from each tasty piece the last bit of the most valuable. Learn
to be the master of your life.
When I was young I learned to prepare fragrances. I learned to extract from life its essence,
its most subtle qualities. Search in everything the most valuable, learn to separate the fine
from the coarse. One who has learned how to extract the essence, the most important from each
moment of life, has reached a sense on quality.
He is able to do with the world something that can not be done by an aboriginal.
It could be that in the last moments of your life you will not have the choice where and
with whom to be, but you will have a choice to decide how fully you will live them. The ability
to take the valuable from life - is the same as to take from the food, air and the impressions
the substances needed to build up your higher bodies. If you want to take from your life the
most valuable for yourself, it has to be for the good of the higher; for yourself it is enough
to leave just a little. To work on yourself for the good of others is a smart way to receive
the best from life for yourself. If you will not be satisfied with the last hour of your life,
you will not be happy about the whole of your life. To die means to come through something
which is impossible to repeat again. To spend your precious time in nothing means to deprive
yourself the opportunity to extract from life the most valuable.
In this world, to live life through, from the beginning to the end - means another aspect
of the Absolute. All greatest philosophers were carefully preparing for the last hour of their
life. And now I will give you the exercise to prepare for the last hour on the Earth. Try not
to misinterpret any word from the given exercise.
The Exercise
Look back at the hour that has passed, as if it was the last hour for you on the earth and
that you have just acknowledged that you have died. Ask yourself, were you satisfied at that
hour?
And now reanimate yourself again and set up the aim for yourself. In the next hour (if you
are lucky to live one more) try to extract from life a little more than you did in the last
hour. Define, where and when you should have been more aware, and where you should have put
more inner fire.
And now open your eyes wider, and by this I mean - open more possibilities for yourself,
be a little more brave, than you were in the previous hour. Since you know that this is your
last hour and you have nothing to loose, try to gain some bravery - at least now. Of course,
you don't have to be silly about it.
Get to know yourself better, look at your machine as if from the outside. Now, when you
are dying, there is no sense to keep your reputation and your prestige.
And now onward, until the real last hour, aspire with persistence to receive the most you
can from life that is of value, develop your intuition. Take just a few moments each hour to
watch at the hour that passed, without judgment, and then tune yourself to extracting more
from the following hour.
If we look at each hour like at a separate life unit, you can try to do as much as you can
to use every unit totally. Force yourself and find the way to make the next hour much more
than the one before, but also be aware that you have taken care of the debts you collected
till now. Increase the self-sensing and self-knowledge of yourself, and also increase the ability
to master yourself, this will change the work of your machine, which is always out of your
control. And these abilities can become the indication of the real changes. And it is absolutely
unimportant what the machine is thinking about this.
...To live the rest of your life rehearsing your death hour by hour - is not at all pathological.
None can receive more from life than the cancer patient, who knows approximately when he will
die. And since he already recognized how he wishes to spend the rest of his life, he will not
have to make the total change in it, but he will be able to go somewhere, where he always wished
to go, but would not do it in other circumstances.
The man who knows that he will die soon, will try to use to the maximum every hour of the
rest of his life. This is exactly what Christ meant when he said that the last days will come
soon - the days before the Last Judgment. We are all standing in front of the Judge, but it
is not the others who are judging us, but we ourselves do the last estimation of our life.
We do not have to fail the most important examination, where the most serious judge is ourselves.
Each moment, taken alone, represents the particle of the eternal Creation. Therefore each
moment we can extract the most subtle substances, that we can call "the essence of life".
Imagine yourself the substance "air" or the substance "impressions". Finally, draw in your
mind the substance "moment". Yes, even the moments of time are the substances.
If we will be able to extract the finest substances from the coarser, sooner or later we
will have to
pay for it. This law is called The Law of Balance. That is why we will learn how to pay immediately
for those that we receive from life. Only then we will not have any debts. To pay immediately
- this is what is called "real doing". "To do" - is to think, to feel, to act, but "real doing"
- is to pay immediately.
To do - may mean only one thing: to extract the essence from each moment of life and at
the same moment to pay all the debts to the nature and yourself; but only when you have "I",
can you pay immediately.
Real life is not a change of activity, but a change of the quality of the activity. Destiny
- is destiny. Each one of us has to find himself in the whole order of things. It is not too
late yet to start doing it now, although you have spent the greater part of your life in sleep.
Starting from today you can begin to prepare yourself for death and, at the same time, to increase
the quality of your living. But do not delay with the start - maybe you really only have just
one more hour of life.
Question: Can we share this with others? I think it is very important what we have heard
about this evening.
- You can retell it word by word, but until you will [can?] do this [exercise] yourself,
it would mean nothing for others. Existence is the means, or the instrument, for action. Think
about this and you will find out why it is so.
Question: Therefore, we cannot pay the debts, if we do not exist, or if our "I" is absent?
- Why do you have such a need to pay? Pay for what? If life is only a coincidence, then
there is no sense to go on. This does not mean that you have to end your life with a suicide.
Opposite, you have to put all your effort into "to live". Ordinary man always lives, just going
with the flow. He is not just sleeping, he is absolutely dead. To really live, it is necessary
to support the efforts of nature, to take actively from life, and not to act passively - wherever
it flows.
Extracting from life the most precious, you have to be able to operate your emotions. See
how fairly you can estimate yourself. Look attentively at yourself and you will see many remarkable
ways to be fair. Each time notice for yourself different moments when the desires appear. Act
as before, but always be aware of their presence. Transport to the world the part of your blood,
but one of the higher level.
At the end of each hour after you have estimated its usefulness, imagine that you just woke
up in the absolutely unknown in comparison to the previous one gone by. It is important to
note that the apparent continuation of the last hour is in reality changing with every hour,
although things and people seem the same as before. With the time you will learn to see yourself
as a spirit of a special substance, who is coming from one world to another, as an uninvited
guest of nature.
Looking from this point of view evaluate everything you do in your life. Looking at the
results of all your efforts of the past and think what sense they all have now, in the last
hour of your life. Those who are engaged in the Work, are dead to this world and at the same
time they are more alive in this world than anyone else. Work...something strange, imperceptible,
but for many it is impossible to live without it.
The ordinary way of understanding life is vanity of vanities. However big the result is
according to earthly measures, sooner or later it will fail. Even the sand is being rubbed
into dust by time. Even the most significant people of history are being forgotten. To understand
the real possibilities of this world, it is necessary to find what we can reach in this world
that will be very useful in the Real World.
Attentively look at the lives of all the greatest people, those who were commanding armies,
who had power over others. What is the benefit for them from all their great actions now, when
they are dead? Even when they were alive, all these great actions were no more than empty dreams.
We are not here to praise ourselves and to prove ourselves, the most disgusting in the ordinary
man is the ability to quickly satisfy his flesh.
The majority of people find many excuses not to work on themselves. They are in a complete
prison of their weaknesses. But right now we do not speak about them, but about you.
Understand me right, I do not need followers, I am rather interested in finding the good
organizers, the real warriors of the new world. I understand the weakness of the organization,
because right now we do not speak about the usual organisation which would consist of initiates.
I remind you once again, learn to live each of your hours with a bigger benefit. Create
a detailed plan of the last hour of your life. To understand how one should die, you should
grow deep roots into life, only then you will be able to die like a human being, not like a
dog. Although, it is not given to everyone - to die. You can become manure for our planet,
but it does not really mean do die. To die to this world forever - is an honour. For this honour
you have to pay with Conscious Labour and Intentional Suffering. You have to earn this right.
Try to imagine yourself relatively clearly the last hour of your life on earth. Write a
kind of a script of this last hour, as if you were writing the script for a film. Ask yourself:
"Is this how Iwant to dispose my life". If you are not satisfied with the answer, rewrite the
script until you likeit.
Look at life like as business. Time is your money for life. When you came into this world,
a definite amount of money was given to you and this you cannot exceed. Time is the only currency
with which you pay for your life. Now you see, how you used the biggest part of it in a stupid
way. You have not even reached the main goal of life - to have rest. You failed as a businessman,
and as a user of life - you deceived yourself. All your life you thought that everything is
given to you for free, and now suddenly you discovered that - it is not free. You pay for using
the time, that is why each moment of your stay here costs something.
So how would it be possible for you to reimburse [recover] at least somehow these losses?
Check, if the deficit on your bank account is only temporary or is it perhaps constant? Did
you loose the time or could you invest it successfully? If you have spent all your money on
vacations, then there is nothing to do but to be sorry about the past.
For many years you have been spending you life as if your parents gave you a bank account
with unlimited credit. But now the amount is used and you see that you are all alone and that
there is none to rely on. There is no more time on your bank account. Now you are forced to
earn each hour of your life. All your life you behaved like a child and spent time just like
a newly married couple on their honeymoon.
Our main enemy, which is hindering us from applying the necessary efforts - is hopelessness.
I know, you will have many excuses not to prepare yourself for the last hour of your life.
The habit is a big force, but starting once, you can learn to do each time more and more.
Do not fiddle all day, force yourself at least one hour a day to make an effort, otherwise
you will loose everything. Think about the rehearsal of your last hour as if it was ballet
exercises - you have to do it all your life.
I dedicate four hours a day for this exercise, but when I was young, I spent on it two times
longer.
Translation from Russian by Alexandra Kharitonova, with free English rendering by Reijo
Oksanen. unearthed by Ilya Kotz & Avi Solomon of the Jerusalem Nyland Group.
Some of us are stressed. Others are overworked, struggling with the new responsibilities of parenthood,
or moving from one flawed relationship to another. Whatever it is, whatever you are going through,
there is wisdom from the Stoics that can help.
Followers of this ancient and inscrutable philosophy have found themselves at the centre of some
of history's most trying ordeals, from the French Revolution to the American Civil War to the prison
camps of Vietnam. Bill Clinton reportedly reads Roman Emperor and stoic Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
once a year, and one can imagine him handing a copy to Hillary after her heart-wrenching loss
in the US presidential election.
Stoicism is a school of philosophy which was founded in Athens in the early 3rd century and then
progressed to Rome, where it became a pragmatic way of addressing life's problems. The central message
is, we don't control what happens to us; we control how we respond .
The Stoics were really writing and thinking about one thing: how to live. The questions they asked
were not arcane or academic but practical and real. "What do I do about my anger?" "What do I do
if someone insults me?" "I'm afraid to die; why is that?" "How can I deal with the difficult situations
I face?" "How can I deal with the success or power I hold?"
There also happens to be a decent amount of advice on how to live under the looming threat of
a tyrant ("I may wish to be free from torture, but if the time comes for me to endure it, I'll wish
to bear it courageously with bravery and honor," wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca). All of which
makes Stoic philosophy particularly well-suited to the world we live in.
While it would be hard to find a word dealt a greater injustice at the hands of the English language
than "stoicism"- with its mistaken connotations of austerity and lack of emotion - in fact, nothing
could be more necessary for our times than a good dose of Stoic philosophy.
When the news media provokes us with overwhelming amounts of information, Epictetus, another Roman
philosopher, cuts through the noise: "If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid
in extraneous matters." When it feels like people are ruder and more selfish than ever, Marcus Aurelius
urges us to ask when we ourselves have behaved the same way - and says that the best revenge is simply
"to not be like that".
When the natural inclination is to focus on achievement and money, Seneca's reminder to his father-in-law,
who had just been removed from a prominent position, rings true: "Believe me, it's better to produce
the balance sheet of your own life than that of the grain market."
In their writings - often private letters or diaries - and in their lectures, the Stoics struggled
to come up with real, actionable answers. They held duty and honor as sacred obligations and they
believed that every obstacle they faced was simply an opportunity - to test themselves and be better.
Now Stoicism is finding resonance with new followers. Just last month in New York, a conference
called Stoicon was declared to be the largest gathering of Stoics in history.
This kind of philosophy is not an idle pursuit but a crucial tool. As Seneca said, "Where then
do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that
are my own."
About the author
Ryan Holiday is the author of The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance,
and the Art of Living (Profile Books, £9.99). To order a copy for £8.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
"... I had always thought Hayek made some good critical points about the illusions of socialists/utopians and then chose to ignore the fact that his criticism also applied to his ..."
"... So maybe Hayek didn't overlook the fact that his critique also applied to his utopia. Maybe he knew full well he was misrepresenting what he was selling, engaging in exactly the same propaganda techniques that he attributed to others. ..."
"... A Rovian strategy - conceal your weakness by attacking others on precisely that issue. ..."
"... The Road to Serfdom put out in the US after WWII, which was full of this inflammatory sort of thing that doing anything to ameliorate the harder edges of capitalism put one inexorably on the road to serfdom. ..."
"... In the actual RtS one finds Hayek himself supporting quite a few such amiliorations, most notably social insurance, especially national health insurance well beyond what we even have in the US now with ACA. ..."
"... The problem for lovers of Hayek, and arguably Hayek himself, is that he simply never repudiated this comic book version of his work, even as he and many of his followers got all worked up when people, such as Samuelson, would criticize Hayek for this comic book version of the RtS, pointing out his support for these ameliorations in the original non-comic book version. ..."
"... However, Samuelson in his last remarks on Hayek, which I published in JEBO some years ago, effectively said that Hayek had only himself to blame for this confusion. ..."
"... I have been thinking that maybe both "sides" in our mostly brainwashed America today could agree with the meme of "DRAIN-THE-SWAMP" and hope to see it carried proudly on protest signs by the non-zombies of both sides in the ongoing social upheaval. ..."
"... I agree that "accuse the other side of doing what you are doing" is a familiar ploy of the right. ..."
Sandwichman | December 10, 2016 12:51 am
In his neo-Confederate "Mein Kampf," Whither Solid South ,
Charles Wallace Collins quoted a full paragraph from Hayek's The Road to Serfdom
regarding the emptying out of the meaning of words. My instinct would be not to condemn Hayek
for the politics of those who quote him. Even the Devil quotes Shakespeare.
But after taking another look at the Look magazine
comic book edition of Hayek's tome, I realized that Collins's depiction of full employment
as a sinister Stalinist plot was, after all, remarkably faithful to the
comic-book version of Hayek's argument. With only a little digging, one can readily
infer that what the comic book refers to as "The Plan" is a policy also known as full employment
(or, if you want to get specific, William Beveridge's Full Employment in a Free Society
). "Planners" translates as cartoon Hayek's alias for Keynesian economists and their political
acolytes.
To be sure, Hayek's sole reference to full employment in the book is unobjectionable
- even estimable almost:
That no single purpose must be allowed in peace to have absolute preference over all others
applies even to the one aim which everybody now agrees comes in the front rank: the conquest of
unemployment. There can be no doubt that this must be the goal of our greatest endeavour; even
so, it does not mean that such an aim should be allowed to dominate us to the exclusion of everything
else, that, as the glib phrase runs, it must be accomplished "at any price". It is, in fact, in
this field that the fascination of vague but popular phrases like "full employment" may well lead
to extremely short-sighted measures, and where the categorical and irresponsible "it must be done
at all cost" of the single-minded idealist is likely to do the greatest harm.
Yes, single-minded pursuit at all costs of any
nebulous objective will no doubt be short-sighted and possibly harmful. But is that really
what "the planners" were advocating?
Hayek elaborated his views on full employment policy in a 1945 review of Beveridge's
Full Employment in a Free Society, in which he glibly characterized Keynes's theory of
employment as "all that was needed to maintain employment permanently at a maximum was to secure
an adequate volume of spending of some kind."
Beveridge, Hayek confided, was "an out-and-out planner" who proposed to deal with the difficulty
of fluctuating private investment "by abolishing private investment as we knew it." You see, single-minded
pursuit of any nebulous objective will likely be short-sighted and even harmful unless that
objective is the preservation of the accustomed liberties of the owners of private property, in
which case it must be done at all cost!
Further insight into Hayek's objection to Keynesian full-employment policy can be found in
The Constitution of Liberty . The problem with full employment is those damn unions. On this
matter, he quoted Jacob Viner with approval:
The sixty-four dollar question with respect to the relations between unemployment and full
employment policy is what to do if a policy to guarantee full employment leads to chronic upward
pressure on money wages through the operation of collective bargaining .
and
it is a matter of serious concern whether under modern conditions, even in a socialist country
if it adheres to democratic political procedures, employment can always be maintained at a high
level without recourse to inflation, overt or disguised, or if maintained whether it will not
itself induce an inflationary wage spiral through the operation of collective bargaining
Sharing Viner's anxiety about those damn unions inducing an inflationary wage spiral "through
the operation of collective bargaining" was Professor W, H, Hutt, author of the Theory of
Collective Bargaining, who "[s]hortly after the General Theory appeared
argued that it was a specific for inflation."
Hutt, whose earlier book on collective bargaining "analysed [and heralded] the position of the
Classical economists on the relation between unions and wage determination," had his own
plan for full employment . It appeared in The South African Journal
of Economics in September, 1945 under the title "Full Employment and the Future of Industry."
I am posting a large excerpt from Hutt's eccentric full employment "plan"
here because it makes explicit principles that are tacit in the neo-liberal pursuit of
"non-inflationary growth":
Full employment and a prosperous industry might yet be achieved if what I propose
to call the three "basic principles of employment" determine our planning .
The first basic principle is as follows. Productive resources of all kinds, including
labour, can be fully employed when the prices of the services they render are sufficiently
low to enable the people's existing purchasing power to absorb the full flow of the
product.
To this must be added the second basic principle of employment. When the prices of
productive service have been thus adjusted to permit full employment, the flow of purchasing power,
in the form of wages and the return to property is maximised .
The assertion that unemployment is "voluntary" and can be cured by reducing wages is the classical
assumption that Keynes challenged in the theory of unemployment. Hutt's second principle, that full
employment, achieved by wage cuts, will maximize the total of wages, profit and rent thus would be
not be likely to command "more or less universal assent," as Hutt claimed. But even if it did, Hutt's
stress on maximizing a total , regardless of distribution of that total between wages
and profits, is peculiar. Why would workers be eager to work more hours for
less pay just to generate higher profits? Hutt's principles could only gain "more or
less universal assent" if they were sufficiently opaque that no one could figure out what he was
getting at, which Hutt's subsequent exposition makes highly unlikely.
Hutt's proposed full employment plan consisted of extending the hours of work, postponing retirement
and encouraging married women to stay in the work force. He advertised his idea as a reverse lump-of-labor
strategy. Instead of insisting - as contemporary economists do - that immigrants (older workers,
automation or imports) don't take jobs, Hutt boasted they create jobs, specifically because they
keep wages sufficiently low and thus maximize total returns to property and wages
combined. He may have been wrong but he was consistent. Nor did he conceal his antagonism toward
trade unions and collective bargaining behind hollow platitudes about
inclusive growth .
The U.S. has been following Hutt-like policies for decades now and the
results are in :
For the 117 million U.S. adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been
non-existent for a generation while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong.
Or perhaps Hutt was right and what has held back those at the bottom of the income distribution
is that wages have not been sufficiently low to insure full employment and thus
to maximize total returns to labor and capital. The incontestable thing about Hutt's theory is that
no matter how low wages go, it will always be possible to claim that they didn't go sufficiently
low enough to enable people's purchasing power to absorb the full flow of their services.
coberly , December 10, 2016 11:52 am
I can't claim to know all of what Hayek meant. but I did read one of his books and it was clear
he did not mean what the right has taken him to not only mean, but to have proved.
In any case it is dangerous (and a bit stupid) to base policy on what someone said or is alleged
to have said. Especially economists who claim to have "proved" some "law" of economics.
That said, i wonder if some of what is said here is the result of over-reading what someone
(else) as said: to be concerned with policies "to the exclusion of all else" is not the same as
rejecting the policies while keeping other things in mind. and to recognize the potential of labor
unions to force inflationary levels of wages is not the same as opposing labor unions.
neither the advocates in favor of or those opposed to the extreme understanding of these cautions
–including the authors of them if that is the case - are contributing much to the development
of sane and humane policy.
I had always thought Hayek made some good critical points about the illusions of socialists/utopians
and then chose to ignore the fact that his criticism also applied to his neo-liberal
utopia. But I followed up the passage quoted by Collins and it turns out that Hayek was discussing
a statement made by Karl Mannheim, which he quoted out of context and egregiously misrepresented
-- a classic right-wing propaganda slander technique. So here is Hayek talking about emptying out
the meaning from words and filling them with new content and he is doing just that to the words
of another author.
So maybe Hayek didn't overlook the fact that his critique also applied to his utopia. Maybe
he knew full well he was misrepresenting what he was selling, engaging in exactly the same propaganda
techniques that he attributed to others. By accusing others first of doing what he was doing,
it made it awkward for anyone to point out that he was doing it, too. A Rovian strategy - conceal
your weakness by attacking others on precisely that issue.
One of the problems with Hayek is that there was always this conflict between the "comic book
Hayek" and the more scholarly and careful Hayek. In fact, there really was a comic book version
of The Road to Serfdom put out in the US after WWII, which was full of this inflammatory sort
of thing that doing anything to ameliorate the harder edges of capitalism put one inexorably on
the road to serfdom.
In the actual RtS one finds Hayek himself supporting quite a few such amiliorations,
most notably social insurance, especially national health insurance well beyond what we even have
in the US now with ACA.
The problem for lovers of Hayek, and arguably Hayek himself, is that he simply never repudiated
this comic book version of his work, even as he and many of his followers got all worked up when
people, such as Samuelson, would criticize Hayek for this comic book version of the RtS, pointing
out his support for these ameliorations in the original non-comic book version.
However, Samuelson
in his last remarks on Hayek, which I published in JEBO some years ago, effectively said that
Hayek had only himself to blame for this confusion.
To me it comes down to whether government is structured to serve all or some obfuscated minority
of all. With that as the divider it is easy to decipher Hayek's work and others.
I have been thinking that maybe both "sides" in our mostly brainwashed America today could
agree with the meme of "DRAIN-THE-SWAMP" and hope to see it carried proudly on protest signs by
the non-zombies of both sides in the ongoing social upheaval.
coberly , December 10, 2016 6:41 pm
Sammich
I agree that "accuse the other side of doing what you are doing" is a familiar ploy of the
right.
I don't know what Hayek was really saying, or if he let the comic book version stand because
he was so flattered to have his child receive such adulation, or just because he was in his dotage
and didn't really understand how he was being misrepresented if he was.
but the fun thing to do with Hayek is to point out what he "really" said to those who have
only heard the comic book version
if anyone is still talking about him at all. seems there was a big rush of talk about Hyak
a few years ago and now it has faded.
"... is a board certified hospice and palliative care physician. In her work she helps people make decisions about their medical treatment, helping them elucidate their values, preferences, and goals given the constraints of their medical situation and their limited time to live. Mary began practicing an intuitive form of Stoicism as a child. She discovered Stoic philosophy in middle age. She finds Stoicism essential, not only for her personal life, but also to avoid having patients, their loved ones, and herself becoming overwhelmed by the difficulties of taking care of the sickest and most fragile patients in the medical system ..."
As happens with many Stoics, my Stoic practice developed spontaneously as a response to difficulties
in my life. I was orphaned when I was seven, causing the life I had known to evaporate. In order
to survive this loss, using my own intuition I developed some potent Stoic techniques for tolerating
difficult situations. Unfortunately, I did not develop any techniques for avoiding difficult situations.
Thus my personal brand of Stoicism carried me straight from suboptimal foster care right into
a bad marriage.
A couple of decades and several life changes later, my boyfriend introduced me to Stoic philosophy.
I was shocked to discover how much of my self-developed philosophy of living and coping techniques
those ancient Greeks had known about all along. Thus, well into middle age, I started the formal
practice of Stoic philosophy. Those ancient Greeks had a trick or two to teach me. My life got
even better with their help.
At this point, I rely on my Stoic techniques when things start to go wrong inside my head.
Earlier this week, a dying patient was reviewing his life with me. He told me about how much he
valued the teamwork he and his wife shared to raise their children. It is a beautiful story and
my eyes start to fill with tears. No problem so far. I am not expected to be without feelings,
but if my feelings take control of my thinking, I cannot focus enough to be a good doctor.
As I listen to my patient talk about how raising their children deepened his relationship with
his wife, I realize the one thing I wanted most out of life was to raise my kids well. I married
and had children with a man who always had his way and whose method of childrearing I disagreed
with. I could not figure out how to challenge his child rearing ideas or how to divorce him for
twenty five years. Now I am too old to have more children, and will never get to have the experience
of raising a child with a partner. I didn't get a father; I only got a mother for seven years.
Life couldn't even deliver me a decent husband. I don't ask for much. My eyes are dripping tears
now and I realize that I am not paying any attention to my patient.
I need to pull myself away from the attraction of self-pity and into the present. Even if I
had the skills to turn my feelings off, that would not be helpful; I need them in order to take
care of my patient. I remind myself of the Stoic maxim: "It seemed so to you at the time."
I have a sense that I am shoving my foot in a slamming door. If I can keep the door from closing,
I can maintain control of myself, and my equanimity will be only briefly disturbed. It feels as
though the force of emotion that wells up must be countered with something forceful. If what I
bring to bear on it is not forceful, it will fail. Once the tears start forming, my Buddhist practice
has nothing to offer me. Once I have started to lose my equanimity, my emotions flood me if I
attempt to use Buddhist techniques. I have found that only Stoic techniques overcome the waves
of emotion. Buddhist techniques feel more general and unfocussed.
What my Buddhist meditation practice does offer me is a decrease in my overall reactivity.
When I am meditating regularly, I am less apt to be bothered by the unavoidable emotional events
of life. This pattern has repeated itself a dozen or more times. I fall away from my meditation
practice. I become more easily riled. I recognize this and resume meditating. Things improve until
I fall away from my meditation practice again.
I asked people on the Facebook Stoicism Group about their experiences, and learned this is
typical. The only consensus was that Stoic mindfulness practices are useful for the immediately
present threat to equanimity, and Buddhist mindfulness practices help strengthen equanimity overall.
It is not surprising to me that Buddhist meditation works well for us on a daily basis because
it has been honed over thousands of years by hundreds of thousands of people. What is surprising
to me is that it does not always work well for me and my Facebook friends. It surprises me that
our Buddhist practice fails us in the pinch.
Why does Buddhism not include techniques like "Amor Fati" or negative visualization? Are these
incompatible with the Buddhist philosophy? I do not know enough about Buddhism to answer that.
It seems to me that if there were a significant fraction of people whose needs were not being
met by Buddhism, and that there were non-Buddhist techniques that met their needs, then Buddhism
would have figured out how to respond to them. Either these techniques would have been incorporated
into Buddhism or variant forms of Buddhism would have developed that were compatible with these
techniques. I think it is more likely that the Buddhist techniques worked well enough for most
people in the society in which Buddhism developed.
When I receive a disturbing impression and begin to formulate my response to it, Buddhism would
say that I need to distance myself from that nascent thought and to examine it scientifically
as I would someone else's emotion. So far, this is very similar to the Stoic teachings on disturbing
impressions as I understand them. Buddhism recommends that I next lean into the unpleasant emotion,
to really examine it, get to know it and to realize that it will pass soon. This technique results
in me wallowing in my emotion as I wait for it to pass. I become so attracted to it that I will
grasp it firmly and become unable to function. Perhaps if I practiced this technique for decades,
it would work, but the dying patient in front of me does not have decades while I grapple with
my inner demons.
Stoicism offers me techniques that I can use right in the moment. Instead of leaning in, I
counter the emotion with a maxim that I have prepared and have at the ready for whenever disturbing
emotions arise. The part of my mind that is not wrapped up in my personal tragedy can recite Stoic
maxims forcefully to counter the attraction of "I didn't get and I want." Stoicism gets between
my mind and the idea it is about to grip onto and stays my grasp before it happens. For me, for
the most disturbing impressions, this is what works.
There is an idea in neurology of over-learning. Things which one repeats thousands of times
during one's lifetime such as the ABC's or the response to "how are you today?" are over-learned.
When a person is demented and has lost the ability to think in any meaningful fashion, they can
often still recite the ABC's or other over-learned phrases. It seems to me that when I am caught
by my deep feelings of deprivation and grief that I am like a demented person and can only say
over-learned things. The little bit of my brain that is not sucked into the black hole of "I lack"
can barely squeak out "It seemed so to you at the time." If it can however, it breaks the spell
and the attractiveness of the disturbing impression is diminished.
Another common observation is that Western culture has more emphasis on independence and individuality.
It seems likely that this emphasis develops minds that are more likely to work with individually
oriented techniques. Stoicism emphasizing my personal inner citadel rather than Buddhism emphasizing
dissolution of myself feels more comfortable to me. When I am most in pain, standing steadfast
against an ocean crashing against the seawall of my personal virtue makes me feel less pain whereas
the paradoxical teachings of Buddhism simply frustrate me.
I find that Buddhist techniques on an ongoing basis combined with Stoic ones on an as needed
basis work best for me to maximize my equanimity. I do not have a good explanation for why. I
am more at peace, at rest and am flourishing more than ever before in my life.
This reminds me of another Stoic technique that I practice. It has a Buddhist analog: I am
grateful.
Mary Braun, MD is a board certified hospice and palliative care physician. In her work
she helps people make decisions about their medical treatment, helping them elucidate their values,
preferences, and goals given the constraints of their medical situation and their limited time
to live. Mary began practicing an intuitive form of Stoicism as a child. She discovered Stoic
philosophy in middle age. She finds Stoicism essential, not only for her personal life, but also
to avoid having patients, their loved ones, and herself becoming overwhelmed by the difficulties
of taking care of the sickest and most fragile patients in the medical system .
"... And even in Buddhism it is hard to find much in the way of political or social engagement, outside of a general attitude of compassion (and, again, acceptance) for the suffering of creatures. I won't go as far as agreeing with Marx that the point is not to understand the world, but to change it, but surely a positive philosophy has to explicitly engage with how to improve the human condition, not just at the individual level, but socially. ..."
"... Epicureans insisted on the value of friendship, for instance, which I do believe is a fundamental component of a flourishing existence. Their assault on fear-engendering superstition can also be counted as one of their most enduring legacies. ..."
"... And all three philosophies have in common the idea that it is wise to attempt to understand the world as it actually is, as opposed to the way it superficially appears to be ..."
However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if
you do not act on upon them? (Buddha)
It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
(Epicurus)
Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow
creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live. (Marcus Aurelius)
I have been pondering for a while that there are some striking similarities among the three
ancient philosophies of Buddhism
, Epicureanism and
Stoicism . Let me premise
that I don't know as much about the first as about the latter two, and even there I'm certainly
no expert, so take what follows with a commensurately sized grain of salt.
Buddhism is the more complicated of the three, largely - I think - because it has a much longer
history as a live philosophy. It has therefore had significantly more time to develop diverging
schools of thoughts and interpretations. It is also different from Epicureanism and Stoicism in
belonging to the Eastern rather than the Western philosophical tradition, which means that it
is more imbued with mysticism and much less grounded in the Greek style of logical argument (it
is not by chance that Buddhism, but not the other two, is often referred to as a "religion," though
even there the term only applies partially and only to some Buddhist traditions).
Interestingly, all three philosophies arose in similar times, both chronologically and in terms
of social setting. The founder of Epicureanism was, of course, Epicurus, a historical figure about
whom we know a good deal. He lived between 341 and 269 BCE in Greece. Stoicism was established,
also in ancient Greece, by Zeno of Citium (334-262 BCE), who was therefore a contemporary of Epicurus
(indeed, the two schools were rivals throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods). The birth
of Buddhism is much less clear, but it originated in the northeastern Indian subcontinent in the
5th century BCE (so about one and a half centuries before Epicureanism and Stoicism). Not as much
is known about the actual life of its founder, Siddhārtha Gautama, but there is no reason to believe
that he was not an actual historical figure and that the general course of his life took place
along the lines accepted by tradition.
Perhaps more interestingly, though, all three philosophies arose and thrived in times of social
and political turmoil, within their respective geographical areas. This is relevant because I
think it may go some way toward explaining some of the similarities I am interested in. Of course,
Buddhism still thrives today, with hundreds of millions of followers. Epicureanism and Stoicism,
on the contrary, largely exist in textbooks, the main reason being Christianity: as soon as the
Christians took over the Roman empire they put their newly found political and military might
in the service of the one true god and persecuted both Epicureans and Stoics. Both schools were
officially abolished in 529 CE by the emperor Justinian I, that prick.
There are several interesting aspects of all three philosophies that I will simply ignore here,
particularly their more scientific ones (such as, most prominently, Epicurean atomism, which was
inherited from pre-Socratic thinkers like Leucippus, Democritus, Heraclitus and Parmenides). I
will concentrate instead on the metaphysics and ethics of the three schools. I also need to add
that I am quite skeptical of the attempts that various people make of attributing almost miraculous
"scientific" insights to ancient philosophies. Yes, the Epicureans were talking about atoms, but
that concept had very little to do with modern physics. The same goes for the Buddhist idea that
the self is an illusion, allegedly anticipating modern neuroscience. Indeed, in the latter case,
I think that treating the self as an illusion is a profound mistake, based on a misunderstanding
of neurobiology (but not of Buddhism, which really does claim something along those lines!). But
that's another story for another post.
Let's begin, then, with the basics of Epicureanism. Of the three, it was by far the least mystical
set of doctrines. Epicurus was a pretty strict materialist, and even though he believed in the
existence of a god, said god had nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of the universe or human
affairs, and indeed he was made of atoms just like everything else.
Thanks to sustained Christian slurring, we moderns associate Epicureanism with hedonism, but
Epicurus' principle of pleasure had very little to do with sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. His basic
idea was that human suffering is caused by our misunderstanding of the true nature of the world
(a thought common also to Stoicism and Buddhism), and to our preoccupation with human matters
such as - ironically - sensual pleasures and political power. All of this, according to Epicurus,
interfered with the real goal of human existence, reaching a state that he called ataraxia
(which usually translates as tranquillity). To achieve ataraxia one has to eliminate
both bodily and mental pains, and particularly one has to conquer the fundamental fears of death
and punishment in the afterlife. Hence, Epicureanism's profoundly anti-religious, and eventually
anti-Christian, character. Indeed, Epicureans' only social involvement was in the fight against
religion and superstition, which they regarded as a principal cause of human unhappiness.
It seems to me that the Epicurean concept of ataraxia , as well as their teachings on
how to achieve it, are not that different in spirit (though they certainly are in detail) from
the Buddhist idea of nirvana , the highest happiness possible for a sentient being.
Indeed, nirvana derives from a Sanskrit word that means something along the lines of "cessation
of craving and ignorance," an idea that both Stoics and Epicureans would have been very comfortable
with (though nirvana has a decidedly more mystical meaning than either the Stoics or especially
the Epicureans would have been comfortable with).
Basic Buddhist teachings begin with the Four Noble Truths . (I noticed that Buddhists
have a penchant for numbering things: there are four noble truths, the noble path is eightfold,
there are four "immeasurables," three "marks of existence," "three jewels" to seek refuge in,
five precepts for basic Buddhism, and so on. You get the idea.) The four noble truths are: i)
that dukkha (suffering) originates from physical and mental illness, the anxiety engendered
by constant change, and a general dissatisfaction pervading all life forms; ii) that the origin
of dukkha can be known by human beings, and that its roots are craving and ignorance (see
Epicureanism above!); iii) that the cessation of dukkha is indeed possible; and iv) that
such cessation is achieved through the noble eightfold path.
Said noble eightfold path , in turn, is essentially a recipe to achieve the cessation
of dukkha and eventually nirvana , the eight components being meant to be pursued
in parallel, not sequentially: 1) Right View, viewing the world for what it is, not as it appears
to be (easier said than done, but still); 2) Right Intention, the pursuit of renunciation, freedom
and harmlessness; 3) Right Speech, speaking truthfully and without harming others; 4) Right Action,
acting without harming others; 5) Right Livelihood, living without causing harm; 6) Right Effort,
that is making an effort to improve oneself (yes, you will notice the recurring deployment of
the notion of self in Buddhism, despite the fact that it allegedly doesn't exist); 7) Right Mindfulness,
which means awareness of both how things are and of the reality within one self (!); and
8) Right Concentration, engaging in meditation or concentration of the right kind.
One of the most problematic Buddhist concepts, I think, is that of karma , which
refers to a cosmic force driving the cycle of suffering and rebirth of every being. The idea is
that one's actions during a lifetime determine one's rebirth at the next cycle. (I think that
there is a fundamental contradiction between the Buddhist rejection of the idea of an enduring
self and the very concept of beings that go through different lifetimes. Buddhists do have answers
to this objection, of course, but I find them extremely unconvincing.) The goal, so to speak,
is to be reborn on higher "planes of existence" (there are 31 of them, grouped in 6 "realms"),
until eventually one achieves enlightenment and escapes the cycle of rebirth altogether.
I say that karma is problematic for a variety of reasons. To begin with, it seems to
be plucked out of nowhere, with neither empirical or even logical support. It amounts to an automatic
cosmic scoring chart which will affect a new being who has, in fact, no memory of what his "predecessor"
actually did to gain positive or negative karma points. Ethically, it is hard to imagine
why one should be responsible for (or should gain from) the previous round in her or his "dependent
arising."
Be that as it may, the idea that there is a cosmic framework within which we act is reminiscent
of (though it is quite distinct from) the Stoic idea of logos , which is a sort
of universal reason that determines the unfolding of events. For the Stoics too, the goal is to
become clear about reality, and a major objective is to develop a degree of self-control that
allows one to overcome destructive emotions (which arise precisely from errors of judgment about
how the world works). Again, the parallels with both Epicureanism and Buddhism seem obvious.
Stoics aimed not at getting rid of emotions (despite the popular caricature of Stoics as Spock-like
figures), but rather to channel them in a more productive direction. This was achieved through
a combination of logic, concentration and reflection, and eventually evolved into various contemporary
forms of cognitive behavioral therapy. (In this sense, both Buddhism - with its various meditative
techniques - and Stoicism have entered the realm of modern practices, which can be pursued essentially
independently of the philosophies that gave origin to them.) The ultimate goal of the Stoic was
apatheia , or peace of mind, which I think is akin to both the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia
and the Buddhist goal of nirvana (again, with due consideration given to the significant
differences in the background conditions and specific articulation of the three philosophies).
And of course Stoics too had a ready-made recipe for their philosophy, in the form of a short
list of virtues to practice (nothing compared to the above mentioned panoply of Buddhist lists
though!). These were: courage, justice, temperance and wisdom.
I am sure one could continue with this conceptual cross-mapping for a while, and of course
scholars within each of the three traditions would object to or modify my suggestions. What I
am interested in here, however, is pursuing the further questions of what the common limitations
of the philosophies of Buddhism, Epicureanism and Stoicism are, as well as what positive contributions
they have made to humanity's thinking about (and dealing with!) the universe.
I am inclined to reject both Buddhism's and Stoicism's metaphysics, being significantly more
happy with the Epicurean view of the world. I don't think there is any reason to think that concepts
like logos or karma have any philosophical substance, nor do they do any work in
actually explaining why things are the way they are. The Epicurean embracing of a materialist
metaphysics, instead, is in synch with the development of natural philosophy and eventually of
modern science. True, there are no "atoms" in the sense in which Epicurus and his predecessors
where thinking of them, and the free will-enabling "swerve" seems a rather arbitrary conceit that
has been superseded by better philosophical treatment of the problem it was supposed to address.
But all in all I think Epicurean metaphysics handily beats the other two.
However, of concern is the limited social engagement of all three philosophies. While they
do differ in degree on this count too, Buddhism, Epicureanism and Stoicism all preach a level
of detachment that seems alien to being human and that may easily lead to social disengagement.
On this issue, I'm with David Hume (and with much modern neuroscience) when he argued that emotions
aren't something to get rid of or overcome (or drastically alter), but instead they are the very
reason we give a crap about anything to begin with.
All three philosophies certainly imply a good measure of compassion for our fellow creatures,
but the Epicureans in particular expressly rejected involvement in politics, and their only social
engagement was manifested in their relentless attack on religion and superstition as the primary
causes of fear. The Stoics were opposed to slavery and preached brotherly love, but their insistence
on understanding and accepting whatever the logos set out easily slides into a somewhat
passive stance devoid of social action. And even in Buddhism it is hard to find much in the
way of political or social engagement, outside of a general attitude of compassion (and, again,
acceptance) for the suffering of creatures. I won't go as far as agreeing with Marx that the point
is not to understand the world, but to change it, but surely a positive philosophy has to explicitly
engage with how to improve the human condition, not just at the individual level, but socially.
As I mentioned earlier, though, perhaps this common degree of passivity toward the social and
emphasis on the individual's understanding and acceptance of the world resulted from the fact
that all three philosophies were born at a time of social turmoil and uncertainty, when surely
an attitude of recoiling into one's internal world must have seemed like the only available option
in the face of events that were hard to control and that often resulted in painful consequences
for large swaths of society.
On the positive side, I am a firm believer that philosophy is a continuous source of valuable
insight into the human condition, so I think most philosophies offer something that is worth plucking
and adding to the store of our collective wisdom. In the cases of these three, and despite my
reservations about their dearth of social engagement, there is quite a bit to be recommended.
Epicureans insisted on the value of friendship, for instance, which I do believe is a fundamental
component of a flourishing existence. Their assault on fear-engendering superstition can also
be counted as one of their most enduring legacies. Both Buddhists and Stoics, for their part,
developed techniques to improve people's mental well being, and there is good empirical evidence
that those techniques do work (though my personal preference is for the more reflective Stoic
approach rather than the overly meditative Buddhist one). And all three philosophies have
in common the idea that it is wise to attempt to understand the world as it actually is, as opposed
to the way it superficially appears to be (though, again, I think the Buddhists were more
off the mark than the other two, particularly the Epicureans).
In the end, I don't consider myself an Epicurean or a Stoic, and I am certainly no Buddhist.
But this does not preclude me from appreciating what some of the greatest minds of human antiquity
had to say to their fellow travelers. Their thoughts still resonate vibrantly more than two millennia
after they were first conceived, and that is no small accomplishment by any human standard.
"... the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, also known as waiters and bartenders. In October, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by "food services and drinking places" rose by another 18,900, the US workforce lost another 4,000 manufacturing workers. ..."
"... National Restaurant Association's Restaurant performance activity index showed in October, overall industry sentiment is the worst since the financial crisis, due to declines in both same-store sales and customer traffic, suggesting that restaurant workers should now be in the line of fire for mass layoffs. ..."
"... Putting this divergence in a long context, since the official start of the last recession in December 2007, the US has gained 1.8 million waiters and bartenders, and lost 1.5 million manufacturing workers. Worse, while the latter series had been growing, if at a slower pace than historically, it has now clearly rolled over, and in 2016, some 60,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. ..."
As another month passes, the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are
referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs,
and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, also known as waiters and bartenders. In
October, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by "food services and drinking
places" rose by another 18,900, the US workforce lost another 4,000 manufacturing workers.
This is the fourth consecutive month of declining manufacturing workers, and the 7th decline in
the past 10 months.
The chart below puts this in context: since 2014, the US had added 571,000 waiters and bartenders,
and has lost 34,000 manufacturing workers.
While we would be the first to congratulate the new American waiter and bartender class, something
does not smell quite right. On one hand, there has been a spike in recent restaurant bankruptcies
or mass closures (Logan's, Fox and Hound, Bob Evans), which has failed to reflect in the government
report. On the other hand, as the National Restaurant Association's Restaurant performance activity
index showed in October, overall industry sentiment is the worst since the financial crisis, due
to declines in both same-store sales and customer traffic, suggesting that restaurant workers should
now be in the line of fire for mass layoffs.
However, what we find more suspect, is that according to the BLS' seasonally adjusted "data",
starting in March of 2010 and continuing through September of 2016, there has been just one month
in which restaurant workers lost jobs, and alternatively, jobs for waiters and bartenders have increased
in 80 out of the past 81 months, with just one month of job losses, something unprecedented in this
series history.
Putting this divergence in a long context, since the official start of the last recession
in December 2007, the US has gained 1.8 million waiters and bartenders, and lost 1.5 million manufacturing
workers. Worse, while the latter series had been growing, if at a slower pace than historically,
it has now clearly rolled over, and in 2016, some 60,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.
Like last month, we remain curious what this "data" series will look like after it is revised
by the BLS shortly after the NBER declares the official start of the next recession.
"... The economic point is that globalisation has boosted trade and overall wealth, but it has also created a dog eat dog world where western workers compete with, and lose jobs to, people far away who will do the work for much less. ..."
"... But neither Trump nor Farage have shown any evidence of how realistically they can recreate those jobs in the west. And realistically god knows how you keep the wealth free trade and globalisation brings but avoid losing the good jobs? At least the current mess has focused attention on the question and has said that patience has run out. ..."
"... Compared to the real economic problems, the identity politics is minor, but it is still an irritant that explains why this revolution is coming from the right not from the left. ..."
"... And what "age" has that been Roy? The "age" of: climate change, gangster bankers, tax heavens, illegal wars, nuclear proliferation, grotesque inequality, the prison industrial complex to cite just a few. That "age"? ..."
"... the right wing press detest one kind of liberalism, social liberalism, they hate that, but they love economic liberalism, which has done much harm to the working class. ..."
"... Most of the right wing press support austerity measures, slashing of taxes and, smaller and smaller governments. Yet apparently, its being socially liberal that is the problem ..."
A crucial point "WWC men aren't interested in working at McDonald's for $15 per hour instead
of $9.50. What they want is... steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class
life."
The economic point is that globalisation has boosted trade and overall wealth, but it has
also created a dog eat dog world where western workers compete with, and lose jobs to, people
far away who will do the work for much less.
But neither Trump nor Farage have shown any evidence of how realistically they can recreate
those jobs in the west. And realistically god knows how you keep the wealth free trade and globalisation
brings but avoid losing the good jobs? At least the current mess has focused attention on the
question and has said that patience has run out.
Compared to the real economic problems, the identity politics is minor, but it is still
an irritant that explains why this revolution is coming from the right not from the left.
If you're white and male it's bad enough losing your hope of economic security, but then to
be repeatedly told by the left that you're misogynist, racist, sexist, Islamophobic, transgenderphobic
etc etc is just the icing on the cake. If the author wants to see just how crazy identity politics
has become go to the Suzanne Moore piece from yesterday accusing American women of being misogynist
for refusing to vote for Hillary. That kind of maniac 'agree with me on everything or you're a
racist, sexist, homophobe' identity politics has to be ditched.
Reply
Funny, I've been a white male my whole life and not once have I been accused of being a misogynist,
racist, sexist, Islamophobic, or transgenderphobic. I didn't think being a white male was so difficult
for some people...
Reply
"Are we turning our backs on the age of enlightenment?".
And what "age" has that been Roy? The "age" of: climate change, gangster bankers, tax heavens,
illegal wars, nuclear proliferation, grotesque inequality, the prison industrial complex to cite
just a few. That "age"?
I agree hardly an age of enlightenment. My opinion... the so called Liberal Elite are responsible
for many of the issues in the list. The poor and the old in this country are not being helped
by the benefits system. Yet the rich get richer beyond the dreams of the ordinary man.
I would
pay more tax if I thought it might be spent more wisely...but can you trust politicians who are
happy to spend 50 billion on a railway line that 98% of the population will never use.
No solutions from me ...an old hippy from the 60s "Love and peace man " ...didn't work did
it :)
I have come under the impression that the right wing press detest one kind of liberalism,
social liberalism, they hate that, but they love economic liberalism, which has done much harm
to the working class.
Most of the right wing press support austerity measures, slashing of taxes and, smaller
and smaller governments. Yet apparently, its being socially liberal that is the problem.
"... I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. ..."
"... I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ..."
"... Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever. ..."
"... These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. ..."
"... Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 ..."
"... Chronicle for Higher Education: ..."
"... Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars. ..."
"... "Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income. ..."
"... Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains." ..."
"... There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it). ..."
"... It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign. ..."
"... The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing. ..."
"... The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. ..."
"... Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Eric places the blame for this loss squarely on economics, which, it seems to me, gets the analysis
exactly right. And the statistics back up his analysis, I believe.
It's disturbing and saddening to watch other left-wing websites ignore those statistics and
charge off the cliff into the abyss, screaming that this election was all about racism/misogyny/homophobia/[fill
in the blank with identity politics demonology of your choice]. First, the "it's all racism" analysis
conveniently lets the current Democratic leadership off the hook. They didn't do anything wrong,
it was those "deplorables" (half the country!) who are to blame. Second, the identity politics
blame-shifting completely overlooks and short-circuits any real action to fix the economy by Democratic
policymakers or Democratic politicians or the Democratic party leadership. That's particularly
convenient for the Democratic leadership because these top-four-percenter professionals "promise
anything and change nothing" while jetting between Davos and Martha's Vineyard, ignoring the peons
who don't make $100,000 or more a year because the peons all live in flyover country.
"Trump supporters were on average affluent, but they are always Republican and aren't numerous
enough to deliver the presidency (538 has changed their view in the wake of the election result).
Some point out that looking at support by income doesn't show much distinctive support for Trump
among the "poor", but that's beside the point too, as it submerges a regional phenomenon in a
national average, just as exit polls do. (..)
"When commentators like Michael Moore and Thomas Frank pointed out that there was possibility
for Trump in the Rust Belt they were mostly ignored or, even more improbably, accused of being
apologists for racism and misogyny. But that is what Trump did, and he won. Moreover, he won with
an amateurish campaign against a well-funded and politically sophisticated opponent simply because
he planted his flag where others wouldn't.
"Because of the obsession with exit polls, post-election analysis has not come to grips with
the regional nature of the Trump phenomenon. Exit polls divide the general electorate based on
individual attributes: race, gender, income, education, and so on, making regional distinctions
invisible. Moreover, America doesn't decide the presidential election that way. It decides it
based on the electoral college, which potentially makes the characteristics of individual states
decisive. We should be looking at maps, not exit polls for the explanation. Low black turnout
in California or high Latino turnout in Texas do not matter in the slightest in determining the
election, but exit polls don't help us see that. Exit polls deliver a bunch of non-explanatory
facts, in this election more than other recent ones." http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/11/11/23174/
"Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and
especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future.
"Trump, who in his campaign pledged to be a voice for `forgotten Americans,' beat Hillary Clinton
in counties with slower job growth and lower wages. And he far outperformed her in counties where
more jobs are threatened by automation or offshoring, a sign that he found support not just among
workers who are struggling now but among those concerned for their economic future."
Meanwhile, the neoliberal Democrats made claims about the economy that at best wildly oversold
the non-recovery from the 2009 global financial meltdown, and at worst flat-out misrepresented
the state of the U.S. economy. For example, president Obama in his June 1 2016 speech in Elkhart
Indiana, said:
"Now, one of the reasons we're told this has been an unusual election year is because people
are anxious and uncertain about the economy. And our politics are a natural place to channel
that frustration. So I wanted to come to the heartland, to the Midwest, back to close to my
hometown to talk about that anxiety, that economic anxiety, and what I think it means. (..)
America's economy is not just better than it was eight years ago - it is the strongest, most
durable economy in the world. (..) Unemployment in Elkhart has fallen to around 4 percent.
(Applause.) At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in 10 homeowners in the state of Indiana
were either behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure; today, it's one in 30. Back then,
only 75 percent of your kids graduated from high school; tomorrow, 90 percent of them will.
(Applause.) The auto industry just had its best year ever. (..) So that's progress.(..) We
decided to invest in job training so that folks who lost their jobs could retool. We decided
to invest in things like high-tech manufacturing and clean energy and infrastructure, so that
entrepreneurs wouldn't just bring back the jobs that we had lost, but create new and better
jobs By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the
beginning of my presidency. That's the truth. That's true. (Applause.) It's true. (Applause.)
Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs - that's
the longest stretch of consecutive private sector job growth in our history. We've seen the
first sustained manufacturing growth since the 1990s."
None of this is true. Not is a substantive sense, not in the sense of being accurate, not in
the sense of reflecting the facts on the ground for real working people who don't fly their private
jets to Davos.
The claim that "America's economy is the strongest and most durable economy in the world" is
just plain false. China has a much higher growth rate, at 6.9% nearly triple the U.S.'s - and
America's GDP growth is trending to historic long-term lows, and still falling. Take a look at
this chart of the Federal Reserve board's projections of U.S. GDP growth since 2009 compared with
the real GDP growth rate:
"[In the survey] [t]he Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer:
47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling
something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who
knew?
"Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.
" I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know
what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can
pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account
levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5-literally-while I wait for
a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs.
I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new
bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell
my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether
something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters
because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ."
" Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000
emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after
the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever.
" These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less
than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty
coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.
" Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a
year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 .
"`The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming,' said
Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings
issues."
The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations - unemployment
has dropped to 4 percent because so many people have stopped looking for work and moved into their
parents' basements that the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer counts them as unemployed. Meanwhile,
the fraction of working-age adults who are not in the workforce has skyrocketed to an all-time
high. Few homeowners are now being foreclosed in 2016 compared to 2009 because the people in 2009
who were in financial trouble all lost their homes. Only rich people and well-off professionals
were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. Since 2009, businesses did
indeed create 14 million new jobs - mostly low-wage junk jobs, part-time minimum-wage jobs that
don't pay a living wage.
"The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment
growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and
fast-food restaurants.
"In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."
And the jobs market isn't much better for highly-educated workers:
New research released Monday says nearly half of the nation's recent college graduates work
jobs that don't require a degree.
The report, from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, concludes that while
college-educated Americans are less likely to collect unemployment, many of the jobs they do have
aren't worth the price of their diplomas.
The data calls into question a national education platform that says higher education is better
in an economy that favors college graduates.
Don't believe it? Then try this article, from the Chronicle for Higher Education:
Approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to
2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled-occupations where many participants
have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our
nation's stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a
bachelor's degree or more.
As for manufacturing, U.S. manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs in 2016, and manufacturing employment
remains 2.2% below what it was when Obama took office.
Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012
went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of
all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income
of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars.
"Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per
family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their
real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning
that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income.
Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like
stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According
to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100
to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000
to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains."
Does any of this sound like "the strongest, most durable economy in the world"? Does any of
this square with the claims by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that "By almost every economic
measure, America is better off "? The U.S. economy is only better off in 2016 by disingenuous
comparison with the stygian depths of the 2009 economic collapse.
Hillary Clinton tied herself to Barack Obama's economic legacy, and the brutal reality for
working class people remains that the economy today has barely improved for most workers to what
it was in 2009, and is in many ways worse. Since 2009, automation + outsourcing/offshoring has
destroyed whole classes of jobs, from taxi drivers (wiped out by Uber and Lyft) to warehoues stock
clerks (getting wiped out by robots) to paralegals and associates at law firms (replaced by databases
and legal search algorithms) to high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of
H1B via workers from India and China).
Yet vox.com continues to run article after article proclaiming "the 2016 election was all about
racism." And we have a non-stop stream of this stuff from people like Anne Laurie over at balloon-juice.com:
"While the more-Leftist-than-thou "progressives" - including their latest high-profile figurehead
- are high-fiving each other in happy anticipation of potential public-outrage gigs over the next
four years, at least some people are beginning to push back on the BUT WHITE WORKING CLASS HAS
ALL THE SADS!!! meme so beloved of Very Serious Pundits."
That's the ticket, Democrats double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized
middle class how great the economy is. Because that worked so well for you this election.
= = = mclaren@9:52 am: The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being
dissimulations -[ ] Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes
through the 2009 financial collapse. = = =
Some food for thought in your post, but you don't help your argument with statements such as
this one. Rich people and well-off professionals make up at most 10% of the population. US homeownership
rate in 2005 was 68.8%, in 2015 is 63.7. That's a big drop and unquestionably represents a lot
of people losing their houses involuntarily. Still, even assuming no "well-off professionals"
lost their houses in the recession that still leaves the vast majority of the houses owned by
the middle class. Which is consistent with foreclosure and sales stats in middle class areas from
2008-2014. Remember that even with 20% unemployment 80% of the population still has a job.
Similarly, I agree that the recession and job situation was qualitatively worse than the quantitative
stats depicted. Once you start adding in hidden factors not captured by the official stats, though,
where do you stop? How do you know the underground economy isn't doing far better than it was
in the boom years of the oughts, thus reducing actual unemployment? Etc.
Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo),
how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically
depressed areas? I got hit bad by the recession myself. Know what helped from 2010 forward? Knowing
that I could change jobs, keep my college-age children on my spouse's heath plan, not get hit
with pre-existing condition fraud, and that if worse came to worse in a couple years I would have
the plan exchange to fall back on. Kansas has tried the Ryan/Walker approach, seen it fail, doubled
down, and seen that fail 4x as badly. Now we're going to make it up on unit sales by trying the
Ryan plan nationally? How do you expect that to "work out for you"?
WLGR 11.16.16 at 4:11 pm
mclaren @ 7: "high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers
from India and China)"
I'm on board with the general thrust of what you're saying, but this is way, way over
the line separating socialism from barbarism. The fact that
it's not even true is beside the point, as is the (quite frankly) fascist metaphor of "flood"
to describe human fucking beings traveling in search of economic security, at least as long as
you show some self-awareness and contrition about your language. Some awareness about the insidious
administrative structure of the H1-B program would also be nice - the way it works is, an individual's
visa status more or less completely depends on remaining in the good graces of their employer,
meaning that by design these employees have no conceivable leverage in any negotiation
over pay or working conditions, and a program of unconditional residency without USCIS as a de
facto strikebreaker would have much less downward pressure on wages - but anti-immigration rhetoric
remaining oblivious to actual immigration law is par for the course.
No, the real point of departure here from what deserves to be called "socialism" is in the
very act of blithely combining effects of automation (i.e. traditional capitalist competition
for productive efficiency at the expense of workers' economic security) and effects of offshoring/outsourcing/immigration
(i.e. racialized fragmentation of the global working class by accident of birth into those who
"deserve" greater economic security and those who don't) into one and the same depiction of developed-world
economic crisis. In so many words, you're walking right down neoliberal capitalism's ideological
garden path: the idea that it's not possible to be anticapitalist without being an economic nationalist,
and that every conceivable alternative to some form of Hillary Clinton is ultimately reducible
to some form of Donald Trump. On the contrary, those of us on the socialism side of "socialism
or barbarism" don't object to capitalism because it's exploiting American workers , we
object because it's exploiting workers , and insisting on this crucial point against all
chauvinist pressure ("workers of all lands , unite!") is what fundamentally separates our
anticapitalism from the pseudo-anticapitalism of fascists.
Maclaren: I'm with you. I well remember Obama and his "pivot to deficit reduction" and "green
shoots" while I was screaming at the TV 'No!! Not Now!"
And then he tried for a "grand bargain" with the Reps over chained CPI adjustment for SS, and
he became my active enemy. I was a Democrat. Where did my party go?
Just chiming in here: The implicit deal between the elites and the hoi polloi was that the economy
would be run with minimal competence. Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with
the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it.
I'm less inclined to attach responsibility to Obama, Clinton or the Democratic Party than some.
If Democrats had their way, the economy would have been managed considerably more competently.
Always remember that the rejection of the elites wasn't just a rejection of Democrats. The
Republican elite also took it in the neck.
I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different
circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition
is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism.
I find the discussions over identity politics so intensely frustrating. A lot of people
on the left have gone all-in on self-righteous anger
Identity politics (and to some extent probably the rhetorical style that goes with it) isn't
a 'left' thing, it's a liberal thing. It's a bête noire for many on the left-see eg. Nancy Fraser's
work.
The Anglo/online genus what you get when you subtract class, socialism and real-world organisation
from politics and add in a lot of bored students and professionals with internet connections in
the context of a political culture (America's) that already valorises individual aggression to
a unique degree.
As polticalfoorball @15 says. The Democrats just didn't have the political muscle to deliver on
those things. There really is a dynamic thats been playing out: Democrats don't get enough governing
capacity because they did poorly in the election, which means their projects to improve the economy
are neutered or allowed through only in a very weakened form. Then the next election cycle the
neuterers use that failure as a weapon to take even more governing capacity away. Its not a failure
of will, its a failure to get on top of the political feedback loop.
@15 politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm
"Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being
punished for it."
Could you specify some "elite" that has been punished?
'the economic theories and programs ascribed to John M. Keynes and his followers; specifically
: the advocacy of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment and spending'
– and if it is done wisely – like in most European countries before 2000 it is one of the least
'braindead' things.
But with the introduction of the Euro – some governmental programs – lead (especially in Spain)
to horrendous self-destructive housing and building bubbles – which lead to the conclusion that
such programs – which allow 'gambling with houses' are pretty much 'braindead'.
Or shorter: The quality of Keynesianism depends on NOT doing it 'braindead'.
Cranky Observer in #11 makes some excellent points. Crucially, he asks: "Finally, you need to
address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying
the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed
areas?"
There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't
think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters
seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and
no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't
afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll
never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think
they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do
need it).
It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that
it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job
but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't).
That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy
the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign.
As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes were snapped
up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented those homes
out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive. Much of the home-buying since
the 2009 crash has been investment purchases. Foreclosure home purchases for rent is now a huge
thriving business, and it's fueling a second housing bubble. Particularly because in many ways
it repeats the financially frothy aspects of the early 2000s housing bubble - banks and investment
firms are issuing junks bonds based on rosy estimates of ever-escalating rents and housing prices,
they use those junk financial instruments (and others like CDOs) to buy houses which then get
rented out at inflated prices, the rental income gets used to fund more tranches of investment
which fuels more buy-to-rent home buying. Rents have already skyrocketed far beyond incomes on
the East and West Coast, so this can't continue. But home prices and rents keep rising. There
is no city in the United States today where a worker making minimum wage can afford to rent a
one-bedroom apartment and have money left over to eat and pay for a car, health insurance, etc.
If home ownership were really so robust, this couldn't possibly be the case. The fact that rents
keep skyrocketing even as undocumented hispanics return to Mexico in record numbers while post-9/11
ICE restrictions have hammered legal immigration numbers way, way down suggests that home ownership
is not nearly as robust as the deceptive numbers indicate.
Political football in #15 remarks: "I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive
in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather
than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent
to overt racism."
Race was important, but not the root cause of the Trump victory. How do we know this? Tump
himself is telling us. Look at Trump's first announced actions - deport 3 million undocumented
immigrants who have committed crimes, ram through vast tax cuts for the rich, and end the inheritance
tax.
If Trump's motivation (and his base's motivation) was pure racism, Trump's first announced
action would be something like passing laws that made it illegal to marry undocumented workers.
His first act would be to roll back the legalization of black/white marriage and re-instate segregation.
Trump isn't promising any of that.
Instead Trump's (bad) policies are based around enriching billionaires and shutting down immigration.
Bear in mind that 43% of all new jobs created since 2009 went to immigrants and you start to realize
that Trump's base is reacting to economic pressure by scapegoating immigrants, not racism by itself.
If it were pure racism we'd have Trump and Ryan proposing a bunch of new Nuremberg laws. Make
it illegal to have sex with muslims, federally fund segregated black schools and pass laws to
force black kids to get bussed to them, create apartheid-style zones where only blacks can live,
that sort of thing. Trump's first announced actions involve enriching the fantastically wealthy
and enacting dumb self-destructive protectionism via punitive immigration control. That's protectionism
+ class war of the rich against everyone else, not racism. The protectionist immigration-control
+ deportation part of Trump's program is sweet sweet music to the working class people in the
Rust Belt. They think the 43% of jobs taken by immigrants will come back. They don't realize that
those are mostly jobs no one wants to do anyway, and that most of those jobs are already in the
process of getting automated out of existence.
The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent
to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly
unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization
for whom Democrats have done little or nothing.
Here's an argument that may resonate: the first two groups in Trump's coalition are unreachable.
Liberal Democrats can't sweet-talk racists out of being racist and we certainly have nothing to
offer the plutocrats. So the only part of Trump's coalition that is really reachable by liberal
Democrats is the third group. Shouldn't we be concentrating on that third group, then?
The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are
natural enemies. Since the plutocrats are perceived as running giant corporations that import
large numbers of non-white immigrants to lower wages, the racists are not big fans of that group
either.
Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the
Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows
to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic
party.
Why? Because the stormfront types consider elite U.S. institutions like CitiBank as equally
culpable with Democrats in supposedly destroying white people in the U.S. According to Bannon's
twisted skinhead logic, Democrats are allegedly race traitors for cultural reasons, but big U.S.
corporations and elite institutions are supposedly equally guilty of economic race treason by
importing vast numbers of non-white immigrants via H1B visas, by offshoring jobs from mostly caucasian-populated
red states to non-white countries like India, Africa, China, and by using elite U.S. universities
to trawl the world for the best (often non-white) students, etc. Bannon's "great day of the rope"
includes the plutocrats as well as people of color.
These natural fractures in the Trump coalition are real, and Democrats can exploit them to
weaken and destroy Republicans. But we have to get away from condemning all Republicans as racists
because if we go down that route, we won't realize how fractured and unstable the Trump coalition
really is.
The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is
a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so
it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed
thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending
on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the
stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.
Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
Ps. Should prob add that identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT
politics, etc. They're all needed now more than ever.
What we don't need more of imo is a particular liberal/middle-class form of those things with
particular assumptions (meritocratic and individualist), epistemology (strongly subjectivist)
and rhetorical style (which often aims humiliating opponents from a position of relative knowledge/status
rather than verbal engagement).
I don't know why I'm even having to say this, as it's so obvious. The "leftists" (for want of
a better word) and feminists who I know are also against neoliberalism. They are against the selloff
of public assets to enterprises for private profit. They want to see a solution to the rapidly
shrinking job market as technology replaces jobs (no, it's not enough for the Heroic Workers to
Seize the Means of Production – the means of production are different now and the solution is
going to have to be more complex than just "bring back manufacturing" or "introduce tariffs".)
They want to roll back the tax cuts for the rich which have whittled down our revenue base this
century. They want corporations and the top 10% to pay their fair share, and concomitantly they
want pensioners, the unemployed and people caring for children to have a proper living wage.
They support a universal "single payer" health care system, which we social democratic squishy
types managed to actually introduce in the 1970s, but now we have to fight against right wing
governments trying to roll it back They support a better system of public education. They support
a science-based approach to climate change where it is taken seriously for the threat it is and
given priority in Government policy. They support spending less on the Military and getting out
of international disputes which we (Western nations) only seem to exacerbate.
This is not an exhaustive list.
Yet just because the same people say that the dominant Western countries (and my own) still
suffer from institutionalised racism and sexism, which is not some kind of cake icing but actually
ruin lives and kill people, we are "all about identity politics" and cannot possibly have enough
brain cells to think about the issues I described in para 1.
The slow recovery was only one factor. Wages have been stagnant since Reagan. And honestly,
if a white Republican president had stabilized the economy, killed Osama Bin Laden and got rid
of pre-existing condition issue with healthcare, the GOP would be BRAGGING all over it. Let's
remember that we have ONE party that has been devoted to racist appeals, lying and putting party
over country for decades.
Obama entered office as the economy crashed over a cliff. Instead of reforming the banks and
punishing the bankers who engaged in fraudulent activities, he waded into healthcare reform. Banks
are bigger today than they were in 2008. And tell me again, which bankers were punished for the
fraud? Not a one All that Repo 105 maneuvering, stuffing the retirement funds with toxic assets
– etc. and so on – all of that was perfectly legal? And if legal, all of that was totally bonusable?
Yes! In America, such failure is gifted with huge bonuses, thanks to the American taxpayer.
Meanwhile, homeowners saw huge drops the value of their homes. Some are still underwater with
the mortgage. It's a shame that politicians and reporters in DC don't get out much.
Concurrently, right before the election, ACA premiums skyrocketed. If you are self-insured,
ACA is NOT affordable. It doesn't matter that prior to ACA, premiums increased astronomically.
Obama promised AFFORDABLE healthcare. In my state, we have essentially a monopoly on health insurance,
and the costs are absurd. But that's in part because the state Republicans refused to expand Medicaid.
Don't underestimate HRC's serious issues. HRC had one speech for the bankers and another for
everyone else. Why didn't she release the GS transcripts? When did the Democrats become the party
of Wall Street?
She also made the same idiotic mistake that Romney did – disparage a large swathe of American
voters (basket of deplorables is this year's 47%.)
And then we had a nation of voters intent on the outsider. Bernie Sanders had an improbable
run at it – the Wikileaks emails showed that the DNC did what they could to get rid of him as
a threat.
Well America has done and gone elected themselves an outsider. Lucky us.
"... Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation's physical and human infrastructure needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep and the provision of quality child care services"" ..."
""A lot of this has to do with the fact that Americans continue to be subjected to bad jobs
or unstable employment - and those who are employed often face stagnant or even declining wages.
The fragility of Americans' economic well-being is epitomized by the National Coalition for the
Homeless' estimate that 44 percent of homeless persons actually have jobs, albeit poorly paid
jobs.
The expansion of "flex work" arrangements, which make work hours uncertain, contribute significantly
to income volatility for workers in low-pay sectors of the economy. Around 50 percent of Americans
could not meet a $400 emergency expense by drawing upon their personal savings if they had to.
An alternative to these conditions is the adoption of a federal job guarantee, a policy that
would insure the option for anyone to work in a public sector program, similar to what the Works
Progress Administration established in the 1930s.
Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty
threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would
establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would
be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation's physical and human infrastructure
needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep
and the provision of quality child care services""
"... The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan ..."
"... As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards. ..."
"... in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work. ..."
According to current information, Trump broke all records in the support he received from white voters,
working class and lower middle class, particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural
and suburban, primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger throughout
the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in the unanticipated Brexit vote and the
collapse of centrist parties in continental Europe. The angry and disaffected are victims of the
neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by
Fed chair Alan Greenspan – St. Alan as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and
other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed in 2007-8, threatening to
bring the whole world economy down with it. As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes
in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working
people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating
wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards.
Working people who have been the subjects of these experiments in economic theory are, oddly,
not particularly happy about the outcome. They are not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that
in
2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than
they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while
spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction
of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions,
matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work.
The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high
and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage – which sets a floor for other wages
– tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then the minimum
wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20
per hour. Today it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.
With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force participation remains below the earlier
norm. And for a working man, there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with
union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with little security in some service
profession. Apart from wages, benefits, and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the
future, of a sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role.
The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschild's sensitive and illuminating portrayal of a Trump
stronghold in Louisiana, where she lived and worked for many years. She uses the image of a line
in which these people are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they work hard and keep
to all the conventional values. But their position in the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see
people leaping forward, but that does not cause much distress, because it is "the American way" for
(alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is what is happening behind them.
... ... ...
These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are deluded to believe that
Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals
demonstrates the opposite – posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance
desperately needed changes.
Exit polls reveal that the passionate support for Trump was inspired primarily by the belief that
he represented change, while Clinton was perceived as the candidate who would perpetuate their distress.
The "change" that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it is understandable that
the consequences are not clear to isolated people in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations
(like unions) that can educate and organize. That is a crucial difference between today's despair
and the generally hopeful attitudes of many working people under much greater duress during the great
depression of the 1930s.
"... In Huntsville Alabama, I was part of a group that visited prisoners in the county jail. I visited the women prisoners every Sat. There was a recession in Reagan's term, and Reagan didn't think the government should help the unemployed. Before the recession, there were usually only one or two women prisoners at a time. The most they had at one time was four. ..."
"... During the recession, the number of prisoners grew greatly. The number of women ballooned to at least a dozen. Because of the increase in the number of male prisoners, the women were all crowded into a single cell, with mattresses on the floor. Most of the women were in jail had children, and were in jail for passing bad checks. ..."
In Huntsville Alabama, I was part of a group that visited prisoners in the county jail. I visited
the women prisoners every Sat. There was a recession in Reagan's term, and Reagan didn't think the government
should help the unemployed. Before the recession, there were usually only one or two women prisoners
at a time. The most they had at one time was four.
During the recession, the number of prisoners grew greatly. The number of women ballooned to at least
a dozen. Because of the increase in the number of male prisoners, the women were all crowded into a
single cell, with mattresses on the floor. Most of the women were in jail had children, and were in
jail for passing bad checks.
When they were able to get jobs, they did not pass bad checks.
There was a national increase in crime at this time, and Reagan claimed that the high rate and long
duration of unemployment did not cause an increase in crime.
If you have ever been out of work so long that you were losing weight because you couldn't afford
enough food, and were in danger of having to live in your car, you would know how wrong Reagan was.
It would have to be much worse for parents. I guess if you are unemployed, you are expected to allow
yourself and your children to starve to death, so as not to inconvenience those more fortunate.
This is one of the reasons that if I believed in such things, I would consider Reagan to be a manifestation
of the anti-Christ.
"In late 2007, before the recession started, the prime-age
employment-to-population ratio in the U.S. was about the same
as in other Group of Seven developed nations (which also
include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.).
The U.S., however, experienced a much larger decline during
the recession, and remains much farther from undoing the
damage. As of June, the G-7 as a whole had recovered almost
completely, while the U.S. was only 60 percent back from its
lowest point:"
We continue to see a steady drumbeat of news stories and opinion pieces about the problem of men,
and especially less-educated men, in the modern economy. The pieces always start with the fact that
large numbers of prime-age men (ages 25–54) have dropped out of the labor force. The latest entry
is a New York Times column * by Susan Chira that highlighted recent research showing that
a large
percentage of men who are not in the labor force are in poor health and frequent users of pain medication.
... ... ...
Undoubtedly many are, although the extent to which these problems are the result of their unemployment
or a cause will often not be clear. Nonetheless, steps that can improve public health will be a good
thing, but the better place to look to solve the problem of unemployment is Washington.
Men Who Don't Work: When Did Economists Stop Being Wrong About the Economy?
By Cherrie Bucknor and Dean Baker
... ... ...
Since there is a drop in prime-age EPOPs for all groups, this would seem to suggest that
the main problem is a lack of demand and not some new difficulty that some relatively narrow
group of workers has in dealing with the labor market. Before going through these trends, it
is worth making an additional point; this decline in EPOPs was not expected before it happened.
For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2001 projected that EPOPs would continue
to rise from their 2000 peaks. It projected that the potential labor force would grow at an
average annual rate of 1.1 percent over the next decade, implying that it would be 11.6 percent
larger in 2010 than in 2000. This growth was driven in part by population growth, but also
by the expectation that the trend of rising EPOPs for women would continue.
In fact, the labor force in 2010 was just 7.9 percent larger than in 2000. This 3.7 percentage
point difference corresponds to a labor force that was 5 million smaller in 2010 than CBO had
projected for that year in 2001. (It is worth noting that the CBO projections were not an outlier.
CBO tries to ensure that its projections lie close to the middle of the pack for economic forecasters.)
If the argument that structural factors have led to a permanent lowering of prime-age EPOPs
is right, as opposed to just weakness in demand reducing employment, then the 2001 projections
for the growth of the potential labor force were clearly wrong. Of course official projections
have often proven wrong, but this should give us caution about our ability to accurately assess
the structural determinants of employment rates. After all, it's not obvious that our knowledge
of the economy is very much better in 2016 than it was in 2001.
The figure below shows the employment to population ratios for prime-age workers by gender
and education levels.
[Figure]
The ratios for 2000 are set at 100 to allow for a clear view of the drop off from this
peak. As noted, all groups see some drop from this peak, with the smallest drop for college-educated
women, followed by college-educated men. The drop for prime-age workers with some college is
considerably sharper, with the drop for women being somewhat larger than the drop for men.
The drop for workers with a high school degree or less is even greater, but here also the drop
is larger for women than for men.
The decline in EPOPs for prime-age men with a high school
degree or less is 7.8 percent, while the drop for women is 14.0 percent. Given the much sharper
drop in EPOPs for less-educated women, it is difficult to understand why the policy debate
has focused on men leaving the labor force.
The more fundamental issue is that it is difficult to explain a drop in EPOPS for all
workers, regardless of education levels, as being a problem of workers lacking skills or a
desire to work. This looks pretty clearly like a story of weak demand. In other words, the
problem is not them; it is us, where "us" is the people who make economic policy.
[1] This discussion focuses on EPOPs rather than labor force participation rates (LFPR)
because the latter has likely been affected by the tightening of rules for getting unemployment
insurance. It is widely recognized that many unemployed workers drop out of the labor force
when they are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. With many states having instituted
stricter rules on benefits over this period, we would have expected a decline in LFPR even
with no changes in the workforce or the economy.
JohnH -> anne...
, -1
Economist should also be looking
at labor participation rates in other industrial growth which are experiencing the same economic
stagnation as the US. In the UK and Japan EPOPs are near record highs, while US rates are near
40 year lows. Why such a disparity?
My hunch is that economists are trying to find ways
to explain away the low EPOP rates in the US, because the crux of the problem goes back to
investor friendly/worker hostile policies that they have advocated for years--trade policy
and trickle down monetary policy.
"... Why all the bullshit jobs? And why are the most necessary and useful jobs, almost inevitably the lowest prestige and lowest paid? Capitalism. It's a nasty, nasty, nasty tangle of perverse incentives and evil. ..."
Why all the bullshit jobs? And why are the most necessary and useful jobs, almost inevitably
the lowest prestige and lowest paid? Capitalism. It's a nasty, nasty, nasty tangle of perverse
incentives and evil.
The answer clearly isn't economic: it's moral and political. The ruling class has figured
out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think
of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the '60s). And, on the other
hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit
themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing,
is extraordinarily convenient for them. David Graeber from
http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/
Also, as several here have noted, one can work without a job if they have such resources as
land or a workshop and, dare I say it, an income.
"... I refuse to use self-checkouts at grocery stores, as well. I see that, and this new Sam's app, as doing nothing more than 'outsourcing' the job onto the customers themselves (but even better, as they have to pay no one), eliminating jobs, while increasing their profits by cutting the overhead for the company we're patronizing. ..."
"... IMO I think we, as the public, should refuse to use such apps, forcing companies such as these to keep employees rather than allowing them to eliminate jobs to increase their profits. The words 'customer service' are rare enough in businesses these days, already. ..."
As of 2014, nearly 30% of the US households no internet access. How do you think that maps onto WalMart
customers? Plue get outside the big cities, you see a big drop in smart phone use. Even in wealthy
Mountain Brook, Alabama (yes, believe it or not, it looks like the better parts of Westchester County),
you see a fraction of the device use in NYC. These analysts need to get out and see more of the heartland.
#1 I am happy that the news industry has found new sources of revenue, because that story read
like a Walmart advertisement. Don't they have to disclose if they are getting paid for it?
#2. They already have these prescan guns in supermarkets. I see a very small percentage of
people us them. I doubt that it saves you any time shopping because the register person can probably
scan the items faster than an amateur. If you wanted to save time at the store you would have
ordered online.
I certainly agree with you on #1. It did read like a Walmart ad.
The part that jumped out at me was: "If the item doesn't have a barcode, it could be easily
looked up."
Really? How is the barcode looked up? And by whom? The customer?
It didn't say how in that 'ad'. (poor reporting)
It all sounds like another way of eliminating employees and forcing the customer to do the
work. Obviously 'checking out' is one job that can't be outsourced, so now they've discovered
a way to still eliminate the employees by forcing the customer to do the work instead.
As Yves mentioned, many of us living rural don't have dumbphones because we don't have service.
I've never had a cell phone because there's never been coverage where I've lived out in the country,
but even if I did, I'd resent having to 'check myself out' to increase the profits of the company.
Oh, hell no!
I refuse to use self-checkouts at grocery stores, as well. I see that, and this new Sam's app,
as doing nothing more than 'outsourcing' the job onto the customers themselves (but even better,
as they have to pay no one), eliminating jobs, while increasing their profits by cutting the overhead
for the company we're patronizing.
SS recently required a cell phone to access your account online.
They quickly dialed that back when they realized that many of us don't have one. Duh? I agree with Yves that these analysts need to get out into the heartland more.
And I hope their vehicle breaks down while there, so reality smacks 'em hard.
To quote a comedian, "Here's your sign!"
Regarding #2, I have no experience with those. My nearest Walmart is hours away so what little
I do buy from them I order online and have it shipped to me.
IMO I think we, as the public, should refuse to use such apps, forcing companies such as these
to keep employees rather than allowing them to eliminate jobs to increase their profits.
The words 'customer service' are rare enough in businesses these days, already.
"... Female labor force participation in the U.S. is well below its pre-crisis level. Maybe video games are now marketed equally toward men and women. ..."
"... Cowen is an idiot. I think the man needs to get some serious first hand experience on how much "fun" unemployment is. ..."
Uneasy Money has a wonderful post on the "all models are false dodge". Nothing really to add
but I especially enjoyed this:
Romer's most effective rhetorical strategy is to point out that the RBC core of modern DSGE models
posit unobservable taste and technology shocks to account for fluctuations in the economic time
series, but that these taste and technology shocks are themselves simply inferred from the fluctuations
in the times-series data, so that the entire structure of modern macroeconometrics is little more
than an elaborate and sophisticated exercise in question-begging.
I used to ask the New Classical crowd what the great negative real shock was during the early 1980's.
The massive real appreciation of the dollar may have lowered net export demand but that was one of
those Keynesian things. One would think the rise in the relative price of domestically supplied goods
would have increased employment. Same with the alleged wonders of the Reagan tax cut. Oh but it was
paid for by reducing transfer payments – another one of those Keynesian things. If poor people got
less government assistance, then they should have gone all Jeb! and worked harder. And of course
we were enjoying the start of the computer and technology revolution. But here is where the list
gets hysterical – the line was that these new tools were being used to do less work in the office.
But before you fall in the floor laughing at this excuse consider a recent excuse ala
Tyler Cowen :
There are a few reasons, but the internet may be the biggest. It is easier to have fun while unemployed.
That's a social problem for some people.
Tyler was debating Noah Smith. Noah had just argued for more infrastructure investment on the Keynesian
notion that we were still below full employment. Tyler seems to think the low employment to population
ratio is still somehow consistent with full employment. Noah disagreed noting that real wage growth
is weak to which Tyler continues:
Maybe employers just aren't that keen to hire those males who prefer to live at home, watch porn
and not get married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of the worker than a market
failure?
Oh my – boys will be boys! Noah had some good counters including:
Female labor force participation in the U.S. is well below its pre-crisis level. Maybe video games
are now marketed equally toward men and women.
Thankfully Tyler did not respond by suggesting the ladies in the office were going crazy over hot
dudes on Instragram. Posted by
ProGrowthLiberal
at
4:50 AM
Sweet spreadable Jeebus on a matzoh, Cowen is an idiot. I think the man needs to get some serious
first hand experience on how much "fun" unemployment is.
The Washington Post article noted this presentation:
"Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men"
Presenter: Mark Bils, University of Rochester
Coauthors: Mark Aguiar, Kerwin Charles, and Erik Hurst
Discussant: John Kennan, University of Wisconsin
As it happens, Dean Baker was the only person who noted that "the drop in employment rates
among less-educated women over the last 15 years has been even sharper. Furthermore there has
been a decline in employment rates among all groups of prime age workers (25-54), even those
with college degrees."
This seems to put a pretty big whole in the idea from the get go, doesn't it?
Anon- Dean's point was pretty clear. We have seen a broad based drop in the employment to population
ratio which is better described by weak aggregate demand than some strange tale that the kids
stay home to watch video games. And the weakness in real wage growth is better explained by
demand rather than supply factors. The rest is details.
"... "In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great Depression. If we were back at 1965 levels today, nearly 10 million additional men would have paying jobs. The collapse of male work is due almost entirely to a flight out of the labor force-and that flight has on the whole been voluntary. The fact that only 1 in 7 prime-age men are not in the labor force points to a lack of jobs as the reason they are not working." ..."
"... "these unworking men are floated by other household members (wives, girlfriends, relatives) and by Uncle Sam. Government disability programs figure prominently in the calculus of support for unworking men-ever more prominently over time." ..."
"In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population
ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower
than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great
Depression. If we were back at 1965 levels today, nearly 10
million additional men would have paying jobs. The collapse
of male work is due almost entirely to a flight out of the
labor force-and that flight has on the whole been voluntary.
The fact that only 1 in 7 prime-age men are not in the labor
force points to a lack of jobs as the reason they are not
working."
Uh Nick – thanks for telling us what we already knew –
labor force participation is down. But do you realize how you
just contradicted yourself. Keynesians like myself would
agree that is due to a lack of jobs (aka low aggregate
demand). So is this a voluntary thing?
Let's read on:
"these unworking men are floated by other household
members (wives, girlfriends, relatives) and by Uncle Sam.
Government disability programs figure prominently in the
calculus of support for unworking men-ever more prominently
over time."
Since government provided benefits have not been scaled up
by our policy makers – he must think the hard working ladies
are cuddling young men for their good lucks or something. Uh
Nick – come to NYC and you will see that the ladies here
think this is so stupid. His next excuse is all those dudes
in prison. Seriously? Does this AEI clown not realize crime
is much lower than it was a generation ago? This piece was
dumb even by AEI "standards". But at least he did not dwell
on the Tyler Cowen porn thing.And at the risk of repeating
myself (and Noah Smith) if their thesis that young men had
suddenly decided to loaf, then the inward shift of the labor
supply curve would mean higher real wages than we are seeing.
Fortunately I will have very little spare time for idle or
addle minded leisure now until well after the election and
even well after the subsequent coronation save those days so
rainy that outdoor activity is entirely impractical.
"At the same time, outside the liberal tent, the feeling
of being suffocated by the left's cultural dominance is
turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion -
which may be one reason the Obama years, so good for
liberalism in the culture, have seen sharp G.O.P. gains at
every level of the country's government. This spirit of
political-cultural rebellion is obviously crucial to Trump's
act."
Vote for a racist like Trump because liberals are
suffocating. Did I say I really do not like Ross Douhart?
Again we agree. (Signs of the apocalypse? I guess Trump is
going to win.)
Douchehat is the worst hypocrite. He wants
readers to believe he's an expert in morality and morale
rectitude and that's what conservative should be known for
when in reality Republicans chose Trump as their candidate,
one grand example of immorality and dishonesty.
And still Douthat turns on the liberals as behaving badly.
Suffocating? Howabout the insanity of the Republican
convention? That was suffocating.
He even quotes Internet Troll Steve Sailor!!!
*rubs eyes*
"(The alt-right-ish columnist Steve Sailer made the punk
rock analogy as well.)"
It's like Douthat writing about JohnH or BINY. Every one
of Sailor's Internet comments would be racist ones about
immigration. He's mentally unhinged.
"But it remains an advantage for the G.O.P., and a
liability for the Democratic Party, that the new cultural
orthodoxy is sufficiently stifling to leave many Americans
looking to the voting booth as a way to register dissent."
Clueless Douthat. The culture is getting better in certain
ways because the TV executives just want to sell advertising
and these performers are popular. It's capitalism at work.
Kudos to John Oliver for winning an Emmy.
"Among millennials, especially, there's a growing
constituency for whom right-wing ideas are so alien or
triggering, left-wing orthodoxy so pervasive and
unquestioned, that supporting a candidate like Hillary
Clinton looks like a needless form of compromise."
Note the disdain for millennials. "Triggering."
Conservative like Douthat and Bobo Brooks "trigger" the
hate and anger centers of my brain.
The fact is that Samantha Bee is right and NBC facilitated
the rise of Trump with the Apprentice and treating him well
on other shows like Jimmy Fallon and SNL.
The minor reason is they have a nice paper on the Dutch
Disease – something JohnH thinks he understands but he needs
to read up on this topic. But the main reason has to do with
a stupid comment from Paine on my Econospeak post, which goes
to show how very little Paine actually learned in graduate
school.
I was try to paint a picture of some Real Business Cycle
claim that Bruno and Sachs emphasized when I was in graduate
school. I never truly bought their story as I was (and still
am) a die hard Keynesian. But here is how it went as applied
to the early 1980's (the period I was talking about). If a
nation enjoys a massive real appreciation and if aggregate
demand does not matter (the New Classical view which we
Keynesians do not buy) then the real wages of its domestic
workers rise. These workers supply more labor driving down
wages relative to domestic prices. So domestic firms hire
more workers.
That is their story. I do not buy it as I was clearly
mocking it. Alas Paine never learned this. And so he mocks
someone who did. Just another day at the EV comment section.
Aals.
Debating Government's Role in Boosting Growth: Cowen and
Smith
By Tyler Cowen & Noah Smith
Smith: If that's true -- if we're seeing a greater
preference for leisure -- why are we not seeing wages go up
as a result? Is that market also broken?
Cowen: Maybe employers just aren't that keen to hire those
males who prefer to live at home, watch porn and not get
married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of
the worker than a market failure?
Reply
Sunday,
DrDick -> djb...
,
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 07:49 AM
Why seek truth from facts
When from scratch
story telling pays so much better
DrDick -> Paine ...
, -1
;-)
cm -> djb...
, -1
And I thought it was "video
games".
There will always be
water carriers "explaining" lack
of success by lack of virtue.
Likewise, before large scale
automation and "globalization", we
didn't need PISA studies to
highlight the failures of the
education systems and alleged lack
of student/graduate preparedness.
Sandwichman had multiple
expositions on the early lump of
labor fallacy debates where the
plight of laborers was ascribed to
their carrying their money to the
ale house.
pgl -> djb...
, -1
He lacks basic logic. If his story was valid, real wages
would have risen. Inward shift of the supply curve v.
movement along a supply curve? Hello? What do they teach the
kids at GMU?
Peter K. -> pgl...
, -1
This month's Time magazine - with Kaepernick on the cover -
has a column by an AEI hack, Eberstadt, who pushes the exact
same line Cowen is pushing. The lazy/entertained male meme.
His reasoning is that the decline in the labor force
participation rate is consistent through boom times and
recessions. (I'm not going to bother linking.)
"Consider: America's prime-male workforce participation
has been declining at a virtually linear rate for half a
century - a trajectory unaffected by good times or
recessions."
Again I suspect the conservatives are just lying. The Age
of Niallism.
Excellent Econospeak post by PGL. He can be quite good
when not trolling or mud-wrestling with trolls.
If Men Don't Work Because of Video Games, What Explains
Women Not Working?
by Dean Baker
Published: 24 September 2016
As is widely known the Washington Post never misses an
opportunity to blame the victims of policy for bad outcomes,
rather than rich and powerful folks who design policy. We are
treated to yet another example of this charade with the Post
running a major article that claims that video games are a
major reason that fewer young men are working today than 15
years ago.
The basic story is that many young men, particularly those
with less education, have dropped out of the labor force in
the last 15 years. According to survey data, they appear to
be spending much of their time playing video games. They also
report to be relatively happy. See, all you people who
thought it was a bad economy are mistaken, the problem is the
video games are just too much fun.
Okay, that's a great Trumpian level of analysis, but let's
get back to the real world. Less-educated young men are not
the only group with declines in employment rates. In fact,
the drop in employment rates among less-educated women over
the last 15 years has been even sharper. Furthermore there
has been a decline in employment rates among all groups of
prime age workers (25-54), even those with college degrees.
This general drop in employment rates might suggest that
the real problem is a lack of demand. In other words, young
men are not working for the same reason young women are not
working, the Washington Post and other advocates of austerity
have been successful in reducing demand in the economy by
reducing the government budget deficit. So the problem has
little to do with video games, the problem is the policy, but
hey, if the Post can use video games to distract attention
from what its favored policies are doing to people -- why
not?
What, is there a presumption that young women don't play
video games? (Or indulge in other online/"social media"
entertainment formats?)
Of course lack of employment is not
the consequence but the cause of filling one's day with any
available entertainment - and due to cheap offshore
manufacturing the hardware is overall a minor expenditure, as
well as due to the near zero marginal cost of software
replication, the games are quite affordable. For online games
there are data center expenses but they are distributed over
many players which fits the budget of involuntary or
semi-voluntary "Hotel Mama" residents.
Of course puritans cannot have it that the
un(der)employeds are not suffering every inconvenience there
is, particularly the soul crushing boredom of an absence of
any engaging activity. Hence the mindset that the welfare
state must provide exactly the measure of life support that
keeps the beneficiaries from death but in this particular
state of suffering. Being able to play games or having sexual
relations (with others or oneself) defeats the whole purpose.
You mean reducing Spending in the economy, and yes via
political controls that stop the govt from spending at levels
that might fill the gaps.
But the point is, to me, that
private spending is where it is and will not increase to fill
the gaps. Only the public acting as society's agent vua its
govt can increase spending to fill the gaps - uh, jusy as
Keynes and many ithers have said for quite some time.
I'm pretty sure you agree, but the point is about
spending, not about the fiscal math (a deficit is just 2nd
grade math, not a policy). The other party does not want to
fill gaps and does not want the public to understand its role
in governance - political control for infirm reasons, and
that is not a word containing a typo.
I will have to take a peek at this Eberstadt piece. Maybe he
will explain to us how a supposed inward shift of the labor
supply curve is consistent with weak real wage growth. Oh
wait - he writes for the AEI so maybe not.
Just posted a link to this really awful piece from this AEI
goofball. Thanks for the tip. Along with the link, I rip its
sheer stupidity. Tyler Cowen was really bad but this AEI guy
is incredibly incoherent.
I see standard aka Econ 101 theory - which is what the New
Classical crowd pushes - is lost on you. Do try to follow the
discussion before your usual babbling. Jesus H. Christ - even
JohnH is trying to grasp the economics of the Dutch disease.
OK - he is doing his usual terrible job but you do not even
try.
Real business-cycle theory (RBC theory) are a class of New
classical macroeconomics models in which business-cycle
fluctuations to a large extent can be accounted for by real
(in contrast to nominal) shocks. Unlike other leading
theories of the business cycle, RBC theory sees business
cycle fluctuations as the efficient response to exogenous
changes in the real economic environment. That is, the level
of national output necessarily maximizes expected utility,
and governments should therefore concentrate on long-run
structural policy changes and not intervene through
discretionary fiscal or monetary policy designed to actively
smooth out economic short-term fluctuations.
According to RBC theory, business cycles are therefore
"real" in that they do not represent a failure of markets to
clear but rather reflect the most efficient possible
operation of the economy, given the structure of the economy.
DrDick -> pgl...
, -1
Conservative economics, like RBC, cannot survive exposure to
reality. Your post in the list today quite nicely shreds that
kind of nonsense.
Spirited defense of the establishment from one of financial oligarchy members.
" The economy overall is doing just fine." Does this include QE? If the Fed is pouring
billions of new money into the economy, how accurate is it to say that the economy
is doing just fine?
Notable quotes:
"... "That was a number that was devised, statistically devised, to make politicians - and in particular, presidents - look good. And I wouldn't be getting the kind of massive crowds that I'm getting if the number was a real number." ..."
"... In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, organized labor was fairly convinced that the government was purposely underestimating inflation and the cost of living to keep Social Security payments low and wages from rising. George Meany, the powerful head of the American Federation of Labor at the time, claimed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiled both employment and inflation numbers, had "become identified with an effort to freeze wages and is not longer a free agency of statistical research." ..."
"... Employment figures are sometimes seen as equally suspect. Jack Welch, the once-legendary former CEO of GE, blithely accused the Obama administration of manipulating the final employment report before the 2012 election to make the economic recovery look better than it was. "Unbelievable jobs numbers … these Chicago guys will do anything … can't debate so change numbers," he tweeted ..."
"... His arguments were later fleshed out by New York Post columnist John Crudele , who went on to charge the Census Bureau (which works with BLS to create the samples for the unemployment rate) with faking and fabricating the numbers to help Obama win reelection. ..."
"... The chairman of the Gallup organization, Jim Clifton, sees so many flaws with the way unemployment is measured that he has called the official rate a "Big Lie." In the Democratic presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders has also weighed in, saying the real unemployment rate is at best above 10 percent. ..."
"... What a useless article. The author explains precisely nothing about what the official statistics do and do not measure, what they miss and what they capture. ..."
"... I had the same impression as well. Notice he does not mention that the Gallop number is over 10% and is based on their polling data. ..."
"... But never mentioned that Reagan changed how Unemployment was figured in the early 80's. He included all people in the military service, as employed. Before that, they was counted neither way. He also intentionally left out that when Obama, had the unemployed numbers dropped one month before the election, from 8.1% to 7.8% --because it was believed that no one could be reelected if it was above 8%. ..."
"... U6 is 9.8% for March 2016. We still have 94 million unemployed and you want to say its 5 % what journalistic malpractice. ..."
"... Trump has emphasized that he is looking at the percent of the population that is participating in the workforce - and that this participation rate is currently at historical lows -- and Trump has been clear that his approach to paying down the national debt is based on getting the participation rates back to historical levels ..."
"... "The government can't lie about a hundred billion dollars of Social Security money stolen for the Clinton 'balanced budget', that would be a crime against the citizens, they would revolt. John, come one now. " ..."
"... I didn't say it first, Senator Ernest Hollings did, on the Senate floor. ..."
"... And here is how they did it: http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16 ..."
"... There is plenty of evidence the figures are cooked, folks, enough to fill a book: Atlas Shouts. Don't believe trash like this article claims. GDP, unemployment and inflation are all manipulated numbers, as Campbell's Law predicts. ..."
"... I can't believe the Washington Post prints propaganda like this. ..."
"... I do remember when the officially-announced unemployment rate stopped including those who were no longer looking for work. That *was* a significant shift, and there's no doubt it made politicians (Reagan, I think it was) look better; of course, no President since then has reversed it, as it would instantly make themselves look worse. ..."
"... Working one hour a week, at minimum wage, is 'employed', according to the government. No wonder unemployment is at 5%. ..."
"... Add in people who are working, but want and need full time jobs, add in people who have dropped out of the labor market and/or retired earlier than they wanted to, and unemployment is at least 10%. Ten seconds on Google will show you that. ..."
"... The writer should be sacked for taking a very serious issue and turning it into a piece of non-informative fluff. Bad mouthing Trump and Sanders is the same as endorsing Hilly. ..."
Yes, Donald Trump is wrong about unemployment. But he's not the only one. -
The Washington Post
Listen to President Obama, and you'll hear that job growth is stronger than
at any point in the past 20 years, and - as
he said in his final State of the Union address - "anyone claiming that
America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction."
Listen to Donald Trump and you'll hear something completely different. The
billionaire Republican candidate for president told The Washington Post last
week that
the economy is one big Federal Reserve bubble waiting to burst, and that
as for job growth, "we're not at 5 percent unemployment. We're at a number that's
probably into the 20s if you look at the real number." Not only that, Trump
said, but the numbers are juiced: "That was a number that was devised, statistically
devised, to make politicians - and in particular, presidents - look good. And
I wouldn't be getting the kind of massive crowds that I'm getting if the number
was a real number."
It's easy enough to dismiss - as a phalanx of economists and analysts
did - Trump's claims as yet another one of his all-too-frequent campaign
lines that have little to do with reality. But with this one, at least, Trump
is tapping into a deep and mostly overlooked well of popular suspicion of government
numbers and a deeply held belief that what "we the people" are told about the
economy by the government is
lies, damn
lies and statistics designed to benefit the elite at the expense of the
working class. The stubborn persistence of these beliefs should be a reminder
that just because the United States is doing well in general, that doesn't mean
everyone in the country is. It's also a warning to experts and policymakers
that in the real world,
there is no "the economy," there are many, and generalizations have a way
of glossing over some very rough patches.
Since the mid-20th century, when the U.S. government began keeping
and compiling our modern suite of economic numbers, there has been constant
skepticism of the reports, coming from different corners depending on economic
trends and the broader political climate. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance,
organized labor was fairly convinced that the government was purposely underestimating
inflation and the cost of living to keep Social Security payments low and wages
from rising. George Meany, the powerful head of the American Federation of Labor
at the time, claimed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiled both
employment and inflation numbers, had "become identified with an effort to freeze
wages and is not longer a free agency of statistical research."
Over the decades, those views hardened. Throughout the 1970s, as workers
struggled with unemployment and stagflation, the government continually tweaked
its formulas for measuring prices. By and large, these changes and new formulas
were designed to make the figures more accurate in a fast-changing world. But
for those who were already convinced the government was trying to paint a deliberately
false picture, the tweaks and innovations were interpreted as a devious way
to avoid spending money to help the ailing middle class, not trying to measure
what was actually happening to design policies to help address it. The commissioner
of BLS at the time, Janet Norwood, dismissed those concerns
in testimony to Congress in the late 1970s, saying that when people don't
get the number they want, "they feel there must be something wrong with the
indicator itself."
Employment figures are sometimes seen as equally suspect. Jack Welch,
the once-legendary former CEO of GE,
blithely accused the Obama administration of manipulating the final employment
report before the 2012 election to make the economic recovery look better than
it was. "Unbelievable jobs numbers … these Chicago guys will do anything … can't
debate so change numbers," he tweeted after that last October report showed
better-than-expected job growth and lower-than-anticipated unemployment rate.
His arguments were later fleshed out by New York Post columnist
John Crudele, who went on to charge the Census Bureau (which works with
BLS to create the samples for the unemployment rate) with faking and fabricating
the numbers to help Obama win reelection.
These views are not fringe. Type the search terms "inflation
is false" into Google, and you will get reams of articles and analysis from
mainstream outlets and voices, including investment guru Bill Gross (who referred
to inflation numbers as a "haute
con job"). Similar results pop up with the terms "real
unemployment rate," and given how many ways there are to count employment,
there are legitimate issues with the headline number.
The cohort that responds to Trump reads those numbers in a starkly different
light from the cohort laughing at him for it. Whenever the unemployment rate
comes out showing improvement and hiring, those who are experiencing dwindling
wages and shrinking opportunities might see a meticulously constructed web of
lies meant to paint a positive picture so that the plight of tens of millions
who have dropped out of the workforce can be ignored. The chairman of the
Gallup organization, Jim Clifton, sees so many flaws with the way unemployment
is measured that he has called the
official rate a "Big Lie." In the Democratic presidential campaign,
Bernie Sanders has also weighed in, saying the real unemployment rate is
at best above 10 percent.
Beneath the anger and the distrust - which extend to a booming stock market
that helps the wealthy and banks flush with profit even after the financial
crisis - there lies a very real problem with how economists, the media and policymakers
discuss economics. No, the bureaucrats in the Labor and Commerce departments
who compile these numbers aren't a cabal engaged in a cover-up. And no, the
Fed is not an Illuminati conspiracy. But the idea that a few simple big numbers
that are at best averages to describe a large system we call "the economy" can
adequately capture the stories of 320 million people is a fiction, one that
we tell ourselves regularly, and which millions of people know to be false to
their own experience.
It may be true that there is a national unemployment rate measured at
5 percent.
But it is also true that for white men without a college degree, or white men
who had worked factory jobs until the mid-2000s with no more than a high school
education, the unemployment reality is much worse (though it's even worse for
black
and Hispanic men, who don't seem to be responding by flocking to Trump in
large numbers). Even when those with these skill sets can get a job, the pay
is woefully below a living wage. Jobs that don't pay well still count, in the
stats, as jobs. Telling people who are barely getting by that the economy is
just fine must appear much more than insensitive. It is insulting, and it feels
like a denial of what they are experiencing.
The chords Trump strikes when he makes these claims, therefore, should be
taken more seriously than the claims themselves. We need to be much more diligent
in understanding what our national numbers do and do not tell us, and how much
they obscure. In trying to hang our sense of what's what on a few big numbers,
we risk glossing over the tens of millions whose lives don't fit those numbers
and don't fit the story. "The economy" may be doing just fine, but that doesn't
mean that everyone is. Inflation might be low, but millions can be struggling
to meet basic costs just the same.
So yes, Trump is wrong, and he's the culmination of decades of paranoia and
distrust of government reports. The economy overall is doing just fine.
But people are still struggling. We don't have to share the paranoia or buy
into the conspiratorial narrative to acknowledge that. A great nation, the one
Trump promises to restore, can embrace more than one story, and can afford to
speak to those left out of our rosy national numbers along with those whose
experience reflect them.
the3sattlers, 4/8/2016 1:05 PM EDT
" The economy overall is doing just fine." Does this include QE? If the
Fed is pouring billions of new money into the economy, how accurate is it
to say that the economy is doing just fine?
james_harrigan, 4/8/2016 10:14 AM EDT
What a useless article. The author explains precisely nothing about
what the official statistics do and do not measure, what they miss and what
they capture.
Derbigdog, 4/8/2016 11:40 AM EDT
I had the same impression as well. Notice he does not mention that
the Gallop number is over 10% and is based on their polling data.
captdon1, 4/8/2016 5:51 AM EDT
Not reported by WP
The first two years of Obama's presidency Democrats controlled the house
and Senate. The second two years, Republicans controlled the Senate. The
last two years of Obama's term, the Republicans controlled house and Senate.
During this six years the national debt increase $10 TRILLION and the Government
collected $9 TRILLION in taxes and borrowed $10 TRILLION. ($19 Trillion
In Six Years!!!) (Where did our lovely politicians spend this enormous amount
of money??? (Republicans and Democrats!)
reussere, 4/8/2016 1:43 AM EDT
Reading the comments below it strikes me again and again how far out
of whack most people are with reality. It's absolutely true that using a
single number for the employment rate reflects the overall average of the
economy certainly doesn't measure how every person is doing, anymore than
an average global temperature doesn't measure any local temperatures.
One thing not emphasized in the article is that there is a number of
different statistics. The 5% figure refers to the U-3 statistic. Nearly
all of the rest of the employment statistics are higher, some considerably
so because they include different groups of people. But when you compare
U-3 from different years, you are comparing apples and apples. The rest
of the numbers very closely track with U-3. That is when U-3 goes up and
down, U-6 go up and down pretty much in lockstep.
It is unfortunate that subpopulations of Americans are doing far worse
(and some doing far better) than average. But that is the nature of averages
after all. It is simply impossible for a single number (or even a group
of a dozen different employment measurements) to accurately reflect a complex
reality.
Smoothcountryside, 4/8/2016 12:04 PM EDT
The alternative measures of labor underutilization are defined as U-1
through U-6 with U-6 being the broadest measure and probably the closes
to the "true" level of unemployment. Otherwise, all the rest of your commentary
is correct.
southernbaked, 4/7/2016 11:02 PM EDT
Because this highly educated writer is totally bias, he left out some
key parts, I personally lived though. He referred back to the late 70's
twice. But never mentioned that Reagan changed how Unemployment was
figured in the early 80's. He included all people in the military service,
as employed. Before that, they was counted neither way. He also intentionally
left out that when Obama, had the unemployed numbers dropped one month before
the election, from 8.1% to 7.8% --because it was believed that no one could
be reelected if it was above 8%.
Then after he was sworn in--- in January, they had to readjust the numbers
back up. They blamed it on one employees mistakes-- PS. no one was fired
or disciplined for fudging. Bottom line is, for every 1.8 manufacturing
job, there are 2 government jobs, that is disaster. Because this writer
is to young to have lived in America when it was great. When for every 1
government job, you had 3 manufacturing jobs.
I will enlighten him. I joined the workforce -- With no higher education
-- when you merely walked down the road, and picked out a job. Because jobs
hang on trees like apples. By 35 I COMPLETELY owned my first 3 bedroom brick
house, and the 2 newer cars parked in the driveway. Anyone care to try that
now ??
As for all this talk about education-- I have a bit of knowledge about
that subject-- because I paid in full to send all under my roof through
it. Without one dime of aide from anyone. The above writer is proof-- you
can be heavily educated, and DEAD WRONG. There is nothing good about this
economy. Signed, UN-affiliated to either corrupted party
Bluhorizons, 4/7/2016 9:43 PM EDT
"we're not at 5 percent unemployment. We're at a number that's probably
into the 20s if you look at the real number." Trump is correct. The unemployment
data is contrived from data about people receiving unemployment compensation
but the people who's unemployment has ended and people who have just given
up is invisible.
"It may be true that there is a national unemployment rate measured at
5 percent. But it is also true that for white men without a college degree,
or white men who had worked factory jobs until the mid-2000s with no more
than a high school education, the unemployment reality is much worse "
The author goes on and on about the legitimate distrust of government
unemployment data and then tells us Trump is wrong. But the article convinces
us Trump is right! So, this article its not really about the legitimate
distrust of government data is is about the author's not liking Trump. Typical
New Left bs
Aushax, 4/7/2016 8:24 PM EDT
Last jobs report before the 2012 election the number unusually dropped
then was readjusted up after the election. Coincidentally?
George Mason, 4/7/2016 8:15 PM EDT
U6 is 9.8% for March 2016. We still have 94 million unemployed and
you want to say its 5 % what journalistic malpractice.
F mackey, 4/7/2016 7:57 PM EDT
hey reporter,Todays WSJ, More than 40% of the student borrowers aren't
making payments? WHY? easy,they owe big $ money$ & cant get a job or a well
paying job to pay back the loans,hey reporter,i'd send you $10 bucks to
buy a clue,but you'd probably get lost going to the store,what a %@%@%@,another
reporter,who doesn't have a clue on whats going on,jmo
SimpleCountryActuary, 4/7/2016 7:57 PM EDT
This reporter is a Hillary tool. Even the Los Angeles Times on March
6th had to admit:
"Trump is partly right in saying that trade has cost the U.S. economy
jobs and held down wages. He may also be correct - to a degree - in saying
that low-skilled immigrants have depressed salaries for certain jobs or
industries..."
If this is the quality of reporting the WaPo is going to provide, namely
even worse than the Los Angeles Times, then Bezos had better fire the editorial
staff and buy a new one.
Clyde4, 4/7/2016 7:34 PM EDT [Edited]
This article dismissing Trump is exactly what is wrong with journalism
today - all about creating a false reality for people instead of investigating
and reporting
Trump has emphasized that he is looking at the percent of the population
that is participating in the workforce - and that this participation rate
is currently at historical lows -- and Trump has been clear that his approach
to paying down the national debt is based on getting the participation rates
back to historical levels
The author completely ignored the big elephant in the room -- that is
irresponsible journalism
The author may want to look into how the unemployment rate shot up in
2008 when the government extended benefits and then the unemployment rate
plummeted again when unemployment benefits were decrease (around 2011, I
believe) - if I were the author I would do a little research into whether
the unemployment rate correlates with how much is paid out in benefits or
with unemployment determined through some other approach (like surveys
dangerbird1225, 4/7/2016 7:25 PM EDT
Bunch of crap. If you stop counting those that stop looking for a job,
your numbers are wrong. Period. Why didn't this apologist for statistics
mention that?
"The government can't lie about a hundred billion dollars of Social
Security money stolen for the Clinton 'balanced budget', that would be a
crime against the citizens, they would revolt. John, come one now. "
I didn't say it first, Senator Ernest Hollings did, on the Senate
floor.
"Both Democrats and Republicans are all running this year and next
and saying surplus, surplus. Look what we have done. It is false. The
actual figures show that from the beginning of the fiscal year until
now we had to borrow $127,800,000,000." - Senate speech, Democratic
Senator Ernest Hollings, October 28, 1999
Go to New Orleans Chicago Atlanta Los Angeles Detroit stop anybody on
the street and ask if unemployment is 5% and that there is a 95% chance
a guy can get a job.
Then you will have a statistic reference point. Its not a Democratic
or republican issue because both of them have manipulated the system for
so long its meaningless. Go Trump 2016 and get this crap sorted out with
common sense plain English
AtlasRocked, 4/7/2016 4:37 PM EDT
There is plenty of evidence the figures are cooked, folks, enough
to fill a book: Atlas Shouts. Don't believe trash like this article claims.
GDP, unemployment and inflation are all manipulated numbers, as Campbell's
Law predicts.
I can't believe the Washington Post prints propaganda like this.
TimberDave, 4/7/2016 2:23 PM EDT
I do remember when the officially-announced unemployment rate stopped
including those who were no longer looking for work. That *was* a significant
shift, and there's no doubt it made politicians (Reagan, I think it was)
look better; of course, no President since then has reversed it, as it would
instantly make themselves look worse.
astroboy_2000, 4/7/2016 1:28 PM EDT
This would be a much more intelligent article if the writer actually
said what the government considers as 'employed'.
Working one hour a week, at minimum wage, is 'employed', according
to the government. No wonder unemployment is at 5%.
Add in people who are working, but want and need full time jobs,
add in people who have dropped out of the labor market and/or retired earlier
than they wanted to, and unemployment is at least 10%. Ten seconds on Google
will show you that.
The writer should be sacked for taking a very serious issue and turning
it into a piece of non-informative fluff. Bad mouthing Trump and Sanders
is the same as endorsing Hilly.
Manchester0913, 4/7/2016 2:12 PM EDT
The number you're referencing is captured under U6. However, U3 is the
traditional measure.
Son House, 4/7/2016 2:24 PM EDT
The government doesn't claim that working one hour a week is employed.
Google U 3 unemployment. Then google U 6 unemployment. You can be enlightened.
Liz in AL, 4/7/2016 7:21 PM EDT
I've found this compilation of all 6 of the "U-rates" very useful. It
encompasses the most restrictive (and thus smallest) U-1 rate, though the
most expansive U-6. It provides brief descriptions of what gets counted
for each rate, and (at least for more recent years) provides the ability
to compare at the monthly level of detail.
U6 Unemployment Rate Portal Seven
It Pays to Work: Work Incentives and the
Safety Net: Isaac Shapiro, Robert
Greenstein, Danilo Trisi, and Bryann
DaSilva, CBPP
: Some critics of
various low-income assistance programs
argue that the safety net discourages
work. In particular, they contend that
people receiving assistance from these
programs can receive more, or nearly as
much, from not working - and receiving
government aid - than from working. Or
they argue that low-paid workers have
little incentive to work more hours or
seek higher wages because losses in
government aid will cancel out the
earnings gains.
Careful analysis of the data and
research demonstrates, however, that
such charges are largely incorrect and
that it pays to work. In the
overwhelming majority of cases, in fact,
adults in poverty are significantly
better off if they get a job, work more
hours, or receive a wage hike.
Various
changes in the safety net over the past
two decades have transformed it into
more of what analysts call a "work-based
safety net" and substantially increased
incentives to work for people in
poverty. ...
The late 70s 80s inflation was due to 2 components.
1. Wage inflation fueled by COLA.
2. Price inflation fueled by the oil shock and the response of fuel switching
and conservation, both of which were expensive and subtracted from productivity.
(Same amount of product made, more work if you count work dedicated to remediation).
Volcker overcorrected and defanged labor to the delight of the wealthy
elites.
That inflation did not return even when unemployment declined to low levels
validates that other factors were driving inflation (oil) and that was corrected
by Carter energy policy.
The wealthy elites give zero credit to regulatory and fiscal policy under
Carter for fixing the problem. Reagan fiscal policy made inflation worse,
but by then, Carter energy policy had taken full effect.
During the Great Moderation, we do see inflation start to appear during
oil shocks (such as Gulf War 1).
We have rewritten history discounting policies
that worked, thus preventing us from learning the truth about the value
of fiscal and regulatory policy and limitations of monetary policy.
Monetary
policy only worked by creating a bad recession with high unemployment.
Fiscal
and regulatory policy tackled the energy issues without causing the social
harm from high unemployment.
Looks like now line in 1920th the global pendulum moves toward nationalism.
So in a way neoliberalism breeds nationalism and transnational elite paves the way
for dictators like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin in the past. Transnational elites
start to recognize the danger, but they can do nothing about it as Trump has shown
so vividly in the USA.
High unemployment logically lead to nationalism and all
those neoliberal politicians understood that they are destroying the county but
continue to plunder it anyway. Biden already cried uncle about the danger of far
right nationalism on CNN. But reality in the USA is not then different from the
reality in Britain.
Notable quotes:
"... No wonder Donald Trump's campaign has ignited a growing nationalism movement. We're creating jobs and giving them away. We've let globalization get away from us. It's abundantly clear that we don't have the right public policies in place to incentivize corporations to keep Americans gainfully employed. ..."
"... Grove's bold piece was embraced by some, panned by others and largely ignored. Whether he or Trump have exactly the right solution to the globalization and immigration problems plaguing free-market economies throughout the western world doesn't matter. What matters is that they've identified a problem that needs to be solved before it's too late. So did the British people when they voted to exit the EU. ..."
"... Economic prosperity and security must trump political correctness and ideology. The Brits got it right. Will we? ..."
It's hard to say if that was the wakeup call that led to a sharp reversal and
Thursday's historic vote to leave the EU, but it was nevertheless a stunning
realization that Prime Minister David Cameron had failed to stem the tide of
immigrant workers flooding the UK's job market, as he had promised to do.
Meanwhile, a laundry list of commentators from the
Washington Post and
Esquire to
Vox and the
New York Times chalked it all up to millions of racist xenophobes who are
terrified of immigrants mucking up their pristine white privileged world. If
that sounds at all similar to the anti-Trump rhetoric, you can sort of see where
this is going.
The thing is, there's nothing even remotely irrational or bigoted about the
alarming
transformation of Britain's job market. Since 1997, the number of foreign-born
workers has doubled to one in six. And since 2014, three EU migrants have found
jobs for every Brit, according to official government figures. And, as we'll
see in a minute, there are concerning parallels on this side of the pond, as
well.
I hear from college grads and experienced professionals looking for jobs
all the time, but a recent inquiry from a 27-year-old Edinburgh, Scotland woman
with a BS in microbiology and excellent grades got my attention. She has applied
for more than 400 jobs without managing to secure an interview. Not a single
one.
More concerning is that the workforce itself has continued to shrink over
the same period. Whether that reflects increasing competition, lack of in-demand
skillsets or both doesn't really matter. The net result is that foreigners are
getting more of our jobs, and that's as true of offshore jobs as it is of onshore
jobs.
Think about it. Apple has created well over a million jobs, but 90% of them
are outsourced to China. Google may not make phones and tablets, but the vast
majority of Android-enabled mobile devices are manufactured in Asia. Of course,
that's true of nearly every industry, old or new.
We may not face the identical migrant worker problem that the UK has, but
the net result is the same: By giving up more and more jobs we create to foreign-born
immigrants and offshore contractors, that leaves fewer and fewer jobs and increasing
competition for American citizens.
No wonder Donald Trump's campaign has ignited a growing nationalism
movement. We're creating jobs and giving them away. We've let globalization
get away from us. It's abundantly clear that we don't have the right public
policies in place to incentivize corporations to keep Americans gainfully
employed.
Back in 2010, former Intel chairman Andy Grove penned How America Can Create
Jobs. The front-page Bloomberg BusinessWeek feature clearly outlined the perils
of losing our manufacturing muscle and declared the need for public policy that
puts jobs first, even if it does means constraining free trade with tariffs,
trade war be damned.
Grove's bold piece was embraced by some, panned by others and largely ignored.
Whether he or Trump have exactly the right solution to the globalization and
immigration problems plaguing free-market economies throughout the western world
doesn't matter. What matters is that they've identified a problem that needs
to be solved before it's too late. So did the British people when they voted
to exit the EU.
Economic prosperity and security must trump political correctness and ideology.
The Brits got it right. Will we?
"... That said, what I believe is needed in the USA is a doubling down on Corporate Boards of Directors and CEOs to create a crisis, an American intervention, if you will, that demands companies bring back the idea that Profits alone are not all that matters. Serving the Nation you are born in, raised in, educated in, and then making a profitable income from certainly needs to be focused in on. ..."
"... An additional factor in the financial woes of the falling middle class is the changing demographics here in the US - the growing numbers of single mothers, who are far more likely to struggle financially than a two income household. I make no judgment regarding how people form their family units, but life is especially hard for single mothers. ..."
"... Its even more difficult for journalists in Guardian. They have to destroy chances of only candidate addressing inequality and climate change (Bernie), completely surrender their integrity to corporations, lament over those issues post factum, and yet be paid miserably only in hundreds of thousands for such colossal betrayal of humanity. Its worth at billions to actively participate in destroying future of your kids. Or is it? ..."
"... We need a new Federal Minimum Wage, and the wealthiest need to start paying up. Trump claims that business in the US pay the highest tax rate. That's just not true. I'm not talking about putting the burden on small business, but the multi-nationals and Wall Street. ..."
"... And we can blame Billary and Hussein for it. Their "free-trade" decisions, along with their shameful endorsement of open-borders, have lowered wages for everyone, except for financiers. Interestingly, it was those who've suffered the brunt of the elites' decisions who voted for Britain to leave the EU. Ironically, those who professed to stand for the middle and lower classes, revealed their hypocrisy when they joined the Mandarins in opposing for Britain to leave the totalitarian EU. ..."
"... Like the Trojans fearing present-giving presents, so should the working man loath the elites who promised to have their best interests at heart. That is the same promise communism gave the workers, only to turn on and enslave them. Today the workers don't stand a chance: the Marxists and bankers are on the same side sneering at the working classes who are demeaned as being racist, jingoistic xenophobes. ..."
"... An article in Forbes that explains why Obamacare is a scam. ObamaCare Enriches Only The Health Insurance Giants and Their Shareholders ..."
"... I agree with you that he never did. Obama is a corporatist and globalist. If you think Obamacare is bad wait until his trade deals are past. He sold Americans out for the profits of multinational corporations. Hillary will continue his work. I understand the true meaning of his words now. ..."
"... The US middle class has been disintegrating for decades as inequity grows ..."
"... Clinton is in hiding. I can't find her in the Guardian today. She is a habitual liar and the whole world has all the evidence it needs. All of her promises are bullshit. Bernie has been right the whole time and he is smart not to endorse. Bernie has always known what she is and Bernie's supporters have no reason to support her. ..."
"... It means she is corrupt, dishonest, and unqualified to be anything but an inmate. ..."
"... the middle class has been decimated.. This financial category is only about 35% of was it was in the early 70's.. additionally the definition of middle class has changed drastically as well.. believe it or not your middle class if your earn more than 50k a year!.. this is part of the reason we are as a nation borrowing a trillion dollars a year.. when will the silenced majority wake up and start voting and stop spending on products that are vastly over priced. ..."
"... My kid had a persistent tummy ache. Doc said intestinal blockage; take him to the ER immediately. Seven hours and one inconclusive CAT scan later, he's home again with symptoms unchanged. Two days later the pain went away. Cost: $12,000 with about $10,000 covered by union health insurance. So that's at least $2,000 out of pocket to me for seven hours in hospital, zero diagnosis and zero relief from symptoms. Medicine as a criminal enterprise? So what? Who's gonna stop it? The press? The law? ..."
"... I sympathize. I also agree with you. The US medical system is criminal. It is cruel, discriminatory, ruthless, often ineffective, and often incompetent. The only reason the administrators ("health" maintenance corporations) aren't in jail is because they use some of their obscene profits to buy Congress -- which passes laws like Obama's ACA or Bush's big Pharma swindle. I have no idea what to do about it though -- maybe if everyone refused to pay their premiums and medical bills, the money managers would notice. A sort of strike. ..."
"... SIngle-payer is the answer. Of course, the insurance companies and big pharma use scare tactics to stop that from happening. They talk about government waste, completely ignoring their own waste. They ignore the billions of dollars that they skim off of the top each year before applying any money for actual medical care. Wake up, people. Medical care should be run by the government or non-profit organizations, not by for-profit corporations. ..."
"... Despite the financial situation in middle-and lower income families that has been steadily declining under the past 8 years of the Obama administration, most in that group will support Hillary and propagate the Same problems for 4 more years. They stand no hope unless they break from the knee-jerk support of the "Democratic" Party. ..."
"... So they should support Donald Trump and the conservative party? Last time I checked raising taxes on the middle class while lowering taxes on the rich didn't really help anyone but the rich. The Republican party never gave two shits about middle and lower class, and there's no point believing they will start now. ..."
"... Isn't choosing to have three children very selfish if you cannot support them financially. People always find someone else to blame. ..."
"... "Race" card!!?? Where the hell did I mention anything about race or are you really as dumb as your reply suggests. Plus, you don't require a test to decide if you can afford children or not. It basic family planning. It's people like you in society that has the place in a mess with your "blame anyone but meself attitude" If I'm considered horrible, at least I'm not totally dumb and irrisponsible like you. ..."
"... Bill Maher recently (July 1, 2016; Overtime) editorialized about the state "laboratories" where new ideas are tested and evaluated. Maher compared the divergent fates of California and Kansas plus Louisiana. ..."
"... It's interesting. According to my household income I'm in the "upper" tier for the DC-metro region. But it really doesn't feel that way. Even those of us who make a good income are more and more stretched. In comparison to most of the country, I am well off. I own a car, just bought a house, I can afford to go out to eat a couple times a week. But, I even get to the end of the month with only $100 in the bank. That's because other downward pressures on pay aren't taken into account, such as student debt. My expensive undergraduate and graduate education didn't come cheap, and while that education affords people higher pay, if you end up taking less of it home. It kinda equals out. ..."
"... Sometimes my husband and I think about having kids, and then we realise that even with our good paying jobs, we can't afford day care in our area. I get paid the most, so I can't quit my job but if my husband quit to care for a child, we would really be strapped. Can I really be considered an upper tier household if I can't afford to have kids? If I can't afford to go on vacation once a year? If I haven't bought new clothes in two years? If I have no savings and a freak medical bill might just tip me over the edge? ..."
"... Suggest you give Andrew Tobias' book a read to think outside the box a good education often constructs for us: https://www.amazon.com/Only-Investment-Guide-Youll-Ever/dp/0544781937?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc ..."
"... You can cut student debt in the U.S. by attending a good community college for two years and then transferring to a state university. Most kids are unwilling to do this--no frats or prestige in community colleges! ..."
"... Beginning in the 1970s, a majority of the middle class began to resent the taxation needed to continue support for these liberal policies, and they began to vote for conservative politicians who promised to remove them as they "only helped the undeserving poor." White racism played a role in this as the lower class was invariably portrayed in political speeches and advertising as group of lazy black people. ..."
"... No, it was created in response to the Bolshevik revolution, in particular, to that genius who said "Let's just shoot the royal family and be done with this." ..."
"... All of these things have come under attack since the USSR fell apart, probably on that exact day. And who overthrew the USSR? Overeducated middle class, not the poor or the rich. Who was Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring... the recent protests against the French labor law tightenings, ALL the middle class. ..."
"... The greatest threat to governments has, and always will be, from within. And this threat is from the middle class, almost exclusively. Therefore, we are to be crushed and controlled tightly ..."
"... funny how this media outlet didn't publish these types of reports while the primary was hot. It was all "Hilary is inevitable and supporting Bernie is supporting Trump" type garbage. ..."
"... Probably he means to say Americans habitually ask new acquaintances, "What do you do for a living?" That's absolutely a query about income and personal worth, though slightly disguised, and it's a question I have never widely encountered anywhere else in the world, nor while living overseas the last ten years. ..."
"... This article is extremely dishonest. First, it claims that she has 'three other jobs'. Second, she has children, for whom she presumably gets child support. So what's her *real* income? ..."
"... When those in poverty or on the verge of it are single mothers, you tend to wonder if there are some other issues as well. I don't recall a time in American history where a single mother of several children could take care of herself when completely on her own. ..."
"... I teach in inner city schools. There are so many problems, money is one of them but all the money won't solve the problem of poor learning attitudes, disaffection, poor discipline and nonexistent work ethic . ..."
"... A lot of the students get no discipline at home and their parents don't expect them to learn anything. They are resistant to the whole process of focus on new knowledge , absorb, drill, recall , deploy newly learned thing. ..."
"... I don't know what solution there is to this. My nieces and nephews did well in school, studied hard, and went on to university. They didn't do drugs, rape or be raped, and stayed away from unsavory kids. BUT--they went home to two parents every night, a father and mother, which I think would have made them successful at school no matter what their income. ..."
"... The US economy isn't competitive anymore. It started with the labor cost being too high, so factories moved out. Then the entire supply chain moved out. Now the main consumer market is also moving out. Once that is gone, we will have no more leverage. ..."
"... The US education is good, but students are lazy, undisciplined, and incurious. In silicon valley, more than 75% of highly paid technical personnel are foreign born. Corporations making money with foreign workers here and abroad, on foreign markets. Taking these away and you will see the economy crash. ..."
"... Labor costs were too high. Have some more kool-aid. The elite didn't want labor to have any bargaining power whatsoever . They wanted to dictate the terms to labor believing that they were the only ones who should have any say in matters. The elite wanted to maximize their profits at the expense of their own citizens. They wanted slave labor . They wanted powerless people to dance to their tune. How could an advanced nation's labor possibly compete with slave labor . ..."
"... Sadly ..... thee isn't any hope for these people in the foreseeable future . Their economic decline has been happening for quite some time now and shows no sign of abating whatsoever . The economic foundations of their lives have been steadily pulled out from under them by the financial elite and their subservient political cultures , the Republican and Democratic Parties . The Republicans have never really given a damn about them and the Democrats have long abandoned them . These poor people of North Carolina are adrift on a sinking raft on easy ocean of indifference by the political cultures of America . To those in power , they don't exist . They don't count . They don't matter . ..."
"... The trend in the U.S, along with almost every other major nation in the world over the past 35 years has been to exclusively serve the interests of the financial elite and only their needs . All sense of fairness , justice and decency have been totally discarded . ..."
"... Tax breaks after tax breaks , tax shelters , free movement of capital , etc., etc. would sum up the experience of the financial elite over the past 35 years . They have become incredibly wealthy now and are still not satisfied . They want more . They want it all . They want what little you have and their political servants which help them get . ..."
"... Political discourse pertaining to the plight of those like these folks in North Carolina is all window dressing . In the end , you can be certain that it will amount to nothing . Just like it has for decades now . The financial elite are in control and they are not going to give any of that control up . As a matter of fact , they are going to tighten their grip . They will invent crisis to have their agendas imposed upon an increasingly powerless and bewildered public . They will take advantage of every naturally occurring crisis to advance their agenda . ..."
"... The problem is the job exporting American elite class. NAFTA was an economics, political, and social experiment with all the downside on the former, mostly lower middle class. Non-aligned examination of the available data shows how disastrous NAFTA has been to America's bubbas. Thanks to Bush 41 and Bill Clinton. WTO was all Bill. Of the mistakes Obama has made TPP would be the worst. The question is, really, do we favor global fairness (an even playing field for all earth's peoples) and a climate-killing consumerist world, or our own disadvantaged (courtesy of our financial and political elite) citizens. Not an easy choice. Death by poison or hanging. No treaty can benegotiated fairly in secret. ..."
"... The tragic irony is that the anger against rule by the 1% manifests in things like support for Trump, a typical example of the greed and excess of the 1%. Americans need to question outside their desperately constrained paradigms more. It will help focus their anger more strategically, and possibly lead to solutions. Don't hold your breath, the inequality gap is accelerating the wrong way. ..."
"... I think the US is heDing for trouble. It is the middle class that maintains civil society and gives a sense of hope. This is an interesting open letter by a zillionaire to his peers warning them what happens without a string middle class. A thought provoking read. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014 ..."
"... The elite of the USA have done exactly what the Romans did and what the Pre-Revolutionary French did.... drain the lower classes while enriching themselves. "Taxes are for little people" is not just a pithy quote, it has become the reality as the elite rig the system so they benefit and the lower classes pay. They need to wake up or they will get exactly what the Romans Got (collapsed empire) or the French got (Violent Revolution). Wake up America! It is time to choose your side in the class war the elite continue to execute while telling us there is no "Class War" - you can't pull yourself up by your boot straps while they are pulling the rug out from under you! ..."
"... My wife used to employ recent graduates from Georgetown University with poli. sci., psychology, sociology degrees, to stack books for $10/hr. It took them on average 2-3 years, before finding work in their field. ..."
"... Education is NOT about finding a job! It's about learning ways to seek wisdom and rationality, and to assimilate (not deny) new knowledge throughout your life--and that's exactly what's lacking in the US! Our schools are factories to turn out standard robots to be used by the owners of this country, whether they practice law or flip burgers. ..."
I was stumped by the very idea that someone has the $money, the time, the energy to
go out and study for 3 bachelor degrees. This woman doesn't look old enough to have had time to get
3 degrees.
That said, what I believe is needed in the USA is a doubling down on Corporate Boards
of Directors and CEOs to create a crisis, an American intervention, if you will, that demands companies
bring back the idea that Profits alone are not all that matters. Serving the Nation you are born
in, raised in, educated in, and then making a profitable income from certainly needs to be focused
in on.
Why on earth isn't Main Stream Media doing this, along with all of CONGRESS and the President?
What is their excuse? Even if you brought back all the robotic jobs to US soil, you would also end
up bringing a large number of administrative jobs back here, too, just to keep up with the business
at hand. It is critical that we rebuild our infrastructure, yet we see NO immediate or Long-term
plans to do so. How can we, without the support of the Business Class to support the whole nation
through Paying their Taxes to the US Tax System? There is no excuse that will do, in my book. Profits
to the top tier need to be STOPPED so long as businesses are going outside of the United States Borders.
Period.
Typical of what's happening around the world. The trillions of dollars lurking in tax havens is
the reason why economies are stagnating. Money makes the world go round, however detouring to
the Cayman Islands, the flow stops and the poverty begins. Spend locally and reject multi national
corporations. Give your local communities a chance to prosper,
An additional factor in the financial woes of the falling middle class is the changing demographics
here in the US - the growing numbers of single mothers, who are far more likely to struggle financially
than a two income household. I make no judgment regarding how people form their family units,
but life is especially hard for single mothers.
"The 2016 presidential race has superficially been dominated by talk of this declining middle.
First from Bernie Sanders, then Hillary Clinton and even Donald Trump's promise to Make America
Great Again"
"And even"??? What a laugh. Even if you hate Trump its clear The Guardian has written every
article possible to prevent his rise and they have failed miserably. Hillary amd Sanders are dominating
conversatiin. Trump is by far.
One thing us for sure. 15 million illegals and thousands more every month is not making the
middle class more secure.
They are shrinking, and you expect them to tolerate "Make America Mexico Again"? In these times?
Donor money is ruining the country. They hate Trump because he doesnt need these arrogant donors
who have never heard "no" their whole lives.
Its even more difficult for journalists in Guardian. They have to destroy chances of only candidate
addressing inequality and climate change (Bernie), completely surrender their integrity to corporations,
lament over those issues post factum, and yet be paid miserably only in hundreds of thousands
for such colossal betrayal of humanity. Its worth at billions to actively participate in destroying
future of your kids. Or is it?
It isn't immigration that costing jobs - it's employers who know they can pay these people
less for their work. We need a new Federal Minimum Wage, and the wealthiest need to start
paying up. Trump claims that business in the US pay the highest tax rate. That's just not
true. I'm not talking about putting the burden on small business, but the multi-nationals and
Wall Street.
You can see in western Europe at the moment that a minimum wage desn't work without a whole host
of other protective legislation. A minimum wage doesn't reach to the self employed, and it doesn't
prevent the use of flexible or non-guaranteed hours contracts making use of a larger than is required
labour pool. Not to mention the black market / cash in hand trade.
And we can blame Billary and Hussein for it.
Their "free-trade" decisions, along with their shameful endorsement of open-borders, have lowered
wages for everyone, except for financiers.
Interestingly, it was those who've suffered the brunt of the elites' decisions who voted for Britain
to leave the EU.
Ironically, those who professed to stand for the middle and lower classes, revealed their hypocrisy
when they joined the Mandarins in opposing for Britain to leave the totalitarian EU.
Like the Trojans fearing present-giving presents, so should the working man loath the elites
who promised to have their best interests at heart.
That is the same promise communism gave the workers, only to turn on and enslave them.
Today the workers don't stand a chance: the Marxists and bankers are on the same side sneering
at the working classes who are demeaned as being racist, jingoistic xenophobes.
You realize most of the votes in favor of NAFTA were Republican and most against were Democratic,
right? You know that "free trade" has been an item in the Republican platform (and increasingly
the Democratic one) for years before Clinton and Obama were ever in office, right? Know some elementary
facts about U.S, politics before posting nonsense.
Ed Thurmann: it's not teacher-bashing, it's just the old recycled "black family values" spiel
that was introduced into the poverty debate in the '60s by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan,
not so BTW, is Hillary Clinton's intellectual hero. So you can expect a hell of a lot more of
these cliches after January of next year.
An article in Forbes that explains why Obamacare is a scam. ObamaCare Enriches Only The Health Insurance Giants and Their Shareholders
Robert Lenzner , CONTRIBUTOR
I'm trying to wise up 300 million people about money & finance
So far in 2013 the value of the S& P health insurance index has gained 43%. Thats more than
double the gains made in the broad stock market index, the S & P 500. The shares of CIGNA are
up 63%, Wellpoint 47% and United Healthcare 28%. And if you go back to the early 2010 passage
of ObamaCare, you will find that Obama's sellout of the public interest has allowed the public
companies the ability to raise their premiums, especially on small business, dramatically multiply
their profits and send the value of their common stocks up by 200%-300%. This is bloody scandalous
and should be a cause for concern even as the Republican opponents of the bill threaten the close-down
of the government.
We warned you back on December4, 2009 in my blog " The Horrendous Truth About Health Care Reform"
that the Obama White House was handing a " free ride for the health insurance industry" that would
allow premium hikes of 8%-10% a year by CIGNA, Humana HUM +1.56%, Aetna AET +0.45%, UnitedHealth
Group UNH +0.58% and Wellpoint, and as well a $500 billion taxpayer subsidy, a half trillion dollars
without any requirement that the health insurers had to spend the subsidy on medical care. Several
US Senators including Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia spoke to me openly of the outrageous sellout
being foisted on the nation's uninsured citizens.
At the time I wrote, Goldman Sachs research operation estimated that the 5 giants would increase
profits by 10% a year from 2010 to 2019, sending their shares up an average of 59%. In truth,
the shares of CIGNA and some others are up a multiple of several times since the contest was resolved
by a very tight vote in early 2010. One startling reason for this amazing performance was that
Obama took off the table "proposals to significantly reduce health care costs" as the giveaway
in getting the bill through, according to Ron Susskind's best-selling book ,"Confidence Men,"
which I wrote about in a blog on September 24, 2011. ( "Obama's Incoherent Policy-Making") Some
3 years later, UnitedHealthCare Group(UNH) was rewarded by being added to the elite list of the
Dow 30 industrials.
I understood belatedly that there would have been no Affordable Care Act of 2010 if the White
House had not given into demands from the giant profit-making health insurance companies. Had
he not done so, I am being assured that there would have been no bill passed, a priority goal
that Obama promised in his 2008 Presidential campaign. How the profits have risen so impressively
requires further investigation as the bill is meant to limit the profits earned to 20% of the
revenues.
One of the other downsides to the supposed reform bill was the surprisingly unfair treatment
of small business owners who faced even larger potential premiums for their employees. It has
been the fear of these higher health costs that has resulted in the overwhelming trend toward
hiring part-time employees whom the employers need not offer healthcare insurance.
So much for the reforms embedded in the mis-labeled Affordable Care Act of 2010. It may not
die a bloody demise this month, but it is certain to be reformed itself, let's hope for the benefit
of the 300 million, not just the millions of lucky shareholders who may have understood the ramification
of ObamaCare, which was to multiply the profits of five giant insurance companies, just as the
major bank oligopoly was rewarded by the federal bailouts and Fed monetary policy.
I agree with you that he never did. Obama is a corporatist and globalist. If you think Obamacare
is bad wait until his trade deals are past. He sold Americans out for the profits of multinational
corporations. Hillary will continue his work. I understand the true meaning of his words now.
"We are a nation of immigrants" meaning he prefers cheap illegal labor when 46 million Americans
live in poverty. Soon cheap foriegn will be unlimited and legal in the US with worker mobility.
Even for professional jobs. Can you imagine competing with foreigners in the US who make 30 cents
an hour? It's depressing really. Here are some of the highlights of the TPP that will throw Americans
further into poverty.
My heart goes out to these beleaguered families. In the late 1970s/80s I held down a full-time
job in DC and freelanced feverishly to make ends meet. I lived below the official poverty line
in an expensive, yet thoroughly crappy, flat. That recession-riddled era of energy chaos, leading
into Reagan's 'voodoo' economics regime (the risible idea of 'trickle-down', the US becoming the
world's largest debtor), was another hot mess.
The US middle class has been disintegrating for
decades as inequity grows, thanks in large part to the poor governance of Republican presidents
(Nixon's stagflation, the disastrous shifts under GW Bush).
Clinton is in hiding.
I can't find her in the Guardian today.
She is a habitual liar and the whole world has all the evidence it needs.
All of her promises are bullshit.
Bernie has been right the whole time and he is smart not to endorse.
Bernie has always known what she is and Bernie's supporters have no reason to support her.
Her disapproval ratings will top Trump now.
The voters are now going to show her what the meaning of is, really is.
It means she is corrupt, dishonest, and unqualified to be anything but an inmate.
Her disapproval ratings are high, but not up with Trump's and they never will be. You can vote
for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in November. Or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian. But
Bernie will not be a candidate, and he will eventually endorse Clinton -- after he is sure he's
won certain concessions in the Democratic platform. That's your reality in July 2016, not in February.
the middle class has been decimated.. This financial category is only about 35% of was it was
in the early 70's.. additionally the definition of middle class has changed drastically as well..
believe it or not your middle class if your earn more than 50k a year!.. this is part of the reason
we are as a nation borrowing a trillion dollars a year.. when will the silenced majority wake
up and start voting and stop spending on products that are vastly over priced..Turn off your phone,
stop buying all but essentials.. we need to force prices down until we complain and start voting
with our dollars little will change
What about the millions of married couples with kids..when the parents lose their jobs? That happens
very frequently. Should we take the kids away? Are you suggesting that poor people not be allowed to have children?
Then we have the religious nutcases that are against contraception and abortion, yet demonize
poor women for having children.
My kid had a persistent tummy ache. Doc said intestinal blockage; take him to the ER immediately.
Seven hours and one inconclusive CAT scan later, he's home again with symptoms unchanged. Two
days later the pain went away. Cost: $12,000 with about $10,000 covered by union health insurance. So that's at least $2,000 out of pocket to me for seven hours in hospital, zero diagnosis and
zero relief from symptoms. Medicine as a criminal enterprise? So what?
Who's gonna stop it? The press? The law?
Medicine as a criminal enterprise? So what?
Who's gonna stop it? The press? The law?
I sympathize. I also agree with you. The US medical system is criminal. It is cruel, discriminatory, ruthless, often ineffective, and often incompetent. The only reason the administrators ("health" maintenance corporations) aren't in jail is because
they use some of their obscene profits to buy Congress -- which passes laws like Obama's ACA or
Bush's big Pharma swindle. I have no idea what to do about it though -- maybe if everyone refused to pay their premiums
and medical bills, the money managers would notice. A sort of strike.
SIngle-payer is the answer. Of course, the insurance companies and big pharma use scare tactics to stop that from happening.
They talk about government waste, completely ignoring their own waste. They ignore the billions
of dollars that they skim off of the top each year before applying any money for actual medical
care. Wake up, people. Medical care should be run by the government or non-profit organizations,
not by for-profit corporations.
Corporations have only one goal...to make as much money as possible for themselves. Health
care is just a necessary nuisance.
Despite the financial situation in middle-and lower income families that has been steadily declining
under the past 8 years of the Obama administration, most in that group will support Hillary and
propagate the Same problems for 4 more years. They stand no hope unless they break from the knee-jerk
support of the "Democratic" Party.
So they should support Donald Trump and the conservative party? Last time I checked raising taxes
on the middle class while lowering taxes on the rich didn't really help anyone but the rich. The
Republican party never gave two shits about middle and lower class, and there's no point believing
they will start now.
This article mentions Latonia Best and her three children.
Is there a Mr Best around? It has always been tough to raise a family on the salary of a single parent.
The breakdown of the American family is a probably the biggest reason for the supposed struggles
of the middle class. People have to take responsibility for their lives.
traditionally, the middle class had the guy going out to work, and his wife staying at home to
look after the kids. Once children are in school and childcare is reduced, I don't see how a
woman working and raising her kids alone, is any more expensive than a man supporting himself,
his wife and their kids.
It used to be possible. It used to be doable. wealth disparity ind income inequality mean that
is no longer the case, at least certainly not for the average middle class. In the UK anyway,
it's now a sign of wealth. This has nothing top do with the family and everything to do with income
disparity.
Ah. I was waiting for some "bubba" to pull the race card. Congratulations.
Maybe we should make everyone take a test to prove that they can afford children. No children for poor people. Nice.
"Race" card!!?? Where the hell did I mention anything about race or are you really as dumb as
your reply suggests.
Plus, you don't require a test to decide if you can afford children or not. It basic family planning.
It's people like you in society that has the place in a mess with your "blame anyone but meself
attitude" If I'm considered horrible, at least I'm not totally dumb and irrisponsible like you.
$3,333.33 is actually not a lot of money to raise a family of four on. Let's do some math, shall
we?!
Taxes: $800 (rough estimate)
Health Insurance: I'm going to estimate $300 because she probably has dependents on her coverage
and that's what I paid one dependent a while back.
Car: I'm going to estimate $150. My car payment is $300, but let's say she got a cheaper, used
car.
Rent: Let's say $1,000/month (I did a quick search and found that this seemed like a good price
for a two bedroom)
Bills: Let's round up to $150/month for gas, electricity, water, sewage
Food: Let's say she spends $80/week, so roughly $320 a month (you know, she's a thrifty shopper)
All of that leaves about $313 left for gas, phone, college tuition, maybe internet and cable
at home. I don't know how she does it.
Worst of all was the town of Goldsboro – one of three metropolitan areas in North Carolina
at the bottom of the national league table.
North Carolina, Michigan, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma ... more ...
Sad stories in states run by Republicans. Toxic rivers, shootings, poisoned tap water, bankruptcy,
daily earthquakes ...
Bill Maher recently (July 1, 2016; Overtime) editorialized about the state "laboratories"
where new ideas are tested and evaluated. Maher compared the divergent fates of California and
Kansas plus Louisiana.
Only five countries produced more last year than California: the U.S., China, Japan, Germany
and the United Kingdom.
So -- North Carolina with fouled rivers, a collapsing middle class, discriminatory laws --
or a thriving California?
Goldsboro remains far from the sort of economic catastrophe seen in parts of the rust belt,
but these are signs of financial stress that are hard to ignore. The strain on the middle class
across much of the country may not have gone unnoticed by politicians, but locals here fear
there is little talk of the investment in skills, high-paying jobs and civic infrastructure
needed to arrest the slide.
Republican shills will have to admit -- finally that Republican policies ruin lives, ruin the
economy and ruin the environment. Truth appears more powerful than slogans and slanders. Who knows?
They might even acknowledge climate change.
I believe it is the wars and needs of the military-industrial-banking complex that sap far too
much from the economy. Both parties are guilty of supporting them.
North Carolina with fouled rivers, a collapsing middle class, discriminatory laws -- or a thriving
California?
Since 2013, North Carolina has the fastest GDP growth of any state. The NC economy is not in bad
shape. This lady lives in one of the poorest areas in the state, she should move 45 minutes north
to thriving Raleigh or Durham - the population in that area is booming, they need teachers.
The dumping of coal ash into the Dan river was a corporate crime, not a policy decision. Neither
party is responsible for criminal actions by individuals or corporations, that's just silly. (The
republicans have been too lax in holding Duke Energy to account but the damage done is not a political
issue)
HB2 is a disgrace but the legislature is in the process of correcting it and the Governor is likely
to lose the election in the fall which bodes well for anti-HB2 people. Don't forget that California
voters voted to ban gay marriage not even 10 years ago. It's not a paradise of wealth and enlightenment,
no place is.
Why should we feel sorry for the American middle class they have elected for all the misery that
has befallen them!
If America was a fascist state I could sympathise but it's not. Americans have let their social
rights being eroded by a mendacious and cunning establishment.
One good example of how Americans don't give a shit is the very expensive wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan which have cost gazillions to the US taxpayer and not a whimper from the US population.
If one can compare that to the Vietnam war which created its own critical cinema genre, protest
songs, large demonstrations etc...you know that todays average Americans responsibility for the
mess they find themselves in is non existent. They just bend over and take it and have little
whine about it from time to time.
What about the people that didn't vote for the "misery" as you call it?
What about the fact that whichever way you vote in the US you're screwed?
And I don't know about you, but you must not know many Americans. The number of my friends
who have been tear gassed during marches against the Iraq war flies in the face of your argument.
Have you, yourself, even uttered a whimper against it?
I will support proper child-support and healthcare and everything that can be done to make this
woman's life easier and secure her kids' futures BUT
Three kids is a LOT for two people to handle, let alone one.
To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to raise one child alone may be regarded as a misfortune; to
attempt to raise three looks like carelessness. To try to raise three alone in the United States
is MADNESS.
I live in the USA. I'm in a stable long-term relationship. I don't make much money. I can't
afford kids.
2 + 2 = 4
Poor me. I don't say I have a right to kids because I need them or I have so much love to give
or blah, blah, blah. I just can't. Not here. This is a cruelly individualistic country. It is
built to serve those who serve themselves. Namely, the young, healthy, smart, motivated and single.
There is no political foundation or tradition of altruism here. Maybe back in Ireland where there's
a system to support me and some healthcare and family. Not here. Madness.
But she's got the kids now. What is she supposed to do? Hand them back to someone? If she and
the childrens' father had them when life was looking more stable and she didn't have to work 4
jobs to make ends meet, she can hardly be blamed now for their existence.
You are living in the now and choose not to have children because you feel you can't afford
them. However, in the future, you may find that you can afford them, and therefore choose to conceive.
If your circumstances change after that and you are no longer able to afford to care for them
without working excessive hours and living in poverty, there's not a lot you can do other than
get on with it. No point blaming her for something that is irreversible.
It's interesting. According to my household income I'm in the "upper" tier for the DC-metro region.
But it really doesn't feel that way. Even those of us who make a good income are more and more
stretched. In comparison to most of the country, I am well off. I own a car, just bought a house,
I can afford to go out to eat a couple times a week. But, I even get to the end of the month with
only $100 in the bank. That's because other downward pressures on pay aren't taken into account,
such as student debt. My expensive undergraduate and graduate education didn't come cheap, and
while that education affords people higher pay, if you end up taking less of it home. It kinda
equals out.
Sometimes my husband and I think about having kids, and then we realise that even with our
good paying jobs, we can't afford day care in our area. I get paid the most, so I can't quit my
job but if my husband quit to care for a child, we would really be strapped. Can I really be considered
an upper tier household if I can't afford to have kids? If I can't afford to go on vacation once
a year? If I haven't bought new clothes in two years? If I have no savings and a freak medical
bill might just tip me over the edge?
There's something very, very wrong. How rich do you need to be before you don't feel like you're
struggling?
You can cut student debt in the U.S. by attending a good community college for two years and then
transferring to a state university. Most kids are unwilling to do this--no frats or prestige in
community colleges!
The huge middle class in the USA was created by the liberal economic polices of the 1930s, which
were designed to help the lower class.
Beginning in the 1970s, a majority of the middle class began to resent the taxation needed
to continue support for these liberal policies, and they began to vote for conservative politicians
who promised to remove them as they "only helped the undeserving poor." White racism played a
role in this as the lower class was invariably portrayed in political speeches and advertising
as group of lazy black people.
What the middle class did not understand was that their continued existence depended on these
liberal programs, as most of the benefits went to the middle class, not the lower class as they
assumed. As the liberal programs began to disappear, so did the economic security of the middle
class.
One would think they would have figured all of this out by now, but they have not, and they
continue to vote for conservatives.
No, it was created in response to the Bolshevik revolution, in particular, to that genius who
said "Let's just shoot the royal family and be done with this."
When that happened, the ruling class got scared, and said "OK, minimum wage, vacation, sick
pay, 40 hr work week, no child labor, great schooling, etc"
All of these things have come under attack since the USSR fell apart, probably on that exact
day. And who overthrew the USSR? Overeducated middle class, not the poor or the rich. Who was
Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring... the recent protests against the French labor law tightenings,
ALL the middle class.
The greatest threat to governments has, and always will be, from within. And this threat is
from the middle class, almost exclusively. Therefore, we are to be crushed and controlled tightly.
" squeezed middle class tell tales of struggle " Too bad they voted for the big squeeze herself -- Bernie
could have set them free from the path of exploitation she has planned for them immediately after
her election by imposing the TPP upon the very fools who will elect her. Stop watching
the Kartrashians and read about actual policy implications for your family and especially your
children, if you had, none of you would have supported Clinton.
funny how this media outlet didn't publish these types of reports while the primary was hot. It
was all "Hilary is inevitable and supporting Bernie is supporting Trump" type garbage.
I lived in Pittsburgh for 8 years, being European I sent them to public school...well, after a
year in which my six years old son was suspended twice for running around at lunchtime when he
shouldn't (six years old tend to do that), numerous recesses where they were put in front of a
TV (we cannot send them outside, insurance doesn't cover if they get hurt and we got sued before),
and notes from teachers full of spelling mistakes......I had to send them to private school perpetuating
a cycle of poor people in public system and rich people (or middle class as i was at the time)
to private schools....
i don't know what needs to be done to fix the issue but it's the whole society that is really
divided along money lines and race lines and inequality is getting worse. But money trumps everything,
the US is the only place int he world where it's not considered unpolite to ask people :"what's
your worth?" meaning how much you make, what are your assets, etc.....instilling in people a mentality
of self worth based on money and consequentially a cutthroat environment where the more you have
the more you are worth, so at the top they squeeze the lower end, to make more money but also
because they think they are really not that worthy....its a perverse cycle that history taught
us doesn't bring any good because at a certain point the poor reach a critical mass that will
just revolt......I'm waiting for that, good luck...
I'm afraid my friend we disagree on that, excellent public schools are exceptions, there are some
but they are a minority (International statistics on education quality validate that), I don't
live in the US anymore but travel a lot there for business (at least 20 times a year). As for
the worth question I had it asked to me quite a few times and kind of everywhere, maybe it's unpolite,
I believe it's unpolite, but it happens regularly and only in the US (let me rephrase, in the
rest of the world it wouldn't be considered unpolite, that's too mild of a term, it would be considered
inconceivable). Said that I hope the US makes it and the "American Values" that you talk about
prevail, but i am afraid those values have changed and being substituted by less noble ones...
Probably he means to say Americans habitually ask new acquaintances, "What do you do for a living?"
That's absolutely a query about income and personal worth, though slightly disguised, and it's
a question I have never widely encountered anywhere else in the world, nor while living overseas
the last ten years. The question is so ingrained, though, that Americans who ask it don't think
of it as a query about net worth. They do, however, react with overflowing respect toward those
who answer in certain ways, and something akin to sympathy to those who answer in other ways.
All my foreign friends have noticed it, and all think it's weird.
This article is extremely dishonest. First, it claims that she has 'three other jobs'. Second,
she has children, for whom she presumably gets child support. So what's her *real* income?
Agree, I did my last year of high school in the US, in North Carolina of all places, in a top
private school, i was a middling student in Europe with flashes of brilliance in some subjects
but definitely far from the top of the class. When I arrived (it was in the 80s) I didn't speak
English. Well, I graduated with high honors int he top 5% and got my high school diploma, honestly
without having to study that much, school was not totally comparable but definitely way less challenging.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, a lot of private schools in the United States are severely lacking
in the rigor department. This is even true for many--not all--private schools that cater to well-to-do
families.
When those in poverty or on the verge of it are single mothers, you tend to wonder if there are
some other issues as well. I don't recall a time in American history where a single mother of
several children could take care of herself when completely on her own.
I know of single mothers
who are doing fine, but they employed and are also being helped by siblings and parents who already
have some wealth and free time to take care of the child. Maybe the issue is the fact that these
people are having kids at the wrong time or without enough thought. Divorce rates are incredibly
high in the US, and the percentage of children who have non-birth parents is very high as well.
What this all means is that the USA isn't teaching its citizens about having kids and the responsibility.
The USA is also not teaching men and women about birth control, or about being holding potential
partners to higher standards (and I don't mean looks). A lot of people in the USA are too shallow
and focus too much on aesthetics over reliability and now we have single mothers with fathers
who refuse to pay child support at all costs. There are too many problems with the USA, but I
feel that personal hygiene and responsibility with sexual partners should be on the top.
I teach in inner city schools. There are so many problems, money is one of them but all the money
won't solve the problem of poor learning attitudes, disaffection, poor discipline and nonexistent
work ethic .
A lot of the students get no discipline at home and their parents don't expect them
to learn anything. They are resistant to the whole process of focus on new knowledge , absorb,
drill, recall , deploy newly learned thing.
Americans have a religious reverence for individualism
and learning new things is a humbling experience and many people don't like it. Sure the adults
bang on about education but they aren't serious about it. They think all you need is to spend
more money , not do any actual work.
The problems in the inner city are so intransigent that I doubt anything can fix it. I have three
friends, all dedicated teachers, who taught in inner city schools in New Jersey and the stories
they have told me make my mind reel: a mother who punched a teacher (and gave her a concussion)
who "disrespected" her kid (by failing him, deservedly, in algebra), 15-year-olds who had pagers
so their pimps could call them, children who had five brothers and sisters--all with different
fathers. You couldn't make this stuff up.
I don't know what solution there is to this. My nieces and nephews did well in school, studied
hard, and went on to university. They didn't do drugs, rape or be raped, and stayed away from
unsavory kids. BUT--they went home to two parents every night, a father and mother, which I think
would have made them successful at school no matter what their income.
The Pew survey you cited noted that "...the share living in middle-income households fell from
55% in 2000 to 51% in 2014. Reflecting the accumulation of changes at the metropolitan level,
the nationwide share of adults in lower-income households increased from 28% to 29% and the share
in upper-income households rose from 17% to 20% during the period." In other words, most of the
decline in the middle class was due to their moving into the upper class.
The article was mostly about a declining rural area. The Guardian grinding its usual axes and
reaching the conclusion it intended to reach?
Middle class job death inflicted by cronie capitalism entertained by the political establishment
(examples): Private equity is not scrutinized by anti-trust legislation, buys any company and
sends jobs overseas. Cronie supporters of politicians get help in that some industry gets indicted
(e.g. more or less entire coal industry) or regulated into oblivion, for fake reasons, so that
cronie (solar panel) company gets subsidies. Of course, the latter goes under, no company on IV
survives without IV. Banks get bailed out, others not. GM gets bailed out, to maintain jobs, then
outsources.
The old members of middle class are not tolerated by our government and the cronies. Who is tolerated
as middle class is any kind of civil servant, and new immigrants. Revenge from 2 sides. Or call
it cultural revolution Mao style: Take their habitat.
Growing up in the SF Bay Area during the 70's there was a large disparity in academics between
schools even in the same district. At 11 years old the school district was rezoned and the new
school that I attended had much lower standards. So much so, that I came home the very first day
and complained to my mother that I had been assigned to a class for slow learners. Being so bored,
my grades started to drop. At 13 years, I tested out of mathematics and eventually tested out
of high school altogether and joined the military.
There my intelligence was appreciated (believe
it or not). The military provided a valuable work ethic and training in technology that have provided
a decent career and lifestyle since. It's too bad that America can't seem to provide adequate learning to the vast majority.
The US economy isn't competitive anymore. It started with the labor cost being too high, so factories
moved out. Then the entire supply chain moved out. Now the main consumer market is also moving
out. Once that is gone, we will have no more leverage.
The US education is good, but students are lazy, undisciplined, and incurious. In silicon valley,
more than 75% of highly paid technical personnel are foreign born. Corporations making money with
foreign workers here and abroad, on foreign markets. Taking these away and you will see the economy
crash.
Then you have Hillary wanting to sub divide a rapidly diminishing pie, and Trump wanting to
return to 1946. Good luck to them both.
Labor costs were too high. Have some more kool-aid. The elite didn't want labor to have any bargaining power whatsoever . They wanted to dictate
the terms to labor believing that they were the only ones who should have any say in matters. The elite wanted to maximize their profits at the expense of their own citizens. They wanted slave labor . They wanted powerless people to dance to their tune. How could an advanced nation's labor possibly compete with slave labor .
This is the same argument that slave owning , southern plantation owners used to fight against
the freeing of slaves . They to said that they would not longer be competitive and the overall
economy would suffer .
Are you telling us that an economy needs slave labor to exist ?
Sadly ..... thee isn't any hope for these people in the foreseeable future .
Their economic decline has been happening for quite some time now and shows no sign of abating
whatsoever . The economic foundations of their lives have been steadily pulled out from under them by the
financial elite and their subservient political cultures , the Republican and Democratic Parties
. The Republicans have never really given a damn about them and the Democrats have long abandoned
them . These poor people of North Carolina are adrift on a sinking raft on easy ocean of indifference
by the political cultures of America . To those in power , they don't exist . They don't count . They don't matter .
The trend in the U.S, along with almost every other major nation in the world over the past
35 years has been to exclusively serve the interests of the financial elite and only their needs
. All sense of fairness , justice and decency have been totally discarded .
Tax breaks after tax breaks , tax shelters , free movement of capital , etc., etc. would sum
up the experience of the financial elite over the past 35 years . They have become incredibly wealthy now and are still not satisfied . They want more . They
want it all . They want what little you have and their political servants which help them get
.
Political discourse pertaining to the plight of those like these folks in North Carolina is
all window dressing . In the end , you can be certain that it will amount to nothing . Just like
it has for decades now . The financial elite are in control and they are not going to give any of that control up .
As a matter of fact , they are going to tighten their grip . They will invent crisis to have their
agendas imposed upon an increasingly powerless and bewildered public . They will take advantage
of every naturally occurring crisis to advance their agenda .
There will be an end to their abuse , greed and domination until one day when everything changes
. The day when people have had enough . When people can't take it any more . History has demonstrated
this fact so often before . The mighty do fall . They always fall ..... but their fall is nowhere
to be seen at this time .
There is going to a great deal more pain for average folk before things get better .
A Presidential election featuring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is clear evidence of this
fact.
Hopefully , these two bottom feeding , utter human failures represent the bottom of the barrel
but I doubt if they do .
Good luck to the good folks of North Carolina and countless others like them .... they / we
/ myself are going to need it .
On the contrary .... it's money that the elite have not paid out in wages .
It's money that the elite have illegally hidden from the taxman . It's money the the elite need to pay for the infrastructure that makes it possible to do business
in the first place . It's money that has been made from insider trading and backroom deals . It's money from the wealth that labour has basically created in the first place .
It's money that contributes to the social maintenance on a safe , civil society . It's money that the wealthy do not need .... they have all they could ever need now .
It is money that when distributed fairly keeps money in motion creating it's transfer into
additional hands which further circulates that money creating even more spending by people and
the consumption of goods and services which result in the creation of even more wealth .
Static capital kills economies .
I know that the elite like to think that they are the exclusive ones to create wealth but wealth
creation is the marriage between capital and labour . You can have all of the capital in the world
but without labour transforming it into greater wealth it can not possibly grow .
If anyone is guilty of stealing money it is the elite who steal from the economy causing the
economy's ill health .
The last 35 years are more than testimony to this fact .
Economies are dying wherever the elite have gotten their way .
The elite are the real killers of wealth and economies . Just look at any economy in the world
throughout history where the elite had all of the wealth to themselves . Their economies are highly
dysfunctional and their societies are full of social problems and crime .
This is an indisputable fact .
Greed kills wealth development .
Wealth development is directly tied to the well being of labour which allows for mass consumption
of goods and services .
You would have to be a complete idiot not to see this fact .
So my good doctor .... the money in any given economy really belongs to everyone , not just
the greedy elite .
You need to get a real perspective instead of constantly eyeing you own pile of wealth .
so the woman chose to have 3 daughters, is now choosing to foot the bill for their college education,
and wants me to feel sorry because she has to work her ass off to do all these things? how about
this.... don't have children you can't afford. a little personal responsibility in one's life
goes a long, long way.
We need to redefine middle class. I grew up middle class. We had one TV. Not a lot of clothes.
Took short, cheap vacations. Had no credit cards. Our lives were perfectly enjoyable. Many people
here in the US live way beyond their means.
We piled into the station wagon and headed out on short trips in the region. We visited historic
sites and were enriched by the experience. None of this $1000s on the trip to Disneyland. We didn't
feel deprived or entitled.
The key is not money but optimism. America is still richer, cleaner, and better run than most
other places. But the gap is rapidly closing. Scaling back the spending would not help here. It
would only further reduce the drive.
As a North Carolinian, there are two major issues. One, the right to bear arms and also, teacher
tenure and working conditions. Republicans have already taken away tenure from my younger colleagues,
but as an older teacher, I still have mine. Secondly, democrats want to take away gun rights on
the federal level, but state dems are usually more pro-gun in the conservative state.
SO for me, I will vote for a democratic state government and a republican federal government.
I will be proudly putting a Roy Cooper bumper sticker on my car. But due to the peaceful liberals,
I would be afraid to put a TRUMP sticker on my car because of recent violence against Trump supporters.
The problem is the job exporting American elite class. NAFTA was an economics, political, and
social experiment with all the downside on the former, mostly lower middle class. Non-aligned
examination of the available data shows how disastrous NAFTA has been to America's bubbas. Thanks
to Bush 41 and Bill Clinton. WTO was all Bill. Of the mistakes Obama has made TPP would be the
worst. The question is, really, do we favor global fairness (an even playing field for all earth's
peoples) and a climate-killing consumerist world, or our own disadvantaged (courtesy of our financial
and political elite) citizens. Not an easy choice. Death by poison or hanging. No treaty can benegotiated
fairly in secret.
The tragic irony is that the anger against rule by the 1% manifests in things like support for
Trump, a typical example of the greed and excess of the 1%.
Americans need to question outside their desperately constrained paradigms more. It will help
focus their anger more strategically, and possibly lead to solutions. Don't hold your breath, the inequality gap is accelerating the wrong way.
Fake, fake fake.
A woman with $40k and three children would *not* be paying 1/3 of her income in tax.
This woman does *not* live on $40k net or gross - she has three other jobs.
And her name looks *very* made up.
The elite of the USA have done exactly what the Romans did and what the Pre-Revolutionary French
did.... drain the lower classes while enriching themselves. "Taxes are for little people" is not
just a pithy quote, it has become the reality as the elite rig the system so they benefit and
the lower classes pay. They need to wake up or they will get exactly what the Romans Got (collapsed
empire) or the French got (Violent Revolution). Wake up America! It is time to choose your side
in the class war the elite continue to execute while telling us there is no "Class War" - you
can't pull yourself up by your boot straps while they are pulling the rug out from under you!
My wife used to employ recent graduates from Georgetown University with poli. sci., psychology,
sociology degrees, to stack books for $10/hr. It took them on average 2-3 years, before finding
work in their field. I keep telling my kids you need to earn a degree that has a skill for life
and will always be in demand, i.e. doctor, dentist, vet, engineer, scientist. Additionally, include
work oversees in your career.
Education is NOT about finding a job! It's about learning ways to seek wisdom and rationality,
and to assimilate (not deny) new knowledge throughout your life--and that's exactly what's lacking
in the US! Our schools are factories to turn out standard robots to be used by the owners of this
country, whether they practice law or flip burgers.
I was lucky that my parents were born and
raised before that happened. They went to what used to be called "country schools"--my dad to
a 1-room schoolhouse. Some of the so-called "knowledge" was patriotic trash, serving only the
rich elites, but they learned to be sturdy and to think for themselves, so I was lucky and learned
a lot at home. Without parents who practice the empathetic, rational morality needed in a democracy,
all the jobs in the world--especially if most are for flipping burgers--won't save this dreary
country.
You make an excellent point. Thinking about your life rather than just going for a crip major
in college would be an excellent way NOT to wind up stacking books for $10 an hour with a degree.
I can't count the number of my kids friends who select communications majors, or sociology or
women's studies and then are completely surprised when there are no jobs demanding their educational
background. What is it that they think they will be qualified to do after college?
From the article....
"Some lucky families saw themselves promoted to the upper income bracket." Here in a nutshell we see the author's underlying worldview. Getting to the upper income bracket has nothing to do with effort. Rather it's the result of
luck. It's something that is done to you by an outside force.
"... During the 15 months that I worked at Pitt, I felt the brunt of this lady's abuse. She'd call me into the office, launch into a blistering tirade, and I would sit there, stunned. And, to her, that was another cause for anger. Why was I just sitting there and not reacting? ..."
"... The authors fail to get to the real fundamentals of this phenomenon. The two ends of the spectrum that they delineate can be housed under a single umbrella, that of neoliberalism. And it is obvious that neoliberalism can kill. And Durkheim would have agreed readily that ideas can kill, and not just via suicide. ..."
"... Give yourself a break inode_buddha. Thirty years ago, you, and myself as well, made a rational decision as to what direction to take. At the time, construction and the associated trades were honourable and respectable. A decent living could be made, and a future was in sight. Neo-Liberalism has, since then, destroyed most things that benefited anyone other than the criminal management classes. Humanity has had to stand up and fight for decency and equality throughout history. ..."
"... I have to tell you, as a small business owner myself, this "regulations are burdensome" argument is a crock. Lobbyists in DC learned decades ago that the best way to put a sympathetic face on their efforts to get waivers for big businesses is to have small business owners act as their mouthpieces. And there are enough extreme libertarians everywhere that it's not hard to find someone to screech that the regulations he is subject to are horrible irrespective of how much a burden they really are. ..."
"... "Perhaps this world is another planet's hell." – Aldous Huxley. Yes, it is definitely. Perhaps pretty soon they will start strip search employees when they come to work. ..."
"... Increasing numbers of suicides are one outcome of these environments. But as the writers point out, there are a number of other symptoms associated with these toxic workplaces, none good. They range from physical and mental health issues, to various forms of addiction, burnout, and secondary effects on employees' personal lives and those of their family members or partners. ..."
"... I agree that neoliberal ideology, globalization, and the basic structures of our debt-based economy all play a key role in enabling the intentional development of these organizational environments. ..."
"... I believe the roots of the problem lie in a broader and deeper systemic failure. ..."
"... market failure ..."
"... This article highlights suicide, but drug and alcohol abuse are just as much a result of poor employment outcomes as suicide and for the same reasons. ..."
Yves here. It's hardly a secret that employers have become more abusive towards employees because
they can get away with it. The difficulty of finding new employment, particularly for mid and senior
level jobs, combined with the fact that most workers (even comparatively well paid ones) are only
a paycheck or two away from financial desperation, means bosses have tremendous leverage over workers.
And more and more firms embrace coerciveness as a virtue. In the past, it's more often taken the
form of cultishness, which is a very effective business model, as Goldman and Bain attest, but more
recently, outright mistreatment is becoming common. For instance, Amazon has so successfully cultivated
a "culture of fear" that t
he overwhelming majority of employees cry at work .
Note the claim in the article about elevated suicide rates at Apple supplier Foxconn is contested;
some contend that statistically, its rate of suicides is no higher than for other employers. However,
many of the dorms apparently had mesh canopies to prevent suicides, so one wonders if direct comparisons
are apt.
By Sarah Waters, a Senior Lecturer in French Studies, University of Leeds and Jenny Chan,
a Departmental Lecturer in Sociology and China Studies, University of Oxford. Originally published
at The Conversation
A Paris prosecutor
recently called for the former CEO and six senior managers of telecoms provider, France Télécom,
to face criminal charges for workplace harassment. The recommendation followed a lengthy inquiry
into the suicides of a number of employees at the company between 2005 and 2009. The prosecutor accused
management of deliberately "destabilising" employees and creating a "stressful professional climate"
through a company-wide strategy of "harcèlement moral" – psychological bullying.
All deny any wrongdoing and it is now up to a judge to decide whether to follow the prosecutor's
advice or dismiss the case. If it goes ahead, it would be a landmark criminal trial, with implications
far beyond just one company.
Workplace suicides are sharply on the rise internationally, with increasing numbers of employees
choosing to take their own lives in the face of extreme pressures at work.
Recent studies in the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, China, India and Taiwan all
point to a steep rise in suicides in the context of a generalised deterioration in working conditions.
Rising suicides are part of the profound transformations in the workplace that have taken place
over the past 30 years. These transformations are arguably rooted in the political and economic shift
to
globalisation that has radically altered the way we work.
In the post-war Fordist era
of industry (pioneered by US car manufacturer Henry Ford), jobs generally provided stability
and a clear career trajectory for many, allowing people to define their collective identity and their
place in the world. Strong trade unions in major industrial sectors meant that employees could negotiate
their working rights and conditions.
Now, it is not enough simply to work hard. In the words of Marxist theorist Franco Berardi,
"the soul is put to work"
and workers must devote their whole selves to the needs of the company.
For the economist Guy Standing, the
precariat is the
new social class of the 21st century, characterised by the lack of job security and even basic stability.
Workers move in and out of jobs which give little meaning to their lives. This shift has had deleterious
effects on many people's experience of work, with rising cases of acute stress, anxiety, sleep disorders,
burnout, hopelessness
and, in some cases, suicide .
Holding Companies to Account
Yet, company bosses are rarely held to account for inflicting such misery on their employees.
The suicides at France Télécom preceded another well-publicised case in a large multinational company
– Foxconn Technology Group in China – where 18 young migrant workers aged between 17 and 25 attempted
suicide at one of Foxconn's main factories in 2010 (14 of whom
died ).
The victims all worked on the assembly line making electronic gadgets for some of the world's
richest corporations, including Samsung, Sony and Dell. But it was Apple that received the most criticism,
as Foxconn was its main supplier at the time.
One of our son's best friends from high school was a funny, bright kid that got a BS/MS in
Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) a few years ago. He did his first
coop at a software firm in Boston that dealt with electricity demand management.
Then he went to work for Apple, first as a coop then as an employee.
By the time his name was announced to the media, everything about him on Facebook, LinkedIn,
etc had disappeared. They scrubbed him off the internet. We don't know if he posted anything before
his death, but our son said his pages were pretty generic for a 25 year old.
Let it suffice to say something went terribly wrong in the libertarian paradise of Silicon
Valley, really just a ritzier version of FoxConn. Having known him through high school and occasional
visits thereafter, one never would have thought such an end would have been possible.
It's happening on the job, at school, and damn near any other social institution where the
stakes can be ratcheted up in intensity. Suicide is one end of the spectrum of dysfunction.
Going postal is another. Our elites don't like wet work much, so they find other ways to get
rid of the undesirables. I doubt they planned it this way, but isn't it sweet that all you have
to do is stop being fake-nice as a boss and the problem takes care of itself?
It's not only corporations, of course, that have problems with endemic abuse and need to be
taking responsibility, nor is the issue restricted to institutions where profits take precedence
über alles. Here is the link for the site "Academia Is Killing My Friends," which is described
in the "About" section like this:
I am a final year PhD student in the Social Sciences. Last year a fellow PhD student committed
suicide after being harassed by a lecturer. I got angry and made this site. This site is a
response to the cultures of violence, fear and silence I have witnessed and experienced in
my academic community. Sexual harassment, mental illness and unpaid labor are the accepted
and expected norms. Abusive academics are well known and yet remain in the community. We are
powerless and afraid of backlash, unemployment and failure. All of this gets worse as public
spending is cut and universities become increasingly neoliberal institutions. This site is
a 'fuck you' to the silence and fear. It is, I hope, a space where we can share our stories
of abuse, exploitation and suffering in academia.
There are now 104 stories and counting. An excerpt from a recent post (#103):
I started out an idealistic and hopeful student. Worked to pay for college, good grades,
got into a good PhD program. Worked hard, had a good mentor, published, moved on to postdoc.
I thought that I could keep working hard, publish and move into some reasonable career trajectory.
Right?
Well, we all know why we're here. I can't even go into the details. It's a familiar story
– sexism, racism. Abuse by an advisor, with nowhere to turn. Rampant discrimination and harassment.
When I looked for help (from the wrong people, apparently), I was told to suck it up, work
harder. Constant financial worries. Every little setback used up my savings. I got sick and
never really recovered… stress and overwork guaranteed that. I was good at living modestly,
but that wasn't enough to sustain me. Now, I'm just trying to pick up the pieces. I feel floored
by the lack of opportunities and support through most of my career. I had no idea how much
a career in academia would rely on having money to begin with. I feel like this work has stolen
my life away. And I'm not the only one – I know plenty of people who have had a similar experience.
The best people leave early.
Worst of all, I don't even feel that I can tell my story. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody
would lift a finger to protect me from retribution. Nobody wants to address problems like this.
I feel so much grief for the good I might have done in another profession, the life I could
have lived. I don't know what to do with this grief.
Some of the worst abuse I ever experienced was in academia. Here's an example:
During the mid-1980s, I was on the staff of a journal at the University of Pittsburgh. My boss,
the departmental librarian, must have come from the Attila the Hun School of Management, because
that's how she treated people. Shortly after I started my job, I got on her bad side. I
have no idea why this happened. Thirty years late, I still can't figure it out.
It may have had something to do with the introductory meeting we were supposed to have with
the journal's publisher.
Well, being the good little employee that I thought I was, I had my office clock set to the
correct time. I didn't know it at the time, but the library clock was 10 minutes fast. Yep, the
same trick that bars pull on their customers. Getting them out the door before the official closing
time.
So, I got to the library a few minutes before 9 a.m. Plenty of time to for the boss and me
to walk over to the publisher's office. Bossola was SEETHING. I was LATE! Just look at that CLOCK!
It was already after nine!
Over to the publisher's office we walked, and guess what. They weren't even ready for us. So
we sat in the waiting area for a while.
The publisher and his staff couldn't have been nicer. The polar opposite of my boss.
During the 15 months that I worked at Pitt, I felt the brunt of this lady's abuse. She'd
call me into the office, launch into a blistering tirade, and I would sit there, stunned. And,
to her, that was another cause for anger. Why was I just sitting there and not reacting?
During her final tirade, when she told me to start looking for another job, I'd had enough.
I told her that I was going to start looking for another city.
Well, guess who sat there, stunned.
She insisted that I didn't have to do anything THAT drastic. But my mind was made up. I was
done with her, done with Pitt, and done with Pittsburgh.
Three and a half months and several wonderful bicycling miles later, I landed in Tucson, and
I'm still here. Without that nasty boss, I probably wouldn't be in this wonderful city.
As for Ms. Nasty, she left Pitt and went on to become the head librarian at Chatham College,
which was nearby. Small women's college. Known for its caring, friendly, and supportive environment.
Ms. Nasty didn't last very long there.
And she didn't last very long at St. Michael's College in northern Vermont. I think that she
was fired from that institution, but I'm not sure. Let's just say that I hope she was, because
she deserved a taste of her own medicine.
Here is a story that scared shit of Academia's organized crime ring for a little while in the
early 90s.
"The University of Iowa shooting took place at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa on
November 1, 1991. The gunman was Gang Lu, a 28-year-old former graduate student at the university.
He killed four members of the university faculty and one student, and seriously wounded another
student, before taking his own life."
Damn. Thing is I've heard this from Actuarials and docs. It's everywhere the "well, just work
harder". But some of it is on the employees. None have the frame of mind to kick back, to unionize,
and hard (when was unionizing ever easy?). None. All have the neoliberal view that: work hard
and you'll be fine. And so when that button is pushed, they go for broke until burned out. It's
that or be labeled lazy. Well, being unemployed is also an issue, but there's also the matter
of having the language to fight back, to not feel guilty for working less than 100 hours a week
etc.
I think an important point about Unions which people forget is that they provide an opportunity
for people to vent and let off frustration. I've been a Union rep at various places and many times
I would have people come in to have a rant about a certain manager or policy. At the end I would
say 'do you want to make a formal complaint?' and the answer would be no – the person just wanted
to get it off their chest in a confidential manner.
And to know that if they needed it, there was back up. Non-union places I've worked in, even
good ones, lack that safety valve.
I'm in the process of paying a personal price for this BS as I type this, having walked off
the job a few months ago. I'm not gonna drive 30 miles each way for 1/2 of what I should be making
only to be treated like shit by management brown-nosers. Bad news is, I'm mid-career and not a
spring chicken. Considering leaving the field altogether or doing my own startup. But if I had
known then what I know now, I would have had the voice recorder app on my phone, recording everything….
The authors fail to get to the real fundamentals of this phenomenon. The two ends of the
spectrum that they delineate can be housed under a single umbrella, that of neoliberalism. And
it is obvious that neoliberalism can kill. And Durkheim would have agreed readily that ideas can
kill, and not just via suicide.
Ugh. After twenty years in commercial construction, I thought our industry was an outlier for
abuse, psychotic management, and general HR mayhem. Apparently not. Arizona Slim, I could have
profiled Mrs. Nasty at any number of firms I worked for…she's not unusual.
I stay at smaller companies with good people for less money because I just can't handle the
high pressure and abusive environment of Big Time Construction Firms. I also have zero interest
in big projects anymore – too many psycho Owners who appear to delight in torturing the contractor
as a hobby. The men I work with think I'm nuts to turn down some work. I tell them, there's no
reward for it. No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no big promotion – just health problems
and more commuting for the same old, same old.
You too? Abuse, and psycho management is why I'm considering leaving the trade altogether,
too bad I've invested 30 years and a few schools into it…. but of course, nobody *made* me invest
in myself and believe in the american dream /sarc
Give yourself a break inode_buddha. Thirty years ago, you, and myself as well, made a rational
decision as to what direction to take. At the time, construction and the associated trades were
honourable and respectable. A decent living could be made, and a future was in sight. Neo-Liberalism
has, since then, destroyed most things that benefited anyone other than the criminal management
classes. Humanity has had to stand up and fight for decency and equality throughout history.
The decent living in the construction trades, for me anyways, has started and (so far) ended
as a contract employee. I'm at the cusp of 50 and am looking at disaster if I can't find something
permanent. My spouse has her dream job (that unfortunately comes with mediocre pay) so moving
the fam for a job is our of the question. I'm one dropped contract away from my professional expiration
date – too old for entry level, not experienced enough for management, unable to move to a better
job market if such a thing existed.
But at least I paid off my student loans, so that's not hanging over my head like the sword
of Damocles.
Living on the road, out of town, at the jobsite, etc. etc. There's a reason why so many of
the Superintendents and Foremen I've encountered on big jobs drink to excess.
I've had my share of Mz/Mr Nasty bosses. The worst thing one can do to one of these persons,
as I learned one afternoon, is to laugh at them when they "put you in your place." The program
is going south anyway. If the wherewithall is available for a drive home, go ahead and let 'them'
know you're not going to put up with abuse anymore. (Easier said than done, I'll agree, but, as
long as you and yours aren't starving, why not? You'll sleep better at night. Take my word for
it.)
Smaller outfits are, from my experience, easier to get along with because the manager is often
the owner or family and not divorced from the ground floor experience. Reason is used instead
of formula.
I used to hold the same belief about construction being the bilge of the work world. Then I
worked for the USPS for almost three years. Then the dreaded Lowes Home Improvement set its avernal
brand sizzling on my soul.
Ah my, what a picaresque novel all this would make.
Picaresque novel or hilarious TV show. I've written the scripts in my head a thousand times….clueless
architects, raging Owners, ridiculous Inspectors, overfed upper management/sales staff, etc. etc.
I agree that laughter is truly the best medicine in this business. As a friend once told me,
"Sometimes you gotta let the crazy people be crazy."
Some titles: "Faking, Inc.," "Department of Imaginary Tools," "Bargain Employee of the Month,"
and the annual winner, "Going Out of Business Sale: Season Three."
Since I'll need to go back to work for a few years, until my miniscule SS kicks in, I might do
a Home Depot Equal Opportunity for Exploitation Edition.
(When I grow up I want to be a Day Trader! Maybe I'll take a flutter in pork bellies on the
Chicago Exchange.)
In her own strange way, Ms. Nasty had quite a positive effect on my life. As our relationship
deteriorated, I started piling up the savings. I was planning my escape, even before that final
tirade.
My last six weeks at Pitt were amazing. After I tended my resignation (on Friday, February
13, 1987), the whole department was impressed with how relaxed and happy I was. It was as if a
different Slim had moved into my body.
Yes, there was that farewell luncheon where Ms. Nasty refused to raise her glass in a toast,
but you know what? I was going to be out the door in a few hours, so I no longer cared. In fact,
I found her refusal rather amusing.
What came next was even better. That pile of savings was deployed for something I really enjoyed.
Long-distance bike touring! Rode thousands of miles in a little over three months! And then I
settled here in Tucson!
Where I found a job similar to my Pitt job, but with a nice boss. That was my last FT job.
I've been a freelancer since 1994.
So, Ms. Nasty, thanks for the motivation. And I do hope that you learned how to be nice to
people who are, ahem, beneath you.
That's what Labor (or socialist) political parties used to do, and Corbyn's trying to re-institute
in the UK.
One cannot be pro-trade (as currently defined) and pro democratic not pro citizen, not pro-labor.
The US has never permitted socialism, and prefers crony capitalism, which is actually close
to fascism.
The whole defense Military Industry Complex of Government and Industry is a definition of fascism
in the US. I place no regard on Ike's warning about the MIC as he did noting until the end of
his reign, and then made a speech.
At long last I've finally managed to get out of a job I couldn't stand after working there
for nearly a decade. The pay was ridiculously low, even relative to the industry standard. Management
routinely promoted narcissistic, ignorant cronies who never told them the word "no." I couldn't
be happier it's finally over. They've had so much turnover in the past couple of years entire
departments are composed of entirely new people. The CEO cares about nothing except looking good
to the shareholders and owners, and that's pretty much the attitude from the top on down. Look
good to the people with power and to hell with the rest.
I'd be surprised if the company still existed 5-10 years from now.
Soooo glad I'm retired. I was starting to see more and more of this over the last couple of
decades, and it escalated as times worsened. I wish libertarians and free-marketers would contemplate
the situations described here, and consider what kind of a world it would be if financial oligarchs
held even more power. What hope would there be to counter this sort of abuse?
I wouldn't exactly call myself a libertarian (I'm not sure what I am), but I think that the
libertarian response would be that if there were fewer pointless regulations people would be much
more readily able to work for themselves, and not for an abusive boss. It is unbelievably hard
to start a business now, even a solo one, due to regs. And I'm not talking about reasonable regs
(don't dump toxins in waterways). I'm talking about regs that have been invented by big existing
businesses to keep upstarts from starting.
A number of years ago there was an article about someone who tried to start a storage company
in the CT/RI area and how they eventually gave up because the regs made the process insane; there's
not much that's simpler than a storage company. Most small business owners I know tell me they
could not start now because it has all gotten too complicated; they have been able to cobble together
responses to the new regs as they go, but starting at this point would be impossible for them.
Picture what it would be like if you could look at your skill set, and go out and work for
yourself without a huge amount of extremely complex taxes and paperwork. A strange thought, isn't
it?
I'm not saying this would be an option for most people ( not at all
), but it does not now even exist as an escape valve. Now you have to have millions in
start-up funds to start some BS company (e.g. one more stupid company that delivers food to patron's
homes) that isn't actually meant to make money (it just exists to get money from investors), and
you need that much to deal with the paperwork.
And, if someone wants to pop up and say "the paperwork is not so bad and complicated," please
remember that you are a NC poster and are in the top ten percent of the population for ability
to deal with paperwork.
I have to tell you, as a small business owner myself, this "regulations are burdensome"
argument is a crock. Lobbyists in DC learned decades ago that the best way to put a sympathetic
face on their efforts to get waivers for big businesses is to have small business owners act as
their mouthpieces. And there are enough extreme libertarians everywhere that it's not hard to
find someone to screech that the regulations he is subject to are horrible irrespective of how
much a burden they really are.
Specifically, regarding a storage business, I can't fathom your view that storage companies
should not be regulated. If I am putting my valuable stuff in the hands of someone else, I sure
as hell want protection that they won't cut all the locks and run off with everything, or find
more legitimate ways of stealing, like create excuses to jack up my storage costs by 10X and hold
my goods hostage. And what about requiring them to have adequate fire protection and security?
Even if they aren't crooks, cheap and reckless will also result in my property being stolen or
damaged.
In general, entrepreneurship is way oversold in America to legitimate the bad treatment of
workers: "If things are as bad as you say, why put up with it? Go start your own business!" That's
ridiculous since staring your own business requires that you be both a good salesman and a good
general manager, and good salesmen are almost without exception terrible managers, as anyone in
Corporate America will tell you. And it's extremely hard to make partnerships work unless the
principals worked together in the same company for years (ie, they grew up with the same training
and rules, and so will default to the same assumptions as to how things are done). Even in consulting,
I've seldom seen people who come of of different large firms work well together absent a strong
organization around them.
The proof that pretty much no one should go into business for themselves is 9 out of every
10 businesses fail within three years. The percentabe is no doubt higher if you extend the time
frame to five years. I've started two successful businesses in the US and one that didn't work
out in Oz, but an overseas launch is much harder and it seemed too dodgy to go beyond the two
years I'd invested (as in I might have made it a go had I kept on, but I decided it was more prudent
to cut my losses).
And I don't know where you get your information about new business from. It's pretty clear
you aren't in that world. You don't need millions in funds. The overwhelming majority of new ventures
are funded from savings, credit cards, and loans from friends and family.
And if you aren't able to handle regulatory filings (or find a lawyer or accountant who can
help) you aren't competent to be in business for yourself. Running a business means you run into
obstacles all the time and need to find ways around them. Do you not think that private firms
also require paperwork, like vendor approval processes and documenting your invoices? If you can't
handle paperwork, you need to stay on a payroll.
While I agree with Yves that there is too much libertarian bitching about regulations, there
are a lot of really stupid laws on the books that we could easily do without. As an example, I
was recently looking at an RFP from a public agency in the state of MI. One of the requirements
for bidders responding was to provide a notarized affidavit that the company was not controlled
by the Republic of Iran! Apparently this is Michigan Public Act 517 of 2012. BTW, the winning
bidder, a large US corporation, certified they are not secretly controlled by the evil Ayatollahs.
yes but most people won't be able to work until they are dead, because they aren't able to
or because noone is going to hire them (it's why people collect social security at 62, it's not
because this is the smartest financial plan, it's clearly not) and I hope most don't take the
"therefore middle aged or senior aged suicide" route.
If you are able to work until you die a natural death good for you I guess (even better to
be able to choose to retire of course), but it's not going to be an option for many people even
if they want it to be, health or the job market WILL force them out.
"Perhaps this world is another planet's hell." – Aldous Huxley. Yes, it is definitely.
Perhaps pretty soon they will start strip search employees when they come to work.
Excellent and timely article. As the writers observe, the problem is global in nature. If you
work in or have worked in corporate America, you likely have personally experienced or seen the
results of the deliberate creation of a stressful professional climate and workplace environment,
abusive psychological bullying, and intentional destabilization of employees.
Increasing numbers of suicides are one outcome of these environments. But as the writers
point out, there are a number of other symptoms associated with these toxic workplaces, none good.
They range from physical and mental health issues, to various forms of addiction, burnout, and
secondary effects on employees' personal lives and those of their family members or partners.
Although it seems that individuals with psychopathic characteristics often rise in management
in many of these organizations, I believe the roots of the problem lie in a broader and deeper
systemic failure. I agree that neoliberal ideology, globalization, and the basic structures
of our debt-based economy all play a key role in enabling the intentional development of these
organizational environments.
It may be a global problem, but it seems particularly acute in the US.
Ian Welsh's observations
ring true to me:
One of the most striking things about much of American culture is the simple meanness of
it. The cruelty… There is also a culture of punching down… America has a high-violence, high-bullying
society… [Y]ou can have a high-violence society in which it is considered unacceptable to attack
the weak (doing so is viewed as cowardice), but that's not the case in America. In American
culture, the weak are the preferred target. Failure is punishable by homelessness, suffering,
and death… You'd better get down on your knees and do whatever your boss wants, because if
you're fired or let go you may never work again, and if you do hang on at a bottom-wage job,
well, your life will suck… Having learned that the right way to treat anyone who is weaker
than them is with demands for acquiescence and dominance displays, to many Americans, to interpret
any sign of weakness as requiring them, as a moral duty, to dominate and hurt the weak person.
People become what is required of them. They learn from authority figures how to behave… The
entire process makes America a far more unpleasant place to live or visit than is necessary.
The structure of dominance, meanness and cruelty is palpable to the visitor, and distressing;
even as it warps the best inhabitant.
I believe the roots of the problem lie in a broader and deeper systemic failure.
Yes, a systemic failure, but to be more precise, it is ultimately a particular kind of
market failure that gives employers an incentive to abuse their employees.
The best way to understand what I mean is to imagine a labor market where there are always
more jobs available than there are people to fill them. In an economy that is experiencing a chronic
labor shortage, employers would have a market incentive to actually start treating their employees
with respect.
In markets where labor surpluses are carefully maintained (virtually every market you've ever
known), business owners/managers feel free to express anger at any employee shehe feels a 'power
advantage' over. They sense they have this advantage when/if they believe the employee fears losing
hiser job more than the employer fears losing the employee.
It really would force a profound change in employer-employee relations, generally. Employers
would be compelled by the marketplace to not only find ways to motivate their employees to work
hard, but also to find ways to make them feel content , psychologically.
In an economy that is experiencing a sustained labor shortage, the crudest and least sympathetic
methods of motivating employees would be gradually phased out.
'Bottom feeders' in the competition for scarce labor would have a constant incentive to try
to retain employees, and to 'go the extra mile' to work with people who are having problems. Individuals
who are having personal problems would not be simply cast aside, as they are now.
The national government could do something to help those businesses that are struggling within
very [price-] competitive markets, providing counseling services, etc., to help those employees
who are struggling with various problems outside of the job environment.
In our current labor surplus economy, lawsuits may give some employers an incentive
to treat their people with respect, but it won't get anywhere close to providing THE solution
to the problem that we would experience if we were to create and indefinitely maintain a labor
shortage in the economy.
And to think that Pink Floyd recorded the verse; "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English
way." Back in 1968.
Quiet desperation is a characteristic of a declining society.
As far as I can tell quiet desperation is the life of most people. This article highlights suicide, but drug and alcohol abuse are just as much a result of poor
employment outcomes as suicide and for the same reasons.
When people stop being quietly desperate is when change happens.
I refer to CCR's Effigy although as
a Gen-X -er I Prefer the Uncle Tupelo
version
Guys. You're also forgetting that if the U.S. took in the Nazi Scientists and Death Specialists
and used them and their techniques to crush real democratic, fair, egalitarian societies in Latin
America (Chomsky) and then learned to transmute overt war (+nazi techniques) and colonialism into
Finance (Hudson)–then we are currently dealing with something 'worse than Nazi Germany' (my 90
year old neighbor).
"... there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with children reporting incomes of less than $2 per person per day, a fact we documented in our book, $2 a Day ..."
"... What it did in reality was essentially kill the U.S. cash welfare system. (We use the term "cash welfare" to distinguish it from other forms of assistance, such as housing vouchers and food stamps, which have pre-designated uses.) ..."
"... Prior to August 22, 1996, families such as that one-families with little or no cash income-were entitled by law to a check from the government, thanks to AFDC. The program had many flaws. Yet it provided a cash floor that could have eased the hardships of folks at the end of their ropes. ..."
"... We've traveled to many different parts of the country getting to know people in need. While greedy, heartless landlords were sometimes a source of their troubles, their biggest problem-by far-has been the lack of access to a cash safety net-money-when failing to find or keep a job. In 21st-century America, a family needs at least some cash to have any chance at stability. Only money can pay the rent (though a minority of families get subsidies via a housing voucher). Only money buys socks, underwear, and school supplies. Money is what's needed to keep the utilities on. Each of the families we followed-technically eligible if our reading of the rules is right-weren't getting that money from TANF. ..."
"... Yet these desperately needy families either didn't know the program existed, felt the stigma and hassle weren't worth it, or had been rebuffed at the welfare office. ..."
"... Why has TANF left so many needy families behind? Its advocates argue that it reduces dependency and promotes work. Its critics contend that the time limits and work requirements it imposes are too punitive. Yet a careful look under the hood reveals that both of these claims fail to grasp the fundamental nature of what TANF has become. ..."
"... Built into the very core of TANF are perverse incentives for states to shed families from the welfare rolls. If they do so, they get to keep the money and use it for other things. And outside of what's spent on cash aid, there is virtually no meaningful oversight on how the rest of the money is spent. ..."
"... What are states doing with their TANF dollars if they aren't providing cash welfare to families? Some states, such as Ohio, spend a considerable portion on child care, no doubt a boon to the working poor, yet folks not in jobs or in work programs aren't eligible. Likewise other states, such as Wisconsin, use some of their block grant to fund state tax credits that benefit the working poor. ..."
"... When TANF is used to pay for giveaways for the non-poor or to plug budget holes, it becomes welfare for states and not for people. ..."
"... What states spend astonishingly little on-besides cash assistance-is helping the poor find employment. In 2014, Ohio-which is about at the national average here-allocated only 8 percent of combined federal and state TANF funding to vital "hand-up" activities linking recipients to jobs. ..."
"... Ronald Regan brought the image of the infamous-albeit mythical-welfare queen into the national consciousness. Bill Clinton probably owes his first term in office to his promise to "end welfare as we know it," and possibly his second to signing the reform into law. Both politicians railed against AFDC's so-called "perverse disincentives." TANF offered states a lot of flexibility to innovate, to allow a flowering of new ideas to help the poor. But that's not what the country got. Instead it got a new kind of welfare queens: states. States, not people, are using TANF to close the holes in their budgets. It is states, not people, who are falling prey to the "perverse disincentives" of welfare. ..."
America's poorest are still dealing with the consequences of the legislation that Bill Clinton
signed into law two decades ago today.
As recently as April of this year, former president
Bill Clinton defended the welfare reform bill he signed into law on August 22, 1996-twenty years
ago today-as one of the great accomplishments of his presidency. The bill scrapped the welfare program
known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and created a new one that lasts to this
day-Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). There was a grandiose idea behind the change:
TANF was no simple safety net; it was also meant to be a springboard to self-sufficiency through
employment, which it encouraged recipients to find work by imposing work requirements and limiting
how long they could receive benefits.
Today, across the country, welfare is-at best-a shadow of its former self. In much of the Deep
South and parts of the West, it has all but disappeared. In the aftermath of welfare reform,
there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with children reporting incomes of less than
$2 per person per day, a fact we documented in our book, $2 a Day. As of 2012, according to
the most reliable government data available on the subject, roughly 3 million American children spend
at least three months in a calendar year living on virtually no money.
Numerous other sources of data confirm these findings. According to the most recent data available
(2014), TANF rolls are now down to about 850,000 adults with their 2.5 million children-a whopping
decline of 75 percent from 1996. TANF was meant to "replace" AFDC. What it did in reality was
essentially kill the U.S. cash welfare system. (We use the term "cash welfare" to distinguish it
from other forms of assistance, such as housing vouchers and food stamps, which have pre-designated
uses.)
Cleveland, where the Republicans hosted their convention this year, is one of the poorest cities
in the country and a place where the effects of this reform can be seen most plainly. What has happened
to welfare in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and its inner suburbs, is reflective of its
fate elsewhere in the nation. Currently, the county's TANF-to-poverty ratio (the fraction of poor
families with children who are actually receiving help from the program) sits at 22 percent-right
about at Ohio's, and the nation's, average. (In some states, it is dramatically lower, such as Georgia,
where it is just six, and Texas, where it is five.)
What's happened to poor people as a result? Since 2013, we've spent considerable time in the city
trying to find out. Each year, we catch up with several families who, in 2013, had spent at least
three months living without money income exceeding $2 per person per day. To deepen our perspective,
we also spend time trying to understand what's going on for the city's poorest, more broadly speaking.
Earlier this month, one of us-Kathryn-spent a day talking to supplicants at a west-side food pantry.
She spent an afternoon walking the streets of one neighborhood, striking up casual conversations
with residents as they took out the garbage or sat on their porches. Yet the toughest experience
was when Kathryn went for a ride-along with bailiffs assigned to the Cleveland Housing Court as they
went about their daily rounds, evicting a family from their west-side apartment mid-meal.
Prior to August 22, 1996, families such as that one-families with little or no cash income-were
entitled by law to a check from the government, thanks to AFDC. The program had many flaws. Yet it
provided a cash floor that could have eased the hardships of folks at the end of their ropes.
TANF ought to be able to help-albeit temporarily, as the name implies. Yet many of the people
we have studied have never received it. One woman, a high-school graduate and a mother of two, told
us she doesn't think it's worth it. She believes that in order to meet the program's requirements,
she would have to work full time at a make-work job, leaving her no time to find legitimate employment.
Others have tried to get it and failed. When one mother we know lost her job at Walmart after
her only means of transportation failed, she initially refused to apply for TANF out of pride, insisting
that she was a worker, not a leach on the government. Finally, after months of fruitless job search,
plus a list of health diagnoses a mile long, she broke down and applied. Since then, she has been
sent away three times, all for no legitimate reason we, as TANF experts, can discern. Now, she, her
daughter, and her fiancé are tripled-up with friends in a house that lacks heat and running water
but offers a free roof over her head.
And many more aren't even aware TANF is available. During her visit to the west-side food pantry
a few weeks ago, Kathryn met families camping in unfinished basements of friends, a couple who survived
a Cleveland winter while sleeping in a tent (they advised finding a thick mattress to keep your body
off the ground and to keep a candle burning), and a family in the process of breaking apart-the three
children parceled off to relatives-until a laid-off Ford assembly line worker and his partner of
14 years, who cleaned suburban homes until her car was repossessed, can secure stable jobs and a
place to live. When we asked why they didn't apply for TANF, we were met with blank stares. If our
experiences across the city this summer are any guide, many poor Clevelanders-even those in desperate
straits-don't even realize the program exists.
We've traveled to many different parts of the country getting to know people in need. While
greedy, heartless landlords were sometimes a source of their troubles, their biggest problem-by far-has
been the lack of access to a cash safety net-money-when failing to find or keep a job. In 21st-century
America, a family needs at least some cash to have any chance at stability. Only money can pay the
rent (though a minority of families get subsidies via a housing voucher). Only money buys socks,
underwear, and school supplies. Money is what's needed to keep the utilities on. Each of the families
we followed-technically eligible if our reading of the rules is right-weren't getting that money
from TANF.
How did they survive? Nearly all had sold plasma from time to time, some regularly. In 2014, so-called
"donations" hit an
all-time high at 32.5 million, triple the rate recorded a decade prior. They collected tin cans
for an average yield of about $1 an hour. They traded away their food stamps, usually at the going
rate of 50 or 60 cents on the dollar. Some traded sex for cash or-more commonly-the payment of their
cell phone bill, a room to stay in, a meal, or some other kind of help. One 15-year-old was lured
into a sexual relationship with her teacher on the promise of food. Yet these desperately needy
families either didn't know the program existed, felt the stigma and hassle weren't worth it, or
had been rebuffed at the welfare office.
Some would argue that families are better off without cash welfare. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
warned that welfare was
"a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." Yet even Ron Haskins, one of the Republican
architects of the program,
recognizes
that the problem of "disconnected mothers"-those neither working nor on welfare-is "a serious
policy issue, that its magnitude is increasing, and that in two decades the nation has not figured
out how to address the problem."
Why has TANF left so many needy families behind? Its advocates argue that it reduces dependency
and promotes work. Its critics contend that the time limits and work requirements it imposes are
too punitive. Yet a careful look under the hood reveals that both of these claims fail to grasp the
fundamental nature of what TANF has become.
To put it plainly, TANF is not really a welfare program at all. Peter Germanis, a conservative
expert on welfare policy and former Reagan White House aide,
describes it best, as a "fixed and flexible funding stream"-think slush fund-for states, provided
by what are known as "block grants." Yes, some block-grant dollars are used to provide cash aid to
struggling families. But
three of every four dollars allocated to TANF is directed toward other purposes.
How can this be? After the 1996 welfare reform bill was signed into law, states were no longer
obligated to give out a dime to those in need. The rules governing TANF are so flexible that states
can potentially eliminate cash handouts all together. What's more, TANF's rules threaten to penalize
states that continue to provide cash assistance, such as California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Vermont.
It is easier to comply with TANF regulations by simply pushing people off the rolls, as Cuyahoga
County has done.
Built into the very core of TANF are perverse incentives for states to shed families from
the welfare rolls. If they do so, they get to keep the money and use it for other things. And outside
of what's spent on cash aid, there is virtually no meaningful oversight on how the rest of the money
is spent.
If past is prologue, the dollars devoted to cash assistance will only continue to dwindle. Even
in 2006, TANF had far greater reach than it does now. Meanwhile, counts of the number of families
knocking on the doors of the nation's food pantries
have reached the highest point ever recorded. "Donations" of blood plasma in exchange for cash
have tripled in the last decade. School-aged children are increasingly likely to be homeless or doubled
up. In sum, on many measures, child and family wellbeing has taken a nosedive.
Welfare reform is certainly not the only factor driving these trends. An increasingly perilous
low-wage labor market and a growing affordable-housing crisis are critical drivers too. Yet a simple
thought experiment brings the role of welfare reform in focus. Imagine a world in which states are
prohibited by law from denying any family who meets eligibility criteria. Now envision a world in
which denying a family in need is perfectly legal, and states who do so get to keep the cash. This
is America before and after welfare reform. On the eve of welfare reform, roughly seven in 10 poor
families claimed cash aid; only about two in 10 now do so. If the safeguards governing AFDC were
in place today, this sort of extreme poverty would be a fraction of what it is now.
What are states doing with their TANF dollars if they aren't providing cash welfare to families?
Some states, such as Ohio, spend a considerable portion on child care, no doubt a boon to the working
poor, yet folks not in jobs or in work programs aren't eligible. Likewise other states, such as Wisconsin,
use some of their block grant to fund state tax credits that benefit the working poor.
But the remainder goes to an assortment of other activities not necessarily benefitting the impoverished
at all. Michigan funds college scholarships for young adults with no children, under the rationale
that doing so may reduce teen pregnancy. Texas spends a large chunk of its block grant on its child
welfare-system, an expense the state would have to assume responsibility for otherwise. When
TANF is used to pay for giveaways for the non-poor or to plug budget holes, it becomes welfare for
states and not for people.
What states spend astonishingly little on-besides cash assistance-is helping the poor find
employment. In 2014, Ohio-which is about at the national average here-allocated only 8 percent of
combined federal and state TANF funding to vital "hand-up" activities linking recipients to jobs.
Ronald Regan brought the image of the infamous-albeit mythical-welfare queen into the national
consciousness. Bill Clinton probably owes his first term in office to his promise to "end welfare
as we know it," and possibly his second to signing the reform into law. Both politicians railed against
AFDC's so-called "perverse disincentives." TANF offered states a lot of flexibility to innovate,
to allow a flowering of new ideas to help the poor. But that's not what the country got. Instead
it got a new kind of welfare queens: states. States, not people, are using TANF to close the holes
in their budgets. It is states, not people, who are falling prey to the "perverse disincentives"
of welfare.
"... The report dismisses the myths that access to Social Security disability or that men are not choosing to work as culprits. More than a third were in poverty. Fewer that 25% of the men not working have a spouse supporting them and that percentage has dropped in the last 50 years. The CEA's analysis find that Social Security disability explains at most 0.5% of the reduction. ..."
"... Similarly, the problem with European-style job training programs is that US employers do not want to hire people with general training, even in a particular skill area. Their strong preference is to hire someone who is doing the exact same job for a similar company, so as to minimize their effort (in theory; in practice, the extra time spent on the search probably offsets the theoretical savings). The cure for that is a much more robust job market, where employers realize they are not going to find the perfect candidate and take someone approximate and give them the training and other guidance they need to become productive. ..."
"... Friends of mine visited Germany last year, noticed that for curb, pothole repair where in the US you see 2-3 guys and a bunch of equipment, there he would see 8 guys with shovels and little to no equipment. ..."
"... Yes, when I was working at UT-Austin, they cut the janitorial staff so that offices were only vacuumed once a month. ..."
"... The reality of what is happening is on the economic/political level. It involves a small number of people, living in a rich, opulent high tower, who for years acted and enacted without the slightest bit of empathy or selflessness. These same people have literally no depth to their thought and are ruled by the very gluttony/ego so valued in todays consumerist society. This type used to live in Rome during Diocletian's rule, in Egypt during the Hyskos invasion, in the Mayan Empire during the Postclassic period, etc ad infinitum. The overall picture has repeated itself, as an empire is a microcosm of any living organism; it gets old and becomes very susceptible to change, that is, the ruling class become so removed from reality that their decision making begins to deviate further and further from the actuality of the current situation. The Housing Crisis is a prime example. The banks saw fit to literally scam their own customers with no government intervention! Twice! This type of thinking quickly affects the entire nation. People begin to see a futility in living morally and truthfully, and start to wonder if the entire system is a scam. ..."
"... I've visited enough towns in the Mid West where everyone is on some pharmaceutical, usually Percocet or valium, yet have no money for a proper house with heating and cooling. ..."
"... So entire industries now eschew people older than 30 in favor of being staffed entirely by 20 something's. This will surely end well. ..."
"... They are bring these workers from India where starting IT salaries are $10,000/year. Check early in the morning and late at night and you will see the buses delivering the workers who lived crammed in surrounding apartments. One told me his Indian outsourcers had eight of them living in a two-bedroom apartment with one bathroom - while working 80-100 hours per week. They are threatened with deportation if they complain, and in some cases, their families back home are physically threatened. ..."
"... granting automatic work authorization to all H-1B spouses. ..."
"... expanding Bush's "Optional Practical Training" now allowing stem graduates to work for three years ..."
"... lowered qualifying requirements for L-1B visas. L-1b visas allow corporations to import their foreign employee to work in the US at the home nation salaries. And has lead to widespread abuse such as foreign employees being paid $1.73/hour. ..."
"... modified the B-1 visa, used attended training and meetings, to incorporate the "B-1 in lieu of H-1B" which now allows some foreign workers to work in the US on the B-1 visa ..."
"... There are now well over a million foreign guest workers in the US and the numbers are growing. Curiously (ha ha!), DHS does not even keep count of the above admissions. ..."
"... Wow, didn't know they expanded the student work permission to three years. Used to be one year. Essentially if you go to college here you have bought yourself a ticket to live in America and take a job from an American. ..."
"... I was replaced by a 20-something. Actually, at my last job (3 years ago) both the older employees, myself and another employee, were replaced. One employee who had worked there for 15 years and was 60, so TWO years away from retirement, was let go. (I hope he sued the pants off that horrible firm!) ..."
"... Yes indeed, there's a reason big business doesn't want medicare for all – it would result in the ultimate 'flexible workforce'. Workers immediately bailing out of every shit show employment situation they manage to fall into at the drop of the hat with no COBRA or insurance dead zones. But on the other side of the coin, it would ramp up the Uber jitney economy of on-demand disposable workers lined up holding signs displaying their skill sets for a day's pay at the highway on-ramps at 6:30 AM (or, as the neo-liberal mindset would frame it – the entrepreneurs). ..."
"... Thats pretty much how the movie/tv industry operates in Hollywood. ..."
"... History of Work Comp as I remember it - speaking of how "the company" counts its beans: Johns Manville had a problem with people getting slowly sicker on the job (handling asbestos) starting late in the 1800s paid doctors to do studies that proved the asbestos-asbestosis-mesothelioma connection, and gave some rates of worsening of the diseases and hence points at which workers could no longer work. The researchers and doctors were paid for and threatened into silence on the findings, and required to ignore their Hippocratic obligations. Workers had to go to company doctors, who would nurse them along until they were fired for inability. ..."
"... All labor reform policies put forth by Republicans and their policy activation arm (Dems) have been to make life easier and richer for CEO's, not to help workers. So now economists are surprised by the results? What a useful profession they are. ..."
"... The 40 hour work week was established under Roosevelt. If you wish to reverse or stave off the declining Participation Rate, then decrease the required number of hours work to 32. We have agreed before that Labor is the lowest cost when compared to Overhead or Materials. In the end, the difference in cost would be made up by higher productivity. ..."
A new Council
of Economic Advisers study released by the White House on the fall in labor force participation among
men of prime working age (25 to 54) should be subtitled, "It's the Neoliberal Economy, Stupid."
The report does a useful job in documenting where the level and nature of the decline in male
workforce participation, which peaked at 98% in 1954 and is now at 88%, the third lowest among OECD
countries. The decline is concentrated among less educated:
Blacks have been hit harder than other groups:
And the general outlook for employment has been deteriorating over time. However, bear in mind
that this decay somewhat overlaps with the story that less educated groups have been harder hit.
US educational attainment has fallen over time.
The report dismisses the myths that access to Social Security disability or that men are not choosing
to work as culprits. More than a third were in poverty. Fewer that 25% of the men not working have
a spouse supporting them and that percentage has dropped in the last 50 years. The CEA's analysis
find that Social Security disability explains at most 0.5% of the reduction.
The cause is the state of the job market:
• Participation has fallen particularly steeply for less-educated men at the same time as their
wages have dropped relative to more-educated men, consistent with a decline in demand.
o In recent decades, less-educated Americans have suffered a reduction in their wages relative
to other groups. From 1975 until 2014, relative wages for those with a high school degree fell
from over 80 percent of the amount earned by workers with at least a college degree to less
than 60 percent
While doing a fine job dimensioning profile of the groups that have been hit the worst, the authors,
after invoking hoary neoliberal defenses, as in these workers are the losers in a globalized market,
the paper gives a coded acknowledgment that policies that are hostile to workers have produced the
expected result:
This reduction in demand, as reflected in lower wages, could reflect the broader evolution
of technology, automation, and globalization in the U.S. economy.
Conventional economic theory posits that more "flexible" labor markets-where it is easier to
hire and fire workers-facilitate matches between employers and individuals who want to work. Yet
despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD-with low levels of labor market
regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of collective
bargaining coverage-the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor force participation
rates of OECD member countries.
It is remarkably cheeky to see the authors attempt to depict "flexible" labor markets, where workers
can be tossed on the trash heap, as beneficial to laborers.
The recommendations are tepid, and the authors assert "A number of policies proposed by the Administration
would help to boost prime-age male labor force participation." In other words, we are to believe
the problem is those Republican meanies in Congress, as opposed to Obama not pushing hard for these
measures in his first term, when he had the opportunity to pass wide-ranging reforms.
One proposal is the new conventional wisdom of more infrastructure spending to create more jobs
for unskilled workers directly, improving community colleges and other training so workers will have
skills that line up with hot job markets. The problem with the latter idea is that demand can shift
quickly (look at how the oil patch was robust a few years back and is now just starting to get back
on its feet). Moreover, employers are extremely prejudiced against both older people and people who've
been out of the workforce, and the age which is deemed to be "older" has collapsed.
Per Wolf Richter (emphasis original):
Now I've come across a fascinating piece on MarketWatch, an article on what to do to get into
the cross hairs of a recruiter whose algos are combing through millions of profiles on LinkedIn.
No recruiter in his right might is personally clicking through LinkedIn profiles. They're all
scanned by algos by the millions in nanoseconds. And so the trick is structuring your profile
to get the algos to pay attention. This isn't a human-to-human scenario, but a human-to-algo scenario.
You're trying to second-guess an algo that's going to decide your future….
But apparently the lifespan of a degree has been shortened from 20 or 25 years to just 10 years!
Then it rots, and it has to be swept under the rug. The article put it this way (emphasis added):
Older job-seekers….
I mean, I'm already seething.
Older job-seekers need to walk a fine line. Unless you made the cover of
"Time" or discovered a solar galaxy, experience has a shelf life on LinkedIn, says Scott Dobroski,
career trends analyst at Glassdoor. There's no need to wax lyrical about a job that's more
than 10 years old, he says. And those who g raduated from college a decade ago
may want to exclude the date they graduated. "Your college graduation date will age
you," he says, "and although ageism is illegal, it's happening all the time." On the other
hand, if you're applying for a job as CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you graduated in 1986,
it's okay to leave the date, Dobroski says.
Note the word "older job seekers" in connection with a college degree from 10 years ago. Those
older job seekers are early Millennials!
Yves here. Admittedly, candidates on LinkedIn are more educated than the group this study is most
concerned about, but consider the message: even among the educated, the shelf life of a degree has
diminished greatly due to ageism. Why would it be less bad among the less well educated?
Similarly, the problem with European-style job training programs is that US employers do not want
to hire people with general training, even in a particular skill area. Their strong preference is
to hire someone who is doing the exact same job for a similar company, so as to minimize their effort
(in theory; in practice, the extra time spent on the search probably offsets the theoretical savings).
The cure for that is a much more robust job market, where employers realize they are not going to
find the perfect candidate and take someone approximate and give them the training and other guidance
they need to become productive.
And finally, the report claims that Obama has been pumping for one of the most needed remedies:
Increasing wages for workers by raising the minimum wage, supporting collective bargaining,
and ensuring that workers have a strong voice in the labor market.
Help me.
So I'm at a loss to understand the political purpose of this report. It's useless as a policy
driver given that this is an election year when Obama is a lame duck. Perhaps it is a weak effort
at legacy-bolstering by showing that even though the decline in labor force participation among men
was marked in the Obama Administration, it started long before he took office. But it still ignores
some elephants in the room, like the fact that employers stopped sharing the benefits of productivity
gains with workers starting in the mid-1970s and lack of sufficient demand in the economy. What it
does reveal is one of the many time-bombs that Obama has left for the next President.
Time to start blaming those darn
"stay-at-home" dads!! (PEW via CalculatedRisk) How much more evidence will it take for orthodox
economists to stop manufacturing silly excuses for a crappy job market.
Economists since the 1970s have been primarily involved with explaining away unemployment;
that is, saying it doesn't exist. This is because their theory of inflation (printing money =
inflation) breaks the rules of elementary algebra if unemployment does exist. To normal people
(non-economists) confronted with such a situation, the theory would quickly be abandoned as nonsense,
but to economists this is not an option, because this theory also says that big government is
bad, a truism that in the economics profession needs no explanation.
So you see, Marco, there is no crappy jobs market because there's no such thing as unemployment.
Ask any economist. They'll tell you.
Here are some nice nuggets from the CEA study on the stay-at-home dad myth:
"Participation rates have fallen for both parents and nonparents alike, but prime-age
males without children saw a larger decline of 9.4 percentage points since 1968 compared
to 4.9 percentage points among prime-age males with children. This suggests that men dropping
out of the labor force to be stay-at-home fathers is likely not an important factor in the overall
decline; moreover, only around a quarter of prime-age men who are not in the labor force are parents
(down from around 40 percent in 1968)."
and
"Based on [American Time Use Survey] data, there is little evidence that men are staying
home to care for children or to do house work. "
Blame technology.
Low skilled workers are easiest to replace.
Example, you used to have people sweeping and washing floors in shopping centers or subway stations.
Now you have one person on a sweeper or washer.
And how well is that working out? I'm serious. Perhaps they need a couple of more people ALONG
with the washers and sweepers. Sorry to use Disney, but part of the reason the parks are pristine
is because they have a whole lot of people going along picking up the trash and sweeping up.
It is not just technology, it is a management that doesn't understand how much labor they really
need and ignore the signs they do not have enough, because then their numbers might be down. And
this is even when their numbers are already down.
It's really about how the priorities are set and by whom.
In a sane society, the issuer of the currency would pay people to do things people like to
do or benefit from doing themselves and pay for equipment/robots to do things people don't like.
Friends of mine visited Germany last year, noticed that for curb, pothole repair where in the
US you see 2-3 guys and a bunch of equipment, there he would see 8 guys with shovels and little
to no equipment.
It is not as simple as "technology". I often find that those who say lines like "robots are
going to take away all the jobs!" are those without actual degrees in those subjects. Technology
simply moves the plane of thought, processing, manufacturing, etc to the next level. The invention
of the computer spawned an entire multi-TRILLION dollar industry with millions of jobs. Robotics
will be/is the same.
The reality of what is happening is on the economic/political level. It involves a small number
of people, living in a rich, opulent high tower, who for years acted and enacted without the slightest
bit of empathy or selflessness. These same people have literally no depth to their thought and
are ruled by the very gluttony/ego so valued in todays consumerist society. This type used to
live in Rome during Diocletian's rule, in Egypt during the Hyskos invasion, in the Mayan Empire
during the Postclassic period, etc ad infinitum. The overall picture has repeated itself, as an
empire is a microcosm of any living organism; it gets old and becomes very susceptible to change,
that is, the ruling class become so removed from reality that their decision making begins to
deviate further and further from the actuality of the current situation. The Housing Crisis is
a prime example. The banks saw fit to literally scam their own customers with no government intervention!
Twice! This type of thinking quickly affects the entire nation. People begin to see a futility
in living morally and truthfully, and start to wonder if the entire system is a scam.
Now imagine the modern US economy as a sinking ship. The top level execs, elites, are busy
pillaging as much as they can, because they all see that US supremacy isn't going to last. Manufacturing
all moved to China, now Mexico, retail is dead in the water, the US consumer is getting weaker
and weaker. Only healthcare is staying afloat, due more to political reasons than anything else.
The easiest and most common method to increase your salary as a corporate exec is to get rid
of overhead: sell off portions of the business, layoffs, etc. They are all doing it regularly
with no impunity. US manufacturing is all but GONE. Its all been sold to PE firms that install
a puppet as the CEO, who then begins the extraction process of selling off parts of the business,
instating capital controls, and layoffs. Now it moved to retail. Eventually, America will be a
literal husk. Every place will just have the same options of a few fast food and retail chains.
The entire Midwest is already there, hence "Rust Belt". The only places that will be spared in
America will be the bubble of wealth concentrated on the coasts, but even these will begin to
whither as wealth starts to move to other, happier countries.
So in this milieu, put yourself in the place of a average HS educated American. You have two
options for your career: work your ass off and make next to nothing, or go to college and graduate
a debt-slave, also making next to nothing. However, a third option presents itself, complements
of the Welfare State: collect unemployment and have all the free time in the world. Then imagine
what you see and hear everyday. Banks illegally foreclosing on homes, executives getting away
with fraud in the hundreds of millions, a militarized police, potent pharmaceuticals given away
like candy, a plant that causes mild decrease in heart pressure illegalized, politicians lying
again and again, the wealthy talking on TV about how "easy" it is to open a business and selling
books about it, etc. It all concentrates down to the worst of all emotions: depression, self-loathing,
and envy.
The depression comes from the hopelessness of most American's situation: poorly educated with
no future career, not even a path to take which will ensure a brighter future. The self-loathing
comes from the media, as most people get an HOURLY reminder of how shitty they look, how poor
they are. Even shows like Shameless don't touch on the reality of being poor in America. It isn't
a day to day struggle to pay bills. Its a day to day struggle to even feel worth something. To
feel part of society.
Then there's envy. You feel envious of the wealth, the attractiveness of others you see in
the media, which you misplace as being the vast majority of people in America because you see
them everyday and everywhere: online, on billboards, in movies, commercials, etc. You begin to
feel like SOMETHING should be given to you. The Government, fearing rebellion, realized this during
the last Great Depression when they began to expand the Welfare State. Welfare is a form of suppression.
It keeps people on the lowest rung just happy enough to forget about rebelling. Big Pharma is
a BIG factor in this as well. I've visited enough towns in the Mid West where everyone is on some
pharmaceutical, usually Percocet or valium, yet have no money for a proper house with heating
and cooling.
So in summary, the extraction of wealth by the upper class, (through "global" trade agreements,
stock market manipulation, tax evasion, offshoring, etc) along with lax regulation & prosecution
by the political body (they are very much one and the same these days) caused immense physical
(monetary) and mental depression/suppression of the masses, which are steadily moving toward Welfare
as it becomes the only of options with a glimmer of stability & free time.
They are bring these workers from India where starting IT salaries are $10,000/year. Check
early in the morning and late at night and you will see the buses delivering the workers who lived
crammed in surrounding apartments. One told me his Indian outsourcers had eight of them living
in a two-bedroom apartment with one bathroom - while working 80-100 hours per week. They are threatened
with deportation if they complain, and in some cases, their families back home are physically
threatened.
With the defeat of H-1B expansion, Obama has now vastly increased foreign guest workers through
executive actions that include:
granting automatic work authorization to all H-1B spouses.
expanding Bush's "Optional Practical Training" now allowing stem graduates to work for
three
years in the US on a student visa. The OPT has no caps, little labor protections,
and no salary requirement.
lowered qualifying requirements for L-1B visas. L-1b visas allow corporations to import their
foreign employee to work in the US at the home nation salaries. And has lead to widespread abuse
such as foreign employees being paid $1.73/hour.
modified the B-1 visa, used attended training and meetings, to incorporate the "B-1 in lieu
of H-1B" which now allows some foreign workers to work in the US on the B-1 visa
There are now well over a million foreign guest workers in the US and the numbers are growing.
Curiously (ha ha!), DHS does not even keep count of the above admissions.
Wow, didn't know they expanded the student work permission to three years.
Used to be one year.
Essentially if you go to college here you have bought yourself a ticket
to live in America and take a job from an American.
I was replaced by a 20-something. Actually, at my last job (3 years ago) both the older employees,
myself and another employee, were replaced. One employee who had worked there for 15 years and
was 60, so TWO years away from retirement, was let go. (I hope he sued the pants off that horrible
firm!)
Oh, they're all out beating down the door over in Philadelphia to work as substitute teachers
for $75 per day. Just google 'substitute teacher shortage' and you'll see plenty of job opportunities.
Its called "turnover" and companies use it nowadays to suppress wages. Why pay a 30 yr old
85K when you can pay a 20 yr old 50k?
Most of the work is simple anyways, unless you work in the STEM field. And unfortunately, in
the STEM field, the largest industry (software) takes this approach to the next level.
Incentives matter – if the end all and be all is GDP, you get GDP. TPP is an "industrial" policy,
or more accurately a re-distribution policy – yeah – re-distribution – the fact that it is re-distribution
from the poorer to the richer is a novel use of the concept, but we should never under estimate
the cleverness of Davos man.
The fact that it is espoused by those who incessantly yammer about how government policy should
be "neutral" exposes that these people are just making the rules for their own benefit. The fact
that so many laws ("reforms") must be instituted to advance this agenda just exposes the intellectual
dishonesty. Or would they have us believe that the advent of neoliberalism and the increase in
inequality is just a happy (sarc) coincidence? The idea that this is some unstoppable force of
nature just wants to make me puke.
If you think that work matters, that participation in society is important, and that a nation
is more than airbnb beds for Davos man conference attendees, you can have policies that punish
outsourcing, decide that limiting H4B workers increases demand for workers here with commensurate
increases in wages. There are a zillion ways the tax code as well as other laws are inimical to
US workers. It STARTS with the idea that paying labor more does NOT harm society….
These policies are not a function of physics or of God's will – they are made by men at the
behest of the few to reward the few. It can be changed if we choose to change it – although I
fear we are rapidly reaching a point, and may have already reached it, where we are a defacto
plutocracy and any "reform" is mere window dressing.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. We are on a straight path to plutocracy and I too fear we
have already passed the point of no return. I hear (read) daily the awful word, redistribution;
always in the context of taking a small amount away from the rich and powerful to give to those
not as fortunate; but never in the context of what is actually happening on a grand scale; the
taking from the lower classes and giving it to the upper 1% and above. When will it stop? I don't
know; I do know that unless we continue to try and make the masses actually understand what is
happening to them and to get them off their apathetic arses and involved in the political process,
thereby voting out of office the scrads of politicians devoted to and enamored of neoliberalism,
we will continue down this prophetic road of self destruction. It is our choice. It will be hard.
It may, in fact, already be too late. But, we have to try. We have to keep working; working to
explain the awful policies of neoliberalism.
Agreed. So what MUST the demand be ? Let the capitalist go after FULL AUTOMATION and balance
that with UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME . Everything to do with money can be defined as a balance sheet
so this should be the balance sheet for the 21st Century . The demand should come from all . And
it's coming. I know the Swiss just rejected it , but the fact that they just called a referendum
to decide it ( for now ) tells us it's there in the ether and the Swiss are not alone ; the Dutch,
the Finns are all working on this . It's the genuine great leap forward.
sorry but basic income guarantee is simply creating demand for the plutocrats, and is exactly
why food stamps are in the agriculture budget. This is why the 13,000/yr BIG floated a week or
two ago already, at it's inception, takes 3,000 and puts it towards medical care-oops, i mean
insurance- you won't get care unless you pay extra, don't kid yourself. And this gravy train will
have as many cars attached to it as it can carry, how much will your BIG be in the form of food
stamps? rent subsidy? by the time it's implemented the person at the root of the issue won't get
a thin dime, but the cronies will have a basic income guarantee, the true purpose of this terrible
idea, I and others like me want things to do, not a snap card (more likely digital wallet brought
generously to you by apple and jp morgan, which of course will charge a fee, and conveniently
keep track of where you are at all times) that allows me to buy gmo food (yes, there will be foods
that are for the poor and foods for the rich, want organic? what's your net worth?) The silicon
valley parlors where these moronic ideas are hatched are filled with people who are trying to
cement their presence in the upper class which is funny on the meritocrat side because many of
my tech friends didn't go to college, they were good at video games and now it's robots robots
robots because that's their gravy train and the BIG is their lame ass apology, while getting some
demand into the economy to pay for their craptastic junk toys.
Excellent, my vote post of the week. The best answer is to pay people to actually work, the
work would be to pay them to undo the damage of the last 300 years of industrial revolution. We
had created a large middle middle class and secure working class destroying the planet, we can
create the same wealth cleaning it up. Instill hope on a dying planet, and for the first time
in its history give humanity a reason to get up in the morning other than just exploiting each
other in a rat race.
One way of looking at how a BIG can be manipulated by owners is considering slavery. It seems
we are entering a new phase in the never ending capitalist struggle to secure cheep labor. Cheep
labor and resources are the driving force of the current system. The logical end result is to
have a self-sustaining labor force. One that makes just enough to survive and work- with little
room for anything else. That is where we are headed.
Advancing technology and the desire to shed costs related to slave upkeep can be argued as
important factors in slavery's demise in it's original social form as one individual owning another
as property. Why bother taking on the responsibility for slave upkeep when you can rig the system
in ways that require workers to enslave themselves to businesses and the system as a whole. You
need the labor power, not the person.
A BIG will be sold for all the typical humanitarian half-truths, but in reality is a natural
development to maintain the capitalist system. The powers that be have demonstrated no interest
in maintaining a middle class workforce. Debt bondage and BIG coercion are on the horizon.
As Goethe observed: None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are
free.
Why does there have to be a political purpose for the release of the report? I would guess
that the end of a presidency works a little like late Friday afternoon when stuff get dumped to
the public at their point of lowest interest.
Raising the minimum wage works at cross purposes. It helps in the short run but in the longer
run – other things held constant – it makes automation more likely.
When the small company I worked for years ago was faced with replacing a piece of equipment,
at some point after the minimum wage had been raised, the company replaced it with one that was
more automated and took few people to operate. The cost of labor had moved up and cost of capital
was lower due the interest rates. The numbers were close enough that it could have gone either
way but the feeling was that the cost of labor would continue to go up. Going with the more automated
equipment locked in more of our costs.
It's weird how people can pretend to conflate technology assisting labor with replacing labor
with cheaper labor, in order to derail the subject.
As far as your "point", they invented the nail and hammer and now we don't have to drill holes
and put pegs in. Fine. Nobody is talking about going technologically backwards, in fact just the
opposite. We are talking about the race to the bottom in labor itself. I suspect a bit of looking
around can find a lot of places where 1 American + 1 machine is slightly more expensive than 4
third-worlders + shipping + no machine. Sometimes the machines have progressed so fast that work
has moved back onshore (and funny that all the moaning about "helping people that live on 2cents/day"
isn't heard when that happens), which is cool but it still is the exception.
But: how limited is the number of "capitalists" that are going to bother to invest in bringing
down the cost of that machine when you can drive the cost of humans down in almost unlimited fashion?
- there are actually limits, and we will eventually hit them but it will get a lot uglier if we
do it that way.
And the whole issue is treating fellow human beings as less deserving, less worthy of employment
just because of their nationality.
There will always be that other half of the working class that can be used to kill the other
half when pushed hard enough, any definition will do for separating the class in to us vs them,
so that the war can start. Unions blew it when in the 1970s when their leadership sold out, refused
to go international with trade agreements, and focused on protecting an indefensible position,
indefensible from both an economics view and from an ethics view.
During the cold war the American Labor union movement was thoroughly anti-communist and in
bed with the CIA as far coordinating with international labor. See wiki on Jay Lovestone for a
bit of the flavor of the times.
My point was that we ended up with one less minimum wage job because the cost of labor made
it better for the company to buy the more automated piece of equipment.
That example had nothing to do with off-shoring – though I now work in a company of about two
dozen people who has off-shored some work. I am going to guess about the equivalent of two full
time jobs.
I was quite surprised when that decision was made given our small size but it has worked as
explained to us when it started.
Looked at that way, the machine buys it's consumables and raw material used in the process.
It would have done that anyway, were Bill's company to decide to buy a simpler machine and employ
one more person, but because of the automation, and as long as sales justify it, the more advanced
machine will process more raw material and use more consumables because it has the potential to
run 24 hours per day, whereas an employee would be seeing stars after an eight hour shift, due
to repetitious boring work.
Good point. Also consider litigation costs which to most employers in Ca at least is a huge
financial and management burder. A couple of worker's comp sore backs or knees combined with chiropractor,
"pain management doctors," surgeons, secondary psychic stress etc. makes a lot of employers including
me realize that every employee is a ticking liability time bomb just waiting to call that 1-800-hurt
at work number. No business can hire Americans in this legal environment unless they are very
well paid well beyond their value so they have no option but to do the job. In fact, in my business
litigation/medical/disability costs are far more significant than hourly wages. We just can't
take the risk and we outsource everything and hire as few as possible and I am not alone.. We
do everything possible to avoid hiring low level workers and when we do we want young recent immigrants
who are not "Americanized" and lawyer prone. Even then we get burned more often than not with
claims for age related conditions. Then it is simply 1-800-Lastimado en Trabajo and you can see
the ads all over the busses in TJ before they come over….ads for Ca worker's comp attorneys!!!!
Lawyers, since they control the democratic party are a huge part of our unemployment problem.
No employer can take the worker's comp risk of an older employee. If they feel back ache or knee
ache or neck ache on the job…it is "aggravated" and the employer is often out hundreds of thousands….thanks
to the lawyers who write the laws. Don't count on this lawyer in chief or the next one to do anything
about it. Age discrimination and automation and outsourcing are survival tactics for most of the
businesses I work with, including my own.
Yes indeed, there's a reason big business doesn't want medicare for all – it would result in
the ultimate 'flexible workforce'. Workers immediately bailing out of every shit show employment
situation they manage to fall into at the drop of the hat with no COBRA or insurance dead zones.
But on the other side of the coin, it would ramp up the Uber jitney economy of on-demand disposable
workers lined up holding signs displaying their skill sets for a day's pay at the highway on-ramps
at 6:30 AM (or, as the neo-liberal mindset would frame it – the entrepreneurs).
Damn it, we could unleash potent forces if we just got rid of the lawyers. When a person's
knee gets torn up on the job, give em' a couple grand, an aspirin and tell them to get over it.
That's all you need to do.
Think about this. If the states weren't so desperate for money, they wouldn't have to run the
system on the cheap. If health costs were lowered, then the system wouldn't be so expensive. A
worker's comp agency has to balance its objectives between not bankrupting the state and not screwing
over hurt people. A hurt worker without an advocate is a sitting duck. One way to make lawyers
go away is to abolish worker's rights. Alternatively the worker's comp system would be cheaper
if health costs were cheaper, and realistic settlements without the assistance of a lawyer might
be possible if states had more revenue to pay bills.
History of Work Comp as I remember it - speaking of how "the company" counts its beans: Johns
Manville had a problem with people getting slowly sicker on the job (handling asbestos) starting
late in the 1800s paid doctors to do studies that proved the asbestos-asbestosis-mesothelioma
connection, and gave some rates of worsening of the diseases and hence points at which workers
could no longer work. The researchers and doctors were paid for and threatened into silence on
the findings, and required to ignore their Hippocratic obligations. Workers had to go to company
doctors, who would nurse them along until they were fired for inability.
At first, the court system's tort law provided the persistent with some compensation and support
commensurate with the harm. Many cases settled, but all contained non-disclosure mousetraps (tell
anyone and you lose everything.) And of course the "experts" who testified for both sides were
sworn to secrecy too, for money or from fear. But Manville and other corporate creatures got inspired,
starting around the 1890s I think, to pitch and successfully write (lobby) into law that "workers
comp" system that persists - places an administratively determined value on the "injury," percent
of disability, and the rest, bars tort litigation for WC-"covered" injuries. Even with all that,
a lawyer is often needed because the fokking corporate swine do everything in their considerable
power and corrupting reach to avoid even paying out the pittance WC provides, especially long-term
treatments and care for the many horrific injuries. Once again, the hope is that the injured worker
will GO DIE. And yes, there are cheaters, but gee, how surprising that the profits from fokking
over the workers so far outweigh the little bits that a few people scam from the other side. Many
of the patients I tried to help when I worked as a nurse were WC, and the treatment they got from
the insurers, and the "employee advocates" and "nurse case managers" and defense lawyers acting
on screw-the-worker policies of long standing, was amazingly cruel.
"Bankrupting the state?" WC is paid, far as I know, at least in FL, out of an insurance pool
that is funded by employers. Subject to the same kinds of actuarial calculations that any other
large-pool insurance game undertakes in underwriting. And yes, universal health care (not Obamacare)
would, if it could be managed without the full usual apparently inescapable corruption by neoliberal
interests and thinking, reduce EVERYONE's costs. And states are "desperate for money" largely
because the Chamber of Commerce and other neoliberal fokkers like the Kochs have strangled the
public general-welfare income stream and diverted most of what is left to various kinds of "white
man's welfare" and corporate gifts.
Here in FL, "worker's rights" are already largely abolished, and the mopping up continues.
Just so's you know. There are still lawyers who will (for a cut of the limited amounts that WC
will pay out if they finally prevail, to the worker's and family's detriment, "take cases." What
I learned in law school, first week in Contracts and Torts and Constitutional Law, is that "There
are no rights without effective remedies." What remedies do workers have?
And for those who want to shoot at the VA, on "inefficiency" grounds and the other neoliberal
overt and covert assaults, VA disability is a Workers Comp program too. Max payout for a GI who
is 100% permanently and totally disabled is around $30,000 a year. There is no component as with
other kinds of insurance structures for enhanced damages for "bad faith" on the part of the government
and the privatized functions that make up the disability administration. "Thank you for your service,
Sucker!!" And that "award" usually only comes after a decade or more of fighting with a well documented
opposition from the people who administer the "system" and requires persistence, luck, and occasionally
benefits (not so much any more) from intervention by the injured GI's elected representative…
All this talk of workplace injury, lawyers and workers comp misses the obvious point that some
of these workplaces must be UNSAFE. (It's always the other workplace that's unsafe–"our" worker
comp payouts are always rorts).
The answer to all worker comp issues is the same: universal mandatory insurance run by the state
and work that minimises physical/psychological injury.
Naturally it won't occur as its a cost to business….
Heaven forbid employers pay for the body parts they use up and destroy in their workers.
I agree with Anon, universal health care would resolve a lot of these issues. When the cost
is spread out employers whine less when their workers are hurt.
Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD-with low levels of
labor market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates
of collective bargaining coverage-the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor
force participation rates of OECD member countries.
This song was made in 1983…and the same crap that Run-DMC mention in the lyrics still exists
today:
Unemployment at a record highs
People coming, people going, people born to die
Don't ask me, because I don't know why
But it's like that, and that's the way it is
People in the world tryin to make ends meet
You try to ride car, train, bus, or feet
I said you got to work hard, you want to compete
It's like that, and that's the way it is
Huh!
Money is the key to end all your woes
Your ups, your downs, your highs and your lows
Won't you tell me the last time that love bought you clothes?
It's like that, and that's the way it is
Bills rise higher every day
We receive much lower pay
I'd rather stay young, go out and play
It's like that, and that's the way it is
Huh!
Wars going on across the sea
Street soldiers killing the elderly
Whatever happened to unity?
It's like that, and that's the way it is
The thing about being a man near the bottom in a country with low social mobility means it
is extremely hard to get girls. Jordan B Peterson said in The Age of Unequals discussion that
the primary motivation for men to become criminals is because it is the only way to have a chance
at attractive women. That has been my personal experience with crime too.
Ageism takes many forms, some more subtle than others. When your friendly local HR department
makes a few tweaks to benefits, the newer employees don't notice, but the wizened veterans take
notice. They see the handwriting earlier, and brace themselves for the next steps.
The HR folks are acting rationally in their supply-side worldview as they look out for shareholders
first and consider employees well down the list, if not at the bottom. That treatment of personnel
represents a policy of a very high effective discount rate on human capital in the aggregate.
When parsed out, there are a few nuances that make the picture clearer. When the top handful get
outsized payouts, they are incentivized to reinforce that high human capital discount rate, to
the detriment of those down range.
The graphics showed an acceleration in the ominous trends in the early and mid 1990s. That
coincided with the great outsourcing, re-engineeing, re-euphemising of jobs and the economy. In
that era, Fortune magazine published a series of articles about the changing nature of the social
contract at work.
One takeaway reflected the new bargain: companies needed to provide interesting work to retain
employees, and the latter had to continue to make themselves employable. Those veteran employees
referenced above discerned that there wasn't a bargain but a mandate to become more efficient,
all presented with the window dressing of so-called interesting work.
A more honest presentation would have said work that meets the interest or discount rate, as
part of the increasing financialization of the world. The decline in trust also accelerated during
that period, whether in companies or the media. We continue to reap the results of that widespread
mistrust and discontent during the current election cycle.
a different Chris , please listen (see below) and read what Clayton Christensen has been saying.
Big companies are mostly brands now. Have offshored main parts of company. Last stage in that
development is decline of company, as in case of steel. IBM is presently also classic case as
on road to failure as well for same reason. It started at IBM with Gerstner.
In a labor market that contains for the sake of argument 50% rich country workers (e.g., American
raised) and 50% poor country workers (anywhere else raised) - must be something like Chicago which
is 40% white, 40% black, 20% Hispanic …
… where pay is set by what I call "subsistence-plus"; meaning set STARTING at the absolute minimum
pay workers will tolerate (e.g., $800/wk for American born taxi drivers, me; $400 for foreign
born) and then PLUS some more for each additional level of skill (bottom for McDonald's, more
for better English in Starbucks, more for college English and more competent organizing in Whole
foods?) …
instead of pay set by the highest price the consumer is willing to pay - by collective bargaining
or a minimum wage …
… a huge dropout of low skilled, rich country workers will occur as low skilled work pays much
below what rich country workers look at as "minimum subsistence" (the labor market will not clear).
E.g., American born taxi drivers (me again) and the Crips and the Bloods. How else explain that
100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 Chicago, gang-age males are in street gangs?
To make the psychological point about "minimum subsistence", today's rich county labor would
gladly work for half of today's poor country minimum - if it were 100 years ago and that's the
best a much less productive economy could pay. It's psychological, but a lot of psychological
if DNA immutable.
Now here's the wind-up - that should implant permanently the unquestionable need for collective
bargaining in all labor transactions: A what I call subsistence-plus labor market with
100% rich country workers will have lower pay levels than a collective bargaining labor market
with 50% rich/50% poor country workers.
That's the whole law and the profits about the need to make union busting a felony (starting
in progressive states) as far as I'm concerned.
PS. This is not an endorsement of Donald Trump's anti-immigration bender - that would kick
down the pillars that our whole civilization is built on (sorry Native Americans) - that could
mean 250 million Americans by 2050 instead of the anticipated 500 million. This IS an endorsement
or rebuilding high labor union density - the missing balance-of-power pillars of our civilization.
(Don't forget centralized bargaining - the "compleat" balance-of-power pillar of a unionized labor
market.
David Simon covered this in "The Wire" and "Show me a Hero", you have entire sections of the
population that are forced to leave or participate in crime as a viable form of employment. We
have a surplus population now- and going forward that are not supporter by their labor or any
other resource other than transfer payments.
Please pause a moment and consider that concept. We have a paucity of credible jobs that people
can cobble together a living, let alone increase their opportunities going forward.
when everyone is trying to game the system no one has the right to cry morality.
i have some small businesses that i am selling off. Too many overhead, insurance and legal
costs. The line of business is becoming a slave to govt mandated costs and regulations. Customers
more interested in injury lawsuits. IQ and attitude of younger employees noticeably poor.
"THE LONG-TERM DECLINE IN PRIME-AGE MALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION" report states:
"Conventional economic theory posits that more 'flexible' labor markets-where it is easier
to hire and fire workers-facilitate matches between employers and individuals who want to work.
Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD-with low levels of labor
market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of
collective bargaining coverage-the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor
force participation rates of OECD member countries."
I have been following this so-called "conventional economic theory" closely for nearly 20 years
now and can attest that it is not a theory but a hollow assertion. Empirical "evidence" for this
assertion is based on "strong priors": models containing assumptions that generate outcomes consistent
with the assertions. GIGO!
At the core of the flexible labour markets dogma is obeisance to the great god NAIRU, which
Jamie Galbraith exposed in all its Emperor's New Clothes nakedness 20 long years ago: "Time to
Ditch the NAIRU"
"The concept of a natural rate of unemployment, or non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment
(NAIRU), remains controversial after twenty-five years. This essay presents a brief for no-confidence,
in four parts. First, the theoretical case for the natural rate is not compelling. Second,
the evidence for a vertical Phillips curve and the associated accelerationist hypothesis that
lowering unemployment past the NAIRU leads to unacceptable acceleration of inflation is weak.
Third, economists have failed to reach professional consensus on estimating the NAIRU. Fourth,
adherence to the concept as a guide to policy has major social costs but negligible benefits."
In "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market" Richard Layard, Stephen
Nickell and Richard Jackman grafted the dubious NAIRU concept onto the anachronistic lump-of-labor
fallacy claim to create the hybrid chimera "LUMP-OF-OUTPUT FALLACY" in which central banks enforcing
NAIRU anti-inflation policy would ensure that you couldn't redistribute working time. You can't
make this stuff up. But Layard, Nickell and Jackman did. Nonsense on stilts.
"To many people, shorter working hours and early retirement appear to be common-sense solutions
for unemployment. But they are not, because they are not based on any coherent theory of what
determines unemployment. The only theory behind them is the lump-of-output theory: output is
a given. In this section we have shown that output is unlikely to remain constant."
This is simply not true. Shorter working hours is based on the same theory as the
theory of full employment fiscal policy. Keynes's theory. But don't take my word for it. In an
April 1945 letter to T.S. Eliot, Keynes wrote:
"The full employment policy by means of investment is only one particular application of
an intellectual theorem. You can produce the result just as well by consuming more or working
less. Personally I regard the investment policy as first aid. In U.S. it almost certainly will
not do the trick. Less work is the ultimate solution."
Galbraith's "Time to Ditch NAIRU" has 293 citations on Google Scholar. Layard et al's "Unemployment"
has 5824. Economists flock to dogma like flies to shit.
Some strong starting points without requiring additional govt interference:
Shut down both legal and illegal immigration. When you can not employ the ones who are here
why let more in.
Inforce the borders and deport people who are here illegally.
Get rid of anchor babies
Put tariffs on imports and I mean substantial tariffs. Worrying about Smoot Hawley is a canard.
At that time the US was the biggest exporter now we are the biggest importer. I would also have
a sliding scale depending upon labor rights. Some would scream we need to worry about the poor
in these countries. How about worrying about the poor in this country. It has reached the point
that you need to look around at your family and friends and say what would you do so that these
people prosper. If you are not willing to say practically anything legally then you will probably
not prosper.
Cut back govt at all levels. This is a major misallocation of resources. This is especially
true of the military industrial security area. Come up with new health care laws. Focus resources
to generate more doctors in the US and less people with unproductive degrees.
One other thing, if you look at a lot of the jobs that men use to take and make a good living
it was construction, plumbing, gardening, janitorial, cooks and etc. All of these jobs have been
filled by illegal aliens who live 25 to a house, pay no taxes, get free health care and suppress
wages.
Assuming there are enough natural resources, it is quite possible to arrange an economy in
a way that benefits the population of the recipient country. Think about it. The immigrants are
healthy, hardworking adults. So you get their labour without investing in twenty years of raising
them and then taking on the burden of those who are unhealthy or anti-social.
The US is an immigrant country with a weak safety net so an intelligent policy could easily
benefit both parties.
With respect, if your givens were in the least interesting or useful to the greater good, rather
than articles of faith (which is just a polite term for self-delusion that benefits the power
structure) designed to benefit your imaginary friends, satisfy your need to dominate and abuse
others, and give your poor lonely misery some company, you might have something worth a detailed,
thoughtful response. As it is, I think you need to explain yourself a bit better.
Seems very clear to me. You must have a low IQ if you need someone to explain it to you.
Illegal aliens generally do not pay taxes because they get paid with cash! Sorry, if they have
to pay such taxes like sales tax that everyone else needs to pay.
"Stupid" is typical American conformist speak for "would offend my bosses".
You had two points that sounded reasonable: "Shut down both legal and illegal immigration.
When you can not employ the ones who are here why let more in." Because markets. Those who own
a government that was designed to be bought want to drive down the price and increase the availability
("flexibility") of all labor, of course. Plenty of Americans would be happy to work off the books
for a less demeaning wage under less demeaning conditions and less demeaning people. (As if Social
Security isn't going to be looted by the oligarchs by the time I'm of age to retire) They wouldn't
risk death and torture to come here if EMPLOYERS weren't withdrawing the benefits of employment
from those already here and offering those benefits to others. While stopping the influx would
be a fine idea, until you get control over those who are paying them to come here - making EMPLOYERS
into felons for any support of immigration violations would be a far, far more effective use of
enforcement power than beating down brown people at arm's length to satisfy your cultural conceits
- supply and demand works both ways.
And "Put tariffs on imports and I mean substantial tariffs" is in the right spirit, but fails
to acknowledge, with the usual hostility to self-awareness and past actions that defines the USAmerican
"mind", that other nations have just as much right to respond any way they feel like, and the
"trade agreements" the USA has signed grant them contractual grounds (pacta sunt servandum, remember?)
to respond disproportionately with their own tariffs, penalties against the USG, and other demerits
in the international sphere which are not constrained by your triumphalism in any way. Those means
would not be as effective as simply repudiating every multilateral "trade"-related agreement the
USA has ever signed and not, quite literally, pawning the USA for a mess of bourgeois pottage.
It's ridiculous that you should be depending on the US government to evaluate human rights
conditions, when human authorities are never bound by evidence unless they want to be. Malaysia's
admission into the TPP, and the politically-driven mulligan they received on their human rights
conditions, shows the utter folly of letting ambitious bourgeois careerists hide behind corporate
veils of any sort.
If you only believe that people who pay taxes should have rights, you support the very definition
of plutocracy, and that makes you a disease vector.
"illegal aliens…pay no taxes, get free health care"
You have it back-a*ward. Undocumented workers pay taxes (FICA, SS, etc deductions), that they
will not receive when they reach old/SS age, even if they are in the US at that future time. There
is no "free health care" for undocumented workers, not eligible for Medicaid or ACA. Emergency
room service does not qualify as health care.
Even US citizens have to go through a bureaucratic nightmare to get & maintain Medicaid or
ACA, which is CRAPPY INSURANCE, not ACTUAL HEALTH CARE. At the point of needing actual health
care, USians are often denied the service or the insurance refuses to pay after the service is
done & face another bureaucratic nightmare in fighting the payment refusal. Undocumented workers
lack access to even this crapified level of "health coverage".
I do agree that increasing supply (H1-B for STEM pros, undocumented for HS-degreed workers)
lowers wages. Also, restricting supply (AMA restricting physician graduates such that US physicians
per capita lower than OECD levels) increases wages. Econ101 supply & demand, perhaps neoliberal
economists need "retraining" & should enroll in Econ101 at the local community college.
If there was an actual desire to limit undocumented immigration, the solution is large fines
on Illegal Employers. How about $100K per undocumented worker found. In addition, end the Drug
War, which causes violence & refugees, especially in Mexico & Central America. Revoke or at least
amend NAFTA to un-decimate the MEX agricultural industry.
People who work "off the books" don't pay income taxes regardless of their immigration status.
They do pay many other types of taxes, often regressive – sales tax, excise tax, property tax
(or their landlord's property tax.
1. "When you can not employ the ones who are here why let more in."
Cui bono? Because EMPLOYERS love it, from large corporations to my neighbors who hire low-paid
gardeners. Maybe this class-ifies me, but that would have considered to be an extravagance when
I was growing up. I wonder how many people who complain about illegal immigrants actually rely
on their services?
2. "Inforce the borders and deport people who are here illegally. Get rid of anchor babies"
Bit late for that. I do agree we really have made a mess that needs attention and an intelligent
cleanup. Even so, do you think we could competently amend the Constitution at this point, which
is what it would take? Practically, I do think that better border security coupled with (really)
improved labor conditions, both here and in Mexico (Imagine! An international labor effort!) could
improve things. But TTIP and TTP are pushing the other way.
3. "Put tariffs on imports and I mean substantial tariffs."
I like the idea, but only sovereign nations can do this, and we're not. We're subject to international
courts. In this case, specifically, expect corporate lawsuits against the USA, arguing that the
US should compensate corporations for loss of profits caused by said tariffs. These will be arbitrated
by Investor-State Dispute Resolution panels, courtesy of said TTIP and TTP, where the no-appeal
panels are staffed by international trade lawyers, who otherwise work for international corporations.
Yes, by all means, worry about the poor in this country, but don't leave out anyone else.
4. "Cut back government at all levels."
Down with traffic lights! (This statement of yours hooked me into writing this entire reply).
Strict libertarians strike me as being more than a little Pollyann-ish. The only historical example
that comes close are now called the dark ages. In those idyllic times, a bunch of French Norman
good-ol' boys could hie themselves over to Italy and wreak havoc, I mean make their fortune. Governments
are necessary to contain dispute resolution, and so require power superior to all other factions,
but, for the sake of equal justice, should be accountable in some way to all. I could go on, but
"no government" advocacy in our times leaves a power vacuum just at a time when corporations and
financiers are doing their best to take over. As the Federalists argued, we do need a
strong government, to ensure that the will of the people can be vigorously asserted. Not to say
that it's working out so great right now, but it would be nice if we could in some way place competent
people at the helm to right the ship. Speaking of Pollyanna….
All labor reform policies put forth by Republicans and their policy activation arm (Dems) have
been to make life easier and richer for CEO's, not to help workers. So now economists are surprised
by the results? What a useful profession they are.
You already have him on your thread. The 40 hour work week was established under Roosevelt.
If you wish to reverse or stave off the declining Participation Rate, then decrease the required
number of hours work to 32. We have agreed before that Labor is the lowest cost when compared
to Overhead or Materials. In the end, the difference in cost would be made up by higher productivity.
Sandwichman is a proponent of this and I agree with his analysis.
"... By James A. Kidney, former SEC attorney. Originally published at Watch the Circus ..."
"... Pro Publica ..."
"... Pro Publica's ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Dodd-Frank at best imposes generalized rules about bank size and other generic issues, rather than addressing the kinds of fraudulent actions that actually occurred. It is appropriate for the SEC or Federal Reserve to impose narrower changes in corporate practice to address specific kinds of fraud. They are called "undertakings" and are often imposed by civil settlements with the SEC or in litigated relief. It did not happen with the Big Bank frauds. ..."
"... The only reason to keep the information secret is to prevent embarrassment to the SEC or to those people who made decisions for the agency. Most of them left the SEC years ago. For public consumption, I have tried to redact all names of the non-supervisory personnel in the Division of Enforcement who worked on Goldman. I also must add that, as the emails show, for a period of time those dedicated investigators were excited about the notion of bringing at least a slightly broader action than their supervisors wanted. As is the case with much of the Division of Enforcement, the worker bees try hard and usually are fearless. It is their bosses who frequently suppress their enthusiasm for policy, political, or personal reasons. ..."
"... The author is trying very hard to be nice to the point of being delusional. This is criminality and corruption through and through, and it didn't end in '08. Don't be sad… get mad. ..."
"... This man has risked a lot to do what he did. He's lost more than many of you will realize. If he can't just crap on the old life and the old profession, please, cut the man a little slack. You don't want to be him. ..."
"... James A. Kidney, former trial attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, retired from the SEC in 2014 at the age of 66 after 24 years working there. Looks like he had a full career, although had to put up with a lot of bullshit, and possibly soured some relationships on his way out. ..."
"... Very similar situation here. Going on 50, unemployed in my chosen field, etc. And yes, its hard to just walk away sometimes… I have to keep my mind focused ahead instead of looking back. ..."
"... I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters who wound up losing their jobs who initially blame themselves, than come to accept that the system in which they operated was fundamentally corrupt, that even if some people locally really were trying to do the right thing, it was bound to either 1. go nowhere, 2. be allowed to proceed to a more meaningful level if it was cosmetic or served some larger political purpose or 3. got elevated because the organization was suddenly in trouble and they needed to burnish their cred in a big way (a variant of 2, except with 3, you might have a something serious take place by happenstance of timing). ..."
Yves here. Two things struck me about Jim Kidney's article below. One is that he still wants to
think well of his former SEC colleagues. I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters who
wound up losing their jobs who initially blame themselves, than come to accept that the system in
which they operated was fundamentally corrupt, that even if some people locally really were trying
to do the right thing, it was bound to either 1. go nowhere, 2. be allowed to proceed to a more meaningful
level if it was cosmetic or served some larger political purpose or 3. got elevated because the organization
was suddenly in trouble and they needed to burnish their cred in a big way (a variant of 2, except
with 3, you might have a something serious take place by happenstance of timing). Kidney does criticize
corrosive practices, particularly the SEC stopping developing its own lawyers and becoming dependent
on the revolving door, but his criticisms seem muted relative to the severity of the problems.
Number two, and related, are the class assumptions at work. The SEC does not want to see securities
professionals at anything other than bucket shops as bad people. At SEC conferences, agency officials
are virtually apologetic and regularly say, "We know you are honest people who want to do the right
thing." Please tell me where else in law enforcement is that the underlying belief.
By James A. Kidney, former SEC attorney. Originally published at
Watch the Circus
The New Yorker and
Pro Publica websites today posted an article by Pro Publica's Jesse Eisinger
about the de minimis investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into the conduct
of Goldman Sachs in the sale of derivatives based on mortgage-backed securities during the run-up
to the Great Recession of 2008. The details of the SEC's failure to aggressively pursue Goldman in
the particular investigation, Abacus, and its refusal to investigate fully misconduct by Goldman
and other "Too Big to Fail" banks, stands not only as a historic misstep by the SEC and its Division
of Enforcement, but undermines the claim that the Obama Administration has been "tough on Wall Street."
The Pro Publica version contains links to a few of the documents I provided.
No one in authority who was involved in the Goldman investigation ever gave me an explanation
for why the effort was so slight. Mr. Eisinger's article doesn't offer any explanation from the one
investigation participant brave enough to comment. The details of the investigation into Abacus at
my level as trial counsel, which I provided to Pro Publica earlier this year, compels the
conclusion that the SEC, its chairman at the time, Mary Schapiro, and the leadership of the Division
of Enforcement were more interested in a quick public relations hit than in pursuing a thorough investigation
of Goldman, Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan and other large Wall Street firms.
Although the emails and documents I produced to Pro Publica stemming from my role as
the designated (later replaced) trial attorney for the Division of Enforcement are excruciatingly
boring to all but the most dedicated securities lawyer, even a lay person can observe that the Division
of Enforcement was more anxious to publicize a quick lawsuit than to follow the trail of clues as
far up the chain-of-command at Goldman as the evidence warranted. Serious consideration also never
was given to fraud theories in any of the Big Bank cases stemming from the Great Recession that would
better tell the story of how investors were defrauded and who was responsible, due either to dereliction
or design.
Instead, the SEC restricted its investigation to the narrowest theory of liability, had to be
pressed (by me) to go even one short rung above the lowest level Goldman supervisor in its investigation
(which took months to push through, though investigative subpoenas are frequently issued on far less
in far smaller cases) and finally dropped other investigations of Goldman in return for a $550 million
settlement
announced July 15, 2010. To my knowledge (I retired in March 2014), the SEC never again pursued
Goldman for its mortgage securities fraud or other major fraud. There is no evidence on the SEC website
that it did so.
At a minimum, it can be said that the SEC left 90 percent of the money on the table at a time
when a more aggressive investigation of the company, as well as others, could have counted for something
by disclosing, in a detailed court complaint, Wall Street wrongs that might have helped policy makers
better address the subject and allow damaged individuals and entities to bring their own lawsuits.
It is very important to emphasize emphatically several points. First, I have zero evidence, and
would be very surprised, if any of the individuals at the Division of Enforcement, including senior
supervisors or the SEC chairman or associate commissioners, acted unlawfully or were motivated principally
to protect Goldman and other big banks. All of these people appeared well-intentioned from their
point of view, even they never really explained, to me, or to many others at the Commission, their
motives in limiting investigations. The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in
the private sector to head the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal
sacrifice. (They then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public
positions.) All of them were gentlemen. These factors make it all the more surprising that I never
got a clear answer as to why the investigation was so constipated, as it obviously was. Its range
was clearly limited from the outset: we will sue the bank and not look hard for evidence of individual
participation beyond the lowest levels.
By the same token, it is unfair to assume as a fact that any of the individuals at Goldman not
sued, or anyone at Paulson & Co., violated the securities laws, civilly or criminally. Like any citizen,
they are entitled to a day in court. Absent such opportunity, they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
Arguments in my internal correspondence that evidence was sufficient to sue should be viewed only
as that - arguments.
So my point in releasing these documents to Pro Publica is not to chastise or hold up
to public criticism those involved at the SEC, Paulson & Co. or Goldman, though criticism of the
process and of the underlying financial conduct certainly is inevitable. All of these institutions
have substantial influence in the investment industry. Rather, it is to bring to light the actual
conduct of one of several SEC investigations into Big Bank fraud leading up to the 2008 financial
crisis.
As I told Mr. Eisinger when I met him, I hoped he would go to the individuals in charge of the
SEC investigation at the time and find out why the investigation was so limited. I have spent six
years wondering what is the true answer to that question. Perhaps there were sound reasons, other
than the urge to get out a quick press release, which led experienced criminal prosecutors with histories
in Wall Street to smother a major investigation by limiting it to the lowest level employee possible,
to express total resistance to even investigating further up the chain of command, and ignoring without
serious explanation and analysis what I and others, including my own immediate supervisors, viewed
as the more appropriate theory for civil prosecution. I hope there are such reasons. As a trial attorney
at the SEC for over 20 years, I bled SEC blue. I believed that the agency usually tried to do the
best it could, using analog era procedures and processes to combat fraud in a digital age. I am saddened
to release this information. But the notion that "the Administration was tough on Wall Street" must
be addressed by facts, not press releases and self-serving interviews, else the system's problems
cannot be adequately addressed and repaired to deal with the next financial crisis.
Not only is the issue of how the financial sector enforcement agencies handled the wrongs of the
Great Recession an important political issue, but it is important to history. It is important that
the facts not be shielded from the public so that we can all learn for the future. And it is a melancholy
thought that, presented with the opportunity for a rigorous investigation and airing of facts in
civil or criminal proceedings gone, history will be denied a fairer story of both the financial crisis
itself and how the government responded.
As
many news organizations have noted , the taxpayer and Goldman shareholders will pay the combination
of penalties and repayments in the DOJ settlement. No individual was named as liable in the civil
settlement with Goldman nor in any of the other similar, and even larger, financial settlements entered
into with the Department of Justice, all of which are vastly greater than what the SEC obtained in
its "quick hit, one and done" enforcement actions. DOJ must be credited with what appears to have
been a far more thorough investigation of wrongdoing than the SEC performed, but the public is properly
mystified that no individuals were charged, criminally or civilly, although the DOJ press releases
contains the usual caveat that "the investigation continues."
The settlements with Goldman and other Big Banks were resolved under the Financial Institutions
Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), which allows the Feds to ignore the normal five-year
statute of limitations for fraud, but does not permit suit by private party victims. As has been
the practice with DOJ when dealing with Wall Street, no criminal charge was brought. In fact, no
complaint was filed in any of these cases. Instead, DOJ entered into contractual arrangements with
the banks. Failing to fulfill their obligations under the contract would subject them to civil enforcement
as a breach of contract matter, not a contempt charge in federal District Court.
Contrary to claims by politicians, it is clear that the Obama Administration has not been hard-hitting
on Wall Street fraudsters. The large fines obtained by the Department of Justice, while a short-term
pinch, are simply a cost of doing business. Relying on fines to penalize rich Wall Street banks,
which, after all, specialize in making money and do it well, if not always honestly, is like fining
Campbell Soup in chicken broth. It costs something, but doesn't change anything in the way of operations
or personnel.
Despite billions in fines representing many more billions in fraud, the enforcement agencies of
the United States have been unable to find anyone responsible criminally or civilly for this huge
business misconduct other than a janitor or two at the lowest rung of the companies. Nor have they
sought to impose systemic changes to these banks to prevent similar frauds from happening again.
Yessir, according to the Obama administration, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank
and other institutions made their contributions to tearing down the economy, but no one was responsible.
They are ghost companies. And nothing needs to be done to prevent such intent or dereliction in the
future.
Law enforcement by contract? Clearly, the banks made it a condition of settlement that no complaint,
civil or criminal, be filed. That might gum up the works by requiring state regulators to take action
under their own rules, or cause other collateral consequences.
Ah, say the defenders of the status quo, don't forget about Dodd-Frank, the unwieldy legislation
passed by feckless Democrats influenced by big money contributors and their own fear of appearing
too aggressive (a particular Democratic Party contagion). Dodd-Frank was and is a virtual chum pool
for Wall Street lawyers and lobbyists, leaving most of the substance to regulatory agencies such
as the SEC and the Federal Reserve, who for years have been significantly captured by those they
are supposed to regulate. The private sector lawyers and lobbyists have open doors to these places
to "help" write the rules and add complexity, which they later complain about in court, challenging
those same rules as too complex.
Dear citizen, just remember this: complexity favors fraud, and certainly favors Wall Street and
corporate America. You can't understand the rules and neither can Congress or all but the most dedicated
experts. That's a lot of room to disguise misdeeds. To take a current example, which came to my attention
just before completing this post, Congress is trying to use sentencing reform, generally thought
of as intending to remove inequities from the criminal justice system, to also make it even tougher
to prosecute and punish white-collar crime. Is this why the Koch Brothers suddenly show such public
attention to the poor and needy by favoring such legislation?
See this discussion of adding the "mens rea" requirement to such legislation. Burying an important
but legalistic issue in otherwise liberal leaning legislation is a current example of disguising
lax enforcement of white-collar crime in a complicated package. As one Democratic congressman suggested,
how can a liberal vote against sentencing reform? The explanation of the badger buried in the woodpile
is too complicated for the average voter.
Not coincidentally, adding a requirement to the law that it is a defense to either the crime itself
or to sentencing that "I didn't know my acts were against the law" is a get out of jail free card
as the complexity of laws addressed to ever more sophisticated business misconduct grows. Wall Street
clearly has shown no shame in using the defense that "no one knew". Can't blame them. It has worked
so far. Maybe they don't even need new legislation.
I was told repeatedly when I entered the Goldman investigation that synthetic CDOs were just too
complex for me to understand. Of course, it appeared to be plain vanilla fraud selling a product
designed to fail but nicely packaged for chumps to buy. Claims of complexity hide many easily understood
sins.
At least for the major sins, we don't need even more complex regulations. Instead, put leadership
in place who will aggressively enforce the laws we have already. That would raise plenty of eyebrows
and put some bums in prison, or at least make them pay civil and criminal penalties personally. As
many have noted, prison or, at least, personal financial liability, beats corporate concessions every
time and pays back in future reluctance to break the law. The country should try it sometime.
So back to little me, a small and ineffective cog in the larger system. Why is this release of
documents so long after the investigation?
My friends know that I have been upset since 2010 about the way the SEC handled the Goldman case
and, in my view (confirmed by other trial lawyers), that it became a template for other SEC civil
suits against the Big Banks. In 2011 I wrote an anonymous letter to The New York Times complaining
about the lack of investigative effort by the Division of Enforcement and the impact of the "revolving
door" bringing Wall Street defense lawyers into the highest reaches of the SEC. This is a practice
that Obama has continued at most departments and agencies having to do with the financial system,
following in Bill Clinton's footsteps. The New York Times letter was based entirely on publicly
available information.
I was dismayed to not find any follow-up to my letter in The New York Times . I gave
up trying to bring attention to the investigative lassitude of the agency. Interest appeared to be
over.
A year after I retired, I sent a copy of the letter to The Times , under a cover letter
identifying myself. One of the addressees on the original letter called and told me the original
letter never was received. The caller suggested that was because I misaddressed it to the old location
of The New York Times . I felt foolish, of course, but I guess that in 2014, when the letter
was finally received, The Times didn't see fit to follow-up the information even knowing
its source. This was another indication to me that the time for debate over the law enforcement treatment
of wrong doers on Wall Street had passed.
Once, years earlier and only for a brief time, the SEC was an agency that was at least sometimes
fearless of Wall Street institutions. In those days, the directors of the Division of Enforcement
were home-grown, not imported from Wall Street law firms. After 1996, that ended. Every director
since has been nurtured as a Wall Street defense lawyer. The decline in performance has followed
an expected arc. No one has seemed bothered by this. It seems the phrase "lawyers represent client
interests" is sufficient explanation to insulate this practice from critics. In this view (pushed
by lawyers), lawyers are the only people in America who are not influenced by their work experience,
including friendships and defense of client practices. They are SO exceptional! So give it up, Jim,
I finally told myself. It's the nature of Washington to put foxes in hen houses and claim they are
protecting the fowl.
But in April 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his presidential candidacy, based principally
on anger over how Wall Street has escaped being held seriously responsible for its misdeeds. If you
credit Sanders with nothing else, praise him for not letting go of the notion of justice for those
who suffered and those who caused pain and anger for millions. Yes, the banks are not solely responsible
for the Great Recession, but they contributed more than their fair share and leveraged immensely
the damage initially caused by others.
Sanders was not treated seriously. The publications I read made it clear that Sanders was, like
Donald Trump, a flash in the pan. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton would be nominated. Anger against
Wall Street and inequality were issues, but not worthy vehicles for a political campaign. Nothing
here. Move on.
It turns out that the ravages caused by Wall Street are the gift that keeps on giving. As Sanders
campaigned with far more success than predicted, and Secretary of State Clinton defended President
Obama as "tough on Wall Street," it was evident that my small contribution to correcting the record
might be timely.
So here it is.
Do I think Obama is responsible for the ineffective and embarrassing lay downs at the SEC and
DOJ? Yes, I do. I have no idea if the President communicated to his law enforcement appointees that
they should "go easy on Wall Street." Rarely is such overt instruction necessary in Washington. But
it is not hard to believe that in some fashion he did send such signals, since he came into office
with a mantra of letting bygones be bygones, including in the far more important arena of the false
narratives for invading Iraq.
In any event, the chairman of the SEC and the attorney general are appointed by the President.
At a minimum, we can say with certainty that Obama was satisfied with their performance. It is difficult
to conceive that, as a Harvard educated lawyer who also taught law at the University of Chicago,
it never crossed his mind how massive civil or criminal misconduct could go on without the supervision
or knowledge of at least mid-level executives. Certainly, the public criticism was brought to his
attention. His response was to create a joint task force on the subject of fraud in general. Its
main visible public function is to collect all the press releases on fraud prosecutions, including
small-time fraud, on one website . It also
offers advice to "elders" on how to avoid fraudulent scams. The pro forma mention of the
task force in DOJ's announcement of the Goldman settlement signals that the Task Force doesn't do
much. Again, law enforcement by press release.
The alternative possibility, never mentioned because it is preposterous, is that big Wall Street
firms so lack supervision of their lower level employees that fraud on a huge scale can be conducted
without the knowledge of even mid-level executives. At the SEC, at least, such a conclusion should
call for application of its "regulatory" function to impose supervisory conditions on the banks.
No such action was ever undertaken. Instead, it was "pay up some money and nevermind."
Dodd-Frank at best imposes generalized rules about bank size and other generic issues, rather
than addressing the kinds of fraudulent actions that actually occurred. It is appropriate for the
SEC or Federal Reserve to impose narrower changes in corporate practice to address specific kinds
of fraud. They are called "undertakings" and are often imposed by civil settlements with the SEC
or in litigated relief. It did not happen with the Big Bank frauds.
I believe that the American public is entitled to accurate information about how their government
works, including the important regulatory agencies. One way to do this is to fully disclose how the
sausage is made, especially when the process is defective. Self-promoting press releases swallowed
by a fawning business press is not sufficient. I knew I would not disclose any non-public information
about the Goldman investigation while the lawsuit against Fabrice Tourre was pending. He was the
one guy at Goldman the SEC sued personally. In fact, I think he was the only guy employed by any
of the big banks sued personally. (Another fellow who worked with the banks - not for the banks -
was sued in another case. He was found not liable, with the jury asking how come higher-ups were
not in the dock and urging the investigation to continue. It wasn't.) The Tourre case concluded a
few years ago with a verdict against the defendant. All appeals are exhausted. The statute of limitations
has expired for private actions. Disclosure of the information I had can do no harm to the public
or to pending litigation.
The only reason to keep the information secret is to prevent embarrassment to the SEC or to
those people who made decisions for the agency. Most of them left the SEC years ago. For public consumption,
I have tried to redact all names of the non-supervisory personnel in the Division of Enforcement
who worked on Goldman. I also must add that, as the emails show, for a period of time those dedicated
investigators were excited about the notion of bringing at least a slightly broader action than their
supervisors wanted. As is the case with much of the Division of Enforcement, the worker bees try
hard and usually are fearless. It is their bosses who frequently suppress their enthusiasm for policy,
political, or personal reasons.
As final egotistical end note, I must say that, despite all of my personal reservations about
his dedication to effective law enforcement in the financial sector, I voted for the President twice.
I will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee. But I ask myself: Is this the best that two political
parties given de facto monopoly over selection of presidential candidates can do?
Whoever is nominated and elected, Republican or Democrat, I hope that he or she will recognize
the need to end the practice of hiring Wall Street personnel to run our financial enforcement agencies.
They should begin by looking to home-trained personnel to lead the major departments and agencies,
such as Treasury, the SEC and the Department of Justice, including the chief of the Antitrust Division.
These are the people who are responsible for these institutions on a daily basis and also understand
the nature and importance of their mission. They have a career stake in doing an effective job. Outsiders
are, in general, more interested in resume polishing for the next private job. Additionally, much
great talent leaves these agencies for their own more lucrative private careers when they see their
own chances for advancement blocked by outsiders or their energies trying to fairly but aggressively
enforce the law sapped by timid leadership.
One party has chastised our government on every occasion for nearly 40 years and shows no intention
of reining in Big Business or Wall Street. Directly or by implication, these attacks tarnish government
employees in general, making a public service career less attractive to our most talented citizens.
The other party has been indifferent or ineffective in its defense of civil service and has addressed
financial sector wrongs by adding to the complexity of the system rather than cutting through it.
As a result, some of our businesses are above the law.
Something has got to change. It will. The question is, will it be for the better?
The author is trying very hard to be nice to the point of being delusional. This is criminality
and corruption through and through, and it didn't end in '08. Don't be sad… get mad.
A little history: I was hired, first as an adjunct, then a tenure-track professor, by the interdisciplinary
Freshman teaching unit at my old university. Two years before I would have come up for tenure
(and gotten it) they axed the program and switched me, against its will, to the History Department.
And they reset my tenure clock to zero. Long story short, they were never going to tenure me.
So I slogged on and earned my pay and got my two kids through high school. By then, my wife wanted
out of the suburbs and said she was leaving, preferably with me, but leaving. So we moved to the
country. This cut me off from the academic life (and nice $72,000 a year paycheck) that I had
struggled for years to enter and excel in.
So what? So, It's gone. I'm cut off. My intended life's work is ruined. At 51 I'm an unemployed
naval historian with two books and seven refereed journal articles and I can't get an interview
for a full-time job at a community college. How painful is this? It's murder. Hurts all the time.
No more exciting lectures to give. No more university library at my beck and call. No more access
to journals. No more conferences. It's an occasional one-off course and driving a delivery van.
This man has risked a lot to do what he did. He's lost more than many of you will realize.
If he can't just crap on the old life and the old profession, please, cut the man a little slack.
You don't want to be him.
Mr Levy, I am very sympathetic to your situation – long story short, I was in the forefront
of the late 70s to the present, layoffs in various industries where I found myself game-fully
employed. I too, no longer believe I will ever be employed full time at any job.
But I argue that it is not that the gods do not favour us; it is that we are the outcome of
bad gov't policies and unregulated (regulated for the consumer) businesses practices. Hence, my
lack of sympathy or willingness to tolerate breast beating (see my April 24, 2016 at 6:44 am posting)
by those who put us here.
James A. Kidney, former trial attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, retired
from the SEC in 2014 at the age of 66 after 24 years working there. Looks like he had a full career,
although had to put up with a lot of bullshit, and possibly soured some relationships on his way
out.
Very similar situation here. Going on 50, unemployed in my chosen field, etc. And yes,
its hard to just walk away sometimes… I have to keep my mind focused ahead instead of looking
back.
Are there any yacht clubs nearby you? There is like 4 of them within 10 minutes of me (I'm
on the Great Lakes) You could teach sailing and rigging no doubt. Bonus: Union crane operators
are required to know their rigging – they may need teachers too.
More than ever, I am convinced the capitalist system needs to be rejected as the means determining
how goods and services are delivered. The injustice and inequality generated are too great. Finding
a positive expressive outlet for this dissatisfaction will require leadership- and a new vision
for the future.
The amount of social damage being inflicted by the elite is almost beyond comprehension. Since
they have successfully insulated themselves form the consequences of their actions, they remain
aloof and uncaring for the plight of ordinary people, not to mention the health of the planet.
This system will continue to cut more and more people off from the benefits of collective social
action and effort. The work of the many, supporting the desires of the few cannot stand.
We all have to decide the level of inequality we are willing to live with. How people answer
this question will naturally sort them into common communities. Leave the isolated gated communities
to the elite. Careerism, like capitalism, is a dead end if your position cannot be guaranteed.
The amount of talent and passion for work wasted under the current system is another undercounted
fact. Sustainability and democracy are not compatible with capitalism.
Getting mad is only the beginning. The anger must be directed in some productive fashion. Any
resistance to the current order must have broad social support and that support only has strength
if self-reliant. Building these self-reliant structures is what the future will hold. If the plutocrats
can build a world for themselves, why can't the common man. It only takes work,discipline, and
control over the means of production.
Workers without power, influence, and the means to obtain life necessities are slaves. Is the
best the human mind can conceive a life of benevolent serfdom?
By the way, I believe I would enjoy sitting in on one of your lectures. I'm sure I would learn
much- and be a better man for it.
@James Levy … sorry to hear. I know a few who have been chewed up by the academic meat grinder.
I hope you can find a productive outlet for your scholarship. Exile is hard.
"The explanation of the badger buried in the woodpile is too complicated for the average voter."
That's it! Stop right there! I will not let you (speaking to the author) BS your guilty conscience
over my internet link. The average voter clearly knows they are getting screwed, that Wall Street
and the voter's own bank is ripping the voter off, and most clearly, that the justice department,
from state and local to federal, is enabling this injustice.
You sir, are swimming with sharks. Your morality is "is it legal?", your justification is "for
the shareholder". Therefore, you refuse to see the mendacity and instead excuse it for ignorance.
I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters who wound up losing their jobs who
initially blame themselves, than come to accept that the system in which they operated was fundamentally
corrupt, that even if some people locally really were trying to do the right thing, it was bound
to either 1. go nowhere, 2. be allowed to proceed to a more meaningful level if it was cosmetic
or served some larger political purpose or 3. got elevated because the organization was suddenly
in trouble and they needed to burnish their cred in a big way (a variant of 2, except with 3,
you might have a something serious take place by happenstance of timing).
Wow, that's a mouthful – and it's only one sentence. Whilst I love your pieces, I've noticed
that many of the articles – at least the run up summation to the articles – tend to be written
in a stream-of-consciousness style that, frankly, is hard to digest. This seems to be the case
more now than in the past. I don't know if you're harried or on an impossible schedule, but could
you please make your syntax easier to read? Thanks from a long-time reader and donator.
Because it's a Sunday and I have time to goof off, one potential revision - b/c I believe what
Mr Kidney has to say is important enough for me to spend a few minutes on one potential suggestion.
I've amended and added what I hope are accurate meanings:
----
Focusing on these as the key subject /verb pairs: I know (other whistleblowers) (other whistleblowers) [lost their jobs] (other whistleblowers) [blamed themselves – initially]
(other whistleblowers) [finally… accept] the system in which they operated … [was corrupt]
… even if… (some employees) tried to [be competent]
(It - there's a problem with 'it' as the subject, because we are unclear what 'it'
refers back to - I'll interpret 'it' as 'investigating fraud' ) was bound to…
-------------–
I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters. They wound up losing their jobs.
Initially, they blamed themselves, until they finally came to accept that the system in which
they operated was so fundamentally corrupt that they could not retain a sense of their own integrity
while working within the organization.
Despite the fact that some people really were trying to do the right thing, for reasons that
I will explain, investigating fraud was bound to go in one of only three directions:
1. fraud would not be investigated at all,
2. fraud investigation would serve the agency's need for better public relations - in other words,
the appearance of fraud investigation would be allowed to proceed, but only if it was merely cosmetic
(or served some larger political purpose), or else
3. fraud investigation became temporarily elevated, but only because the organization* was suddenly
in trouble – and consequently, needed to burnish its credibility by actually investigating fraud.
(Although 3 is a variant of 2, in the third option, credible fraud investigation could occur
if, and only if, political necessity enabled competent SEC employees to actually investigate fraud
in order to maintain the reputation of the SEC).
[NOTE: *It's not entirely clear here whether 'the organization' is the target business, or
whether it is the SEC (which would need to burnish it's cred in the face of bad publicity)]
------------
Not sure how close I came to the author's intended meanings, but I thought that I'd give it
a shot.
The sentence parses correctly even though it is long. Stream of consciousness often does not
parse correctly, plus another characteristic is the jumbling of ideas or observations. The point
is to try to recreate the internal state of the character.
For instance, from David Lodge's novel "The British Museum Is Falling Down":
It partook, he thought, shifting his weight in the saddle, of metempsychosis, the way his
humble life fell into moulds prepared by literature. Or was it, he wondered, picking his nose,
the result of closely studying the sentence structure of the English novelists? One had resigned
oneself to having no private language any more, but one had clung wistfully to the illusion
of a personal property of events. A find and fruitless illusion, it seemed, for here, inevitably
came the limousine, with its Very Important Personage, or Personages, dimly visible in the
interior. The policeman saluted, and the crowd pressed forward, murmuring 'Philip', 'Tony',
'Margaret', 'Prince Andrew'.
More generally:
The Stream of Consciousness style of writing is marked by the sudden rise of thoughts and
lack of punctuations.
The sentence may be longer than you like but this is not stream of consciousness. A clear logical
structure ("first, second, third") is the antithesis of stream of consciousness.
I fail to see why fraud is not prosecuted. We can get cute with fancy words but fraud is clear
and simple. Also – Enron results in SARBOX which seems to be clearly ignored. Yves – do we know
of any SARBOX prosecutions? Clinton started deregulation, Bush implemented deregulation and Obama
maintains it. No wonder the kids are mad. The financial industry makes the Koch brothers look
like pikers.
There is actually a high legal bar to prosecuting fraud.
I have written at length re Sarbox and the answer is no. And under Sarbox, you don't need to
prosecute, you can start with a civil case and flip it to criminal if you get strong enough evidence
in discovery. There was only one case (IIRC, with Angelo Mozilo) where the SEC filed Sarbox claims,
one in which it also filed securities law claims. The judge threw out the Sarbox claims with no
explanation. I assume it was because the judge regarded that as doubling up: you can do Sarbox
or securities law (the claims to have some similarity) but not both. But the SEC as it so often
does seems to have lost its nerve after that one.
I don't know if an election would have consequences and if a new administration headed by Sanders
would make it the SEC more responsible to the taxpayers and not the investors / banks.
It only took a decade for Markopolos to have his ponzi scheme information read by SEC.
I want to like this guy, I really do. But then he goes and says stuff like this:
The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head
the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They
then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.)
All of them were gentlemen. These factors make it all the more surprising that I never got
a clear answer as to why the investigation was so constipated, as it obviously was.
So he doesn't understand how the revolving door works…or he does but he's being purposefully
obtuse about it. Sacrifice my ass! Gentleman my heiny! And claiming that there's no proof of criminality
when, as is pointed out above, Sarbanes-Oxley was obviously violated isn't helping things either.
Listen dude, pick a side. It's either the American people or Wall Street crooks and their abettors
in government. You don't get to have it both ways. This kind of minimization and wishy-washyness
is only helping the crooks. More disappointing than I exepected.
these kinds of articles are nothing more than defensive measures against a growing public
rage !!!
I don't actually agree. I think the guy feels a little guilty for not doing more, now he's
trying to salve his conscience. Still, he can't quite bring himself to admit that the people he
was working for may well have been criminals. They were just so nice!
Self-reflection is not comfortable, and most people don't have much tolerance for it. I think
this guy's legitimately trying to do the right thing (not cover up for criminality) it's just
that it's really psychologically difficult to admit certain aspects of reality. It's not like
he's the only one.
I find it telling that suddenly now (within the last year or so) that all these people ( people
in high finance, their underlings, traders, hedge funders, and other assorted enablers of massive
fraud upon the general public, are suddenly having a 'come to hayzeus' epiphany! I'm not buying
whatever faux sincerity they're trying to project…….
They've screwed millions of trusting people with their fraudulent grifting!
> I find it telling that suddenly now (within the last year or so) that all these people […],
are suddenly having a 'come to hayzeus' epiphany!
Especially when it comes after a fat retirement and a lengthy career of going along. I have
much more respect for people who really did put their daily bread on the line, and there are plenty
of those people, a lot of whom Obama sent to jail. So, yeah, great, you finally told the truth…
but where were you when the country needed you to speak out?
Couldn't we use civil forfeiture to go after them regardless of whether we can prove any actual
crime? What's good for the average citizen is surely good for the elite banker…
It's a good thing they're gentlemen. I don't know if I could handle all the looting and self-dealing
if it came from common ruffians. Truly we are fortunate to be in such hands, my fellow countrymen!
According to Bill Black in a ted talk 2014. After the Savings and loans debacle, where the
regulators went after the worst of the worst criminals, they made 30.000 criminal referrals and
1000 procecutions with a 90% succes rate.
Now after the 2008 crisis, which was 70 times bigger causing 10 million job losses and costing
11 trillion dolllars, the Obama administration has not made one single criminal referral.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JBYPcgtnGE
Today I fell over some information about the IMF, that the organization is exempt from legal
prosecutions and taxes. Can this be true?
From the article: "The employees who bare the IMF badge are pretty much exempt from all forms
of government intervention. And, according to LisaHavenNews, the IMF "law book," the Articles
of Agreement lists the reasons and requirements for exclusion from government mandate."
Thank you, I was hoping someone would mention Bill Black.
I'm a software/hardware product/business development engineer. In 2008, after 20 years of reading
the WSJ and stunned by the sellout to Murdoch, I went to the internet independent media (IM) to
follow the 'economic crisis'. Within a few months it was clear to me 1) I had learned nothing
of substance reading the WSJ, 2) the U.S. MSM, education system, and government are thoroughly
captured/corrupt.
Being a 'reader' (note: I don't know anyone who reads non-fiction) for me this 'worldview transition'
was quite natural, nothing really surprised me, and it was a big relief to discover such good
information/analysis so easily available on the internet. However, eight years later, I have yet
to meet a single person who has rejected the MSM or tuned in to what's happening, via the IM or
otherwise. In fact, after leaving the university in 1990, I have yet to meet a single person with
any basic understanding of (or the slightest interest in, or concern about) the extreme institutional
criminality of the the Savings & Loan Crisis, Asian Economic Crisis, Technology Bubble, the 2008
crisis, or the many economic/military wars-of-aggression methodically destroying one government/economy/country
after another.
To me, nothing made the global/economic/organized/mafia criminality more clear than the 2008/2009
articles by Bill Black. Back then I again foolishly assumed people would rally behind Dr. Black
to reestablish basic law enforcement against yet another obvious largest-ever "epidemic" of organized
crime. Looking back, the highly organized (and very successful) criminality of the Paulson/Obama/Geithner/Bernanke/etc.
cabal was truly an amazing operation to behold. Perhaps the most shocking news came in 2010 when
numerous studies confirmed that the top 7% of Americans had already "profited" from the economic
crisis, that the criminally organized upper class had not only increased their net wealth but,
more importantly, had increased their rate of wealth accumulation relative to the bottom 93%.
Still, to me, infinitely more amazing, the bottom 93% didn't, and still don't, seem to care, or
if they do, they've done absolutely nothing to even start to fight back.
Today, when reading these articles, I'm astounded how completely meek and 'unorganized' the
bottom 93% are compared to the extremely vicious and organized top 7%. Year after year the wealthy
elite, who's core organizing philosophy is "take or be taken, kill or be killed", increasingly
wallow in dangerously high and unprecedented levels of wealth accumulated by blatant/purposeful/methodical/criminal/vicious
looting while their victims, the bottom 93% 'working class', do absolutely nothing (what are they
doing?…. other than playing with their phone-toys, facebook, video games, movies?). At this point,
the main (only?) reason I continue to 'read' is to perhaps someday 'behold' the working class
93% attempting to educate themselves and consequently 'organize' to defend themselves.
I sympathize with Mr. Kidney and applaud him for doing what he can to try to rectify this abhorrent
situation. I also applaud him for placing the blame squarely on Obama and his reasons for doing
so are solid.
What I find much harder to understand is why he would vote for Obama even in 2012 after it
became apparent that Obama was ultimately responsible for stonewalling his investigation, and
his complete willingness to vote for the corrupt Democrat party no matter what going forward.
As long as enough people continue to have that attitude things will never change until the
whole system comes crashing down. I'd much rather see an FDR-type overhaul of the system rather
than a complete collapse as I'm rather fond of civilization. But I've come to expect the latter
rather than the former so I'll be reading my weekly Archdruid report for the foreseeable future.
The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head
the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They
then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.)
All of them were gentlemen. These factors make it all the more surprising that I never got
a clear answer as to why the investigation was so constipated, as it obviously was.
Yes poor babies for that "significant personal sacrifice" that resulted in "even more lucrative"
private employment. The author explains the problem then scratches his head over what it might
be.
In a rational world there would be a strict separation between the regulated and the regulators.
The government would hire professional experts at decent salaries and they never ever would be
allowed to then move on to jobs with the regulated. Clearly the assumption underlying our current–irrational–system
is that these high status technocrats are "gentlemen" with a code of honor. Welcome to the 19th
century. Those long ago plutocrats in their stately English mansions were all gentlemen and therefore
entitled to their privileges by their superior breeding. They were the better sort.
Meanwhile for lesser mortals it seems totally unsurprising when laws are ignored because you
hire your police from the ranks of the criminal gangs. No head scratching needed.
Reid Muoio (boss of kidney @ $EC) has a brother at a major tall bldg law firm whose job is
to help fortune 500 companies deal with D & O insurance issues…so when in the article Muoio says
"He" did not go thru the revolving door…it was fraud by omission…his brother sits on the opposite
side of these private settlement agreements…
so is Kidney unaware…leaving us to maybe accept he was never much of an investigator…or just
forgot to point it out for us…
The world is full of govt types who tell us TINA…
The wealthy Elliott Spitzer told us he would have loved to help "the little people" but the
OCC and then scotus with waters v wachovia…except scotus ruled only direct subsidiaries get protection
and the OCC specifically said the trustee operations of OCC regulated entities are also not covered/protected…
Does anyone else think this was insider demolition – not just the failure to prosecute, but
the whole financial implosion in the first place? Who writes up nothing but "shitty deals" – all
the while saying to each other: IBGYBG and survives to slink away? They must have had a heads
up that the financial system as we had known it in the 20th c. was done. They had a heads up and
then they got free passes. My only question is, Wasn't there a better way to bring down the system,
an honest way that protected us all? By the end of the cold war money itself had become an inconvenience
because of diminishing returns. And now the stuff is just plain dangerous because everyone who
got screwed (99%) wants their fair share still. It is paralyzing our thinking. Obama maintains
he personally "prevented another depression". I honestly think he might be insane. What we need
is a recognition that the old system was completely irrational and it isn't coming back. And most
of us are SOL. Somebody is going to figure out how to maintain both the value and usefulness of
money very soon, because we've got work to do.
The GFC was the first great financial crime of this millenium, and Goldman Sachs was at the
epicenter. A heist of gargantuan proportions, they didn't even need a safecracker after Bernanke
spun the dials and opened the door wide.
Imagine if the FBI and the Mafia exchanged their top leaders every few months. That's what
we have here with the SEC and Wall Street.
Bernie Sanders: The business of Wall Street is fraud and greed.
We can add to that. The business of the SEC is to provide cover.
In Yves intro she shares her views, first, that Kidney still wants to think well of his former
SEC colleagues and his criticisms seem muted relative to the severity of the problems, and second,
that there are class assumptions at work.
The first is obvious, as the SEC is an utter failure in its responsibility to investigate and
prosecute financial criminals. While Mr. Kidney devotes a fair amount of his passages pondering
how it can be that no individuals within these financial institutions bear personal responsibility,
Mr. Kidney fails to see the SEC through that same lens. To say Kidney's criticism of his coworkers
is muted is an understatement. The individuals at the SEC are corrupt. The individuals at the
Justice Department are corrupt. Probably all nice people: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends,
etc. Just like those folks at the financial institutions. Mr. Kidney cuts them slack because of
his personal relationships with them. Mr. Kidney chooses to give them the benefit of doubt when
the totality of their professional performance at the SEC make clear this cannot be true.
With respect to class assumptions at work, Yves illustrates with the deference shown by SEC
officials and investigators toward these financial criminals and their presumption that these
individuals are honest. Mr. Kidney does share some of his disappointment in President Obama and
Obama's administration but fails to properly connect the dots. In short, the lack of financial
crime prosecutions is the result of a deliberate, planned and orchestrated effort.
Mr. Kindney's investigations were prevented in going forward by his superiors. He was never
given an explanation for this despite his asking. But Kidney believes his superiors are all good
people.
No, they are not. They are compromised people who have placed their career employment above
their sworn duty. The fact that their bosses have done the same, as have those in the Justice
Department as well as President Obama, should not diminish this fact. The phrase "class assumptions"
is too euphemistic when describing a system where there is no justice for the victims of financial
crimes, a system where the Justice Department and Administration coordinate to shield financial
criminals based on where they work.
This is America. In today's America the fact is certain individuals are above the law because
our elected officials at all levels accept that this is okay. Victims of these individuals will
be prevented access to their legal recourse, and that these criminals are protected from the highest
level of our government down. This goes way, way beyond class assumptions.
Yves has written extensively about how corporate interests have funded academic sinecures,
as well as continuing legal education seminars attended by attorneys and judges. This is part
of the fallout; if you want more, check out her section of ECONned where she explains how legal
thinking was perverted by business interests.
As someone who has fallen on their sword more than once (and again recently), I just want to
say that "placed their career employment above their sworn duty" is accurate but also oversimplifies
the situation.
People with families tell themselves that they balance performance of most (some?) of those
duties, while shirking the balance in order to protect their families (a "good" (as in, expensive)
college for the kids)… this actually comes down to sustaining their social status, in a culture
(political as well as corporate) where loyalty is valued equal to and above performance, and honorable
action is diminished, trivialized, even ridiculed; and not just within the context of the financial
industry.
This is not at all a defense of the choice, but the choice is made in a very class-stratified
social context, and arises in that general context. People take out loans to buy cars and houses,
they squirrel earnings away into investments (to avoid taxes) which they are reluctant to draw
from… they feel less ready to abandon their addictive income streams for honor, and fudge their
responsibilities. It's not isolated to regulators, or government, or even finance. It occurs so
constantly and on so many fronts that addressing specific cases doesn't make a dent in the compromise
of the entire culture. And that compromise is fueled and maintained by a very twisted set of ideas
about money, and career, and social status (not to mention compromises in journalism, education,
science, you name it).
I read Mr kidney as being very sarcastic. I could not write this with a serious sarcastic (Lawsuit
Avoiding) view:
The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head
the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They
then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.)
taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice
Oh really? Must have hurt. And from a legal point of view does not appear libelous.
Despite 14 years of public education campaigns, only one-third of Americans know about national
recommendations for a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day, and fewer than half meet that goal,
a new study has found. The lack of awareness is greatest among men, the unemployed and people born
in the United States, the researchers said. Their finding camefrom [...]
"... Unemployed people who found a job that rated well in these areas reported a substantial improvement in their mental health. By contrast, newly employed people who felt overwhelmed, insecure about their employment, underpaid, and micromanaged reported a sharp decline in their mental health, including increased symptoms of depression and anxiety. Even those who couldn't find a job fared better. This last finding was "striking," Butterworth says. "This runs counter to a common belief that any job offers psychological benefits for individuals over the demoralizing effects of unemployment." ..."
"... Policymakers should address the impact that the workplace has on mental - and not just physical - health, Butterworth says. "In the same way that we no longer accept workplaces that are physically unsafe or in which employees are exposed to dangerous or toxic substances, there could be a greater focus on ensuring a more positive psychosocial environment at work." ..."
March 14, 2011 | Health.com
With unemployment still high, job seekers who have been discouraged by a
lack of work might be inclined to take the first opportunity they're offered.
That will help pay the bills, but it could cause other problems: A new study
suggests that some jobs are so demoralizing they're actually worse for mental
health than no [...]
With unemployment still high, job seekers who have been discouraged by a
lack of work might be inclined to take the first opportunity they're offered.
That will help pay the bills, but it could cause other problems: A new study
suggests that some jobs are so demoralizing they're actually worse for mental
health than not working at all.
The findings add a new wrinkle to the large body of research showing that
being out of work is associated with a greater risk of mental health problems.
In the study, which followed more than 7,000 Australians over a seven-year period,
unemployed people generally reported feeling calmer, happier, less depressed,
and less anxious after finding work, but only if their new jobs were rewarding
and manageable.
"Moving from unemployment to a poor-quality job offered no mental health
benefit, and in fact was more detrimental to mental health than remaining unemployed,"
says the lead author of the study, Peter Butterworth, PhD, a senior research
fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University,
in Canberra.
The study was published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Butterworth and his colleagues analyzed data from an annual survey in which
participants described their mental state, their employment status, and-for
those with a job-details of the working conditions that they enjoyed (or didn't
enjoy, as the case may be). The survey respondents were asked how strongly they
agreed with statements such as "My job is complex and difficult" and "I worry
about the future of my job."
The researchers focused on four job characteristics that are closely linked
with mental health: the complexity and demands of the work, job security, compensation,
and job control (i.e., the freedom to decide how best to do the job, rather
than being ordered around).
Unemployed people who found a job that rated well in these areas reported
a substantial improvement in their mental health. By contrast, newly employed
people who felt overwhelmed, insecure about their employment, underpaid, and
micromanaged reported a sharp decline in their mental health, including increased
symptoms of depression and anxiety. Even those who couldn't find a job fared
better.
This last finding was "striking," Butterworth says. "This runs counter to
a common belief that any job offers psychological benefits for individuals over
the demoralizing effects of unemployment."
Although certain types of jobs-such as working in a customer-service call
center-are more likely to be downers, the working environment tends to have
a greater impact on mental health than the job description itself, Butterworth
adds.
Managers are especially important to employee well-being, says Robert Hogan,
PhD, an expert on personality in the workplace and a former chair of the department
of psychology at the University of Tulsa. "Bad bosses will make anybody unhappy,"
Hogan says. "Stress comes from bad managers."
Policymakers should address the impact that the workplace has on mental
- and not just physical - health, Butterworth says. "In the same way that we
no longer accept workplaces that are physically unsafe or in which employees
are exposed to dangerous or toxic substances, there could be a greater focus
on ensuring a more positive psychosocial environment at work."
"... Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He edits the Scientia Salon webzine and produces the Rationally Speaking podcast. His latest book, co-edited with Maarten Boudry, is "Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem." ..."
Throughout the rest of the day, my Stoic practice is mostly about mindfulness, which means to remind
myself that I not only I live "hic et nunc," in the here and now, where I must pay attention to whatever
it is I am doing, but, more importantly, that pretty much every decision I make has a moral dimension,
and needs to be approached with proper care and thoughtfulness. For me this often includes how to
properly and respectfully treat students and colleagues, or how to shop for food and other items
in the most ethically minded way possible (there are apps for that, naturally).
Finally, my daily
practice ends with an evening meditation, which consists in writing in a diary (definitely not meant
for publication!) my thoughts about the day, the challenges I faced, and how I handled them. I ask
myself, as Seneca put it in "On Anger": "What bad habit have you put right today? Which fault did
you take a stand against? In what respect are you better?"
Stoicism, of course, may not appeal to or work for everyone. It is a rather demanding philosophy
of life, where your moral character is pretty much stipulated to be the only truly worthy thing to
cultivate in life (though health, education, and even wealth are considered to be "preferred indifferents").
Then again, it does have a lot of points of contact with other philosophies, as well as religions:
Buddhism, Christianity, and - I think - even modern secular movements such as
secular humanism or
ethical culture. There is something very appealing
for me as a non religious person in the idea of an ecumenical philosophy, one that can share goals
and at the least some general attitudes with other major ethical traditions across the world.
There are also challenges that remain unresolved. The original Stoicism was a comprehensive philosophy
that included not just a particular view of ethics, but also a metaphysics, a take on natural science,
and specific approaches to logic and epistemology (i.e., a theory of knowledge). Many of the particular
notions of the ancient Stoics have ceded place to modern science and philosophy, and need to be updated.
Take, for instance, the Stoic concept of Logos, the rational principle that governs the universe.
For the Stoics, this was the manifestation of a divine creative mind, a notion I certainly cannot
subscribe to as a modern secular philosopher and scientist. But I am on board with the idea that
the universe is organized according to rational-mathematical principles (otherwise we could not understand
it scientifically), and I share the Stoic belief in universal cause and effect, which in turn has
profound implications for the way Stoics look at both our place in the cosmos and our conduct of
everyday life.
Given all this, I am willing to invest some time into exploring just how much one can recover
of the original Stoic spirit, update it with modern knowledge, and still reasonably call it "Stoicism"
(or, more properly, neo-Stoicism). If it turns out that it can't be done, I will at least have learned
much from the search.
In the end, of course, Stoicism is simply another path some people can try out in order to develop
a more or less coherent view of the world, of who they are, and of how they fit in the broader scheme
of things.
The need for this sort of insight seems to be universal.
Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He edits the
Scientia Salon webzine and produces
the Rationally Speaking podcast.
His latest book, co-edited with Maarten Boudry, is "Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the
Demarcation Problem."
"... My idea of the modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. ..."
"... What is wrong is not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means. ..."
"... The stoic is a person who combines the qualities of wisdom, upright dealing, and courage. The stoic will thus be immune from life's gyrations as he will be superior to the wounds from some of life's dirty tricks. ..."
"... In some ways stoicism resembles a Western form of Buddhism. ..."
"... The world has learned to thrive on positive illusion to drive reality; the world of the Ideal controls the Material more and more through illusory concepts, half-baked in our Romantic minds. Because the Stoic ideal depends on self-mastery and reason rather than emotion, it certainly is more difficult than ever before to be a Stoic. ..."
I was introduced to stoicism by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile. The stoic learns from
mistakes and practices tranquility of mind in the face of chaos, and hence is very much applicable
in today's time. Taleb says,
My idea of the modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into
information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Stoicism is often misunderstood as being a cold or glum. This is far from the case. Taleb says
Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated
our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word ..There
is nothing wrong and undignified with emotions-we are cut to have them. What is wrong is
not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means.
It is the attempt by man to get even with probability ..stoicism has rather little to do with
the stiff-upper-lip notion that we believe it means ..The stoic is a person who combines
the qualities of wisdom, upright dealing, and courage. The stoic will thus be immune from life's
gyrations as he will be superior to the wounds from some of life's dirty tricks.
Stoicism is a philosophy not a religion and is therefore applicable in all periods of time and
compatible with all faiths including atheism and agnosticism. In some ways stoicism resembles
a Western form of Buddhism.
Now as for the point of view of someone who tries to live life Stoically (on the emotional
detachment level): It's bloody hard, that's what it is!
Besides providing pithy quotes and inspirational sayings, I think you have to accept the following
existential views as the road:
You have one life, and this is it
The is no "end goal" in life, it is all about how you live each moment. Put another
way, the meaning of life is how you chose to live life itself
Perfection is not something you achieve, it is something you strive towards
Stoicism is an ideal. Keep striving while accepting occasional failures. Some tools
that might help you on your way:
The above book. Probably an easier read than Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (at
least for me)
Mindful meditation. This will help you recognise your own thoughts, so that you
can catch yourself in the act and re-route thoughts and neural pathways.
Start with Existentialism (e.g. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning), in
the sense that you accept that the only thing you can control are your words, your actions,
your thoughts and your emotions. When faced with a situation brought on by external circumstances
and people and that affects you, analyze yourself as to why it does and how can you use
it (this is where meditation helps).
I have heard good things about NLP, but there are a lot of mixed and bad reviews as
well.
In essence, accept that it will not be easy. As things affect you, catch yourself in the act and
ask why? And then re-route your thinking on the subject, for next time.
Anything that helps you do this - meditation, NLP, philosophy books - is good, but it's a very
personal journey.
I think it is impossible to be a true and honest Stoic in any single era, because of the logical
inconsistencies in the entire ethical philosophy. By Stoicism, I am assuming you are talking about
the ethical aspect rather than the other advancements they made such as logic and natural theory.
To first answer this question directly, I think that it is certainly more difficult nowadays
to achieve the Stoic dream than ever because of the rampant Romanticism that envelops us all in
the modern age. I think the ethical discourse in the modern age encourages a neo-Romanticism aspect
on almost everything, from relationships, to consumerism, dreams (American Dream especially),
propaganda (e.g. KONY 2012), and advertisement.
The world has learned to thrive on positive illusion to drive reality; the world of the
Ideal controls the Material more and more through illusory concepts, half-baked in our Romantic
minds. Because the Stoic ideal depends on self-mastery and reason rather than emotion, it certainly
is more difficult than ever before to be a Stoic.
Now onto the problems of Stoic ethics and the impossibility of Stoicism:
By ethical
aspect, I mean their philosophy of happiness derived mainly from the texts of Aurelius and Epictetus,
in which it is generally accepted:
"The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments,
or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and
that the sage-a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection-would not undergo
them."
Stoicism mirrors Buddhism in the renunciation of desire, and that I believe is the fatal logical
flaw. It is impossible to rid yourself of all desires. The life well lived to the Stoics depends
upon the extinction of all desire, whereas a more common-sensical approach would be the
moderation of desires, the philosophy that the opposing school of philosophy (Epicureanism) proposed.
Human beings are emotional first, and reason is nothing but a string of empathy that extends
throughout our shared experiences. The goal of Stoicism is impossible in nature, and to fully
shut out emotions is a terrifying way to live. At best, we can trick ourselves into thinking that
we have no desire, and in that case our "Stoic" lives become lies.
To become a Stoic is a desire in-itself. Thus the entire prospect is doomed from the start.
The Stoic dream is a desire to have no desires -- and that is a nightmare of a life.
Another issue I have with Stoicism is in the ability to ignore all circumstances in order
to find happiness. Find exactly what you are responsible for, and if the negative event is not
of your own bringing, then you have no reason to be unhappy. Incapability is not a valid reason
to feel no unhappiness. Because you could not have done otherwise, even in a deterministic system
fails to validate the disappearance of emotion.
Epictetus also proposed that self-mastery and knowing oneself would lead to this keen ability
to distinguish between self and circumstance. He makes it out to seem as if a conclusion can really
be reached. For example, if I am trying to intervene in a friend's suicide, what can I do? Should
I:
A) Come to understand that it is out of my control, and state that my free will only goes
so far as to not interfere with another's free will? (Rousseau).
B) Should I try anyways in conclusion that any attempt may help this friend of mine from
committing suicide?
C) Should I believe that it is fully my responsibility being in my friend's presence to
prevent suicide?
There is little we can do in tough decisions and states of being to draw a line between
self and circumstance. We ourselves are not aware of the limits of our influence, and thus this
self mastery is a joke. Our influence does not always depend on us. It is a matter of circumstance,
itself. We are circumstance.
Stoicism depends upon self-mastery and heavy introspection which is of course valued across
the board -- it is the dream of the Enlightenment and can be found in Kant's What is Enlightenment?
Therefore, it is not an accomplishment specific to Stoicism. After all, that dream of the
Enlightenment is also disputed, especially since it often depends upon the notion of free will.
Other than a collection of "inspirational quotes" by Aurelius and Epictetus for the layman,
there is little else that makes sense in Stoic ethics.
No, Stoicism's ethical philosophy is flawed right from the beginning. Can you ever imagine emotionally
satisfying each human being on Earth? Ethics have always been dictated by people with power and
capacity and the world is organised by power hierarchy rather than ethics.
Ethics is important
in many day to day human interactions but loses its hold after a point.Eastern philosophy on the
other hand propose ethically wholesome lifestyle while giving primary importance to transformation
of human energy or expanding one's consciousness.Once there is a conscious absorption in higher
forms of energy/intensity it will make him powerful enough to dictate ethics.Increasing and bringing
clarity of perception in life is much more important than being ethical.
Following is the criticism of any ethical philosophy(including stoicism) as proposed by Eastern
Philosopher -Sri Aurobindo:
" The Limitations of Morality
There is an area of our being which is a source of both great difficulty and great power. A source
of difficulty, because it blurs all the communications from outside or above by frantically opposing
our efforts to silence the mind and bogging down the consciousness at its own level of petty
occupations and interests, thus hindering its free movement toward other regions. A source
of power, because it is the outcropping of the great force of life in us. This is the region located
between the heart and the sex center, which Sri Aurobindo calls the vital.
It is a place full of every possible mixture: pleasure is inextricably mixed with suffering,
pain with joy, evil with good, and make-believe with truth. The world's various spiritual traditions
have found it so troublesome that they have preferred to reject this dangerous zone altogether,
allowing only the expression of so-called religious emotions and strongly advising the neophyte
to reject everything else. Everyone seems to agree: human nature is unchangeable. But this kind
of moral surgery,57 as Sri Aurobindo calls it, has two drawbacks: first, it does not bring about
any real purification, because the higher emotions, however refined they may appear to be, are
as mixed as the lower ones, since they are sentimental in essence and hence partial; secondly,
it does not really prevent anything – it merely represses. The vital is a force of its own, entirely
independent of our rational or moral arguments. If we try to overpower it or ill-treat it by radical
asceticism or discipline, the slightest letup can bring on an open rebellion – and it knows how
to take revenge with interest. Or, if we have enough willpower to impose our mental or moral
rules upon it, we may prevail, but at the cost of drying up the life-force in ourselves, because
the frustrated vital will go on strike and we will find ourselves purified not only of the evil
but also of the good in life: we will have become colorless and odorless. What is more, morality
works only within the bounds of the mental process; it does not have access to the subconscious
or superconscious regions, or to death, or to sleep (which happens to take up one day out of every
three in our existence, so that a sixty-year life span would entitle us to forty years of waking
moral life and twenty years of immortality – a strange arithmetic). In other words, morality
does not go beyond the limits of our small frontal personality. "
Sri Aurobindo: So long as you need to be virtuous you have not attained the pure spiritual
height where you have not to think whether the action is moral or not. These people hastily conclude
that when you ask them to rise above morality, you are asking them to sink down below good and
evil. That is not at all the case.
- They believe that a man can advance only by morality, i.e. by remaining moral. Sri Aurobindo: Nobody denies that. By morality you become more human, but you do not
go beyond humanity. Morality has done much good to man, maybe; it has also done much harm. The
question is whether you can rise to something above man by morality. That sort of mental limitation
is not conductive to the growth into the Spirit.
- But they always confuse morality with spirituality. The Upanishads and the Gita are loud with and full of the idea of going beyond morality. For
instance, when the Upanishad says: "he does not need to think whether he is doing is good or bad"
(sadhu, asadhu). Such a man attains a consciousness in which there is no need to think
about morality because the action proceeds from the Truth.
"The attempt of human thought to force an ethical meaning into the whole of Nature is one of those
acts of wilful and obstinate self-confusion, one of those pathetic attempts of the human being
to read himself, his limited habitual human self into all things and judge them from the stand-point
he has personally evolved, which most effectively prevent him from arriving at real knowledge
and complete sight."
So,Stoicism's ethical theory makes one incapable of self defense in a sense lifeless.But I
agree with with other aspects of natural theory like the concepts of Logos and Eros.
The opposition of good and evil is not finally resolved in ethical plane but can achieved through
spiritual/human energy focus & transcendence
"... This isn't as cold as it might at first sound: we ought to overcome harmful, negative emotions that are based on mistaken judgments while embracing correct positive emotions, replacing anger with joy. ..."
"... There is nothing to be gained from trying to resist these larger processes except anger, frustration, and disappointment. While there are many things in the world that we can change, there are many others we cannot and we need to understand this and accept it. ..."
Stoicism was one of the four principal schools of philosophy in ancient Athens, alongside Plato's
Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, and Epicurus' Garden, where it flourished for some 250 years. It proved
especially popular among the Romans, attracting admirers as diverse as the statesman Seneca, the
ex-slave Epictetus, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The works of these three authors have come down
to us and have won admirers from the Renaissance through to the present day. Although the philosophy
of Stoicism as a whole is complex, embracing everything from metaphysics to astronomy to grammar,
the works of the three great Roman Stoics focus on practical advice and guidance for those trying
to achieve wellbeing or happiness. Here are four central ideas:
Value – the only thing that is truly good is an excellent mental state, identified
with virtue and reason. This is the only thing that can guarantee our happiness. External things
such as money, success, fame and the like can never bring us happiness. Although there is nothing
wrong with these things and they do hold value and may well form part of a good life, often the
pursuit of these things actually damages the only thing that can bring us happiness: an excellent,
rational mental state.
Emotions – our emotions are the project of our judgements, of thinking that
something good or bad is happening or is about to happen. Many of our negative emotions are based
on mistaken judgements, but because they are due to our judgements it means they are within our
control. Change the judgements and you change the emotions. Despite the popular image, the Stoic
does not repress or deny his emotions; instead he simply doesn't have them in the first place.
This isn't as cold as it might at first sound: we ought to overcome harmful, negative emotions
that are based on mistaken judgments while embracing correct positive emotions, replacing anger
with joy.
Nature – the Stoics suggest we ought to live in harmony with Nature. Part
of what they mean by this is that we ought to acknowledge that we but small parts of a larger,
organic whole, shaped by larger processes that are ultimately out of our control. There is
nothing to be gained from trying to resist these larger processes except anger, frustration, and
disappointment. While there are many things in the world that we can change, there are many others
we cannot and we need to understand this and accept it.
Control – in the light of what we have seen, there are some things we have
control over (our judgements, our own mental state) and some things that we do not (external processes
and objects). Much of our unhappiness is caused by confusing these two categories: thinking we
have control over something that ultimately we do not. Happily the one thing we do have control
over is the only thing that can guarantee a good, happy life.
The three Roman Stoics Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of practical
advice aimed at helping people incorporate these ideas into their daily lives.
"... Stoicism took off because it offered security and peace in a time of warfare and crisis. The Stoic creed didn't promise material security or a peace in the afterlife; but it did promise an unshakable happiness in this life. ..."
"... Stoicism tells us that no happiness can be secure if it's rooted in changeable, destructible things. Our bank accounts can grow or shrink, our careers can prosper or falter, even our loved ones can be taken from us. There is only one place the world can't touch: our inner selves, our choice at every moment to be brave, to be reasonable, to be good. ..."
"... The world might take everything from us; Stoicism tells us that we all have a fortress on the inside. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was born a slave and crippled at a young age, wrote: "Where is the good? In the will If anyone is unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone." ..."
"... While it's natural to cry out at pain, the Stoic works to stay indifferent to everything that happens on the outside, to stay equally happy in times of triumph and disaster. It's a demanding way of life, but the reward it offers is freedom from passion–freedom from the emotions that so often seem to control us, when we should control them. A real Stoic isn't unfeeling. But he or she does have a mastery of emotions, because Stoicism recognizes that fear or greed or grief only enter our minds when we willingly let them in. ..."
"... But Stoicism is still there at the foundation of the Christian religion, in some of its most basic terms and concepts. ..."
"... before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves first. Our attempts to exert influence on the world are subject to chance, disappointment, and failure–but control of the self is the only kind that can succeed 100% of the time ..."
"... The Stoics taught that we fail far more often than we succeed, that to be human is to be fearful, selfish, and angry far more often than we'd like. ..."
we've spent the past few years studying and writing on another politician famous for his coolness:
Cato the Younger.
He was a practitioner of Stoicism, an ancient Greek religion that he helped bring to Rome. We
aren't claiming that the president's a secret Stoic. But we do think that the public response to
his self-control shows how poorly Stoic qualities can go over in our times: a philosophy built on
emotional control seems strange in the age of over-sharing.
... ... ...
We think that's a shame. Stoicism still has a tremendous amount to teach us, especially in these
passion-saturated times. What's more, the Stoic legacy has shaped our world in more ways than you
might expect. Here are five reasons why Stoicism matters:
1. It was built for hard times.
Stoicism was born in a world falling apart. Invented in Athens just a few decades after Alexander
the Great's conquests and premature death upended the Greek world, Stoicism took off because
it offered security and peace in a time of warfare and crisis. The Stoic creed didn't promise material
security or a peace in the afterlife; but it did promise an unshakable happiness in this life.
Stoicism tells us that no happiness can be secure if it's rooted in changeable, destructible
things. Our bank accounts can grow or shrink, our careers can prosper or falter, even our loved ones
can be taken from us. There is only one place the world can't touch: our inner selves, our choice
at every moment to be brave, to be reasonable, to be good.
The world might take everything from us; Stoicism tells us that we all have a fortress on
the inside. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was born a slave and crippled at a young age, wrote:
"Where is the good? In the will If anyone is unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason
of himself alone."
While it's natural to cry out at pain, the Stoic works to stay indifferent to everything that
happens on the outside, to stay equally happy in times of triumph and disaster. It's a demanding
way of life, but the reward it offers is freedom from passion–freedom from the emotions that so often
seem to control us, when we should control them. A real Stoic isn't unfeeling. But he or she does
have a mastery of emotions, because Stoicism recognizes that fear or greed or grief only enter our
minds when we willingly let them in.
A teaching like that seems designed for a world on edge, whether it's the chaotic world of ancient
Greece, or a modern financial crisis. But then, Epictetus would say that–as long as we try to place
our happiness in perishable things–our worlds are always on edge.
... ... ...
3. If you're Christian, you're already part-Stoic.
Imagine a religion that stressed human brotherhood under a benevolent creator God; that told us
to moderate and master our basic urges rather than giving into them; that nevertheless insisted that
all humans, because we're human, are bound to fail at this mission; and that spent a lot of time
talking about "conscience" and the multiple aspects, or "persons," of a unitary God. All of that
might sound familiar. But the philosophy that invented all of those ideas was not Christianity, but
Stoicism.
It makes sense that Christianity is a deeply Stoic religion. Stoicism dominated Roman culture
for centuries - and Christianity went mainstream in the same culture. What's more, many of the leaders
of the early Christian church were former Stoics. Of course Christianity borrowed much of its thought
and terminology from Stoicism – because thinking about religion in the early 1st millennium meant
thinking like a Stoic.
As Christianity continued to grow, church leaders, who wanted to emphasize the uniqueness of their
faith, began to downplay this Stoic connection. But Stoicism is still there at the foundation
of the Christian religion, in some of its most basic terms and concepts.
4. It's the unofficial philosophy of the military.
In 1965, James Stockdale's A-4E Skyhawk was shot down over Vietnam. He later remembered the moment
like this: "After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before
I landed And so help me, I whispered to myself: 'Five years down there, at least. I'm leaving the
world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.'"
Stockdale spent more than seven years in a Vietnamese prison, and he wrote that Stoicism saved
his life. Stockdale had spent years studying Stoic thought before deploying, and he drew on those
teachings to endure his captivity. These words from Epictetus kept coming back to him: "Do you not
know that life is a soldier's service? If you neglect your responsibilities when some severe order
is laid upon you, do you not understand to what a pitiful state you bring the army?" While some of
his fellow POWs tormented themselves with false hopes of an early release, Stockdale's Stoic practice
helped him confront the grim reality of his situation, without giving in to despair and depression.
Stockdale was not alone as a military man who drew strength from Stoicism. In her book The Stoic
Warrior, Nancy Sherman, who taught philosophy at the Naval Academy, argued that Stoicism is a driving
force behind the military mindset – especially in its emphasis on endurance, self-control, and inner
strength. As Sherman writes, whenever her philosophy class at Annapolis turned to the Stoic thinkers,
"many officers and students alike felt they had come home."
5. It's a philosophy for leadership.
Stoicism teaches us that, before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves first.
Our attempts to exert influence on the world are subject to chance, disappointment, and failure–but
control of the self is the only kind that can succeed 100% of the time. From emperor Marcus
Aurelius on, leaders have found that a Stoic attitude earns them respect in the face of failure,
and guards against arrogance in the face of success.
... ... ...
Stoicism has an appeal for anyone who faces uncertainty–that is, for all of us.
...Cato the Younger subscribed to this philosophy from his young adulthood to his death, but he
was also prone to violent outbursts of anger, obstinate pride, and occasional drunkenness.
Yet in his most courageous moments–when he faced down the army of Julius Caesar and certain defeat
without blinking–Cato lived out the Stoic ideal. The Stoics taught that we fail far more often
than we succeed, that to be human is to be fearful, selfish, and angry far more often than we'd like.
But they also taught a realistic way to be more.
The more we practice Stoic qualities in good times, the more likely that we'll find them in ourselves
when they're most needed.
As anyone who's lost a job can attest, stress and worry often quickly follow. But the health of your heart after unemployment
can also take a tumble. Job loss can cause immediate heart issues, and the stress and bad habits that frequently come with unemployment
can build up over time, causing cardiovascular damage, health exerts [...]
Although people rarely talk about it, almost everyone experiences anger toward God at some point in their lives, commonly after
the diagnosis of a serious illness, the death of a loved one or a trauma. In fact, nearly two out of three people report that they've
felt angry at God, according to a study in the January issue of he [...]
WEDNESDAY, March 30 (HealthDay News) -- Saying a prayer for another person may help people control their negative emotions after
being insulted by a stranger, researchers report. A series of studies found that after people were intentionally provoked into anger,
asking them to pray for a person who needs extra help or support (a cancer patient, for example), helped calm them down. The researchers
[...]
THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) - Levels of a brain chemical known as serotonin govern the way people react to unfair offers
when they play the game of life, a new study indicates. Serotonin, which carries messages between neurons, is involved in emotional
control. One recent study found that the expression of anger in women was affected by variations in a gene governing the receptors
forserotonin [...]
"... Self-employment has risen substantially since the ACA took effect. ..."
"... One of the desired outcomes from the ACA was that it would free people from dependence on their employer for health care insurance, allowing them to work part-time or start a business if they so choose and get insurance through the exchanges. ..."
"... Yes labor force participation has increased but it still is only 63%. Yes the employment to population ratio is now 59.9% but it should be 62%. Slow progress with a long way to go. ..."
"... But the negatives, especially among the series that lead, are beginning to outweigh the positives. Revisions were mixed. The manufacturing workweek declined, and manufacturing jobs are now down YoY. Although temporary jobs rose this month, they have failed to top their December peak for the last 3 months. Short term unemployment has continued to rise slightly. A coincident indicator, aggregate hours, also failed to exceed its January high. ..."
The economy added 215,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate rounding up to 5.0 percent
from February's 4.9 percent. However, the modest increase in unemployment was largely good news,
since it was the result of another 396,000 people entering the labor force. There has been a large
increase in the labor force over the last six months, especially among prime-age workers. Since
September, the labor force participation rate for prime-age workers has increased by 0.8 percentage
points. This seems to support the view that the people who left the labor market during the downturn
will come back if they see jobs available. However, even with this recent rise, the employment-to-population
ratio for prime-age workers is still down by more than two full percentage points from its pre-recession
peak. Another positive item in the household survey was a large jump in the percentage of unemployment
due to voluntary quits. This sign of confidence in the labor market rose to 10.5 percent, the
highest level in the recovery to date, although it's still more than a percentage point below
the pre-recession peaks and almost five percentage points below the peak reached in 2000.
Other items in the household survey were mixed. The number of people involuntarily working
part-time rose by 135,000, reversing several months of declines. However, involuntary part-time
work is still down by 550,000 from year-ago levels. The number of people voluntarily working part-time
fell in March, but it is still 654,000 above its year-ago level.
One of the desired outcomes from the ACA was that it would free people from dependence on their
employer for health care insurance, allowing them to work part-time or start a business if they
so choose and get insurance through the exchanges. There has been a substantial rise in self-employment
since the exchanges began operating in 2014. In the first quarter of 2016, incorporated self-employment
was up by more than 400,000 (7.8 percent) from the same quarter of 2013. Unincorporated self-employment
was also up by almost 360,000 (3.9 percent).
While the employment growth in the establishment survey was in line with expectations, average
weekly hours remained at 34.4, down from 34.6 in January. This indicates that February's drop
in hours was not just a result of bad weather. As a result, the index of aggregate hours worked
is down by 0.2 percent from the January level. This could be a sign of slower job growth in future
months. ...
The average hourly wage rose modestly in March after a reported decline in February. There
is zero evidence of any acceleration in wage growth. The average for the last three months increased
at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent compared with the average of the prior three months. This
is virtually identical to the increase over the last year.
On the whole this is a positive report, both because the economy continues to create jobs at
a healthy pace and even more importantly because it indicates that people are returning to the
labor market. The continuing weakness in wage growth is discouraging, but also should signal to
the Fed that there is little reason to raise interest rates.
PPaine :
The job markets are coming alive
But is the punch bowl headed for the kitchen sink ?
We need to set much higher target ratios for E to P
We need 15 million more jobs in short order
To get near vickrey zone conditions on job markets
Obviously we won't go there
But just how far will we go
Before the bastards turkey wire the system ?
PPaine -> PPaine ...
We need the quit rate to go up another 30% at least
PPaine -> PPaine ...
I mean on top of the 50% rise to match the high water mark of the Clinton miracle
[ The quits rate only needs to climb 15% to get back to the Clinton level. ]
anne -> PPaine ...
Never ever explain what "Vickrey zone conditions" are, as long as there is no concern with being
understood.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> anne...
[Google William Vickrey. Highlights of Wikipedia:]
...Vickrey's economic philosophy was influenced by John Maynard Keynes and Henry George. He
was sharply critical of the Chicago school of economics and was vocal in opposing the political
focus on achieving balanced budgets and fighting inflation, especially in times of high unemployment...
Selected works[edit]
"Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders", Journal of Finance, 1961. The
paper originated auction theory, a subfield of game theory.
"Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism: A Disquisition on Demand Side Economics".
October 5, 1996.
Arrow, Kenneth Joseph; Arnott, Richard J.; Atkinson, Anthony A.; Drèze, Jacques (editors) (1997).
Public Economics: Selected Papers by William Vickrey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-59763-3.
Warner, Aaron W.; Forstater, Mathew; Rosen, Sumner M. (editors) (2000). Commitment to Full Employment:
The Economics and Social Policy of William S. Vickrey. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-7656-0633-X.
Pavlina R. Tcherneva; Forstater, Mathew (2004). Full Employment and Price Stability: The Macroeconomic
Vision of William S. Vickrey. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 1-84376-409-1.
[Paine repeatedly references William Vickrey because of his substantial commitment to full employment
policy as sound economics (as if human well being for the masses actually mattered).]
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
And Anne repeatedly asks "What does this reference to Vickrey mean?" Maybe Anne's battery is almost
dead and working memory gets reset each time the solar generator powers down. The programming
still functions because it is stored in non-volatile memory on the hard drive, but volatile RAM
is wiped each time that the sunsets after the battery storage is exhausted.
anne -> PPaine ...
We need 15 million more jobs in short order.
To get near Vickrey zone conditions on job markets
[ Where did the 15 million number come from, and I still have no idea what Vickrey zone conditions
are? ]
pgl :
Yes labor force participation has increased but it still is only 63%. Yes the employment to population
ratio is now 59.9% but it should be 62%. Slow progress with a long way to go.
pgl -> pgl...
I may be setting the bar too low with my call for a 62% employment to population ratio. Brad DeLong
puts it north of 62.5%:
But the negatives, especially among the series that lead, are beginning to outweigh the positives.
Revisions were mixed. The manufacturing workweek declined, and manufacturing jobs are now down
YoY. Although temporary jobs rose this month, they have failed to top their December peak for
the last 3 months. Short term unemployment has continued to rise slightly. A coincident indicator,
aggregate hours, also failed to exceed its January high.
So while we can cheer yet another month of jobs added to the economy, and the jump in participation,
this report just adds to my concern about next year.
pgl -> New Deal democrat...
I won't cheer until the employment to population ratio reaches 62% and real wages actually rise
on a consistent basis.
sanjait -> New Deal democrat...
Don't look at peaks in monthly data, look at rolling average trends.
Also, while manufacturing specific data can be meaningful ... these days the dynamics in those
data are largely dominated by swings in O&G, which is in a historic funk.
sanjait :
In general, the trends look good. The working age E/P number is, to me, the most meaningful single
indicator we have, and it appears to be continuing to rise and at an accelerating rate. That's
a very good sign. It's very arguable that things could and should be improving at a faster rate,
but when this stat is rising things are indeed improving.
Baker's note about ACA and self-employment is also an important one. One important aspect of ACA
is that it is GREAT for entrepreneurship. People are more free to leave jobs and start companies
when their ability to get health insurance isn't predicated on their working for a large company
with a group plan.
The GOP makes a lot of noise about how ACA supposedly kills jobs and stifles
industry, but the reality is that tomorrow's tech leaders, and major employers, are getting a
boost today from ACA.
Ben Groves :
It is not sustainable and will reverse in April imo. Driving unemployment down.
Their dirty ways: " One day last October, when employees at Cenovus Energy showed up at the office, many discovered that they couldn't
access their computer files on the company's internal system. That's how they found out they were being laid off.
Companies that fought to attract and keep staff have been learning the hard way how to shed them in a hurry. But that doesn't mean
it can't – and shouldn't – be done right
One day last October, when employees at Cenovus Energy showed up at the office, many discovered that they couldn't access their
computer files on the company's internal system. That's how they found out they were being laid off. Two months earlier, employees
at Hutchison Ports Australia in Sydney and Brisbane got a text message, then an email in the middle of the night inviting them to
a beachside hotel. They, too, were being laid off.
Cenovus called its move a mistake. Hutchison Ports Australia said it had begun its consultations with staff and unions regarding
redundancies in June. Whatever the explanation, companies need to start approaching layoffs more carefully. And though everyone in
the energy business is hoping the bloodletting is over, if it isn't, there are ways to soften the blow of layoffs, and do them fairly
and transparently.
Communication
A company should keep its employees informed of the economic forces acting on the business and their employment prospects, says
Martin Birt, president of HRaskme.com and a human resources consultant with 30 years in the business. "Closures should never, in
my view, be a surprise," he says. Neither should layoffs. You can communicate messages with your employees such as how decisions
will be made in what Birt calls a "long-game communications plan," a set of HR principles that will be applied should anything be
decided regarding the company's long-term employment potential. That way, employees have some context as to what to expect when market
circumstances change.
If you choose not to share your long-game communications plan in your employee manual, when speaking to the people you're laying
off, at least communicate how, why and when you made the decision, Birt says. Your actions will get back to suppliers, contractors
and layoff survivors. And if you've communicated fairly and awarded appropriate compensation and benefits, the external environment
will understand what kind of corporate citizen you are.
Listen to Your Experts
Involve the correct teams – operations, human resources and legal – and involve them as early in the decision-making process as
possible, says Birt. These teams will protect you as a corporation from any liability associated with a layoff.
Soften the Blow
Henry Hornstein is an assistant professor at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario's Algoma University, specializing in organizational change
management. In the early 1990s, he was among the staff let go from Imperial Oil's Strathcona refinery. "It was not pleasant," says
Hornstein, "but the way Imperial Oil handled that at the time cushioned the blow." They provided him with a year's worth of salary
and benefits, and services with an outplacement firm. These included resumé writing, interview training and networking support. "Rather
than treating people as commodities, people are treated compassionately," says Hornstein of the experience. You can provide your
employees with psychological support in addition to proper severance, benefits and outplacement services, he says. Consider offering
group meetings where people can talk to others about the negative psychological impacts of downsizing that they've experienced. "Downsizing
is a significant assault on an individual's self-esteem Everybody has a story, and when somebody is downsized, the organization can
[seem to] take an approach that they don't care what the background story is, they just want to get rid of the people." says Hornstein.
Birt agrees, saying companies should be prepared to offer an employee assistance program (EAP), a short-term counseling service for
employees in need of support. This can also add a buffer against the company's liability.
Confidentiality
Having said that, to maintain confidentiality, limit the planning group to only those whose participation is necessary, says Birt.
Consider using specific project-related confidentiality agreements, as well, and clearly describe the consequences for breaching
confidentiality. He also suggests reminding participants with pre-existing confidentiality agreements of the terms of those agreements.
If you are a publicly traded company, you should know if you are required to first inform the markets of your actions. If that is
the case, managers must be prepared to communicate with employees immediately after informing the markets.
Finalize the Details
Before you deliver the news of layoffs, finalize all the details with human resources and legal, including severance, benefits
and pension entitlements, says Birt. You'll be prepared to immediately answer individual questions. Everything you say orally in
a termination meeting should be captured in a termination letter as well, he says. However, give terminated employees a few days
to review their termination package and ask any questions, says Fraser Johnson, a professor at the Ivey School of Business in London,
Ontario. "As soon as you hear the words that you're being laid off, your mind might go blank," he says.
Share the Pain
Rather than targeting employees with layoffs, share the cuts across the corporation, just as Canadian Natural Resources did when
all staff pay was cut by up to 10 percent. Or, introduce flexible work arrangements like part-time work, voluntary leaves of absence,
or deferred compensation in which an employee can work full-time at 80 percent salary for several years before taking a paid sabbatical.
"... Yes. The ratio of population to jobs needs to change dramatically. Bust out of the old cycle where the ratio thru out the cycle remains bad. Yes even at the peak of employment -- We need a far higher sustained rate of spending on domestically produced goods and services ..."
"... One problem with MMTers is they talk about very common ideas, like deficit financed spending, and pretend like they just invented something radically new, while completely failing to acknowledge or address the rest of the conversation that others have been having for years. ..."
"... Oh no! Whatever you do, cried Brer Rabbit, Dont throw me into the briar patch! ..."
"... ...So long as business interests dominate the political process, it will be hard to reverse the trend toward increasing inequality. ..."
"... Mark and most of his ilk support an open door for corporations to import smart, hard working and desperate workers from around the world...impact of that at the margins for wages(along with many other things) have been a disaster for the bottom 80% over the past 30 years. ..."
Three Ways to Help the Working Class : ... In graduate school, I was once told that "people
don't have marginal products, jobs do." What does this mean? ...
I wish I would have connected the last part to the Supreme Court case on public unions.
RGC :
"If you took 100 dogs and you buried 95 bones in a field and you told the dogs their job was to
go out and find a bone, what's the very best case scenario? The best you can possibly hope for
is that 95 dogs come back with bones. Five dogs can't get bones. More likely, some dogs will get
lucky; they'll stumble across a few extras. Some may have better skills; they'll find three or
four. So, the number of dogs that come back without bones may be ten or fifteen.
(c. 9:38) "The conventional economist would gather the dogs together, the ones that had no
bones, and train them to sniff out bones more effectively. Then they would send those hundred
dogs back out into the field and tell them to go come back with a bone. And, again, the best you
can get is 95 dogs with bones. What's wrong is that there aren't enough bones. There's nothing
wrong with the dogs. The bones are the jobs. There's nothing wrong with the unemployed. There
simply aren't enough jobs.
- Stephanie Kelton at the Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. She is Creator and
Editor of New Economic Perspectives. Her research expertise is in Federal Reserve operations,
fiscal policy, social security, healthcare, international finance, and employment policy.
PPaine -> RGC...
Yes. The ratio of population to jobs needs to change dramatically. Bust out of the old cycle where the ratio thru out the cycle remains bad. Yes even at the peak
of employment -- We need a far higher sustained rate of spending on domestically produced goods and services
sanjait -> RGC...
The very conventional new Keynesian response to a shortfall in demand is expansionary demand management
policies.
One problem with MMTers is they talk about very common ideas, like deficit financed spending,
and pretend like they just invented something radically new, while completely failing to acknowledge
or address the rest of the conversation that others have been having for years.
RGC -> sanjait...
It's cute the way you make obviously ignorant assertions with such apparent confidence.
PPaine -> RGC...
Don't be too harsh. He very often makes good points. Why he's so hard on MMTers escapes me
Has he read kalecki Lerner and Vickrey ?
The young James Meade
The young Lawrence Klein
Lawrence R. Klein, Economic Theorist
By GLENN RIFKIN
Lawrence R. Klein, who predicted America's economic boom after World War II and was awarded
the 1980 Nobel in economic science for developing statistical models that are used to analyze
and predict global economic trends, died on Sunday at his home in Gladwyne, Pa. He was 93.
His daughter Hannah Klein confirmed the death.
As World War II was ending, Professor Klein, widely regarded as a brilliant theorist, disputed
the conventional wisdom that the postwar period would drive the American economy back into a long
depression.
Using his econometric models based on mathematical equations, he predicted correctly that the
pent-up demand for consumer goods and housing after the war, coupled with the purchasing power
of the returning soldiers, would result not in economic crisis but in a surge in spending and
a flourishing economy.
Though he often testified before federal bodies and served as an economic adviser to Jimmy
Carter during his 1976 presidential campaign, Professor Klein chose to remain in academia - he
taught economics at the University of Pennsylvania for 33 years - and rejected an offer to join
the Carter administration.
"I am just an academic giving advice," he told People magazine in 1976. "If you are a technician
and are asked for help, it is a social obligation of citizenship to give it."
Professor Klein's use of vast survey data to build statistical economic models for the United
States and several other countries has been adopted by economists around the world. "Few, if any,
research workers in the empirical field of economic science have had so many successors and such
a large impact as Lawrence Klein," the Nobel committee wrote in awarding him the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Science....
anne -> PPaine ...
Where is a reference? Repeated name-dropping, with no references is widly inconsiderate. Since
you use the names repeatedly, why not just have a set of references to put down?
MAP: A Market Anti-Inflation Plan
By David Colander and Abba Lerner
Preface
This is a small book about a big topic. This is not the usual book on inflation, simplified-
or oversimplified- to make accepted doctrines intelligible to the layman. It presents a new plan-
MAP (Market Anti-inflation Plan)- that makes it possible to succeed in curing our inflation. The
ideas in it are not easily absorbed. They form a radical new framework- a new way of looking at
inflation, and indeed at all macroeconomics, which is at the same time only a synthesis of many
divergent old trains of thought. As Albert Einstein said, "Ideas should be expressed as simply
as possible, but not more so." We think we have made the book intelligible to nonspecialists,
even though its ideas are challenging for all readers, and perhaps even more so for advanced economists.
We approach inflation as an economic problem, but we make allowances for political realities
in designing MAP. Although we believe MAP should be adopted in some form, the book is not written
from an advocatory position. We try to consider all arguments, both pro and con, and do not attempt
to minimize potential difficulties.
The methodology is realytic - an unusual word that indicates a contrast with analytic. This
means that we are primarily concerned with solving real problems. We believe that the book also
contributes importantly to extending theoretical understanding, but it does this only where necessary
to solve the problem at hand. *
Supreme Court Seems Poised to Deal Unions a Major Setback
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court seemed poised on Monday to deliver a severe blow to organized
labor.
In a closely watched case brought by 10 California teachers, the court's conservative majority
seemed ready to say that forcing public workers to support unions they have declined to join violates
the First Amendment.
A ruling in the teachers' favor would affect millions of government workers and culminate a
political and legal campaign by a group of prominent conservative foundations aimed at weakening
public-sector unions. Those unions stand to lose fees from both workers who object to the positions
the unions take and those who simply choose not to join while benefiting from the unions' efforts
on their behalf.
Under California law, public employees who choose not to join unions must pay a "fair share
service fee," also known as an "agency fee," typically equivalent to members' dues. The fees,
the law says, are meant to pay for collective bargaining activities, including "the cost of lobbying
activities." More than 20 states have similar laws.
Government workers who are not members of unions have long been able to obtain refunds for
the political activities of unions like campaign spending. Monday's case, Friedrichs v. California
Teachers Association, No. 14-915, asks whether such workers must continue to pay for any union
activities, including negotiating for better wages and benefits. A majority of the justices seemed
inclined to say no.
Collective bargaining, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said, is inherently political when the government
is the employer. "Many critical points are matters of public concern," he said, mentioning issues
like tenure, merit pay, promotions and classroom size.
The best hope for a victory for the unions had rested with Justice Antonin Scalia, who has
written and said things sympathetic to their position. But he was consistently hostile on Monday.
"The problem is that everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within
the political sphere, almost by definition," he said.
The court's four liberal members were on the defensive, asking whether there was good reason
to overturn a 1977 decision by the court that allowed the fees....
Mandatory Union Fees Getting Hard Look by Supreme Court
By ADAM LIPTAK
The justices have already voiced skepticism about making people give money to public unions.
They may now be ready to rule that it's unconstitutional.
PPaine -> anne...
The unins have no choice but to attack on all fronts
Public sector insulation from savage attacks ended long ago
This is just a after dinner beltch by the union eaters
Peter K. :
One way to increase worker bargaining power is to employ aggressive macro (fiscal, monetary, currency/trade)
policy so that labor markets are tight and businesses are fighting over workers.
In the late 90s, labor shared in productivity gains as unemployment fell below 4 percent. This
ended with the tech stock bubble which morphed into the housing bubble.
As DeLong recently wrote:
"What we need now is 1) debt relief to unwind the overhang and 2) much tighter financial regulation
to prevent the growth of new fragilities. And if those prove inconsistent with full recovery,
then we need massive government spending on infrastructure and other investments financed by money
printing until full employment is reattained."
It could be that achieving aggressive macro policy is as difficult politically as making the
environment more favorable towards unions.
If we look at the post-war social democratic years, both helped raise living standards. Also
the financial system was much smaller and much more regulated.
"Oh no! Whatever you do," cried Brer Rabbit, "Don't throw me into the briar patch!"
pgl :
Point #2: "We also need to do a better job of providing the educational resources people need
to reach their full potential."
I can see conservative economists echoing this but what specifically do they want policy to
do to make this happen? More Pell Grants No - they want to cut that kind of support. Now Greg
Mankiw will tell you that you will get a great education if you manage to get into Harvard and
pay $300 for his textbook!
If getting a Harvard PhD for every worker means that the California farm worker cutting broccoli
and lettuce, or changing bed pans for the bedridden in nursing homes, gets paid $120,000 per year,
then I'm all for eliminating poverty by education.
My guess is education is not the path to eliminating poverty.
If you think education is the solution, explain why it takes a college degree to pay farm workers,
home care workers, child care workers, cleaning people who scrub toilet, middle class wages, instead
of simply paying them middle class wages right now.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron :
"...So long as business interests dominate the political process, it will be hard to reverse the
trend toward increasing inequality."
[Actually it is the interest of management and the capital owning class that are dominating
the political process. Businesses would do just fine if wages were higher, rent seeking - not
so much.]
An illustrated interview with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
g :
Mark and most of his ilk support an open door for corporations to import smart, hard working and
desperate workers from around the world...impact of that at the margins for wages(along with many
other things) have been a disaster for the bottom 80% over the past 30 years.
PPaine -> Paine...
Even the great dani rodick and joe Stigilitz could push tis harder
But they are one worlders
An honorable club but...
Perhaps we need bordered areas to heal themselves first with national policies of true full employment
and balance trade forex
That's right ... You cannot make the retail clerk any more productive. That's talking about the
people I care about: bus drivers (taxi drivers -- me :-]), home carers, janitors, etc. But, you
can make the economy they inhabit more productive -- and then the economy can pay them more (not
less every year!): why barbers in France get paid more than barbers in Poland (classic example).
US per capita income in 1968, $15,000. In 2016, $30,000.
Minimum wage nearly $4 an hour below what it was in 1968 (adjusted). Ditto for the price of
US labor across the mid-to-lower board.
US mid-to-low labor price so extraordinarily low that half (HALF! -- 100,000!) of Chicago's
gang age, minority males would rather join a street gang. Then there's my gang, Chicago's old
(mostly retired) American born taxi drivers. Wouldn't get us into that job today for $500, if
lucky, for 60 grueling hours.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
The core American trouble isn't wages not keeping up with productivity per se (though that
parallels); the core labor sickness is wages not even remotely approaching what the consumer (not
the boss) might be very willing to pay.
We do not need to attract businesses that provide good jobs -- the jobs cannot be good if the
pay is miserly. High wage opportunities don't happen -- they are made (ask Jimmy Hoffa).
Educational resources are not needed to help retail clerks reach their full potential. Good
pay for retail clerks is needed to help Detroit's schools reach their full potential. Nationwide:
poverty area schools don't work because students (and teachers!) don't feel it worth making the
effort -- given the job market doesn't promise anything remunerative enough to strive for when
it's time for them to go to work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00332EXDM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1
"I believe this is mainly due to differences in bargaining power." Which is mainly due to absurdly
unenforceable labor laws in this country which -- uniquely in all markets -- allows one side in
the labor market to bully the other side out of being able to meaningfully bargain. Simple enough
solution: make union busting a felony (like every other kind of market warping -- try to take
a movie in the movies and telling them you were only kidding).
The labor laws enabling collective bargaining have long been in place; the need for collective
barraging presumably settled. So when are progressive states going to begin -- one state at a
time; forget Congress -- to make these laws enforceable? Federal preemption means individual states
cannot subtract from national law, but states may add. In Maryland for one, Democrats have a 33-17
edge in the State Senate and a 91-50 edge in the House. WA, OR, CA, IL, NY, anybody listening?
IS ANYBODY, ANYWHERE LISTENING?! Retail clerks (and their hungry families) desperately want
to know.
Step 1. Cut wages to increase profits
Step 2. Produce more and price it twice as high
Step 3. Demand government allow workers to borrow at high interest rates to buy twice as much
as before their wages were cut in half
Step 4. Blame government, and especially Obama when the math does not work out.
If you want faster gdp growth, you must pay workers, who are after all 99% of the consumers,
more and increase their pay faster.
Economies are zero sum.
It is possible to time shift, say by exporting more than imported and taking the difference
and saving it by buying debt, or stored labor, in other countries, but at some point, the process
is reversed. For the US, savings has flowed into the US blocking exports and increasing imports.
At some point, that will need to reverse. Someone will need to work more and consume less. That
will need to be the 1% because for decades, most US workers have worked more and consumed less,
unless they got to borrow and consume so they will need to work more and consume less.
Unless there is a massive redistribution of wealth, either war, or bankruptcy. Trying to tax
wealth to redistribute will only destroy the wealth. After all, 99% of the wealth in the US was
not built by labor, but inflated into existence by pump and dump asset churn or by high rents
inflating decaying scarce assets in price.
"... His motto (which he shares with me every other day), is, "Never throw anything away". And damned if he can't find exactly what I need when I come over to scrounge at what I call, "Our Store". ..."
"... We wear our clothes out and watch what we buy. We don't travel by air, and limit trips to local visits with family. In the future, perhaps this will be the norm for most instead of today's extravagent consumption which is thought of as normal for Canadians and a birthright. ..."
"... Perhaps as a group, as a species, it seems as if we never learn and make the same and even greater mistakes over and over. But as individuals we can try to do things better, live better; until we can't go on. That is my plan, and I am sticking with it until I can't go on. ..."
"... the banjo prevailed and damned if it isn't getting better. I am well on the way to mastering (to use that term loosely) an Iris Dement version of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms", "I can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash, and "I Believe In You" by Don Williams. I think I have sub-conciously chosen these songs to combat my own confessions of doom and gloom. ..."
Back in early 2012, the Premier of Ontario
suggested that the loonie (Canadian
dollar) was becoming a petro-dollar. He was slapped down by the Cons, and
walked back his comment.
"That has knocked the wind out of Ontario exporters and manufacturing in particular," explained McGuinty.
"The only reason the dollar is high - it's a petro dollar , right? It's been driven by the global demand for oil
and gas to be sourced in Western Canada.
"So if I had my preferences, as to whether we have a rapidly growing oil-and-gas sector in the West or a lower dollar benefiting
Ontario, I'll tell you where I'd stand - with the lower dollar."
By the middle of 2014, oil's share of Canada's total exports reached 19 percent from about 6 percent a decade earlier. Meanwhile,
the Ontario-based auto industry was seeing its share of the export pie fall to to 14 percent from 22 percent. The heavier reliance
on crude became an issue in last October's national election, as Harper and his Western-based Conservatives were accused by
all their opponents of having favored oil to the detriment of other regions.
In the process, the Canadian dollar had effectively joined the ranks of petro-currencies. The correlation between movements
in the price of oil and the loonie has increased five-fold since 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2015, while
all commodity-exporting countries faced currency pressure, the Canadian dollar was more sensitive to oil price movements
than such petro-states as Mexico, Norway and Russia.
I don't actually see low oil prices re-balanacing the Canadian economy. The cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. Would
you invest in an export dependent industry in Canada? One can reasonably model a scenario where the price of oil goes up to $100/barrel,
the loonie returns to parity with the greenback and an exporters competitiveness disappears with our petro-loonie's parity with
the U.S. dollar.
Being a petro-state makes for a pretty ugly domestic economy.
I believe the decline will bring us Canadians back to our roots and strengths. Personally, I have been disgusted with our past
30 year transformation into urban consumers, no matter what part of the country we live in.
I remember my Grandparents playing penny poker on winter evenings. I grew up with stories of the Depression. While I am 60,
my good friend down the road is 75. He often tells me about living in our Valley from '46 onwards ..a time of bailing water from
the river into a 45 for home supply, canned venison and salmon for winter, oil lamps because Hydro did not arrive until the latter
'60s. His Dad built up a sawmill and his folks provided room and board for 'the crew'. His mom washed their clothing by hand on
Saturdays and finally got a gas powered ringer washer to make it easier. Nowadays, he scrounges scrap steel (old bedframes and
the like) from the recycling bins for our welding projects. He helps me make up power saw chains from scraps and pieces. His
motto (which he shares with me every other day), is, "Never throw anything away". And damned if he can't find exactly what I need
when I come over to scrounge at what I call, "Our Store".
I don't know what will happen to the Vancouverites or Torontonians when property values dive. I imagine that many will lose
everything they think they have, (when their debt bomb blows). I guess then we will see what people are made of. Will they whine?
Or will they pick themselves up and make the best of it?
As for Ron's post, it is similar to one last year. I could hardly read that one as well. Yes, there are deserts and sewers
made by man, and that will be the best that many can hope for. But what is your sphere of influence and power to change things?
I have replanted several thousand trees on our property and let most of it regen into a bramble-filled mixed forest. I have put
in a pond that trout have found from the drainage ditches and flooded wetlands next door. I have cut trails for deer and elk crossing
routes. We grow our gardens without pesticides and with as much compost as possible. We wear our clothes out and watch what
we buy. We don't travel by air, and limit trips to local visits with family. In the future, perhaps this will be the norm for
most instead of today's extravagent consumption which is thought of as normal for Canadians and a birthright.
Ron, the facts are glum. Your story is true. I accept that. What I don't accept is allowing it to bring me down and giving
up .on myself, my loved ones, and my people. Perhaps as a group, as a species, it seems as if we never learn and make the
same and even greater mistakes over and over. But as individuals we can try to do things better, live better; until we can't go
on. That is my plan, and I am sticking with it until I can't go on.
I am teaching myself to play the banjo. (My blessed wife is so so patient). Today, the weather was cold and foggy, my lumber
is frozen into ice lumps, and I was quite house bound being sick of crunching around my frozen yard trying to be productive. So,
the banjo prevailed and damned if it isn't getting better. I am well on the way to mastering (to use that term loosely) an
Iris Dement version of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms", "I can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash, and "I Believe In You" by Don
Williams. I think I have sub-conciously chosen these songs to combat my own confessions of doom and gloom. Sometimes, it
is all we have. For you post readers, I will provide the Youtube links for a pick-me-up. A nice glass of whiskey makes for a good
listening partner.
regards and thanks for your heartfelt honesty and efforts
"... I actually think that the bigger effect is not just offshoring, but a vicious circle relating to increasing inequality. After all, most of the economy today is services, but if normal people cant afford the services anymore, then that will of course stagnate, forcing down wages decreasing the affordability even more (or causing substitution of inferior automated or remote services). ..."
"... That is why the one employment bright spot is medical services which are subsidised (one way or the other) almost everywhere. We really have to investigate more the distribution of the circulation of money, how the concentration of money in a few hands means that money circulates through relatively hands. I dont know of anybody who actually investigates this. You could say, it is the disaggregation-is-important problem. ..."
"... One thing that really annoys with political discussion today is the dominance of money illusion. This is particularly extreme in the Euro area today where Germans keep complaining that so and so will be taking our tax money . No one ever seems to stop and think, where does the money come from in the first place , and yet, in macro-economics, this is absolutely the most important question. Nobody even seems to notice that both deleveraging and bankruptcy actively destroy money and that money needs to be replaced. ..."
"... Foreign companies like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a "good enough" syndrome and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to give consumers what they really wanted - reliability, the latest technology and good design at a reasonable cost. ..."
"... Yes, I see offshoring as a transitional stage while foreign workers are cheaper than machines. ..."
"... The plot was about automation, but the moral was about humanity. :) ..."
"... "The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings, said Paul, not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems." ..."
"... It is not the PRODUCERS who have a huge incentive to make sure it never happens. Au contraire, they want their consumers to have more money. It is the OWNERS who want to make sure it never happens because that would dilute their power. ..."
So you think that offshoring does not eventually increase living standards in the destination
countries? That's odd. What's your evidence?
Automation may not be the first response, but it's always in the equation:
CEO: "Those pesky foreign workers are asking for more again! Machines are so much easier to
work with. Can we replace them with machines yet?"
CTO: "Let me check... No, not yet, but a lot of smart people are working on it."
CEO: "OK, then let's look for another offshoring partner with more complacent workers for now
and revisit this later."
The answer to this automation question only has to be yes once to permanently change the playing
field.
reason said...
I actually think that the bigger effect is not just offshoring, but a vicious circle relating
to increasing inequality. After all, most of the economy today is services, but if normal people
can't afford the services anymore, then that will of course stagnate, forcing down wages decreasing
the affordability even more (or causing substitution of inferior automated or remote services).
That is why the one employment bright spot is medical services which are subsidised (one
way or the other) almost everywhere. We really have to investigate more the distribution of the
circulation of money, how the concentration of money in a few hands means that money circulates
through relatively hands. I don't know of anybody who actually investigates this. You could say,
it is the disaggregation-is-important problem.
reason said...
One thing that really annoys with political discussion today is the dominance of money
illusion. This is particularly extreme in the Euro area today where Germans keep complaining that
so and so will be taking "our tax money". No one ever seems to stop and think, "where does the
money come from in the first place", and yet, in macro-economics, this is absolutely the most
important question. Nobody even seems to notice that both deleveraging and bankruptcy actively
destroy money and that money needs to be replaced.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to pgl...
"...the empty suits running GM and Ford were both greedy and incompetent..."
The United States of Toyota: How Detroit Squandered Its Legacy and Enabled Toyota to Become America's
Car Company
September 11, 2007
by Peter M. DeLorenzo
The United States of Toyota is many stories in one. First and foremost, it is a business story,
detailing the decline of the American automobile industry - and the simultaneous rise of an Asian
manufacturer to take its place. It is also a history book, providing an intimate portrait of the
larger-than-life personalities and cars that led the American auto industry through its glory
days and down the path toward extinction. It is a political/current affairs piece, presenting
the rise of a Japanese company - Toyota - not just in terms of its sales success but also in terms
of its cultural success, as it works to assimilate into American society. And finally, it is a
never-before-seen primer on Detroit - The Motor City - a town and a region dominated by the auto
companies, their suppliers and their ad agencies - and by a mindset and culture all its own. In
commentary that is as accurate as it is blunt, Peter De Lorenzo presents the players and the action
in the auto business in a way not seen before in print. His voice is unique and refreshingly candid.
His provocative analyses and assessments - grounded in personal experience and a lifelong immersion
in all things automotive - present a compelling picture of the state of the auto business - how
it used to be, what it has become and where it is headed. From the arrogance and short-sightedness
of the Detroit manufacturers to the acumen and relentlessness of Toyota, The United States of
Toyota paints an insightful portrait of an iconic American industry as it struggles for survival
in the early years of the 21st century.
The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market
September 21, 2004
by Micheline Maynard
An in-depth, hard-hitting account of the mistakes, miscalculations and myopia that have doomed
America's automobile industry.
In the 1990s, Detroit's Big Three automobile companies were riding high. The introduction of the
minivan and the SUV had revitalized the industry, and it was widely believed that Detroit had
miraculously overcome the threat of foreign imports and regained its ascendant position. As Micheline
Maynard makes brilliantly clear in THE END OF DETROIT, however, the traditional American car industry
was, in fact, headed for disaster. Maynard argues that by focusing on high-profit trucks and SUVs,
the Big Three missed a golden opportunity to win back the American car-buyer.
Foreign companies
like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share
in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly
engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a "good enough" syndrome
and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to
give consumers what they really wanted - reliability, the latest technology and good design at a
reasonable cost. Drawing on a wide range of interviews with industry leaders, including Toyota's Fujio Cho, Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, Chrysler's Dieter Zetsche, BMW's Helmut Panke, and GM's Robert
Lutz, as well as car designers, engineers, test drivers and owners, Maynard presents a stark picture
of the culture of arrogance and insularity that led American car manufacturers astray. Maynard
predicts that, by the end of the decade, one of the American car makers will no longer exist in
its present form.
*
[Like the executives of the US steel industry before them, the management of the big three (plus
one) US automakers possessed legendary inabilities when it came to product development and production
quality control. One can only imagine that their golf games must have been better than their understanding
of auto making.]
pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Exactly - products designs that were better than our. Lean production which we were slow to
adapt. And there are those Jan commercials. Toyotas are selling like crazy. But at least Ford
and GM is finally under new management.
sanjait said in reply to pgl...
A few decades later ... Ford and GM do indeed look to be getting their act together. I'd buy
a car from either one of those companies today.
lower middle class said...
Paging Dr. Proteus... Dr. Paul Proteus!
cm said in reply to lower middle class...
That was automation, not offshoring.
Syaloch said in reply to cm...
In the end that's a distinction without a difference.
Julio said in reply to Syaloch...
Yes, I see offshoring as a transitional stage while foreign workers are cheaper than machines.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Julio...
Machines could not open up SE Asian markets to US firms in the way that offshoring could.
Syaloch said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Suppose we visited those factories from Player Piano and discovered that the few highly educated
workers remaining were not overseeing automated machines, but rather shipping raw materials over
to a foreign country where goods were produced by low-wage laborers. In terms of the domestic
economy, would that make any difference?
Large-scale offshoring was enabled by machines that made the exchange of goods and information
between remote locations possible. Whatever residual labor component is involved is merely an
automation problem that hasn't been solved... yet.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Syaloch...
MNCs wanted their capital investment to have access to the markets with the most growth potential.
Regulatory and FOREX arbitrage helped. Labor costs were low on the totem pole.
Syaloch said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
That's more true with offshored manufacturing than with services. US companies aren't sending
call center jobs to India because they hope to serve the Indian market.
But even with regard to manufacturing labor costs are obviously a major consideration. Just
watch any episode of "Shark Tank" and listen to the sharks explain how stupid anyone is for trying
to manufacture anything here in the US. Are t-shirts sewn in Bangladesh because of the huge growth
potential in apparel sales there? Were the Mexican maquiladoras set up to have better access to
the Mexican market?
lower middle class said in reply to cm...
The plot was about automation, but the moral was about humanity. :)
"The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to
serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems."
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
Syaloch said in reply to lower middle class...
Toward the end of Player Piano the Shah of Bratpuhr asks a very good question: What are people
for?
When I first read Player Piano I also happened by pure chance to be reading a collection of essays
by Wendell Berry titled "What Are People For?"
The eponymous essay from Berry's collection was a great complement to Vonnegut's book.
lower middle class said in reply to Syaloch...
Time for me to visit the library, thanks Syaloch!
reason said...
New Deal democrat
Yes, it is part of your name (and was copied then throughout the Western world). Then of course
there was the Russian and Chinese revolutions, which at least initially were very egalitarian.
New Deal democrat said in reply to reason...
I think you misunderstood my point, which was about liberalizing international trade. I'm not
100% sure, but I don't think that was a really high priority of the Russian and Chinese revolutions.
:)
pgl said in reply to New Deal democrat...
I studied Russian history. Free trade was not exactly what drove Lenin. And it is certainly
not what drives Putin.
PPaine said in reply to New Deal democrat...
There was a significant debate about trade early on with bukharin advocating. Two way openness.
And Lenin a two way state monopoly.
Lenin anticipated what happened to russia after the wall fell ....70 or so years later.
He had a keen insight into MNCs free for all tactics.
Unfortunately state concessions which he supported faced a tacit constriction.
Despite notable exceptions including Pater Koch
reason said...
P.S. New Deal democrat
It is not the PRODUCERS who have a huge incentive to make sure it never happens. Au contraire,
they want their consumers to have more money. It is the OWNERS who want to make sure it never
happens because that would dilute their power.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to reason...
Yep. Capital gains... and gains... and gains, until there is little left for labor gains.
pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Nike makes obscene profits. And for what? Designing new shoes? They don't make anything - their
third party Chinese manufacturers do the hard work at low wages. BTW - the US does not get to
tax those Nike profits as they end up in Bermuda.
"... Robert Waldmann writes that that the reason Krugman was surprised by the failure of the supply side is that he didn't pay enough attention to the European unemployment problem. The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then with low inflation. By 2008, the flat Phillips curve was already very clear to anyone who read Italian newspapers. ..."
The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely
high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long
time, then with low inflation.
Krugman posted a graph showing how the US graph of inflation and unemployment has changed (just
click the
link and look). In the past high unemployment gradually lead to lower inflation and then to lower
inflation and unemployment - this is the pattern predicted by Friedman, Phelps, Tobin (and discussed
already by Samuelson and Solow in 1960). But in the recent past extremely high unemployment has come
with low and stable core inflation.
Things used look very different here in Italy than in the USA. Here is a graph of data from before
January 2008. Extremely high unemployment was consistent with moderate and then with low inflation.
The only clear shift in inflation occurred in 1996 and 1997 (which may or may not be when Italians
began to think they might actually earn the wonderful reward of being allowed to adopt the Euro).
By 2008, The flat Phillips curve (the Fillipo curve?) was already very clear to anyone who read
Italian newspapers.
Here are all data which are available on FRED (yes I sit in Rome and surf to St Louis for Italian
data). Oddly the harmonized unemployment series is only available (at FRED) from 1983 on.
In this graph there is also very little sign of Friedman-Phelps cycles. The old pattern was a
steady decline from extremely high inflation - it looks almost like an expectations unaugmented Phillips
curve. But then (really from 1986 on) there was fairly stable moderate to low inflation along with
extreme swings in unemployment. I stress that this is CPI inflation including food and energy not
core inflation. the peak oil spike in 2007 and the collapse in 2008 are clearly visible. It is possible
that the most recent observations show a slide to actual persistent deflation, but it is more likely
that the recent decline in inflation is due to the collapse of the price of oil.
[…] Robert Waldmann writes that that the reason Krugman was surprised by the failure of the
supply side is that he didn't pay enough attention to the European unemployment problem. The natural
unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment
did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then
with low inflation. By 2008, the flat Phillips curve was already very clear to anyone who read
Italian newspapers. […]
You need to distinguish "creative destruction" due to new technologies invented from "greed based" destruction
caused by financization and outsourcing... In both cases old job dissaper, but in case of
finanzition based destruction of jobs no new jobs are ever created. It's just plain vanilla wealth
transfer to upper 1% of the society.
The social instability that comes alongside creative destruction - or 'disruption' - is often justified
by the notion that unemployment effects are only temporary since in the long run a multitude of new
jobs (many of which we can't even imagine yet) will inevitably be created.
Only 0.5% of the US labor force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000.
Even in Silicon Valley, only 1.8% of workers are employed in new industries
The majority of the 71 new 'tech' jobs relate to the emergence of digital technologies,
(such as online auctions, video and audio streaming and web design) but also include renewable
energy and biotech.
New jobs cluster in skilled cities, making economic activity increasingly concentrated
and contributing to growing regional inequalities.
This, in other words, is the reality of the new "zero to one" tech world, where moving fast and
breaking things (including jobs), then not worrying about the consequences until you're a billionaire
who can give his wealth away in one billion dollar tranches, is the acceptable norm. (Even though,
arguably, the accumulation of those billions in the first place is often the job-destroying problem.)
Dr. Frey adds the valuable commentary that:
"Because digital businesses require only limited capital investment, employment
opportunities created by technological change may continue to stagnate as economies become increasingly
digitized. Major economies like the US need to think about the implications for lower-skilled
workers, to ensure that vast swathes of people don't get left behind."
Very fair point.
Limited capital investment equals extremely low barriers to entry. This in turn equals absolutely
ruthless competition, which - somewhat ironically - leads to the "why should I bother investing in
anything at all since there's nothing in it for me in the long run" effect. The real-world equivalent,
if you will, of the Grossman Stiglitz Paradox.
As a consequence, faddy network effects - a.k.a who's first to benefit from natural monopoly formation
or old-fashioned populism by another name - increasingly mean everything, reducing successful entrepreneurial
enterprise to a simple lottery/gambling game or (at best) a highly politicised popularity contest,
wherein marketing spend stands equivalent to political campaigning outlay.
Except, whereas political campaigns pay off electorate loyalty with promises of better lives in
material terms, the most successful technology campaigns tend to do the opposite: pay off users for
network loyalty with the promises of better digital returns, at the same time as transferring a greater
share of material wealth to a tiny platform owning elite.
Indeed, because tech firms are mainly focused on redistributing existing wealth rather than creating
more of it, for them to profit, some share of real economy product must be snatched from those who
actually worked to produce it. That's Schumpeterian creative destruction in action, albeit at the
cost of producers who tend to share their profits with workforces through wages.
The lowest cost producer will always be the one with smallest human workforce.
All of which then sparks a dangerous race to the bottom focused on cutting out the most expensive
material input: the human.
What's worse, once that race starts, there's little to no incentive for anyone to invest in any
business which ever involves human capital again.
The irony is, without any beneficiary workforce within the new business structure, it's only capital
owners (or lucky billionaire charity cases) who get to benefit from the dividends created by the
system. Demand for products and services is destroyed. To wit, a vicious deflationary cycle begins,
which shrinks the pie rather than grows it.
Regarding the labour-destroying digital/tech trend, Frey and Berger's paper says specifically:
Relative to major corporations of the early computer revolution, the companies leading the
digital revolution have created few employment opportunities: while IBM and Dell still employed
431,212 and 108,800 workers respectively, Facebook's headcount reached only 7,185 in 2013.
To be blunt, that arguably means it's not looking good for three of the core Schumpeterian presumptions,
namely:
Technological disruption will eventually create jobs of equal merit elsewhere in the system
(i.e. unemployment is temporary).
Recessions lead to efficiency gains that create social well-being for all.
Successful innovation must be rewarded with a temporary monopoly if it's to continue incentivising
anyone to bear the risks of entrepreneurship.
It is, however, looking better for the Schumpeterian conclusion that eventually capitalism must
give way to socialism if it's to create a widespread commonwealth.
Why? Because, whilst it's never been easier, cheaper or less risky to grab yourself a ticket for
the 'monopoly reward' lottery - and thus more profitable when you do win - these cheap tickets are
only available to businesses redistributing existing wealth that's focused on contracting consumer
surplus as a whole.
In the digital tech era, that's at best an exercise in political-populism (marketing
spend to get consumers to support this platform rather than another, for as low a consumer surplus
cost as possible to the platform leader) and at worst an exercise in total utter randomness. Neither,
consequently, really justifies outsized rewards to any winning party.
To the contrary, if you're in the business of creating new value utilising real human workforces
or focused on creating new areas of demand, it's arguably never been more difficult, expensive or
risky to take a punt on success - and thus less profitable if you do win. And that's because the
very concept of rewarding a large workforce or consumer base with a steady, dependable and secure
consumer surplus is considered to be a fundamental competitive disadvantage.
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at
CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
An
essential read from Martin Wolf this Thursday on the manner in which corporate surpluses are
contributing to the savings glut problem and causing all sorts of distributive chaos in the process.
So, whereas it used to be the sovereigns over-hoarding international claims and under-consuming/under-investing
in their own infrastructure for the benefit of getting a leg up in the global hierarchal order, it's
now corporates over-hoarding retained earnings for the sake of protecting their dominant positions
instead (retaining earning piles being different to explicit cash piles, which can be generated with
debt not just profit).
Says Wolf:
The observation that a structural surplus of savings over investment appears to have emerged
in the corporate sectors of the big high-income countries is highly significant. It is
significant for the growth of potential supply, since it reflects relatively feeble investment,
but it is also significant for the shape of aggregate demand.
If the corporate sector runs a structural surplus of savings over investment, other sectors
must run offsetting structural deficits. If the government is to be in financial balance, either
households or foreigners must run these deficits. In the eurozone, this logic has led to huge
current-account surpluses (a financial deficit for foreigners). For the UK and US, it is likely
to mean renewed household deficits - a perilously destabilising possibility.
Why is corporate investment structurally so weak then? Wolf proposes a few reasons. One is the ageing
of societies, which lowers the level of investment needed. The other is globalisation, which motivates
relocation out of high-income countries. But the one we think might be most relevant is his
proposition that technological innovation is quietly killing the incentive to invest. This is critical:
Much investment today is in IT, whose price is collapsing: constant nominal investment finances
rising real investment. Again, much innovation seems to reduce the need for capital: consider
the substitution of warehouses for retail stores.
We've taken for granted that "technology" is a force for good in the world. But perhaps the reality
is a little different? Perhaps for every 'good' information tech creates, an equal and equivalent
'ungood' is created too? Or perhaps more so, the reason we're seeing the computer age everywhere
but in the productivity statistics is precisely because information technology is and always has
been another manifestation of a rent-extracting financial type of business.
Here's a chart by way
of
Iren Levina at Kingston University to cement our argument that banks were the original network-based
technology platform unicorns - with business models equally focused on gathering privileged data
about customer behaviours for the purpose of influencing more profitable behaviours elsewhere:
It is with good reason, then, that banks dedicate the biggest chunk of operating expenses to personnel,
algorithms, IT infrastructure and hardware equipment. Banks, like information tech firms today, are
and always have been information processing businesses.
On which note, Diana Hancock, of the Fed, argued
convincingly in the 1990s
that the Financial Firm is a financial technology which takes input (data), processes said input,
and then creates monetary goods which distribute existing capital to sectors which can draw returns
more effectively than others, in exchange for a leasing fee for that matching service.
But as Hancock says, financial profits can only be assured only if the purchase cost of one unit
of the capital good less the rental received during the period is equal to the discounted
depreciated value of the capital good in the rental period.
That's another
way of saying bank profits are only justifiable if the added value from redistributing leased
capital more than compensates for its natural depreciation - something that's only possible if the
total value add is over and above total lease fees charged by the intermediaries. If at the end of
the rental period society has no more capital (or less!) than it had to begin with, fees charged
on an ex-ante basis will have proven unjustified.
The parallels between banks and technology platforms are thus uncanny.
In the banking process, data input represents the process by which information about future consumption
(or lack thereof) - as extrapolated from previous behaviour - is collected from user networks to
facilitate more constructive consumption elsewhere. By the time capital is returned, enough new capital
is supposed to have been created to ensure both the original investors can be paid back as well as
the banking/intermediary layer compensated for. Banking crises emerge when it turns out investments
have failed to compensate for the natural depreciation rate.
Shrinking the pie?
In the unicorn IT process, data input represents the process by which information about future
consumption (or lack thereof) - as extrapolated from previous behaviour - is collected from user
networks to facilitate less constructive consumption at source.
In other words, instead of using information about long-term non-consumption to benefit value-adding
industries which grow the pie for all, tech firms are focused on using information about fleeting
periods of non-consumption to draw down existing capital more efficiently.
The better tech firms are at predicting or shaping behaviours through their information processes,
the less new capital investment is needed, because reduced consumer optionality allows for increased
supplier predictability. To wit, those who can predict their customer's behaviours best or mould
them, become the lowest cost marginal producers - deferring more risky capital investment (by way
of retained earnings) to the moment they can be sure they're the last monopolists left standing.
The pie as a whole stops growing, with only information tech providers - the modern-day rentiers
of the system - benefiting from the structure.
To conclude, some points from Hancock's book which incidentally highlight the parallels between
financial firms and modern-day unicorns:
The amount of profit generated, depends upon the strength of the banking system's monopoly
position.
And..:
The traditional reason given for deposit rate ceilings is that bank competition for deposits
allegedly leads to a high rate of bank failures. According to this view, bank competition for
deposits led individual banks in the 1920′s and early 1930′s to offer higher interest rates in
order to maintain or increase individual share of the market. The banks were forced to rely on
higher yielding riskier assets to offset incurred deposit costs. This placed the banks in a vulnerable
position. Any adverse economic developments, either national or local, would be sufficient to
make these risky assets uncollectible by the bank. Deposit rate ceilings affect consumers,
since they receive less for deposits than would otherwise be the case, but the accompanying increased
monopoly power of financial institutions makes them allegedly more sound.
The techies would argue they're just making the world more efficient.
We can't help wonder if solutions based on substituting new goods for pre-existing goods (or virtual
ones) are somewhat different to solutions which grow the pie for everyone. There seems to us an inherent
risk in creating monopolistic systems which overstretch themselves to the point they
essentially
run on empty.
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at
CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
"... In truth, the real jobless rate would be 9.8% if those who have given up looking for work and part-timers who want a full-time job were included. ..."
"... The labor force participation rate is at its lowest level in 38 years. ..."
"... This Federal Reserve chart (November 6) shows that only 62.4% of working-age Americans are employed or looking for work ..."
"... A record 94,610,000 Americans were not in the workforce in September. But the questionable health of the U.S. labor market doesn't stop here. ..."
"... the point is that many of the new jobs in the U.S. have been at the lower end of the income brackets. ..."
In truth, the real jobless rate would be 9.8% if those who have given up looking for work and
part-timers who want a full-time job were included.
The labor force participation rate is at its lowest level in 38 years.
This Federal Reserve chart (November 6) shows that only 62.4% of working-age Americans are
employed or looking for work:
A record 94,610,000 Americans were not in the workforce in September. But the questionable
health of the U.S. labor market doesn't stop here.
Even those who are working are struggling to make headway.
And what about the 2.95 million new jobs that were created in 2014, and the slightly more
than 2 million so far in 2015?
The numbers sound impressive until you dig deeper. This is
from the Atlantic magazine (September 4):
According to new research, between 2009 and 2014, wage loss across all jobs averaged
4 percent. But for those in the bottom quintile, those losses averaged 5.7 percent. ...
The [jobs] where declines in real wages have been the most acute -- are also the jobs
that have hired the highest share of new workers during the recovery.
It's true that average hourly earnings increased by nine cents in October. Even so, the
point is that many of the new jobs in the U.S. have been at the lower end of the income
brackets.
Also consider that in September, the U.S. Consumer Price Index fell 0.2% and that the
Producer Price Index declined by 0.5%.
All told, our stance remains that deflation is knocking at the door.
Currency devaluation's role in the developing global crisis
How the self-reinforcing aspect of deflation is already apparent in commodities
trading
Why the top 1% of earners are in for a rude awakening
How Europe's biggest economies are screeching to a halt
The hair-raising future for U.S. stocks
Just recall how swiftly the 2007-2009 financial crisis unfolded. We anticipate
that the next global financial crisis could be even more sudden and severe.
I don't recall where I read another story about this, but it said the cause of death was unknown. It also showed a portion
of his webpage with the Serenity Prayer quoted and I wondered (granted, was speculative) if he had a history of addiction. Then
I read the Guardian link posted and saw it reported that toxicology results were pending (yeah, it's routine testing for a death
of unknown cause, but not typically highlighted in press reports IME). So, I question how accurate "working himself to death"
might be. A gut feeling says his death was drug-related, not that it becomes any less tragic or senseless for being so.
That being said, if he did struggle with addiction or had become sober relatively recently, working those type of hours would
have put his sobriety at risk. He either would have or should have been warned to limit himself to ~40 hours/week, even if it
meant skipping the internship (as whatever is deemed more important than staying clean will be lost…… or so is the common wisdom).
I wonder if Merrill Lynch was unaware of his being at risk, or if they knew and ignored it. I could be wrong but it seems an
internship and the mentoring role would (or perhaps the mother in me thinks it should) imply some sort of custodial responsibility
on the part of Merrill, or whatever the correct term would be.
Clive:
You're right of course Lucy - innocent until proven guilty applies to everyone or not at all.
I would add that suicidality, depression / stress, chemical or behavioural dependency are often co-morbid. If an individual
is predisposed to these conditions, it will be exacerbated by a presence of overwork.
Overwork can also be a trigger. I'm not sure we ever want to normalise a culture where 15 hour days are routinely tolerated
and thus degenerate into employment Darwinism where only the strongest survive.
Yves Smith
LucyLulu,
I don't know if you've every worked the sort of hours young people on the investment banking (NOT trading) side work at big
firms. I had one of these jobs back in the early 1980s. It is simply inconceivable unless you've been in it. It's worse than what
medical residents are put through. You are not permitted to say no, you have (in my case) 100 people who can give you work
(30+ clients, typically 2 or more people at the firm who could ask that something be done, plus the client would often call the
junior staffers directly if they wanted something small done quickly) with none of them caring what the other 99 had you doing.
Priorities changing all the time intra day as markets moved and deals got accelerated or delayed and pitches to clients had to
be changed based on changing market info (you could not finalize any client marketing piece until you had closing prices at 4,
which meant inevitably you were working into the evening, and that was the more ordered part of the work).
How do these firms get away with it? They are the most prestigious, sought after employers. They can hire whoever they want.
They seek people who are smart, intensely competitive, and insecure. They then wind up in an environment that has much
in common with a cult. People wind up largely abandoning all their former friends and spending much less time with their families
due to the hours and the pay gap (people who make that much money are quickly acculturated to eat out and spend what little recreational
time they have at a lavish level). The environments are also extremely conformist. Social psychologists write about the
power of social assent, that if enough people in your environment do something, you'll see it as normal, even required. And the
extreme hours are most certainly required. Young people in these jobs are expected to have no boundaries. When asked to do something,
they are not permitted to say "No, I already have too much on my plate, I can't take that on". The only acceptable answer is "When
do you need it?"
I known one someone at Salomon who started vomiting under the stress. Every half hour. Went back and kept working after each
incident. Electrolytes got so messed up he collapsed and had to be hospitalized. I know another person at Lazard, working on a
big deal. Was seen in the office lying on the floor on one side reading documents over the weekend. People asked if she was OK.
She waved them away, insisted she was fine. The pain eventually got so bad she went home and called her boyfriend. He ran up and
took her immediately to the hospital. The operated straight away, thinking it was appendicitis. It was diverticulitis, which is
usually a disease of old people but can be brought on by stress and bad diet. They had to remove half her colon. Had they gotten
to her a half hour later, her colon would have ruptured and she would have died.
Same woman later lost 90% of her vision in one eye due to glaucoma, didn't have time to get regular eye exams. This was the
price of becoming the first woman partner in M&A at any major firm.
I can give you other stories like that. Breakdown is hardly unheard of.
I did 2 all nighters in a row and was starting to have trouble with motor function (coordination for inputting data was starting
to go). Three, which is what this young man did, amounts to torture. And you can do that on mere caffeine.
Your blaming his death on drugs when I am highly confident you've never done more than one all nighter and have no idea what
that does to you is uninformed and is supporting the banks and abusive work environments generally.
LucyLulu:
I read the link you posted and one other article. If it was mentioned that he had stayed up three nights in a row, somehow
I overlooked it. And yes, I've done several (successive) all-nighters in the past, having to be on call for a week at a time,
and work 12 hour days even if up all night (fairly often). I didn't fare well, and didn't stay at the job long.
I wasn't meaning to be judgmental towards the intern. I consider his death just as tragic and senseless if it was fatigue-induced,
and my point about responsibility lying with the mentoring firm still stands.
In fact, I don't understand why the practice is allowed to continue. Medical residents and related professions have since had
limits imposed on the number of hours that can be asked to work without time off.
Yves Smith:
Lucy,
Thanks for the reply, but even then, your experience with all nighters is not directly comparable. I meant all nighters while
you were working, as in 48+ hours of continuous work except for dealing with essential bodily functions and some hygiene.
And this is also in an environment that is intolerant of errors, where typos or computation errors are career enders or severely
detrimental.
So even working 12 hours and not sleeping well/at all by being on call is not the same as having to keep working except for
eating and showering/clothes change time/pottie breaks. The stress level is considerably worse.
As to the three all-nighters, it has been reported but not confirmed. And BofA will clearly try to make what happened look
less awful than it was:
yep…I used to wonder how battered women stayed with their abusers…I didn't realize until after I LEFT BofA that I was essentially
a battered woman…surrounded by her enabling in laws.
You don't realize how crazy it is until you leave. It really is like a cult.
If you raise your hand to question the regime, retribution is swift and sure, even among "friends" with decades long relationships,
and even against spouses. I truly believe some of my former co-workers would even commit murder if their overlords insisted on
it.
Nathanael:
I'm glad to be immune to that particular sort of coercion thanks to abnormal psychology. I wish more people were like me.
Worth noting: the particular psychological oddities which make people resistant to that type of coercion seem to be the
same ones which make people good at computer programming. I have no idea what the social consequences of that combination
will be.
LucyLulu:
I'm really not trying to be argumentative, but actually I WAS talking about working all night, as I took after-hours call from
home, at least until I had to go get somebody admitted or petitioned or go out and do an emergency assessment or something. It
was clear what you meant when I said I had done it also. I would also argue that mistakes kinda aren't tolerated in the health
field either, though perhaps for different reasons.
Nobody should be expected to work for 72 hours straight, nor is there a need, it's sheer exploitation to maximize profits.
It's more than the human body and mind can endure. Workers need to stand up and say no. I think that's something people tend to
learn as they get older, gain confidence, and their priorities become more clear. 21 is still very young. And saying no, if it
means possibly the loss of the job, is not so easy when employment is scarce and an income is needed, or it's a standard requirement
for one's chosen career, as apparently it must be in finance (Higher Power sending initial clue that one has chosen lousy career??).
Workers no longer have unions to help them negotiate collectively….. though nursing never joined unions in most parts of the country,
It was deemed to be beneath the professional status of a registered nurse to be a union member, rather conveniently. Thee places
I ended working, almost exclusively in the south, it was risky to be overheard mentioning "unions" within earshot of management.
IIRC, the provision of nursing staff is easily a hospital's single largest expenditure. With unionized nursing, how can a hospital
pay their CEO their $15M living wage?
fajensen:
I wonder if Merrill Lynch was unaware of his being at risk, or if they knew and ignored it.
Easy to find out*: If the HR-bods either knew or suspected anything they would have taken out a life insurance on the poor
guy, with Merill Lynch as beneficiaries.
Gotta play them odds!
*) Or maybe not so easy – It is depressingly common for employers to buy a little bet on the early demise of the "Human Ressources".
Nathanael:
"But what of the next generation, mired in debt and subject to the extraction by the multitude of licensed protection racket
players in healthcare, finance, education or housing ? How can they ever get ahead ?"
Off-the-books economy. Find one part-time job which gives you enough tenuous connection to the on-the-books economy that the
police state doesn't get suspicious, then do *ALL* your other work off the books.
Lambert Strether:
"Off-the-books economy." And commit perjury on your ObamaCare application?
LucyLulu:
If it's off the books, you're already committing tax fraud (or tax evasion, or something like that) on your IRS return.
Nathanael, The off-the-book work would also have to be something that could be done on a flexible schedule since the part time
job hours will change every week. But any work where you can be your own boss and set your own hours is preferable to dependence
upon the 'good will' of an employer, IMO. I'm working on that one myself. (I knew I should have taken basketweaving.)
LucyLulu:
This link by Charlie Stross was on Jesse's page and was an intriguing read on the implications of the current labor culture.
Stross theorizes that Snowden and Alynikov type defectors will become the norm now that Gen Y, first born in the early 80′s, are
starting to flood the labor market (most employers don't have the vast resources for retribution of the US gov and Goldman-Sachs).
Gen Y is the first generation having no prior work experience in a culture that favors mutual employee/employer commitment, nor
having grown up witnessing parents in more secure "jobs-for-life" and termination-for-cause employment. They've only had experience
with jobs that are outsourced, offshored, laid-off, contract, zero-hours, temporary, part-time, etc.
Gen Y believes in the workplace golden rule ("do unto others as they do unto you"… okay, I've taken some liberties paraphrasing
Stross). Thus today's employees will have no less reticence about 'screwing' their (former) employers to advance their own
self-interests, than employers have about 'screwing' their workers to maximize profits. It's a good read.
With any luck, it won't be merely wishful thinking to say: Karma's a bitch!
Doug Terpstra:
Yes, it's "funny" how the Wal-Mart right-to-work churn, permanent student debt, gross inequality, and social insecurity caused
by a triumphant class war has fractured American cultural cohesion, especially within Gen Y. At this juncture economic dynamism
can no longer be sustained, and along with it, autonomic patriotism. Following up on fajensen above, in a climate of callous top-down
disloyalty, the roster of conscientious whistleblowers such as Snowden, Manning, Assange, Kiriakou, Darby (Abu Ghraib), Drake
(NSA) and many more, is certain to grow. Dissent rises gradually, then rapidly, as things fall apart and the center cannot hold.
I think we have a great disharmonic convergence coming, likely this year. Ben Shalom is leaving and is almost sure to take
away the punch bowl before Summers is seated.
psychohistorian:
Karma is a bitch.
That is what is going to bring the current system to a halt. The young ones are not daft, I am finding.
The current economic/social system runs on computers and if servers stop/slow or the networks begin not working right, the
trust level is eventually broke and all hell breaks loose…..geometric finger pointing and cascading fail overs between and among
vendors.
Being an old techie I engage every other techie I run into and the young contract techies keeping the NSA sub contractors running
are a hairsbreath from mayhem the management can't contain.
Go long on popcorn and don't be surprised if techie shit gets less reliable for a while. Prepare for a bouncy ride.
Kievite:
psychohistorian,
The trend toward less qualification in IT is probably present as younger people did not experience the emerging of
all those technologies as oltimers did. So they have less "in-depth" knowledge that old-timers acquired due to this process. But
there are old-timers and old-timers. A lot of old-times are just accidental people which moved to the field during boom years
of IT (say, 1990-1998). Many of them are barely competent in what they are doing even now.
I would not get too exited about new generation of IT workers (mostly part-time and lower paid) greatly affecting network or
server reliability. May be something will happen on the margins. But it looks completely remote to me. May be due to commodization
of the technology the IT support on the level of the firm now matter less. Complex issues are solved by vendor support, or professional
consultants. Enterprise software is also more or less standardized.
Where huge blunders are now made is at senior level, where people became generally detached from technology (and sometimes
from reality). Also too many technically illiterate bean counters were promoted to senior positions. And they often rely
on fashion (and vendor hype and/or bribing) in adopting new technologies for the firm. But at the end of the day this is just
modest cost overruns. Nothing to be exited about. So something that cost $100K is bought for a million and cost another couple
of million in maintenance fees and internal costs before being abandoned. That's about it. Remember IT is generally around 1%
of the total cost of a large company operations.
hazmat:
Employers destroyed the golden rule in the work place. As an employee, you simply cannot continue to treat them the way
you wish to be treated over a sustainable period of time when they offer only these kinds of abuses in return.
Reciprocity is the new rule for employees. If they take care of you, take care of them and treat them well. Pamper them. If
they screw you over, return the favor a multitude worse. Make it painful.
Doug Terpstra:
Thank you, Yves, for another great bottom-line assessment of the change Obama has inflicted on us - the exact inverse of his
electoral campaign. Although Ms. Garson says nothing of Obamacare directly, the ACA (the Insurance Racket Bailout Act) is now
a huge reason for the great bait-and-switch acceleration to part-time and freelance jobs. As Lambert has reported it is hugely
damaging socio-economic engineering.
This is Obama's legacy, shaping up to be not abysmal but disastrous. Even worse, I suspect it's intentional, the deliberate
creative destruction of disaster capitalism in a grab for absolute power. That's the most disheartening apprehension.
Here are a few more inconvenient truths about our change president from "33 Shocking Facts Which Show How Badly The Economy
Has Tanked Since Obama Became President". It's an objective and damning assessment of real change under Obama. People won't be
able to ignore these much longer, and eventually even veal pen journalists (MSDNC) will have to acknowledge certain stubborn facts:
#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of
working age Americans have a job.
#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time
jobs. [87% of job creation…part-time; this differs from the post(?)] … #5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually
make less than what a full-time 11 since the 2006-2007 school year. … #8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class
is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#20 Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president, and Obamacare is going to make things
far worse. … #23 In 2008, that total amount of student loan debt in this country was 440 billion dollars. At this point, it has
shot up to about a trillion dollars.
#24 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
You get the idea. And those are only some of the economic changes, without even broaching disastrous militarism, and police-state
espionage.
Robert Dudek:
I've got a good title for a book on this phenomenon. Unfortunately, it's already been taken: Road to Serfdom.
reason
And you seriously think this is all Obama's fault and that the GOP had nothing to do with it?
Michael Fiorillo:
Needless to say, the GOP has much to do with it, but it's two hands washing each other.
The infernal brilliance of the Overclass' support for Obama is his ability to misdirect and divert whatever energies for resistance
remain within what passes for the Left.
What insidious genius to have a Black man (well, sort of) be the one to undermine Social Security, public education (his policies
are at least as bad as Bush's, probably worse) and institutionalize the National Security State.
Sure, the GOP is at fault, but Obama was hired to make sure that potential opposition remains paralyzed.
Doug Terpstra:
All O's fault? No, but it's his legacy, like it or not. Clearly it doesn't bother him.
Blame the last four and a half years on Republicans if you like. So then, let's just say O's been implausibly impotent
and hopelessly inept.
Not only are none of the foregoing economic failures his fault,
he couldn't close Gitmo;
couldn't bring himself to prosecute a single one of his Wall Street investors (Corzine);
couldn't renegotiate NAFTA;
couldn't stop Republicans from ramrodding thru three new SHAFTA agreements and initiating TPP (oh, wait…);
... ... ...
I could go on and on but it would bore informed NC readers to tears. You may think Obama is hapless and incompetent to
the point of making Herbert Hoover look like an activist progressive. I happen to believe he's brilliant, an epic false messiah,
a diabolically-hypnotic charlatan who's a total eclipse of his idol Reagan.
Nathanael:
"You may think Obama is hapless and incompetent to the point of making Herbert Hoover look like an activist progressive.
I happen to believe he's brilliant, an epic false messiah, a diabolically-hypnotic charlatan who's a total eclipse of his idol
Reagan."
And I don't really care which he is. I judge entirely by results. Whatever is in his "deepest heart", in practice Obama has
been very close to G.W.Bush's third and fourth terms. (Oh, there are weird little exceptions, like railway funding, but I think
Obama wasn't paying ANY attention to that.)
bluntobj:
Laying blame on one side or the other is like sitting in a stadium and cheering for your team, red or blue. The owners
of both teams are up in the owner's box, drinking champagne together and counting the ticket & concession sales cash.
Just entering that stadium means you've bought in to their propaganda. The only safe path is to opt out and create an
alternative to the game inside for yourself.
George:
None of this is a surprise. . . a few years ago at my company, it was decided to withdraw all benefits for freelance employees,
many who were putting in full time hours as any staff employee. The freelancers staged a walk out and the company relented in
the short term by grandfathering those freelancers employed at that time with their current benefits.
Since then, the benefits for those freelancers have been reduced to the barest of medical plans with high deductibles. Any
new freelancers who come in don't get health insurance unless they work a consecutive number of days in a row, which is near to
impossible since the company forces them to take 6 weeks off throughout the year, thus cementing the fact that they'll never receive
health insurance.
At that time, the company cited being competitive in the global market, and pointed to our competitors which made similar changes
years earlier. Considering we've been earning healthy profits after the first year of the Great Recession, and the CEO and other
high level execs lining their pockets with record sums, it's pretty clear they're more interested in short term gains as pushed
by Wall Street.
That greed is really what's ruining this country and those playing the game won't be satisfied till they've squeezed us
for all the money we have, laughing all the way to the bank in Singapore
Handgrip:
Give me one good reason "to work" at all?
bluntobj:
Only work for yourself by opting out of the game being played in the stadium.
You will be considered a whacko and stupid, but those insults will be coming from people with underwater houses, CC debt up
to their eyeballs, a job they hate, a 101k retirement plan coming in September, and a heart condition due to stress.
Think alternatively, and be much happier.
Wat Tyler:
Saying from the old Soviet Union:
"They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
No society can survive if work is not valued at the economic and psychological levels.
Important point is that the answer to virtually any economic policy question was "education" is
the neoliberal ploy. This is simply not true in the current environment. It is important what specialty
to choose at the university. And taking into account shifting job market it is difficult to choose right
(decimation of IT is one great story in this respect). Stories of university graduates working as bartenders
are abundant. Especially graduates from such fields as psychology, public relations, English literature,
etc.
Notable quotes:
"... The labor market is no less pivotal to Marxist analyses of capitalism. The treatment of labor
as a commodity, to be bought and sold on a market, is what allows capitalists to acquire more value
from workers than they actually pay for, which explains the accrual of profits. Without labor, there
could be no value. Without labor markets, there could be no capitalism. ..."
"... Marx liked to depict capital as a vampire that sucked the blood from living labor. But the
fantasy of fully automated capitalism contains a different monstrosity altogether: the zombie that no
longer needs us at all. ..."
"... This question lurks in Thomas Piketty's Capital, which highlights how the inheritance of capital
is a far more effective route to riches than the exertion of effort in the workplace. Piketty's account
forces us to pay attention to the family as a source of income - work is an increasingly unlikely path
to acquiring wealth. ..."
"... Theories of financialization, such as those of the economist Costas Lapavitsas or the sociologist
Greta Krippner, point in a similar direction, showing how firms have deliberately sought to shift away
from productive activities and toward balance-sheet manipulation and financial innovations as sources
of profit. ..."
"... The neoliberal ploy that each individual be treated as a chunk of capital was present in the
discourse of the 1990s knowledge economy, and the answer to virtually any economic policy question was
education. This no longer feels adequate ..."
"... An economy in which capital has replaced labor may witness the rise of a few thousand well-paid
YouTube stars, but it would also feature a promulgation of unpaid internships, adults living off their
parents, and unpaid workfare contracts. ..."
"... Ford advocates a basic income guarantee, an idea that is accumulating support right now. If
the labor market will not provide the income that people need, some other institution will be required
to take its place. He makes the case well, dismissing the simplistic policy narrative that people need
to be cajoled and incentivized to work or else the economy will grind to a halt. On the contrary, neoliberal
economies seem to be teeming with people wanting to do fulfilling and creative things but struggling
to get paid for them. ..."
"... Piketty's proposal for a global wealth tax, they require not only greater political coordination
than seems available right now, but also a wholesale inversion of policy orthodoxy. Neoclassical economics,
which provides the basis for so much policy, starts from the assumption that resources and time are
scarce. ..."
Since the Victorian era, the labor market has been the arena in which the virtues and injuries
of capitalism can been seen. Classical economic liberals look at the labor market and see a platform
for social mobility, one in which individual effort is matched by monetary reward. The neoliberals
of the 20th century took this optimism further still, adding the notion of human capital - that people
could augment themselves through education or self-branding so as to increase their own value in
the market.
The labor market is no less pivotal to Marxist analyses of capitalism. The treatment of labor
as a commodity, to be bought and sold on a market, is what allows capitalists to acquire more value
from workers than they actually pay for, which explains the accrual of profits. Without labor, there
could be no value. Without labor markets, there could be no capitalism.
Marx liked to depict capital as a vampire that sucked the blood from living labor. But the
fantasy of fully automated capitalism contains a different monstrosity altogether: the zombie that
no longer needs us at all. As the economist Joan Robinson has written, if there is one thing
worse than being exploited by capital, it is not being exploited by capital. The vision that Kaplan
and Ford put before us is of a world in which machines don't even bother to extract value from us
any longer - they're too busy trading with one another. What might capitalism look like if labor
markets lose their political centrality? Would this even be capitalism?
This question lurks in Thomas Piketty's Capital, which highlights how the inheritance of capital
is a far more effective route to riches than the exertion of effort in the workplace. Piketty's account
forces us to pay attention to the family as a source of income - work is an increasingly unlikely
path to acquiring wealth.
Theories of financialization, such as those of the economist Costas Lapavitsas or the sociologist
Greta Krippner, point in a similar direction, showing how firms have deliberately sought to shift
away from productive activities and toward balance-sheet manipulation and financial innovations as
sources of profit. The vaudevillian horror show of machines broken free from human control is
mirrored in the anxieties of contemporary political economy. The specter of autonomous machines is
also the specter of autonomous capital, no longer anchored in society via the wage relation.
The neoliberal ploy that each individual be treated as a chunk of capital was present in the
discourse of the 1990s "knowledge economy," and the answer to virtually any economic policy question
was "education." This no longer feels adequate. As Kaplan and Ford point out, the market value
of most qualifications is diminishing all the time. Given the possible scale of automation, Ford
argues, the idea that education can achieve prosperity for all is like "believing that, in the wake
of the mechanization of agriculture, the majority of displaced farmworkers would be able to find
jobs driving tractors."
An economy in which capital has replaced labor may witness the rise of a few thousand well-paid
YouTube stars, but it would also feature a promulgation of unpaid internships, adults living off
their parents, and unpaid workfare contracts. As Ford points out, even where humans are cheaper
than robots to employ, there are various reasons that automation may nevertheless be preferable.
Robots bring less baggage than people. The prospects for inequality under these conditions are terrifying.
... ... ...
Ford advocates a basic income guarantee, an idea that is accumulating support right now. If
the labor market will not provide the income that people need, some other institution will be required
to take its place. He makes the case well, dismissing the simplistic policy narrative that people
need to be cajoled and incentivized to work or else the economy will grind to a halt. On the contrary,
neoliberal economies seem to be teeming with people wanting to do fulfilling and creative things
but struggling to get paid for them.
The chance of such policy ideas being adopted is slim at best. As with Piketty's proposal
for a global wealth tax, they require not only greater political coordination than seems available
right now, but also a wholesale inversion of policy orthodoxy. Neoclassical economics, which provides
the basis for so much policy, starts from the assumption that resources and time are scarce.
Hence the curiosity that as our national productive capacity swells from year to year, political
discourse seems ever more fixated on constraints and cuts.
... ... ...
...there is an unavoidable sense in which the robots can't understand what they're doing. Their
inability to complain, which is precisely what makes them attractive to the likes of Uber and Amazon,
is also what renders them somewhat stupid after all. They are locked into what Max Weber termed instrumental
rationality. Endlessly performing, relentlessly producing, they are incapable of ever saying "enough's
enough."
In this they hold up a daunting mirror for us to look in. They represent an impossible benchmark
of success and efficiency, one that recedes so far into the distance ahead that the only sane response
is to abandon the idea of humans as capital altogether.
... ... ...
William Davies is a senior lecturer in politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the
author of The Happiness Industry (Verso, 2015).
"... the wilful DENIAL inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. Everything is awesome. Repeat till it becomes fact. ..."
"... To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists. ..."
"... That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art horse of greater transparency for the private sector, and we are the worlds police in their foreign policy. ..."
"... That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you nuts if not worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families. ..."
"... The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs in its money machine. ..."
"... American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes for your next dinner party. ..."
"... Wolf has a point. Im in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. Im also very physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was well-qualified but too senior, I stopped looking. ..."
"... ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply lifes necessities - food, clothing and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set. ..."
"... Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the US ..."
"... In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folks mental health than staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists. ..."
"... @cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing: US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported low level jobs. ..."
"... The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment is much higher than reported. ..."
"... I was amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys. ..."
"... Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. ..."
"... The FT published my letter to the editor in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. ..."
"... In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too big and way too dominant. ..."
"... The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s). ..."
"... Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago. ..."
"... the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting. ..."
"... @lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of the earnings is off the books ) the results look better. You cannot make an apples to apples comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different. ..."
"... You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006 period). ..."
"... Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for it. ..."
"... I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents. ..."
"... Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary schemes have been reducing in number. ..."
The causes are multi factorial, but what is really disturbing is the wilful DENIAL inherent
in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. 'Everything is awesome'. Repeat
till it becomes fact.
To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading
to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor
or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists.
The discovery mechanisms in America's so called free markets are terminally broken.
The whole charade is necessary to keep the terrifying monster that circles the deep below the
surface: debt. Irreconcilable, measured in numbers so stupendous it makes Zimbabwe's terminal
hyperinflation seem tame by comparison.
There is only one way the monster of debt can be tamed: war.
E. Scrooge, 3 hours ago
The rise of the underground economy, pay cash and you can get sizable discounts on construction,
repairs, all sorts of things. Many, but not all of those able, are providing products and mainly
services as part of the underground economy. This was and I still believe is the fastest growing
segment of the US economy. Mostly out of necessity, but will likely remain a very significant
part of the overall economy for quite some time, as many of these workers are years away from
Social Security eligible.
ceteris paribus
The irony of this title. The American labour force--the people who do real jobs in the real
economy are working harder than ever, for less and less money to keep themselves afloat. So American
labour does work while the American labour market is apparently on a permanent vacation.
Kevin Alexanderman
"America's labour market is not working"?
You mean "America's government is not working".
That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment
of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art
horse of "greater transparency" for the private sector, and "we are the world's police" in their
foreign policy.
They can't even competently establish metrics to adequately assess performance of their economy.
Mr. Martin, you say "In all, the proportion of the fall in the unemployment rate because of
lower participation cannot be more than a quarter." Is that your best attempt at one-liner humour?
Are you still mocking Greenspan-speak?
So I gather you are saying that a fall from 10% to 5% is more on the order of a fall from 10%
to 6.25%.
That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you "nuts" if not worse
for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that
in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about
splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families.
Astrophysicist111
Interesting that the author doesn't consider the possible role of the increased death rate
among middle aged U.S. whites - as recently reported, e.g. in the NY Times - to be a factor in
the low labor participation rate. As one economist who studied the data observed: "There are a
half million people dead who shouldn't be". This is over the interval 1993-2014. Prior to 1993
the specific age demographic, 45-64 years old, had enjoyed a 2 percent improvement in life span
- but no more. The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases
resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed
very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs
in its money machine.
Legal Tender
For those interested, here is an NPR piece (and follow-up from The Atlantic) on the disability
situation in the US. Note that an adult need not be disabled themselves to collect payments and
leave the workforce. Children are eligible for disability payments in the US for learning disabilities
(including ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc) with the income going to the parent (reducing the need for
that parent to enter the workforce).
From 2009 to 2013, there were 2.5 million jobs created in the US while 5.9 million people were
added to the disability system.
One thing I enjoy a great deal is good comedy. And as an American reader I find plenty of fabulous
comedy in these "what's wrong with America" articles. Soaring rates of morbidity among white middle-aged
Americans? How can that be? Pathologically low LFP rates? What could possibly explain that? Billionaire
clowns near the top of opinion polls? Go figure!
After the first course, one then moves on to the comments, littered with the aromatic excretions
of right-wing American idiots. The incredulous replies subsequently posted are often quite hilarious,
because respondents find it so hard to believe the amazing levels of stupidity on display.
American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground
realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which
bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes
for your next dinner party.
Thanks FT!
TJG
Thank you Mr. Wolf for pointing out that the declining employment participation rate portends
significant community and social problems. I would like to suggest that two issues play a significant
role in this decline. The low minimum wage combined with the high cost of competent child care
make it financially pointless for a spouse earning less than $10.00/hour to work. Secondly racially
tinged mass incarceration has produced an ever growing number of unemployable people. The moment
an applicant indicates he or she has been incarcerated it is pretty certain the application will
be rejected. Until societal attitudes and public policies change the problems illuminated by Mr.
Wolf's opinion piece will only continue to grow.
JMC22
The title of this piece -- that the US labour market is not working -- is way out of line with
the content. A highly contentious issue regarding the fall in the measured participation rate
is hardly an indication of a non-working labour market, especially given the huge increase in
employment in recent years. One issue not discussed -- the fact of a very considerable increase
in the employment in the grey markets. Self-employed persons, partly growing out of internet activities,
are not properly measured. Nor are those who simply work outside the formal economy, including
many illegal immigrants.
ciwp1
@JMC22 Good points. Worth bearing in mind also, wrt self-employed, there are large numbers
'officially' self-employed who are not doing much; similar irregular work patterns afflict temps,
part-time works, zero hours...
Mark Feldman
Mr. Wolfe, the problem is a lack of education. And I don't mean a lack of degrees.
I'm not an economist (I'm a former math professor.), but it certainly seems to me that if an
economy needs educated (Again, don't confuse that with "degreed".), workers, and they aren't readily
available, then there will be more unemployment.
What I mean by "degreed but uneducated" should be obvious, but I do want to make one point
with an example.
If you learn how to do calculus - just how to do it period - that will not make it easier to
learn how to use a spreadsheet; but, if you really learn calculus, you will find it much easier
to use a spreadsheet. That is because you will have trained your mind to think quantitatively.
It's that simple.
In the 60's students who took calculus learned it. Now, they mainly just get certified in it.
(If you doubt me, just compare today's AP Calculus with the one from 1970.)
This same phenomena is true across all disciplines. It is because the American higher educational
system, as a whole, is corrupt. (In a recent issue,The Economist has done an excellent job reporting
and analyzing the system. Thank you.)
But here is what is even worse.
The effect of this corruption has seeped down to America's K-12 system. To see how, just ask
yourself where high school teachers go to learn, and within what system do "professors" at regional
state schools get their "credentials", and why it might be in the interest of more "elite" schools
to credential them.
For anyone who wants to know more, I have a blog inside-higher-ed that has convincing examples
and documentation.
Veiled One
Wolf has a point. I'm in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for
work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at
elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. I'm also very physically
fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was "well-qualified but too senior,"
I stopped looking.
Now, I'm a rentier with 100% free time, and read the FT every morning. I suppose I should be
happy to enjoy the guerdons of a career when very young.
Kevin Alexanderman
@Veiled One ,
Sounds like you are a victim of age-racism. The leftist journalist crowd know the money is
with the older people. Just as they slander the banks, (who have the money), and as the German
national socialists slandered the Jews (who had the money), today's socialists slander older people.
The leftists are preparing some kind of way to swindle more experienced people out of their
money, just haven't figured out how yet.
Gail Johnson
This is a political problem. Ordinary Americans are no longer represented by the national government.
In other major industrialized democracies, the equivalent of US congressional districts include
about 100,000 people. For example, in the UK there are 650 members of the House of Commons representing
about 64 million people. In a district with 100,000 people it is possible to contest an election
without a $1 million war chest.
In the US congressional districts average over 700,000 people. There are 435 representatives
for over 310 million people. Congress has an approval rating on the low teens, and yet in the
last election 95% of incumbents got reelected. Why? Their demonstrated willingness to vote the
way big money tells them to in return for the funds needed to stay in office.
Thus, ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply life's necessities - food, clothing and
shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set.
The US is focused on Austerity. Cultural, Economic and Political Austerity. The right wing
drive to kill everything for everyone ( save for the elite that are rapidly accumulating it all)
has destroyed the infrastructure and the fabric of the country. The US is the laggard in the 'leading
developed countries' of the world and is certainly vectored in the wrong direction.
Michael Moran
I wonder how much of this can be explained by furtive self-employment. The ridiculous tax system
provides every reason for a smart person to try and avoid formal employment through LLCs or other
dodges. The LLC structure and their tax status is unique to the US, after all. It could be part
of the explanation.
RDRAVID
@Michael Moran
If someone is self-employed they would be counted as actively participating in the Labour market.
Rather than self-employment, I think the issue is a growth in informal activity in the US. Its
becoming more common there for people to do undeclared work, whether of the handyman, domestic
helper or running a mobile food shack.
The bottom 20% in the US are effectively living a third world style life.
Isaias
I always said that if US unemployment was measured by Spain unemployment standards ( the strictest
in the EU ), it would probably be around 12 % if not more.
What free market?
While Martin Wolf explains a deeply worrying trend, particularly for those who have given up
the struggle to find work, there is another bar to job creation.
Small businesses find the bureaucratic hassle of taking on staff a nightmare: the intrusion
of form filling, record keeping, the tax authorities, local authorities etc, all of which have
their own, separate agendas, is sufficient deterrent to employing anyone except on a casual basis
- which the very young and old are happy to engage with the process.
The only common strategy for bureaucrats and tax men is job creation - theirs and those of
the ilk - their role is job destructive in the real economy.
gkjames
@What free market? Really? How so? What "bureaucratic hassle"? Are standard record-keeping
and accounting practices an "intrusion" or, more likely, a useful mechanism by which shareholders
can track the health of the enterprise? In most US states, by the way, it takes all of a single
form and a modest fee to incorporate. As for the alleged "common strategy for bureaucrats and
tax men," you do realize, presumably, that it is elected legislatures who write the tax laws,
laws that reflect extensive (and, not infrequently, exclusive) input from the business community.
What free market?
Yes, it is BIG business that controls the output of legislatures, small business does not get
a look in - those running them are too busy running their businesses and coping with bureaucracy.
It is often overlooked that rules and regulations that are imposed universally suit big business
but place a disproportionate burden on small business who have to comply with the same dictats
but without the administrative cohort and infrastructure that large firms can justify.
What free market?
Indeed, without sounding too conspiratorial, I would say there is an unwritten pact between
big business and legislators that allows big business to comply with onshore rules and forces
competing small business to do the same.
Meanwhile offshore, big business can engage in tax evasion on a massive scale using offshore
tax havens, transfer pricing and the freedom from jurisdictional control that obviates their need
to remit revenues that would be taxable (viz Apple) . Small businesses are captive, they have
to be 100% complient and that suits big business as the administrative burden crushes incipient
competition from small business.
Anon2
Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the
US and the subsequent poor performance in school, crime, prison etc. I guarantee those not
participating exhibit a higher percentage of having had no father in the home as a child.
LJH
@Anon2 Yes, we don't like poor people in the US, or minorities - including women. The problem
is the ruling class of white rich men is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Those that create the problems are usually not the first to suffer the consequences. That comes
later as the empire crumbles.
M_T
@Hell No -- Given the minimal welfare in the US, and that it seems implausible that one in eight
American working age men are starving, my personal assumption would be that a large proportion
of the remainder are working in the unregistered economy. That includes crime but would also include
casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc.
RiskAdjustedReturn
@M_T @Hell No --
"... casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc."
In my local bank, on a Saturday morning, one will see lines of middle-aged white guys standing
in line to take out thousands of dollars each in cash, which I'm assuming is meant to pay their
workers
Adam Bartlett
An issue that's only going to get more severe and widespread as technological unemployment
continues its advance.
In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folk's mental health than
staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists.
The choice facing us is probably between the statist solution of a massive increase in public
sector employment, or the relatively libertarian option of a generous universal basic income.
Let's pray it won't be too many years before such options get to the table.
pangloss
Surely an American (or any other) worker is worth no more than say a Chinese worker + some
translation factor. The translation factor includes the presence of infrastructure and human capital
on both sides. The low skill worker suffers first because of an early and easy shift in the translation
factors. Sooner or later the high-end designers of Silicon Valley will suffer the same fate. Excluding
nuclear war there is likely to be a flattening of wages across the developed world. This is especially
bad news for those at the lower end of the ability scale, no credible amount of education or training
will make enough difference. There are limits to human capital. Start thinking about redistribution
and the niches that are immune from this effect.
nonuthin
The question that bothered me through this is what do they actually do if they're not "working".
Clearly not all sustained by welfare, does this indicate a significant increase in either the
black economy, the criminal economy or both. E.g. it would be statistically fascinating ( if politically
unachievable) to see the impact of a legally licenced drugs trade on the employment participation
rates.
Adam Bartlett
@nonuthin Some in single earner households, having to accept a lower material quality of life
than they would if both adults could earn. Others drawing down savings and living frugally. Many
dependent on food banks and other forms of charity. Others subsisting in the informal economy,
but activity one would call 'grey' at worst, not the black or criminal economy.
Big Dipper
There is more to life's responsibilities than your "men and women whose responsibilities should
make earning a good income". Perhaps you could consider high-quality child raising, other care
activity, community and education. The ratio is dangerous.
cg12348
Every week Martin Wolf reminds me why the self proclaimed experts are really idiots - you can
make stats sing if you know what you are doing........but the reality is easy to see. Americans
have a work force that is seeing its jobs exported - notice he does not give the stats on companies
moving out of the US over the past 30 years. Again the experts say we could not stop It - NO they
cant stop it that is true - but there is a way to stop it.
They would further tell you that the 11 million immigrant workers have little to no effect
because they take jobs that we don't want - wrong again. As you age your are happy to be employed
even if the job does not hold the allure of your previous job. What immigrant workers do is they
take less money because they are willing to live at a lower standard. They will live many families
to one home etc. In fact if they were not here to take the job the job would get done when the
pay increased to attract a willing worker - FACT. Finally what stats do not capture is the moral
of a work force.
There is nothing "decent" about our unemployment stats. We are not a nation of any one race
we are a nation of opportunity with one of the most powerful economies and plenty of natural resources
and demand and opportunity for innovation - so what sickness has befallen the US - large government
- corporate taxation - political mediocrity - the same thing that has recently become apparent
in Germany and France - idiots who give away what we worked hard for and expect us to pay more
for those they choose to support.
Todays social programs breed a generation that no longer asks what they can do for their nation
- but what their nation can do for them. Obama and his ilk have handed the world to those who
were unwilling to fight to fix their own countries - instead they want to come here for opportunity
that did not exist at home and then in a great act of irony turn our land into theirs - we do
not want to be Europe - nor do we want to be Mexico and we certainly do not want to be the middle
east - instead what we want those who love our opportunity to come here and become American -
but in numbers and within a legal process that does not exacerbate or marginalize those who were
born here and should have the right to the first jobs here.
Profitsee
@cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing:
US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported "low level" jobs. Even as a Democrat,
I confess, you provide a lucid argument.
Tiger II
The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment
is much higher than reported. Sclerotic labor laws and regulations make it impossible to
create many jobs that can produce more than they cost, especially given the dumbing down of the
work force by public monopoly schools. Regulated labor markets are one of the biggest drivers
of unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic and should be abolished.
Brian Reading
While not disputing in any way Martin Wolf's analysis, the devil may still be in the detail.
Population estimates by age cohorts come from ten-yearly census data - the denominator for participation
rates. These estimates are interpolated between censuses from births, deaths and migration data.
The numerator, the number in each age cohort at work or seeking work, comes from regular household
sample surveys. Using one source for denominator and another for numerator, which cannot be avoided,
entails a margin of error. In looking into this, I was amazed to discover that legal immigration
averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged,
are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys.
DougInCalifornia
What I am seeing where I live is the emergence of a part-time, informal service economy. You
might call it the Craigslist/Ebay/PayPal economy. I think that a lot of people make a (minimal)
living this way. And my guess is that most of it doesn't get picked up in official statistics.
I think that "employment" will need to be measured differently in the post-internet era.
RiskAdjustedReturn
@cg12348 @Boston1
"Show me a middle class kid that expects to work his way up and willing to start at the bottom
and I will show you..."
...a recent immigrant.
WL - Minneapolis
One clue into the declining labor force participation rate may have been discovered in a study
reported in the NY Times today, that may account for a substantial portion. The death rate among
middle-aged (45-54) whites with high school education or less has increased in recent years, reversing
a long-term trend. The cause appears to be poor health/chronic pain/mental health issues that
result in death by drug/alcohol abuse and/or suicide.
Clearly unskilled and low-skilled workers have more trouble finding well paying jobs, and the
wages for those jobs have fallen around 19% since 2000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. But
an increase in health problems of one sort or another may also be the cause of the lower participation
rate as well.
Excellent article on education difficulties in the US by Edouardo Porter in today's NYT. One
problem is that children living in poverty in the US struggle to learn in the education system
partially because overall public support for impoverished families is so poor in the US.
If we think the current labor market is not working, wait till the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP) trade deal passes the US Congress & signed into law .
Capital ($), aided by misguided policies of the US economic elites, will prevail over (skilled)
Labor.
Paul A. Myers
A major contributor to lack of hiring men age 25-54 is the massive underinvestment in infrastructure
in the U.S. This is a prime age for construction employment and this industry provides a ladder
of advancement from low and semi-skilled labor up to more skilled labor. My experience with construction
contractors in Southern California is that they are interested in individuals who can get to the
job site and do the work and are often willing to overlook criminal records. A dollar of public
spending on construction puts American workers to work, not someone in Korea. You can't import
a highway or a building from the Far East.
The other major failure is the large urban school district. These "too big to succeed" institutions
have a record for over a half a century of failure to turn out skilled young people. In the massive
Los Angeles Unified School District, they shut down skill-based vocational education during the
period 1970-1990 with the lame excuse of everyone is going to college. The duopoly of a wooden-headed
educational establishment fostered by graduate schools of education and powerful job-protecting,
mediocrity-fostering teachers unions have created the largest statist failure since the collapse
of East Germany. (And you can remember how much Germany paid to clean up that mess!)
There are recent reports that there are 4-5 million unfilled jobs in the US due to lack of
skilled applicants.
A crummy labor market is almost always the creation of bad public policy. And today's America
swims in bad public policies.
beforethecollapse.com
@Paul A. Myers As an educator, I wonder what role poor nutrition plays in the US?
beforethecollapse.com
Also, I must say that the family unit is far more influential and important to the youth than
any teacher. The teacher can operate as a third parent, or second parent if the family breaks
down, but a youth needs a stable environment for healthy emotional and instinctual development.
Excellent diet, physical exercise and regimented sleep patterns are essential. It's easy for parents
to blame teachers but I have noted that such complaints arise from personalities that resent strong
authority figures and duty enforces. As such, they are incapable of disciplining their own child.
In China, society encourages the family to be unconditionally supportive to the child, this
is balanced by the teacher who is a strict disciplinarian, often by way of corporeal punishment.
Philip Verleger
@Paul A. Myers A crummy labor market can also be the result of increased monopsonistic power
of employers. Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots.
There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. The employers
cannot offer more because their customers - the large airlines and the big shippers will not pay
more. The trained workers are there. They just will not accept the scarps.
The public policy mistake was allowing the creation of such large monopolies/monopsonies.
Look outside your silo!
Paul A. Myers
@Philip Verleger @Paul A. Myers Good points. The FT published my letter to the editor in
about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached
unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. (I think I was seriously
outside my silo and I think the FT editors were very receptive to this argument--then and now.)
Oligopolies (the only kind of major corporations and markets in the US today) produce lower
volumes, at higher prices, and with fewer employees than a more competitive economic sector would
employ, produce, price.
In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too
big and way too dominant. In the 1950s and 60s, it used to be the Big Three in most sectors;
today is at most the Big Two.
The Progressives understood the economic concentration argument; the Democratic Leadership
Council generation embraces concentration's contributory support.
Philip Verleger
@Paul A. Myers @Philip Verleger
Could not agree more. I am on the board of a family firm. We cannot find truck drivers although
we pay well and train (to move gasoline - it takes an extra license). There is just little interest
in joining the profession because the large companies keep wages down.
The FTC and Justice Department unfortunately failed to do their jobs.
BelCan
Mr Wolf seems to have missed the fact that the FT already covered this issue on 16 October.
The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since
2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those
16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous
decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s).
The main factors that keep the aggregate LFP rate from falling further are the increase of
the LFP rate of those 55 and older and the strong attachment to the labor force of Hispanic and
Asian people, who constitute the main share of the immigrant population.
Henry C
@nb Your good post is reinforced plenty by the more recent talk by Bullard. He notes:
"If you know only one aspect of the data on labor force participation, it should be this: Labor
force participation used to be relativelylow, it rose during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,peaking
in 2000, and it has generally been declining since 2000.From 1948 to 1966, the labor force participation
rate was relatively low and relatively stable, averaging 59.1 percent. That's substantially lower
than today's value of 63 percent. It is important to note that we normally consider the U.S. economy
to have performed relatively well during this period, especially during the long expansion of
the 1960s.
Evidently, low labor force participation does not equate with weak economic growth. Surely
this is because the factors driving economic growth are different from the factors driving labor
force participation."
Why are you surprised? You genuflected to my employer.. The People's Republic of China.
Where slavery is a tool for political control. Perhaps you should have thought harder and better
when you and your friends were nattering on about The Great Moderation. What was your long game?
Did you think there would be a revolution or revolt that you could manipulate? Or were you a true
believer in The Circular Theory of Income?
Action? What action? How are you going to move production back to the West? How can you undo
what you are responsible for?
As to family support, the other aspect one might look at is whether US household disposable
income growth has been deficient relative to other G7 countries (which all have higher LFPR).
But that's not the case: see
So on the face of it, it seems to take a higher LFPR in other G7 countries to match the same
approximate growth in US disposable income in the long run.
L'anziano
"What might explain the extent to which prime-aged men and women have been withdrawing
from the labour market in the US over a long period?"
Heartless as this sounds (and I am sure I will not gain any friends for this on this page)
the reason on the male side of the equation is that it is much easier to fire ineffective, unproductive,
middle-aged, male dinosaurs in the US than it is in the UK, France or Japan. At least this has
always been the case in every global firm in which I have worked. I am acutely aware of this as
a middle aged man myself.
lennerd
Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male
and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more
than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago.
This, of course, is the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors
that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of
growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per
cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting.
Olaf von Rein
@lennerd Those income statistics right? Frightening.
Legal Tender
@lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million
low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very
bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of
the earnings is "off the books") the results look better. You cannot make an "apples to apples"
comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s
and 2000s. The demographics are very different.
If Europe admits millions of refugees over the next few years, I can assure you it will depress
average male household earnings. But you always need to look at what has changed in the composition
of the data before drawing conclusions about the data. The fact that there might be millions of
Middle Eastern and African arrivals earning very little (officially) would impact the overall
data for wages but may not accurately describe the experience of the pre-existing labour force.
You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for
millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what
they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries
to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current
economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006
period).
Cuibono
As somebody who has worked in both Europe and the US I would add to the list of underlying
causes mentioned. First employee rights in the US are abysmal. Poor conditions, no training or
upward mobility, little or no personal privacy, cult like "motivation" exercises, passive aggressive
annual reviews, drug testing, binding non-compete contracts that disallow moving to competitors
for long periods of time and now declining benefits. The list goes on and on.
The employer gets everything and gives nothing more than an "at-will" commitment to continue
employment.
It gets to a point where it's not profitable to bother.
Raver
@Cuibono Yes it's gotten pretty bad. The benefit packages are barely cheaper than what you
can buy in the health insurance marketplace, maybe $20 less a month if you're lucky.
Banker
@Cuibono yea but salaries are 2-3x as much as in the UK.
Cuibono
@Banker @Cuibono Right, until you factor in the cost of health care and college tuition for
your kids.
Banker
@Cuibono @Banker @Cuibono Ahm? Most ivies have $0 fees for families under $60k and a lot of
support. Health insurance also provided from employer covers everything. Have you even got any
idea how expensive private healthcare is in the UK? Unless you want to use 3rd world NHS ofcourse.
All public universities also charge minimum £9k/year fees here.
Learn your facts before you post.
Cuibono
Well I believe I know facts. I also have manners, and you apparently don't. So get off your
high horse before you post!
Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands
down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system,
but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please
feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for
it.
You 9k per year number is, frankly hilarious to any middle class US parent. Try 60k per year
for fees and board for a good university.
And if you are earning 60k per year how are you going to afford the basic second level education,
complete with top SAT scores and cultural experiences that will get you selected to the mythical
ivy.- especially if you are white and without legacy connections? You should take your own advice
and read up on US colleges and their outrageous manipulation of statistics to hide the fact that
they are little more than vehicles that allow the elite to transfer status across generations.
You are upset about an opinion I expressed based on my own experiences and you set yourself
up as the comment police to challenge that opinion without.
Something to think about. . .
US corporations have the developed world's highest remuneration scale to executives and the
lowest benefits to other employees. How else can these corporate executive maintain their life
style without hiring from the two employee pools (young and old) that work for such low wages?
Young are beginning and old augmenting income.
ForgottenHistory
I recall how in the Netherlands and in Germany (and i think to a lesser degree also in France
but haven't got a clue on the UK in this matter) policymakers and governments were very concerned
for just this: an increase in the longer -and ultimately eternally- unemployed. Therefore people
weren't just been laid off but held on and send on courses or only half-employed(=50% or so) and
the government added some funds to that.
This way people retained and even improved their skills, in stead of losing skills and become
unemployable and ultimately end up being a costly burden for society.
It doesn't surprise me at all this didn't happen in the US, as the US has equal opportunities(supposed
to) but no proper sense of community in the sense of a government with a long term-planning; US
has been doing the opposite, e.g. cutting-off anything which would help the unemployed, poor,
or disadvantaged -that's equal opportunities in reality.
Smyrna Cracker
I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree
may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered
a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural
populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising
levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has
no interest in serving the population it represents.
Mr Passive
Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs.
There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary
schemes have been reducing in number.
Is it another function of very low bond yields & therefore pension rates, the side-effects
of QE we may call it.
Time for the CBs to hold up their hands and admit they've done all they can and at the margin
further extra-ordinary measures will be counter productive.
Massachusetts
@Mr Passive In the US the only age group that has seen incomes increase consistently is the
65-74 decile. I cannot speak to the UK.
"... the wilful DENIAL inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. 'Everything is awesome'. Repeat till it becomes fact. ..."
"... To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists. ..."
"... That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art horse of "greater transparency" for the private sector, and "we are the world's police" in their foreign policy. ..."
"... That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you "nuts" if not worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families. ..."
"... The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs in its money machine. ..."
"... American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes for your next dinner party. ..."
"... Wolf has a point. I'm in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. I'm also very physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was well-qualified but too senior, I stopped looking. ..."
"... ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply life's necessities - food, clothing and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set. ..."
"... Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the US ..."
"... In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folk's mental health than staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists. ..."
"... @cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing: US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported low level jobs. ..."
"... The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment is much higher than reported. ..."
"... I was amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys. ..."
"... Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. ..."
"... The FT published my letter to the editor in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. ..."
"... In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too big and way too dominant. ..."
"... The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s). ..."
"... Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago. ..."
"... the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting. ..."
"... @lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of the earnings is off the books ) the results look better. You cannot make an apples to apples comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different. ..."
"... You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006 period). ..."
"... Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for it. ..."
"... I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents. ..."
"... Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary schemes have been reducing in number. ..."
The causes are multi factorial, but what is really disturbing is the wilful DENIAL
inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. 'Everything is
awesome'. Repeat till it becomes fact.
To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy,
leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as
the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic
crony capitalists.
The discovery mechanisms in America's so called free markets are terminally broken.
The whole charade is necessary to keep the terrifying monster that circles the deep below the
surface: debt. Irreconcilable, measured in numbers so stupendous it makes Zimbabwe's terminal
hyperinflation seem tame by comparison.
There is only one way the monster of debt can be tamed: war.
E. Scrooge, 3 hours ago
The rise of the underground economy, pay cash and you can get sizable discounts on
construction, repairs, all sorts of things. Many, but not all of those able, are providing
products and mainly services as part of the underground economy. This was and I still believe
is the fastest growing segment of the US economy. Mostly out of necessity, but will likely
remain a very significant part of the overall economy for quite some time, as many of these
workers are years away from Social Security eligible.
ceteris paribus
The irony of this title. The American labour force--the people who do real jobs in the real
economy are working harder than ever, for less and less money to keep themselves afloat. So
American labour does work while the American labour market is apparently on a permanent
vacation.
Kevin Alexanderman
"America's labour market is not working"?
You mean "America's government is not working".
That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an
indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the
holier-than-thou-art horse of "greater transparency" for the private sector, and "we are the
world's police" in their foreign policy.
They can't even competently establish metrics to adequately assess performance of their
economy.
Mr. Martin, you say "In all, the proportion of the fall in the unemployment rate because of
lower participation cannot be more than a quarter." Is that your best attempt at one-liner
humour? Are you still mocking Greenspan-speak?
So I gather you are saying that a fall from 10% to 5% is more on the order of a fall from
10% to 6.25%.
That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you "nuts" if not
worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would
say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is
not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families.
Astrophysicist111
Interesting that the author doesn't consider the possible role of the increased death rate
among middle aged U.S. whites - as recently reported, e.g. in the NY Times - to be a factor in
the low labor participation rate. As one economist who studied the data observed: "There are a
half million people dead who shouldn't be". This is over the interval 1993-2014. Prior to 1993
the specific age demographic, 45-64 years old, had enjoyed a 2 percent improvement in life
span - but no more. The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and
diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that
something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards
citizens as mere cogs in its money machine.
Legal Tender
For those interested, here is an NPR piece (and follow-up from The Atlantic) on the
disability situation in the US. Note that an adult need not be disabled themselves to collect
payments and leave the workforce. Children are eligible for disability payments in the US for
learning disabilities (including ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc) with the income going to the parent
(reducing the need for that parent to enter the workforce).
From 2009 to 2013, there were 2.5 million jobs created in the US while 5.9 million people were
added to the disability system.
One thing I enjoy a great deal is good comedy. And as an American reader I find plenty of
fabulous comedy in these "what's wrong with America" articles. Soaring rates of morbidity
among white middle-aged Americans? How can that be? Pathologically low LFP rates? What could
possibly explain that? Billionaire clowns near the top of opinion polls? Go figure!
After the first course, one then moves on to the comments, littered with the aromatic
excretions of right-wing American idiots. The incredulous replies subsequently posted are
often quite hilarious, because respondents find it so hard to believe the amazing levels of
stupidity on display.
American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of
on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning
question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times -
what are the best recipes for your next dinner party.
Thanks FT!
TJG
Thank you Mr. Wolf for pointing out that the declining employment participation rate
portends significant community and social problems. I would like to suggest that two issues
play a significant role in this decline. The low minimum wage combined with the high cost of
competent child care make it financially pointless for a spouse earning less than $10.00/hour
to work. Secondly racially tinged mass incarceration has produced an ever growing number of
unemployable people. The moment an applicant indicates he or she has been incarcerated it is
pretty certain the application will be rejected. Until societal attitudes and public policies
change the problems illuminated by Mr. Wolf's opinion piece will only continue to grow.
JMC22
The title of this piece -- that the US labour market is not working -- is way out of line
with the content. A highly contentious issue regarding the fall in the measured participation
rate is hardly an indication of a non-working labour market, especially given the huge
increase in employment in recent years. One issue not discussed -- the fact of a very
considerable increase in the employment in the grey markets. Self-employed persons, partly
growing out of internet activities, are not properly measured. Nor are those who simply work
outside the formal economy, including many illegal immigrants.
ciwp1
@JMC22 Good points. Worth bearing in mind also, wrt self-employed, there are large numbers
'officially' self-employed who are not doing much; similar irregular work patterns afflict
temps, part-time works, zero hours...
Mark Feldman
Mr. Wolfe, the problem is a lack of education. And I don't mean a lack of degrees.
I'm not an economist (I'm a former math professor.), but it certainly seems to me that if an
economy needs educated (Again, don't confuse that with "degreed".), workers, and they aren't
readily available, then there will be more unemployment.
What I mean by "degreed but uneducated" should be obvious, but I do want to make one point
with an example.
If you learn how to do calculus - just how to do it period - that will not make it easier to
learn how to use a spreadsheet; but, if you really learn calculus, you will find it much
easier to use a spreadsheet. That is because you will have trained your mind to think
quantitatively. It's that simple.
In the 60's students who took calculus learned it. Now, they mainly just get certified in it.
(If you doubt me, just compare today's AP Calculus with the one from 1970.)
This same phenomena is true across all disciplines. It is because the American higher
educational system, as a whole, is corrupt. (In a recent issue,The Economist has done an
excellent job reporting and analyzing the system. Thank you.)
But here is what is even worse.
The effect of this corruption has seeped down to America's K-12 system. To see how, just ask
yourself where high school teachers go to learn, and within what system do "professors" at
regional state schools get their "credentials", and why it might be in the interest of more
"elite" schools to credential them.
For anyone who wants to know more, I have a blog inside-higher-ed that has convincing examples
and documentation.
Veiled One
Wolf has a point. I'm in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for
work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at
elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. I'm also very
physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was "well-qualified
but too senior," I stopped looking.
Now, I'm a rentier with 100% free time, and read the FT every morning. I suppose I should be
happy to enjoy the guerdons of a career when very young.
Kevin Alexanderman
@Veiled One ,
Sounds like you are a victim of age-racism. The leftist journalist crowd know the money is
with the older people. Just as they slander the banks, (who have the money), and as the German
national socialists slandered the Jews (who had the money), today's socialists slander older
people.
The leftists are preparing some kind of way to swindle more experienced people out of their
money, just haven't figured out how yet.
Gail Johnson
This is a political problem. Ordinary Americans are no longer represented by the national
government. In other major industrialized democracies, the equivalent of US congressional
districts include about 100,000 people. For example, in the UK there are 650 members of the
House of Commons representing about 64 million people. In a district with 100,000 people it is
possible to contest an election without a $1 million war chest.
In the US congressional districts average over 700,000 people. There are 435
representatives for over 310 million people. Congress has an approval rating on the low teens,
and yet in the last election 95% of incumbents got reelected. Why? Their demonstrated
willingness to vote the way big money tells them to in return for the funds needed to stay in
office.
Thus, ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply life's necessities - food, clothing
and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set.
The US is focused on Austerity. Cultural, Economic and Political Austerity. The right wing
drive to kill everything for everyone ( save for the elite that are rapidly accumulating it
all) has destroyed the infrastructure and the fabric of the country. The US is the laggard in
the 'leading developed countries' of the world and is certainly vectored in the wrong
direction.
Michael Moran
I wonder how much of this can be explained by furtive self-employment. The ridiculous tax
system provides every reason for a smart person to try and avoid formal employment through
LLCs or other dodges. The LLC structure and their tax status is unique to the US, after all.
It could be part of the explanation.
RDRAVID
@Michael Moran
If someone is self-employed they would be counted as actively participating in the Labour
market. Rather than self-employment, I think the issue is a growth in informal activity in the
US. Its becoming more common there for people to do undeclared work, whether of the handyman,
domestic helper or running a mobile food shack.
The bottom 20% in the US are effectively living a third world style life.
Isaias
I always said that if US unemployment was measured by Spain unemployment standards ( the
strictest in the EU ), it would probably be around 12 % if not more.
What free market?
While Martin Wolf explains a deeply worrying trend, particularly for those who have given
up the struggle to find work, there is another bar to job creation.
Small businesses find the bureaucratic hassle of taking on staff a nightmare: the intrusion of
form filling, record keeping, the tax authorities, local authorities etc, all of which have
their own, separate agendas, is sufficient deterrent to employing anyone except on a casual
basis - which the very young and old are happy to engage with the process.
The only common strategy for bureaucrats and tax men is job creation - theirs and those of the
ilk - their role is job destructive in the real economy.
gkjames
@What free market? Really? How so? What "bureaucratic hassle"? Are standard record-keeping
and accounting practices an "intrusion" or, more likely, a useful mechanism by which
shareholders can track the health of the enterprise? In most US states, by the way, it takes
all of a single form and a modest fee to incorporate. As for the alleged "common strategy for
bureaucrats and tax men," you do realize, presumably, that it is elected legislatures who
write the tax laws, laws that reflect extensive (and, not infrequently, exclusive) input from
the business community.
What free market?
Yes, it is BIG business that controls the output of legislatures, small business does not
get a look in - those running them are too busy running their businesses and coping with
bureaucracy. It is often overlooked that rules and regulations that are imposed universally
suit big business but place a disproportionate burden on small business who have to comply
with the same dictats but without the administrative cohort and infrastructure that large
firms can justify.
What free market?
Indeed, without sounding too conspiratorial, I would say there is an unwritten pact between
big business and legislators that allows big business to comply with onshore rules and forces
competing small business to do the same.
Meanwhile offshore, big business can engage in tax evasion on a massive scale using
offshore tax havens, transfer pricing and the freedom from jurisdictional control that
obviates their need to remit revenues that would be taxable (viz Apple) . Small businesses are
captive, they have to be 100% complient and that suits big business as the administrative
burden crushes incipient competition from small business.
Anon2
Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the
US and the subsequent poor performance in school, crime, prison etc. I guarantee those
not participating exhibit a higher percentage of having had no father in the home as a child.
LJH
@Anon2 Yes, we don't like poor people in the US, or minorities - including women. The
problem is the ruling class of white rich men is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Those that create the problems are usually not the first to suffer the consequences. That
comes later as the empire crumbles.
M_T
@Hell No -- Given the minimal welfare in the US, and that it seems implausible that one in
eight American working age men are starving, my personal assumption would be that a large
proportion of the remainder are working in the unregistered economy. That includes crime but
would also include casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc.
RiskAdjustedReturn
@M_T @Hell No --
"... casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc."
In my local bank, on a Saturday morning, one will see lines of middle-aged white guys
standing in line to take out thousands of dollars each in cash, which I'm assuming is meant to
pay their workers
Adam Bartlett
An issue that's only going to get more severe and widespread as technological unemployment
continues its advance.
In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folk's mental health than
staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists.
The choice facing us is probably between the statist solution of a massive increase in public
sector employment, or the relatively libertarian option of a generous universal basic income.
Let's pray it won't be too many years before such options get to the table.
pangloss
Surely an American (or any other) worker is worth no more than say a Chinese worker + some
translation factor. The translation factor includes the presence of infrastructure and human
capital on both sides. The low skill worker suffers first because of an early and easy shift
in the translation factors. Sooner or later the high-end designers of Silicon Valley will
suffer the same fate. Excluding nuclear war there is likely to be a flattening of wages across
the developed world. This is especially bad news for those at the lower end of the ability
scale, no credible amount of education or training will make enough difference. There are
limits to human capital. Start thinking about redistribution and the niches that are immune
from this effect.
nonuthin
The question that bothered me through this is what do they actually do if they're not
"working". Clearly not all sustained by welfare, does this indicate a significant increase in
either the black economy, the criminal economy or both. E.g. it would be statistically
fascinating ( if politically unachievable) to see the impact of a legally licenced drugs trade
on the employment participation rates.
Adam Bartlett
@nonuthin Some in single earner households, having to accept a lower material quality of
life than they would if both adults could earn. Others drawing down savings and living
frugally. Many dependent on food banks and other forms of charity. Others subsisting in the
informal economy, but activity one would call 'grey' at worst, not the black or criminal
economy.
Big Dipper
There is more to life's responsibilities than your "men and women whose responsibilities
should make earning a good income". Perhaps you could consider high-quality child raising,
other care activity, community and education. The ratio is dangerous.
cg12348
Every week Martin Wolf reminds me why the self proclaimed experts are really idiots - you
can make stats sing if you know what you are doing........but the reality is easy to see.
Americans have a work force that is seeing its jobs exported - notice he does not give the
stats on companies moving out of the US over the past 30 years. Again the experts say we could
not stop It - NO they cant stop it that is true - but there is a way to stop it.
They would further tell you that the 11 million immigrant workers have little to no effect
because they take jobs that we don't want - wrong again. As you age your are happy to be
employed even if the job does not hold the allure of your previous job. What immigrant workers
do is they take less money because they are willing to live at a lower standard. They will
live many families to one home etc. In fact if they were not here to take the job the job
would get done when the pay increased to attract a willing worker - FACT. Finally what stats
do not capture is the moral of a work force.
There is nothing "decent" about our unemployment stats. We are not a nation of any one race
we are a nation of opportunity with one of the most powerful economies and plenty of natural
resources and demand and opportunity for innovation - so what sickness has befallen the US -
large government - corporate taxation - political mediocrity - the same thing that has
recently become apparent in Germany and France - idiots who give away what we worked hard for
and expect us to pay more for those they choose to support.
Todays social programs breed a generation that no longer asks what they can do for their
nation - but what their nation can do for them. Obama and his ilk have handed the world to
those who were unwilling to fight to fix their own countries - instead they want to come here
for opportunity that did not exist at home and then in a great act of irony turn our land into
theirs - we do not want to be Europe - nor do we want to be Mexico and we certainly do not
want to be the middle east - instead what we want those who love our opportunity to come here
and become American - but in numbers and within a legal process that does not exacerbate or
marginalize those who were born here and should have the right to the first jobs here.
Profitsee
@cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing:
US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported "low level" jobs. Even as a
Democrat, I confess, you provide a lucid argument.
Tiger II
The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies.
Unemployment is much higher than reported. Sclerotic labor laws and regulations make it
impossible to create many jobs that can produce more than they cost, especially given the
dumbing down of the work force by public monopoly schools. Regulated labor markets are one of
the biggest drivers of unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic and should be abolished.
Brian Reading
While not disputing in any way Martin Wolf's analysis, the devil may still be in the
detail. Population estimates by age cohorts come from ten-yearly census data - the denominator
for participation rates. These estimates are interpolated between censuses from births, deaths
and migration data. The numerator, the number in each age cohort at work or seeking work,
comes from regular household sample surveys. Using one source for denominator and another for
numerator, which cannot be avoided, entails a margin of error. In looking into this, I was
amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect
estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do
not appear in household surveys.
DougInCalifornia
What I am seeing where I live is the emergence of a part-time, informal service economy.
You might call it the Craigslist/Ebay/PayPal economy. I think that a lot of people make a
(minimal) living this way. And my guess is that most of it doesn't get picked up in official
statistics. I think that "employment" will need to be measured differently in the
post-internet era.
RiskAdjustedReturn
@cg12348 @Boston1
"Show me a middle class kid that expects to work his way up and willing to start at the bottom
and I will show you..."
...a recent immigrant.
WL - Minneapolis
One clue into the declining labor force participation rate may have been discovered in a
study reported in the NY Times today, that may account for a substantial portion. The death
rate among middle-aged (45-54) whites with high school education or less has increased in
recent years, reversing a long-term trend. The cause appears to be poor health/chronic
pain/mental health issues that result in death by drug/alcohol abuse and/or suicide.
Clearly unskilled and low-skilled workers have more trouble finding well paying jobs, and the
wages for those jobs have fallen around 19% since 2000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. But
an increase in health problems of one sort or another may also be the cause of the lower
participation rate as well.
Excellent article on education difficulties in the US by Edouardo Porter in today's NYT.
One problem is that children living in poverty in the US struggle to learn in the education
system partially because overall public support for impoverished families is so poor in the
US.
If we think the current labor market is not working, wait till the Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP) trade deal passes the US Congress & signed into law .
Capital ($), aided by misguided policies of the US economic elites, will prevail over
(skilled) Labor.
Paul A. Myers
A major contributor to lack of hiring men age 25-54 is the massive underinvestment in
infrastructure in the U.S. This is a prime age for construction employment and this industry
provides a ladder of advancement from low and semi-skilled labor up to more skilled labor. My
experience with construction contractors in Southern California is that they are interested in
individuals who can get to the job site and do the work and are often willing to overlook
criminal records. A dollar of public spending on construction puts American workers to work,
not someone in Korea. You can't import a highway or a building from the Far East.
The other major failure is the large urban school district. These "too big to succeed"
institutions have a record for over a half a century of failure to turn out skilled young
people. In the massive Los Angeles Unified School District, they shut down skill-based
vocational education during the period 1970-1990 with the lame excuse of everyone is going to
college. The duopoly of a wooden-headed educational establishment fostered by graduate schools
of education and powerful job-protecting, mediocrity-fostering teachers unions have created
the largest statist failure since the collapse of East Germany. (And you can remember how much
Germany paid to clean up that mess!)
There are recent reports that there are 4-5 million unfilled jobs in the US due to lack of
skilled applicants.
A crummy labor market is almost always the creation of bad public policy. And today's America
swims in bad public policies.
beforethecollapse.com
@Paul A. Myers As an educator, I wonder what role poor nutrition plays in the US?
beforethecollapse.com
Also, I must say that the family unit is far more influential and important to the youth
than any teacher. The teacher can operate as a third parent, or second parent if the family
breaks down, but a youth needs a stable environment for healthy emotional and instinctual
development. Excellent diet, physical exercise and regimented sleep patterns are essential.
It's easy for parents to blame teachers but I have noted that such complaints arise from
personalities that resent strong authority figures and duty enforces. As such, they are
incapable of disciplining their own child.
In China, society encourages the family to be unconditionally supportive to the child, this is
balanced by the teacher who is a strict disciplinarian, often by way of corporeal punishment.
Philip Verleger
@Paul A. Myers A crummy labor market can also be the result of increased monopsonistic
power of employers. Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot
find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered.
The employers cannot offer more because their customers - the large airlines and the big
shippers will not pay more. The trained workers are there. They just will not accept the
scarps.
The public policy mistake was allowing the creation of such large monopolies/monopsonies.
Look outside your silo!
Paul A. Myers
@Philip Verleger @Paul A. Myers Good points. The FT published my letter to the editor
in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had
reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. (I think I
was seriously outside my silo and I think the FT editors were very receptive to this
argument--then and now.)
Oligopolies (the only kind of major corporations and markets in the US today) produce lower
volumes, at higher prices, and with fewer employees than a more competitive economic sector
would employ, produce, price.
In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too
big and way too dominant. In the 1950s and 60s, it used to be the Big Three in most
sectors; today is at most the Big Two.
The Progressives understood the economic concentration argument; the Democratic Leadership
Council generation embraces concentration's contributory support.
Philip Verleger
@Paul A. Myers @Philip Verleger
Could not agree more. I am on the board of a family firm. We cannot find truck drivers
although we pay well and train (to move gasoline - it takes an extra license). There is just
little interest in joining the profession because the large companies keep wages down.
The FTC and Justice Department unfortunately failed to do their jobs.
BelCan
Mr Wolf seems to have missed the fact that the FT already covered this issue on 16 October.
The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate
since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate
of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and
(4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s).
The main factors that keep the aggregate LFP rate from falling further are the increase of
the LFP rate of those 55 and older and the strong attachment to the labor force of Hispanic
and Asian people, who constitute the main share of the immigrant population.
Henry C
@nb Your good post is reinforced plenty by the more recent talk by Bullard. He notes:
"If you know only one aspect of the data on labor force participation, it should be this:
Labor force participation used to be relativelylow, it rose during the 1970s, 1980s and
1990s,peaking in 2000, and it has generally been declining since 2000.From 1948 to 1966, the
labor force participation rate was relatively low and relatively stable, averaging 59.1
percent. That's substantially lower than today's value of 63 percent. It is important to note
that we normally consider the U.S. economy to have performed relatively well during this
period, especially during the long expansion of the 1960s.
Evidently, low labor force participation does not equate with weak economic growth. Surely
this is because the factors driving economic growth are different from the factors driving
labor force participation."
Why are you surprised? You genuflected to my employer.. The People's Republic of China.
Where slavery is a tool for political control. Perhaps you should have thought harder and
better when you and your friends were nattering on about The Great Moderation. What was your
long game? Did you think there would be a revolution or revolt that you could manipulate? Or
were you a true believer in The Circular Theory of Income?
Action? What action? How are you going to move production back to the West? How can you undo
what you are responsible for?
As to family support, the other aspect one might look at is whether US household disposable
income growth has been deficient relative to other G7 countries (which all have higher LFPR).
But that's not the case: see
So on the face of it, it seems to take a higher LFPR in other G7 countries to match the
same approximate growth in US disposable income in the long run.
L'anziano
"What might explain the extent to which prime-aged men and women have been
withdrawing from the labour market in the US over a long period?"
Heartless as this sounds (and I am sure I will not gain any friends for this on this page)
the reason on the male side of the equation is that it is much easier to fire ineffective,
unproductive, middle-aged, male dinosaurs in the US than it is in the UK, France or Japan. At
least this has always been the case in every global firm in which I have worked. I am acutely
aware of this as a middle aged man myself.
lennerd
Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male
and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973,
more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a
generation ago.
This, of course, is the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other
factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the
proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of
the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting.
Olaf von Rein
@lennerd Those income statistics right? Frightening.
Legal Tender
@lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15
million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take
out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a
good portion of the earnings is "off the books") the results look better. You cannot make an
"apples to apples" comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the
labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different.
If Europe admits millions of refugees over the next few years, I can assure you it will
depress average male household earnings. But you always need to look at what has changed in
the composition of the data before drawing conclusions about the data. The fact that there
might be millions of Middle Eastern and African arrivals earning very little (officially)
would impact the overall data for wages but may not accurately describe the experience of the
pre-existing labour force.
You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for
millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times
what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those
countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not
classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe
much of the 1990-2006 period).
Cuibono
As somebody who has worked in both Europe and the US I would add to the list of underlying
causes mentioned. First employee rights in the US are abysmal. Poor conditions, no training or
upward mobility, little or no personal privacy, cult like "motivation" exercises, passive
aggressive annual reviews, drug testing, binding non-compete contracts that disallow moving to
competitors for long periods of time and now declining benefits. The list goes on and on.
The employer gets everything and gives nothing more than an "at-will" commitment to
continue employment.
It gets to a point where it's not profitable to bother.
Raver
@Cuibono Yes it's gotten pretty bad. The benefit packages are barely cheaper than what you
can buy in the health insurance marketplace, maybe $20 less a month if you're lucky.
Banker
@Cuibono yea but salaries are 2-3x as much as in the UK.
Cuibono
@Banker @Cuibono Right, until you factor in the cost of health care and college tuition for
your kids.
Banker
@Cuibono @Banker @Cuibono Ahm? Most ivies have $0 fees for families under $60k and a lot of
support. Health insurance also provided from employer covers everything. Have you even got any
idea how expensive private healthcare is in the UK? Unless you want to use 3rd world NHS
ofcourse.
All public universities also charge minimum £9k/year fees here.
Learn your facts before you post.
Cuibono
Well I believe I know facts. I also have manners, and you apparently don't. So get off your
high horse before you post!
Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins
hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private
system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden
costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family)
with co-pays for it.
You 9k per year number is, frankly hilarious to any middle class US parent. Try 60k per
year for fees and board for a good university.
And if you are earning 60k per year how are you going to afford the basic second level
education, complete with top SAT scores and cultural experiences that will get you selected to
the mythical ivy.- especially if you are white and without legacy connections? You should take
your own advice and read up on US colleges and their outrageous manipulation of statistics to
hide the fact that they are little more than vehicles that allow the elite to transfer status
across generations.
You are upset about an opinion I expressed based on my own experiences and you set yourself
up as the comment police to challenge that opinion without.
Something to think about. . .
US corporations have the developed world's highest remuneration scale to executives and the
lowest benefits to other employees. How else can these corporate executive maintain their life
style without hiring from the two employee pools (young and old) that work for such low wages?
Young are beginning and old augmenting income.
ForgottenHistory
I recall how in the Netherlands and in Germany (and i think to a lesser degree also in
France but haven't got a clue on the UK in this matter) policymakers and governments were very
concerned for just this: an increase in the longer -and ultimately eternally- unemployed.
Therefore people weren't just been laid off but held on and send on courses or only
half-employed(=50% or so) and the government added some funds to that.
This way people retained and even improved their skills, in stead of losing skills and
become unemployable and ultimately end up being a costly burden for society.
It doesn't surprise me at all this didn't happen in the US, as the US has equal
opportunities(supposed to) but no proper sense of community in the sense of a government with
a long term-planning; US has been doing the opposite, e.g. cutting-off anything which would
help the unemployed, poor, or disadvantaged -that's equal opportunities in reality.
Smyrna Cracker
I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college
degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have
uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same
phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health
services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power
but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents.
Mr Passive
Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such
jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that
final salary schemes have been reducing in number.
Is it another function of very low bond yields & therefore pension rates, the side-effects of
QE we may call it.
Time for the CBs to hold up their hands and admit they've done all they can and at the margin
further extra-ordinary measures will be counter productive.
Massachusetts
@Mr Passive In the US the only age group that has seen incomes increase consistently is the
65-74 decile. I cannot speak to the UK.
"... Nevertheless, the truth is that the United States economy is not exactly in good health. The labour market data published during the 12 months before March of 2015 is not as robust as was presumed by the Federal Reserve: the Department of Labor recognized recently that it had overestimated the jobs created by the private sector by at least 255,000 [3]. ..."
"... The policies of the Federal Reserve are not capable of increasing the economy by their own efforts [6]. Yellen bet everything on a reduction of the unemployed, hence businesses would be pressured to increase wages, so that the acquisitive power of families and price levels would increase (inflation). ..."
"... This has not happened. While the rate of unemployment fell from 5.7 to 5.1% between January and September of this year, hourly wages hardly increased 2.2% in annual terms the past month, still far from the levels reached before the crisis, when increases above 4% were noted. Inflation has not succeeded in passing 2% in more than 3 years, the objective of the US central bank [7]. ..."
The ego of Janet Yellen has broken into a thousand pieces. The new data published some days ago
by the US Department of Labor confirms the hypothesis of the economist Ariel Noyola Rodríguez, who
had maintained since last year that the United States' labour market was much more fragile than was
presumed by the head of the Federal Reserve. If the situation of the North American economy continues
to get worse it is probable that in coming weeks new measures will be taken to mitigate structural
unemployment.
In her public discourses, the president of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has avoided the
serious problems that the United States economy suffers. When in mid-September the Federal Open Market
Committee (FOMC) took the decision to maintain the federal funds rate between zero and 0.25% the
target of Yellen's worries was directed to China [1] and the debts of emerging economies [2].
In accord with the President of the Federal Reserve, the process of recovery of the North American
economy has been strengthening for considerable time. And, because of this, if the FOMC has not raised
the cost of credit is due, above all, to a high rate of "obligation" and "responsibility" with the
rest of the world.
Nevertheless, the truth is that the United States economy is not exactly in good health. The labour
market data published during the 12 months before March of 2015 is not as robust as was presumed
by the Federal Reserve: the Department of Labor recognized recently that it had overestimated the
jobs created by the private sector by at least 255,000 [3].
On the other hand, during the month of September the non-agricultural employment reached 143,000,
much less than the 200,000 hoped for [4]. The greatest reversals were in sectors tied to external
trade and energy. The rise of the dollar, and the fall in prices of commodities and the extreme weakness
of global demand with the rest of the world precipitated the structural deterioration of the US economy.
The bad news does not end here: the numbers of the jobs generated in July and August were also
lower [5]. Now we know that in August only 136,000 jobs were created, rather than the 176,000 originally
reported: while in the month of July there were created 21,000 fewer jobs than those counted in the
previous revision.
Hence with the data actualized by the Department of Labor, in the United States there were registered
an average of 167,000 new jobs between July and September, an amount that represents less than 65%
of the 260,000 (average per month) that were created during the previous year.
The policies of the Federal Reserve are not capable of increasing the economy by their own efforts
[6]. Yellen bet everything on a reduction of the unemployed, hence businesses would be pressured
to increase wages, so that the acquisitive power of families and price levels would increase (inflation).
This has not happened. While the rate of unemployment fell from 5.7 to 5.1% between January and
September of this year, hourly wages hardly increased 2.2% in annual terms the past month, still
far from the levels reached before the crisis, when increases above 4% were noted. Inflation has
not succeeded in passing 2% in more than 3 years, the objective of the US central bank [7].
Hence it is now clear that the fall of the unemployment rates in recent months depends more on
the reduction of the rate of participation in the labour market - as a consequence of the despair
of thousands of US citizens - and less on the creation of quality long range jobs: on Friday October
2 it was announced that in September 350,000 persons abandoned the search for work [8]. There is
no turning around, in the United States job growth has been submerged in stagnation.
"... "don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired. It changed my self-identity.
I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself." ..."
"... More and more I have to accept this is the Third Act in Life and working for a traditional
company in a traditional job is no longer a reality ..."
"... Without real income, you eventually become another victim of our perverse, experience-averse
corporate economy. ..."
For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans
nearing retirement are lower than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a
job, older workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year, according to the Labor
Department, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19
weeks for teenagers.
There are numerous reasons - older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization.
They're more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries
tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they're attractive targets if layoffs are needed.
Even as they do all the things they're told to do - network, improve those computer skills, find
a new passion and turn it into a job - many struggle with the question of whether their working life
as they once knew it is essentially over.
This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be
addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not
include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult balance,
said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
... ... ...
Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help. My friend Shelley's husband,
Neal, who also asked that I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a friend was
"don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired. It changed my self-identity.
I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself."
He also has friends facing the same issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups,
whether formal or informal, are very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president of the American Counseling
Association and professor emerita of counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.
"Legitimizing the fact that this stinks also helps," she said. "I find that when I say this, clients
are so relieved. They thought I was going to say, 'buck up.' "
And even more, "they should know the problem is not with them but with a system that has treated
them like a commodity that can be discarded," said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling,
developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who
works with the older unemployed in suburb of Boston. "I try to help clients get in touch with their
anger about that. They shouldn't blame themselves."
Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do. "I know not to take it personally," Neal said,
"but sure, I wonder at times, what's wrong with me? Is there something I should be doing differently?"
It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to wonder if he is somehow standing in his own
way, like a cancer patient who is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.
Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary "Set for
Life" about the older jobless, said she stopped posting articles like "Five Easy Steps to get a New
Job." "People are so frustrated," she said. "They don't want to hear, 'Get a new wardrobe, get on
LinkedIn.' "
As one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said, "I've been told to
redo my résumé twice now. The first 'expert' tells me to do it one way, the next 'expert' tells me
to put it back the way I had it."
Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although
he believes he'll never make as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic about
some consulting jobs.
But the reality is that the problem of the older unemployed "was acute during the Great Recession,
and is now chronic," Ms. Sipprelle said. "People's lives have been upended by the great forces of
history in a way that's never happened before, and there's no other example for older workers to
look at. Some can't recoup, though not through their own fault. They're the wrong age at the wrong
time. It's cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you just dye your hair, you'll get that
job."
Flatlander, August 5, 2013
Age discrimination is a sad reality today and always has been. It is also very difficult to
prove in a legal action. From what I have heard,...
Jay, August 5, 2013
Ok, I took some knocks on this, one that I deserve. I really do feel badly for the guys that
didn't make it. I was wrong on that one. Yes,...
Walter, August 5, 2013
This is a great article. I'm in this situation but worse. Trying to entice myself to nowadays
corporations I went and enrolled in a MBA program and got myself into a $40K student loan debt.
I had already paid my previous loans long time ago so I figure, if I update myself educational-wise
and prove these people that my mind is still fresh and sharp at a high level that I could raise
my chances.
Now, I am 56 and I still cant get a job. Taking a minimum wage position is out of the question
for me since all my salary would actually go to pay my debt and I would not have money even for
transportation back and forth to work.
What I find amazing is that employer are failing to understand that old folks like us would
really appreciate the opportunity and work harder to try to excel than probably any of nowadays
young kids, that, like the article mentioned, are more prone to leave the company to get promotions.
I keep telling my friends that I would even sign a contract guaranteeing that I would work for
them until the day I die or retire.
I like the idea presented by one of the readers here that the government should provide some
kind of economic incentive in the way of lower taxation for businesses that hire people over 50.
They do it for career criminals. Why not for qualified and educated/trained people.
This is totally age discrimination and it is a federal offense. However, I try that channel
also and I got no response from the Labor Dept. I thank the NYT for bringing this up.
Jovality, Las Vegas, NV. August 5, 2013
I'm 57 and have or had been employed in the high tech industry for over 25 years with never
a period of more than two weeks unemployment until now. During that time I rose from a software
developer to product manager, to VP of Sales and Marketing. I was laid off from that position
at the end of 2012, but luckily I was able to reach out to an old colleague who was able to sneak
me into a marketing position in his company at less than half my previous salary.
I was surprised by the younger people's reaction to me. They said things to me I had to take
as compliments such as, "You're really cool for an older guy." "I would never expect someone your
age would know so much or be so talented".
Unfortunately the company had a major layoff which I was caught in. Now I am like many of the
others who have posted her, "A ghost with a resume". Since being laid off in June of 2013 I have
sent out 100's of resumes with only a very limited response.
More and more I have to accept this is the "Third Act in Life" and working for a traditional
company in a traditional job is no longer a reality. It's time to take the vast experience
and talents I've built up or an entire career and use them to open my own business. It's a frighten
challenge to be sure.
But as someone once told me there is only one real form of security in life, when life knocks
you down you must have the drive and self-confidence to get up handle the situation and both survive
and succeed.
Jon K. Polis, East Greenwich, Rhode Island August 3, 2013
Bohemienne: In answer to your question; look up the movie " Soylent Green " from 1973, that
starred Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson....and see what fate be-fell Mr. Robinson's character....if
our government today offered me the same options/opportunities to me that they offered to him;
I would take advantage of them in a heartbeat...
Glenn, Cary, NC July 31, 2013
"People's lives have been upended by the great forces of history...."
Nonsense. People's lives have been upended by soulless capitalists and their lackeys in Congress
(read Republicans). There are no great forces of history at work here, just good, old-fashioned
GREED.
Rhea Goldman, Sylmar, CA July 31, 2013
I find it strange, very strange indeed, that all of us have so easily accepted our plight of
hardship. Have we been so cowed that collectively we take no action to put a stop to this harsh
treatment from employers? Re-read Dickens' Christmas Carol.....we are allowing the economics of
the United States to make Bob Cratchets of us all.
J. Campbell, Chicago, IL July 31, 2013
I'm amazed that an article from the NYT (to which I subscribe) actually suggests that people
in their 50's who are unemployed can somehow just "accept that they may *never* work again". How
could we live? What legal source of income could we obtain that would bridge us to Social Security
(even for those of us eventually eligible for SS retirement)? What are the people responsible
for this article (including the NYT editors who released it) thinking? What if someone suggested
that *they* accept a future where they never worked again, and had no income?
If there were several major American riots, that involved hundreds of thousands of unemployed
people (a fraction of the millions of current long-term unemployed in the US), the NYT would be
out front in demanding that order be restored *at any cost*. Where is the mainstream press demand
that *economic stability for the working class* be restored at any cost?
Or do you think, because of our current corporate/NSA state, such riots are impossible? If
so, look at Europe--right now.
Sam, Florida July 31, 2013
My husband was just laid off due to company merger. His entire department was eliminated. The
only good news, is that we've been expecting the lay off for about a year or so, as such we had
time to prepare. We also, have worked very hard to get our finances in order since we got married.
We killed all our unsecured debt in 2007, $55,000+, and we have saved a good chunk every year
since then. I'm still working on our lay off budget, but I hope that we will be able to cover
our regular monthly expenses on my salary.
Been there. Done that. It didn't work. The money disappeared - slowly but surely. Without
real income, you eventually become another victim of our perverse, experience-averse corporate
economy.
MJ, New York City August 5, 2013
Actually, it is possible to live on one salary. Best way is to start early on in the marriage,
keeping your first home rather than moving "up." Even if you have moved "up" it is possible and
no shame at all to move "down." It is a brave journey and takes real guts, but in many cases it
can be done.
Sam, Florida July 31, 2013
In addition to the costs to the individual and the families, their is a cost to society. Obviously
there is a cost to support many of these people in their later years, but there is also an uncalculated
cost to workers in their peak earning years, the height of their careers falling out of the job
market.
There is a cost to society to lose this knowledge, to losing their mentoring and training skills
for the next generation, to losing their consumer spending power, etc.
Melanie Dukas, Saugus, mass July 31, 2013
I am 59 years old, and I lost my job during the high tech bust in 2002 as marketing communications
manager at a fiber optic start-up. In Massachusetts, this was for many of us worse than the Great
Recession. At the height of my career at 48 years old, I was determined to get a job and interviewed
for 5 years. I drove a taxi and limo 6 days a week, but still couldn't make ends meet, so I moved
in with my parents 5 years ago and started my own business developing websites and marketing.
I just couldn't take interviewing anymore! It was like heartbreaking, kind of like dating - I
would go on the interview and get so excited and they never called.
It's been a long road, but at I am happy to be working in my field and making a living. Luckily,
I had done this before and although I would have preferred to work at a company full time, at
my age in marketing the jobs are few are far between and I need to work for the rest of my life
because I have no retirement. Even if I get a job, it is unlikely to last and then I would be
back in the same boat. Now I am in.
Henry, New York July 31, 2013
I think people must understand that the nature of WORK is changing. - In the past you worked
from 9-5 for a Company and as long you performed adequately you continued on your Job...
Well, welcome to the New Economy ...
Companies can no longer afford to Hire all the people they need "full time" people. The cost
is becoming prohibitive, especially if you add on the benefits costs ( avg. est. 30 % above salary).
In the future, I believe most people will become Independent Contractors and/or work on a Part-time
basis - to be utilized when needed and working Jobs or "Gigs" for many different employers- with
periods of " downtime."
This type of flexible Work will, soon become the mainstay. Therefore the "grayling" workforce
must adapt and think and plan accordingly. - In fact, there are many Employment Firms or " Headhunters"
who are already adapting this model. - and as the Baby Boomers retire en masse, they will be looking
for people since, in my opinion, there will not be enough "younger" to fill all the jobs needed.
Splenetix, Muskegon August 3, 2013
The conversion of full-time workers into freelancers is an exploitation of capitalism, forcing
you to waste your time self-marketing and administering. You won't have any of the scales of economy
that larger businesses enjoy so you won't be competitive.You won't succeed, you won't be able
to manage and get the work done. It's all about worker repression.
"... Older workers were less likely to lose their jobs during the recession, but those who were
laid off are facing far tougher conditions than their younger colleagues. Workers in their fifties are
about 20% less likely than workers ages 25 to 34 to become re-employed, according to an Urban Institute
study published last year. ..."
"... The point made in several articles of this nature revolve around lack of knowledge and experience
with newer technologies. In an effort to address this issue, I went back to school (again) to obtain
expertise in IT Networking and Security, PMP Path Project Management and ITIL. Now I am being told that
my education is of no value since I do not have the requisite 'Real World' experience using these newly
acquired skills. ..."
On one hand, they're too young to retire. They may also be too old to get re-hired.
Call them the "new
unemployables," say researchers at Boston College.
Older workers were less likely to lose their jobs during the recession, but those who were
laid off are facing far tougher conditions than their younger colleagues. Workers in their fifties
are about 20% less likely than workers ages 25 to 34 to become re-employed, according to
an Urban Institute study published last year.
"Once you leave the job market, trying to get back in it is a monster," said Mary Matthews, 57,
who has teetered between bouts of unemployment and short temp jobs for the last five years. She
applies for jobs every week, but most of the time, her applications hit a brick wall.
Employers rarely get back to her, and when they do she's often told she is "overqualified" for
the position. Sometimes she wonders: Is that just a euphemism for too old?
Her resume shows she has more than 30 years of experience working as a teacher, librarian, academic
administrator and fundraiser for non-profits.
"I've thought about taking 10 years off my resume," she said. "It's not like we're senile. The
average age of Congress is something like 57. Joe Biden is 70. Ronald Reagan was in his 70s when
he was president. So what's the problem?"
... ... ...
About 23,000 age discrimination complaints were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
in fiscal 2012, 20% more than in 2007.
Proving discrimination is next to impossible, though, unless it's blatant.
"It's very difficult to prove hiring discrimination, because unless somebody says, 'you're too
old for this job,' you don't know why you weren't hired," said Michael Harper, a law professor at
Boston University.
As a former public servant teaching University Level Econometrics for nearly 15 years and possessing
numerous 'Excellence' awards, this development is nothing short of shameful. I have had dozens
of recruiters and HR 'specialists' debase my public service as not being 'Real World' experience
despite the fact that without my commitment to 'Real World Applications' education, many of those
with whom I apply for employment would not hold a college degree. Indeed, I find many of the hiring
managers with whom I speak regarding positions for which I have both technical and applications
experience, there is impenetrable discrimination once they meet me in person.
The point made in several articles of this nature revolve around lack of knowledge and
experience with newer technologies. In an effort to address this issue, I went back to school
(again) to obtain expertise in IT Networking and Security, PMP Path Project Management and ITIL.
Now I am being told that my education is of no value since I do not have the requisite 'Real World'
experience using these newly acquired skills.
Indeed, to meet the criteria for many positions I find open requires that I be a 'recent college
graduate.' When I point out that I have been continually retraining and taking online courses
to keep my IT skills current, I am once again met with the lack of 'Real World' experience requirement.
For a society that purports itself to value education and hard work, for those among us that have
worked very hard for substandard pay and benefits to be so casually cast aside is absolutely inexcusable.
Paul Stukin, Apr 24, 2015
This is nothing new, especially if you are in IT. I was laid off from IBM in August 2001, then
9/11, and the bottom fell out of the jobs market. I have not worked in IT since. I truncated my
resume to show the last 10 years of "relevant" experience and then got interviews, but never the
job.
DJM22, Apr 24, 2015
@Richard Thwaites
Where does this group turn; what is this demographic to do. For instance in my case based on
the type of work I've done for a lifetime I've been laid off a total of 5 times. The monies you've
had saved during these periods had to be used for survival and take care of family. No it wasn't
wasted.
But now boomers are going into that area where as they are tooyoung to retire in order to just
obtain social security. And then this won't be a whole bunch.
Are we suppose to give up everything we've worked for and live a less than mediocre livelihood?
That's a good 10/15 years away. Then they will say next how the boomers are becoming more of a
problem and mooching in order to survive. I'm not suggesting hand outs, but if ageism is going
to be the problem for boomers then boomers need to press somewhere, someone, something so we don't
end up with problems that will become even more major problems. What a way to end your career
and what a legacy to leave your children.
Look at all the characters in our government. None of them worked, simply kept chairs warmed
and signed papers they were told to sign and as stated they're up in their 70's + and have enough
money to aid their next 10 generations and the normal joe can't even complete his generation.
"... The NC Employment Security agent told a bunch of us to try to conceal our age when interviewing.
When asked if age discrimination wasn't against the law, he said very candidly it is, but there is no
penalty for it in these times. ..."
When the most recent employment report was released, PBS NewsHour
presented
a segment on a group of people over 50 who had been out of work. The participants said that employers
had little interest in even talking to them. Sometimes, when applying for jobs, these older applicants
deleted up to 15 years of experience from their resumes to get through the door, but as soon as the
interviewers saw how old the applicants were, their faces dropped and they cut the interview short.
... ... ...
Add to this mix the results of a recent study that explored the relationship between the number
of weeks of unemployment and the likelihood of receiving a callback after submitting an application.
The researchers submitted fictitious resumes to real online job postings in each of the largest U.S.
metropolitan areas. They sent roughly 12,000 resumes to roughly 3,000 job postings in sales, customer
service, administrative support and clerical job categories. They tried to make their fictitious
resumes look as close as possible to real resumes posted on job boards. In some cases, the resumes
showed the applicant as currently employed, in other cases as unemployed for spells of between one
and 36 months. They found that the callback rate sharply declined during the first eight months of
unemployment – from 7% to 4% – and then stabilized. This 45% decline compares to the results of another
study where black-sounding names received 33% fewer callbacks than white-sounding names.
... ... ...
The problem is that when the stigma of being unemployed is added to the stigma of being old, the
chance of getting a job becomes very, very small. This outcome is not only unfair, but also wasteful
from a national perspective as a substantial amount of experience and talent goes unused. Extended
periods of unemployment also destroy the lives of the individuals affected. They use up their savings,
they tap their 401(k)s, they sell their homes, and then they are left with nothing. And the number
of older unemployed workers is large. As of 2012, almost 2 million people over 50 had been unemployed
for more than six months; 1.3 million for a year or more. We need a jobs corps for these individuals
and we need it fast.
Robert E. Pin, May 15, 2013
I applied for one of the numerous jobs online and they asked point blank - what year did you
graduate HS? OMG! It was a required field so it was either lie, or put 1979. I felt it was good
Karma to say the truth.
So hard to prove age discrimination in this case but boy would I love to give them a piece
of my mind.
Doc y, May 15, 2013
@Brady White What would it do to your karma if you told them you were a child prodigy and graduated
at six years old? Also, for the math challenged, I often give my age as 28 years old, when counting
in base 20.
Sort of like there are 10 types of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Wayne MacNeil, May 15, 2013
Bravo Alicia. Finally someone who understands what is going on. Only the numbers are probably
much higher. Age discrimination is supposed to be against the law. This needs to be enforced just
as strongly as discrimination against women or religion. There is a crisis in unemployment for
those over 50. Many of these people are the best educated and would be among the most capable
workers in the country. Someone has to pave a path requiring companies to employ older capable
workers. This is criminal and as mentioned by the author is destroying people, families, retirements.
People who have been productive for 30 years are losing everything. And younger workers dont seem
to get it. If they dont stand up to this - their time is coming too.
People think they will need to work until they are 70 to pay their debts. The shock comes when
the system wont let the majority work after they are about 50.
Rainier Rollo, May 15, 2013
Wayne -- I once asked a friend in her late 50s who was lamenting her long term unemployment
how many people over the age of 40 she hired when she was in a position to hire --- the answer
was ZERO. So don't just say that today's young people are afflicted with this way of looking at
people. Most of those now unemployed 50+ in poisitons of hiring also passed over older candidates.
Lois Land, May 15, 2013
In that PBS segment, it was amazing to watch that university woman (clearly over 60) talk about
how people become less productive after the age of 40.
Then doesn't she owe it to the university to resign/retire? Or does she think she's special/different?
I might be special/different too. I'm 64 and I've never been sharper or more productive.
Doc y, May 15, 2013
@Lois Land I hate to admit it, but something that has enhanced my productivity now that I am
50+ is I no longer have to leave work to attend kids' events, or take them to their appointments,
etc. I miss my children very much, but they are grown and on their own. I loved doing stuff with
them, and I made their activities my number one priority while they were growing up. Being laid
off three years after the youngest left home was never in the financial plan, and like others
on this site, employers have not been breaking my door down to come work for them.
The NC Employment Security agent told a bunch of us to try to conceal our age when interviewing.
When asked if age discrimination wasn't against the law, he said very candidly it is, but there
is no penalty for it in these times.
richard harris, May 15, 2013
The root cause of massive unemployment in the over 50 crowd is legal immigration. The 2010
census reported 40 million legal immigrants were residing in the US. These 40 million immigrants
translate to about 24 million potential workers. The real unemployment level is 23 million people.
Thus the real unemployment level of 23 million people is approximately equal to the work force
inflation caused by legal immigration.
Thus the only hope for the over 50 chronically unemployed is to ban all further legal immigration.
"...An era of leadership in computer technology has died, and there is no grave marker, not even a funeral ceremony or eulogy
... Hewlett-Packard, COMPAQ, Digital Equipment Corp, UNIVAC, Sperry-Rand, Data General, Tektronix, ZILOG, Advanced Micro Devices, Sun
Microsystems, etc, etc, etc. So much change in so short a time, leaves your mind dizzy."
HP made bullet-proof products that would last forever..... I still buy HP workstation notebooks, especially now when I can
get them for $100 on ebay ....
I sold HP products in the 1990s .... we had HP laserjet IIs that companies would run day & night .... virtually no maintenance
... when PCL5 came around then we had LJ IIIs .... and still companies would call for LJ I's, .... 100 pounds of invincible Printing
! .... this kind of product has no place in the World of Planned-Obsolesence .... I'm currently running an 8510w, 8530w, 2530p,
Dell 6420 quad i7, hp printers hp scanners, hp pavilion desktops, .... all for less than what a Laserjet II would have cost in
1994, Total.
Not My Real Name
I still have my HP 15C scientific calculator I bought in 1983 to get me through college for my engineering degree. There is
nothing better than a hand held calculator that uses Reverse Polish Notation!
BigJim
HP used to make fantastic products. I remember getting their RPN calculators back in th 80's; built like tanks.
Then they decided to "add value" by removing more and more material from their consumer/"prosumer" products until they became
unspeakably flimsy. They stopped holding things together with proper fastenings and starting hot melting/gluing it together, so
if it died you had to cut it open to have any chance of fixing it.
I still have one of their Laserjet 4100 printers. I expect it to outlast anything they currently produce, and it must be going
on 16+ years old now.
Fuck you, HP. You started selling shit and now you're eating through your seed corn. I just wish the "leaders" who did this
to you had to pay some kind of penalty greater than getting $25M in a severance package.
Automatic Choke
+100. The path of HP is everything that is wrong about modern business models. I still have a 5MP laserjet (one of the first),
still works great. Also have a number of 42S calculators.....my day-to-day workhorse and several spares. I don't think the present
HP could even dream of making these products today.
nope-1004
How well will I profit, as a salesman, if I sell you something that works?
How valuable are you, as a customer in my database, if you never come back?
Confucious say "Buy another one, and if you can't afford it, f'n finance it!"
It's the growing trend. Look at appliances. Nothing works anymore.
hey big brother.... if you are curious, there is a damn good android emulator of the HP42S available (Free42). really it is
so good that it made me relax about accumulating more spares. still not quite the same as a real calculator. (the 42S, by the
way, is the modernization/simplification of the classic HP41, the real hardcord very-programmable, reconfigurable, hackable unit
with all the plug-in-modules that came out in the early 80s.)
Miss Expectations
Imagine working at HP and having to listen to Carly Fiorina bulldoze you...she is like a blow-torch...here are 4 minutes of
Carly and Ralph Nader (if you can take it):
My husband has been a software architect for 30 years at the same company. Never before has he seen the sheer unadulterated
panic in the executives. All indices are down and they are planning for the worst. Quality is being sacrificed for " just get
some relatively functional piece of shit out the door we can sell". He is fighting because he has always produced a stellar product
and refuses to have shit tied to his name ( 90% of competitor benchmarks fail against his projects). They can't afford to lay
him off, but the first time in my life I see my husband want to quit...
unplugged
I've been an engineer for 31 years - our managements's unspoken motto at the place I'm at (large company) is: "release it now,
we'll put in the quality later". I try to put in as much as possible before the product is shoved out the door without killing
myself doing it.
AGuy
Do they even make test equipment anymore?
HP test and measurement was spun off many years ago as Agilent. The electronics part of Agilent was spun off as keysight late
last year.
HP basically makes computer equipment (PCs, servers, Printers) and software. Part of the problem is that computer hardware
has been commodized. Since PCs are cheap and frequent replacements are need, People just by the cheapest models, expecting to
toss it in a couple of years and by a newer model (aka the Flat screen TV model). So there is no justification to use quality
components. Same is become true with the Server market. Businesses have switched to virtualization and/or cloud systems. So instead
of taking a boat load of time to rebuild a crashed server, the VM is just moved to another host.
HP has also adopted the Computer Associates business model (aka Borg). HP buys up new tech companies and sits on the tech and
never improves it. It decays and gets replaced with a system from a competitor. It also has a habit of buying outdated tech companies
that never generate the revenues HP thinks it will.
BullyBearish
When Carly was CEO of HP, she instituted a draconian "pay for performance" plan. She ended up leaving with over $146 Million
because she was smart enough not to specify "what type" of performance.
GeezerGeek
Regarding your statement "All those engineers choosing to pursue other opportunities", we need to realize that tech in general
has been very susceptible to the vagaries of government actions. Now the employment problems are due to things like globalization
and H1B programs. Some 50 years ago tech - meaning science and engineering - was hit hard as the US space program wound down.
Permit me this retrospective:
I graduated from a quite good school with a BS in Physics in 1968. My timing was not all that great, since that was when they
stopped granting draft deferments for graduate school. I joined the Air Force, but as an enlisted airman, not an officer. Following
basic training, I was sent to learn to operate PCAM operations. That's Punched Card Accounting Machines. Collators. Sorters. Interpreters.
Key punches. I was in a class with nine other enlistees. One had just gotten a Masters degree in something. Eight of us had a
BS in one thing or another, but all what would now be called STEM fields. The least educated only had an Associate degree. We
all enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the Marines. (Not that there's anything wrong with the Marines, but all of us
proclaimed an allergy to energetic lead projectiles and acted accordingly. Going to Canada, as many did, pretty much ensured never
getting a job in STEM fields later in life.) So thanks to government action (fighting in VietNam, in this case) a significant
portion of educated Americans found themselves diverted from chosen career paths. (In my case, it worked out fine. I learned to
program, etc., and spent a total of over 40 years in what is now called IT. I think it was called EDP when I started the trek.
Somewhere along the line it became (where I worked) Management Information Systems. MIS. And finally the department became simply
Information Technology. I hung an older sign next to the one saying Information Technology. Somehow MIS-Information Technology
seemed appropriate.)
Then I got to my first duty assignment. It was about five months after the first moon landing, and the aerospace industry was
facing cuts in government aerospace spending. I picked up a copy of an engineering journal in the base library and found an article
about job cuts. There was a cartoon with two janitors, buckets at their feet and mops in their hands, standing before a blackboard
filled with equations. Once was saying to the other, pointing to one section, "you can see where he made his mistake right here...".
It represented two engineers who had been reduced to menial labor after losing their jobs.
So while I resent all the H1Bs coming into the US - I worked with several for the last four years of my IT career, and was
not at all impressed - and despise the politicians who allow it, I know that it is not the first time American STEM grads have
been put out of jobs en masse. In some ways that old saying applies: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
If you made it this far, thanks for your patience.
adr
Just like Amazon, HP will supposedly make billions in profit analyzing things in the cloud that nobody looks at and has no
use to the real economy, but it makes good fodder for Power Point presentations.
I am amazed how much daily productivity goes into creating fancy charts for meetings that are meaningless to the actual business
of the company.
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!!!!!
I designed more products in one year for the small company I work for than a $15 billion corporation did throughout their entire
design department employing hundreds of people. That is because 90% of their workday is spent preparing crap for meetings and
they never really get anything meaningful done.
It took me one week to design a product and send it out for production branded for the company I work for, but it took six
months to get the same type of product passed through the multi billion dollar corporation we license for. Because it had to pass
through layer after layer of bullshit and through every level of management before it could be signed off. Then a month later
somebody would change their mind in middle management and the product would need to be changed and go through the cycle all over
again.
Their own bag department made six bags last year, I designed 16. Funny how I out produce a department of six people whose only
job is to make bags, yet I only get paid the salary of one.
Maybe I'm just an imbecile for working hard.
Bear
You also have to add all the wasted time of employees having to sit through those presentations and the even more wasted time
on Ashley Madison
cynicalskeptic
'Computers' cost as much - if not more time than they save, at least in corporate settings. Used to be you'd work up 3 budget
projections - expected, worst case and best case, you'd have a meeting, hash it out and decide in a week. Now you have endless
alternatives, endless 'tweaking' and changes and decisions take forever, with outrageous amounts of time spent on endless 'analysis'
and presentations.
EVERY VP now has an 'Administrative Assistant' whose primary job is to develop powerpoint presentations for the endless meetings
that take up time - without any decisions ever being made.
Computers stop people from thinking. In ages past when you used a slide rule you had to know the order of magnitude of the
end result. Now people make a mistake and come up with a ridiculous number and take it at face value because 'the computer' produced
it.
Any exec worht anythign knew what a given line in their department or the total should be +or a small amount. I can't count
the number of times budgets and analyses were WRONG because someone left off a few lines on a spreadsheet total.
Yes computer modeling for advanced tech and engineering is a help, CAD/CAM is great and many other applications in the tech/scientific
world are a great help but letting computers loose in corporate and finance has produced endless waste AND - worsde - thigns like
HFT (e.g. 'better' more effective ways to manipulate and cheat markets.
khnum
A recent lay off here turned out to be quite embarrassing for Parmalat there was nobody left that knew how to properly run
the place they had to rehire many ex employees as consultants-at a costly premium
Anopheles
Consultants don't come at that much of a premium becaue the company doesn't have to pay benefits, vacation, sick days, or payroll
taxes, etc. Plus it's really easy and cheap to get rid of consultants.
arrowrod
Obviously, you haven't worked as a consultant. You get paid by the hour.
To clean up a mess. 100 hours a week are not uncommon. (What?, is it possible to work 100 hours a week? Yes, it is, but only
for about 3 months.)
RaceToTheBottom
HP Executives are trying hard to bring the company back to its roots:
The ability to fit into one garage...
PrimalScream
ALL THAT Meg Whitman needs to do ...
is to FIRE EVERYBODY !!
Then have all the products made in China, process all the sales orders in Hong Kong, and sub-contract the accounting and tax
paperwork to India. Then HP can use all the profits for stock buybacks, except of course for Meg's salary ... which will keep
rising astronomically!
Herdee
That's where education gets you in America.The Government sold out America's manufacturing base to Communist China who holds
the debt of the USA.
Who would ever guess that right-wing neo-cons(neo-nazis) running the government would sell out to communists just to get
the money for war? Very weird.
Really20
"Communist"? The Chinese government, like that of the US, never believed in worker ownership of businesses and never believed
that the commerical banking system (whether owned by the state, or private corporations which act like a state) should not control
money. Both countries believe in centralization of power among a few shareholders, who take the fruits of working people's labor
while contributing nothing of value themselves (money being but a token that represents a claim on real capital, not capital itself.)
Management and investors ought to be separate from each other; management should be chosen by workers by universal equal vote,
while a complementary investor board should be chosen by investors much as corporate boards are now. Both of these boards should
be legally independent but bound organizations; the management board should run the business while the investor board should negotiate
with the management board on the terms of equity issuance. No more buybacks, no more layoffs or early retirements, unless workers
as a whole see a need for it to maintain the company.
The purpose of investors is to serve the real economy, not the other way round; and in turn, the purpose of the real economy
is to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans should stop being slaves to perpetual growth.
Really20
HP is laying off 80,000 workers or almost a third of its workforce, converting its long-term human capital into short-term
gains for rich shareholders at an alarming rate. The reason that product quality has declined is due to the planned obsolescence
that spurs needless consumerism, which is necessary to prop up our debt-backed monetary system and the capitalist-owned economy
that sits on top of it.
NoWayJose
HP - that company that sells computers and printers made in China and ink cartridges made in Thailand?
Dominus Ludificatio
Another company going down the drain because their focus is short term returns with crappy products.They will also bring down
any company they buy as well.
Barnaby
HP is microcosm of what Carly will do to the US: carve it like a pumpkin and leave the shell out to bake in the sun for a few
weeks. But she'll make sure and poison the seeds too! Don't want anything growing out of that pesky Palm division...
Dre4dwolf
The world is heading for massive deflation.
Computers have hit the 14 nano-meter lithography zone, the cost to go from 14nm to say 5nm is very high, and the net benefit
to computing power is very low, but lets say we go from 14nm to 5nm over the next 4 years.
Going from 5nm to 1nm is not going to net a large boost in computing power and the cost to shrink things down and re-tool will
be very high for such an insignificant gain in performance.
What does that mean
1) Computers (atleast non-quantum ones) have hit the point where about 80-90% of the potential for the current science has
been tap'd
2) This means that the consumer is not going to be put in the position where they will have to upgrade to faster systems for
atleast another 7-8 years.... (because the new computer wont be that much faster than their existing one).
3) If no one is upgrading the only IT sectors of the economy that stand to make any money are software companies (Microsoft,
Apple, and other small software developers), most software has not caught up with hardware yet.
4) We are obviously heading for massive deflation, consumer spending levels as a % are probably around where they were in the
late 70s - mid 80s, this is a very deflationary environment that is being compounded by a high debt burden (most of everyones
income is going to service their debts), that signals monetary tightening is going on... people simply don't have enough discretionary
income to spend on new toys.
All that to me screams SELL consumer electronics stocks because profits are GOING TO DECLINE , SALES ARE GOING TO DECLINE.
There is no way , no amount of buy backs will float the stocks of corporations like HP/Dell/IBM etc... it is inevitable that
these stocks will be worth 30% less over the next 5 - 8 years
But what do I know? maybe I am missing something.
In anycase a lot of pressure is being put on HP to do all it can at any cost to boost the stock valuations, because so much
of its stock is institution owned, they will strip the wallpaper off the walls and sell it to a recycling plant if it would give
them more money to boost stock valuations.
That to me signals that most of the people pressuring the board of HP to boost the stock, want them to gut the company as much
as they can to boost it some trivial % points so that the majority of shares can be dumped onto muppets.
To me it pretty much also signals something is terribly wrong at HP and no one is talking about it.
PoasterToaster
Other than die shrinks there really hasn't been a lot going on in the CPU world since Intel abandoned its Netburst architecture
and went back to its (Israeli created) Pentium 3 style pipeline. After that they gave up on increasing speed and resorted to selling
more cores. Now that wall has been hit, they have been selling "green" and "efficient" nonsense in place of increasing power.
x86 just needs to go, but a lot is invested in it not the least of which is that 1-2 punch of forced, contrived obsolesence
carried out in a joint operation with Microsoft. 15 years ago you could watch videos with no problem on your old machine using
Windows XP. Fast forward to now and their chief bragging point is still "multitasking" and the ability to process datastreams
like video. It's a joke.
The future is not in the current CPU paradigm of instructions per second; it will be in terms of variables per second. It will
be more along the lines of what GPU manufacturers are creating with their thousands of "engines" or "processing units" per chip,
rather than the 4, 6 or 12 core monsters that Intel is pushing. They have nearly given up on their roadmap to push out to 128
cores as it is. x86 just doesn't work with all that.
Dojidog
Another classic "Let's rape all we can and bail with my golden parachute" corporate leaders setting themselves up.
Pile on the string of non-IT CEOs that have been leading the company to ruin. To them it is nothing more than a contest of being
even worse than their predecessor. Just look at the billions each has lost before their exit. Compaq, a cluster. Palm Pilot, a
dead product they paid millions for and then buried. And many others.
Think the split is going to help? Think again. Rather than taking the opportunity to fix their problems, they have just duplicated
and perpetuated them into two separate entities.
HP is a company that is mired in a morass of unmanageable business processes and patchwork of antiquated applications all
interconnected to the point they are petrified to try and uncouple them.
Just look at their stock price since January. The insiders know. Want to fix HP? All it would take is a savvy IT based leader
with a boatload of common sense. What makes money at HP? Their printers and ink. Not thinking they can provide enterprise solutions
to others when they can't even get their own house in order.
I Write Code
Let's not beat around the bush, they're outsourcing, firing Americans and hiring cheap labor elsewhere:
Patricia Russo: (Lucent) (Dedree in Political Science).
Another lady elevated through the AA plan
Russo got her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in political science and history in 1973.
She finished the advanced management program at Harvard Business School in 1989
Both ladies steered their corporations to failure.
Clowns on Acid
It is very straightforward. Replace 45,000 US workers with 100,000 offshore workers and you still save millions of USD ! Use
the "savings" to buy back stock, then borrow more $$ at ZIRP to buy more stock back.
You guys don't know nuthin'.
homiegot
HP: one of the worst places you could work. Souless.
Pancho de Villa
Ladies and Gentlemen! Integrity has left the Building!
space junk
I worked there for a while and it was total garbage. There are still some great folks around, but they are getting paid less
and less, and having to work longer hours for less pay while reporting to God knows who, often a foreigner with crappy engrish
skills, yes likely another 'diversity hire'. People with DEEP knowledge, decades and decades, have either gotten unfairly fired
or demoted, made to quit, or if they are lucky, taken some early retirement and GTFO (along with their expertise - whoopsie! who
knew? unintended consequences are a bitch aren't they? )....
If you look on a site like LinkedIN, it will always say 'We're hiring!'. YES, HP is hiring.....but not YOU, they want Ganesh
Balasubramaniamawapbapalooboopawapbamboomtuttifrutti, so that they can work him as modern day slave labor for ultra cheap. We
can thank idiot 'leaders' like Meg Pasty Faced Whitman and Bill 'Forced Vaccinations' Gates for lobbying Congress for decades,
against the rights of American workers.
Remember that Meg 'Pasty Faced' Whitman is the person who came up with the idea of a 'lights out' datacenter....that's right,
it's the concept of putting all of your computers in a building, in racks, in the dark, and maybe hiring an intern to come in
once a month and keep them going. This is what she actually believed. Along with her other statement to the HP workforce which
says basically that the future of HP is one of total automation.....TRANSLATION: If you are a smart admin, engineer, project manager,
architect, sw tester, etc.....we (HP management) think you are an IDIOT and can be replaced by a robot, a foreigner, or any other
cheap worker.
Race to the bottom is like they say a space ship approaching a black hole......after a while the laws of physics and common
sense, just don't apply anymore.
InnVestuhrr
An era of leadership in computer technology has died, and there is no grave marker, not even a funeral ceremony or eulogy
... Hewlett-Packard, COMPAQ, Digital Equipment Corp, UNIVAC, Sperry-Rand, Data General, Tektronix, ZILOG, Advanced Micro Devices,
Sun Microsystems, etc, etc, etc. So much change in so short a time, leaves your mind dizzy.
"... the labor force participation rate dropped once more, from 62.8% to
62.7%, a level seen back in February 1978, even as the BLS reported that the entire labor
force actually declined for the second consecutive month, down almost 100K in March to 156,906.
..."
So much for yet another "above consensus" recovery, and what's worse it is, well, about to get
even worse, because while the Fed keeps baning some illusory drum that slack in the economy is almost
non-existent, the reality is that in March the number of people who dropped out of the labor force
rose by yet another 277K, up 2.1 million in the past year, and has reached a record 93.175 million.
Indicatively, this means that the labor force participation rate dropped once more, from 62.8% to
62.7%, a level seen back in February 1978, even as the BLS reported that the entire labor
force actually declined for the second consecutive month, down almost 100K in March to 156,906.
Each budget plan derives more than two-thirds of its non-defense budget cuts from programs
for people with low or modest incomes even though these programs constitute less than one-quarter
of federal program costs. Moreover, spending on these programs is already scheduled to decline
as a share of the economy between now and 2025.[1]
The bipartisan deficit reduction plan that Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles (co-chairs of the
National Commission on Federal Policy) issued in 2010 adhered to the basic principle that deficit
reduction should not increase poverty or widen inequality. The new Congressional plans chart a
radically different course, imposing their most severe cuts on people on the lower rungs of the
economic ladder. ...
DeDude
What they increase instead of cutting is our absurdly overblown defense spending. It should
be turned around with all the cuts in defense and a slight increase in non-defense (as we desperately
need to invest in infrastructure.
ilsm said in reply to DeDude...
They cannot cut defense, how will they pay to fix the F-35's they are taking possession of?
Billions a year in contracts because we pay soldiers too much to do combat support services......
Perpetual war is "security", just not the kind that a poor kids food stamps should pay for.
400 ppm CO2 said in reply to ilsm...
"Perpetual war is..."
~~ilsm~
Perpetual war is perpetual refugees. Most of the young kids are fleeing Ukraine as we network.
Older folks are glued to their retirement plans which are being taxed to the max.
We need to write
to Congressional Creatures and beg for some refugee relief for our cousins now in Ukraine. We
need to organize community action. Make a place for some of them here. A daunting task, but somebody
has got to do it before even more Ukrainians get maimed and killed.
Russian cousins should also get their shjt together and help relocate some of the refugees. It
will be easier for the Живаго-s to extricate victims. Живаго-s are closer than we. It is everyone's
responsibility.
Zinsky said...
This is an immoral piece of proposed legislation. The wealthy in the United States are doing just
fine, thank you, and don't need another gratuitous tax cut. Especially given the fact that it wouldn't
do a thing to stimulate the U.S. economy, all the right-wing rhetoric to the contrary.
The United
States is a very wealthy country. We can afford to feed the hungry and help trodden. In fact, if
we truly were a Judeo-Christian country, we would be morally obligated to do so. Of course, most
conservatives are phony Christians who care not a whit for the poor and broken. Shame on them.
If the US is at Full Employment and the Economy is at full steam ( as Obot lackeys keep telling
us), then why is the Fed Funds rate still at 0%. Isn't 0% Fed rate an indicator of an Economy On Life Support. Tell me why I'm wrong.
participant-observer-observed, March 14, 2015 at 5:19 am
This is int'l but insofar as City sleeps with Wall St, it may be relevant to see that City
has a new boyfriend, getting front page coverage at the Taipei Times
Beijing yesterday hailed Britain's announcement that it would seek to join a Chinese-led
development bank, after Washington voiced caution about the move.
. . . .
London's move drew a cautious response from Washington, a rare note of discord in their "special
relationship," which follows criticism from the US about Britain's cuts to defense spending.
China and 20 other countries signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the
Beijing-headquartered bank in October.
"We believe any new multilateral institution should incorporate the high standards of the World
Bank and the regional development banks," US National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell
said.
"Based on many discussions, we have concerns about whether the AIIB will meet these high standards,
particularly related to governance, and environmental and social safeguards."
The bank has support from countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Pakistan, the
Philippines, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
China's official Xinhua news agency rapped the US for its skepticism, writing in a commentary
yesterday that Washington "exhibited nothing but a childish paranoia towards China."
"It seems that the US government needs to be reminded that bias and a deep-rooted strategic
distrust towards China are by no means helpful in forging a healthy relationship with the country,"
Xinhua wrote.
"It's imperative for Washington to change its mindset," it said.
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim yesterday also welcomed the setting up of the China-backed bank.
Llewelyn Moss, March 14, 2015 at 8:51 am
If the US is at Full Employment and the Economy is at full steam ( as Obot lackeys keep telling
us), then why is the Fed Funds rate still at 0%.
Isn't 0% Fed rate an indicator of an Economy On Life Support. Tell me why I'm wrong.
cassiodorus, March 14, 2015 at 5:02 pm
Employment-population ratio: 59.3%, where it was in July of 2009
Employment-population ratio, 25-54: 77.3%, about where it was at the beginning of 2009
Being made redundant or forced into unemployment can scar trust to such an extent that even after finding new work this distrust
persists, according to the new findings of social scientist Dr James Laurence. This means that the large-scale job losses of the
recent recession could lead to a worrying level of long-term distrust among the British public and risks having a detrimental
effect on the fabric of society.
Dr Laurence ... finds that being made redundant from your job not only makes people less willing to trust others but that this
increased distrust and cynicism lasts at least nine years after being forced out of work. It also finds that far from dissipating
over time, an individual can remain distrustful of others even after they find a new job. ...
gunste said...
I was laid off many years ago, because my usually correct advice to management bugged them when I was proved right. Best thing
that ever happened to me, because I found that I was able to use the projects that I managed and start my own business. It grew
and became known world wide. I provided some QC, accelerated test equipment for my industry that was unique. Since the market
was limited, no one else got into it. I thrived for 14 years, when the equipment became obsolescent and retired - very comfortably.
The lesson is, if you have new areas to explore and start your own business based on something you know very, very well, you
can make it as your own boss -- which is the best boss you will ever have.
cm -> gunste...
"you can make it as your own boss - which is the best boss you will ever have"
That's only the case if you are in a line of work where somebody else doesn't specify the details of what you have to do (to
some level), which is often the case if your work can be described as a "service". But you sound happy so you weren't in that
place.
reason...
gunste
you do realize what the probability of new business succeeding is? It is like winning the lottery, and saying look there
is no problem, just go in a lottery.
Because you succeeded, there is no guarantee that anybody else could. And as cm pointed out, you may not have a boss where
you work, but your customer is your boss. You are still not fully self directed (and a good boss can give you some room for making
you own decisions).
Quote: "Some landed on their feet, others were forced into an early and significantly more humble retirement than they'd planned.
Another was unemployed and dismayed to find he was considered "too old" to even get some sort of janitorial work and others fared even
worse."
There is simply not enough acknowledgement of the structure of work, that highly paid roles almost without exception involve highly
specialized skills.
If you cannot find someone who wants those particular skills, you then are forced to look for work that draws on your more general
skills (selling, managing people, being a data jockey, manual labor) where you are less differentiated from other candidates and
where the prevailing pay levels are lower.
Studies like this also fail to consider that demand for these higher-paid jobs can drop for protracted periods of time. For instance,
being a derrickhand in the late 1970s oil boom was one of the highest paid jobs in the US. A colleague with a college degree made
more than I did as a new associate (with an MBA) at Goldman. When the oil market went splat, many of those jobs did too. Similarly,
in the late 1980s, when the LBO boom stopped, employment in M&A contracted by 75% and did not fully recover for a good 5+ years.
I'm sure readers can cite similar examples from other fields.
And this article fails to consider a new phenomenon: the vogue among employers for astonishingly narrow job specifications,
as in a strong predisposition to hire only people who are doing virtually the same job at a highly similar company, and the
usual bias towards stealing people who are currently employed from competitors rather than hiring the jobless.
rusti, February 13, 2015 at 5:42 am
Similarly, in the late 1980s, when the LBO boom stopped, employment in M&A contracted by 75% and did not fully recover for
a good 5+ years. I'm sure readers can cite similar examples from other fields.
My first position after finishing my master's degree was doing compact embedded antenna design for wireless devices. A lot
of the guys I worked with had been there for 15-20 years and had developed an incredible sort of grandmaster's intuition for the
design work. Less than a year after I'd started the company closed up shop and there were far fewer positions doing similar work
in the greater geographical area than I'd had colleagues.
Some landed on their feet, others were forced into an early and significantly more humble retirement than they'd planned. Another
was unemployed and dismayed to find he was considered "too old" to even get some sort of janitorial work and others fared even
worse.
I was lucky to be young and flexible enough to find work in another city but took the lesson with me that building a broad
base of skills is a necessary tradeoff versus the increased pay of intense specialization when you live in a neo-Feudalist society.
Something that annoys me endlessly is the utterly absurd notion that increased automation will inevitably lead to high unemployment.
There are enough intellectual and physical pursuits to keep 7 billion people occupied if we dedicate resources to it. Every unemployed
person could be put to work in some capacity towards the goal of transitioning off of fossil fuel consumption, we just lack the
political machinery to allocate people towards such ends.
"... Why has the demand for full-time workers in general-service occupations been more subdued than for other jobs? As the following
chart shows, wage growth for these occupations has been quite weak in the past few years, suggesting that employers have not been experiencing
much tightness in the supply of workers to fill vacancies for these occupations. Presumably, then, the firms generally find it acceptable
to have a greater share of part-time workers than in the past. ..."
"... The overall share of the workforce employed in part-time jobs is declining and is likely to continue to decline. But the
decline is not uniform across industries and occupations. Working part-time has become much more likely in general-service occupations
than in the past-and a greater share of those workers are not happy about it. ..."
"... Nah. It's a Paradigm Shift. The work-week is now twenty hours instead of forty. And those over-achievers who want to put
in more time can just get another job. Or two. Haven't we been asking for a shorter work week for years? Now our fondest wish is coming
true. ..."
"... "Is this a Great Country or what?" Thanks to free lunch economics that ends the dismal economist demand that wages equal
demand equal supply. With free lunch economics, wages can be cut to zero, profits increased to 100% of GDP and jobless consumers will
buy all GDP using money for nothing. On a more serious side, there have always been the free riders who shortchange labor while collecting
lots of money from all the other workers who spend most of their high wages. ..."
John Robertson and Ellie Terry at the Atlanta Fed's Macroblog:
Are We Becoming
a Part-Time Economy?: Compared with 2007, the U.S. labor market now has about 2.5 million more people working part-time and
about 2.2 million fewer people working full-time. In this sense, U.S. businesses are more reliant on part-time workers now than
in the past.
But that doesn't necessarily imply we are moving toward a permanently higher share of the workforce engaged in
part-time employment. As our
colleague Julie
Hotchkiss pointed out, almost all jobs created on net from 2010 to 2014 have been full-time. As a result, from 2009 to 2014,
the part-time share of employment has declined from 21 percent to 19 percent and is about halfway back to its prerecession level.
But the decline in part-time utilization is not uniform across industries and occupations. In particular, the decline is much
slower for occupations that tend to have an above-average share of people working part-time. This portion of the workforce includes
general-service jobs such as food preparation, office and administrative support, janitorial services, personal care services,
and sales.
... ... ...
Why has the demand for full-time workers in general-service occupations been more subdued than for other jobs? As the following
chart shows, wage growth for these occupations has been quite weak in the past few years, suggesting that employers have not been
experiencing much tightness in the supply of workers to fill vacancies for these occupations. Presumably, then, the firms generally
find it acceptable to have a greater share of part-time workers than in the past.
The overall share of the workforce employed in part-time jobs is declining and is likely to continue to decline. But the
decline is not uniform across industries and occupations. Working part-time has become much more likely in general-service occupations
than in the past-and a greater share of those workers are not happy about it.
JF said in reply to anne...
I think is this just one more example of how labor markets have been distorted; managers have confirmed their control over
hiring and the workforce and these markets do not work in a proper supply-demand mode. The other obvious example of distortion
is the point about productivity rising in the period before but no gains were seen in wages.
I use the term "distortion" to signal a difference from the period before where the data are fundamentally different and I
take this to say the a market on labor supply and demand changed fundamentally. Since I believe people put on their clothes more
or less the same we we did in the 1970s or 1950s, and humankind still works pretty hard, these markets became distorted (not natural),
that is not appropriate economics, and we should look toward better economic policy to help return to normalization of markets.
The distortion also effected a windfall in gains to managers of capital. Economic policy may wish to remediate, at least if
you are on the side of EPOP ratios improving and you measure success in domestic-workforce terms.
This can be seen as one of the divides between the national political parties. One may want to position on the side of normal
markets and policies that support improved domestic workforce measures. The other may then need to defend whether its policies
sponsored and induced a culture of distortion (of economics and unwise labor policy and results). The data are on the side of
those who want to re-establish normal labor market economics, support domestic employment, and remediate and correct for the windfalls
gained.
If you believe that non-market economics led to distortion of the labor markets and windfall gains, perhaps this is also a
reason to justify windfall taxation policies as well (since these gains were unfairly and uneconomically gathered, they were not
earned by the people who actually got the money).
It may also justify a modest increase in social security earnings checks too, as this is, at least, a modest way to correct
for the inappropriate, distortionary wage results of that period.
And as for the part-time labor market now, this also means we need to look at Fair Labor Standards policy and enforcement.
The distortion of labor markets for a generation do not justify continuation of similarly thoughtless policies.
Fred C. Dobbs said...
Nah. It's a Paradigm Shift. The work-week is now twenty hours instead of forty. And those over-achievers who want to put
in more time can just get another job. Or two. Haven't we been asking for a shorter work week for years? Now our fondest wish
is coming true.
So, employer-provided healthcare doesn't happen any more. Thanks to ObamaCare, that just doesn't matter any more.
Is this a Great Country or what?
Peter K. said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
Dean Baker has been pushing the meme that Obamacare allows people to work part-time if they want because they can now get health
insurance. He has data to back it up. Sounds reasonable.
mulp said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
"Is this a Great Country or what?" Thanks to free lunch economics that ends the dismal economist demand that wages equal
demand equal supply. With free lunch economics, wages can be cut to zero, profits increased to 100% of GDP and jobless consumers
will buy all GDP using money for nothing. On a more serious side, there have always been the free riders who shortchange labor
while collecting lots of money from all the other workers who spend most of their high wages.
But free lunch economists have severed worker pay from aggregate demand so they can argue that the highest GDP growth comes
from cutting labor costs and thereby jacking up profits.
The ideal would be for every corporation to be like Apple and parking 30%-50 of all revenue outside the US and selling ever
more goods to Americans who must print their own money that gets laundered through Asia and tax havens with only half the cash
spent by consumers cycling back into the USA.
Just think about the $17 trillion in GDP generating $8 trillion in offshore profits blocked outside the USA by Obama insisting
on taxing it. That would be a major success for free lunch economics.
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
'Thanks to ObamaCare, that just doesn't matter any more.' Except for the high deductibles, of course. Deal with it.
(Get an extra job!)
"Assume the worst, hope for the best and be prepared for whatever happens. "
"... You may feel secure now, but you never know when the pink slip is coming ..."
"... Establish an emergency fund. Set aside enough money to cover your basic living expenses for three to six months.
This should give you the ability to pay your rent or mortgage, buy food and repay debts. Consider socking this money away in an online-only,
high-yield money market account or a short-term certificate of deposit. For more details about how to choose such an account and earn
more interest on your dough, read this past "10 Tips" column on the subject. ..."
"... Investigate your health insurance policy. Be clear on what your health plan covers, and figure out how much
it would cost to extend your employer's group insurance coverage through the federal program COBRA. Be aware that you would have
to pay both the employer and employee shares of the premiums – ouch – but at least you'd get to keep the same coverage. ..."
There's an old saying: assume the worst, hope for the best and be prepared for whatever happens. Amid mounting evidence that the
U.S. is headed into recession, that is advice worth taking, especially in regards to earning a living. In
"With Recession Looming, Be Prepared for a Layoff"MSNBC's
Laura T. Coffey details a 10-step plan for coping with what is likely to be a fast-growing threat.
You may feel secure now, but you never know when the pink slip is coming
The dreaded "R" word – recession – has been dominating business headlines for months now. More and more economists are predicting
bleak economic conditions and weak job growth in the coming months.
On Friday, it was reported that employers slashed 63,000 jobs in February, the most in five years. Do you need any more signs
that we are teetering on the verge of recession?
Even if you feel secure in your job at this moment in time, here's a sobering thought: Because of forces beyond your control,
you could be hit with an unexpected layoff at almost any moment.
For this reason, it's always a good idea to plan ahead for potential financial emergencies before they strike. The following
tips can help.
1. Establish an emergency fund. Set aside enough money to cover your basic living expenses for three to six
months. This should give you the ability to pay your rent or mortgage, buy food and repay debts. Consider socking this money away
in an online-only, high-yield money market account or a short-term certificate of deposit. For more details about how to choose
such an account and earn more interest on your dough, read this past "10 Tips" column on the subject.
2. Live within your means. Try hard not to spend excessively on items and services you don't truly need. This
will make it even easier to build up that emergency fund once and for all. For additional ideas about how to establish an emergency
fund, this past "10 Tips" column about how many middle-class families are being squeezed financially could be of help to you.
... ... ...
6. Network, network, network. Always make a point of getting to know as many people as you can in your line
of work. By having plenty of friends and contacts in your industry, you'll stand a better chance of finding work quickly if you
lose your job.
... ... ...
9. Pursue higher education while you can. Do you work for a large company that offers a "Corporate U," or
for an employer that helps cover education costs at schools in your area? Tap into that resource so you can improve your skills
and bolster your resume. Hundreds of corporate university classes have been accredited, meaning you could get college credit for
them if you ever enroll in a degree program.
10. Investigate your health insurance policy. Be clear on what your health plan covers, and figure out how
much it would cost to extend your employer's group insurance coverage through the federal program COBRA. Be aware that you
would have to pay both the employer and employee shares of the premiums – ouch – but at least you'd get to keep the same coverage.
"... "Going to grad school will make you more marketable." Grad school will make you more marketable if you're
in a field that requires or rewards graduate degrees, but if you're in one of the many fields that doesn't, employers may find the degree
irrelevant. ..."
"... these days, persistent follow-up mostly shows you don't respect hiring managers' time and that you're not clear on how
the hiring process works. ..."
Not all
career advice is created equal. In fact, some can actually hurt a job search or career. Here are seven pieces of terrible career
advice that you should ignore:
1. "Going to grad school will make you more marketable." Grad school will make
you more marketable if you're in a field that requires or rewards graduate degrees, but if you're in one of the many fields that
doesn't, employers may find the degree irrelevant.
What's worse is that grad school can even make it harder for you to get hired in many cases, since if you're applying to jobs
that don't require the degree, employers may think that their work isn't
what you really want to do.
2. "Treat your job search like a full-time job if you want to be successful." The amount of time a job search
takes varies dramatically from field to field and from person to person. If you're junior in your career and applying to a wide range
of positions, it's possible that writing cover letters, tailoring your résumé and networking could take up a significant portion
of your time (although it still might not reach 40 hours a week, and that's fine).
However, if you're more senior or simply in a field without a lot of openings, you're probably not going to need to spend
(or be able to spend) 40 hours a week on your search. And besides, for most people, when it comes to applying to jobs, quality
matters far more than quantity.
3. "It no longer matters how long your résumé is." It's true that the old
one-page résumé rule
has relaxed for everyone but very recent graduates, but résumé length still matters. Résumés that are three pages or longer end up
diluting the impact of their contents and will make you come across as someone who can't edit and doesn't understand what information
matters most.
Plus, the strongest candidates limit their résumés to two pages, so when an experienced hiring manager sees a long résumé, they're
instantly primed to expect a weaker candidate.
4. "Offer to work for a week for free to prove yourself to an employer." In most cases, this is illegal, because
it violates minimum wage laws. With a few limited exceptions (like some nonprofits and government agencies), employers are required
to pay people who work for them. But even if it weren't illegal, most employers wouldn't sign on for this anyway, because it takes
an enormous amount of time to train new hires. The first week is nearly always a loss for the employer.
5. "If an interviewer asks about your weaknesses, answer with something positive." If you've picked up any guide
to job searching in the past decade, you've probably seen the advice to claim that
your biggest weakness is that you work too hard or you're a perfectionist. But so have most interviewers, and at this point,
those answers sound cliché and disingenuous. What's more, they make you sound like you either don't have much self-awareness or you're
unwilling to have an honest discussion about your fit for the role you're applying for.
Good interviewers don't want to talk about weaknesses so they can play "gotcha," but because they want to make sure they won't
put in a job where you'll struggle.
6. "Following up with an employer after you apply for a job shows persistence and enthusiasm." This advice is
still a staple of many career centers, but these days, persistent follow-up mostly shows you don't respect hiring managers' time
and that you're not clear on how the hiring process works. After all, the employer knows that you're interested; your application
demonstrated that. Now the ball is in their court to decide whether they're interested in speaking further with you or not. Most
employers aren't interested in fielding
follow-up calls at this stage.
7. "Track down the hiring manager's name so that you can address your cover letter to the right person." This
is unnecessary, and most hiring managers don't even notice whether you did or not -- and far fewer care. If the hiring manager's
name is easily available, of course it's fine to go ahead and use it. But you don't need to call to track it down or do other detective
work to find it. Hiring managers care about the content of your application, not whether you spent 20 minutes trying to find out
their names.
Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog,
where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. She's the author of "How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring
Manager," co-author of "Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results" and the former chief of staff
of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.
"... I think there is a strong correlation of wage growth and energy consumption per capita.http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/12/29/how-increased-inefficiency-explains-falling-oil-prices/.
As the latter now is shrinking the wages are stagnant. Neoliberal transformation of society since 1970th also suppresses wages by dramatically
increasing the share of owners. Those two tendencies work together. ..."
Despite considerable improvement in the labor market, growth in wages continues to be disappointing. One reason is that
many firms were unable to reduce wages during the recession, and they must now work off a stockpile of pent-up wage cuts....
-- Mary Daly and Bart Hobijn
[ What offensive nonsense, as though real after-tax corporate profits per employee had exploded, simply exploded, since 2000.
]
drb48 -> anne:
Thank you Anne for introducing some sanity to what is the biggest bunch of hogwash I've read in a while.
drb48 -> anne:
Wage growth has been "disappointing" for decades. If employers have a problem reducing wages, it's because they're already
so low. Lack of bargaining power due to de-unionization, off-shoring, automation and massive numbers of cheap - and frequently
undocumented - immigrant labor has placed downward pressure on wages in many industries, including most of the ones with the greatest
job growth. All the gains in productivity have been accruing to capital, almost none to labor. Trying to rationalize with some
bullshit study this as anything other than the powerful exploiting the weak is - as you say - offensive nonsense.
Roger Gathmann -> anne:
Exactly. Since economists like to think of themselves as physicians, perhaps they should consider a powerful force pushing
on a weak force - a gorilla, for instance, squeezing a marshmallow. The gorilla is corporate power, the marshmallow, labor. Now
perhaps the gorilla is able to squeeze the marshmallow because that marshmallow was so damn sticky and refused to budge last time
- or maybe the marshmallow has been squeezed low these past thirty years.
Obviously, the economists will jump for the sticky solution, since politics, the relative power of capital and labor, is an
offense against all the wonderful models based on equilibrium and god's own free market.
* Without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments,
seasonally adjusted, 1982 - 1984 dollars
likbez
I think there is a strong correlation of wage growth and energy consumption per capita.http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/12/29/how-increased-inefficiency-explains-falling-oil-prices/.
As the latter now is shrinking the wages are stagnant. Neoliberal transformation of society since 1970th also suppresses wages
by dramatically increasing the share of owners. Those two tendencies work together.
"... The evidence presented above is not, strictly speaking, a 'smoking gun' of a harmful effect of temporary contracts. Due
to the nature of our data (a cross section), we cannot credibly establish unambiguous causality for the statistical relation that we
find. However, the evidence is quite suggestive. We hope that future analysis will allow for a clearer causal inference, but given all
the evidence (not just ours) accumulated so far on the detrimental effects of dualism, we should keep the suspect under house arrest
and heavy police surveillance. If it really is a social danger, we should at least try not to do more damage. ..."
"... Take the issue of training. Temps are not trained because often they are hired to provide skills unavailable from the permanent
employees, call them directs. Without some investment in training, both time and money, directs generally lack the skills hired in with
a temp. We were always called "hired-guns", recalling the gun-fighters hired for their speed, shooting accuracy, and willingness to
shoot anyone identified as a target. ..."
"... The management at every job I was on went to lengths to create an enmity between directs and temps. It was common practice
to lay-off directs whenever opportunity presented, while keeping the temps because they could be laid-off on a whim. ..."
"... Temps give employers a tool to tell their employees how very fungible and unimportant they are. In the days of unions,
what are called temps now might have been called "scabs" in some cases. I work in an amalgam of engineering and programming. I feel
little guilt about having worked as a job-shopper in the past and as a "consultant" in the very recent past - soon to be unemployed.
Engineers and programmers are too stupid and arrogant to ever form a union. They are "Mexican-crabs" of the workplace (please forgive
my use of a term sounding racist. I am not racist, the term is, and the image fits too well not to use it). ..."
"... To hell with that Stakhanovite rubbish. We need livelihoods, not work. Work presents itself well enough as it is.
..."
"... Meaningful work … almost oxymoronic. "what kind of job do you want with that degree in sociology?" asked the older halfbrother.
The younger halfbrother (born post WWII) replied, "I don't know, but I want to get a job I like." "Good god!" exclaimed the older halfbrother,
born preDepression era. "I worked for 40 years and not once, not one goddamned time, did I have a job I liked." ..."
"... Your comment is far more insightful than the article.I observed highly skilled PEs of my fathers generation offed in perpetual
fear of being offed in the 1970s when they were in their late 40s-early 50s. Ugly. Observing them focused my personal strategy. The
only real difference between permanent employees and temps is that the permanent employees don't realize they are also temps. The bottom
line is skillset, the one thing a former employer cant do is take away what you know. ..."
...The negative consequences of dual labour markets have been extensively documented, but so far little attention has been
paid to their effects on workers' on-the-job training and cognitive skills. This column discusses evidence from PIAAC – an exam
for adults designed by the OECD in 2013. Temporary contracts are associated with a reduction of 8–16 percentage points in the probability
of receiving on-the-job training, and this training gap can explain up to half of the gap in numeracy scores between permanent and
temporary workers.
Starting with the seminal work by Saint-Paul (1996), there has been a large literature documenting the negative consequences of
dual labour markets in several EU countries.1 Among them, Spain is often cited as the most extreme example, since its
labour market is characterised by a large gap between the firing costs of workers with permanent and temporary contracts, and by
lax regulation of the use of temporary contracts.
Yet, so far not much attention has been paid to the effects of dual labour markets on workers' on-the-job training (OJT) and the
subsequent effect of the latter on cognitive skills.2 A new element to add to the ample evidence of the negative effects
of duality on other dimensions of worker's performance is provided by the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies
(PIAAC), the exam for adults designed by the OECD in 2013, in the spirit of the PISA exams but for the working-age population.
... ... ...
Concluding Remarks
The evidence presented above is not, strictly speaking, a 'smoking gun' of a harmful effect of temporary contracts. Due to
the nature of our data (a cross section), we cannot credibly establish unambiguous causality for the statistical relation that we
find. However, the evidence is quite suggestive. We hope that future analysis will allow for a clearer causal inference, but given
all the evidence (not just ours) accumulated so far on the detrimental effects of dualism, we should keep the suspect under house
arrest and heavy police surveillance. If it really is a social danger, we should at least try not to do more damage.
What an annoying piece of writing! I do not believe the authors have ever worked as temps.
[I worked many years as a job-shopper to the Military-Industrial complex, a temporary engineer-programmer, also called a contractor.
No! I am not proud about it. I saw when I first started engineering school how engineering was turning into a well-paid, but for
other reasons crappy job. When I was a kid, I saw an entire generation of the best engineers laid-off after man walked on the
moon. We all make the "best" choices open to us.]
Take the issue of training. Temps are not trained because often they are hired to provide skills unavailable from the permanent
employees, call them directs. Without some investment in training, both time and money, directs generally lack the skills hired
in with a temp. We were always called "hired-guns", recalling the gun-fighters hired for their speed, shooting accuracy, and willingness
to shoot anyone identified as a target.
In other cases temps are hired with the needed skills, usually no different from the skills of permanent employees doing
the same job. The temps fill out temporary and long term increases in demand for a good or service but ever remain expendable.
One or two decades ago, temps earned a pay differential for their mobility and easy expendability. In any case they help put fear
into directs.
The management at every job I was on went to lengths to create an enmity between directs and temps. It was common practice
to lay-off directs whenever opportunity presented, while keeping the temps because they could be laid-off on a whim. Temps
were often used as a prod to push directs. As a temp I was expected to perform without training and without more than a cursory
description of the work required. Temps must read their clients desires and produce accordingly. This is a skill lacking in many
directs who require some efforts expended to explain what was required of them.
My experiences as a temp worker clash greatly with the conclusions of this piece. Temps have to come in already knowing
the job. They have to perform or they will be laid-off, sometimes within hours. In many cases they are expected to outperform
directs and supplement skills directs never developed. Of course, they are not trained. They are expected to bring the skills
with them. What is unmentioned in the article - often directs are not trained either.
I do not know what kind of temps and what kinds of employment the authors of this paper studied. As I indicated above, temps
are a way to steal the skills trained by other employers or to take advantage of those who are "Smarter than the average bear"
to get jobs done. Temps also give employers a tool for increasing the anxiety of directs and forcing speedups with the stick -
"If you cannot perform as quickly and as well as the temps we keep, you too will be cast off. Do you want to join this band of
hired-gun gypsies?"
Temps give employers a tool to tell their employees how very fungible and unimportant they are. In the days of unions,
what are called temps now might have been called "scabs" in some cases. I work in an amalgam of engineering and programming. I
feel little guilt about having worked as a job-shopper in the past and as a "consultant" in the very recent past - soon to be
unemployed. Engineers and programmers are too stupid and arrogant to ever form a union. They are "Mexican-crabs" of the workplace
(please forgive my use of a term sounding racist. I am not racist, the term is, and the image fits too well not to use it).
Any engineers or programmers reading my comment may be my guest at feeling insulted. As a group we deserve it, and I will go
so far as to include myself if it pleases you! Lawyers are already a casualty, but medical doctors remain as one of the last of
the professions. For all but medical doctors, profession only means that employers can legally not pay for overtime, they neither
pay time-and-a-half nor pay straight-time for hours worked. Though elliptical to this discussion, we will all be professionals
soon. It pains me to watch the demise of the medical profession as they become subsumed into the Medical Industrial Complex.
Moneta , December 6, 2014
Unless it's for a very particular kind of job…
-Lack of commitment on both sides
-Lack of trust on both sides
Probably the 2 most important elements for mid to long-term business success.
craazyman, December 6, 2014
they certainly have less job security but I don't know about less cognitive skills.
if sucking up, ass kissing, looking busy, paper pushing, going to meetings and generally unctuous bloviating are part of the
family of cognitive skills then yes, temporary workers are at a decided disadvantage. No doubt. They usually actually have to
work!
to be fair, I tried to look up the original article to see what kind of inane madness was on that test for cognitive skills
but the link didn't seem to load. I admit, maybe I'm being too cynical. (but I doubt it hahahahahhaha) sorry
Paul Lafargue, December 6, 2014
Can it be that the prime force behind devaluing labor – as in the dignity of work – are the capitalists, freed from countervailing
forces (a labor movement, government regulation, ethical guidelines promulgated by esteemed religious figures), who gut whatever
meaning remains in the concept? Historically, can we say that the inherent value of labor (dignity) in great part motivated the
outrage of the proles of a previous era and was an impetus to fight back in order to achieve what shreds of dignity could be achieved
through solidarity? Let's assume these premises, then is it logical to conclude that a large component of the current labor force
is devoid of the notion that there is Dignity in Labor? Further, again adopting all these assumptions, is it important to revive
that notion, by for example advocating a JG? Or, as I believe, is it better to re-think the concept of Labor in such a way that
it is divorced from the notion of a job and squarely embedded in the tasks that promote social and individual well-being. These
musings may be criticized as an ahistorical quest for an age long gone when Labor was coterminous with Skill, but I think we can
imagine (and that may be the first step to realization) Labor more as a ludic enterprise that may encompass skill as one aspect,
but not a determining one. Those who know the work of Johan Huizinga will recognize the drift of these remarks.
diptherio, December 6, 2014
Two words: worker co-ops
jrs, December 6, 2014
Has anyone here ever received on the job training even in jobs that lasted years? Oh probably a boomer back in the days then?
Because training is rare these days.
Management and so on are sometimes sent to training – it's a function of hierarchy of course. Of course things might be different
in the EU.
Alcofribas, December 7, 2014
Not at all. Inequalities of training curves follow exactly inequalities of salary and robustness/precarity of jobs.
One only grants rich ones. It's a systemic faithful rule of [neo]liberalism, and so worldwide applying.
not_me, December 6, 2014
Again we have the conflation of work with jobs; neither requires the other; one can work without a job (ie. be self-employed)
and one can have a job that does no or even negative work (destruction) such as the military often does.
And it's a losing conflation too, from an equality standpoint, since eventually capital will eliminate the need for almost
all human workers. From whence jobs then? Pathetic and patronizing make-work from the government?
Rather, we should aim for justice and let jobs take care of themselves since justice can never become obsolete or be outflanked.
hunkerdown, December 6, 2014
Why would we want to *maximize* work? Trying to accelerate the heat death of the universe, are we, or just the death of the
underclass?
To hell with that Stakhanovite rubbish. We need livelihoods, not work. Work presents itself well enough as it is.
rur42, December 7, 2014
Meaningful work … almost oxymoronic. "what kind of job do you want with that degree in sociology?" asked the older halfbrother.
The younger halfbrother (born post WWII) replied, "I don't know, but I want to get a job I like." "Good god!" exclaimed the older
halfbrother, born preDepression era. "I worked for 40 years and not once, not one goddamned time, did I have a job I liked."
Times change.
rur42, December 7, 2014
Should add: Younger halfbrother eventually became a tenured professor of sociology in a job he came to loath, except for its
benefits, salary, and free time.
washunate, December 7, 2014
I didn't intend to get into a detailed exchange on this. But you do raise an important clarification.
In a nutshell, especially the American context, I would describe temp work as when the employee knows they need to be looking
for another job. This could be for a number of reasons – the job will move and the employee doesn't want to, the job will disappear,
the job pays less than other jobs, the boss is terrible, the next assignment is terrible, there's no room for growth, etc.
But the common principle in MMT is that JG is not designed for long-term mass employment. It's supposed to transfer workers
to the private sector. That's temp work.
Or are you suggesting that 100 million workers should be on the public payroll indefinitely? Maybe more than that?
Just to put some numbers to things:
99 million workers made less than $40K last year (SSA #s –> totally random number since MMTers can't agree on even a rough
figure for the JG wage to be)
2 million people in prison who obviously don't want to be there, including 1 million who are working as modern day slaves
92 million people not in labor force (BLS #s)
13 million full-time students in higher ed (NCES #s)
So that's about 200 million people (some overlap between full time students and workers, of course - hmm, I wonder how the
cost of college keeps going up despite massive unemployment if buffer stocks are supposed to act as price anchors?). And of course
some people are quite happily retired, almost as if not going to work is more fulfilling than going to work…
To suggest that even a small portion of those who would benefit from a JG would have a job as long as they want it is to say
that the government will expand public sector staffing on a massive scale. I'm not saying that can't happen. Quite the opposite,
I'm taking seriously what it would mean to offer an actually decent term of employment.
Rather, what I have run into is that when I suggest a JG that provides good working conditions, meaningful work, and decent
pay would attract tens of millions of workers, I'm usually ridiculed for such absurdly high numbers.
But it can't go both ways. Either the JG is low-wage temp work that gets people back into the private sector, with all the
attendant problems of inequality and poor job performance inherent in crap jobs, or it's a career opportunity that will massively
expand the scope of government permanently.
Now I'm not instinctively opposed to the latter; many Americans, especially younger ones, are openly socialist, and it's a
position that should be taken seriously. But it's not what MMT is talking about. MMT is still fundamentally rooted in the idea
of private sector decision-making, right down to valuing increases in net private sector savings.
Moneta, December 7, 2014
The word stupid crossed your mind, not mine!
Cognitive refers to how the brain processes data. Without the temp work, he most probably would not have had the same thoughts
which made him structure his life around fear. Therefore the temp work had a cognitive impact.
Jeremy Grimm, December 7, 2014
Fear? Others may speak for themselves – yes fear.
I became an engineer through fear. I have other gifts I might have tried. I working as an engineer for DoD out of fear, as
I watched non-DoD engineering jobs disappear and turn to shit. Fear and anger against my employers kept me working as a job-shopper.
I quit job-shopping when I married - very late in life. It took me too long to learn my greatest desire was to have children
and a family. I greatly feared losing the mobility which kept me employed.
Fear kept me working for the same consulting company as the market for engineers grew grimmer than when I started work in the
middle 70s. I had my two children and not too long thereafter, I was divorced for reasons I still neither know nor fathom. Fear
kept me working in engineering as I grew older. Did you know once the state of New Jersey sets your child support payment, based
on your employment at the time of your divorce, changing it, whether you lose your job or not, is nearly impossible - and not
paying the set amount could place you in jail? Yes, fear!
As I grow old, the costs of college for my children, medical care, housing, and food grow - some like college and medical care
growing at rates I could never have anticipated and never properly saved for. I am very afraid for the future. I am afraid for
my children and the kind of life they may have as the world I knew, and watched collapse, grows worse by the month. So, yes I
fear.
As I face unemployment, two years before retirement age, I cannot share your optimism that I can probably land another
job - unless you mean I could leverage my past experience working graveyard cleanup crew and hamburger flipper for Foodmaker Corporation.
So I fear losing my job, such as it was. Where we might disagree though is whether fear is a part of just middle class culture.
I know and have lived with those I considered poor, certainly not middle class in their values. They too know fear - fear as well
as they know hunger - a feeling I have so far avoided. Remember the wisdom from "The Prince", whether it is better for retaining
control to be loved or feared?
What of the rationality of my fears? Fear is not a rational emotion. I believe a rational thinker coldly examining my situation
would feel fear. Middle class culture inculcates fear - fear of slipping from the middle class. Is that fear so irrational - just
a part of middle class culture? I believe it is an ancient fear lived out lifetime-by-lifetime as those few who rose up from poverty
saw how many slipped back into poverty. I do not believe the wheel of fortune spoke to kings and lords.
I remain fearful. My theme for many years comes from an old folk song, Joan Baez sang, which admonishes "whoever treasures
freedom, like the swallow, will learn to fly." I would fly - but I do not know where to fly to. I am too old to be a revolutionary.
I fear too many of those younger than I am, facing situations more dire than any I faced, will also not know where to fly to.
Given how little it would cost to avoid this growing desperation I believe those who own our fates have lost their way. I fear
the consequences and long to get far away from any large cities. When there is no hope left and nothing left to lose - nothing
will hold back the anger and blood lust of the disposed. I fear our lords and ladies are too confident in their trust to militarized
police, NSA, Blackwater and their like for defense of their privileges. I fear becoming part of the collateral damage.
So yes, scared, and whether rational or not fear.
More directly referencing your comment - do you really believe engineers "can probably land another job etc.?" and hence their
fears are irrational or middle class? Most of the jobs for engineers, to replace the job I will lose, are a thousand miles away
and a thousand figurative miles from the work I have done in the past. Employers started hiring people only to work at jobs they
have already done for years. That is why there are so few "quailed" STEM workers. Except for the few scattered duplicates of my
present job, my prospects are not bright. Fear is not irrational. What makes my fear grow is how much my prospects are better
than those of the large part of our population seeking employment. Projecting my fears upon them and transforming them through
the options of this other population I grow extremely fearful of what may come. Like the swallow, I would fly away - but to where?
Alcofribas, December 7, 2014
Thank you for your contribution, you nail the undergrounded reason why not only individuals but entire societies become
hopeless. Fear.Remember the wisdom from "The Prince", whether it is better for retaining control to be loved or feared?
Wisdom ? In the old days, power was conquered by arms, and retained with dogmas and affective common events, celebrating the
nations' self confidences. 1% of populations was educated. Now, in themselves called democracies, only the way to reach the power
level is apparently democratical. The use of institutions is not. What to think about the 1787 Constitution of USA ? The best
religion to keep people fear and obey is neoliberal economy, dedicated to educated but frightened and individually exploded populations.
In the name of individual freedom, of course.
What is equal freedom when some play with good cards and the largest part of humanity with bad ones ? When few rule the rules
and others don't know obscene rules (out of the public scene) ? A mechanism to enlarge inequalities and a common suicide. The
best ideas, as freedom, when led to extreme, drive to the worst. Running fair institutions, fair rules, cannot be done with faith
of many in few representatives. Of course, families and frienships are broken by enforced job mobility. Lost in translation…
"Democratical" powers are lost too or become schizophrenic. Huge promises to common citizens during campaigns followed by crucial
choices when elected : to have or not to have the courage to change rules, reform institutions when they appear to be structurally
unefficient ? PRC hasn't this problem, runs a safer and cleverer capitalism…but treats people as unbrained chess pieces.
Can Dollar remain the widespread exchange money ? If for common american citizens, the interested answer is NO (US public
debts can only increase), for TBTF bankers and many congressmen, the answer is YES : they don't sincerely regulate finance markets
to protect citizens and real economy enterprises. Financial markets rules the politician agendas. An instable world is good for
speculators, their greatest fear is to loose the power to evaluate the wealths of States's public finances, firms values, labor's
retribution. Going back to the 1936-1971 conception of banking ? Was the american people happy with bankers during those days
? Is financial globalization a huge private card for keeping UNO and democracies powers stupids ?
Like the swallow, I would fly away - but to where?
Can you escape from earth ? No and neither me. So the answer to feel secure for ourselves and future generations stands on
two points imho : 1- what I can do alone (effectively to be poor in open country is not a life without beauty, even if rude),
2- what I can do as a social being (to find out with others how to make democracy evoluate).
First solution is the hermit choice, or hermit community, that can be a solution for an existing person, but not for his descendants.
You can do that inside the local national you're living in. Second is to recognize we are not what the liberal dogma says, simply
individual living objects that product and consume, born with good or bad cards in our hands. The difficulty is just that 200
states organizations are unable to fit the problem of global challenges, climate changes or finance regulation or inequal capitalism,
for examples. You first need in that case to understand what your citizenship has become, on 7 December 2014. Is it only New Jersey
and America based ? Or should it be World based too, but isn't ?
So my answer stands here : I wish you not to fear or dream for a fly to nowhere, not to dream to a sudden and perfect and unalterable
divine change of rules and powers structure, but to be convinced that billions of citizens worldwide share with you the will of
stability rather than profit. From purely ideological solutions, communism and liberalism, teached on different territories to
be both the best/the worst things, we have to convince ourselves none was pure and true, but a part of truth stood in both, and
that the planet will be a very safe and beautiful place to leave on if we manage to bring up new politicians, more balance managers
than heroes. Democracies are sick, shooted with liberal drugs that benefit to few and destroy many lifes. Fascimus trends go up,
but the worst has not come yet and can still be avoided. We have to keep lucid peoples for that.
optimader, December 7, 2014
Your comment is far more insightful than the article.I observed highly skilled PEs of my fathers generation offed in perpetual
fear of being offed in the 1970s when they were in their late 40s-early 50s. Ugly. Observing them focused my personal strategy.
The only real difference between permanent employees and temps is that the permanent employees don't realize they are also temps.
The bottom line is skillset, the one thing a former employer can't do is take away what you know.
Lambert Strether, December 7, 2014
"The only real difference between permanent employees and temps is that the permanent employees don't realize they are
also temps."
Reminds me of the time I pointed out to a supervisor that there was no yarn on the floor for the morning shift. Because of
the layoff to come in a few hours, stupid me.
hunkerdown, December 6, 2014
I think Massinissa is correct. There is a class that feels itself entitled as a matter of identity and tradition to exclude
others from control over the means of production, and one suspects they would sooner not live than live without their tradition
of uselessness.
NotTimothyGeithner, December 6, 2014
Anecdotally, my next door neighbor had to be separated from his family for contracting work. His wife wanted to stay with
the kids*. Eventually, they moved, but the kids had to leave their friends. The woman across the street divorced her husband over
a similar situation. It's not just the mental health of the worker but the family.
*The wife didn't take care of their hydrangeas, and the kids are ruining a hedge in Colorado now and not leaving my gate open.
All in all, my mental health has improved considerably since they left.
Pepsi, December 6, 2014
Being stressed, exhausted, and poor is bad for the mind. Good to see some empirical evidence.
Noni Mausa, December 6, 2014
Controlling for motivation seems to me to consist of controlling for naïveté, or its opposite.
My current, half time job is a case in point. I get very little explicit training (the corporation doesn't even have a training
manual, for instance.) Yet, I am expected to know our point of sale system, ship and receive, care for customers, understand and
demonstrate our hundreds of tools and paints and finishes, accurately recommend materials and tools for specific projects, open
and close the store, cash out and take in the deposit at the end of the day, create signage and displays, clean the building,
including the lunchroom and washrooms, and more. Any upgrading of my knowledge of using our tools and supplies, I am expected
to do on my own time at my own expense. I am also expected to keep abreast of our many rotating sales and, I was told a number
of times, to memorize all the SKU numbers of our thousands of stock items. (Yeah, like that's going to happen.) I am a keyholder,
have been there 18 months, and am not in line for any bonuses, raises, or other benefits. I make $11.25 an hour, about 75 cents
above our minimum wage.
Why am I still there? Only because I am retired and find the job an interesting pastime, which I can leave at any time without
a backward glance. There is zero loyalty on either side, and I could easily put down my clipboard any time and say, "You know
what? I don't need this."
My fellow staff members, including our young, overworked manager, do need the money, but their stress levels from overwork
and unrealistic demands cannot be good for their health.
Alcofribas, December 7, 2014
Some things to be explained to US contributors :
1- Till the 70's, Spain was not a democracy but run by a fascist regime. It hardly makes 2 generations. Not enough to change
minds and turn them into respect of workers as doubtless Know-how wealth of the firms. Quite the opposite of German situation,
in which Kurzarbeit (time reduction of work/incomes for everybody inside the firm when orders slow down, but no difficulty for
restart after the bad period, at no training cost and no research time loss).
2- There stands a main difficulty inside Europe, while inside the euro zone two employment markets, supported by two different
layers of cultural skills interfere. The study nails rightly that in South European countries, a post feudal scheme of societies
separates the population in two parts : strong rights granted one, middle and upper class, and large far less granted one.
A kind of two levels of citizenships system that underlay all relationships, very evident in terms of temp or permanent
jobs, without any consciousness that quality is everywhere in the firm (from the boss to the few considered worker) or isn't.
Management is there a purely hierarchical organization, some taking all decisions, others executing them. Mix that with the old
taylorist division of tasks and you get it. In the north countries, despite of recent neoliberal taste for financial profit even
in manufacuring firms, the project culture and importance of many small self-governing firms make for long a true concern for
everyone in the firm's life. This of course relies on very strong attachment to local social life, and technical improvements
are seen as survey conditions. Of course too, there only can be found two colleges co operating together the strategical management
of firms, one with employees, one with managers and shareolders. Both being responsible of good or bad decisions, what Germans
call Mitbestimmung. Not only the single labor market is largely dominant, but unemployment increases slowly in that case, without
considering state's sectorial implications to enforce specific policies. And don't forget that the cohesive action of Landern
(micro economy) and federal german (macro economy) powers is a real success.
3- Mobility for jobs inside Europe is strictly reserved to high educated people, because of the creation of a continental multicultural
country by union of many micro states. When nothing has been done seriously to give all european citizens multilinguistic skills,
engineers (speaking 3-4 langages) can easily find jobs where they are, and masons and carpenters are captive of local employment
situations.
4- Applying the selective dogma of comparative specialized competences, most european governments have made of Europe a catastrophical
continental area with well and bad diversified zones. Spanish growth depending massively of building sector, spanish economy was
brillant when financial risks were taken by the government, local powers, banks and the citizens. Miracles don't exist. Never.
5- Inside a common money zone, you need a central state. Both to stop divergent local economical policies, and to protect people
when a great crisis occurs. Without this, some zones hardly impressed severly fall down and no help is to be expected to restart
economy and prevent deep social consequences.
6- Potential Europe's GDP is being injured. Young generation of Europeans is now paying for the unresponsible acts of their
parents : maintaining local sovereignties in the macro economical competence is a major political fault.
'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon'
Nichole Gracely has a master's degree and was one of Amazon's best order pickers. Now, after protesting the company, she's homeless.
I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon.
According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers - I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate
throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd
collapse from boredom and exhaustion.
During peak season, I trained incoming temps regularly. When that was over, I'd be an ordinary order picker once again, toiling
in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen.
Superb performance did not guarantee job security. ISS is the temp agency that provides warehouse labor for Amazon and they
are at the center of the SCOTUS case Integrity Staffing Solutions vs. Busk. ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they
would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later,
all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring.
I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance. Amazon
could mandate overtime and I would have to comply with any schedule change they deemed necessary, and if there was not any work,
they would send us home early without pay. I started to fall behind on my bills.
At some point, I lost all fear. I had already been through hell. I protested Amazon. The gag order was lifted and I was free
to speak. I spent my last days in a lovely apartment constructing arguments on discussion boards, writing articles and talking
to reporters. That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. I walked away
from Amazon's warehouse and didn't have any other source of income lined up.
I cashed in on my excellent credit, took out cards, and used them to pay rent and buy food because it would be six months before
I could receive my first unemployment compensation check.
I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed.
I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know
that I qualified for food stamps.
I furthered my Amazon protest while homeless in Seattle. When the Hachette dispute flared up I "flew a sign," street parlance
for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: "I was an order picker at amazon.com.
Earned degrees. Been published. Now, I'm homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps."
I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and I make more money per hour than I
will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.
I flew my protest sign outside Whole Foods while Amazon corporate employees were on lunch break, and they gawked. I went to
my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with
them. And that was in Seattle. One woman asked, "What are you writing?" I told her about the descent from working poor to homeless,
income inequality, my personal experience. She mentioned Thomas Piketty's book, we chatted a little, she handed me $10 and wished
me luck. Another guy said, "Damn, that's a great story! I'd read it," and handed me a few bucks.
I suppose my biggest employment claim would be as some sort of IT techie, with numerous supply chain systems and component
design, development, implementation, interfaces with other systems and ongoing support. CCNP certification and a history of techiedom
going back to WEYCOS.
I have a patent (6,209,954) in my name and 12+ years of beating my head against the wall in an industry that buys compliance
with the "there is no problem here, move on now" approach.
Hell, I was a junior woodchuck program administrator back in the early 70's working for the Office of the Governor of the state
of Washington on CETA PSE or Public Service Employment. The office of the Governor ran the PSE program for 32 of the 39 counties
in the state that were not big enough to run their own. I helped organize the project approval process in all those counties to
hire folk at ( if memory serves me max of $833/mo.) to fix and expand parks and provide social and other government services as
defined projects with end dates. If we didn't have the anti-public congress and other government leadership we have this could
be a current component in a rational labor policy…but I digress.
I have experience in the construction trades mostly as carpenter but some electrical, plumbing, HVAC, etc. also.
So, of course there is some sort of character flaw that is keeping me and all those others from employment…..right. I may have
more of an excuse than others, have paid into SS for 45 years but still would work if it was available…..taking work away from
other who may need it more….why set up a society where we have to compete as such for mere existence???????
One more face to this rant. We need government by the people and for the people which we do not have now. Good, public focused,
not corporate focused government is bigger than any entities that exist under its jurisdiction and is kept updated by required
public participation in elections and potentially other things like military, peace corps, etc. in exchange for advanced education.
I say this as someone who has worked at various levels in both the public and private sectors…there are ignorant and misguided
folks everywhere. At least with ongoing active participation there is a chance that government would, once constructed, be able
to evolve as needed within public focus….IMO.
Lidia:
Ishmael, you're quite right. When I showed my Italian husband's resume to try and "network" in the US, my IT friends assumed
he was lying about his skills and work history.
Contemporaneously, in Italy it is impossible to get a job because of incentives to hire "youth". Age discrimination is
not illegal, so it's quite common to see ads that ask for a programmer under 30 with 5 years of experience in COBOL (the purple
squirrel).
Hosswire
Some good points about the foolishness of recruiters, but a great deal of that foolishness is forced by the clients themselves.
I used to be a recruiter myself, including at Korn Ferry in Southern California. I described the recruiting industry as "yet
more proof that God hates poor people" because my job was to ignore resumes from people seeking jobs and instead "source"
aka "poach" people who already had good jobs by dangling a higher salary in front of them. I didn't do it because I disparaged
the unemployed, or because I could not do the basic analysis to show that a candidate had analogous or transferrable skills to
the opening.
I did it because the client, as Yves said, wanted people who were literally in the same job description already.
My theory is that the client wanted to have their ass covered in case the hire didn't work out, by being able to say that they
looked perfect "on paper." The lesson I learned for myself and my friends looking for jobs was simple, if morally dubious.
Basically, that if prospective employers are going to judge you based on a single piece of paper take full advantage of the fact
that you get to write that piece of paper yourself.
Ishmael:
Hosswire - I agree with your comment. There are poor recruiters like the one I sited but in general it is the clients fault.
Fear of failure. All hires have at least a 50% chance of going sideways on you. Most companies do not even have the ability to
look at a resume nor to interview. I did not mean to same nasty things about recruiters, and I even do it sometimes but mine.
I look at failure in a different light than most companies. You need to be continually experimenting and changing to survive
as a company and there will be some failures. The goal is to control the cost of failures while looking for the big pay off on
a winner.
Mannwich:
As a former recruiter and HR "professional" (I use that term very loosely for obvious reasons), I can honestly say that you
nailed it. Most big companies looking for mid to high level white collar "talent" will almost always take the perceived safest
route by hiring those who look the best ON PAPER and in a suit and lack any real interviewing skills to find the real stars.
What's almost comical is that companies almost always want to see the most linear resume possible because they want to see "job
stability" (e.g. a CYA document in case the person fails in that job) when in many cases nobody cares about the long range view
of the company anyway. My question was why should the candidate or employee care about the long range view if the employer clearly
doesn't?
"... The goal has been the 'Third Worldization' of the United States:
-- an increasingly underemployed, lower-wage work-force;
-- a small but growing moneyed class that pays almost no taxes;
-- the privatization or elimination of human services;
-- the elimination of public education for low-income people;
-- the easing of restrictions against child labor;
-- the exporting of industries and jobs to low-wage, free-trade countries;
-- the breaking of labor unions;
-- and the elimination of occupational safety and environmental controls and regulations...."
"In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called
lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not finish high school
or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.
"In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least
are called lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not
finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.
No system in history has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of
whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.
Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent
interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.
The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves
into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.
The guiding principle of ruling elites was--and still is: when change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed."
These quotes are from The Brass Check which was written by Upton Sinclair in 1919.
A brass check was a token purchased by a customer in a brothel and given to the woman of his choice. Sinclair
saw the moneyed interests of his day holding brass checks with which to purchase politicians, journalists and their editors, and
other thought leaders of the day.
For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes,
pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might choose our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new
industrial order. I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence destroyed, and now I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice
of our money-masters driving us straight to the precipice of revolution.
What shall I do ? What can I do - save to cry out one
last warning in this last fateful hour? The time is almost here - and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were
never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of
America today.
Imagine, if you can, the feelings of a workingman on strike who picks up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and
reads:
'We have a flabby public opinion which would wring its hands in anguish if we took the labor leader by the scruff of his neck,
backed him up against a wall, and filled him with lead. Countries which consider themselves every bit as civilized as we do
not hesitate about such matters for a moment.'
Year by year the cost of living increases, and wages, if they move at all, move laggingly, and after desperate and embittered
strife. In the midst of this strife the proletariat learns its lessons ; it learns to know the clubs of policemen and the bayonets
and machine-guns of soldiers.
Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together,
they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. The [first world] war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda ; it has
accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.
American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and
protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and
destroying political democracy.
By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery ; but that misery has its purpose
in the scheme of nature. Something more than a century ago we saw the people driven by just such misery to grope their way into
a new order of society; they threw off the chains of hereditary monarchy, and made themselves citizens of free republics.
And now again we face such a crisis only this time it is in the world of industry that we have to abolish hereditary rule,
and to build an industrial commonwealth in which the equal rights of all men are recognized by law.
The author has engaged an important topic, one about which remarkably
few books are presently available. For recognizing the importance of the issue and doing the work to publish a book, I give it
two stars. Unfortunately, this book suffers from some serious flaws - so serious, in fact, that Work's New Age has the distinction
of being the only book I have ever returned for a refund.
First, it is obviously entirely unedited for grammer, syntax, and style. Strangely constructed sentences, run-on paragraphs,
an excess of direct quotes from other sources, poorly formatted charts and tables (at least on the Kindle version) and awkward
or missing transitions hinder an understanding of what is being presented. The worst of it is that in several places, the author
makes guesses about what might happen that sound weak and unsupported, and this undermines his authority on the topic. Clearly
he has done a lot of study, reading, and research, but it's wasted when he uses all that he has learned to generate thought experiments
for which there is no scaffolding.
Second, the book assumes that past trends will necessarily continue. For example, it presupposes that automation will always
reduce the number of jobs, and globalization will always result in brain drain and downward pressure on wages. All of the research
and all of the solutions discussed in the book revolve around these assumptions, and the resulting picture is indeed scary. However,
there's a fundamentally circular argument buried in the book. It's this: prices must be kept low, or an underemployed population
will be unable to support its basic needs; and low prices can only be achieved and maintained with low overhead, principally low
employment costs. Only big business can create the conditions for low overhead that lead to low prices. Thus, we have a marketplace
dominated by big business that drives prices and wages down, which results in underemployment and no growth. Bleak, indeed.
I am unpersuaded (to say the least) that this circular argument defines the sum total of our options as an economy. I wish
the author had explored more productive options, as well as the darker ones he did explore. For instance, what if we as a culture
fully grasped the import of always shopping for lowest price? The other day, for example, I bought socks at Target because they
were less expensive than the socks in my locally owned shoe store. Target had them packaged three pairs for $8. But when I opened
the package, I discovered that two pair were thin stockings sure to fail after just a wearing or two. This is how Target keeps
its sock pricing down: by giving the illusion of quantity, but delivering poor quality so that I'll need more socks in weeks rather
than months. I'd have been better off buying the more expensive socks from my local store, and the obvious personal reasons are
just the start of it. What if we could learn the value of paying more for locally produced goods that are part of a true marketplace
that engages not just in commerce, but in community? Perhaps we would make different choices that would naturally temper the tendency
of big businesses to produce more with less.
The book contains a few glimmers of ideas that should be part of our public discourse. Should we aspire to be a nation of 1
percenters, when it's the 99 percent that support the economy? What do we human beings do with our time and energy when work does
not demand everything of us? Are we risking breeding a culture that cannot join the workforce even if jobs are available? What
is the definition of value, and is there a way to compensate people for value they add, other than giving them jobs in profit-centered
businesses? Unfortunately, these engaging ideas get short shrift and little deep thinking.
All in all, an important topic gets a well-meaning effort, and a few glimmers of interesting possibilities, but suffers from
a lack of editing and a straitjacket of assumptions that don't have to be true. I'm looking forward to some other book on this
subject that does a better job of engaging me with clear thinking and broader possibilities.
Although prolonged unemployment is tough for any worker, it's especially hard on people at midlife who are often forced to dip
into retirement savings and change their lifestyles in order to make ends meet. And it's much more difficult to become employed again.
Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development
at Rutgers University, says the situation for those unemployed and over 55 "is very severe. That group has the longest duration of
unemployment."
Although the number fluctuates, Van Horn says there are "at least a couple of million people" over age 55 in the category of long-term
unemployed-defined as more than six months–and at least half of those have been unemployed for over a year. "From a national perspective
it's a small number-the labor market is 150 million people-but it's a small number experiencing a severe problem," says Van Horn.
"In the research we did between 2009-2011 only 15 percent of those we surveyed were able to find a full-time job within a year."
"Even though it's illegal, this group faces age discrimination, a sense by employers that a younger worker can work harder and
will have had more recent training and more technical skills," says David Blustein, a professor of counseling psychology and an expert
in unemployment and career development at the Lynch School
of Education at Boston College. And if they do find work, older workers will likely be earning less than they did before losing
their job.
Still, the news isn't all doom-and-gloom. Those over 50 often worked in leadership roles before becoming unemployed and have skills
and industry knowledge that can't be replaced. That gives them unique options, says executive recruiter Sharon Hulce, president of
Employment Resource Group in Appleton, Wisconsin and author of the forthcoming book, A Well-Done Professional Midlife Crisis.
While the Government Accountability Office report noted that relatively few U.S. households headed by people 65 or over are carrying
student loans, the value of the unpaid debt had spiked from $2.8 billion in 2005, before the financial crisis.
That debt is concentrated in a small number of homes. Just 4 percent of households headed by someone 65 or older carried student
loan debt as of 2010, up from 1 percent in 2004.
"Some may think of student loan debt as a just a young person's problem," said U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, who heads a Senate
committee on aging and held a hearing on the findings on Wednesday. "As it turns out, that's increasingly not the case."
The $18.2 billion figure includes loans related to both the holders' education, often for those who have returned to school
later in life, and their children's education, the report found.
Across the United States, about 40 million Americans are paying back some $1.1 trillion in student loan debt.
I would add to that question - a career that pays a living wage. Many of us have created "hobby" jobs for ourselves to keep
active or have pieced together contract or part-time gigs.
Others have jumped into multi-level-marketing schemes they are calling their "jobs". But who has successfully obtained a job
on par with their former career that is full time with benefits and supports their family? THAT is the bigger question.
I can see that I'm still not alone. Finding a job that is 'reasonable' has been very difficult. I left a very stressful nonprofit
job that was leaving me in knots, hoping to find another job that I could do. I have a chronic pain condition and have to be careful.
I may have done myself in and have been doing project and temporary work for months. I originally lost a job I enjoyed and it
took me 2 years to find another one. It seemed that the job market in my area was getting better but it has seemed to go up and
down.
I'm temping and am proving to be valuable. However, if anything ever happened to my husband, I would be sunk. I have thought
about the business route…at least to do some grant writing. Even non-profits are getting volunteers to do grant writing. The killer
is that I have gotten appeal letters from non-profit organizations to which I have applied. Some of wanted me to do free grant
writing. I'm obviously good enough to volunteer but not good enough to hire?
Recently, over a two month period, I went through three phone interviews with an employer and waited two weeks. Finally, after
I contacted them to check in, I got an in person interview. That interview was two weeks ago and I'm losing steam. I met the HR
person at GE and she didn't ask much…as if to say, you're older and we don't want you. Other interviewers have been rude, condescending
on a few occasions and that made me not want to get out of bed! I have even asked if I wanted to continue to live at times.
It's the elephant in the room that we can't talk about publicly because we could be 'whistleblowers' but the injustice and
psychological effects are real and damaging. Employers want to work on the cheap but the reality is that if we don't have money,
we won't buy more goods and that will keep the economy in a standstill. That seems to be the case overall. The job numbers don't
say much about the low-paying jobs that people are taking to just get by.
Anyway, I'm on State lists and hope to eventually get a job with the State.
- posted on our website last night
"... "Most of the 100 unemployed Americans over 50 we initially interviewed have been able to find jobs over the past year or
so," she says, "but they're part-time or for much less money than they earned prior to the Great Recession." ..."
Although things seem to be looking up on the job front (claims for state unemployment benefits just fell to their lowest level
since January 2008), the same can't be said for America's long-term unemployed, especially those over 50.
Consider:
Nearly 40 percent of unemployed Americans - roughly 4.8 million people - have been jobless for six months or longer. About
half of them are over age 50.
Some 3.25 million Americans, CNN says, are "hopelessly unemployed." They haven't looked for work in more than a year because
they've simply given up the search. They're not even counted for the official unemployment rate.
The Facebook page for the multimedia project,
Over Fifty
and Out of Work, is filled with postings like this one: "I am a 60-year-old male, I have been in the construction industry
since I was 20, the last 16 as a superintendent or project manager. I was laid off August 1, 2010. I have not found but 3 months
work since then. I have sent over 300 resumes to advertised jobs. I am in financial ruin."
"Most of the 100 unemployed Americans over 50 we initially interviewed have been able to find jobs over the past year or so,"
she says, "but they're part-time or for much less money than they earned prior to the Great Recession."
"We live in a society where it's hard to maintain self-respect if you don't have a job," Kwame Anthony Appiah, philosopher
at Princeton, said in a recent radio
interview, and I can certainly identify. All of my life I've been an achievement junkie. I have two Harvard degrees, practiced
law at elite Manhattan firms, and wrote and published two novels, among other things. But of all my accomplishments, by far the most
impressive is absent from my résumé: It's my more than two-year stint of job searching and unemployment.
If you've been unemployed you already know this, but if you haven't, here's a news flash: Coping with prolonged joblessness
is hugely demanding. It requires deep reservoirs of fortitude, faith, patience, courage and self-control, traditional virtues
generally accorded high regard in our nation's pantheon of values. Of course, we're a country that values hard work, and that's as
it should be. But don't our values also dictate respect for the efforts of the struggling unemployed?
Two years of job hunting has required infinitely more of me than any of my lauded past achievements. And I, of course, am among
the relatively fortunate, with a cushion of savings and a supportive group of friends. And here is what I think: If the experience
is still this hard for me, how much harder must it be for the millions who lack these things?
There is a distinct Groundhog Day quality to days spent looking for work: Write letters. Prepare résumés. Search job boards. Make
phone calls and brainstorm over coffee. Sleep. Get up. Repeat. After sending off my materials, I often hear nothing back. I've long
since lost count of the number of jobs I've applied for.
As an "older worker" -- When did that happen? -- I try to ignore a drumbeat of statistics telling me I face an uphill battle.
It's hard not to feel worn down, to succumb to "learned helplessness," our innate tendency to give up when our efforts fail to yield
results. Still, like millions of others, day by day I keep going.
My exertions often seem strangely invisible, not only to my family and friends but increasingly to me -- an experience that turns
out to be widely shared in job-loss land. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. As Atlantic journalist Don Peck recounts in "Pinched,"
his sobering account of the changes wrought by the Great Recession, studies show "a growing isolation, a warping of family dynamics,
and a slow separation from mainstream society" among the long-term unemployed. Strikingly, no other circumstance triggers a larger
decline in well-being and mental health than involuntary joblessness. Only the death of a spouse compares.
...At the start of this year, the average unemployment duration of more than nine months was longer than it's been since the Bureau
of Labor Statistics began tracking the figure in 1948, according to Peck.
And yet, daunting as these numbers may be, they only hint at the human suffering that they reflect. In his 2010 book "The Honor
Code," Appiah places honor at the heart of what it takes to lead a successful life, noting that throughout history, societies have
adopted guidelines for how people "can gain the right to respect, how they can lose it, and how having and losing honor changes the
way they should be treated." The result: "[P]eople in an honor world automatically regard those who meet its codes with respect and
those who breach them with contempt."
This stark dichotomy -- between respect and contempt -- got me to thinking. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to see
that when there are six job seekers for every job, it's simply not possible for everyone to find work. And in fact, as others have
noted, the reality is even tougher on the unemployed than these numbers suggest. For one, they (we) are competing for positions not
only with other unemployed workers but also with applicants already in the workforce who are looking to move on. They (we) are
also contending with subtle -- and not so subtle -- biases against the unemployed, including the proliferation of "unemployed need
not apply" caveats on job ads for positions ranging from electrical engineers to restaurant managers. Thanks to my legal background,
this shocked me less than it did some of my friends. I knew that current laws don't prohibit discrimination against the jobless.
So how is it that so many have come to disdain the unemployed? To equate unemployment with failure and shiftlessness? If the barometer
of popular culture is any indication, this wasn't always so. In the 1962 film classic "A Touch of Mink," plucky all-American Cathy
Timberlake (aka Doris Day) is on the way to collect her unemployment check, when a chauffeured limousine splashes her with mud. It's
Cathy Timberlake -- not the feckless industry titan played by Cary Grant -- who represents the traditional American values that in
the end carry the day. Firmly planted at the dark pole of the film's moral compass is the creepy unemployment office bureaucrat who
alternately taunts Timberlake for taking government money and hits on her. The film has plenty of disdain for the titan and the bureaucrat
and plenty of sympathy for Timberlake.
See interesting and educational case stories in comments
"... It is refreshing to read an article on older unemployed workers in the NYT that is free of Friedman's nonsense about everyone
needing to reinvent themselves. ..."
I WAS recently talking to a friend at a party whose husband - in his 60s - has been unemployed for more than two years. While
there are many challenges, she said, one of the hardest things is trying to balance hope with reality.
Is there a moment when people over 50 who don't have jobs should give up looking, accept their fate and find other ways to
make life meaningful?
She wonders how to support him in his continued quest to find a job in his field of marketing and financial services while at
the same time encouraging him to think about what his life would be like if he never worked in that field or had a full-time job
again.
"I wanted to move to what I thought was a healthier place. I wanted to turn the page," said my friend, who asked to be identified
by her middle name, Shelley, since she didn't want to publicize her family's situation. "He saw it as vote of no confidence."
For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower
than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding work.
Over the last year, according to the Labor Department, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared
with 19 weeks for teenagers.
There are numerous reasons - older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization. They're more likely to have
been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they're
attractive targets if layoffs are needed.
Even as they do all the things they're told to do - network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and turn it into
a job - many struggle with the question of whether their working life as they once knew it is essentially over.
This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be addressed better than it is now.
Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job
searches, is a difficult balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Psychologists and others who counsel this cohort need to help them face the grief of losing a job, and also to understand that
jobs and job-hunting are far different now from how they used to be.
"The contract used to be, 'I am a loyal employee and you are a loyal employer. I promise to work for you my entire career and
you train, promote, give benefits and a pension when I retire.' Now you can't count on any of that," she said. "The onus is all on
the employee to have a portfolio of skills that can be transferable."
People in their 20s and 30s know that they need to market themselves and always be on the lookout for better opportunities, she
said, something that may seem foreign to those in their 50s and 60s.
If a counselor or psychologist "doesn't understand how the world of work has changed, they're not helping at all," she said. "You
can't just talk about how it feels."
In response to this concern, Professor Fouad and her colleagues have drawn up guidelines for the American Psychological Association
to help psychotherapists better assist their clients with workplace issues and unemployment. It is wending its way through the association's
committees.
Of course, not everyone who is unemployed and over 50 is equal. For some, the reality is that they need to find another job -
any job - to survive. Others have resources that can allow them to spend more time looking for a job that might have the salary or
status of their former position.
In the first case, Professor Fouad said, "You need to decide what is the minimum amount of money you can make and how to go about
finding it." In the second case, she said, it's necessary to examine what work means to you and how that may have to change.
Is it the high social status? The identity? The relationship with co-workers? It is important to examine these areas, perhaps
with the help of a professional counselor, Professor Fouad said, to discover how to find such meaning or relationships in other areas
of life.
Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help. My friend Shelley's husband, Neal, who also asked that
I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a friend was "don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're
semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself."
He also has friends facing the same issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups, whether formal or informal, are
very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president of the American Counseling Association and professor emerita of counseling at Oakland
University in Rochester, Mich.
"Legitimizing the fact that this stinks also helps," she said. "I find that when I say this, clients are so relieved. They thought
I was going to say, 'buck up.' "
And even more, "they should know the problem is not with them but with a system that has treated them like a commodity that can
be discarded," said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of
Education at Boston College, who works with the older unemployed in suburb of Boston. "I try to help clients get in touch with their
anger about that. They shouldn't blame themselves."
Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do.
"I know not to take it personally," Neal said, "but sure, I wonder at times, what's wrong with me? Is there something I should
be doing differently?"
It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to wonder if he is somehow standing in his own way, like a cancer patient who
is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.
Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary "Set for Life" about the older jobless,
said she stopped posting articles like "Five Easy Steps to get a New Job."
"People are so frustrated," she said. "They don't want to hear, 'Get a new wardrobe, get on LinkedIn.' "
As one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said, "I've been told to redo my résumé twice now. The first
'expert' tells me to do it one way, the next 'expert' tells me to put it back the way I had it."
Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although he believes he'll never make
as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic about some consulting jobs.
But the reality is that the problem of the older unemployed "was acute during the Great Recession, and is now chronic," Ms. Sipprelle
said. "People's lives have been upended by the great forces of history in a way that's never happened before, and there's no other
example for older workers to look at. Some can't recoup, though not through their own fault. They're the wrong age at the wrong time.
It's cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you just dye your hair, you'll get that job."
Flatlander, LA, CA
Age discrimination is a sad reality today and always has been. It is also very difficult to prove in a legal action.
From what I have heard, if you are in your 60's you can basically forget about getting hired for a full time career track type
job (I turned 60 last June).
I guess the best advice I can give people in their mid 40's is to try and save as much as you possibly can just in case when
you are in your mid to late 50's and you unexpectedly lose your job. You will need something to fall back on if you will be facing
a prolonged period of unemployment.
I stopped working full time at age 58 which was sooner than I planned. Fortunately my wife and I had prepared ourselves for
just such an occurrence and we are getting along OK. That plus the fact that I enjoy not working and all the stress that goes
along with it.
Walter, Bronx, NY
This is a great article. I'm in this situation but worse. Trying to entice myself to nowadays corporations I went and enrolled
in a MBA program and got myself into a $40K student loan debt. I had already paid my previous loans long time ago so I figure,
if I update myself educational-wise and prove these people that my mind is still fresh and sharp at a high level that I could
raise my chances.
Now, I am 56 and I still cant get a job. Taking a minimum wage position is out of the question for me since all my
salary would actually go to pay my debt and I would not have money even for transportation back and forth to work.
What I find amazing is that employer are failing to understand that old folks like us would really appreciate the opportunity
and work harder to try to excel than probably any of nowadays young kids, that, like the article mentioned, are more prone to
leave the company to get promotions. I keep telling my friends that I would even sign a contract guaranteeing that I would work
for them until the day I die or retire. I like the idea presented by one of the readers here that the government should provide
some kind of economic incentive in the way of lower taxation for businesses that hire people over 50. They do it for career criminals.
Why not for qualified and educated/trained people. This is totally age discrimination and it is a federal offense. However,
I try that channel also and I got no response from the Labor Dept. I thank the NYT for bringing this up.
Jovality, Las Vegas, NV.
I'm 57 and have or had been employed in the high tech industry for over 25 years with never a period of more than two weeks
unemployment until now. During that time I rose from a software developer to product manager, to VP of Sales and Marketing. I
was laid off from that position at the end of 2012, but luckily I was able to reach out to an old colleague who was able to sneak
me into a marketing position in his company at less than half my previous salary.
I was surprised by the younger people's reaction to me. They said things to me I had to take as compliments such as, "You're
really cool for an older guy." "I would never expect someone your age would know so much or be so talented".
Unfortunately the company had a major layoff which I was caught in. Now I am like many of the others who have posted her,
"A ghost with a resume". Since being laid off in June of 2013 I have sent out 100's of resumes with only a very limited response.
More and more I have to accept this is the "Third Act in Life" and working for a traditional company in a traditional job is
no longer a reality. It's time to take the vast experience and talents I've built up or an entire career and use them to open
my own business. It's a frighten challenge to be sure. But as someone once told me there is only one real form of security in
life, when life knocks you down you must have the drive and self-confidence to get up handle the situation and both survive and
succeed.
kfahern, San Francisco, Ca
I too, am a over 50 person who has been in sales from VP to National sales for over 25 years. I was unemployed for 11 months,
took a job which paid much less, gave the company all of my current book of business, set up their sales team, designed a sales
training course and 5 months later was let go. Reason, I was not the right type of person for the job. Again, I was unemployed
for over a year, finally a company approached me and after they had all of my expertise (asked to train the younger sales people
and a few other things, such as my contacts) they let me go after only 90 days, saying I was clearly not keeping up. So again
for the 3rd time in 4 years, I find myself unemployed.
Companies, do not want to pay for the older generation. But do want and have found a way to get all of that experience an connections
from us, then hire recent college graduates and they benefit from everything it took all of us over 30 years to learn.
So all those people who cheated and assisted in the clasp of our economy, have taught the new young executives one thing, use
people to advance yourself and then throw them away. No consequences to these actions. Just benefits for the "me" generation.
The only plus to all of this, is the "me" generation will be in their 50s soon and will hopefully experience the same horrible
treatment.
Jon K. Polis, East Greenwich, Rhode Island
Bohemienne: In answer to your question; look up the movie " Soylent Green " from 1973, that starred Charlton Heston and Edward
G. Robinson....and see what fate be-fell Mr. Robinson's character....if our government today offered me the same options/opportunities
to me that they offered to him; I would take advantage of them in a heartbeat...
Rhea Goldman, Sylmar, CA
I find it strange, very strange indeed, that all of us have so easily accepted our plight of hardship. Have we been so cowed
that collectively we take no action to put a stop to this harsh treatment from employers? Re-read Dickens' Christmas Carol.....we
are allowing the economics of the United States to make Bob Cratchets of us all.
J. Campbell, Chicago, IL
I'm amazed that an article from the NYT (to which I subscribe) actually suggests that people in their 50's who are unemployed
can somehow just "accept that they may *never* work again". How could we live? What legal source of income could we obtain that
would bridge us to Social Security (even for those of us eventually eligible for SS retirement)? What are the people responsible
for this article (including the NYT editors who released it) thinking? What if someone suggested that *they* accept a future where
they never worked again, and had no income?
If there were several major American riots, that involved hundreds of thousands of unemployed people (a fraction of the millions
of current long-term unemployed in the US), the NYT would be out front in demanding that order be restored *at any cost*. Where
is the mainstream press demand that *economic stability for the working class* be restored at any cost?
Or do you think, because of our current corporate/NSA state, such riots are impossible? If so, look at Europe--right now.
Sam, Florida
My husband was just laid off due to company merger. His entire department was eliminated. The only good news, is that we've
been expecting the lay off for about a year or so, as such we had time to prepare. We also, have worked very hard to get our finances
in order since we got married. We killed all our unsecured debt in 2007, $55,000+, and we have saved a good chunk every year since
then. I'm still working on our lay off budget, but I hope that we will be able to cover our regular monthly expenses on my salary.
Been there. Done that. It didn't work. The money disappeared - slowly but surely. Without real income, you eventually become
another victim of our perverse, experience-averse corporate economy.
Melanie Dukas, Saugus, mass
I am 59 years old, and I lost my job during the high tech bust in 2002 as marketing communications manager at a fiber optic
start-up. In Massachusetts, this was for many of us worse than the Great Recession. At the height of my career at 48 years old,
I was determined to get a job and interviewed for 5 years. I drove a taxi and limo 6 days a week, but still couldn't make ends
meet, so I moved in with my parents 5 years ago and started my own business developing websites and marketing. I just couldn't
take interviewing anymore! It was like heartbreaking, kind of like dating - I would go on the interview and get so excited and
they never called.
It's been a long road, but at I am happy to be working in my field and making a living. Luckily, I had done this before and
although I would have preferred to work at a company full time, at my age in marketing the jobs are few are far between and I
need to work for the rest of my life because I have no retirement. Even if I get a job, it is unlikely to last and then I
would be back in the same boat. Now I am in control and my business is growing. Many people my age are not so lucky.
Wayne Johnson, Brooklyn
Boomerexpat makes some excellent points about the real world crisis that most aging unemployed deal with every day. The American
Psychological Association demonstrates how out of touch they are with that world by "road testing" new counseling approaches after
more than ten years of this crisis. Those of us who have actually been doing this work know how devastating the layoffs are to
individuals and families. Is it a news bulletin to the APA that compassion is essential or that the world of the job search has
changed?
Although the recession has hit men and women alike, it is males who have overwhelmingly faced the brunt of this economic
disaster. This not only means stress to the individual, but to his family and invariably creates an identity crisis of major
proportions since men so closely identify themselves with their ability to secure and perform meaningful work.
webdiva, Chicago
Yeah, doing that at 49 isn't doing it at 59. You turn 60 and see how many employers want to be responsible for your pension
benefits. At 59, I have absolutely NO money for grad school or any other remake (and I already have an advanced degree, thanks;
my profession is simply imploding because of the Internet, that's all, despite all my efforts to keep up with technology) and,
thanks to the recession, I also have no credit rating or assets that would make anyone want to loan me money for grad school.
Surviving a week at a time doesn't allow you to go back to school. And those retail jobs are vanishing, too, as are many other
minimum-wage jobs -- I did those until several of them vanished on me, in succession (I wasn't the only one laid off in each case,
and no, I don't think anyone's going to teach me to change oil, either).
There will never be retirement for me. I continue to do whatever I can, but it may never be enough because I can only dodge
my age for so long. And I don't expect there will be any bloody cruises in my future, either.
Tbird57, Phoenix, AZ
I am 56 and the oldest staff person in my nonprofit organization which employs 30 people. Every day I see the effects of valuing
youth over experience; for example: younger people don't think it's fun to work with you since you're so old; I must dumb down
my expectations regarding performance related to the most simple things like basic grammar, spelling, punctuation and accuracy;
my boss is 8 years younger than me and plots to make me dissatisfied in my position so I will just quit and they can hire a younger
person who is more homogeneous; my experience is demeaned by a 30 year old as no longer relevant...and the list goes on. I'm working
on finding something I can do from home remotely so age won't be such an obvious factor but the clock is ticking and I feel the
writing is on the wall.
LeoK, San Dimas, CA
I believe what you've described is a huge elephant in the room in these discussions: It's awkward for younger supervisors
with older workers under them, and the pro-active solution is to simply not hire any older workers.
In many various ways we know more than they do (if only about life in general) and that generates some discomfort if not outright
resentment. I've seen this play out even when the older worker is trying not to be a know-it-all.
Kerry Pechter, Emmaus, PA
Boomers think we invented music, sex, and everything else that we encountered as we got older. Now we're experiencing age discrimination
and think that we invented that too. We didn't. Willie Loman was shocked when they let him go. "Old and in the way" isn't a new
expression. There was never a golden age where people at the top of the wage scale and coasting toward retirement weren't either
nudged or shoved out the door. The moment someone else is willing and able to do your job for less (and more compliantly), your
employer is thinking of ways to replace you. "Up and out" isn't a new expression either. Reinventing oneself is mandatory, not
optional. The good news today: On the Internet, no one knows you're a geezer.
greenie, Vermont
True- although if someone were determined to find your age there are so many places on the net where your age and date of birth
are listed. And then there's your Linked In Photo- and if you do Facebook those photos of your grandkids might tip them off!
webdiva, Chicago
I've been reinventing myself and repositioning my skills every 5 or 10 years for most of my life ... and it doesn't always
work. Especially at a live interview. Perhaps the question should be: at what point do comments like 'keep trying and stay positive'
or 'give up looking and see how little you can get by on' become trite, useless and really irritating? Because both kinds
of advice sound really annoying and pointless to me. I will keep doing what I must because I have no choice if I want to
survive -- but meanwhile, I want our leaders to tell me why I've worked hard all my life only to end up still working hard with
not much to show for it, and why those bozos who caused the recession that devalued most of what I had (it's still a recession
where I live) won't be paying for it for the rest of *their* lives.
BTW, saying that boomers didn't invent obsolescence is also useless. The point is: we have an uncomfortably large group of
unemployed people over age 50 who have few prospects but a lot of experience -- what are we, as a nation, going to do about putting
them to work??? They have skills, experience and institutional memory; to let them rot unemployed is a huge waste of economic
resources exactly when we need to be more competitive as an economic power.
Competitiveness comes from more than just laying off more people and pushing those who remain harder, until they quit. Haven't
idiot CEOs figure this out yet???
Chris Kox, San Francisco
On the internet you are still unemployed.
Ohio Doc, Ohio
A masters, a doctorate and three-and-a-half decades of a stellar career in direct service, teaching and executive positions
within the behavioral healthcare industry, and here I am in my 60s, a few short-term jobs over the past six years, unemployed
continuously for almost a year now and finding myself forced into "semi-retirement."
After submitting countless applications into HR "black holes" with rarely a response, networking with thousands of others and
carefully grooming my resume and social media presence, it's beginning to feel like I have been permanently banished from
the world of full-time employment.
I could blame downsizing, budget cuts, wishful thinking that psychiatric drugs can solve all human problems, preference for
cheaper, lesser-trained hires and growing dominance of unions in many types of healthcare jobs. But the main reason folks my age
are un- and under-employed is the one that no one wants to talk about: Ageism. It's hard to prove on a case-by-case basis, but
look at trends in suicide rates over the past decade: They're rising fastest for people 45 and older, especially for white males.
I would never support suicide as a solution, but my heart goes out to those whose pain of rejection is so great that they would
see death as the only answer.
Even in a society that devalues the wisdom that comes with experience, there must be a better way. It's time to name the elephant
in the room and to reintegrate those who are being prematurely discarded.
vulcanalex, Tennessee
Well if you are really good at what you do and there is a market for it, you need to consider going directly to the customers
and cut out the middle man. I bet that there is not that much demand and plenty of cheaper supply. Sort of like my case where
I believe I am way better than a recent graduate, but few if any believe this.
Fortunately good luck and good planing keeps me in food, shelter and other necessities.
Joseph, Chicago
I have been unemployed or "under-employed" since Aug 2009. It's been quite the challenge--to find new work and to keep going
forward. Yes, I took my skills and turned myself into a business but it was not by choice, nor, frankly, am I very good at being
a business.
I'm an excellent worker, but I never wanted to be an entrepreneur or "business owner". I don't understand all the business
requirements, I have no idea how to benefit from the tax codes (actually I don't think there are any benefits in the tax
code), I go months and months without insurance and everyday is filled with uncertainty--I never know if I'll have another "client",
another opportunity to put another dollar into my account.
I've been lucky thus far but I recognize that it could all crash down at any moment, and the once small safety net is completely
gone. Somehow though, I face each day with a positive attitude and a resignation that this too shall pass.
vulcanalex, Tennessee
Good for you perhaps you need a partner or a service to help you in the "business" portion. Taxes are just something to pay,
no real benefit. Keep moving and I hope for your success.
Hello World, Pasadena, CA
There is very little room at the top - for anyone - old timers or the young ones. So it is statistically inevitable that a
majority of the older traditional ladder climbers will be disappointed - they will continue to get cost of living raises - until
they are simply too unaffordable and unmanageable.
Almost 50 here, and been unemployed, partially employed for a couple of years already. But, hey, seem like no shortage of people
willing to hire me as consultant. They just do not want to want pay and/or give me enough time to do a good job. So famine or
feast is what to expect, no steady paycheck. For the younger folks, if you are going to end up 50 plus and cannot hustle up a
few paying gigs, or set up your own full-time racket of some sort, that is anchored in US of A (and cannot be outsourced), the
American dream will just be that.
LaBelleRebelle, Nice, France
Oh snap out of it. There's a solution to this problem: triple Social Security benefits and allow people to collect in full
from age 60 and partial benefits from age 55. What's that? No money you say? America is the richest country in human history.
The only reason boomers are condemned to spend their golden years in penury is because we've let the super-rich loot the Treasury.
Let's bring back the top tax rate in effect during Eisenhower years which was 90% and apply it to investment income which is where
the rich are scamming the middle class.
The Walton family is worth $115 billion, more than the bottom third of the country. I bet they could scrape by on a measly
billion. How about making Apple pay some taxes for a change?
How much money would that add to a retirement fund? Let's siphon off some money from other mega-corporations which would also
drain the funds they use to buy off our elected representatives. How much money is the NSA using to vacuum up every single communication
we have? Leaving aside the trillion-dollar wars, how much money does the military use to drone around the world making enemies
everywhere they touch?
Maybe there simply aren't enough jobs for people over 50 (or under 50 for that matter). Whether because of policy decisions,
technological changes or whatever, a lack of jobs should not condemn a generation to misery. We worked, we played by the rules
and we built this country. Now it's time for the country to give back.
TH Williams, Washington, DC
Apply to large firms, well-known names, but indicate a willingness to take an entry level position. They typically do not
practice age discrimination like smaller outfits. Once inside the doors just prove your worth to all the young people all
around you, every day. I'm also in my 50s but have used this approach since my early 40s.
Yes, it is humiliating spending a year or so as a grunt, though only one firm has kept me at entry-level for even that long.
Initially they do steal your knowledge but as time passes they realize all you have to offer and reward you. I also still work
at 2nd and 3rd jobs when I don't even need to. Those build my network.
TW, Greenwich, CT
For some people, perhaps many, there may come a time when they rightly understand that finding a traditional "job" is unattainable
and see that continuing along that road would be wasteful and maybe harmful. But, I would say that's adapting, giving in, but
not necessarily giving up.
Productive, creative people, I believe, get more out of life, interact with others more frequently, and contribute to communities'
well-being. Respectfully, I would say that we live our fate, sometimes we make things happen, other times stuff and people happen
to us. I accepted the fate of being 59 when my "job" was eliminated, and when my savings were almost gone, and our house had to
be sold, and when family health suffered and college tuitions had to be paid.
Sometimes that wasn't pretty, but I didn't ever see that as a kind of "prison sentence" or unalterable condition, since fate
is a constant, perhaps even after we die.
However unfair, the government wasn't going to help me; in fact they slaughtered my 401K with taxes. HR departments are professional
with in the context of what they know, same for consultants. they mean well. In the end, family support, physical and emotional
health, even prayer, help more.
Only the individual knows when it's time and if she/he can afford to really retire. I'm not ready or able, and that's okay.
Carol Murchie, New England
Hear! Hear! I launched my own freelance business in virtual assistance about a year ago, after the first anniversary of my
latest layoff. I'm 55, and struggling (just figuring out how to survive day to day when no money is coming in is exhausting, so
no, I probably don't look like a perky 20 something.) Friends, well-meaning though they are, are convinced that I should dumb
down my resume to get a burger-flipping job, as if I will suddenly have no more troubles at all. With a Master's Degree, good
grammar and vocabulary, critical thinking and problem solving and tons of computer skills (self taught in things like Quickbooks,
Wordpress, and able to pick up most technological tools), why should I trash it all to get a lousy job that won't even pay all
the basic bills like food, shelter, and heat? I have had some people exclaim that they don't understand how a person as bright
and adaptable as myself isn't snapped up by local employers ("You're so smart!" is the usual). That's just the problem, I
sigh, that and appearing to be older than dirt with my graying hair. Maybe when I make my first million at McDonald's, I can afford
to get it dyed nicely?
albert, nyc
I would argue the bar is even lower as I am 41 years old, unemployed and have been told dozens of times even though I have
all the qualifications to meet the job but they are looking for someone with "less experience." Translation Im too old and
they want someone younger and cheaper.
Personally I think this is a mistake as older employees generally dont require training or supervision, which definitely comes
with a cost, while young employees do, so on a net net basis older may even be cheaper.
J. New York, NY
In the good old days, friends were willing to put themselves literally on the line by picking up the phone and calling their
colleagues saying that you have to hire my talented friend and they did. Nowadays, friends tell friends to apply online, wishing
them all the best…
Angela, Sacramento CA
Perhaps it is time to think the unthinkable. Perhaps it is time to consider population control due to the lack of available
jobs for the growing number of people who need to support themselves. Not only have many jobs been outsourced to other countries
or insourced due to H1B Visas, they have also been eliminated due to technology. Think elevator or phone operators, gas station
attendants that used to pump gas and wash your windshields to name a few. In the future technology will do much of the work and
will only need a few human over-seers to make sure things go smoothly. What will the rest of us do? Our government does not seem
much inclined to create a greater welfare state at this time. So how do we support ourselves in the meantime? They want to raise
the retirement age but don't say how one is to earn a living if they have to spend the next 20 years (50-70) either unemployed
or under employed.
The 1%'ers will not be willing to give up their wealth in order to share it with the 99% without a great fight.
I understand that this does not help the plight of those over 50 who are currently looking for work, but the economic and jobs
landscape has already drastically changed and will most likely continue to change for many years to come. It may no longer be
enough to have as many children as one can comfortably afford, it may require a more extreme solution such as limiting the size
of one's family.
GY, New York, NY
Please note that it takes money to go back to school, people mention that option as if it was the easiest thing in the
world. Assessing the option of making a sizatble investment with an uncertain outcome, and shifting priorities is very much part
of what the older unemployed have to deal with.
Dennis Fox, Miami, FL
In these economic times age is definitely a factor, however, the job market has changed so drastically. Cooperations aren't
hiring because they're making more with fewer people, globalization means more people competing for the same positions and technology
has created opportunities which few are qualified for.
Headhunters attempt to help place their clients only to justify keeping themselves employed.
People with "lifetime positions" completely oblivious to the job situation around them.
Reality is that in times of full employment every age would be able to get good jobs and people could be picking and choosing
best offers.
LadyProf, Brooklyn
Interesting story, troubling presentation. I can't blame Alina Tugend and her editors for writing to and about the prosperous
older unemployed--people who can call themselves "semiretired" with a straight face--because that's who buys this newspaper. But
I have to protest the lede, opening with Shelley rather than Neal. The problem is presented as first hers and only secondarily
his.
Yet another command to wives that it's their job to carry the emotional load of their marriage. As always, the wife is probably
doing it wrong. Can anyone even imagine a story about a husband's struggle to give his wife the right psychological support to
cope with two years of unemployment that distresses her?
JC, NJ
Try having to carry the full financial load, the full emotional load, AND deal with a spouse's serious illness, all at the
same time, in your late fifties. So far I am fortunate in that I have been a "high performer" at my job for five years. But I
am rapidly approaching burnout and exhaustion, and we all know how long they'll keep me around once that sets in. Meanwhile, I
wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks about what happens if I lose our health insurance.
KL, California
My mom was in her mid-50s when she was laid off from a company where she had worked for 20 years. After searching unsuccessfully
for work for half a year, she went back to school to get her master's degree in a different field, from a good university with
an online degree program. She worked unpaid as an intern for six months at the end of her degree before getting a full time job.
It takes courage, but it is possible to do.
Yes but she might have had savings, a husband, or some support that many of us don't have. I too changed fields in my late
30s. I was unemployed for over a year, ran through half my savings (at least I had that), wasn't told about a retraining program
by the NYS Department of Labor until all my unemployment benefits were gone, and received no help from anyone when it came to
keeping body and soul together. I lucked into a temp job, worked like crazy to pass the course but was hardly swamped with offers.
I started at the bottom of the pay scale where you can barely make it. Thank heaven I didn't have anyone but myself to support.
But I will say this: being unemployed for over a year with little to no help left me very cynical. I was always a hard worker,
willing to learn, and willing to extend myself. That's what we told to do. And courage doesn't matter. All that matters is making
money to pay the bills because not paying is what will kill you.
Tom Shandy, Denver, CO
Professionals in their fifties and sixties may well attain a heightened level of earning power, but why is it suddenly an emergency
when they have to take a lower-paying job? Oh, I get it, they didn't save enough money when the times were good, and more to the
point, they structured their financial lives such that their fixed costs rose to the level of their earnings, which were once
much higher. This used be called behaving foolishly. I guess it's called fodder for sympathy now.
Anne, East Lansing, MI
Don't know how old you are, Tom, but maybe some of these folks made more modest incomes, did their best to provide for their
families and help finance their kids' college educations. They invested in their 401ks because no one was offering pensions any
more and then saw those investments halved during the 2008 recession.
Got laid off or reduced in force and had to dip into what savings they had just to survive while they were looking for new
jobs. Don't be so quick to judge.
spintreebob, Illinoios
Many factors. Employers want workers who will fit-in. The older worker is challenged with figuring out what a particular resume
reader or interviewer sees as fitting-in.
Economic climate is another factor. Many hiring managers had money in the budget to bring me in. They wanted to bring me in.
But some Asst VP above them put in a freeze due to fear of what anti-employment thing the government might do next. The Asst VP
won't be penalized for keeping the status quo. But making a change is risky to his career.
jzzy55, undefined
I'm 58 and if they ask, I now tell people I'm retired. I suppose that I am, but not voluntarily. The white collar
trade in which I thrived in for 25 years no longer exists. So I switched to education, but after obtaining two degrees and state
teacher certification it became clear that I am a poor fit for the public school culture. I like kids but not schools. I then
did tutoring and after school teaching -- better, but that's not a career. It's temp work.
I'm one of the lucky ones with a well-paid, benefitted spouse in a tenured faculty job. So I just gave up on working. I
do a bit of substitute teaching, a bit of craft selling and occasionally sell other items I develop.
It's often wonderful to be retired young, sometimes boring. It is what it is. Having a Plan B seemed like the way to go,
but it turned out I needed a Plan C (or even Plan D) as well.
Although I am one of the 30% of Americans with a college degree (from a prestigious school), at my age it is worthless.
boomerexpat, Bangkok, Thailand
It is refreshing to read an article on older unemployed workers in the NYT that is free of Friedman's nonsense about everyone
needing to reinvent themselves.
In the real world (on planet Earth not the one Friedman lives on) most people are not going to become successful entrepreneurs.
Few older people will successfully turn a passion into a livelihood unless that passion is to greet shoppers at Walmart. And,
to make matters worse, it doesn't make financial sense for most late-50-something year olds and older to go back and get an expensive
degree for a job few companies will hire them for anyway.
At the very least, it would be nice if people were able to show some compassion towards unemployed people who made the the
lifestyle mistake of aging. Alas, the norm now, especially in Silicon Valley where I toiled for years, is to blame us geezers.
Deus02, Toronto
Realistically, and especially for a male, once that individual hits 50 and loses his job unless he has very specific "in demand"
skills then all bets are off and that is regardless of the economic circumstances in place at the time of the job loss. Not only
is age discrimination alive and well but in applying for a new position and even if he is successful in getting an interview,
the odds are the person conducting the interview is more than likely going to be considerably younger than the interviewee.
There is, of course, an intimidation factor involved plus the potential employer assumes the job is a "stopgap" for the individual
who more than likely at the time of his termination was earning considerably more money. I am talking here, of course, an older
worker with a college education. Older workers that spent their working years in a manufacturing job are another matter altogether.
Their circumstances are generally even more dire. Nowadays, it is not much better for older female workers either.
The ironic part of all this is while employers continually whine about the lack of skilled workers to fill their specific
positions, they are generally downsizing primarily the older employee out of a job, many of whom I suspect have the necessary
skills to deal with this employment shortfall. When employers downsize, they generally make across the board "head count" cuts
with little thought given to the skills that will be lost in the process.
mrsfenwick, florida
Uh, no thanks. During the Cold War big business had a deal with workers. We provide you with job security and a middle class
life, including pension and health care, and you support capitalism. Once the Cold War ended, big business decided it no longer
needed to honor that bargain and it has gradually stopped holding up its end of the bargain. Time for American workers to stop
holding up their end. Since workers no longer get anything in return for supporting capitalism, there is no reason for them to
do so. Vote for candidates who want to raise business and inheritance taxes. Why not? You have nothing to lose.
Art Koff, Chicago, IL
Surveys at RetiedBrains.com show the best ways for older jib seekers to
find employment is look for temporary jobs and project assignments. These kinds of jobs are easier to find and age is less likely
to be a factor in hiring.
We have also found that when applying for a full time job if you ask to start on a temporary or project
basis it gives you a leg up on younger applicants who are unable to work without benefits.
Temporary jobs and project assignments often turn into full time jobs after you demonstrate your abilities and work ethic.
Betsy B, Dallas TX
Why are older workers "able" to work without benefits? I buy my own insurance through the Affordable Care Act's Pre-Existing
Condition insurance program, and at 61, I certainly don't get some other special stipend to make me able to get by more easily
without benefits. Is it because my mature philosophical outlook allows me to see benefits as an illusion?
Heck, most of my 401K dissolved during the recession/depression. Benefits haven't been part of my life for a very long time. I
work hard because I must and because I'm proud of my abilities.
I don't think that my employers care much about my work ethic in a way that will make them hire me full time.
Don't get me wrong. I've been working 3 or 4 part time jobs since I lost a 20-year job. All my employers tell me they appreciate
my effort. These jobs are not going full time.
Polly, Maryland
You wrote: Temporary jobs and project assignments often turn into full time jobs after you demonstrate your abilities and work
ethic.
I don't think that "often" means what you think it does.
hen3ry, New York
You are wrong. I worked several temp jobs in the 90s. Not one of them turned into a permanent position. In one of them however,
even though it was against company rules about temps, I was expected to train permanent employees in a procedure that I did. I
was rewarded with, you guessed it, nothing. In another position I was treated like a slave. The permanent employees never learned
my name, never did the prep work before experiments, and lied about me behind my back. I had the skills, the interest, and the
qualifications for those jobs and others. The reason for not hiring me, as I was told, was that I wasn't proficient in one or
another procedure and couldn't start the job on day one by doing that one particular procedure and was unhireable. No one "hits
the ground running" on day one at any job. It can take 3-6 months before one is productive. That's because a person has to learn
how the job works, the routines, etc.
The real reason employers don't want to hire anyone with experience is because they have to pay them. Anyone who has
more than a few years experience, or who is in their mid 30s or older is going to have problems finding a job unless they have
the right connections. And no one should be working without benefits. I've seen too many people come in sick, burn out, or become
so cynical from being taken advantage of that temping should be stopped, period.
CR, Seattle
After looking for work for more than two years my advice is:
1. Don't bother with recruiters; they are no more than craven "body snatchers" and have no interest in even communicating
with anyone over 50.
2. Use LinkedIn to research the approximate ages of the people in charge at potential employers. If the "HR" person is older
than 50 you might have a better chance.
3. Find out the location of the local food bank and don't be too proud to use it.
4. If you have life insurance check if your policy covers "self inflicted termination" (just in case one can not bear it any
longer).
Smoke11, Washington DC
This is why Obamacare is critical. I am in my late 50s. I have prexisting conditions. If lose company benefits, I will be in
serious trouble. I can support myself if I have healthcare.
Rocky, California
I was laid off at age 57 and never wanted full time employment after that. I would have been willing to work a couple of days
a week in a low stress job but nothing turned up. Fortunately, I am more familiar with financial matters than most Americans,
I saved a lot during my peak income years and I have not had to worry about where my next meal was coming from.
Most Americans are going to have to get used to a lower standard of living than they might have predicted for themselves when
they were younger. But someone has to pay the price for the bad political choices we the people made in recent years.
I have very low expectations from our government, especially at the state and Federal level, so I won't be especially surprised
or disappointed if government programs are cut back. We keep spending money we don't have being policeman to the world and subsidizing
foreign governments while millions of Americans are struggling just to get by. It sounds like France in the 1780's.
swp, Poughkeepsie, NY
I got out by the skin of my teeth and could afford to retire when I got laid off. I worry about setting aside enough money
so my children can retire one day. They aren't prepared and don't believe they will become outdated. It isn't something they learn
about in school and no one seems sure about they moving grey line between personal and social responsibility.
I don't know how anyone prepare for a poor economy, high taxes and unaffordable health care. When the basic family is struggling
for better wages, I don't expect seniors to be first. So many people older than me struggle with inept home care, social predators
and poor oversight.
J R, Poughkeepsie, NY
I was laid off at age 52 and took over 2 years to find another job.
My 2 insights:
1.Always live below your means. I have, and it allowed me to never panic while out of work.
2.I wish companies would see the other side of the coin when it comes to a "flexible" workforce: 3 years is forever in today's
business. It doesn't matter what the 10 year potential is, hire the person who can start up the fastest and get the most done
NOW.
Jim Mc, punta gorda fl
"Always live below your means."
This is the best piece of advice anyone can get.
My wife and I have always done that, so we were able to weather the storm when the stuff hit the fan a few years ago.
Tony, Silicon Valley
It's the old managers, HR, marketing, etc. who are making decisions about getting rid of their age group. Firms like Google,
GE, Goldman Sachs, etc. deliberately won't hire over 35 for entry-to-mid levels. Then, there are 35 year olds interviewing candidates
as old as their parents.
Besides age, there is acute competition -- age & skill appropriate candidates competing among themselves, and the younger "leapers"
from the level below and some older "down marketers" who just want a job.
All of this is under the aegis of the 50-62 old CEO, assisted by 45-55 year old head of HR (with 35-year old recruiters as
their proxies), and implemented by 45-55 middle managers directing 35-45 year old hiring managers.
Then there's a % of laid off older workers who were promoted above their skill & results level, and need to recognize their
luck ran out or the last mistake wasn't forgiven.
ACW, New Jersey
Ever seen 'Death of a Salesman'? There's a great scene between Willy Loman and the son of his old boss.
Patrick, Pittsburgh, PA
Hi,
It's NOT easy living with LITTLE money and without a decent means of employment! I've been without work, now, for a little
over one year. For a period of time, however, I just "relaxed" and acted as if I was already retired. I'm a 58 year old, single,
male. But, for the past many months, I've been hitting the internet in hopes of securing at least interviews aimed towards employment!
It's a chore...
I've been trained, via multiple degrees, to work in either accounting, nursing, or college teaching. I've searched thru various
employment web sites trying to find work! I've had some positive hits. I've only had a couple of interviews, though! I'm also
an honorably-discharged U.S. Army officer. When I'm cleaned up, I can still pass for my late 40's or early 50's. I DON'T know
what the "secrets" are, these days, in actually garnishing a good job. I'm NOT asking for huge salaries, either!
DON'T give up!!! Pray!!! Ask God for a "miracle"!
God-Bless all peoples searching for employment, I remain
Cordially yours,
P.J. Neary
Inspired, Sunnyvale, California
As a witness of a friend who obtains employment, I have discovered that he literally is glued to his computer almost the entire
day and it is as if he is playing an intense game of tennis, writing back and forth, answering questions on the phone, writing,
composing seeking. He is worn out.
He is hired by major companies and often misled about the exact nature of the work, the duration, the actual plans
for the position by corporate, and worst of all - when he has reported overtime - he gets nixed by the biggest of companies.
You have to understand NOW is an adversarial time - and the job environment is WAR.
Bending, flexing,conforming, and repeating all the assertions you used to get the attention of a hiring agent, and then you
must tolerate and get beaten down a bit to earn a decent wage. Don't expect a job - they don't exist anymore.
OSS Architect, San Franciso
The latest trend in Silicon Valley is the "web cam interview". Your resume looks good, and this is the follow-up. The interviewer
is pre-recorded. Your interview session is recorded.
Somebody watches the recording. It take less than five seconds to assess a persons age. Game over.
Brilliant. Age discrimination with absolutely zero finger prints.
Ken, Smith
"Age discrimination laws really can't be enforced unless the potential employer is foolish enough to let it slip that it's
a factor in their decision."
This isn't really true if the government agencies are motivated -- they can find "de facto" discrimination. They could, for
instance, send equally qualified resumes, with only differing ages, to high-flying tech and finance companies and see which candidates
get calls. I am pretty sure some of our marquee US companies would be unmasked as gross age-discriminators that should be at least
publicly shamed, if not prosecuted.
As things stand now, you could complete your M.S. in computer science at age 26 with $75k - $100k in student debt and find
yourself out on your butt after 10 or 15 years of grinding work hours with no pension and no health care (if the Republicans get
their way).
Is it any wonder that U.S. college students are not flocking to this STEM-major life?
If you suddenly find yourself back in the job market after age 50, you might need to dust off your résumé and spruce it up for
today's changing job market. Here are seven strategies older workers can use to get their résumé to the top of the stack, score an
interview, and-yes-land a new job:
Play down your age. Age often brings wisdom, but wisdom can seem awfully expensive to a hiring
manager. You don't have to include all of your achievements on your résumé. "You should consider not putting dates like graduation
dates on your résumé," says Tom Musbach, senior editor of Yahoo! HotJobs.
"You don't want to lie if asked, but on your résumé, you don't want to broadcast that you graduated in 1960." According to an
October
survey by Gray Hair Management, a career coaching and networking firm, 65 percent of senior-level executives age 40 or older
say they've adjusted their résumé to downplay their age. Older workers need to appear up-to-date with the modern workforce. Be
sure to list the work experiences most relevant to the description of the
job you're applying for so that your résumé will turn up in job bank searches.
Use examples. Don't just say you have good communications skills: Give concrete examples of how your abilities
boosted a former employer's bottom line. "If you're applying for a financial position, you can find out what system of accounting
the company uses and tell them about your experiences using [that system] at your last three jobs," says Steven Greenberg, CEO
and founder of Jobs4Point0.com, a job-search website for those 40 and older.
It helps if you can also describe how much money your skills made or saved the company. You might be expected to show as well
as tell. "In a sales or marketing-related position, your follow-up has to be excellent because that's part of the job and you're
showing me what kind of salesperson you are," Greenberg says. That goes for other industries too.
Emphasize your flexibility. A common misconception is that older workers are unfamiliar with new technologies
and are resistant to change. "You have to demonstrate your flexibility and adaptability and comfort with technology," says Mark
Anderson, president of ExecuNet, a networking firm for senior-level executives.
So play up any computer experience you have: Include a link on your résumé to a website you designed, or describe a program you
implemented that improved work flow.
Offer new info. Most people know that following up is the best way to make sure your résumé gets a reading.
But don't pick up the phone without a plan. Offer a new piece of information about yourself that's not included in your résumé
or
cover letter that applies to the job. "You want to call out something to your experience each time you follow up," says Greenberg.
"You're creating more data points for the employer to have about you and make a decision about you."
Be a problemsolver. Companies are looking for employees who can improve their bottom line.
"Finding out what problems a company may have and then positioning yourself as a solution to that problem is a really important
way to set yourself apart from a person who comes to the interview and just answers questions," Anderson says. "You have to demonstrate
what you can do that is better than what others can do."
Apply to companies that aren't hiring. Many positions are never publicly posted. "With so many people seemingly
out of work, employers don't want to be bombarded with a lot of unqualified candidates that they have to weed through to find
the jewels," says Renee Ward, founder and publisher of Seniors4Hire.org.
"The recruiter will network and/or search résumé databases to select candidates." Sometimes it's better to look for jobs that
aren't posted by sending your résumé to companies that don't haveopen positions listed on their websites. Also, let your
network of friends and colleagues know you're looking for a new job. "The way you are going to find your next opportunity is through
a network of people who know what you can do," says Anderson.
Focus onfields that welcome older workers. After age 50, you probably don't want a strenuous
job that requires standing or repetitive motion all day. There are plenty of industries that welcome older workers, such as
healthcare, higher education, and government positions-all industries that are also proving to be relatively recession resistant.
Check out the 20
fastest-growing jobs for aging boomers.
The highest concentration of IT professionals in the U.S. is -- you guessed it -- in Silicon Valley. But naming the No. 2 spot
isn't as easy, and the answer might surprise you.
The runner-up isn't a well-known tech center like Boston or Seattle/Redmond; it's the Washington metro area.
"It kind of belies some of the perceptions of where the hiring is, where people work in this field," said
John Challenger,
president of Chicago-based outsourcing firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. "[Many typically] think that most people in IT work in Silicon Valley, and they might add in
Washington state, Seattle and maybe Austin," he said.
Data for 2006 from the
U.S. Census
Bureau's annual American
Community Survey (ACS), released just last month, reveal what could be called a metropolitan area's "TQ" (technology quotient)
-- how "techie" a region's overall workforce is, based on the number of self-reported computer professionals. And some of the results
turn stereotypes upside down. (See our interactive national
map, or
query the database for a specific metro area.)
Roughly 6% of the D.C. metro area workforce is made up of "computer specialists," compared with 8.3% in Silicon Valley.
The third-highest concentration of IT workers is in Raleigh/Cary, N.C., at 5.3% of the workforce, followed closely by Boulder,
Colo., and Huntsville, Ala., each at 5.2%.
The remainder of the top 10 technology worker areas is rounded out, in order, by Bloomington/Normal, Ill.; Trenton-Ewing, N.J.;
Austin-Round Rock, Texas; Manchester-Nashua, N.H.; and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.
Moving for a job, especially when you're just starting out, can be the springboard that launches your career. But weigh your
options carefully. Where you move is just as important for your happiness as the job you move for, many career managers and recruitment
professionals say.
It's well known that technology is a young man's game. Still, it is surprising to see just how young (and how male).
PayScale, a company based in Seattle, has determined that the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies in
the technology industry, along with information on gender and years of experience.
Just six of the 32 companies it looked at had a median age greater than 35 years old. Eight of the companies, the study said,
had median employee age of 30 or younger. Women were generally less than 30 percent of the work force, and in fields like semiconductors,
represented much less than that.
While the results may affirm a widely held hunch, they are nonetheless striking: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the overall median age of American workers is 42.3 years old. The company with the oldest workers on the PayScale list, Hewlett –
Packard, came in at 41 years.
The other five companies with older workers, in descending order of median age, were I.B.M. Global Services (38 years old), Oracle
(38), Nokia (36), Dell (37) and Sony (36).
The seven companies with the youngest workers, ranked from youngest to highest in median age, were Epic Games (26); Facebook
(28); Zynga (28); Google (29); and AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com (all 30). According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, only shoe stores and restaurants have workers with a median age less than 30.
Median age means that an equal number of workers are above and below the figure. In large populations, the number is considered
representative. PayScale, which surveys many industries, says it covers 3 percent of the American work force, an amount that could
yield meaningful results. In this survey, some 21,700 company employees submitted information.
Not surprisingly, the companies with older workers tend to be older companies, because some people still stay with one employer
for many years, and over time a company may accumulate more of these people. Cisco Systems has a median worker age of 35, and both
Samsung and Microsoft come in at 34. These companies also tend to have workers with a lot more experience.
Younger companies tend to have workers with less time at the firm, which is partly an effect of being new and hiring intensively
in recent years. Facebook's median worker has been with the company just 1.1 years, while Intel, I.B.M., Oracle and others
come in around six years.
Other factors are also in play, however. "The firms that are growing or innovating around new areas tend to have younger workers,"
said Katie Bardaro, the lead economist at PayScale. "Older companies that aren't changing with the times get older workers."
One reason for this, she said, was a function of skills. "Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL," she said. C# is
a software language, while SQL is a database technology. She added, "Gen Y knows Python, social media, and Hadoop," which are newer
versions of those things.
Amazon.com, notably, has a median stay with the company of just one year, a figure Ms. Bardaro ascribed to the intense pace
of work there. (The study did not include workers in Amazon's warehouses, where skills and turnover are different.) "We're based
in Seattle, and know a lot of people at Amazon," she said. "The consensus is that you are run through a gamut there, make money,
burn out and leave."
The survey was derived from information PayScale gets from individuals who come to PayScale seeking employment information, and
volunteer their data to share information from others. PayScale, which works with LinkedIn, sells its data to human resources departments.
Ms. Bardaro said her company had also backed up the information with third-party data, to confirm the numbers.
H1-B's have killed your occupation. That being said-- It won't help you moving and then searching for a job. You need to
have good, solid job opportunities set up in advance before you even consider moving -- that's a majorly huge risk moving before
you have a job.
You can post your resume around on the internet--such as on Monster.com--or read all of the cities you mentioned
classifieds each and every day until something matches your experience level and expertise.
Have you thought about going back to school? They offer a lot of extra help for students.
... ... ...
CA is questionable - a lot of the IT jobs there went away when the Silicon Valley market crashed. It's also crazy
expensive to live there both in terms of housing and taxes.
In TX, the hot area right now seems to be Houston. There's also no state income tax there still (afaik.)
FL definitely has no state income tax still...Tampa seems to be the hot spot for jobs at the moment.
GA does have a state income tax. Not surprisingly, Atlanta is the heavy employer.
One place you might've overlooked is NC - the Research Triangle area between Raleigh and Durham is usually pretty active
in IT jobs.
... ... ...
Dice is where most IT types go to look for work. Just type in your job name/title, or skill set & see what states or cities have
the most jobs you are looking for. Having said that, finding a job in this recession is very, very tough. I think your best shot
for finding work, would be Texas or the DC area.
California is going thru severe budgetary problems & many job cuts. I just don't see many jobs there.
For every job advertised, there are dozens of applicants. Good luck, you will need it.
"I've been in IT since the mid-1980s, mainly working for financial institutions. After 16 years at a company, as a programmer
(Java, C#, PL/SQL, some Unix scripting) and technical lead, my job was outsourced.
That was in 2009 when the job market was basically dead. After many false starts, here I am 3 years later wondering what
to do.
I'm sure if I were 40 I'd be working already but over 60 you might as well be dead. SO, I'm wondering about A+.
Does anyone think that this will make me more employable? Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?"
Rather than applying for a full-time position, have you considered forming your own independent consulting business? You would
have to leverage your contacts in the industry, but there is a massive difference in the culture between hiring a 60-year-old
technical lead and hiring a 60-year-old's consulting business.
Vendor management contacts just won't care, in my opinion, if you're professional and can get results.
The problem you face is one that I faced long ago in a completely different vein. I was unemployable, because although I had developed
programming skills, they were self-taught by reading books and websites rather than school. Without significant experience, I
was unemployable as all the jobs had requirements like Bachelor's requirements.
So I did what seemed to be the only thing
left -- started my own company! I chatted it up with anybody I could find who ran a business and needed something done,
found some people willing to pay for a solution, and worked long hours for a while until my revenue stream was sufficient to live
on. Now 15 years later, I have ownership of a valuable company that has grown successfully every single year since starting,
employees working a job they like with decent pay and a work environment set up the way I like it. Sure, it has its stresses,
but they are stresses I choose to assume or ignore, and I like the control that offers me.
It's not for everyone, but I will probably never have a "job" ever again.
Just so you know, asking an older person for their retirement plans in an interview or at any point during the hiring process
can open you up to a very costly age discrimination lawsuit.
Not hiring people over 40 because you think they'll ask for too much money will do the same.
If you're simply reporting that people that age tend to ask for too much money that's one thing, but if you're proactively
screening out older applicants because you think they might ask for too much money, that's against the law.
Having taken the A+, Network+ and Security+ as a requirement for my current job, I can tell you that they're not worth a damn
thing. The tests are simple and they just check basic knowledge that you probably already have as a programmer.
You could always go the route a lot of fresh grads who are also not working do: start writing apps.
Games are fun, easy and profitable enough if done well.
Plus there's a slew of tools to make them quickly producible. Lately I've been playing with the AppGameKit (AGK) from the Game
Creators, and I like it. They have a free version that you could try out and see if it's something you'd be interested in.
Get into contracting. If you've not done it before...look around and get with a contracting company....preferrably one that
does Federal Govt Contracting.
Can you survive a clearance check?
If so, you should have no problem getting on with a company doing DoD contracting....they OFTEN look for years of experience.
If you're good, have a decent resume, they will submit you in....they want you to get the jobs so they can get $$ off you.
The market is often dying to hire people with lots of resume experience.
You definitely have a leg up on younger programmers.
If you spent that much time in financial institutions, the think about Urbana, Maryland. Banner Life has a data center there,
as well as Fannie Mae, and the Social Security Administration is moving a data center there.
It's pretty good bucks, but far enough outside the DC metro area to be at least reasonable. Just an idea.
Try to get some work on the several freelance boards over the internet, start with small jobs and build a reputation. Try to
master one specific subject, don't go jack of all trades.
IT skills is a dime a dozen. You need to sell yourself in IT in your particular skillset. Health Care, Manufacturing, Legal,
Finance, Government... People don't want experienced IT workers. They want IT workers with experience with their business.
by (36278) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:50PM (#41921973)
I have to ask what your expectations are and be realistic.
As an employer actively recruiting IT staff at the moment, rare in the current job market I know, and I have a choice between
a recent uni-graduate and someone with 15 yrs experience who I can hire for almost the same wages because so many skilled IT staff
have been laid off and need to pay their mortgage. For me the choice is obvious, I don't care about the age factor.
However I also interview many many people who think they deserve to get the same remuneration they got from their high-flying
finance job and wonder why they are still jobless after two years.
If you get your A+ then you will work at Best Buy for the geek Squad... And from What I have seen there, walmart greeter
is a better job.
With your experience why in the world would you even look at the gutter that is the world of A+? with your background in programming
there is a lot of freelance stuff you could do. hell start trolling the freelancing boards and pick up jobs you can do from home.
Although a lot of those are incredibly low pay. I know of several flash designers with 15 years experience that refuse to look
at the freelancer boards...
"wanted an entire website designed in flash with a SQL backend and capable of scalability. Expectedt o take 3-6 months. Willing
to pay $250.00 total for the project."
That kind of crap is rampant on the freelancing sites.
Or find a small business that needs a senior programmer. You know more than the 20 somethings, so use your age and experience
as a positive!
A 62-year old friend of mine took an iOS certification course at the University of Washington (Seattle) and promptly found
a full-time position at one of the Big Four professional services firms, developing mobile applications for their clients. Prior
to this job, he was a self-employed specialty developer, until his wife fell ill and he needed to procure full-time employment.
So hope springs eternal - it's at least possible to get a job after being Of A Certain Age, if you have the right skills for
the right field.
Make sure your skills are up-to-date, and structure your resume in such a way as to not reveal how old you really are. For
example, no dates on your education and/or military service, leave off early jobs, etc. You might want to dye your hair if you're
gray, although I wouldn't go that far.
It's illegal to not hire you due to your age, but of course it's hard to win an age discrimination suit. So don't let it go
there.
Other people have mentioned govt. contracting. Some contracting firms like to hire older techies because they fit in well with
the aging population of government workers.
The problem you're going to experience is that; unless the headhunter knows you're brilliant with tons of experience and willing
to do the job for the same pay as some wet-behind-the-ears kid who'll never cut the mustard, when you get to HR, the clueless
twit who works there will look at you and show you the door because you're 60.
Start making Android or iPhone apps. Make a name for yourself by consulting; get yourself going with a IT temp shop. Having
A+ is like having a driver's license, it's not a path to anything.
If you were with the financial industry and really understand the ins and outs of that, you should be able to get a job in
the investment banking sector, as HFT is always looking for guys who are good, and don't make mistakes -- because as we've seen,
mistakes can cost millions or even billions in HFT -- so they want really good people, not cheap people who will ultimately cost
them even more.
Have you looked into consulting? Presumably, you have a rather large amount of industry experience and breadth of knowledge.
Being a PM, working with companies on IT initiatives, that kind of thing?
After I 'graduated' from my last programming job, I've been in consulting and not writing code. I've actually found it quite
rewarding, and companies are looking for people with "big picture" kinds of skillsets and not just people who can work on the
technical nuts and bolts.
All of those soft-skills you've likely picked up, like being able to work in meetings, work to build consensus, scheduling
and planning, estimating, overseeing.. these are all skillsets people will still be willing to pay for.
There is life after code, and I definitely know people in their 50's and 60's who are still consultants and in demand.
For some tasks, a little age and perspective is actually what is most needed -- it's like the old joke about the young bull
wanting to run down and fuck one of the cows, and the old bull wanting to walk down and fuck them all. The stuff you've already
done can be really valuable in helping organizations do new things. Sometimes, just having been there and done that gives you
the perspective to see similarities in what's going on and understand where to go from there.
But organizations probably aren't looking to hire you as a coder, but as someone who works at a slightly higher level. (And
I'm not saying give up on your tech skills, just recognize the your experience might be more valuable than your ability to write
code. If you can still wow the young punks with some coding wizardry, all the better.)
But when I interview I look for a few things: technical merit, reliable, personality, enthusiasm.
It doesn't even cross my mind that an older candidate wouldn't be qualified. Often, I expect them to have a mountain of experience
that could get absorbed into the company. What I've run into though is the older folks often don't have that "nerd enthusiasm",
haven't kept their skills current, or are just stuffy with no sense of humor. Maybe it's a generational thing? But a young person
with the same ailments wouldn't have a shot here either.
Having just gone through a job change and being... older... I'd say this is perhaps the best advice so far.
Be enthusiastic about the work you will be doing. Be up to date, or close to it, on the skills that the work will require.
Don't just talk about what you've done but talk about what you will do when you are hired.
And remember that a smile takes years off of your face.
A+ means absolutely nothing. I took my A+ certification out of high school, got something like 99.9% on it with ever actually
studying. The only real suggestion I have is to get it so you can take the second level certification test, MSCE, Linux+ etc....
Just load up with papers and then if nothing else you'll get hired to look good for the company. All of those certifications with
the exception of CCNA, CCNP, CCIE and MSCE are all just laughable papers. They basically mean you found the power button and plugged
the computer in. If your going to focus your time into a real certification CCNA is a good one which is a HARD path or your MSCE.
Of course any of the computer networking certifications will at least help.
There are a few things that may work in your favor though.
- Certifications. Cross A+ off that list, and give a look at brainbench and some others. Most certs are not worth anything,
but with your experience, you should be able to pull off quite a few of them at 'Master' level, which will demonstrate skills
empirically. If those skills are in line with your experience, they will act as a "force multiplier" for that experience.
- Experience. Did I mention this already? If you have kept current, this goes a looooooooong ways.
- Stability. 16 years is a long time at one company, especially by the standards of the last decade or so. I started my IT
career in the mid 90s and since then I have only had two jobs for longer than a year. It's similar for many people in the field.
No hiring manager likes it, but they live with it.
- Age discrimination...? They aren't even allowed to *ask* you how old you are, so don't give them many hints. If the experience/history
on your resume goes back to the 1970s, scrub out the oldest stuff. Drop the years off your education, if you have it listed. Impress
them with what you know to get you the interview before you drop any hints that may bias them.
The toughest thing you have going against you is that every potential employer is going to be worried that they will spend
time training you and bringing you up to speed on their systems and procedures just in time for you to retire when you were about
to start really making (instead of costing) them money. It's not your age itself that is the problem, it's the fact that you will
probably be retiring sooner than they would like. This means a lot of time and resources will be invested in you that they won't
recoup when it comes to training "the next generation" of replacements and so on.
You can mitigate a lot of that by sticking to your niche, even if that means moving where the work is. It'll be a lot easier
for you to stick to the financial industry, where experience not directly skill related makes you more valuable. Of course you
need to double-down on your pre-interview research too. Make sure that you tailor every resume you send out to the specific employer
you are going to send it to, highlight the skills and experience that relate directly to their business.
Huge important place to be for the next ten years. If you can do any sort of database at all you can get a great job at Orbitz
or any other type of shop that uses Hadoop.
Go to machine learning meetups in your area, super smart people are in the data science community and they will help you get
a job. Our Chicago Machine Learning group is super good for this!
Are you willing to move somewhere new? If not, consulting is the best route to go.
Do you have your heart set on continuing to program? You mention PL/SQL - PostgreSQL experts are in great demand now and are
replacing oracle jobs all over the place. Few people have a LOT of experience, so being able to just claim that you've installed
it locally (hint: install it locally on a unix server), and being able to do PL/SQL, you have a good chance of getting SOMETHING
in that field.
Do you plan on working more of a "corporate" job - aka: Big company to move up in? In that sense, i can see why your age would
be a problem. Instead, take up android development. If you can get ANYTHING published, you will be in extremely high demand all
over the country for java based android developers. You would also have a much higher chance of being able to telecommute or work
from home full time. Either way, having long time java skills will still give you a shoe in to many android shops.
Final recommendation - if you want to continue writing code and can't find anything, I would recommend taking up javascript
and HTML. You can always work from home, PHP/Python/Ruby are pretty easy to learn, BUT you can keep using c# and java as well.
There are a LOT of web jobs available all over.
As for a+ / network+... both are pretty useless in my opinion. Security+ i've seen a few people give a nod of acknowledgement, but that's
pretty much it.
As for WHERE to get jobs: www.dice.com and www.craigslist.com are my two recommendations for finding something. Otherwise register
yourself with a tech recruiter like teksystems or accenture. They make money by finding you jobs, AND they will sometimes bypass
the interview portion with the official company they are trying to place you in, or they might only do phone interviews - that
should help keep your age a little more hush hush while going through the interview portion.
I'm not at all suggesting that the OP's contention that age may be working against him isn't true. However, I have often found
that when people over 50 in IT "can't get hired" that what they are conveniently leaving out is the following -- they live in
some small town of 50,000 or fewer people and there simply aren't any more jobs available in that small town like what they used
to do. They aren't willing to move because they have paid off a house or are close to paying it off, have kids in school and don'
If you haven't noticed, programming has changed since the '90s. It's now pretty well a blue-collar job -- under three levels
of management. Even in small companies, it's heavily controlled, especially where version control comes into play.
It's the perfect job for any 20-something.
By the time 30 roles around, you'd better be the one determining what gets programmed. Whether or not you also do the programming
is irrelevant.
By 60, your value comes as proper experience. You shouldn't be looking for a programming job. You should be looking to manage
a programming company, consult for a programming company, assess a programming company, or start your own programming company.
Otherwise, you're a) not bringing any more skill than a 20-something and b) wasting a lot of the skill that you certainly have.
I'm 35, have my own software company that's varied in size between 1 and 5 programmers -- including myself. And that's just
the way I love it.
At least in the California job market, there is a dearth of qualified applicants. I've been on both sides of the hiring equation
for years. The idea that you can't get a job, with over a decade of PL/SQL, Java and other programming, is just laughable, and
tells me we must be missing something, here.
Are you missing all your teeth and refuse to get dentures? Are you only looking for jobs in a 10 mile radius of your house?
Are you demanding an astronomical salary? Do you have obvious medical problems that make you incredibly unreliable from day-to-day?
Are you just a mediocre programmer?
Your age certainly isn't preventing you from landing a new job. That said, it's certainly possible whatever those issues are,
they could be age-related or age-compounded.
Or it could just be an inefficient job market with too much friction in matching seekers with employers.
Heck, just give the OP your company's contact info, and let him apply. That might not be a good general solution, but it could
help fix this one particular situation.
I suggest that you think about how you could market yourself. What are your top three features that would make you particularly
attractive to an employer? Are there specific application domains where your experience would make you more valuable than less
chronologically advanced people? Make sure that you have taken all of the modern steps to create an online presence, e.g., LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, for many people who have been out of work for a few years, and especially for older people, it's hard to build
a strong case for yourself over someone who is willing to work > 60 hours/week and who is more current in terms of technical skills
and job history.
It's much easier to find a tech job with a government agency (local, state, or federal) than it is to find a job in industry.
Government jobs are publicly posted, and governments are especially sensitive to various laws regarding equal employment opportunity;
there's also a higher percentage of older employees in governments than you will find in most companies. There's something positive
to be said for a steady 40-hour/week job. While I don't think much of certifications, some government job postings include them,
in which case it would be worth pursuing that certification for a specific position.
If you enjoy teaching, you should consider finding a way to teach at the college level. Community colleges and university extension
programs often need instructors, and there are numerous for-profit institutions that don't require advanced degrees of their faculty.
While teaching itself can be personally rewarding (not so much financially, though), many of your students will be working for
companies that might be willing to hire you as a contractor or perhaps even as an instructor for the company's internal education
programs.
In summary, be realistic about what you can bring to the party, recognize that many companies simply find legal ways not to
hire people over 40, and focus on those opportunities where you are on a relatively even playing field in seeking a job. Good
luck.
I know of at least two companies who have gone looking for people who are either retired or semi-retired for full-time positions.
The companies aren't rich, and so can only pay normal wages, and so get turned down a lot and/or have terrible turnover as people
in mid-career go looking for more money elsewhere.
They find that older engineers more reliable, and that their depth of experience makes them as effective as more junior people,
even where the juniors try to work too many hours. Sometimes because the juniors are working too many hours (:-))
It's hard to find semi-retired people, though. The people I know about were found by the employer via word of mouth, but I
suspect one can ask for 'enough experience that age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm' in an ad without actually getting
arrested...
This clearly delineates the dichotomy that aging developers reach at some point. (I'm not even close to 50 yet, let alone 60,
but I'm not 25 any more either...)
When you're young, and not really at the top of your game, you can still fill a role. Some kinds of testing, lab rat, meeting
coordinator, etc. (I'm kind of saying this tongue-in-cheek, but the bottom line is that when you're young and cheap, and perhaps
a bit underpowered, well we always need someone to fill the snack room and keep the copier
Ignore the kiddies and libertarian suckers' comments (I mean, if they were making that much, they wouldn't be wasting
time posting here during the work day).
The real question is how long you have on your resume of you being out of work. The longer you're out, the less HR assholes
want to talk to you. Back around '04 or '05, when I was *very* long "between positions", I applied for one that looked like it
was written for me. Never heard anything, so I got annoyed enough to call the recruiter. She told me I "wasn't fresh".
That *really* pissed me off, so I asked her that if she took a year off to have a kid, would she never be employable again,
because *she* "wasn't fresh"? That took her back. She said she'd never thought of it that way, and actually put me in. Didn't
get it, presumably because her opposite number thought the same way.
I also wrote a couple of articles I managed to get published in a mag. More on the resume. Did some F/OSS software, set it
up as a project on sourceforge, and *that* went on the resume... and it also gave prospective employers examples of what I could
do.
Anyway, one thing I did was to use some hair dye. Another thing was that a friend looked me up, told me he was starting a co,
and had me do his co. website. I never got paid for that... but with his ok, the instant I made that website live, I had, on my
resume, that I was "working" and the website as a bullet point. He was willing to answer calls that yes, I was working for
him. Not that many months later, I finally started working again. Warning: you might have to work outside where you live,
at least for a while (till you find something local), just so
a) you can pay the bills, and
b) have another point on the "yes, he's working now" check box.
A+ is useless. My son got it six or eight years ago, and no one would hire him, anyway. He went back for his 4-yr.
Q: I'm aged 61. I've been a computer programmer (BIG computers) for many years.?
What causes me to be flummoxed is
the new technology. I would enjoy starting my own wedsite/url, but I'm lost. Is there anywhere on the Internet that offers a step-by-step
walk through for doing this?
A: Join the club! I am 60+ too, and I worked on mainframes as well! You must have some serious experience in programming,
so learning a new language should not be a problem.
I would assume that you have at least some knowledge of C. (Cobol
is a bit out of date!) This will give you a good start for Php and mySQL.
Don't bother with free web hosts: you'll be more frustrated than happy.
By a domain, rent a LAMP server (less than 100$/year: you can afford that, even on your pension).
Then, you have two options:
You use a WYSIWYG software, like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, and design a
small website (Warning: this will inevitably lead to a dead end when you will want to do something clever)
You use a classic Notepad++ (free download) to write your codes: the world is your oyster!
You need two serious helpers: www.w3schools.com and www.php.net.
Start with w3s: a lot of examples there, and good guidance. Go for "learning HTML" first. Experiment.
Add javascript. Experiment. Soon, you will be ready for more! Good luck and remember: a lot of us here are here to help.
First of all, I couldn't decide the right words for title after reading
How old is "too old"? question.
I still can't decide with old, middle-aged, expert or professional.
As you know, there are a lot of developers over 35-40 years
old in StackExchange. They are helping to beginners and having less experience people. They are so valuable users. And mostly, their
some answers are awesome because of good analyzing and adding their experience to answers.
When I see this kind of users, they all started programming with kind of Lisp, Pascal, Cobol or Basic type programming language.
These are the first modern programming languages. And I think these people are so lucky learning programming with them first because
of they are close to machine language. Maybe they learn the basics of programming better. Now it looks they are working easily with
object oriented programming.
I'm graduated from computer engineering a year ago. First year, we superficially learned C programming language. Second year,
there are C# and Java course. But when I try to learn those languages in college, I always feel like I missed something. Learning
languages, structures, libraries.. if fine but teachers never teach us "How the codes working in machine?".
They teach us the programming language which is popular in software market. So kind of they prepare us for companies. They
think if we learn assembly or fortran, we can't easily find a job according to Java or C#. Unfortunately, at these days, this is
kind of true.
Could be better learning first Assembly, Fortran, Cobol instead of Java and C#? Are we unlucky?
Michael Borgwardt Oct 29 '11 at 23:43
Dude, C is much, much closer to machine language than Lisp, Pascal, Cobol or Basic. Lisp is about as far from machine language
as it's possible to be (well, except for Lisp machines, but those didn't work out so well).
Grab a copy of The Art of Computer Programming. It's a favorite collection of books to sit on the bookshelf so people can feel
like they're smart. If you actually open and read them in sections, however, it's the Rabbit Hole. First off, this work was started
over 40 years ago, so you'll see some old stuff that has passed in time (MIX processor language has 6-bit bytes).
Aside from that, the nature of the book is that it's comprehensive in language, math, understanding, and approach. If you want
to look at things at a lower level and understand how your modern languages relate to the processor, I feel like this is one of
the best ways beyond what you get out of your degree program.
Now, for the order of learning things, I think that any functional modern language is a great start (functional as in useful,
so Java & OO languages are in). When you really look at data structures, learning C is the next thing I think matters. Understanding
the power of simple arrays, pointers, and the stack are there. Writing assembly is something you do because you must, because
you think it's fun to be MEL, or if you're doing reverse-engineering / hacking.
"... Another aspect of this way of doing business is that as projects near their end it is very difficult to keep people around
to finish the job. Most people with any sense start looking for a new contract about 4-6 months before the end of the one they are on.
Often we reach a point where we have to offer bonuses to those who are left to keep them around. ..."
As much as the rest of the world has chosen to look down on Japan in its post bubble era for its failure to clean up its banking
mess and resultant stagnant economy, it has managed its relative decline in status with considerable aplomb. It
still has the longest life expectancy
in the world, universal health care, not bad unemployment (3% to 5%) and ranks well on other social indicators And now that the
US is going down the Japan path, it might behoove us to take heed of their example.
One of the striking difference between the cultures is importance ascribed to job creation. The Japanese understand full well
that the workplace for many people is a far more important community to them than where they live, and so in contrast to the US,
generating and preserving employment is a high priority. For example, Japanese entrepreneurs are revered for generating jobs, while
in the US, personal wealth is proof of success.
McKinsey had Yankelovich survey the attitudes of young people a decade ago, and even then, the results were pretty disturbing.
Yankelovich projected that college graduates would average 11 jobs by the time they were 38 (!), yet found they were demanding of
their employers, wanting frequent feedback (as in lots of attention) and quick advancement. But if you are not likely to be around
for very long, no one is likely to want to invest in you all that much (McKinsey, which was competing for a narrow slice of supposed
"top" talent and not offering Wall Street sized pay opportunities, might have been more inclined to indulge this sort of thing than
other employers).
But these rapid moves from job to job, and now a much weaker job market, are producing behaviors that old farts like me find troubling.
One is rampant careerism. I've run into too many polished people under the age of 35 where the veneer is very thin. It isn't hard
to see the opportunism, the shameless currying of favor, and ruthless calculations of whom to help and whom to kick, including throwing
former patrons under the bus when they are no longer useful (I can cite specific examples of the last behavior). The world has always
had its Sammy Glicks, but now we seem to be
setting out to create them on a mass basis.
The economic effects are also not pretty. A 30 year mortgage made sense when people would spend a decade or more with a single
employer. And more frequent job changes means not only more total time unemployed over one's working years, but also the very high
odds of falling out of a highly or even moderately paid career path to a much lower one as the work place continues to be restructured.
A New York Times piece tonight describes the latest stage of this sorry devolution: "job jugglers" who hold down multiple part
time jobs to make a living. This sort of thing used to happen only to lower income people, artists, or people who live in resort
areas. The article makes clear that this is often a hand-to-mouth, high stress existence, although the interviewees put a brave face
on it. And we aren't necessarily talking having one income source in the days and another in the evenings: three of the individuals
featured had four jobs. Even then, they barely cover their expenses.
Yet it could indeed be worse:
Still, Ms. [Mia] Branco, who graduated magna cum laude with a degree in musical theater from American University in 2009, says
she feels lucky to be employed at all. "The majority of the jobs I have right now are because people were laid off and they didn't
want to hire back full-time employees," she said. "My willingness to have a hodgepodge schedule makes me more
marketable."
But the "marketable" benefits are only short term.
A national study by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies found that young women who worked primarily in part-time
jobs did not make higher wages in their 30s than in their 20s…The reason is that part-time jobs generally provide fewer training
opportunities and often don't put workers on a track for advancement.
And many of these jobs are clearly stopgaps:
More college graduates are working in second jobs that don't require college degrees, part of a phenomenon called "mal-employment."
In short, many baby-sitters, sales clerks, telemarketers and bartenders are overqualified for their jobs.
Last year, 1.9 million college graduates were mal-employed and had multiple jobs, up 17 percent from 2007, according to federal
data. Almost half of all college graduates have a job that doesn't require a bachelor's degree.
I see this in my own building. One of the new doormen, a clean cut, high energy fellow, is a college graduate who is going to
work on his graduate degree at night. One who has been here about a year also went to college. That was unheard of until recently.
Even though the evidence is that these jugglers would do better financially and probably in terms of lifestyle if they got on
a career path, some seemed to have been imprinted by their multi-job routine and seemed loath to give it up, even though they recognized
that it is not conducive to having a family.
These part-time jobs may just be another feature of this recession, but the odds are that it will become yet another aspect of
the "new normal".
ambrit
Mz Smith;
This 'multi-job' paradigm is also creeping upwards in the over 50 age group.
Lots of potential employers pass on by over 50s, as I have experienced. When cornered and taken to task, one mid 30s Human
Resource Manager for a big box store I had applied to, (for a job I actually qualified for,) said plainly that "older people are
too much trouble."
When pressed on that statement, she continued, "You older folks know too much. You call us out on the B- S- that every
big outfit uses to keep the kids in line. Face it, you're a threat to the system." Evidently, overqualified also means having
a social conscience today.
I do pity the young folks today though. They're growing up in a new Dickensian Age.
Daniel Pennell
I suspect that that apart from the reasons already given, that there is one more to consider. Work, in a broad swath of
the economy, is becoming increasingly project based and the work ends with the end of the project.
For example, if McDonalds wants to put up a half dozen new stores in a region, they will hire the resources they need to acquire
and build the stores in that region. Once the stores are built there is no more need for those skill sets in that region until
they need to build again. So..lay off the staff that located and constructed the store.
In my work as a program manager for Federal IT projects the work is inherently based the duration of the project and the contract
and when the project ends you usually receive whatever back PTO you have and 2-4 weeks salary. You will likely also get about
a month from the end of the project until you get laid off to find something internally or another job.
Another aspect of this way of doing business is that as projects near their end it is very difficult to keep people around
to finish the job. Most people with any sense start looking for a new contract about 4-6 months before the end of the one they
are on. Often we reach a point where we have to offer bonuses to those who are left to keep them around.
It used to be that if you worked for a consultancy or a contractor that you would simply work very very hard for a period of
time and then either take a vacation and move to the next project or you had a couple of months of very slow downtime to do training
or catchup on other tasks and then move to the next project. Now…you are billable or you are gone. Nothing to do with skill (though
it may have to do with salary), the business just needs to get you off the books.
It was not that long ago that the people in a position to function this way was limited to people like myself, senior analysts
with very specific knowledge, or to project managers. Now, a company that shall remain unnamed, just hired a dozen college grads
and people with years of experience, to do a bunch of proposals, technical writing and graphics work. They are all on 1099s and
they are all gone after about 4 months. Pay your share and that of the employers share of the employment taxes. No benefits. No
disability. No retirement contribution.
It is unfortunate, but this is the way we are heading. It is beomeing every man or woman for themselves. But then..that has
been the plan of corporate America for 25 years at least.
NOW…all these companies gotta figure out how to deal with consumer that has a variable and insecure income.
How does a 30 year mortgage work in this environment?
DownSouth
Daniel Pennell said: "Work, in a broad swath of the economy, is becoming increasingly project based and the work ends with
the end of the project."
One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal people is that it is superior to the new [pathocratic] rulers in
intelligence and practical skills, no matter what geniuses they seek to appear to be. The knots stultifying reason are gradually
loosened, and fascination with the new rulership's non-existent secret knowledge and plan of action begins to diminish, followed
by familiarization with the accurate knowledge about this new deviant reality.
The world of normal people is always superior to the deviant one whenever constructive activity is needed, whether it be the
reconstruction of a devastated country, the area of technology, the organization of economic life, or scientific and medical work.
"They want to build things, but they can't get much done without us." Qualified experts are frequently able to make certain demands,
unfortunately, they are just as often only considered qualified until the job has been done, at which point they can be eliminated.
Once the factory has started up, the experts can leave; management will be taken over by someone else, incapable of further progress,
under whose leadership much of the effort expended will be wasted.
…The psychopathologist was thus not surprised by the fact that the world of normal people is dominant regarding skill and talent.
For that society, however, this represented a discovery which engendered hope and psychological relaxation.
Since our intelligence is superior to theirs, we can recognize them and understand how they think and act. This is what
a person learns in such a system on his own initiative, forced by everyday needs. He learns it while working in his office, school,
or factory, when he needs to deal with the authorities, and when he is arrested, something only a few people manage to avoid.
The author and many others learned a good deal about the psychology of this macrosocial phenomenon during compulsory indoctrinational
schooling. The organizers and lecturers cannot have intended such a result. Practical knowledge of this new reality thus grows…
▬Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology
Philip Finn
"One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal people is that it is superior to the new [pathocratic] rulers
in intelligence and practical skills, no matter what geniuses they seek to appear to be."
yeah, that's what we now have reason to believe brought down the Pharaohs, caused the Reformation, gave birth to the Enlightenment,
pulled us out of the Black Death into a Middle Class…so what's your point? How many will have to suffer and die under the New
Gilded Age before something is done?
tyaresun
Is it called just in time hiring by the Ivy League MBAs?
Francois T
"How does a 30 year mortgage work in this environment?"
It does not, as well as tons of other features of a normal and civilized society.
The fundamental drama of this situation you so eloquently describes is simple: Efficiency comes at the cost of robustness.
The quest for ever higher degree of efficiency makes society AND the economy extraordinarilybrittle.
One speed bump at the wrong place and the wrong time and oooops! there is a mega hosing of doodoo all over the place, it stinks
and everyone is splashed thank you very much!
And that is under the best scenario; a system that is geared for peak efficiency, without robustness and redundancy will ineluctably get obliterated much faster and more completely than a system with built-in redundancy and robustness.
So, why do we burden ourselves with such systems?
The short of it is:
greed,
short-termism and hyper-individualism, this Après moi, le Déluge! attitude of those who reach the top. Each of their
decisions is "rational", yet, makes no place for anything else than the immediate task at hand. Their workers, children, descendants,
their community…none of this matters enough to modify their thinking.
I have always wondered how can men like the CEO of Exxon or the Koch brothers can look at themselves in the mirror and think
with a straight face that the climate denial machine they've set up won't profoundly affect their progeny. Maybe they hate them
that much, who knows?
But I digress! What is obvious that such a way to operate is condemned to fail. My only hop is that it does os before it becomes
the modus operandi of the greatest number of corporations. Because if it does, in case of financial or ecologic collapse, it is
the very foundations of our society who would collapse too.
Skippy
F1 motors last one race but, wow look at them go….gosh.
doom
That 'threat to the system' business is also a factor in attacks on liberal education. People who are educated and not just
trained are more resistant to the sillier kinds of workplace indoctrination. We're going to wind up with an education system that
gives critical thinking skills only to the people with enough cultural capital to compensate for their subversive education –
and that's people who were born in the dominant class. Mumpsy and Throckmorton can get away with immersing themselves in the trivium
and quadrivium. Then they take their finely-honed bullshit detectors to work, and blow off a lot of the nonsense, and thrive.
So people who can objectively view the system, and work it or change it, are going to be a different group than the victims of
the system. Maybe that's the point.
nobody
After a few unpleasant years in temp and permatemp positions in the corporate world, I'm now in the social sciences, and I'd
have to say that the indoctrination levels and other defects in contemporary "liberal education" make it look, to my eye, more
like than unlike the corporate workplace. I'm really not seeing a whole lot more critical thought than I did in corporate America,
and the continuities and similarities between the two domains are striking.
Jojo
"This 'multi-job' paradigm is also creeping upwards in the over 50 age group. Lots of potential employers pass on by over 50s,
as I have experienced."
---
Agreed! And tricking up your resume to reduce your displayed experience (as is often recommended by career consultants) in hopes
of snagging an interview is no longer a viable strategy when your age is easy to obtain from public info databases like
http://www.spokeo.com,
http://www.zoominfo.com, http://www.pipl.com and many others.
DOB and age should be considered non-public info, just as your SS# is!
xxx, June 26, 2011 at 5:46 am
"My willingness to have a hodgepodge schedule makes me more marketable."
Talk about identifying with one's oppressor and internalizing his ideology and propaganda.
More college graduates are working in second jobs that don't require college degrees, part of a phenomenon called "mal-employment."
One the few good signs is the way the system seems determined to produce an unemployable, debt-indentured cohort of educated
intellectuals. As a rule this type will happily serve as system lackeys as long as the system takes care of them, but becomes
a revolutionary talent pool where the system neglects or in our case swindles and then assaults them.
This is one example of how the kleptocracy is so psychopathic and short-term obsessed by now that it's incapable of any kind
of rational, self-interest-based retrenchment at all.
ambrit
Good morning sunshine;
Who ever said that 'educated' and intellectual necessarily go together? Also, it depends on what your 'rational self-interest'
really is. If what you're after is to loot and plunder, both the essence of non-productive enterprises, then the present system
is just right for you.
I have to agree with you about the root of the problem: The abandonment of the social contract that had established the hybrid
capitalist welfare state. But no, someone had to get greedy. I'm beginning to buy into your narrative. Gordon Gekko is going to
meet Leon Trotsky, and it will not be pleasant to watch.
Who ever said that 'educated' and intellectual necessarily go together?
Not me. But the post is about college grads, so that's what we're discussing.
Also, it depends on what your 'rational self-interest' really is. If what you're after is to loot and plunder, both the
essence of non-productive enterprises, then the present system is just right for you.
The criminals' rational self-interest arguably would involve some retrenchment, some kind of plan other than every looter for
himself, and for the maximum for himself. (Not to mention a more rational plan for the remaining fossil fuels.) But they've bet
it all on infinite greed and violence (and the self-brainwashing of ideology), that they'll be able, without taking even the slightest
precaution, to forestall the inevitable political (revolution) and natural (e.g. pandemics from their CAFOs, crop failure from
their zombified soil and GMO monoculture) counteractions reality imposes on such berserkers.
Mark P.
ambrit wrote:
'Gordon Gekko is going to meet Leon Trotsky, and it will not be pleasant to watch.'
Oh, here in the 21st century it could be worse than that – Gordon Gekko may meet Ted Kaczynski.
For example, there's second-hand stuff on eBay nowadays that can enable one or two people with skills to do in a garage what
required fifty-some scientists in a fancy lab in Novosibirsk twenty years ago. http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=dna+synthesizer
DownSouth
attempter said:
"…the system seems determined to produce an unemployable, debt-indentured cohort of educated intellectuals."
"Debt-indentured," that's the other side of the neoliberal coin. So there's not only the factor of diminishing job
and pay prospects, but also a mountain of debt.
CNN has a great click-through this morning showing 10 young people struggling with the debts they incurred to get their
university education,
My degree isn't
worth the debt!. It helps put a human face on neoliberalism, even though it is benign in comparison to the violence neoliberalism
has unleashed on countries like Mexico.
attempter said:
"This is one example of how the kleptocracy is so psychopathic and short-term obsessed by now that it's incapable of
any kind of rational, self-interest-based retrenchment at all."
That's why I think it's helpful, in addition to looking at the world through the lens of morality, religion/ideology, politics,
history and economics, to also look at it through the lens of psychology. Many of the people with their hands on the levers of
world power are psychological deviants, driven by a plethora of other motivations besides rational self-interest. Self-interest
does not explain it all, as the simplistic constructs of neoclassical economics would have us believe. Our current economic
and political leadership in the United States is not only a danger to others, but also a danger to itself.
As Andrew M. Lobaczewski puts it in Political Ponerology:
The pathocratic world, the world of pathological egotism and terror, is so difficult to understand for people raised
outside the scope of this phenomenon that they often manifest childlike naiveté…
One of the things I took away from Political Ponerology is that the takeover by pathocrats is not an event, but a slow
decades-long process. As Lobaczewski explains: "Ever-increasing control is thus necessary until full pathocracy can be achieved.
Those leaders whom the central authorities consider to be effectively transitional can be eliminated…"
As I was reading Political Ponerology, I couldn't help but thinking that the West currently finds itself in conditions
not unlike the late 19th century which caused Nietzsche such great consternation. I can't help but believe that dark clouds are
gathering, just like they were then.
DownSouth
In regards to the decades-long process in which psychological deviants slowly infiltrate and eventually come to dominate a
society, I found the following from Ponerology to be quite realistic:
The traditional interpretation of these great historical diseases has already taught historians to distinguish two phases.
The first is represented by a period of spiritual crisis in a society, which historiography associates with exhausting of the
ideational, moral, and religious values heretofore nourishing the society in question. Egoism among individuals and social groups
increases, and the links of moral duty and social networks are felt to be loosening. Trifling matters thereupon dominate human
minds to such an extent that there is no room left for thinking about public matters or a feeling of commitment to the future.
An atrophy of the hierarchy of values within the thinking of individuals and societies is an indication thereof; it has been described
both in historiographic monographs and in psychiatric papers. The country's government is finally paralyzed, helpless in the face
of problems which could be solved without great difficulty under other circumstances. Let us associate such periods of crisis
with the familiar phrases in social hysterization.
The next phase has been marked by bloody tragedies, revolutions, wars, and the fall of empires.
Moneta
Everyone seems to focus on the disaffected who are stuck going down that route but that's not always the case. Many highly
marketable workers are also choosing the contractual route even if it penalizes them financially.
I'm 42, with a skill set that can get me a full-time permanent well paying job offering career advancement but every time I
have done it, after 6-9 months, it has been like walking around with a ball and chain.
They hire me for my experience and skill set but once in there all they want me to do is mindlessly execute. Decisions are
made at the top with barely any imput from the lower levels. They are all based on maximizing value ASAP so those at the top can
exercise their options, IPO or profit from some other form of financial engineering.
The work environments have been short-term results oriented, stifling, unethical. After a few months I start having trouble
getting out of bed or tolerating the people around me. After quitting my last 3 jobs which offered only more of the same, I have
given up on the permcnecy aspect and have decided to go the contract route and get to leave when the honeymoon period is over.
Debt is not an issue in my case so this gives me great flexibility.
What I have noticed is that my peers are swamped with debt so they are ready to sacrifice all ethics to keep their overindebted
materialistic lifestyles.
I don't know if my case is rare but something tell me I'm not the only one who is doing whatever it takes to stay sane.
ambrit
Dear Moneta;
You have described one of the 'less felicitous' aspects of the "New Normal." Believe me and, I would bet, most of the older cohort
here, when I tell you, it was different 'back in the day.'
The short term thinking you describe slowly infiltrated and took over the corporate elite. The same phenomenon occurred in
all aspects of life.
An instance: Back in the days when buffalo roamed the plains, television had strict limits as to how much commercial time was
allowed per hour. (I believe it was seven minutes per hour.) This was a function of the concept of regulation of the airways as
a public good. Then Ronnie Reagan, (whom I hope is presently toasting marshmallows in the Infernal Regions,) did away with those
regulations. In the interests of 'market reform,' such appropriation of time for commercial purposes was given over to the 'invisible
hand' that everyone "knew" would more efficiently regulate the airways. A "Bonanza" of sorts ensued, and everyones life became
just a little more hectic and aggravating.
As the people commenting on this and some other blogs will tell you, IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. Yes Moneta, there was
a "Golden Age." Some of us can remember it, and strive for its return. Don't despair, history shows that sooner or later the process
brings about radical change, springing from internal forces.
As for contract based employment, in my field, construction, it has always been so. The secret is to try and find those jobs
that pay just enough more to tide you over the slack periods. I've reached the point where my skill set is no longer considered
usefull enough to offer that extra bit more. H-! The whole field is constricting due to overproduction and a general fall in quality
standards. (Your short term thinking again.) So, as we used to say, 'The squeeze is on.' On the bright side, after all the rioting
and civil insurrections are over, someone will have to rebuild the country.
DownSouth
Moneta said: "Everyone seems to focus on the disaffected who are stuck going down that route but that's not always the case."
1.3 Clasificación de la economía informal de acuerdo a las utilidades que genera
Aunque en este punto se divide a la economía informal, la situación es mucho más compleja que la descripción de una división
de individuos o empresas en dos segmentos,20 pero para efectos de este estudio se utilizará una clasificación basada en las utilidades
que se obtienen de las actividades comerciales, profesionales y de servicios, debido a que básicamente en ello radica la posibilidad
de pagar impuestos.
1.3.1 Comercio informal de subsistencia.
En el sector informal existe una gran proporción de personas con bajos recursos, con bajo capital humano, bajos niveles de escolaridad,
sin acceso al crédito, que encuentran en la economía informal su única alternativa de empleo. Este tipo de empleo puede considerarse
como de "sobrevivencia". Este sector de la población en la economía informal está estrechamente ligado a la pobreza.21
[….]
1.3.2 Comercio informal de rentabilidad.
En esta tendencia, los empleados informales se encuentran en esta condición por su propia voluntad y con un sentido de empresarialidad,
dado que en dichas actividades obtienen mejores ingresos y condiciones de autonomía laboral, frente a los empleos formales disponibles.24
Estas personas tienen la posibilidad de trabajar formalmente, pero deciden hacerlo dentro de la informalidad porque consideran
que maximizan su utilidad al no pagar los impuestos que les corresponden.
DownSouth
Let me try to translate that:
1.3 Classification of the informal economy according to the benefits that it provides
Although at this point we divide the informal economy into two parts, the actual situation is much more complex than a description
with a division of individuals and business into two segments. But for the purposes of this study we will utilize a classification
based on the benefits provided by businesses, professionals and service companies…
1.3.1 Informal subsistence enterprise
In the informal sector there exists the grand proportion of persons with few resources, with low human capital, low levels of
schooling, without access to credit, who find themselves in the informal economy as their only alternative for employment. This
type of employment can be considered as "survival." This sector of the population in the informal sector is closely linked to
poverty.
1.3.2 Informal profitable enterprise
In this trend, the informal employees find themselves in this condition of their own volition and with a feeling of entrepreneurship,
given that in these activities they obtain greater incomes and conditions of autonomy, in comparison to employment in the formal
sector. These people have the possibility to work formally, but opt for informal employment because it maximizes their benefits
and they don't pay corresponding taxes.
Valissa
Moneta, I think there are many people who think as you. At the risk of saying something terribly trite… people are different,
have different needs, and different values. Many people are quite happy with a well defined and secure career track, and actively
seek that… and I say bully for them! Others feel that "ball & chain" and prefer the thrill of the unknown and seek out new and
unfamiliar situations. Some people are more motivated by Money (and it's cousin Security) than others… and so on.
As of my late 20′s, and having an excellent resume, I was well positioned to have a big career in the defense industry (there
are many interesting jobs there). Last year, when I was reading the big WP expose on how all the folks with Top Secret clearances
could easily get well paid jobs, I thought… but for the grace of the goddess I could have been one of those. But I chose freedom
over career and money, and I have NEVER regretted that choice. With a career, your mind gets full of your career related issues…
when you just have a job, your mind is freer to go where it will.
For many years I did temp work, contract work, odd jobs, etc. and was content enough with that approach because it freed me
up to experience life more fully. Fellow employees who made way more $$ than I did seemed to envy my freedom. I had time to read,
think and study and to do some low budget travel. One can live pretty decently on a low income if one has low overhead, even in
today's harsher work environment.
However now that I am over 50, I confess I am rather glad my husband (I finally married in my late '40s) makes a good enough
income for the both of us so I don't have to go out and hunt for some type of side jobs for survival. I have the luxury of doing
part-time work I enjoy and plenty of time for reading & thinking (and gardening!). It does get harder to get hired into more 'traditional'
corporate jobs (retail is pretty corporate too) when you are older, but many people manage to find/create interesting solutions
for themselves.
A friend and I have both observed that some people are able to figure out what jobs or careers are more valuable at this time
in history and then 'just do it'. It's surprising how many well educated coporate type people don't know how to do anything other
than work in a corproate environment and therefore are clueless when they get laid off. We observed that some people seem to very
slow to realize changing job and business trends whereas others looked around them, paid attention and then took appropriate action.
And between us, our examples of acquaintance's stories spanned socio-economic, racial, degree-of-education and age-based groups
kievite
The 6% group [of full-bore psychopaths] constitute the new mobility; the 12% group [of less extreme psychopaths and other
psychological deviants] forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous.
I think that this 12% group is by-and-large consists of RWA(right wing authoritarians) types
RWA or in common language "kiss up, kick down" personalities tend to dominate as they hire/promote strictly with thier own
group.
According to Wikipedia this personality type
"is defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of psychodynamic, childhood experiences.
These traits are conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy,
power and "toughness," destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sexuality (sexual repression).[1]
In brief, the authoritarian is predisposed to follow the dictates of a strong leader and traditional, conventional values."
Another example is how, whereas previous totalitarian systems tried to provide the atomized individual (a potential rebel,
if he can latch onto a new idea/movement) with at least a sham way of belonging (e.g. the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, "Community
of the People"), neoliberal capitalism relentlessly strives to destroy all possible bases of social cohesion.
Those leaders whom the central authorities consider to be effectively transitional can be eliminated.
Corporate liberals are the obvious example. Also the way the system is now starting to liquidate its own flunkey professional
class.
fifi
Yup. A systemic collapse is only one disaffected, alienated engineer or IT guy saying "screw it" and working to destroy it
all. What stake does he have in the system if he if unable to afford to get married or have children?
nonclassical
"Contracted workers" are to be the new reality..no benefits, no pay, even, without generating profit..and no messy unemployment
benefits..
vlade
From what I know of the current Japan, the tempization of jobs is a huge problem there, and it did start in the lost decade.
So US (and UK, I can see it here too, although to a lesser extent) is on that path, and given the previous attitude to work, moving
considerably faster.
One thing I wish we would stop saying is assuming over qualification because someone has a degree. I'd say it's more overpromising
– the system (for various reasons, including dealing with youth unemployment) promised young people that they will have better
jobs if they get a degree.
That is manifestly not true, as if you imagine that 100% of the population got a degree, the number of jobs that require a
degree is more or less the same.
jimS
I agree with vlade. I noticed the article was in danger of mixing up a problem (insecurity of employment and exploitation of
workers) with a non-problem (being a graduate doesn't get me special privileges anymore!).
I think 100% graduation is a good thing to aim for, and if that means your plumber has a degree in English, well, what's wrong
with that? It does leave us with the moral requirement that that plumber should have a long and satisfying career, with appreciative
clients, and be able to afford a home fit for him and his family. But I believe we already owed the plumber that when he didn't
have an English degree.
Dan Duncan
What a joke this JimS comment is…
"…(we have)the moral requirement that that plumber should have a long and satisfying career, with appreciative clients,
and be able to afford a home fit for him and his family. is one of the most ridiculous comments ever made in the English language.
The only positive to this statement is that the dumbass, plumber who took on $50,000 in student-loan-debt to get a useless
English degree might just get his money's worth analyzing this tripe.
"We have a moral requirement that plumber's have appreciative clients"
That is freaking hilarious.
I can see JimS in the confessional at this moment:
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned: My plumber does not have appreciative clients."
ambrit
Dear Mr Duncan;
Oh my, you seem to have misunderstood jimSs' comment. He ends with: "..but I believe we already owed the plumber that.."
I myself am an overeducated plumber. I don't have a degree, but I have been told, "You read too D- much!" by an otherwise reasonable
employer. Consider the underlying assumption behind the 'categorization' of people into 'classes.' It is implied that 'working
people' are incapable of reasoning and analysis. This dog wont hunt my friend. A great deal of a persons world view is based upon
their adaptation to the expectations of the society around them. If you are told that "plumbers are too dumb to analyze english,"
literature or functional communication, most people, if they find themselves in the Plumber "Box" will not even try. This does
not even require any "higher education." Just an unfettered curiosity, and some resources. It is the question of resources that
brings in the matter of 'leisure time' and financial security. Some form of each is needed to ease the process of personal improvement.
It's no accident that the Victorian concept of "Individual Improvement" rose alongside the rising standards of living for the
emerging "Middle Class."
The present assault on the Middle Class betokens a yearning for the good old days of Feudal social arraingments.
So, yes, depending on your world view, we do owe that plumber, and ofice worker, and even burger flipper a better life, in all
respects. That's what all the shouting is all about.
Valissa
"It's no accident that the Victorian concept of "Individual Improvement" rose alongside the rising standards of living for
the emerging "Middle Class.""
That is a popular misconception. According to a fascinating book* I read recently, Americans have been interested in self-improvement
and character building from colonial times onward (as seen in diaries), and this interest became more popular after the Revolutionary
War.
*Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character, by Claude S. Fischer (highly recommended!)
jcrit
Laser true! Anyone who has had to fight with getting cheap Chinese brass fixtures to not leak definitely deserves our fullest
consideration.
nonclassical
Vlade,
It may NOW be "manifestly untrue" in the states, however, having taught (secondary) in states and Europe, it is not true there
(Germany). Actually, one must recognize, it was never "true" in states, as only 20% of Americans graduate from 4 year university
or vocational equivalent..as opposed to 70%+ of Euros. Of course Euro goals involve making certain all are paying into expensive
social systems through
taxes, while U.S. goals involve cheap labor force.
While Americans are encouraged by mainstream media to castigate U.S. education as "provider of opportunity", it was never educational
opportunity people sought.
In states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, circa 2005, study shows average wage necessary for family of 4=$45,000.00 per year.
Agricultural, rural areas less, urban cities, more.
But TOTAL number of jobs PAYING that $45,000.00 per year, was only 20% of jobs.
I suggested to our Superintendent of Kitsap Schools, Washington State, that she work to DOUBLE the 20% currently
graduating, heading off to 4 year university. She replied,
"But then there would be no jobs for them"…I stated, "Yes,
and then it's no longer an "educational problem"…
The U.S. may begin to look like Egypt-where so many youth are university educated, with no possibility of gainful employ.
But of course we have the "Tea Party" anti-intellectuals to marginalize them…let's remember, intellectuals historically appear
to either lead change, or be exterminated by it…
H. Alexander Ivey
vlade
Over promising, not over qualified! An excellent comment and one I will most happily steal, as I have lived large chunks of
my life in that pursuit of the perfect college degree. Fortunately I did that when college was cheaper so I lived financially
to tell the tale.
Abusive Workplaces
Corporate 'Murica hires and fires like the use of tissue paper. For some reason, we've accepted this as normal, or beneficial.
Richard
It's interesting how this perspective changes when one moves between labour and management. A salaried worker has different
incentives than a partner. A recent article showed that doctors in Maine are gradually moving to salaried hospital positions,
causing their politics to shift.
This reminds me of the genius that was the Bush Ownership Society. While it failed to come to fruition, I can only envision
how different society would look like if more people have a (paid off) personal
Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those from
younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills - as well as some technical skills sought by employers - are rusty after
years of working for the same company.
"There are these fears in the background, and they are suppressed," said Ms. Reid, who is now selling some of her jewelry and
clothes online and is late on some credit card payments. "I have had nightmares about becoming a bag lady," she said. "It could happen
to anyone. So many people are so close to it, and they don't even realize it."
Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those
from younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills - as well as some technical skills sought by employers - are
rusty after years of working for the same company.
Many had in fact anticipated working past conventional retirement ages to gird themselves financially for longer life spans, expensive
health care and reduced pension guarantees.
The most recent recession has increased the need to extend working life. Home values, often a family's most important asset, have
been battered. Stock portfolios are only now starting to recover. According to a Gallup poll in April, more than a third of
people not yet retired plan to work beyond age 65, compared with just 12 percent in 1995.
Older workers who lose their jobs could pose a policy problem if they lose their ability to be self-sufficient. "That's what we
should be worrying about," said Carl E. Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce
Development at
Rutgers University, "what it means to this class of the new unemployables, people who have been cast adrift at a very vulnerable
part of their career and their life."
Forced early retirement imposes an intense financial strain, particularly for those at lower incomes. The recession and its aftermath
have already pushed down some older workers. In figures released last week by the
Census Bureau, the poverty rate among those 55 to 64 increased to 9.4 percent in 2009, from 8.6 percent in 2007.
But even middle-class people who might skate by on savings or a spouse's income are jarred by an abrupt end to working life and
to a secure retirement.
"That's what I spent my whole life in pursuit of, was security," Ms. Reid said. "Until the last few years, I
felt very secure in my job."
As an auditor, Ms. Reid loved figuring out the kinks in a manufacturing or parts delivery process. But after more than 20 years
of commuting across Puget Sound to Boeing, Ms. Reid was exhausted when she was let go from her $80,000-a-year job.
Stunned and depressed, she sent out résumés, but figured she had a little time to recover. So she took vacations to Turkey and
Thailand with her husband, who is a home repairman. She sought chiropractic treatments for a neck injury and helped nurse a priest
dying of cancer.
... ... ....
"A job is more than a job, you know," Mr. Mielock said. "It's where you fit in society."
Here in the greater Seattle area, a fifth of those claiming extended unemployment benefits are 55 and older.
To help seniors polish their job-seeking skills, WorkSource, a local consortium of government and nonprofit groups, recently began
offering seminars. On a recent morning, 14 people gathered in a windowless conference room at a local community college to get tips
on how to age-proof their résumés and deflect questions about being overqualified.
Motivational posters hung on one wall, bearing slogans like "Failure is the path of least persistence."
... ... ...
Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. In August, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly
more than 39 weeks, according to the Labor Department, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also
after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.
At this year's pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions
lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth.
For millions of people, it already is serious. Bruce Tulgan, a consultant on generational workplace issues, estimates that 3.5
million people between the ages of 40 and 58 vanished from the American workforce from 2001 to 2004. That's about 5% of all baby-boomers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of "displaced workers" (people who lost their jobs for any reason other than for cause) offers
a concise litany of the ways middle-aged people get screwed. In the most recent survey, which covers 2001 through 2003, 55- to 64-year-old
displaced workers were less likely to find new jobs than 25- to 54-year-olds (57% vs. 69%), and more likely to drop out of the workforce
altogether (20% vs. 11%). Of the lucky castoffs who get rehired, older folks take a much bigger pay cut than the young'uns. A 2003
survey by DBM, an outplacement firm, found that only 32% of workers over 57 earned the same or higher pay at their new employer,
versus 42% of 38-to-56-year-olds (and 60% of 21-to-37-year-olds). Those data are all a year or two old, but the trends are continuing.
"Older white-collar workers quickly become disenfranchised," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Economy. com. "They have difficulty
getting back into the job market, and when they do, their compensation is often significantly reduced."
How did life get so bad for pentagenarians? Age discrimination is part of the problem. Some employers assume that people north
of 50 are marking time, or lacking in energy and up-to-date skills. In a survey of 428 HR managers by the Society for Human
Resource Management, 53% said older workers "didn't keep up with technology," and 28% characterized them as "less flexible." That
certainly rings true for Sam Horgan, 57, a veteran CFO who's spent a lot of time between jobs. A 30-ish job interviewer asked him,
"Would you have trouble working with young bright people?" One job interviewer pointedly said to 58-year-old Russ Rakestraw, "You've
got a lot of maturity." The former Louisville public administrator didn't take it as a compliment. "Why don't you come out and tell
me I'm old?" he silently fumed. "Who's kidding who?"
But another reason is a profound, age-neutral economic transformation. These people had the bad luck to reach their peak earning
years during an economic perfect storm. There was the recent recession and its aftermath, of course. Beyond that, there are some
forces that have been building for a while, such as the bottom-line demands of Wall Street and the steady rise in health costs. Other
pressures have developed more recently--for example, the proliferation of excellent, inexpensive engineers and systems analysts and
whatnot in China and India. All those factors have hastened the demise of the safe, secure white-collar job.
"It's a true paradigm shift," says Karen Hochman, chair of the New York City chapter of MENG, all of whose 550 members have held
top corporate jobs and half of whom are out of work. "You've got hundreds of thousands of obsolete professionals who can't find employment
in positions where they've been successful. These are people living off retirement savings 15 years before they were supposed to
retire. They don't know what they're going to do."
You don't see many overt signs of panic at gatherings of involuntary retirees. What's most noticeable at support groups and networking
meetings is a kind of sustenance through euphemism. No one is unemployed; they're "in transition." But at a recent meeting of the
Atlanta chapter of FENG (Financial Executives Networking Group), anxiety surfaces when a facilitator asks each of the dozen middle-aged
men in the room to review their past week's job-hunting tactics and confess shortcomings. "Making the phone calls," says the first
man on the hot seat. "I hate it." It's just not like middle-aged bean counters to hustle and cold-call. "I remember trying to make
calls without standing on my tongue," says chapter vice president Grant Anderson, who landed a new CFO job in March after a year's
hiatus. "But you have to get over it, because that's how you network and that's how I got my job. It was an unadvertised blue-plate
special." And when you do finally get a job, Anderson advises, keep networking. Today, he says, "being employed is an illusion."
"Seasoned" hasn't always been a code word for "untouchable." When America was an agrarian society, elders were honored for their
knowledge of the earth and kept involved in the family farm long into old age. But with the Industrial Revolution, far greater value
was placed on speed and productivity. That was the province of younger people. The creation of Social Security in 1935 wasn't just
a beneficent gesture to seniors. "From then on we had the cult of youth, the belief that each generation brought more and better
and smarter young people than ever," says Ken Dychtwald, president of AgeWave, a demographic consulting firm in San Francisco. "We
had to move the old people out."
By the 1990s the demand for speed and productivity dwarfed anything the industrialists of the 1890s could have imagined. The most
devout adherents of the cult of youth are arguably in Silicon Valley, where older workers can be forgiven for feeling blacklisted.
"When the [Internet] explosion happened, all these young people were drawn in who were willing to work for six or seven days a week
for little pay and a lot of stock options," says Paul Kostek of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA. "A lot
of people who were older and had families said, 'Do I want to take this risk?'" Tech veterans who sat out the bubble bacchanalia
couldn't regain positions even after sobriety returned, according to Kostek, a former president of the trade group and an engineer
at Boeing. The bubble may have burst, but the industry's belief in the virtues of inexperienced, inexhaustible, inexpensive youth
remained. "Technology has taken the position that if you've got gray hair, you're not up to speed," Kostek says. Think he's exaggerating?
A November survey of 983 IEEE-USA members, median age 49, found that 42% were unemployed.
Old-economy stalwarts embraced youth almost as zealously in the 1990s. (They almost had to, lest they lose newly recruited MBAs
to dot-coms.) General Electric made an obsession of identifying its hottest up-and-comers at tender ages. They were called "high
pots," for high potential, and fast-tracked up the corporate ladder. Pity the middle-aged managers who occupied rungs along their
route. They were called "blockers," and they had to be removed.
From: Kim Berry Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 10:31 AM To:[email protected] Subject: RE: BLS: Where are the 150,000 programmers who "left the workforce"?
Followup:
Randy (202 691-5456) from BLS phoned me.
He explained that this current population survey does not track individuals longitudally (the same person over time) so it
does not reveal the impact on the 150,000+ displaced programmers who now are working doing something.
He stated that, even without my interpolation to a 20% or greater unemployment among programmers, the 7.1% that this data
reveals is still "very high" - exceeding the national average for all occupations.
He clarified that my last paragraph is incorrect - the survey is independent of whether individuals are receiving unemployment
benefits. (Maybe the State has data based on benefits?
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/htmlfile/subject/lftable.htm)
He did not dispute that my inference that 20% of computer programmers in the U.S. are either unemployed or working in another
profession - likely lower-paid - is reasonable.
Nonetheless, Congress continues to admit up to 65,000 foreign tech workers per year on the premise of a labor shortage, and DOL continues
to grant petitions for both nonimmigrant and permanent immigrants into this labor pool with no requirement of a showing that no qualified
U.S. workers are available.
Shouldn't these visas be immediately suspended until the number of employed programmers approaches
the 2000 level? Shouldn't some nonimmigrant visas be revoked to provide needed employment for U.S. tech workers?
Sincerely,
Kim Berry
-----Original Message----- From: Kim Berry Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 12:39 PM To: '[email protected]' Subject: BLS: Where are the 150,000 programmers who "left the workforce"?
It concludes that programmer unemployment is "only" about 7% because the number of programmers in the workforce has dropped by
about 150,000 workers in the last three years.
This is an odd presumption since a record number of foreign programmers
entered the U.S. on nonimmigrant visas during this period - roughly another 100,000 in this workforce category.
Unless BLS expects us to believe that the bulk of these workers have been promoted to managers - or retired to the south of France
on dot-com stock options - then there should be 800.000 programmers in the U.S. workforce - with only 550,000 currently employed.
This suggests that unemployment among computer programmers is (250/800) = 31% UNEMPLOYMENT
Can you please explain why my reasoning is flawed, and why BLS excludes programmers whose benefits have expired as no longer part
of the workforce?
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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