by Tom Walker
1. Over the last decade, in how many months have you a) had no income from employment? and b) were unsure how long it would be before you would again receive a paycheck?
2. How many times in your working life have you had to "change careers" because there were meager prospects in the field of work you had become proficient at?
3. How likely do you believe it is that you will be laid off as a professor in a) the next six months? b) the next year? c) the next five years?
4. How many of your fellow tenured economics professors do you know of who are currently laid off from their positions?
5. What do you think of the Pope's views on birth control?
EconoSpeak readers, please contribute your suggestions to this list of questions for economists on unemployment.
5 comments:
If I could ask a question and receive an answer it would simply be "What do you think of the income tax code of 1955"? Which is to say a "capital gains" tax rate of 25% with an ordinary income tax rate the was highly progressive:
20% 0 to 32000
22% 32000 to 64000
26% 64000 to 76000
30% 76000 to 120000
50% 258000 to 290000
72% 709000 to 806000
91% 3200000 to sky
The objective of this was to convince the very rich that actual risk taking and _INVESTMET_ was a lot more profitable than sitting around sucking on T-Bills. So, Mr. Richie, you can start the companies that will be prototyping modular thorium reactors. Otherwise we are going to take all your money and spend it on education and health care. Of course "capital gains" would have to be limited to _real_ capital and not real estate and not financial institutions.
Actually, departments are closing, colleges are closing, administrators are getting tenured faculty who criticize them fired, and faculty in some states (including California) are joyously experiencing the Sandwichman's preferred proposal, cut wages and work hours to preserve jobs ("furloughs"), which I have no problem with, really.
Oh, and while tenured faculty do have more job security than most people, many have experienced unemployment at some time in their lives, and many have friends or family members who are experiencing this as well.
I for one am not going to enlist so that I have the "experience" necessary to denounce war. Spurious argument and S-Man knows it. But I take his point.
Go fight with these guys:
http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-you-have-job-stfu-about-unemployment.html
Common tactic among libertarians: dismiss personal reflection and social commentary as just so much "hand wringing." This time it was probably just for grins, Mungowitz can reflect, but he also likes to have fun (known him for 20 years). Here's a challenge to those guys: since you like to say we know too little to regulate anything ("cure worse than disease"), why are you so sure a little hand wringing won't bring you some enlightenment? Seems like a contradiction.
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