The school invited me to give the annual lecture on December 8. I'm trying to copyedit The Invisible Handcuffs, finish two articles before a December 1 deadline, and grade papers before school starts next week.
My idea is to show how ideas evolve with my books, paralleled with both the course of the economy and the course of higher education, particularly in California. I don't have much data on education yet.
I have roughed out the first draft of the talk, which I'm sure will have a lot of problems. If anyone has any these suggestions for improvement, I would be more than grateful.
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/lecture.pdf
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Judith Miller on the Economics Beat
I will leave it to Dean Baker and Paul Krugman, who get paid to do this, to tear into the errors and absurdities of this latest bit of agitprop from the New York Times on the phantom menace of fiscal deficits. What I would like to raise is the issue of institutional responsibility. You would think that the Times might have learned from its earlier foray into phantom WMD’s that playing the lead public role in a campaign of deception can have devastating consequences, particularly if the end product is a policy that implodes on its own mythology. This is what happened in Iraq: blatant falsehoods published as fact in the news outlet that feeds stories to the rest of the media (now that they have downsized their own news-gathering forces) came back to haunt them when, instead of WMD’s, soldiers were met with IED’s.
Let’s hope this campaign to reproduce 1937 is the inspiration of a rump group in the financial elite with little influence on actual policy. If deficit-cutting becomes the new imperative in Washington, however, and the economy duly melts, we will have to suffer through more public contrition on the part of the Times’ editorial brass.
Let’s hope this campaign to reproduce 1937 is the inspiration of a rump group in the financial elite with little influence on actual policy. If deficit-cutting becomes the new imperative in Washington, however, and the economy duly melts, we will have to suffer through more public contrition on the part of the Times’ editorial brass.
Jamie Galbraith's Call to Arms
Jamie Galbraith rallies the faithful: "Sorry to be defeatist - it’s the way I feel. Prove me wrong."
Seventy-six years ago a Senator from Alabama — yes, Jamie, Alabama — proposed a solution to an earlier unemployment crisis. And you know what? The Senate approved it 53-30. But the Big Boys objected and we got the NRA instead. "It will be remembered," wrote brain truster Rexford Tugwell, "that one of the reasons why NRA was sponsored by Roosevelt, and why the act was passed in the special session of spring, was the threat of a thirty-hour law being pushed by Senator Hugo Black." Tugwell was wrong. It has not been remembered. It is forgotten that Roosevelt only acted in the face of a more radical mobilization.
The problem with the solutions you propose, Jamie, is that they are the kind of moderate, respectable responses that might be forthcoming from an Obama administration if (and only if) there was momentum building for a more radical response to the jobs crisis.
There is a 240-year arc to this crisis, a 60-year arc and a 30-year arc. The 240-year arc is "capitalism". The 60-year arc is "the cold war" and the 30-year arc is "neo-liberalism". Until enough people understand how those three arcs relate to each other, there’s not going to be any resolution of this crisis. Moving beyond the neo-liberalism of the last 30 years cannot mean restoring some solution from a more distant past. What is most frightening about the present crisis is that its resolution has the potential for a previously inconceivable degree of emancipation. It is precisely the THREAT of freedom that is evoking such great resistance.
"Civilization has to defend itself against the specter of a world which could be free. If society cannot use its growing productivity for reducing repression (because such usage would upset the hierarchy of the status quo), productivity must be turned against the individuals; it becomes itself an instrument of universal control."
Seventy-six years ago a Senator from Alabama — yes, Jamie, Alabama — proposed a solution to an earlier unemployment crisis. And you know what? The Senate approved it 53-30. But the Big Boys objected and we got the NRA instead. "It will be remembered," wrote brain truster Rexford Tugwell, "that one of the reasons why NRA was sponsored by Roosevelt, and why the act was passed in the special session of spring, was the threat of a thirty-hour law being pushed by Senator Hugo Black." Tugwell was wrong. It has not been remembered. It is forgotten that Roosevelt only acted in the face of a more radical mobilization.
The problem with the solutions you propose, Jamie, is that they are the kind of moderate, respectable responses that might be forthcoming from an Obama administration if (and only if) there was momentum building for a more radical response to the jobs crisis.
There is a 240-year arc to this crisis, a 60-year arc and a 30-year arc. The 240-year arc is "capitalism". The 60-year arc is "the cold war" and the 30-year arc is "neo-liberalism". Until enough people understand how those three arcs relate to each other, there’s not going to be any resolution of this crisis. Moving beyond the neo-liberalism of the last 30 years cannot mean restoring some solution from a more distant past. What is most frightening about the present crisis is that its resolution has the potential for a previously inconceivable degree of emancipation. It is precisely the THREAT of freedom that is evoking such great resistance.
"Civilization has to defend itself against the specter of a world which could be free. If society cannot use its growing productivity for reducing repression (because such usage would upset the hierarchy of the status quo), productivity must be turned against the individuals; it becomes itself an instrument of universal control."
Monday, November 23, 2009
The world that made us and the world we made
In June this year an Australian by the name of Paul Gilding made an interesting statement about the cause of the global financial crisis. Gilding gives public talks around the world highlighting the alarming issue of global climate change. In his talk he said that in July 2008 the world entered ‘the crash’ that resulted from a planetary economic and environmental system pushed to its limits.
‘Distributed impacts’, an interesting concept for economics. We could imagine that the global economy collapsed last year because of a giant financial ponzi scheme reaching its logical conclusion. However, the existence of diverse (and much more widespread) currents of collapse in the environment and society could explain why this apparently mindless financial engineering game existed in the first instance.
For instance, over the 20th Century it is possible to see the games of Empire being played by out in a way that increasingly impoverished what we now call the ‘third world’. Barnet and Muller, in their 1974 book entitled ‘Global Reach’ point out that in 1900 people in poor nations had ½ the per capita income of rich nations. By 1970 their income had dropped to 1/20th, as measured in 1900 dollars [2]
During that same century the ‘advanced societies’ began to experience “a doubling of the total output of goods and services…every fifteen years.” And the doubling times were shrinking. [3]
Ironically, but not surprisingly, economists by 1976 were talking about a global recession. Jim Cairns, a left-winger heterodox economists from down-under pondered whether the stagflation that existed at the time was one of the implications of the development of ‘bigness in capitalism’. He said things were not so different in Australia compared to the rest of the ‘advanced’ world where “some 2 percent of the companies control about 50 percent of 'gross national product' in some way or another.” [4]
It seemed logical to many writers and thinkers that the increasingly warped wealth distribution in the world would lead to ongoing economic crisis. A very disturbing consequence of this imbalance was that the political power had also concentrated. The corporate elite constituted “a hierarchy developed and run from the economic top down.”
The markets that this new power elite created were not politically neutral. The ideological power of the forces of globalisation
A war ensued. It was waged on the planet’s atmosphere, on the land, sea and other conditions of life. The number of malnourished people in the world has increased by about 20% in the last decade, from 800 million to near a billion people… global warming is already making itself felt in the drying out of grain producing areas in Australia, China, Africa, and arguably the American west…. we are already consuming more resources than the Earth can sustain by any reasonable measure.” [7]
The truth is that the Ponzi scheme began a hundred or more years ago. We’ve been drawing heavily from our capital and presenting this as ‘wealth creation’. Capitalism was ‘sped up’. Space was substituted for time and that meant, according to Theresa Brennan “that neither the environment nor the people who live in it are given the opportunity to regnerate.” [8]
Regulation of the global financial system won’t cut the cake. There needs to be a move away from streamlined thought produced by the machinery of propaganda. Can we no longer differentiate between the world that made us and the world we made? If we could, would we see that corporations are more often not the creators of wealth - their efficiency often merely lies in how quickly they can usurp natural and human capital. Militarism and empire strategies make the concept of ‘comparative advantage’ in trade null and void. ‘Freedom’ is not the right to impose our will on our environment in violation of natural laws. ‘My country’ is the world. ‘The crisis’ is not a deficiency of demand but one of supply. The earth does not belong to man – man belongs to the earth.
[1] The great disruption. Paul Gilding. 14th June 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2592909.htm#transcript
[2] Richard J Barnet & Ronald E Muller. ‘Global Reach – The Power of the Multinational Corporations’. Touchstone publishers. 1974. Page 190.
[3] Alvin Toffler ‘Future Shock’. Pan Books. 1970 Pages 31 and 32
[4] [1] Jim Cairns 'Oil in Troubled Waters' Widescope International Publishers Pty Ltd, Camberwell Victoria. 1976. pp 133-134. As quoted in:
Bigness in Capitalism. Brenda Rosser. October 2009
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2009/10/bigness-in-capitalism.html
[5] C Wright Mills, ‘The Power Elite’ Oxford University Press. 1956. Page 165.
[6] Clive Hamilton ‘Growth Fetish’. Allen and Unwin, 2003. Page 118
[7] Silent Armageddon?
by Alexis Zeigler for Culture Change
http://greenertimes.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/gt-for-march-2-8/
[8] Theresa Brennan ‘Globalisation and its Terrors’ Routledge 2003.
“….We entered the crash then because oil prices were going through the roof, because of supply issues. Food prices were going through the roof because climate change was crashing the Australian wheat crop and rice crop, and therefore we had food spikes around the world for that and other reasons. We had floods since then in the US destroying the corn crop. This is climate change. This is what we forecast would happen, that you would get distributed impacts, hard to pinpoint a specific cause …. nevertheless would have impact on the economy. That's what we were seeing. We saw oil prices going up because consumption in China was going ahead of forecast, right? So that's what happens when you push a system against its limits, right? It bounces and it has the responses, and those responses are resource prices going up, ecological systems breaking down, the biggest-ever melting of the North Pole sea ice, right?…” [1]
‘Distributed impacts’, an interesting concept for economics. We could imagine that the global economy collapsed last year because of a giant financial ponzi scheme reaching its logical conclusion. However, the existence of diverse (and much more widespread) currents of collapse in the environment and society could explain why this apparently mindless financial engineering game existed in the first instance.
For instance, over the 20th Century it is possible to see the games of Empire being played by out in a way that increasingly impoverished what we now call the ‘third world’. Barnet and Muller, in their 1974 book entitled ‘Global Reach’ point out that in 1900 people in poor nations had ½ the per capita income of rich nations. By 1970 their income had dropped to 1/20th, as measured in 1900 dollars [2]
During that same century the ‘advanced societies’ began to experience “a doubling of the total output of goods and services…every fifteen years.” And the doubling times were shrinking. [3]
Ironically, but not surprisingly, economists by 1976 were talking about a global recession. Jim Cairns, a left-winger heterodox economists from down-under pondered whether the stagflation that existed at the time was one of the implications of the development of ‘bigness in capitalism’. He said things were not so different in Australia compared to the rest of the ‘advanced’ world where “some 2 percent of the companies control about 50 percent of 'gross national product' in some way or another.” [4]
It seemed logical to many writers and thinkers that the increasingly warped wealth distribution in the world would lead to ongoing economic crisis. A very disturbing consequence of this imbalance was that the political power had also concentrated. The corporate elite constituted “a hierarchy developed and run from the economic top down.”
“The chief executives are now at the head of the corporate world…In them is vested the economic initiative, and they know it and they feel it to be their prerogative. As chiefs of the industrial manorialism, they have looked reluctantly to the federal government’s social responsibility for the welfare of the underlying population. They view workers and distributors and suppliers of their corporate systems as subordinate members of their world, and they view themselves as individuals of the American individualistic sort who have reached the top.” [5]
The markets that this new power elite created were not politically neutral. The ideological power of the forces of globalisation
“have a strong preference for measures that reduce inflation at the expense of higher unemployment, for measures that reduce public spending in ways that diminish welfare provision, and for precedence to be given to ‘development’ over environmental protection… Globalisation is thus not just the spread of corporate and financial activity: it is the spread of political ideas backed by economic power.” [6]
A war ensued. It was waged on the planet’s atmosphere, on the land, sea and other conditions of life. The number of malnourished people in the world has increased by about 20% in the last decade, from 800 million to near a billion people… global warming is already making itself felt in the drying out of grain producing areas in Australia, China, Africa, and arguably the American west…. we are already consuming more resources than the Earth can sustain by any reasonable measure.” [7]
The truth is that the Ponzi scheme began a hundred or more years ago. We’ve been drawing heavily from our capital and presenting this as ‘wealth creation’. Capitalism was ‘sped up’. Space was substituted for time and that meant, according to Theresa Brennan “that neither the environment nor the people who live in it are given the opportunity to regnerate.” [8]
Regulation of the global financial system won’t cut the cake. There needs to be a move away from streamlined thought produced by the machinery of propaganda. Can we no longer differentiate between the world that made us and the world we made? If we could, would we see that corporations are more often not the creators of wealth - their efficiency often merely lies in how quickly they can usurp natural and human capital. Militarism and empire strategies make the concept of ‘comparative advantage’ in trade null and void. ‘Freedom’ is not the right to impose our will on our environment in violation of natural laws. ‘My country’ is the world. ‘The crisis’ is not a deficiency of demand but one of supply. The earth does not belong to man – man belongs to the earth.
[1] The great disruption. Paul Gilding. 14th June 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2592909.htm#transcript
[2] Richard J Barnet & Ronald E Muller. ‘Global Reach – The Power of the Multinational Corporations’. Touchstone publishers. 1974. Page 190.
[3] Alvin Toffler ‘Future Shock’. Pan Books. 1970 Pages 31 and 32
[4] [1] Jim Cairns 'Oil in Troubled Waters' Widescope International Publishers Pty Ltd, Camberwell Victoria. 1976. pp 133-134. As quoted in:
Bigness in Capitalism. Brenda Rosser. October 2009
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2009/10/bigness-in-capitalism.html
[5] C Wright Mills, ‘The Power Elite’ Oxford University Press. 1956. Page 165.
[6] Clive Hamilton ‘Growth Fetish’. Allen and Unwin, 2003. Page 118
[7] Silent Armageddon?
by Alexis Zeigler for Culture Change
http://greenertimes.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/gt-for-march-2-8/
[8] Theresa Brennan ‘Globalisation and its Terrors’ Routledge 2003.
Prosperity without Lumps
Ed Crooks reviews Prosperity Without Growth in the Financial Times:
Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at Surrey university, has thought hard about the subject. His prose is lucid and lively, and many of his policy prescriptions are sensible....Indeed, the idea that "there is no more work to be done" would be ludicrous. But that's not the same idea as the idea that we need to make up wasteful things to do just to keep people in jobs.
Yet for all these strengths, his argument is flawed...
His only idea that could put the brake on growth would be cutting working hours. Here he takes the economist’s famous “lump of labour” fallacy – the idea that there is only a fixed amount of work to do that has to be shared round – and suggests it should be a goal of policy. Yet in anything other than a perfect utopia, the idea that there is no more work that needs doing is ludicrous.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Galbraith Replies to Keyserling
Said Galbraith: "Mr. Keyserling has been reading my books and watching my actions for the last 10 years and finding evidence of wickedness which even I would not have thought possible. Feeling as he does, he was certainly right to alert the public."
Washington Post, February 15, 1968:John Kenneth Galbraith, national chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, took formal notice yesterday of charges that he has long been engaged in a devious campaign to defeat President Johnnson.
The accusations were leveled Tuesday by fellow economist Leon H. Keyserling in a protest against ADA's weekend endorsement of Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy for President.
Said Galbraith: "Mr. Keyserling has been reading my books and watching my actions for the last 10 years and finding evidence of wickedness which even I would not have thought possible. Feeling as he does, he was certainly right to alert the public."
California Collapsing: What Would Reagan Do?
When he was in office, Ronald Reagan looked bad. Now, by today's standards, he looks like a progressive.
Reagan, Ronald. 1973. "On Spending and the Nature of Government." National Review (7 December).
"When I took office in 1967, we discovered that the promise of "no tax increases" could not be carried out. California was virtually insolvent, the precious administration having changed that state's system of budgetary bookkeeping in a way that allowed the spending of 15 months' revenue in twelve months' time, thus avoiding a major tax increase in election year 1966. The state government was spending $1 million a day more than it was collecting."
"California, unlike the Federal Government, cannot print more money or pile up deficits. The governor is required to submit a balanced budget, and if any additional taxes are needed to balance revenues with spending, the constitution requires the governor to propose higher taxes."
"So our first major lesson in government was painful: for the taxpayers and for us. We had to increase taxes by some $800 million to balance the unbalanced budget we inherited."
Reagan, Ronald. 1973. "On Spending and the Nature of Government." National Review (7 December).
"When I took office in 1967, we discovered that the promise of "no tax increases" could not be carried out. California was virtually insolvent, the precious administration having changed that state's system of budgetary bookkeeping in a way that allowed the spending of 15 months' revenue in twelve months' time, thus avoiding a major tax increase in election year 1966. The state government was spending $1 million a day more than it was collecting."
"California, unlike the Federal Government, cannot print more money or pile up deficits. The governor is required to submit a balanced budget, and if any additional taxes are needed to balance revenues with spending, the constitution requires the governor to propose higher taxes."
"So our first major lesson in government was painful: for the taxpayers and for us. We had to increase taxes by some $800 million to balance the unbalanced budget we inherited."
Barmy and Clyde
Clyde E. Dankert was a "widely respected" labor economist who in 1965 edited an Industrial Relations Research Association volume on Hours of Work. His textbook, Contemporary Unionism in the United States, was published in 1948 by Prentice-Hall. I have read some bizarre attempts to explain the inexplicable "lump of labor fallacy" but this one is delirious. In it, Dankert claims that those who believe a given reduction in the hours of work will result in a permanent reduction in unemployment subscribe to the lump of labor fallacy. What do you call it when an argument doesn't even have enough solid straw in it to qualify as a straw man?
For a permanent reduction in hours, the fact must be recognized that the volume of unemployment, both technological and non-technological, can be as large with industry operating at a low hour-level as at a high one. The forces which produce unemployment can operate just as effectively, and just as disastrously, when the length of the working-week is thirty hours as when it is forty or fifty hours. It is still true, however, that a permanent and a more or less general reduction in hours will cut down the amount of technological unemployment. Here we must distinguish between the movement to the lower hour-plateau and the arrival at it. The transition will without any doubt lessen the amount of unemployment for the time being. But when once the new level is reached and the necessary adjustments in industry have been made, there is no reason for believing that the volume of unemployment will continue to be less than it had been. To argue to the contrary is to subscribe to the lump-of-labor (or fixed work-fund) fallacy. [No, to argue to the contrary would constitute a level of incomprehension that couldn't be encompassed by the term "fallacy". But no advocate of shorter working time ever "argues to the contrary" that a given reduction in hours will result in a permanent solution to unemployment so just what is the point of this red herring?]
If, as the productivity of industry increases, the length of the working-week is gradually reduced, the amount of technological unemployment can to some extent be kept down. But the hours should not be reduced commensurately with the increase in productivity. If that is done, the living standards of the workers will be frozen at their existing levels. [Here, however, is a fallacy. The living standards of the workers will not be "frozen" because with fewer hours of work they will have more free time.] From the standpoint of human well-being it would be a gross mistake to take all the gains that are made in productivity in the form of increased leisure. Some of the gains should be taken in the form of more production and higher material living standards.[From the standpoint of writing a college textbook it would be a gross mistake to issue personal value judgments as absolute principles without giving reasons for that opinion.]
Friday, November 20, 2009
Reducing Financial Complexity: A Different Take on Transaction Taxes
I’m working on a project that involves, among other things, looking at taxes on financial transactions, and I’ve thought myself into an idea that I’d like to float to our skeptical readership. The short version: Tobin taxes, Keynes taxes, and other financial transaction taxes have been sold on the grounds they would reduce price volatility. There is some controversy about this, and the case is not at all clear. I think, however, that increasing transaction costs could have the effect of reducing the complexity of trading strategies, and that might be a very positive thing.
The original proponent of a transaction tax was Keynes, who wanted to apply it to the stock market. He thought that it would have the effect of penalizing speculative strategies with high turnover, while rewarding buy-to-hold strategies. His views on financial markets as casinos are well known, and the tax proposal fits like a glove. Tobin, writing after the collapse of Bretton Woods and its fixed exchange rates, zeroed in on foreign exchange transactions. He worried about excess volatility in currency markets and applied Keynes’ logic to that sphere.
The argument about “real” versus “speculative” motives for transactions is plausible but much too simple. In particular, it makes assumptions about hedging strategies that are unfounded. The simplest version of such a strategy is that you take a position in the forex markets that is the reverse of the one you take in your real (goods and services) transactions. This means that you would double the volume of real trade to get the real-plus-hedged component of forex transactions, and as we know the latter is a vast multiple of the former.
But hedges can be quite a bit more complicated. One can try to hedge a variety of risk factors, not only exchange rates but also interest rates, commodity prices, etc., and these risks may interact in nonobvious ways. Moreover, one can shade or fine-tune a hedge, or generate a package of hedges that have properties that a simple reverse-position transaction cannot emulate. Without knowing the deep microstructure of these markets, it is impossible to know a priori how much of the transaction volume is risk averting (hedging) rather than risk-seeking (speculation).
Empirically, there have been studies that claim that transaction costs (which a transaction tax would augment) have been positively associated with volatility in foreign exchange markets. These, to my knowledge, have not been refuted.
As I see it, the intellectual and political winds have therefore shifted on transaction taxes. Keynes and Tobin wanted a tax big enough to change behavior, because they thought markets needed to be checked. Contemporary proposals, which are gaining momentum, have much lower tax rates precisely to avoid altering the behavior of market players. We are now hearing about a tax of a basis point or less on the value of transactions, not enough to change the way markets work, positively or negatively.
But I think the fixation on the terms of contracts (short term vs long) misses the point. A transaction tax penalizes a trading strategy according to the volume of transactions it entails. Consider again the hedge. A reverse position is the simplest hedge, and it consists of just one transaction. Granted, it may be too simple to meet the needs of sophisticated players, but this is not an argument for unlimited complexity.
Complexity renders market positions opaque and creates potential for systemic faults that are invisible even to the well-trained eye. Note that transaction costs fall as one moves from simple/actual transactions (like spots and outright forwards) to more complex ones (derivatives). Apparently such costs were not sufficient to prevent the emergence of fantastically complex strategies that entailed taking conditional positions in a plethora of markets simultaneously—a complexification that culminated in collapse. The conclusion appears to be that these costs need to be raised.
In other words, it is not the term of the trade that should attract a tax, but the sheer number of such trades to support a single position-taking.
I have argued previously that there was a dialectical relationship between the complexity of trading strategies and the extent of leverage. More leverage justified putting resources into increasingly complex strategies that offered minuscule margins. The perception that such mini-margins could be attained as a sure thing (all risk offloaded) justified leveraging that would otherwise have been viewed as outré.
Hence there may well be a case for a large enough transaction tax to alter behavior, but with a different purpose. The issue is not how much volatility it discourages, but how much complexity and inducement to excess leverage..
The original proponent of a transaction tax was Keynes, who wanted to apply it to the stock market. He thought that it would have the effect of penalizing speculative strategies with high turnover, while rewarding buy-to-hold strategies. His views on financial markets as casinos are well known, and the tax proposal fits like a glove. Tobin, writing after the collapse of Bretton Woods and its fixed exchange rates, zeroed in on foreign exchange transactions. He worried about excess volatility in currency markets and applied Keynes’ logic to that sphere.
The argument about “real” versus “speculative” motives for transactions is plausible but much too simple. In particular, it makes assumptions about hedging strategies that are unfounded. The simplest version of such a strategy is that you take a position in the forex markets that is the reverse of the one you take in your real (goods and services) transactions. This means that you would double the volume of real trade to get the real-plus-hedged component of forex transactions, and as we know the latter is a vast multiple of the former.
But hedges can be quite a bit more complicated. One can try to hedge a variety of risk factors, not only exchange rates but also interest rates, commodity prices, etc., and these risks may interact in nonobvious ways. Moreover, one can shade or fine-tune a hedge, or generate a package of hedges that have properties that a simple reverse-position transaction cannot emulate. Without knowing the deep microstructure of these markets, it is impossible to know a priori how much of the transaction volume is risk averting (hedging) rather than risk-seeking (speculation).
Empirically, there have been studies that claim that transaction costs (which a transaction tax would augment) have been positively associated with volatility in foreign exchange markets. These, to my knowledge, have not been refuted.
As I see it, the intellectual and political winds have therefore shifted on transaction taxes. Keynes and Tobin wanted a tax big enough to change behavior, because they thought markets needed to be checked. Contemporary proposals, which are gaining momentum, have much lower tax rates precisely to avoid altering the behavior of market players. We are now hearing about a tax of a basis point or less on the value of transactions, not enough to change the way markets work, positively or negatively.
But I think the fixation on the terms of contracts (short term vs long) misses the point. A transaction tax penalizes a trading strategy according to the volume of transactions it entails. Consider again the hedge. A reverse position is the simplest hedge, and it consists of just one transaction. Granted, it may be too simple to meet the needs of sophisticated players, but this is not an argument for unlimited complexity.
Complexity renders market positions opaque and creates potential for systemic faults that are invisible even to the well-trained eye. Note that transaction costs fall as one moves from simple/actual transactions (like spots and outright forwards) to more complex ones (derivatives). Apparently such costs were not sufficient to prevent the emergence of fantastically complex strategies that entailed taking conditional positions in a plethora of markets simultaneously—a complexification that culminated in collapse. The conclusion appears to be that these costs need to be raised.
In other words, it is not the term of the trade that should attract a tax, but the sheer number of such trades to support a single position-taking.
I have argued previously that there was a dialectical relationship between the complexity of trading strategies and the extent of leverage. More leverage justified putting resources into increasingly complex strategies that offered minuscule margins. The perception that such mini-margins could be attained as a sure thing (all risk offloaded) justified leveraging that would otherwise have been viewed as outré.
Hence there may well be a case for a large enough transaction tax to alter behavior, but with a different purpose. The issue is not how much volatility it discourages, but how much complexity and inducement to excess leverage..
Thursday, November 19, 2009
How Digital "Piracy" Creates Value.
EBay just sold a large portion of Skype after a long legal dispute with Skype's founders. What interested me was the Skype's code evolved from the founders' earlier venture, the file-sharing system, Kazaa. In effect, the experience with the "illegal" Kazaa allowed the founders to develop technology that had a great value, especially for people communicating internationally.
The founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, blocked the sale for a long time on the grounds that EBay violated an agreement not to tamper with the code without their approval. In effect, Ebay acted like a pirate, while the pirates became anti-pirates.
Perhaps someday someone will catalog all the other benefits that that the pirates developed.
Here is some background information:
Dealbook. 2009. "EBay Settles Suit Over Skype Sale." New York Times (6 November).
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/ebay-settles-suit-over-skype-sale/?scp=2&sq=ebay%20skype%20sale&st=cse
"Skype brought in $185 million for eBay in the last quarter and was the fastest-growing part of its business."
Stone, Brad. 2009. "Founders Win a Piece of Skype From eBay." New York Times (6 November): p. B 3.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/companies/07skype.html
"eBay has formally settled the litigation around its sale of the Skype online calling service. The founders of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, will drop their lawsuits against the company and a consortium of buyers whose bid to purchase 65 percent of Skype was announced last month, according to an announcement released by eBay before the opening of the stock markets on Friday. As part of the complex agreement, the founders will own a 14 percent stake in the new Skype and receive two seats on the board."
"The founders will also transfer the disputed intellectual property owned by their company Joltid, which was at the heart of the legal battle, over to Skype."
Joe Nocera, Joe. 2009. "The Cloud Hanging Over Skype." New York Times (5 September): p. B 1.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/technology/companies/05nocera.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all
"In 2005, when eBay bought Skype from its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, it paid $3.1 billion. But the company had performed so poorly that by the fall of 2007, eBay had been forced to take a $1.1 billion write-down."
"Not long after Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom left the company, they became embroiled in a dispute with eBay that has turned into a very nasty lawsuit. It turns out that in selling Skype to eBay, Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom retained control of a key part of the Skype technology, which they licensed to eBay. Although the details are under seal in a London court, the Skype founders' essential complaint is that eBay tampered with their software, and in doing so, violated the terms of the licensing agreement. They were demanding that Skype be forced to stop using the technology, which, for all intents and purposes, would mean shutting down Skype itself. The case is set for trial in 2010."
"In a court hearing in London last June, eBay's lawyer told the court that if Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom won the case, the result would be "devastating"."
"Skype was not Mr. Friis's and Mr. Zennstrom's first company. No, that was the infamous Kazaa, a peer-to-peer company that the two men founded in 1999, not long after Napster showed the world exactly how easy it was to steal copyrighted music using peer-to-peer computing. By 2001, the recording industry, having routed Napster, turned its sights on Kazaa."
" In 2003, when they started Skype, that same technology that had powered Kazaa became an important part of the Skype code; it was the means by which computer users connected to each other and created a larger network. (VoIP -- voice over Internet protocol -- was the means by which they spoke to each other online.) But Skype never owned the technology; JoltID did. Why eBay was willing to go along with such an arrangement when it bought Skype two years later will forever be a puzzle. But so long as the two men remained part of the eBay "family," it didn't matter much. Any changes to the peer-to-peer code were ones they approved"."
"When the deal went sour, however, and the founders left eBay, that all changed. And when eBay continued to tinker with the code -- something eBay contends it has a right to do under the license -- they entered into negotiations that went nowhere. Finally, by March of 2009, the two sides had sued each other."
The founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, blocked the sale for a long time on the grounds that EBay violated an agreement not to tamper with the code without their approval. In effect, Ebay acted like a pirate, while the pirates became anti-pirates.
Perhaps someday someone will catalog all the other benefits that that the pirates developed.
Here is some background information:
Dealbook. 2009. "EBay Settles Suit Over Skype Sale." New York Times (6 November).
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/ebay-settles-suit-over-skype-sale/?scp=2&sq=ebay%20skype%20sale&st=cse
"Skype brought in $185 million for eBay in the last quarter and was the fastest-growing part of its business."
Stone, Brad. 2009. "Founders Win a Piece of Skype From eBay." New York Times (6 November): p. B 3.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/companies/07skype.html
"eBay has formally settled the litigation around its sale of the Skype online calling service. The founders of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, will drop their lawsuits against the company and a consortium of buyers whose bid to purchase 65 percent of Skype was announced last month, according to an announcement released by eBay before the opening of the stock markets on Friday. As part of the complex agreement, the founders will own a 14 percent stake in the new Skype and receive two seats on the board."
"The founders will also transfer the disputed intellectual property owned by their company Joltid, which was at the heart of the legal battle, over to Skype."
Joe Nocera, Joe. 2009. "The Cloud Hanging Over Skype." New York Times (5 September): p. B 1.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/technology/companies/05nocera.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all
"In 2005, when eBay bought Skype from its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, it paid $3.1 billion. But the company had performed so poorly that by the fall of 2007, eBay had been forced to take a $1.1 billion write-down."
"Not long after Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom left the company, they became embroiled in a dispute with eBay that has turned into a very nasty lawsuit. It turns out that in selling Skype to eBay, Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom retained control of a key part of the Skype technology, which they licensed to eBay. Although the details are under seal in a London court, the Skype founders' essential complaint is that eBay tampered with their software, and in doing so, violated the terms of the licensing agreement. They were demanding that Skype be forced to stop using the technology, which, for all intents and purposes, would mean shutting down Skype itself. The case is set for trial in 2010."
"In a court hearing in London last June, eBay's lawyer told the court that if Mr. Friis and Mr. Zennstrom won the case, the result would be "devastating"."
"Skype was not Mr. Friis's and Mr. Zennstrom's first company. No, that was the infamous Kazaa, a peer-to-peer company that the two men founded in 1999, not long after Napster showed the world exactly how easy it was to steal copyrighted music using peer-to-peer computing. By 2001, the recording industry, having routed Napster, turned its sights on Kazaa."
" In 2003, when they started Skype, that same technology that had powered Kazaa became an important part of the Skype code; it was the means by which computer users connected to each other and created a larger network. (VoIP -- voice over Internet protocol -- was the means by which they spoke to each other online.) But Skype never owned the technology; JoltID did. Why eBay was willing to go along with such an arrangement when it bought Skype two years later will forever be a puzzle. But so long as the two men remained part of the eBay "family," it didn't matter much. Any changes to the peer-to-peer code were ones they approved"."
"When the deal went sour, however, and the founders left eBay, that all changed. And when eBay continued to tinker with the code -- something eBay contends it has a right to do under the license -- they entered into negotiations that went nowhere. Finally, by March of 2009, the two sides had sued each other."
Conflict of Interest? Economists? Impossible.
The controversy over medical researchers taking money from drug companies continues. Universities are being called out for their failure to disclose to public agencies the other, private grants researchers are pulling in. The article discusses the competition between research shops for the star grant recipients, but discreetly fails to point out that the universities themselves get a cut of the proceeds, so that the conflict of interest is theirs too.
I’ve mentioned this in the past and will repeat now: there is no corresponding policy, not even rules to be broken, in economics. Public funders and some foundations require an acknowledgment in the published research they support, but this is about “thank you”, not probity. Any disclosure of other, privately-interested funding sources by economists is strictly voluntary, and in practice seldom occurs. Trade researchers can be funded by foreign governments or business associations, health researchers by tobacco companies, law and economics researchers by trade associations facing tort claims, agricultural researchers by agribusiness, and on and on. Turn on the recording function of your iPhone as you saunter the halls in Atlanta in January, and you will pick up lots of tidbits about economists proudly on the take.
Where should we begin to reform this profession? Would an AEA resolution help? Standard disclosure forms required by journals? I’m happy to see that the economic meltdown has prompted some soul-searching about where economists went wrong. Maybe a good starting point would professional transparency.
I’ve mentioned this in the past and will repeat now: there is no corresponding policy, not even rules to be broken, in economics. Public funders and some foundations require an acknowledgment in the published research they support, but this is about “thank you”, not probity. Any disclosure of other, privately-interested funding sources by economists is strictly voluntary, and in practice seldom occurs. Trade researchers can be funded by foreign governments or business associations, health researchers by tobacco companies, law and economics researchers by trade associations facing tort claims, agricultural researchers by agribusiness, and on and on. Turn on the recording function of your iPhone as you saunter the halls in Atlanta in January, and you will pick up lots of tidbits about economists proudly on the take.
Where should we begin to reform this profession? Would an AEA resolution help? Standard disclosure forms required by journals? I’m happy to see that the economic meltdown has prompted some soul-searching about where economists went wrong. Maybe a good starting point would professional transparency.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monsanto says it has nothing to do with the Food Safety Modernisation Act 2009
"Most people who know Michael Taylor’s name recall that he worked as Monsanto’s lawyer at King & Spalding for years before being appointed to the FDA to oversee the swift introduction into the marketplace of GMOs. He did so by ramming through a faux scientific regulatory conceit called “substantial equivalence.”....Since shedding the title of Vice President of Monsanto, Taylor has been busy promoting the concept of “risk assessment” as a means to deal with food-borne illness as an alternative to urging regulatory agencies to actually enforce laws already on the books and to adequately fund them so they could do so. Like “substantial equivalence,” the risk assessment conceit offers a great opportunity to change the system to benefit corporate interests....."
The Rockefeller name emerges yet again:
"....President Obama’s nominee for Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Margaret Hamburg, MD, sits on the board of directors at the Trust for America’s Health. Hamburg, a well-connected player in the public health field, also serves on the board of directors of the Rockefeller Foundation...."
See: 'The 2009 Food ‘Safety’ Bills Harmonize Agribusiness Practices in Service of Corporate Global Governance'
From the Department of Unbiased Research
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama's health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation's economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.
The e-mail, written by the Chamber's senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.
Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: "The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document".
Shear, Michael D. 2009. "Health Bill Foes Solicit Funds for Economic Study." Washington Post (16 November).
"The Great Disconnect Between Stocks and Jobs"
Robert Reich at TPM wrings his hands ineffectually:
The Eisenhower speech's theme of "false prosperity" echoes elements of essayist and literary critic Kenneth Burke's satirical essay of twenty-two years earlier, "Waste – the future of prosperity," which Burke subsequently reprised in a 1958 essay, "Borrow. Spend. Buy. Waste. Want." The particular variety of waste that Eisenhower condemned in his speech was the Truman administration's policy of using massive rearmament spending to stimulate the economy -- a policy whose single-mindedly cynical deliberateness would be revealed in 1975 when National Security Council memorandum 68 (NSC-68) was declassified (see especially Fred Block's 1980 Politics and Society article, Economic Instability and Military Strength: The Paradoxes of the 1950 Rearmament Decision).
I want to quote resonating paragraphs from Burke's 1930, Ike's 1952 speech and NSC-68 and also to suggest that a profound amnesia and denial about the manifestly wasteful sources of "economic growth" massively constrain and distort American political discourse and thought -- both popular and academic.
Burke: "If all our people are to be kept straining at their jobs, the duty of the public as wasters becomes obvious...
"But by expanding this principle, we find even greater encouragement. For long we have worried about war, driven by a pre-industrial feeling that war is the enemy of mankind. But by the theory of the economic value of waste we find that war is the basis of culture. War is our great economic safety-valve. For if waste lets up, if people simply won't throw out things fast enough to create new needs in keeping with the increased output under improved methods of manufacture, we always have recourse to the still more thoroughgoing wastage of war. An intelligently managed war can leave whole nations to be rebuilt, thus providing work at peak productivity for millions of the surviving population."
Ike: "The inflation we suffer is not an accident; it is a policy. It is not, as the Administration would have us believe some queer and deadly kind of economic bacteria breathed into the atmosphere by Soviet communism.
"This is the way a recent editorial in a great metropolitan newspaper put it: "Inflation is the calculated policy of the White House on the labor front, the fiscal front, the agricultural front." The point and purpose of this policy I have already indicated: to fool the people with a deceptive prosperity. The method is very simple: to give more people more money that is worth less....
"There is in certain quarters the view that national prosperity depends on the production of armaments and that any reduction in arms output might bring on another recession. Does this mean, then that the continued failure of our foreign policy is the only way to pay for the failure of our fiscal policy? According to this way of thinking, the success of our foreign policy would mean a depression."
NSC-68: " Furthermore, the United States could achieve a substantial absolute increase in output and could thereby increase the allocation of resources to a build-up of the economic and military strength of itself and its allies without suffering a decline in its real standard of living. Industrial production declined by 10 percent between the first quarter of 1948 and the last quarter of 1949, and by approximately one-fourth between 1944 and 1949. In March 1950 there were approximately 4,750,000 unemployed, as compared to 1,070,000 in 1943 and 670,000 in 1944. The gross national product declined slowly in 1949 from the peak reached in 1948 ($262 billion in 1948 to an annual rate of $256 billion in the last six months of 1949), and in terms of constant prices declined by about 20 percent between 1944 and 1948.
"With a high level of economic activity, the United States could soon attain a gross national product of $300 billion per year, as was pointed out in the President's Economic Report (January 1950). Progress in this direction would permit, and might itself be aided by, a buildup of the economic and military strength of the United States and the free world; furthermore, if a dynamic expansion of the economy were achieved, the necessary build-up could be accomplished without a decrease in the national standard of living because the required resources could be obtained by siphoning off a part of the annual increment in the gross national product. These are facts of fundamental importance in considering the courses of action open to the United States."
It's the WASTE, stupid. The stock market knows that the more unemployment there is, the more waste the federal government will be encouraged to buy. There is no alternative. As Kenneth Burke observed in his 1930 satire, "We have simply to make sure that the increase in the number of labor-saving devices does not shorten the hours of labor." Even Paul Krugman has dipped his toe in that water, as had Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post the week before. Larry Summers has tipped off Wall Street that the White House won't make any such "mistake": "It may be desirable [to the unemployed] to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that's not as desirable [to Wall Street] as expanding the total amount of work."
Robert Reich, along with the AFL-CIO, appears to still be sitting on the fence on this one. Shame!
How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise.On the evening of September 23, 1952, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican nominee for President of the United States, was scheduled to deliver a campaign speech in Cleveland, Ohio. That night however, his vice-presidential running mate, Richard M. Nixon, gave his famous "Checkers" speech defending himself from charges that he had received inappropriate financial gifts. Instead of his originally scheduled address, whose topic was inflation and "false prosperity", Eisenhower substituted his reaction to Nixon's televised appearance. The text of Ike's unspoken speech was published the next day in the Washington Post and Eisenhower essentially "the same" speech a month later in Troy, New York. But that later version of the speech, coming just a week and a half before election day, would have had little impact on framing the election campaign.
The Eisenhower speech's theme of "false prosperity" echoes elements of essayist and literary critic Kenneth Burke's satirical essay of twenty-two years earlier, "Waste – the future of prosperity," which Burke subsequently reprised in a 1958 essay, "Borrow. Spend. Buy. Waste. Want." The particular variety of waste that Eisenhower condemned in his speech was the Truman administration's policy of using massive rearmament spending to stimulate the economy -- a policy whose single-mindedly cynical deliberateness would be revealed in 1975 when National Security Council memorandum 68 (NSC-68) was declassified (see especially Fred Block's 1980 Politics and Society article, Economic Instability and Military Strength: The Paradoxes of the 1950 Rearmament Decision).
I want to quote resonating paragraphs from Burke's 1930, Ike's 1952 speech and NSC-68 and also to suggest that a profound amnesia and denial about the manifestly wasteful sources of "economic growth" massively constrain and distort American political discourse and thought -- both popular and academic.
Burke: "If all our people are to be kept straining at their jobs, the duty of the public as wasters becomes obvious...
"But by expanding this principle, we find even greater encouragement. For long we have worried about war, driven by a pre-industrial feeling that war is the enemy of mankind. But by the theory of the economic value of waste we find that war is the basis of culture. War is our great economic safety-valve. For if waste lets up, if people simply won't throw out things fast enough to create new needs in keeping with the increased output under improved methods of manufacture, we always have recourse to the still more thoroughgoing wastage of war. An intelligently managed war can leave whole nations to be rebuilt, thus providing work at peak productivity for millions of the surviving population."
Ike: "The inflation we suffer is not an accident; it is a policy. It is not, as the Administration would have us believe some queer and deadly kind of economic bacteria breathed into the atmosphere by Soviet communism.
"This is the way a recent editorial in a great metropolitan newspaper put it: "Inflation is the calculated policy of the White House on the labor front, the fiscal front, the agricultural front." The point and purpose of this policy I have already indicated: to fool the people with a deceptive prosperity. The method is very simple: to give more people more money that is worth less....
"There is in certain quarters the view that national prosperity depends on the production of armaments and that any reduction in arms output might bring on another recession. Does this mean, then that the continued failure of our foreign policy is the only way to pay for the failure of our fiscal policy? According to this way of thinking, the success of our foreign policy would mean a depression."
NSC-68: " Furthermore, the United States could achieve a substantial absolute increase in output and could thereby increase the allocation of resources to a build-up of the economic and military strength of itself and its allies without suffering a decline in its real standard of living. Industrial production declined by 10 percent between the first quarter of 1948 and the last quarter of 1949, and by approximately one-fourth between 1944 and 1949. In March 1950 there were approximately 4,750,000 unemployed, as compared to 1,070,000 in 1943 and 670,000 in 1944. The gross national product declined slowly in 1949 from the peak reached in 1948 ($262 billion in 1948 to an annual rate of $256 billion in the last six months of 1949), and in terms of constant prices declined by about 20 percent between 1944 and 1948.
"With a high level of economic activity, the United States could soon attain a gross national product of $300 billion per year, as was pointed out in the President's Economic Report (January 1950). Progress in this direction would permit, and might itself be aided by, a buildup of the economic and military strength of the United States and the free world; furthermore, if a dynamic expansion of the economy were achieved, the necessary build-up could be accomplished without a decrease in the national standard of living because the required resources could be obtained by siphoning off a part of the annual increment in the gross national product. These are facts of fundamental importance in considering the courses of action open to the United States."
It's the WASTE, stupid. The stock market knows that the more unemployment there is, the more waste the federal government will be encouraged to buy. There is no alternative. As Kenneth Burke observed in his 1930 satire, "We have simply to make sure that the increase in the number of labor-saving devices does not shorten the hours of labor." Even Paul Krugman has dipped his toe in that water, as had Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post the week before. Larry Summers has tipped off Wall Street that the White House won't make any such "mistake": "It may be desirable [to the unemployed] to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that's not as desirable [to Wall Street] as expanding the total amount of work."
Robert Reich, along with the AFL-CIO, appears to still be sitting on the fence on this one. Shame!
"Is Work Sharing A Viable Solution To The Unemployment Problem?"
Pat Garofalo at Think Progress Wonk Room:
Down through the ages, philosophers, theologians and even economists (Mill, Marx, Marshall, Veblen, Keynes…) have extolled the virtues of leisure and downplayed the accumulation of material possessions. The trauma of the 1930s Depression and the subsequent World War II seem to have locked the American psyche into the fixed idea that economic growth — by whatever means necessary — is the holy grail. This has produced six decades of what Dwight Eisenhower called "false prosperity", that is to say increase of gross output, fueled by military spending and other wasteful indulgences, and heedless of its impact on the environment, the social fabric and the character of individuals.
Over 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin observed,
Two months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy mused, "we are going to find the workweek reduced, and we are going to find people wondering what they should do…" Two years later, his brother, Bobby, delivered a famous critique of the GNP inability to measure a country's health. The measure "counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them" but not "the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play." That speech, by the way, was cited by President Obama during the election campaign to illustrate his conviction that a "paradigm shift" was needed in economics before it became too late.
Just last March, the UK's Sustainable Development Commission issued a report, "Prosperity without Growth?", pointing out that the ongoing obsession with economic growth was making environmental catastrophe inevitable even as it was not delivering on its mythical promises of stability and reduction of poverty. The report called the continuing growth imperative a delusion.
Even if work-sharing is "still only a B- idea" it is at least a step in the right direction and, perhaps, the thin edge of a wedge that will ultimately pull down the temple of idolatry dedicated to economic growth. The growth imperative's ideological foundations in the Cold War NSC-68 doctrine and economic competition with the "Soviet Menace" have been long forgotten, even as their analytically-incoherent economic justifications have been elevated to the status of incontestable dogma.
An A+ idea would consist of consigning the entire putrefying economic paradigm to its appropriate dust bin. For now, we would do well to settle for B-.
Both Baker and Paul Krugman point to the example of Germany, which has a work sharing program, along with strong labor protections. As Krugman wrote, the measures "didn’t prevent a nasty recession, but Germany got through the recession with remarkably few job losses." Plus, as Peter Dorman at EconoSpeak noted, work sharing helps preserve human capital, as firms don’t have to re-hire and re-train workers down the line — they just increase their hours back to where they were previously.Compared to utter failure, B minus looks like genius. In terms of "doing better" one first has to take stock of what "progress" might conceivably mean. I like to start with Adam Smith's summary of "what constitutes the real happiness of human life": ease of body and peace of mind. Then there is Thomas Jefferson's prescription, "If we can prevent government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
All that said, this is still only a B- idea. (Krugman acknowledges this, calling it the "third-best" economic policy available, after committing to moderate inflation to lower interest rates or further fiscal stimulus.) In the absence of stronger stimulus measures, such as aid to states or a direct job program, it will do some good — and it may be the only thing that a deficit-crazed Congress is willing to consider. But it is inefficient, has the potential to be wasteful, and obviously does nothing for those already out of work. Work sharing isn’t terrible, but I’d like to think that we can do better.
Down through the ages, philosophers, theologians and even economists (Mill, Marx, Marshall, Veblen, Keynes…) have extolled the virtues of leisure and downplayed the accumulation of material possessions. The trauma of the 1930s Depression and the subsequent World War II seem to have locked the American psyche into the fixed idea that economic growth — by whatever means necessary — is the holy grail. This has produced six decades of what Dwight Eisenhower called "false prosperity", that is to say increase of gross output, fueled by military spending and other wasteful indulgences, and heedless of its impact on the environment, the social fabric and the character of individuals.
Over 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin observed,
"It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that if every man and woman would work for four hours each day on something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life ; want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and pleasure."Nearly a century ago, in the wake of World War I, Stephen Leacock observed, "The nerves of our industrial civilization are worn thin with the rattle of its own machinery," Leacock wrote, "The industrial world is restless, over-strained and quarrelsome. It seethes with furious discontent, and looks about it eagerly for a fight. It needs a rest." Leacock argued that reducing the hours of work "should be among the primary aims of social reform," and recommended "such a shortening as will strain the machine to a breaking point, but never break it." Keynes concurred with a vision of a 15-hour work week as a realistic prospect for the future.
Two months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy mused, "we are going to find the workweek reduced, and we are going to find people wondering what they should do…" Two years later, his brother, Bobby, delivered a famous critique of the GNP inability to measure a country's health. The measure "counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them" but not "the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play." That speech, by the way, was cited by President Obama during the election campaign to illustrate his conviction that a "paradigm shift" was needed in economics before it became too late.
Just last March, the UK's Sustainable Development Commission issued a report, "Prosperity without Growth?", pointing out that the ongoing obsession with economic growth was making environmental catastrophe inevitable even as it was not delivering on its mythical promises of stability and reduction of poverty. The report called the continuing growth imperative a delusion.
Even if work-sharing is "still only a B- idea" it is at least a step in the right direction and, perhaps, the thin edge of a wedge that will ultimately pull down the temple of idolatry dedicated to economic growth. The growth imperative's ideological foundations in the Cold War NSC-68 doctrine and economic competition with the "Soviet Menace" have been long forgotten, even as their analytically-incoherent economic justifications have been elevated to the status of incontestable dogma.
An A+ idea would consist of consigning the entire putrefying economic paradigm to its appropriate dust bin. For now, we would do well to settle for B-.
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