Barrett, Paul.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Power is never having to say you are sorry
Citing a Greenspan interview: "The majority of lawyers, in my experience, seek to regulate -- that is, to contain certain activities with little weight given to the lost benefits of such activities," he says. "The question is: What do you lose? In this case, a very valuable instrument [credit default swaps, the derivatives at the core of the current mess] for the diminution of systemic risk. You can stop the system dead and eliminate speculative losses. But you will also get significantly reduced economic activity and ultimately lower standards of living."
Barrett, Paul.2 008. "Wall Street Staggers." Business Week (17 September): pp.
Barrett, Paul.
Recent Interview on the Crisis
I was on Realnews yesterday. The interview begins with a montage of congressional talks on the bailout, then a discussion with me for the final 3 minutes or so.
LINK to video
LINK to video
Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement
"There is nothing new or novel in the proposition for a general reduction of the hours of labor."
There is nothing new or novel in the proposition for a general reduction of the hours of labor. It introduces no new principle into society. It proposes no arbitrary interference with economic and social relations; it disturbs no existing interests; it does not change the relation of buyers to sellers, or laborers to employers; in fact, it does not in any way arbitrarily disturb existing economic and social institutions. All it asks for is that the laborer shall have more leisure; that the development of his social character may be commensurate with the increase of his productive power and the comfort and culture of his home may grow apace with the wealth-cheapening capacity of the factory.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Have you no sense of decency, madam Governor, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
by the Sandwichman
Senator Joe McCarthy: I perform this unpleasant task because the American people are entitled to have the coldly documented history of this man who says, "I want to be your President."
Strangely, Alger -- I mean, Adlai [laughter] -- But let's move on to another part of the jigsaw puzzle. Now, while you think -- while you may think there can be no connection between the debonair Democratic candidate and a dilapidated Massachusetts barn, I want to show you a picture of this barn and explain the connection.
Here is the outside of the barn. Give me the pictures of the inside, if you will. Here is the outside of the barn up at Lee, Massachusetts. It looks as though it couldn't house a farmer's cow or goat from the outside. Here's the inside: a beautifully panelled conference room with maps of the Soviet Union. Well, in what way does Stevenson tie up with that?
My -- my investigators went out and took pictures of the barn after we had been tipped off of what was in it -- tipped off that there was in this barn all the missing documents from the Communist front -- IPR -- the IPR which has been named by the McCarran Committee -- named before the McCarran Committee as a coverup for Communist espionage.
Now, let's take a look at a photostat of a document taken from the Massachusetts barn -- one of those documents which was never supposed to see the light of day. Rather interesting it is. This is a document which shows that Alger Hiss and Frank Coe recommended Adlai Stevenson to the Mount Tremblant Conference which was called for the purpose of establishing foreign policy (postwar foreign policy) in Asia. And, as you know, Alger Hiss is a convicted traitor. Frank Coe has been named under oath before congressional committees seven times as a member of the Communist Party. Why? Why do Hiss and Coe find that Adlai Stevenson is the man they want representing them at this conference? I don't know. Perhaps Adlai knows.
The Second Shoe, Part II
by the Sandwichman
Hate it or not, in the context of a really, really big economic crisis, making sense of the conjuncture may indeed require that we occasionally "sound like a Marxist."
In his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx's Wage Labor and Capital, Frederick Engels stressed the importance of the distinction that Marx subsequently made (years after writing WL&C) between labor and labor power. Engels called this distinction, "one of the most important points in the whole of political economy."
Engels framed his discussion of this most important point by remarking on the relationship between political economy and book-keeping:
Twenty-six years later, on the eve of the Russian Revolution these "wondrous errors and confusions" had been miraculously resolved, at least in the eager imagination of V.I. Lenin:
Nothing had changed. Book-keeping still offered a wondrously erroneous and confused approach to political economy. Lenin simply didn’t know what he was talking about.
Then in the 1930s along came Oskar Lange and Ludwig von Mises and their debate about economic calculation under socialism. Lange won the debate at the time -- in theory. But, with the collapse of the Soviet system in the early 1990s, von Mises came to be seen as the winner on the ground. The dysfunctional Soviet accounting system, inspired by Lange’s arguments, had played an important role in that collapse. The unspoken assumption is that it was the Langian amendments to the accounting system -- not some intrinsic flaw in accounting-in-general -- that led to that collapse.
The joker in this deck is that the calculation debate revolved around comparing centralized state planning with some hypothetical competitive market. There is no such thing. In the real world, domination of markets by a few key players (bond rating agencies, the Federal Reserve, banks too-big-to-fail) and the principal-agent problem engendered by the separation between corporate shareholder ownership and management render the competitive scenario moot.
Oskar Lange wasn't alone in recognizing how the latter separation distorted economic incentives. Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means stipulated that the separation of risk and control in the modern corporation left a choice between conservatively protecting the assets of shareholders but thereby ['possibly'] inhibiting enterprise or granting free rein to the controlling group and risking "corporate oligarchy" and "corporate plundering". Berle and Means’s analysis was influential in establishing the securities regulatory policies of the Roosevelt New Deal. And guess what? The deregulation mania of the last three decades did indeed unleash enterprise, oligarchy and plundering.
But there’s no returning to the New Deal regulatory security blanket. In offering their fixes of financial regulation, on the one hand, and socialist calculation, on the other, Berle and Means and Oskar Lange ignored the old critique of political economy Engels had highlighted.
"Labor" may be a perfectly coherent book-keeping category from the limited perspective of the individual firm, but it is the source of error and confusion when brought over into political economy. National economic statistics rely heavily on the collection and collation of firm-level data based on accounting conventions. If firm-level data are silent on social costs than so will be national statistics.
Soviet accounting failed because state owned enterprises carried unsold goods on their books at official prices. It made no difference whether those goods were even salable. That created a perverse managerial incentive to produce shoddy goods.
Capitalist accounting fails because private firms are oblivious to the social cost of their labor and raw materials inputs. Those 'inputs' include byproducts of waste, pollution and worker health impacts. That has created a perverse managerial incentive to subsidize their input costs through off-the-book social and environmental "externalites".
The capitalist accounting fault is the mirror image of the Soviet one but the end result is the same. Accounting incentives encourage managers to count the destruction of value in the wider world as a plus for their own narrow enterprises.
Next: Accounting for labor power
"I hate to sound like a Marxist about this, but…" -- Doug Muzzo, Political Science Professor, Baruch College, commenting on Michael Bloomberg’s decision to seek a third term as mayor of New York City.
Hate it or not, in the context of a really, really big economic crisis, making sense of the conjuncture may indeed require that we occasionally "sound like a Marxist."
In his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx's Wage Labor and Capital, Frederick Engels stressed the importance of the distinction that Marx subsequently made (years after writing WL&C) between labor and labor power. Engels called this distinction, "one of the most important points in the whole of political economy."
Engels framed his discussion of this most important point by remarking on the relationship between political economy and book-keeping:
Classical political economy took over from industrial practice the current conception of the manufacturer, that he buys and pays for the labor of his workers. This conception had been quite adequate for the business needs, the book-keeping and price calculations of the manufacturer. But, naively transferred to political economy, it produced there really wondrous errors and confusions.
Twenty-six years later, on the eve of the Russian Revolution these "wondrous errors and confusions" had been miraculously resolved, at least in the eager imagination of V.I. Lenin:
The accounting and control necessary for [the socialization of industry] have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost, till they have become the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic.
Nothing had changed. Book-keeping still offered a wondrously erroneous and confused approach to political economy. Lenin simply didn’t know what he was talking about.
Then in the 1930s along came Oskar Lange and Ludwig von Mises and their debate about economic calculation under socialism. Lange won the debate at the time -- in theory. But, with the collapse of the Soviet system in the early 1990s, von Mises came to be seen as the winner on the ground. The dysfunctional Soviet accounting system, inspired by Lange’s arguments, had played an important role in that collapse. The unspoken assumption is that it was the Langian amendments to the accounting system -- not some intrinsic flaw in accounting-in-general -- that led to that collapse.
The joker in this deck is that the calculation debate revolved around comparing centralized state planning with some hypothetical competitive market. There is no such thing. In the real world, domination of markets by a few key players (bond rating agencies, the Federal Reserve, banks too-big-to-fail) and the principal-agent problem engendered by the separation between corporate shareholder ownership and management render the competitive scenario moot.
Oskar Lange wasn't alone in recognizing how the latter separation distorted economic incentives. Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means stipulated that the separation of risk and control in the modern corporation left a choice between conservatively protecting the assets of shareholders but thereby ['possibly'] inhibiting enterprise or granting free rein to the controlling group and risking "corporate oligarchy" and "corporate plundering". Berle and Means’s analysis was influential in establishing the securities regulatory policies of the Roosevelt New Deal. And guess what? The deregulation mania of the last three decades did indeed unleash enterprise, oligarchy and plundering.
But there’s no returning to the New Deal regulatory security blanket. In offering their fixes of financial regulation, on the one hand, and socialist calculation, on the other, Berle and Means and Oskar Lange ignored the old critique of political economy Engels had highlighted.
"Labor" may be a perfectly coherent book-keeping category from the limited perspective of the individual firm, but it is the source of error and confusion when brought over into political economy. National economic statistics rely heavily on the collection and collation of firm-level data based on accounting conventions. If firm-level data are silent on social costs than so will be national statistics.
Soviet accounting failed because state owned enterprises carried unsold goods on their books at official prices. It made no difference whether those goods were even salable. That created a perverse managerial incentive to produce shoddy goods.
Capitalist accounting fails because private firms are oblivious to the social cost of their labor and raw materials inputs. Those 'inputs' include byproducts of waste, pollution and worker health impacts. That has created a perverse managerial incentive to subsidize their input costs through off-the-book social and environmental "externalites".
The capitalist accounting fault is the mirror image of the Soviet one but the end result is the same. Accounting incentives encourage managers to count the destruction of value in the wider world as a plus for their own narrow enterprises.
Next: Accounting for labor power
Friday, October 3, 2008
The unemployed, the gambler and the whore
by the Sandwichman
"The 'keep smiling' on the job market adopts the behavior of the whore who, on the love market, picks up someone with a smile." -- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
"The capitalist who gives himself over to fate at the gaming table is replicating in his leisure his activity of gambling on the stock market during the 'work' day, but this parallel is for Benjamin less revealing than the characteristic 'futility, the emptiness, the inability to complete something' which connects the gambler and the machine laborer..." -- Susan Buck-Morss, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore"
"The closer work comes to prostitution, the more inviting it is to describe prostitution as work -- as has long been true in the argot of prostitutes. The convergence here proceeds with giant steps under the sign of unemployment; the 'keep smiling' on the job market adopts the behavior of the whore who, on the love market, picks up someone with a smile." -- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
Key words: unemployed, gambler, whore. Google the title of this posting and at the top of the list is a JSTOR file of Susan Buck-Morss's 1986 New German Critique essay, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering." This is not some clever google-bomb. It simply reflects that the deep connection between financial speculation, John McCain's craps addiction, unemployment and Sarah Palin's ostentatious winking is nothing new.
I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me."
"The 'keep smiling' on the job market adopts the behavior of the whore who, on the love market, picks up someone with a smile." -- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
In the past decade, he has played on Mississippi riverboats, on Indian land, in Caribbean craps pits and along the length of the Las Vegas Strip. Back in 2005 he joined a group of journalists at a magazine-industry conference in Puerto Rico, offering betting strategy on request. "Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John's life," says John Weaver, McCain's former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino.
"The capitalist who gives himself over to fate at the gaming table is replicating in his leisure his activity of gambling on the stock market during the 'work' day, but this parallel is for Benjamin less revealing than the characteristic 'futility, the emptiness, the inability to complete something' which connects the gambler and the machine laborer..." -- Susan Buck-Morss, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore"
Jobs are vanishing at the fastest pace in more than five years with pink slips likely to keep stacking higher in the months ahead, an urgent signal the country may be careening toward a deep and painful recession just as Americans prepare to elect a new president.
"The closer work comes to prostitution, the more inviting it is to describe prostitution as work -- as has long been true in the argot of prostitutes. The convergence here proceeds with giant steps under the sign of unemployment; the 'keep smiling' on the job market adopts the behavior of the whore who, on the love market, picks up someone with a smile." -- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
Key words: unemployed, gambler, whore. Google the title of this posting and at the top of the list is a JSTOR file of Susan Buck-Morss's 1986 New German Critique essay, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering." This is not some clever google-bomb. It simply reflects that the deep connection between financial speculation, John McCain's craps addiction, unemployment and Sarah Palin's ostentatious winking is nothing new.
Meanwhile, A Lube Job
While attention was elsewhere, congress voted to give lend GM, Ford and Chrysler a $25B bailout all their own. I can remember a time not so long ago when that would have been considered real money. Critics protest: why should we prop up Detroit? What about Toyota and Honda, for instance: they produce in this country too, no?
But this misses the point. Toyota and Honda don’t need the money; they’ve been designing and building fuel-efficient vehicles for years. We should reward the Big 3 for binging on SUV’s and starving their research engineers.
But this misses the point. Toyota and Honda don’t need the money; they’ve been designing and building fuel-efficient vehicles for years. We should reward the Big 3 for binging on SUV’s and starving their research engineers.
It’s Not Over
It’s official: Henry Paulson is now authorized to begin shelling out the first tranche in his $700B plan to refloat financial markets. Don’t pull your money out from under your mattress just yet, however.
1. This is just a beginning. The writedowns in the mortgage market are estimated at $2 trillion and the bubble is still unwinding. The losses in derivative assets will be greater still. The bailout buys time but it does not constitute a solution.
2. The problem of pricing assets will be enormous. There is a technical problem, of course, in determining the price of something that no one currently bids for, but a deeper issue lurks. The plan was sold on the basis of highly ambiguous wording. It was stated for public consumption that the only problem is liquidity, and that the Fed/Treasury can solve it by offering to buy assets at their hold-to-maturity value. Everyone knows, however, that the real problem is solvency, and that the unspoken intention is to overpay in order to slip cash to players who might otherwise go under. No doubt it is possible to do this quietly, a few billion at a time, like the US military does in Iraq, but this is not big enough or fast enough to rescue the markets. There will need to be big, big overpayments, and in their search for congressional votes the plan’s backers couldn’t hope to ask for such a mandate. This means that everyone connected with the operation will be looking over their shoulders, worrying that, if they follow the unstated intent of the law, they will be held personally accountable.
But look on the bright side: mental illness will now be covered under more private health insurance plans (for those dwindling few that have them), and small timber-dependent communities out here in the Pacific northwest will be able to keep their schools open. So the bill will have some successes to crow about.
1. This is just a beginning. The writedowns in the mortgage market are estimated at $2 trillion and the bubble is still unwinding. The losses in derivative assets will be greater still. The bailout buys time but it does not constitute a solution.
2. The problem of pricing assets will be enormous. There is a technical problem, of course, in determining the price of something that no one currently bids for, but a deeper issue lurks. The plan was sold on the basis of highly ambiguous wording. It was stated for public consumption that the only problem is liquidity, and that the Fed/Treasury can solve it by offering to buy assets at their hold-to-maturity value. Everyone knows, however, that the real problem is solvency, and that the unspoken intention is to overpay in order to slip cash to players who might otherwise go under. No doubt it is possible to do this quietly, a few billion at a time, like the US military does in Iraq, but this is not big enough or fast enough to rescue the markets. There will need to be big, big overpayments, and in their search for congressional votes the plan’s backers couldn’t hope to ask for such a mandate. This means that everyone connected with the operation will be looking over their shoulders, worrying that, if they follow the unstated intent of the law, they will be held personally accountable.
But look on the bright side: mental illness will now be covered under more private health insurance plans (for those dwindling few that have them), and small timber-dependent communities out here in the Pacific northwest will be able to keep their schools open. So the bill will have some successes to crow about.
What Would a Scientific Economics Look Like?
This is the title of piece of mine just published in the Post-Autistic Economics Review. I happen to be a fan of science (I’m so pre-postmodern) and would like economics to move in that direction. Let me know what you think.
Is it Plagiarism or Normal Business Practice?
As loyal readers of EconoSpeak know, on Sept. 24 I posted a relatively substantial proposal that I headlined “Plan B: How to Restore Financial Markets Without a Bailout”. Three days later, I was surprised to see almost the same plan referred to in a New York Times column, but attached to the name of Andrew Feldstein, the director of a hedge fund. What struck me is that, not only were the two key general ideas—the public financial intermediary, the window to acquire distressed assets at market prices—the same, even the initial capitalization was pegged at an identical $300B. (Some of the details revealed in a followup Times blog were different and, honestly, not as good.) In my line of work, this is a prima facie case of plagiarism.
What this probably represents, however, is a difference in culture. In the academic world that I inhabit, there is a strong expectation that all borrowed words or ideas will be attributed to their source. Failure to do this constitutes an intellectual scandal; on the positive side, we try to impress our peers with a bottomless pile of citations. (This is called “scholarship”.)
The business world is different. There the rule is, if it ain’t nailed down you can take it. Having a bright idea and getting mentioned in the Times is worth real money. I can imagine that Feldstein’s fund may get an extra investor or two (or dissuade an existing investor from fleeing) by the halo effect of this publicity. I was dumb enough not to copyright my idea, so what do I expect?
Actually, while I like to have my ego stroked every now and then, and while I would come down hard on any student who submitted a paper that plagiarized, I don’t really care about attribution in this case. I would like this idea to be given a fair hearing, and someone with a hedge fund is likely to have a wider audience than me. In fact, I rather like the notion that an obscure economist can release an idea on some little corner of the web, it can bounce around for a while, and then reappear dressed up in real money.
What this probably represents, however, is a difference in culture. In the academic world that I inhabit, there is a strong expectation that all borrowed words or ideas will be attributed to their source. Failure to do this constitutes an intellectual scandal; on the positive side, we try to impress our peers with a bottomless pile of citations. (This is called “scholarship”.)
The business world is different. There the rule is, if it ain’t nailed down you can take it. Having a bright idea and getting mentioned in the Times is worth real money. I can imagine that Feldstein’s fund may get an extra investor or two (or dissuade an existing investor from fleeing) by the halo effect of this publicity. I was dumb enough not to copyright my idea, so what do I expect?
Actually, while I like to have my ego stroked every now and then, and while I would come down hard on any student who submitted a paper that plagiarized, I don’t really care about attribution in this case. I would like this idea to be given a fair hearing, and someone with a hedge fund is likely to have a wider audience than me. In fact, I rather like the notion that an obscure economist can release an idea on some little corner of the web, it can bounce around for a while, and then reappear dressed up in real money.
The Problem with Trickle-Up
I’ve been hearing a lot recently about a so-called “trickle-up” approach to straightening out the financial system. The idea is that, rather than forking over hundreds of billions of dollars to speculators, we should give it instead to distressed homeowners. The government could issues grants or subsidized loans to folks having trouble making their mortgage payments; this would serve two purposes, to keep people in their homes and, by greatly reducing the default rate, validating the financial assets derived from mortgages.
Nice try, but it won’t work.
First, there is a nasty problem of equity vs cost: the program is affordable only if you give the money to the subset of owners falling behind in their payments, but why should they be the only ones to get a price break. Speaking just for myself, I own a house and have not skipped a payment yet, although not without occasional struggle. Why them and not me? Multiply this by a few million and you have a real question.
Second, and much more to the point financially, the underlying problem is a housing bubble. Prices overshot by about 30% or so on a national average, and a mountain of securities were piled on top. How will helping people make onerous payments correct this? Answer: you can only prevent the deflation of the bubble by permanently (or at least indefinitely) blowing more air into it. To sustain the overvaluation of a house, you not only have to subsidize its current financing, you have to subside new buyers so that the old ones can sell at the inflated price. If you don’t, the house drops in value and you are back to square one as far as derivative assets are concerned. The real point is that it is futile for the government to try to hold back the deflation of the bubble by throwing money at it. The prices have to come down one way or another.
This is why I like Dean Baker’s approach. He would let the mortgages fail but allow people to stay in their homes as renters. From a progressive point of view I see no particular value in mass home ownership. (Why should people concentrate their savings into a single asset, their home, rather than diversify? Or rather than own their own job, which could provide a greater measure of income security?) What needs to be prevented, however, is mass eviction.
Nice try, but it won’t work.
First, there is a nasty problem of equity vs cost: the program is affordable only if you give the money to the subset of owners falling behind in their payments, but why should they be the only ones to get a price break. Speaking just for myself, I own a house and have not skipped a payment yet, although not without occasional struggle. Why them and not me? Multiply this by a few million and you have a real question.
Second, and much more to the point financially, the underlying problem is a housing bubble. Prices overshot by about 30% or so on a national average, and a mountain of securities were piled on top. How will helping people make onerous payments correct this? Answer: you can only prevent the deflation of the bubble by permanently (or at least indefinitely) blowing more air into it. To sustain the overvaluation of a house, you not only have to subsidize its current financing, you have to subside new buyers so that the old ones can sell at the inflated price. If you don’t, the house drops in value and you are back to square one as far as derivative assets are concerned. The real point is that it is futile for the government to try to hold back the deflation of the bubble by throwing money at it. The prices have to come down one way or another.
This is why I like Dean Baker’s approach. He would let the mortgages fail but allow people to stay in their homes as renters. From a progressive point of view I see no particular value in mass home ownership. (Why should people concentrate their savings into a single asset, their home, rather than diversify? Or rather than own their own job, which could provide a greater measure of income security?) What needs to be prevented, however, is mass eviction.
Sandwichman Doubts the Work Ethic!
by the Sandwichman
PGL writes "No one doubts the work ethic of Americans..."
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, maybe. But no one doubts the work ethic? What am I? Chopped liver?
Sandwichman doesn't doubt that there are endless panegyrics to hard work in American folklore. But Sandwichman doubts that what American politicians and pundits call the work ethic -- striving for financial success (or just survival), willingness to put in extra hours on the job in exchange for more income -- constitutes a genuine work ethic.
Sandwichman's argument continues to be that the conventional misconception about the work ethic is at the root of the economy's inability to generate sufficient demand to sustain full employment.
The revised American standard version of the work ethic falsely ties higher income to longer hours on the job. Well, if one takes that as an unquestionable article of faith, then there's no point in considering the Stewardian critique and alternative summed up in the ditty, "whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay."
That ditty, by the way, expressed the founding philosophy of organized labor in the United States. Today's unions have strayed far from that idea, which may account in part, for their declining influence. But no one doubts? What does that mean? Doesn't it really frame the discussion in such a way as to exclude us nobodies who fundamentally questions the conventional wisdom about the connection between longer hours and higher income?
As long as "no one doubts the work ethic", the debate about how to "stimulate" the necessary demand can continue to go around and around in the same circles: "Reduce taxes" "No, increase government spending (on worthwhile things)" "No, reduce taxes" "No... No... No..."
To use a tired cliche: been there, done that.
PGL writes "No one doubts the work ethic of Americans..."
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, maybe. But no one doubts the work ethic? What am I? Chopped liver?
Sandwichman doesn't doubt that there are endless panegyrics to hard work in American folklore. But Sandwichman doubts that what American politicians and pundits call the work ethic -- striving for financial success (or just survival), willingness to put in extra hours on the job in exchange for more income -- constitutes a genuine work ethic.
Sandwichman's argument continues to be that the conventional misconception about the work ethic is at the root of the economy's inability to generate sufficient demand to sustain full employment.
The revised American standard version of the work ethic falsely ties higher income to longer hours on the job. Well, if one takes that as an unquestionable article of faith, then there's no point in considering the Stewardian critique and alternative summed up in the ditty, "whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay."
That ditty, by the way, expressed the founding philosophy of organized labor in the United States. Today's unions have strayed far from that idea, which may account in part, for their declining influence. But no one doubts? What does that mean? Doesn't it really frame the discussion in such a way as to exclude us nobodies who fundamentally questions the conventional wisdom about the connection between longer hours and higher income?
As long as "no one doubts the work ethic", the debate about how to "stimulate" the necessary demand can continue to go around and around in the same circles: "Reduce taxes" "No, increase government spending (on worthwhile things)" "No, reduce taxes" "No... No... No..."
To use a tired cliche: been there, done that.
The Employment Situation for September & Sarah Palin on the Fundamentals of the US Economy
Last night - Sarah Palin argued:
John McCain saying our economy was strong, he was talking to and about the American workforce, and the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce, that is a positive, that is encouragement, and that is what John McCain meant.
BLS reported this morning:
Nonfarm payroll employment declined by 159,000 in September, and the unemployment rate held at 6.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade, while mining and health care continued to add jobs.
No one doubts the work ethnic of Americans. The problem is that the economy is not generating sufficient aggregate demand to fully utilize this work ethnic.
Payroll employment has declined by 760 thousand since December 2007. While the unemployment rate did not further increase last month, that’s not because of any good news from the household survey of employment which showed a 222 thousand decline last month alone. We should note that the employment-population ratio fell from 62.1% to 62.0% but that was accompanied by a decline in the labor force participation rate from 66.1% to 66.0%. Palin does not seem to be attributing this decline to less work ethic and she’s likely correct as this decline is more likely due to a discouraged worker effect.
Our graph shows both the employment-population ratio (EP) and the labor force participation rate (LF) from October 1998 to September 2008. From early 2001 to September, the employment-population ratio fell from its 64% plus level to only 62.0% as of September 2003 but then partially recovered to 63.4% by December 2006. Since then, this ratio has plummeted with the September 2008 level being as bad as the September 2003 level. While the rise in the unemployment rate sounds bad, the drop in the employment-population ratio has been worse since the labor force participation rate has also declined from around 67% as of the end of 2000 to only 66% now.
The next Administration needs to recognize that these hard working Americans want new job opportunities. Alas, I did not hear very much from Governor Palin last night as to how a McCain Administration would go about accomplishing this goal.
Update: John McCain has responded to the labor market news and proposes that we cut government spending as a means for increasing employment. Lord Keynes must be rolling over in his grave!
The 1960s - the subversive current continues
If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today none of us are going to be around because somebody's going to make the mistake through our senseless blundering, with the dropping of a nuclear bomb somewhere, and then another one's going to drop, and don't let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds....But this is were we have drifted, and we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct, 'I must be first. I must be supreme. Our nation must rule the world!' And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken. God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam! And we are criminals in that war, we have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it! And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation, but God has a way of putting nations in their place! The God that I worship has a way of saying 'Don't play with me!'
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values -- that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968, Baptist civil-rights leader in the US
Hidden conclusion here.
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