Eugene Steuerle: Deficit Hawk in the Middle of a Depression

AP News reports:

Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion. Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession's impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever. The last time the government's revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression.

The same story quotes Eugene Steuerle - a former Treasury Department official in the Reagan administration who is now vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation:

Our tax system is already inadequate to support the promises our government has made ... This just adds to the problem.

While it is true that Federal fiscal policy needs to regain long-term fiscal sanity, which was basically ignored during the Bush43 years, lamenting the fact that tax revenues have declined during the current recession strikes me as Hoover economics. Short-term stimulus with a credible commitment to long-term fiscal sanity seems to be what the current Administration is striving for – and that makes sense to this deficit hawk.

Hours of Labour 5

by Sydney J. Chapman (translated and condensed by the Sandwichman)

Next, suppose that an agreement between employers, tacit or overt, is impossible, and that each employer will make what arrangements he can when he can. What hours, then, will competition among employers tend to bring about, when humanitarian considerations and any resistance from the workers are ruled out?


Suppose the efficiency of labor at the time is that associated with a customary working day of ten hours. The product of the last fraction of the tenth hour could not be zero, for if it were ten hours would not be worked. The ultimate effect of extending the working day beyond nine hours is loss, not because the product of the last fraction of the ninth hour is zero, but because the product of the last fraction of the ninth hour just equals the ultimate reduction of the product of the other hours occasioned by the lengthening of the working day.

Hence, on the assumption that employers are perfectly far-sighted but that agreement between them as to working hours is lacking, the disposition on the part of each employer to reduce hours to nine would be weakened if each employer could not depend upon keeping workers after he had brought them to the level of efficiency associated with the nine hours' day. The reforming employer would run the risk of paying the whole cost of the labor value created by shorter hours and getting little in return; other employers might secure and exhaust the new labor value, and no permanent good would be effected. Nor would there be any more guarantee in the conditions supposed that the nine hours' day would be retained, if instituted, for an employer could always snatch a temporary advantage by extending hours and paying slightly higher weekly wages. This is a general proof that, on the assumption made as regards the intelligence and foresight of employers and in the absence of agreement between them, the hours resulting in the maximum product would not necessarily establish themselves, no force on the side of the working people being supposed operative.

Next

Anonymous Gold Fan Out To Lunch

For those who followed my post on Janet Yellen as Fed Chair, an anonymous fan of the gold standard (he did not like the title "gold bug" and says he does not know how to buy gold) showed up claiming that a 1988 paper by Barsky and Summers in the JPE on "Gibson's Paradox" showed that the price of gold was being suppressed and needed to be set free. He went on at length about this. So, I went and looked at the paper.

So, Gibson's Paradox is a supposed relation between the price level and the nominal price of gold, along with the level of the long term interest rate(s). Of course, Irving Fisher argued that it was the rate of inflation that should be tied to nominal interest rates. So, Anonymouse Gold Fan argued that B and S had shown this relation to hold and that this explained Fed policy since 1995. Baloney. What B and S found was that this paradox held during the period of the high gold standard, 1821-1914. It held weakly during the Bretton Woods period of 1945-1971. Otherwise, it has not held. Anonymous Gold Fan is Out To Lunch and misrepresenting papers to push nonsense, big surprise.

Medical Cost Ratios Should be Closer to 90% Rather Than 80%

Brad DeLong summarizes an interesting contribution from Arindrajit Dube:

Investors in Cigna, United Healthcare Group, and Aetna alone appear to believe that if they can block the public plan, then their investments in those three companies alone will be worth an extra $30 billion dollars. Arindrajit's calculation is simple. The Senate Group of Six's (Michael B. Enzi, Charles E. Grassley, Olympia Snowe, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, and Jeff Bingamen) discussions and announcement reduced the InTrade probability of a public plan by 15 percentage points. The stakes for the insurers are huge. The investors in them appear to believe that the public plan is nearly a life-or-death issue for the companies: each 1% increase in the chance of a public plan chops 0.6% off of the long-term value of the totalprofits--not the health profits, the total profits--from their business as they have to compete for real against the government in the health insurance market.

Next up is a nugget from Cost versus Profit in Managed Care Today:

MCR is simply the percentage of premium money that is spent on reimbursement to providers for rendered health care services. At a time when we have the largest number of uninsured individuals, decreasing MCRs and increasing premiums have combined for record profits to insurers. That is, the profit margin comes not only from increasing premiums, but by lowering the amount MCOs spend on health care … Below, we examine ratios for four of the five5 largest publicly traded national managed care organizations. Looking at the three quarters ending September 2007, we can see how MCRs have decreased period to period.

This report noted in particular the MCR for UnitedHealthCare Group so I checked its 10-K for see how this ratio would look over the 2006 to 2008 three-year period – the answer being its average was 81.3 percent. The report also note recent MCRs for Aetna, Humana, and Wellpoint with the latter having MCRs less than 80 percent.

Wikipedia writes:

As a general rule, a medical cost ratio of 85% or less is desirable.

Let’s see – even if I’m so inefficient that my operating cost ratio is 14 percent (which is where UnitedHealth Group’s has been lately), I can make profits from underwriting HMO insurance equal to 1 percent of premiums on top of my investment income, which often also runs around 1 percent of premiums. OK, my business would have to receive a normal cost of capital even in a competitive world but then this 2 percent should do that. If I can get my MCR down to around 80 percent, which is what we are seeing now, then I get an extraordinary return to capital even with these high operating costs.

So what should we expect from real competition – as in having the public option and the government perhaps running their program with lower operating costs? If the private HMOs learned to run their shops with operating costs less than 10 percent of premium income, the medical cost ratio could be as high as 90 percent and still afford these private companies a normal return to capital. But I guess such efficiency is seen as a bad idea among Republicans and certain centrist Democrats.

Technological Unemployment

by the Sandwichman

"Not much is said these days about technological unemployment." (Comment by Joseph DeLassus of MO on a U.S. News and World Report blog)

Most people with intellectual honesty know by this time that the chief cause of the great depression is technological unemployment; in other words, our collective failure to adjust working time to fit the greatly increased efficiency of our productive system.

Knowing the root of our troubles, the remedy should be simple. Reduce the working time immediately. The bill for the thirty-hour work-week, now before Congress, should become a law at once. -- Samuel Teitelbaum, Letter to the editor, New York Times, January 7, 1933.

Sandwichman wants to know, "Is there such a thing as 'technological unemployment'? If there is such a thing, might it be the 'chief cause' of the current recession? If it is even possible that it is the chief cause of the current recession why does NO ONE mentions the possibility?

"Jobless recovery" is a gutless euphemism for technological unemployment. Remember that.

Number One!

by the Sandwichman

It pays to advertise. Thanks to boilerplate blog columns in Business Week and The Economist last month (and comments with links), the Sandwichman's Why Economists Dislike a Lump of Labor ranked Number One in abstract views for July 2009 on the Research Papers in Economics database (tied for 101st place for article downloads).

Hours of Labour 4

by Sydney J. Chapman (translated and condensed by the Sandwichman)

The eight-hour day has come to be regarded by some social reformers as the ideal of the future. The doctrine that the workman should normally work eight hours a day has been advanced with as high a degree of certainty as, say, the doctrine that the workman should normally sleep some definite number of hours a day. But the problem of the length of the working day is of a different nature from that of the problem of the time that should be devoted to sleep. The hours that should be given to sleep depend mainly on physiological conditions (though these physiological conditions are also affected by economic and psychological conditions). But the hours it is wise to assign to labor depend on the attitude of the workman to leisure and work, resulting as much from non-physiological as from physiological influences.


It is my purpose to show that the non-physiological value of leisure, as well as its physiological value, must rise with progress, and that therefore, in all probability, the hours that should normally be worked per day will become steadily less. The ideal working day of the future cannot be eight hours, for it must be essentially a progressive ideal. As a community advances, agitation for shorter hours will be constantly breaking out anew. If this is a correct reading of progress, it is important that we should understand fully the forces at work at each re-settlement of the length of the working day, those on the employing side as well as those expressed in the claims of the workers. I propose now, in consequence, to disentangle the impulses and their relations, into which the question of the determination of the working day at any one time may be resolved.

The matter being complex, it is necessary to proceed by successive steps of abstraction. In the first instance, therefore, I intend to indicate the length of working day workers and employers would respectively seek if they recognized their own interests and were endowed with complete foreknowledge of the effects of different hours of labor upon their interests. I will assume – as I may legitimately for most employment in large-scale production – that the workman tends to get as his wage his marginal worth, that is to say, the value that would be lost by his dismissal. We may assume, further, that the marginal worth of the workman for any given length of working day becomes, in the long run, a stationary amount.

If the efficiency of labor rose continuously in consequence of a reduction of hours it would obviously approximate to some limit, and if it fell continuously in consequence of an extension of the hours of labor it would also approach a limit. After some time the differences between these limits and the actual efficiency of labor could be taken as negligible.

For the sake of simplicity, I will for now suppose that one kind of labor only is employed. It is clear, then, that it is possible on these assumptions to indicate what in the long run (i.e., when all the reactions as regards, for instance, the efficiency of labor and provision and arrangement of other agents have taken place) the marginal daily worth of labor will be for different lengths of working day, it being understood that the number of shifts worked remains the same. If the number of shifts were increased the value of the labor would rise, as will be fully explained later.

Let us suppose that the following table represents, at a given time, the value of labor of a given kind per week, in relation to the length of the working day:
The fall in the value of labor after the working day exceeds nine hours is due to the fact that diminished weekly productivity more than counteracts the direct effect of the extension of the daily time for work. The diminished weekly productivity may be due to impaired vitality – physical, mental, or moral – or to some extent to irregularity, where that is possible, as in the case of colliers. The damage to productivity may be inflicted directly by excessive work, or it may be indirectly consequent upon it, the prime cause being found in the use of stimulants or recourse to unhealthy excitement in periods of leisure, reactions that are only to be expected when the day's work is very exhausting or very dull. The use of leisure affects, of course, mental vitality, culture, and character, and it will therefore be generally observable that labor which has had its hours reduced will be capable after a time – when the use of leisure has been improved and the improvement has produced its effects – of managing satisfactorily more complicated machinery, and will be generally more responsible and trustworthy, and therefore less in need of continuous watching and directing.

If employers are endowed with the foresight presupposed, and if their operating hours need not increase concurrently with a lengthening of the working day, it is in that case supposed to their interest collectively to come to an agreement not to employ labor more than nine hours a day, and to their interest individually not to employ labor for shorter hours than nine a day. The second conclusion follows from the fact that the weekly product would be augmented by a greater amount than is multiplied by the number of workers were the hours of labor increased, say from eight to nine, because labor, as every other agent employed in production, is paid not its aggregate but its marginal worth to the business in which it is employed. This proposition may be made more self-evident by the following example. Were labor rendered 25 percent more productive all round, the product and real wages would each be raised approximately 25 percent, other things being equal; but as the product must be greater than aggregate wages the addition made to the former by the longer hours must be greater than the addition made to aggregate wages.

Next

Aggregate Demand and Government Purchases

In certain GOP circles, the conclusion had already been drawn that the recent fiscal stimulus had failed to cure the patient even before the patient really swallowed the medicine. A few interesting tidbits from the BEA’s latest include the somewhat good news that real GDP fell by only 1 percent (all figures on an annualized basis) during the second quarter of 2009 as opposed to about 6 percent over the previous 6 months. Also notice that government purchased fell by 2.6 percent during the first quarter of 2009 with declines not only in state and local purchases but also Federal purchases. But during the most recent quarter, government purchases rose by 5.6 percent mainly because of a pop from Federal purchases. Simply put – the patient is still sick but the fiscal medicine has started to kick in.

Update: When Josh Bivens speaks, you listen:

The marked improvement in this quarter relative to last is largely due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Despite the needed boost from the ARRA (up to 3 full percentage points of annualized growth in the quarter), the U.S. economy has still contracted over the past year by 3.9%, the largest annual contraction since 1947 ... Despite the overall contraction, the fingerprints of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could be seen in some aspect of today’s report. Federal government spending grew at an 11% rate in the quarter, adding roughly 0.8% to overall GDP. State and local government spending grew at a 2.4% annual rate, the fastest growth since the middle of 2007. It is clear that the large amount of state aid contained in the ARRA made this growth possible. Furthermore, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable personal income rose by 3.2% in the quarter, after rising by only 1% in the previous quarter. A large contribution to this increase was made by the Making Work Pay tax credit passed in conjunction with the ARRA, as this was the first full quarter that the credit was in effect. Inflation-adjusted transfer payments (including a one-time payment to Social Security recipients) rose at an annual rate of over 6% in the quarter as well. This increase in disposable personal incomes did not translate into a sharp boost in consumption spending because the personal savings rate jumped again — rising to 5.2% in the second quarter, up from 4% in the previous quarter. This slippage between personal incomes and consumption spending caused by a rising savings rate makes plain that, instead of focusing on even more tax cuts, it was wise to make sure that much of the ARRA was devoted to direct public investment spending. The public investment spending in the ARRA, while not having a significant impact in the second quarter, will provide an even stronger boost to the economy in quarters to come. The consensus of macroeconomic forecasters is that ARRA contributed roughly 3% to annualized growth rates in the second quarter. This means that absent its effects, economic performance would have resembled that of the previous three quarters, when the economy contracted at an average annual rate of 4.9%. In short, the recovery act turned this quarter’s economic performance from disastrous to merely bad. This is no small achievement, but with even more public relief and investments, the U.S. economy could do much better.

Thirty Hour Work Week Bill, 1934

A BILL To prevent the shipment in interstate commerce of certain articles and commodities, in connection with which persons are employed more than five days per week or six hours per day, and prescribing certain conditions with respect to purchases and loans by the United States, and codes, agreements, and licenses under the National Industrial Recovery Act.

Whereas interstate commerce among the people of the various States has been and is now burdened, hampered, and clogged by a patent and continued idleness of workers as well as the mechanical appliances and implements of production; and

Whereas this continued idleness of men and machines has necessarily resulted in imposing the burden of feeding and supporting more than eighteen million people upon that part of our people who do work and produce, which condition is unjust to those who work and those who cannot obtain work; and

Whereas interstate commerce and trade can best be revived, and the comfort and happiness of the people can best be produced by an economic readjustment that supplies people jobs with wages, rather than charity without jobs; and

Whereas under our economic system production is stifled when purchasers with ability to buy are lacking, and is stimulated to action by purchasers with money; and

Whereas our private productive system is dependent for its own customers chiefly upon its own employees, who cannot buy the output of the system unless producers give them jobs at wages adequate to exchange for the products; and Whereas private business has not been able, and is not now able, to give jobs to those who need them, on past or existing hours of labor; and

Whereas business chaos, bankruptcies, insolvencies, misery, destitution, and want have resulted, and the American people have been deprived of the incalculable advantages and benefits of the abundance of goods, commodities, and services idle machines and idle people could have produced if put to work: Now, therefore, in order to provide a fairer and more nearly balanced income; to put idle machines and people to work; to increase the purchasing power of the people and thereby stimulate production to capacity; to revive languishing commerce and trade; and to promote the happiness and comfort of the people.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled, That no article or commodity shall be shipped, transported, or delivered in interstate or foreign commerce, which was produced or manufactured in any mine, quarry, mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment situated in the United States, in which any person, except officers, executives, and superintendents, and their personal and immediate clerical assistants, was employed more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day: Provided, That upon the submission of satisfactory proof of the existence of special conditions in any industry included herein, making it necessary for certain persons to be employed more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day, the Secretary of Labor, or his duly selected representatives, may issue exemption permits with respect to such persons, relieving the employer from the provisions of this Act with reference to such persons.

SEC. 2. (a) No article or commodity shall be purchased by the United States, or any department or organization thereof, from any business enterprise operating contrary to any provision of this Act, or if such article or commodity was produced or manufactured in any mine, quarry, mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment situated in the United States, in which any person, except officers, executives, and superintendents, and their personal and immediate clerical assistants, was employed, after the date this Act takes effect, more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day.
(b) Each contract made with a contractor for any public work shall contain a provision that the contractor will buy no article or commodity to use on or in any public work from any business enterprise violating any of the terms or provisions of this Act, and will buy no article or commodity which was produced in any mine, quarry, mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment situated in the United States, in which any person, except officers, executives, and superintendents, and their personal and immediate clerical assistants, was employed more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day.

SEC. 3. (a) No governmental agency shall make or renew any loan to any employer of labor in any mine, quarry, mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment situated in the United States, in which any person, except officers, executives, and superintendents and their personal and immediate clerical assistants, was employed more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day.
(b) On and after the effective date of this Act, any such employer of labor who applies for a loan from any such governmental agency shall agree at the time of making application for such loan that so long as he is indebted to the United States he will not permit any person, except officers, executives, and superintendents and their personal and immediate clerical assistants, to work more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day. In the event that there is a violation by any such employer of his agreement, the full amount of the unpaid principal of the loan made to such employer shall be immediately payable.

SEC. 4. (a) On and after the date this Act takes effect, every code of fair competition, agreement, and license approved, prescribed, or issued under title I of the National Industrial Recovery Act shall contain a condition that the employers covered by such code, agreement, or license shall not employ any person, except officers, executives, and superintendents and their personal and immediate clerical assistants, more than five days in any week or more than six hours in any day.
(b) Every such code, agreement, and license heretofore approved, prescribed, or issued under title I of such Act shall be deemed to be amended so as to include a provision corresponding to that prescribed in subsection (a) of this section.

SEC. 5. On and after the date this Act takes effect, it shall be unlawful for any employer subject to any of the provisions of this Act to reduce, directly or indirectly, the daily, weekly, or monthly wage rate in effect on such date (or, in the case of an applicant for a loan from a governmental agency, on the date his application is submitted) with respect to any of his employees until a reasonable opportunity has been afforded to his employees, through representatives of their own choosing by a majority vote, to meet with the employer or his representatives and to discuss and consider fully all questions which may arise in connection with the reduction of such wage rate.

SEC. 6. Any person who violates any of the provisions of this Act, or who fails [to] comply with any of its requirements, shall upon conviction thereof, be fined not
[more] than $200, or be imprisoned for not more than three months, or both.

SEC. 7. (a) This Act shall become effective thirty days after the date of its enactment, and it shall not apply to commodities or articles produced or manufactured prior to its effective date.
(b) Nothing in this Act shall be construed to apply to agricultural or farm products processed for first sale by the original producer.
(c) This Act shall remain in force for two years after the date it becomes effective.

SEC. 8. If any provision, clause, or paragraph of this Act, or the application thereof to any person or circumstances, is held invalid, the remainder of the Act, and the application of such provision, clause, or paragraph to other persons or circumstances, shall not be affected thereby.

Introduction to Three Notes on Budgetary Priorities

At the time that my university system faces almost half a billion dollars (yes, with a B) in budget cuts, I have felt the need to rant about budget priorities. As Joseph Schumpeter wrote: "the budget is the skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies."

People outside of California could not possibly comprehend the perverted logic of our prison system, which consumes more of the budget than state support of higher education. The number of public needs that deserve serious funding is enormous. The most ridiculous waste of money is the military.

I intended to write today about the military budget, going beyond Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes's estimate of the $3 trillion dollar war, looking at the harm done to and by veterans, over and above the medical costs that Stiglitz and Bilmes count.

I had planned to begin with Dave Philipps' articles on the how the war experience has screwed up soldiers' minds. He documents a rash of murders occurred near Fort Carson, Colorado. The murderers are from a small unit that experienced exceptionally heavy fighting and casualties. This morning I was pleasantly surprised to hear Philipps interviewed on Democracy Now, going into more detail.
The next note will point to the problem of homelessness among veterans.

The final note will note the recent discovery that Agent Orange did more harm to veterans health than previously recognized. I suspect that more information about Gulf War Syndrome will trickle in.


The point is not that veterans should be the highest budgetary priority. Social spending needs of all kinds go unmet.

Besides, the easiest policy to reduce the kind of costs noted here is to avoid fighting wars. (Has any empire ever been involved in so many foreign conflicts?)

Even so, the hypocrisy of supposed reverence for veterans in the face of the neglect of their needs is worthy of note. Just as much policy is designed to protect the fetus and then shortchange the kids, the country pours money into high tech military hardware, applauds the soldiers, then ignores the damage done to the veterans.

First Note:
Philipps, Dave. 2009. "Casualties of War, Part I: The Hell of War Comes Home." Colorado Springs Gazette (26 July).

The series discusses: Army unit whose members have been accused of at least 10 murders in the past several years highlights the risks of prolonged warfare.

"In August 2007, Louis Bressler, 24, robbed and shot a soldier he picked up on a street in Colorado Springs. In December 2007, Bressler and fellow soldiers Bruce Bastien Jr., 21, and Kenneth Eastridge, 24, left the bullet-riddled body of a soldier from their unit on a west-side street. In May and June 2008, police say Rudolfo Torres-Gandarilla, 20, and Jomar Falu-Vives, 23, drove around with an assault rifle, randomly shooting people. In September 2008, police say John Needham, 25, beat a former girlfriend to death. Most of the killers were from a single 500-soldier unit within the brigade called the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, which nicknamed itself the "Lethal Warriors.

Second Note:
Eckholm, Erik. 2009. "For Veterans, a Weekend Pass From Homelessness." New York Times (26 July): p. A 13.

"The future mix of homeless veterans was signaled here last weekend at Stand Down, an annual three-day tent city that provides respite and aid to former members of the armed forces whose lives have collapsed. The number of homeless veterans who made their way to a high school's athletic fields for the gathering reached a record high, some 950 compared with last year's record of 830. The job-devouring recession is pushing up the numbers, but organizers said they were also starting to see younger veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, some with traumatic brain injuries or psychological stresses, who had fallen through the safety nets with unusual speed."

"According to V.A. estimates, the overall number of homeless veterans declined in recent years, from about 250,000 who lacked shelter at some point in 2006 to perhaps 200,000 last year. The share of women is climbing, and while they account for 4 percent of all homeless veterans, they make up 9 percent of those under 45, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless programs at the department. The agency has so far detected about 3,700 homeless veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but with one million troops now home from these regions and more returning every week, Mr. Dougherty said, that figure is sure to climb. In an ominous harbinger, a recent study found that more than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who enrolled in the veterans' health system since 2001 had already displayed post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or other mental health problems."

Third Note:
Lorber, Janie. 2009. "Report Sees Agent Orange Link to More Illnesses." New York Times (25 July): p. A 12.

"An expert panel reported on Friday that two more diseases may be linked to exposure to Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the American military during the Vietnam War. People exposed to the chemical appear, at least tentatively, to be more likely to develop Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease, according to the report. The report was written by a 14-member committee charged by the Institute of Medicine with determining whether certain medical conditions were caused by exposure to herbicides used to clear stretches of jungle."

Tom Palley Writes to the Queen of England

Letter to the Queen: Why No One Predicted the Crisis

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London
SW1A 1AA
29 July 2009
MADAM,

In response to your question why no one predicted the crisis you have recently received a letter from Professors Tim Besley and Peter Hennessy, sent on behalf of the British Academy. They claim economists’ failure to foresee the crisis was the result of a “failure of the collective imagination.” That claim is tendentious and will mislead you.

The failure was due to the sociology of the economics profession. This failure was a long time in the making and was the product of the profession becoming increasingly arrogant, narrow, and closed minded. One was compelled to adhere to the dominant ideological construction of economics or face exclusion. That was the mindset of the IMF and the World Bank with their “Washington Consensus”, and it was the mindset of central bankers (including your own Bank of England) with their thinking about the sufficiency of inflation targeting and hostility to regulation.

The crisis was predictable and was predicted. See, for example:

(1) "The Weak Recovery and the Coming Deep Recession," Mother Jones, March 2006.

(2) "Debt and Lending: A Cri de Coeur," Levy Institute, April 2006.

(3) "The Fallacy of the Revised Bretton Woods Hypothesis: Why Today’s Financial System is Unsustainable," Levy Institute, June 2006.

Professors Besley and Hennessy’s letter is another example of the economics profession’s complete inability to come to grips with its sociological failure which produced massive intellectual failure with huge costs for society. This is a very serious social problem and we will all continue to pay the costs as long as it is unaddressed.

Respectfully yours,

Tom Palley

Hours of Labour 3

by Sydney J. Chapman (translated and condensed by the Sandwichman)

So far I have dwelt on two aspects bearing upon the hours of labor: first, the effect of industrial development in intensifying the work performed during the working day and thereby increasing the output; second, the subjective effect of the increasing strain associated with such advance. I have now to add another influence: the enhancement of the value of leisure that must accompany a rise in wages, improved education, and social progress generally. The amount of the real wage yielded by a given money wage necessarily varies with the time left to spend it; and, further, the value of leisure is a function of the goods that can be enjoyed in the period of leisure. The acute worker would aim at so distributing his time between work and recreation that the gain resulting from a little more leisure would equal the loss consequent upon the implied diminution of wages. Hence, when the volume of goods per capita annually supplied to labor increase, an attempt would almost certainly be made by the workers to buy more leisure, even if the satisfaction derived from leisure were unaffected, which it would not be, because the satisfaction derived from leisure must rise when each hour of leisure is enriched by greater possessions. As regards the effect of education, it is sufficient to point out that the value of leisure is a function of appreciative power and that this is developed by education. On the other hand, the higher appreciative power might also enhance the satisfaction got out of the work itself, and this effect could offset the effect on the value of leisure, or even more than counteract it. Ambitions would be further awakened, but the ambitious worker would probably demand, as a rule, more time for study. I think it unquestionable that, on the whole, educational advance causes a curtailment of hours.

But unfortunately human nature improves slowly, and in nothing more slowly than in the hard task of learning to use leisure well. In every age, in every nation, and in every rank of society, those who have known how to work well have been far more numerous than those who have known how to use leisure well. But on the other hand it is only through freedom to use leisure as they will that people can learn to use leisure well; and no class of manual workers who are devoid of leisure can have much self-respect and become full citizens. Some time free from the fatigue of work that tires without educating is a necessary condition of a high standard of life. – Marshall, Principles of Economics, 5th ed., pp. 719-20.

Social progress creates new claims on leisure by complicating life and rendering formerly vague feelings of social obligation more definite and insistent.

Generally it can be said that the more complex the social organism becomes, the more its constituent individuals must devote time, apart from work and business, to the family and recreation, to education and general affairs, the more necessary is a general social arrangement concerning the distribution of time between the several purposes which it has to serve. – Schmoller, Grundrisse der allgemeinen Volkswirthschaftslehre, p. 741.

Next

The Bill O’Reilly Life Expectancy Theorem Applied to California

Paul Krugman said he needed a drink after seeing this:

Bill O’Reilly explaining that of course America has lower life expectancy than Canada - we have 10 times as many people, so we have 10 times as many deaths.

OK, I had a few drinks last night too but am all sober now and thinking how this pearl of wisdom applies to estimating life expectancy for the state of California. First, some background – the CIA World Factbook tells us that life expectancy in the U.S. is 78.1 years and our population is 307.2 million, while in Canada – life expectancy is 81.2 years and its population is 33.5 million. The Census Bureau tells us that California has a population less than 37 million so doesn’t the O’Reilly theorem suggest that life expectancy should be in excess of 80 years since California’s population is roughly the same as that of Canada?

Then again – California has the highest population of any state in the Union so one might also infer from the O’Reilly theorem that is life expectancy is among the lower of any of the 50 states in the Union, which would put it below 78 years. OK – I need another drink!

Fordy Hours

by the Sandwichman

There seems to be a bit of a buzz around Utah's 4-day, forty-hour workweek. Last Friday, Scientific American posted an article, "Should Thursday Be the New Friday? The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek,". Then on Monday, the New Republic's environment and energy blog, The Vine picked up on "The Case For A Four-Day Workweek," channeling the Scientific American piece. Tuesday it was Derek Thompson's Atlantic magazine business blog echoing TNR echoing SA in "In Praise of the Four-Day Workweek." Today the "A Four Day Work Week" meme surfaced at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

What's wrong with this picture? For starters, the four-day, 32-hour week was the big story back in 1957. That's more than a half century ago. Chevrolets had big tail fins, then. Remember? There's nothing sacred about 40 hours. But there appears to be an apprehension that there is something sacred about that number. Hey, that's the length of the workweek that Henry Ford introduced in 1926, one year before he introduced the Model "A" Ford. "The five day week is not the ultimate, and neither is the eight hour day," wrote Samuel Crowther in 1926. The forty hour workweek is, at best, a "Model 'A'" workweek.

Will you ever work a four-day week?

Do you really want a four-day week
By Sid Ross and Ed Kiester
Parade Magazine, September 1957

Will you ever work a four-day week?

Vice President Nixon thinks you will. During last fall's Presidential campaign, he predicted an industry-wide four-day schedule “In the not too distant future.”

Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, thinks you should. Next year, he has announced, he will ask auto manufacturers to place workers on a shorter workweek without reducing their pay. Battle lines already are being drawn.

But do you really want a four-day week? Is it really “inevitable,” as the UAW likes to suggest, in view of automation and increased production? Or is it more likely to disrupt all of America — its jobs, its homes, its schools, its likes and dislikes?

One of the “hottest” controversies in the U.S. today is wrapped up in the answers to these questions. To find them, PARADE talked to industrialists, labor leaders, Government spokesmen, economists, sociologists, psychologists, educators, clergymen— all of whom have a stake in a four-day week. Briefly, here are highlights from what they had to say:

Some Differences of Opinion

• Most Americans don’t want a four-day week, even at the same pay, according to the Trendex News Poll and the American Institute of Public Opinion.
• Increased productivity will make the four-day week a strong possibility by 1970, a Department of Labor expert says, if workers prefer it to extra income.
• A four-day week might be short-sighted. We Americans, some economists and industry groups claim, could double our standard of living in 25 years by staying on a five-day week.
• If a change comes, it will be gradual, beginning in assembly-line industries and working down to service jobs like police, hospitals, stores.
• Many workers probably would take a second job in preference to a third day off.
• Some businesses probably would have to adjust, but others would boom: sports equipment, vacation resorts, garden supplies, gasoline, autos.
• Prices probably would increase further; crime rates might rise. Family breakups might be more widespread. But, conversely, some families probably would be drawn wore tightly together.
• The whole question may be decided not by workers but by their wives. Do you think,’ one psychiatrist asked PARADE, “that American women can stand to have their husbands underfoot three days in a row?”

And women, according to the American Institute of Public Opinion (the Gallup Poll), are more opposed to the shortened workweek than men. Gallup’s figures show that 67 per cent oppose the idea (after all, their workweek wouldn’t be reduced) while only 54 per cent of men do.

Trendex, surveying union members, learned that 47 per cent favored a five-day week. Nearly 30 per cent wanted a four-day week now, and 14 per cent suggested keeping the five-day schedule a little longer, but voted for a four-day week eventually.

Most workers told Trendex they need more income, not more free time. When the poll suggested a choice between a four-day week at present pay levels or a five-day week with increased pay, most workers voted for the pay raise. Businessmen point also to Akron’s rubber workers, who work a six-hour-day, six-day week.

They are openly opposed to returning to a five-day schedule. Reason: More than a third of them use their free time to hold down a second job.

Some industrialists— and some labor leaders —think the Reuther campaign is aimed not at more time but at more money. (Ford’s top negotiator, John Bugas, has called the plan “a smokescreen,”) The UAW, these sources say, wants to work the same number of hours but wants overtime pay to start earlier. In any case, they contend, the auto industry is unlikely to grant a four-day week next year.

“We could work a one-day week right now,” says a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, if we wanted to give up a lot of things. But of course no one does. Adds Dr. Solomon Fabricant, a New York University economist: “I doubt that a four-day week is likely in the near future without a reduction in pay — and people won’t pay the price.”

But by 1970 things may be different. Increasing productivity will make four days at slightly higher pay a strong possibility, according to Charles D. Stewart. deputy assistant secretary for standards and statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Even then, would you want to work four days—or shoot for more money by working five?

Three Months Off at a Time?

The answer: No one is certain. Some union officials think you might prefer to stay on a five-day week and take the extra time off in long week ends or three months off every five years. When Trendex asked one machinist how be felt about a four-day week, he replied, “With a four-day week, I’d have another day at home with nothing to do.”

What would you do with an extra day off? Many businessmen predict a further boom in leisure-time industries. More families would tackle the mushrooming outdoor sports, like boating, skiing, skin-diving.

Husbands would attempt new and more involved do-it-yourself projects. Movies would draw more customers, more television sets would be sold, sports events would play to bigger houses.

The nation would need more highways because more people would use their spare time to travel. More cars and more gasoline would be sold; vacation resorts would be overrun. (But one businessman points out, logically, that more leisure requires more spending money. Could you afford a four-day week?)

A switch to four days’ work would give you more time with your family, but this is a two-edged sword, PARADE was told repeatedly. One psychiatrist predicted a four-day week would mean more broken homes. “There are a lot of marginal families based on keeping out of each other’s way,” he told PARADE. “Husband and wife are thrown together just two days a week; they can stand that. But the extra day might be enough to push them over the brink.”

For other families, another psychiatrist says, three days together could be a great boon “It could be the answer to the problem of father-son relationship we see so much of now,” he says. The Rev. Dr. Ralph W. Stockman, of National Radio Pulpit, adds: “The American family could well be drawn more closely together, and stronger moral fiber might be the result. But with three days of leisure, Americans might face many, many more temptations.”

Dr. Stockman does not subscribe to the idea that work is virtuous and play sinful. It’s simply that, mathematically, there’s more time to be tempted. Unfortunately, psychiatrists told PARADE, many people do regard work as “good,” and play as “bad.”

These are victims of what psychiatry calls ‘the Sunday neurosis.” At work, they feel satisfied, convinced they really are worth something; at rest, they are gnawed by feelings of guilt.

One psychiatrist who has specialized in the psychological overtones of leisure believes Americans can’t cope with three days off unless they have definite interests and hobbies with specific goals. For them to get the most from it, their spare hours will have to be planned — by themselves or others.

Dr. Eli Ginsberg, a Columbia University economist, once studied a group of movie projectionists who worked a four-day schedule. He found the same leisure-time pattern as for a two-day week end— only more of it.

“Time definitely did not hang heavy on their hands,” Dr. Ginsberg says.

“These men occupied themselves helping their wives, or with do-it-yourself projects, or watching ball games.”

But one psychiatrist predicts further scrambling of the jobs of husband and wife: “If the husband is home three days a week and spends his time washing dishes or cleaning the living room, how can a child tell who’s mother and who’s father?”

One of the biggest dislocations might be in the schools. Recently Dr. William E. Stirton, vice president of the University of Michigan, urged educators to plan now for an avalanche of students as workweeks shorten, Other educators also anticipate a boom in adult education — either by workers looking for “something to do” or by those trying to reach executive ranks (where, one hard-pressed executive told PARADE acidly, “they can then work 60 or 70 hours a week”).

Will the schools follow the pattern and cut back to four days? Many educators don’t see how the number of school days could be reduced without children being short changed. Dr. Earl J. McGrath, former U.S. commissioner of education, points out that many elementary schools already are experimenting with even longer school terms.

From parents, however, Dr. McGrath anticipates pressure to bring schools into line with the workweek. Absenteeism may increase as parents utilize three-day week ends for family trips.

“At the moment,” Dr. McGrath says, “most educators would oppose shortening the school week. It’s not the same as speeding up an assembly line.”

To many experts, this is the big stumbling block to a four-day week. As Reuther begins dickering with the Big Three of the auto industry, you’ll hear more and more of the UAW arguments: that a four-day week would spread jobs, that automation is displacing workers, that continually increasing productivity means workers are making more goods in less time, and this savings in time should go to the workers.

Today, however, nearly 50 per cent of Americans are providing services, not manufacturing products. Automatic assembly lines don’t include them. Yet if factories should cutback to a four-day week, inevitably a cry would go up for a four-day week in these fields, too.

One economist told PARADE a cut in hours would mean another rise in prices — and again the service workers would be the victims. Dr. William Haber, a University of Michigan economist, suggests that the most practical course would be to continue a five-day week. American living standards would increase and the nation could mop up some of its shortages — in highways and schools, for instance.

The Labor Department’s Stewart thinks industry might drop back to a four-and-a-half-day week, then to four days, just as the six-day week went to five and a half, then five. Other experts agree that the progress of the shorter workweek — if and when it comes —will be uneven, touching an industry here and there and leaving others on five days and some even on six.

Reuther’s demands have dramatized the issue. But no expert interviewed by PARADE believed a switch to four days of eight hours each is practical now, or even five years from now.

Both the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have assigned study committees to the subject, knowing that it will crop up frequently in the future. (Other unions already have taken their cue from the UAW and made similar demands.) They want to know, among other things, whether Americans really want to work only four days.

“Maybe what we’ll see is people trying to hold down two jobs,” says one industry spokesman. “Instead of a five-day week, they’ll choose a seven-day week.” Like many business figures, he feels that the abbreviated week will be theoretically possible someday — maybe in 20 years, maybe in 30 years, maybe more. Whether it will ever come true in fact is another question.

Will you ever work a four-day week? You can tomorrow, if you want to. But do you really want to? These, as the experts see them, are the terms.

Keynes' Friends

In his book, English Pasts, reviewing a volume of Bertrand Russell's correspondence, Stefan Collini quotes from one of the letters:

'"I saw Moore in the evening, and discussed whether there was any difference between knowing Arithmetic and knowing one's grandmother; he thinks not."'

Words fail me. At one point I wanted to go to grad school in philosophy. Professors who thought Russell was the epitome of a philosopher put me off the idea. How to answer the question of whether or not the present King of France was bald - this was a burning philosophical problem chez Russell!

(Answer: both the statement that he is and that he isn't are false, in case you're wondering.)