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Over 50 and unemployed

Neoliberalism means mass unemployment. This is a deliberate feature which is a part of hijacking political power by financial oligarchy. Neoliberals also demonize poor and unemployed.  They are excluded and marginalized. You need to fight this even neoliberals try to convince you that this is your fault. They deliberately put people over 50 in the situation: "without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape." 

Remember "No man is a failure who has friends". Like with Arctic "isolated person is a doomed person": in this situation you are in better position to overcome huge odds if you can rely on your social network. 

News Neoliberalism war on  labor Recommended Links Chronic Unemployment Underemployment Chronic Unemployment Scapegoating and victimization of poor and unemployed The myth of human capital
Chronic stress Stoicism Surviving a Bad Performance Review Signs that you might be dismissed soon Coping with the toxic stress in IT environment Social Isolation under neoliberalism The Iron Law of Oligarchy The Pareto Law
IT Outsourcing/Offshoring Skeptic: Fighting Outsourcing Myths Commodization of IT: "IT does not matter" fallacy and what in Nicholas Carr views matter Bootlickocracy: "Kiss up, kick down" style in corporate IT Cargo cult programming Alienation in neoliberal society Neoliberal rationality The role of automation and AI in decimation of workforce Secular Stagnation
Office Slaves: the rise of bullshit jobs Tactful communication Diplomatic Communication  Negative Politeness Dealing With Negative Criticism Six ways to say No and mean it Rules of Verbal Self Defense   Avoiding Anger Trap 
Programmers and sysadmins health issues Marriage and unemployment Coping with prolonged joblessness Adverse Selection Bosos or Empty Suits (Aggressive Incompetent Managers) The Fiefdom Syndrome Female Sociopaths The Hare Psychopathy Checklist
Neoliberalism and Christianity Bureaucracies Bureaucratic avoidance of responsibility Slackerism IT Outsourcing/Offshoring Skeptic Social Problems in Enterprise Unix Administration The psychopath in the corner office The IT workplace
Slightly Skeptical View on Enterprise Unix Administration Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime Corporate bullshit Information Overload Fundamental Absurdity of IT Management Uber Cloud Computing Related Humor IT Slang

Introduction

"Don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired.
It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself."
 

Age discrimination has been standard operating procedure in IT at least since 2000. And there are no significant consequences, if any consequences at all, for doing it in the USA under "neoliberal occupation", so to speak.  Outsourcing, offshoring and abuse of  H1B visas were increasing annually since year 1990.

That's why many IT professionals, who are over 50, recently found  themselves excluded and marginalized: "without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape." (Pope Francis on danger of neoliberalism).  For example, IBM has laid off hundreds of thousands in the last few decades.

Essentially this categogy of unemployed is heavily discriminated against and pushed into low paid jobs, such as truck drivers, and McJobs -- Lowes floor save staff, flipping hamburgers, warehouse jobs etc. That's a reality of the neoliberalism in the USA. And it is difficult to fight, regaining employment for previous specialty is possible. But it can take several years while  time is running out due to aging and dwindling retirement funds, if any. 

Neoliberals like to talk bout freedom. But they understand freedom as freedom for financial oligarchy to ignore social norms. and they are interested in maintaining high unemployment as it increases their power and "flexibility".  And they create social stigma for unemployed: unemployed means outcast under neoliberalism.

Neoliberals like to talk bout freedom. But they understand freedom as freedom for financial oligarchy to ignore social norms. In reality, as Franklin D. Roosevelt stated (Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), there are not one, but our fundamental freedoms (which BTW does not include the impunity for financial oligarchy to ignore social norms) that people should have:

  1. Freedom of speech
  2. Freedom of worship
  3. Freedom from want
  4. Freedom from fear

Neoliberalism demonizes poor and unemployed. Typical feelings experienced after loss of employment included emptiness, inadequacy, humiliation, rage, shame, envy, and worthlessness. Additional aspects include  grief over the additional losses that followed the job loss, such as loss of social connectedness,  professional status, and hardships for the family. For some people, unresolved conflicts vis-à-vis former employers produce strong revengeful feelings.  For others, self-loathing, contempt, self-criticism, and insecurity or fear of trying new things are more prominent.

That might affect common activities such as attending children's graduations, weddings, getting through major holidays,  sustaining interest in former leisure activities or hobbies. As the period of unemployment exceeds one year most males usually experienced increased and sometimes overwhelming sadness and grief at what had been lost. Paradoxically, reentering workforce now led to comparisons of "there and then" with "here and now". Reactions including rage and feelings of unfairness  are not uncommon. The toxic mixture of shame and anger is especially notable.

As the period of unemployment exceeds one year most males usually experienced increased and sometimes overwhelming sadness and grief at what had been lost.  Please continue to fight. Those who fight preserve human dignity, no matter what. Such feeling of sadness and grief, replaying actual of imaginable mistakes, are "new normal" and just yet another obstacle to overcome.

The key question here is how to survive this prolonged slump, which is very similar to the situations that often happened in Arctic expeditions at the beginning of XX century: the ship squeezed by ice goes down and survivors face life in tents in Arctic weather.  With limited supplies and a long time before the rescuers can reach them. Often forced to survive in those tents the whole Arctic winter. Dr. Sidney Blair, the Navy psychiatrist who coordinated personnel selection for the Operation Deep Freeze voiced the following opinion (BOLD ENDEAVORS. p. 260):

When I am asked, "If you want to be 100% sure that a person will adjust [ to Antarctic duty], what do you look for?"

My usual answer is that I look for somebody who loves their work. This is probably the most important thing on the list of positive factors, they have to love their work. It is almost all right, if they love their work to the exclusion of everyone else.

Another important factor is ability to survive isolation and confinement inherent in long unemployment. Neoliberalism tried to atomizes employees, destroy social bonds between them, propagating " under the disguise of competition old "Man Is Wolf to Man " mentality( from Latin "Homo homini lupus est" . Which, in essence, is an old style "divide and conquer" strategy, applied to labor force.

Moreover, there was never a trade union of IT administrators of programmers so they are by definition pretty isolated specialty, without much inter-employee solidarity. But as Mark Twain aptly said "No man is a failure who has friends". 

As Mark Twain aptly said "No man is a failure who has friends". Like with Arctic, in the situation of unemployment an isolated person is a doomed person. You need to rely of support of other people and you better start cultivating them (as well a funds) before the blow strikes.

Like is the case with Arctic, in the situation of unemployment an isolated person is a doomed person. You need to rely of support of other people and you better start cultivating them (as well a funds) before the blow strikes.

Analogy of unemployment after 50 and situation in Arctic expeditions at the beginning of XX century

Again this is a very similar to situations that occur in Arctic expeditions; in case of loss of power in older types of ships, etc. IT specialists over 50 who succeed after long unemployment belong to the same type people who would survive in case of crash of the ship in Arctic expedition. This is a real life experiment on what we do in moments of great challenge. Do we rise to the occasion or fail? Are we heroes or cowards? Are we loyal to the people we love most or do we betray them? Are the most close people remain loyal to you in such a challenging circumstances, or they are ready to betray? What is the right thing to do in such difficult circumstances?

Like Arctic explorers in the past you need to face the danger and difficult decisions. It is easy to say that one had to be brave and strong and keep moving forward despite hardships. It is quite difficult to do. It's about ordinary people drawn into circumstances beyond their control and the choices they must make to take back some of that control... avoiding impulsive choices, dangerous choices, heart wrenching and even catastrophic choices that can't be undone. It's more complex that just bravery vs. cowardice.

People who are rated low in impatience and irritability and low in the characteristics associated with creation interpersonal conflicts (e.g. egotistic, boastful, hostile, arrogant) have better chances in this situation. People who are more concerted with well-being of other paradoxically typically fared better in situation of Arctic expedition crisis. Other-directiveness helps to survive is such harsh environment. Traits like social compatibility or likability, emotional control, patience, tolerance to others, self-confidence without egotism, ability to subordinate your own interests to the interests of the team, a sense of humor, and  are extremely valuable and are now checked for potential members of long duration expeditions that involve severe hardships.  To those scientifically established traits for selection of people into Arctic expeditions one can add

People who are more concerted with well-being of other paradoxically typically fared better in situation of Arctic expedition crisis. Other-directiveness helps to survive is such harsh environment.  The ability to take job loss "cool" without excessive negative emotions (as in "sh*t happens" attitude)  is also very important. Use Stoicism and
  1. The level of self-control. There are powerful "animal" mechanisms that are still active within us and due to them we tend to display some behaviors typical for "cornered animal" in the situation of long unemployment and unsuccessful search for a job.  Emotionally the hit of losing job is comparable with the hit of losing close relative. The ability to take those behaviors under control are critical. See also Avoiding Anger Trap. The ability to take job loss "cool" without excessive negative emotions (as in "sh*t happens" attitude)  is very important. Otherwise Job loss can cause heart issues, and the stress as well as bad habits that frequently come with unemployment and can build up over time. There is even danger to your mental health with long unemployment as depression is more common among long term unemployed:.
    Michael McKee, a psychologist and stress expert at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, agreed that attention needs to paid to the body blow that job loss can inflict on any individual’s sense of identity and self-respect.

    “If you keep trying to find a job and don’t,” he noted, “or if you find a job and then lose it, and that pattern repeats and repeats, you not only lose identity, you lose income, the structure to your day, your sense of achievement, your friends from work, your other friends because you are embarrassed to be around them, your self-confidence, your self-respect. Then you start to lose hope and meaning and purpose, [and] feel alienated and hopeless and helpless.”

    So, McKee added, “Well-meaning programs, public and private, which help people find jobs, need to add caution to eagerness. Caution that they not set people up for repeated failure, for long times between jobs, which is likely to accelerate the ride to depression. Always finding another job quickly lets you keep your hope up, but struggling [can] often lead to increased fear and anxiety.”

    Related to that is the ability to use physical exercise to control your emotional state. Consider it as an effective medication for excessive aggressiveness and anger. See also Avoiding Anger Trap The ability to maintain your physical and emotional  tonus, which now is especially important. Stretch exercises are known to help is such situation for many people.  So called 4 x 4 running/walking (fast running for 4 minute then walking 4 minutes; and so one 4 times -- 32 min total ) also is very helpful exercise to reduce the level of aggressiveness and anger. Swimming is another highly recommended exercise.  Generally spending some time near the water tend to help many people.
     

  2. Tactfulness in interpersonal relations (see Tactful communication, Diplomatic Communication, Negative Politeness). This trait can't be overestimated. For married couples, tact can avoid one of the main problem in long unemployment - stress and possible dissolution of the marriage. No matter how hard your try to compensate this is a huge hit for your self-esteem and the truth is such a hit encourages some maladjusted compensation mechanisms and first of all excessive aggression toward family members. You need to resist this tendency. The single best prediction of marital longevity is that both partners are kind and emotionally generous to each other. But this is easier said that done is such situation as long unemployment. Those who feel appreciated and valued by their spouse may feel more committed to their marriage and have more positive outlook on overcoming existing difficulties. 
     
  3. Effective conflict resolution skills, especially in marriage, as marriage comes under stress during period of long unemployment. See Conflict Couple A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace.  It is better to assume part of household hours to help the other partner. Nothing destructs a person so much and so quickly as prolong period of idleness and even routine tasks related to home that you can take from your spouse are beneficial in adaptation. Consider it to be a new part time job.  Expect and prepare to problems in your marital life (Marriage and unemployment). In fact, unemployment stimulates transition of a pre-existing marital conflict into the state when spouses are separated emotionally but not physically, or  became “upstairs/downstairs” couples who are estranged, but share the same house. This is a real danger during long unemployment.
     
  4. Stoicism, ability to withstand hardships with honor, without betrayal of yourself and those who are close to you. The key idea if stoicism is that  "virtue is sufficient for happiness". Such an attitude stresses the value an inner freedom in the face of the external, often hostile world. Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions such lust and greed; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to better understand yourself and thus overcome hardships without betrayal of yourself and those who are close to you. As Seneca said "The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live."

    Admiral James Stockdale, who was shot down over North Vietnam, held as a prisoner and repeatedly tortured was deeply influenced by Epictetus after being introduced to his works while at Stanford University. As he parachuted down from his plane, he reportedly said to himself "I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus!"

    The same phrase can be repeated by IT specialist who are over 50 and became unemployed. 
    Practicing  Stoicism is an active process of preparation to overcome negative influence of hardships with honor  (and viewing hardships as a test that God send to evaluate a person) and acquiring deeper self-knowledge in the process (see below)
     
  5. The sense of humor.  The sense of humor is really important for survival in such circumstances. Sense of humor  serves as an important safety valve, helping to prevent the slide into depression.  The future can be scary, but people with the sense of humor adapt easer to harsh conditions.  We often cannot predict how we will be feeling – our level of emotional stability.  And sense of humor serves as a safety valve in this cases, channeling emotion into the safe path.  Even reading  humor stories can help in such cases.
     
  6. The ability to be easily entertained and  fight the sense of boredom.   This is an interesting observation: the easier one can fight the sense of boredom, the better are chances he/she has to survive long unemployment without emotional scars.  As Nansen frequently wrote in his journal, to survive isolation and confinement, one must learn to be idle without feeling guilty (BOLD ENDEAVORS, p.261)  See below You will survive: Fight the sense of isolation and related higher level of aggression I remember the story of one prisoner whom only entertainment in solitary confinement to observe a female rat in his cell. He observed how she behaved, gave birth, etc and noted that he probably would not survived without this strange companion of his confinement.  And this situation with excessive boredom is not limited to people with the long term unemployment problem.  It is pretty common for example for actors too.  Linda Fiorentino  who played the famous female sociopath character in  The Last Seduction once observed "As actors, the thing we have to fight, more than even the business part of making movies, is boredom."   Temporary work, or even volunteering are important for the same reason. You can't wait for your best chance forever. This is also very similar to the situation actors find themselves. As Linda Fiorentino noted  "Sometimes I have to work because I need the money. You weigh the issues and ask yourself, "Can I wake up every morning and do this?"
     
  7. Interest in keeping a regular log of events. That can be done either on computer on or by writing it in the form of lab journal (writing a regular journal make it easier to keep it private; in case of computer you need to use encrypted USB drive which is unlocked, for example, using fingerprint or code combination). That helps to view that situation as pretty cruel experiment that neoliberal society staged upon you, and gives you an ability see a bigger picture. The picture on the level above your personal problems. See Start a log book
     
  8. Maintaining proper (or may be even slight upscale) attire and useful work habits.  Well dressed people have higher self-esteem. As simple as that. That's an important fact that dictates that you need to be dressed up. For the same reason regular visits to the library revive your work routines. That also forces you to dress properly and helps with self-confidence  Public library can serve as a substitute for working place just for few hours a day and along with positive influence on self-confidence helps to fight the sense of isolation. The same role can play a course in your local community college (if you enroll in one course in it is tax deductable; highly recommended). People are social animals in many respects (see Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are Amy Cuddy TED Talks - YouTube :-)  See also The importance of keeping yourself occupied
  9. Learning to cope with chronic stress caused by long-term unemployment. The most dangerous factor here is chronic stress caused by long-term unemployment. It really endanger your health and create multitude of additional problems starting from insomnia.

Like Arctic explorers with ship squeezed by ice which went down, you need to became an expect in survival in hostile environment and keeping the friendship of a few people you can rely upon. Isolated people die in Arctic really quick. The value of the ability to manage conflicts and to communicate tactfully in your current relationships increase tenfold in such situations:

It takes more skill, effort and commitment--and, at least in the short run, more stress--to face the challenge together with the other person involved in the dispute. Certainly it seems as if it would be easier to fight, withdraw, or give in. Yet in the long run, working through difficulties together will help us live a less stressful and more fulfilling life.

The value of stoicism in fighting consequences of a job loss


The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. – Socrates

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. – Seneca

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Serenity Prayer - Wikipedia

Admiral James Stockdale, who was shot down over North Vietnam, held as a prisoner and repeatedly tortured was deeply influenced by Epictetus after being introduced to his works while at Stanford University. As he parachuted down from his plane, he reportedly said to himself "I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus!" The same words can be repeated by  IT specialist who are over 50 and became unemployed: it is the ability to fight adversity that distinguishes real men from fakes.

Stoics teach us that not everything is under our control, not it should be. There are some things we have control over (our judgments, our own mental state) but for a  lot of things we do not exercise much control -- this is what the concept of destiny is about (external processes and objects, transformations of the society, like the USA conversion to neoliberalism in 1980th with banks running amok for quick profits, resulting from this social cataclysms like Great Recession or, worse,  civil war in some countries (all wars are bankers wars)). Part of our unhappiness can be traced to confusing these two categories: thinking we have control over something that ultimately we do not.

The wisdom can be viewed as the ability to distinguish things that we can control and those that we can not. This stoic attitude was aptly captured by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr[ (1892–1971) in his famous Serenity Prayer:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Loss of job is a severe hit for a person no matter young or old. A hit comparable in its effects with the dissolution of the marriage or a death or a jail term of a close relative. In other words it is a traumatic event with negative long term consequences.  Among them:

But you have the ability to minimize them. Stoicism is a philosophy of life that might help, at least for some people,  is those circumstances. It tried to address the problem of loss of self-esteem but reformulating it from the "dimension" of possession to the dimension of personal courage.  After all if everything if gone a man can quit the life voluntarily. That means that he should be able to fight to last breath against even uneven adds.  The key idea of stoicism is that  "personal virtue and courage in adversity, courage in fight against uneven odds is sufficient for maintaining high self-esteem". 

In other words stoicism reasserts  human dignity as the ability to fight the external, often hostile world. Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions such desperation, lust and greed; the philosophy holds that the ability to see clearly your circumstances and fight them to the extent you can  is an achievement in itself, toward which we all should strive.  No matter what is the outcome of this fight. The Stoics taught that we fail far more often than we succeed, that to be human is to be fearful, selfish, and angry far more often than we’d like. But they also taught a realistic way to be less fearful, less selfish, and less angry.  It also teaches to prepare for adversity and do not expect that your life with be smooth sailing to the very end.

In addition to this "glorification of human courage in fighting adversity" stoics also strive  "to be free from anger, envy, and jealousy" (The Stoic ideal of dispassion is accepted to this day as the perfect moral state by the Eastern Orthodox Church). AS value of a person is in his inner properties , stoics teach to accept everybody as "equals, because all men alike are products of nature." In ancient world this was an innovative, rebellious postulates. Related to social status of unemployment is remains to be so even now. In their view the external differences which are considered of such primary importance in Western civilization, such as rank and wealth should not be primary criteria of judging others, not they should the primary goals in your life, or of primary importance in social relationships

After all it is the idea of capitalism to deprive part of the population from meaning full employment to increase obedience of theirs. Neoliberalism requires that employees sell their labor as a condition of survival. Nothing more, nothing less. The "entrepreneur" can exert power by denying access to work, hence income, hence survival. Watch "Office space" which provides a pretty realistic picture how fear of loss of employment paralyzes even young, rebellious people, making the easy prey to any corporate sociopath. The state has the ability to enforce this social order by "brute force”  and in modern times, when social safety nets are weak routinely destroys efforts of the remnants of organized labor to defend employees rights. And neoliberalism  is certainly remains the preferred order among Western elites. All in all "it is not your fault". Seriously.

In the words of Epictetus (note that the word happiness here has slightly different meaning then in regular English language), you can be  "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy..." If we assume that "happiness" means here the ability to maintain high self-esteem this quote might be more understandable. Stoic ethics stressed the rule: "Follow where reason leads." One must therefore strive to be free of the distortions caused by "passions", bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of "passion" was more close to contemporary words "emotions",  "anguish" or "suffering", that is, "passive reaction to external events, which is different from the modern use of the word. In other words you need the ability to dispassionately and persistently "stay the course" after you had chosen it with all the wisdom you are capable of; it is about "who controls whom.": either you control your emotions, or your emotions control you. 

The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic philosophy are: wisdom (Sophia), courage (Andreia), justice (Dikaiosyne), and temperance (Sophrosyne).  The ability to fight in adversarial conditions considered to be a virtue.  This stoical sentiment with more stress on desire to fight the adversity to the bitter end despite uneven odds was expressed in old Russian song Varyag (the cruiser  that became  famous for her crew's stoicism at the Battle of Chemulpo Bay when she alone tried to break the blockade of the port by the whole Japanese fleet)

All to the upper deck and man your battle posts,
The last battle for our ship is coming
Our proud "Varyag" will not surrender to the enemy,
And none of us want their mercy.

But this situation needs a different type of courage, then military courage required to face overwhelming enemy force and fight to the bitter end despite low or even non-existent odds of the victory and survival. Unlike military battles, unemployment can last for years. So endurance comes to the front. This is more like prolonged war, then a single battle.

Unemployment also press people to get into compromises they would never get otherwise. Stoics teach that a person should strive to be just and moral in an unjust and immoral world (see also Reinhold Niebuhr's book Moral Man and Immoral Society) despite all odds:

"Moral Man and Immoral Society", by Reinhold Neibhur, was published during the years of the Great Depression. In this work, Reinhold asserts the requirement of politics in the fight for social justice because of the depravity of human nature, that is, the arrogance of human beings. Neibur sees the flaws of the mind when it comes to solving social injustice by moral and wise means, "since reason is always the servant of interest in a social situation". This is his judgment of liberal Christian doctrine, which fully believes in the intellectual ability of humans to make themselves be good, and he admits this vulnerability as our existence. In other words, Neibhur accurately saw the evil of systems in society and its empty endeavors to better individuals and their insufficiencies.

Neibhur warns us about adopting "herd mentalities." According to him, individuals are morally able to think of the interests of others above themselves. That is, human beings can be kind. Societies, however, find it essentially impossible to manage intelligently the competing interests of subgroups. Societies, he contends, effectively gather up only individuals' selfish impulses, not their abilities for charitable thoughtfulness toward others.

According to Niebuhr, this group egocentricity of individuals-in-groups is immensely powerful. "In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others, therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships".

Avoidance of fight for justice is viewed by stoics a rejection of one's social duty. Stoic philosophical and spiritual practices included  contemplation of hardship, training to value the life as it is (similar to some forms of Eastern meditation), and daily reflection on everyday problems and possible solutions (by keeping a diary). Practicing  Stoicism is an active process of preparation to overcome  hardships that your destiny could send upon you with honor and courage  (and viewing hardships as a test that God send to evaluate a person). As well as acquiring deeper self-knowledge and the knowledge of the society in the process.

In his Meditations (which were not written for print, but as a  personal diary) Marcus Aurelius defines several such practices. For example, in Book II.I:

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of the ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together...

It was stoicism that gave mankind the idea if equality of all men. In this situation it applies to those who suffer from the long term unemployment. Below are some quotations from major Stoic philosophers, selected to illustrate common Stoic beliefs:

Epictetus:

Marcus Aurelius:

Seneca the Younger:

A good introduction to Stoicism can be found in A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine. Here are some Amazon reviews of the book:

...Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus our efforts on the things we can control, and how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune.

We learn from Marcus Aurelius the importance of prizing only things of true value, and from Epictetus we learn how to be more content with what we have.

Finally, A Guide to the Good Life shows readers how to become thoughtful observers of their own life. If we watch ourselves as we go about our daily business and later reflect on what we saw, we can better identify the sources of distress and eventually avoid that pain in our life...

David B Richman (Mesilla Park, NM USA)
The Best Introduction to an Ancient Philosophy, December 23, 2008 See all my reviews

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Hardcover)

I first read Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" while flying to the eastern United States for a scientific meeting. It was during a rather difficult period in my life and I had picked up on "Meditations" because of a mention of this work by Edwin Way Teale in "Near Horizons" as a book he turned to in times of trouble.

I was not disappointed by these insightful notes written for his own use nearly 2000 years ago by the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher. It was thus that I was primed to read William B. Irvine's "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy." This is one of those books that can be really life changing, if the reader is ready for it.

Irvine briefly discusses the history of Stoic philosophy and its relationship to other philosophies in ancient Greece and Rome. He concentrates most of the book, however, on the Stoics of the Roman Empire, namely Seneca, Gaius Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and, of course, Marcus Aurelius. After his historical review Irvine spends some time on the practical aspects of Stoicism, including

  • negative visualization (visualizing how your life could be worse),
  • dichotomy of control (what we can and cannot control),
  • fatalism (about the past and present, not the future),
  • self-denial (putting off pleasure so as to appreciate it more when you have it),
  • duty (what we owe to others),
  • social relations (how we relate to others),
  • insults (how to react to them),
  • grief (how to deal with loss),
  • anger (how to turn it to humor),
  • personal values (how to deal with fame and fortune, or the lack thereof),
  • old age (how to deal with the aging process),
  • and dying (how to prepare for this certainty).

The last part of the book is devoted to the practice of Stoicism in the modern world, with both its pluses and minuses.

Although I would have to practice a modified Stoicism (I doubt that most of us would like to sleep even occasionally on a board or give up sex except for procreation), there is much of Stoicism that we can use in the modern world.

Unlike the Cynics who slept on boards all the time and generally followed ascetic practices, Stoics wanted to enjoy life and followed something akin to the Middle Way of Buddhism.

This attitude could certainly be of use to counter the worst of this "me first" society of rampant consumerism. In truth you really cannot take it with you when you die and to act like you can is the height of folly.

This book is a fascinating exposition of Stoic philosophy and its possible uses in the present day. The current economic collapse and other disasters of modern living could be a fertile ground for a revival of Stoic ideas. I also recommend it as a refreshing antidote for the hectic modern world in general. Take what is useful, and leave the rest, but read it if you would live deliberately and thus be free!

Secular stagnation of the economy

The world  entered a period of economic stagnation. American middle class families now earn less and have a lower net worth than before the Great Recession.  For individuals, this translates into less savings at the age of 50. Both in 401K and in accounts outside 401K, such as Roth or regular investment account, such as Vanguard. That means that "downsizing" in case of chronic unemployment need to go deeper and be more painful. To raise funds you not only need to change your house for apartment (a good move when you children are grown up in any case) but take other measures, like getting rid off of extra car, boat, etc. 

Rising unemployment level of IT professional over 50 is just a tip of the iceberg of multiple problems caused by secular stagnation.  Here is a short description:

Secular Stagnation is a term proposed by Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen back in the 1930s to explain America’s dismal economic performance — in which sluggish growth and output, and employment levels well below potential, coincide with a problematically low (even negative) real interest rates even in the face of extraordinarily easy monetary policy. This is stagnation that lasts longer period then the business cycle (also called Japanification of economy). It looks like a suppression of economic performance for long (aka secular) period of time.

The global stagnation we are experiencing is the logical result of dominance of neoliberalism and a sign of its crisis an a ideology, somewhat similar to the crisis of Bolshevik's ideology in the USSR in 60th when everybody realized that the existing society cannot fulfill the key promise of higher living standards and that over centralization of economic life naturally lead to stagnation.  Analogy does not ends here, but this point is the most important.

Neoliberalism replaced over-centralization (with iron fist one party rule) with over-financialization (with iron fist rule of financial oligarchy), with generally the same result as for the economy ( In other words neoliberalism like bolshevism is equal to economic stagnation; extremes meet).  End of cheap oil did not help either. In a sense neoliberalism might be viewed as the elite reaction to the end of cheap oil, when it became clear that there are no enough cookies for everyone.

This growth in the financial sector's profits has not been an accident; it is the result of  engineered shift in the elite thinking, which changed government policies. The central question of politics is, in my view, "Who has a right to live and who does not".  In the answer to this question, neoliberal subscribes to Social Darwinism: citizens should be given much less rather than more social protection. Such  policies would have been impossible in 50th and 60th (A Short History of Neo-liberalism)

In 1945 or 1950, if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today's standard neo-liberal toolkit, you would have been laughed off the stage at or sent off to the insane asylum. At least in the Western countries, at that time, everyone was a Keynesian, a social democrat or a social-Christian democrat or some shade of Marxist.

The idea that the market should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and citizens given much less rather than more social protection--such ideas were utterly foreign to the spirit of the time. Even if someone actually agreed with these ideas, he or she would have hesitated to take such a position in public and would have had a hard time finding an audience.

And this change in government polices was achieved in classic Bolsheviks coup d'état way via forming first the Party of "professional neoliberal revolutionaries" who pushed for this change. The crisis of "New Deal capitalism" helped, but without network of think tanks and rich donors, the triumph of neoliberalism in the USA would have been impossible:

...one explanation for this triumph of neo-liberalism and the economic, political, social and ecological disasters that go with it is that neo-liberals have bought and paid for their own vicious and regressive "Great Transformation". They have understood, as progressives have not, that ideas have consequences. Starting from a tiny embryo at the University of Chicago with the philosopher-economist Friedrich von Hayek and his students like Milton Friedman at its nucleus, the neo-liberals and their funders have created a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centers, publications, scholars, writers and public relations hacks to develop, package and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly.

Most economists are acutely aware of the increasing role in economic life of financial markets, institutions and operations and the pursuit of profits via exotic instruments such as derivatives (all this constituted  financialization). This dominant feature of neoliberalism has huge the re-distributional implications, huge effects on the US economy, international dimensions and monetary system, depth and longevity of financial crises and unapt policy responses to them.

They have built this highly efficient ideological cadre because they understand what the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci was talking about when he developed the concept of cultural hegemony. If you can occupy peoples' heads, their hearts and their hands will follow.

I do not have time to give you details here, but believe me, the ideological and promotional work of the right has been absolutely brilliant. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but the result has been worth every penny to them because they have made neo-liberalism seem as if it were the natural and normal condition of humankind. No matter how many disasters of all kinds the neo-liberal system has visibly created, no matter what financial crises it may engender, no matter how many losers and outcasts it may create, it is still made to seem inevitable, like an act of God, the only possible economic and social order available to us.  

Neoliberalism naturally leads to secular stagnation due to redistribution of wealth up. which undermines purchasing power of the 99%, or more correctly 99.9 of the population. In the USA this topic became hotly debated theme in establishment circles after Summers speech in 2013.  Unfortunately it was suppressed in Presidential campaign of 2016. Please note that Sanders speaks about Wall Street shenanigans, but not about ideology of neoliberalism.  No candidates tried to address this problem of "self-colonization" of the USA, which is probably crucial to "making America great again" instead of continued slide into what is called "banana republic" coined by American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter 1862–1910). Here is how Wikipedia described the term:

Banana republic or banana state is a pejorative political science term for politically unstable countries in Latin America whose economies are largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas. It typically has stratified social classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy of business, political, and military elites.[1] This politico-economic oligarchy controls the primary-sector productions to exploit the country's economy.[2]

... ... ...

In economics, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by a collusion between the State and favoured monopolies, in which the profit derived from the private exploitation of public lands is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are a public responsibility.

This topic is of great importance to the US elite because the USA is the citadel of  Neoliberalism. It also suggest that the natural way neoliberal economic system based on increasing of the level of inequality (redistribution of wealth up) should behave: after the initial economic boom (like in case of steroids use) caused by  financialization of economy (as well as dissolution of the USSR), helped by off-shoring of manufacturing, the destructive effects of this temporary boost come into foreground. Redistribution of wealth up increases inequality which after a certain delay starts to undercuts domestic demand. It also tilts the demand more toward conspicuous consumption (note the boom of luxury cars sales in the USA).  

But after  inequality reaches certain critical threshold  the economy faces extended period of low growth reflecting persistently weak private demand (purchasing power of lower 90% of population).  People who mostly have low level service economy jobs (aka MC-jobs) can't buy that much.  Earlier giants of American capitalism like Ford understood that, but Wall Street sharks do not and does not want.  They operate under principle "Après nous le déluge" ("After us, the deluge").

An economic cycle enters recession when total spending falls below expected by producers and they realize that production level is too high relative to demand. What we have under Neoliberalism is Marx's crisis of overproduction on a new level. At this level it is intrinsically connected with the parasitic nature of complete financialization of the economy. The focus on monetary policy and the failure to enact fiscal policy options is the key structural defect of Neoliberalism ideology and can't be changed unless neoliberal ideology is abandoned. Which probably will not happen unless another huge crisis hits the USA. That might not happen soon.  Bolshevism lasted more then 70 years. If we assume that the "age of Neoliberalism" started at 1973 with Pinochet coup d'état in Chile, Neoliberalism as a social system is just 43 years old (as of 2016). It still has some "time to live"(TTL) in zombies state due to the principle first formulated by Margaret Thatcher as TINA ("There Is No Alternative") -- the main competitor, bolshevism, was discredited by the collapse of the USSR and China leadership adoption of neoliberalism. While Soviet leadership simply abandoned the sinking ship and became Nouveau riche in a neoliberal society that followed, Chinese elite managed to preserved at least outer framework of the Marxist state and the political control of the Communist party (not clear for how long). But there was a neoliberal transformation of Chinese economy, initiated, paradoxically, by the Chinese Communist Party.

Currently, no other ideology, including old "New Deal" ideology can  compete with neoliberal ideology, although things started to change with Sanders campaign in the USA on  the left and Trump campaign on the right. Most of what we see as a negative reaction to neoliberalism in Europe generally falls into the domain of cultural nationalism.    

The 2008 financial crisis, while discrediting Neoliberalism as an ideology (in the same way as WWII discredited Bolshevism), was clearly not enough for the abandonment of this ideology. Actually Neoliberalism proved to be remarkably resilient after this crisis. Some researchers claim that it entered "zombie state" and became more bloodthirsty and ruthless.

There is also religious overtones of Neoliberalism which increase its longevity (similar to Trotskyism, and neoliberalism can be called "Trotskyism for rich"). So, from a small, unpopular sect with virtually no influence, neo-liberalism has become the major world religion with its dogmatic doctrine, its priesthood, its law-giving institutions and perhaps most important of all, its hell for heathen and sinners who dare to contest the revealed truth.  Like in most cults adherents became more fanatical believers after the prophecy did not materialized. The USA elite tried partially alleviate this problem by resorting to military Keynesianism as a supplementary strategy. But while military budget was raised to unprecedented levels, it can't reverse the tendency. Persistent high output gap is now a feature of the US economy, not a transitory state.

But there is another factor in play here: combination of peak (aka "plato" ;-) oil and established correlation of  the speed of economic growth and prices on fossil fuels and first of all on oil. Oil provides more than a third of the energy we use on the planet every day, more than any other energy source (How High Oil Prices Will Permanently Cap Economic Growth - Bloomberg). It is dominant fuel for transport and in this role it is very difficult to replace. 

That means that a substantial increase of price of oil acts as a fundamental limiting factor for economic growth. And "end of cheap oil" simply means that any increase of supply of oil to support growing population on the planet and economic growth now requires higher prices. Which naturally undermine economic growth, unless massive injection of currency are instituted. that probably was the factor that prevented slide of the US economy into the recession in 2009-2012.  Such a Catch-22.

Growth dampening potential of over $100-a-barrel oil is now a well established factor. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true. Drop of oil price to below $50 as happened in late 2014 and first half of 2015 did not increase growth rate of the USA economy. It might simply prevented it from sliding it into another phase of Great Recession. Moreover when  economies activity drops, less oil is needed.  Enter permanent stagnation.

Also there is not much oil left that can be profitably extracted at prices below $80. So the current oil price slump is a temporary phenomenon, whether it was engineered, or is a mixture of factors including temporary overcapacity . Sooner or later oil prices should return to level "above $80", as only at this level of oil price capital expenditures in new production make sense. That des not mean that oil prices can't be suppressed for another year or even two, but as Herbert Stein aptly noted   "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,"

Move to the cloud, lumpenization of IT and degeneration of IT brass

Currently the "conversion to the cloud" in the latest IT fashion. and under this sauce a lot of salaried jobs in IT are eliminated.  Technically speaking this just a new flavor of outsourcing.  While such a move have some technical merits:

But for everything else this is not "one size fit all" type of solution. As soon as the service requires considerable bandwidth (such as backup) it became really brittle after move into the cloud.  Also large provider which enjoy economy of scale (such a Google with Gmail or Amazon cloud, Microsoft or Web hosting companies) typically often experience periodic catastrophic outages just became of their huge scale: at such scale even minor mistake can has unpredictable consequences.  And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that you can change in such a situation, if your services are outsourced.  You is just one of many customers and as such there is no special loyalty toward you from the cloud provider staff. Unless you regular employees they do not care much about your company.  See "Everything in the Cloud" Utopia

But it does not matter for IT brass. In reality this conversion is used as an opening salvo in an attack of "traditional", salaried  IT workforce. Which are first transferred to the "cloud provider" and them partially eliminated when datacenter change hands due to "move to the cloud". Many of the older folds choose to retire (and that doubles the value of sound handling of your 401K -- think about it not so much as retirement fund, but more as a private unemployment insurance).  Combining some income stream from 401K and a low paying job helps to survive this adversity

The trend  under Neoliberalism is unmistakable: temps and contractors gradually displace permanent (salaried) employees, top brass gets richer and richer.  Less qualified and lower paid personnel with less benefits gradually is replacing old workforce, whenever such change is even marginally possible. Management gets outsized bonuses.  That's why large companies now are hunting for the opportunity to "convert datacenter to the cloud". 

In reality the conversion to the cloud is used as an opening salvo in an attack of "traditional", salaried IT workforce. Which are first transferred to the "cloud outsourcer" and them partially eliminated  when datacenter change hands. Many older folds choose to retire (and that double the value of sound handling of your 401K -- think about it not so much as retirement fund, but more as a private unemployment insurance).  Combining some income stream from 401K and a low paying job helps to survive this adversity.

The trend toward less qualification in IT (aka "lumpenization of IT") as also connected with the fact that as university graduates get into mature stage of development of major technologies and did not experience the emerging of all those technologies as old-timers did, unless they were amateur enthusiasts who tried to build their own computers and experimented with such OSes as MS DOS and Linux in school. That often means that they have less unique,  "in-depth" knowledge of technologies and processes that old-timers, which they acquired  by being the first hand witnesses of the  evolution of IT to the present level. As such they are more predisposed to use "packaged" solutions.

But of course there are old-timers and old-timers. Large swat of IT old-times are accidental people which moved to the field during boom years of IT (say, 1990-1998). Many of them  have neither native talent which drove "real" old-timers into IT from other specialties (often physics, or electrical engineering), nor computer science university degree which allow to see a bigger picture. Such people are just barely competent despite all the advantages cited above that their entrance at the field at the early stage of development of many important technologies (and first of all web-based technologies) provides. 

At the same time the concerns about reliability and downtime are not as simple as having old seasoned workforce on the payroll. A new generation of IT workers (mostly part-time and lower paid guys from outsourcers) is not greatly affecting network or server reliability in a negative way. May be something does happen on the margins. But major business disruptions caused by the ground floor incompetence looks completely remote to me. More often such cases are caused by gross incompetence of the top brass.

Paradoxically with the current level of hardware and software technology this new temp workers and contractors might be adequate to maintaining status quo. Its completely other game with the development of something new, but just maintaining existing services much like maining electrical network does not requires much talent and dedication. Business can survive with completely outsourced IT, if all they need are basic services. And many businesses unfortunately belongs to this type.  Of cause, everything became slow like running in the dense mud, but services somehow function and the enterprise does not collapse. Also both hardware and software architecture itself became more resilient for reasons external to the datacenter technologies used. For example, if company mail and phone network are down, people still can communicate using their cell phones SMS messages and web based personal accounts (which is bad but those are extraordinary circumstances which require extraordinary measures are better then nothing)

Another trend is that due to commodization of the technology the IT support on the level of the firm now matters less. Actually much less: any complex issues are delegated and solved by vendor support, or professional consultants. Enterprise software also became more or less standardized. Of course this is not applicable to research labs and such, but regular corporate office now runs predictable mixture of standard software suits and components including Microsoft Office, some database (Oracle or Microsoft SQL of both), backup software and storage area network, helpdesk software, datacenter monitoring software, videoconferencing software, and so on. Operating systems re also pretty much standardized: only a half dozen of operating systems such as VMware, Windows, RHEL, and SLES (with some remands of Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and remnants of mainframes OSes). Mail, DNS, proxy, firewall, NFS servers now are often implemented as appliances. 

Where  huge, damaging to the company, blunders are now made is at senior level, where the IT brass became completely detached from technology (and often from reality). In large companies, now there are way too many technically illiterate bean counters who were promoted to senior IT positions. What is important to understand is that they rely mainly on fashion (and vendor hype as well as good old bribing) in adopting new technologies for the firm. Recently misguided security efforts became a major threat to stability of the enterprise IT. In soma cases causing almost paralyses. And security for some reason attract the most incompetent careerists and "good-for-nothing" type of specialists. One typical "corporate excess" is preoccupation with firewalls. 

But contrary to the speculation about the demise of IT from the IT brass incompetence, the net result of that looks stupid and highly questionable from the ground floor are just modest cost overruns almost unnoticeable for the firm.  Nothing to be exited about. Something that should probably cost  $100K is bought for $200K or, in rare cases (if you buy from IBM ;-)  $300K. Plus additional 10-20% in annual maintenance fees. That's about it. So the level of inefficiency is not that great. Nothing in comparison with DoD. 

Please remember the cost of IT is generally around 1% of the total cost of the operation of a large company. Most often slightly less then 1%. So at the scale of the firm all those cost overruns is just a rounding error.

You should not consider your situation as your personal fault


You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci."

You should view your situation is as a fight against unjust and cruel neoliberal society  which put you into neoliberal Gulag. In which human beings are considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. And the guards is no less cruel and much better equipped then under Stalinism. Like prisoners in Gulag "masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape." (Pope Francis on danger of neoliberalism)

The social forces working toward shrinking of middle class have been building up for a while with the growth of neoliberalism. Among the first and foremost factor here was the complete financialization of the economy (casino capitalism) and the steady rise in health costs and cost of university education. Due to this neoliberal transformation which meant redistribution of profits in favor of for the top 1% (much like in Gilded Age), not on the larger society,  outsourcing pressures are now huge. All those factors have hastened the demise of the safe, secure white-collar jobs, especially in IT.

Under neoliberalism the wealthy and their academic servants, see inequality as a noble outcome. They want to further enrich top 1%, shrink middle class making it less secure, and completely impoverish poor limiting payment to them to what is needed for bare survival (actually for some category of worker Wal-Mart and other retailers already pay less then that). In other words they promote under the disguise of "free market" Newspeak a type of economy which can be called a plantation economy. Or XIX century economy if you want. In this type of the economy all the resources and power are in the hands of a wealthy planter class who then gives preference for easy jobs and the easy life to their loyal toadies.

The wealthy elites like cheap labor. And it's much easier to  dictate their conditions of employment when unemployment is high. Keynesian economics values the middle class and does not value unemployment or cheap labor. Neoliberals like a system that rewards them for their loyalty to the top 1% with an easier life than they otherwise merit (look at academic economists as a good example of this trend ;-).  In a meritocracy where individuals receive public goods and services that allow them to compete on a level playing field, many neoliberal toadies would be losers who cannot compete.

Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression via outsourcing, history suggests that such a policy is self-destructive, especially in high-tech industries. High wages promote both loyalty and rapid technological change that the US Information technology industry was famous for.  Now smell of "socialist enterprise" with its slogan "they pretend that they pay us, we pretend that we work" is distinctly felt in many large corporation with outsourced/offshored IT. Helpdesk tickets travel for several days, instead of resolution problems are swiped under the carpet, employees are unable to get qualified help and resort to creation of "shadow IT". And so on.

There are two major trends in job market under neoliberalism that hit especially hard older IT professionals:

One of the most important measures of the health of an economy is the following criteria: how many fulfilling, living-wage jobs are created or destroyed (most other economic factors can be distilled to this.). For example, widely used measure of economic growth, GDP is too influenced by financial masturbation and does not distinguish useful activity from harmful or irrelevant.  From this point of view we could describe the current economic system as Crapitalism, which treats ordinary people and lower level professionals as crap.

One of the most important measures of the health of an economy is the following criteria: how many fulfilling, living-wage jobs are created or destroyed (most other economic factors can be distilled to this.).

We live in a society where it's hard to maintain self-respect if you don't have a job. If you've been unemployed and are over 50 you already know this, but if you haven't, here's a news flash: Coping with prolonged joblessness is a very challenging and personally difficult task. Being unemployed is a stigma in the US neoliberal society, and being unemployed and over 50 is a double stigma. Those who are over 50 need to face subtle -- and not so subtle -- biases including hidden caveats on job ads for positions. 

Being unemployed is a stigma in the US neoliberal society, and being unemployed and over 50 is a double stigma (being young is a virtue under neoliberalism). Those who are over 50 need to face subtle -- and not so subtle -- biases including hidden caveats in job ads for relevant  positions.

And BTW the current laws don't prohibit discrimination against the jobless. As was aptly observed in Even Harvard couldn't protect me

Strikingly, no other circumstance triggers a larger decline in well-being and mental health than involuntary joblessness.

Only the death of a spouse compares.

The quest for ever higher degree of efficiency and dominance of neoliberalism as an ideology makes such a  society (and by extension the economy) extraordinarily brittle. And IT is on the forefront of this process. They essentially are destroying IT as we know it. Good, long lasting, full time jobs IT start to disappear, while percentage of IT temp jobs and low paid entry level jobs increased dramatically. Often the attitude toward older It professionals is highly negative:

"...older people are too much trouble.” When pressed on that statement, she continued, “You older folks know too much. You call us out on the BS — that every big outfit uses to keep the kids in line. Face it, you’re a threat to the system.” Evidently, overqualified also means having a social conscience today. I do pity the young folks today though. They’re growing up in a new Dickensian Age.

It does not help that white collar and professional jobs in general and IT jobs in particular are now being lost in the USA due to outsourcing. In a very deep sense many things in IT become either based on external support (and sometimes external infrastructure like in overhyped "cloud computing") or project-based with people hired at the beginning and said good by at the end. In this environment, losing a full time IT position for a person over 50 means significant hardship, as he is essentially forced by the new employment situation into temp labor pool.  As a result older IT specialist suffer a double hit -- a dramatic decline of earnings and effects of adverse selection of unemployed professionals over 50 making finding any new job a real challenge. 

A person over 50  is essentially forced by the new employment situation into temp labor pool.  As a result older IT specialist suffer a double hit -- a dramatic decline of earnings and effects of adverse selection of unemployed professionals over 50 making finding any new job a real challenge. 

The term adverse selection refers to a market process in which "bad" results occur when buyers and sellers have asymmetric information (i.e. access to different information). In this case the "inferior" products or services are more likely to be selected. As AARP noted: 

One report citing September figures noted, “Good News for Older Jobseekers Remains Elusive.” That’s one way to put it. Depressing might be another—especially if you’ve been out of work for more than a year.

“Will I ever work again?” is a common thought for unemployed people over 50, many of whom have been jobless for an average of 55 weeks. A group called Over 50 and Out of Work featuries 100 video stories on its web site to help others understand the plight of the unemployed at 50+.

Perma-temp is now a new perm for those who no longer can find full time job. You can't change the society in which you live. At least by yourself (that does not mean that you should vote for those who promote neoliberalism, which is the root case of this situation). And while you can and probably should make your voice and frustration heard via voting, on the individual day-to-day level the best philosophy to deal with this situation is Stoicism.

The fact on the ground is that IT environment as a whole seems to be thumped by "ageism" in a higher proportion than even racism or sexism. Age discrimination in the private sector IT is growing as range of candidates is vast when unemployment is high and younger employees are more malleable and controllable. Look at composition of staff of Google and, previously, at Microsoft.  It's all young people...

So situation when you are over 50 and unemployed is now pretty typical. In other word there is mass unemployment among IT professionals over 50 years old. If, despite all efforts, you got into this situation, you should try to take it easy. You are not the first and not the last who was thrown under the bus... 

Neoliberalism as a social system came as a replacement of New Deal and is about lowering standard of living of the middle class and dramatic raising the standard of living of the top 1%. This is what is happening now and It is just a part of bigger picture. You can change the society you live in. so don't take it to the heart. Other have been in this situation and survived, you will too.

This is the key point. You was thrown under the bus by neoliberal financial institutions of the country. Highly paid full time job in general and in IT  especially, are disappearing. Looks like the top 1% does not need middle class anymore and is content with Latin-American social structure of the society. So the process of Latin-americanization started we situation in It is a part of more general process of shrinking middle class.  The process which actually started decade or more ago. In other words, there is a profound, age-neutral economic transformation of the US economy: shredding large chunk of middle class jobs. For IT there are several additional powerful factors in play: commodization of IT, automation, which also affect IT jobs and, of course, outsourcing.

So people who are 50 now had the bad luck to reach their peak earning years during an economic perfect storm. Which was the recent "Great Recession" and its aftermath.

Also IT itself changes and despite the fact that most of the "cloud hype" is just hype, new technologies are gradually displacing older as hardware (especially Intel hardware) becomes more and more powerful and cheaper. Look at consolidation of OSes in Unix world into Linux as a telling example. "It's a true paradigm shift," says Karen Hochman, chair of the New York City chapter of MENG, all of whose 550 members have held top corporate jobs and half of whom are out of work.

"You've got hundreds of thousands of obsolete professionals who can't find employment in positions where they've been successful. These are people living off retirement savings 15 years before they were supposed to retire. They don't know what they're going to do."

Such understanding and mentality of a fighter for just cause can give one some additional moral strength which helps overcome the adverse situation. Mentality of a fighter for just cause, for human dignity,  greatly helps to maintain self-discipline, morale and physical condition. It gives another dimension to your physical exercises, attempt to maintain dignity and preserve a healthy lifestyle. And you should consider other is the same situation as allies that can help you, not as adversaries fighting like animals for few spots on the job market. Although you can't inflict even minor damage to neoliberals in Congress by your voting  in two party system, when both candidates competing for the job were already vetted by financial oligarchy via party "nomenklatura" (apparatchiks) mechanisms borrowed by neoliberalism from bolshevism (As George Carlin explained in his famous monologue the two party system protects interests of oligarchy extremely well  and you are f*cked no matter how you vote), it is your duty to explain to your friends and family that the situation in which you found yourself and help to navigate their choice  unless others, more radical, political actions can be taken (which sometimes is possible although such movements are either quickly "institualized" like Tea Party or suppressed like Occupy movement).  

You need to be aware that deindustrialization of the country and related job cuts often lead to long periods of unemployment, intermittent employment and/or underemployment, and the effects transcend simply the loss of pay, medical benefits and purchasing power. Financial strain creates stress, depression and family tensions, which can manifest in a variety of ways, from increased use of drugs and alcohol to suicide and domestic violence (The Social Costs of Deindustrialization):

...unemployment correlates with increased physical health problems. Reduced access to health care makes it less likely that displaced workers and their families will receive appropriate care. The mental and physical health costs of deindustrialization do not harm only pa­tients; increased demand for health care combined with decreased eco­nomic resources leads to health care workers and systems that are overburdened and ultimately unable to meet the community's needs.

Displaced workers, especially primary breadwinners, are likely to feel significant pressure and anxiety about providing for their families. But job loss causes more than just financial distress; work plays a key role in shaping individual identity and social relations. The loss of work can disrupt an individual's sense of self and his or her value and competence. As Al Gini writes, "To work is to be and not to work is not to be."42

... "anxiety, depression, and other forms of anguish may be the normal result of rational calculation of these life chances," according to Hamilton.47 Finding a new job does not entirely alleviate these fears, because the experience of being laid off can generate persistent fear about losing the next job. The security that workers once felt, especially those who worked for local companies that seemed to be dependable employers, disappears.

Neoliberalism tries to kill human solidarity to enforce the rule of elite

Neoliberalism -- the ideological doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action -- has become dominant in both political thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. It helped to crush communism in the USSR and largely displaced Marxism.

These problems are exacerbated by the loss of social networks under neoliberalism which openly process the law of jungle, the survival of the fittest for everybody except financial oligarchy ("masters of the universe" under neoliberalism). In other words they instill real "Homo homini lupus est" (a Latin saying  meaning "man is a wolf to [his fellow] man.")  ideology. And are pretty effective in that. 

Pope Francis recently took issue with neoliberalism and related pseudo theory called "trickle-down economics", which is designed to mask abject inequality usually created by neoliberal regimes (and resulting National Security State, where under the disguise of protecting citizens from terrorism  protects top 1% financial gains). He stressed that so-called supply side economics is a smoke screen for redistribution of wealth up by the financial oligarchy. As Eugene Patrick Devany noted in his comment to Paul Krugman's post The Case for Techno-optimism (Nov 27, 2013. NYT):

It seems that, "a persistent shortfall on the demand side" is a euphemism for the fact that half the population will remain near bankruptcy for quite sometime.

Pope Francis said two days ago

"To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others ... a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion ..."

One may consider the Pope less qualified to "pontificate" about technology than Prof. Krugman who "tracks technology" and sees that "smart machines are getting much better at interacting with the natural environment in all its complexity ... [and concluding] that a real transformative leap is somewhere over the horizon" Pope Francis said,

"This epochal change has been set in motion by the enormous qualitative, quantitative, rapid and cumulative advances occurring in the sciences and in technology, and by their instant application in different areas of nature and of life. We are in an age of knowledge and information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power."

"This epochal change" seems to be a reference to "fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries" and to people forced to live "with precious little dignity".

The best description of supply side or “trickle down” economics I ever heard was by JK Galbraith:

“trickle down economics is the idea that if you feed the horse enough oats eventually some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

Here are several more relevant Pope Francis quotes:

... Such an [neoliberal] economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

The shift toward neoliberalism occurred in the 1970s because businesses and the super-rich began a process of political self-organization in the early 1970s that enabled them to pool their wealth and influence to achieve dominant political power and to capture administration.  As David Swan noted in his review  (E. David Swan's review of A Brief History of Neoliberalism)

From its founding America's wealthy have feared democracy recognizing that the majority, being poor and middle class, could vote to redistribute wealth and reduce the control held by the elites. After World War II, the middle class in the United States grew dramatically somewhat flattening the countries power base. As a reaction to this dispersal of power the early 1970's saw the formation of groups like The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEO's who were `committed to an aggressive pursuit of political power for the corporation'. As the author writes, `neoliberalization was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restoration of class power'. T

The neoliberal plan was to dissolve all forms of social solidarity in favor of individualism, private property, personal responsibility and family values. It fell on well funded think tanks like The Heritage Foundation to sell neoliberalism to the general public using political-philosophical arguments.

Money pouring into lobbying firms, political campaigns, and ideological think tanks created the organizational muscle which mimics the Bolsheviks organizational muscle. And  a bunch of Trotskyite turncoats such as James Burnham, who knew the political technology of bolshevism from the first hands, were probably helpful in polishing this edifice.  Carter and Clinton sold Democratic Party to the same forces.

This rise of special interests politics has been at the expense of the middle class including IT professionals.  And the neoliberal plan was "to dissolve all forms of social solidarity in favor of individualism, private property, personal responsibility and family values" proved to be a huge success. The whole generation is now completely poised/brainwashed by those ideas. No longer the USA can be viewed as a Christian county by any objective observer. Neoliberalism became a new dominant enforced by the state religions which displaced Christianity. Now we have what we have.

Understand your situation as a part of civil war inflicted on the society by neoliberalism

Consider yourself in war zone now. In a sense it is true as your survival is at risk and you can lose you "living space". That means that you need to access all resources you have and try to make the best of them. In more then one way a way you view yourselves to be in  a war zone now.  This is a civil war for the destruction of New Deal capitalism (Neoliberal Capitalism destroying Society)

It is a form of terrorism because it abstracts economics from ethics and social costs, makes a mockery of democracy, works to dismantle the welfare state, thrives on militarization, undermines any public sphere not governed by market values, and transforms people into commodities. Neoliberalism’s rigid emphasis on unfettered individualism, competitiveness and flexibility displaces compassion, sharing and a concern for the welfare of others. In doing so, it dissolves crucial social bonds and undermines the profound nature of social responsibility and its ensuing concern for others. In removing individuals from broader social obligations, it not only tears up social solidarities, it also promotes a kind of individualism that is almost pathological in its disdain for public goods, community, social provisions, and public values. Given its tendency to instrumentalize knowledge, it exhibits mistrust for thoughtfulness, complexity, and critical dialogue and in doing so contributes to a culture of stupidity and cruelty in which the dominant ethic is organized around the discourse of war and a survival of the fittest mentality. Neoliberalism is the antithesis of democracy. – Henry A. Giroux

Like in any war, for civilian to survive one need to rely on resources you managed to accumulate in "peace time" and first of all your savings. Nothing is sacred in this situation: neither you401K not your house. They are just source of funds to survive. They should not be viewed via the usual prism "Keeping up with Jones" anymore. forget about it.   Move might be necessary, and not necessary to the place with more jobs -- move to place with much loser expenses also makes perfect sense

The "buck up and get over it" is useless advice. It's silly to assume most people aren't doing the best they can. For people who are over 50 it's not about trying or not trying. This is about premature switch to part employment., Possibly for the rest of  your working life (that means before you can get Social Security which is around 67 years old now). There's just so little available IT jobs out there, that your chances of getting one are not that great. That does not mean that you should not try your best. You should do you best and continue trying despite disappointment. Never give up.  But some modest attempt to create income stream should proceed outside your specialty after your unemployment benefits expire. Even  reselling something like used books, cellphones or computers on eBay beats feeling hopeless. That actually allow you to write one room of your house as business expense. Think about it.

Analyze available funds and view them as bullets left

Most fold at 50 have some equity in the house and some sizable 401K. This is now two sources of supplementary income that can tremendously help if all you can get is a low paid job.

Create spreadsheet with your current expenses (see Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime).  Cutting your current expenses to bare bones is a necessary step and the earlier you can do it, the better. It is important to not to go too far here and determine what percentage you can save without dramatically lowering your standard of living. Much depends what "emergency fund" you currently have. Please not that you can also "borrow" from 401K without penalty based of "hardship" provisions of US tax code.  It is a much better move that accumulation of credit card debt. 

You usually can sell some unused staff that you accumulated over the years on eBay. While it's not much money, there are some benefits for this as small business activity which can improve the level of your psychological comfort as you are feel engaged in some systematic activity.

Create a spreadsheet of your monthly expenses and analyze each item. Some steps that help to cut your expenses are easy.

There are several other ways to make your balance sheet more healthy depending on your situation and whether you rent or own the house or apartment.  For example, if community library is nearby, using it in can slightly cuts your air conditioning or heating costs.  Adding a thin film on your windows is another good step in the same direction. Now you have time to do this, at last. Amazon has a lot of low cost offering under such titles as  "Heat control Residential Windows Film",  "Sun control Window Firm". For example Gila LES361

For the examples table below shows monthly expenses obtained by downsizing your life style:

Item Monthly Annual
Total expenses 2470 29640
Rent 800 9600
Food 800 9600
Electricity and heating (if not in rent) 100 1200
Books and once course at community colledge 50 600
Medical Insurance (hospital only) 150 1800
Car amortization/repairs/etc (one car) 100 1200
Car insurance (one car) 100 1200
Gas/transportation 60 720
Other expenses (meals, washing cloth, dry cleaning, etc) 80 960
Drugs, Doctor visits and dental costs 100 1200
Job search expenses 50 600
Cable internet 40 480
Cell phone or tablet with cell connection plus 1GB traffic a month 40 480

The importance of keeping yourself occupied, the danger of social isolation

Volunteering is must for people who lost job and are over 50, as it helps to fight social isolation. For many people job was the main social setting. Especially for those who are divorced or with little or no extended family. That's a real danger. Slide into opiod abuse, alcoholism, etc are real danger in such circumstances

Volunteering is must for people who lost job and are over 50, as it helps to fight social isolation. The latter along with suppressed anger are real dangers. Volunteering a couple of day a month for a local politician who is critical about neoliberal is one way to channel your anger in a constructive way.

Unemployment means boredom and it destroys the person morale and self-worth assessment. That means that it is important to keep yourself occupied. It does not really matter with what activity: Creation of personal website, carving some wood, teaching free classes in the library, helping relative and neighbors. Fred Glogower, the Navy psychologist who was responsible for screening all the US Antarctic personal in 90th, stated this point in a very clear way: "The key to successful winter-over at a station is to keep the people busy."

Fred Glogower, the Navy psychologist who was responsible for screening all the US Antarctic personal in 90th, stated this point in a very clear way: "The key to successful winter-over at a station is to keep the people busy."

Experienced Antarctic managers strive to identify and assign worthwhile projects to crew members that can be completed within the period of isolation and confinement. Working towards an established goal, such as writing a new program or participating if creation of documentation for some open source project provides sense of accomplishment when the goal is achieved.

Clearly defined interim goals help to maintain the focus. Self-checks of your knowledge of Unix and scripting languages, rehearsing interview with family members, passing certification exam for RHEL or their Linux distribution, etc also can help to create that sense of mission. For this reason one need to be aware of danger of low workloads and prepare countermeasures.

Some retraining should be considered, but without too much zeal

Among other things this new situation means that you might benefit from getting some new skills or improving an old one to be more viable on the marketplace to get back to work. But please do not bite nonsense about everyone needing to reinvent themselves.  The last think you need is $40K in student debt. 

In no way you need to reinvent themselves. Especially via expensive collage program. The last thing you need is $40K in student debt. Your problem are mostly connected with neoliberalism not you. Be critical about all those rosy promises: colleges, especially private colleges, now are an educational shark and they will devour you without mercy. See Slightly Skeptical View on Neoliberal Transformation of University Education

In this case  taking a minimum wage position is out of the question for me since all my salary would actually go to pay my debt and I would not have money even for transportation back and forth to work.

EconomistNC,  May 5, 2015

As a former public servant teaching University Level Econometrics for nearly 15 years and possessing numerous 'Excellence' awards, this development is nothing short of shameful. I have had dozens of recruiters and HR 'specialists' debase my public service as not being 'Real World' experience despite the fact that without my commitment to 'Real World Applications' education, many of those with whom I apply for employment would not hold a college degree. Indeed, I find many of the hiring managers with whom I speak regarding positions for which I have both technical and applications experience, there is impenetrable discrimination once they meet me in person.

The point made in several articles of this nature revolve around lack of knowledge and experience with newer technologies. In an effort to address this issue, I went back to school (again) to obtain expertise in IT Networking and Security, PMP Path Project Management and ITIL. Now I am being told that my education is of no value since I do not have the requisite 'Real World' experience using these newly acquired skills.

Indeed, to meet the criteria for many positions I find open requires that I be a 'recent college graduate.' When I point out that I have been continually retraining and taking online courses to keep my IT skills current, I am once again met with the lack of 'Real World' experience requirement. For a society that purports itself to value education and hard work, for those among us that have worked very hard for substandard pay and benefits to be so casually cast aside is absolutely inexcusable.

Sill some, modern steps to adapt can and should be taken. For example, fashion rules in programming and system administration and getting a course or two for the latest fad can improve your prospects getting back to work. In community college it does not cost much money and expense is tax deductible. It is also interesting opportunity professionally as often in the corporate environment longtimers are pushed to the niche which is far from being interesting and sometimes represents a dead end for their former skills.

There are several programs which might  provide some minor financial assistance, but don't count on them too much. In any case tax deduction for one course in the community college is yours to get.

Please understand that colleges also changed and "neoliberalized"  with money becoming primary driver of their activities. That means that many of them now are greedy money extracting machines which can capitalize of your distressed situation. Don't believe hype of magical retraining courses that charge $10K or more for a summer and teach almost nothing. This is a popular brand of  educational scams, nothing more, nothing less. And those "courses" are typically run by really ruthless education sharks. Time when in films college professor was a positive hero are long gone. Now they can well be just another variety of white color criminals. Please read the notes at Slightly Skeptical View on University Education.

In other words, if you are over 50 accumulation of education debt is gambling -- it does not really improve your chances of getting back to workforce due to age discrimination issues. Making a sizable investment in re-training with an uncertain outcome, without understanding full consequences and chances to get an entry level position in newly acquired field (and forget about any other level), might make your situation dramatically worse. See comment from hen3ry below.  You are warned...

Still there are several ways of getting positive return from educational institutions without spending much money:

I would like to mention also two related educational opportunities not directly connected to the college:

You can also try to find special federal and state programs that aid adults in returning to college. Look at website of Workforce Professionals, Employment & Training Administration (ETA) - U.S. Department of Labor. They usually provide better conditions and lower interest rate then private funding (see for example Trade Act Program TAA for Workers, Employment & Training Administration (ETA) - U.S. Department of Labor). Several community organizations and foundations provide assistance to adults going back to school. You may be eligible.  Check out associations and societies that offer scholarships and grants to older students.  If you are a female and/or a single parent there are programs and awards especially for this category.

Start a log book 

With the current complexity of the environment memory is no longer reliable store of your experience.  So create a log book and write down each evening the steps you have taken. Once a week write the review of the week and once a month write the review for the month. You will be surprised at the amount of times you step on the same rake and repeated unnecessary mistakes ;-).

Also that helps you to remember key things from one encounter from another. Logbook helps you to organize your memory and avoid repeating the same mistakes again and again.

You use regular logbook put is somewhere were nobody else can read it. If you use computer put it on electronic USB drive with built-in encryption and iether fingerprint authentication or numeric code authentication. Log should remain private and never shared with anyone.  That extremely essential. 

Learn to get to the library each (or some) of mornings as a new working place

Use library as your new "temporary working place".  It can be a community library or nearby college library but you need to get out of house at  least for the first half of the day. This will help you in a way you don't anticipate.  First of all you can meet people, the second you preserve a resemblance of your usual schedule which positively affected your general psychological state and prevent depression which often accompany long tome unemployment. People need community just of preserving psychic health.

Just the fact you still need to get up in the morning, take a bath, have breakfast and your morning coffee, dress up and go has a strong positive influence. People are creatures of routine; don't break your current routine.  You can also save on air-conditioning going to the library at summer.

Pay attention to your attire when you are going to the library. Try to dress the way you used to dress going to work or slightly better. That keeps you in tonus as being well dressed provide strong implicit feedback to you and improve your self-confidence. Like people used to say "form liberates".

Electronic libraries as Oreily Safari is also a possibility but cost money. O'Reilly provides a short trial period that you can use as additional source of books. But nothing can substitute a real library when you are unemployed.

Enroll into one course in community college

This is a tax deductable expense. And for $400-$800 this is another opportunity to meet people and learn new skills. That also a very helpful for your psychological condition and greatly helps you stay mentally sharp.  If you worked in IT for a long time, you usually lost a lot of your knowledge due to limitations of your regular corporate job.

Now there is a chance to get some of those losses back. Programming course such as Unix shell course or C++ course while not necessary for you employment actually is a great way to relearn many useful thing and feel much better about yourself as you can compare yourself with other students.  In other words attending a college course increases your self-esteem, which is an important thing in your situation.

What is also extremely important is that your status as a student gives you access to the community college computer lab and community college library.  This is a pretty powerful learning environment in itself.

 

Create a home lab

Skilled became rusty if not used on a regular basis. You can recreate part of your former environment (and actually learn few new things is the process) by creating a home lab. Used tower computers from Dell such as Optiplex and workstations. They are very inexpensive and quite reliable. They can be bought for less then $150 each on eBay (with shipping).  4GB of RAM is more then enough to have very complex Linux setups including virtual machine setup. You can also buy used CISCO router or switch if this is part of your skills.

It is more difficult to accommodate your needs if in-addition to linux you managed Solaris o, AIX or HP-UX. But still it is possible, especially with Solaris on UltraSparc (and you can use Solaris on Intel instead).   Still even if you limit yourself to Linux it is better then nothing. 

In any case creating home linux infrastructure is no-brainer. You can have two or three linux boxes and one Solaris box. Install local DNS, DHCP, sendmail and other services. Create a "lab website". Install helpdesk or ticket tracking software. And you can enroll the help of your former colleagues for thing that you currently do not understand. 

Now you are ready to run some small development project or at least tinker with the boxes to prevent losing your skills.

You will survive: Fight the sense of isolation and related higher level of aggression

  It took all the strength I had not to fall apart
Kept trying hard to mend the peaces of my broken heart
I spent so many nights just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry
But now I hold my head up high

Gloria Gaynor

Sense of isolation and desperation in finding a new job increase the level of aggressiveness in people. It's much like an animal which is being cornered. And this is strongly felt by family members, if any. Obeying simple guidelines might help

Humans can endure almost anything, but you need to be aware of typical pitfalls that develop in your situation. Material below is based on the book  BOLD ENDEAVORS, Chapter 18)

The primary lesson that can be learned form studying cases of long term unemployment is that humans are capable of enduring conditions far more austere financially and more challenging morally that initially planned. Your self-worse does not depend on the size of your salary. This is an important point.

People can adjust from change to living in a comfortable cabins on the ship to living in tent in Arctic. Their diaries reveal that members can remain cheerful and even had to remind themselves about their desperate situation.  Arctic expeditions prove that humans can endure unimaginable hardships when the survival is in stake. Humans also exhibited a remarkable capacity to adaptation to living on greatly reduced standard, incomparably lower that any unemployed face. Description o of the life in Nancen't hat on Frans Josef Land illustrate the extremes of human mental and physical endurance and should be a required reading.

the polar whaling industry during nineteen and early twentieth century is another example of people surviving under extremely austere and dangerous conditions,, The crews of sealing and wailing ships endure crowed and anti-sanitary conditions, bad food, harsh treatment and long period of boredom punctuated by now and then by hard work and danger.  Midshipman William Reynolds of the Wilkes Expedition described adaptability of sailors on one of his letters home in 1839 (BOLD ENDEAVORS, p 305):

As for bodily inconveniences, they are easily endured, and as long as extremes of endurance are not called for, all are disposed to make light of the present and trust to better luck in the future. Sailors are your true philosophers in these cases and never employ themselves in fancying their situation worse that it is,.

When you thing about such austere and difficult conditions as described in  BOLD ENDEAVORS,  long term unemployment does not look too bad of a situation anymore.

Unemploymnet offic

Usually it si of little help

Church can be a valuable meeting place with people in the same situation

If you are a church goer, you can utilize this institution too. Church is one of the few place when your current situation does not have any stigma attached to it: religion is was created as an antipode to the Homo homini lupus est  attitude of the marketplace.

Moreover you can use it to create a group of people in similar situation which can a little bit help each other. Just communication with people in similar situation helps.

Checking your friends for job opportunities in their companies

It is a trivial advice, but important nuance is that you should not do it as the first step without talking to recruiter and understanding your situation better. You need to prepare for each such talk, as if you go to the interview, despite the fact that this is your friend.

If position in his/her company does exist, those are usually more reliable and valuable lids, that those from recruiter.  Create the list and call starting from the most promising, not in alphabet order. Those who will take your calls and at least formally try to help can be left on the list. Purge others. Inform those who responded about your the new plans and situation as you understand it now.

Often people do not do anything unless they are more informed about the roadblocks you face, your next steps and plans. This way they become more involved. Expect that some of your friends will do nothing.  Those who will try are kind of virtual team that you can use. Look for opportunities based of your LinkedIn account and you address book; some companies might be looking for consultants, if not permanent staff.  

Volunteer for some community work

Volunteering for some community work is an important source of keeping you skills in shape. Try to help some small business near you for free. Your church, your municipality, and small business around you are suitable targets if they have the infrastructure you know about and can improve.

This can greatly help to stay you sharp and even improve the skill valuable in the marketplace.

Adapt to the fact that you are now can exprience midlife crisis

Unemployment excsabates midlife crisis in individuals. For approximately 10% of individuals the condition is most common from the ages of 41 through 60 (a large study in the 1990s  found that the average age at onset of a self-described midlife crisis was 45). Mid-life crises last about 3–10 years in men and 2–5 years in women. If a  mid-life crisis coincides with losing your job it can form potentially toxic combination. Mid-life is the time from years 45 to 60 where a person is often evaluating his or her own life. Loss of employment creates an "overload" of stressors and exacerbate mdlife crisis. Especiallly in women who often experience additional multiple stressors because of their simultaneous roles as wives, mothers, and  daughters,. Personality type and a history of psychological crisis are believed to predispose some people to  a variety of negative symptoms and behaviors.  by aging itself, or aging in combination with changes, problems, or regrets over:

An American cultural stereotype of a man going through a midlife crisis may include the purchase of a luxury item such as an exotic car, or seeking affairs with a younger woman.  A woman's crisis is more related to re-evaluations of their roles. In both cases the emotions can be intense.

One of the main characteristics of a mid-life crisis  is the reavulation of self-worth. Moreover, the age period, between 50 and 60 if often the time when some chronic illness such as diabetes can come to the forefront. Individuals experiencing a mid-life crisis may feel:

If  individual lacks introspection capabilities they often exhibit a non-healthy response to such a crisis including:

Watching movies about unemployment can provide emotional support

There are several really insightful movies about unemployment. And first of all (Unemployment at the Movies 15 Films for Tough Times - Bloomberg):

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine
Director: John Ford
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1940: 14.6%

The epic tale of the Joad family's search for jobs in Depression America. Tom (Fonda) returns from prison just in time to see his family kicked off their farm. They strike out for California, where it's rumored there are plenty of jobs. Instead they wind up in an itinerant camp with other desperate families. Tom finds more trouble than work and delivers an immortal speech against injustice.

On the Waterfront (1954) Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb
Director: Elia Kazan
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1954: 5.6%

Terry Malloy (Brando) is the ex-prizefighter who has to choose between a cushy, no-show job and the hard work of doing the right thing. Terry provides muscle for Johnny Friendly's mobbed-up union thugs, but he falls for the sister of one of Johnny's victims. When he decides to testify about waterfront corruption, he is cast out of the gang. Kazan directs heavyweights who include Rod Steiger and a real-life fighter, "Two Ton" Tony Galento.

On the Waterfront (1954) Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb
Director: Elia Kazan
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1954: 5.6%

Terry Malloy (Brando) is the ex-prizefighter who has to choose between a cushy, no-show job and the hard work of doing the right thing. Terry provides muscle for Johnny Friendly's mobbed-up union thugs, but he falls for the sister of one of Johnny's victims. When he decides to testify about waterfront corruption, he is cast out of the gang. Kazan directs heavyweights who include Rod Steiger and a real-life fighter, "Two Ton" Tony Galento.

The Godfather Part II (1974) Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1974: 5.6%

It all began with a layoff in turn-of-the-century New York City. In Coppola's strong sequel to The Godfather, young Vito Corleone (De Niro) steals away to America and takes a job in a grocery store. He is fired when a local mob boss forces the store owner to hire his nephew. Thwarted by nepotism, Vito takes up a life of crime with pals Peter Clemenza and Sal Tessio. And the rest is cinema history.

Gung Ho (1986) Starring: Michael Keaton, Gedde Watanabe
Director: Ron Howard
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1986: 7.0%

Hunt Stevenson (Keaton) is foreman of a Pennsylvania car factory that's been shut down; he has to convince Japanese auto executives to reopen it. They agree, but only if they can subject the American workers to lower pay and new work rules. Conflict and cultural confusion ensue. Worth watching if only to confirm that there once was a time when Japan seemed unstoppable and unions had power. \

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) Starring: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin
Director: James Foley
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1992: 7.5%

Just imagine how cutthroat this crew would be in today's housing market. Blake (Baldwin) has been sent to light a fire under the salesmen at a tough Chicago real estate office. His pitch: a sales contest in which only the top two sellers will keep their jobs. The salesmen in this film version of David Mamet's play are matched in desperation only by their would-be clients. To quote Blake: "Only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted." 

Everything Must Go (2010) Starring: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Christopher Jordan Wallace
Director: Dan Rush
U.S. Unemployment Rate, 2010: 9.6%

No hiding the indignity of a layoff in this one. It's all out in the open—literally—for Nick Halsey (Ferrell). Nick has hit the misery trifecta: A relapsed alcoholic, he's been fired and his wife has left him. His solution? Live in his front yard with his "stuff," or at least hold a yard sale as long as he can legally pull it off. The tale is adapted from a Raymond Carver short story published in the late 1970s, yet the theme of a man's struggle for dignity seems very much of these times.

Among more modern firms we can recommend the list by Arun Kumar  (Best Movies about Unemployment - I - CreoFire)

It is often referenced in the media that a country is progressing by leaps and bounds in the matter of economy, but at the same time there is always a sharp increase in the number of unemployed. Growing population, inflation, corruption, despotism and various other factors might play a role in spawning unemployment. But, let’s forget the causes of unemployment and how it affects society on the whole. What does unemployment does to an individual and to his immediate family? In this recession era, the psychological effects of involuntary unemployment look daunting. Our societies have buried a thought that only our job defines our worthiness. For many of us job isn’t what we do to pay our bills — it defines who we are. And when that socioeconomic identity is taken away, the emotional consequences can be severe. The movies mentioned below in the list explore the various emotional stresses a person faces due to joblessness. If I have missed out any great movie, dealing this subject, please mention it in the comments section.

Up in the Air (2009)

 Jason Reitman’s part funny, part serious work is about the corporate layoffs. Its protagonist Ryan Bingham, played charmingly by George Clooney, makes his living by ending the careers of others. His baritone voice and authoritative manner makes him to fly around US to downsize employees for companies whose HR departments are too cowardly to do the task themselves. It has got a bit touchy storyline and a script that loses some fire, but captures contemporary angst of the economic fallout with wit and humanity.

Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Famous J-horror director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s bleakest indictment of modern Japan looks at the ripple effects caused within a family by corporate downsizing. The protagonist Ryuhei is cast out when his administrative job is outsourced to China. The humiliated breadwinner hides his unemployed state from his wife, Megumi and two sons. He suits up as usual and wanders around the city like a zombie and learns the routine of maintaining face over downsizing. The recession-era shows how out dignity is stripped away by a job and how the corporations turns our mind into vegetative state, devoid of basic human connections.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

 This unsentimental Chris Gardner biopic takes an honest, intense look at the day-to-day survival that too many Americans must contend with. Every one of us could at least see some portion of the film and remember being faced with similar obstacles in their lives. Will Smith played Gardner and scored some great emotional points through his portrayal of an African-American male who turns out to be an extraordinary single-parent. The film convincingly asks us to never give up on our dreams, even when we are staying financially afloat.

Time Out (2001)

Laurent Cantet’s French psychological drama tells the story of an executive who conceals, from his family that he has been fired from his job. He later invents a phony investing scheme, calling up old friends to invest in it. The film seriously conveys absurdity behind a white-collar corporate life and showcases how words like ‘emerging markets’ can draw in even smart guys to invest huge load of money. Unlike a Hollywood protagonist, the central character here avoids over-the-top performance giving way to subtle emotions. The strain and scenarios exhibited can be understood by anyone who has held a job.
Starring: Aurélien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet
Director: Laurent Cantet
French Unemployment Rate, 2001: 7.8%

Vincent (Recoing) has lost his job—he's just not telling anyone. Also unclear is what he's up to now: a new consulting job with the U.N.? An investment scam? As his fantasy life ropes in a widening circle of friends and family members, the pressure builds and Vincent's calm facade begins to crumble. Vincent drives from dreary office to bland apartment complex, watching family and former colleagues through windows in the dark, having lost his identity when he was shown the door.

Office Space (1999)

 Mike Judge’s satirical comedy must be dedicated to everyone, whose life and soul is stomped out by an uncaring corporate entity. The story revolves around a frustrated corporate employee Peter Gibbons, who through an accidental session of hypnotherapy is freed from chronic anxieties and fears of unemployment. Stephen Root playing the fat, mumbling employee, Milton and three workers bashing a fax machine with a baseball bat are some of the memorable situation in the movie. Even though the movie offers enough fun, you can’t miss out the bitter truths beneath those gags.

Random Tips

The key here is to understand the your current situation is not the end of the life. You need to survive the current slump. Even if you are forced to take job at much lower salary, if this is a job that corresponds to your qualification and allow to improve them, you might be able to find something better later on.  You can also learn a few new things on a new job and such knowledge is money. You can also work less hours. Often much less hours.  Time is money after all.  Here is one relevant comment:

In worst case you will find itself in "semi-retirement" situation when the only type of jobs that are available as McJobs and entry level temporary jobs.  If you put enough efforts to adjust your cost of living with the new nasty reality you will survive even this situation.

Here are tips for getting back on your feet and into the IT job market from someone who's been there and back By Ron Nutter , Network World , 08/25/2008

Editor's note: On Feb. 20, IT manager and Network World columnist Ron Nutter was called into his boss's office and told he was being let go — that day. Once the initial shock wore off, Nutter launched an aggressive search for new employment in the Kansas City area. Over the next 76 days, Nutter applied for 85 jobs, and had 16 interviews before landing a new position. He chronicled the job search in a daily blog. Now that he has had some time to reflect on the experience, Nutter offers these 20 tips for surviving a layoff.

1. As you're getting laid off, be sure to take notes

This can be difficult to do, since losing a job can be a very emotional experience. But while everything is still fresh in your mind, write down all the details that you can remember.

For example, I was told that I would be paid for the full two-week pay period, plus my remaining vacation and sick time. When my last check arrived, there were discrepancies. Having written notes helped me when I went back and reminded my former boss and the HR folks of their commitment.

2. Take some time for yourself

Take a few days for yourself. A traumatic event has just happened to you and you need to get over the initial shock before jumping into the fray to search for a new job.

3. Review the papers from the company that laid you off

Several important things need to be attended to rather quickly. One is how to file for unemployment. Another is how long your company-paid health insurance will be in force before you have to consider paying for COBRA.

4. Update your resume

This is something that we should all do, but it doesn't always get the attention that it should. I was told a long time ago that your resume should be more than two pages with a max of three bullet points per employer. That may work in some cases but not all.

I have found that some recruiters/employers use software that does a "word count" to look for how many times a particular word, such as Cisco, or a word describing a certain type of experience is listed. I can attest that this is happening to a degree. When I was looking for a prior job, a recruiter had me just about totally rewrite my resume to specifically list all the different Cisco hardware that I had worked with. It was interesting to note how the callbacks increased after I did that.

You may find that it may be necessary to keep more than one type of resume depending on the type(s) of jobs you are looking for, so that the resume is specifically tailored to the type of job you are pursuing.

5. Get a handle on monthly bills

Even though I had a little money put back for a "rainy" day, I went through all my recurring bills to see if there was any room for saving money. One area I looked at was car and home insurance. I found that by shopping around, I was able to keep the same level of auto and homeowners coverage while reducing the amount of both bills. I had been thinking about doing it for a variety of reasons, but being unemployed helped push it to the top of the list.

6. Cut food costs

If you live by yourself, this will be easier to do. If you have a family, everyone will need to sit down and understand that they will all have to help out until you can get another job. ... ...

7. Look at health insurance options

Your company supplied health insurance will come to an end. If it was like my former employer, the health insurance ended a few days after I was separated from the company. Worse yet, I wasn't "due" to receive the COBRA information until after my company health insurance had lapsed. Because my previous employer had also been doing the claims processing for my health insurance, I wasn't comfortable with them having any further access to my medical records. Doing a little research on the Internet, I found a single health insurance policy from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for half the price and better coverage than the COBRA policy my former employer was going to offer me. 

... ... ...

10. File for unemployment compensation

This is something that I delayed a little bit. Partially because of pride and partially because I didn't anticipate the job hunting process to take more than three months. As someone pointed out to me, you earned this money and you should take advantage of it. In my case, filing was complicated by the fact that I had moved from another state in the past 18 months. The unemployment folks go back that far in figuring out where you need to file for unemployment. That potentially had me talking with three different state unemployment departments.

I spent several days on the phone with two states that would be involved in my situation. As painful as it may be to deal with this part of your unemployment process, the sooner you start, the sooner the money will start coming in to help pay the bills until you get another job.

11. Check the job boards

During my job search, I looked at CareerBuilder, Craigslist, Dice and Monster. I found no job leads from Monster in my career area. Several of the HR folks that I talked to during the process told me that they used Monster very little due in part to the higher fees that Monster charged for a job posting compared with other job boards, and the generally poorer quality of applications they received. I found some new job postings on Dice, but with a significant number of jobs cross-posted on different boards, I didn't find Dice to be a significant source of potential job leads. One source I wouldn't have thought to check for jobs was Craigslist. More than one recruiter told me that he had good results from posting new jobs on Craigslist. Set aside time each day to do this.

12. Make the job boards work for you

Dice has a feature where you can make your resume searchable by recruiters/companies looking to fill a position. I did get some calls from that. CareerBuilder recently followed suit by offering that feature as well. While Dice allows companies/recruiters to repost the same job each day so that it looks new, this makes the process of truly identifying the new jobs a little harder in some cases. Turn the tables in your favor by making periodic changes to your resume, so that when it is being searched it will show up as being new/changed and possibly get you looked at by a company or recruiter that might have passed you by the day before.

13. Prepare for the interview

One thing that I have done when preparing for an interview with a company is to do research on the company, the companies/sectors/industries that they serve. If it is a publicly listed company, do a little reading on the past quarter or two of press releases to see what changes have occurred at the company and what new directions they are heading in. From the response I have received from several companies, it seems to make a good impression that you show interest in finding out about the company when going to interview with them. It may seem like a small thing or something that you should do anyway but there seems to be quite a few people looking for a job that don't do this.

Also, have several copies of your resume printed out and with you when at an interview. This becomes even more important once you see your resume as the client/recruiter sees it, when they have downloaded it or printed it out from the job board that you applied for the position through. The formatting is pretty much gone. To make matters worse, the paragraphs or bullet points that you had in the resume will look like a series of poorly written run-on sentences that may cause distinctive or unique information about you to be overlooked.

14. Deal with recruiters

I encountered a couple of recruiters that would give used car salesmen a bad name, but as a general rule I found the recruiters pretty decent to work with. Several positions that I was approached for were not on the job boards and sometimes were only from a single recruiter. The trick I had to learn to develop was to identify the same end job when it coming from different recruiters. One situation that you want to avoid is to not have more than one recruiter pitching you to the same client. Most recruiters will usually tell you early on who the actual end client is.

15. Accept help from family

While your pride may make it hard for you to accept help, keep in mind that the unemployment situation you are dealing with is affecting them to a degree as well. Depending on the age of the family, this is something that may be new to them and that they may have never had the need to deal with. There was a time, unfortunately long gone now, when the company you first went to work for was the only company you would work for your entire career. How much help you accept from family is something that you will have to decide. Look at it this way, whatever help they do give you is that much less you will have to spend for food.

16. Keep good records

This suggestion came from a letter I received from the Department of Unemployment telling me that I would need to provide some basic information. I set up a spreadsheet in OpenOffice with three tabs. The first tab was where I kept track of the jobs I had applied for. I tracked the date, source of the job, how the job was applied for, company name (if known), job name, contact name and job number if provided. The next tab was where I kept track of the recruiters I talked to, HR folks that I had contact with for the jobs I had applied directly on, and anything else such as job fairs that I attended. This information was helpful when I got audited by the Department of Unemployment folks to make sure I was looking for another job. The last tab was where I recorded when I filed my unemployment claim each week, when I received the check, the check number, when it was deposited.

17. Get your personal records in order

When you do get an offer and accept it, one of the things that you will have to deal with is the lovely I-9 form that says you are allowed to work in this country. You will need a variety of things. If you can't find your Social Security card, now would be an excellent time to order a replacement card. This will take several weeks to get processed and get it to you. The sooner you get it, the sooner you will have it ready to produce when starting that new job. If you haven't seen a copy of the I-9 form lately, get a copy of one so you can see what documents will be needed. Another document that you want to make sure that you have a copy of, even if you don't need it for the I-9, is your birth certificate. This is one that might take a little while to get a copy of. I didn't know until recently that, depending on when and/or where you were born, there are two types of birth certificates – one that the hospital does and one done when the birth is registered with the local authorities. You will want to get one that is a copy of what is on file with the local authorities.

18. Don't wait for the phone to ring

This may be one of the harder things to do. Keep in mind that recruiters and HR types move at their own pace. That pace can be slow, very slow. When you first apply for a job, it could be several days or more before you get the first contact. Waiting for the phone to ring will have you climbing the walls in short order. Sometime you will get a call within hours of applying for a job, but expect that to be the exception. There are always things that you can do while waiting for movement on the job front and some of them may be done at little to no cost – doing that little bit of touch-up painting you have never gotten around to, do that trimming around the yard that always needs to be done. The point I am trying to make here is that you need to stay active, don't just sit around and watch the clock move forward.

19. Get out the house at least once a day

At some point you will run out of things to do around the house or just simply need to get out. There will be the occasional job fair, but that won't take a large amount of your time. While you can knock on some doors at some companies that you would like to work at, with the price of gas hovering around $4 a gallon, depending on where you live, that can be an expensive trip to make for an unknown return. Do some things that you like to do, such as going to a museum or sports game. The main thing is to get out to keep from getting cabin fever.

20. Never give up

Don't leave any stone unturned. You may just find that a company that passed you by today for another applicant may come back to you when that person leaves to move onto greener pastures. I would have never thought that could happen but I have seen it happen twice in the past year.

 


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NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

Unemployment Bulletin, 2009 Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 Unemployment Bulletin, 2011 Unemployment Bulletin, 2012 Unemployment Bulletin, 2013 Unemployment Bulletin, 2014

[Jul 21, 2021] U.S. Life Expectancy Fell by 1.5 Years in 2020, the Biggest Decline in Generations by Betsy McKay

Neoliberalism is the key reason fro the drop in life expectancy
Notable quotes:
"... Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep problems in a society, researchers say. ..."
"... More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said ..."
"... The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7 years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age. ..."
Jul 21, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 1.5 years in 2020, the biggest decline since at least World War II, as the Covid-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands and exacerbated crises in drug overdoses , homicides and some chronic diseases.

... ... ...

The full toll of the pandemic has yet to be seen, doctors and public-health officials said. Many people skipped or delayed treatment last year for conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure and endured isolation, stress and interruptions in normal diet and exercise routines.

"That has led to intermediate and longer-term effects we will have to deal with for years to come," said Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and president of the American Heart Association.

Life expectancy is a measure of a nation's well-being and prosperity, based on mortality in a given year. Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep problems in a society, researchers say. Life expectancy fell in the U.S. by 11.8 years in 1918, during a world-wide flu pandemic. Many victims were young.

... ... ...

More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said ...

Life expectancy would have fallen even more, the CDC said, if not for decreases in mortality due to cancer, chronic lower-respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema and asthma, and other factors.

The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7 years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age.

U.S. longevity had been largely stagnant since 2010, even declining in three of those years, due in part to an increase in deaths from drug overdoses , rising death rates from heart disease for middle-aged Americans and other public health crises. "Getting back to where we were before the pandemic is a very bad place," said Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and author of a recent study comparing the effects of the pandemic on life expectancy in the U.S. and other high-income countries. "We've got a larger problem here."

... ... ...

Drug-overdose deaths rose nearly 30% last year, driven by a proliferation of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl as well as stress, isolation and reduced access to treatment during the pandemic, public-health experts said. One study published this month found a 28.3% decline in initiation of addiction treatment in California from March through October 2020..... ...

Life expectancy for white people dropped 1.2 years to 77.6 years in 2020, the lowest level since 2002.

R

Roger Guttentag SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago

What is missing from this article is a comparison of the US with other advanced economies in Europe and Asia. What is disturbing is how the US spends the most and achieves less than our economic peers starting with expected average longevity. We had the lowest longevity averages pre-pandemic and now we have dropped further. This is happening despite the fact that our health care spending is twice the per capita of other advanced economies (Approx. $11K in the US vs. $6K based on 2019 data). Contributing to our dismal longevity statistics, with respect to other wealthy economies, are the highest rates of drug overdose deaths and suicides by gun. This is just the tip of a long list of sad statistics where we are unfortunately number 1 or close to it. The usual (partisan) response is to claim its government's fault or the fault of a greedy healthcare system or just say the data is wrong. So far, none of these strategies is working very well.
Dave Berg SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Life expectancy is the wrong phrase. It's current average life duration. COVID will have no impact on the life expectancy of babies being born right now. I have two new grandchildren, their life expectancy will be impacted by things we don't even know about yet.

[Jul 15, 2021] Many Jobs Lost During the Coronavirus Pandemic Just Aren't Coming Back by Lauren Weber

when the tax rates increase even more, it just encourages automation or DIY (bring your own sheets to avoid paying the cleaning fee), which just grinds down growth rather than accelerates it.
Notable quotes:
"... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. ..."
Jul 15, 2021 | www.wsj.com
Companies see automation and other labor-saving steps as a way to emerge from the health crisis with a permanently smaller workforce
PHOTO: JIM THOMPSON/ZUMA PRESS

... ... ...

Economic data show that companies have learned to do more with less over the last 16 months or so. Output nearly recovered to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021 -- down just 0.5% from the end of 2019 -- even though U.S. workers put in 4.3% fewer hours than they did before the health crisis.

... ... ...

Raytheon Technologies Corp. RTX 0.08% , the biggest U.S. aerospace supplier by sales, laid off 21,000 employees and contractors in 2020 amid a drastic decline in air travel. Raytheon said in January that efforts to modernize its factories and back-office operations would boost profit margins and reduce the need to bring back all those jobs. The company said that most if not all of the 4,500 contract workers who were let go in 2020 wouldn't be called back.

... ... ..

Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. HLT -0.78% said last week that most of its U.S. properties are adopting "a flexible housekeeping policy," with daily service available upon request. "Full deep cleanings will be conducted prior to check-in and on every fifth day for extended stays," it said.

Daily housekeeping will still be free for those who request it... Unite Here, a union that represents hotel workers, published a report in June estimating that the end of daily room cleaning could result in an industrywide loss of up to 180,000 jobs...

... ... ...

Restaurants have become rapid adopters of technology during the pandemic as two forces -- labor shortages that are pushing wages higher and a desire to reduce close contact between customers and employees -- raise the return on such investments. ... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. The hand-held screens provide a hedge against labor inflation, said John Peyton, CEO of Applebee's parent Dine Brands Global Inc.

... ... ...

The U.S. tax code encourages investments in automation, particularly after the Trump administration's tax cuts, said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the impact of automation on workers. Firms pay around 25 cents in taxes for every dollar they pay workers, compared with 5 cents for every dollar spent on machines because companies can write off capital investments, he said.

... ... ...

-- Heather Haddon contributed to this article. D


DANIEL WEBER

A lot of employers were given Covid-aid to keep employees employed and paid in 2020. I assume somebody has addressed that obligation since it wasn't mentioned.

But, what happens to the unskilled workers whose jobs have been eliminated? Do Raytheon and Hilton just say "have a nice life on the streets"?

No, they will become our collective burdens.

I am all for technology and progress and better QA/QC and general performance. But the employers that benefit from this should use part of their gains in stock valuation to keep "our collective burdens" off our collective backs, rather than pay dividends and bonuses first.

Maybe reinvest in updated training for those laid off.

No great outcome comes free. BUT, as the article implies, the luxury of having already laid off the unskilled, likely leaves the employer holding all the cards.

And the wheel keeps turning...

Jeffery Allen
Question! Isn't this antithetical (reduction of employees) to the spirit and purpose of both monetary and fiscal programs, e.g., PPP loans (fiscal), capital markets funding facilities (monetary) established last year and current year? Employers are to retain employees. Gee, what a farce. Does anyone really care?
Philip Hilmes
Some of this makes sense and some would happen anyway without the pandemic. I don't need my room cleaned every day, but sometimes I want it. The wait staff in restaurants is another matter. Losing wait staff makes for a pretty bad experience. I hate having to order on my phone. I feel like I might as well be home ordering food through Grubhub or something. It's impersonal, more painful than telling someone, doesn't allow for you to be checked on if you need anything, doesn't provide information you don't get from a menu, etc. It really diminishes the value of going out to eat without wait staff.
al snow
OK I been reading all the comments I only have a WSJ access as the rate was a great deal.
Hotel/Motel started making the bed but not changing the sheets every day for many years I am fine as long as they offer trash take out and towel/paper every day
and do not forget to tip .
clive boulton
Recruiters re-post hard to fill job listings onto multiple job boards. I don't believe the reported job openings resemble are real. Divide by 3 at least.

[Jul 02, 2021] Number Of US Truck Drivers Sidelined Due To Substance Abuse Violations Has Surpassed 60,000 by John Gallagher

Jul 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Originally from: FreightWaves

Banned drivers matches shortfall in CDL holders needed to meet freight demand. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

The number of U.S. truck drivers sidelined due to substance abuse violations has surpassed 60,000 and continues to climb by roughly 2,000-3,000 per month, according to federal data. The latest monthly report by the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, administered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration since January 2020, revealed that 60,299 CDL holders have a drug or alcohol violation recorded in the clearinghouse as of June 1, up from 57,510 as of May 1 and up from 18,860 recorded in the clearinghouse as of May 1, 2020.

Drivers with at least one substance abuse violation are barred from operating a commercial truck until they complete a return-to-duty process, which includes providing a negative follow-up test result. The percentage of drivers who are completing the RTD process has steadily increased over the past year, however, from 5.2% as of May 1, 2020, to 22.1% as of May 1, 2021.

Marijuana consistently tops the list of substances identified in positive drug tests, far outpacing cocaine and methamphetamine, the second- and third-highest drug violations, respectively, among CDL holders.

The number of violations now recorded in the clearinghouse stands out for another reason: It's coincidentally just a few hundred shy of an estimated number of drivers needed to fill a shortfall of commercial drivers to keep pace with freight demand.

"According to a recent estimate, the trucking industry needs an additional 60,800 truck drivers immediately -- a deficit that is expected to grow to more than 160,000 by 2028," testified American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear at a Capitol Hill hearing on freight mobility in May.

"In fact, when anticipated driver retirement numbers are combined with the expected growth in capacity, the trucking industry will need to hire roughly 1.1 million new drivers over the next decade, or an average of nearly 110,000 per year."

Scopelitis Consulting Co-Director Sean Garney pointed out that the growing number of prohibited drivers is not a bad thing from a safety standpoint.

"The database is doing what it's supposed to do, which is identify those who should not be driving," Garney told FreightWaves. "Losing drivers due to positive drug tests may not necessarily be a good thing for truck capacity, but I think what many others in this industry also care about is safety."

[Jul 02, 2021] More Than 72 Million Americans Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck

The problem is that many people face long term unemployment without substantial emergency funds, which further complicates already difficult situation.
Notable quotes:
"... More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday. ..."
Jul 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Imagine you lost your job tomorrow. How long would you be able to sustain your current lifestyle? A week? A month? A year?

As we await Friday's labor market update, Finder has just published the results of a recent survey attempting to gauge the financial stability of the average American in the post-pandemic era.

More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday.

Another 24% said they expected to be able to live comfortably between two months and six months. That means an estimated 133.6MM working Americans (52.3% of the population) can live off their savings for six months or less before going broke.

On the other end of the spectrum, roughly 8.7MM employed Americans (or 3.4% of the population) say they don't need to rely on a rainy day fund since they have employment insurance which will compensate them should they lose their job.

Amusingly, men appear to be less effective savers than women. Some 32.4MM women (26.7% of American women) say their savings would stretch at most a month, compared to 40MM men (29.9% of American men) who admit to the same. Of those people, 9.7MM women (8% of American women) say their savings wouldn't even stretch a week, compared to 15.5MM men (11.6% of American men) who admit to the same.

A majority of employed Americans over the age of 18 say their savings would last six months at most. About 70.7MM men (52.8% of American men) and 62.8MM women (51.8% of American women) fear they'd be in dire straits within six months of losing their livelihood.

Unsurprisingly, younger people tend to have less of a savings buffer - but the gap between the generations isn't as wide as it probably should be.

While increasing one's income is perhaps the best route to building a more robust nest egg, Finder offered some suggestions for people looking to maximize their savings.

1. Create a budget and stick to it

Look at your monthly income against all of your monthly expenses. Add to them expenses you pay once or twice a year to avoid a surprise when they creep up. After you know where your money is going, you can allot specific amounts to different categories and effectively track your spending.

... ... ...

* * *

Source: Finder

[Jun 26, 2021] There Is No Labor Shortage, Only Labor Exploitation and burning desire not to spend money on training by Sonali Kolhatkar

Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet. ..."
"... West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off. ..."
Jun 12, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

For the past few months, Republicans have been waging a ferocious political battle to end federal unemployment benefits, based upon stated desires of saving the U.S. economy from a serious labor shortage. The logic, in the words of Republican politicians like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, goes like this: "the government pays folks more to stay home than to go to work," and therefore, "[p]aying people not to work is not helpful." The conservative Wall Street Journal has been beating the drum for the same argument, saying recently that it was a " terrible blunder " to pay jobless benefits to unemployed workers.

If the hyperbolic claims are to be believed, one might imagine American workers are luxuriating in the largesse of taxpayer-funded payments, thumbing their noses at the earnest "job creators" who are taking far more seriously the importance of a post-pandemic economic growth spurt.

It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.

But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York Times op-ed , there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, "When those measures [of raising wages] don't result in a substantial increase in workers, that's a labor shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy."

Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market's way of saying, if you can't afford higher salaries, you shouldn't expect to fill jobs.

Or, to use the logic of another accepted capitalist argument, employers could liken the job market to the surge pricing practices of ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. After consumers complained about hiked-up prices for rides during rush hour, Uber explained , "With surge pricing, Uber rates increase to get more cars on the road and ensure reliability during the busiest times. When enough cars are on the road, prices go back down to normal levels." Applying this logic to the labor market, workers might be saying to employers: "When enough dollars are being offered in wages, the number of job openings will go back down to normal levels." In other words, workers are surge-pricing the cost of their labor.

But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce insists that "[t]he worker shortage is real," and that it has risen to the level of a "national economic emergency" that "poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and America's great resurgence." In the Chamber's worldview, workers, not corporate employers who refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.'s economic recovery.

Longtime labor organizer and senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies Bill Fletcher Jr. explained to me in an email interview that claims of a labor shortage are an exaggeration and that, actually, "we suffered a minor depression and not another great recession," as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. In Fletcher's view, "The so-called labor shortage needs to be understood as the result of tremendous employment reorganization, including the collapse of industries and companies."

Furthermore, according to Fletcher, the purveyors of the "labor shortage" myth are not accounting for "the collapse of daycare and the impact on women and families, and a continued fear associated with the pandemic."

He's right. As one analyst put it, "The rotten seed of America's disinvestment in child care has finally sprouted." Such factors have received little attention by the purveyors of the labor shortage myth -- perhaps because acknowledging real obstacles like care work requires thinking of workers as real human beings rather than cogs in a capitalist machine.

Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.

Already, jobless benefits were slashed to appallingly low levels after Republicans reduced a $600-a-week payment authorized by the CARES Act to a mere $300 a week , which works out to $7.50 an hour for full-time work. If companies cannot compete with this exceedingly paltry sum, their position is akin to a customer demanding to a car salesperson that they have the right to buy a vehicle for a below-market-value sticker price (again, capitalist logic is a worthwhile exercise to showcase the ludicrousness of how lawmakers and their corporate beneficiaries are responding to the state of the labor market).

Remarkably, although federal jobless benefits are funded through September 2021, more than two dozen Republican-run states are choosing to end them earlier. Not only will this impact the bottom line for millions of people struggling to make ends meet, but it will also undermine the stimulus impact that this federal aid has on the economies of states when jobless workers spend their federal dollars on necessities. Conservatives are essentially engaged in an ideological battle over government benefits, which, in their view, are always wrong unless they are going to the already privileged (remember the GOP's 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?).

The GOP has thumbed its nose at federal benefits for residents before. In order to underscore their ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, recall how Republican governors eschewed billions of federal dollars to fund Medicaid expansion. These conservative ideologues chose to let their own voters suffer the consequences of turning down federal aid in service of their political opposition to Obamacare. And they're doing the same thing now.

At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid peanuts in income taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth multiplied to extraordinary levels. The obscenely wealthy are spending their mountains of cash on luxury goods and fulfilling childish fantasies of space travel . The juxtaposition of such a phenomenon alongside the conservative claim that jobless benefits are too generous is evidence that we are indeed in a "national economic emergency" -- just not of the sort that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants us to believe.

West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off.

When lawmakers earlier this year debated the Raise the Wage Act , which would have increased the federal minimum wage, Republicans wagged their fingers in warning, saying higher wages would put companies out of business. Opponents of that failed bill claimed that if forced to pay $15 an hour, employers would hire fewer people, close branches, or perhaps shut down altogether, which we were told would ultimately hurt workers.

Now, we are being told another story: that companies actually do need workers and won't simply reduce jobs, close branches, or shut down and that the government therefore needs to stop competing with their ultra-low wages to save the economy. The claim that businesses would no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage .

American workers are at a critically important juncture at this moment. Corporate employers seem to be approaching a limit of how far they can push workers to accept poverty-level jobs. According to Fletcher, "This moment provides opportunities to raise wage demands, but it must be a moment where workers organize in order to sustain and pursue demands for improvements in their living and working conditions."

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was produced by Economy for All , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

[Jun 18, 2021] Corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs

In IT corporate honchos shamelessly put more then a dozen of very specific skills into the position rescription and want a cog that hit that exactly. they are not interested in IQ, ability to learn and such things. that want already train person for the position to fill, so that have zero need to train this persn and they expect that he will work productively from the day one.
Jun 14, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Hayek's Heelbiter , June 12, 2021 at 7:50 am

But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs.

Duh. This is so blindingly obvious, but NC is the only place that seems to mention this fact.

Here in the UK, the outmigration of marginally paid workers from Eastern Europe and the resultant "labour shortage" triggered by Brexit has made it abundantly clear that Blair's change to open borders was not from any idealistic considerations but as a way of importing easily exploited labor.

Business leaders quoted in the the tsunami of hand-wringing MSM articles about the current catastrophe are offering such helpful solutions as allowing housekeepers to use pools and gyms in off hours, free meals to waiters, etc. Anything but a living wage.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 12, 2021 at 5:57 pm

" I don't actually see any untruths to the GOP talking points. "
"" Workers are less likely to accept a job while receiving Gov't benefits" and "workers are less likely to accept low wage crappy jobs ".

Well,if u can survive on a $300/week program that ends after several weeks pass,bless u. No one else in America can. That's a $7.50 hr full time "summer job" with no pension or medical benefits that teenagers with no dependents,few bills n maintenance issues might be interested in; adults with adult responsibilities,no way. That so called RepubliCons, the "economics experts", can make such a fraudulent claim n anyone out of elementary school believes it has a quantum particle of reality or value is . well I'll just say a sad n unbelievable situation.

Now the rest of your comments are laudable.

Objective Ace , June 13, 2021 at 11:57 am

They get 300 dollars plus regular UI. They can also get Medicaid and CHIP, or if they are still making too much they are eligible for Obamacare exchange. Plus they're eligible for SNAP and housing vouchers

Equitable > Equal , June 13, 2021 at 4:38 am

There is one significant fallacy in this article: The author conflates Republican opposition to enhanced benefits with opposition to unemployment benefits overall.

I very much stand with labour over business on most (probably all) points, but the Republican argument is to end the enhanced benefits in most cases – Not to abolish unemployment assistance. They believe the role of government is to step in to help pay basic bills in the event of unemployment, but oppose the current higher level of benefit due to the market distortions it causes (Hence the appearance of the term 'labour shortage'.)

I agree that it basically forces mcdonalds et al to up their wages if they want to do business, which should be a positive for society, but I find it unlikely that the author could have unintentionally mistunderstood the argument on such a fundamental level, and all it does is try to drive a wedge further between each side of the argument.

Sierra , June 12, 2021 at 3:46 pm

Hayek,

Sonali Kohatkar is pro open borders and has the nerve to complain about wage arbitrage?
https://freespeech.org/stories/prop-287-immigration-ca/

Anyone that believes that workers supported their jobs being sent overseas is either demented or delusional or suffers from a mental hernia. The same goes for the common working stiffs supporting massive immigration to help drive down their ability to demand a livable wage.

American labor has been sold down the river by the International Labor Leaders, politicians and the oligarchy of US corporate CEO's.
======

Got a new hip recently. Do your P.T., take it easy, follow the warnings of what not to do until you heal and you should discover that decades feel like they are lifted off your shoulders.

Hayek's Heelbiter , June 13, 2021 at 12:16 pm

Sierra,
You've made a very interesting point that actually never occurred to me and one in which I never seen fully examined.
Exploiting labour and outsourcing it are two sides of the same coin with the same goal in mind, diverting revenue streams into the C-suite and rentier class.
Obviously you cannot outsource most of the workers in the hospitality industry or the non-virtual aspects of world's oldest profession, but a lot of the tech industry and the virtual aspects of the latter are very amenable to being shipped overseas.
Immigrants are extremely visible and an easy target, while outsourcing is essentially an impossible to contain concept that creates real world hardship.
Dear NC readers, do you know of any studies comparing and contrasting the economic impact of immigration and/or limiting it and outsourcing?

sierra , June 12, 2021 at 3:51 pm

Those hip words were meant for Yves of course

Fazal Majid , June 12, 2021 at 8:46 am

Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists.

You are acting if economists and lobbyists are separate groups, as opposed to largely a subset thereof. Funny how a field entirely based on the study of incentives claims incentives don't distort their policy prescriptions, isn't it?

As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.

One factor not mentioned is many free-riding businesses refuse to pay for training, then wonder why there are no trained workers to hire.

Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage. Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel.

Yves Smith , June 12, 2021 at 8:51 am

Economics is not based on incentives. That's behavioral economics. I hate to quote Larry Summers, but this is Summers on financial economics:

Ketchup economists reject out of hand much of this research on the ketchup market. They believe that the data used is based on almost meaningless accounting information and are quick to point out that concepts such as costs of production vary across firms and are not accurately measurable in any event. they believe that ketchup transactions prices are the only hard data worth studying. Nonetheless ketchup economists have an impressive research program, focusing on the scope for excess opportunities in the ketchup market. They have shown that two quart bottles of ketchup invariably sell for twice as much as one quart bottles of ketchup except for deviations traceable to transaction costs, and that one cannot get a bargain on ketchup by buying and combining ingredients once one takes account of transaction costs. Nor are there gains to be had from storing ketchup, or mixing together different quality ketchups and selling the resulting product. Indeed, most ketchup economists regard the efficiency of the ketchup market as the best established fact in empirical economics.

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 9:22 am

Happy to see you back at a keyboard, and hoping your recovery is progressing well. I had the misfortune of spending two days in the hospitals while they got my blood chemistry strightened out. Here's the kicker; the hospitalist, who I saw 3 times, submitted a bill for a whopping $17,000. Just yesterday, the practice she works for submitted a bill that was one-tenth her charges for the work she did, yet her bill is still sitting waiting to be processed.

Yves Smith , June 12, 2021 at 9:53 am

OMG, how horrible. HSS is a small hospital for a big city like NYC, only 205 beds and 25 operating rooms. No emergency room. They are not owned by PE and so I don't think play outsourcing/markup games (they are very big on controlling quality, which you can't do if you have to go through middlemen for staffing). Some of the MDs do that their own practices within HSS but they are solo practitioners or small teams, which is not a model that you see much of anywhere outside NYC

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 12:05 pm

The last time I was hospitalized, all the hospitalists were in the employ of the hospital, now they are in the employ of a nationwide hospitalist practice, which has all the smell of private equity around it. I'm really beginning to think that a third party focusted on healthcare might have a real shot at upsetting the political order – maybe it's time to drag out your skunk party for 2024.

Arizona Slim , June 12, 2021 at 1:22 pm

How are you feeling? We miss you around here.

tegnost , June 12, 2021 at 10:25 am

As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.

Well I'm sorry you can't find easily exploitable labor, except I'm not immigrants face the same ridiculous costs, and weren't hispanic workers more heavily impacted by covid due to those marginal jobs (I'll switch your dynamic to low wage workers , and marginal jobs, thanks), so by your logic more should have been let in to die from these marginal jobs? but yeah we need more PMC except we don't
Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage. Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel."
Last I checked it was private equity, wall st and pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists that drive up costs so labor needs to charge more.
Wake up and smell the coffee.

Bill Smith , June 12, 2021 at 9:24 am

How much of this is over specification on the part of employers in the ad for the job? We want the perfect candidate who can do the job better than we can with no training .

Yves Smith , June 12, 2021 at 9:48 am

OMG this is such a long-standing pet peeve! We've commented on this nonsense regularly. Companies took the position that they don't have to train and now they are eating their cooking.

Bill Smith , June 12, 2021 at 10:30 am

Exactly.

The mismatch between job openings and job applicants is not just about wages.

In fact, if companies were willing to take a chance on people who didn't exactly match the job requirements, the likely effect would be to raise the wages some of those that did not qualify under the over exacting job requirements. [And likely paying these new employees less than they had contemplated paying the perfect candidate.]

But that seems like someone making the hiring decision might, just possibly, be seen as taking a risk.

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 2:55 pm

At my empolyer we know we can't find any colleges that teach mainframe skills, so we bring in graduates who are willing to learn those skills – we submit them to a 3-month bootcamp and then there's a long period of mentorship under a senior person to their group that has an opening. Since everybody and their dog are now moving headfirst into DevOps, where all the tooling is in somewhat less ancient software, they get exposed using those Eclipse/VScode-based tools and are able to come up to speed somewhat quicker. Still, no one in corporate America dares to bite the bullet and re-platform their core systems with few exceptions (SABRE) for fear of losing all the institutional knowledge that's in software, rather than wetware (humans).

Howard Beale IV , June 12, 2021 at 3:03 pm

Just think what is happening right now with everyone holding an Indian outsourcing contract. You don't have individual's cellphone numbers over in India, which would cost you an arm and a leg to call, never mind what's going on in their facilities.

Mike Elwin , June 13, 2021 at 2:27 pm

On the other hand, there's something to be said for employers not training their staffs. In the SF Bay Area computer industry, employees and independent contractors alike continually race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a rain. Many companies train their customers–and charge them for it–before they'll train their staffs. This is a principal reason there's a market for contractors. Training oneself in new technologies lays a base for opportunities that don't appear if you spend a decade in the same job (unless, like mainframe programming, your job is so old it's new). I suppose this is a beneficial side of capitalism?

Lambert Strether , June 13, 2021 at 2:37 pm

> continually race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a rain

And what, one might ask, do mushrooms grow best in .

Louis , June 12, 2021 at 10:38 am

I get that you want experience for mid to senior level jobs but the experience requirements for what are ostsensibly entry-level jobs have gotten absurd. The education requirements have also gotten out of hand in some cases.

That being said, a lot of the shortages are in low-wage, part-time jobs so the issue isn't necessarily ridiculous requirements, like you sometimes see for entry level white collar jobs, but wages that are too low and awful working conditions.

How many people want to be treated like dirt–be it by customers, management, or both–for not much more than minimum wage if they have other options?

A wage increase will help fill these jobs but there also needs to be a paradigm shift in how employees are treated–the customer is not always right and allowing them to treat employees in ways that would not be tolerated in other businesses, and certainly not in many white-collar workplaces is a huge part of the problem and why these jobs have long had high-turnover.

TomDority , June 12, 2021 at 9:51 am

It never ends – when it was about immigrant labor under George B junior – I think – the call was
-- - They do jobs that Americans won't -- or something to that effect.
It always bothered me that the sentence was never, in my mind, completed. It should have been said
-- They do jobs that Americans won't do at that pay level. --
The tax system, economic system and higher education departments have been perverted by the continuous bribery and endowments by the rentier class to our elected law makers and dept heads for decades –
The creditor, debtor relationships distorted for eons.
The toll takers have never, in history, been in any higher level of mastery than they are now.
It is not to throw out the constitution but, to throw out those who have perverted it.

Oh , June 12, 2021 at 12:23 pm

The construction industry knows how to exploit immigrant labor, documented as well as undocumented. I'm sure most peole born here refuse to work for the same wages.

chris , June 12, 2021 at 6:14 pm

The exploitation occurs on many levels. For small residential jobs, a lot of wage theft occurs. For larger jobs, a lot of safety regs get ignored. When you have a population that won't use the legal avenues available to other citizens to push back against abuse you can get a lot done :/

King , June 12, 2021 at 10:04 am

When I go looking for a job if a degree isn't required I am very unlikely to pursue it further. Same if the list of 'required' is overly detailed. I'm making assumptions in both of these cases (that might not be correct) about pay, benefits, work environment, etc. and what is actually going on with a job listing. Why? Chiefly my likelihood of actually getting a reasonable offer. I expect either being seen as overqualified in the first case or the job only being listed because of some requirement in the second.

I have to wonder if many places know how to hire. This is made much more difficult by years of poorly written (maybe deceptive) job postings. You probably know many of the phrases; flexible schedule, family ___, reliable transportation required, and so on. Its no surprise if puffery doesn't bring back the drones.

Noone from Nowheresville , June 12, 2021 at 10:07 am

If we're playing with statistics. How many of these posted job openings, how many interviews did the companies offer v. how many offers were made until the position was filled? If position remains open, has the company increased the base pay offer? guaranteed an increased min. number of weekly hours? offered bonuses or increased benefits? How many times has this same job opening using the original posting criteria been re-posted? Is this a real single job opening that the company plans to fill in real time or just a posting that they keep opening because they have high turnover? etc., etc., etc.

The real problem with this workers are lazy meme is that it is repeated and repeated all year long on the local news from the viewpoint of business. It has filtered down to local people. I hear them repeating what the local news said without giving it any critical thought. Even those who say that we need unions and believe themselves to be on the side of workers.

Ear wigs are good for businesses. Insidious for workers.

synoia , June 12, 2021 at 12:03 pm

In the UK, in the days of Labor Strive, before Neo-liberalism , there was always newspaper reports about "Labor Strife" and "bolshy workers." Never once did the press examine Management had behaved and caused the workers to become "bolshy" – a direct reaction to Management's attitudes and behavior, probably based on the worst attributes of the UK's class system.

Definition: A bolshy person often argues and makes difficulties.
Management get the workers (Their Attitudes) it deserves.
I recommend reading "The Toyota Way" to explore a very successful management style.

tegnost , June 12, 2021 at 10:40 am

This song is getting a probably getting more hits these days
Take this job and Shove It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
But I hear lots of businesses will close to to no labor, so when they close they can go work for 7.25 an hour for one of their competitors who also needs laborors Solidarinosc!

tegnost , June 12, 2021 at 11:40 am

Geez this song is probably getting more hits these days due to no laborors? hmmm.it must mean something, like proof read your posts .,

Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg , June 12, 2021 at 10:43 am

If businesses are suffering, it's restaurants and small scale enterprise. The Covid response was tailored to the needs of economy of scale mega biz. They likely knew multitides of mom-n-pops would go away- and they have. But that's fine.

Susan the other , June 12, 2021 at 11:24 am

So if state governments can turn down federal unemployment supplements because they want labor to go back to work for unlivable wages this means the federal government can do nothing about it. When push comes to shove the question that must be settled is, Is it a human right to receive employment assistance until a job is found that pays a livable wage? (Not even a republican will actually say No). So then that puts all the stingy states on notice that there is a human rights issue here. States will have the choice to either let businesses shut down for lack of workers, or states can subsidize minimum wages and benefits. If states choose, in desperation, to subsidize minimum wages, then the states can apply to the feds to be compensated. The thing that is needed in the interim, between when the real standoff starts and ends, is a safety net for workers who are being blocked by the state from receiving unemployment benefits. I say call in the national guard. This is a human rights issue.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 12, 2021 at 6:08 pm

Great point. Im appalled at the RepubliCon governers responses. And they call themselves Christians?

Imo Profitism (or Crapitalism if u pref2) is a Rights issue.

jim truti , June 12, 2021 at 11:45 am

The real exploitation happened when we allowed companies to delocalize, manufacture product in China and sell it here with no strings attached.
James Goldsmith seems like a prophet now, he was so absolutely right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmOkaKh3-s

eg , June 12, 2021 at 11:45 pm

He sure does

Tom , June 13, 2021 at 5:34 pm

Wow. The Clinton flack was insufferable. AND WRONG about pretty much everything. Goldsmith was brilliant. I wasn't paying enough attention at he time, but how many high profile people were making the arguments he was making?

Michael Hudson , June 12, 2021 at 12:23 pm

I'm surprised that nobody has taken the opportunity to comment on how this discussion shows how hypocritical Biden and the democrats were not to press for raising the minimum wage.
The pretense (which they must have coached the "Senate scholar" on) was that raising the minimum wage was not related to revenue (i.e., a revenue bill). But of course it is! Right now, paying below-poverty wages enabled Walmart and other employers to make the government pay part of their wage bill. Higher minimum wages would raise these government aid recipients out of the poverty range, saving public revenue.
That is so obvious that the failure of the Democrats to make the point shows that they really didn't want to raise wages after all.

Nikkikat , June 12, 2021 at 1:40 pm

I didn't expect much from Biden but he's even worse than I thought. Along with those bought senators hiding behind Joe Manchin. Depressing to think how much worse everything will become for working people here.

Lambert Strether , June 12, 2021 at 1:48 pm

> the Democrats to make the point shows that they really didn't want to raise wages after all.

Come on, man. They're "fighting for" it.

chris , June 12, 2021 at 6:41 pm

This all day long and twice on Sunday

When I think about how they're complaining about Manchin now when there was a serious primary challenge against him last year, and how the Democrat organization rallied around Manchin and not his challenger, it is disgusting to see Slate/The Guardian/NYT/other "Blue no matter who" mouth breathers write articles asking what can be done to salvage a progressive agenda from the curse of bipartisanship.

I had given up on national politics long before the 2020 election circus but this latest has confirmed my resolve. The destruction of the Democrat party can't come soon enough.

Noone from Nowheresville , June 12, 2021 at 5:25 pm

If I call them Hypocritics, when I never believed them in the first place, will they feel any shame at all? Or must I be part of their class for them to feel even the tiniest of niggles?

Perhaps they'll feel ashamed once they cut the check for the $600 they shorted us this winter. Or maybe that they are reneging on the extended unemployment benefits early or

One side makes you sleep on a bed of nails and swear allegiance.The other side generously offers to help you out, no strings attached, but you might bleed out from the thousands of tiny means-testing cuts. Each side want the lower tiers to face the gauntlet and prove one's worthiness, hoping to convince us that a black box algorithm is the same thing as a jury of peers.

Telee , June 12, 2021 at 9:30 pm

Exactly right! And keep in mind deluge of op-eds telling us that Biden is a transformational president! The same authors presented a deluge of op-eds telling us how Senator Sanders was to radical for the American people after he did well in early primaries. That the reforms he supported like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, lowering drug costs, help with daycare, doing something about climate change etc. were reforms that the people would never accept because the people value their freedom and don't want to live in a socialistic country.
It looks like none of the promises Biden made during the campaign will be implemented by President Biden. That why he is in the White House.

rowlf , June 12, 2021 at 12:38 pm

Would a lot of these positions be filled if the US had single payer healthcare or similar? Would workers accept low paying positions if they didn't have to lose so much of their pay to crappy health insurance?

Nikkikat , June 12, 2021 at 1:31 pm

At our local Petsmart they cut staff during the pandemic. They laid off all full time workers
And are only hiring back part time. I knew several of the laid off people and they are not coming back. Two of the people that worked full time have found other jobs one with slightly better pay the other with slightly better benefits. We are in California where rent is very high so another person we know decided to use this as a chance to relocate to another state where housing is less expensive. Our older neighbor retired, although vaccinated now, he decided it just wasn't safe and after the CDC told everyone to take off their mask off. He is glad he just decided to live on a little less money. I suspect there are a lot of reasons as Yves stated above for a lack of workers, but this "they are lazy" trope is capitalistic nonsense.

Petter , June 12, 2021 at 4:53 pm

This "they are lazy" trope has a long history. Yasha Levine wrote about it for the Exiled and it was reposted here at NC.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/yasha-levine-recovered-economic-history-everyone-but-an-idiot-knows-that-the-lower-classes-must-be-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious.html

Some highlights:
>> everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.
-- Arthur Young; 1771
>>Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the "poverty" of France on its good weather and fertile soil:
'Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more, and really live better.

>>Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.

athingtoconsider , June 12, 2021 at 1:38 pm

I'll just point out, per the Old Testament, that wage, debt and rent slavery were the exception, not the norm (as they are in the US) for citizens (Hebrews) in ancient Israel/Judah.

That's because the assets in ancient Israel/Judah were roughly equally owned by all citizens with provisions in the OT Law (eg. Leviticus 25, eg. Deuteronomy 15, eg. Deuteronomy 23:19-20) to keep it that way in the long run (but less than 50 years).

Contrast that to US where we have privileges for a private credit cartel, aka "the banks", and no limits to the concentration of land ownership and the roots of our problems are evident.

So begging for better jobs for citizens is, in the Biblical context, pathetically weak tea indeed.

Amateur Socialist , June 12, 2021 at 1:53 pm

On a personal note I had a great job interview Thursday at the local food co-op. This is my first in person interview since I was terminated without cause by IBM (after almost 24 years there in a server development job) almost a year ago. Despite applying for over 100 positions. I'm over 60 and haven't worked in a year so I admit I'm grateful to even get the chance.

I have another interview with them next week and hoping to start soon as a produce clerk making $13.50 an hour. If I can get on full time they offer a decent insurance plan including dental. The HR person acknowledged that I was "wildly overqualified" but encouraging. The possibility of getting health care is key; my IBM Cobra benefits will start costing me almost $1400/monthly for myself and my husband in September after the ARA subsidy expires.

I've adjusted my expectations to reinvent myself as a manual laborer after decades in fairly cushy corporate life. I've managed to keep my health and physical capacity so somewhat optimistic I can meet the job requirements that include lifting 50 lb boxes of produce. But we'll see.

athingtoconsider , June 12, 2021 at 2:52 pm

and haven't worked in a year Amateur Socialist

You mean you haven't had a job in a year since it's highly doubtful that you have not done any work in a year; eg. cooking, cleaning, shopping, car maintenance, gardening, chauffeuring, mowing the lawn, home maintenance and caring for others count as work.

We need to stop conflating work (good) with wage slavery as if the former necessarily requires the latter.

Amateur Socialist , June 12, 2021 at 3:57 pm

Okay sure. I haven't earned in a year. But it's still a problem I'm trying to sort out best as I can.

Since I still live in the US where earning is highly correlated with insurance coverage, and I still have about 5 years until we're both qualified for Medicare this may turn out to be a great thing that has happened.

And since I don't see a path out of wage slavery today I'll be happy to accept almost any offer from the food co-op. It's a union job with decent pay and benefits and may offer other opportunities in the future. They mostly buy and sell products that are locally made so that makes it easier too. The money we are all enslaving each other over is staying around here as much as possible. Okay.

Arizona Slim , June 12, 2021 at 4:32 pm

A former neighbor worked in our local food co-op and loved her job. At the co-op, she was a cashier. She also was a retired attorney.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 12, 2021 at 6:25 pm

Good luck! Fyi i strongly suggest u look into taking your IBM pension asap as 1. It will minimally impact your taxes as u r now earning less n 2. How many more years do u think it will be there? ( I usually recommend most people take their social security at 62 for similar reasons but in your case I'd do your research b4 making any move like that. ) Take a blank state n Fed tax form n pencil in the new income n see what the results are.
Btw truly wonderful people are involved in food co-ops,enjoy!

Eudora Welty , June 12, 2021 at 3:17 pm

Good luck! I will be thinking of you next week.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 12, 2021 at 2:52 pm

No one really questions the idea of maximising profit.
How do you maximise profit?
You minimise costs, including labour costs, i.e. wages.

Where did the idea of maximising profit comes from?
It certainly wasn't from Adam Smith.

"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin." Adam Smith
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
Today's problems with growth and demand.
Amazon didn't suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it's grown (not so good on the wages).

The benefits of the system can be passed upwards in dividends or downwards in wages.
Both actually detract from the money available for re-investment as Jeff Bezos knows only too well.
He didn't pay dividends, and paid really low wages, to maximise the amount that he could re-invest in Amazon and look how big it's grown.
The shareholders gains are made through the value of the shares.
Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.

Where do the benefits of the system go?
Today, we pass as much as possible upwards in dividends.
In the Keynesian era they passed a lot more down in wages.

cnchal , June 12, 2021 at 10:34 pm

> Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.

You are missing the tree in the forest. Jeff hopes other people will pay a high enough price for Amazon stawk. We already know Jeff doesn't give a shit about the stuff he sells, or the inhumane working conditions that go along with the low pay and short "career". I mean, not even the nastiest farmer would treat his mules like that, even if mules were easy and cheap to come by.

So far, Mr Market says beating workers, good.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 12, 2021 at 2:55 pm

We don't think people should get money when they are not working.
Are you sure?

What's the point in working?
Why bother?
It's just not worth all the effort when you can make money doing nothing.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned" income.
They love easy money.

With a BTL portfolio, I can get the capital gains on a number of properties and extract the hard earned income of generation rent at the same time.
That sounds good.
What is there not to like?

We love easy money.

You've just got to sniff out the easy money.
All that hard work involved in setting up a company yourself, and building it up.
Why bother?
Asset strip firms other people have built up, that's easy money.

People do love easy money.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 12, 2021 at 3:45 pm

"West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country."
Have you had a look around recently?

In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned" income.
America is not about work at all.

athingtoconsider , June 12, 2021 at 5:44 pm

America is not about work at all. SoS

The US is largely about exploiting or being exploited with most of US doing both.

We should resent an economic system that requires we exploit others or be a pure victim ourselves.

That said and to face some truths we'd rather not, the Bible offers some comfort, eg:

Ecclesiastes 7:16
Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?

Ecclesiastes 5:8-9
If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province, do not be shocked at the sight; for one official watches over another official, and there are higher officials over them. After all, a king who cultivates the field is beneficial to the land.

Nonetheless, we should support economic justice and recognize that most of us are net losers to an unjust economic system even though it offers some corrupt compensation* to divide and confuse us.

*eg positive yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of a monetary sovereign.

KLG , June 12, 2021 at 6:54 pm

Jim Justice made his money the old fashioned way, he inherited it:

From Wiki: James Conley Justice II (born April 27, 1951) is an American businessman and politician who has been serving as the 36th governor of West Virginia since 2017. With a net worth of around $1.2 billion, he is the wealthiest person in West Virginia. He inherited a coal mining business from his father and built a business empire with over 94 companies, including the Greenbrier, a luxury resort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Justice

chris , June 12, 2021 at 6:31 pm

I wonder how much of this is also related to a change in the churn we assume existed pre-pandemic? For example, the most recent JOLTS survey results from April 2021 show the total number of separations hasn't really changed but the number of quits has increased.

So, one possible interpretation of that would be employers are less likely to fire people and those who think they have skills in demand are more interested in leaving for better opportunities now. That makes intuitive sense given what we've been through. If you had a good gig and it was stable through 2020 you had very little reason to leave it even if an offer was better with another company. That goes double if you were a caregiver or had children. Which of course is why many women who were affected by the challenges of balancing daycare and a career gave up.

This is also my experience lately. While it's only anecdotal evidence, we're having a hard time hiring mid career engineers. Doesn't seem like pay is the issue. We offer a ton of vacation, a separate pool of sick time, decent benefits, and wages in the six figures with a good bonus program. We're looking to hire 3 engineers. We can't even get people to apply. In 2019 we could be sure to see a steady supply of experienced candidates looking for new opportunities. Now? If you have an engineering position and your company is letting you work from home it seems you don't have a good reason to jump.

Buckeye , June 12, 2021 at 10:47 pm

Look no further than Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. They had only half the staff they normally need at $10 an hour. So they double the wage to $20 an hour and filled every job in less than a week. The Conservaturds will never admit they are lying.

DWoolley , June 13, 2021 at 3:24 pm

As a small business owner providing professional services I am grateful for the comment section here.

I have called professional peers to get a behind the corporate PR perspective of their businesses. Although anecdotal, the overall trend in our industry is to accept the labor shortage and downsize. Most firms have a reliable backlog of work and will benefit from an infrastructure bill. Our firm has chosen to downsize and close vacant positions.

Remote work, although feasible, has employees thinking they are LeBron James, regardless of their skill set. Desperate employers are feeding their belief. Two years from now it will be interesting to see if these employees they fail forward. Company culture minimized employee turnover pre-covid. This culture has little meaning to an employee working in his daughter's playroom.

For context, in California, I believe the median income for licensees is approximately $110,000 with lower level technicians easily at $75k in the urban areas.

Lastly, the "paltry" $300 per week is in additional to the state unemployment checks and is not subject to taxes. As stated previously, $300 is equal to $7.50 per hour. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 and is adopted by many states minimum, for what it's worth.

Thanks again for the forum.

JBird4049 , June 13, 2021 at 6:32 pm

With respect, I do not see any there there in the comment. Adjusted for inflation the minimum wage at its height in 1968 at 1.60, would be just under $13 per hour today. However, even at $15 in California, it is inadequate.

Anyone making anything like the minimum wage would not be working from home, but would be working in some kind of customer service job, and would find paying for adequate food, clothing, and shelter very difficult. Not in getting any extras, but only in getting enough to survive. People, and their families, do need to eat.

If the response of not paying enough, and therefore not getting new hires, is to downsize, perhaps that is good. After all no business deserves to remain in business, especially if the business model depends on its workers being unable to survive.

Sue inSoCal , June 13, 2021 at 4:13 pm

I am also fed up with the "lazy worker" meme. Or rather, propaganda. People are literally exhausted working 2 or 3 lousy jobs and no real healthcare. Equally irritating to me is a misguided notion that we have some magically accessible generous safety net in the US. As though there aren't thousands and thousands on waiting lists for government subsidized housing. Section 8 vouchers? Good luck.

https://homesnow.org/short-history-of-public-housing-in-the-us-1930s-present/

We've ended "welfare as we [knew] it" (AFDC) thanks to Bill Clinton and then the screw was turned tightly by Junior Bush (no child care, but go to work.) The upshot was bad news for kids.

https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2019/02/25/how-welfare-reform-has-had-a-negative-effect-on-the-children-of-single-mothers

Seems to me one of the few things left is the food stamp program, and I can't imagine how that's been reconfigured. Whomever gave that fantastic list of goodies people can get in the US with a mere snap of the fingers isn't in the real world, imho.

Ok! Yves, lovely to see you again, my friend! (Cue the Moody Blues ) Get well!

10 legged shadow , June 13, 2021 at 4:54 pm

Here is my story.
I am 56 years old, on dialysis and I was collecting SSI of 529 a month.
I was living with and taking care of my mother in her home because she had dementia.
She died in December and I had to start paying the bills. In March I inherited her IRA which I reported to SS. I was able to roll it over into my own IRA because I am disabled, due to the Trump tax law changes.
I reported the changes in a timely manner and because I couldn't afford to live here without a job, I took a part time job for 9 an hour.
So now, because I inherited my mother's IRA and have too much resources I no longer qualify for SSI and have been overpaid to the tune of almost 2 grand, which I am assuming I will have to pay back. I have no idea how that works either. Do they just grab money out of your account? Anyone who knows please tell me.

JBird4049 , June 13, 2021 at 11:35 pm

I would run, run, run to the nearest public assistance counselor or lawyer. In the San Francisco Bay Area, it is should not be too hard to find one. They saved me. There are also in California several state websites. There was a useful to me benefits planning site (It only covers nine states though).

The rules for SSI (Supplemental Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance), Social Security, Medi-Cal or Medicaid, and Medicare are each different. Each state has its own modifications as well, so that is fifty additional sets of modified rules especially for the medical benefits. If they are determined to claw back the money, how it is done might depend on the individual state. It is truly a maze of flycatchers and trapdoors out for you and your money.

The overworked benefits clerks often do not have the knowledge to deal with anything even slightly unusual and are not encourage or at least discouraged from finding out due to the never shrinking pile, not from anyone's malice. This means you could lose benefits because they did not know what they were doing or just by mistake. So, it is up to you to find those nonprofit counselors or the for profit lawyer to help you through the laws, rules, and whatever local regulations there are. Hopefully, you will not have to read through some of the official printed regulations like I did. If wasn't an experience paper pusher.. The average person would have been lost. Intelligence and competence has nothing to do with. Hell, neither does logic, I think.

In my case, when I inherited a retirement account, SSDI was not affected, because of how the original account was set up. However, SSDI is different from SSI although both have interesting and Byzantine requirements. I guess to make sure we are all "deserving" of any help.

So don't ask anonymous bozos like me on the internet and find those local counselors. If it is nonprofit, they will probably do it completely free. If needed, many lawyers, including tax lawyers, and CPAs will offer discounted help or will know where you can go.

Sound of the Suburbs , June 14, 2021 at 12:03 pm

What is the floor on wages?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Set disposable income to zero.
Minimum wages = taxes + the cost of living
So, as we increase housing costs, we drive up wages.

The neoliberal solution.
Try and paper over the cracks with Payday loans.
This what we call a short term solution.

Someone has been tinkering with the economics and that's why we can't see the problem.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital".
They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.
It's so well hidden no one even knows it's there and everyone trips up over the cost of living, even the Chinese.

Angus Deaton rediscovers the wheel that was lost by the early neoclassical economists.
"Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might" Angus Deaton, Nobel prize winner.
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages, reducing profit.
This raises the costs of doing anything in the US, and drives off-shoring.

The Chinese learn the hard way.
Davos 2019 – The Chinese have now realised high housing costs eat into consumer spending and they wanted to increase internal consumption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBcIFu-_V0
They let real estate rip and have now realised why that wasn't a good idea.

The equation makes it so easy.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
The cost of living term goes up with increased housing costs.
The disposable income term goes down.
They didn't have the equation, they used neoclassical economics.
The Chinese had to learn the hard way and it took years, but they got there in the end.

They have let the cost of living rise and they want to increase internal consumption.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
It's a double whammy on wages.
China isn't as competitive as it used to be.
China has become more expensive and developed Eastern economies are off-shoring to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

[Jun 12, 2021] Sidewalk Robots are Now Delivering Food in Miami

Notable quotes:
"... Florida Sun-Sentinel ..."
"... [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] ..."
"... the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries... ..."
Jun 06, 2021 | hardware.slashdot.org

18-inch tall robots on four wheels zipping across city sidewalks "stopped people in their tracks as they whipped out their camera phones," reports the Florida Sun-Sentinel .

"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery landscape...

In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot servers grows around the country.

And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and several others, in the next couple of weeks...

"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing the space with the delivery bots,"

said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...

Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in 30 minutes or less.

Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at Berkeley, where at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries...

"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."

A video shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer having to tip human food-delivery workers.

... ... ...

[Jun 10, 2021] Mcjobs increases in May. Good jobs no so much. Labor-force participation dropped

Jun 10, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Job gains in May were led by leisure and hospitality, with the sector adding 292,000 jobs. Payrolls grew by 559,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, up from a revised 278,000 in April, which marked a sharp drop from March's figure.

The labor recovery has slowed from earlier in the year -- in March, the economy added 785,000 jobs

... The labor-force participation rate, the share of adults working or looking for work, edged slightly lower in May to 61.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020.

M

Michael Quick

Republicans, always eager to snatch the bread from the mouths of the poor, are blaming unemployment benefits for the reluctance of workers to return to jobs. In some red states, they already are snatching it.

But more men are returning to work than are women. Doesn't that prove that unemployment benefits are not holding back former workers?

I'll bet more women will return to work in September, after schools start up in-person classes.

William Lamb
Republican turn a blind on helping people, except themselves. They would rather have one being a slave and get pay less then nothing with little perks in making less then high quality item that will still have defects, even if we pride our workmanship that is suppose to equal to none. It would like being in 1950s, when there was not much world competition, when world economy was still recovering from WW2.

I guessed Republican want American to continue working by low paying wages so they can enrich themselves, and show that America can still produce things with slave wages.

johm moore
Most of the jobs are insufficient to support a reasonable quality of life. A job today is about like a half a job pre-NAFTA and the job export process in terms of the quality of life that it supports.
Bryson Marsh
If UI was holding back employment, then why are we adding so many low wage jobs? The missing jobs are in *middle income* sectors.
David Chait
I wouldn't call people returning to work "new" jobs, that just seems disingenuous.
rich ullsmith
Asset prices rise when the jobs report is lukewarm. Thank you, Federal Reserve. May I have another.
Sam Trotter
It should be made mandatory to publish the offered wage/rate. I see so many fake jobs posted on LinkedIn with no description of bill rate for contract positions or Base+Bonus for Full-Time roles. Too many mass scam messages.

[Jun 09, 2021] Nearly 4 million people quit their jobs in April

Jun 09, 2021 | www.marketwatch.com

The percentage of people quitting their jobs, meanwhile, also rose to a record 2.8% among private-sector workers. That's a full percentage point higher than a year ago, when the so-called quits rate fell to a seven-year low.

...A recent study by Bank of America, for example, found that job switchers earned an extra 13% in wages from their new positions. That's a big chunk of money.

...Normally people who quit their jobs are ineligible for unemployment benefits, but they can get an exemption in many states for health, safety or child-care reasons.

About half of the states, all led by Republican governors, plan to stop giving out the federal benefit by early July to push people back into the labor force. Economists will be watching closely to see how many people go back to work.

[Jun 07, 2021] Meth addiction and overtime work goes hand in hand.

Jun 07, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

EULENSPIEGEL IGNORED 06/07/2021 at 4:10 am

Just to stay at the oil field – Meth addiction and overtime work goes hand in hand.

Meth and it's derivates was the drug of the 50s in Germany during rebuilding from the war (Pervitin, Weckamin). They have been legal until the 70s.

It's the easy way first – just take it and you can work longer. Want to drive a truck 16 hours? Just throw a few Pervitins. Side effects and addiction come later. And the unclean stuff from the black market kills people faster.

[Jun 07, 2021] Sidewalk Robots are Now Delivering Food in Miami

Notable quotes:
"... Florida Sun-Sentinel ..."
"... [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] ..."
"... the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries... ..."
Jun 07, 2021 | hardware.slashdot.org

18-inch tall robots on four wheels zipping across city sidewalks "stopped people in their tracks as they whipped out their camera phones," reports the Florida Sun-Sentinel .

"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery landscape...

In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot servers grows around the country.

And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and several others, in the next couple of weeks...

"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing the space with the delivery bots,"

said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...

Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in 30 minutes or less.

Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at Berkeley, where at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000 deliveries...

"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."

A video shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer having to tip human food-delivery workers.

... ... ...

[Jun 06, 2021] Rethinking Unemployment- From Adam Smith to Marx -Reserve Army of the Unemployed- to the Neoliberal War on Full Employment -

Jun 06, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Rethinking Unemployment: From Adam Smith to Marx "Reserve Army of the Unemployed" to the Neoliberal War on Full Employment Posted on June 5, 2021 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This post gives a useful, high level view of how the basis for unemployment has changed over time, including under Covid.

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at t he Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Canadian economist Mario Seccareccia, recipient of this year's John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, says it's time to reconsider the idea of full employment. He spoke to Lynn Parramore of the Institute for New Economic Thinking about why 2021 offers a rare opportunity to rebalance the economy in favor of Main Street.

Once upon a time – not so long ago, really – unemployment was not a thing.

In agricultural societies, even capitalistic ones, most people worked on the land. A smaller number worked in villages and towns – shoemakers and carpenters and so on. Some might go back and forth from the countryside to the town, depending on the availability of work. If your work in town building houses dried up, you might come back to the country for the harvest.

Economist Mario Seccareccia, who loves history, notes that before the Industrial Revolution, it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.

Questions: If unemployment was once unknown, why do we accept it now?

Where did unemployment come from?

In those pre-Industrial Revolution times, there were paupers, mostly people who could not work for some reason such as a disability. These were deemed deserving of charity. A small number of paupers were considered deviants and treated harshly, perhaps made to labor in public work-houses under vile conditions.

Seccareccia notes that early classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo recognized that able-bodied people could experience temporary joblessness, but not the long-term variety. The word "unemployment" only became widely used in the nineteenth century. As cities grew and manufacturing took off, people living in cities and towns grew apart. Movement between the two places grew less fluid. The agricultural sector of the economy was shrinking.

At first, if you lost your factory job, you could still probably pick up something in the countryside to tide you over. But if you had grown up in the city, as more and more people did, you might not know how to do rural work. By the late nineteenth century, most city dwellers could no longer count on falling back on agricultural work during hard times.

Karl Marx noted that England's enclosure movement, which gained momentum as early as the seventeenth century, had made things hard for agricultural workers as wealthy landowners grabbed up the rights to common lands that workers had traditionally been allowed to use and were a vital part of their sustenance. Uprooting peasants from the land and traditional ways of life, Marx observed, created an "industrial reserve army" – basically a whole bunch of people wanting to work but unable to find a job during times when industrialists held back investment or when machines took over certain jobs.

Marx saw that this new kind of unemployment was a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Still, a lot of mainstream bourgeois economists thought that the market would somehow sort things out and eventually provide enough job openings to prevent mass unemployment.

It didn't turn out that way. Exhibit A: The Great Depression.

Especially after World War I, many later economists, most notably John Maynard Keynes, warned that high rates of unemployment were getting to be the norm in the twentieth century. Keynes predicted that a lot of people would go on being jobless unless the government did something. This was very bad for society.

Keynes emphasized that full employment was never going to just happen on its own. Mainstream economists thought that if wages fell enough, full employment would eventually prevail. Keynes disputed that. As wages fell, demand contracted even further, leading to even less business investment and so forth in a never-ending cycle. No, capitalism, with its business cycles led to involuntary unemployment, according to Keynes.

Seccareccia observes that economist Michał Kalecki agreed that the government could make policies to help more people stay employed at a decent wage, but there was just one problem: wealthy capitalists weren't going to have it. They would oppose state-supported systems to hold demand up so that fear of unemployment checked workers' demands for better pay and improved work conditions.

For a while, after World War II, the capitalists were on the defense. The Great Depression and the Communist threat got western countries spooked enough to go along with Keynes's argument that governments should try to encourage employment by doing things like creating big projects for people to work on. Safety nets were created to keep folks from falling into poverty. The goal of full employment gained popularity and many more workers joined unions.

Capitalists v. Full Employment

Economists have bandied about various definitions of what full employment ought to look like, explains Seccareccia: "A well-known definition came from William Beveridge, who said that what you wanted was as many jobs open as people looking for them – or even more jobs because every person can't take every type of job."

In the mid-twentieth century, with the economy doing well, neoclassical economists like Milton Friedman started to push back against the idea of full employment. He discouraged the use of fiscal and monetary policy to support employment, arguing that attempts to push down unemployment beyond what he insisted was its "natural" rate in the economy would simply lead to inflation.

In the 1960s, some of what Friedman warned about did actually happen. Employment was low and prices started to go up mildly, particularly during the Vietnam War era. However, the biggest boost to the credibility of Milton Friedman came with the OPEC cartel oil-price hikes of the 1970s that pushed the inflation rate to double-digit levels while simultaneously pushing up unemployment. So, in the '70s, western countries started backing off from encouraging full employment and maintaining strong safety nets. Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding government jobs, and leaving it to the market to decide how much unemployment there would be. They said that it had to be this way to keep inflation from rising, even though the cause of that high inflation of the '70s had nothing to do with high public spending and excessive money creation that Friedman and his friends talked about.

Seccareccia points to proof that the neoclassical logic didn't hold up. In the two decades before the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8, the rate of unemployment went down, but inflation didn't go up. That proved that the neoclassical economists were wrong. But unfortunately, policymakers didn't really digest this before the Great Recession hit. So, they bungled the response badly by putting the brake on public spending too quickly because of fears of excessive budget deficits and potentially higher future inflation that never materialized. They kept insisting that the employment level would return to that "natural" state Friedman had talked about if they just left things to the market.

"But it didn't work out that way," says Seccareccia. "Unemployment skyrocketed and it took a decade to return to pre-crisis levels.

Which brings us to the COVID-19 crisis.

A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Seccareccia says that we have to understand the difference between the current situation and the Global Financial Crisis. This time, it really is different.

"The earlier crisis started in the financial sector and spread to the real economy," he explains. "But in 2020, when the Coronavirus emerged, the financial and industrial sectors got hammered at the same time." This meant that people in both sectors stopped spending. Households couldn't spend even if they wanted to because traveling, dining out, and other activities were off-limits. Businesses cut investment as uncertainty loomed and exports declined due to restrictions at borders. Unless you were Home Depot or an e-commerce company, you couldn't sell anything.

The COVID-19 crisis also saw workers pulled out of activities thought to be too high risk for spreading the virus. Across the country, non-essential workers were sent home and told to stay there. Most, especially in sectors like leisure and hospitality, can't do their work from home . A lot of these people lost their wages, and because most of them were low-wage to begin with, they could least afford the hit. Many were only able to maintain their incomes through government unemployment insurance. Businesses, meanwhile, were kept afloat with subsidies.

Seccareccia notes that unemployment had an interesting twist in the pandemic because it was both the problem and the initial cure for the health crisis. Unemployment kept the virus from circulating. It saved lives.

Fast-forward to late spring, 2021. As America and other western countries seek to put the pandemic behind them, the economy is opening back up. Employers are wanting to hire, and they are even competing with each other for workers. But many job seekers are waiting to go back to work. There are a lot of reasons why: caregiving for kids is still a huge burden, and people are still worried about getting sick. Transit routes have been disrupted making it harder for people to get to work. It's also possible that some workers may be resisting jobs on offer which come with low pay and inadequate benefits.

Employers have started complaining they can't find workers and blame the social safety net as the problem. Some employers, like those in the hospitality industry, are offering higher pay to lure workers back.

Just as Kalecki predicted, the wealthy capitalists are getting uneasy. The Chamber of Commerce, for example, has pushed the U.S. to stop expanded unemployment insurance benefits so that people will be forced to return to low-wage jobs. Some Republican-dominated states have jumped on board with this idea. Economist Larry Summers, for his part, is warning about inflation and telling the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates so that wages don't go up. He complains that when he walks outside, all he sees are people eager to fill job vacancies . It's unclear where he was living when he said that, or which people he is talking about.

Others argue that expanded unemployment insurance isn't the problem, but the crappy jobs on offer. Seccareccia believes that it's a good thing if employers raise their wages, even if that means a little bit of inflation.

Rising inequality, he emphasizes, is unsustainable in a healthy society, and it's about time ordinary people had a little power to improve their lot. "When employers are worried about people quitting," he says, "that's when you know you're getting close to full employment. And in a capitalist society, it's an extremely rare situation when the number of quits begins to exceed the number of new hires as an economy nears the peak of a business cycle."

In Seccareccia's view, "there's a balancing act between workers 'fearing the sack' and employers 'fearing the quit.'" He observes that capitalists are very good at making sure that the former situation is more common, and they've been spectacularly successful in the last 40 years. "This is why you have flat wages and runaway inequality," says Seccareccia. "Productivity goes up but the workers don't share in it." Profits pile up at the top.

Right now, inflation has been creeping up in some areas. In a couple of sectors, like used cars, it's rising a lot. The question is, beyond a couple of unique cases, what will happen to inflation overall? And will be temporary? A lot of economists think that inflation will be short-lived and will not get very high, so it's nothing to get excited about. Some economists, like Antonella Palumbo, think the worry about inflation is overdone . She notes that with unemployment still high and vast numbers of people who formerly worked but are still out of the labor force, the ranks of the famous reserve army of unemployed are still huge. As the economy restarts, all kinds of short-run bottlenecks are cropping up, but that reserve army is not going anywhere fast and will continue to limit wage increases.

Seccareccia points out that wealthy capitalists trying to stop workers from getting paid better and conservatives complaining about laziness fail to mention that meanwhile, the stock market is soaring, making the rich richer. Plus, the housing market is booming because the more affluent people lucky enough to have kept their jobs over the pandemic now have extra money saved to spend on big-ticket items. "Is it really fair," he asks, "to complain about a few hundred dollars a week received by those at the bottom of the economic ladder? Especially how much the economy is already titled in favor of the haves?"

So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment? Should it do anything at all? For Seccareccia's part, he thinks this is a perfect time to reconsider the idea of full employment, which has been so long abandoned by policymakers in favor of some "natural" unemployment rate. "Policymakers need to understand why COVID may offer a chance not seen since the end of WWII," he says. "We could actually make the economy fairer for ordinary people."


Alice X , June 5, 2021 at 6:02 am

The 1943 Michal Kalecki piece can be found here:

https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/

EarlyGray , June 5, 2021 at 6:07 am

> So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment?

My favoured solution, and that of other readers of this blog, I suspect, is the Job Guarantee as promoted by MMT.
Because a well designed job guarantee would provide a floor on wages and benefits, the private sector would be forced to match it at the very least. But as has been pointed out on this blog many times before, Kalecki's point that full employment would remove employers ability to effectively threaten workers with the sack, means that it will be very difficult politically to see it implemented.

Mikel , June 5, 2021 at 9:47 am

Still building "houses" with floors only?

I think a definition of "enough" is needed.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 8:07 am

Next week I start my 2nd year of pandemic triggered unemployment after I was terminated without cause. On June 26th my extended UI benefits will be halted by TX Governor Greg Abbot. Okay.

In a year of applying for new positions I have managed to get exactly 1 phone interview after a 40 year career in technology development, ending up with almost 24 years at IBM. In my last year with them I received both a performance bonus and a salary hike. But I'm now over 60 and have been unemployed longer than 3 months so that's probably fairly typical experience. Okay.

The path to full employment is probably going to require the creation of new opportunities in a still contracting economic system. It's not impossible if you're focused on the goal. Here's my shortlist of policy initiatives that could dramatically and quickly grow the number of available jobs, particularly for the under employed younger people who are paying off student loans.

Dramatically increase social security and medicare eligibility/benefits to convince older workers to leave the workforce.
Expand paid family leave and vacation policies to align with other industrialized nations in order to require businesses to hire to cover needed absences.
Drop the number of hours that define full time work to allow more workers to get full benefits.

Yeah, I'd like to be considered for another good paying job in a still viable industry. I spent decades developing skills that are still relevant and valuable. But I'm old and I'm expensive because I have expectations based on my own employment history that 40 years of neoliberal policies have rendered obsolete. Okay.

I'm close enough to retirement and lucky enough in my ability to save and plan that this won't wreck us. I try to imagine my pandemic inspired involuntary retirement as an opportunity to become a labor rights activist. It helps.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 9:23 am

My situation is virtually the same, although in academia as research scientist at major US university, with last 6 years as invited scientist at German research institute. Returned to US to the nightmare of Trump at 63, but fully (and naively) intending to continue working. I've lost count of how many job applications I've tendered, with only one interview in two years, then COVID. Now resigned to the fact that work for me from here on out will be different. I continue to write papers with colleagues at university to maintain a reputation in my field. Now recognize that people take one look at my CV, and think: "Old! Expensive!" -- but the truth is I would be willing to work for little just to stay active in a field applying expertise I've spent decades acquiring. I've since met many, many seniors in the same boat: trained professionals with lots of experience who still want to work (and, in my case, need at least some income).

But at least I had a career. I can't imagine the hopelessness of people 35-40 years my junior, with huge debt from college, grad school, and unable to find a decent job.

Something must change. The situation as it exists is unsustainable. One bright light seems to be increasing recognition of the way the economy actually functions, the role of public spending, and the real limits to growth, prosperity.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 9:40 am

Appreciate your commiseration Rolf. I expect there is an army of people like us who are in this situation or about to be.

Fwiw (maybe not much), I'm actively trying to get hired full time at the food coop near my house. The workers there are represented by a union and get full insurance benefits including dental with a 40 hour work week. The Vt minimum wage of $11.75/hr doesn't matter as much as those insurance benefits do; we're still in that 5 year gap between age 60 and age 65 where you are on your own if you need healthcare.

And I've pretty much decided to laugh off Beaux Jivin's campaign promise to drop the medicare eligibility age to 60 etc. It's abandoned along with many other campaign promises. Okay.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 12:18 pm

Thanks, A/S, for your kind words. Yes, benefits are key. I really am increasingly worried that Biden, and the Democratic Party in general, don't seem the grasp the fact that the GOP is absolutely committed to recovering control of Congress and the White House by *any* means necessary. Biden in particular seems to entertain the notion that he can bring the right wing to his way of thinking by conciliation, negotiation, compromise, and good performance. But the GOP is not interested in Dem's performance or compromise -- McConnell has made this quite clear. So Dems have an opportunity to make significant history, a true course correction, but only this once. To pursue "bipartisanship" with a party that has no interest in compromise is hugely naïve -- I can't imagine Biden is that foolish, except that he did begin his campaign with the promise that "nothing would fundamentally change".

The food coop gig sounds like a good, sound shot -- all the best to you.

Left in Wisconsin , June 5, 2021 at 1:32 pm

Fellow army member, age 61. Lucky to have health care via spouse but definitely not enough wealth to retire. Two interviews in last two years, both in retrospect clearly designed to fill out an interview field when preferred (much younger) hire had already been identified. The canard about atrophied skills might apply in the occasional instance but IMO is just more bullsh1t in defense of existing social order.

Dem obliviousness to the reality all around us is truly horrifying. I used to argue that the big sort would result in fenced "progressive" enclaves in which all parties – those inside and those outside – would be thrilled to not have to interact with each other. But it's clear to me now that progressives don't need physical separation to avoid seeing what they don't want to; they are completely able to not see the world right in front of them.

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 10:52 am

I spent decades developing skills that are still relevant and valuable .

Well, you agree. And I agree with you, though I don't know you.
But Obviously the 'Market' does not.
Whose right here, and why?? is the issue.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 12:29 pm

I guess I should include this post script regarding my IBM termination:

After I'd been unemployed for about 90 days I was contacted by a recruiter working on behalf of IBM and my former managers. They were looking for people with exactly my skills and experience to come back to work at IBM as temporary contractors. I agreed to a short phone interview to learn more about the opportunity.

Once the recruiter verified my experience and contacts at IBM, I managed to confirm that they expected to bring me back on at about 80% of my former salary. With no benefits and zero job security. I laughed out loud at this acknowledgment of their duplicity but agreed to let myself be considered and provided a resume. Never heard back which is probably okay.

Carla , June 5, 2021 at 8:29 pm

Amateur Socialist, Rolf and Left in Wisconsin -- I take my hat off to all of you. Work left both my partner and me a number of years ago, and we quickly learned that we had aged out of the market and were useless to society as we thought of it. Fortunately, we relatively quickly became eligible for Medicare, which even in its steadily diminishing state was (and is) a significant help.

Good luck to all of you, and A/S, please let us know the outcome of your pursuit of the job with benefits at your local Food Co-op.

Objective Ace , June 5, 2021 at 5:39 pm

I think your experience demonstrates the problem with defining full Employment as, "anyone who wants a job has one". Using this definition, the simple way to get the economy to FE then is to just make all the jobs so terrible and low paying that no one wants them. You dont need a job, and you dont want just any old crappy job. You want one similiar to your old one, If that doesnt exist anymore, one would reasonably say you dont want a job, since what you want doesn't exist, hence we're at full employment

All of this is to say, we shouldnt necessarily just encourage the government to get us to FE. Capitalists by themselves are quite capable of getting us there, as I'd argue they did in the 19th century. Its government interventions like minimum wage and basic safety protocols that keep us from reaching FE since that's what makes people actually want a job

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 9:08 am

Interesting overview.

it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.

I think there is a conflation of the language terms bandied about–work-v-jobs-v-employment are all couched in the concept of a Consumption Based Economy. I am tired of this.

weeding the garden is work–unless I'm paying you then it becomes a job. In both instances, however, you are employed in the endeavor. This is grooming behavior using language, imo, and needs to stop.

I think this muddle is a componant of the current 'Jobs Discussion".

Covid has rattled generations coming out of Displacements following the very unequal GFC, and an undefined(maybe) examination of Meaning and Place within the current state of the world and the Economy that has been chosen to fulfill the needs of that Economy (Societal and Personal). More Intuitive than cognitive to many.

Selling Plastic bric-a-brac for the Man, to make the rent in an endless cycle, may have lost its cache' subconsciously, to the 'common man' in this time of apparent Climate Crises et al.

There is still plenty to do, and little time for Idleness( itself a "reward' promoted as a 'something' by the Consumptive Economy).

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 9:19 am

There is still plenty to do , like this(and all it encompasses)

Hero rat that sniffed out over 70 landmines retires The Hill

Mikel , June 5, 2021 at 9:41 am

"Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding government jobs, and leaving it to the market to decide how much unemployment there would be. They said that it had to be this way to keep inflation from rising,"

"The market" – that's the first con people have to get over. There is.no "the market" like there it is something like nature.
It's system of intentional, changeable human decisions backed by beliefs and emotions of all kinds now matter how many theories or quantifications occur. And a corporate beuracracy is still a beuracracy.

And actually this neoliberal thinking of letting some imaginary entity "the market" "decide" (we should be lughing at this silliness!) to keep people unemployed to avoid "inflation" only makes sense if it actually meant to signify "avoid inflation of the population."

Phil in KC , June 5, 2021 at 9:44 am

The modern police force is a consequence of idle and unemployed city dwellers. Idled workers don't just sit down and die from malnutrition. Instead, they roam around looking for food, or opportunities that would lead to procuring food. Hungry, impoverished mobs are never a good idea: Ask Czar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm, or the French aristocrats of the 1780's (rather, interrogate their ghosts) how idle, hungry crowds furthered their reigns. For all that, look to the unrest of the 1930's in the US.

Given this reality–that unemployed and starving people refuse to sit down and die peacefully–what will happen as automation starts to rob routine jobs? Already we are seeing robots prowling the Walmart aisles, driverless vehicles delivering pizzas, and self-checkout lines in big box stores. We who work are losing the war on unemployment, which leads to a question: Who is the winner?

Almost as an afterthought, one wonders how much in contributions to Social Security and Medicare have been lost because of automation. Robots don't pay taxes.

Jesper , June 5, 2021 at 10:21 am

Maybe Keynes had an idea what to do?
https://www.openculture.com/2020/06/when-john-maynard-keynes-predicted-a-15-hour-workweek-in-a-hundred-years-time-1930.html

After the achievement of the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, and other labor concessions, many influential figures believed that egalitarian access to leisure would only increase in the 20th century. Among them was economist John Maynard Keynes, who forecast in 1930 that labor-saving technologies might lead to a 15-hour workweek when his grandchildren came of age. Indeed, he titles his essay, "Economic Possibility for our Grandchildren."

The benefits of labour-saving technologies have mostly been taken as money instead of time and by doing so the capitalist class kept power thereby leading to them getting the lions-share of the benefits of the labour-saving techologies.
The political class could, and still can, side with people and decide that labour-saving technologies is to be taken out as reduced amount of hours spent working for someone else. As is the politcal class have bought the 'lump of labour'-fallacy-fallcy hook, line and sinker so what we see is increased pension-age etc

Vicotria H , June 5, 2021 at 10:31 am

I tried out retirement for a few months. I'm 62 and got SS and a very small pension. It's not enough so I went back – temping. The jobs I can get as a paralegal/admin person don't pay a lot but there seem to be quite a few of them based on companies that are merging or have merged and have a huge mess to clean up. So they hire you for a few months to slog through chaos and fix it. Then on to the next one. I'll keep doing this until I can move to a cheaper part of the U.S. Remote helps in that if I don't have a Zoom interview they can't tell how old I am. I feel for everyone who can't even get tedious work. If my SS was higher I would stop working. If my salary had matched that of the male co-workers that had the exact same job as me, my pension would be higher. Retiring in America for many people is part nomadic as you have to move out of your area to survive after you leave your regular job, or it gets rid of you and the other part is being extremely frugal. Woohoo what a life after over 40 years of helping companies make money.

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 11:00 am

If my SS was higher I would stop working

Is this a complete and true statement, or a shortcut to meaning something else?
No criticism, just looking for the clarity.

Victoria H , June 5, 2021 at 11:20 am

Yes a totally true statement. For it to be higher I would have had to wait until almost 67 to take it. It will go up a tad from my additional employment – maybe. Anyway it's a mostly a set amount. I make as a temp in 2 weeks (take home) what I get in SS once per month. If I make over about $19k annually while taking the SS, the US gov will begin to reduce the SS payment.

John Zelnicker , June 5, 2021 at 1:22 pm

@Victoria H
June 5, 2021 at 11:20 am
-- -- -

Social Security takes the highest 40 quarters (10 years) of your earnings to calculate your benefit. If your current work results in higher numbers than are being used currently, the higher numbers will be used and your benefit will increase.

Victoria H , June 5, 2021 at 11:40 am

I tried to reply to your question – yes it is a true statement. What I wrote additionally may have been moderated out for some reason so I won't repeat it. It only mentioned dollar amounts and the US gov so maybe that was bad – not sure!

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 2:06 pm

Victoria H
and I thank you for that.
But I think you, and I will 'work' until we die–

What does work mean?
noun. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. productive or operative activity. employment, as in some form of industry, especially as a means of earning one's livelihood: to look for work. the result of exertion, labor, or activity; a deed or performance.

Work | Definition of Work at Dictionary.comhttps://www.dictionary.com › browse › work

I am personally familiar with what you are going through and My wife is there right now.

I waited till full retirement at 66 to collect–not being able to leave 2k on the table(diff btwn 62 and 66 for me). I cannot describe the amount of effort and gyration I needed to extend to achieve that– which may explain why I am the only one in my 'Friend Circle' to actually accomplish it.

Trigger Warning

I thought the coup de grace was when I had to sign up for–and Pay For, with cash, Quarterly–Medicare without a SS check to have it automatically deducted from. Because of my birthday I needed to pony up about 5 months worth of premiums(but i had 3 months to save up for the next Q pymt). I doubt you've ever been curbed at the end of a physical altercation, but that is what it felt like to me. Best think about all that.
Good news–do your own taxes for your enlightenment and you will see that the SS Income Worksheet provides a path to structuring your Income to counter-balance additional Income.
Discalimer–I am in no way an Acc'tant or Tax Man or even giving Advice. I am a Carpenter–but Written Instructions are Written Instructions and Numbers are Numbers and I made a paid living following both–so it's understandable enough to give you some options to ponder.

And to Rolf/AmSoc and all the others -- IMNSHO(the first ever time I have used this phrase) the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So Many Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperatly needs "All Hands On Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 3:22 pm

the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So Many Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperately needs "All Hands On Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.

These are true words, Rod. I think catastrophic changes (no hyperbole) lie ahead, for which there is little precedent. Many make absurdly blithe assumptions, thinking they won't be affected, or that wealth will insulate them. This is arrogant folly, and we will need everyone to row in the same direction.

Carla , June 5, 2021 at 9:32 pm

The man who owns the Heating and Air Conditioning company I have been using for the last decade lives in the neighborhood and is 88 years old. After his brother had health problems, and the young nephew he employed left for greener pastures,he now does pretty much all the work himself, and let me tell you, he knows his stuff. I know I should have a back-up in mind, just in case, but so far, haven't found anyone else I can trust.

Dr. R.k. Barkhi , June 5, 2021 at 5:49 pm

Well said. I took retirement at 62 for several reasons,number 1 being i didn't believe it would be around long enough to pay me back.

"All hands on deck" is imo exactly what is needed,but the mostly planned divisiveness (fake right vs fake left aka RepubliCons vs Dumbocrats) will help ensure that never occurs,to someone's benefit.

redleg , June 5, 2021 at 12:20 pm

Just think how many people would quit working, or enter self-employment, if they weren't dependent on employer providedmedical insurance. I don't know the answer/estimate; it would have to be a large number, enough to significantly raise wages across the board.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 11:29 am

Retiring in America for many people is part nomadic

This observation made me remember a critical scene from the excellent oscar winner last year, Nomadland . Frances McDormand's character meets a friend who explains why she took to the road: "Five hundred forty dollars a month from Social Security. After working non stop for over 40 years. How am I supposed to live on that".

I'm paraphrasing possibly badly from memory; it's a very short scene that isn't really pursued farther in the script. But I do remember thinking "Aha! This is the root cause of all this misery and despair "

We moved to southern Vermont from Texas just prior to the pandemic believing we had relocated to a cheaper part of the US as you also mentioned. But Vermont's strong public health track record during the pandemic has unleashed a huge real estate boom here so who knows We may end up priced out of Vermont eventually too.

Rolf , June 5, 2021 at 12:29 pm

Real estate is still relatively cheap in Texas (at least around Houston), with the caveat that Republicans don't always keep the power on or the water pressure up in the middle of winter.

Amateur Socialist , June 5, 2021 at 12:34 pm

Unfortunately our place was in the Austin exurb of Bastrop. Which is now part of the Austin insane real estate boom. And yes Houston can be cheap but only if you don't mind living near a refinery. Or in the path of many future hurricanes. Hard pass.

Pelham , June 5, 2021 at 11:11 am

I keep seeing references to "flat wages." While it's technically true, I suspect it's enormously deceptive.

Yes, we have flat wages. But the cost of necessities that add little or no value to people's lives but which they're FORCED to pay for have shot up far, far beyond the pace of inflation. Think medical care, housing and education, to name just three, all of which are somehow ignored or slighted in official inflation stats.

Susan the other , June 5, 2021 at 11:54 am

Right now the best transition is for the government to regulate capitalism in the direction the future (sustainability) dictates. The problem with regulating capitalism is that most capitalists think it is already too regulated; taxes are too high, etc. They are on the edge of revolution themselves. And regulated capitalism is almost an oxymoron to most Americans. It's just business as usual to a European because they have better social spending and blablablah. The statistic I remember is that the EU spends about 45% of its revenue on social stuff; the US spends a little less than 35%. The problem, as I see it, is this: If we in the US do not achieve adequate social spending we create the perfect breeding ground for exploitation of the environment. People will be desperate for a job – any job. Which will not only cause worse CO2 problems, it will poison off, or starve off, many many species now living on the edge. We will further pollute the oceans and waterways. And we will not only stick with our sick and poisonous agricultural practices, we will exponentiate them – precluding all efforts to fix these unsustainable things. Capitalism as we have known it must change. So, even the great idea of capitalism must adapt to reality. Somebody please tell Larry. At this point "inflation" is an absolutely meaningless word. It would be a very good thing if we followed Eisenhower's advice to LBJ and began to create social structures that are fair to all of society – to the capitalists whose current mandate of voracious profiteering is clearly unsustainable, as well as to "labor" – as we see it evolving – and now, most importantly, we must include the rights of the planet itself and all of our fellow travelers. We won't last very long if we kill them all off and trash the Earth. The race to the bottom that all privateering capitalism eventually creates is the most absurd thing in the history of civilization.

Rod , June 5, 2021 at 2:12 pm

Always with the Big Picture and the Clear Eyes.
Thanks

Carla , June 5, 2021 at 9:35 pm

Indeed.

redleg , June 5, 2021 at 12:13 pm

A good start would be breaking up all of the ubiquitous monopolies/monopsonies/cartels, that have taken over every sector of the economy, from food processing to entertainment to banking to manufacturing to politics to (ad infinitum/nauseum).

John Zelnicker , June 5, 2021 at 1:27 pm

I went to Firehouse Subs yesterday there was a whiteboard inside on a table, facing into the restaurant, that said they were hiring and offered starting pay of $9.00 for crew members and $12.00 for shift managers.

Just inside the door, facing out, was a whiteboard offering starting pay of $11.00 for crew members and $14.00 for shift managers. Seems like they're getting the message.

As an aside, I'd like to give props to Firehouse Subs for using pressed paper clam boxes and paper bags.

LawnDart , June 5, 2021 at 6:47 pm

The average mortgage payment in USA is $1158mo.

Using the 28/36 rule, how much should employers be paying hourly if their employees are valued enough to be able to afford a home?

[May 30, 2021] Andrew Yang: The War on Normal People The Truth About America s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

Looks like this guys somewhat understands the problems with neoliberalism, but still is captured by neoliberal ideology.
Notable quotes:
"... That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent. ..."
"... Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent. ..."
"... Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick. ..."
"... Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007. ..."
Apr 27, 2019 | www.amazon.com

The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we arc collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they're complaining or suffering because they're losers.

We need to break free of this logic of the marketplace before it's too late.

[Neoliberalism] had decimated the economies and cultures of these regions and were set to do the same to many others.

In response, American lives and families are falling apart. Ram- pant financial stress is the new normal. We are in the third or fourth inning of the greatest economic shift in the history of mankind, and no one seems to be talking about it or doing anything in response.

The Great Displacement didn't arrive overnight. It has been building for decades as the economy and labor market changed in response to improving technology, financialization, changing corporate norms, and globalization. In the 1970s, when my parents worked at GE and Blue Cross Blue Shield in upstate New York, their companies provided generous pensions and expected them to stay for decades. Community banks were boring businesses that lent money to local companies for a modest return. Over 20 percent of workers were unionized. Some economic problems existed -- growth was uneven and infla- tion periodically high. But income inequality was low, jobs provided benefits, and Main Street businesses were the drivers of the economy. There were only three television networks, and in my house we watched them on a TV with an antenna that we fiddled with to make the picture clearer.

That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent.

Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent.

Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.

Hostile takeovers, shareholder lawsuits, and later activist hedge funds served as prompts to ensure that managers were committed to profitability at all costs. On the flip side, CF.Os were granted stock options for the first time that wedded their individual gain to the company's share price. The ratio of CF.O to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.

Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007.

Nolia Nessa , April 5, 2018

profound and urgent work of social criticism

It's hard to be in the year 2018 and not hear about the endless studies alarming the general public about coming labor automation. But what Yang provides in this book is two key things: automation has already been ravaging the country which has led to the great political polarization of today, and second, an actual vision into what happens when people lose jobs, and it definitely is a lightning strike of "oh crap"

I found this book relatively impressive and frightening. Yang, a former lawyer, entrepreneur, and non-profit leader, writes showing with inarguable data that when companies automate work and use new software, communities die, drug use increases, suicide increases, and crime skyrockets. The new jobs created go to big cities, the surviving talent leaves, and the remaining people lose hope and descend into madness. (as a student of psychology, this is not surprising)

He starts by painting the picture of the average American and how fragile they are economically. He deconstructs the labor predictions and how technology is going to ravage it. He discusses the future of work. He explains what has happened in technology and why it's suddenly a huge threat. He shows what this means: economic inequality rises, the people have less power, the voice of democracy is diminished, no one owns stocks, people get poorer etc. He shows that talent is leaving small towns, money is concentrating to big cities faster. He shows what happens when those other cities die (bad things), and then how the people react when they have no income (really bad things). He shows how retraining doesn't work and college is failing us. We don't invest in vocational skills, and our youth is underemployed pushed into freelance work making minimal pay. He shows how no one trusts the institutions anymore.

Then he discusses solutions with a focus on Universal Basic Income. I was a skeptic of the idea until I read this book. You literally walk away with this burning desire to prevent a Mad Max esque civil war, and its hard to argue with him. We don't have much time and our bloated micromanaged welfare programs cannot sustain.

[May 28, 2021] Despite Initial Claims Drop, Almost 16 Million Americans Remain On Government Dole

For April 2021 the official Current Unadjusted U-6 unemployment rate was 9.9% down from 10.9% in March, and 11.6% in February, January was 12.0%. It was also 11.6% October "" December 2020. But It was 18.3% in June, 20.7% in May, and 22.4% in April. It is still well above the 8.9% of March 2020 when unemployment rates started jumping drastically due to massive shutdowns due to the Coronavirus.
May 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Initial Jobless Claims tumbled (positively) to their lowest since the pandemic lockdowns began, adding just 406k Americans last week (well below the 425k expected). This is still double the pre-pandemic norms

y_arrow 1
Truthtellers 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Companies laid off an additional 400K people last week and they actually think we are dumb enough to believe there is a labor shortage? That line of crap is obviously just a ploy to get employee's to accept lower salaries.

I'll believe there is a labor shortage after 16 million jobs have been added and the weekly initial claims number is zero.

Until then, I guess if you have a "labor shortage" you better get that pay up.

AJAX-2 13 hours ago (Edited)

Another 400K+ applying for 1st time unemployment benefits and yet they piss on my leg, tell me it's raining, while proclaiming there is a labor shortage. Bu!!****.

PerilouseTimes 9 hours ago

Close to a million people a week were signing up for unemployment for a year and unemployment has been extended. Wouldn't that mean at least 40 million Americans are on unemployment not to mention all the people on welfare and disability? I think the number is closer to 100 million Americans on the government dole and that doesn't count all the worthless government jobs out there.

Normal 12 hours ago remove link

I'm on unemployment except California seems to have quit paying people on unemployment. I tried every-which-way to contact them but there is no way in hell to get through to a live person. I went and typed in how to speak with a real person at the EDD, and hundreds of people have posted that they haven't been paid in 12 weeks. I spoke with their Cal-Jobs representative and she said that many people haven't been paid since March of last year. I think they are forcing the so-called unemployed to their Cal-Jobs site by not paying them.

ay_arrow
NEOSERF 13 hours ago

Worst month during the GFC appears to be about 650K...we are only 50% below that....with 21 states preparing to end the extension, things will be fantastic in these numbers shortly if not the real world...waiting for all the cold/flu season coughing and cold weather in November...

[May 10, 2021] The Feds history of jawboning and deceiving the market players, except large banks

History repeats and the repetition is coming with some minor variations.
Notable quotes:
"... "Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004." ..."
"... There isn't much of a difference between signaling tighter money to a market that is skeptical of Fed forecasts and actually tightening. ..."
"... While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002. ..."
"... While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent. ..."
"... One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. ..."
Dec 17, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K. -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... December 17, 2015 at 10:12 AM
"Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004."

There isn't much of a difference between signaling tighter money to a market that is skeptical of Fed forecasts and actually tightening.

http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/statement-on-fed-and-interest-rates

Washington, D.C.- Dean Baker, economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) issued the following statement in response to the Federal Reserve's decision regarding interest rates:

"The Fed's decision to raise interest rates today is an unfortunate move in the wrong direction. In setting interest rate policy the Fed must decide whether the economy is at risk of having too few or too many jobs, with the latter being determined by the extent to which its current rate of job creation may lead to inflation. It is difficult to see how the evidence would lead the Fed to conclude that the greater risk at the moment is too many jobs.

"While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002.

"If we look at employment rates rather than unemployment, the percentage of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) with jobs is still down by almost three full percentage points from the pre-recession peak and by more than four full percentage points from the peak hit in 2000. This does not look like a strong labor market.

"On the other side, there is virtually no basis for concerns about the risk of inflation in the current data. The most recent data show that the core personal consumption expenditure deflator targeted by the Fed increased at just a 1.2 percent annual rate over the last three months, down slightly from the 1.3 percent rate over the last year. This means that the Fed should be concerned about being below its inflation target, not above it.

"While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent.

"Furthermore, it is important to recognize that workers took a large hit to their wages in the downturn, with a shift of more than four percentage points of national income from wages to profits. In principle, workers can restore their share of national income (the equivalent of an 8 percent wage gain), but the Fed would have to be prepared to allow wage growth to substantially outpace prices for a period of time. If the Fed acts to prevent workers from getting this bargaining power, it will effectively lock in place this upward redistribution. Needless to say, workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution can expect to see the biggest hit in this scenario.

"One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. If it is the case that the economy is not strong enough to justify rate hikes, then the hike today may be the last one for some period of time. It will be important for the Fed to carefully assess the data as it makes its decision on interest rates at future meetings.

"Recent economic data suggest that today's move was a mistake. Hopefully the Fed will not compound this mistake with more unwarranted rate hikes in the future."

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K....

I like Dean Baker. Unlike the Fed, Dean Baker is a class warrior on the side of the wage class. He makes the point about the path to normalization being critical that I have been discussing for quite a while. Let's hope this Fed knows better than Greenspan/Bernanke in 2004-2006. THANKS!

likbez said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

Very true !

pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

"Longer-term bond rates barely moved, showing that there was very little news." This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46% already. So the damage was already done:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BAA

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to pgl...

"... This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46% already..."

Exactly! Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004. Yellen's Fed waited until the bond rate lifted off on its own (and maybe with some help from policy communications) before they raised the FFR.

So far, there is no sign of their making a fatal error. They are not fighting class warfare for wage class either, but they seem intent on not screwing the pooch in the way that Greenspan and Bernanke did. No double dip thank you and hold the nuts.

[May 07, 2021] U.S. job growth disappoints in challenge to economic recovery - BNN Bloomberg

May 07, 2021 | www.bnnbloomberg.ca

6h ago

U.S. job growth disappoints in challenge to economic recovery

Olivia Rockeman , Bloomberg News

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.455.0_en.html#goog_688272017 U.S. jobs data in April disappoints

U.S. job growth significantly undershot forecasts in April, suggesting that difficulty attracting workers is slowing momentum in the labor market and challenging the economic recovery.

Payrolls rose 266,000 from a month earlier, according to a Labor Department report Friday that represented one of the largest downside misses on record. Economists in a Bloomberg survey projected a 1 million hiring surge in April.

The unemployment rate edged up to 6.1 per cent, though the labor-force participation rate also increased.

... The disappointing payrolls print leaves overall employment more than 8 million short of its pre-pandemic level and is consistent with recent comments from company officials highlighting challenges in filling open positions.

... While job gains accelerated in leisure and hospitality, employment at temporary-help agencies and transportation and warehousing declined sharply.

...

Labor force participation, a measure of the percentage of Americans either working or looking for work, rose to 61.7 per cent in April from 61.5 per cent, likely supported by increased vaccinations that helped fuel the reopenings of many retail establishments, restaurants and leisure-facing businesses.

Average weekly hours increased to match the highest in records dating back to 2006. The gain in the workweek, increased pay and the improvement in hiring helped boost aggregate weekly payrolls 1.2 per cent in April after a 1.3 per cent gain a month earlier.

Workforce participation for men age 25 to 54 increased last month, while edging lower for women.

[May 04, 2021] Nuances of discrimination: a t Citi it was very obvious any remotely competent black was promoted way beyond there competency, although that was largely limited to back and middle office roles

Neoliberals policies for minority students in education can be called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Racists want discrimination based on race; wokesters want discrimination based on race too. One in the name of bigotry, one in the name of “tolerance.” Does the motive really matter if the outcome is the same?
Notable quotes:
"... the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination ..."
May 03, 2021 | www.unz.com

LondonBob , says: April 26, 2021 at 10:49 am GMT • 6.6 days ago

@dearieme

My uncle did admissions at Cambridge and he actively discriminated against Public School boys, despite being one himself. He was actually involved in hiring that black woman to be the Master at Christ's College.

Similarly at Citi it was very obvious any remotely competent black was promoted way beyond there competency, although that was largely limited to back and middle office roles.

Still the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination and the free market at work.

[May 04, 2021] Fake CVs, fake results, by James Thompson

Notable quotes:
"... Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. ..."
"... Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT hire directly. ..."
"... There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only redirects towards those. ..."
"... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves. They dictate who will work somewhere. ..."
"... It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments, real work, are so very much more difficult than lies. ..."
"... There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again, he could have just been fooling around. ..."
May 03, 2021 | www.unz.com

ruralguy , says: April 24, 2021 at 8:54 pm GMT "¢ 8.2 days ago

Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. That was very problematic, because once you hire a person, it's hard to get rid of them, even with "at-will" employment.

... ... ...

Reaper , says: May 2, 2021 at 11:19 am GMT "¢ 14.8 hours ago

There is a major problem with the article/ whole employment process:

Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT hire directly.(Respect for the ones, who do.)

There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only redirects towards those.

Also many company have a HR department, etc... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves. They dictate who will work somewhere.

Wish to be workers should meet directly with the ones they supposed to work for.

Vojkan , says: May 2, 2021 at 11:34 am GMT "¢ 14.6 hours ago

To see whether racial discrimination exists, researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications but different names attached, to see if the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that to be the case.

Given that British blacks most often bear British sounding names and that foreign whites too bear foreign sounding names, I don't see how the difference in treatment can be put down to racial bias. Moreover, I don't see anything wrong in giving precedence to compatriots over foreigners. It is the opposite that is unsound.

As a French national with a foreign sounding name, I never expected to be given precedence over native French candidates and always counted solely on my competence to get a position. If the world we live in were still normal, that would be the normal attitude because in a normal world people are allowed to prefer their kin vs folks they don't know from Adam. It is the opposite that isn't normal.

Discard national preference and you get foreign tribes' nepotism.

Sick of Orcs , says: May 2, 2021 at 12:41 pm GMT "¢ 13.5 hours ago

researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications but different names attached, to see if the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that to be the case.

Because it's a lose-lose to hire a Tyrone or Abdul. Even if they're the most qualified, they're "high-maintenance," arriving with extra-legal protections and considerations. Down the road they can always hide behind the specter of racism if their performance is found lacking.

Just another serf , says: May 2, 2021 at 6:28 am GMT "¢ 19.7 hours ago

It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments, real work, are so very much more difficult than lies.

Indians are fantastic fraudsters. Africans are fraud specialists. Many Asians are not so much CV fraudsters as they are test cheaters.

Reaper , says: May 2, 2021 at 1:38 pm GMT "¢ 12.5 hours ago
@Vojkan foreigners."

Agreed as they do it in Swiss. They prefer to employ their folk, if find a suitable person and wait up to 6 months before consider an outlander. Only then ready to employ someone else.

BUT: Will not employ a dullard just because they share a citizenship/ ancestors. About 20% are foreigners among the employed, in Geneva probably most of the employed.

And this is strictly the opposite what is common in many place (and self-appointed "nationalists" demand): No matter how incompetent but employ the dullard native, while send home the competent/ hardworking.

Against meritism/ competition and bad for business.

Ghost of Bull Moose , says: May 2, 2021 at 2:38 pm GMT "¢ 11.5 hours ago

There are plenty of dishonest Europeans, but honesty as a high value seems Western. Subcons caught in a lie will grin and do a head waggle something between a nod and a shake. Blacks will insist the lie is true. East Asians will lie until you demonstrate they cannot get away with it. Latin Americans only lie when they speak.

HallParvey , says: May 2, 2021 at 3:27 pm GMT "¢ 10.7 hours ago
@Just another serf

It's a new world of fraud, total fraud.

There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again, he could have just been fooling around.

[May 03, 2021] Freightwaves claims that companies pay $70,000 For A Part-Time Drivers, which is questionable

Probably $25 an hour or $50K a year is more realistic. Part time jobs are even better to hem to avoid money crunch and at the same time continue to look for an IT job. Might be a viable option for younger healthy IT specialists. CDL course from a reputable truck driving school is around $3500 and they provide you a truck for the DMV exam, but you can try self-study and might pass written exam from a second try as there is nothing complex in the test, saving half of those money.
Notable quotes:
"... What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little more.' ..."
"... To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000. ..."
May 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

By John Kingston of Freightwaves,

David Parker is the CEO of Covenant Logistics and he was blunt with analysts who follow the company on its earnings call Tuesday.

'How do we get enough drivers? ' he said in response to a question from Stephens analyst Jack Atkins. 'I don't know.'

Parker then gave an overview of the situation facing Covenant, and by extension other companies, in trying to recruit drivers. One problem: With rates so high, companies are encountering the fact that a driver doesn't need to work a full schedule to pull in a decent salary.

'We're finding out that just to get a driver, let's say the numbers are $85,000 (per year) ,' Parker said, according to a transcript of the earnings call supplied by SeekingAlpha. ' But a lot of these drivers are happy at $70,000. Now they're not coming to work for me, unless it's in the ($80,000s), because they're happy making $70,000.'

Seasonally adjusted long distance truck drivers. Source: BLS To learn more about FreightWaves SONAR, please go here.

What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little more.'

The result is a tightening of capacity. Parker said utilization in the first quarter at Covenant was three or four percentage points less than it would have as a result of that development. ' It's an interesting dynamic that none of us have calculated,' he said.

To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000.

Parker was firm that this was not a situation likely to change soon. 'There's nothing out there that tells me that drivers are going to readily be available over the medium [term in] one to two years,' he said. 'And that's where I'm at.'

Paul Bunn, the company's COO and senior executive vice president, echoed what other executives have said recently: Additional stimulus benefits are making the situation tighter. He said that while offering some hope that as the benefits roll off, 'that might help a bit.'

But what the government giveth the government can sometimes taketh away. Bunn expressed another familiar sentiment in the industry today, that an infrastructure bill adding to demand for workers would create more difficulty to put drivers behind the wheel. Construction, Bunn said, is 'a monster competitor of our industry' and if the bill is approved, 'that's going to be a big pull.'

Labor is going to be a 'capacity constraint' through the economy, Bunn said, while conceding that trucking is not unique in that. And because of that labor squeeze, capacity in many fields is going to be limited. ' The OEMs, the manufacturers are limited capacity ,' Bunn said. 'They're not ramping up in a major, major way because of labor, because of commodity pricing, because of the costs.'

All that means is that capacity growth is going to be 'reasonable,' Bunn said. 'It's not going to be crazy, people growing fleets [by] significant amounts.'

'It's all you can do just to hold serve, ' he added.

... ... ...

[Apr 29, 2021] After thirteen months, the BLS still cannot count the Unemployed

Apr 29, 2021 | www.shadowstats.com

After thirteen months, the BLS still cannot count the Unemployed. Headline U.3 Unemployment also remained deep in non-recovery territory. The BLS acknowledged continuing misclassification of some "unemployed" persons as "employed," in the Household Survey. Where the count of the understated unemployed had an "upside limit" of 636,000 persons in March 2021, the February 2021 upside estimate of understated unemployed was 756,000. The difference would be a potential headline U.3 of 6.44% instead of today's headline 6.05%, which was down from a headline 6.22% in February. Fully adjusted for COVID-19 disruptions, based on BLS side-surveys of Pandemic impact, and with more than six million people missing from the headline U.S. labor force, actual headline U.3 unemployment still should be well above 10%, the highest unemployment rate since before World War II, outside of the Pandemic and possibly at the trough of the 1982-1983 recession. Broader March 2021 headline U.6 unemployment [including some decline in short-term discouraged workers and those employed part-time for economic reasons] eased to 10.71% from 11.07% in February. Including long-term discouraged/ displaced workers, the March 2021 ShadowStats Alternate Measure –- moving on top of the decline in U.6 –- notched minimally lower to 25.7%, from 25.8% in February 2021, reflecting some modeled transition of "short-term" to "long-term" discouraged workers, with the Pandemic having passed its 12-month anniversary. The latest Unemployment Rates are posted on the ALTERNATE DATA tab (above).

[Apr 03, 2021] Manhattan Office Supply Skyrockets To Three Decade High - ZeroHedge

Apr 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, APR 02, 2021 - 07:00 PM

Whether "working from home" is a temporary fad or a permanent "new normal" remains to be seen; what becomes more evident is the mounting supply glut of corporate space in Manhattan, according to Bloomberg , citing a new report from real estate firm Savills.

Savills said the amount of office space available in Manhattan is at a three-decade high. The report, released on Thursday, said the availability rate soared to 17.2% in the first quarter. The rise in the rate was primarily due to a massive surge in sublease space, which now stands at 22 million square feet, or 62% higher than 2019 levels.

"Abundant short- and long-term options are driving price reductions," Savills noted. "Many owners are proposing historically aggressive rates, concessions, and flexibility to secure tenants amid so much competition."

Savills said rents fell for the fifth consecutive quarter to around $76.27 a square foot, down 9% from a year earlier. These cheaper rents are creating a massive opportunity for companies who want to enter the city.

Desperate landlords were offering generous concessions for long-term leases at newly constructed buildings: "Average tenant improvement allowances jumped 16% and free rent surged 17% to an average of 13.5 months. The tenant-friendly market is expected to last for at least the next 12 to 18 months," Savills said.

The Manhattan office market continues to struggle more than one year after the pandemic hit, which has emptied Manhattan's skyscrapers. And since most employees are still working from home, just around 24.21% of workers in the New York metropolitan area were back at their desks as of this week.

Even with the vaccine rollout now reaching 100 million Americans, companies are still opting for "hybrid" work as remote working dominates .

In a past report, Jim Wenk, a vice chairman at Savills North America, said commercial real estate in the borough will have a "very choppy period for the foreseeable future."

A recent survey from the Partnership for New York City found 66% of Manhattan's most prominent employers would allow employees to work under hybrid work arrangements, meaning they would Manhattan's most prominent employers.

As more proof the work environment is rapidly changing, major magazine publisher Conde Nast (who owns brands such as ARS Technica, GQ, Teen Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired, among other popular magazines) is a major anchor tenant in the new World Trade Center, recently skipped out on rent as it asked for rent discounts and a reduction in square footage.

Last month, JP Morgan was reportedly looking to sublet hundreds of thousands of square feet at 4 New York Plaza in the financial district and 5 Manhattan West in the Hudson Yards area.

To make matters worse, Hudson Yards, a massive complex on Manhattan's Far West Side with condos, office space, and retailers built over an enormous railroad yard had investors panic because the company refuse d to open its books. The combination of work-at-home and folks moving to suburbs has left Hudson Yards and other places across the borough a 'ghost town.'

This all suggests that the virus pandemic has brought years of technological change to the work model that has possibly made companies more productive and cut costs as employees work from home or adopt a hybrid work model. Without office workers returning to the borough, there can't be a robust recovery in the near term.

[Apr 02, 2021] Who's Hiring And Who's Firing

Apr 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Not only was the March payrolls report a blockbuster, golidlocks number, much higher than expected but not too high to spark immediate reflation/hike fears thanks to subdued wage inflation, job growth in March was also widespread unlike February, where 75% of all new jobs were waiters and bartenders . By contrast, in March the largest gains occurring across most industries with the bulk taking place in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction.

Here is a full breakdown:

It's hardly a surprise that with the US reopening, the one industry seeing the biggest hiring remains leisure and hospitality where jobs rose by 280,000, as pandemic-related restrictions eased in many parts of the country, with nearly two-thirds of the increase in "food services and drinking places", i.e., waiters and bartenders, which added +176,000 jobs in March.

And another notable change was in the total number of government workers, which surged by 136K in March, reversing the 90K drop in February, as a result of 49.6K state education workers and 76K local government education workers added thanks to the reopening of schools around the country.

Here is a visual breakdown of all the March job changes:

Finally, courtesy of Bloomberg , below are the industries with the highest and lowest rates of employment growth for the most recent month.


7 play_arrow


Jack Offelday 1 hour ago

The "V" recovery. Where Food Service jobs are the new "Golden Age".

Creamaster 47 minutes ago (Edited)

My wife is a nurse in an outpatient office under a large hospital umbrella here. Normally these outpatient spots go within days to a week.

Currently they have 2 openings they have been trying to fill for a few months now. Combine that with the fact my wife got 3 years worth of raises in a single shot, recently and out of the blue for no reason, tells me the hospitla is really screwed trying to fill nursing spots.

After this pandemic crap, it has likely scared alot of people away from entering healthcare, and if a nurse was on the fence about retirement , likely decided to call it quits after all this BS.

newworldorder 45 minutes ago

There are an estimated, 30 million illegals currently in the USA waiting legalization.

WHEN legalization happens, they will bring into the USA (by historical averages,) another 60 to 90 million of their family members in 10 years.

And all of them US Minority workers, by current US Diversity Laws, - same as all Black Americans.

[Mar 28, 2021] Medicaid Enrollment Grew -30% Year-Over-Year

Mar 28, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

run75441 | March 27, 2021 7:55 pm

HEALTHCARE

Medicaid expansion enrollment grew nearly 30% year-over-year in 19-state sample, Andrew Sprung, XPOSTFACTOID, March 17, 2021

An update on Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the pandemic struck. Below is a sampling of 19 expansion states through January of this year, and 14 states through February.

Maintaining the assumption, explained here , "relatively slow growth in California would push the national total down by about 2.5 percentage points." These tallies still point to year-over-year enrollment growth of approximately 30% from February 2020 to February 2021.

If that's right, then Medicaid enrollment among those rendered eligible by ACA expansion criteria (adults with income up to 138% FPL) may exceed 19 million nationally and may be pushing 20 million. Assuming the sampling of a bit more than a third of total expansion enrollment represents all expansion states more or less and again accounting for slower growth in California.

[Mar 28, 2021] One year later, unemployment insurance claims remain sky-high

Notable quotes:
"... Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.) ..."
Mar 28, 2021 | www.epi.org

One year ago this week, when the first sky-high unemployment insurance (UI) claims data of the pandemic were released, I said " I have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this ." But in the weeks that followed, things got worse before they got better -- and we are not out of the woods yet. Last week -- the week ending March 20, 2021 -- another 926,000 people applied for UI. This included 684,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 242,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.

Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.)

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for March 6). Continuing claims are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago, just before the virus hit.

FIGURE A Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–March 6, 2021 *Use caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*
Date Regular state UI PEUC PUA Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
2019-03-23 1,905,627 31,510
2019-03-30 1,858,954 31,446
2019-04-06 1,727,261 30,454
2019-04-13 1,700,689 30,404
2019-04-20 1,645,387 28,281
2019-04-27 1,630,382 29,795
2019-05-04 1,536,652 27,937
2019-05-11 1,540,486 28,727
2019-05-18 1,506,501 27,949
2019-05-25 1,519,345 26,263
2019-06-01 1,535,572 26,905
2019-06-08 1,520,520 25,694
2019-06-15 1,556,252 26,057
2019-06-22 1,586,714 25,409
2019-06-29 1,608,769 23,926
2019-07-06 1,700,329 25,630
2019-07-13 1,694,876 27,169
2019-07-20 1,676,883 30,390
2019-07-27 1,662,427 28,319
2019-08-03 1,676,979 27,403
2019-08-10 1,616,985 27,330
2019-08-17 1,613,394 26,234
2019-08-24 1,564,203 27,253
2019-08-31 1,473,997 25,003
2019-09-07 1,462,776 25,909
2019-09-14 1,397,267 26,699
2019-09-21 1,380,668 26,641
2019-09-28 1,390,061 25,460
2019-10-05 1,366,978 26,977
2019-10-12 1,384,208 27,501
2019-10-19 1,416,816 28,088
2019-10-26 1,420,918 28,576
2019-11-02 1,447,411 29,080
2019-11-09 1,457,789 30,024
2019-11-16 1,541,860 31,593
2019-11-23 1,505,742 29,499
2019-11-30 1,752,141 30,315
2019-12-07 1,725,237 32,895
2019-12-14 1,796,247 31,893
2019-12-21 1,773,949 29,888
2019-12-28 2,143,802 32,517
2020-01-04 2,245,684 32,520
2020-01-11 2,137,910 33,882
2020-01-18 2,075,857 32,625
2020-01-25 2,148,764 35,828
2020-02-01 2,084,204 33,884
2020-02-08 2,095,001 35,605
2020-02-15 2,057,774 34,683
2020-02-22 2,101,301 35,440
2020-02-29 2,054,129 33,053
2020-03-07 1,973,560 32,803
2020-03-14 2,071,070 34,149
2020-03-21 3,410,969 36,758
2020-03-28 8,158,043 0 52,494 48,963
2020-04-04 12,444,309 3,802 69,537 64,201
2020-04-11 16,249,334 31,426 216,481 89,915
2020-04-18 17,756,054 63,720 1,172,238 116,162
2020-04-25 21,723,230 91,724 3,629,986 158,031
2020-05-02 20,823,294 173,760 6,361,532 175,289
2020-05-09 22,725,217 252,257 8,120,137 216,576
2020-05-16 18,791,926 252,952 11,281,930 226,164
2020-05-23 19,022,578 546,065 10,010,509 247,595
2020-05-30 18,548,442 1,121,306 9,597,884 259,499
2020-06-06 18,330,293 885,802 11,359,389 325,282
2020-06-13 17,552,371 783,999 13,093,382 336,537
2020-06-20 17,316,689 867,675 14,203,555 392,042
2020-06-27 16,410,059 956,849 12,308,450 373,841
2020-07-04 17,188,908 964,744 13,549,797 495,296
2020-07-11 16,221,070 1,016,882 13,326,206 513,141
2020-07-18 16,691,210 1,122,677 13,259,954 518,584
2020-07-25 15,700,971 1,193,198 10,984,864 609,328
2020-08-01 15,112,240 1,262,021 11,504,089 433,416
2020-08-08 14,098,536 1,376,738 11,221,790 549,603
2020-08-15 13,792,016 1,381,317 13,841,939 469,028
2020-08-22 13,067,660 1,434,638 15,164,498 523,430
2020-08-29 13,283,721 1,547,611 14,786,785 490,514
2020-09-05 12,373,201 1,630,711 11,808,368 529,220
2020-09-12 12,363,489 1,832,754 12,153,925 510,610
2020-09-19 11,561,158 1,989,499 10,686,922 589,652
2020-09-26 10,172,332 2,824,685 10,978,217 579,582
2020-10-03 8,952,580 3,334,878 10,450,384 668,691
2020-10-10 8,038,175 3,711,089 10,622,725 615,066
2020-10-17 7,436,321 3,983,613 9,332,610 778,746
2020-10-24 6,837,941 4,143,389 9,433,127 746,403
2020-10-31 6,452,002 4,376,847 8,681,647 806,430
2020-11-07 6,037,690 4,509,284 9,147,753 757,496
2020-11-14 5,890,220 4,569,016 8,869,502 834,740
2020-11-21 5,213,781 4,532,876 8,555,763 741,078
2020-11-28 5,766,130 4,801,408 9,244,556 834,685
2020-12-05 5,457,941 4,793,230 9,271,112 841,463
2020-12-12 5,393,839 4,810,334 8,453,940 937,972
2020-12-19 5,205,841 4,491,413 8,383,387 1,070,810
2020-12-26 5,347,440 4,166,261 7,442,888 1,450,438
2021-01-02 5,727,359 3,026,952 5,707,397 1,526,887
2021-01-09 5,446,993 3,863,008 7,334,682 1,638,247
2021-01-16 5,188,211 3,604,894 7,218,801 1,826,573
2021-01-23 5,156,985 4,779,341 7,943,448 1,785,954
2021-01-30 5,003,178 4,062,189 7,685,857 1,590,360
2021-02-06 4,934,269 5,067,523 7,520,114 1,523,394
2021-02-13 4,794,195 4,468,389 7,329,172 1,437,170
2021-02-20 4,808,623 5,456,080 8,387,696 1,465,769
2021-02-27 4,457,888 4,816,523 7,616,593 1,237,929
2021-03-06 4,458,888 5,551,215 7,735,491 1,207,201

Other programs (mostly EB and STC) PUA PEUC Regular state UI Jul 2019 Jan 2020 Jul 2020 Jan 2021 0 10,000,000 20,000,000 30,000,000 40,000,000 Chart Data Caution: Trends over time in PUA claims may be distorted because when an individual is owed retroactive payments, some states report all retroactive PUA claims during the week the individual received their payment.

Click here for notes.

Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration, Initial Claims [ICSA], retrieved from Department of Labor (DOL), https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/persons.xls and https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf , March 25, 2021. Share Tweet Embed Download image

The good news in all of this is Congress's passage of the sweeping $1.9 trillion relief and recovery package. It is both providing crucial support to millions of working families and setting the stage for a robust recovery. One big concern, however, is that the bill's UI provisions are set to expire the first week in September, when, even in the best–case scenario, they will still be needed. By then, Congress needs to have put in place long-run UI reforms that include automatic triggers based on economic conditions.

[Mar 27, 2021] I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and vans lately

Notable quotes:
"... freedom is material: a human being must be free from material privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom. ..."
Mar 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Mar 24 2021 17:07 utc | 3

Health is primary indicator of people's happy life: Xi

Marx's concept of freedom is completely different from the liberal or pre-liberal concepts of freedom. For Marx, freedom is material: a human being must be free from material privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom.

Human beings can only be materially free. Don't fall for the moral victories of liberalism, the snake oil salesmen's promise of a spot in Paradise from the Abrahamics or the nihilist bullshittery from the Buddhists et al.


William Gruff , Mar 24 2021 17:47 utc | 6

vk @3

Excellent point by vk here. Despite sometimes pretending to myself that I am a Buddhist (I am really good at meditating!), real freedom is being free from need. Abstract and metaphysical "freedoms" are luxuries of the wealthy that few under the thumb of the empire can afford.

I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and vans lately. I guess from my Buddhist perspective they have been freed from the attachment to a residence. Who could have guessed that capitalism would be such a good teacher of the path to enlightenment?

karlof1 , Mar 24 2021 21:30 utc | 50

John @44--

It's freedom from Want. The Four Freedoms as articulated by FDR in 1941 were:

1.Freedom of speech
2.Freedom of worship
3.Freedom from want
4.Freedom from fear

Earlier this year on the 80th anniversary of FDR's speech, I wrote a series of comments on the topic. They remain the four main tasks needing to be accomplished for the Common Man to be genuinely free. At the time, they were to be the main goals of WW2; goals that were further articulated by Henry Wallace in 1942 & '43 in his speeches and writings. Currently, several nations have accomplished those four goals; none of them is a NATO/Neoliberal nation however.

[Mar 12, 2021] The US economy still has almost 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold

Mar 12, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The jobs picture overall has been improving with 379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been revising their employment and GDP forecasts are higher.

Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that the jobless rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.

Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site already lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings and our benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5% year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.

As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and pharmacy.

While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not, which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.

"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.

That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet -- along with their sweatpants.

[Mar 12, 2021] The pandemic 'will change how hiring is done forever,' says CEO of jobs website Indeed

Mar 12, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Remember job interviews pre-pandemic? The jitters, the choosing of just the right suit, the race to get there early, maybe even the drive across town or flight across the country for a shot at a new opportunity?

Like most everything else, the pandemic changed that dynamic. The jitters may remain, but in-person meetings are largely off the table, interviews among them. The CEO of one of the most-trafficked jobs websites says it's likely to stay that way even after people get back to the office.

"People being able to conduct an interview from the safety and convenience of their own home is going to change hiring forever," said Chris Hyams, Indeed CEO, in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live. "We believe this is the beginning of a massive secular shift."

"In April, we saw the number of requests for interviews to happen over video shoot up by 1,000%. Even as things have started to stabilize and the economy has opened up over the last 11 months, we've seen that continue to grow," Hyams said.

The jobs picture overall has been improving with 379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been revising their employment and GDP forecasts are higher. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that the jobless rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.

Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site already lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings and our benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5% year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.

As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and pharmacy.

While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not, which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.

"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.

That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet -- along with their sweatpants.

[Feb 21, 2021] It doesn't matter if we die of freezer burn sleeping on cardboard after we've been laid-off, evicted, and starved.

Feb 21, 2021 | www.unz.com

obwandiyag , says: February 12, 2021 at 5:10 am GMT • 8.8 days ago

Don't you know that whining about race, from the racist or the anti-racist side, doesn't matter, is more important than billionaires fucking us over. It's more important than anything. It doesn't matter if we die of freezer burn sleeping on cardboard after we've been laid-off, evicted, and starved. It doesn't matter if we die in a nuclear war that the billionaires started because they think it would be a good idea.

Nope. All that matters is whining about race. That's the most important thing. All else is trivial.

Ray Caruso , says: February 12, 2021 at 5:39 am GMT • 8.8 days ago

Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely and manifestly incompetent" and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak in China would never spread back to America".

The crucial factor here is that the US is not a nation per the most basic definition of the word, "a group of people born of a common ancestry". Consequently, as illustrated by job-killing "trade deals" and in countless other ways, there are plenty of "Americans" who don't care a whit about the fate of Americans. That makes it entirely plausible that the Deep State and/or one or more billionaires would release a virus in China in the full expectation that it would hit the US and that once here it would disrupt, impoverish, and kill millions of Americans. This was a win-win for them. The Deep State and the billionaires don't like China, which is a non-liberal country and curtails their power by restricting the use of US tech products. So if somehow the virus were contained in China it would be okay with them, as it just would be a smaller win. However, what they really wanted was for the virus circle back to the US. They knew that once here the disruption it would cause would further enrich and empower them while giving them a pretext to dump it all on Donald Trump, whom they would accuse of being incompetent and uncaring.

FHTEX , says: February 12, 2021 at 12:06 pm GMT • 8.5 days ago

While full of good insights, the problem with this article as far as COVID is concerned is that it misleads on the main point. COVID is not biowarfare, it is not a pandemic, it's just the flu. The US recorded the same death rate in 2020 as in previous years and, as Dr. Colleen Huber has documented, medical oxygen and supply sales were no different from previous years.

All those COVID-19 deaths were simply deaths of a different name. Of course, we knew from last March's Diamond Princess cruise–still by far the best controlled COVID "experiment"–that the case-fatality rate of COVID-19 for the general public is in the flu range.

But, it never was about COVID-19, which is just a glorified coronavirus of the type seen even before the dawn of humans. Long before the virus even hit the streets, the media and governments and medical establishments had secretly planned to to create a "panic-demic" to scare people into a whole lot of strange and dangerous behaviors–like giving up their liberties and economic futures. COVID-19 is just a medical nothing-burger that convinced a lot of otherwise sane people to scare themselves into oblivion. Or did it? If the post-election analyses are correct, Trump won in a major landslide and even those who voted against him were already suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. So, maybe the people weren't fooled by COVID so much as electorally raped by the vast elite cabal.

Digital Samizdat , says: February 12, 2021 at 12:06 pm GMT • 8.5 days ago

Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this mantra.

Maye both Washington and Beijing are guilty -- of a perpetrating a hoax.

Putin surprised me. He flatly refused the offer of Schwab and his ilk. He condemned the manner of recent pre-Covid growth, for all the growth went into a few deep pockets. Moreover, he noted that digital tycoons are dangerous for the world.

Emslander , says: February 12, 2021 at 12:12 pm GMT • 8.5 days ago

The next strong man we elect must be an actual STRONG man. I salute Trump for his genius in identifying the real majority in this country and for forcing the techno-oligarchs into overdoing their election steal. Now we need someone who is willing to establish real authority on behalf of the un-queer.

[Jan 29, 2021] Deaths of Despair and the Incidence of Excess Mortality in 2020

Notable quotes:
"... By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic. Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how. ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
Jan 29, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. While this paper does a good job of compiling and analyzing data about Covid deaths and excess mortality, and speculating about deaths of despair, I find one of its assumptions to be odd. It sees Covid-related deaths of despair as mainly the result of isolation. In the US, I would hazard that economic desperation is likely a significant factor. Think of the people who had successful or at least viable service businesses: hair stylists, personal trainers, caterers, conference organizers. One friend had a very successful business training and rehabbing pro and Olympic athletes. They've gone from pretty to very well situated to frantic about how they will get by.

While Mulligan does mention loss of income in passing in the end, it seems the more devastating but harder to measure damage is loss of livelihood, thinking that your way of earning a living might never come back to anything dimly approaching the old normal. Another catastrophic loss would be the possibility of winding up homeless, particularly for those who'd never faced that risk before.

By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU

The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic. Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how.

The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary, although often untested, steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some have worried that 'the cure is worse than the disease'. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton mocked such worries as a "pet theory about the fatal dangers of quarantine". They concluded in the summer of 2020 that "a wave of deaths of despair is highly unlikely" because, they said, the duration of a pandemic is measured in months whereas the underlying causes of drug abuse and suicide take many years to accumulate (Case and Deaton 2020). With the extraordinary social distancing continuing and mortality data accumulating, now is a good time to estimate the number of deaths of despair and their incidence.

As a theoretical matter, I am not confident that demand and supply conditions were even approximately constant as the country went into a pandemic recession. Take the demand and supply for non-medical opioid use, which before 2020 accounted for the majority of deaths of despair. 1 I acknowledge that the correlation between opioid fatalities and the unemployment rate has been only weakly positive (Council of Economic Advisers February 2020, Ruhm 2019). However, in previous recessions, the income of the unemployed and the nation generally fell.

In this recession, personal income increased record amounts while the majority of the unemployed received more income than they did when they were working (Congressional Budget Office 2020). 2 Whereas alcohol and drug abuse can occur in isolation, many normal, non-lethal consumption opportunities disappeared as the population socially distanced. Patients suffering pain may have less access to physical therapy during a pandemic.

On the supply side, social distancing may affect the production of safety. 3 A person who overdoses on opioids has a better chance of survival if the overdose event is observed contemporaneously by a person nearby who can administer treatment or call paramedics. 4 Socially distanced physicians may be more willing to grant opioid prescriptions over the phone rather than insist on an office visit. Although supply interruptions on the southern border may raise the price of heroin and fentanyl, the market may respond by mixing heroin with more fentanyl and other additives that make each consumption episode more dangerous (Mulligan 2020a, Wan and Long 2020).

Mortality is part of the full price of opioid consumption and therefore a breakdown in safety production may by itself reduce the quantity consumed but nonetheless increase mortality per capita as long as the demand for opioids is price inelastic. I emphasise that these theoretical hypotheses about opioid markets in 2020 are not yet tested empirically. My point is that mortality measurement is needed because the potential for extraordinary changes is real.

The Multiple Cause of Death Files (National Center for Health Statistics 1999–2018) contain information from all death certificates in the US and would be especially valuable for measuring causes of mortality in 2020. However, the public 2020 edition of those files is not expected until early 2022. For the time being, my recent study (Mulligan 2020b) used the 2015–2018 files to project the normal number of 2020 deaths, absent a pandemic.

'Excess deaths' are defined to be actual deaths minus projected deaths. Included in the projections, and therefore excluded from excess deaths, are some year-over-year increases in drug overdoses because they had been trending up in recent years, especially among working-age men, as illicit fentanyl diffused across the country.

I measure actual COVID-19 deaths and deaths from all causes from a Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) file for 2020 that begins in week five (the week beginning 26 January 2020) and aggregates to week, sex, and eleven age groups. To minimise underreporting, I only use the data in this file through week 40 (the week ending 3 October). In separate analyses, I also use medical examiner data from Cook County, Illinois, and San Diego County, California, which indicate deaths handled by those offices through September (Cook) or June 2020 (San Diego) and whether opioids were involved, and 12-month moving sums of drug overdoses reported by CDC (2020) through May 2020.

Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds what would have occurred if official COVID-19 deaths were combined with a normal number of deaths from other causes. The demographic and time patterns of the non-COVID-19 excess deaths (NCEDs) point to deaths of despair rather than an undercount of COVID-19 deaths. The flow of NCEDs increased steadily from March to June and then plateaued. They were disproportionately experienced by working-age men, including men as young as 15 to 24. The chart below, reproduced from Mulligan (2020b), shows these results for men aged 15–54. To compare the weekly timing of their excess deaths to a weekly measure of economic conditions, Figure 1 also includes continued state unemployment claims scaled by a factor of 25,000, shown together with deaths.

Figure 1 2020 weekly excess deaths by cause (men aged 15–54)

NCEDs are negative for elderly people before March 2020, as they were during the same time of 2019, due to mild flu seasons. Offsetting these negative NCEDs are about 30,000 positive NCEDs for the rest of the year, after accounting for an estimated 17,000 undercount of COVID-19 deaths in March and April.

If deaths of despair were the only causes of death with significant net contributions to NCEDs after February, 30,000 NCEDs would represent at least a 45% increase in deaths of despair from 2018, which itself was high by historical standards. At the same time, I cannot rule out the possibility that other non-COVID-19 causes of death or even a bit of COVID-19 undercounting (beyond my estimates) are contributing to the NCED totals.

One federal and various local measures of mortality from opioid overdose also point to mortality rates during the pandemic that exceed those of late 2019 and early 2020, which themselves exceed the rates for 2017 and 2018. These sources are not precise enough to indicate whether rates of fatal opioid overdose during the pandemic were 10% above the rates from before, 60% above, or somewhere in between.

Presumably, social isolation is part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of deaths of despair. However, the results so far do not say how many, if any, come from government stay-at-home orders versus various actions individual households and private businesses have taken to encourage social distancing. The data in this paper do not reveal how many deaths of despair are due to changes in 'demand' – such as changes in a person's income, outlook, or employment situation – versus changes in 'supply' – such as the production of safety and a changing composition of dangerous recreational substances.

See original post for references


Terry Flynn , January 29, 2021 at 10:50 am

I agree with Yves's counter-argument though I must declare an interest, having done work on quality of life for 20 years and hope I'm not breaking site rules (given recent reminders about what is and isn't ok).

The excess deaths (particularly among men) certainly to me seems more consistent with a collapse in one's ability to do the "valued things in life" and prioritise (to SOME extent) economic outcomes over relationships. After all, the old trope that men cope less well than women with retirement is found in happiness, quality of life and other such data.

Whether or not one agrees with me, surely a test as to whether the authors or Yves has the better explanation for the excess deaths would involve looking at well-being and mortality of men who retire earlier than they'd like vs that of those whose spouse died earlier than expected (including the proper control groups).

Bob Hertz , January 29, 2021 at 10:59 am

Thanks for posting.

It would be interesting to find out the following:

1. Did the states with the most generous unemployment benefits (like MA or NJ) have fewer deaths of despair that the states with much stingier benefits?

2. Did the states which imposed various shutdowns (mainly blue states) have more deaths of despair than the states which stayed open, like SD or Florida?

My guess is that deaths of despair are too idiosyncratic to blame on Covid lockdowns, but I am not an expert at all about this.

1 Kings , January 29, 2021 at 11:47 am

They could also look for the link with 0% interest on people's saved money and seeing no f..ing end in sight as the beatings continue. Going down to zero does not make the people jolly.

Wukchumni , January 29, 2021 at 11:02 am

It used to be only men who would upon meeting another man, where the first question is likely 'What do you do for a living?', but with the advent of as many women working, probably appropriate there too.

Nobody ever asks firstly what your hobby is or what sports team you follow, as the job query tells you everything about the person in one fell swoop.

There's a lot of people whose jobs were kind of everything in their lives, who had never gone without work ever, that are now chronically unemployed.

Tomonthebeach , January 29, 2021 at 12:24 pm

Anybody who has studied suicide readily appreciates that the act is impulsive. Case & Deaton are probably correct in the limited sense of economic despair derived from transitioning away from fossil fuels and industrial production to jobs requiring education unreachable to middle-aged coal miners. However, those deaths were likely derived from easy access to opioids. Most of those job losses led workers to make disability claims (achy backs) to extend income. The treatment for achy back is pain killers – oxy-something or other back then. Those same pills killed the pain of failure. Over time, addiction set in and, according to Koob & LeMoal's 2008 addiction model, increased consumption becomes necessary to stay pain-free. Physicians would surely not up dosages indefinitely and that put addicts on the street literally. All that took time to evolve. But times have changed. Using your family doc to get you high is no longer an option. So, Mulligan makes sense.

IM Doc , January 29, 2021 at 1:39 pm

As an internist with boots on the ground – I cannot express enough gratitude that these kinds of reports are getting out.

As busy as I have been this past year with COVID, the actual patients struggling with anxiety and depression have just dwarved the actual COVID numbers.

I cannot even begin to tell you the heartbreak of being a provider and having 20-40 year old young men in your office crying their eyes out. Lots of job loss, lots of income issues, lots of not being able to pay for things for your kids. All the while being completely unable to find other work or extra work. It is truly a nightmare for these people. And the attitude by so many of the lockdown Karens who seem to have no conception of how this is all going down for these young people has been deeply worrisome to me.
It is really not getting better – if anything slowly getting worse.

I would agree with the article above that loneliness is a problem – this is for the minority – mainly older people and should not be dismissed.

Loneliness is not the big problem however, in my experience. The big problem is the economic despair for our young people and the complete loss of socialization for our teenagers and kids.

And I have no clue what the answer is.

[Nov 28, 2020] Krystal and Saagar- New Study Shows Deaths Of Despair Hitting Poor Working Class Of ALL Races

Nov 28, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Daniel George @drdanielgeorge • Nov 10 000

A research team I'm part of just published data looking at the 'diseases of despair' crisis over the last decade (full article is free and available online).

A brief summary of our findings below, and some thoughts....

Trends in the diagnosis of diseases of despair in the United States...

Background and objective Increasing mortality and decreasing life expectancy in the USA are largely attributable to accidental...

See also: Saagar Enjeti- How Both Parties FAILED Us On Stimulus Guaranteeing Mass Unemployment, Business Death - YouTube

[Nov 28, 2020] Diseases of despair diagnoses increase in Pennsylvania - EurekAlert! Science News

Nov 28, 2020 | www.eurekalert.org

Diseases of despair diagnoses increase in Pennsylvania

PENN STATE

Research News

AUDIO: FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 100 YEARS, LIFE EXPECTANCY IS DECREASING IN THE UNITED STATES. IN THIS EPISODE, DR. LARRY SINOWAY DISCUSSES THE DECLINE AND HOW IT RELATES TO... view more

CREDIT: PENN STATE CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Medical diagnoses involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- commonly referred to as diseases of despair -- increased in Pennsylvania health insurance claims between the years 2007 and 2018, according to researchers from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics.

Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015. Case and Deaton's research observed a decline in life expectancy of middle-aged white men and women between 1999 and 2015 -- the first such decline since the flu pandemic of 1918. They theorized that this decline is associated with the social and economic downturn in rural communities and small towns. These changes include loss of industry, falling wages, lower marriage rates, increasing barriers to higher education, an increase in one-parent homes and a loss of social infrastructure.

"It is theorized that these changes have fostered growing feelings of despair including disillusionment, precariousness and resignation in many peoples' lives," Daniel George, associate professor of humanities and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, said. "Despair can trigger emotional, cognitive, behavioral and even biological changes, increasing the likelihood of diseases that can progress and ultimately culminate in deaths of despair."

With the commonwealth's considerable rural and small-town population, particularly around Penn State campuses, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute led a research study to understand the rate of diseases of despair in Pennsylvania. Institute researchers collaborated with Highmark Health, one of the state's largest health insurance providers. Highmark provides employer-sponsored, individual, Affordable Care Act and Medicare plans.

Highmark Health's Enterprise Analytics team analyzed the claims of more than 12 million people on their plans from 2007 to 2018. Penn State did not have access to Highmark member data or individual private health information. Although the insurance claims included members from neighboring states, including West Virginia, Delaware, and Ohio, the majority of the claims were from Pennsylvania residents. Researchers reported their results in BMJ Open .

The researchers defined diseases of despair as diagnoses related to alcohol use, substance use and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. They searched the claims data for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes related to these diagnoses. ICD codes form a standardized system maintained by the World Health Organization and are used in health records and for billing.

The researchers found that the rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair increased significantly in the Highmark claims in the past decade. Nearly one in 20 people in the study sample was diagnosed with a disease of despair. Between 2009 and 2018, the rates of alcohol-, substance-, and suicide-related diagnoses increased by 37%, 94% and 170%. Following Case and Deaton's findings, the researchers saw the most substantial percentage increase in disease of despair diagnoses among men ages 35 to 74, followed by women ages 55 to 74 and 18 to 34.

The rate of alcohol-related diagnoses significantly increased among men and women ages 18 and over. The most dramatic increases were among men and women ages 55 to 74. Rates increased for men in this age group by 50% and 80% for women.

The rate of substance-related diagnoses roughly doubled for men and women ages 35 to 54 and increased by 170% in ages 55 to 74. In 2018, the most recent year of claims included in the study, rates of substance-use diagnoses were highest in 18-to-34-year-olds.

The rate of diagnoses related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased for all age groups. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, rates increased by at least 200%. The rate for all other age groups increased by at least 60%.

The type of insurance patients had also mattered. People with Medicare insurance had 1.5 times higher odds of having a disease of despair diagnosis and those with Affordable Care Act insurance had 1.3 times higher odds.

One increase stood out to researchers: among infants, substance-related diagnoses doubled.

"This increase was entirely attributable to neonatal abstinence syndrome and corresponded closely with increases in substance-related disorders among women of childbearing age," Emily Brignone, senior research scientist, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics, said.

Neonatal abstinence syndrome occurs when a baby withdraws from substances, especially opioids, exposed to in the womb.

Future research can concentrate on identifying "hot spots" of diseases of despair diagnoses in the commonwealth to then study the social and economic conditions in these areas. With this data, researchers can potentially create predictive models to identify communities at risk and develop interventions.

"We found a broad view of who is impacted by increases in diseases of despair, which cross racial, ethnic and geographic groups," Jennifer Kraschnewski, professor of medicine, public health sciences and pediatrics, said. "Although originally thought to mostly affect rural communities, these increases in all middle-aged adults across the rural-urban continuum likely foreshadows future premature deaths."

###

National Center for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health through Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute funded this research.

A podcast about this topic is available here.

Other researchers on this project were Lawrence Sinoway, director, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute; Curren Katz and Robert Gladden, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics; Charity Sauder, administrative director, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute; and Andrea Murray, project manager, Penn State College of Medicine.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

[Oct 11, 2020] A partial solution to what is coming

Oct 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

2banana , 1 day ago

I have come up with a partial solution to what is coming. Feel free to add.

1. Take care of your health. Exercise. Eat healthy even if it costs a little more.


2. Stay out of debt. Live beneath your means.


3. Keep learning. Learn new skills. Learn how to fix and build things yourself. Invest in yourself.


4. Realize that government (at all levels) will lie to you. Government will not take care of you. Government will take everything you have if it means they stay in power just one day longer.


5. Buy a little gold and silver. Bitcoin if you must. But realize that this is just a little insurance and not much else.


6. Stay far away from bubbles. Hard to do when friends and relatives are getting "rich" and think you the fool.


7. Relationships are worth far more than "stuff." Families are worth way more than "stuff."


8. Enjoy life. It doesn't take lots of money.


9. Learn how to shoot safely and have at least one gun. Even if you think you will never touch it again.


10. Be part of "something" bigger than yourself such as a Church or a volunteer organization. All the issues we see today are the same issues seen 2000 years ago.

[Sep 26, 2020] The Stockdale Paradox

Notable quotes:
"... You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ..."
Sep 26, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

grug-cave-head , 2 hours ago

Let me post something.

The Stockdale Paradox[ edit ]

James C. Collins related a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp. [21] [ non-primary source needed ] When Collins asked which prisoners didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:

Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This is a very important lesson.

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. [22]

Collins called this the Stockdale Paradox. [21]

[Aug 29, 2020] Endurance- Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Lansing, Alfred, eBook - Amazon.com

Aug 29, 2020 | www.amazon.com

The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance , the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

>


Bama Fan

The book gave me several adrenaline rushes...it's that well written.

5.0 out of 5 stars The book gave me several adrenaline rushes...it's that well written. Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2018 Verified Purchase This is an amazing account of Shackleton's journey that went into intricate details about the twists and turns every step of the way for this small group of brave explorers. It reads like a thrilling fiction novel, but the fact that it is non-fiction makes it even more astounding. The description really paints a true picture of the hellacious conditions that they continued to face time and time again. This book really put into perspective what a challenge truly is. A simple headache that we might get now is nowhere near getting your sleeping bag drenched and still having to sleep in it in temperatures near 0 when you don't know how the weather or current is going to change while you try to sleep. Great read and really hard to put down because even though you think you know what's going to happen, you still have to find out how. Would highly recommend if you're looking for a good book that you will have trouble putting down. 38 people found this helpful

Helpful Comment Report abuse >
Twostory
Cold

5.0 out of 5 stars Cold Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2018 Verified Purchase Very cold. Always cold. This is a very detailed (true) story about men trying to survive in a very hostile environment in c. 1915. Stark and full of detail, the reader almost gets to feel the cold, hunger and pain the crew experienced while trying to survive Antarctica and return to civilization. it's amazing that anyone survived this ordeal let alone all of them. Sadly, many creatures and peaceful animals paid the price for mans survival. The details often are so descriptive and redundant due to the scope of the story, that it sometimes becomes repetitive and familiar. This is because of the constant distress and horrible conditions the crew experienced for such a long time. It's a well documented and exciting story with a bit of a history lesson that really held my interest. It's a popular book that is deserving of its high ratings. 21 people found this helpful

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George E. Dawson
A REMARKABLE TALE OF SURVIVAL, SUPERBLY TOLD.

5.0 out of 5 stars A REMARKABLE TALE OF SURVIVAL, SUPERBLY TOLD. Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2017 Verified Purchase "There can be little doubt that Shackleton, in his way, was an extraordinary leader of men." (p. 11).

There is no doubt in my mind that I would not be able to endure even one, the best, day of the unimaginable hardships that the men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Exposition (1914-17) -- under the leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleton -- struggled with for more than 400 days. They endured and survived some of the most incredible, unbelievable, conditions ever experienced; and Alfred Lansing captures the urgency, the deprivation, and the desperation, with spellbinding storytelling.

Recommendation: Best adventure story, ever. Should be read by all, especially those of high school age.

"In all the world there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age -- no warmth, no life, no movement." (p. 46).

Basic Books. Kindle Edition, 268 pages. 16 people found this helpful

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Dataman
A Riveting True Story of Adventure, Survival and Hope

5.0 out of 5 stars A Riveting True Story of Adventure, Survival and Hope Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2014 Verified Purchase In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on an expedition to make the first land crossing of the barren Antarctic continent from the east to the west coast. The expedition failed to accomplish its objective, but became recognized instead as an amazing feat of endurance. Shackleton and a crew of 27 (plus one stowaway) first headed to the Weddell Sea on the ship Endurance. Their ship was trapped by pack ice short of their destination and eventually crushed. Forced to abandon ship, the men were trapped on ice floes for months while they drifted north. Once they were far enough north that the ice thinned somewhat, they were forced to journey in lifeboats they'd dragged off the ship. After six terrible days, they made it to uninhabited Elephant Island; from there Shackleton and five other men set off in an open 22-foot boat on an incredible 800-mile voyage across the notoriously tempestuous Drake Passage to South Georgia Island, where they hiked across the island's mountain range to reach a whaling camp. From there, they returned in a ship to rescue the men left behind on Elephant Island.

That these men were able to survive in the harsh, barren conditions of Antarctica, where temperatures frequently fell below zero is amazing. It's nearly unimaginable that these men could survive for almost two years, their lives marked by a seemingly endless stretch of misery, suffering, and boredom, not to mention the threat of starvation. At every turn, their situation seems to go from bad to worse. If this were a work of fiction, one would be inclined to claim the story was simply too far-fetched. But Endurance isn't just a tale of misery, it is a vivid description of their journey, the dangers they faced, and the obstacles they overcame. Through all of this, Shackleton has never lost a man.

Alfred Lansing's book, written in 1958 from interviews and journals of the survivors, is now back in print. It's a riveting tale of adventure, survival and hope. It is also a rare historical, non-fiction book that is as exciting as any novel. I've read a number of stories of survival and would rate this as the best of all I have read. This is one of the great adventure stories of our time. Don't miss it. Read more 45 people found this helpful

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Sam
I recommend this book to add to the collection of those ...

5.0 out of 5 stars I recommend this book to add to the collection of those ... Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2015 Verified Purchase What a page turner. Lansing is a master for the description of those explorers hardships, desire to follow Shacketon' orders. I kept saying to myself that there are few humans today that are as tough as those men. I recommend this book to add to the collection of those books that give us the knowledge of what it takes to conquer a goal. 51 people found this helpful

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S. Cherkas
By far one of the best books I've ever read, & I've read many!

5.0 out of 5 stars By far one of the best books I've ever read, & I've read many! Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2019 Verified Purchase I just finished reading 2 of Grann's books - Lost City of Z & The White Darkness. The latter is the story of Henry Worsley, the grandson of Frank Worsley one of the "extraordinary" men in Lansing's Endurance. Grann suggested Endurance as a worthy read. Sir Earnest Shackleton & Frank Worsley were two of some 20 men who incredibly survived a journey to Antarctica that went awry from almost its onset. Two years later all hands were rescued through the extraordinary will of the men who found themselves at the mercy of the elements. Lansing's research & grasp of the situation in which these men found themselves in conjunction with his writing style has put this book at the top of my all time favorites! Fabulous! Fabulous! Anyone 12 or older will be blown away by this true story & this writer! 4 people found this helpful

[Jul 30, 2020] Building an Inclusive Post-Pandemic American Workforce by Michele Steeb Michele Steeb

Jul 30, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

>

ll eyes are on the declining number of unemployed. The May and June jobs reports chronicle the reabsorption of 5.3 million who lost their jobs in the COVID-19 pandemic. Twelve million jobs to go to reach pre-pandemic employment.

Yet prior to the pandemic, there were 18 million Americans missing from the economy. These persons were neither employed nor seeking employment -- nor retirees, students or in-home caregivers -- and therefore were excluded from the Bureau of Labor Statistics count of the workforce. In order that America emerge from the pandemic stronger than before, a concerted initiative by federal and state governments to move them back into the economy -- using existing resources -- must begin now.

...

Research on the social determinants of health finds that employment has a very strong correlation with positive health outcomes. To exist as a non-participant in the economy is thus an invitation to dire health outcomes including premature death.

What's more, these individuals are needed as contributors to our national commonweal, fueling increased economic and social progress. And people engaged in productive activities are much less likely to engage in negative and destructive behaviors.

... The USDA's food stamp program has a robustly funded, though underutilized, employment and training grant. States use the excuse of USDA's partial match requirement as a reason to opt out.

[Jun 30, 2020] Older Workers Targeted in Trump's Lawsuit to End Obamacare by DEAN BAKER

Notable quotes:
"... This would be bad news for anyone with a serious health condition, but it would be especially bad news for the oldest pre-Medicare age group, people between the ages of 55 and 64. This group currently faces average premiums of close to $10,000 a year per person for insurance purchased through the ACA exchanges. Insurers could easily charge people with serious health conditions two or three times this amount if the Trump administration wins its case. ..."
"... The 55 to 64 age group will also be hard hit because they are far more likely to have serious health issues than younger people. Just 18 percent of the people in the youngest 18 to 34 age group have a serious health condition, compared to 44 percent of those in the 55 to 64 age group, as shown in the figure above. ..."
Jun 30, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

Anne , June 30, 2020 12:49 pm

https://cepr.net/older-workers-targeted-in-trumps-lawsuit-to-end-obamacare/

June 30, 2020

Older Workers Targeted in Trump's Lawsuit to End Obamacare
By DEAN BAKER

The Trump administration is supporting a lawsuit which seeks to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in its entirety. The implication is that a large share of the older workers now able to afford health insurance as a result of the ACA will no longer be able to afford it if the Trump administration wins its lawsuit.

Furthermore, if the suit succeeds it will both end the expansion of Medicaid, which has insured tens of millions of people, and again allow discrimination against people with serious health conditions. Ending this discrimination was one of the major goals of the ACA. The issue is that insurers don't want to insure people who are likely to have health issues that cost them money. While they are happy to insure healthy people with few medical expenses, people with heart disease, diabetes, or other health conditions are a bad deal for insurers.

Before the ACA, insurers could charge outlandish fees to cover people with health conditions, or simply refuse to insure them altogether. The ACA required insurers to cover everyone within an age bracket at the same price, regardless of their health. If the Trump administration has its way, we would go back to the world where insurers could charge people with health issues whatever they wanted, or alternatively, just deny them coverage.

This would be bad news for anyone with a serious health condition, but it would be especially bad news for the oldest pre-Medicare age group, people between the ages of 55 and 64. This group currently faces average premiums of close to $10,000 a year per person for insurance purchased through the ACA exchanges. Insurers could easily charge people with serious health conditions two or three times this amount if the Trump administration wins its case.

And, since a Trump victory would eliminate the ACA subsidiaries, people in this age group with health conditions could be looking to pay $20,000 to $30,000 a year for insurance, with no help from the government. That will be especially hard since many people with serious health conditions are unable to work full-time jobs, and some can't work at all.
[Graph]

The 55 to 64 age group will also be hard hit because they are far more likely to have serious health issues than younger people. Just 18 percent of the people in the youngest 18 to 34 age group have a serious health condition, compared to 44 percent of those in the 55 to 64 age group, as shown in the figure above.

The ACA has many inadequacies, but it has allowed tens of millions to get insurance who could not otherwise. Donald Trump wants to take this insurance away.

[Jun 16, 2020] "That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." by George Carlin

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Old saying: A Recession is when your neighbor loses their Job. A Depression is when you lose your Job. ..."
"... A lot of mega wealthy people are cheats. They get insider info, they don't pay people and do all they can to provide the least amount of value possible while tricking suckers into buying their crap. Don't even get me started on trust fund brats who come out of the womb thinking they are Warren buffet level genius in business. ..."
"... There's a documentary about Wal-Mart that has the best title ever: The High Cost of Low Cost ..."
"... Globalism killed the American dream. We can buy cheap goods made somewhere else if we have a job here that pays us enough money. ..."
Jun 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Dave C , 4 days ago

"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." -George Carlin

Robert Schupp , 4 days ago

You can't just move to American cities to pursue opportunity; even the high wages paid in New York are rendered unhelpful because the cost of housing is so high.


Dingo Jones
, 3 days ago

@JOHN GAGLIANO Cost of living is ridiculous too.

Dirtysparkles , 4 days ago

Our country has become the American Nightmare

Jean-Pierre S , 4 days ago

Martin Luther King, Jr. was vilified and ultimately murdered when he was helping organize a Poor People's Campaign. Racial justice means economic justice.

John Sanders , 3 days ago

Old saying: A Recession is when your neighbor loses their Job. A Depression is when you lose your Job.

Adriano de Jesus , 4 days ago

A lot of mega wealthy people are cheats. They get insider info, they don't pay people and do all they can to provide the least amount of value possible while tricking suckers into buying their crap. Don't even get me started on trust fund brats who come out of the womb thinking they are Warren buffet level genius in business.

Ammon Weser , 4 days ago

There's a documentary about Wal-Mart that has the best title ever: The High Cost of Low Cost

crazyman8472 , 4 days ago

Night Owl: "What the hell happened to us? What happened to the American Dream?"

Comedian: "What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're looking at it."

-- Watchmen

David Tidwell , 4 days ago

Nailed it. As a millennial, I'm sick of being told to just "deal with it" when the cards have always been stacked against me. Am I surviving? Yes. Am I thriving? No.

D dicin , 4 days ago

When the reserve status of the American dollar goes away, then it will become apparent how poor the US really is. You cannot maintain a country without retention of the ability to manufacture the articles you use on a daily basis. The military budget and all the jobs it brings will have to shrink catastrophically.

farber2 , 4 days ago

American trance. The billionaires hypnotized people with this lie.

Michael D , 4 days ago (edited)

...and sometimes you CAN'T afford to move. You can't find a decent job. You certainly can't build a meaningful savings. You can't find an apartment. And if you have kids? That makes it even harder. I've been trying to move for years, but the conditions have to be perfect to do it responsibly. The American Dream died for me once I realized that no matter the choices I made, my four years of college, my years of saving and working hard....I do NOT have upward mobility. For me, the American Dream is dead. I've been finding a new dream. The human dream.

B Sim , 3 days ago

This is a very truncated view. You need to expand your thinking. WHY has the system been so overtly corrupted? It's globalism that has pushed all this economic pressure on the millennials and the middle class. It was the elites, working with corrupt politicians, that rigged the game so the law benefited them.

This is all reversible. History shows that capitalism can be properly regulated in a way that benefits all. The answer to the problem is to bring back those rules, not implement socialism.

Trump has:

  • - Ended the free trade deals
  • - Imposed Protective tarriffs to defend American jobs and workers
  • - Lowered corporate taxes to incentivize business to locate within us borders.
  • - Limited immigration to reduce the supply of low skilled labor within US borders.

The result? before COVID hit the average American worker saw the first inflation adjusted wage increase in over 30 years!

This is why the fake news and hollywood continue to propagandize the masses into hating Trump.

Trump is implementing economic policies good for the people and bad for the elites

Sound Author , 3 days ago

The dream was never alive in the first place. It was always bullshit.

Julia Galaudet , 4 days ago

Maybe it's time for a maximum wage.

Scott Clark , 4 days ago

Private equity strips the country for years! It's the AMERICAN DREAM!!!

Siri Erieott , 4 days ago

A dream for 1%, a nightmare for 99%.

andrew kubiak , 4 days ago

Globalism killed the American dream. We can buy cheap goods made somewhere else if we have a job here that pays us enough money.

[Jun 16, 2020] Krystal Ball: The American dream is dead, good riddance

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Debt-free is the new American dream ..."
Jun 12, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Krystal Ball exposes the delusion of the American dream.

About Rising: Rising is a weekday morning show with bipartisan hosts that breaks the mold of morning TV by taking viewers inside the halls of Washington power like never before. The show leans into the day's political cycle with cutting edge analysis from DC insiders who can predict what is going to happen.

It also sets the day's political agenda by breaking exclusive news with a team of scoop-driven reporters and demanding answers during interviews with the country's most important political newsmakers.

Owen Cousino , 4 days ago

Debt-free is the new American dream

poppaDehorn , 4 days ago

Got my degree just as the great recession hit. Couldn't find real work for 3 years, not using my degree... But it was work. now after 8 years, im laid off. I did everything "right". do good in school, go to college, get a job...

I've never been fired in my life. its always, "Your contract is up" "Sorry we cant afford to keep you", "You can make more money collecting! but we'll give a recommendation if you find anything."

Now I'm back where i started... only now I have new house and a family to support... no pressure.

[Jun 04, 2020] The Gig Economy: WTF? Precarity and Work under Neoliberalism

Highly recommended!
"The gig economy is just a way for corporations to cut the cost of employees, by turning them into subcontractors. They blur the line between employee and subcontractors by having tight rules like an employer, and since most people have a employee mentality, the company nurtures the idea that they somehow are more like employees, then they get mostly good workers, working hard for very little compensation. The Gig economy is just another sign of our failing way of life."
Notable quotes:
"... The gig economy would be great if we lived in a society where health care is free, food is cheap, housing is common, and nobody suffers from economic Issues Which is not what we are living in ..."
"... Neo-liberals - we support freedom and stuff. Removes mask Is actually corporation lapdogs. ..."
Jun 04, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Unlike most developments in the employment market, the Gig Economy has received a great deal of press attention and established itself firmly as a point of reference in the popular consciousness. In recent years, increasing numbers of people have turned to services such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Just Eat, TaskRabbit and Fiverr as either a side hustle or their main source of income.

Following on from my video on neoliberalism and neoliberal capitalism, in today's episode of What the Theory?, we look deeper into how the gig economy (or sharing economy) works and what differentiates it from the rest of the economy. We ask whether the gig economy is truly an opportunity for those wanting a more flexible work arrangement or whether it is simply a means for multinational corporations to circumvent hard-won workers rights and labour laws.

Finally, we also consider whether there might be some historical precedents to the sharing economy in the early industrial period and look at some of the challenges facing those attempting to organise Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers and other gig economy workers into trade unions in order to negotiate for better rates of pay and conditions.

If you'd like to support my channel then please do check out my Patreon page at http://patreon.com/tomnicholas


Simple Things , 5 months ago

Unregulated capitalism? You mean like child labor and passing the hat when a worker dies in an accident? They don't want workers. They want people who are desperate.

Tom Nicholas , 5 months ago

Well, how far it all goes is something that remains to be seen. I don't think we'll get as far as child labour but the curation of dependence is something that's definitely in progress.

memeoverlord 2010 , 5 months ago

They don't want people who are desperate, they want slaves.

Tyler Potts , 4 months ago

Tom Nicholas but if they could they would have kids gigging. The gig economy is a scam, I'd rather pay more for an Uber and have unionized drivers.

Tyler Potts , 4 months ago

Daxton Lyon except the majority of entrepreneurs and business owners didn't come Into their business ownership via merit. You are forgetting that most of these people are born into a situation where they have access to capital, access to legal services and education. Sure there are a minority of people who make it from nothing but that number is diminishingly small.

John Jourdan , 3 months ago

I notice not one of you mentioned immigrants. lol

EYTPS , 2 months ago

Daxton Lyon "You don't like the gig? Do something else." Too bad the economy is currently setup to where around half of individuals are limited to gig and don't have the resources and money to do anything else.

EYTPS , 2 months ago

Daxton Lyon "If any of you did, your panzy responses regarding corporate greed would be squashed!" No, they wouldn't, but keep performing those red herrings and hasty, extremely-worshipping generalizations about entrepreneurship to distract from the point; I'm sure they'll catch on.

Justin Goretoy , 5 months ago

Neoliberalism is the religious belief that markets are magical and will regulate themselves.

User Name , 4 months ago

The gig economy would be great if we lived in a society where health care is free, food is cheap, housing is common, and nobody suffers from economic Issues Which is not what we are living in

memeoverlord 2010 , 5 months ago

Neo-liberals - we support freedom and stuff. Removes mask Is actually corporation lapdogs.

[Jun 02, 2020] Don't understand the protests? What you're seeing is people pushed to the edge

Jun 02, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

  1. anne , May 31, 2020 4:48 pm

    https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-30/dont-understand-the-protests-what-youre-seeing-is-people-pushed-to-the-edge

    May 30, 2020

    Don't understand the protests? What you're seeing is people pushed to the edge
    By KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR – Los Angeles Times

    What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck while Floyd croaked, "I can't breathe"?

    If you're white, you probably muttered a horrified, "Oh, my God" while shaking your head at the cruel injustice. If you're black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, "Not @#$%! again!" Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn't for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store's video showed he wasn't. And how the cop on Floyd's neck wasn't an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.

    Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming the black man who asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black Yale University grad student napping in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a white student. Because you realize it's not just a supposed "black criminal" who is targeted, it's the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.

    You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops.

    What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you're white, you may be thinking, "They certainly aren't social distancing." Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, "Well, that just hurts their cause." Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, "That's putting the cause backward."

    You're not wrong -- but you're not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness -- write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change -- the needle hardly budges.

    But COVID-19 has been slamming the consequences of all that home as we die at a significantly higher rate than whites, are the first to lose our jobs, and watch helplessly as Republicans try to keep us from voting .

Bert Schlitz , May 31, 2020 7:14 pm

The protests are self centered crap blacks do year after year. Considering 370 whites over 100 Latinos were killed by cops, many as bad as that guy in minnie. Blacks have a Trumptard mentality. We have a ecological disaster, a economic disaster and pandemic(when th they are spreading). Yet let's whine about one bad cop related homicide.

This may begin the breakup of the Democratic party and the blacks. The differences are just to large.

Kaleberg , May 31, 2020 9:40 pm

It's rather sad that it takes a massive civil disturbance to get the authorities to arrest a man videotaped killing another. You'd think that would just happen as a matter of course, but that's how it works in this country.

Denis Drew , June 1, 2020 10:17 am

THE WAY BACK -- THE ONLY WAY BACK -- BOTH ECONOMICALLY AND POLITICALLY (pardon me if I take up a lot of space -- almost everyone else has said most of what they want to say)

EITC shifts only 2% of income while 40% of American workers earn less that what we think the minimum wage should be -- $15/hr.
http://fortune.com/2015/04/13/who-makes-15-per-hour/

The minimum wage itself should only mark the highest wage that we presume firms with highest labor costs can pay* -- like fast food with 25% labor costs. Lower labor cost businesses -- e.g., retail like Walgreens and Target with 10-15% labor costs can potentially pay north of $20/hr; Walmart with 7% labor costs, $25/hr!

That kind of income can only be squeezed out of the consumer market (meaning out of the consumer) by labor union bargaining.

Raise fast food wages from $10/hr to $15/hr and prices go up only a doable 12.5%. Raise Walgreens, Target from $10/hr to $20/hr and prices there only go up a piddling 6.25%. Keeping the math easy here -- I know that Walgreens and Target pay more to start but that only reinforces my argument about how much labor income is being left on the (missing) bargaining table.

Hook up Walmart with 7% labor costs with the Teamsters Union and the wage and benefit sky might be the limit! Don't forget (everybody seems to) that as more income shifts to lower wage workers, more demand starts to come from lower wage workers -- reinforcing their job security as they spend more proportionately at lower wage firms (does not work for low wage employees of high end restaurants -- the exception that actually proves the rule).

Add in sector wide labor agreements and watch Germany appear on this side of the Atlantic overnight.
* * * * * *

If Republicans held the House in the last (115th) Congress they would have passed HR2723-Employee Rights Act -- mandating new union recertification/decertification paper ballots in any bargaining unit that has had experienced "turnover, expansion, or alteration by merger of unit represented employees exceeding 50 percent of the bargaining unit" by the date of the enactment -- and for all time from thereafter. Trump would have signed it and virtually every union in the country would have experienced mandated recert/decert votes in every bargaining unit.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2723/text

Democrats can make the most obvious point about what was lacking in the Republican bill by pretending to be for a cert/recert bill that mandates union ballots only at places where there is no union now. Republicans jumping up and down can scream the point for us that there is no reason to have ballots in non union places and not in unionized workplaces -- and vice versa.
* * * * * *

Biggest problem advocating the vastly attractive and all healing proposal of federally mandated cert/recert/decert elections seems to be that nobody will discuss it as long as nobody else discusses it -- some kind of innate social behavior I think, from deep in our (pea sized) midbrains. How else can you explain the perfect pitch's neglect. I suspect that if I waved a $100 bill in front of a bunch of progressives and offered it to the first one would say the words out loud: "Regularly scheduled union elections are the only way to restore shared prosperity and political fairness to America", that I might not get one taker. FWIW.

Another big problem when I try to talk to workers about this on the street -- just to get a reaction -- is that more than half have no idea in the world what unions are all about. Those who do understand, think the idea so sensible they often think action must be pending.

Here is Andrew Strom's take:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/

[see just below for last link -- can't lay more than three at a time :-)]

Denis Drew , June 1, 2020 10:17 am

*1968 federal minimum was $12/hr – indicating that consumer support was there at half today's per capita income.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.60&year1=196801&year2=202001

rick shapiro , June 1, 2020 10:46 am

econ101 should tell you that the eitc is a subsidy to the corporations that hire droves of low-paid workers, with meagre spillover to the workers themselves. More effective and persistent improvements to social justice would come from significant increases to the minimum wage, societal support to unionization, and other efforts to increase the threshold of what is considered by society to be the bare minimum of compensation for work.
The concomitant decline in the value of the dollar and the terms of trade would be small compared to the reduction in inequality.

Bernard , June 1, 2020 5:21 pm

such a third world country as America , riots are the only way to get heard for some. the Elite have been looting us blind for decades, the Covid bail outs to Corporations by the Elites in DC as the latest installment of Capitalist theft know as Business as Usual.
it's all about the money.
sick,sick country praising capitalism over everything else.
the comfortable white people are afraid of losing what they have. Divide and Conquer is the Republican and now Democratic way they run America.

to the rich go the spoils. the rest, well. screw them .

the Lee Atwater idea to use coded language when St. Reagan implemented the destruction of America society, coincided with St. Thatcher's destruction of England.

the White elites post Civil War in the South knew how to divide the poor whites and the poor blacks.

that is how we got to where we are now.

Did you see any of the bankers go to jail for the 2008 ripoff?
not one and they got bonuses for their "deeds."

America, such a nation of Grifters, Thieves and Scam artist. like Pelosi , McConnel and all the people in DC and the Business men who sold out our country and the American people for "small change".

God forbid Corporations should ever have to pay for the damage they have done to America and its" people. My RIGHT to Greed trumps your right to clean air, water, safe neighborhoods, says Capitalism!

the Rich get richer and the poor get poorer, Everybody Knows!!!

But let's not focus on things lest some uncomfortable truths.

and wonder why riots happen, Not at All!

[Jun 01, 2020] It didn't happen overnight

Jun 01, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

Dan Crawford | May 31, 2020 9:12 am

US/Global Economics by Ken Melvin

3 rd World

--

It didn't happen overnight.

The nightly news, when talking about the effect of the pandemic on the populace in, say, Southeast Asian, African, South American, countries, invariably refer to the tenuous hold on life of their working poor; they don't really have a job. Each day they rise and go forth looking for work that pays enough that they and their family can continue to subsist. It is, in some countries, a long-standing problem.

Sound too familiar? Sometime in the late 80s (??) Americans began to see day labors line up at Home Depot and Lowe's lots in numbers not seen since The Great Depression. Manufacturing Corporations began subbing out their work to sub-contractors, otherwise known as employees without benefits; Construction Contractors subbed out construction work to these employees without benefits; Engineering Firms subbed out engineering to these employees without benefits; Landscapers' workers were now sub-contractors/independent contractors; Here, in the SF Bay Area, time and again, we saw vans loads of undocumented Hispanics under a 'Labor Contractor' come in from the Central Valley to build condos; the white Contractor for the project didn't have a single employee; none of the workers got a W-2. Recall watching, sometime in the 90s (??), a familiar, well dressed, rotund guest from Wall Street, on the PBS News Hour, forcefully proclaiming to the TV audience:

American workers are going to have to learn to compete with the Chinese; Civil Service employees, factory employees, are all going to have to work for less

All this subcontracting, independent contractors, was a scam, a scam meant to circumvent paying going wages and benefits, to enhance profit margins; a scam that transferred more wealth to the top. Meanwhile back at The Ranch, after the H1B Immigration Act of 1990, Microsoft could hire programmers from India for one-half the cost of a citizen programmer. Half of Bill Gates' fortune was resultant these labor savings; the other half was made off those not US Citizens. Taking a cue, Banks, Bio-Techs, some City and State Governments began subcontracting out their programming to H1Bs. Often, the subcontractors/labor contractors (often themselves immigrants) providing the programmers, held the programmers' passports/visas for security.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, friends of Bush/Cheney made fortunes on clean up contracts they subbed out for next to nothing; the independent/subcontractor scam was now officially governmentally sanctioned.

By about 2000 we began to hear the term gig-workers applied to these employees without benefits. Uber appeared in 2007 to be followed by Lift. Both are scams based on paying less than prevailing wages, on not providing worker benefits,

These days, the nightly news, when talking about the effect of the pandemic on the populace in America, shows footage of Food Banks in California with lines 2! miles long. Many of those waiting in these lines didn't have a real job before; they were gig-workers; they can't apply for Unemployment Benefits. It is estimated that 1.6 million American workers (1% of the workforce) are gig-workers; they don't have a real job. That 1% is in addition to the 16 million American workers (10% of the workforce) that are independent contractors. Of the more than 40 million currently unemployed Americans, some 17 million are either gig-workers or subcontractors/independent contractors. All of these are scams meant to transfer more wealth to the top. All of these are scams with American Workers the victims; scams, in a race to the bottom.


Denis Drew , May 31, 2020 10:51 am

Ken,

Read this by the SEIU counsel Andrew Strom -- and tell me what you think:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/

Democrats in the so called battle ground states would clean up at the polls with this. Why do you think those states strayed? It was because Obama and Hillary had no idea what they really needed. Voters had no idea what they SPECIFICALLY needed either -- UNIONS! They had been deunionized so thoroughly for so long that they THEMSELVES no long knew what they were missing (frogs in the slowly boiling pot).

In 1988 Jesse Jackson took the Democratic primary in Michigan with 54% against Dukakis and Gephardt. Obama beat Wall Street Romney and red-white-and-blue McCain in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. But nobody told these voters -- because nobody seems to remember -- what they really needed. These voter just knew by 2016 that Democrats had not what they needed and looked elsewhere -- anywhere else!

Strom presents an easy as can be, on-step-back treatment that should go down oh, so smoothly and sweetly. What do you think?

  • Matthew young , May 31, 2020 10:51 am

    Not overnight, but a few days in 1972 when Nixon fouled the defaults and none of us knew how badly at the time.

    Reseting prices takes a long time, it is not magic and Nixon had fouled the precious metals market, overnight. That and all the commodities market needed a restructure to adapt to our new regime.

    Our way out was to export price instability to Asia. My suggestion this time is to think through the math a bit before we all suddenly freak and do another over nighter. Think about how one might spread the partial default over a 15 year period.

    All of us, stuck with 40 years of flat earth economic planning without a clue. Now we have a year at best to nail down the Lucas criteria and get a default done with some science behind it.

    I doubt it. I figure we will all go to monetary meetup with our insurance contracts ready to be confirmed. That is impossible and Trump will be stuck doing a volatile, overnight partial default, like Nixon.,

  • EMichael , May 31, 2020 12:02 pm

    Dennis,

    The states you mentioned have overwhelmingly voted Rep for the last 3 decades in their state races. One of them has instituted right to work laws, and the other two have come very close to doing the same.

    The white working class cares nothing about unions at all. They have been voting against them for decades. It's why union rights and membership has deteriorated for 5 decades.

    run75441 , May 31, 2020 12:32 pm

    EM:

    Notably, I had posted the 2016 presidential election numbers numbers for MI, PA, and WI which resulted in an "anyone but Trump or Clinton vote" and gave th election to Trump. The "anyone but Trump or Clinton vote" resulted in a historical high for the "others" category and was anywhere from 3 to 6 times higher than previously experienced in other presidential elections. It also resulted in those three states casting Electoral votes for a Republican presidential candidate since 1992 – MI, 1988 – PA, and 1988 – WI. While this does defeat your comment above on those states voting Republican, it does not take away from your other comment on Sarandon. People punished themselves with Trump in spite of every obvious clue he demonstrated of being a loon. In this case the white working class voted against themselves for Trump and those of Sarandon's ilk helped them along by voting for "others."

  • EMichael , May 31, 2020 12:45 pm

    Run, I stated in "state elections".

    Y'know one other thing I have seen in MI voting is that the amount of people who voted did not cast a voted for President also was the highest ever. Thinking these are the same people like Sarandon. It was close to 90,000 in MI.

    "87,810: Number of voters this election who cast a ballot but did not cast a vote for president. That compares to 49,840 undervotes for president in 2012.

    5 percent: Proportion of voters who opted for a third-party candidate in this election, compared to 1 percent in 2012."

    https://www.mlive.com/politics/2016/11/michigans_presidential_electio.html

    run75441 , May 31, 2020 1:58 pm

    EM:

    I am going to put the numbers out here for Presidential Election 2012 and 2016. It is easier to look at them and the percentages.

    Michigan Presidential Vote 2012 and 2016

    In this site, you can look year to year on the vote. US Election Atlas

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 1:04 pm

    Denis

    Thanks for your comment and the link. Wow! Where to start, huh?

    SEIU was a player from the get go, but I don't want to go there just now.

    Before Reagan, there was the first rust belt move to the non-union south. Why was the south so anti-union? I think this stuff is engendered from infancy and most of us are incapable of thinking anew when it comes to stuff our parents 'taught' us. MLK was the best thing that ever happened to the dirt-road poor south, yet they hated him and they hated the very unions that might have lifted them up. They did seem to take pleasure in the yanks' loss of jobs.

    I think the Reagan era was prelude to what is going on now, i.e., going backward while yelling whee look at me go. No doubt, Reagan turned union members against their own unions. But, the genesis of demise probably lay with automation and the early offshoring to Mexico. By Reagan, the car plants were losing jobs to Toyota and Honda and automation. By 1990, car plants that had previously employed 5,000, now automated, produced more cars employing only 1200. At the time, much of the nation's wealth was still derived from car production.

    Skipping forward a bit, the democrats blew it for years with all their talk about the 'middle-class' without realizing it was the 'disappearing middle-class'. They ignored the poor working-class vote and lost election after election.

    I've come to not like the term labor, think it affords capital an undeserved status, though much diminished, I think thought all workers would be better off in a union. Otherwise, as we are witnessing, there is no parity between workers and wealth; we are in a race to the bottom with the wealth increasingly go to the top.

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 1:15 pm

    Matthew – thanks for your comment

    I think that we are into a transition (about 45 yrs into) as great as the industrial revolution. We, as probably those poor souls of the 18th and 19th centuries did, are floundering, unable to come to terms with what is going on.

    I also think that those such as the Kochs have a good grasp of what is going on and are moving to protect themselves and their class.

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 1:21 pm

    EMichael, thanks for the comment

    Are you implying that the politicians are way behind the curve? If so, I think that you are right.

    Let me share what I was thinking last night about thinking:

    Descartes' problem was that he desperately wanted to make philosophy work within the framework of his religion, Catholicism. Paul Krugman desperately wants to make economics all work within the Holy Duality of Capitalism and Free Markets. Even Joe Stiglitz can't step out of this text. All things being possible, it is possible that either could come up with a solution to today's economic problems that would fit within the Two; but the odds are not good. Better to think anew.

    We see politicians try and try to find solutions for today's problems from within their own dogmas/ideologies. Even if they can't, they persist, they still try to impose these dogmas/ideologies in the desperate hope they might work if only applied to a greater degree. How else explain any belief that markets could anticipate and respond to pandemics? That markets could best respond to housing demand?

  • anne , May 31, 2020 1:48 pm

    Ken Melvin,

    Interesting and fine writing.

  • anne , May 31, 2020 1:49 pm

    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1267060950026326018

    Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

    Glad to see Noah Smith highlighting this all-too-relevant work by the late Alberto Alesina 1/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-30/racism-is-the-biggest-reason-u-s-safety-net-is-so-weak

    Racism Is the Biggest Reason the U.S. Safety Net Is So Weak
    Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, who died last week, found that ethnic divisions made the country less effective at providing public goods.

    7:50 AM · May 31, 2020

    The Alesina/Glaeser/Sacerdote paper on why America doesn't have a European-style welfare state -- racism -- had a big impact on my own thinking 2/

    https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/why_doesnt_the_u.s._have_a_european-style_welfare_state.pdf

    For a long time anyone who pointed out that the modern GOP is basically a party that serves plutocratic ends by weaponizing white racism was treated as "shrill" and partisan. Can we now admit the obvious? 3/

  • EMichael , May 31, 2020 1:53 pm

    Ken,

    Half the politicians are behind the curve. When George Wallace showed the GOP how to win elections (Don't ever get outniggerred) the Dem Party failed to see and react to it. Then the Kochs of the world stepped in with the John Birch society (fromerly the KKK) and started playing race against class, which resulted in the white working class supporting anti-labor pols and legislation.

    The election of Obama caused the racists to go totally off the reservation with the Tea Party (formerly the KKK and the John Birch Society) and lead us to where we are now.

    Of course, the corporate world followed the blueprint.

    Way past time for the Dem Party to start attacking on a constant basis the racist GOP. And also to start appealing more to workers, though the 2016 platform certainly did that to a large degree, and the 2020 platform looks to be mush more supportive of labor than ever.

    "It's a detailed and aggressive agenda that includes doubling the minimum wage and tripling funding for schools with low-income students. He is proposing the most sweeping overhaul of immigration policy in a generation, the biggest pro-union push in three generations, and the most ambitious environmental agenda of all time.

    If Democrats take back the Senate in the fall, Biden could make his agenda happen. A primary is about airing disagreements, but legislating is about building consensus. The Democratic Party largely agrees on a suite of big policy changes that would improve the lives of millions of Americans in meaningful ways. Biden has detailed, considered plans to put much of this agenda in place. But getting these plans done will be driven much more by the outcome of the congressional elections than his questioned ambition.

    A big minimum wage increase

    Biden's commitment to raising the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 to $15 an hour is one of the least talked-about plans at stake in the 2020 election.

    In the 2016 cycle when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders disagreed about raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, the debate was the subject of extensive coverage. By the 2020 cycle, all the major Democratic candidates were on board, so it didn't come up much. But it's significant that this is no longer controversial in Democratic Party circles. If the party is broadly comfortable with the wage hike as a matter of both politics and substance, Democrats in Congress are likely to make it happen if it's at all possible.
    Noji Olaigbe, left, from the Fight for $15 minimum wage movement, speaks during a McDonald's workers' strike in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 23, 2019. David Santiago/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

    The $15-an-hour minimum wage increase is also a signature issue for Biden. He endorsed New York's version of it in the fall of 2015, back when he was vice president and his boss Barack Obama was pushing a smaller federal raise.

    A big minimum wage hike polls well, it aligns with Biden's thematic emphasis on "the dignity of work," and it's a topic on which he's genuinely been a leader. It reflects his political sensibilities, which are moderate but in a decidedly more populist mode than Obama's technocratic one.

    Biden has a big Plan A to support organized labor, and a Plan B that's still consequential and considerably more plausible politically.

    Beyond a general disposition to be a good coalition partner to organized labor, the centerpiece of his union agenda is support for the PRO Act, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this year.

    That bill, were it to become law, would be the biggest victory for unions and collective bargaining since the end of World War II -- overriding state "right to work" laws, barring mandatory anti-union briefings from management during organizing campaigns, imposing much more meaningful financial penalties on companies that illegally fire workers for pro-union activity, and allowing organizing through a streamlined card check process. Separately, Biden and House Democrats have lined up behind a Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act that would bolster public sector workers' collective bargaining rights. "

    https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21257648/joe-biden-climate-economy-tax-plans

    One of the big issues here is Biden not committing to killing the filibuster, in addition to Dem Senators not in agreement either. That would be a disaster for any legislation.

    Makes sense not to run on ending the filibuster now, as there is a chance trump can win and teh GOP keeps the Senate. But if the opposite happens and Biden wins and Dems take the Senate, they will have to pivot quickly to getting rid of the filibuster. Apply any and all possible pressure to those Dem Senators who do not agree with that. Threaten them with losing committee posts; primary opponents; the kitchen sink.

    Yes, it poses a risk in the event the Reps get a trifecta again, but it is time to flood progressive legislation into law, and getting rid of the filibuster is the only way.

    And if they can hit the trifecta and bring this platform to fruition, they won't have to worry about a GOP trifecta for a long, long time. Possibly forever.

  • anne , May 31, 2020 1:56 pm

    https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/why_doesnt_the_u.s._have_a_european-style_welfare_state.pdf

    September, 2001

    Why Doesn't the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?
    By Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote

    Abstract

    European countries are much more generous to the poor relative to the US level of generosity. Economic models suggest that redistribution is a function of the variance and skewness of the pre-tax income distribution, the volatility of income (perhaps because of trade shocks), the social costs of taxation and the expected income mobility of the median voter. None of these factors appear to explain the differences between the US and Europe. Instead, the differences appear to be the result of racial heterogeneity in the US and American political institutions. Racial animosity in the US makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters. American political institutions limited the growth of a socialist party, and more generally limited the political power of the poor.

  • rick shapiro , May 31, 2020 2:07 pm

    This dynamic is not limited to low-skill jobs. I have seen it at work in electronics engineering. When I was a sprat, job shoppers got an hourly wage nearly twice that of their company peers, because they had no benefits or long-term employment. Today, job shoppers are actually paid less than company engineers; and the companies are outsourcing ever more of their staffing to the brokers.
    Without labor market frictions, the iron law of wages drives wages to starvation levels. As sophisticated uberization software eliminates the frictions that have protected middle class wages in the recent past, we will all need to enlist unionization and government wage standards to protect us.

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 2:29 pm

    Rick

    The big engineering offices of the 70s were decimated and worse by the mid-90s; mostly by the advent of computers w/ software. One engineer could now do the work of 10 and didn't need any draftsman.

  • rick shapiro , May 31, 2020 2:40 pm

    I was speaking of engineers with equal skill in the same office. Many at GE Avionics were laid off, and came back as lower paid contract empoyees.

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 2:46 pm

    Rick

    Die biden

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 2:52 pm

    beiden

    The both

  • ken melvin , May 31, 2020 3:05 pm

    EMichael

    Minimum wage, the row about the $600, all such things endanger the indentured servant economic model so favored in the south. Keep them poor and hungry and they will work for next to nothing. 'Still they persist.' On PBS, a black woman cooking for a restaurant said that she was being paid less than $4/hr.

  • anne , May 31, 2020 4:48 pm

    https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-30/dont-understand-the-protests-what-youre-seeing-is-people-pushed-to-the-edge

    May 30, 2020

    Don't understand the protests? What you're seeing is people pushed to the edge
    By KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR – Los Angeles Times

    What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck while Floyd croaked, "I can't breathe"?

    If you're white, you probably muttered a horrified, "Oh, my God" while shaking your head at the cruel injustice. If you're black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, "Not @#$%! again!" Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn't for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store's video showed he wasn't. And how the cop on Floyd's neck wasn't an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.

    Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming the black man who asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black Yale University grad student napping in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a white student. Because you realize it's not just a supposed "black criminal" who is targeted, it's the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.

    You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops.

    What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you're white, you may be thinking, "They certainly aren't social distancing." Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, "Well, that just hurts their cause." Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, "That's putting the cause backward."

    You're not wrong -- but you're not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness -- write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change -- the needle hardly budges.

    But COVID-19 has been slamming the consequences of all that home as we die at a significantly higher rate than whites, are the first to lose our jobs, and watch helplessly as Republicans try to keep us from voting .

    run75441 , May 31, 2020 9:39 pm

    anne:

    If you rcomments are not appearing they are going to spam, Just let me know and I will fish them out of spam. Just approved 4 of yours.

  • Bert Schlitz , May 31, 2020 7:14 pm

    The protests are self centered crap blacks do year after year. Considering 370 whites over 100 Latinos were killed by cops, many as bad as that guy in minnie. Blacks have a Trumptard mentality. We have a ecological disaster, a economic disaster and pandemic(when th they are spreading). Yet let's whine about one bad cop related homicide.

    This may begin the breakup of the Democratic party and the blacks. The differences are just to large.

  • Kaleberg , May 31, 2020 9:40 pm

    It's rather sad that it takes a massive civil disturbance to get the authorities to arrest a man videotaped killing another. You'd think that would just happen as a matter of course, but that's how it works in this country. Post Comment Leave a Reply Cancel reply

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    [May 16, 2020] Reopening Isn't only about Reopening -- It's also about forcefully removing people from unemployment insurance by Peter Dorman

    May 16, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    By Peter Dorman, professor of economics at The Evergreen State College. Originally published at Econospeak

    Donald Trump, cheering on his "warriors" who demand that states lift their lockdown and distancing orders (where they have them), would have you believe this is about bringing the economy back to life so ordinary people can get their jobs and normal lives back. Elitist liberals who work from home and have country estates to retreat to don't care, but "real" people do.

    The reality is different. The shuttering of stores, restaurants, hotels and workplaces didn't begin with government orders and won't end with them. If the rate of new infection and death is too high, a lot of people won't go along. Not everyone, but enough to make a huge economic difference. Ask any small business owner what it would mean for demand to drop by 25-50%. Lifting government orders won't magically restore the economic conditions of mid-winter. So what's it about? Even as it makes a big PR show of supporting state by state "liberation" in America, the Trump administration is advising state governments on how to remove workers from unemployment insurance once orders are lifted. Without government directives, employers can demand workers show up, and if they refuse they no longer qualify. And why might workers refuse? Perhaps because their workplaces are still unsafe and they have vulnerable family members they want to keep from getting infected? Not good enough -- once the state has been "liberated".

    How should we respond to this travesty? First, of course, by telling the truth that an anti-worker, anti-human campaign is being conducted under the guise of defending workers. If the Democrats weren't themselves such a tool of business interests we might hear that narrative from them, but the rest of us are free to speak out and should start doing it, loudly, wherever we can.

    Second, one of the laws of the land is the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which gives workers the right to refuse imminently hazardous work. This hasn't been used very often, nor is there much case law around it, but the current pandemic is a good reason to pull it out of storage.

    If there are public interest law firms looking for something useful to do during distancing, they could advertise their willingness to defend workers who need to stay home until work is safe -- while still getting their paycheck. If employers thought the choice was between public support for workers sitting out the pandemic or their support for them we might hear less about "liberation".


    none , May 14, 2020 at 10:30 am

    They want to throw people off of unemployment while using the virus threat to stop any serious protests against that. It is literally biological warfare against working people. Same class war as before, but now with CBW.

    Rod , May 14, 2020 at 10:47 am

    Taught it for years. This is the biggest net and is the # 1 Cited Violation for 1910/1926 and MSHA–ever.

    OSHA 654 5(a)1 The General Duty Clause.

    OSHA Laws & Regulations OSH Act of 1970
    OSH Act of 1970
    Table of Contents
    General Duty Clause
    Complete OSH Act Version ("All-in-One")
    SEC.
    5.
    Duties
    (a)
    Each employer --
    (1)
    29 USC 654
    shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees;
    (2)
    shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.
    (b)
    Each employee shall comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules, regulations, and orders issued pursuant to this Act which are applicable to his own actions and conduct.

    And 'Recognized' totes a lot of water.

    Rod , May 14, 2020 at 10:53 am

    Quick Take –Two way street.
    Employers mus t mitigate hazards. Employees must comply with mitigation.
    No Employer Mitigation=Breaking the Law=No Employee requirement to work in Unsafe Conditions.

    L , May 14, 2020 at 11:16 am

    "Lifting all boats" was always a lie. It was simply a way to sell trickle down by claiming that the objectively observable inequality it produced would somehow help everyone, eventually, sort of. There was not and has never been a plan by the Conservative Movement to lift all boats. Only a plan to feign interest in doing so.

    Librarian Guy , May 15, 2020 at 12:02 pm

    I agree with most of your comment except the "smarter" part.

    They don't seem smart to me, they openly plunder and loot and spit in the populace's faces. They don't even pretend to believe in or work for a "common good" anymore, really. That is the story of the 21st Century in the US, starting with Baby Bush II. (Okay, I get that the Obama crew seemed "smart" or sophisticated to the PMC and comfortable liberals, but how smart were they if they led to the open Kleptocratic Disruption of Trumpism and the God Emperor?)

    What the Elites have that the proles don't is in-group solidarity. (And a captured Media establishment.) They protect their own, while the hoi polloi fight one another for scraps.

    Hoppy , May 14, 2020 at 12:54 pm

    What is the death rate among the working age population?

    Seem like a tough hill to die on given the curve has flattened, hospitals are not overflowing, and the economy is teetering on the edge of depression.

    No one has a vaccine, this isn't going away any time soon. It's time to focus on protecting the most vulnerable instead of pretending this effects everyone equally.

    Allow states to cut benefits? Come on, UI benefits are taxed for pete's sake. 'Available to work' basically means you have start at 8am the next day which is doesn't align with any reality of hiring except in low end service sector jobs.

    campbeln , May 14, 2020 at 3:25 pm

    > and the economy is teetering on the edge of depression

    This was baked in the cake already, COVID was simply the spark that ignited all that dead wood on the forest floor.

    cripes , May 15, 2020 at 12:16 am

    campbeln:

    Yes.

    I thought the quiet transfer of trillions in helicopter money to the banksters in the last half of 2019, way before the covid craze was telling.

    How convenient.

    Wally , May 14, 2020 at 1:49 pm

    The other really significant thing is that 're-opening' doesn't necessarily mean returning to business. For example, Musk insists on re-opening Tesla the assumption being that sales are there to be had if they re-open. But if not no sales, no need for employees back down the drain we go.
    Same for restaurants. retail, hotels, transit and white collar jobs – attorneys, architects, CPAs

    DHG , May 14, 2020 at 5:48 pm

    Yup, the smart and shrewd will conceal themselves as much as possible and live, the stupid will rush out and most likely die.

    JBird4049 , May 15, 2020 at 1:20 am

    The poorest and the most desperate actually. Some people still have not received any money from the state or federal governments. The quarantine started about two months ago. So no job, no income, no money, and no joke. No matter how shrewd or smart you are sometimes you are not making the decisions. Reality makes them for you.

    KFritz , May 14, 2020 at 3:24 pm

    There's another possible reason to reopen. If the country officially reopens, there's no need for any more federal stimulus!

    campbeln , May 14, 2020 at 3:26 pm

    Bankers got their TRILLIONS?

    Pack it up, boys! We're done here.

    J.k , May 14, 2020 at 5:06 pm

    Well till the markets crashes again and they need to save the assets of the wealthiest.

    I just got a text from a buddy who is an electrician. His company just told him they are not expecting to take any major work till second quarter of next year. They will only be taking emergency calls. This is in Chicago.

    LawnDart , May 14, 2020 at 6:28 pm

    Your buddy might be able to use this link:

    https://wepoweramerica.org/hotjobs.cgi

    Granted, it's a union site, but one point that they make is how union saturation raises the wages for all workers within a given region.

    In Appalachia, I was offered $15hr. to work as an electrician. In Chicagoland, starting wages were close to or more than double that. Guess where I went in order to establish a salary history? And no, the cost of living is really not too different between those two places, but opportunities sure were.

    (moderators: in response to an "Eat the Rich!" comment, I posted a link with recipes: I apologize for this. Admittedly, it was in poor taste.)

    [May 15, 2020] US Unemployment Update

    Notable quotes:
    "... @apenultimate ..."
    May 15, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

    apenultimate on Thu, 05/14/2020 - 9:50am The past week's unemployment claims came out today, and add another 2.98 million to the pile. This brings total unemployment claims for the past 8 weeks (two months or so) to 36.5 million.

    Determining unemployment percentages depends on what data you use. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the employment numbers for the United States in August 2019 as ~157 million ( https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm ). Admittedly, that's not March 2020 statistics, but employment numbers would not change all that much in half of a year.

    The St. Louis Federal Reserve has a different set of statistics that show 205.5 million Americans employed in March 2020 ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S ). (They show the August 2019 period with employment at 206 million.)

    Why the huge difference? I have no idea. But going forward, I'll use both to determine unemployment numbers. Remember that in early March 2020, unemployment was already around 3%.

    Using the BLS statistics, we get an unemployment rate of 23.16% for the past 8 weeks. Add on the previous 3% of people unemployed, and you reach 26.16% unemployment.

    Using the St. Louis Fed statistics, we get an unemployment rate of 17.76% for the past 8 weeks. Add on the previous 3% of people unemployed, and you reach 20.76% unemployment.

    The peak rate of unemployment during The Great Depression was 24.9%. The peak rate of unemployment during the the Great Recession in 2008 was 10%.

    According to BLS statistics, we are already greater than Great Depression unemployment numbers.

    According to the St. Louis Fed, we are already more than double Great Recession numbers and only about 4 percentage points away from Great Depression peaks.

    The Labor Department last week reported April unemployment for the United states at 14.7%, but this according to their own admission was undercounting the real rates. Be careful of any numbers coming out of the mainstream media or government sources.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Coronavirus-job-loss-Weekly...

    Some jobs will definitely come back, but many will not. For example, JC Penny's reported that they are permanently closing 200 of their 850 nationwide stores. Those jobs will not be coming back. There are weekly reports of many cafes, restaurants, and small businesses shuttering their doors for good. Those jobs will not be coming back.

    Even for the companies that do not shut down, it may be a long haul before economic activity has picked up enough to bring workers back. In most cases, it will not be a quick recovery.

    Hang on for a very rough ride. 2 users have voted.

    ggersh on Thu, 05/14/2020 - 10:52am
    This is the place to go for stats

    @apenultimate and like everything else our govt does, the unemployment number is just pure BS

    http://www.shadowstats.com/article/csfu1435

    • Headline April 2020 Unemployment Really Was Around 20%, Not 15%
    • Bureau of Labor Statistics Disclosed Erroneous Unemployment Surveying for a Second Month
    • About 7.5 Million People in the April Household Survey Were Misclassified as Employed Instead of Unemployed, per the BLS
    • Headline April U.3 Unemployment at 14.7%, Should Have Been 19.5%
    • The BLS Had Disclosed the Same Surveying Error Last Month; Where Headline March 2020 U.3 Was 4.4%, It Should Have Been 5.3%
    • Per the BLS, Headline Data Will Not Be Corrected: "To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses."
    • Nonetheless, Headline April Unemployment Soared to Historic Highs from March: U.3 from 4.4% to 14.7%, U.6 from 8.7% to 22.8% and ShadowStats from 22.9% to 35.4%
    • More Realistic, Those Same Unemployment Numbers, Corrected: U.3 from 5.3 % to 19.5%, U.6 from 9.6% to 27.7% and ShadowStats from 23.7% to 39.6%
    • April 2020 Payrolls Collapsed by an Unprecedented 20.5 Million Jobs
    • Annual Growth in April 2020 Money Supply Measures Soared to Historic Highs
    • U.S. Economic Activity Has Collapsed to Great Depression Levels, with the Federal Reserve Creating Unlimited Money

    apenultimate on Thu, 05/14/2020 - 10:58am
    Nice

    @ggersh

    Thanks for that. Seems like a large percentage of the difference is that BLS says 7.5 million were mis-classified as employed.

    At the very least, it seems the BLS does a bit of correcting, whereas the Fed does not.

    gulfgal98 on Thu, 05/14/2020 - 1:13pm
    Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell

    stated in the very beginning of this video, that of people who were employed in February of this year, nearly 40% of those earning $40,000 or less have become unemployed. This is an unprecedented human tragedy that Congress in all their bailouts now totalling about $8 Trillion have seen fit to throw a one time pittance of $1,200. With mountains of cash going to corporations and lobbyists, Congress insultingly gave real suffering Americans a few pennies and in effect told them that their lives do not matter to Washington DC.

    //www.youtube.com/embed/AROXMTDOkjw?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

    [May 12, 2020] 'Immediate danger' Half of world's workforce could lose livelihood due to Covid-19, UN agency warns

    www.defenddemocracy.press
    The International Labour Organization (ILO) has warned that around half of the world's workforce, or 1.6 billion workers, are at imminent risk of losing their livelihood because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In its latest report, the UN agency stated that those hardest hit by the financial effects of the Covid-19 outbreak have been 'informal economy' workers, including the self-employed and those on a short-term contract.

    "The first month of the crisis is estimated to have resulted in a drop of 60 percent in the income of informal workers globally," the ILO said of the economic damage already caused by the pandemic.

    The deepening crisis in many parts of the world has left more than 436 million businesses facing financial hardship and possible closure, the ILO stated, which will inevitably hurt workers. The report listed the worst-hit sectors as manufacturing, accommodation and food services, wholesale and retail trade, and real estate.

    "For millions of workers, no income means no food, no security and no future," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said of the stark impact of an economic dip.

    He added that, according to ILO data, there is expected to be a "massive" rise in poverty levels worldwide, unless governments recognize the need to reconstruct their economies around better working practices and "not a return to the pre-pandemic world of precarious work for the majority."

    Since the novel coronavirus emerged in China late last year, over 3.1 million cases have been confirmed around the world, and more than 216,000 people have died. Drastic lockdowns to limit its spread have taken a dire toll on the global economy, prompting market turmoil and numerous projections of the heavy recession to strike this year.

    [May 10, 2020] Lockdowns May Aggravate America's Next Health Crisis An Explosion Of Deaths Of Despair, Study Finds

    Notable quotes:
    "... Polls of life satisfaction taken since the outbreak began have reflected a rapid erosion as 33 million Americans have joined the unemployment rolls over the last months. NY Gov Andrew Cuomo said during a recent daily briefing that NY is seeing a spike in drug and alcohol abuse as people sit around all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go. ..."
    "... But of course the tremendous levels of financial uncertainty coupled with the unique characteristics of this crisis make it pretty much impossible to model - any research is really an educated guess, at best. ..."
    "... "Unemployment is going to have a very important impact on deaths of despair." ..."
    "... His proposed strategies including investing more resources in helping unemployed people find meaningful work, and/or training the armies of contact tracers that de Blasio has now promised to hire to spot people at risk of self-harm. ..."
    May 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

    Doctors , scientists policymakers and even 'non-experts' posting on social media have argued that shuttering the health-care system to all non-emergency care risks sparking other public health crises from a spike in heart attacks and advanced cancer diagnoses, to so-called "deaths of despair."

    In some areas, a spike in suicides has already been recorded since the start of the outbreak. And now, a newly published paper released Friday has attempted to quantify deaths that might occur because of the mental-health ramifications of widespread economic chaos caused by the crisis. The research - which hasn't yet been peer-reviewed - found the isolation, grief and economic hardship related to COVID-19 are conspiring to supercharge America's already-burgeoning mental-health crisis, likely setting the stage for tens of thousands of suicides down the line.

    Specifically, the researchers tabulated that as many as 75k additional "deaths of despair" could be caused by the outbreak and the economy-crushing measures implemented to stop the spreads. "Deaths of despair" typically refer to suicides and substance-abuse-related deaths, according to Bloomberg .

    The research was carried out by the Well Being Trust and researchers affiliated with the American Academy of Family Physicians. One of the report's authors said he hopes the research is eventually proven to be incorrect.

    "I hope in 10 years people look back and say, 'Wow, they way overestimated it,'" said John Westfall, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care, who co-wrote the report.

    But the sizable spike in suicides, overdoses etc since the last major crisis (the financial crisis) is reason to be concerned.

    Even as the American economy rebounded after the last recession, suicides and overdoses cut into Americans' life expectancy. Mental health experts worry that the economic uncertainty and social isolation of the pandemic will make things worse at a time when the health care system is already overwhelmed. The suicide rate in the US has already been rising for two decades, and in 2018 hit its highest level since 1941, Bloomberg reported, citing a piece published by JAMA Psychiatry (a prestigious medical journal) back in April.

    "There's a paradox," said Jeffrey Reynolds, president of a Long Island-based nonprofit social services agency, the Family and Children's Association. " Social isolation protects us from a contagious, life-threatening virus, but at the same time it puts people at risk for things that are the biggest killers in the United States: suicide, overdose and diseases related to alcohol abuse."

    Polls of life satisfaction taken since the outbreak began have reflected a rapid erosion as 33 million Americans have joined the unemployment rolls over the last months. NY Gov Andrew Cuomo said during a recent daily briefing that NY is seeing a spike in drug and alcohol abuse as people sit around all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

    "One of the main things people should take away from this paper is that employment matters," said Benjamin Miller, chief strategy officer at the Well Being Trust and a clinical psychologist who worked on the paper. "It matters for our economic livelihood, and for our mental and emotional health."

    But of course the tremendous levels of financial uncertainty coupled with the unique characteristics of this crisis make it pretty much impossible to model - any research is really an educated guess, at best.

    Still, the researchers believe it's a useful warning, and something important for policy makers to keep in mind.

    "It's useful to have a wake-up call," said Ken Duckworth, chief medical officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness. "Unemployment is going to have a very important impact on deaths of despair."

    Benjamin Miller, chief strategy officer at the Well Being Trust and a clinical psychologist who worked on the paper, proposed several solutions that could be enacted to, uh, depress the number of suicides.

    His proposed strategies including investing more resources in helping unemployed people find meaningful work, and/or training the armies of contact tracers that de Blasio has now promised to hire to spot people at risk of self-harm.

    [May 06, 2020] Deaths of Despair

    May 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

    c1ue , May 6 2020 15:54 utc | 86

    I'm sure this has been mentioned, but Angus Deaton talking about his "Deaths of Despair" work Boston review article

    JC: In the book you focus on these deaths of despair: 158,000 in 2018, about 100,000 of which are above and beyond what we would normally expect, an excess that is almost entirely among white non-Hispanic men and women without a college degree. The category covers three different causes of death: alcohol, opioids, and suicide. Could you talk about why you group them together?

    AD: Initially, "deaths of despair" was a label of convenience. It helped express the sense that these deaths were sort of caused by your own hand -- unlike COVID-19, say.

    ...

    these previous drug epidemics -- in the United States after the Civil War, or in China when the empire was disintegrating -- tended to arise during periods of social disintegration. The simplified story is that some bad Big Pharma manufacturers started pushing opioids on all of us. But in reality, Purdue Pharmaceuticals and other companies went to places where there was already lots of despair. They were looking for despair. They were looking for regions where you could harass doctors into prescribing these drugs.

    Our claim in the book is that without this underlying despair -- pain, morbidity, people not going to church, people's lives coming apart -- there wouldn't have been this open field for opioids. On the other hand, if the FDA had not been so much in the hands of the industry, and if we were not operating a rent-seeking, capitalistic health care system, then we wouldn't have got those efforts to capitalize on the despair. Other countries didn't get them to anything like the same extent.

    ...

    JC: One of the issues that you emphasize in the book is the generational aspect of deaths of despair: how it keeps getting worse for younger generations. The idea that this is a process that is worsening over time resonates strongly with Raj Chetty's account of the fading American dream. I am thinking of the study by Chetty and colleagues about absolute mobility, guided by the question: Are you going to do better than your parents? When I was born in 1951, there was a 90 percent chance of doing better than your parents. If you were born in 1980, chances had fallen to 50 percent.

    ...

    The Democrats largely decided to abandon the working class and build a coalition of educated elites and minorities (including working-class minorities), and the Republicans basically followed business and religious organizations.

    And the health care crises make things worse. Health care costs were 5 percent of GDP back in 1970, and now they're 18 percent of GDP. Everything is heaping up on these people.

    ...

    The pillars that structured working-class life seem to have gone, or at least been eroded. And we see the fundamental force of that in the labor market. Decent wages and jobs help to bring respectability and meaning into life. We're not against some of the explanations that focus more on social norms. I think the birth control pill was very important, changing the norms about when and whether you could have children, whether you'd live together without being married. We write about how the pill was very socially divisive. For women who could get educated, it enormously enhanced opportunities to have relationship fulfilment and children as well as really good jobs. But for many working-class women for whom college was not an option, it did the opposite.

    But declining wages were an incredibly important part of the loss.

    ...

    But there's a much more negative scenario, too, which economic historian Robert Allen writes about. In the early nineteenth century in Britain, real wages stagnated for fifty years. Handloom weavers were being replaced by machines in factories in the Industrial Revolution, and wages could only rise when they were all gone, and the way of life and around handloom weaving had been destroyed.

    [c1ue note: the putting out system was a major cause of the above]

    ...

    A lot of evidence suggests that in recessions, mortality rates typically go down. The Great Depression was a very good time for life expectancy. But suicides do go up. It's not a simple story. They say in New York that what would normally be filling hospital beds would normally be filling with traffic and construction accidents, and there aren't any.

    [May 06, 2020] Richard Wolff US jobless totals are about to get WORSE than during the Great Depression. It's time for a RADICAL new approach

    May 06, 2020 | www.rt.com

    By Richard D. Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, NYC. Wolff's weekly show, Economic Update, is syndicated on over 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV and his two recent books with Democracy at Work are Understanding Marxism and Understanding Socialism both available at democracyatwork.info . We are entering an even Greater Depression than the 1930s, with hundreds of millions thrown out of work across the world. Capitalism is a broken, unstable system that is beyond repair – but there are alternatives. Ninety-one years after the start of the Great Depression (capitalism's worst downturn until now), we are entering an even Greater Depression. The 1930s were so awful that leaders of capitalist economies ever since have said they had learned how to avoid any future depressions. All promised to take the steps needed to avoid them. Those promises have all been broken. Capitalism remains intrinsically unstable. Read more Richard D. Wolff: Viruses like Covid-19 are a part of nature we must accept. But Capitalism-2020 must be destroyed Richard D. Wolff: Viruses like Covid-19 are a part of nature we must accept. But Capitalism-2020 must be destroyed

    That instability is revealed in its recurring cycles, recessions, downturns, depressions, crashes, etc. They have plagued capitalism wherever it has settled in as the prevailing economic system. Now that the whole world's prevailing economic system is capitalism, we suffer global instability. To date, capitalist instability has resisted every effort (monetary and fiscal policies, Keynesian economics, privatization, deregulation, etc.) to overcome or stop it. And now it is here yet again.

    Across the world, hundreds of millions of workers are unemployed. The tools, equipment, and raw materials in their factories, offices and stores sit idle, gathering dust and rust. The goods and services they might have produced do not now emerge to help us through these awful times. Perishable plants and animals that cannot now be processed are destroyed even as scarcities multiply.

    Workers lose their jobs if and when employers – mostly private capitalists – fire them. Employers hire workers when workers add more value to what the employer sells than the value of those workers' wages. Hiring then adds to profits. Employers fire workers when they add less than the value of the wages paid to them. Firing then reduces losses. Employers protect and reproduce their enterprises by maximizing profits and minimizing losses.

    Profit, not the full employment of workers nor of means of production, is "the bottom line" of capitalists, and thus of capitalism. That is how the system works. Capitalists are rewarded when their profits are high and punished when they are not.

    No-one wants unemployment. Workers want their jobs back; employers want the workers back producing profitable output; governments want the tax revenues that depend on workers and capitalist employers actively collaborating to produce.

    Yet the capitalist system has regularly produced economic downturns everywhere for three centuries – on average, every four to seven years. We have had three crashes so far this century: 'dot.com' in 2000, 'sub-prime mortgage' in 2008, and now 'corona' in 2020. That averages out at one crash just under every seven years – capitalism's 'norm'. Capitalists do not want unemployment, but they regularly generate it. It is a basic contradiction of their system.

    Read more ONE IN SEVEN Americans would avoid Covid-19 treatment for fear of cost, even as pricey new pill shows promise against virus ONE IN SEVEN Americans would avoid Covid-19 treatment for fear of cost, even as pricey new pill shows promise against virus

    Today's massive US capitalist crisis – over 30 million unemployed and counting, a quarter of the workforce – shows dramatically that maximizing profit is not maximizing society's well-being. First and foremost, consider that the unemployed millions continue much of their consumption while ceasing much of their production. A portion of the wealth produced by those still employed must be redistributed to sustain the unemployed. Society thus suffers the usually intense struggles over the shares of profits versus wages that will be redistributed to the unemployed. These struggles, both public – over tax structures, for example – and private – for instance, over household budgets – can be profoundly destabilizing for societies.

    Redistribution struggles could be alleviated if, for example, public employment replaced private unemployment. If the state became the employer of last resort, those fired by private employers could immediately be rehired by the state to do useful social work.

    Then any government paying unemployment benefits would instead pay wages, obtain in return real goods and services, and distribute them to the public. The 1930s New Deal did exactly that for millions fired by private employers in the US. A similar alternative (not part of the New Deal) would be to organize the unemployed into worker co-ops performing socially useful work under contract with the government.

    This last alternative is the best, because it would develop a new worker co-op sector of the US economy. That would provide the US public with direct experience in comparing the capitalist with the worker co-op sector in terms of working conditions, product quality and price, civic responsibility, etc.

    On that concrete, empirical basis, societies could offer people a real, democratic choice as to what mix of capitalist and worker co-op sectors of the economy they prefer.

    The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

    [Apr 28, 2020] The Meditations, by a Roman emperor who died in a plague named after him, has much to say about how to face fear, pain, anxiety and loss by Donald Robertson

    Notable quotes:
    "... First of all, because Stoics believe that our true good resides in our own character and actions, they would frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what's "up to us" and what isn't. Modern Stoics tend to call this "the dichotomy of control" and many people find this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly under my control, never completely ..."
    "... Marcus likes to ask himself, "What virtue has nature given me to deal with this situation?" That naturally leads to the question: "How do other people cope with similar challenges?" Stoics reflect on character strengths such as wisdom, patience and self-discipline, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try to exemplify these virtues and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life, during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope. Even historical figures or fictional characters can serve as role models. ..."
    "... fear does us more harm than the things of which we're afraid. ..."
    "... Finally, during a pandemic, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your own death. Since the day you were born, that's always been on the cards. Most of us find it easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the No1 most popular coping strategy in the world. We live in denial of the self-evident fact that we all die eventually. ..."
    "... "All that comes to pass", he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as "familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn". Marcus Aurelius, through decades of training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of someone who has done so countless times already in the past. ..."
    Apr 25, 2020 | www.theguardian.com
    T he Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the last famous Stoic philosopher of antiquity. During the last 14 years of his life he faced one of the worst plagues in European history. The Antonine Plague, named after him, was probably caused by a strain of the smallpox virus. It's estimated to have killed up to 5 million people, possibly including Marcus himself.

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    ="rich-link__link u-faux-block-link__overlay" aria-label="'What it means to be an American': Abraham Lincoln and a nation divided" href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/11/abraham-lincoln-verge-book-ted-widmer-interview">

    From AD166 to around AD180, repeated outbreaks occurred throughout the known world. Roman historians describe the legions being devastated, and entire towns and villages being depopulated and going to ruin. Rome itself was particularly badly affected, carts leaving the city each day piled high with dead bodies.

    In the middle of this plague, Marcus wrote a book, known as The Meditations, which records the moral and psychological advice he gave himself at this time. He frequently applies Stoic philosophy to the challenges of coping with pain, illness, anxiety and loss. It's no stretch of the imagination to view The Meditations as a manual for developing precisely the mental resilience skills required to cope with a pandemic.

    First of all, because Stoics believe that our true good resides in our own character and actions, they would frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what's "up to us" and what isn't. Modern Stoics tend to call this "the dichotomy of control" and many people find this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly under my control, never completely up to me, but my own thoughts and actions are – at least the voluntary ones. The pandemic isn't really under my control but the way I behave in response to it is.

    Much, if not all, of our thinking is also up to us. Hence, "It's not events that upset us but rather our opinions about them." More specifically, our judgment that something is really bad, awful or even catastrophic, causes our distress.

    This is one of the basic psychological principles of Stoicism. It's also the basic premise of modern cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of psychotherapy. The pioneers of CBT, Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck, both describe Stoicism as the philosophical inspiration for their approach. It's not the virus that makes us afraid but rather our opinions about it. Nor is it the inconsiderate actions of others, those ignoring social distancing recommendations, that make us angry so much as our opinions about them.

    Many people are struck, on reading The Meditations, by the fact that it opens with a chapter in which Marcus lists the qualities he most admires in other individuals, about 17 friends, members of his family and teachers. This is an extended example of one of the central practices of Stoicism.

    Marcus likes to ask himself, "What virtue has nature given me to deal with this situation?" That naturally leads to the question: "How do other people cope with similar challenges?" Stoics reflect on character strengths such as wisdom, patience and self-discipline, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try to exemplify these virtues and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life, during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope. Even historical figures or fictional characters can serve as role models.

    With all of this in mind, it's easier to understand another common slogan of Stoicism: fear does us more harm than the things of which we're afraid. This applies to unhealthy emotions in general, which the Stoics term "passions" – from pathos , the source of our word "pathological". It's true, first of all, in a superficial sense. Even if you have a 99% chance, or more, of surviving the pandemic, worry and anxiety may be ruining your life and driving you crazy. In extreme cases some people may even take their own lives.

    In that respect, it's easy to see how fear can do us more harm than the things of which we're afraid because it can impinge on our physical health and quality of life. However, this saying also has a deeper meaning for Stoics. The virus can only harm your body – the worst it can do is kill you. However, fear penetrates into the moral core of our being. It can destroy your humanity if you let it. For the Stoics that's a fate worse than death.

    Finally, during a pandemic, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your own death. Since the day you were born, that's always been on the cards. Most of us find it easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the No1 most popular coping strategy in the world. We live in denial of the self-evident fact that we all die eventually. The Stoics believed that when we're confronted with our own mortality, and grasp its implications, that can change our perspective on life quite dramatically. Any one of us could die at any moment. Life doesn't go on forever.

    We're told this was what Marcus was thinking about on his deathbed. According to one historian, his circle of friends were distraught. Marcus calmly asked why they were weeping for him when, in fact, they should accept both sickness and death as inevitable, part of nature and the common lot of mankind. He returns to this theme many times throughout The Meditations.

    "All that comes to pass", he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as "familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn". Marcus Aurelius, through decades of training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of someone who has done so countless times already in the past.

    Donald Robertson is cognitive behavioural therapist and the author of several books on philosophy and psychotherapy, including Stoicism and the Art of Happiness and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

    [Apr 22, 2020] Replacing Workers Has Many Costs by Cheryl Carleton

    Apr 22, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    It goes without saying that the consequences to workers are damaging to catastrophic. Normally, being unemployed for more than six months is a near-insurmountable barrier to getting hired again. Perhaps coronavirus will create a better new normal on this front, of companies taking a more understanding view of crisis-induced resume gaps.

    By Cheryl Carleton, Assistant Professor of Economics, Villanova University. Originally published at The Conversation

    The labor market is changing rapidly with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

    Many organizations are laying off almost all of their workers , while others are considering which workers to lay off, which to furlough and which to keep. Alternatively, some are expanding their labor forces .

    When the economy starts to open up again, employers will need to consider rehiring or replacing workers, or hiring workers with a different mix of skills. The cost of replacing an employee is high for employers, and being out of work is harmful for workers, who may be replaced with artificial intelligence or contractors and risk losing their skills.

    I'm an expert in labor economics , and my work with a colleague investigates the increase in people engaging in alternative work arrangements such as contract or gig work, along with the implications such jobs have for all workers' well-being .

    There is no denying that the U.S. was experiencing a tight labor market and a low rate of unemployment before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. For some fields, particularly health care and services deemed essential by local governments, the labor market continues to be tight.

    A sudden massive loss of demand for their goods and services is forcing companies to make quick decisions, and some employers may underestimate the cost to replace good employees. Knowing these costs may encourage them to keep more of their workers on the payroll.

    Where Are the Costs?

    There are costs involved in losing a worker and replacing them, such as completing paperwork when they leave, advertising the open position, reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates and training the new worker.

    Once a new worker is hired, others must also spend time training them, and it will take some time for the new worker to achieve the same level of productivity as the worker who left.

    Another cost is the loss in social capital . Social capital is the relationships between individuals at work that take time to build and add to the productivity of the firm.

    The Society for Human Resource Management found that departures cost about one-third of a worker's annual earnings .

    The Center for American Progress drilled in deeper. They found the costs of replacing workers who earn less than US$30,000 per year to be 16% of annual salary, or $3,200 for an individual earning $20,000 per year.

    For those earning $30,000 to $50,000 per year, it is estimated to cost about 20% of annual salary, or $8,000 for an individual earning $40,000. For highly educated executive positions, replacement costs are estimated to be 213% of annual salary – $213,000 for a CEO earning $100,000 per year.

    The much higher cost for replacing CEOs is partly due to the fact that they require higher levels of education, greater training, and firms may lose clients and institutional knowledge with such turnovers.

    Employee Alternatives

    This high cost of losing and replacing workers has important implications for organizations, consumers and workers, especially now with an estimated 15 million unemployed .

    For those workers where the costs to replace them are high, firms will try to accommodate them. Strategies may include maintaining pay, increasing benefits and retraining. These actions are also costly, so firms will weigh them against the cost of simply hiring new workers .

    This means businesses face high costs to replace workers in the future, and high costs to retain current workers, leading to higher costs for consumers who buy the firms' goods and services.

    While the above consequences might sound great for workers that organizations choose to keep, these are not the only ways in which firms can respond.

    The high cost of replacing workers, along with the increased uncertainty about the economy may cause businesses to use more automation and robots . Though such switches may entail a significant upfront cost, once they are made the firms then have more control over their production processes.

    Another alternative for firms is to hire fewer permanent employees and turn instead to contract workers . With contract workers, employers are not responsible for benefits, and they can more simply increase or decrease the number of workers as needed.

    While this may increase employment for some workers, it will decrease it for others and it has serious implications for the availability of health and pension benefits as well as unemployment benefits, as the current crisis has revealed.

    Businesses might also consider limiting the scope of what some workers do to limit the cost of replacing them. If the scope of a worker's job is limited, then fewer areas will be impacted by the individual leaving, and the costs to train a replacement will be lower. For workers, however, it means fewer opportunities to gain experience.

    For example, instead of training workers on several or all parts of the production process, the business may limit them to one specific aspect. It will then be less costly for the firm to replace them and the worker will have less experience to add to their resume. This also means less bargaining power for employees.

    Some Win, But Others Lose

    The high cost of losing and then hiring new workers along with increased restrictions on hiring nonresidents might mean higher wages and increased benefits for some workers.

    However, the high degree of uncertainty in the current labor market, along with the potential increase in contract workers and automation means that some workers will not realize these potential gains, and all of us as consumers will most likely end up paying higher prices for the goods and services we buy.

    [Jan 19, 2020] Death and Neglect in the 7th Fleet

    Jan 19, 2020 | www.propublica.org

    . A firsthand account from a U.S. Naval officer is eye opening (emphasis mine).

    He'd seen his ship, one of the Navy's fleet of 11 minesweepers, sidelined by repairs and maintenance for more than 20 months. Once the ship, based in Japan, returned to action, its crew was only able to conduct its most essential training -- how to identify and defuse underwater mines -- for fewer than 10 days the entire next year . During those training missions, the officer said, the crew found it hard to trust the ship's faulty navigation system: It ran on Windows 2000.

    Sonar which identifies dishwashers, crab traps and cars as possible mines, can hardly be considered a rebuilt military. The Navy's eleven minesweepers built more than 25 years ago, have had their decommissioning continually delayed because no replacement plan was implemented. I'll await the deeper understanding of 'deterrence' from b, even as I consider willingness to commit and brag about war crimes as beyond the point of no return.

    Posted by: psychedelicatessen | Jan 19 2020 9:14 utc | 98

    [Jan 19, 2020] The Quiet Crisis Deaths Caused By Alcoholism Have More Than Doubled

    Jan 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

    The Quiet Crisis: Deaths Caused By Alcoholism Have More Than Doubled by Tyler Durden Sat, 01/18/2020 - 21:15 0 SHARES

    Opioid overdoses may have leveled off last year after soaring over the last ten, but Americans are still dying in droves from another, far more popular substance: alcohol.

    According to a series of studies cited by MarketWatch , the number of Americans drinking themselves to death has more than doubled over the last two decades, according to a sobering new report. That far outpaces the rate of population growth during the same period.

    Researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism studied the cause of death for Americans aged 16 and up between 1999 and 2017. They determined that while 35,914 deaths were tied to alcohol in 1999, it doubled to 72,558 in 2017. The rate of deaths per 100,000 soared by 50.9% from 16.9 to 25.5.

    Over that 20-year period, the study determined that alcohol was involved in more than 1 million deaths. Half of these deaths resulted from liver disease, or a person drinking themselves to death, or a drug overdose that involved alcohol.

    For more context: In 2017 alone, 2.6% of roughly 2.8 million deaths in the US were alcohol-related.

    One doesn't need to be a chronic alcoholic to suffer from alcohol: Nine states - Maine, Indiana, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia - saw a "significant" increase in adults who binge drink, a dangerous activity that can lead to deadly car crashes and other fatal accidents, according to a report released Thursday by the CDC.

    And across the country, Americans who binge drink are consuming more drinks per person: That number spiked from 472 in 2011 to 529 in 2017, a 12% increase.

    Historically, men have been more predisposed to "deaths of despair" than women: But a study published in "Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research" found that the largest increase in recent years in these types of deaths occurred among non-hispanic white women.

    Public health crises tied to substance abuse have been plaguing American for decades. So, what is it about our contemporary society that's causing deaths to skyrocket?

    There's some food for thought.


    VodkaInKrakow , 1 hour ago link

    This happens in poor economies. Happened in Russia from 1992 on. Not every area is affected in The US. Just those with the functional equivalent of a 3rd world or developing world economy.

    Add in a Japanese-style lost-growth decade.

    Double-whammy for parts of The US.

    sekhars , 1 hour ago link

    about 2000 die each year in NYC due to alcohol directly. 4 to 5 times more than opioids and more than all the drugs related death combined.

    Ms No , 2 hours ago link

    I'm watching somebody kill themselves with alcohol as we speak. People have catered to her alcaholism for 15 years. Her original ezcuse was a family death. Her husband has died now. Alcaholics always have an excuse though. Alcaholism always seeks excuse.

    I am a callous bitch and just cut right to the point. "All of us have to decide to live or die. Life is a choice. If you decide to die, you will. I hope you havent already aubconsciously made that decision (can tell by dreams). You should search for a reason to live. Whatever you choose I will respect that."

    TerryThomas , 2 hours ago link

    Liver deaths? You mean Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease caused by sugary drinks laced with HFCS has made a spike in liver disease death, so naturally the lazy investigator blames it on alcohol.

    sirpo , 4 hours ago link

    adults who binge drink, a dangerous activity that can lead to deadly car crashes and other fatal accidents, according to a report released Thursday by the CDC.

    a dangerous activity CORRECTION STUPIDITY or CHEAP CHARLIE for not willing to take a UBER or YELLOW CAB home

    What are we talking here $50 at most

    Any idea what a DWI will set you back cause I know for a fact in stupidity and 1980's USD and it taught me

    Don't do the crime if you can't spend the dime for a taxi

    Erwin643 , 1 hour ago link

    Just thinning the herd, Baby!

    pods , 4 hours ago link

    Some people have a hard time living in crazy town.

    I mean, constant war, dollar value sinking, inflation sucking the life outta you, **** food and a fake society. All the while everywhere you look people are pretending they're killing it while up to their eyeballs in debt.

    I'm actually pretty happy these numbers are this low.

    PersonalResponsibility , 4 hours ago link

    Spot on pods. It's nice I have a dream and a good job while following the dream but the pressure is huge explained by what you wrote.

    Pull , 1 hour ago link

    Absolutely DEAD NUTS ON!

    [Jan 11, 2020] Atomization of workforce as a part of atomization of society under neoliberalism

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness. ..."
    "... And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves. ..."
    "... The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling. ..."
    "... Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation. ..."
    "... So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church. ..."
    Apr 18, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    DJG , April 17, 2017 at 11:09 am
    Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That's what's wrenching society apart George Monbiot, Guardian

    George Monbiot on human loneliness and its toll. I agree with his observations. I have been cataloguing them in my head for years, especially after a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness.

    A couple of recent trips to Rome have made that point ever more obvious to me: Compared to my North Side neighborhood in Chicago, where every other person seems to have a dog, and on weekends Clark Street is awash in dogs (on their way to the dog boutiques and the dog food truck), Rome has few dogs. Rome is much more densely populated, and the Italians still have each other, for good or for ill. And Americans use the dog as an odd means of making human contact, at least with other dog owners.

    But Americanization advances: I was surprised to see people bring dogs into the dining room of a fairly upscale restaurant in Turin. I haven't seen that before. (Most Italian cafes and restaurants are just too small to accommodate a dog, and the owners don't have much patience for disruptions.) The dogs barked at each other for while–violating a cardinal rule in Italy that mealtime is sacred and tranquil. Loneliness rules.

    And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves.

    That's why the comments about March on Everywhere in Harper's, recommended by Lambert, fascinated me. Maybe, to be less lonely, you just have to attend the occasional march, no matter how disorganized (and the Chicago Women's March organizers made a few big logistical mistakes), no matter how incoherent. Safety in numbers? (And as Monbiot points out, overeating at home alone is a sign of loneliness: Another argument for a walk with a placard.)

    Katharine , April 17, 2017 at 11:39 am

    I particularly liked this point:

    In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two feet.

    With different imagery, the same is true in this country. The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling.

    DJG , April 17, 2017 at 11:48 am

    Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation.

    So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church.

    [Jan 10, 2020] America's Hamster Wheel of 'Career Advancement' by Casey Chalk

    Notable quotes:
    "... Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World ..."
    "... The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the labor Americans perform isn't actually good ..."
    Jan 09, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    We're told that getting ahead at work and reorienting our lives around our jobs will make us happy. So why hasn't it? Many of those who work in the corporate world are constantly peppered with questions about their " career progression ." The Internet is saturated with articles providing tips and tricks on how to develop a never-fail game plan for professional development. Millions of Americans are engaged in a never-ending cycle of résumé-padding that mimics the accumulation of Boy Scout merit badges or A's on report cards except we never seem to get our Eagle Scout certificates or academic diplomas. We're told to just keep going until we run out of gas or reach retirement, at which point we fade into the peripheral oblivion of retirement communities, morning tee-times, and long midweek lunches at beach restaurants.

    The idealistic Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer's bestselling book Into the Wild defiantly declares, "I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one." Anyone who has spent enough time in the career hamster wheel can relate to this sentiment. Is 21st-century careerism -- with its promotion cycles, yearly feedback, and little wooden plaques commemorating our accomplishments -- really the summit of human existence, the paramount paradigm of human flourishing?

    Michael J. Noughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, and board chair for Reel Precision Manufacturing, doesn't think so. In his Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World , Noughton provides a sobering statistic: approximately two thirds of employees in the United States are "either indifferent or hostile to their work." That's not just an indicator of professional dissatisfaction; it's economically disastrous. The same survey estimates that employee disengagement is costing the U.S. economy "somewhere between 450-550 billion dollars annually."

    The origin of this problem, says Naughton, is an error in how Americans conceive of work and leisure. We seem to err in one of two ways. One is to label our work as strictly a job, a nine-to-five that pays the bills. In this paradigm, leisure is an amusement, an escape from the drudgery of boring, purposeless labor. The other way is that we label our work as a career that provides the essential fulfillment in our lives. Through this lens, leisure is a utility, simply another means to serve our work. Outside of work, we exercise to maintain our health in order to work harder and longer. We read books that help maximize our utility at work and get ahead of our competitors. We "continue our education" largely to further our careers.

    Whichever error we fall into, we inevitably end up dissatisfied. The more we view work as a painful, boring chore, the less effective we are at it, and the more complacent and discouraged. Our leisure activities, in turn, no matter how distracting, only compound our sadness, because no amount of games can ever satisfy our souls. Or, if we see our meaning in our work and leisure as only another means of increasing productivity, we inevitably burn out, wondering, perhaps too late in life, what exactly we were working for . As Augustine of Hippo noted, our hearts are restless for God. More recently, C.S. Lewis noted that we yearn to be fulfilled by something that nothing in this world can satisfy. We need both our work and our leisure to be oriented to the transcendent in order to give our lives meaning and purpose.

    The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the labor Americans perform isn't actually good . There are "bad goods" that are detrimental to society and human flourishing. Naughton suggests some examples: violent video games, pornography, adultery dating sites, cigarettes, high-octane alcohol, abortifacients, gambling, usury, certain types of weapons, cheat sheet websites, "gentlemen's clubs," and so on. Though not as clear-cut as the above, one might also add working for the kinds of businesses that contribute to the impoverishment or destruction of our communities, as Tucker Carlson has recently argued .

    Why does this matter for professional satisfaction? Because if our work doesn't offer goods and services that contribute to our communities and the common good -- and especially if we are unable to perceive how our labor plays into that common good -- then it will fundamentally undermine our happiness. We will perceive our work primarily in a utilitarian sense, shrugging our shoulders and saying, "it's just a paycheck," ignoring or disregarding the fact that as rational animals we need to feel like our efforts matter.

    Economic liberalism -- at least in its purest free-market expression -- is based on a paradigm with nominalist and utilitarian origins that promote "freedom of indifference." In rudimentary terms, this means that we need not be interested in the moral quality of our economic output. If we produce goods that satisfy people's wants, increasing their "utils," as my Econ 101 professor used to say, then we are achieving business success. In this paradigm, we desire an economy that maximizes access to free choice regardless of the content of that choice, because the more choices we have, the more we can maximize our utils, or sensory satisfaction.

    The freedom of indifference paradigm is in contrast to a more ancient understanding of economic and civic engagement: a freedom for excellence. In this worldview, "we are made for something," and participation in public acts of virtue is essential both to our own well-being and that of our society. By creating goods and services that objectively benefit others and contributing to an order beyond the maximization of profit, we bless both ourselves and the polis . Alternatively, goods that increase "utils" but undermine the common good are rejected.

    Returning to Naughton's distinction between work and leisure, we need to perceive the latter not as an escape from work or a means of enhancing our work, but as a true time of rest. This means uniting ourselves with the transcendent reality from which we originate and to which we will return, through prayer, meditation, and worship. By practicing this kind of true leisure, well treated in a book by Josef Pieper , we find ourselves refreshed, and discover renewed motivation and inspiration to contribute to the common good.

    Americans are increasingly aware of the problems with Wall Street conservatism and globalist economics. We perceive that our post-Cold War policies are hurting our nation. Naughton's treatise on work and leisure offers the beginnings of a game plan for what might replace them.

    Casey Chalk covers religion and other issues for The American Conservative and is a senior writer for Crisis Magazine. He has degrees in history and teaching from the University of Virginia, and a masters in theology from Christendom College.

    [Jan 02, 2020] The Purpose Of Life Is Not Happiness: It s Usefulness Happiness as an achievable goal is an illusion, but that doesn t mean happiness itself is not attainable by Darius Foroux

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." ..."
    "... Recently I read Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It's about Peter Barton, the founder of Liberty Media, who shares his thoughts about dying from cancer. ..."
    Aug 22, 2019 | getpocket.com

    For the longest time, I believed that there's only one purpose of life: And that is to be happy. Right? Why else go through all the pain and hardship? It's to achieve happiness in some way. And I'm not the only person who believed that. In fact, if you look around you, most people are pursuing happiness in their lives.

    That's why we collectively buy shit we don't need, go to bed with people we don't love, and try to work hard to get approval of people we don't like.

    Why do we do these things? To be honest, I don't care what the exact reason is. I'm not a scientist. All I know is that it has something to do with history, culture, media, economy, psychology, politics, the information era, and you name it. The list is endless.

    We are who are.

    Let's just accept that. Most people love to analyze why people are not happy or don't live fulfilling lives. I don't necessarily care about the why .

    I care more about how we can change.

    Just a few short years ago, I did everything to chase happiness.

    But at the end of the day, you're lying in your bed (alone or next to your spouse), and you think: "What's next in this endless pursuit of happiness?"

    Well, I can tell you what's next: You, chasing something random that you believe makes you happy.

    It's all a façade. A hoax. A story that's been made up.

    Did Aristotle lie to us when he said:

    "Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence."

    I think we have to look at that quote from a different angle. Because when you read it, you think that happiness is the main goal. And that's kind of what the quote says as well.

    But here's the thing: How do you achieve happiness?

    Happiness can't be a goal in itself. Therefore, it's not something that's achievable. I believe that happiness is merely a byproduct of usefulness. When I talk about this concept with friends, family, and colleagues, I always find it difficult to put this into words. But I'll give it a try here. Most things we do in life are just activities and experiences.

    Those things should make you happy, right? But they are not useful. You're not creating anything. You're just consuming or doing something. And that's great.

    Don't get me wrong. I love to go on holiday, or go shopping sometimes. But to be honest, it's not what gives meaning to life.

    What really makes me happy is when I'm useful. When I create something that others can use. Or even when I create something I can use.

    For the longest time I foud it difficult to explain the concept of usefulness and happiness. But when I recently ran into a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the dots connected.

    Emerson says:

    "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

    And I didn't get that before I became more conscious of what I'm doing with my life. And that always sounds heavy and all. But it's actually really simple.

    It comes down to this: What are you DOING that's making a difference?

    Did you do useful things in your lifetime? You don't have to change the world or anything. Just make it a little bit better than you were born.

    If you don't know how, here are some ideas.

    That's just some stuff I like to do. You can make up your own useful activities.

    You see? It's not anything big. But when you do little useful things every day, it adds up to a life that is well lived. A life that mattered.

    The last thing I want is to be on my deathbed and realize there's zero evidence that I ever existed.

    Recently I read Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It's about Peter Barton, the founder of Liberty Media, who shares his thoughts about dying from cancer.

    It's a very powerful book and it will definitely bring tears to your eyes. In the book, he writes about how he lived his life and how he found his calling. He also went to business school, and this is what he thought of his fellow MBA candidates:

    "Bottom line: they were extremely bright people who would never really anything, would never add much to society, would leave no legacy behind. I found this terribly sad, in the way that wasted potential is always sad."

    You can say that about all of us. And after he realized that in his thirties, he founded a company that turned him into a multi-millionaire.

    Another person who always makes himself useful is Casey Neistat . I've been following him for a year and a half now, and every time I watch his YouTube show , he's doing something.

    He also talks about how he always wants to do and create something. He even has a tattoo on his forearm that says "Do More."

    Most people would say, "why would you work more?" And then they turn on Netflix and watch back to back episodes of Daredevil.

    A different mindset.

    Being useful is a mindset. And like with any mindset, it starts with a decision. One day I woke up and thought to myself: What am I doing for this world? The answer was nothing.

    And that same day I started writing. For you it can be painting, creating a product, helping elderly, or anything you feel like doing.

    Don't take it too seriously. Don't overthink it. Just DO something that's useful. Anything.

    Darius Foroux writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance. His ideas and work have been featured in TIME, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Observer, and many more publications. Join his free weekly newsletter.

    More from Darius Foroux

    This article was originally published on October 3, 2016, by Darius Foroux, and is republished here with permission. Darius Foroux writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance.

    Join his newsletter.


    [Jan 02, 2020] Since 2008, we've been witnessing a "reverse stagflation", i.e. low unemployment with low wages (a phenomenon which is impossible according to modern bourgeois economic theory).

    Jan 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

    vk , Dec 31 2019 18:38 utc | 32

    Here's another evidence capitalism has reached a stagnant level of both technological progress and birth rates:

    Over-65s to account for over half of employment growth in next 10 years

    Workers aged 65 and older will be responsible for more than half of all UK employment growth over the next 10 years and almost two-thirds of employment growth by 2060, according to new figures.

    Since 2008, we've been witnessing a "reverse stagflation", i.e. low unemployment with low wages (a phenomenon which is impossible according to modern bourgeois economic theory).

    The reason for this is what I mentioned earlier: no more technological progress and negative birth rates. The USA is still benefitting from mass immigration from Central America, but this demographic bonus won't last for much: now even the Third World countries are barely above the minimum 2 children per woman (including most of Latin American nations). Only a bunch of African nations (which have high mortality rates either way, so it doesn't matter) and India still have the "demographic bonus" in a level such as to be capitalistically viable.

    This problem is not new in cotemporary history. It happened once: in the USSR.

    In the 1970s, only 6% of the Soviet population was necessary to produce everything the USSR needed, so the only solution available was to expand the economy extensively, i.e. by reproducing the same infrastructure more times over.

    The problem with that is that the USSR had reached its limits demographically. Its population growth entered into stagnant to negative territory. Decades passed until the point where it didn't even matter if they came up with a revolutionary technology, since there were simply not enough children to teach and train to such new tech. Add to that the pressure from the Cold War (which drained its R&D to the military sector), and it begun to wither away.

    Now we can predict the same thing is happening to capitalism. Contrary to the USSR, the capitalist nations had the advantage of having available the demographic bonuses of the Third World - specially China - to maintain their dynamism even when some countries like Japan and Germany reached negative birth rates. Now China's demographic bonus is over and also much of Latin America. To make things even worse for the capitalists, China managed to scape the "middle income trap" and go to the route of becoming a superpower, thus adding to the demographic strains of the capitalist center.

    The solution, it seems, is to do pension reforms and force the old people back to work. France is going to destroy its pension system; Brazil already did that; the USA was a pioneer in forcing its old population to work to the death; Italy destroyed its pension system after 2008; the UK is preparing the terrain now that its social-democracy is definitely destroyed.

    Patroklos , Jan 1 2020 2:49 utc | 65

    Posted by: vk | Dec 31 2019 18:38 utc | 32

    As always I find your application of Marxist critique succinct and correct. This coming decade, with its unravelling of the financialization phase of our current phase of capitalism (i.e the US consolidation phase following British imperialism, c.1914-2020s), will be its terminal decade. The signal that we had entered the financialization phase were the shocks of 1970-73, and the replacement of industrial manufacture (i.e. money>commodity>money+x, or M-C-M') with finance/speculation (i.e. money>money+x, M-M') has unfolded more or less according to Marx's analysis in Capital vol.3. This is as much a crisis of value creation as anything else. In Australia (where I am) the process is particularly transparent: we have almost no manufacturing sector left and so we exchange labour-value created in China for mineral resources and engage in the ponzi-scheme of banking and property speculation, which produces no value whatsoever. Either way the M-C-M' phase in Australia has vanished and government dedicates itself to full-spectrum protection of the finance economy and mining. All the while a veneer of productivity is created by immigration, which destroys cities (because there's no infrastructure to accomodate them), inflates prices and creates the illusion of 'growth'. This is propped up by a media who perpetuate xenophobia by creating panic about refugees (5%) while saying zip about the fact that Australia only has economic growth at all because we bring in 250K new consumers every year. This collapsing financialization phase will only accelerate this decade and we will wake to find we don't make anything and have crumbling 1980s-era infrastructure: Australia will suffer badly as the phase plays out, not least because of a colonial-settler looting mentality around the 'economy' that persists at every level of government.

    What I like about the point you're making in your post (#32) is the wider expansive question of productivity -- or, how do we continue to produce value? It is often overlooked that Marx sought to liberate human beings from expropriative labour of every kind (which occurred as much under the Soviets as it does today); this means that capital's aorta connecting labour to value via money must be severed (rather than the endless attempts to reform capitalism to make it 'fairer' etc, a sell-out for which Gramsci savaged the union movement). The relation between work and value must be critiqued relentlessly. To salvage any kind of optimism about the future we need to invest all our intellectual energy in this critique and find a radically new way of construing the link between time, labour and value that does not include social domination.

    In the meantime the scenario to which you have drawn our attention -- the parasitic vampirism now attacking the elderly and the retired -- is an inevitable consequence of our particular moment in late capitalism, hurtling at speed toward a social catastrophe of debt, wealth inequality, neo-feudalism and biopolitical police state, all characterized by an image of 70-year-olds trudging to work in an agony of physical suffering and mental meaninglessness which will end in a forgotten grave.

    [Jan 01, 2020] FDA Failed to Police Opioids Makers, Thus Fueling Opioids Crisis

    Jan 01, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    FDA Failed to Police Opioids Makers, Thus Fueling Opioids Crisis Posted on January 1, 2020 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

    I had hoped to welcome 2020 with a optimistic post.

    Alas, the current news cycle has thrown up little cause for optimism.

    Instead, what has caught my eye today: 2019 closes with release of a new study showing the FDA's failure to police opioids manufacturers fueled the opioids crisis.

    This is yet another example of a familiar theme: inadequate regulation kills people: e.g. think Boeing. Or, on a longer term, less immediate scale, consider the failure of the Environmental Protection Agency, in so many realms, including the failure to curb emissions so as to slow the pace of climate change.

    In the opioids case, we're talking about thousands and thousands of people.

    On Monday, Jama Internal Medicine published research concerning the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) program to reduce opioids abuse. The FDA launched its risk evaluation and mitigation strategy – REMS – in 2012. Researchers examined nearly 10,000 documents, released in response to a Freedom of Information ACT (FOA) request, to generate the conclusions published by JAMA.

    As the Gray Lady tells the story in As Tens of Thousands Died, F.D.A. Failed to Police Opioids :

    In 2011, the F.D.A. began asking the makers of OxyContin and other addictive long-acting opioids to pay for safety training for more than half the physicians prescribing the drugs, and to track the effectiveness of the training and other measures in reducing addiction, overdoses and deaths.

    But the F.D.A. was never able to determine whether the program worked, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found in a new review, because the manufacturers did not gather the right kind of data. Although the agency's approval of OxyContin in 1995 has long come under fire, its efforts to ensure the safe use of opioids since then have not been scrutinized nearly as much.

    The documents show that even when deficiencies in these efforts became obvious through the F.D.A.'s own review process, the agency never insisted on improvements to the program, [called a REMS]. . .

    The FDA's regulatory failure had serious public health consequences, according to critics of US opioids policy, as reported by the NYT:

    Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis, said the safety program was a missed opportunity. He is a leader of a group of physicians who had encouraged the F.D.A. to adopt stronger controls, and a frequent critic of the government's response to the epidemic.

    Dr. Kolodny, who was not involved in the study, called the program "a really good example of the way F.D.A. has failed to regulate opioid manufacturers. If F.D.A. had really been doing its job properly, I don't believe we'd have an opioid crisis today."

    Now, as readers frequently emphasize in comments: pain management is a considerable problem – one I am all too well aware of, as I watched my father succumb to cancer. He ultimately passed away at my parents' home.

    That being said, as CNN tells the story in The FDA can't prove its opioid strategy actually worked, study says :

    Although these drugs "can be clinically useful among appropriately selected patients, they have also been widely oversupplied, are commonly used nonmedically, and account for a disproportionate number of fatal overdoses," the authors write.

    The FDA was unable, more than 5 years after it had instituted its study of the opioids program's effectiveness, to determine whether it had met its objectives, and this may have been because prior assessments were not objective, according to CNN:

    Prior analyses had largely been funded by drug companies, and a 2016 FDA advisory committee "noted methodological concerns regarding these studies," according to the authors. An inspector general report also concluded in 2013 that the agency "lacks comprehensive data to determine whether risk evaluation and mitigation strategies improve drug safety."

    In addition to failing to evaluate the effective of the limited steps it had taken, the FDA neglected to take more aggressive steps that were within the ambit of its regulatory authority. According to CNN:

    "FDA has tools that could mitigate opioid risks more effectively if the agency would be more assertive in using its power to control opioid prescribing, manufacturing, and distribution," said retired FDA senior executive William K. Hubbard in an editorial that accompanied the study. "Instead of bold, effective action, the FDA has implemented the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy programs that do not even meet the limited criteria set out by the FDA."

    One measure the FDA could have taken, according to Hubbard: putting restrictions on opioid distribution.

    "Restricting opioid distribution would be a major decision for the FDA, but it is also likely to be the most effective policy for reducing the harm of opioids," said Hubbard, who spent more than three decades at the agency and oversaw initiatives in areas such as regulation, policy and economic evaluation.

    The Trump administration has made cleaning up the opioids crisis – which it inherited – a policy priority. To little seeming effect so far. although to be fair, this is not a simple problem to solve. And litigation to apportion various costs of the damages various prescription drugmakers, distributors, and doctors caused it far from over – despite some settlements, and judgements (see Federal Prosecutors Initiate Criminal Probe of Six Opioid Manufacturers and Distributors ; Four Companies Settle Just Before Bellwether Opioids Trial Was to Begin Today in Ohio ; Purdue Files for Bankruptcy, Agrees to Settle Some Pending Opioids Litigation: Sacklers on Hook for Billions? and Judge Issues $572 Million Verdict Against J & J in Oklahoma Opioids Trial: Settlements to Follow? )

    Perhaps the Johns Hopkins study will spark moves to reform the broken FDA, so that it can once again serve as an effective regulator. This could perhaps be something we can look forward to achieving in 2020 (although I won't hold my breath).

    Or, perhaps if enacting comprehensive reform is too overwhelming, especially with a divided government, as a starting point: can we agree to stop allowing self-interested industries to finance studies meant to assess the effectiveness of programs to regulate that very same industry? Please?

    This is a concern in so many areas, with such self-interested considerations shaping not only regulation, but distorting academic research (see Virginia Supreme Court Upholds Ruling that George Mason University Foundation Is Not Subject to State FOIA Statute, Leaving Koch Funding Details Undisclosed ).

    What madness!

    [Jan 01, 2020] Gig workers getting screwed

    Jan 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

    c1ue , Dec 29 2019 16:19 utc | 3

    Gig workers getting screwed. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it - the modern gig economy is nothing more than the "putting out" system redux from the early days of the industrial revolution.
    And much like the looms and thread from the putting out system, the owners control pricing for gig workers as well as cut off any possibility of upward advancement.
    Vice article on gig workers
    Note this isn't one company - it is all of them. When Uber first started, they were paying over $1/mile for drivers - it is now down to $0.60. Equally, the various other gig startups pay more to lure workers in, then cut when they need/want to.
    When she initially joined Instacart a year ago, Dorton says she could earn up to $800 during a 40 hour workweek picking up groceries at Costco and Sam's Club and dropping them off at customers' homes. But in recent months, her weekly income has fallen to $400 for 60 hours of grocery shopping. "I made more delivering pizza and waiting tables," Dorton told Motherboard.

    Yes, but with the delivery services contributing to the everlasting restaurant crunch, there are fewer jobs delivering pizza and waiting tables. That's a feature.

    [Dec 30, 2019] Economic Possibilities for Ourselves by Robert Skidelsky

    Notable quotes:
    "... In Praise of Idleness ..."
    "... Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained ..."
    "... Project Syndicate ..."
    "... Rise of the Robots ..."
    "... ad infinitum ..."
    Dec 30, 2019 | robertskidelsky.com

    The most depressing feature of the current explosion in robot-apocalypse literature is that it rarely transcends the world of work. Almost every day, news articles appear detailing some new round of layoffs. In the broader debate, there are apparently only two camps: those who believe that automation will usher in a world of enriched jobs for all, and those who fear it will make most of the workforce redundant.

    This bifurcation reflects the fact that "working for a living" has been the main occupation of humankind throughout history. The thought of a cessation of work fills people with dread, for which the only antidote seems to be the promise of better work. Few have been willing to take the cheerful view of Bertrand Russell's provocative 1932 essay In Praise of Idleness . Why is it so difficult for people to accept that the end of necessary labor could mean barely imaginable opportunities to live, in John Maynard Keynes's words, "wisely, agreeably, and well"?

    The fear of labor-saving technology dates back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, but two factors in our own time have heightened it. The first is that the new generation of machines seems poised to replace not only human muscles but also human brains. Owing to advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, we are said to be entering an era of thinking robots; and those robots will soon be able to think even better than we do. The worry is that teaching machines to perform most of the tasks previously carried out by humans will make most human labor redundant. In that scenario, what will humans do?

    The other fear factor is the increasing precariousness of wage labor – though this concern is seemingly belied by headline statistics suggesting that unemployment is at a historic low. The problem is that an economy at "full employment" now contains a large penumbra of what economist Guy Standing calls the "precariat": under-employed people who work less and for lower pay than they would like. A growing number of workers, seeming to lack any kind of job (and pay) security, are thus forced to work well below their ability.

    It is natural that one would interpret the onset of precariousness as the first stage in a broader trend toward workforce redundancy, especially if one pays attention to alarmist predictions of the next category of "jobs at risk." But this conclusion is premature. The penetration of robotics into the world of work has not yet been sufficient to explain the rise of the precariat. So far, "cost cutting" in the West has largely taken the form of offshoring to the East, where labor is cheaper, rather than replacing humans with machines. But "onshoring" work that was previously offshored will offer cold comfort to workers if machines get most of the jobs.

    ROBO-RAPTURE

    According to the first view – let us call it "job enrichment" – technology will eventually create more, better human jobs than it destroys, as has always been the case in the past. Simple, mundane tasks may increasingly be automated, but human labor will then be freed up for more "interesting" and "creative" cognitive work.

    In late 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) published Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained , which claimed that as much as 50% of working hours in the global economy could theoretically be automated; the authors suggested, however, that not more than 30% actually would be. Further, they estimated that less than 5% of occupations could be fully automated; but that in 60% of occupations, at least 30% of the required tasks could be.

    In line with the usual mainstream assessment, MGI believes that while there will be no net loss of jobs in the long run, the "transition may include a period of higher unemployment and wage adjustments." It all depends, the authors say, on the rate at which displaced workers are re-employed: a low re-employment rate will lead to a higher medium-term unemployment rate, and vice versa .

    MGI's proposal for massive investment in education to lower the unemployment cost of the transition is also conventional. The faster the labor reabsorption, the higher the wage growth. Lower re-employment levels will cause wages to fall, with a greater share of the gains from automation accruing to capital, not labor. But the authors hasten to add:

    "Even if the particulars of historical experience turn out to differ from conditions today, one lesson seems pertinent: although economies adjust to technological shocks, the transition period is measured in decades, not years, and the rising prosperity may not be shared by all."

    This assessment is typical, and it has led many to call on governments to invest heavily in so-called "upskilling" programs. In a commentary for Project Syndicate , Zia Qureshi of the Brookings Institution argues that, "with smart, forward-looking policies, we can ensure that the future of work is a better job." In this view, automation is simply the continuation of the move toward more, higher-quality jobs that has characterized capitalist growth since the Industrial Revolution.

    History is on the optimists' side. Mechanization has been the durable engine of productivity and wage growth as well as reductions in working hours, albeit usually with a considerable lag. Although the Roberts loom cost hundreds of thousands of handloom weavers their jobs in the nineteenth century, the broader wave of new industrial technologies enabled a much larger population to be maintained at a higher standard of living.

    ROBO-REDUNDANCY

    But, according to the second view – call it "job destruction" – this time is different. The programming of machines to perform ever more complex tasks with ever-increasing speed, accuracy, precision, and reliability will result in mass unemployment. In Rise of the Robots , author and entrepreneur Martin Ford addresses the techno-optimists head-on. "There is a widely held belief – based on historical evidence stretching back at least as far as the industrial revolution – that while technology may certainly destroy jobs, businesses, and even entire industries, it will also create entirely new occupations often in areas that we can't yet imagine." The problem, Ford argues, is that information technology has now reached the point where it can be considered a true utility, much like electricity.

    It stands to reason that the successful new industries that will emerge in the years ahead will have taken full advantage of this powerful new utility and the distributed machine intelligence that accompanies it. That means they will rarely – if ever – be highly labor-intensive. The threat is that as creative destruction unfolds, the "destruction" will fall primarily on labor-intensive businesses in traditional areas like retail and food preparation, whereas the "creation" will generate new industries that simply don't employ many people.

    On this view, the economy is heading for a tipping point where job creation will begin to fall consistently short of what is required to employ the workforce fully. We will soon reach the stage where the machine-driven destruction of existing human jobs far outpaces the creation of new human jobs, resulting in inexorably rising mass "technological unemployment."

    THE UPSKILLING MIRAGE

    Optimists' response to such concerns is that the workforce simply needs to be trained or upskilled in order to "race with the machines." Typical of this outlook is the following headline on a commentary published by the World Economic Forum: "How new technologies can create huge numbers of meaningful jobs." According to the author, concerns about "the looming devastation that self-driving technology will have on the 3.5 million truck drivers in the US" are "misdirected." Augmented-reality technology, we are told, can create loads of new jobs by enabling people to work from home. All that will be needed is training of the kind offered by "Upskill, an augmented reality company in the manufacturing and field services sectors," which "uses wearable technologies to provide step-by-step instructions to industrial workers."

    The author, himself the co-founder of an augmented-reality company, goes on to argue that, "With the pace of technological progress only accelerating and with increasing specialization becoming the norm in every industry, reducing the time necessary to retrain workers is pivotal to maintaining the competitiveness of industrialized economies." There is no mention of the wages that will be offered to these "upskilled" workers in their "meaningful" new jobs. We are simply told that they will be relocated to "lower cost areas more in need of job creation." Only at the very end of the commentary does the author acknowledge that, in fact, "Technology is a force that has the potential to eliminate entire industries through robotics and automation, and for that we should be concerned."

    The retraining argument should give us pause. In portraying upskilling as the solution to the labor displacement caused by new technologies, optimists rarely admit that if predictions about "thinking robots" turn out to be anywhere near true, workers would need to be trained in technical skills to an extent that is unprecedented in human history.

    Moreover, the time it takes to upgrade the skills of the workforce will inevitably exceed the time it takes to automate the economy. This will be true even if claims about an imminent deluge of automation are greatly exaggerated. In the interval, there will be under- and unemployment. In fact, this has already been happening. Although automation is not yet bearing down on workers to the extent that has been predicted, it has nonetheless pushed more of them into less-skilled jobs; and its mere possibility may be exerting downward pressure on wages. There are already signs of the new class structure envisioned by the pessimists: "lovely jobs at the top, lousy jobs at the bottom."

    A more fundamental question is what we mean by upskilling, and what its consequences might be. Often, heavy emphasis is placed on the importance of better technological education at all levels of society, as if all people will need to succeed in the future is to be taught how to write and understand computer code.

    As the technology writer James Bridle has shown , this line of argument has a number of limitations. While encouraging people to take up computer programming might be a good start, such training offers only a functional understanding of technological systems. It does not equip people to ask higher-level questions along the lines of, "Where did these systems come from, who designed them and what for, and which of these intentions still lurk within them today?" Bridle also points out that arguments for technological education and upskilling are usually offered in "nakedly pro-market terms," following a simple equation: "the information economy needs more programmers, and young people need jobs in the future."

    THE MISSING DIMENSION

    More to the point, the upskilling discourse totally ignores the possibility that automation could also allow people simply to work less. The reason for this neglect is twofold: it is commonly assumed that human wants are insatiable, and that we will thus work ad infinitum to satisfy them; and it is simply taken for granted that work is the primary source of meaning in human lives. 1

    Historically, neither of these claims holds true. The consumption race is a rather recent phenomenon, dating no earlier than the late nineteenth century. And the possibility that we might one day liberate ourselves from the "curse of work" has fascinated thinkers from Aristotle to Russell. Many visions of Utopia betray a longing for leisure and liberation from toil. Even today, surveys show that people in most developed countries would prefer to work less, even in the workaholic United States, and might even accept less pay if it meant logging fewer hours on the clock.

    The deeply economistic nature of the current debate excludes the possibility of a life beyond work . Yet if we want to meet the challenges of the future, it is not enough to know how to code, analyze data, and invent algorithms. We need to start thinking seriously and at a systemic level about the operational logic of consumer capitalism and the possibility of de-growth.

    In this process, we must abandon the false dichotomy between "jobs" and "idleness." Full employment need not mean full-time employment, and leisure time need not be spent idly. (Education can play an important role in ensuring that it is not.) Above all, wealth and income will need to be distributed in such a way that machine-enabled productivity gains do not accrue disproportionately to a small minority of owners, managers, and technicians.

    [Dec 22, 2019] After the Eviction Notice

    Dec 22, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    smoker , December 21, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    Re: After the Eviction Notice

    So disturbing, and this problem is only going to increase in the US as people realize they can no longer afford to rent anywhere, and there are millions of Boomers who rent, with no available affordable housing to move into, and no livable wage jobs (despite education) for those who would gladly continue working – due to an as yet to be headlined age discrimination which started during the dot.com boom Clinton/Gore ushered in, and exploded during Obama's reign. Sickeningly, in Silicon Valley, 35 year olds feel over the hill.

    None of the candidates want to even address this rental housing issue (for all ages) with Federal Tax Policy even? Renters are the only ones who invest major sums of money into housing, with no equity whatsoever?

    newcatty , December 21, 2019 at 3:38 pm

    Yes, it is the canary growing fainter and struggling for life in the dark gloom of the coal mine. The most basic human requirement for survival is shelter, after food and water. Clothing is also in that category. The poor and homeless ( absolutely including the working poor) at first , when attention started to be given to the " national crisis and (in some people's minds) and national disgrace", was just, you know, the usual suspects. From hobos ( whom many saw as romanticized free spirits or stubborn old guys) to including the abandoned mentally ill, drug addicts, criminals, people with "something to hide", teens on the run from neglect or abuse to? The numbers of people who are essentially w/o shelter is not going to remain out of sight, out of mind. Now, we know that mothers, fathers, grandparents, children and grandchildren are homeless. And, if they are not, many are living in what , once upon a time, poor or desolate housing. Many are living in ,what was once called a boarding house, in a room with their kids. They supposedly have access to "common areas". This is not people who often even have more than a casual aquaintanceship with their "landlords". This is not the "Golden Girls" living the high life in sunny Florida with the owner, who is an adorable rascal. No doubt, some examples of older, single women housing together is a good fit for some.

    Most older people on limited incomes don't live in a golden fantasy world. Besides young people not being able to afford outrageous rents, now include the older people. Couple this with the "reports" that there are people hungry in this country. Age has become no restrictor on this tragic fact. This can not stand. Trickle down the ,as was mentioned , breads and circuses in all of their guises. Cheap, junk fast food will become not so cheap when in dire poverty. Housing is just cold, hearted cash for the owners. Who gets to watch the circuses and gladiators ? Got cable tv( even if you personally choose not to not the point)? Afford the cost of any pro sports tickets ? Attend any cultural events that include paying for tickets? Yep, am not going to include the all American past time of watching a game at the local pub. Many people can not afford the luxury of the food and drinks OK, it's time to stop now with my pov. I am fortunate to not be in the above circumstances. Too many are, though.

    smoker , December 21, 2019 at 5:40 pm

    Your point of view seems valid to me.

    God knows what's being planned behind closed doors for this increasing tragedy, the reality is too clear for Congress not to be aware of it. Meanwhile, I'm fully sure that amoral predators who are investing in those areas they're betting the homeless will be forced to dwell and die in, or choose to be euthanized at.

    Meanwhile, Congress does absolutely nothing about putting a stop to obscenely biased, corrupted and deadly in its blatant discrimination AI, which is increasingly decimating millions of jobs, and virtually tagging people with social scores they'll never get out from under, no matter how false. This, ever since Obama glibly announced there would be many jobs lost, and some pain, due to technology The Technocracy . A Bipartisan, Horrid Congress accepted it as a necessary reality.

    The Rev Kev , December 21, 2019 at 5:43 pm

    The only thing missing was a police officer going in after with a drawn gun. When millions of people were being kicked out of their homes about a decade a go, I saw a photo that won an award at the time. It showed a cop, with pistol drawn, going into a house that had the family kicked out from it. Surrounding him was all the left overs from a family's life and it was very sad.

    smoker , December 21, 2019 at 7:29 pm

    It is heart rending. Even watching renters who leave before being evicted is heart rending, they're forced to throw away many belongings, like perfectly good mattresses and basic necessities. Lived at an apartment complex turned into ratty ass condos for mostly foreign property 'flippers' who continued renting them out, then 'flipping' them. The despair, fear, and loss during a huge job downturn was horrid to witness, as many had lived there over ten years. I was lucky to be on my feet somewhat at the time, no longer.

    Every fricking sign, particularly in Silicon Valley, that advertises Apartment Homes ™ should be torn down and destroyed. The average US renters have always been treated as second class leechers, I've witnessed it my entire adult life, now they're being treated even worse.

    Thanks Clinton/Gore, Obomber/Biden, Nanny Pelosi , et al; and we thought that was only the mark of Republicans busy at work.

    smoker , December 21, 2019 at 9:12 pm

    Thinking on this subject even more, it occurs to me why the powers that be are so invested in pitting each generation against the other. An empowered US renters' 'lobby' could be enormous. It would cross all age – along with race, gender, religion, and geographic – spectrums. Renters, along with the homeless are increasing in vast numbers of all ages. The last thing the powers that be would want, is for those vast millions to stick together against them, and age is the easiest barrier for the powers that be to keep renters separated by.

    [Dec 07, 2019] Fake goverment statistics as interpreted by Dean baker

    Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne , December 06, 2019 at 08:34 AM

    http://cepr.net/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/jobs-2019-12
    December 6, 2019

    Economy Adds 266,000 Jobs in November, Unemployment Edges Down to 3.5 Percent
    By Dean Baker

    The share of women in payroll employment is likely to exceed 50 percent in December.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 266,000 jobs in November. While this figure is inflated by the return of roughly 50,000 striking GM autoworkers, upward revisions to the prior two months' data brought the three-month average to a solid 205,000. The unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent, returning to a 50-year low.

    The job growth was widely spread across industries. Manufacturing added 54,000 jobs, somewhat more than the number of returning strikers. It appears that the sector may again be on a modest growth path, with the number of jobs up 13,000 from its level three months ago and 76,000 from its year-ago level. Food manufacturing is providing the bulk of these gains, adding 19,300 jobs in the last three months and 25,900 over the last year.

    Health care added 45,200 jobs in November after adding just 11,900 in October. Job growth for the two months together falls slightly below the 34,500 average for the last year. Restaurants added 25,300 jobs, roughly its average for the last year. The high-paying professional and technical services sector added 30,600 jobs, after three months of weak growth.

    Construction employment remains weak, with the sector adding just 1,000 jobs in November. Job growth has averaged just 5,600 a month since June. Support activities for mining, which has been losing jobs since February, lost another 5,700 jobs in November. Employment in that sector is now down 23,700 (6.6 percent) over the last year. Retail added 2,000 jobs for the month, but employment is still down 31,400 (0.2 percent) over the last year.

    In spite of the strong job growth and low unemployment rate, there continues to be no evidence of accelerating wage growth. The average hourly wage increased 3.1 percent over the last year. The annual rate of growth over the last three months (September, October, and November), compared to the prior three months (June, July, August), was just 3 percent.

    Women's share of payroll employment edged closer to 50 percent in November, with the figure now standing at 49.992 percent, up from 49.977 percent in October. This should mean that the share will cross 50 percent in December.

    The data in the household survey was generally positive. The overall employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) remained at a recovery high of 61.0 percent for the third straight month. The EPOP for prime-age workers (ages 25 to 54) also remained at its recovery high of 80.3 percent. The EPOP for prime-age men edged up 0.2 percent to 86.7 percent, a high reached in March, while the EPOP for women slipped 0.1 percentage point to 74.1 percent, which is still a full percentage point above its year-ago level.

    The average duration of unemployment spells fell in November, as did the share of the long-term unemployed. There was a modest increase of 0.1 weeks in the median duration.

    Perhaps the most disturbing item in this report was the dip in the share of unemployment due to voluntary quits from 14.5 percent to 13.3 percent. This is extraordinarily low, given the 3.5 percent unemployment rate. On the other hand, it is consistent with what we're seeing with wage growth, which remains modest, and with no evidence of acceleration.

    Another discouraging item in the household data is the decline in the share of the workforce that chooses to work part-time. This fell by 15,000 in November. For the year average to date, this figure is up by less than 0.5 percent, meaning that it is dropping as a share of total employment. The share of voluntary part-time employment had increased sharply after the Affordable Care Act took effect, the recent decline is likely an indication of the increasing difficulty of getting health care coverage outside of employment.
    [Graph]

    This should be seen as a mostly positive report. The pace of job growth clearly has slowed some from its 2018 rate, but with the economy presumably approaching full employment, this was inevitable. The major downside is that workers seem to remain insecure about their employment prospects, as evidenced by the low quit rates and the relatively modest pace of wage growth.

    anne -> anne... , December 06, 2019 at 08:40 AM
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=mRhq

    January 4, 2018

    United States Employment-Population Ratio for Women, * 2007-2018

    * Employment age 25-54


    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=mRhs

    January 4, 2018

    United States Employment-Population Ratio for Men, * 2007-2018

    * Employment age 25-54

    anne -> anne... , December 06, 2019 at 08:41 AM
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lMlh

    January 15, 2018

    Real Median Weekly Earnings for men and women, * 2007-2018

    * Full time wage and salary workers

    (Percent change)


    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lMlk

    January 15, 2018

    Real Median Weekly Earnings for men and women, * 2007-2018

    * Full time wage and salary workers

    (Indexed to 2007)

    likbez -> anne... , December 07, 2019 at 01:39 AM
    Anne,

    The truth is that good, middle class jobs are very difficult to get. Almost impossible. You are very lucky being a retiree with Vanguard funds chest ;-)

    Recent graduates are in a very bad position, with only graduates from Ivy league colleges resume not being instantly tossed into waist basket.

    McJobs, Amazon warehouse jobs, Home Depot jobs, low level construction jobs (in $15-$20 per hour range), etc are available for graduates. But that's it. Looks like the USA is looking now like a big amazon warehouse.

    People over 50 are actually doomed, if they lost the job, to much lower standard of living. Even if they are professionals.

    likbez -> likbez... , December 07, 2019 at 01:43 AM
    And please understand that this a period when baby boomer leave workforce. So theoretically this should be a very low unemployment period.

    [Dec 04, 2019] Trump and Trade: He s Not All Wrong by Dean Baker

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Employment in the United States has increased steadily over the last seven years, one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history. There are about 10 million more working Americans today than when President Obama took office. ..."
    "... "David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., estimated in a famous paper that increased trade with China did eliminate roughly one million factory jobs in the United States between 2000 and 2007. However, an important implication of his findings is that such job losses largely ended almost a decade ago. ..."
    "... It is also worth noting that even though our trade deficit has declined from its 2006 peak (the non-oil deficit has recently been rising again), workers are constantly being displaced by imports. The Bureau of Labor Statistic reports there have been an average of 110,000 layoffs or discharges a month in manufacturing thus far this year. If just a quarter of these are trade-related, it would imply that more than 300,000 workers a year are losing their jobs due to trade. ..."
    "... The second point is the wage effect, which can go beyond the direct impact of job loss. The oil market can give us a useful way of thinking about this issue. Suppose that Saudi Arabia or some other major producer ramps up its oil production by 1 million barrels of oil a day. This will put downward pressure on world prices, which will have the effect of lowering prices in the United States as well. This could mean, for example, that instead of getting $50 for a barrel of oil, producers in North Dakota will only get $40 a barrel. This will mean less money for workers and companies in the oil industry. In the case of workers, it will mean fewer jobs and lower pay. ..."
    "... This can happen even if there is very little direct impact of trade. The increased supply of Saudi oil may result in some modest reduction in U.S. exports of oil, but the impact on price will be much larger. The analogous story with trade in manufactured goods is that the potential to import low cost goods from Mexico, China, or other countries can have the effect of lowering wages in the United States, even if the goods are not actually imported. ..."
    "... Finally, the balance of trade will have an impact on the overall level of employment in the economy when the economy is below its full employment level of output. Until the Great Recession, most economists did not think that trade could affect the overall level of employment, but only the composition. This meant that trade could cause us to lose manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, but these job losses would be offset by gains in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. This could still mean bad news for the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs, but the net effect for the country as a whole would still be positive. ..."
    "... The Great Recession changed this view, as many economists came to believe that the United States is facing a period of secular stagnation: a sustained period in which lack of demand in the economy constrains growth and employment. In this context, the trade deficit is a major cause of the lack of demand since it is spending that is creating demand in other countries rather than the United States. If we could reduce the annual trade deficit by $100 billion then as a first approximation it will have the same impact on the economy as a stimulus of $100 billion. ..."
    "... There is no generally accepted explanation as to why so many prime age workers would suddenly decide they didn't feel like working, but one often invoked candidate is the loss of manufacturing jobs. The argument in this story is that the manufacturing sector provided relatively good paying jobs for people without college degrees. With so many of these jobs now gone, these workers can't find jobs. If this argument is true, then it means that trade has cost the country a large number of jobs even if the economy is back at full employment. ..."
    Oct 11, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne : October 11, 2016 at 06:46 AM , October 11, 2016 at 06:46 AM

    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/trump-and-trade-he-s-not-all-wrong

    October 11, 2016

    Trump and Trade: He's Not All Wrong

    Given his history of promoting racism, xenophobia, sexism and his recently exposed boasts about sexual assaults, not many people want to be associated with Donald Trump. However that doesn't mean everything that comes out of his mouth is wrong.

    In the debate on Sunday Donald Trump made a comment to the effect that because of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade deals, "we lost our jobs." The New York Times was quick to say * this was wrong.

    "We didn't.

    "Employment in the United States has increased steadily over the last seven years, one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history. There are about 10 million more working Americans today than when President Obama took office.

    "David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., estimated in a famous paper that increased trade with China did eliminate roughly one million factory jobs in the United States between 2000 and 2007. However, an important implication of his findings is that such job losses largely ended almost a decade ago.

    "And there's no evidence the North American Free Trade Agreement caused similar job losses.

    "The Congressional Research Service concluded in 2015 that the 'net overall effect of Nafta on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest.' "

    There are a few things to sort out here. First, the basic point in the first paragraph is absolutely true, although it's not clear that it's relevant to the trade debate. The United States economy typically grows and adds jobs, around 1.6 million a year for the last quarter century. So any claim that trade has kept the U.S. from creating jobs is absurd on its face. The actual issue is the rate of job creation and the quality of the jobs.

    Here there are three issues to consider.

    1) The direct job loss – the jobs that were displaced due to imports substituting for domestically produced goods and services;

    2) The wage effects – the downward pressure on the wages of workers that retain their jobs that can result from job loss and also the threat of job loss;

    3) The impact of a trade deficit on the level of demand in the economy.

    Taking these in turn we now have some pretty solid evidence on some of the job loss attributable to trade. David Autor's work ** found that imports from China cost the economy more than 2 million jobs in the years from 2000-2007.

    "Estimates of the net impact of aggregate demand and reallocation effects imply that import growth from China between 1999 and 2011 led to an employment reduction of 2.4 million workers" (page 29).

    These are workers who are directly displaced by import competition. In addition, as the article goes on to note, there were more workers who likely lost their jobs to the multiplier effect in the local economies most directly affected by imports.

    The impact of trade with China was more dramatic than trade with Mexico and other countries because of the huge growth in imports over a short period of time. However, even if the impact from trade with other countries was smaller, it still would have a substantial effect on the communities affected.

    It is also worth noting that even though our trade deficit has declined from its 2006 peak (the non-oil deficit has recently been rising again), workers are constantly being displaced by imports. The Bureau of Labor Statistic reports there have been an average of 110,000 layoffs or discharges a month in manufacturing thus far this year. If just a quarter of these are trade-related, it would imply that more than 300,000 workers a year are losing their jobs due to trade.

    Of course people lose jobs for other reasons also, like increased productivity. So the fact there is job loss associated with trade doesn't make it bad, but it is not wrong to see this as a serious problem.

    The second point is the wage effect, which can go beyond the direct impact of job loss. The oil market can give us a useful way of thinking about this issue. Suppose that Saudi Arabia or some other major producer ramps up its oil production by 1 million barrels of oil a day. This will put downward pressure on world prices, which will have the effect of lowering prices in the United States as well. This could mean, for example, that instead of getting $50 for a barrel of oil, producers in North Dakota will only get $40 a barrel. This will mean less money for workers and companies in the oil industry. In the case of workers, it will mean fewer jobs and lower pay.

    This can happen even if there is very little direct impact of trade. The increased supply of Saudi oil may result in some modest reduction in U.S. exports of oil, but the impact on price will be much larger. The analogous story with trade in manufactured goods is that the potential to import low cost goods from Mexico, China, or other countries can have the effect of lowering wages in the United States, even if the goods are not actually imported.

    Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor of industrial relations at Cornell, documented one way in which the potential to import can have the effect of lowering wages. She found *** that employers regularly used the threat of moving operations to Mexico as a way to thwart unionization drives. While most workers are not typically involved in unionization drives, it is easy to imagine this dynamic playing out in other contexts where employers use the real or imagined threat from import competition as a reason for holding down wages. The implication is the impact of trade on wages is likely to be even larger than the direct effect of the goods actually brought into the country.

    Finally, the balance of trade will have an impact on the overall level of employment in the economy when the economy is below its full employment level of output. Until the Great Recession, most economists did not think that trade could affect the overall level of employment, but only the composition. This meant that trade could cause us to lose manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, but these job losses would be offset by gains in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. This could still mean bad news for the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs, but the net effect for the country as a whole would still be positive.

    The Great Recession changed this view, as many economists came to believe that the United States is facing a period of secular stagnation: a sustained period in which lack of demand in the economy constrains growth and employment. In this context, the trade deficit is a major cause of the lack of demand since it is spending that is creating demand in other countries rather than the United States. If we could reduce the annual trade deficit by $100 billion then as a first approximation it will have the same impact on the economy as a stimulus of $100 billion.

    From this perspective, the trade deficit is a major source of job loss. Our current trade deficit of $500 billion a year (@2.8 percent of GDP) is a major drag on demand and employment. For this reason, a politician would be absolutely right to cite trade as a big factor in the weakness of the labor market.

    It is worth noting that many economists (including many at the Federal Reserve Board) now believe that the economy is close to its full employment level of output, in which case trade is not now a net cause of job loss even if it had been earlier in the recovery. There are two points to be made on this view.

    First, there are many prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, who argue that the economy is still well below its full employment level of output. So this is at least a debatable position.

    Second, if we accept that the economy is near full employment it implies that close to 2 million prime age workers (ages 25-54) have permanently left the labor market compared to 2007 levels of labor force participation. (The gap is close to 4 million if we use 2000 as our comparison year.)

    There is no generally accepted explanation as to why so many prime age workers would suddenly decide they didn't feel like working, but one often invoked candidate is the loss of manufacturing jobs. The argument in this story is that the manufacturing sector provided relatively good paying jobs for people without college degrees. With so many of these jobs now gone, these workers can't find jobs. If this argument is true, then it means that trade has cost the country a large number of jobs even if the economy is back at full employment.

    In short, there are good reasons for a politician to complain about trade as a major source of our economic problems. There is much research and economic theory that supports this position.

    * http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/us/elections/fact-check-debate.html#/factcheck-25

    ** http://www.ddorn.net/papers/Autor-Dorn-Hanson-ChinaShock.pdf

    *** http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=cbpubs

    -- Dean Baker

    [Dec 04, 2019] Perfect Storm Trump Admin To Cut 750,000 From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession

    First they cut unemployment benefits. Now they are cutting food stamps. Great...
    Dec 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    In a bid to end the massive welfare state, the Trump administration is expected to announce new measures Wednesday that would end food stamp benefits for nearly 750,000 low-income folks. The new rules will make it difficult for "states to gain waivers from a requirement that beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program," according to Bloomberg sources.

    Republicans have long attempted to abolish the welfare state, claiming that the redistribution of wealth for poor people keeps them in a state of perpetual poverty. They also claim the welfare state is a system of command and control and has been used by Democrats for decades as a political weapon against conservatives, hence why most inner cities vote Democrat.

    House Republicans tried to cut parts of the federal food assistance program last year, but it was quickly rejected in the Senate.

    The new requirements by the Trump administration would only target "able-bodied" recipients who aren't caring for children under six.

    Sources said the measure would be one of three enacted by the Trump administration to wind down the massive federal food assistance program.

    The measures are expected to boot nearly 3.7 million recipients from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Though it comes at a time when employment is in a downturn, manufacturing has stumbled into a recession , and the US economy could be entering a mild recession in the year ahead. As to why President Trump wants hundreds of thousands of low-income folks off SNAP ahead of an election year while the economy is rapidly decelerating could be an administrative error that may lead to social instabilities in specific regions that will be affected the hardest. Then again, no turmoil could come out of it, and it's hailed as a success during the election year.

    The Department of Agriculture estimates that the new measures could save the agency $1.1 billion in year one, and $7.9 billion by year five.

    Nearly 36.4 million Americans in the "greatest economy ever" are on food stamps. At least half of all Americans have low-wage jobs, barely enough to cover living expenses, nevertheless, service their credit cards with record-high interest rates . The economy as a whole is undergoing profound structural changes with automation and artificial intelligence. Tens of millions of jobs will be lost by 2030. It's likely the collision of these forces means the welfare state is going nowhere and will only grow in size when the next recession strikes.

    Cutting food stamps for low-income folks is the right move into creating a more leaner government, but there are severe social implications that could be triggered if the new measures are passed.

    And while President Trump wants to slash the welfare state for poor people, his supply-side policies and bailouts of corporate America have been record-setting in some respects.

    Actions by the administration clearly show that corporate welfare for Wall Street elites is more important than welfare for low-income folks. Perfect Storm: Trump Admin To Cut 750,000 From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession


    naps8906 , 23 seconds ago link

    this is one of the most shameful acts for any president, especially a billionaire. If he wants to save a billion/year, cut it from military. Or increase staff at SNAP to check for fraud, but this is really shameful. I think it would've been better to raise tariff on China and use that money to increase SNAP not decrease it

    cheka , 1 minute ago link

    i have a better way. over BMI = no taxpayer funded food handouts

    taking money from the working class, at the point of a gun....to give free food to fat *****.....clown world

    Wild Bill Steamcock , 4 minutes ago link

    What's the need in cutting foodstamps? You can take every able-bodied recipient and have them work a reasonable number of hours per week in a fair exchange. Plenty of work to be had and you could do it WPA style where those of certain skills could apply them.

    And if you want to cut welfare, START WITH CORPORATE WELFARE

    Dr Anon , 4 minutes ago link

    This is a positive development in terms of the nuclear family. Women can't just abscond with the kids and her husband's alimony if she knows she will have to actually get a job to pay for her own food. I'm sick of paying taxes to support whore women and their bastard children.

    Zeusky Babarusky , 6 minutes ago link

    "The Department of Agriculture estimates that the new measures could save the agency $1.1 billion in year one, and $7.9 billion by year five."

    Today's Repo operation by the Fed is $70.1 Billion. The $1.1 Billion in annual savings due to this cut is about 1.5% of what the Fed pumped into the Repo market just today. I'm all for cutting out the fraud. If you can work, then you should work. Don't work? Don't eat! But our economy is a Service Sector for the most part now, and the wages suck for a big part in the Service Sector. Wages overall have been nearly flat for about 30 years. How about we cut the welfare **** to the banks, Wall Street? That would save trillions not just billions. Typical DC. Fix problems while ******* over the little people, and continuing corporate welfare all the while. This **** so needs to burn up!

    same2u , 7 minutes ago link

    In the meantime, the Fed keeps on giving to the billionaires and banksters...

    Stock market is the food stamp program for the super rich...

    Omega_Man , 6 minutes ago link

    great... outsource manufacturing, sign new trade deals to off shore more jobs, ramp up the stock market for the rich, waste trillions on destabilizing other nations, give israel all they want, print money to infinity, ask for zero interest rate.. and a billion per year to feed poor people is too much.. Trump is in touch with the little guy

    Trump will lose 2020... give the 750,000 guns and ammo and some food and water... and a map to DC... Soros can provide the buses...

    Rusticus2.0 , 7 minutes ago link

    In a bid to end the massive welfare state, the Trump administration is expected to announce new measures Wednesday that would end food stamp benefits for nearly 750,000 low-income folks

    and yet Trump is crying for negative interest rates so the 0.1% can continue getting the welfare they deserve ?

    Just Take It All , 7 minutes ago link

    Do lampposts dream of central bankers?

    Fishthatlived , 10 minutes ago link

    A Bloomberg story? Isn't that guy running for President? What a coincidence.

    NoDebt , 4 minutes ago link

    The new rules will make it difficult for "states to gain waivers from a requirement that beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program," according to Bloomberg sources.

    And... those are actually the OLD rules, which are still on the books, but which Obama waived by EO. I'm glad 750,00 are being cut from the roles.

    NoDebt , 1 minute ago link

    Trump Admin To Cut 750,000 From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession

    OK, so I have to ask: What recession? Well, the coming one, obviously! So let's logic this out. You wouldn't cut food stamps IN a recession (political suicide), so what's your alternative? You're either in a recession or you're on your way to the next one which will happen eventually, right? So, when would you be able to cut food stamps? I guess never by that logic.

    RiskyBidness , 7 minutes ago link

    If you like your foodstamps .You can't keep your foodstamps

    [Dec 04, 2019] Your Uber Driver Is 'Retired' You Shouldn't Be Surprised by Paula Span

    In other words older people are pushed to the boom of the ladder. To thankless jobs like Uber, and janitorial type of jobs.
    Oct 25, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

    Despite spending 40 to 60 hours a week picking up riders in his 2015 Subaru Forester, Mr. Ellenbogen is barely surviving financially. He had to give up his apartment and move into his mother's condo in Verona, N.J. He relies on Medicaid for health care.

    "It's something I'm accepting because I'm in need of money," he said of his Lyft gig. "I'm capable of better things, but this is what's available to me."

    Economists debate how to define this kind of employment, often categorized as "nontraditional jobs" or "alternative work arrangements," and how to calculate the proportion of the older work force engaged in it.

    Popularly seen as the province of the young, it now provides work for a growing number of people in their 50s, 60s and beyond.

    The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics includes independent contractors (who may be self-employed but well compensated) and estimates that 11.4 percent of those aged 50 to 62 have nontraditional jobs. The Government Accountability Office, using an even broader definition including part-timers, says the figure is 31.2 percent.

    Among workers over 62, economists at The New School's Retirement Equity Lab have found that 9 percent were in "on-call, temp, contract or gig jobs" in 2015; the researchers believe the percentage has grown since then .

    In a just-published report, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College put the number of nontraditional job holders at about 20 percent of 50- to 62-year-old workers , using data from the national Health and Retirement Study.

    Their study defines nontraditional jobs as those that provide no health insurance or retirement benefits. "They're probably low-paid," said Alicia Munnell, director of the center. "Some have erratic schedules."

    ... ... ...

    The majority of those in nontraditional jobs at ages 50 to 62 rely on them for most of their employment, and their retirement income at 62 is 26 percent lower than that of employees holding traditional jobs. (Nontraditional jobholders have somewhat higher rates of depression, as well.)

    ... ... ...

    Nontraditional jobs include food service and retail, as well as gig jobs; among the fastest growing categories are janitorial work, and personal care and health aide positions. "They're not easy on older bodies," Dr. Ghilarducci pointed out. "They require a lot of physical stamina."

    ... ... ...

    Mr. Ellenbogen, for instance, has a master's degree in social psychology from the University of Vermont. After getting laid off from sales positions and finding a return to business coaching unprofitable, he became a commission-only sales rep for Home Depot, with no base salary or benefits.

    The company let him go, he said, when retina surgery left him unable to drive for two months. After he recovered, the only work he could find was with Lyft, where about a quarter of drivers are over 50, the company reported last year.

    Mr. Ellenbogen has searched for jobs on LinkedIn, on Indeed, in local newspapers. The New Start Career Network at Rutgers University has provided free weekly sessions with a coach.

    Nothing has materialized, so Mr. Ellenbogen keeps driving, trying to delay claiming Social Security to maximize his benefits.

    [Dec 01, 2019] Federal Prosecutors Initiate Criminal Probe of Six Opioid Manufacturers and Distributors

    Fetanil smuggling from China also played an important role
    Dec 01, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Federal Prosecutors Launch Criminal Probe of Opioid Makers, Distributors :

    The investigation, if it results in criminal charges, could become the largest prosecution yet of drug companies alleged to have contributed to the opioid epidemic, escalating the legal troubles of businesses that already face complex, multibillion-dollar civil litigation in courts across the country. Prosecutors are examining whether the companies violated the federal Controlled Substances Act, a statute that federal prosecutors have begun using against opioid makers and distributors this year.

    By using statutes typically used to target drug dealers, prosecutors are finally seeing these companies for what they are: drug pushers. This approach is unusual but not unprecedented, according to the Journal:

    Earlier this year, federal prosecutors filed major criminal cases in Manhattan and Ohio that, for the first time, employed criminal statutes that are more commonly applied to drug dealers, legal experts say.

    When prosecutors from the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against a pharmaceutical distributor and two executives earlier this year, the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office said the case was unusual.

    "This prosecution is the first of its kind," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in April, "executives of a pharmaceutical distributor and the distributor itself have been charged with drug trafficking."

    CNBC notes in Federal prosecutors open criminal probe of opioid makers and distributors, report says :

    The investigation marks a significant broadening of the federal government's focus on pinpointing which parties contributed to the opioid crisis.

    The six companies to receive subpoenas from the US attorney's office for the eastern district of New York are: AmerisourceBergen Corp., Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt, McKesson Corp. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., as reported by the WSJ, citing regulatory filings.

    This investigation is in its early stages; whether or not other companies have thus far also received subpoenas is not apparent. As federal prosecutors proceed, they will likely widen their probe, drawing in more companies and individuals.

    Separately, most states, as well as roughly 2,600 city, county, and municipal governments have sued major players throughout the opioids supply chain. Despite intense pressure on parties to settle, these negotiations have stalled and numerous lawsuits remain pending (see Four Companies Settle Just Before Bellwether Opioids Trial Was to Begin Today in Ohio .)

    One manufacturer, Purdue Pharma has already filed for bankruptcy (see Purdue Files for Bankruptcy, Agrees to Settle Some Pending Opioids Litigation: Sacklers on Hook for Billions? ).

    As yesterday's WSJ further reports:

    Purdue separately faces civil and criminal probes from the U.S. attorneys offices in New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut and U.S. Justice Department in Washington and has said that a proposed plan to turn over its operations to creditors is contingent on resolving the federal investigations .

    Opioids have made it onto Trump's personal radar screen. AP reports in Trump donates 3rd-quarter salary to help fight opioid crisis:

    President Donald Trump is donating his third-quarter salary to help tackle the nation's opioid epidemic.

    A White House official says Trump has given the $100,000 he would be paid in the quarter to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, which oversees federal public health offices and programs, including the surgeon general's office.

    The White House says the funds are being earmarked "to continue the ongoing fight against the opioid crisis."

    Jerri- Lynn here. Well. Thanks for your concern!!

    More from AP:

    Trump has made tackling the misuse of opioids an administration priority. More than 70,000 Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses, the bulk of them involving opioids.

    Trump is required to be paid, but he has pledged to donate his salary while in office to worthy causes. Trump donated his second-quarter salary to the surgeon general's office.

    This I didn't know.

    Deaths of Despair

    In separate news today, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study affirming that American life expectancy continues to decline, Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the United States, 1959-2017 .

    The US trend is in contrast to the state of play in other advanced countries; US life expectancy began to lose pace in the 1980s, according to the JAMA study, and by 1998, had declined to a level below the OECD average. Since 2014, US life expectancy rates have declined for three consecutive years.

    Naked Capitalism has covered the rise in "deaths of despair" extensively: the decline in US life expectancy, especially for poorer and less educated Americans, see these posts drawn from numerous examples: Stunning" Rise in Death Rate, Pain Levels for Middle-Aged, Less Educated Whites) ; Credentialism and Corruption: The Opioid Epidemic and "the Looting Professional Class" ; US Life Expectancy Declines in 2015: Unintentional Injuries Rise ; and American Life Expectancy Continues to Fall: Rise in Suicides, Overdose Deaths the Big Culprit .

    The latest JAMA figures show that the decline extends throughout the country, as the New York Times reports in It's Not Just Poor White People Driving a Decline in Life Expectancy :

    But a new analysis of more than a half-century of federal mortality data, published on Tuesday in JAMA , found that the increased death rates among people in midlife extended to all racial and ethnic groups, and to suburbs and cities. And while suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism were the main causes, other medical conditions, including heart disease, strokes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also contributed, the authors reported.

    From the JAMA study's abstract:

    Findings Between 1959 and 2016, US life expectancy increased from 69.9 years to 78.9 years but declined for 3 consecutive years after 2014. The recent decrease in US life expectancy culminated a period of increasing cause-specific mortality among adults aged 25 to 64 years that began in the 1990s, ultimately producing an increase in all-cause mortality that began in 2010. During 2010-2017, midlife all-cause mortality rates increased from 328.5 deaths/100 000 to 348.2 deaths/100 000. By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases. The largest relative increases in midlife mortality rates occurred in New England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%) and the Ohio Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%). The increase in midlife mortality during 2010-2017 was associated with an estimated 33 307 excess US deaths, 32.8% of which occurred in 4 Ohio Valley states.

    This trend has occurred despite the US spending the highest per capita on health of any country in the world – a point made in a JAMA editorial published simultaneously with the study, Confronting the Rise and Fall of US Life Expectancy.

    Now, no one would dispute that the US health care system is a mess. From the NYT:

    "The whole country is at a health disadvantage compared to other wealthy nations," the study's lead author, Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, said. "We are losing people in the most productive period of their lives. Children are losing parents. Employers have a sicker work force."

    The study makes for depressing reading; you can download the full version for free by registering at the above link.

    If you lack time for that, some summary from the NYT:

    "Mortality has improved year to year over the course of the 20th century," said Dr. Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania. "The 21st century is a major exception. Since 2010 there's been no improvement in mortality among working-aged people."

    Death rates are actually improving among children and older Americans, Dr. Woolf noted, perhaps because they may have more reliable health care -- Medicaid for many children and Medicare for older people. Jerri-Lynn here: my emphasis.

    But the problem isn't wholly related to the dysfunctional US health care system. Extreme inequality doesn't just harm the poorest and weakest among us. Over to the NYT:

    "The fact that it's so expansive and involves so many causes of death -- it's saying that there's something broader going on in our country," said Ellen R. Meara, a professor of health policy at Dartmouth College. "This no longer limited to middle-aged whites."

    The states with the greatest relative increases in death rates among young and middle-aged adults were New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, West Virginia and Ohio.

    Dr. Woolf said one of the findings showed that the excess deaths were highly concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana.

    "What's not lost on us is what is going on in those states," he said. "The history of when this health trend started happens to coincide with when these economic shifts began -- the loss of manufacturing jobs and closure of steel mills and auto plants."

    What do the billionaires and their toadies have to say to that?

    And, to return to where I began, note that Ohio is ground zero for the opioids epidemic.


    Matthew G. Saroff , November 27, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    When are we going to start seeing asset forfeiture of the companies and the executives?

    If a couple of senior execs end up having to wash dishes for a living, and having to rely on public defenders, and maybe there will be deterrence.

    Also, maybe it will prompt a reevaluation of the asset forfeiture laws.

    Ford Prefect , November 27, 2019 at 2:07 pm

    A former Obama official was interviewed today about these investigations. When asked point-black on whether or not pharma executives should go to jail on these charges, there was tremendous hemming and hawing about the "goal is to prevent this from happening again in the future" which is the same stance regarding financial executives after the GFC. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/783223378/feds-may-pursue-criminal-charges-against-opioid-makers

    So the drug laws incarcerate millions of poor and minority people for minor drug possession offences but effectively running a drug cartel inside US corporations would not be worth jailing somebody for? No wonder people are simply ready to toss the entire system.

    Annieb , November 27, 2019 at 5:28 pm

    Here's an excellent article about fentanyl smuggling from China. The opioid crisis is not just about US companies. The larger question is why our government largely ignored fentanyl smuggling for years during the Obama administration despite warnings from DEA.

    http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-china-fentanyl-20181019-story.html

    albrt , November 28, 2019 at 2:59 am

    "The larger question is why our government largely ignored fentanyl smuggling for years during the Obama administration"

    Umm, because Barack Obama was one of the worst criminal accessories in the entire history of the world across every economic sector?

    Do I win a prize for answering that question correctly?

    David , November 27, 2019 at 2:42 pm

    Terrific read. Thank you.

    Pain patients who function quite well with medication are caught between the more strident of the War on Drugs Crusaders and the addicts who use opioids recreationally, causing most to think of anyone on pain medication as drug abusers. Pain patients using medication as prescribed are not drug abusers and a safe harbor needs to be created to protect this vulnerable population. They are genuinely in fear and despair has set in. They are consciously and openly stating an intent to commit suicide. We should not forget them as this war continues. They saw what Duarte promoted and understand they are powerless in a fight where their lives are at stake.

    Cutting off the supply through criminal prosecutions of manufacturers will harm the most vulnerable. Perhaps that is the plan.

    Synoia , November 27, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    The issue appears to be "prescription" and "control"

    You intimate the drugs will be removed from the market, as opposed to being subject to proper and necessary stringent controls.

    The issue at hand with the manufacturers is: Have the Manufacturers caused bypass on controls. As I understand it, the drugs are not banned at this point in time.

    The manufacturers appear to be investigated for promoting mis-prescription of their products.

    Annieb , November 27, 2019 at 5:09 pm

    Most deaths are caused by fentanyl overdose, and most fentanyl is imported from China through Mexico. The manufacturers are Chinese companies.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/09/04/757089868/fentanyl-as-a-dark-web-profit-center-from-chinese-labs-to-u-s-streets

    The Obama administration didn't take serious action. Why?

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/ct-hlth-obama-fentanyl-20190313-story.html

    David , November 27, 2019 at 5:26 pm

    There have been unintended consequences from the war on drugs. To your point, we have seen providers, insurers, and pharmacies set their own limits to avoid liability. Going after the risk-averse pharmaceutical manufacturers will force them to decide whether the profit is worth the risk of financial ruin and possible prison. And legitimate patients are caught in the middle.

    Anecdotally, we have this result that impacts the most vulnerable – not the powerful, who will always get their drugs, whether they need them or not:

    The misconception that opioid prescriptions lead to opiate addiction has been widespread, and overarching state and federal measures to combat the opioid overdose crisis are reaching a fever pitch. There's the Oregon Health Authority's (OHA) now-tabled proposal to force-taper all Medicaid patients on opioids for certain chronic pain conditions; Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Gardner's controversial proposal to limit all acute pain medication prescriptions to a seven day fill, which sparked massive pushback from the chronic pain and disability communities; and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who favors a three-day fill limit. In contrast, the American Medical Association (AMA) has come out against arbitrary pill limits, as has a group called Health Professionals for Patients in Pain (HP3).

    Very few opioid addictions begin with a patient who has a doctor's prescription: Up to 80 percent of people with an opioid addiction illegally obtained pills from another source like a friend or relative first. While the opioid overdose epidemic from illegal heroin and fentanyl is a serious problem, federal and state actions to decrease the number of opioid prescriptions and/or pills in circulation overall will have -- and are already having -- a hugely negative impact on chronic pain patients who take opioid medications. While the number of pain prescriptions has declined since 2010, the number of deaths due to overdoses involving heroin and synthetic fentanyl has increased.

    According to Thomas Kline, MD, a physician in North Carolina who maintains a list of chronic pain patients who committed suicide after being forced off of their medications, the anti-opioid hysteria that has taken root in the medical field and the federal government has resulted in "people [being] killed."

    https://talkpoverty.org/2019/05/17/chronic-pain-opioid-crisis

    Protect the vulnerable in this clash.

    notabanktoadie , November 28, 2019 at 2:44 am

    +100

    And I'm reminded of this besides Proverbs 31:6-9, etc.

    even the compassion of the wicked is cruel. Proverbs 12:10

    CoryP , November 28, 2019 at 6:15 am

    "Very few opioid addictions begin with a patient who has a doctor's prescription".

    This is very similar to the original marketing line of OxyContin, and I have a hard time believing it. But it's only a gut feeling along with vague memories of educational materials I've seen before but would have to look up.

    I think there are pretty forceful (though not equally funded) agendas on both sides of the issue that would want to down- or over-play the impact of prescribed opioids.

    Either way, I don't think it's necessary to use that quote in order to make the case that people in pain still deserve access to these drugs.

    Yves Smith , November 28, 2019 at 6:38 am

    Other sources flatly contradict this claim. This is from an article by a professor of medicine:

    According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four in five new heroin users started out by misusing prescription painkillers, and 94 percent of opioid-addicted patients said that they switched to heroin because prescription opioids were more expensive and harder to obtain.

    https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/oxycontin-how-purdue-pharma-helped-spark-opioid-epidemic/

    And:

    Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative, at Brandeis University, has worked with hundreds of patients addicted to opioids. He told me that, though many fatal overdoses have resulted from opioids other than OxyContin, the crisis was initially precipitated by a shift in the culture of prescribing -- a shift carefully engineered by Purdue. "If you look at the prescribing trends for all the different opioids, it's in 1996 that prescribing really takes off," Kolodny said. "It's not a coincidence. That was the year Purdue launched a multifaceted campaign that misinformed the medical community about the risks." When I asked Kolodny how much of the blame Purdue bears for the current public-health crisis, he responded, "The lion's share."

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

    CoryP , November 28, 2019 at 12:11 pm

    Thanks. I knew I wasn't going crazy but don't always have references at hand.

    CoryP , November 28, 2019 at 3:49 am

    I work as a pharmacist in northern Ontario, where the opioid problem is quite acute. To be fair, this region had some insane narcotic prescribing habits -- dose/increases that seemed unreasonably high (since well before I started practicing 10 years ago).

    Now we're seeing a combination of new grad physicians seemingly afraid to prescribe opioids, and older doctors either under investigation by their regulatory body, or retiring as fast as they can to avoid getting nailed.

    Their patients in the (sadly frequent) worst case, suddenly find themselves without a doctor in an area which already has a shortage. Or they're put through a forced rapid taper off these meds which seems only a bit less stressful.

    Chronic pain patients can definitely benefit from tapering their dose, as opioid-induced hyperalgesia is definitely a thing, and overdose risk increases with dose even taking into consideration tolerance.

    A lot of patients with pain can benefit from methadone or Suboxone, which is often the only option remaining as addiction treatment centres are everywhere. But even if those drugs work for them there's still a lot of inconvenience and stigma attached to them.

    I wish the attitude was more accomodating to the patients who have been on these huge doses for years. (usually in their 50s or 60s). Like, say to doctors "try not to get anybody else hooked on opiates, but be gentle with the patients that already are".

    But it seems like the approach taken is mostly based on avoidance of liability. And the profits of addictions chains that provide dubiously valuable treatment.

    I guess there's no perfect solution. It's a shitshow up here.

    eg , November 28, 2019 at 4:16 am

    Thank you for doing what you can -- it must be very stressful. I wouldn't blame those who fled such responsibility.

    notabanktoadie , November 28, 2019 at 4:44 am

    There's no perfect solution but certainly an ethical finance system is part of an optimum solution.

    CoryP , November 28, 2019 at 5:32 am

    Yeah, off the top of my head the biggest financial issues that could be helped by a government that gave crap would be:
    1) increase the welfare/disability payments which have lost ground to inflation since the 90s I believe
    2) do something for the awful living conditions and opportunities for our first nations reserves, which are (were?) the biggest centres of despair and addiction
    3) free pharmacare would help, though our most vulnerable do already have coverage
    4) actually fund mental health programs/psychotherapy

    The vaunted Canadian healthcare system doesn't cover much that doesn't happen in a doctor's office or hospital. It's it's not heading in the right direction.

    notabanktoadie , November 28, 2019 at 6:56 am

    Not to discount generous welfare for the needy by any means but those things don't address the fundamental problem which is economic injustice.

    CoryP , November 28, 2019 at 12:13 pm

    It occurs to me now you might have meant something entirely different by 'finance system' but I was on a tangent.

    notabanktoadie , November 28, 2019 at 5:31 pm

    I did; the need for extensive welfare is, by itself, an indication of an unjust economic system.

    The indicators are piling up, btw. The latest I've heard is the US birth rate is below replacement of the population.

    notabanktoadie , November 28, 2019 at 12:52 am

    What do the billionaires and their toadies have to say to that? Jerri-Lynn Scofield

    Certainly toadies, intentional or otherwise, must include those who support unethical finance – the means by which so many jobs were outsourced in the first place.

    Our finance system was designed or evolved to only create wealth – not to share it justly – and we are reaping the bitter fruit of that shortsightedness.

    William Beyer , November 28, 2019 at 7:22 am

    Can't wait to see how this will all be blamed on the Russians

    Robpost , November 28, 2019 at 10:12 am

    Better late than never, I suppose. But, to look only to preventing such things from recurring in the future is to give the current crop of miscreants a pass, as was done with torturing and financial crimes since the turn of the century.

    JimTan , November 28, 2019 at 12:38 pm

    A criminal probe is definitely appropriate. It's already been established that drug companies and their distributors have flooded the country with 76 billion opioid pills between 2006 through 2012. 76 billion pills amounts to approximately 33 opiate pills per year for every man woman and child in the United States during the 7 year time period covered in this article. And that's only oxycodone and hydrocodone – it doesn't include the various types of fentanyl.

    That can't be a mistake.

    Gordon , November 29, 2019 at 11:35 am

    There is good evidence that providing treatment for the addicted rather than criminalising them is the way to go with a big fringe benefits in terms of less crime etc for the rest of the community, for example the work of Dr John Marks in Widness, England.

    I haven't read the book mentioned but the Liverpool Echo tells of his success – until, that is, the US leaned on the UK to stop him.

    Can anyone shed any light on why the US would do that?

    Myron , November 30, 2019 at 7:55 pm

    Methadone destroys your bones. They become brittle and crumble. Suboxone does very little for pain relief. Suboxone only blocks the craving for opioids. It is obvious most of you posters have little contact with addicts and rely on articles published by individuals who use govt' info to BS the population.

    WHY have there not been at least Criminal Manslaughter charges filed against some of the actors in the dreadful life drama. The doctors, The manufacturers, the distributors. If I give scrip opioids to another and thy die from taking them , I will be charged with a Homicide.

    [Dec 01, 2019] A Wicked Cocktail Of Corporate Greed, Social Media, Opioids Is Slashing US Life Expectancy Rates

    Notable quotes:
    "... Why is a guy much over 50 going to work for? **** that. 55 is pushing it for any sort of manual labor. ..."
    "... Even top US citizen STEM grads can't find jobs. Or get interviews. That's pretty much all you need to know about how good the economy is. ..."
    Dec 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    A Wicked Cocktail Of Corporate Greed, Social Media, & Opioids Is Slashing US Life Expectancy Rates by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/01/2019 - 22:30 0 SHARES

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Following decades of increased life expectancy rates, Americans have been dying earlier for three consecutive years since 2014, turning the elusive quest for the 'American Dream' into a real-life nightmare for many. Corporate America must accept some portion of the blame for the looming disaster.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/N33X92zic5Y

    Something is killing Americans and researchers have yet to find the culprit. But we can risk some intuitive guesses.

    According to researchers from the Center on Society and Health, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, American life expectancy has not kept pace with that of other wealthy countries and is now in fact decreasing.

    The National Center for Health Statistics reported that life expectancy in the United States peaked (78.9 years) in 2014 and subsequently dropped for 3 consecutive years, hitting 78.6 years in 2017. The decrease was most significant among men (0.4 years) than women (0.2 years) and happened across racial-ethnic lines: between 2014 and 2016, life expectancy decreased among non-Hispanic white populations (from 78.8 to 78.5 years), non-Hispanic black populations (from 75.3 years to 74.8 years), and Hispanic populations (82.1 to 81.8 years).

    "By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases," wrote researchers Steven H. Woolf and Heidi Schoomaker in a study that appears in the latest issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association.

    At the very beginning of the report, Woolf and Schoomaker reveal that the geographical area with the largest relative increases occurred "in the Ohio Valley and New England."

    "The implications for public health and the economy are substantial," they added, "making it vital to understand the underlying causes."

    Incidentally, it would be difficult for any observer of the U.S. political scene to read that passage without immediately connecting it to the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

    Taking advantage of the deep industrial decline that has long plagued the Ohio Valley, made up of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Trump successfully tapped into a very real social illness, at least partially connected to economic stagnation , which helped propel him into the White House.

    Significantly, thirty-seven states witnessed significant jumps in midlife mortality in the years leading up to 2017. As the researchers pointed out, however, the trend was concentrated in certain states, many of which, for example in New England, did not support Trump in 2016.

    "Between 2010 and 2017, the largest relative increases in mortality occurred in New England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%, Massachusetts 12.1%) and the Ohio Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%), as well as in New Mexico (17.5%), South Dakota (15.5%), Pennsylvania (14.4%), North Dakota (12.7%), Alaska (12.0%), and Maryland (11.0%). In contrast, the nation's most populous states (California, Texas, and New York) experienced relatively small increases in midlife mortality.

    Eight of the 10 states with the highest number of excess deaths were in the industrial Midwest or Appalachia, whereas rural US counties experienced greater increases in midlife mortality than did urban counties.

    A tragic irony of the study suggests that greater access to healthcare, notably among the more affluent white population, actually correlates to an increase in higher mortality rates. The reason is connected to the out-of-control prescription of opioid drugs to combat pain and depression.

    "The sharp increase in overdose deaths that began in the 1990s primarily affected white populations and came in 3 waves," the report explained: (1) the introduction of OxyContin in 1996 and overuse of prescription opioids, followed by (2) increased heroin use, often by patients who had become addicted to prescription opioids, and (3) the subsequent emergence of potent synthetic opioids (eg, fentanyl analogues) -- the latter triggering a large post-2013 increase in overdose deaths.

    "That white populations first experienced a larger increase in overdose deaths than nonwhite populations may reflect their greater access to health care (and thus prescription drugs)."

    In September, Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, reached a tentative settlement with 23 states and more than 2,000 cities and counties that sued the company, owned by the Sackler family, over its role in the opioid crisis

    Other factors also helped to drive up the U.S. mortality rate, including alcoholic liver disease and suicides, 85% of which occurred with a firearm or other method.

    The United States spends more on health care than any other country, yet its overall health report card fares worse than those of other wealthy countries. Americans experience higher rates of illness and injury and die earlier than people in other high-income nations.

    Researchers were perplexed but not surprised by the data as there existed clear signs back in the 1980s that the United States was heading for a cliff as far as longevity rates go.

    So what is it that's claiming the life of Americans, many at the prime of their life, at a faster pace than in the past? The reality is that it is likely to be an accumulation of negative factors that are finally beginning to take a toll. For example, apart from the opioid crisis, there has also been an almost total collapse of union representation across Corporate America, which has essentially crushed any form of workplace democracy. This author, a former member of three worker unions, witnessed this egregious abuse of corporate power firsthand, which is apparent by the total stagnation of wages for many decades.

    Today's real average wage – that is, after accounting for inflation – has about the same purchasing power it did about half a century ago . Meanwhile, in the majority of cases, increases in salary have a marked tendency to go to the highest-paid tier of executives.

    In a report by Pew Research, "real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today."

    One needs only consider the growing mountain of tuition debt now consuming the paychecks of many university graduates, many of whom have yet to land their dream 6-figure job from their relatively worthless liberal education, to better understand the quiet desperation that exists across the country.

    At the same time, the exponential rise in the use of social media, which has been proven to trigger depression and loneliness in users, also deserves serious consideration. What society is experiencing with its massive online presence is a total overhaul as to the way human beings relate to each other. Presently, it would be very difficult to argue that the changes have been positive; in fact, they seem to be contributing to the early demise of millions of Americans in the prime of life.

    Taken together, abusive labor practices that ignores workplace democracy, the epidemic of opioid usage, compounded by the anti-social features of 'social media' suggests a perfect storm of factors precipitating the rise of early deaths in the United States. Since all of these areas fall in one way or another under the control of corporate power, this powerful agency must find ways to help address the problem. The future success of America depends upon it.


    ohm , 1 minute ago link

    A Wicked Cocktail Of Corporate Greed, Social Media, & Opioids Is Slashing US Life Expectancy Rates

    In short, capitalism

    Pfeffernusse , 2 minutes ago link

    With a college degree and half a brain things are still pretty good. They look pretty good for trades guys too, as long as they are honest hard workers. I just got a quote from some guy to dig up a 70 foot driveway and replace it with topsoil... $14,000. Nobody is hurting too bad where I am except serious white trash with no job skills. Well, blacks and latinos without job skills are hurting too, the difference is, they're resigned to their fate after 300+ years of getting abused. It's the Trump trailer trash who are mad that they aren't throwing around big money any more for stealing copper or whatever the **** these trash did before now.

    Indelible Scars , 3 minutes ago link

    Opioids have been around for 2500 years+. The culture is what has changed. For the worse.

    systemsplanet , 3 minutes ago link

    Slashing US Life Expectancy Rates

    "We saved the Social Security Trust Fund by supporting programs to shorten American life spans"

    - Leftist Bureaucratic Social Engineers

    RDouglas , 5 minutes ago link

    You think life expectancy has dropped off now? Give it 10 or 20 years. Fentynal+a cheap plastic mask with nitrogen or co2 emitter will be easily available on the internet...Most people over 50 are ill equipped to deal with burgeoning economic realities. I'm 51 and I see it all around me in NW Montana, dudes that are 50 or 100 pounds overweight, smoking, drinking whisky and taking pills, not showing up for work. The economy here is booming and yet there are men and women, mostly my age or older wandering around with tombstone eyes all day, bumming money in front of the grocery stores. I spend more time than I like in Portland OR, and it's even more apparent there. There are kids that panhandle, but 90% of the people camping on the street are 45+. Dis Eases of dispair.

    dibiase , 2 minutes ago link

    When the reality you live is has been engineered to be **** what would you expect.

    Possibly a sane reaction to an insane world?

    Indelible Scars , 1 minute ago link

    Why is a guy much over 50 going to work for? **** that. 55 is pushing it for any sort of manual labor.

    Demeter55 , 13 minutes ago link

    When men abandon their families to pursue money and fame, their families move on, and then, when the men found they were chasing fool's gold, they despaired and died, since they had fucked themselves, their children and the women who were willing to love them.

    There wasn't any reason to live, if one doesn't believe in repairing such social crimes, or second chances. And there's a time limit for such rehabilitation; wait too long to get smart, and your chances are gone.

    I know of three such cases in my immediate family.

    Helix6 , 14 minutes ago link

    In "Democracy in America", Alexis de Tocqueville commented on Americans' obsession with money and means of procuring it. I would hypothesize that the deteriorating economic means of ordinary Americans is behind the increase in midlife mortality. The pursuit of money has resulted in a lifestyle that is not conducive to a happy and healthy life.

    Rashomon , 13 minutes ago link

    Stress kills.

    Is-Be , 2 minutes ago link

    Stress causes the body to release cortisol which responds by building up belly fat for the emergency times ahead. Sleep and stress reduction can reduce the waist line, slowly.

    PedroS , 17 minutes ago link

    "there has also been an almost total collapse of union representation across Corporate America, which has essentially crushed any form of workplace democracy. This author, a former member of three worker unions, witnessed this egregious abuse of corporate power firsthand, which is apparent by the total stagnation of wages for many decades." This cracked me up. companies are NOT Democratic and never should be.

    dibiase , 15 minutes ago link

    Actually workers unions are quite a capitalist concept. It's a shame they turned into what they are today.

    Is-Be , 20 minutes ago link

    Isn't Capitalism wonderful? We mandate that a company may not make a decision not in the interests of the shareholder. And then whinge because Big Pharma does just that. It makes drugs that maximize profits. Why did you expect anything different?

    And what about insurance companies? How are shareholders of insurance companies served if the insurance companies pay up for claims? Anyway, let me present a physicians point of view , that the AMA represents the shareholders of Big Pharma, not the doctors. BTW. Black salve works against Big C. (I have to use euphemisms because it is illegal to utter the words "Cures Big C". Why? I dunno. ( Bloodroot , a common plant.)

    How unpatriotic it would be to praise Unions! So I shan't. Instead I recommend Guilds. A complete monopoly of particular trades by their own Guild House. The guild controls the training of their members. It controls who gets to work where. It controls their accommodation and pension. It controls for the benefit of it's members. It is Vast.

    It negotiates with politicians on protecting it's own interests by Law. (Hey, why should only multi-national companies lobby in their own interest!)

    For instance. A electrical guild would negotiate a contract with a builders guild for cheap housing. (You scratch my back, I scratch yours.) It would negotiate with the teacher's guild for the correct education of their children.

    Big international companies are going to love it. But why do we need to consider their emotions?

    steverino999 , 21 minutes ago link

    This rampant social illness is why Trump ran for President. He knew there were a lot of hurting people out there who needed to believe in something, anything, and most importantly he knew they would devour every scoop of manure he shoveled their way.

    pitz , 24 minutes ago link

    Even top US citizen STEM grads can't find jobs. Or get interviews. That's pretty much all you need to know about how good the economy is.

    PedroS , 20 minutes ago link

    Due to wholesale outsourcing of the jobs they planned for. You left that out so I helped you...

    rejectnumbskull , 24 minutes ago link

    U might be right...and I'm sad about it

    free corn , 12 minutes ago link

    Strongman or strong woman whoever leave the cage.

    dibiase , 10 minutes ago link

    Even better. A woman might be more cruel and demeaning to our enemies.

    free corn , 31 minutes ago link

    "real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today."

    No big drama here considering growth in wealth inequality for the period.

    Tillyoudrop , 35 minutes ago link

    A Wicked Cocktail Of Corporate Greed, Social Media, & Opioids

    Nope. What you listed is just a bunch of the symptoms not the root cause.

    HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 , 38 minutes ago link

    Alex Jones named it years ago: drugs, bad food, lack of good nutrition, lack of exercise, and mass demoralization.

    misgivings , 9 minutes ago link

    And increasing surveillance, 5G and AI - with no input from the sheep.

    Oliver Klozoff , 39 minutes ago link

    Of course the author conveniently avoids the main cause, neoliberalism, courtesy of the dems.

    artistant , 40 minutes ago link

    There's a spiritual decay gnawing away at America's soul.

    The EveryThing Bubble , 40 minutes ago link

    Stupid people are supposed to die

    [Oct 08, 2019] Job Growth Remains Slow in September

    Oct 08, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne , October 04, 2019 at 09:24 AM

    http://cepr.net/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/jobs-2019-10

    October 4, 2019

    Job Growth Remains Slow in September, but Unemployment Rate Falls to 3.5 Percent
    By Dean Baker

    Manufacturing employment hit a record low as a share of private sector employment.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 136,000 jobs in September, after adding 168,000 in August. The 157,000 average for the last three months is considerably slower than the 179,000 average for the last year, but this slowing is expected in a tight labor market.

    The September job growth led to a 0.2 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate to 3.5 percent, a fifty-year low. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) rose 0.1 percentage point to 61.0 percent, a new high for the recovery that is 0.6 percentage points above the year-ago level.

    The EPOPs for both prime-age (ages 25 to 54) men and women rose by 0.1 percentage point in September. The 74.0 percent rate for women is a new high for the recovery, although still below the peak of 74.9 percent hit in April of 2000. The 86.4 percent rate for men is 0.3 percentage points below the March level and 1.6 percentage points below the prerecession peak.

    The unemployment rate for Hispanics fell to 3.9 percent, the lowest on record, 0.6 percentage points below the year-ago level. The unemployment rate for workers without a high school degree also fell sharply to 4.8 percent, 0.8 percentage points below the year-ago level. The share of unemployment due to voluntary quits, a measure of workers' confidence in their labor market prospects, jumped 1.7 percentage points to 14.6 percent, a level more typical for a strong labor market.

    Other data in the household survey were more mixed. While the mean duration of unemployment spells edged down 0.1 weeks to 22.0 weeks, the median duration rose 0.5 weeks to 9.4 weeks. The share of long-term unemployed also rose by 2.1 percentage points to 22.7 percent.

    The number of involuntary part-time workers edged down by 31,000. The number of workers choosing to work part-time also fell, dropping by 124,000 in September. The percentage of the workforce choosing to work part-time has been dropping over the last year, after rising sharply following the implementation of the ACA. This likely due to workers having greater difficulty getting health care outside of employment.

    Another negative item is an increase in the number of multiple job holders, especially among women. The share of employed women who have multiple jobs rose to 5.9 percent, 0.5 percentage points above the year-ago level. The vast majority of these women report that they work a second job in addition to a full-time job.

    The picture on the establishment side is more negative. Slower job growth is to be expected in a tighter labor market, but it has virtually stopped altogether on the goods-producing side. The goods-producing sector has added a total of just 2,000 jobs over the last three months, with construction adding 8,000 jobs, manufacturing adding 4,000, and mining and logging losing 10,000. A big part of this is the fallout from the trade war and the resulting drop in investment. Also, lower world oil prices are a big hit to the mining sector. The manufacturing share of private sector employment sunk to a new all-time low in September of 9.96 percent.

    On the service side, job growth in the high-paying professional and technical services sector has slowed sharply in the last two months, added an average of 13,900, compared to an average of 23,900 over the last year. Restaurant employment has also slowed sharply, with the sector adding an average of just 1,500 jobs over the last four months. This should be expected in a tight labor market, where workers have higher-paying options. Retail lost 11,400 jobs in September, bringing its losses over the last year to 60,900, just under 0.4 percent of total employment.

    A big job gainer in recent months is health care, which added 38,800 jobs in September after adding 37,200 in August. The sector has accounted for almost a third of job growth in the private sector over the last two months.

    In contrast to the evidence of a tight labor market in the household survey, wage growth appears to be slowing slightly. The average hourly wage rose 2.9 percent over the last year, although the annualized rate of wage growth, comparing the last three months (July, August, September) with the prior three months (April, May, June), was a slightly higher 3.4 percent.

    [Graph]

    This is a generally positive report with some serious warning signs. The goods sector is very weak and likely to get weaker, according to a wide variety of measures of manufacturing. The evidence of slowing wage growth is also striking in a labor market with 3.5 percent unemployment.

    [Sep 26, 2019] The Two-Income Trap Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi

    Notable quotes:
    "... Meanwhile, greed -- once best known for its place on the list of Seven Deadly Sins -- became a point of pride for Wall Street's Masters of the Universe. With a sophisticated smile, the rallying cry of the rich and fashionable became "1 got mine -- the rest of you are on your own." ..."
    Sep 26, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    And yet America's policies were headed in the wrong direction. The big banks kept lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would gut families' last refuge in the bankruptcy courts -- the same bill we describe in this book. (It went by the awful name Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, but it should have been called the Gut the Safety Net and Pay OIT the Big Banks Act.). The proposed law would carefully preserve bankruptcy protections for the likes of Donald Trump and his friends, while ordinary families that had been crushed by debts from medical problems or job losses were thrown under the bus.

    When we wrote The Two-Income Trap, it was already pretty clear that the big banks would win this battle. The fight kept going for two more years, but the tide of blame-the-unlucky combined with relentless lobbying and campaign contributions finally overwhelmed Congress.

    In 2005, the Wall Street banking industry got the changes they wanted, and struggling families lost out. After the law was rewritten, about 800,000 families a year that once would have turned to bankruptcy to try to get back on their feet were shut out of the system.1

    That was 800,000 families -- mostly people who had lost jobs, suffered a medical catastrophe, or gone through a divorce or death in the family. And now, instead of reorganizing their finances and building some security, they were at the mercy of debt collectors who called twenty or thirty times a day -- and could keep on calling and calling for as long as they thought they could squeeze another nickel from a desperate family.

    As it turned out, the new law tore a big hole in the last safety net for working families, just in time for the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the bank regulators kept playing blind and deaf while the housing bubble inflated. Once it burst, the economy collapsed. The foreclosure problem we flagged back in 2003 rolled into a global economic meltdown by 2008, as millions of people lost their homes, and millions more lost their jobs, their savings, and their chance at a secure retirement. Overall, the total cost of the crash was estimated as high as S14 trillion.2

    Meanwhile, America's giant banks got bailed out, CEO pay shot up, the stock market roared back, and the investor class got rich beyond even their own fevered dreams.3

    A generation ago, a fortune-teller might have predicted a very different future. With so many mothers headed into the workforce, Americans might have demanded a much heavier investment in public day care, extended school days, and better family leave policies. Equal pay for equal work might have become sacrosanct. As wages stagnated, there might have been more urgency for raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, and expanding Social Security. And our commitment to affordable college and universal preschool might have become unshakeable.

    But the political landscape was changing even faster than the new economic realities. Government was quickly becoming an object of ridicule, even to the president of the United States. Instead of staking his prestige on making government more accountable and efficient, Ronald Reagan repeated his famous barb "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Tin from the government and I'm here to help."'8 After generations of faithfulness to the promise of the Constitution to promote general welfare, at the moment when the economic foundations of the middle class began to tremble, our efforts to strengthen each other and offer a helping hand had become the butt of a national joke.

    Those who continued to believe in what we could do together faced another harsh reality: much of government had been hijacked by the rich and powerful. Regulators who were supposed to watch out for the public interest shifted their loyalties, smiling benignly as giant banks jacked up short-term profits by cheating families, looking the other way as giant power companies scam mod customers, and partying with industry executives as oil companies cut comers on safety and environmental rules. In this book we told one of those stories, about how a spineless Congress rewrote the bankruptcy laws to enrich a handful of credit card companies.

    Meanwhile, greed -- once best known for its place on the list of Seven Deadly Sins -- became a point of pride for Wall Street's Masters of the Universe. With a sophisticated smile, the rallying cry of the rich and fashionable became "1 got mine -- the rest of you are on your own."

    These shifts played nicely into each other. Every' attack on "big government" meant families lost an ally, and the rules tilted more and These shifts played nicely into each other. Every attack on "big government" meant families lost an ally, and the rules tilted more and more in favor of those who could hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers. Lower taxes for the wealthy -- and more money in the pockets of those who subscribed to the greed-is-good mantra. And if the consequence meant less money for preschools or public colleges or disability coverage -- the things that would create more security for an overstretched middle class -- then that was just too bad.

    Little by little, as the middle class got deeper and deeper in trouble, government stopped working for the middle class, or at least it stopped working so hard. The rich paid a little less and kept a little more. Even if they didn't say it in so many words, they got exactly what they wanted. Remember the 90 percent -- America's middle class, working class, and poor -- the ones who got 70 percent of all income growth from 1935 through 1980?

    From 1980-2014, the 90 percent got nothing.9 None. Zero. Zip. Not a penny in income growth. Instead, for an entire generation, the top 10 percent captured all of the income growth in the entire country. l(X) percent.

    It didn't have to be this way. The Two-Income Trap is about families that w'ork hard, but some things go wrong along the way -- illnesses and job losses, and maybe some bad decisions. But this isn't what has put the middle class on the ropes. After all, people have gotten sick and lost jobs and made less-than-perfect decisions for generations -- and vet, for generations America's middle class expanded. creating more opportunity to build real economic security and pass on a brighter future to their children.

    What would it take to help strengthen the middle class? The problems facing the middle-class family are complex and far-reaching, and the solutions must be too. We wish there could be a simple silver bullet, but after a generation of relentless assault, there just isn't. But there is one overriding idea. Together we can. It's time to say it out loud: a generation of I-got-mine policy-making has failed -- failed miserably, completely, and overwhelmingly. And it's time to change direction before the entire middle class has been replaced by hundreds of millions of Americans barely hanging on by their fingernails.

    Americas middle class was built through investments in education, infrastructure, and research -- and by' making sure we all have a safety net. We need to strengthen those building blocks: Step up investments in public education. Rein in the cost of college and cut out- standing student loans. Create universal preschool and affordable child care. Upgrade infrastructure -- mass transit, energy, communications -- to make it more attractive to build good, middle-class jobs here in America. Recognize that the modem economy can be perilous, and a strong safety net is needed now more than ever. Strengthen disability coverage, retirement coverage, and paid sick leave. And for heavens sake, get rid of the awful banker-backed bankruptcy law, so that when things go wrong, families at least have a chance at a fresh start. We welcome the re-issue of The Two-Income Trap because we see the original book as capturing a critical moment, those last few minutes in which the explanation of why so many hardworking, plav-by- tho-mlcs people were in so much trouble was simple: It was their own fault. If only they would just pull up their socks, cinch their belts a little tighter, and stop buying so much stuff, they -- and our country -- would be just fine. That myth has died. And we say', good riddance.

    [Sep 25, 2019] Michael Hudson Asset-Price Inflation and Rent Seeking

    Notable quotes:
    "... The main culprit for the economy's falling growth rate and the general middle-class economic squeeze is debt - or more specifically, the burden of having to pay it back, with penalties, fees and lower credit ratings. The mainstream press depicts the rising market price of homes as a benefit to homeowners, a capital gam as if they almost were real estate speculators or capitalists in miniature, not wage-eamers running up debt. GDP statisticians include the rise hi valuation of owner-occupied real estate and the rising rents it saves homeowners from having to pay as adding to GDP. ..."
    "... "What has occurred is an inversion of values about the proper aim of economies. Today, it is to get rich by means of a financialized rentier economy. From the point of view of rentiers and other investors, the production-and-consumption economy is the overhead. The costs of labor and capital are to be minimized by squeezing out more economic rent. By contrast, our approach treats the production-and-consumption sector as primary, and the FIRE sector and other rent extracting sectors as overhead." ..."
    "... "Each debt is a credit on the other side of the balance sheet, because behind each borrower is a lender." ..."
    Sep 25, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Those who praise the post-2008 economy as a successful recovery point to the fact that the stock market has soar ed to all-time highs, while the unemployment rate has fallen to a decade-low. But is the stock market a good proxy for how the overall economy is doing? The low reported unemployment rate sidesteps the predominance of minimum-wage jobs. part-time "gig'' work, and the fact that the Federal Reserve's Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 201S reports that 39% of Americans do not have $400 cash available for a medical or other emergency, and that a quarter of adults skipped medical care hi 2018 because they could not afford it. 1 The latest estimates by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that nearly half (48 percent) of households headed by someone 55 and older lack any retirement savings or pension benefits.2 Even in what the press calls an economic boom, most Americans feel stressed and many are chronically angry and worried. According to a 2015 survey by the American Psychological Association, financial worry is the "number one cause of stress in America today."3 The Fed describes them as suffering from '•financial fragility." What is fragile is their economic status and self-worth, teetering 011 the brink of downward mobility. Living hi today's fmancialized economy creates stresses that seem more damaging emotionally than living hi a poor country. America certainly is not a poor counfry, but it has become so debt-ridden, and its wealth and income growth so highly concentrated, that much of its population is emotionally worse off than that of almost any other country hi the world.

    The U.S. economy's soaring wealth and income finds its counterpart on the liabilities side of the balance sheet. Rising stock prices have been fueled by corporate stock buyback programs and debt leveraging, not earnings from new tangible investment and employment. And rising real estate prices reflect the decline hi interest rates, enabling a given rental flow to be capitalized hito higher bank loans and market prices. Additionally, the wave of foreclosures 011 junk mortgages and debt- strapped new home buyers has reduced home ownership rates, forcing more of the population into a rental market, whose rising charges for housing have supported general real estate prices. Thus, these capital gains do not reflect a thriving economy, but a higher-cost one that is polarizing between creditors and debtors, property owners and renters, and the financial sector vis-a-vis the rest of the economy.

    The main culprit for the economy's falling growth rate and the general middle-class economic squeeze is debt - or more specifically, the burden of having to pay it back, with penalties, fees and lower credit ratings. The mainstream press depicts the rising market price of homes as a benefit to homeowners, a capital gam as if they almost were real estate speculators or capitalists in miniature, not wage-eamers running up debt. GDP statisticians include the rise hi valuation of owner-occupied real estate and the rising rents it saves homeowners from having to pay as adding to GDP. But

    2 William E. Gibson, "Nearly Half of Americans 55+ Have No Retirement Savings or Pension Benefits," AARP, March 28, 2019. https://www.aarp.org/retirement/retirement-savings/info-2019/no-retirement-money-saved.html

    3 Source: American Psychological Association (2015). "American Psychological Association survey shows money stress weighing on Americans' Health Nationwide," February 4, 2015. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/02/monev-stiess.aspx.

    Steve H. , September 25, 2019 at 8:17 am

    "What has occurred is an inversion of values about the proper aim of economies. Today, it is to get rich by means of a financialized rentier economy. From the point of view of rentiers and other investors, the production-and-consumption economy is the overhead. The costs of labor and capital are to be minimized by squeezing out more economic rent. By contrast, our approach treats the production-and-consumption sector as primary, and the FIRE sector and other rent extracting sectors as overhead."

    "Each debt is a credit on the other side of the balance sheet, because behind each borrower is a lender."

    [Sep 22, 2019] Is the Unemployment Rate Tied to the Divorce Rate

    Yes it is, but only for couples with low level of marital satisfaction.
    Notable quotes:
    "... They also looked at marital breakup more generally, focusing on when couples decided to end their relationships (not necessarily if or when they got divorced). Their findings revealed that when men were unemployed, the likelihood that either spouse would leave the marriage increased. What about the woman's employment status? For husbands, whether their wife was employed or not was seemingly unimportant-it was unrelated to their decision to leave the relationship. It did seem to matter for wives, though, but it depended upon how satisfied they were with the marriage. ..."
    "... When women were highly satisfied, they were inclined to stay with their partner regardless of whether they had employment. However, when the wife's satisfaction was low, she was more likely to exit the relationship, but only when she had a job. ..."
    Science of Relationships
    The first study considers government data from all 50 U.S. states between the years 1960 and 2005.1 The researchers predicted that higher unemployment numbers would translate to more divorces among heterosexual married couples. Most of us probably would have predicted this too based on common sense-you would probably expect your partner to be able to hold down a job, right? And indeed, this was the case, but only before 1980. Surprisingly, since then, as joblessness has increased, divorce rates have actually decreased.

    How do we explain this counterintuitive finding? We don't know for sure, but the researchers speculate that unemployed people may delay or postpone divorce due to the high costs associated with it. Not only is divorce expensive in terms of legal fees, but afterward, partners need to pay for two houses instead of one. And if they are still living off of one salary at that point, those costs may be prohibitively expensive. For this reason, it is not that uncommon to hear about estranged couples who can't stand each other but are still living under the same roof.

    The second study considered data from a national probability sample of over 3,600 heterosexual married couples in the U.S. collected between 1987 and 2002. However, instead of looking at the overall association between unemployment and marital outcomes, they considered how gender and relationship satisfaction factored into the equation. 2

    They also looked at marital breakup more generally, focusing on when couples decided to end their relationships (not necessarily if or when they got divorced). Their findings revealed that when men were unemployed, the likelihood that either spouse would leave the marriage increased. What about the woman's employment status? For husbands, whether their wife was employed or not was seemingly unimportant-it was unrelated to their decision to leave the relationship. It did seem to matter for wives, though, but it depended upon how satisfied they were with the marriage.

    When women were highly satisfied, they were inclined to stay with their partner regardless of whether they had employment. However, when the wife's satisfaction was low, she was more likely to exit the relationship, but only when she had a job.

    [Sep 22, 2019] Game of musical chairs became more difficult: the US economy seems to put out fewer and fewer chairs.

    Notable quotes:
    "... A good economy compensates for much social dysfunction. ..."
    "... More than that, it prevents the worst of behaviors that are considered an expression of dysfunction from occurring, as people across all social strata have other things to worry about or keep them busy. Happy people don't bear grudges, or at least they are not on top of their consciousness as long as things are going well. ..."
    "... This could be seen time and again in societies with deep and sometimes violent divisions between ethnic groups where in times of relative prosperity (or at least a broadly shared vision for a better future) the conflicts are not removed but put on a backburner, or there is even "finally" reconciliation, and then when the economy turns south, the old grudges and conflicts come back (often not on their own, but fanned by groups who stand to gain from the divisions, or as a way of scapegoating) ..."
    "... "backwaters of America, that economy seems to put out fewer and fewer chairs." ~~Harold Pollack~ ..."
    "... Going up through the chairs has become so impossible for those on the slow-track. Not enough slots for all the jokers within our once proud country of opportunities, ..."
    "... George Orwell: "I doubt, however, whether the unemployed would ultimately benefit if they learned to spend their money more economically. ... If the unemployed learned to be better managers they would be visibly better off, and I fancy it would not be long before the dole was docked correspondingly." ..."
    "... Perhaps you are commenting on the aspect that when (enough) job applicants/holders define down their standards and let employers treat them as floor mats, then the quality of many jobs and the labor relations will be adjusted down accordingly, or at the very least expectations what concessions workers will make will be adjusted up. That seems to be the case unfortunately. ..."
    Nov 23, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Avraam Jack Dectis said...
    A good economy compensates for much social dysfunction.

    A bad economy moves people toward the margins, afflicts those near the margins and kills those at the margins.

    This is what policy makers should consider as they pursue policies that do not put the citizen above all else.

    cm -> Avraam Jack Dectis...
    "A good economy compensates for much social dysfunction."

    More than that, it prevents the worst of behaviors that are considered an expression of dysfunction from occurring, as people across all social strata have other things to worry about or keep them busy. Happy people don't bear grudges, or at least they are not on top of their consciousness as long as things are going well.

    This could be seen time and again in societies with deep and sometimes violent divisions between ethnic groups where in times of relative prosperity (or at least a broadly shared vision for a better future) the conflicts are not removed but put on a backburner, or there is even "finally" reconciliation, and then when the economy turns south, the old grudges and conflicts come back (often not on their own, but fanned by groups who stand to gain from the divisions, or as a way of scapegoating)

    Dune Goon said...

    "backwaters of America, that economy seems to put out fewer and fewer chairs." ~~Harold Pollack~

    Going up through the chairs has become so impossible for those on the slow-track. Not enough slots for all the jokers within our once proud country of opportunities, not enough elbow room for Daniel Boone, let alone Jack Daniels! Not enough space in this county to wet a tree when you feel the urge! Every tiny plot of space has been nailed down and fenced off, divided up among gated communities. Why?

    Because the 1% has an excessive propensity to reproduce their own kind. They are so uneducated about the responsibilities of birth control and space conservation that they are crowding all of us off the edge of the planet. Worse yet we have begun to *ape our betters*.

    "We've only just begun!"
    ~~The Carpenters~

    William said...

    "Many of us know people who receive various public benefits, and who might not need to rely on these programs if they made better choices, if they learned how to not talk back at work, if they had a better handle on various self-destructive behaviors, if they were more willing to take that crappy job and forego disability benefits, etc."

    George Orwell: "I doubt, however, whether the unemployed would ultimately benefit if they learned to spend their money more economically. ... If the unemployed learned to be better managers they would be visibly better off, and I fancy it would not be long before the dole was docked correspondingly."

    cm said in reply to William...

    A valid observation, but what you are commenting on is more about getting or keeping a job than managing personal finances.

    Perhaps you are commenting on the aspect that when (enough) job applicants/holders define down their standards and let employers treat them as floor mats, then the quality of many jobs and the labor relations will be adjusted down accordingly, or at the very least expectations what concessions workers will make will be adjusted up. That seems to be the case unfortunately.

    [Sep 22, 2019] Paul Krugman: Despair, American Style

    Notable quotes:
    "... In a recent interview Mr. Deaton suggested that middle-aged whites have "lost the narrative of their lives." That is, their economic setbacks have hit hard because they expected better. Or to put it a bit differently, we're looking at people who were raised to believe in the American Dream, and are coping badly with its failure to come true. ..."
    "... the truth is that we don't really know why despair appears to be spreading across Middle America. But it clearly is, with troubling consequences for our society... ..."
    "... Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn self-destructive; others turn on the elites they feel have betrayed them. ..."
    "... What we are seeing is the long term impacts of the "Reagan Revolution." ..."
    "... The affected cohort here is the first which has lived with the increased financial and employment insecurity that engendered, as well as the impacts of the massive offshoring of good paying union jobs throughout their working lives. Stress has cumulative impacts on health and well-being, which are a big part of what we are seeing here. ..."
    "... Lets face it, this Fed is all about goosing up asset prices to generate short term gains in economic activity. Since the early 90s, the Fed has done nothing but make policy based on Wall Street's interests. I can give them a pass on the dot com debacle but not after that. This toxic relationship between wall street and the Fed has to end. ..."
    "... there was a housing bubble that most at the Fed (including Bernanke) denied right upto the middle of 2007 ..."
    "... Yellen, to her credit, has admitted multiple times over the years that low rates spur search for yield that blows bubbles ..."
    "... Bursting of the bubble led to unemployment for millions and U3 that went to 10% ..."
    "... "You are the guys who do not consider the counterfactual where higher rates would have prevented the housing bubble in 2003-05 and that produced the great recession in the first place." ..."
    "... Inequality has been rising globally, almost regardless of trade practices ..."
    "... It is not some unstoppable global trend. This is neoliberal oligarchy coup d'état. Or as it often called "a quite coup". ..."
    "... First of all, whether a job can or is offshored has little to do with whether it is "low skilled" but more with whether the workflow around the job can be organized in such a way that the job can be offshore. This is less a matter of "skill level" and more volume and immediacy of interaction with adjacent job functions, or movement of material across distances. ..."
    "... The reason wages are stuck is that aggregate jobs are not growing, relative to workforce supply. ..."
    "... BTW the primary offshore location is India, probably in good part because of good to excellent English language skills, and India's investment in STEM education and industry (especially software/services and this is even a public stereotype, but for a reason). ..."
    "... Very rough figures: half a million Chicago employees may make less than $800 a week -- almost everybody should earn $800 ... ..."
    "... Union busting is generally (?) understood as direct interference with the formation and operation of unions or their members. It is probably more common that employers are allowed to just go around the unions - "right to work", subcontracting non-union shops or temp/staffing agencies, etc. ..."
    "... Why would people join a union and pay dues when the union is largely impotent to deliver, when there are always still enough desperate people who will (have to) take jobs outside the union system? Employers don't have to bring in scabs when they can legally go through "unencumbered" subcontractors inside or outside the jurisdiction. ..."
    "... Credibility trap, fully engaged. ..."
    "... The anti-knowledge of the elites is worth reading. http://billmoyers.com/2015/11/02/the-anti-knowledge-of-the-elites/ When such herd instinct and institutional overbearance connects with the credibility trap, the results may be impressive. http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/gold-daily-and-silver-weekly-charts-pop.html ..."
    "... Suicide, once thought to be associated with troubled teens and the elderly, is quickly becoming an age-blind statistic. Middle aged Americans are turning to suicide in alarming numbers. The reasons include easily accessible prescription painkillers, the mortgage crisis and most importantly the challenge of a troubled economy. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention claims suicide rates now top the number of deaths due to automobile accidents. ..."
    "... The suicide rate for both younger and older Americans remains virtually unchanged, however, the rate has spiked for those in middle age (35 to 64 years old) with a 28 percent increase (link is external) from 1999 to 2010. ..."
    "... When few people kill themselves "on purpose" or die from self-inflicted but probably "unintended" harms (e.g. organ failure or accidental death caused by substance abuse), it can be shrugged off as problems related to the individual (more elaboration possible but not necessary). ..."
    "... When it becomes a statistically significant phenomenon (above-noise percentage of total population or demographically identifiable groups), then one has to ask questions about social causes. My first question would be, "what made life suck for those people"? What specific instrument they used to kill themselves would be my second question (it may be the first question for people who are charged with implementing counter measures but not necessarily fixing the causes). ..."
    "... Since about the financial crisis (I'm not sure about causation or coincidence - not accidental coincidence BTW but causation by the same underlying causes), there has been a disturbing pattern of high school students throwing themselves in front of local trains. At that age, drinking or drugging oneself to death is apparently not the first "choice". Performance pressure *related to* (not just "and") a lack of convincing career/life prospects has/have been suspected or named as a cause. I don't think teenagers suddenly started to jump in front of trains that have run the same rail line for decades because of the "usual" and centuries to millennia old teenage romantic relationship issues. ..."
    Nov 09, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com

    "There is a darkness spreading over part of our society":

    Despair, American Style, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: A couple of weeks ago President Obama mocked Republicans who are "down on America," and reinforced his message by doing a pretty good Grumpy Cat impression. He had a point: With job growth at rates not seen since the 1990s, with the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance hitting record highs, the doom-and-gloom predictions of his political enemies look ever more at odds with reality.

    Yet there is a darkness spreading over part of our society. ... There has been a lot of comment ... over a new paper by the economists Angus Deaton (who just won a Nobel) and Anne Case, showing that mortality among middle-aged white Americans has been rising since 1999..., while death rates were falling steadily both in other countries and among other groups in our own nation.

    Even more striking are the proximate causes of rising mortality. Basically, white Americans are, in increasing numbers, killing themselves... Suicide is way up, and so are deaths from drug poisoning and ... drinking... But what's causing this epidemic of self-destructive behavior?...

    In a recent interview Mr. Deaton suggested that middle-aged whites have "lost the narrative of their lives." That is, their economic setbacks have hit hard because they expected better. Or to put it a bit differently, we're looking at people who were raised to believe in the American Dream, and are coping badly with its failure to come true.

    That sounds like a plausible hypothesis..., but the truth is that we don't really know why despair appears to be spreading across Middle America. But it clearly is, with troubling consequences for our society...

    I know I'm not the only observer who sees a link between the despair reflected in those mortality numbers and the volatility of right-wing politics. Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn self-destructive; others turn on the elites they feel have betrayed them. No, deporting immigrants and wearing baseball caps bearing slogans won't solve their problems, but neither will cutting taxes on capital gains. So you can understand why some voters have rallied around politicians who at least seem to feel their pain.

    At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I'm not sure whether they're enough to cure existential despair.

    bakho said...

    There are a lot of economic dislocations that the government after the 2001 recession stopped doing much about it. Right after the 2008 crash, the government did more but by 2010, even the Democratic president dropped the ball. and failed to deliver. Probably no region of the country is affected more by technological change that the coal regions of KY and WV. Lying politicians promise a return to the past that cannot be delivered. No one can suggest what the new future will be. The US is due for another round of urbanization as jobs decline in rural areas. Dislocation forces declining values of properties and requires changes in behavior, skills and outlook. Those personal changes do not happen without guidance. The social institutions such as churches and government programs are a backstop, but they are not providing a way forward. There is plenty of work to be done, but our elites are not willing to invest.

    DrDick -> bakho...

    The problem goes back much further than that. What we are seeing is the long term impacts of the "Reagan Revolution."

    The affected cohort here is the first which has lived with the increased financial and employment insecurity that engendered, as well as the impacts of the massive offshoring of good paying union jobs throughout their working lives. Stress has cumulative impacts on health and well-being, which are a big part of what we are seeing here.

    ilsm said...

    Thuggee doom and gloom is about their fading chance to reinstate the slavocracy.

    The fever swamp of right wing ideas is more loony than 1964.

    Extremism is the new normal.

    bmorejoe -> ilsm...

    Yup. The slow death of white supremacy.

    Peter K. -> Anonymous...

    If it wasn't for monetary policy things would be even worse as the Republicans in Congress forced fiscal austerity on the economy during the "recovery."

    sanjait -> Peter K....

    That's the painful irony of a comment like that one from Anonymous ... he seems completely unaware that, yes, ZIRP has done a huge amount to prevent the kind of problems described above. He like most ZIRP critics fails to consider what the counterfactual looks like (i.e., something like the Great Depression redux).

    Anonymous -> sanjait...

    You are the guys who do not consider the counterfactual where higher rates would have prevented the housing bubble in 2003-05 and that produced the great recession in the first place. Because preemptive monetary policy has gone out of fashion completely. And now we are going to repeat the whole process over when the present bubble in stocks and corporate bonds bursts along with the malinvestment in China, commodity exporters etc.

    Peter K. -> Anonymous...

    "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."

    sanjait -> Anonymous...

    "You want regulation? I would like to see

    1) Reinstate Glass Steagall

    2) impose a 10bp trans tax on trading financial instruments."

    Great. Two things with zero chance of averting bubbles but make great populist pablum.

    This is why we can't have nice things!

    "3) Outlaw any Fed person working for a bank/financial firm after they leave office."

    This seems like a decent idea. Hard to enforce, as highly intelligent and accomplished people tend not to be accepting of such restrictions, but it could be worth it anyway.

    likbez -> sanjait...

    " highly intelligent and accomplished people tend not to be accepting of such restrictions, but it could be worth it anyway."

    You are forgetting that it depends on a simple fact to whom political power belongs. And that's the key whether "highly intelligent and accomplished people" will accept those restrictions of not.

    If the government was not fully captured by financial capital, then I think even limited prosecution of banksters "Stalin's purge style" would do wonders in preventing housing bubble and 2008 financial crush.

    Please try to imagine the effect of trial and exile to Alaska for some period just a dozen people involved in Securitization of mortgages boom (and those highly intelligent people can do wonders in improving oil industry in Alaska ;-).

    Starting with Mr. Weill, Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Rubin, Mr. Phil Gramm, Dr. Summers and Mr. Clinton.

    Anonymous -> Peter K....

    "2003-2005 didn't have excess inflation and wage gains."

    Monetary policy can not hinge just on inflation or wage gains. Why are wage gains a problem anyway?

    Lets face it, this Fed is all about goosing up asset prices to generate short term gains in economic activity. Since the early 90s, the Fed has done nothing but make policy based on Wall Street's interests. I can give them a pass on the dot com debacle but not after that. This toxic relationship between wall street and the Fed has to end.

    You want regulation? I would like to see
    1) Reinstate Glass Steagall
    2) impose a 10bp trans tax on trading financial instruments.
    3) Outlaw any Fed person working for a bank/financial firm after they leave office. Bernanke, David Warsh etc included. That includes Mishkin getting paid to shill for failing Iceland banks or Bernanke making paid speeches to hedge funds.


    Anonymous -> EMichael...

    Fact: there was a housing bubble that most at the Fed (including Bernanke) denied right upto the middle of 2007
    Fact: Yellen, to her credit, has admitted multiple times over the years that low rates spur search for yield that blows bubbles
    Fact: Bursting of the bubble led to unemployment for millions and U3 that went to 10%

    what facts are you referring to?

    EMichael -> Anonymous...

    That FED rates caused the bubble.

    to think this you have to ignore that a 400% Fed Rate increase from 2004 to 2005 had absolutely no effect on mortgage originations.

    Then of course, you have to explain why 7 years at zero has not caused another housing bubble.

    https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FEDFUNDS

    Correlation is not causation. Lack of correlation is proof of lack of causation.

    pgl -> Anonymous...

    "You are the guys who do not consider the counterfactual where higher rates would have prevented the housing bubble in 2003-05 and that produced the great recession in the first place."

    You are repeating the John B. Taylor line about interest rates being held "too low and too long". And guess what - most economists have called Taylor's claim for the BS it really is. We should also note we never heard this BS when Taylor was part of the Bush Administration. And do check - Greenspan and later Bernanke were raising interest rates well before any excess demand was generated which is why inflation never took off.

    So do keep repeating this intellectual garbage and we keep noting you are just a stupid troll.

    anne -> anne...
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/10/29/1518393112

    September 17, 2015

    Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century
    By Anne Case and Angus Deaton

    Midlife increases in suicides and drug poisonings have been previously noted. However, that these upward trends were persistent and large enough to drive up all-cause midlife mortality has, to our knowledge, been overlooked. If the white mortality rate for ages 45−54 had held at their 1998 value, 96,000 deaths would have been avoided from 1999–2013, 7,000 in 2013 alone. If it had continued to decline at its previous (1979‒1998) rate, half a million deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999‒2013, comparable to lives lost in the US AIDS epidemic through mid-2015. Concurrent declines in self-reported health, mental health, and ability to work, increased reports of pain, and deteriorating measures of liver function all point to increasing midlife distress.

    Abstract

    This paper documents a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United States between 1999 and 2013. This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other rich country saw a similar turnaround. The midlife mortality reversal was confined to white non-Hispanics; black non-Hispanics and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 65 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall. This increase for whites was largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases. Rising midlife mortality rates of white non-Hispanics were paralleled by increases in midlife morbidity. Self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work, as well as clinically measured deteriorations in liver function, all point to growing distress in this population. We comment on potential economic causes and consequences of this deterioration.

    ilsm -> Sarah...

    Murka is different. Noni's plan would work if it were opportune for the slavocracy and the Kochs and ARAMCO don't lose any "growth".

    Maybe cost plus climate repair contracts to shipyards fumbling through useless nuclear powered behemoths for war plans made in 1942.

    Someone gotta make big money plundering for the public good, in Murka!

    CSP said...

    The answers to our malaise seem readily apparent to me, and I'm a southern-born white male working in a small, struggling Georgia town.

    1. Kill the national war machine
    2. Kill the national Wall Street financial fraud machine
    3. Get out-of-control mega corporations under control
    4. Return savings to Main Street (see #1, #2 and #3)
    5. Provide national, universal health insurance to everyone as a right
    6. Provide free education to everyone, as much as their academic abilities can earn them
    7. Strengthen social security and lower the retirement age to clear the current chronic underemployment of young people

    It seems to me that these seven steps would free the American people to pursue their dreams, not the dreams of Washington or Wall Street. Unfortunately, it is readily apparent that true freedom and real individual empowerment are the last things our leaders desire. Shame on them and shame on everyone who helps to make it so.

    DeDude -> CSP...

    You are right. Problem is that most southern-born white males working in a small, struggling Georgia town would rather die than voting for the one candidate who might institute those changes - Bernie Sanders.

    The people who are beginning to realize that the american dream is a mirage, are the same people who vote for GOP candidates who want to give even more to the plutocrats.

    kthomas said...

    The kids in Seattle had it right when WTO showed up.


    Why is anyone suprised by all this?

    We exported out jobs. First all the manufacturing. Now all of the Service jobs.


    But hey...we helped millions in China and India get out of poverty, only to put outselves into it.


    America was sold to highest bidder a long long time ago. A Ken Melvin put it, the chickens came home to roost in 2000.

    sanjait -> kthomas...

    So you think the problem with America is that we lost our low skilled manufacturing and call center tech support jobs?

    I can sort of see why people assume that "we exported out jobs" is the reason for stagnant incomes in the U.S., but it's still tiresome, because it's still just wrong.

    Manufacturing employment crashed in the US mostly because it has been declining globally. The world economy is less material based than ever, and machines do more of the work making stuff.

    And while some services can be outsourced, the vast majority can't. Period.

    Inequality has been rising globally, almost regardless of trade practices. The U.S. has one of the more closed economies in the developed world, so if globalization were the cause, we'd be the most insulated. But we aren't, which should be a pretty good indication that globalization isn't the cause.

    cm -> sanjait...

    Yes, the loss of "low skilled" jobs is still a loss of jobs. Many people work in "low skilled" jobs because there are not enough "higher skill" jobs to go around, as most work demanded is not of the most fancy type.

    We have heard this now for a few decades, that "low skilled" jobs lost will be replaced with "high skill" (and better paid) jobs, and the evidence is somewhat lacking. There has been growth in higher skill jobs in absolute terms, but when you adjust by population growth, it is flat or declining.

    When people hypothetically or actually get the "higher skills" recommended to them, into what higher skill jobs are they to move?

    I have known a number of anecdotes of people with degrees or who held "skilled" jobs that were forced by circumstances to take commodity jobs or jobs at lower pay grades or "skill levels" due to aggregate loss of "higher skill" jobs or age discrimination, or had to go from employment to temp jobs.

    And it is not true that only "lower skill" jobs are outsourced. Initially, yes, as "higher skills" obviously don't exist yet in the outsourcing region. But that doesn't last long, especially if the outsourcers expend resources to train and grow the remote skill base, at the expense of the domestic workforce which is expected to already have experience (which has worked for a while due to workforce overhangs from previous industry "restructuring").

    likbez -> sanjait...

    "Inequality has been rising globally, almost regardless of trade practices."

    It is not some unstoppable global trend. This is neoliberal oligarchy coup d'état. Or as it often called "a quite coup".

    sanjait -> cm...

    "Yes, the loss of "low skilled" jobs is still a loss of jobs. Many people work in "low skilled" jobs because there are not enough "higher skill" jobs to go around, as most work demanded is not of the most fancy type.

    We have heard this now for a few decades, that "low skilled" jobs lost will be replaced with "high skill" (and better paid) jobs, and the evidence is somewhat lacking. "

    And that is *exactly my point.*

    The lack of wage growth isn't isolated to low skilled domains. It's weak across the board.

    What does that tell us?

    It tells us that offshoring of low skilled jobs isn't the problem.

    "And it is not true that only "lower skill" jobs are outsourced. Initially, yes, as "higher skills" obviously don't exist yet in the outsourcing region."

    You could make this argument, but I think (judging by your own hedging) you know this isn't the case. Offshoring of higher skilled jobs does happen but it's a marginal factor in reality. You hypothesize that it may someday become a bigger factor ... but just notice that we've had stagnant wages now for a few decades.

    My point is that offshoring IS NOT THE CAUSE of stagnating wages. I'd argue that globalization is a force that can't really be stopped by national policy anyway, but even if you think it could, it's important to realize IT WOULD DO ALMOST NOTHING to alleviate inequality.

    cm -> sanjait...

    I was responding to your point:

    "So you think the problem with America is that we lost our low skilled manufacturing and call center tech support jobs?"

    With the follow-on:

    "I can sort of see why people assume that "we exported out jobs" is the reason for stagnant incomes in the U.S., but it's still tiresome, because it's still just wrong."

    Labor markets are very sensitive to marginal effects. If let's say "normal" or "heightened" turnover is 10% p.a. spread out over the year, then the continued availability (or not) of around 1% vacancies (for the respective skill sets etc.) each month makes a huge difference. There was the argument that the #1 factor is automation and process restructuring, and offshoring is trailing somewhere behind that in job destruction volume.

    I didn't research it in detail because I have no reason to doubt it. But it is a compounded effect - every percentage point in open positions (and *better* open positions - few people are looking to take a pay cut) makes a big difference. If let's say the automation losses are replaced with other jobs, offshoring will tip the scale. Due to aggregate effects one cannot say what is the "extra" like with who is causing congestion on a backed up road (basically everybody, not the first or last person to join).

    "Manufacturing employment crashed in the US mostly because it has been declining globally. The world economy is less material based than ever, and machines do more of the work making stuff."

    Are you kidding me? The world economy is less material based? OK maybe 20 years after the paperless office we are finally printing less, but just because the material turnover, waste, and environmental pollution is not in your face (because of offshoring!), it doesn't mean less stuff is produced or material consumed. If anything, it is market saturation and aggregate demand limitations that lead to lower material and energy consumption (or lower growth rates).

    In the aftermath of the financial crisis, several nations (US and Germany among others) had programs to promote new car sales (cash for clunkers etc.) that were based on the idea that people can get credit for their old car, but its engine had to be destroyed and made unrepairable so it cannot enter the used car market and defeat the purpose of the program. I assume the clunkers were then responsibly and sustainably recycled.

    cm -> sanjait...

    "The lack of wage growth isn't isolated to low skilled domains. It's weak across the board.

    What does that tell us?

    It tells us taht offshoring of low skilled jobs isn't the problem."

    This doesn't follow. First of all, whether a job can or is offshored has little to do with whether it is "low skilled" but more with whether the workflow around the job can be organized in such a way that the job can be offshore. This is less a matter of "skill level" and more volume and immediacy of interaction with adjacent job functions, or movement of material across distances. Also consider that aside from time zone differences (which are of course a big deal between e.g. US and Europe/Asia), there is not much difference whether a job is performed in another country or in a different domestic region, or perhaps just "working from home" 1 mile from the office, for office-type jobs. Of course the other caveat is whether the person can physically attend meetings with little fuss and expense - so remote management/coordination work is naturally not a big thing.

    The reason wages are stuck is that aggregate jobs are not growing, relative to workforce supply. When the boomers retire for real in another 5-10 years, that may change. OTOH several tech companies I know have periodic programs where they offer workers over 55 or so packages to leave the company, so they cannot really hurt for talent, though they keep complaining and are busy bringing in young(er) people on work visa. Free agents, it depends on the company. Some companies hire NCGs, but they also "buy out" older workers.

    cm -> cm...

    Caveat: Based on what I see (outside sectors with strong/early growth), domestic hiring of NCGs/"fresh blood" falls in two categories:

    • Location bound jobs (sales, marketing, legal, HR, administration, ..., also functions attached to those or otherwise preferring "cultural affinity") - which are largely staffed with locals, also foreigners (visa as well as free agent (green card/citizen))
    • "Technical functions" and "technical" back office (i.e. little or no customer contact) - predominantly foreigners on visa (e.g. graduates of US colleges), though some "free agent" hiring may happen depending on circumstances

    Then there is also the gender split - "technical/engineering" jobs are overweighed in men, except technical jobs in traditionally "non-technical/non-product" departments which have a higher share of women.

    All this is of course a matter of top-down hiring preferences, as generally everything is either controlled top-down or tacitly allowed to happen by selective non-interference.

    cm -> sanjait...

    "You could make this argument, but I think (judging by your own hedging) you know this isn't the case. Offshoring of higher skilled jobs does happen but it's a marginal factor in reality. You hypothesize that it may someday become a bigger factor ... but just notice that we've had stagnant wages now for a few decades."

    I've written a lot of text so far but didn't address all points ...

    My "hedging" is retrospective. I don't hypothesize what may eventually happen but it is happening here and now. I don't presume to present a representative picture, but in my sphere of experience/observation (mostly a subset of computer software), offshoring of *knowledge work* started in the mid to late 90's (and that's not the earliest it started in general - of course a lot of the early offshoring in the 80's was market/language specific customization, e.g. US tech in Europe etc., and more "local culture expertise" and not offshoring proper). In the late 90's and early 2000's, offshoring was overshadowed by the Y2K/dotcom booms, so that phase didn't get high visibility (among the people "affected" it sure did). Also the internet was not yet ubiquitous - broadband existed only at the corporate level.

    • 15-20 years ago it was testing and "low level" programming, perhaps self contained limited-complexity functions or modules written to fairly rigid specifications, or troubleshooting and bug fixes implemented here or there.
    • Then 10-15 years ago it advanced to offshore product maintenance, following up on QA issues, small development projects, or assisting/supporting roles in "real" projects (either conducted offshore or people visiting the domestic offices for weeks to months).
    • This went on in parallel with domestic visa workers from the first 15-20 years ago wave either being encouraged or themselves expressing a desire to go back home (personal, career, family reasons etc.) and "spread the knowledge" and advancing into technical/organization management roles.
    • Then 5-10 years ago with clearly grown offshore skills (my theory is that people everywhere are cut from the same cloth, and we are now at 10+ years industry experience in this narrative), the offshore sites started taking on ownership of product components, while all the "previous" functions of testing, R&D support, tech pub (which I didn't mention earlier), etc. remained and evolved further. Also IT (though IT support is more timezone bound and is thus present in all time zones).

    Since then there has been little change, it is pretty much a steady state.

    BTW the primary offshore location is India, probably in good part because of good to excellent English language skills, and India's investment in STEM education and industry (especially software/services and this is even a public stereotype, but for a reason).

    Syaloch -> sanjait...

    Whether low skilled jobs were eliminated due to offshoring or automation doesn't really matter. What matters is that the jobs disappeared, replaced by a small number of higher skill jobs paying comparable wages plus a large number of low skill jobs offering lower wages.

    The aggregate effect was stagnation and even decline in living standards. Plus any new jobs were not necessarily produced in the same geographic region as those that were lost, leading to concentration of unemployment and despair.

    sanjait -> Syaloch...

    "Whether low skilled jobs were eliminated due to offshoring or automation doesn't really matter. "

    Well, actually it does matter, because we have a whole lot of people (in both political parties) who think the way to fight inequality is to try to reverse globalization.

    If they are incorrect, it matters, because they should be applying their votes and their energy to more effective solutions, and rejecting the proposed solutions of both the well-meaning advocates and the outright demagogues who think restricting trade is some kind of answer.

    Syaloch -> sanjait...

    I meant it doesn't matter in terms of the despair felt by those affected. All that matters to those affected is that they have been obsoleted without either economic or social support to help them.

    However, in terms of addressing this problem economically it really doesn't matter that much either. Offshoring is effectively a low-tech form of automation. If companies can't lower labor costs by using cheaper offshore labor they'll find ways to either drive down domestic wages or to use less labor. For the unskilled laborer the end result is the same.

    Syaloch -> Syaloch...

    See the thought experiment I posted on the links thread, and then add the following:

    Suppose the investigative journalist discovered instead that Freedonia itself is a sham, and that rather than being imported from overseas, the clothing was actually coming from an automated factory straight out of Vonnegut's "Player Piano" that was hidden in a remote domestic location. Would the people who were demanding limits on Freedonian exports now say, "Oh well, I guess that's OK" simply because the factory was located within the US?

    Dan Kervick -> kthomas...

    I enjoyed listening to this talk by Fredrick Reinfeldt at the LSE:

    http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=3253

    Reinfeldt is a center-right politicians and former Swedish Prime Minister. OF course, what counts as center-right in Sweden seems very different from what counts as center-right in the US.

    Perhaps there is some kind of basis here for some bipartisan progress on jobs and full employment.

    William said...

    I'm sure this isn't caused by any single factor, but has anyone seriously investigated a link between this phenomena and the military?

    Veterans probably aren't a large enough cohort to explain the effect in full, but white people from the south are the most likely group to become soldiers, and veterans are the most likely group to have alcohol/drug abuse and suicide problems.

    This would also be evidence why we aren't seeing it in other countries, no one else has anywhere near the number of vets we have.

    cm -> William...

    Vets are surely part of the aggregate problem of lack of career/economic prospects, in fact a lot of people join(ed) the military because of a lack of other jobs to begin with. But as the lack of prospects is aggregate it affects everybody.

    Denis Drew said...

    " At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I'm not sure whether they're enough to cure existential despair."


    UNOINIZED and (therefore shall we say) politicized: you are in control of your narrative -- win or lose. Can it get any more hopeful than that? And you will probably win.

    Winning being defined as labor eeking out EQUALLY emotionally satisfying/dissatisfying market results -- EQUAL that is with the satisfaction of ownership and the consumer. That's what happens when all three interface in the market -- labor interfacing indirectly through collective bargaining.

    (Labor's monopoly neutralizes ownership's monopsony -- the consumers' willingness to pay providing the checks and balances on labor's monopoly.)

    If you feel you've done well RELATIVE to the standards of your own economic era you will feel you've done well SUBJECTIVELY.

    For instance, my generation of (American born) cab drivers earned about $750 for a 60 hour (grueling) work week up to the early 80s. With multiples strip-offs I won't detail here (will on request -- diff for diff cities) that has been reduced to about $500 a week (at best I suspect!) I believe and that is just not enough to get guys like me out there for that grueling work.

    Let's take the minimum wage comparison from peak-to-peak instead of from peak-to-trough: $11 and hour in 1968 -- at HALF TODAY'S per capita income (economic output) -- to $7.25 today. How many American born workers are going to show up for $7.25 in the day of SUVs and "up-to-date kitchens" all around us. $8.75 was perfectly enticing for Americans working in 1956 ($8.75 thanks to the "Master of the Senate"). The recent raise to $10 is not good enough for Chicago's 100,000 gang members (out of my estimate 200,000 gang age minority males). Can hustle that much on the street w/o the SUBJECTIVE feeling of wage slavery.

    Ditto hiring result for two-tier supermarket contracts after Walmart undercut the unions.

    Without effective unions (centralized bargaining is the gold standard: only thing that fends off Walmart type contract muscling. Done that way since 1966 with the Teamsters Union's National Master Freight Agreement; the long practiced law or custom from continental Europe to French Canada to Argentina to Indonesia.

    It occurred to me this morning that if the quintessential example of centralized bargaining Germany has 25% or our population and produces 200% more cars than we do, then, Germans produces 8X as many cars per capita than we do!

    And thoroughly union organized Germans feel very much in control of the narrative of their lives.

    cm -> Denis Drew...

    "thoroughly union organized Germans"

    No longer thoroughly, with recent labor market reforms the door has likewise been blown open to contingent workforces, staffing agencies, and similar forms of (perma) temp work. And moving work to nations with lower labor standards (e.g. "peripheral" Europe, less so outside Europe) has been going on for decades, for parts, subassembly, and even final assembly.

    Denis Drew said...

    Very rough figures: half a million Chicago employees may make less than $800 a week -- almost everybody should earn $800 ...

    ... putative minimum wage? -- might allow some slippage in high labor businesses like fast food restaurants; 33% labor costs! -- sort of like the Teamsters will allow exceptions when needed from Master agreements if you open up your books, they need your working business too, consumer ultimately sets limits.

    Average raise of $200 a week -- $10,000 a year equals $5 billion shift in income -- out of a $170 billion Chicago GDP (1% of national) -- not too shabby to bring an end to gang wars and Despair American Style.

    Just takes making union busting a felony LIKE EVERY OTHER FORM OF UNFAIR MARKET MUSCLING (even taking a movie in the movies). The body of laws are there -- the issues presumably settled -- the enforcement just needs "dentures."

    cm -> Denis Drew...

    Union busting is generally (?) understood as direct interference with the formation and operation of unions or their members. It is probably more common that employers are allowed to just go around the unions - "right to work", subcontracting non-union shops or temp/staffing agencies, etc.

    cm -> Denis Drew...

    Why would people join a union and pay dues when the union is largely impotent to deliver, when there are always still enough desperate people who will (have to) take jobs outside the union system? Employers don't have to bring in scabs when they can legally go through "unencumbered" subcontractors inside or outside the jurisdiction.

    cm -> cm...

    It comes down to the collective action problem. You can organize people who form a "community" (workers in the same business site, or similar aggregates more or less subject to Dunbar's number or with a strong tribal/ethnic/otherwise cohesion narrative). Beyond that, if you can get a soapbox in the regional press, etc., otherwise good luck. It probably sounds defeatist but I don't have a solution.

    When the union management is outed for corruption or other abuses or questioable practices (e.g. itself employing temps or subcontractors), it doesn't help.

    Syaloch said...

    There was a good discussion of this on last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl5kFZ-SZq4

    Surprisingly, I pretty much agree with David Frum's analysis -- and Maher's comment that Trump, with his recent book, "Crippled America", has his finger on the pulse of this segment of the population. Essentially what we're seeing is the impact of economic stagnation upon a culture whose reserves of social capital have been depleted, as described in Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone".

    When the going gets tough it's a lot harder to manage without a sense of identity and purpose, and without the support of family, friends, churches, and communities. Facebook "friends" are no substitute for the real thing.

    Peter K. said...

    Jared Bernsetin:

    "...since the late 1970s, we've been at full employment only 30 percent of the time (see the data note below for an explanation of how this is measured). For the three decades before that, the job market was at full employment 70 percent of the time."

    We need better macro (monetary, fiscal, trade) policy.

    Maybe middle-aged blacks and hispanics have better attitudes and health since they made it through a tough youth, have more realistic expectations and race relations are better than the bad old days even if they are far from perfect. The United States is becoming more multicultural.

    Jesse said...

    Credibility trap, fully engaged.

    Jesse said...

    The anti-knowledge of the elites is worth reading. http://billmoyers.com/2015/11/02/the-anti-knowledge-of-the-elites/ When such herd instinct and institutional overbearance connects with the credibility trap, the results may be impressive. http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/gold-daily-and-silver-weekly-charts-pop.html

    Fred C. Dobbs said...

    White, Middle-Age Suicide In America Skyrockets
    Psychology Today - May 6, 2013
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201305/white-middle-age-suicide-in-america-skyrockets

    Suicide, once thought to be associated with troubled teens and the elderly, is quickly becoming an age-blind statistic. Middle aged Americans are turning to suicide in alarming numbers. The reasons include easily accessible prescription painkillers, the mortgage crisis and most importantly the challenge of a troubled economy. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention claims suicide rates now top the number of deaths due to automobile accidents.

    The suicide rate for both younger and older Americans remains virtually unchanged, however, the rate has spiked for those in middle age (35 to 64 years old) with a 28 percent increase (link is external) from 1999 to 2010. The rate for whites in middle-age jumped an alarming 40 percent during the same time frame. According to the CDC, there were more than 38,000 suicides (link is external) in 2010 making it the tenth leading cause of death in America overall (third leading cause from age 15-24).

    The US 2010 Final Data quantifies the US statistics for suicide by race, sex and age. Interestingly, African-American suicides have declined and are considerably lower than whites. Reasons are thought to include better coping skills when negative things occur as well as different cultural norms with respect to taking your own life. Also, Blacks (and Hispanics) tend to have stronger family support, community support and church support to carry them through these rough times.

    While money woes definitely contribute to stress and poor mental health, it can be devastating to those already prone to depression -- and depression is indeed still the number one risk factor for suicide. A person with no hope and nowhere to go, can now easily turn to their prescription painkiller and overdose, bringing the pain, stress and worry to an end. In fact, prescription painkillers were the third leading cause of suicide (and rising rapidly) for middle aged Americans in 2010 (guns are still number 1). ...

    cm -> Fred C. Dobbs...

    When few people kill themselves "on purpose" or die from self-inflicted but probably "unintended" harms (e.g. organ failure or accidental death caused by substance abuse), it can be shrugged off as problems related to the individual (more elaboration possible but not necessary).

    When it becomes a statistically significant phenomenon (above-noise percentage of total population or demographically identifiable groups), then one has to ask questions about social causes. My first question would be, "what made life suck for those people"? What specific instrument they used to kill themselves would be my second question (it may be the first question for people who are charged with implementing counter measures but not necessarily fixing the causes).

    Since about the financial crisis (I'm not sure about causation or coincidence - not accidental coincidence BTW but causation by the same underlying causes), there has been a disturbing pattern of high school students throwing themselves in front of local trains. At that age, drinking or drugging oneself to death is apparently not the first "choice". Performance pressure *related to* (not just "and") a lack of convincing career/life prospects has/have been suspected or named as a cause. I don't think teenagers suddenly started to jump in front of trains that have run the same rail line for decades because of the "usual" and centuries to millennia old teenage romantic relationship issues.

    [Sep 22, 2019] The Despair of Learning That Experience No Longer Matters by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

    Notable quotes:
    "... If returns to experience are in decline, if wisdom no longer pays off, then that might help suggest why a group of mostly older people who are not, as a group, disadvantaged might become convinced that the country has taken a turn for the worse. It suggests why their grievances should so idealize the past, and why all the talk about coal miners and factories, jobs in which unions have codified returns to experience into the salary structure, might become such a fixation. ..."
    Apr 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    RGC , April 12, 2017 at 06:41 AM
    The Despair of Learning That Experience No Longer Matters

    April 10, 2017

    .....................

    The arguments about Case and Deaton's work have been an echo of the one that consumed so much of the primary campaign, and then the general election, and which is still unresolved: whether the fury of Donald Trump's supporters came from cultural and racial grievance or from economic plight. Case and Deaton's scholarship does not settle the question. As they write, more than once, "more work is needed."

    But part of what Case and Deaton offer in their new paper is an emotional logic to an economic argument.

    If returns to experience are in decline, if wisdom no longer pays off, then that might help suggest why a group of mostly older people who are not, as a group, disadvantaged might become convinced that the country has taken a turn for the worse. It suggests why their grievances should so idealize the past, and why all the talk about coal miners and factories, jobs in which unions have codified returns to experience into the salary structure, might become such a fixation.

    Whatever comes from the deliberations over Case and Deaton's statistics, there is within their numbers an especially interesting story.

    http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/the-despair-of-learning-that-experience-no-longer-matters

    [Sep 15, 2019] Wall Street Ignores Cyclical Jobs Growth Downturn As Employment Indicator Hits Great Recession Levels

    Notable quotes:
    "... Most of the ads for good jobs are fake. ..."
    "... Instead of submitting a general application, as used to be the case in the past, and have the ability to work with the company to find the role that works best. HR has ruined a lot of good companies and their recruiting processes by going to rigid job descriptions instead of just hiring smart people and letting them work. ..."
    Sep 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    The Economic Cycle Research Institute's (ECRI) Lakshman Achuthan recently sat down with CNBC's Michael Santoli to discuss the jobs growth downturn. Keep in mind, this conversation was held on Wednesday, several days before Friday's disappointing jobs report.

    Achuthan told Santoli there's a " very clear cyclical downturn in jobs growth, there's really no debating that, and it looks set to continue ."

    Achuthan said January 2019 marked the cyclical peak in jobs growth, has been moving lower ever since, and the trend is far from over. Both nonfarm payrolls and the household survey year-over-year growth are in cyclical downturns, he said. While the economic narratives via the mainstream financial press continue to cheerlead that the consumer will lift all tides thanks to the supposedly strong jobs market, Achuthan believes the downturn in jobs growth will start to "undermine consumer confidence." And it's the loss in consumer confidence that could tilt the economy into recession.

    He also said when examining cyclically sensitive sectors of the economy, there are already "questionable jobs numbers," such as a significant surge in the construction unemployment rate.

    Achuthan said nonfarm payroll growth has plunged to a 17-month low, and the household survey is even weaker. He said the top nonfarm payroll line would be revised down by half a million jobs in the coming months, which would underline the weakness in employment.

    Achuthan emphasized to Santoli that ECRI's recession call won't be "taken off the table. We've been talking about a growth rate cycle slowdown. We're slow-walking toward -- some recessionary window of vulnerability -- we're not there today -- but this piece of the puzzle [jobs growth downturn] is looking a bit wobbly. This is the main message that Wall Street is missing."

    As Wall Street bids stocks to near-record highs on "trade optimism" and the belief that the consumer will save the day, in large part because of solid jobs growth. ECRI's Leading Employment Index, which correctly anticipated this downturn in jobs growth, is at its worst reading since the Great Recession .

    And Wall Street's bet today is that the Fed can achieve a soft landing – as in 1995-96 – when it started the rate cut cycle the same month the inflation downturn was signaled by the U.S. Future Inflation Gauge (USFIG) turning lower.

    However, this time around, the inflation downturn signal arrived in September 2018, the moment when the Fed should have started the cut cycle. With a ten-month lag in the cut cycle, belated rate cuts have always been associated with recession.

    And now it should become increasingly clear to readers why President Trump has sounded the alarm about the need for 100bps rate cuts, quantitative easing, and emergency payroll tax cuts - it's because he's been briefed about the economic downturn that has already started.


    GotAFriendInBen , 15 minutes ago link

    Actually, MSM cheerleads rate cuts as the cure-all, instead of throwing shoes at Powell

    Keyser , 41 minutes ago link

    How do you continue to have jobs growth when the country is at full employment?

    Typical ******** from C-NBC...

    Alex Droog , 19 minutes ago link

    The network that employs dotards like Jim Cramer to cheerlead the lemmings.

    Build-It-Well , 1 hour ago link

    Have we learned anything?

    https://soundcloud.com/daniel-sullivan-505714723/little-saigon-report-170-have-we-learned-anything

    Art_Vandelay , 1 hour ago link

    I don't agree with him that the Fed can do anything to correct this, nor do they have an incentive to do so. The Fed is not on the consumer's side. They will appropriate funds to whoever they want to, just like 08, and give the middle finger to everyone else.

    pitz , 1 hour ago link

    Job quality is horrible, particularly for US citizen STEM workers. This has been the case since the downturn that began in the late 1990s. Trump needs to fully cancel the OPT program and almost eliminate the H-1B program. Major employers don't even bother considering US citizen STEM talent before they hire foreign nationals.

    pump and dump , 1 hour ago link

    Most of the ads for good jobs are fake.

    pitz , 1 hour ago link

    Yes, but they don't bother to come out and tell you its a fake ad. One of the tragedies of the online job application process is that it forces a person, with little to no knowledge of a company and its internals, to pick, out of potentially hundreds of roles, which one would be best for them.

    Instead of submitting a general application, as used to be the case in the past, and have the ability to work with the company to find the role that works best. HR has ruined a lot of good companies and their recruiting processes by going to rigid job descriptions instead of just hiring smart people and letting them work.

    ZD1 , 1 hour ago link

    Congress first established the H-1B program with the The Immigration Act of 1990. It was supposed to be temporary.

    Congress needs to abolish it.

    Future Jim , 2 hours ago link

    This seems to contradict the labor participation rate.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

    J S Bach , 2 hours ago link

    "Wall Street Ignores Cyclical Slave Growth Downturn As Enslavement Indicator Hits Great Recession Levels"

    Ahhh... what truth a few seconds of editing can convoke.

    The EveryThing Bubble , 2 hours ago link

    It's all rigged folks

    don't believe anything you read

    [Sep 13, 2019] Clowns, AI and layoffs

    Sep 13, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Bugs Bunny , September 13, 2019 at 4:25 pm

    Clowns should be increasingly used in redundancy (layoff, firing) meetings until it becomes the norm and employers start to compete with each other to offer the best clown redundancy experience and promote it as a benefit.

    It would also create clown jobs, which would probably require more clown schools, meaning that the tuition prices would go through the roof and young people dreaming of becoming redundancy clowns would either have to come from wealth or take out massive clown loans to fund their education for clown universities and grad schools. Shareholders can only take so much top line costs and Wall Street pressure would force corporations to improve return on investment and reduce redundancy clown labor expenses. Sadly, redundancy clowns would find themselves training their own replacements – HB1 clowns from "low cost" countries. Employers would respond to quality criticisms of the HB1 clown experience by publishing survey results showing very similar almost ex-employee satisfaction with the new clowns.

    Eventually, of course, redundancy clowns will be replaced by AI and robots. It's just the future and we will need to think about how to adapt to it today by putting in place a UBI for the inevitable redundant redundancy clowns.

    [Sep 09, 2019] What's the True Unemployment Rate in the US? by Jack Rasmus

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. ..."
    "... The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed). ..."
    "... But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated. ..."
    "... The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them). ..."
    "... The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). ..."
    "... The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%. ..."
    Sep 09, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. Here's why: the 3.7% is the U-3 rate, per the labor dept. But that's the rate only for full time employed. What the labor dept. calls the U-6 includes what it calls discouraged workers (those who haven't looked for work in the past 4 weeks). Then there's what's called the 'missing labor force'–i.e. those who haven't looked in the past year. They're not calculated in the 3.7% U-3 unemployment rate number either. Why? Because you have to be 'out of work and actively looking for work' to be counted as unemployed and therefore part of the 3.7% rate.

    The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed).

    But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated.

    The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them).

    The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). The labor dept. just makes assumptions about that number (conservatively, I may add) and plugs in a number to be added to the unemployment totals. But it has no real idea of how many undocumented or underground economy workers are actually employed or unemployed since these workers do not participate in the labor dept. phone surveys, and who can blame them.

    The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%.

    Finally, there's the corroborating evidence about what's called the labor force participation rate. It has declined by roughly 5% since 2007. That's 6 to 9 million workers who should have entered the labor force but haven't. The labor force should be that much larger, but it isn't. Where have they gone? Did they just not enter the labor force? If not, they're likely a majority unemployed, or in the underground economy, or belong to the labor dept's 'missing labor force' which should be much greater than reported. The government has no adequate explanation why the participation rate has declined so dramatically. Or where have the workers gone. If they had entered the labor force they would have been counted. And their 6 to 9 million would result in an increase in the total labor force number and therefore raise the unemployment rate.

    All these reasons–-i.e. only counting full timers in the official 3.7%; under-estimating the size of the part time workforce; under-estimating the size of the discouraged and so-called 'missing labor force'; using methodologies that don't capture the undocumented and underground unemployed accurately; not counting part of the SSI increase as unemployed; and reducing the total labor force because of the declining labor force participation-–together means the true unemployment rate is definitely over 10% and likely closer to 12%. And even that's a conservative estimate perhaps." Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jack Rasmus

    Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, 'Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression', Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com .

    [Sep 04, 2019] Starving Seniors How America Fails To Feed Its Aging naked capitalism

    Sep 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    https://eus.rubiconproject.com/usync.html

    https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html

    https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2343&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2019%2F09%2Fstarving-seniors-how-america-fails-to-feed-its-aging.html <img src="http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=16807273&cv=2.0&cj=1" /> By Laura Ungar, who health issues out of Kaiser Health News' St. Louis office, and Trudy Lieberman, a journalist for more than 45 years, and a past president of the Association of Health Care Journalists. Originally published by Kaiser Health News .

    MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Army veteran Eugene Milligan is 75 years old and blind. He uses a wheelchair since losing half his right leg to diabetes and gets dialysis for kidney failure.

    And he has struggled to get enough to eat.

    Earlier this year, he ended up in the hospital after burning himself while boiling water for oatmeal. The long stay caused the Memphis vet to fall off a charity's rolls for home-delivered Meals on Wheels , so he had to rely on others, such as his son, a generous off-duty nurse and a local church to bring him food.

    "Many times, I've felt like I was starving," he said. "There's neighbors that need food too. There's people at dialysis that need food. There's hunger everywhere."

    Indeed, millions of seniors across the country quietly go hungry as the safety net designed to catch them frays. Nearly 8% of Americans 60 and older were "food insecure" in 2017, according to a recent study released by the anti-hunger group Feeding America. That's 5.5 million seniors who don't have consistent access to enough food for a healthy life, a number that has more than doubled since 2001 and is only expected to grow as America grays.

    While the plight of hungry children elicits support and can be tackled in schools, the plight of hungry older Americans is shrouded by isolation and a generation's pride. The problem is most acute in parts of the South and Southwest. Louisiana has the highest rate among states, with 12% of seniors facing food insecurity. Memphis fares worst among major metropolitan areas, with 17% of seniors like Milligan unsure of their next meal.

    And government relief falls short. One of the main federal programs helping seniors is starved for money. The Older Americans Act -- passed more than half a century ago as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reforms -- was amended in 1972 to provide for home-delivered and group meals, along with other services, for anyone 60 and older. But its funding has lagged far behind senior population growth, as well as economic inflation.

    The biggest chunk of the act's budget, nutrition services, dropped by 8% over the past 18 years when adjusted for inflation, an AARP report found in February. Home-delivered and group meals have decreased by nearly 21 million since 2005. Only a fraction of those facing food insecurity get any meal services under the act; a U.S. Government Accountability Office report examining 2013 data found 83% got none.

    With the act set to expire Sept. 30, Congress is now considering its reauthorization and how much to spend going forward.

    Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 45% of eligible adults 60 and older have signed up for another source of federal aid: SNAP, the food stamp program for America's poorest. Those who don't are typically either unaware they could qualify, believe their benefits would be tiny or can no longer get to a grocery store to use them.

    Even fewer seniors may have SNAP in the future. More than 13% of SNAP households with elderly members would lose benefits under a recent Trump administration proposal.

    For now, millions of seniors -- especially low-income ones -- go without. Across the nation, waits are common to receive home-delivered meals from a crucial provider, Meals on Wheels, a network of 5,000 community-based programs. In Memphis, for example, the wait to get on the Meals on Wheels schedule is more than a year long.

    "It's really sad because a meal is not an expensive thing," said Sally Jones Heinz, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association , which provides home-delivered meals in Memphis. "This shouldn't be the way things are in 2019."

    Since malnutrition exacerbates diseases and prevents healing, seniors without steady, nutritious food can wind up in hospitals, which drives up Medicare and Medicaid costs, hitting taxpayers with an even bigger bill . Sometimes seniors relapse quickly after discharge -- or worse.

    Widower Robert Mukes, 71, starved to death on a cold December day in 2016, alone in his Cincinnati apartment.

    The Hamilton County Coroner listed the primary cause of death as "starvation of unknown etiology" and noted "possible hypothermia," pointing out that his apartment had no electricity or running water. Death records show the 5-foot-7-inch man weighed just 100.5 pounds.

    A Clear Need

    On a hot May morning in Memphis, seniors trickled into a food bank at the Riverside Missionary Baptist Church, 3 miles from the opulent tourist mecca of Graceland. They picked up boxes packed with canned goods, rice, vegetables and meat.

    Marion Thomas, 63, placed her box in the trunk of a friend's car. She lives with chronic back pain and high blood pressure and started coming to the pantry three years ago. She's disabled, relies on Social Security and gets $42 a month from SNAP based on her income, household size and other factors. That's much less than the average $125-a-month benefit for households with seniors, but more than the $16 minimum that one in five such households get. Still, Thomas said, "I can't buy very much."

    A day later, the Mid-South Food Bank brought a "mobile pantry" to Latham Terrace, a senior housing complex, where a long line of people waited. Some inched forward in wheelchairs; others leaned on canes. One by one, they collected their allotments.

    The need is just as real elsewhere. In Dallas, Texas, 69-year-old China Anderson squirrels away milk, cookies and other parts of her home-delivered lunches for dinner because she can no longer stand and cook due to scoliosis and eight deteriorating vertebral discs.

    As seniors ration food, programs ration services.

    Although more than a third of the Meals on Wheels money comes from the Older Americans Act, even with additional public and private dollars, funds are still so limited that some programs have no choice but to triage people using score sheets that assign points based on who needs food the most. Seniors coming from the hospital and those without family usually top waiting lists.

    More than 1,000 were waiting on the Memphis area's list recently. And in Dallas, $4.1 million in donations wiped out a 1,000-person waiting list in December, but within months it had crept back up to 100.

    Nationally, "there are tens of thousands of seniors who are waiting," said Erika Kelly , chief membership and advocacy officer for Meals on Wheels America. "While they're waiting, their health deteriorates and, in some cases, we know seniors have died."

    Edwin Walker, a deputy assistant secretary for the federal Administration on Aging, acknowledged waits are a long-standing problem, but said 2.4 million people a year benefit from the Older Americans Act's group or home-delivered meals, allowing them to stay independent and healthy.

    Seniors get human connection, as well as food, from these services. Aner Lee Murphy, a 102-year-old Meals on Wheels client in Memphis, counts on the visits with volunteers Libby and Bob Anderson almost as much as the food. She calls them "my children," hugging them close and offering a prayer each time they leave.

    But others miss out on such physical and psychological nourishment. A devastating phone call brought that home for Kim Daugherty, executive director of the Aging Commission of the Mid-South , which connects seniors to service providers in the region. The woman on the line told Daugherty she'd been on the waiting list for more than a year.

    "Ma'am, there are several hundred people ahead of you," Daugherty reluctantly explained.

    "I just need you all to remember," came the caller's haunting reply, "I'm hungry and I need food."

    A Slow Killer

    James Ziliak , a poverty researcher at the University of Kentucky who worked on the Feeding America study, said food insecurity shot up with the Great Recession, starting in the late 2000s, and peaked in 2014. He said it shows no signs of dropping to pre-recession levels.

    While older adults of all income levels can face difficulty accessing and preparing healthy food, rates are highest among seniors in poverty. They are also high among minorities. More than 17% of black seniors and 16% of Hispanic seniors are food insecure, compared with fewer than 7% of white seniors.

    A host of issues combine to set those seniors on a downward spiral, said registered dietitian Lauri Wright , who chairs the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of North Florida. Going to the grocery store gets a lot harder if they can't drive. Expensive medications leave less money for food. Chronic physical and mental health problems sap stamina and make it tough to cook. Inch by inch, hungry seniors decline.

    And, even if it rarely kills directly, hunger can complicate illness and kill slowly.

    Malnutrition blunts immunity, which already tends to weaken as people age. Once they start losing weight, they're more likely to grow frail and are more likely to die within a year, said Dr. John Morley, director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University.

    Seniors just out of the hospital are particularly vulnerable. Many wind up getting readmitted, pushing up taxpayers' costs for Medicare and Medicaid. A recent analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that Medicare could save $1.57 for every dollar spent on home-delivered meals for chronically ill seniors after a hospitalization.

    Most hospitals don't refer senior outpatients to Meals on Wheels, and advocates say too few insurance companies get involved in making sure seniors have enough to eat to keep them healthy.

    When Milligan, the Memphis veteran, burned himself with boiling water last winter and had to be hospitalized for 65 days, he fell off the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association's radar. The meals he'd been getting for about a decade stopped.

    Heinz, Metropolitan's CEO, said the association is usually able to start and stop meals for short hospital stays. But, Heinz said, the association didn't hear from Milligan and kept trying to deliver meals for a time while he was in the hospital, then notified the Aging Commission of the Mid-South he wasn't home. As is standard procedure, Metropolitan officials said, a staff member from the commission made three attempts to contact him and left a card at the blind man's home.

    But nothing happened when he got out of the hospital this spring. In mid-May, a nurse referred him for meal delivery. Still, he didn't get meals because he faced a waitlist already more than 1,000 names long.

    After questions from Kaiser Health News, Heinz looked into Milligan's case and realized that, as a former client, Milligan could get back on the delivery schedule faster.

    But even then the process still has hurdles: The aging commission would need to conduct a new home assessment for meals to resume. That has yet to happen because, amid the wait, Milligan's health deteriorated.

    A Murky Future

    As the Older Americans Act awaits reauthorization this fall, many senior advocates worry about its funding.

    In June, the U.S. House passed a $93 million increase to the Older Americans Act's nutrition programs, raising total funding by about 10% to $1 billion in the next fiscal year. In inflation-adjusted dollars, that's still less than in 2009. And it still has to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the proposed increase faces long odds.

    U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittee, expects the panel to tackle legislation for reauthorization of the act soon after members return from the August recess. She's now working with colleagues "to craft a strong, bipartisan update," she said, that increases investments in nutrition programs as well as other services.

    "I'm confident the House will soon pass a robust bill," she said, "and I am hopeful that the Senate will also move quickly so we can better meet the needs of our seniors."

    In the meantime, "the need for home-delivered meals keeps increasing every year," said Lorena Fernandez, who runs a meal delivery program in Yakima, Wash. Activists are pressing state and local governments to ensure seniors don't starve, with mixed results. In Louisiana, for example, anti-hunger advocates stood on the state Capitol steps in May and unsuccessfully called on the state to invest $1 million to buy food from Louisiana farmers to distribute to hungry residents. Elsewhere, senior activists across the nation have participated each March in "March for Meals" events such as walks, fundraisers and rallies designed to focus attention on the problem.

    Private fundraising hasn't been easy everywhere, especially rural communities without much wealth. Philanthropy has instead tended to flow to hungry kids, who outnumber hungry seniors more than 2-to-1, according to Feeding America.

    "Ten years ago, organizations had a goal of ending child hunger and a lot of innovation and resources went into what could be done," said Jeremy Everett, executive director of Baylor University's Texas Hunger Initiative. "The same thing has not happened in the senior adult population." And that has left people struggling for enough food to eat.

    As for Milligan, he didn't get back on Meals on Wheels before suffering complications related to his dialysis in June. He ended up back in the hospital. Ironically, it was there that he finally had a steady, if temporary, source of food.

    It's impossible to know if his time without steady, nutritious food made a difference. What is almost certain is that feeding him at home would have been far cheaper.

    [Sep 02, 2019] Discrimination thru stupid job descriptions is catching up to the economy

    Jan 11, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    cocomaan, January 10, 2017 at 4:04 pm

    Coulnd't get the JOLTS, November 2016 links to work, but the skills gap is wild.

    At an institution of higher ed I'm familiar with, both faculty and administrative positions continue to be unfilled. There are very few candidates even for entry level positions. Failed searches are now the norm. It's feast or famine: either people are perfect for the job and have many options, or have no related experience at all.

    I wonder if the labor force participation rate is starting to catch up with the job market. That is, there are a lot of healthy adults who have dropped out of the workforce who would be the people you'd want in those positions.

    Or that the job market is not nearly as liquid as they'd have you believe, and people can't relocate from where they are because of adult children who live with them, or things of that nature. All kinds of weird things now in the job market. I know someone who commutes a significant distance to work that has to look for another job because their workplace's health care plan only covers a geographic area close to that job.

    alex morfesis , January 10, 2017 at 4:59 pm

    Discrimination thru stupid job descriptions is catching up to the economy paying $12 per hour five years experience required nonsense job descriptions designed to help the accredited and credentialed have a leg up

    There seem to be three types of employment categories

    • real jobs that might last through 12 quarters
    • gigs
    • and surfdumb/$lavery gigs where your hours are messed with, your schedule is messed with & you are expected to pay for the stupid uniform some bean counter thinks is branding

    IMUO it is not a skills gap it is the demanding of irrelevant capacities and experience that almost always have very little to do with the actual tasks required

    [Sep 02, 2019] Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so that people from other countries can have higher incomes

    Notable quotes:
    "... Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so that people from other countries can have higher incomes, and leftists often agree because hey "free movement" and because after all the professional class jobs aren't at risk ..."
    "... "I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people." ..."
    "... No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g. outsource Brad DeLong . ..."
    "... To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to live independently. ..."
    "... Attempts at repairing historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and even as hostile since they can easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than those who racial politics focuses upon. ..."
    "... The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back. ..."
    "... The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who do you recommend they vote for? ..."
    "... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
    "... Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone must play the role of outsider. ..."
    "... I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community. ..."
    "... Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.) ..."
    "... Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz status. ..."
    "... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
    Aug 01, 2004 | crookedtimber.org

    Rich Puchalsky 08.04.16 at 11:40 am 177

    fn: "Of course there is a subtext to these racist hate campaigns that someone else here raised and rich ran with a bit, which is the hatred of the unemployed. I think a lot of people voting leave imagine that the next thing on the agenda is slashing the dole to force poor white people to do the work the Eastern Europeans did. "

    Yes, in part. In part, also, people imagine that poor citizens will get jobs that previously were done by migrants. This has a hatred of slackers element that is bad, but as economics, it's pretty well-founded that if you reduce the size of the labor pool relative to the population then unemployment will go down and wages will go up. Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so that people from other countries can have higher incomes, and leftists often agree because hey "free movement" and because after all the professional class jobs aren't at risk. But strangely enough some people seem to resent this.

    Layman 08.04.16 at 11:48 am 178

    Lupita: "I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people."

    ... ... ...

    Rich Puchalsky 08.04.16 at 12:03 pm

    "I can't recall any particular instance where someone made this argument."

    No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g. outsource Brad DeLong.

    engels 08.04.16 at 12:25 pm

    While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't recall any particular instance where someone made this argument

    Maybe this kind of thing rom Henry Farrell? (There may well be better examples.)

    Is some dilution of the traditional European welfare state acceptable, if it substantially increases the wellbeing of current outsiders (i.e. for example, by bringing Turkey into the club). My answer is yes, if European leftwingers are to stick to their core principles on justice, fairness, egalitarianism etc

    http://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/31/talking-turkey-over-welfare/

    Lupita 08.04.16 at 2:42 pm

    Large numbers of low-income white southern Americans consistently vote against their own economic interests. They vote to award tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations, to cut unemployment benefits, to bust unions, to reward companies for outsourcing jobs, to resist wage increases, to cut funding for health care for the poor, to cut Social Security and Medicare, etc.

    The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world.

    Why might this be?

    In the case of Mexico, because Peña Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that? It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni.


    Patrick 08.04.16 at 4:32 pm

    To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to live independently.

    They see it as little different from letting your kid move back on after college and smoke weed in your basement. They don't generally mind people being on unemployment transitionally, but they're supposed to be a little embarrassed about it and get it over with as soon as possible.

    They not only worry that increased government social spending will incentivize bad behavior, they worry it will destroy the cultural values they see as vital to Americas past prosperity. They tend to view claims about historic or systemic injustice necessitating collective remedy because they view the world as one in which the vagaries of fate decree that some are born rich or poor, and that success is in improving ones station relative to where one starts.

    Attempts at repairing historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and even as hostile since they can easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than those who racial politics focuses upon. Left wing insistence on borrowing the nastiest rhetoric of libertarians ("this guy is poor because his ancestors couldn't get ahead because of historical racial injustice so we must help him; your family couldn't get ahead either but that must have been your fault so you deserve it") comes across as both antithetical to their values and as downright hostile within the values they see around them.

    All of this can be easily learned by just talking to them.

    It's not a great world view. It fails to explain quite a lot. For example, they have literally no way of explaining increased unemployment without positing either that everyone is getting too lazy to work, or that the government screwed up the system somehow, possibly by making it too expensive to do business in the US relative to other countries. and given their faith in the power of hard work, they don't even blame sweatshops- they blame taxes and foreign subsidies.

    I don't know exactly how to reach out to them, except that I can point to some things people do that repulse them and say "stop doing that."


    bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 5:50 pm

    The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back.

    The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who do you recommend they vote for?

    There is serious deficit of both trust and information among the poor. Poor whites hardly have a monopoly; black misleadership is epidemic in our era of Cory Booker socialism.


    bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 7:05 pm

    Politics is founded on the complex social psychology of humans as social animals. We elevate it from its irrational base in emotion to rationalized calculation or philosophy at our peril.


    T 08.04.16 at 9:17 pm

    @Layman
    I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush. They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud. So, is your argument is that Trump even more racist? That kind of goes against the whole point of the OP. Not saying that race doesn't matter. Of course it does. But Trump has a 34% advantage in non-college educated white men. It just isn't the South. Why does it have to be just race or just class?


    Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm

    "I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim, but my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"

    My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income.

    This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition), and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency , they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.

    T 08.05.16 at 3:12 pm

    @patrick @layman

    Patrick, you're right about the Trump demographic. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/

    Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than Bush for reasons other than race? Are the folks that voted for the other candidates in the primary less racist so Trump supporters are just the most racist among Republicans? Cruz less racist? You have to explain the shift within the Republican party because that's what happened.


    Anarcissie 08.06.16 at 3:00 pm

    Faustusnotes 08.06.16 at 1:50 pm @ 270 -

    Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone must play the role of outsider. While Berne's theories are a bit too nifty for me to love them, I have observed a lot of the behaviors he predicts. If one wanted to be sociobiological, it is not hard to hypothesize evolutionary pressures which could lead to this sort of behavior being genetically programmed. If a group of humans, a notably combative primate, does not have strong social cohesion, the war of all against all ensues and everybody dies. Common affections alone do not seem to provide enough cohesion.

    In an earlier but related theory, in the United States, immigrants from diverse European communities which fought each other for centuries in Europe arrived and managed to now get along because they had a major Other, the Negro, against whom to define themselves (as the White Race) and thus to cohere sufficiently to get on with business. The Negro had the additional advantage of being at first a powerless slave and later, although theoretically freed, was legally, politically, and economically disabled - an outsider who could not fight back very effectively, nor run away. Even so, the US almost split apart and there continue to be important class, ethnic, religious, and regional conflicts. You can see how these two theories resonate.

    It may be that we can't have communities without this dark side, although we might be able to mitigate some of its destructive effects.


    bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm

    I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.

    Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)

    Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus a component of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master class. The business end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities: slaves, sharecroppers, poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled communities, predatory institutions and authoritarian governments.

    For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.

    engels 08.07.16 at 1:02 am

    But how did that slavery happen

    Possible short answer: the level of technological development made slavery an efficient way of exploiting labour. At a certain point those conditions changed and slavery became a drag on further development and it was abolished, along with much of the racist ideology that legitimated it.


    Lupita 08.07.16 at 3:40 am

    But how did that slavery happen

    In Mesoamerica, all the natives were enslaved because they were conquered by the Spaniards. Then, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas successfully argued before the Crown that the natives had souls and, therefore, should be Christianized rather than enslaved. As Bruce Wilder states, this did not serve the interests of the slaveholding elite, so the African slave trade began and there was no Fray Bartolomé to argue their case.

    It is interesting that while natives were enslaved, the Aztec aristocracy was shipped to Spain to be presented in court and study Latin. This would not have happened if the Mesoamericans were considered inferior (soulless) as a race. Furthermore, the Spaniards needed the local elite to help them out with their empire and the Aztecs were used to slavery and worse. This whole story can be understood without recurring to racism. The logic of empire suffices.

    [Sep 02, 2019] How Can Older Workers Compete In An Economy That Values Youth

    May 28, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

    ...

    Workers of all ages are caught in a vice. Older workers need to keep working longer in an economy which values younger workers (and their cheaper healthcare premiums). Younger workers are caught in the vice of "you don't have enough experience" and "how do I get experience if nobody will hire me?"

    Middle-aged workers are caught between the enormous Millennial generation seeking better jobs and the equally numerous baby Boom generation seeking to work a few more years to offset their interest-starved retirement funds. (Thank you, predatory and rapacious Federal Reserve for siphoning all our retirement fund interest to your cronies the Too Big to Fail Banks.)

    Workers 55 and older are undeniably working longer. Here is the labor participation rate for 55+ workers:

    ... And here's why so many workers have to work longer--earned income's share of the GDP has been in a free-fall for decades as Fed-funded financiers and corporations skim an ever greater share of the nation's GDP.

    I am 62, very much an older worker with a startling 46 years in the work force (first formal paycheck, 1970 from Dole Pineapple). (Thanks to the Fed's zero-interest rate policy, I should be able to retire at 93 or so--unless the Fed imposes a negative-rate policy on me and the other serfs.)

    But I recall with painful clarity the great hardships and difficulties I experienced in the recessions of 1973-74, 1981-82 and 1990-91 when I was in younger demographics. My sympathies are if anything more with younger workers, as it is increasingly difficult to get useful on-the-job experience if you're starting out.

    That said, here are some suggestions for 55+ workers seeking to find work in a very competitive job/paid work market.

    1. Target sectors that haven't changed much. There's a reason so many older guys find a niche in Home Depot and Lowe's--power saws, lumber, appliances, etc. haven't changed that much (except their quality has declined) for 40 years.

    The same can be said of many areas of retail sales, house-cleaning, caring for children, etc.

    Everyone knows the young have an advantage in sectors dominated by fast-changing technology, so avoid those sectors and stick to sectors where your knowledge and experience is still applicable and valued by employers.

    2. If at all possible, get your healthcare coverage covered by a spouse or plan you pay. Those $2,000/month premiums for older workers are a big reason why employers would rather hire a $200/month premium younger worker, or limit the hours of older workers to part-time so no healthcare coverage is required.

    Telling an employer you already have healthcare coverage may have a huge impact on your chances of getting hired.

    3. If you have any computer-network-social media skills, you can get paid to help everyone 55+ with fewer skills. Your computer skills may not be up to the same level as a younger person's, but they are probably far more advanced than other 55+ folks. Many older people are paying somebody $35/hour or more to help them set up email, fix their buggy PCs and Macs, get them started on Facebook, etc. It might as well be you.

    4. Focus on fields where managerial experience and moxie is decisive. Even highly educated young people have a tough time managing people effectively because they're lacking experience. Applying biz-school case studies to the real world isn't as easy as it looks. (I found apologizing to my older employees necessary and helpful. Do they teach this in biz school? I doubt it.)

    The ability to work with (and mentor) a variety of people is an essential skill, and it's one that tends to come with age and experience.

    5. Reliability matters. The ability to roll with the punches, show up on time, do what's needed to get the job done, and focus on outcomes rather than process are still core assets in a work force.

    Being 55+ doesn't automatically mean someone has those skills, but they tend to come with decades of work.

    6. If nobody will hire you, start your own enterprise to fill scarcities and create value in your community. The classic example is a handyperson, as it's very difficult for a young person to acquire the spectrum of experience needed to efficiently assess a wide array of problems and go about fixing them.

    #3 above is another example of identifying one's strengths and then seeking a scarcity to fill. Value, profits and high wages flow to scarcity. Don't try to compete in supplying what's abundant; seek out scarcities and work on addressing those in a reliable fashion.

    Every age group has its strengths and weaknesses, and the task facing all of us is to 1) identify scarcities we can fill and 2) seek ways to play to our strengths.

    Shizzmoney

    That's easy: the elitist old people in power will start a war, force the young people into that war, where they will all be killed and the old people get their jobs.

    Also, for those young people who protest the war, the government and corporate military security forces will detain and kill them, too.

    Problem solved!

    KnuckleDragger-X

    Bob Seger: Ballad of the Yellow Berets

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP6Xt3GBhdQ

    Syrin

    Exactly. Value youth? Is that why we saddle them with $250,000 worth of student loan debt and a degree in women's studies to find no jobs because we let in illegals and skilled workers with Visas from foreign countries? Seems like we hate our youth. Of course, they deserve it since they have been focused on being social justice fucktards rather than getting any marketable skills and paying attention to what the gov't is doing to their future. Schadenfreude.

    deja

    No, they are stupid enough to saddle themselves with $250,000 worth of student loan debt for a degree in womens' studies.

    cougar_w

    The OP doesn't make much sense to me. Most of the work people my age do, the young people either don't want or are not qualified for. Maintaining vital COBOL apps or air traffic controller software from the 70's? Really? And the ones are, they don't mind working with older employees and seem to enjoy our "gravity".

    I work in IT so maybe things are a bit different. Grey beards are huge around here and always will be.

    But this has been a challenge for centuries, young people have to find their own way and "their way" (being probably a dream from childhood or an inspiration from a college professor) might not be practical at first. They bounce around a little until marriage hits them and then they find something that works for supporting a family. Same as it ever was. The idea that "their way" is some kind of unswerving life's mission is usually part of the corporate "just do it" meme that sells $400 specialty running shoes. Yeah whatever, just figure it out actually, life will tell you what you are supposed to be doing, and who you are supposed to be doing it with.

    GeezerGeek

    The market for COBOL programmers had a sudden surge around Y2K, but only certain industries still maintain their old COBOL apps. Curiously, a certain computer/software has recently tried pushing a visual version of COBOL, much like Gates did when he came out with Visual Basic back in the early 1990s. I retired after 40 years in IT in 2011, so I am a bit out of touch where COBOL is concerned. Does anyone even teach it anymore in college? Maybe if someone modified it to create phone apps and games it would once again be popular.

    Abbie Normal

    Then it's a good thing I didn't follow my undergrad English Prof's advice and switch my major from science to arts, because he thought there was some "real intelligence" in my writing style that even his grad students lacked. Maybe I should look him up....

    eatthebanksters

    I have two buddies, one a 61 year old attonery who has never lost a case and the other a 59 year old facilities director. The lawyer has been seeking work for 6 years and has pretty much given up...he can't even get hired at lesser jobs because he is overqualified and 'will leave when something better comes along'. The facilities director has a great resume and knows his stuff but has been out of work for almost two years. He has come in 'second' more times than I can count. He is working od jobs and living with a friends mother, exchanging work on the house for rent and meals. Welcome to Obama's economy.

    N0TaREALmerican

    He'd work if he'd accept less money, but he feels "entitled to earn what HE thinks he's worth". Just another lazy old-fart who feels the world owns him something. Welcome to a competitive economy old-fart, nobody said life was fair. Stop bitching and work for less.

    mary mary

    If you ever need an attorney, you might look for an experienced attorney who worked so hard that he never lost a case.

    If you ever inherit a zillion bucks and buy a bunch of properties, you might confer with an experienced facility manager who actually managed a bunch of properties.

    I doubt an attorney who never lost a case achieved that record by going around saying, "somebody owes me something".

    I doubt a facilities manager who managed a bunch of properties achieved that by going around saying, "somebody owes me something".

    Baa baa

    What a load of crap. Most will take anything. I know, I am one. Don't lecture me about being "entitled" you punk. Your post reeks of the entitlement generation. Slug through 50 years of working, rearing a family, kids to college... I am beginning to wonder if the hundreds of thousands spent on the education and well-being of your ingrate ass was a misallocation of funds.

    corporatewhore

    Give credit where credit is due. This inability to find work at an older age has been going on for years and can't be blamed on Obama. Senior buyers at Macy's, older workers at Monsanto or television weather people at KSDK in St Louis all suffer the same fate. Labor cost and benefits are all less for the younger generation no matter what level of experience or capability. We develop a mindset throughout our productive career that we are indispensable and worth it because of our knowledge, contacts and industry wherewithal. It's all an illusion and we are NOT prepared or equipped to face the reality at an older age that we are completely dispensable.

    At an older age if you want meaning you have to find it and think out of the paradigm that you've been led to believe is real. No one owes you anything for your experience or wealth of knowledge. Figure it out and rethink yourself as to what you love to do and want to do not what you must do to make money.

    At 58 in 2008 I was fucked over by my corporation and wallowed in miserableness and poverty while i worked every contact and firm I knew. Nothing resulted. I had to work 3 part time jobs until I earned 2 full time ones and work over 90 hours per week because I enjoy it. It is work that covers the bills and allows me to create what I want to work on for the future while I still can walk think and breathe.

    Best advice to your children: Go in business for yourself because just as it happened to me, it will happen to you when you become 55.

    Nobody For President

    Thanks for that, corporate whore. That sounds like an honest reprise of an incredibly hard time in your life, and I totally agree. I'm telling all (4) my grandkids, from 7 to 20, to live your life, not someone else's. The oldest one gets it, and I think the other ones will also, if I live long enough, because I walked that walk.

    I'm old, and work full time (more or less) and make a living - not a killing, but a living - at it.

    nuubee

    Good news old people, the economy currently doesn't value anything you can produce, unless you can print money.

    Cautiously Pessimistic

    You get up every morning
    From your 'larm clock's warning
    Take the 8:15 into the city
    There's a whistle up above
    And people pushin', people shovin'
    And the girls who try to look pretty
    And if your train's on time
    You can get to work by nine

    ... ... ...

    mary mary

    MSM says Baby Boomers "have stolen everything", but in fact Baby Boomers are having to extend their careers because they're broke. This is the easily foreseeable result of 20+ years of the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low, making Baby Boomers suffer the double-whammy of (1) not having their deferred income (pensions) grow, while (2) inflation in fact continued at 6% annual, thanks also to the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low.

    Yes, someone "have stolen everything". That someone is the owners of the Fed.

    [Sep 01, 2019] NetSlaves: True Tales of Working the Web by Bill Lessard

    Notable quotes:
    "... Being an unemployed techie myself, I cannot begin to describe what a godsend this book is. NETSLAVES finally reveals the truth about what it is to be part of what is likely the most under-appreciated sect of the working class. ..."
    "... It is a comment on upper and middle management corporate business practices in general, and the dismal fate of the vast armies of workers used as cannon fodder since day one for the follies of unscrupulous robber barons; or morons who just happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time to make market killings; or Scrooges who will never learn what it is to have a heart. Baldwin and Lessard are heirs to the muckrakers of the early 20th Century. Corporate E-merica, take heed. ..."
    Apr 16, 2003 | www.amazon.com
    Arthur Lindsey III , April 16, 2003
    A 246 Page "Support Group"

    Being an unemployed techie myself, I cannot begin to describe what a godsend this book is. NETSLAVES finally reveals the truth about what it is to be part of what is likely the most under-appreciated sect of the working class.

    The stale stories of "dorm-room success" have been supplanted by the pathetically sad/darkly humorous accounts of those who have been saddled with with million-dollar job titles, bleeding ulcers, and ramen noodle grocery budgets.

    NETSLAVES is an entertaining and enligtening read, written by two men who have actually been passengers in every sewer pipe that is the new-media industry. This book is a must for every modern library, as it can be considered a "warning shot" for those with IT aspirations, or as a source of vindication for those of us who have been dismissed and trampled on. Bravo!

    A customer, November 24, 1999

    Handwriting on the Wall

    NetSlaves tells it like it is for the millions of us on the business end of the IPO and monopoly screwdrivers. Apply these lessons to the law, publishing, automotive, chemical, airline industries, etc., etc. This book is not just a cerebral and satirical indictment of the internet industry.

    It is a comment on upper and middle management corporate business practices in general, and the dismal fate of the vast armies of workers used as cannon fodder since day one for the follies of unscrupulous robber barons; or morons who just happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time to make market killings; or Scrooges who will never learn what it is to have a heart. Baldwin and Lessard are heirs to the muckrakers of the early 20th Century. Corporate E-merica, take heed.

    [Aug 30, 2019] Over 50, Unemployed, Depressed and Powerless by D. A. Wolf

    Notable quotes:
    "... I know what it feels like to be marginalized because you're out of work. To be judged by others as if there's something wrong with you. To grow increasingly depressed, demoralized and despairing as three months turns into six months and that goes on for a year or more; as rejection after rejection becomes crushing, humiliating, and leaves you feeling worthless. ..."
    "... All money-related impacts aside, you lose confidence. You wear out. You start to give up ..."
    "... Now and then, an acquaintance will make an off-hand remark about those who borrow money or live on credit cards. The assumption is that credit purchases are frivolous, or that the person who racks up consumer debt does so out of irresponsibility and poor judgment. ..."
    "... Never assume. Yours truly? I borrowed to put food on the table. I borrowed to pay for school supplies for my kids. I borrowed to enable them to take advantage of academic opportunities that they earned through their own hard work. I also counted my blessings. While I had no family to assist, my kids were healthy and doing well, I was basically healthy despite chronic pain, and I was able to use credit. Borrowing is a double-edged sword of course, especially if it continues for an extended period. But for my little household, debt was the only path to survival. For all I know, it will be again. ..."
    "... These days? I still live on a tight budget, I dream of recovering from the years of financial devastation "someday," and I take every gig I can get. Willingly. I've gained new skills along the way and continue to refine them, I'm always looking for another project and thrilled when I nab one, and I'm accustomed to a 12- to 14-hour workday. I put in long hours throughout my corporate career and I have no problem doing so now. In fact, I'm grateful for these workdays and I take none of them for granted. Moreover, I suggest that few of us should take our sources of income as a given ..."
    "... The longer that Americans are unemployed, the more likely they are to report signs of poor psychological well-being," says the study. "About one in five Americans who have been unemployed for a year or more say they currently have or are being treated for depression - almost double the rate among those who have been unemployed for five weeks or less. ..."
    "... To be in this position - wanting to work, needing to work, knowing you still have much to contribute but never getting a foot in the door - is deeply frustrating, horribly depressing, and leaves us feeling powerless. Add up these elements and you have the formula for despair. ..."
    "... One small act of compassion can breathe new hope into the worst situation. And here's what I know with 100% certainty. We may be unemployed, we may be depressed but we aren't powerless if we come together and try to help one another. ..."
    Apr 30, 2016 | Daily Plate of Crazy

    Are you over 50, unemployed, depressed and feeling powerless? For that matter, are you any age and feeling hopeless because you can't seem to land a job?

    Frustrated Middle Age Man

    The recession may be officially over, and for some segments of the population, things are looking up. But too many are still sinking or hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Long-term unemployment or underemployment has become a way of life.

    This issue, for me, is personal.

    I know what it feels like to be marginalized because you're out of work. To be judged by others as if there's something wrong with you. To grow increasingly depressed, demoralized and despairing as three months turns into six months and that goes on for a year or more; as rejection after rejection becomes crushing, humiliating, and leaves you feeling worthless.

    All money-related impacts aside, you lose confidence. You wear out. You start to give up. And you don't even make it into the "statistics." It's been too long since your last employment relationship.

    Overqualified, Over-Educated, Over 50

    Despite my fancy educational background and shiny corporate career history, for a number of years I was unable to obtain work that was even remotely close to using my skills. Paying me a living wage? Let's not even discuss it. I must have applied to 100 positions over the course of several years, attended the usual networking events, and schmoozed every contact I could come up with.

    No go. I suffered from the three O's: Overqualified, Over-educated and Over 50, though I may not have looked it. That last? If you ask me, age was the kicker. Throughout that period, as post-divorce skirmishes continued to flare (further complicating matters), I nonetheless took every project I could eke out of the woodwork, supplemented by debt.

    Hello, bank bail-out? How about a few bucks for those of us who foot the bill in tax dollars?

    The Borrowing Trap

    Now and then, an acquaintance will make an off-hand remark about those who borrow money or live on credit cards. The assumption is that credit purchases are frivolous, or that the person who racks up consumer debt does so out of irresponsibility and poor judgment.

    Never assume. Yours truly? I borrowed to put food on the table. I borrowed to pay for school supplies for my kids. I borrowed to enable them to take advantage of academic opportunities that they earned through their own hard work. I also counted my blessings. While I had no family to assist, my kids were healthy and doing well, I was basically healthy despite chronic pain, and I was able to use credit. Borrowing is a double-edged sword of course, especially if it continues for an extended period. But for my little household, debt was the only path to survival. For all I know, it will be again.

    Fighting Your Way Back

    These days? I still live on a tight budget, I dream of recovering from the years of financial devastation "someday," and I take every gig I can get. Willingly. I've gained new skills along the way and continue to refine them, I'm always looking for another project and thrilled when I nab one, and I'm accustomed to a 12- to 14-hour workday. I put in long hours throughout my corporate career and I have no problem doing so now. In fact, I'm grateful for these workdays and I take none of them for granted. Moreover, I suggest that few of us should take our sources of income as a given.

    You know the expression - "There but for the grace of God go I." Misfortune can visit any one of us. Layoff. Accident or illness. Gray divorce. The phone call or email with no warning, saying "you're done" as you're replaced by someone 20 years younger.

    And yes, I've internalized the wisdom of this little gem: "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." But I also know it isn't always possible, and the secret to success is not as simple as hard work. It's aided by the assistance of others, not to mention - luck.

    Unemployed and Depressed

    Forbes reminds us of the clear links between unemployment and depression, which isn't to say that underemployment or hating your job is a picnic.

    Forbes staff writer Susan Adams cites a Gallup poll as follows:

    The longer that Americans are unemployed, the more likely they are to report signs of poor psychological well-being," says the study. "About one in five Americans who have been unemployed for a year or more say they currently have or are being treated for depression - almost double the rate among those who have been unemployed for five weeks or less.

    She goes on to note:

    The long-term unemployed, unfortunately, have good reason to be depressed. They suffer plenty of discrimination in the job market. A 2012 study by economist Rand Ghayad found that employers preferred candidates with no relevant experience, but who had been out of work for less than six months, to those with experience who had been job hunting for longer than that.

    .... ... ...

    I'm certain that many of you have fought your way back; I'm still fighting after years, but I have seen progress. Slower than I'd like, but progress all the same.

    If someone helped you out, have you paid it forward by making connections for others?

    Please do read this comment from Cindy. I have responded as best I can. I'm sure she would welcome your suggestions.

    A Note on Despair

    To be in this position - wanting to work, needing to work, knowing you still have much to contribute but never getting a foot in the door - is deeply frustrating, horribly depressing, and leaves us feeling powerless. Add up these elements and you have the formula for despair.

    It's brutally hard to fight your way back from despair. But sometimes, an act of compassion can help.

    I've been on the receiving end of those incredible kindnesses - from strangers, from readers, and from one friend in particular, herself too long living on the edge.

    One small act of compassion can breathe new hope into the worst situation. And here's what I know with 100% certainty. We may be unemployed, we may be depressed but we aren't powerless if we come together and try to help one another.

    ... ... ...

    [Aug 30, 2019] Over 50 and unemployed: Don t panic!

    Highly recommended!
    Don't panic is always a good advice. Following it is another story...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Using contacts, no matter how far in the past they rest, is nothing to be ashamed of! You've probably spent most of your life working, and meeting a lot of people along the way. ..."
    "... Your resume should be tailored to each and every job you apply for. While it is important to showcase your talent and skills, how you present the information is equally important. ..."
    Jan 03, 2012 | Palmetto Workforce Connections

    When you find yourself over 50 and unemployed, the thought of finding another job may seem daunting and hopeless.

    It is quite easy to become discouraged because many people fear being stereotyped because of their age, the tough job market, or the prospect of being interviewed by someone half their age. However, there are some things the older unemployed should keep in mind while on the job search. Using the following tips will increase your chances of a short job search and create an overall more pleasant experience.

    1. Quit telling yourself that no one hires older workers. This is simply just not true. In some cases older workers have to exert more effort to overcome discrimination, but this is certainly not the case for every employer. There are even entire websites with jobs posted specifically for older workers, and a quick Google search will render you a list of those websites. Take advantage of such resources!
    2. Take advantage of new technology. Learn to blog and micro-blog, via Twitter, about your profession and interests. You should even create a LinkedIn profile (a website similar to Facebook yet has a more career oriented function) to assist it meeting people in your desired field. All of which will help you stay fine tuned on your skills, while developing new ones. Learning to use social networking will indicate to potential employers that you can adapt to change and learn new things, particularly technology, fairly quickly.
    3. Use all those hard earned contacts. Using contacts, no matter how far in the past they rest, is nothing to be ashamed of! You've probably spent most of your life working, and meeting a lot of people along the way. It is completely acceptable to reach out to former colleagues, class mates, co-workers and employers for job possibilities. Using resources like Facebook or LinkedIn are great ways to find those long lost contacts as well. Chances are they would love to hear from you and help you out if possible.
    4. Don't clutter your resume. Your resume should be tailored to each and every job you apply for. While it is important to showcase your talent and skills, how you present the information is equally important. This means keep it straight to the point and relate your past experience to the skills necessary for the job you are applying for. Essentially, don't do a history dump of every job you've ever had, instead, make each word count!
    5. Don't act superior to the interviewer. It is likely that the people interviewing you will be younger than you. But this does not mean you should look down upon them. Obviously they have earned their position, and if you play your cards right, in due time, you will earn yours! Even if you've worked more years than your interviewer has been alive, it's not okay to tell him or her that you can "teach" them anything. A better idea would be to state your experience working in a multi-generational work place.

    Use these tips to help make your job search less stressful and more positive. Whatever you do, don't throw in the towel before you've even tried. Your experience and knowledge will be recognized. All you need is the right employer to identify it.

    [Aug 29, 2019] Over 50 and out of work Program seeks to help long-term unemployed

    This is essentially a scam. Help in landing $13 per hour job is not a big achievement.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Older workers like Lane make up a larger percentage of the persistently jobless than ever before. Nearly 40 percent of unemployed workers are over the age of 45 - a 30 percent rise from the 1980s. ..."
    "... P2E is an intensive, individualized five-week bootcamp that teaches job skills and works to build job-seekers' confidence and emotional health. "We acknowledge that there are serious emotional issues for people who'd been unemployed for that long," Carbone said. ..."
    "... The privately-funded program makes deals with businesses who hire P2E graduates for "internships," a few-week trial period for the would-be employee, whose salary is subsidized by the WorkPlace. Often, it leads to full-time work. According to P2E, 80 percent of their participants have been granted trial periods, and of those, more than 85 percent have been hired by employers. ..."
    "... This acceptance of a new economic reality is at the heart of P2E; the program isn't solving the problems of precarity, real-wage decline, or manufacturing losses so much as doing damage control. ..."
    "... "I'd say 100 percent of the people who went through Platform are making less than they did previously," said Carbone. "We get them prepared for the fact that their standard of living will go down, that they probably have to change careers." ..."
    Nov 16, 2013 | NBC News
    When Bret Lane was laid off from his telecommunications sales job after 16 years, he wasn't worried. He'd never been unemployed for more than a few days since he started working as a teenager. But months passed, and he couldn't find a job. One day, he heard the Purina plant in his Turlock, Calif., neighborhood was hiring janitors for $14 an hour. When he arrived early at 4 a.m., he counted more than 400 people lined up to interview.

    "That's when I realized things had gotten serious," said Lane, 53, who called being out of work "pure hell."

    Lane's experience is hardly unique. As of September 2013, 4 million people had been unemployed for six months or more. The economy has been slow to regain the 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession, making prospects grim for many of the long-term unemployed.

    Older workers like Lane make up a larger percentage of the persistently jobless than ever before. Nearly 40 percent of unemployed workers are over the age of 45 - a 30 percent rise from the 1980s. And for this group, the job hunt can be particularly long and frustrating. Unemployed people aged 45-54 were jobless for 45 weeks on average, and those 55 to 64 were jobless for 57 weeks, according to an October 2013 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

    Younger workers didn't have such a hard time, perhaps because many employers perceive them to be more energetic or productive than older workers, said Linda Barrington, an economist at Cornell University's Institute for Compensation Studies. Employers "acting on such inaccurate assessments or stereotypes is what benefits younger workers and disadvantages older workers," she said.

    Addressing the emotional side of unemployment

    An innovative program based in Bridgeport, Conn., is helping to get those who are over 50 and unemployed for long periods back into the market. Platform to Employment started in 2011 when a Connecticut job center called the WorkPlace was overwhelmed by calls from "99ers"-people who had been unemployed for 99 weeks, exhausting their unemployment benefits-many of whom were older workers.

    The exact number of 99ers across the country is unknown; the Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn't distinguished between 99ers and those out of work for a year since 2010, an oversight that some say renders this group even more politically invisible. Already, the long-term unemployed face biases in hiring. It's both legal and common for employers to write "unemployed need not apply" on job postings.

    There has been virtually no public policy tackling long-term unemployment since the recession hit, said P2E founder Joe Carbone, and his program seeks to fill that gap. "These people have lost access to opportunity, which is a basic American tenet," said Carbone. "We find a way to make them competitive and feel hopeful."

    P2E is an intensive, individualized five-week bootcamp that teaches job skills and works to build job-seekers' confidence and emotional health. "We acknowledge that there are serious emotional issues for people who'd been unemployed for that long," Carbone said.

    The privately-funded program makes deals with businesses who hire P2E graduates for "internships," a few-week trial period for the would-be employee, whose salary is subsidized by the WorkPlace. Often, it leads to full-time work. According to P2E, 80 percent of their participants have been granted trial periods, and of those, more than 85 percent have been hired by employers.

    Accepting a new economic reality

    Bret Lane washes out his coffee pot at his home after a shift at a call center in San Diego, Calif., on Oct. 31. Lane was laid off after 16 years as a salesman in telecommunications and was unemployed until he got a job at a call center. Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images for NBC News

    The program has spread to 10 other cities across the United States, including San Diego, where Lane, a P2E graduate, has been employed full-time at a call center since May. After a year and nine months of unemployment, Lane sold his two-bedroom house, pared down his possessions to fit in a 5x10 storage unit, and drove to San Diego to live with his sister. That's when he saw an ad in the paper for Platform to Employment.

    He learned how to make his online resume more searchable by adding keywords, as well as how to create an impressive LinkedIn profile. "It also occurred to me that I was being discriminated against" because of age, rather than being rejected for not being good enough. Lane now makes about half of his previous salary and still lives with his sister, but he's "happy to be working again."

    This acceptance of a new economic reality is at the heart of P2E; the program isn't solving the problems of precarity, real-wage decline, or manufacturing losses so much as doing damage control.

    "I'd say 100 percent of the people who went through Platform are making less than they did previously," said Carbone. "We get them prepared for the fact that their standard of living will go down, that they probably have to change careers."

    This guidance is necessary, Barrington said. "A lot of [the long-term unemployed] came into the workforce still thinking you could work for the same company for your whole life," she said. "Someone has to sit you down and tell you that's not going to happen."

    She added that businesses need to be reminded of the value of older workers, who often bring intangible skills, such as punctuality, responsibility, and "being able to write a memo," that younger employees may not yet have.

    Heidi DeWyngaert, President of Bankwell, a holding company of several banks in Connecticut, said one of her banks hired an older worker from P2E who is succeeding on the job precisely for these reasons. "She's mature, reliable and responsible with a great attitude," said DeWyngaert.

    The program has gained so much prominence that it's become competitive in its own right. Early last year, after P2E was featured on 60 Minutes, the Bridgeport office was flooded with inquiries. The program routinely gets 1,000 applicants for around 20 spots.

    Hoping to spark a national conversation

    Vanessa Jackson, 57, saw the segment and kept track of P2E's growth until it expanded to her area in Chicago. Jackson had been unemployed off and on since 2008, when she lost her $100,000 job as a marketing manager during a corporate downsizing. "I thought, of course, I would get another comparable job," she said.

    But it didn't happen. She decided to get an MBA to "ride out the recession," but that just landed her more debt. She finally got a part-time job as a deli clerk, until she broke her arm and went on disability for 10 months. Her $300,000 401(k) account dwindled to $60,000. She sold her house in the suburbs and moved in with her boyfriend on the South Side of Chicago.

    "It was the most desperate thing in the world," Jackson said. It pained her to remember the days when recruiters would tell her she was one of "the top African-American women in marketing."

    P2E "revived my energy," she said. "It lifted the depression that was very much there."

    Jackson now works part-time as a project coordinator at a home care service agency for $13 an hour, which she admits is inadequate for her level of education. Still, she almost missed out on the opportunity. When P2E came to Chicago earlier this year, she wasn't selected at first. "It felt like applying for a job in itself," she said. "I beseeched [Chicago program manager Michael Morgan]. He said 'I admire your ambition' and let me in."

    Carbone is all too aware of P2E's limited reach. "We've helped hundreds of people, but that doesn't put even a small dent in the amount who need help," he said. Carbone hopes to spark a national conversation and, eventually, get the attention of Washington.

    "Let's be clear," Carbone said. "I wouldn't be doing this if there were appropriate and relevant government policies."

    [Aug 28, 2019] My Top 5 Movies About Unemployment

    Apr 30, 2016 | Christianity Today
    Erin Brockovich

    2000 | Rated R
    directed by Steven Soderbergh
    Based on the true story of an unemployed mother of three who forced her way into a job as a legal clerk and built an anti-pollution case against a California utility company. Erin Brockovich has become a name for someone with tenacity and perseverance.

    The Journey of Natty Gann

    1985 | Rated PG
    directed by Jeremy Kagan
    Disney's family-friendly adventure demonstrates how tough the Great Depression was on kids, namely the teenage girl of the title who journeys across America to reunite with her father. Grounded by strong performances, including a young John Cusack, this gem serves as a fine introduction of a difficult subject to younger viewers.

    Tootsie

    1982 | Rated PG
    directed by Sydney Pollack
    This light-hearted, quirky comedy stars Dustin Hoffman as an unemployed actor who pretends to be a woman for a full-time role in a soap opera. Beneath the hilarity is a sobering reminder that landing a job sometimes requires thinking outside the box, to say the least.

    Up in the Air

    2009 | Rated R
    directed by Jason Reitman
    George Clooney is stellar as a veteran hatchet man who has lost his ability to form meaningful relationships, living a life on the road. Ultimately this is a poignant drama about identity and what defines us. If we are nothing more than our occupation, what remains when that is gone?

    Russ Breimeier, a freelance film critic who lives in Indianapolis, was unemployed for two years until recently landing a part-time job.

    [Aug 28, 2019] What do you call a 50 year old engineer?

    Mar 03, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Synoia , March 3, 2016 at 10:25 am

    Q: What do you call a 50 year old engineer?

    A: Unemployed.

    [Aug 27, 2019] The Death of the Professional: Are Doctors, Lawyers and Accountants Becoming Obsolete

    Probably not. But the quantities necessary might diminish considerably...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Adapted from the new book The Future of the Professions by Richard Susskind & Daniel Susskind (Oxford University Press, 2015).Originally published at Alternet ..."
    "... The proof is in how there is one premium cost if the medical provider is on their own and magically it is cheaper if theu are part of a group or hospital.. Same doctor same practices lower rates prima facia evidence of insurance company rate fraud ..."
    "... Re solidarity, you might be surprised. One reason law school enrollments are down is that it is becoming public knowledge that employment for graduates in upwardly mobile career positions is way down ..."
    "... Many are shunted into low level proletarian type legal work, churning out evidence for use in lawsuits owned and managed by large firms. Lawyers who do this earn less then a good paralegal with less job security and no benefits. ..."
    "... So much of the 'grunt work' of professions – once the entry and training province of new graduates – is now being done overseas by shops that specialize in legal research, or reading x-rays, or accounting and tax preparation. ..."
    "... The 'grunt work' that grounds one in the full knowledge of the profession and how it works is slowly removed from the profession. That omission leaves future practitioners with an incomplete understanding. ..."
    "... This loss makes them more reliant on big data as both assistant and excuse/defense, and makes them less master craftsmen (if I may use the term without giving offense) and more the front-end interface of one-size-fits-all processes. Very good for corporate profits. Not so good for the professions or their clients. ..."
    "... Long ago, firms started off-shoring basic, tedious, repetitive tasks, generally considered as unrewarding, such as software testing or error correction to India. The idea was to focus on "high added-value" jobs such as system architects or project management, and leave low-level operations, supposedly requiring less qualifications, to cheaper Indian contractors. Decades later, there is a shortage of qualified people for those high-skilled jobs - precisely because fewer and fewer young people have had the possibility ..."
    "... The result? It is now necessary to import expensive project managers and system architects from foreign countries. ..."
    "... Bottom line: the race to the bottom for wages is "on". ..."
    "... Professionals would be the next logical choice of squeezing cost out of work; unions, middle management, big industry, airlines, manufacturing and construction have all paid their price at the alter of the 1%. ..."
    "... I also agree with the concept of there being less for the bottom 90% to spend. And as more automation kicks in, there will be even less bad choice jobs for these folks to scramble for. Just waiting for truck drivers to be slowly replaced with auto-drive trucks. ..."
    "... " . Prefer a fence at the top of the cliff to an ambulance at the bottom " ..."
    "... The rich and the truly rich will always have skilled, artistic human professionals to serve their personally tailored bespoke needs. It is the rest of us who will be assigned the doctorobots, the lawyer machines, etc. ..."
    "... Part of the "crapification of everything" except for managers and owners, it is part of their cost cutting plan. ..."
    "... First they came for the blue collar workers, and I did nothing? Then they came for the white collar workers, and I did nothing? Now they are coming for the professionals, and they are laughing at my passivity? ..."
    "... They have played all the classes, higher than the one they are currently discarding, and the remaining consumers are happy to throw their neighbors under the bus. But your turn will come. Karma. ..."
    "... Once corporations start setting guidelines and dictating the drugs you can and can't use for treatment, do you think they'll do it according to what's cost effective and least risky for the patient based on current science or do you think they'll do it based on their own profits? ..."
    "... The shift from reactive to proactive ..."
    "... Proactive cannibalism ..."
    Jan 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on January 9, 2016 by Yves Smith Yves here. Many members of the top 10% regard their role in society as relatively secure, particularly if the are in a niche that serves the capital-deploying 1% or better yet, 0.1%. But a new book suggest their position is not secure. And trends in motion confirm this dour reading, such as the marked decline in law school enrollments, and the trend in the US to force doctors to practice out of hospitals or HMOs, where they are salaried and are required to adhere to corporate care guidelines. For instance, my MD is about to have her practice bought out, and is looking hard as to whether she can establish a concierge practice. Mind you, she appears regularly on TV and writes a monthly column for a national magazine [not that is how I found her or why I use her]. Yet she has real doubts as to whether she can support all the overhead. If someone with a profile can't make a go at it solo in a market like Manhattan, pray tell, who can?

    Adapted from the new book The Future of the Professions by Richard Susskind & Daniel Susskind (Oxford University Press, 2015).Originally published at Alternet

    The end of the professional era is characterized by four trends: the move from bespoke service; the bypassing of traditional gatekeepers; a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to professional work; and the more-for-less challenge.

    The Move From Bespoke (Custom) Service

    For centuries, much professional work has been handled in the manner of a craft. Individual experts and specialists-people who know more than others-have offered an essentially bespoke service ("bespoke" is British for "custom"). In the language of the tailor, their product has been "made-to-measure" rather than "off-the-peg." For each recipient the service has been disposable (used once only), handcrafted ordinarily by a solitary scribe or sole trusted adviser, often in the spirit of an artist who starts each project afresh with a blank canvas.

    Our research strongly suggests that bespoke professional work in this vein looks set to fade from prominence, as other crafts (like tailoring and tallow chandlering) have done over the centuries. Significant elements of professional work are being routinized: in checklists, standard form materials, and in various sorts of systems, many of which are available online. Meanwhile, the work that remains for human beings to handle conventionally is often not conducted by individual craftspeople, but collaboratively in teams, sometimes collocated, but more often virtually. And, with the advance of increasingly capable machines, some work may not be conducted by human beings at all.

    Just as we witnessed the "death of gentlemanly capitalism" in the banks in the 1980s, we seem to be observing a similar decline in bespoke professionalism.

    The Bypassed Gatekeepers

    In the past, when in need of expert guidance we turned to the professions. Their members knew things that others did not, and we drew on their knowledge and experience to solve our problems. Each profession acted as a "gatekeeper" of its own, distinct body of practical expertise. Today this set-up is under threat.

    We are already seeing some work being wrested from the hands of traditional professions. Some of the competition is coming from within. We observe professionals from different professions doing each other's work. They even speak of "eating one another's lunch." Accountants and consultants, for example, are particularly effective at encroaching on the business of lawyers and actuaries. We also see intra-professional friction, when, for example, nurses take on work that used to be exclusive to doctors, or paralegals are engaged to perform tasks that formerly were the province of lawyers.

    But the competition is also advancing from outside the traditional boundaries of the professions-from new people and different institutions. We see a recurring need to draw on people with very different skills, talents, and ways of working. Practicing doctors, priests, teachers, and auditors did not, for example, develop the software that supports the systems that we describe. Stepping forward instead are data scientists, process analysts, knowledge engineers, systems engineers, and many more. Today, professionals still provide much of the content, but in time they may find themselves down-staged by these new specialists. We also see a diverse set of institutions entering the fray-business process outsourcers, retail brands, Internet companies, major software and service vendors, to name a few. What these providers have in common is that they look nothing like twentieth-century doctors, accountants, architects, and the rest.

    More than this, human experts in the professions are no longer the only source of practical expertise. There are illustrations of practical expertise being made available by recipients of professional work-in effect, sidestepping the gatekeepers. On various platforms, typically online, people share their past experience and help others to resolve similar problems. These "communities of experience," as we call them, are springing up across many professions (for example, PatientsLikeMe and the WebMD communities in medicine). We say more about them in a moment. More radical still are systems and machines that themselves generate practical expertise. These are underpinned by a variety of advanced techniques, such as Big Data and artificial intelligence. These platforms and systems tend not to be owned and run by the traditional professions. Whether those who do so will in turn become "new gatekeepers" is a subject of some concern.

    The keys to the kingdom are changing. Or, if not changing, they are at least being shared with others.

    Jim Haygood ,, January 9, 2016 at 8:57 pm

    'medium and large corporations are also struggling to deal with increasing regulation'

    My claim is that large corporations don't "struggle to deal with" regulation - they write it.

    Case in point, Obamacare was drafted by Liz Fowler, formerly of WellPoint.

    alex morfesis , January 10, 2016 at 12:05 am

    You nailed it on medical professionals would like to add, that at least here in flori duh there seems to be massive pricing fraud by malpractice and liability insurance providers which state regulators allow to continue to force small or single practitioners to join groups by financial obliteration at least in floriduh, there is the usual massive distortion suggesting insurance companies are paying out huge amounts when there in fact seems to be collusion amongst insurance companies neglecting the legal requirement to try to settle on good faith and end up forcing people to settle for pennies on the dollar yet the insurance companies keep picking the pockets of medical professionals

    The proof is in how there is one premium cost if the medical provider is on their own and magically it is cheaper if theu are part of a group or hospital.. Same doctor same practices lower rates prima facia evidence of insurance company rate fraud

    jrs , January 9, 2016 at 3:49 pm

    Yes some of it is only logical though, if masses of the population see their income declining and yet the costs of medical care keeps increasing eventually noone can afford to see the doctor never mind the ACA etc.. And it can get to be this way with a lot of professional services less urgent and distorted than medical care, like soon noone can afford an accountant, you use turbo tax, a lawyer – no middle class people start to make their own wills. Many professions seek ever further protections of government for their guilds (more and more requirements to practice to try to preserve their privilege) and yet with nothing protecting the income of the other 80% (read: unions, that would be their role) unless they plan to only serve the fellow 20%

    So solidarity? Yea, but making the solidarity argument with many (not all) members of such professions is a waste of time as they instinctively side with the 1s.

    Local to Oakland , January 9, 2016 at 4:13 pm

    Re solidarity, you might be surprised. One reason law school enrollments are down is that it is becoming public knowledge that employment for graduates in upwardly mobile career positions is way down

    Many are shunted into low level proletarian type legal work, churning out evidence for use in lawsuits owned and managed by large firms. Lawyers who do this earn less then a good paralegal with less job security and no benefits.

    ilporcupine , January 9, 2016 at 4:33 pm

    It has been said Paralegals are being squeezed out, to make way for the huge increase in law graduates from prior class booms. Why not use cheap lawyers, with better credential, and desperate for employment?

    flora , January 9, 2016 at 5:39 pm

    So much of the 'grunt work' of professions – once the entry and training province of new graduates – is now being done overseas by shops that specialize in legal research, or reading x-rays, or accounting and tax preparation.

    There are 3 downsides to this, in my opinion. New college grads have fewer entry slots. The 'grunt work' that grounds one in the full knowledge of the profession and how it works is slowly removed from the profession. That omission leaves future practitioners with an incomplete understanding.

    This loss makes them more reliant on big data as both assistant and excuse/defense, and makes them less master craftsmen (if I may use the term without giving offense) and more the front-end interface of one-size-fits-all processes. Very good for corporate profits. Not so good for the professions or their clients.

    guest , January 9, 2016 at 6:25 pm

    Big Data is not a solution.

    Your first two points (no entry-level jobs for beginners, no acquisition of professional basics) are essential - and their detrimental effects are already painfully felt in some professions.

    Case in point: software development.

    Long ago, firms started off-shoring basic, tedious, repetitive tasks, generally considered as unrewarding, such as software testing or error correction to India. The idea was to focus on "high added-value" jobs such as system architects or project management, and leave low-level operations, supposedly requiring less qualifications, to cheaper Indian contractors. Decades later, there is a shortage of qualified people for those high-skilled jobs - precisely because fewer and fewer young people have had the possibility to

    (a) start in the profession at entry-level positions (when job postings all require qualifications as senior software engineer and five years experience, what do you do?)

    (b) learn the ropes and practice the skills from the ground up (the necessary step before rising in the professional hierarchy).

    The result? It is now necessary to import expensive project managers and system architects from foreign countries.

    From what I read, the UK has been especially hit by this phenomenon, because it was particularly enthusiastic about off-shoring IT to India.

    polecat , January 9, 2016 at 8:18 pm

    Uhm ..oh wait uh ..I know .uh Brondo's got what plants need ..right?

    Phil , January 10, 2016 at 2:34 am

    Attorney's work is being automated and outsourced. For more on one aspect of outsourcing:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?_r=2

    I can't find the cite, but last year I read that some of the Indian companies that American law firms have outsourced to are now moving offices "stateside" to hire American attorneys, here.

    Bottom line: the race to the bottom for wages is "on". Add to this job automation that will only get more efficient, over time.
    http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/news-release-oxford-martin-school-study-shows-nearly-half-us-jobs-could-be-risk-computerisation

    armchair , January 9, 2016 at 5:17 pm

    The Washington State Bar has initiated a legal technician program , and I find the timing questionable, even if the premise of the program is good-hearted. As the market is awash in underemployed, licensed attorneys, the Bar is going ahead and turning veteran paralegals into the people to undercut the market even further. It seems like bad timing to let someone who has years of experience, and no law school debt get over on a bunch law school grads who are facing a life of being hounded for their debts. I spoke to someone at the Bar who made a good defense, that the legal technician is like an ARNP. Only later did it occur to me that there are very few out-of-work doctors.

    From another perspective, the legal technician answers another problem of the collapsing paralegal market. Much of the collapse has been driven by advances in document management, especially scanning that 'reads' the text and makes it searchable. But hey, here is a shiny new program. Go ahead and set up a parenting plan with your abusive ex for $75! What could go wrong?

    The key to really get the legal field de-humanized would be robot judges and robotic juries. I hope someone is already working on it.

    polecat , January 9, 2016 at 8:26 pm

    Don't worry what's old is new again. At some point in the future we'll all be scratching glyphs on clay tablets .once the 2nd law of thermodynamics really kicks in ..plenty of work then!

    armchair , January 9, 2016 at 9:02 pm

    Work! What about George Jetson? The go west value system we are stuck with these days is almost perfectly incompatible with a future that requires very little human labor.

    MyWag , January 9, 2016 at 5:33 pm

    Professionals would be the next logical choice of squeezing cost out of work; unions, middle management, big industry, airlines, manufacturing and construction have all paid their price at the alter of the 1%.

    Public sector unions are hanging on but as the majority of local & state taxpayers have less to give, these wages, benefits and especially pensions will be cut. Those earning less and less will gleefully pull down those public employees who are 'living like kings'.

    I also agree with the concept of there being less for the bottom 90% to spend. And as more automation kicks in, there will be even less bad choice jobs for these folks to scramble for. Just waiting for truck drivers to be slowly replaced with auto-drive trucks.

    This leads us to an enhanced confrontation at the Federal level on how to go forward. The earned income tax credit, a good concept also under siege, I believe, will have to be supplemented with a minimum guaranteed income.

    By this time, 20 years, the DEMs will be the party of business and the GOP will be entirely dependent on fed govt subsidies. Oh the irony.

    Brooklin Bridge , January 10, 2016 at 12:00 pm

    By this time 20 years, the GOP will be saying, "I told you so", regarding Global Warming.

    Ptup , January 9, 2016 at 6:12 pm

    Reading Rise of a The Robots right now, and the law and accounting profession have and will continue to be hurt hard by computers armed with big data, and the education and medical profession are next. Has to be. It's already a travesty that education and medical costs continue to rise as incomes stagnate and drop, and that just cannot continue. Well, maybe it can, until all of those guns out there are used by the people as they rise up. Look at the buffoon who many are considering for the Republican nominee, more out of blind, misinformed anger, than anything. Scary.

    RBHoughton , January 9, 2016 at 7:31 pm

    " . Prefer a fence at the top of the cliff to an ambulance at the bottom "

    You have a delightful way with words Yves. Many thanks.

    different clue , January 9, 2016 at 9:19 pm

    The rich and the truly rich will always have skilled, artistic human professionals to serve their personally tailored bespoke needs. It is the rest of us who will be assigned the doctorobots, the lawyer machines, etc.

    James Koss , January 10, 2016 at 11:13 am

    The French phrase "Everything changes and remains the same" remains true today.

    Whereas today the top of society has its professionals to isolate and protect them from the remainder of the population and the rules nobility and the church had its knights, nobles, obedient serfs and peasants to fight and protect "their" nobility. Names and titles changed but the rules remained. Those who have will get those who don't will not.

    Inverness , January 10, 2016 at 11:29 am

    Correct. The same applies in education. The wealthy know what kinds of schools serve their children best: those with better teacher to student ratios, rich arts curricula, and a progressive approach to instruction. Just see what Obama's kids got at their fancy Quaker school. The rest get standardized lesson plans, big class sizes, deep cuts in music and the arts, and high-stakes testing.

    They can privatize their lives; we cannot.

    Disturbed Voter , January 9, 2016 at 10:42 pm

    Part of the "crapification of everything" except for managers and owners, it is part of their cost cutting plan.

    Why would you trust a medical system run by politicians and insurance companies a system promoted by those same managers and owners. Like hiring the Three Stooges as your plumber, electrician and roofer. Gullibility will be the death of us that and malice.

    First they came for the blue collar workers, and I did nothing? Then they came for the white collar workers, and I did nothing? Now they are coming for the professionals, and they are laughing at my passivity?

    They have played all the classes, higher than the one they are currently discarding, and the remaining consumers are happy to throw their neighbors under the bus. But your turn will come. Karma.

    flora , January 10, 2016 at 2:19 am

    In Oregon some doctors are unionizing to resist medical assembly line medicine.
    From NYTimes:

    Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

    "Dr. Alexander and his colleagues say they are in favor of efficiency gains. It's the particular way the hospital has interpreted this mandate that has left them feeling demoralized. If you talk to them for long enough, you get the distinct feeling it is not just their jobs that hang in the balance, but the loss of something much less tangible - the ability of doctors everywhere to exercise their professional judgment."

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize-to-resist-the-medical-machine.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

    digi_owl , January 10, 2016 at 4:12 am

    I find myself thinking about an episode of the original Connections series, that was produced in the 70s.

    There it was mused about how corporate management would idle their days away waiting for the computer in the basement to crunch the numbers and come up with company decisions they were then to implement.

    Instead what happened was that the professional managerial class, the MBAs, dug in while computers instead replaced the laborers via robotics.

    Jesper , January 10, 2016 at 6:55 am

    Or shorter: The common argument that 'we (by that I mean you) have to become more employable' is about to hit home among the people with long education. Will they recognize the similarity to what has already happened to others and/or will they themselves make themselves more 'employable'?

    financial matters , January 10, 2016 at 8:11 am

    I think one of the major consequences we are seeing as a result of a misguided professional system is the lack of basic legal services for millions of people. This resulted in people being thrown out of their homes as the result of very obvious fraud and yet having no recourse unless they were able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees.

    I think the popular new series 'Making of a Murderer' emphasizes this problem. I don't think a show that emphasizes the problems that the very poor have with justice from the lack of being able to pay for legal services would have been this popular 10 years ago.

    financial matters , January 10, 2016 at 8:17 am

    I think this would require a 'single payer' legal system similar to the need for a single payer medical system.

    Wade Riddick , January 10, 2016 at 8:53 am

    Once corporations start setting guidelines and dictating the drugs you can and can't use for treatment, do you think they'll do it according to what's cost effective and least risky for the patient based on current science or do you think they'll do it based on their own profits?

    What happens when they own their own pharmacies – as they're all scrambling to do right now – and try to jack up reimbursement through that unit too? Do you think patients were served when Philidor started (criminally) altering scripts and making substitutions?

    For profit healthcare is really sickcare, isn't it? Why cure a disease when treating it brings in more revenue? Why sell cheap human insulin when you can patent a variety on the molecule, jack up the price and carve up the market?

    Keep the sucker paying the vig

    These guys aren't adopting better guidelines for treating chronic disease based on the best available science. In fact, as they corporatize they're getting worse. I've talked to these clowns. They're typically ten years behind the state of the art in their field. Patients do the reading and then they stare at us like we're morons. Fifteen years later they swear they knew the truth all along.

    If these corporate suits are setting the guidelines for care, how come there's no common national board standard for care, no portfolio investment model approach where they model the disease with the best available experts, determine how to intervene in the various genetic pathways that are perturbed and then pick the simplest, cheapest methods/chemicals to try first?

    That sounds like a pretty reasonable, scientific approach to treatment – but, if that's your standard, then these people are in breech of fiduciary duty left and right and it all has to do with that old canard "maximizing shareholder value." What about maximizing customer service? Corporate medicine will lead to tobacco-level deaths. I know doctors who have been personally injured in this system already. Corporations want to avoid risk to their profit – *not* their patient. Imagine what *those* mandatory arbitration clauses are going to look like. Imagine what the sequel to _Merchants of Doubt_ will look like in the era of corporate medicine and Supreme Court decisions that bust doctors' unions.

    I'm still burning from Peter Thiel's comments on monopolies in the New York Times this morning. Does he have any clue how bad the service is in regional hospital cartels already and how fast prices are rising?

    It's not even a matter of price in the drug markets now. It's basic availability. Aside from the persistent shortages of cheap, effective generics due to the kickback scheme in PMOs/PBMs, we now have explicit regulatory interference. The FDA has been moving to withdraw entire lines of medication from compounding pharmacies even when there's no rival big pharma product competing against them or any indication of patient risk. These are decades-old treatments. (It's the CDC's job to set treatment guidelines, by the way, not the FDA's).

    It's just a knee-jerk reaction at this point to protect imaginary future profits, I suppose. You can't make up this stuff. The FDA has even imposed a 30% sales volume rule for "safety." It has nothing to do with purity or contamination of compounded products. If Tesla sold exploding cars, how would restricting 30% of their sales volume to California improve consumer safety? It's clearly a market-rigging reg – and it's because the corporate medicine lobby wants it.

    What does this have to do with corporate medicine? Compounding pharmacies in big chain hospitals – which are often pitifully narrow in their professional scope – are all magically exempt (oligopolistic and more expensive too). Isn't that wonderful?

    The current corporatization of medicine rests on the notion that the chief challenge faced by those of us with serious illnesses is that we simply don't read enough fine print or fill out enough paperwork.

    If you think that corporations have done a fine job handling your retirement investments in this era of lax accounting standards, wait until you see what they do with your actual body.

    Brooklin Bridge , January 10, 2016 at 1:00 pm

    Exceptional comment!

    Brooklin Bridge , January 10, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    This article is based on the faulty perception that this is all normal benign efficiency working it's way out of an antiquated system, perhaps with a few -to be expected- hiccups. It isn't.

    What we are experiencing is wholesale greed and corruption on an international scale working it's way into the core of our civilization like mold or cancer, and perverting technology as well as the process of social change and adjustment to that change – for it's exclusive benefit – as it goes. It is unconscionable that we could call this progress or adjustment in anything but the most cruelly ironic sense.

    The shift from reactive to proactive my foot! 60 years ago doctors were getting out proactive messages far better than today via education, television, the media and so on. And they gave a damn!!! Today, insurance companies are devising ever new ways to minimize what they spend on your care, maximize what they charge you for it, and call it, "proactive." Proactive theft, or genocide for fun and profit, would be closer to the mark.

    Brooklin Bridge , January 10, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    Proactive cannibalism also comes to mind

    [Aug 26, 2019] Overshoot The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

    Secular stagnation of the US economy might be parcially driven by high (above $50 per barrel) oil prices. That nessesarity generates high level of unemployment, especially chromic unemployment and "perma-temps".
    Apr 08, 2005 | www.amazon.com

    Amazon.com

    By J. Mann on April 8, 2005

    Masterpiece, offers solution for THE problem of our time/div> I am astonished at the quality of this book, which is about the eighth book in a personal reading program that included Paul Roberts' The End of Oil, Kenneth Deffeyes' Beyond Oil, Jared Diamon's Collapse, Cottrell's Energy and Society, Michael Klare's Blood and Oil, and others, all extremely good and relevant books.

    The task this author undertakes is to help readers find a new perspective from which to constructively and usefully interpret inevitable and major changes the world around us. By taking this approach, the author is providing the very essential tool we need to cope with these changes.

    The issue is our ecological footprint.

    Catton uses the term "Age of Exuberance" to represent the time since 1492 when first a newly discovered hemisphere and then the invention of fossil-fuel-driven machines allowed Old-World humans to escape the constraints imposed by a population roughly at earth's carrying capacity, and instead to grow (and philosophize and emote) expansively.

    He then reminds us that we are soon to be squeezed by the twin jaws of excessive population and exhausted resources, as our current population is utterly dependent on the mining and burning of fossil energy and its use to exploit earth's resources in general.

    In spring 2005, the buzz about "the end of cheap energy" is reaching quite a pitch, and when and if the "peak oil" scenario (or other environmental limit-event) is reached, the impact on our social / political world will be enormous. Already the US is brandishing and using its superior weaponry to sieze control of oil assets; this same kind of desperate struggle may well erupt at all levels of society if we don't find a way to identify the problem, anticipate its consequences, and find solutions.

    Catton offers a perspective based on biology / ecology -- not bad, since we are indeed animals in an ecology and we are indeed subject to the iron laws of nature and physics.

    With this perspective we can avoid ending up screaming nonsense at each other when changes begin to get scary. My urgent recommendation is, read this G.D. book and do it now.

    [Aug 25, 2019] Chronic unemployment should not lead to despair. It is now a new normal. I recommend Stoicism , which is the way Greeks and Romans coped with their own decline

    Notable quotes:
    "... It has to be explained that Stoics believe that nothing external to the individual is secure, and thus the truly important thing is virtue, based on ethics and moral. ..."
    "... Stoicism is the appropriate philosophy for what awaits us. It brings out the best of us and it eases the anguish. The illusion of control is our worst enemy. Matters are completely out of our control and Nature will deal with them as she pleases. ..."
    Jan 09, 2016 | peakoilbarrel.com
    Javier , 01/09/2016 at 5:29 am

    I wholeheartedly agree that even a cursory look at things reveals the overwhelming scope of things and quickly leads to despair.

    It doesn't have to lead to despair. I recommend Stoicism , which is the way Greeks and Romans coped with their own decline.

    In the words of Seneca:

    "Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes." (De Provid. v.8)

    It has to be explained that Stoics believe that nothing external to the individual is secure, and thus the truly important thing is virtue, based on ethics and moral. Virtue can not be taken from an individual whatever the circumstances, and helps him deal with adversity. That is what Seneca means with "nothing of our own that perishes" .

    Stoicism is the appropriate philosophy for what awaits us. It brings out the best of us and it eases the anguish. The illusion of control is our worst enemy. Matters are completely out of our control and Nature will deal with them as she pleases.

    [Aug 23, 2019] Nobody here wants to hire an over 60 IT worker

    Notable quotes:
    "... I am lucky in that I lived very frugally my whole life as I have always feared what was coming, and what in my opinion has now come. I am retired, and have been for over 4 years, but not by choice. ..."
    "... For me, the misery index is High. I am lucky that I am not in danger of homelessness, but I have to be very careful about what I spend as prices keep going up and up and most things I consume. Meaning, food, utilities, taxes, etc. These days food doesn't go up by cents, but rather usually a dollar at a time. Carrots at my local Costco just went from $6.99 to $7.99 for example. ..."
    "... I think that for everyone but the top 10%, the Misery Index is High ..."
    Aug 23, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    BoulderMike , , August 23, 2019 at 4:19 pm

    From just outside Boulder, CO: John Edwards said "there are two Americas". I am thinking he was more than correct, but that it should be 4 Americas: the top ,1%, the rest of the top 10%, the people who were prudent and saved and are older who are suffering but still can afford to live, and the truly poor who can't come up with $400 in an emergency, which would include the homeless. I am lucky in that I lived very frugally my whole life as I have always feared what was coming, and what in my opinion has now come. I am retired, and have been for over 4 years, but not by choice. Nobody here wants to hire an over 60 IT worker.

    I measure the "economy" and the it's health by what I refer to as the "misery index". It isn't measured in numbers but rather in how one feels about their life and the world around them. For me, the misery index is High. I am lucky that I am not in danger of homelessness, but I have to be very careful about what I spend as prices keep going up and up and most things I consume. Meaning, food, utilities, taxes, etc. These days food doesn't go up by cents, but rather usually a dollar at a time. Carrots at my local Costco just went from $6.99 to $7.99 for example.

    I think that for everyone but the top 10%, the Misery Index is High . But, around here, it is I believe one of the more affluent areas of the country. People are buying up $1.5 million dollar houses like crazy, and tearing down $1 million dollar old houses to build new custom houses. Tesla's and Mercedes are everywhere. Google has taken over Boulder and the young Tech workers are numerous. My little town of about 10,000 people is building new homes on every square inch of available land. They are talking about another 500 new homes of close to a million dollars to well over a million dollars. Traffic is outrageous, and bad air pollution days seem to be more and more numerous these days.

    So, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Depends on who you are.

    I think though that we are in the midst of a class war. The racial issues we are experiencing are to distract people and divide people. Divide people on race, divide people on age, divide people on ideology. No matter what, just divide people so while the common "man" is fighting each other, the rich plunder more and more.
    Finally, from my perspective, as a student of history, especially Nazi Germany, and Russia under Stalin, I am more and more frightened each day by the acceptance of the Trump rhetoric. It is messianic and dangerous.

    [Aug 22, 2019] BOLD ENDEAVORS Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration

    Notable quotes:
    "... A lesson of use at job interviews, schools and even in families. I am thankful for an added knowledge and understanding of the many problems associated with these Endeavors. This book should be a "must" to all young people. ..."
    Oct 16, 1999 | Amazon.com
    Britta Sahlgren, October 16, 1999
    An intriguing story of human relationships in the extreme.

    Bold Endeavors by Jack Stuster proved to be a real page-turner! Since childhood reading about adventures and explorers had been my favorite literature. In this book the persons behind these endeavors came to life.

    They were of flesh and blood and you as a reader took part of their everyday life, their hardships and personal problems. A thrilling experience. A lesson in the importance of relationships not only among people in isolation

    A lesson of use at job interviews, schools and even in families. I am thankful for an added knowledge and understanding of the many problems associated with these Endeavors. This book should be a "must" to all young people.

    [Aug 21, 2019] Losing a job in your 50s is especially tough. Here are 3 steps to take when layoffs happen by Peter Dunn

    Unemployment benefits currently are usually is just six month or so; this is the time when you can plan you "downsizing". You do not need to rush but at the same time do not expect that you will get job offers quickly, if at all. Usually it does not happen. many advertised positions are fakes, another substantial percentage is already reserved for H1B candidates and posting them is the necessary legal formality.
    Often losing job logically requires selling your home and moving to a modest apartment, especially if no children are living with you. At 50 it is abut time... You need to do it later anyway, so why not now. But that's a very tough decision to make... Still, if the current housing market is close to the top (as it is in 2019), this is one of the best moves you can make. Getting from your house several hundred thousand dollars allows you to create kind of private pension to compensate for losses in income till you hit your Social Security check, which currently means 66.
    $300K investment in A quality bonds that returns 3% per year is enough to provides you with $24K per year "private pension" from 50 to age of 66 when social security kicks in. That allows you to pay for the apartment and amenities. The food is extra but with this level of income you qualify for food assistance.
    This way you can take lower paid job, of much lower paid job (which mean $15 per hour), of temp job and survive.
    And if this are many form you house sell your 401k remains intact and can supplement your SS income later on. Simple Excel spreadsheet can provide you with a complete picture of what you can afford and what not. Actually the ability to walk of fresh air for 3 or more hours each day worth a lot of money ;-)
    Notable quotes:
    "... Losing a job in your 50s is a devastating moment, especially if the job is connected to a long career ripe with upward mobility. As a frequent observer of this phenomenon, it's as scary and troublesome as unchecked credit card debt or an expensive chronic health condition. This is one of the many reasons why I believe our 50s can be the most challenging decade of our lives. ..."
    "... The first thing you should do is identify the exact day your job income stops arriving ..."
    "... Next, and by next I mean five minutes later, explore your eligibility for unemployment benefits, and then file for them if you're able. ..."
    "... Grab your bank statement, a marker, and a calculator. As much as you want to pretend its business as usual, you shouldn't. Identify expenses that don't make sense if you don't have a job. Circle them. Add them up. Resolve to eliminate them for the time being, and possibly permanently. While this won't necessarily lengthen your fuse, it could lessen the severity of a potential boom. ..."
    Feb 15, 2019 | finance.yahoo.com

    ... ... ...

    Losing a job in your 50s is a devastating moment, especially if the job is connected to a long career ripe with upward mobility. As a frequent observer of this phenomenon, it's as scary and troublesome as unchecked credit card debt or an expensive chronic health condition. This is one of the many reasons why I believe our 50s can be the most challenging decade of our lives.

    Assuming you can clear the mental challenges, the financial and administrative obstacles can leave you feeling like a Rube Goldberg machine.

    Income, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, bills, expenses, short-term savings and retirement savings are all immediately important in the face of a job loss. Never mind your Parent PLUS loans, financially-dependent aging parents, and boomerang children (adult kids who live at home), which might all be lurking as well.

    When does your income stop?

    From the shocking moment a person learns their job is no longer their job, the word "triage" must flash in bright lights like an obnoxiously large sign in Times Square. This is more challenging than you might think. Like a pickpocket bumping into you right before he grabs your wallet, the distraction is the problem that takes your focus away from the real problem.

    This is hard to do because of the emotion that arrives with the dirty deed. The mind immediately begins to race to sources of money and relief. And unfortunately that relief is often found in the wrong place.

    The first thing you should do is identify the exact day your job income stops arriving . That's how much time you have to defuse the bomb. Your fuse may come in the form of a severance package, or work you've performed but haven't been paid for yet.

    When do benefits kick in?

    Next, and by next I mean five minutes later, explore your eligibility for unemployment benefits, and then file for them if you're able. However, in some states severance pay affects your immediate eligibility for unemployment benefits. In other words, you can't file for unemployment until your severance payments go away.

    Assuming you can't just retire at this moment, which you likely can't, you must secure fresh employment income quickly. But quickly is relative to the length of your fuse. I've witnessed way too many people miscalculate the length and importance of their fuse. If you're able to get back to work quickly, the initial job loss plus severance ends up enhancing your financial life. If you take too much time, by your choice or that of the cosmos, boom.

    The next move is much more hands-on, and must also be performed the day you find yourself without a job.

    What nonessentials do I cut?

    Grab your bank statement, a marker, and a calculator. As much as you want to pretend its business as usual, you shouldn't. Identify expenses that don't make sense if you don't have a job. Circle them. Add them up. Resolve to eliminate them for the time being, and possibly permanently. While this won't necessarily lengthen your fuse, it could lessen the severity of a potential boom.

    The idea of diving into your spending habits on the day you lose your job is no fun. But when else will you have such a powerful reason to do so? You won't. It's better than dipping into your assets to fund your current lifestyle. And that's where we'll pick it up the next time.

    We've covered day one. In my next column we will tackle day two and beyond.

    Peter Dunn is an author, speaker and radio host, and he has a free podcast: "Million Dollar Plan." Have a question for Pete the Planner? Email him at [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.

    [Aug 17, 2019] Bankruptcy-related job losses are rising at rates not seen since 2009

    Aug 17, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    im1dc , August 07, 2019 at 05:44 PM

    "Bankruptcy-related job losses are rising at rates not seen since 2009"

    Grim foreshadowing of what may come and quickly...

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bankruptcies-cause-the-highest-number-of-job-losses-since-2009-when-the-us-was-in-the-depths-of-the-great-recession-2019-08-06

    "Bankruptcy-related job losses are rising at rates not seen since 2009, invoking grim reminders of the Great Recession"

    By Quentin Fottrell, Personal Finance Editor...Aug 7, 2019...8:24 p.m. ET

    "The recent spate of bankruptcies in corporate America is taking its toll.

    In the first seven months of the year, U.S.-based companies announced 42,937 job cuts due to bankruptcy, up 40% on the same period last year and nearly 20% higher than all bankruptcy-related job losses last year, a report released Tuesday concluded. Despite record-low unemployment, bankruptcy filings have not claimed this many jobs since the Great Recession.

    "It is the highest seven-month total since 2009 when 50,258 cuts due to bankruptcy were announced," according to the report by outplacement and business coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "In fact, it is higher than the annual totals for bankruptcy cuts every year since 2009."...

    [Aug 08, 2019] Revised Profit Data Are Good News But Don't Reverse Decades of Wage Stagnation

    Notable quotes:
    "... corporations were able to increase their share of income at the expense of labor, even with an unemployment rate below 4 percent. ..."
    Aug 08, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne , August 05, 2019 at 11:03 AM

    http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/revised-profit-data-are-good-news-but-don-t-reverse-decades-of-wage-stagnation

    August 5, 2019

    Revised Profit Data Are Good News But Don't Reverse Decades of Wage Stagnation
    By Dean Baker

    In July, the U.S. Department of Commerce released data showing GDP growth had slowed sharply in the second quarter. Most economic reporting appropriately highlighted the data showing that we were not getting the investment boom that the Republicans had promised would result from their tax cut.

    But there was also an important item in the annual GDP data revisions that many overlooked in the report: The revised profit data for 2018 showed that the profit share of corporate income had fallen by 0.4 percentage points from the prior year. This is a big deal for two reasons: It means that workers are now clearly getting their share of the gains from growth, and it tells us an important story about the structure of the economy.

    On the first point, we know that the wages of the typical worker have not kept pace with productivity growth over the last four decades. While productivity growth has not been great over most of this period (1995-2005 was the exception), wages have lagged behind even the slow productivity growth over most of this period.

    The one exception was the years of low unemployment from 1996 to 2001, when the wages of the typical worker rose in line with productivity growth. With unemployment again falling to relatively low levels in the last four years, many of us expected that wages would again be keeping pace with productivity growth.

    The earlier data on profits suggested that this might not be the case. It showed a small increase in the profit share of corporate income, suggesting that corporations were able to increase their share of income at the expense of labor, even with an unemployment rate below 4 percent.

    The revised data indicate this is not the case. The low unemployment rate is creating an environment in which workers have enough bargaining power to get their share of productivity gains and even gain back some of the income share lost in the Great Recession.

    This brings up the second issue. Most of the upward redistribution over this period was not from ordinary workers to profits, but rather to high-end workers. The big winners in the last four decades have been CEOs, hedge fund and private equity partners, and at a somewhat lower level, highly paid professionals like doctors and dentists.

    The shift to profits takes place only in this century after much of the upward redistribution had already occurred. One obvious explanation was the weak labor market following the Great Recession. With unemployment remaining stubbornly high, wages were not keeping pace with productivity growth or even inflation. An alternative explanation was that growing monopolization of major sectors (think of Google, Facebook and Amazon) was allowing capital to gain at the expense of labor.

    The revised profit data seem to support the first story. In the last four years, the profit share has fallen by 3.2 percentage points. (It had dropped another percentage point in the first quarter of 2019, although the quarterly data are highly erratic.) At this rate, in four more years, the run-up in profit shares in this century will be completely reversed.

    If the weak labor market following the Great Recession is the story of the rise in profit shares, there is still the problem of the run-up in profit share in 2003-2007, the years preceding the Great Recession. One explanation is that the profits recorded in these years were inflated by phony profits recorded by the financial sector.

    Banks like Citigroup and Bank of America were recording large profits in these years on loans that subsequently went bad. This would be equivalent to a business booking large profits on sales to customers that did not exist. Their books would show large profits when the sales were recorded, but then they would show large losses when the business had to acknowledge that the customer didn't exist, and therefore write off a previously booked sale.

    Profits that are based on sales to nonexistent customers don't come at the expense of workers, nor do profits that are booked on loans that go bad. (The subsequent recession was, of course, very much at the expense of workers.) For this reason, we should be somewhat skeptical of the shift from wages to profits in the years of the housing bubble.

    In any case, the revised profits data are good news. They show a tight labor market is working the way it is supposed to. But this doesn't mean everyone is doing great. You don't reverse four decades of wage stagnation with four relatively good years.

    However, things are at least moving in the right direction now, and that is good news. That has not generally been the case over the last 40 years.

    [Jun 19, 2019] America s Suicide Epidemic

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes . What's more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides , even though the murder rate gets so much more attention. ..."
    "... In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%). ..."
    "... Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally , it ranks 27th. ..."
    "... The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country. ..."
    "... Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets. ..."
    "... Evidence from the United States , Brazil , Japan , and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. ..."
    "... One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher . ..."
    "... The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled " deaths of despair " -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter. ..."
    "... Trump has neglected his base on pretty much every issue; this one's no exception. ..."
    Jun 19, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Yves here. This post describes how the forces driving the US suicide surge started well before the Trump era, but explains how Trump has not only refused to acknowledge the problem, but has made matters worse.

    However, it's not as if the Democrats are embracing this issue either.

    BY Rajan Menon, the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention Originally published at TomDispatch .

    We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade die by their own hand. Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That's odd given the magnitude of the problem.

    In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves. In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly seven times greater than the number of American soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.

    A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes . What's more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides , even though the murder rate gets so much more attention.

    In other words, we're talking about a national epidemic of self-inflicted deaths.

    Worrisome Numbers

    Anyone who has lost a close relative or friend to suicide or has worked on a suicide hotline (as I have) knows that statistics transform the individual, the personal, and indeed the mysterious aspects of that violent act -- Why this person? Why now? Why in this manner? -- into depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how serious the suicide epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.

    According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study , between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate. In 30 states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third. Nationally, it increased 33% . In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).

    Alas, the news only gets grimmer.

    Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally , it ranks 27th.

    More importantly, the trend in the United States doesn't align with what's happening elsewhere in the developed world. The World Health Organization, for instance, reports that Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the U.S., as do all but six countries in the European Union. (Japan's is only slightly lower.)

    World Bank statistics show that, worldwide, the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016. It's been falling in China , Japan (where it has declined steadily for nearly a decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most of Europe, and even countries like South Korea and Russia that have a significantly higher suicide rate than the United States. In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26% from a high point of 42 per 100,000 in 1994 to 31 in 2019.

    We know a fair amount about the patterns of suicide in the United States. In 2017, the rate was highest for men between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per 100,000) and those 75 and older (39.7 per 100,000).

    The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country.

    There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last.

    Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets.

    The Economics of Stress

    This surge in the suicide rate has taken place in years during which the working class has experienced greater economic hardship and psychological stress. Increased competition from abroad and outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job loss, particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining that had long been mainstays of employment for such workers. The jobs still available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.

    Technological change, including computerization, robotics, and the coming of artificial intelligence, has similarly begun to displace labor in significant ways, leaving Americans without college degrees, especially those 50 and older, in far more difficult straits when it comes to finding new jobs that pay well. The lack of anything resembling an industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe has made these dislocations even more painful for American workers, while a sharp decline in private-sector union membership -- down from nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today -- has reduced their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.

    Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged over the last four decades (even as CEO salaries have soared). And a decline in worker productivity doesn't explain it: between 1973 and 2017 productivity increased by 77%, while a worker's average hourly wage only rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it harder for working-class Americans to get by, let alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.

    The gap in earnings between those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased -- a lot. Since 1979, the wages of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by a pitiful 1.2%. Those in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of 6%. By contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by 34.3% and those near the peak of the wage pyramid -- the top 1% and especially the rarefied 0.1% -- made far more substantial gains.

    And mind you, we're just talking about wages, not other forms of income like large stock dividends, expensive homes, or eyepopping inheritances. The share of net national wealth held by the richest 0.1% increased from 10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016. By contrast, the share of the bottom 90% shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%. As for the top 1%, by 2016 its share had increased to almost 39% .

    The precise relationship between economic inequality and suicide rates remains unclear, and suicide certainly can't simply be reduced to wealth disparities or financial stress. Still, strikingly, in contrast to the United States, suicide rates are noticeably lower and have been declining in Western European countries where income inequalities are far less pronounced, publicly funded healthcare is regarded as a right (not demonized as a pathway to serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive, and apprenticeships and worker retraining programs more widespread.

    Evidence from the United States , Brazil , Japan , and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies -- should Democrats ever retake the White House and the Senate -- could make a positive difference. A study based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10% appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college degrees.

    The Race Enigma

    One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher . It increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000. Black men are 10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.

    The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled " deaths of despair " -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter.

    According to a study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve , the white working class accounted for 45% of all income earned in the United States in 1990, but only 27% in 2016. In those same years, its share of national wealth plummeted, from 45% to 22%. And as inflation-adjusted wages have decreased for men without college degrees, many white workers seem to have lost hope of success of any sort. Paradoxically, the sense of failure and the accompanying stress may be greater for white workers precisely because they traditionally were much better off economically than their African American and Hispanic counterparts.

    In addition, the fraying of communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has increased social isolation among them, and the evidence that it -- along with opioid addiction and alcohol abuse -- increases the risk of suicide is strong . On top of that, a significantly higher proportion of whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun ownership is more widespread.

    Trump's Faux Populism

    The large increase in suicide within the white working class began a couple of decades before Donald Trump's election. Still, it's reasonable to ask what he's tried to do about it, particularly since votes from these Americans helped propel him to the White House. In 2016, he received 64% of the votes of whites without college degrees; Hillary Clinton, only 28%. Nationwide, he beat Clinton in counties where deaths of despair rose significantly between 2000 and 2015.

    White workers will remain crucial to Trump's chances of winning in 2020. Yet while he has spoken about, and initiated steps aimed at reducing, the high suicide rate among veterans , his speeches and tweets have never highlighted the national suicide epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers. More importantly, to the extent that economic despair contributes to their high suicide rate, his policies will only make matters worse.

    The real benefits from the December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by the president and congressional Republicans flowed to those on the top steps of the economic ladder. By 2027, when the Act's provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans are expected to have captured 81.8% of the gains. And that's not counting the windfall they received from recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and the GOP doubled the annual amount exempt from estate taxes -- wealth bequeathed to heirs -- through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual to $11.2 million (or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this act of generosity? Not workers, that's for sure, but every household with an estate worth $22 million or more will.

    As for job retraining provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president proposed cutting that program by 40% in his 2019 budget, later settling for keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the cards as long as Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget Office projects that his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget deficits in the years to come. (The shortfall last year was $779 billion and it is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020.) Inevitably, the president and congressional Republicans will then demand additional reductions in spending for social programs.

    This is all the more likely because Trump and those Republicans also slashed corporate taxes from 35% to 21% -- an estimated $1.4 trillion in savings for corporations over the next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has no end date . The president assured his base that the big bucks those companies had stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce a wave of job creation -- all without adding to the deficit. As it happens, however, most of that repatriated cash has been used for corporate stock buy-backs, which totaled more than $800 billion last year. That, in turn, boosted share prices, but didn't exactly rain money down on workers. No surprise, of course, since the wealthiest 10% of Americans own at least 84% of all stocks and the bottom 60% have less than 2% of them.

    And the president's corporate tax cut hasn't produced the tsunami of job-generating investments he predicted either. Indeed, in its aftermath, more than 80% of American companies stated that their plans for investment and hiring hadn't changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs has proven unremarkable compared to President Obama's second term, when the economic recovery that Trump largely inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018 (though not 3.1% as the president claimed). There wasn't, however, any "unprecedented economic boom -- a boom that has rarely been seen before" as he insisted in this year's State of the Union Address .

    Anyway, what matters for workers struggling to get by is growth in real wages, and there's nothing to celebrate on that front: between 2017 and mid-2018 they actually declined by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for African Americans, while they rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%. And though Trump insists that his beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers, they will actually raise the prices of goods, hurting the working class and other low-income Americans the most .

    Then there are the obstacles those susceptible to suicide face in receiving insurance-provided mental-health care. If you're a white worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a deductible and co-payments that are high and your income, while low, is too high to qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven't done anything for you. Never mind the president's tweet proclaiming that "the Republican Party Will Become 'The Party of Healthcare!'"

    Let me amend that: actually, they have done something. It's just not what you'd call helpful. The percentage of uninsured adults, which fell from 18% in 2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to Obamacare , had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.

    The bottom line? On a problem that literally has life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of his base, Trump has been AWOL. In fact, to the extent that economic strain contributes to the alarming suicide rate among white workers, his policies are only likely to exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic proportions.


    Seamus Padraig , June 19, 2019 at 6:46 am

    Trump has neglected his base on pretty much every issue; this one's no exception.

    DanB , June 19, 2019 at 8:55 am

    Trump is running on the claim that he's turned the economy around; addressing suicide undermines this (false) claim. To state the obvious, NC readers know that Trump is incapable of caring about anyone or anything beyond his in-the-moment interpretation of his self-interest.

    JCC , June 19, 2019 at 9:25 am

    Not just Trump. Most of the Republican Party and much too many Democrats have also abandoned this base, otherwise known as working class Americans.

    The economic facts are near staggering and this article has done a nice job of summarizing these numbers that are spread out across a lot of different sites.

    I've experienced this rise within my own family and probably because of that fact I'm well aware that Trump is only a symptom of an entire political system that has all but abandoned it's core constituency, the American Working Class.

    sparagmite , June 19, 2019 at 10:13 am

    Yep It's not just Trump. The author mentions this, but still focuses on him for some reason. Maybe accurately attributing the problems to a failed system makes people feel more hopeless. Current nihilists in Congress make it their duty to destroy once helpful institutions in the name of "fiscal responsibility," i.e., tax cuts for corporate elites.

    dcblogger , June 19, 2019 at 12:20 pm

    Maybe because Trump is president and bears the greatest responsibility in this particular time. A great piece and appreciate all the documentation.

    Svante , June 19, 2019 at 7:00 am

    I'd assumed, the "working class" had dissappeared, back during Reagan's Miracle? We'd still see each other, sitting dazed on porches & stoops of rented old places they'd previously; trying to garden, fix their car while smoking, drinking or dazed on something? Those able to morph into "middle class" lives, might've earned substantially less, especially benefits and retirement package wise. But, a couple decades later, it was their turn, as machines and foreigners improved productivity. You could lease a truck to haul imported stuff your kids could sell to each other, or help robots in some warehouse, but those 80s burger flipping, rent-a-cop & repo-man gigs dried up. Your middle class pals unemployable, everybody in PayDay Loan debt (without any pay day in sight?) SHTF Bug-out bags® & EZ Credit Bushmasters began showing up at yard sales, even up North. Opioids became the religion of the proletariat Whites simply had much farther to fall, more equity for our betters to steal. And it was damned near impossible to get the cops to shoot you?

    Man, this just ain't turning out as I'd hoped. Need coffee!

    Svante , June 19, 2019 at 7:55 am

    We especially love the euphemism "Deaths O' Despair." since it works so well on a Chyron, especially supered over obese crackers waddling in crusty MossyOak™ Snuggies®

    https://mobile.twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1140998287933300736
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=apxZvpzq4Mw

    DanB , June 19, 2019 at 9:29 am

    This is a very good article, but I have a comment about the section titled, "The Race Enigma." I think the key to understanding why African Americans have a lower suicide rate lies in understanding the sociological notion of community, and the related concept Emil Durkheim called social solidarity. This sense of solidarity and community among African Americans stands in contrast to the "There is no such thing as society" neoliberal zeitgeist that in fact produces feelings of extreme isolation, failure, and self-recriminations. An aside: as a white boy growing up in 1950s-60s Detroit I learned that if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had to do was to hang out with black people.

    Amfortas the hippie , June 19, 2019 at 2:18 pm

    " if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had to do was to hang out with black people."
    amen, to that. in my case rural black people.
    and I'll add Hispanics to that.
    My wife's extended Familia is so very different from mine.
    Solidarity/Belonging is cool.
    I recommend it.
    on the article we keep the scanner on("local news").we had a 3-4 year rash of suicides and attempted suicides(determined by chisme, or deduction) out here.
    all of them were despair related more than half correlated with meth addiction itself a despair related thing.
    ours were equally male/female, and across both our color spectrum.
    that leaves economics/opportunity/just being able to get by as the likely cause.

    David B Harrison , June 19, 2019 at 10:05 am

    What's left out here is the vast majority of these suicides are men.

    Christy , June 19, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    Actually, in the article it states:
    "There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last."

    jrs , June 19, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    which in some sense makes despair the wrong word, as females are actually quite a bit more likely to be depressed for instance, but much less likely to "do the deed". Despair if we mean a certain social context maybe, but not just a psychological state.

    Ex-Pralite Monk , June 19, 2019 at 10:10 am

    obese cracker

    You lay off the racial slur "cracker" and I'll lay off the racial slur "nigger". Deal?

    rd , June 19, 2019 at 10:53 am

    Suicide deaths are a function of the suicide attempt rate and the efficacy of the method used. A unique aspect of the US is the prevalence of guns in the society and therefore the greatly increased usage of them in suicide attempts compared to other countries. Guns are a very efficient way of committing suicide with a very high "success" rate. As of 2010, half of US suicides were using a gun as opposed to other countries with much lower percentages. So if the US comes even close to other countries in suicide rates then the US will surpass them in deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Firearms

    Now we can add in opiates, especially fentanyl, that can be quite effective as well.

    The economic crisis hitting middle America over the past 30 years has been quite focused on the states and populations that also tend to have high gun ownership rates. So suicide attempts in those populations have a high probability of "success".

    Joe Well , June 19, 2019 at 11:32 am

    I would just take this opportunity to add that the police end up getting called in to prevent on lot of suicide attempts, and just about every successful one.

    In the face of so much blanket demonization of the police, along with justified criticism, it's important to remember that.

    B:H , June 19, 2019 at 11:44 am

    As someone who works in the mental health treatment system, acute inpatient psychiatry to be specific, I can say that of the 25 inpatients currently here, 11 have been here before, multiple times. And this is because of several issues, in my experience: inadequate inpatient resources, staff burnout, inadequate support once they leave the hospital, and the nature of their illnesses. It's a grim picture here and it's been this way for YEARS. Until MAJOR money is spent on this issue it's not going to get better. This includes opening more facilities for people to live in long term, instead of closing them, which has been the trend I've seen.

    B:H , June 19, 2019 at 11:53 am

    One last thing the CEO wants "asses in beds", aka census, which is the money maker. There's less profit if people get better and don't return. And I guess I wouldn't have a job either. Hmmmm: sickness generates wealth.

    [Jun 11, 2019] Open borders and illegal immigration are NeoLiberal tactics to promote wage arbitrage.

    Jun 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    MG , Jun 11, 2019 8:40:24 AM | 129

    @donkeytale

    You stated, "Let's also ignore the fact that the sons and grandsons of the unionised postwar generation for the most part subsequently rejected blue collar work no matter what the pay. This is a sign of decadence I will grant you, and I am guilty as charged. "

    This canard doesn't hold up in the face of empirical evidence. One example: 20,000 waiting in line for lousy warehouse jobs at Amazon. The fact is, open borders and illegal immigration are NeoLiberal tactics to promote wage arbitrage. In California, those impacted the most by illegal immigration are African Americans. Whole sectors, such as hotel maintenance and janitorial service, had been unionized, and had principally employed black workers whose salaries enabled them to move into the middle class. The hotel industry welcomed the influx of illegal immigrants willing to work for drastically lower wages. Black workers were replaced and the union destroyed. Unfortunately, many in the US and globally have been so propagandized about illegal immigration that even mentioning illegal immigration gets one falsely labeled racist. in the US, Democrats use illegal immigration as a "demographic strategy," which enables Democrats to remain in power while remaining wholly loyal to Wall Street and doing nothing to ameliorate the misery of the bottom 90%.

    [Jun 05, 2019] America's Demise In One Simple Chart - The Path To A FIRE Economy

    Notable quotes:
    "... finance...is not value added....it is value SUBTRACTED! ..."
    "... A job at McDonald's then was merely a job you had to make a little money on the side while attending colleges that were FREE to very low cost. Now, McDonald's is one of many low wage jobs in this GIG economy that are utilized as life sustaining. ..."
    "... Production of debt instead of production of things. US is one of the largest producers of debt. Financialization as planned by the bankers. ..."
    Jun 05, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    venturen , 2 hours ago link

    finance...is not value added....it is value SUBTRACTED!

    venturen , 3 hours ago link

    when you can create $10 Trillion out of thin air and then give it to a select few...what did you think would happen. Instead of arresting the criminal bankers....we rescued them!

    They are criminal by nature and are programmed to steal ever more! I know hundreds of NYC bankers and lawyers.....they are NOT NICE PEOPLE!

    Handful of Dust , 2 hours ago link

    +1,000

    Between Bush and Obama bailing them out, and then destroying the middle class with regulations, Obamacare, ZIRP, offshoring, etc.....

    CatInTheHat , 2 hours ago link

    ...Narcissists/sociopaths in America now outnumber empaths

    exlcus , 2 hours ago link

    America's Demise In One Simple Chart

    This is one time that a ZH headline was not click bait. Not only is FIRE bigger than manufacturing, even .GOV is bigger than manufacturing now too. We're fucked, big time.

    CatInTheHat , 2 hours ago link

    Another boomer who lives in a state of alternate reality. Boomers were privy to government jobs and manufacturing in the US aplenty. They also were privy to government subsidies that don't exist today.

    A job at McDonald's then was merely a job you had to make a little money on the side while attending colleges that were FREE to very low cost. Now, McDonald's is one of many low wage jobs in this GIG economy that are utilized as life sustaining.

    Offshoring, the disappearance of government subsidies and social programs (thanks to boomers love for BILL CLINTON), wealth inequality (See the FED/Obama bank bailout/QE), stagnant wages, student loan debt, 22 TRILLION US DEBT, & 9/11 & 17 years of WAR & MORE WAR, has caused this country to become BANKRUPT.

    Living in your parents basement, or with roommates, one paycheck from the streets to living on the streets is how it is for that kid YOU destroyed through your voting for sociopaths who took away the very jobs and entitlements YOU were privy to that no longer exist.

    RasinResin , 1 hour ago link

    I like your sarcasm, but the truth is something different entirely. Median home in 2000 - 164K. Now - 313K. Median income during the same period rose 3k. Clarified.

    Handful of Dust , 1 minute ago link

    If interest rates ever correct, those houses will be $164k again.

    Expat , 3 hours ago link

    LOL. All hail Donald! Our Real Estate Over-Lord and King of Low Interest Rates!

    ... ... ...

    j0nx , 1 hour ago link

    Bs. If they feared that then they wouldn't have ever raised rates effectively killing the refi market and putting downward pressure on prices for the past 2 years.

    yogibear , 1 hour ago link

    Production of debt instead of production of things. US is one of the largest producers of debt. Financialization as planned by the bankers.

    desirdavenir , 1 hour ago link

    Financialization as embraced by the boomers, eager to go for the fast money with no skills and no hard work.

    CatInTheHat , 27 minutes ago link

    Yeah it is. I wouldn't have a kid and raise it in this country today if my life depended on it. May be that's why birth rates in the US are at historic lows.

    besnook , 1 hour ago link

    if the country was run by shoe shine boys there would be shoe shine palaces on every corner and a law requiring everyone to get a shoeshine 3 times/day. the usa is run by banksters. you get the result described.

    wonger , 1 hour ago link

    ADP just missed by 153,000 jobs, bye bye real estate

    HideTheWeenie , 1 hour ago link

    Real Estate:They're mot making more of it ... Because they made too much of it.

    BuyDash , 3 hours ago link

    It happened in the blink of an eye. I told you, soon Caucasian areas will just start dying out. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

    Teja , 1 hour ago link

    Curse of consumerist car-focussed societies everywhere. Same for Japan, China. Don't think that skin pigments will protect against it, though.

    The only counter-trends are societies like the Amish, or maybe orthodox Jews. Their inoculation against most aspects of consumer society has the side effect of exponential population growth.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Amish_population

    TeethVillage88s , 1 hour ago link

    Via Global Macro Monitor,

    We originally posted this chart in February 2011 , which we just updated also breaking out the real estate industry from FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate). It is still just as shocking as it was back when we first produced it.

    Economy Jumps The Shark. The U.S. economy jumped the shark in 1990 when FIRE overtook the manufacturing sector in terms of its contribution to GDP.

    So... Finance Capitalism is real, Mises?

    [May 15, 2019] Tariffs won't bring back manufacturing jobs...

    The key factor here is that the USA is a neoliberal state which means profits before people and outsourcing to area with lower labor cost. Like leopard can't change its spots, neoliberalism can't change it "free movement of goods and labor" principles, or it stop being neoliberalism.
    No jobs will come back to the USA as financial oligarchy is transnational body that uses the USA military as an enforcer for their gang. It does not care one bit about the common people in the USA.
    May 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Originally from: Pepe Escobar Warns Over US-China Tensions The Hardcore Is Yet To Come

    ... ... ...

    Where are our jobs?

    Pause on the sound and fury for necessary precision. Even if the Trump administration slaps 25% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the US, the IMF has projected that would trim just a meager slither – 0.55% – off China's GDP. And America is unlikely to profit, because the extra tariffs won't bring back manufacturing jobs to the US – something that Steve Jobs told Barack Obama eons ago.

    What happens is that global supply chains will be redirected to economies that offer comparative advantages in relation to China, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos. And this redirection is already happening anyway – including by Chinese companies.

    BRI represents a massive geopolitical and financial investment by China, as well as its partners; over 130 states and territories have signed on. Beijing is using its immense pool of capital to make its own transition towards a consumer-based economy while advancing the necessary pan-Eurasian infrastructure development – with all those ports, high-speed rail, fiber optics, electrical grids expanding to most Global South latitudes.

    The end result, up to 2049 – BRI's time span – will be the advent of an integrated market of no less than 4.5 billion people, by that time with access to a Chinese supply chain of high-tech exports as well as more prosaic consumer goods.

    Anyone who has followed the nuts and bolts of the Chinese miracle launched by Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in 1978 knows that Beijing is essentially exporting the mechanism that led China's own 800 million citizens to, in a flash, become members of a global middle class.

    As much as the Trump administration may bet on "maximum pressure" to restrict or even block Chinese access to whole sectors of the US market, what really matters is BRI's advance will be able to generate multiple, extra US markets over the next two decades.

    We don't do 'win-win'

    There are no illusions in the Zhongnanhai, as there are no illusions in Tehran or in the Kremlin. These three top actors of Eurasian integration have exhaustively studied how Washington, in the 1990s, devastated Russia's post-USSR economy (until Putin engineered a recovery) and how Washington has been trying to utterly destroy Iran for four decades.

    Beijing, as well as Moscow and Tehran, know everything there is to know about Hybrid War, which is an American intel concept. They know the ultimate strategic target of Hybrid War, whatever the tactics, is social chaos and regime change.

    The case of Brazil – a BRICS member like China and Russia – was even more sophisticated: a Hybrid War initially crafted by NSA spying evolved into lawfare and regime change via the ballot box. But it ended with mission accomplished – Brazil has been reduced to the lowly status of an American neo-colony.

    Let's remember an ancient mariner, the legendary Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng He, who for three decades, from 1405 to 1433, led seven expeditions across the seas all the way to Arabia and Eastern Africa, reaching Champa, Borneo, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz, Aden, Jeddah, Mogadiscio, Mombasa, bringing tons of goods to trade (silk, porcelain, silver, cotton, iron tools, leather utensils).

    That was the original Maritime Silk Road, progressing in parallel to Emperor Yong Le establishing a Pax Sinica in Asia – with no need for colonies and religious proselytism. But then the Ming dynasty retreated – and China was back to its agricultural vocation of looking at itself.

    They won't make the same mistake again. Even knowing that the current hegemon does not do "win-win". Get ready for the real hardcore yet to come.


    Tachyon5321 , 35 minutes ago link

    The Swine fever is sweeping china hog farms and since the start of 2019 200+ millions hogs have been culled. Chinese hog production is down from 2016 high of 700 million to below 420 million by the end of the year. The fever is not under control.

    Soybeans from Ukraine are unloaded at the port in Nantong, in eastern China. Imports of soy used to come from the US, but have slumped since the trade war began. Should point out that the Ukraine soy production matures at a different time of the year than the US soybean. The USA planting season starts in Late april, may and june. Because of the harvest time differences worldwide the USA supplies 80% of the late maturing soybeans needed by October/Nov and December.

    A propaganda story by the Asian Times

    BT , 46 minutes ago link

    Orange Jesus just wants to be re-elected in 2020 and MIGA.

    Son of Captain Nemo , 52 minutes ago link

    Perhaps this is one of the "casualties" ( https://www.rt.com/news/459355-us-austria-embassy-mcdonalds/ ) of economic war given the significance of China and just how important it is to the U.S. in it's purchases of $USD to maintain the illusion of it's reserve currency status and "vigor"...

    Surprised this didn't happen first at the U.S. Embassies in Russia and China?... Obviously Ronald McDonald has turned into a charity of sorts helping out Uncle $am in his ailing "health" these dayz!...

    SUPER SIZE ME!... Cause I'm not lovin it anymore!... I'm needin it!!!!

    joego1 , 52 minutes ago link

    If Americans want to wear shoes they can make them or have a robot make them. Manufacturing can happen in the U.S. **** what Steve Jobs told Oblamy .

    ElBarto , 1 hour ago link

    I've never understood this "jobs aren't coming back" argument. Do you really think that it will stop tariffs? They're happening. Better start preparing.

    ZakuKommander , 1 hour ago link

    Oh, right, tariffs WILL bring back American jobs! Then why didn't the Administration impose them fully in 2017? Why negotiate at all; just impose all the tariffs!?! lol

    Haboob , 1 hour ago link

    Pepe is correct as usual. Even if America tariffs the world the jobs aren't coming back as corporations will be unable to turn profits in such a highly taxed country like America would be. What could happen however is America can form an internal free market again going isolationist with new home grown manufacturing.

    Gonzogal , 41 minutes ago link

    You VERY obviously have ZERO knowledge of Chinas history and its discoveries/inventions etc USED BY THE WEST.

    I suggest that you keep your eyes open for "History Erased-China" on Y Tube. The series shows what would happen in todays world if countries and their contributions to the world did not happen.

    here is a preview: https://youtu.be/b6PJxuheWfk

    [May 11, 2019] America s Industrial Gold Rush is Over

    Notable quotes:
    "... I see a lot of people saying, "They should just move to where the jobs are." 1) They would need accurate and defined information about where the jobs are that are looking for their skills 2) They would need some money to get there 3) They would need a place to stay and the rents and mortages are sky high 'where the jobs are' 4) They would have to be welcome. Two previous mass migrations within the USA come to mind: Black Americans out of the South and the dust bowl migrations to California. They were not welcomed with "open arms". ..."
    "... I think the author understates the importance of Corporations being Good Citizens and Good Persons. ..."
    "... My father was selected to go to Akron for training and if he passed the tests and did well in the training he might get a chance at Managing a Firestone Store. He was gone for weeks at a time for this process and was even required to go to Akron for more training after becoming a store manager. My father was an intelligent person but did not have a college degree. But I can see now that Firestone did an outstanding job training their store managers in all aspects of the job. Just think about that for a while. ..."
    "... Corporations today hate themselves because its only about the money. I guess the point I am trying to make is this loss of Corporate Responsibility to the Nation and its Citizens was something that did exist but is now long gone. ..."
    "... All across the West you can find old ghost towns. Towns that flourished until the gold or silver ran out of the local hill. The towns then were deserted. The similar thing can happen when a major employer runs out of "gold'. What the article ignores is all of the other reasons towns die. ..."
    "... I would much rather rural stay rural and not become urban. There is more to the quality of life than a constant red hot economy. ..."
    "... "The schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, liberals get elected and raise taxes, etc." One only needs to look at Kansas to see that this sentence is flawed. It needs to be changed and re-ordered to properly represent cause and effect. "Conservatives cut taxes, the schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, etc." ..."
    "... The days of being qualified for good, well paying work without having more than a mediocre high school are in the past. This doesn't necessarily mean college because the trades require more education than ever before. Cutting school funding to pay for tax cuts is a loser's game. Trickle down economics has failed. ..."
    May 11, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    I recently read and reviewed Tim Carney's excellent book Alienated America , a sort of combination of the "how we got Trump" genre with the sociological works of researchers like Robert Putnam and Charles Murray. Carney's exploration of the Trump phenomenon, and his grappling with the timeless question of economic security versus personal responsibility in regard to the formation of virtue, family, and community, are among the best you'll find. There is a deeper subtext in his book, however, that is not excavated. But first, a quick recap.

    As in most treatments of inequality, geographic immobility, deindustrialization, and related issues, Alienated America features the requisite visits to faded old towns with ghostly main streets, and paeans to the blue-collar jobs that once allowed men with high school educations to comfortably own homes, raise families, and retire with pensions.

    Through a long analysis, including a fascinating visit to a fracking camp in North Dakota -- awash in money but utterly lacking in neighborliness and community -- Carney concludes that wealth alone does not produce human flourishing. It is rather community and what social researchers call "civil society" that makes the American Dream possible. Obviously, money helps, but it is not sufficient, nor, in Carney's telling, even necessary.

    ... ... ...

    Indeed, large numbers of human settlements never do, and never have . A one-dimensional, economically undiversified city is essentially a housing tract for a factory or a wharf or whatever industry drives its economy. What is left when that economic engine breaks down? A company town without a company. This is the fate that has befallen many of America's declining places, and it is hard to argue that this economic reality doesn't play a direct role in the decline of the family and of civil society. Is this a "materialist" explanation? Perhaps. But it may also be true.

    There are those who admirably hope and work for revival, for restoration in places like Gary, Detroit, or any number of gutted small towns. But many of the buildings in these ghostly, empty blocks, even with their mighty and almost pleasantly timeworn facades, are far beyond the point where renovation is economical. For now, poverty is a sort of preservative. More money, for many hollowed-out cities, would simply mean more demolition.

    To urbanist and declinist James Howard Kunstler, it may simply be the case that the national gold rush of petroleum-fueled industrial growth is over . If this is the case, the crisis of declining America is a structural, inexorable economic reality on the order of the Industrial Revolution itself.

    ... ... ...

    The unwinding of rural and post-industrial America is a human tragedy, not to be written off, much less tacitly celebrated. Yet the facts of the post-industrial landscape may not care about remaining working-class feelings. This does not mean that any of these places " deserve to die ." But it may well mean that their collapse is beyond the ability of policy -- or church -- to alter.

    Addison Del Mastro is assistant editor of The American Conservative . He tweets at @ad_mastro .

    Tim , says: May 9, 2019 at 6:56 pm

    Interesting and probably spot on. It doesn't take a degree in economics or history to understand how prosperity came and went; a passing knowledge of the 20th century will suffice. Dating back to the '20s we experienced a classic example of the boom/bust cycle, with the bust of the 30s lasting basically the entire decade. The good times rwith the onset of WWII and continued afterward because we, of all the major combatant nations, actually experienced minimal economic, social, and cultural disruption. The devastation elsewhere was sufficient to provide us a head-start worth a couple decades of strong growth. It wound down around the beginning of the 70s, coincident with the end of the Vietnam War. We retained some strong advantages, though, and they were sufficient to provide more growth – on paper at least – even as today's yawning income-distribution gap began to open up. The the Cold War ended and the days of free-trade saving the world (aka 'Globalism') commenced. It seemed great for awhile but now we're left holding an empty bag and the rest of the world has sidelined our old industrial workforce through off-shoring for the sake of cheaper labor. Nope, there's no turning back.
    LarsX , says: May 9, 2019 at 9:30 pm
    "Yet the facts of the post-industrial landscape may not care about remaining working-class feelings."

    Well, somebody sure as hell better care about working-class feelings or Trump will only be act one.

    JonF , says: May 10, 2019 at 6:20 am
    Re: The revival of the American Dream requires the re-churching of America.

    Maybe, but it also requires jobs paying a living wage that offer a reasonable degree of long-term security (It's the latter is lacking in short-lived fracking boom towns)

    LouB , says: May 10, 2019 at 10:37 am
    Having lived in the inner Chicago burbs since the mid 1970's I have watched Chicago turn from being an industrial powerhouse to a have and have not economy. If you're working in professional/service sector or part of the management of multinational globalist activity you're doing reasonably well. What's swept under the rug is that Chicago and their ilk hide the vast swaths of decayed blight and human warehousing with pretty downtown / privileged few neighborhoods. Most of our once great second city serves little purpose other than to provide housing for the poverty class. So called "Revitalization" only provides window dressing for the parade of the chosen few.

    Prior to living in Chicago, my folks lived in a small city in western IL that was a poster child for the small town decay referred to above that Mr. Williamson thinks should die.

    The town was famous for their productivity. Civic pride was evident in most all aspects of community life there. A major steel mill anchored the economy as well as numerous smaller hardware manufacturers. The steel mill went belly up, the hardware manufacturers became distributors of Asian made goods.

    The gravy train just dried up. Times aren't so good now for the town that holds so many fond memories for me. Progress. I guess.

    Kent , says: May 10, 2019 at 11:08 am
    @hooly:

    "Americans are the descendants of people who crossed oceans and continents for a better life, why are Americans who live in this dying towns so different? I just don't get it."

    Because there is no longer a place with a better life. People left families and homes because life could be dramatically better someplace else.

    An unemployed steel-worker used to making $60,000/year in a $100,000 house isn't going to find life somehow better making $8/hour as a barista in San Francisco with a $2000/month rent.

    LT , says: May 10, 2019 at 11:31 am
    I see a lot of people saying, "They should just move to where the jobs are."
    1) They would need accurate and defined information about where the jobs are that are looking for their skills
    2) They would need some money to get there
    3) They would need a place to stay and the rents and mortages are sky high 'where the jobs are'
    4) They would have to be welcome. Two previous mass migrations within the USA come to mind: Black Americans out of the South and the dust bowl migrations to California. They were not welcomed with "open arms".
    Tick Tock , says: May 10, 2019 at 12:09 pm
    First let me say that I agree with the author almost 90+%. But I think the author understates the importance of Corporations being Good Citizens and Good Persons. That is clearly what has happened to America. As the son of a former Firestone Store Manager, I can attest that Firestone trained all of their store managers in Akron, OH.

    My father was selected to go to Akron for training and if he passed the tests and did well in the training he might get a chance at Managing a Firestone Store. He was gone for weeks at a time for this process and was even required to go to Akron for more training after becoming a store manager. My father was an intelligent person but did not have a college degree. But I can see now that Firestone did an outstanding job training their store managers in all aspects of the job. Just think about that for a while.

    The Company cared what the Company looked like everywhere, not just in Akron, OH. There was almost no turnover in my father's store of employees. He was finally burnt out from dealing with the public in retail sales but they promoted him to District Manager a job that he kept till he passed away. No employer today gives a crap about any employee or any client. Of course you can't learn to love someone else till you learn to love yourself. Corporations today hate themselves because its only about the money. I guess the point I am trying to make is this loss of Corporate Responsibility to the Nation and its Citizens was something that did exist but is now long gone.

    While some will surely say I am crazy, I strongly believe that a very high progressive tax rate on individuals and corporations would help to change this attitude and at least get money into circulation. We also have to remove the corrupt and criminal group that has taken over the US Corporations and with that the Governments both National and Local or the US is doomed.

    Steve M , says: May 10, 2019 at 12:53 pm
    All across the West you can find old ghost towns. Towns that flourished until the gold or silver ran out of the local hill. The towns then were deserted. The similar thing can happen when a major employer runs out of "gold'. What the article ignores is all of the other reasons towns die.

    The schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, liberals get elected and raise taxes, etc. A town can survive with a big company leaving, but if all of the social factors cause the best, brightest and hardest working people to pull up roots and leave, maybe the town didn't die, it committed suicide.

    Johann , says: May 10, 2019 at 2:36 pm
    Spot on Daniel P. Donnelly!

    I would much rather rural stay rural and not become urban. There is more to the quality of life than a constant red hot economy. And really, today, many rural areas are more rural than they were a generation ago. Yes, farms are bigger and so there are fewer people on more land and so many small rural towns have dried up. Personally, I love it. More room to hunt and fish, less hectic, more fresh air, and more freedom.

    LFC , says: May 10, 2019 at 2:37 pm
    "The schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, liberals get elected and raise taxes, etc." One only needs to look at Kansas to see that this sentence is flawed. It needs to be changed and re-ordered to properly represent cause and effect. "Conservatives cut taxes, the schools go to hell, the crime goes way up, etc."

    The days of being qualified for good, well paying work without having more than a mediocre high school are in the past. This doesn't necessarily mean college because the trades require more education than ever before. Cutting school funding to pay for tax cuts is a loser's game. Trickle down economics has failed.

    [May 04, 2019] Someone is getting a raise. It just isn't you

    stackoverflow.com

    As is usual, the headline economic number is always the rosiest number .

    Wages for production and nonsupervisory workers accelerated to a 3.4 percent annual pace, signaling gains for lower-paid employees.

    That sounds pretty good. Except for the part where it is a lie.
    For starters, it doesn't account for inflation .

    Labor Department numbers released Wednesday show that real average hourly earnings, which compare the nominal rise in wages with the cost of living, rose 1.7 percent in January on a year-over-year basis.

    1.7% is a lot less than 3.4%.
    While the financial news was bullish, the actual professionals took the news differently.

    Wage inflation was also muted with average hourly earnings rising six cents, or 0.2% in April after rising by the same margin in March.
    Average hourly earnings "were disappointing," said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets in New York.

    Secondly, 1.7% is an average, not a median. For instance, none of this applied to you if you are an older worker .

    Weekly earnings for workers aged 55 to 64 were only 0.8% higher in the first quarter of 2019 than they were in the first quarter of 2007, after accounting for inflation, they found. For comparison, earnings rose 4.7% during that same period for workers between the ages of 35 and 54.

    On the other hand, if you worked for a bank your wages went up at a rate far above average. This goes double if you are in management.

    Among the biggest standouts: commercial banks, which employ an estimated 1.3 million people in the U.S. Since Trump took office in January 2017, they have increased their average hourly wage at an annualized pace of almost 11 percent, compared with just 3.3 percent under Obama.

    Finally, there is the reason for this incredibly small wage increase fo regular workers. Hint: it wasn't because of capitalism and all the bullsh*t jobs it creates. The tiny wage increase that the working class has seen is because of what the capitalists said was a terrible idea .

    For Americans living in the 21 states where the federal minimum wage is binding, inflation means that the minimum wage has lost 16 percent of its purchasing power.

    But elsewhere, many workers and employers are experiencing a minimum wage well above 2009 levels. That's because state capitols and, to an unprecedented degree, city halls have become far more active in setting their own minimum wages.
    ...
    Averaging across all of these federal, state and local minimum wage laws, the effective minimum wage in the United States -- the average minimum wage binding each hour of minimum wage work -- will be $11.80 an hour in 2019. Adjusted for inflation, this is probably the highest minimum wage in American history.
    The effective minimum wage has not only outpaced inflation in recent years, but it has also grown faster than typical wages. We can see this from the Kaitz index, which compares the minimum wage with median overall wages.

    So if you are waiting for capitalism to trickle down on you, it's never going to happen. span y gjohnsit on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:21pm

    Carolinas

    Teachers need free speech protection

    Thousands of South Carolina teachers rallied outside their state capitol Wednesday, demanding pay raises, more planning time, increased school funding -- and, in a twist, more legal protections for their freedom of speech
    SC for Ed, the grassroots activist group that organized Wednesday's demonstration, told CNN that many teachers fear protesting or speaking up about education issues, worrying they'll face retaliation at work. Saani Perry, a teacher in Fort Mill, S.C., told CNN that people in his profession are "expected to sit in the classroom and stay quiet and not speak [their] mind."

    To address these concerns, SC for Ed is lobbying for the Teachers' Freedom of Speech Act, which was introduced earlier this year in the state House of Representatives. The bill would specify that "a public school district may not willfully transfer, terminate or fail to renew the contract of a teacher because the teacher has publicly or privately supported a public policy decision of any kind." If that happens, teachers would be able to sue for three times their salary.

    Teachers across the country are raising similar concerns about retaliation. Such fears aren't unfounded: Lawmakers in some states that saw strikes last year have introduced bills this year that would punish educators for skipping school to protest.

    [May 02, 2019] If The U.S. Economy Is So Great, Why Are So Many Workers Miserable

    May 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    If The U.S. Economy Is So Great, Why Are So Many Workers Miserable?

    by Tyler Durden Thu, 05/02/2019 - 17:45 2 SHARES Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Millennial and generation Z workers are becoming increasingly miserable with their jobs and careers. Since we are told several times a day by the media that the economy is booming, why are so many young workers so disastrously melancholy all the time?

    The mental well being of the American worker hit an all-time low in 2018, according to a report by Barron's . That's a bit shocking considering the economy is booming and wages are rising, right? Well, wages aren't rising that much, and much of the consumer spending is being put on credit cards , creating a vicious cycle of depression and consumerism that will repeat for a lot of folks.

    Americans Are Financially And Mentally Unstable: Crippling Debt Is Linked To Chronic Depression

    "When you're struggling with your mental health it can be much harder to stay in work or manage your spending, while being in debt can cause huge stress and anxiety – so the two issues feed off each other, creating a vicious cycle which can destroy lives," said Helen Undy the institute's chief executive. "Yet despite how connected these problems are, financial services rarely think about our mental health, and mental health services rarely consider what is happening with our money."

    So why are we constantly being told everything is fine? The mainstream media loves to say that the U.S. is nearly ten years into one of the longest economic expansions in history, unemployment is the lowest it's been in almost half a century, and employees have more job choices than they've had in years. But there's just one problem. That's not actual truthful when taking all of the data into consideration. Sure, unemployment is low the way the government calculates it, but there's a reason for that. 102 million Americans are no longer "in the workforce" and therefore, unaccounted for.

    Michael Snyder, who owns the Economic Collapse Blog s ays: "Sadly, the truth is that the rosy employment statistics that you are getting from the mainstream media are manufactured using smoke and mirrors."

    When a working-age American does not have a job, the federal number crunchers put them into one of two different categories. Either they are categorized as "unemployed" or they are categorized as "not in the labor force".

    But you have to add both of those categories together to get the total number of Americans that are not working.

    Over the last decade, the number of Americans that are in the "unemployed" category has been steadily going down, but the number of Americans "not in the labor force" has been rapidly going up.

    In both cases we are talking about Americans that do not have a job. It is just a matter of how the federal government chooses to categorize those individuals. – Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog

    That could partially explain the misery some are feeling, but those who have jobs aren't happy either. They are often reeling from student loan and credit card debt. Being depressed makes shopping feel like a solution, but when the bill comes, the depression once again sets in making this a difficult cycle to break for so many just trying to scrape by.

    Depression and suicide rates are rising sharply and other than putting the blame on superficial issues, researchers are at a loss as to the real reason why. But could it possibly be that as the elite globalists continue to take over the world and enslave mankind, people are realizing that they aren't meant to be controlled or manipulated, but meant to be free?

    There's something we are all missing all around the globe. Could it possibly be free will and a life of freedom from theft and violent coercion and force that's missing?


    Sick , 31 minutes ago link

    Freedom to assemble is gone. That would be the only way for the awake people to make a change. Unfortunately everyone is glued to their electronics

    CashMcCall , 57 minutes ago link

    When even your own article lies to everyone... so the modern person that does well are those who lie the best and are the best con artists. Trump is an example. Low talent High con.

    Example the US unemployment number.

    Only the pool of unemployed that is Presently eligible for unemployment benefits is counted in the Unemployment number. That means self employed, commissioned workers, contractors etc are not included in the pool of unemployment even if they are out of work because they are unemployment ineligible.

    Thus, over time, as unemployment benefits are lost, the unemployment pool shrinks. This is called a mathematical regression. How far does it shrink? To the point of equilibrium which is roughly 4% in which new persons enter the work force to the same extent of those losing benefits and being removed and become invisible.

    Thus, Unemployment is a bogus number grossly understating truthful Unemployment. This method was first used under Obama and persists today under the Orange poser.

    Nepotism and Affirmative action

    Why would this make people unhappy? Chronic underemployment. Advancement is mostly by nepotism or affirmative action the flip side of the same coin. The incoming Harvard Class this year was 30% legacy student... and 30% affirmative action and the rest be damned. Happy?

    Feminism has gripped the workplace.

    Men hate working for female bosses. They don't trust them, they don't trust their judgment which often looks political and never logical. Men feel those women were promoted because of gender.

    I saw this years ago in a clean room at National Semiconductor. A woman was put in charge of a team of roughly 30 white nerd males. She was at them constantly for not locking doors behind them and other menial infractions. She could not comprehend the complexity of the work or how inspiration operates but she would nag them and bully them.

    At another facility there was a genius that would come to work and set up a sleeping bag and go to sleep under his desk. He was a Unix programmer and system engineer. So when something went wrong they would wake him and he would get up, solve the problem and go back to sleep.

    Then the overstuffed string of pearls showed up as the new unit boss. She was infuriated that somebody would dare sleep on the clock and so blatantly. So she would harass him and wake him. Then one day she got so mad she started kicking him while he was sleeping. He grabbed his sleeping bag and briefcase and stormed out.

    Ultimately the woman's boss took her to task and explained to her that it didn't matter if that employee slept under his desk because when he worked to solve problems only he could solve he saved the company millions. She was fired. As a token stipulation the sleeping genius came back and a sign was posted on his desk. "Kicking this employee is grounds for immediate dismissal."

    Usually the nerd walks and just gets replaced by some diversity politician and string of pearls then sets the tone by making the workplace ****. Women simply are not as intelligent as men and pretending they are just wrecks morale of the people who are really intelligent. The rise of the shoulder padded woman string of pearls bully is a scourge to one and all.

    bizznatch14 , 2 hours ago link

    Simple answer: because people are spineless and terrible negotiators.

    Long answer: for years the adage has been "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" or "find a good job and never leave" or "work your way to the top" or "be a hard worker, trust your leadership, keep your head down, and don't make waves."

    ********.

    If you do what you love, you'll learn to hate it. Welcome to misery.

    Upward mobility doesn't happen unless you leave. If you're a good little productive worker drone, management has no incentive to give you more than 1-3% raises every year to keep you 'loyal.' Once you've wasted 20 or so years being a robot, welcome to misery.

    Nobody gets promoted unless you're a useless ***-kisser who fails to be productive and hasn't done anything egregious enough to get canned. Once you've been passed by for that promotion you want enough times, welcome to misery.

    The people making the decisions at the top are the useless ***-kissers that can't do what you do but they talk a good game. Most of them are case studies in the Peter Principle. Once you realize that the 'top' consists of nothing but fuckwads, welcome to misery.

    The only way to get ahead and get what you want out of a career is to develop the skills you need and market yourself top someone who'll pay you what you're worth.

    Develop strong negotiation skills early, know your market value, and don't be afraid of change.

    Employer loyalty is a farce; if you think your employer is loyal to you, I've got some oceanfront property in New Mexico to sell you.

    Interested_Observer , 2 hours ago link

    All the good jobs are being taken over by "imported labor" who are getting paid 1/2 of what Americans are getting paid.

    There is no longer upward mobility unless you are part of an Indian Mafia.

    Enjoy working for these freaks who treat everyone like crap?

    [Apr 28, 2019] Prisoners of Overwork A Dilemma by Peter Dorman

    Highly recommended!
    This is true about IT jobs. Probably even more then for lawyers. IT became plantation economy under neoliberalism.
    Notable quotes:
    "... mandatory overwork in professional jobs. ..."
    "... The logical solution is some form of binding regulation. ..."
    "... One place to start would be something like France's right-to-disconnect law . ..."
    "... "the situation it describes is a classic prisoners dilemma." ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    The New York Times has an illuminating article today summarizing recent research on the gender effects of mandatory overwork in professional jobs. Lawyers, people in finance and other client-centered occupations are increasingly required to be available round-the-clock, with 50-60 or more hours of work per week the norm. Among other costs, the impact on wage inequality between men and women is severe. Since women are largely saddled with primary responsibility for child care, even when couples ostensibly embrace equality on a theoretical level, the workaholic jobs are allocated to men. This shows up in dramatic differences between typical male and female career paths. The article doesn't discuss comparable issues in working class employment, but availability for last-minute changes in work schedules and similar demands are likely to impact men and women differentially as well.

    What the article doesn't point out is that the situation it describes is a classic prisoners dilemma.* Consider law firms. They compete for clients, and clients prefer attorneys who are available on call, always prepared and willing to adjust to whatever schedule the client throws at them. Assume that most lawyers want sane, predictable work hours if they are offered without a severe penalty in pay. If law firms care about the well-being of their employees but also about profits, we have all the ingredients to construct a standard PD payoff matrix:

    There is a penalty to unilateral cooperation, cutting work hours back to a work-life balance level. If your firm does it and the others don't, you lose clients to them.

    There is a benefit to unilateral defection. If everyone else is cutting hours but you don't, you scoop up the lion's share of the clients.

    Mutual cooperation is preferred to mutual defection. Law firms, we are assuming, would prefer a world in which overwork was removed from the contest for competitive advantage. They would compete for clients as before, but none would require their staff to put in soul-crushing hours. The alternative equilibrium, in which competition is still on the basis of the quality of work but everyone is on call 24/7 is inferior.

    If the game is played once, mutual defection dominates. If it is played repeatedly there is a possibility for mutual cooperation to establish itself, but only under favorable conditions (which apparently don't exist in the world of NY law firms). The logical solution is some form of binding regulation.

    The reason for bringing this up is that it strengthens the case for collective action rather than placing all the responsibility on individuals caught in the system, including for that matter individual law firms. Or, the responsibility is political, to demand constraints on the entire industry. One place to start would be something like France's right-to-disconnect law .

    *I haven't read the studies by economists and sociologists cited in the article, but I suspect many of them make the same point I'm making here.

    Sandwichman said...
    "the situation it describes is a classic prisoners dilemma."

    Now why didn't I think of that?

    https://econospeak.blogspot.com/2016/04/zero-sum-foolery-4-of-4-wage-prisoners.html April 26, 2019 at 6:22 PM

    [Apr 13, 2019] For those IT guys who want to change the specalty

    Highly recommended!
    The neoliberal war on labor in the USA is real. And it is especially real for It folk over 50. No country for the old men, so to speak...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Obviously you need a financial cushion to not be earning for months and to pay for the training courses. ..."
    "... Yeah, people get set in their ways and resistant to make changes. Steve Jobs talked about people developing grooves in their brain and how important it is to force yourself out of these grooves.* ..."
    "... Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. ..."
    "... The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a person in a wheelchair. ..."
    "... IBEW (licensed electricians) has no upper age limit for apprentices They have lots of American engineers who applied in their 30s after realizing most companies want diverse HI-B engineers. ..."
    "... At 40+, I still can learn advanced mathematics as well as I ever did. In fact, I can still compete with the Chinese 20 year olds. The problem is not mental horsepower, it's time and energy. I rarely have time to concentrate these days (wife, kids, pets), which makes it hard to get the solid hours of prime mental time required to really push yourself at a hard pace and learn advanced material. ..."
    "... That's a huge key and I discovered it when I was asked to tutor people who were failing chemistry. I quickly discovered that all it took for most of them to "get it" was to keep approaching the problem from different angles until a light came on for them and for me the challenge of finding the right approach was a great motivator. Invariably it was some minor issue and once they overcame that, it became easy for them. I'm still astonished at that to this day. ..."
    "... Sorry man, English teaching is huge, and will remain so for some time to come. I'm heavily involved in the area and know plenty of ESL teachers. Spain for me, and the level of English here is still so dreadful and they all need it, the demand is staggering and their schools suck at teaching it themselves. ..."
    "... You have to really dislike your circumstances in the US to leave and be willing to find some way to get by overseas. ..."
    "... We already saw this in South Africa. Mandela took over, the country went down the tubes, the wealthy whites left and the Boers were left to die in refugee camps. They WANT to leave and a few went to Russia, but most developed countries don't want them. Not with the limited amount of money they have. ..."
    "... Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country except for blacks and rednecks I have met in the Philippines who were stationed there in the military and have a $1000 a month check. Many of them live in more dangerous and dirty internal third worlds in America than what they can have in Southeast Asia and a good many would be homeless. They are worldly enough to leave. ..."
    Apr 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Anonymous [388] Disclaimer , says: March 12, 2019 at 1:26 pm GMT

    @YetAnotherAnon

    " He's 28 years old getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled trades as well. What then?"

    I know a UK guy (ex City type) who retrained as an electrician in his early 50s. Competent guy. Obviously no one would take him on as an apprentice, so he wired up all his outbuildings as his project to get his certificate. But he's getting work now, word gets around if you're any good.

    Obviously you need a financial cushion to not be earning for months and to pay for the training courses.

    Yeah, people get set in their ways and resistant to make changes. Steve Jobs talked about people developing grooves in their brain and how important it is to force yourself out of these grooves.*

    I know a Haitian immigrant without a college degree who was working three jobs and then dropped down to two jobs and went to school part time in his late 40's and earned his degree in engineering and is a now an engineer in his early 50's.

    *From Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pp.330-331:

    "It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing," Jobs said wistfully to the writer David Sheff, who published a long and intimate interview in Playboy the month he turned thirty. "Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they're rare." The interview touched on many subjects, but Jobs's most poignant ruminations were about growing old and facing the future:

    Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.

    I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back. . . .

    If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away.

    The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye. I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.

    anonymous [191] Disclaimer , says: March 12, 2019 at 9:59 pm GMT
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    "fluid intelligence" starts crystallizing after your 20's". Nonsense, I had a great deal of trouble learning anything from my teen years and 20's because I didn't know how to learn. I went for 30 years and eventually figured out a learning style that worked for me. I have learned more and mastered more skills in the past ten years ages 49-59 than I had in the previous 30.

    You can challenge yourself like I did and after a while of doing this (6 months) you will find it a lot easier to learn and comprehend than you did previously. (This is true only if you haven't damaged your brain from years of smoking and drinking). I constantly challenged myself with trying to learn math that I had trouble with in school and eventually mastered it.

    The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a person in a wheelchair.

    Anon [257] Disclaimer , says: March 15, 2019 at 4:29 am GMT
    @YetAnotherAnon

    IBEW (licensed electricians) has no upper age limit for apprentices They have lots of American engineers who applied in their 30s after realizing most companies want diverse HI-B engineers.

    Upper age limits for almost every occupation disappeared decades ago in America because of age discrimination laws.

    I can't see how any 28 year old could possibly be too soft to go into any kind of manual labor job.

    jbwilson24 , says: March 15, 2019 at 9:31 am GMT
    @anonymous Yeah, there was a recent study showing that 70 year olds can form neural connections as quickly as teenagers.
    At 40+, I still can learn advanced mathematics as well as I ever did. In fact, I can still compete with the Chinese 20 year olds. The problem is not mental horsepower, it's time and energy. I rarely have time to concentrate these days (wife, kids, pets), which makes it hard to get the solid hours of prime mental time required to really push yourself at a hard pace and learn advanced material.

    This is why the Chinese are basically out of date when they are 30, their companies assume that they have kids and are not able to give 110% anymore.

    jacques sheete , says: March 15, 2019 at 11:14 am GMT
    @anonymous

    eventually figured out a learning style that worked for me.

    That's a huge key and I discovered it when I was asked to tutor people who were failing chemistry. I quickly discovered that all it took for most of them to "get it" was to keep approaching the problem from different angles until a light came on for them and for me the challenge of finding the right approach was a great motivator. Invariably it was some minor issue and once they overcame that, it became easy for them. I'm still astonished at that to this day.

    The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a person in a wheelchair.

    No doubt about it. No embellishment needed there!

    s.n , says: March 15, 2019 at 11:42 am GMT
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    Yeah. He's 28 years old and apparently his chosen skillset is teaching EASL in foreign countries. That sector is shrinking as English becomes the global lingua franca and is taught in elementary schools worldwide. He's really too old and soft for his Plan B (military), and getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled trades as well. What then?

    do you know anything first hand about the teaching- english- as-a- second- language hustle?

    Asking sincerely – as I don't know anything about it. However I kinda suspect that 'native speakers' will be in demand in many parts of the globe for some time to come [as an aside – and maybe Linh has written of this and I missed it – but last spring I was in Saigon for a couple of weeks and, hanging out one day at the zoo & museum complex, was startled to see about three groups of Vietnamese primary-school students being led around by americans in their early 20s, narrating everything in american english . Apparently private schools offering entirely english-language curriculum are the big hit with the middle & upper class elite there. Perhaps more of the same elsewhere in the region?]

    At any rate the young man in this interview has a lot more in the way of qualifications and skill sets than I had when I left the States 35 years ago, and I've done just fine. I'd advise any prospective expats to get that TEFL certificate as it's one extra thing to have in your back pocket and who knows?

    PS: "It really can't be overstated how blessed you are to have American citizenship" – well, yes it can. Everyone knows that the best passport on earth is from Northwest Euroland, one of those places with free university education and free health care and where teenage mothers don't daily keel over dead from heroin overdoses in Dollar Stores .. Also more places visa-free

    The Anti-Gnostic , says: Website March 15, 2019 at 2:37 pm GMT
    @s.n

    When you left the States 35 years ago, the world was 3 billion people smaller. The labor market has gotten a tad more competitive. I don't see any indication of a trade or other refined skillset in this article.

    People who teach EASL for a living are like people who drive cars for a living: you don't do it because you're really good at teaching your native language, you do it because you're not marketable at anything else.

    jeff stryker , says: March 15, 2019 at 3:20 pm GMT
    @jacques sheete JACQUES

    I think being Australian is the best citizenry you can have. The country is far from perfect, but any lower middle class American white like myself would prefer to be lower middle class there than in Detroit or Phoenix, where being lower income means life around the unfettered urban underclass that is paranoia inducing.

    Being from the US is not as bad as being Bangladeshi, but if you had to be white and urban and poor you'd be better off in Sydney than Flint.

    The most patriotic Americans have never been anywhere, so they have no idea whether Australia or Tokyo are better. They have never traveled.

    s.n , says: March 15, 2019 at 11:42 am GMT
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    Yeah. He's 28 years old and apparently his chosen skillset is teaching EASL in foreign countries. That sector is shrinking as English becomes the global lingua franca and is taught in elementary schools worldwide. He's really too old and soft for his Plan B (military), and getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled trades as well. What then?

    do you know anything first hand about the teaching- english- as-a- second- language hustle?

    Asking sincerely – as I don't know anything about it. However I kinda suspect that 'native speakers' will be in demand in many parts of the globe for some time to come [as an aside – and maybe Linh has written of this and I missed it – but last spring I was in Saigon for a couple of weeks and, hanging out one day at the zoo & museum complex, was startled to see about three groups of Vietnamese primary-school students being led around by americans in their early 20s, narrating everything in american english .

    Apparently private schools offering entirely english-language curriculum are the big hit with the middle & upper class elite there. Perhaps more of the same elsewhere in the region?]

    At any rate the young man in this interview has a lot more in the way of qualifications and skill sets than I had when I left the States 35 years ago, and I've done just fine. I'd advise any prospective expats to get that TEFL certificate as it's one extra thing to have in your back pocket and who knows?

    ps: "It really can't be overstated how blessed you are to have American citizenship" – well, yes it can. Everyone knows that the best passport on earth is from Northwest Euroland, one of those places with free university education and free health care and where teenage mothers don't daily keel over dead from heroin overdoses in Dollar Stores ..

    Also more places visa-free

    s.n , says: March 16, 2019 at 7:23 am GMT
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    People who teach EASL for a living are like people who drive cars for a living: you don't do it because you're really good at teaching your native language, you do it because you're not marketable at anything else.

    well that's the beauty of it: you don't have to be good at anything other than just being a native speaker to succeed as an EASL teacher, and thousands more potential customers are born every day. I'd definitely advise any potential expats to become accomplished, and, even better, qualified, in as many trades as possible. But imho the real key to success as a long term expat is your mindset: determination and will-power to survive no matter what. If you really want to break out of the States and see the world, and don't have inherited wealth, you will be forced to rely on your wits and good luck and seize the opportunities that arise, whatever those opportunities may be.

    Thedirtysponge , says: March 16, 2019 at 4:01 pm GMT
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    Sorry man, English teaching is huge, and will remain so for some time to come. I'm heavily involved in the area and know plenty of ESL teachers. Spain for me, and the level of English here is still so dreadful and they all need it, the demand is staggering and their schools suck at teaching it themselves.

    You are one of those people who just like to shit on things:) and people make a lot of money out of it, not everyone of course, like any area. But it's perfectly viable and good to go for a long time yet. It's exactly that English is the lingua Franca that people need to be at a high level of it. The Chinese market is still massive. The bag packer esl teachers are the ones that give off this stigma, and 'bag packer' and 'traveller' are by now very much regarded as dirty words in the ESL world.

    Mike P , says: March 16, 2019 at 5:52 pm GMT
    @Thedirtysponge

    ESL teachers. Spain for me

    There is a very funny version also with Jack Lemmon in "Irma la Douce", but I can't find that one on youtube.

    jeff stryker , says: March 17, 2019 at 7:26 am GMT
    @Thedirtysponge S.N. & DIRTY SPONGE

    Most Americans lack the initiative to move anywhere. Most will complain but will never leave the street they were born on. Urban whites are used to adaptation being around other cultures anyhow and being somewhat street smart, but the poor rural whites in the exurbs or sticks whose live would really improve if they got the hell out of America will never move anywhere.

    You have to really dislike your circumstances in the US to leave and be willing to find some way to get by overseas.

    Lots of people will talk about leaving America without having a clue as to how hard this is to actually do. Australia and New Zealand are not crying out for white proles with high school education or GED. It is much more difficult to move overseas and stay overseas than most Americans think.

    Except of course for the ruling elite. And that is because five-star hotels look the same everywhere and money is an international language.

    We already saw this in South Africa. Mandela took over, the country went down the tubes, the wealthy whites left and the Boers were left to die in refugee camps. They WANT to leave and a few went to Russia, but most developed countries don't want them. Not with the limited amount of money they have.

    Australia and NZ would rather have refugees than white people in dire circumstances.

    Even immigrating to Canada, a country that I worked in, is much much harder than anyone imagines.

    jeff stryker , says: March 17, 2019 at 7:37 am GMT
    A LONGTIME EXPAT ON LIVING ABROAD

    Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country except for blacks and rednecks I have met in the Philippines who were stationed there in the military and have a $1000 a month check. Many of them live in more dangerous and dirty internal third worlds in America than what they can have in Southeast Asia and a good many would be homeless. They are worldly enough to leave.

    But most Americans whose lives would be vastly improved overseas think they are living in the greatest country on earth.

    [Apr 01, 2019] Retail Layoffs Are 92% Higher In 2019, And Now Even Wal-Mart Is Quietly Closing Stores by Michael Snyder

    Notable quotes:
    "... "The decision to close our local stores is a difficult one," said Lifeway Chief Executive Officer Brad Waggoner. "While we had hoped to keep some stores open, current market projections show this is no longer a viable option." ..."
    "... And yes, Internet retailing has been growing, but it still accounts for less than 10 percent of all U.S. retail sales. In addition, it is important to point out that Internet retailers had a very disappointing holiday season just like brick and mortar retailers did. ..."
    "... Ultimately, the truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily slowing down in recent months. During the months of December, January and February, the amount of stuff being moved around the country by truck, rail and air was lower than during all of those same months a year earlier. The following comes from Wolf Richter ..."
    "... Unfortunately, it appears that things are only going to get rougher for the U.S. economy in the months ahead. So more retail workers are going to get laid off, more stores are going to close, and there are going to be a lot more stories about our ongoing "retail apocalypse" in the mainstream media. ..."
    Apr 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    Just like we witnessed during the last recession, major retailers are laying off tens of thousands of workers, and it looks like this will be the worst year for store closings in all of U.S. history. Many are referring to this as "the retail apocalypse" , and without a doubt this is one of the toughest stretches for retailers that we have ever seen. But many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning . After all, if retailers are struggling this much now, how bad will things be once the next recession really gets rolling? Of course the truth is that things have been rocky for the retail industry for quite a few years, but the numbers are telling us that this crisis is really starting to accelerate.

    According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, retail layoffs were up a whopping 92 percent in January and February compared to the same period a year ago. The following comes from NBC News

    More than 41,000 people have lost their jobs in the retail industry so far this year -- a 92 percent spike in layoffs since the same time last year, according to a new report.

    And the layoffs continue to mount, with JCPenney announcing this week it would be closing 18 stores in addition to three previously announced closures, as part of a "standard annual review."

    Yes, competition from Internet commerce is hurting the traditional retail industry, but it certainly doesn't explain a 92 percent increase.

    And very few retailers have been able to avoid this downsizing trend. At this point, even the largest retailer in the entire country has begun "quietly closing stores"

    Walmart is closing at least 11 US stores across eight states.

    The stores include one Walmart Supercenter in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Walmart Neighborhood Market stores in Arizona, California, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington.

    For decades, Wal-Mart has been expanding extremely aggressively.

    They have plenty of cash, and so the only way that it would make sense for them to close stores is if they anticipated that we are heading into a recession.

    Here is a list of the addresses where Wal-Mart stores are closing

    Of course Wal-Mart is in far better shape than almost everyone else in the industry.

    One of Wal-Mart's key competitors, Shopko, has just announced that they will be shutting down all of their stores

    Shopko will liquidate its assets and close all of its remaining locations by mid-June.

    The company was unable to find a buyer for the retail business and will begin winding down its operations beginning this week, the company said in statement released Monday. The decision to liquidate will bring an end to the brick-and-mortar business that began in 1962 with one location in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

    And personally I was very saddened to learn that Lifeway Christian Bookstores has also decided to close all their brick and mortar stores

    Lifeway Christian Bookstores announced last week it would be closing the doors of all 170 brick and mortar stores, in a pivot to focusing on digital and e-commerce.

    "The decision to close our local stores is a difficult one," said Lifeway Chief Executive Officer Brad Waggoner. "While we had hoped to keep some stores open, current market projections show this is no longer a viable option."

    Whenever I do an article like this, I always have some readers that try to convince me that this is only happening because of the growth of Internet retailing.

    And yes, Internet retailing has been growing, but it still accounts for less than 10 percent of all U.S. retail sales. In addition, it is important to point out that Internet retailers had a very disappointing holiday season just like brick and mortar retailers did.

    Ultimately, the truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily slowing down in recent months. During the months of December, January and February, the amount of stuff being moved around the country by truck, rail and air was lower than during all of those same months a year earlier. The following comes from Wolf Richter

    Now it's the third month in a row, and the red flag is getting more visible and a little harder to ignore about the goods-based economy: Freight shipment volume in the US across all modes of transportation – truck, rail, air, and barge – in February fell 2.1% from February a year ago, according to the Cass Freight Index , released today. The three months in a row of year-over-year declines are the first such declines since the transportation recession of 2015 and 2016.

    I have a feeling that when we get the final numbers for March that they will show that this streak has now extended to four months.

    Right now, unsold goods are starting to pile up in U.S. warehouses at a rate that we haven't seen since the last recession. Many retailers that are barely clinging to life will simply not survive if economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

    Unfortunately, it appears that things are only going to get rougher for the U.S. economy in the months ahead. So more retail workers are going to get laid off, more stores are going to close, and there are going to be a lot more stories about our ongoing "retail apocalypse" in the mainstream media.

    [Mar 18, 2019] Middle Class Once Meant Stability and Now Means Fragility

    Notable quotes:
    "... Was the American Middle Class a Cold War thing? ..."
    "... The British middle class seems to have been mostly people living on investments -- not in the manorial style, but with enough to have a flat, and a servant -- in a style that you might associate with Sherlock Holmes. A middle class that included people with jobs definitely seems post-WWII, and, of course, since the wage stagnation starting in the mid 1970's, it's mostly ended by now. ..."
    Mar 18, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    By Alissa Quart, Executive Editor, Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Cross posted from the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

    feel that being middle class is not what it once was and that we are all running in place as fast as we can to stay the same, to quote Alice in Wonderland's Red Queen," Brenda Madison, an art director and graphic designer in Laguna Beach (Orange County), told me. "Never did I think I would worry that Social Security and Medicare may not be available in my future or that a medical injury or unexpected repair would bankrupt us."

    She and her husband, now in their middle years, "are not sure we will be able to retire in our home."

    Patricia Moore is a single mother of three who lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles and a licensed vocational nurse working in hospice about to take the licensing exam to be a registered nurse. Due to a shortage of space, she sleeps on the couch and is "still struggling to make ends meet." Her rent is $1,598 a month, her pay is about $3,200, and her student loan payback is $375 a month. Moore recently has had to resort to a GoFundMe campaign so she could stay home with her daughter during a monthlong health crisis, and has at times had to donate plasma. She said she is unable to provide "the extras for her kids."

    Moore began to enter her youngest son in focus groups in office buildings or hotels in neighborhoods like Beverly Hills. Sometimes he would make $75 an hour and the whole family would eat from buffets, the kind with cantaloupe, and maybe they'd also get a gift card. At first, he tested toys and then video games but also an MRI to map his brain. It was only because of these gigs that Moore could finally say, "Go buy yourself something," to her children.

    The extreme cost of living has forced some California families to take unusual steps like this. As the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported, a family of four in the San Francisco metropolitan area making $117,400 a year qualifies as "low income."

    These were Americans for whom the meaning of middle-class life had altered from something stable to implied economic fragility.

    Their burdens were the price of health and child care, educational debt or a housing market gone berserk. They wanted job security, pensions and Social Security and unions, but these things seemed like a fantasy out of a mid-century American novel like "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." The middle class' long historical association with the status quo -- strongly identifying with institutions or corporations, rejecting restive discontent -- has made their new wobbliness all the more startling to them.

    But when did that vulnerability start? Toward the end of the past century into this one, there was a rise in what author Barbara Ehrenreich has called a "fear of falling," an anxiety among the professional-managerial class about downward mobility. I think of fear of falling as the opposite side of the coin of American individualism and its historic promise of social and economic progress.

    Since the 1980s, some members of the middle class have gone "from a kind of security to being reduced to the kind of economic unstable state that working-class Americans have had to experience forever," explained Caitlin Zaloom, an anthropologist at New York University who studies the middle-class financial experience. The office or academic job started to resemble the precarious work life that working poor Americans have long understood to be their lot, she said. And then there are the robots waiting in the wings to take their ostensible share of middle-class jobs, and soon.

    This new fragility is one theory to explain the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Trump voters were sometimes mistaken for all hillbilly elegiac or Rust Belt proletariat. In truth, an estimated 38 percent of white people with bachelor degrees voted for the man -- closer to "office worker elegy." Indeed, as much as Trump's messaging has been jingoistic or racist, he has also been addressing middle-class anxiety when he continually repeated that the system is "rigged."

    While some have protested that Trump's success has more to do with loss of status or rank bigotry, Johns Hopkins University sociologist Stephen L. Morgan has conducted studies that reveal one substantial motivator of the Trump vote was economic. He noted that a successful national Democratic candidate would be one who appealed "to people who have not fared well in the postindustrial economy," such as those in some once-prosperous areas of the Midwest.

    Ordinary middle-class people's struggles can be, of course, ameliorated by broad shifts, such as adopting a form of universal basic income or a flat monthly cash stipend for familial caregivers of their young or elderly kin. And we should at least explore adopting Medicare for all, to address rising health care costs. We also need to more effectively push for longer paid parental leave -- or, in many cases, any paid parental leave.

    But if we can't get relief from federal programs or our employers, we will need to craft local or state solutions. Retaining rent stabilization laws is key in our cities, as is building more affordable housing for, say, teachers and municipal workers, so they can continue to live in the places they serve.

    Finally, I saw when reporting my book that, when squeezed, people revealed their financial woes to others, they tended to then recognize that their obstacles were partially systemic. That, in turn, meant they didn't simply internalize their real-world burdens into self-punishment. They seemed more able to patch together personal solutions -- small-scale child care fixes like sharing pickup with their neighbors, for instance.

    Simply voicing hopes and difficulties, and making them audible for their leaders to name and address, is a small part of what must happen for things to change. Although for some, these needed transformations may seem to be coming too late.

    As Madison put it, "We are trying not to think too much about the future."

    This article was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was first published by the San Francisco Chronicle .

    ambrit , March 18, 2019 at 3:23 am

    My ground level observations indicate that there is a lot of "denial" going on in the minds of the putative 'middle class.'

    One major barrier to the public 'conversations' about the economic malaise affecting America today is the still prevalent custom of shaming the victims of bad luck. I see this tying all the way back to the Calvinist theological concept of "Election," which is an aspect of "Predestination." In effect, one suffers in life because the Deity chooses to make it so. Thus, those who do well in life can "legitimately" look down on those who suffer. It is a perfect excuse for callousness of heart.

    We read Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" in class in my High School. Written around 1900, it still has merit as a descriptive and predictive tome.

    Die wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism

    Old ideas die hard.

    marieann , March 18, 2019 at 9:44 am

    "The rich man in his castle,
    The poor man at his gate,
    God made them, high or lowly,
    And ordered their estate."

    Just so we know our place and stay there

    Sanxi , March 18, 2019 at 12:24 pm

    "Capitalism is a that system which has become that which the living are converted to the the living dead."

    jrs , March 18, 2019 at 12:53 pm

    Some of what is perceived as shaming, may just be understood as trying to understand how those with good professions etc. end up that way (and no I don't judge those without "good professions" – I don't think we choose our fate to any real degree see. It's just takes more to understand why is all). Now from the inside some good professions are not really, or have become so niche that that is the story but

    Acacia , March 18, 2019 at 5:11 am

    Mod: looks like some issue in the first paragraph

    Amfortas the hippie , March 18, 2019 at 6:31 am

    This:"Finally, I saw when reporting my book that, when squeezed, people revealed their financial woes to others, they tended to then recognize that their obstacles were partially systemic. That, in turn, meant they didn't simply internalize their real-world burdens into self-punishment. They seemed more able to patch together personal solutions -- small-scale child care fixes like sharing pickup with their neighbors, for instance."

    commiseration is new, in my experience. not too long ago, one didn't speak about economic difficulties in polite company at least in the middle class(poor people, oth, sometimes do) that they're finding such behaviour is worrying, as it means the precariousness is spreading which causes cognitive dissonance, since it's counterintuitive according the the Narrative we're all supposed to cling to.
    to wit, in my recent exposure to network tv in hotels and dr's offices, i note that -- like in the Matrix–a grand illusion of the late 90's is laid across the world.

    I hear locally upper middle class soccer moms having lunch, and it's oneupmanship all around everything's fine, and we went to the most wonderful resort, in our new suv, and our son married a doctor and they honeymooned as missionaries (!) but it's all nonsense, and everyone knows it.(the quick flash of panic in their eyes, "will the card work?")

    That was the norm not so long ago all the way down to the dregs of the former middle class. i see the rending of that pretension the misty veil of utopian just-worldism as what's at the root of so many of these dislocations an eruptions of late.

    "Believe Real Hard" just doesn't cut it any more, and those soccer moms don't know how to think about it. Per Ambrit's reference to Calvinism, at some point reality intrudes and one must climb down from the pillar.

    jefemt , March 18, 2019 at 9:03 am

    Becoming They and The Other. It can't happen to me -- I am a Exceptional! ™ (and white). Could Compassion be on the horizon– on the wax as more and more realize they are in the global Lemming-fall rat-race to the bottom ?

    kareninca , March 18, 2019 at 8:48 pm

    They're not attending/joining churches because that costs money and they don't have the money. Once there are more "churches" that only cost what people can afford, more people will attend. Just a prediction.

    sanxi , March 18, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    Sadly first the great suffering must turn into the great awareness that it's not your fault than love oneself and compassion for all else

    jrs , March 18, 2019 at 12:58 pm

    it's not all illusions, a part of the population is doing pretty well, they take vacations and crap (who even has ANY paid time off anymore anyway? not me. even STAYCATIONS are off the table! Heck getting a cold is pretty much off the table ..). But others

    But yea the Big Lie Narrative of these times is that the economy is doing well, Trump's economic performance will get him reelected (this economy is total garbage, so F trump and the horse he rode in on), unemployment is low and other BS.

    The Rev Kev , March 18, 2019 at 6:32 am

    Lots of sad reading here. But seriously – $117,400 a year qualifies as "low income."? I know that it is true but at the same time that is so stupid on the face of it. I do have to admit here to a weakness for nostalgia – especially for places that I have never experienced but have read about. Sometimes out of idle curiosity I might flick through a few videos like that on America in earlier times and you can see one such clip at

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECFH3Pe21oQ or at this one at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOr1fIIHQFk

    Having said this, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if neoliberalism had spluttered out during the 1970s as a nonstarter of an idea and instead a different timeline had formed. In this one, instead of wages flate-lining back in the 70s, they had kept apace with GDP like they had the previous thirty years. People, more secure in their wages, would never have embarked on the credit boom like they did when wages dropped. In this timeline too the rich are still taxed at 70% which mopped up all the surplus that would otherwise have instead gone on to founding think tanks and money in politics. With an affluent population, there was never was a need to import so much from China and the unions were still strong enough to stop industries being shipped off to there. It would have been a completely different America.

    But that is another timeline and we are instead in one where people will soon be in a position where they have nothing else to lose. And that is a very dangerous proposition that. And they still have potentially a very powerful weapon – their numbers. And their votes.

    russell1200 , March 18, 2019 at 9:00 am

    The 70s were going to be a very tough decade: The loss of our huge post-WW2 advantages in manufacturing, oil shocks, a very expensive war to pay for, and Watergate probably fits in their somewhere.

    I am not sure what we did in the 70s and after was exactly neoliberalism, but any restraint shown in the face of the new realities (Carter and his sweaters, Bush breaking his tax pledge) were massively unpopular, and I think that was going to be the case in general – regardless of what path we went down.

    The very idea that neo-liberalism was the cause (as opposed to an interaction with) of the root problems I think is indicative of over optimism about our situation. Contrary, I do think it is very reasonable to say that neo-liberalism made the problems worse.

    The distinction is important, you can reject our current situation and policies, and still not be particularly convinced that the opposing voices are being more realistic.

    Carla , March 18, 2019 at 9:44 am

    After reading "Democracy in Chains" by Nancy MacLean, I'm leaning toward neoliberalism as a cause. It kicked into high gear with Reagan's election in 1980, and Bill Clinton made sure there was no stopping it.

    In reference to this from the original post: "In truth, an estimated 38 percent of white people with bachelor degrees voted for [Trump]," I have to say, I think you call those people Republicans, and don't kid yourself. They will do it again.

    Sanxi , March 18, 2019 at 12:43 pm

    Carla, thank you, exactly so. The technique of it all was quite insidious, as it was an appeal disguised and self righteous to greed to a two groups: baby boomers and their parents sociology primed for such pitches. Once that genie got out of the bottle there was no getting it back in.

    polecat , March 18, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    So, will the millenials kill-off the Genie for good .. or will they, in their turn, rub that lamp all the more, to parlay their 3 wishes towards other equally speciously sparklely endeavors ??

    super extra , March 18, 2019 at 3:31 pm

    we can't 'rub the lantern'; when those in power in 1981 set off down the neoliberal road, the conditions of their wish were fulfilled by debt-enslavement of everyone who came after them to support enriching those who clawed their way to the top.

    the only millennial oligarch is Zuckerberg and I don't think anyone believes he is going to maintain his power even half as long as, say, Bill Gates. the only millenials who believe in neoliberalism are paid shills for the elite like Ben Shapiro or Charlie Kirk and by the same Zuckerberg:Gates ratio, they have less than half as much power as a Rush Limbaugh.

    Neoliberalism is dead, we're in the gramscian interregnum, at this point I just hope and plead with the infinite that we get Bernie in 2020 instead of Cotton/Creshaw primarying Trump or something awful like that because the familyblogging Democrats refuse to pass the torch in favor of one more term of grift.

    russell1200 , March 18, 2019 at 1:32 pm

    Rev Kev, who I was responding to, correctly noted that the 1970s were when wages began to drop. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton of course come later. This doesn't mean that their policies were not problematic, but it does make it difficult to blame them as the causal agents of something that started in the 1970s.

    If you want to blame Johnson/Nixon and their Vietnam War policies, that would make some sense, but they don't seem to me to be poster children for Neoliberalism with one being associated with the Great Society and the other the author of price controls to suppress inflation.

    witters , March 18, 2019 at 6:48 pm

    When things get a bit tough (and note that in the 70's for all the hype they were not in fact that tough – until govt policy of a NL kind stepped in) – then you have policy choices. If you go NL, then that is a choice, and causally so. (It was usual to hide this causality in TINA.)

    scott 2 , March 18, 2019 at 9:15 am

    Financialization of the housing market creates obscene rents, leading to less household formation, then the need to "do something" about population decline. Japan is 20 years ahead of us in that regard,

    Dan , March 18, 2019 at 10:06 am

    $117,400 a year qualifies as "low income"?

    Indeed it does here in the SF Bay Area. The surprise of it all is part of the denial – the wife and I look at our family income (usually 10-20% less than that) and are straight up perplexed that it doesn't go as far as it "should". We certainly have a pleasant enough middle-class life, but it feels precarious in a way that we never expected. And we only have that because we have subsidized housing (we live in a house the family has owned for years, so are paying well below the insane market rates). If we had to pay market rates we would be poor, or close to it.

    We certainly rant to one another about the systemic issues behind this situation, but there are a lot of California liberals who bitterly cling to questionable ideas like a balanced budget or Kamala Harris.

    I've been wondering when I'll hear a candidate advocating lower home and rent prices – where I live we absolutely need that if we're to keep a semblance of civilization and democracy.

    ambrit , March 18, 2019 at 11:53 am

    You have hit on a major 'disrupter' of the body social. "Civilization and democracy" are being willfully sacrificed to the Gods of Profit. That betrayal is a core part of neo-liberalism.

    Carla , March 18, 2019 at 5:27 pm

    Re; lower home and rent prices. For the last 40 years, as the prosperous Great Lakes region became the rust belt, we who live here have been constantly told: if you want a job, just MOVE to where the jobs are.

    Now are we allowed to say to the mortgage-or-rent-impoverished middle class folks who live on the coasts, "If you want lower house and rent prices, just move to where the lower priced houses and apartments are" ? We got plenty of room for y'all here, honest. And we're mostly midwest-nice, too.

    Altandmain , March 18, 2019 at 5:34 pm

    Unfortunately a candidate advocating for lower prices of housing will likely be defeated by thr NIMBY types.

    JBird4049 , March 18, 2019 at 12:04 pm

    But seriously – $117,400 a year qualifies as "low income."?

    If you are very lucky, and I mean lucky , you might find an old junior one bedroom apartment for the low, low price of $1,500 a month. No patio, no dishwasher, no nothing except a parking spot. This is not exaggeration, sarcasm or humor, but reality. In some places in California it's closer to three thousand dollars.

    Most of us Californians do not make even fifty thousand and, if we do, we have to live closer to the cities where the well paying jobs are. I keep waiting for the housing bust to arrive for last time the rents dropped as much as thirty percent. Hopefully, I will still be in my apartment, or at least in an apartment when that happens.

    rd , March 18, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    Another factor is cities not allowing for higher density housing. If somebody has a brownstone or something similar, they will fight tooth and nail against that 6 story apartment building that would allow a lot more people to live in the neighborhood. Under-investment in rapid mass transit also hurts workers commuting to jobs and forces far more cars on the roads and parking spaces.

    Ed , March 18, 2019 at 7:36 am

    Was the American Middle Class a Cold War thing?

    pretzelattack , March 18, 2019 at 8:10 am

    it was certainly precarious in the great depression, seems to thrive in boom periods. the white middle class, and some of the black middle class did well in the 50's and early 60's. that was when the us was economically at the pinnacle of the world, and i think that was because most of the other first world economies were rebuilding from the rubble of ww2.

    Wukchumni , March 18, 2019 at 8:30 am

    The only item I can think of that was an import from the Soviet Union and on retail shelves for sale here during the Cold War, was Stolichnaya vodka, and as far as the Peoples Republic of China goes, fireworks.

    If I didn't finish the food on my plate, my parents would admonish me with tales of people starving to death in China, and indeed they were.

    ambrit , March 18, 2019 at 11:16 am

    For me as a child, the starvation place was Africa. I wonder about the psychological motivations that made our parents ignore the suffering right nearby in our own neighborhoods and focus instead on some far away place.

    Today, that starvation is all around us. I personally feel guilty now that we cannot give very much to beggars and homeless etc. due to our own straitened circumstances. The myth of "The Exceptional Ones" (TM) is still a strong part of the social narrative today.

    polecat , March 18, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    I try to do my infinitesmal part, ambrit .. by taking any surplus from the garden, when there IS a surplus that is .. and donate it to the local foodbank. Last year it was 5 full lugs of grapes fresh off the vine, a few yrs before that it was an over abundance of beets. This season it might be potatoes THATs My lifestyle !

    All on less than a $35,000 yr combined income. But that means no trips to Cancun, no new Car every couple of years, no DeathCare expenditures, and no mortgage.

    I feel humbled every time I make a delivery, especially when I see families in obvious distress w/ young children .. looking for sustenance that they cannot otherwise afford to buy .. it breaks my heart.

    ambrit , March 18, 2019 at 4:23 pm

    Yes to that. We got a bumper crop of 'volunteer' Muscadines last year. They made good jelly. I should build a trellis or wire support network for the vines this year. With this weather, we should get another good crop.
    Living the 'prepper' life has it's compensations.

    polecat , March 18, 2019 at 6:31 pm

    Our's were primarily muscat as well, what we donated. I ended up canning the rest, turning them into muscat conserves half of which we've already given away to friends and aquaintances. The other grapes, the Mars variety, became raisins, for home consumption.

    Everyone should learn how to can .. cuz you never know when just-in-time .. just STOPS !

    John Wright , March 18, 2019 at 11:06 am

    re: American Middle Class Cold War thing?

    Possibly this was a major influence. When the USA had identified large foreign enemies that must be countered (Russia and China) there was an impetus to build in America and keep the USA population engaged with the Russian and "Red" Chinese threat.

    The USA was also an oil exporter until 1971, which allowed some control of oil prices.

    Globalization was not prominent and I remember the poor quality Japanese tools of the 1960's (and Chinese manufactured stuff rarely seen by me (firecrackers?))

    Furthermore we had two large countries that economically were not as advanced as the USA and were not viewed as particularly successful with their flawed Communist systems.

    Effectively, China and Russia were playing the game with one hand tied behind their back.

    This may also have allowed USA unions to be strong, increasing wages for union and non-union workers.

    Perhaps the USA is currently making some other countries focus inwardly on their countries as the USA did in the 1950's and 1960's.

    By forcing sanctions on various countries (Iran, Russia, Venezuela) the USA may make them less dependent on global resources and more like the more self sufficient USA of the 50's and 60's.

    Mel , March 18, 2019 at 11:23 am

    Very, very possibly. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I'm reading a lot of fin de siècle novels and literature, e.g. Booth Tarkington.

    The British middle class seems to have been mostly people living on investments -- not in the manorial style, but with enough to have a flat, and a servant -- in a style that you might associate with Sherlock Holmes. A middle class that included people with jobs definitely seems post-WWII, and, of course, since the wage stagnation starting in the mid 1970's, it's mostly ended by now.

    Harold , March 18, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    Middle class always had servants because cost of labor was low. Middle class households sometimes had boarders & often elderly or unmarried relatives.

    MisterMr , March 18, 2019 at 9:00 am

    "While some have protested that Trump's success has more to do with loss of status or rank bigotry, Johns Hopkins University sociologist Stephen L. Morgan has conducted studies that reveal one substantial motivator of the Trump vote was economic. He noted that a successful national Democratic candidate would be one who appealed "to people who have not fared well in the postindustrial economy," such as those in some once-prosperous areas of the Midwest."

    But this is circular reasoning, why would people in the "middle class" think that Trump's policies are better for them than Clinton's policies?

    It's not like Trump is a sort of middle class guy himself, in facts H. Clinton is probably more "middle classey" than Trump.

    Plus, what does the term "middle class" mean specifically? How are these people different from "working class" or small bourgoise?

    Wukchumni , March 18, 2019 at 9:08 am

    Middle class to me growing up, meant that the school custodian across the street and 3 doors down from us, could afford to buy a home, or you played little league with the son of a gas station owner, who made enough from his 2 service bays always full (cars weren't nearly as reliable in the 60's) to also own a home.

    MisterMr , March 18, 2019 at 1:10 pm

    Thanks for the answer.

    My doubt about the middle class is this: it is a term that various schools/sociologists/economists used to mean very different things, so when someone speaks of the middle class it's difficult for me to understand what he/she is speaking about.

    For example:

    1) In marxism it generally means the small bourgoise, meaning the small shopkeeper, the farmer who owns his land etc;

    2) at times, it just means people of the working class who have good jobs, that is different from the definition (1). The disappearence of the middle class just means the disappearence of good jobs;

    3) sometimes (wrongly IMHO) "workers" are supposed to be only blue collar and only without high education, so "middle class" means people who have a degree and are white collars;

    etc.

    At times these categories can somehow mix but the class interest of someone who is a small business owner is different from the class interest of someone who has a good employee job which might be different from the interest of someone who could have a degree and a sucky white collar job.

    So this very general idea of middle class is very confusing IMHO.

    Carla , March 18, 2019 at 5:40 pm

    @MisterMr -- I think that because EVERYTHING in the good ole US of A is about money, the understanding of a term like "middle class" becomes just about money, too.

    When I was young (yes, a long time ago), I was given to understand that "middle class" meant basically people with white collar jobs or jobs that required some professional accreditation: teachers, nurses, lawyers, accountants, etc. "Working class" meant people with blue-collar jobs, even if some of them regularly made more money than a teacher or, say, a nurse. "Upper class" included high-earning professionals, CEO's, and of course those with inherited wealth. Poor, then as now, was the one thing you definitely didn't want to be.

    But, as I said, money has obliterated all those fine distinctions of snobbery. Now there is only one: $.

    JBird4049 , March 18, 2019 at 7:34 pm

    The label of "Middle Class" in America can be used as either for the social class or for the economic class with the white collar workers generally being both and the blue collar workers being, before the 1950s, working class with working class wages. For about two decades the high and low ends of the income range collapsed with most people being squeezed into the economic middle class regardless of social class.

    Now, income disparity has destroyed the economic middle class and the classic pyramid shaped map of the social and economic system reappearing. The tiny wealthy elites; the slightly larger service and professional class providing what the elites want; the small number of bureaucrats, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, religious workers and so that any large societies need just to function at all; the greatest numbers are the laboring class, and I don't mean the working class.

    The mental map of most Americans is stuck on the almost flat pyramid of 1970 in which all classes were getting wealthier collapsing together economically, with the exception of the wealthy not gaining wealth at the same rate as the bottom 99%. Even the poorest blacks finally started to improve economically.

    That picture is buried somewhere deeeep in our collective heads where the only real differences was what type of job you were going to have and where mistakes, failure, and disaster did not mean poverty. At worst, it meant a change of work or a temporary set back or a change of social class but not economic class.

    Find that image in your head, yank it out, put a stake in its heart, burn it, and scatter the ashes. That picture died around 1973. Whatever the truth of that image it is long dead.

    But too many people are trying to pretend that we are not living in a zero sum game of winner take all.

    John Wright , March 18, 2019 at 11:17 am

    Trump had the advantage that he was not tagged, directly or indirectly, with Bill Clinton's NAFTA, welfare reform or supporting "Free trade" that seemed to only work well in economists' minds (TPP).

    Clinton also supported the Iraq War, Libya and other military adventures, and Trump couldn't vote for/against these operations that directly affected their communities.

    Campaigning Trump called these wars "mistakes" while Hillary C would not.

    Someone summed the election as "With Hillary you know you are screwed, with Trump you might not be."

    MisterMr , March 18, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    Thanks, however it is a fact that a situation of bad economy and increasing inequality, that ideally is supposed to be the main reason to vote left, is causing an upsurge in right-leaning populism instead.

    And not only in the USA.

    john Wright , March 18, 2019 at 3:02 pm

    One could argue that the USA reluctantly moved left in the Great Depression while Nazi Germany and Italy moved right.

    In the USA, recently the left has been cast as weak and ineffectual.

    The left doesn't "bring home the bacon" in the minds of many.

    Bernie is popular, but the knives are out from the establishment pols (of both parties) to do him in.

    In the USA, moving to the populist right, to me, seems quite understandable.

    jrs , March 18, 2019 at 3:46 pm

    there is no populist right that brings home the bacon in the U.S. either as far as I can see. Theoretically there could be, but theoretically a lot of things, including much more plausibly and likely the rise of a left that brings home the bacon. IOW the trains don't even run on time now.

    jrs , March 18, 2019 at 1:05 pm

    Trump's economy is scarcely better than Obama's (depends on which year though, in the worst of the Great Recession only then was it worse). So if it's really about the economy: then Trump will lose the next election.

    MisterMr , March 18, 2019 at 1:14 pm

    IMHO it IS about the economy, but not in the direct sense we mean: if the economy goes on as it is, Trump will be able to spin it as good, whereas a democrat would be toast.

    But I expect a recession to hit earlier, in which case I think Trump will not be re-elected.

    Norb , March 18, 2019 at 9:28 am

    Whenever I read articles illustrating the dawning awareness of the middling classes to their extreme precarious social status, I can't help but marvel at the audacity of elites jumping to the front of the protest line proclaiming their desire to "lead" the distraught masses. Even more so, those same distraught workers giving their oppressors the opportunity to do so. That is the definition of a dysfunctional society- rewarding failure. The elites might think themselves clever, and exceptional, for dreaming up such scams, but that dynamic alone goes a long way to explaining the rapid decline of America's prominence in the world.

    America is consumed by a cynical rot that has firmly entered into the body politic. There is no easy way to excise this cancer, but the answer must lie in some form of national mission. The current American leadership have chosen a militaristic vision of conquest for the nation masked with a marketing program of bringing democracy to the world. This contradictory scam will not work, and there is ample evidence showing just how destructive and impotent this strategy truly is. The rest of the world is moving on, and if Americans don't wise up to the the destructive nature of their system, they will be left behind.

    Corporations must be in the service of the nation, not the other way around. Corporations must be allowed to die and change, the nation, and its people must prevail over time. It is an obscene contradiction that the American system is reversing this dynamic. The people are allowed to die, while the corporations, and those that control them are allowed to persist.

    As a working class American, my only desire at this point is for an American elite leadership that has a vision larger and broader than worshiping a bank account. If American workers don't demand a better leadership, history will show them to be worse than peasants, they will be proven to be willful consumerist dupes.

    America is in an identity crisis- a cultural crisis. That does not bode well for the nation and makes it ill equipped to deal with other nations and the world's problems- let alone our own.

    Summer , March 18, 2019 at 10:16 am

    "The current American leadership have chosen a militaristic vision of conquest for the nation masked with a marketing program of bringing democracy to the world."

    That train officially left the station around 1898.

    Oso , March 18, 2019 at 1:27 pm

    agree although the date closer to 1620 when the militaristic conquest of nations began.

    Summer , March 18, 2019 at 2:25 pm

    "masked with a marketing program of bringing democracy to the world."

    For the USA, those thoughts didn't get put into action until post Civil War

    Rod , March 18, 2019 at 11:41 am

    "There is no easy way to excise this cancer, but the answer must lie in some form of national mission."

    here lies the way to better angels and there is no shortage of things that must be done

    diptherio , March 18, 2019 at 1:36 pm

    As someone on social.coop said the other day, "they're not 'elites,' they are 'the predatory class'."

    Joe Well , March 18, 2019 at 10:31 am

    Thank you for posting this.

    1. The author doesn't really explore how rent extraction through housing is the single biggest destroyer of American household wealth, with housing costs outpacing wages almost everywhere.

    2. "Explore" Medicare for all? Build "affordable" housing, but only for certain deserving individuals like teachers?

    It's disappointing that the author chooses to end this with such centrist Dem proposals.

    There needs to be a right to housing, which means a right to build housing: abolish any zoning that excludes dense residential development. Seize land by eminent domain if necessary.

    Jerry B , March 18, 2019 at 1:55 pm

    ===There needs to be a right to housing, which means a right to build housing: abolish any zoning that excludes dense residential development. Seize land by eminent domain if necessary===

    Thanks Joe. While I am not an expert in housing, the lack of affordable housing seems to be tied to:

    1. As you say zoning laws that exclude dense residential development.
    2. Land Use regulations which are probably tied to #1 above.
    3. The high costs incurred by residential developers in navigating the byzantine and bureaucratic maze of permits and regulations at the federal, state, and local levels.
    4. The speculative nature of the housing market i.e. IMO the housing bubble is driven by monetary policies and the actions of "behind the scenes" lever pullers. If housing is treated as a commodity by the finance sector then the machinations of Wall Street can impact housing prices as they did in the 2008 crash.
    5. To my point above, in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago there is a lot of empty office space and light industrial space. So excess supply would tell you that the prices for these properties should go down. Not the case. They are still expensive. If a homeowner is trying to sell their house they will lower the price until it is sold or not sell it. But the same rules do not apply to businesses.

    To #5 above, again if we "believe" what we are told in Econ 101 about free markets and supply and demand then an excess supply should result in a downward price drop until the excess supply is cleared. God help me! I just typed the previous sentence from memory as if verbatim from my Econ 101 class 30 years ago!! #head on desk! So if office and industrial prices are not dropping then someone has to be holding the "bank notes" as is not concerned about if or when they sell.

    Basically in short it seems zoning issues and cost issues are the big obstacles in dense residential development. I am not an advocate of relaxing regulations which could result in shoddy and unsafe construction but maybe there is a middle ground. Something needs to be done.

    polecat , March 18, 2019 at 3:16 pm

    It's not just dense housing, it ALL housing .. in terms of livability (environs with nature as an active component), and Affordable design/construction with energy efficiency in mind .. on a large enough scale to benefit the public ! There is, for all practical purposes none of that to be had. As it currently stands, you have to be richer than God to do ANYTHING other than the unimaginative and wasteful development that has been built up to this point.
    So instead of "Where's My flying car??" .. the question might now more accurately be "Where's My passive solar, earthen-berm, strawbale, rammed-earth, or cob house/apartment???"

    super extra , March 18, 2019 at 3:45 pm

    4. The speculative nature of the housing market

    to expand and maybe add onto this, AirBnb/vacation rentals + rental 'business as income' (at institutional eg Berkshire Hathaway and the associated securitized offerings as well as individuals and small biz creating the 'income stream' via LLC pass through) is a major driver affecting the speculation. What happened to all the foreclosures from a decade ago? They were turned into rentals, they still exist.

    I am all for an affordable housing mandate, but not in an Obamacare fashion by building tons more housing at crappy inflated prices with some means-tested voucher all so the rentiers can keep their profits. Destroy the rentiers and make housing right, make it a policy that is enforced with regulations and limits on numbers of rental units.

    Jerry B , March 18, 2019 at 6:49 pm

    Thanks Super.

    ==AirBnb/vacation rentals + rental 'business as income' (at institutional eg Berkshire Hathaway and the associated securitized offerings as well as individuals and small biz creating the 'income stream' via LLC pass through) is a major driver affecting the speculation===

    To your point there was a recent article on NC that discussed your comment above.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/08/wolf-richter-comes-second-wave-big-money-buy-rent-scheme.html

    Across the street from the townhouse subdivision where my wife and I live is a subdivision of $275K – $350K houses. One of the more expensive houses was sold a year ago to a company that uses it for a rental.

    I talked to the previous owner frequently while walking our dog, and he sold the house after it had been on the market for only about a month. As far as the previous owner was concerned the house sold for close to his asking price so he was happy. He had no concern about selling the house to a company that was going to use it for a rental. The previous owner had been living in that house in that neighborhood for 25 years and seemed to know most everybody in his subdivision. He and his wife raised their two sons in that house and also put a lot of time and effort into the landscaping around the house.

    The rental company that bought the house does the absolute minimal landscaping of the house and barely mows the lawn on a semi regular basis. The company clearly does not have any regard for the "appearance" of the house or the neighborhood. Which is a shame because the other houses near it are well maintained which, due to the lack of landscape maintenance, makes the "rental company" house an eyesore as far as grass, weeds, etc. are concerned.

    I do not begrudge the previous owner for selling to the rental company. His asking price was met so he was happy. And in the last few years, other houses in that subdivision have taken 1-2 years to sell. What I have an issue with is these vulture rental companies acting as mercenaries and treating houses and the neighborhood as so much fodder on a balance sheet.

    One could also make the argument that without the rental company sticking it's nose where it does not belong, the (ahem, cough, cough) free market would have been allowed to work somewhat. By that I mean if this particular house had also taken a long time to sell like the others in that neighborhood, and had subsequent price reductions in order to sell it, then maybe the average housing price in that neighborhood/town/suburb would have gone down helping affordability.

    justsayknow , March 18, 2019 at 11:03 am

    From the Business Insider published today:

    "In fact, the typical CEO made a whopping 312 times their median employees' salary in 2017, according to the Economic Policy Institute."

    Note that is vs median salary not lowest paid.

    The self serving disconnect between the management class and labor class is truly amazing.

    Work is not valued. And the contribution to productivity is extracted and given to ownership. It's not income inequality we should emphasize but simple fairness. Let's call it Income Fairness.

    anon y'mouse , March 18, 2019 at 11:35 am

    "fairness" is too vague and insubstantial a concept around which to base any kind of rights, much less what some should get or we should do as a society.

    we once thought it was "fair" as a society to enslave people. after we stopped that (and not because it wasn't "fair", but as a political move), we thought it was "fair" to continue to deny them many of their rights because they weren't "white".

    huge numbers of us still think it is fair that people die from various issues caused by their "unwillingness to work" or "unwillingness to work smarter". how many times do people say "if you don't get more education, you can just shut up about earning enough to live on. working at McDonald's, you are slacking and therefore can not demand anything. go to school, fool!" people argue all of the time that a "living wage" is not fair, because a person who does low-value jobs isn't making enough money for their employer to justify the wage (basically, profit produced by that employee would either be nil or zero). and that is perfectly "fair" to these arguers.

    fair is the idea that some deserve more and some less, due to something being "earned" by someone. it is a nice idea to teach children. real world morality is much more complicated than that, and a society of justice and laws and policies and bureaucracies can not be based around that. waaay too nebulous, and open to interpretation. everyone -knows what "fair" is- when they see it, because everyone's definition of "fairness" is different. as some kind of lofty ideal, it is fine. in practice, it is meaningless.

    Robin Kash , March 18, 2019 at 11:57 am

    Is this simply a Rip van Winkle account of the middle-class situation that has been well-reported and vigorously commented upon for some time? What am I missing?

    ambrit , March 18, 2019 at 12:32 pm

    The shift came when ol' Rip realized that the rumbling sound he heard was not the sound of the ghostly sailors bowling but the sound of distant cannon fire.

    Another Amateur Economist , March 18, 2019 at 2:04 pm

    The middle class stands upon the floor provided by the working class. And that floor is failing, as the human capital of society is gradually, but with increasing rapidity, plundered, from the bottom up.

    The poor used to have more than they do now, and be less dependent on government redistributions of income.

    Even the middle class owns less productive capital, as the small business owners who used to populate the main streets of American towns have been driven out of business by the Walmarts. Those businessmen were the social elites of their communities, giving those communities leadership, shape, structure and dimension.

    Owning less productive capital, their communities pretty much hollowed out, the middle class have lost much of their self sufficiency, and have become increasingly dependent on the whims of distant oligarchs. First the Walmarts. Now the Amazons. And there will be even fewer resources available to support the necessary services local communities provide.

    The middle class are right to be afraid. The distant oligarchs and their bankers will only allow so much debt before they pull out the rug.

    Too bad no one paid attention what was happening to the working poor. Long ago, the 1% used to command 7% of the nation's income. Now they command 21%. That 14% had to come from someone.

    rd , March 18, 2019 at 2:22 pm

    With almost 40 years of work under my belt, I have been passing along some advice to my kids to help them navigate the current "middle class conundrums":

    1. Owning a home is unlikely to make you wealthy. With just a few major city core exceptions, don't expect it to go up by more than inflation over the decades. So buy or rent just what you need and do real analysis of what you need and why.

    2. Only live in a big expensive city if you need to for your chosen career. The smaller cities have a lot of opportunity for people with good work habits, even in the "Rust Belt" and the living costs are far lower.

    3. College degrees are useful. Getting them with large debt loads is a bad idea though. Don't take on more student debt than about 2/3 of your expected starting salary for a four year degree and take on little or not debt for a 2-year degree.

    4. Going to a name-brand school is worthwhile if you don't have to rack up significant extra debt. Otherwise, pick college and university by major and cost. Your internal traits make a far bigger difference than the school you went to.

    5. Only go to graduate school if your desired career path requires it. Otherwise, you are losing years of earning power while incurring costs and debt. If you want a grad degree just for the joy of it, do it as night school as a hobby.

    6. Start a Roth IRA with monthly contributions early, even if it is only $50/month. It builds habits and over the years will likely ensure you are in the top 25% in assets.

    7. We are in a golden age of investing right now compared to 30 years ago. You can have worldwide, multi-asset class diversified investments at an annual expense ratio of 0.25% which was unheard of at the beginning of my career. So inexpensive Target Date funds or similar vehicles from companies like Vanguard mean you can do fire-and-forget investing while you focus on the rest of your life.

    8. Don't assume the full value of a company or state pension will be there when you retire. These are rife with deliberate and accidental mismanagement and partial defaults are likely with many of them. Instead save so that you are not reliant on them for a basic acceptable standard of living.

    8. You don't need financial advisors for investing, just to help you with personal finance instead. But that is not what they are usually selling, so 99% of the purported financial advisors are to be avoided as they are hazardous to your finances.

    10. Try to get a positive cash flow in your life as early as possible to dramatically reduce stress. That is difficult if you have kids, large student loans, or large mortgage/rent costs, so those are the big decisions you need to make on life-finance balance.

    Regarding Social Security, it is currently structured to provide 75% to 80% of its current benefits starting in 2034. That is still a significant safety net, but would require Congress to act to get it back to around 100%.

    Medicare is just part and parcel of the US healthcare cost issues. If the US can get down to less than 14% of GDP in healthcare expenditures while providing universal coverage, then the Medicare/Medicaid funding issue effectively goes away. This is not impossible as the US is the only developed country that is above 14%.

    rc , March 18, 2019 at 4:01 pm

    Elizabeth Warren had a good speech at UC-Berkeley. She focused on the middle class family balance sheet and risk shifting. Regulatory policies and a credit based monetary system have resulted in massive real price increases in inelastic areas of demand such as healthcare, education and housing eroding purchasing power. Further, trade policies have put U.S. manufacturing at a massive disadvantage to the likes of China, which has subsidized state-owned enterprises, has essentially slave labor costs and low to no environmental regulations. Unrestrained immigration policies have resulted in a massive supply wave of semi- and unskilled labor suppressing wages.

    Recommended initial steps to reform:
    1. Change the monetary system-deleverage economy with the Chicago Plan (100% reserve banking) and fund massive infrastructure lowering total factor costs and increasing productivity. This would eliminate
    2. Adopt a healthcare system that drives HC to 10% to 12% of GDP. France's maybe? Medicare model needs serious reform but is great at low admin costs.
    3. Raise tariffs across the board or enact labor and environmental tariffs on the likes of China and other Asian export model countries.
    4. Take savings from healthcare costs and interest and invest in human capital–educational attainment and apprenticeships programs.
    5. Enforce border security restricting future immigration dramatically and let economy absorb labor supply over time.

    Video of UC-B lecture:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=youtu.be

    Jerry B , March 18, 2019 at 5:26 pm

    As I have said in other comments, I like Liz Warren a lot within the limits of what she is good at doing (i.e. not President) such as Secretary of the Treasury etc. And I think she likes the media spotlight and to hear herself talk a little to much, but all quibbling aside, can we clone her??? The above comment and video just reinforce "Stick to what you are really good at Liz!".

    I am not a Liz Warren fan boi to the extent Lambert is of AOC, but it seems that most of the time when I hear Warren, Sanders, or AOC say something my first reaction is "Yes, what she/he said!".

    [Feb 26, 2019] THE CRISIS OF NEOLIBERALISM by Julie A. Wilson

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism. ..."
    "... Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. ..."
    "... Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy. ..."
    "... In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism. ..."
    "... We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism. ..."
    "... While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."' ..."
    Oct 08, 2017 | www.amazon.com

    Quote from the book is courtesy of Amazon preview of the book Neoliberalism (Key Ideas in Media & Cultural Studies)

    In Chapter 1, we traced the rise of our neoliberal conjuncture back to the crisis of liberalism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the Great Depression. During this period, huge transformations in capitalism proved impossible to manage with classical laissez-faire approaches. Out of this crisis, two movements emerged, both of which would eventually shape the course of the twentieth century and beyond. The first, and the one that became dominant in the aftermath of the crisis, was the conjuncture of embedded liberalism. The crisis indicated that capitalism wrecked too much damage on the lives of ordinary citizens. People (white workers and families, especially) warranted social protection from the volatilities and brutalities of capitalism. The state's public function was expanded to include the provision of a more substantive social safety net, a web of protections for people and a web of constraints on markets. The second response was the invention of neoliberalism. Deeply skeptical of the common-good principles that undergirded the emerging social welfare state, neoliberals began organizing on the ground to develop a "new" liberal govemmentality, one rooted less in laissez-faire principles and more in the generalization of competition and enterprise. They worked to envision a new society premised on a new social ontology, that is, on new truths about the state, the market, and human beings. Crucially, neoliberals also began building infrastructures and institutions for disseminating their new' knowledges and theories (i.e., the Neoliberal Thought Collective), as well as organizing politically to build mass support for new policies (i.e., working to unite anti-communists, Christian conservatives, and free marketers in common cause against the welfare state). When cracks in embedded liberalism began to surface -- which is bound to happen with any moving political equilibrium -- neoliberals were there with new stories and solutions, ready to make the world anew.

    We are currently living through the crisis of neoliberalism. As I write this book, Donald Trump has recently secured the U.S. presidency, prevailing in the national election over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Throughout the election, I couldn't help but think back to the crisis of liberalism and the two responses that emerged. Similarly, after the Great Recession of 2008, we've saw two responses emerge to challenge our unworkable status quo, which dispossesses so many people of vital resources for individual and collective life. On the one hand, we witnessed the rise of Occupy Wall Street. While many continue to critique the movement for its lack of leadership and a coherent political vision, Occupy was connected to burgeoning movements across the globe, and our current political horizons have been undoubtedly shaped by the movement's success at repositioning class and economic inequality within our political horizon. On the other hand, we saw' the rise of the Tea Party, a right-wing response to the crisis. While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism.

    Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. There were just too many fissures and fault lines in the glossy, cosmopolitan world of left neoliberalism and marketized equality. Indeed, while Clinton ran on status-quo stories of good governance and neoliberal feminism, confident that demographics and diversity would be enough to win the election, Trump effectively tapped into the unfolding conjunctural crisis by exacerbating the cracks in the system of marketized equality, channeling political anger into his celebrity brand that had been built on saying "f*** you" to the culture of left neoliberalism (corporate diversity, political correctness, etc.) In fact, much like Clinton's challenger in the Democratic primary, Benie Sanders, Trump was a crisis candidate.

    Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy.

    Universal health care. Free higher education. Fair trade. The repeal of Citizens United. Trump offered a different response to the crisis. Like Sanders, he railed against global trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, Trump's victory was fueled by right neoliberalism's culture of cruelty. While Sanders tapped into and mobilized desires for a more egalitarian and democratic future, Trump's promise was nostalgic, making America "great again" -- putting the nation back on "top of the world," and implying a time when women were "in their place" as male property, and minorities and immigrants were controlled by the state.

    Thus, what distinguished Trump's campaign from more traditional Republican campaigns was that it actively and explicitly pitted one group's equality (white men) against everyone else's (immigrants, women, Muslims, minorities, etc.). As Catherine Rottenberg suggests, Trump offered voters a choice between a multiracial society (where folks are increasingly disadvantaged and dispossessed) and white supremacy (where white people would be back on top). However, "[w]hat he neglected to state," Rottenberg writes,

    is that neoliberalism flourishes in societies where the playing field is already stacked against various segments of society, and that it needs only a relatively small select group of capital-enhancing subjects, while everyone else is ultimately dispensable. 1

    In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism.

    We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism.

    While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."'

    Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism, put it this way:

    The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.4

    I think that, for the first time in the history of U.S. capitalism, the vast majority of people might sense the lie of liberal, capitalist democracy. They feel anxious, unfree, disaffected. Fantasies of the good life have been shattered beyond repair for most people. Trump and this hopefully brief triumph of right neoliberalism will soon lay this bare for everyone to see. Now, with Trump, it is absolutely clear: the rich rule the world; we are all disposable; this is no democracy. The question becomes: How will we show up for history? Will there be new stories, ideas, visions, and fantasies to attach to? How can we productively and meaningful intervene in the crisis of neoliberalism? How can we "tear a hole in the grey curtain" and open up better worlds? How can we put what we've learned to use and begin to imagine and build a world beyond living in competition? I hope our critical journey through the neoliberal conjuncture has enabled you to begin to answer these questions.

    More specifically, in recent decades, especially since the end of the Cold War, our common-good sensibilities have been channeled into neoliberal platforms for social change and privatized action, funneling our political energies into brand culture and marketized struggles for equality (e.g., charter schools, NGOs and non-profits, neoliberal antiracism and feminism). As a result, despite our collective anger and disaffected consent, we find ourselves stuck in capitalist realism with no real alternative. Like the neoliberal care of the self, we are trapped in a privatized mode of politics that relies on cruel optimism; we are attached, it seems, to politics that inspire and motivate us to action, while keeping us living in competition.

    To disrupt the game, we need to construct common political horizons against neoliberal hegemony. We need to use our common stories and common reason to build common movements against precarity -- for within neoliberalism, precarity is what ultimately has the potential to thread all of our lives together. Put differently, the ultimate fault line in the neoliberal conjiuicture is the way it subjects us all to precarity and the biopolitics of disposability, thereby creating conditions of possibility for new coalitions across race, gender, citizenship, sexuality, and class. Recognizing this potential for coalition in the face of precarization is the most pressing task facing those who are yearning for a new world. The question is: How do we get there? How do we realize these coalitional potentialities and materialize common horizons?

    HOW WE GET THERE

    Ultimately, mapping the neoliberal conjuncture through everyday life in enterprise culture has not only provided some direction in terms of what we need; it has also cultivated concrete and practical intellectual resources for political interv ention and social interconnection -- a critical toolbox for living in common. More specifically, this book has sought to provide resources for thinking and acting against the four Ds: resources for engaging in counter-conduct, modes of living that refuse, on one hand, to conduct one's life according to the norm of enterprise, and on the other, to relate to others through the norm of competition. Indeed, we need new ways of relating, interacting, and living as friends, lovers, workers, vulnerable bodies, and democratic people if we are to write new stories, invent new govemmentalities, and build coalitions for new worlds.

    Against Disimagination: Educated Hope and Affirmative Speculation

    We need to stop turning inward, retreating into ourselves, and taking personal responsibility for our lives (a task which is ultimately impossible). Enough with the disimagination machine! Let's start looking outward, not inward -- to the broader structures that undergird our lives. Of course, we need to take care of ourselves; we must survive. But I firmly believe that we can do this in ways both big and small, that transform neoliberal culture and its status-quo stories.

    Here's the thing I tell my students all the time. You cannot escape neoliberalism. It is the air we breathe, the water in which we swim. No job, practice of social activism, program of self-care, or relationship will be totally free from neoliberal impingements and logics. There is no pure "outside" to get to or work from -- that's just the nature of the neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power. But let's not forget that neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power is also a source of weakness. Potential for resistance is everywhere, scattered throughout our everyday lives in enterprise culture. Our critical toolbox can help us identify these potentialities and navigate and engage our conjuncture in ways that tear open up those new worlds we desire.

    In other words, our critical perspective can help us move through the world with what Henry Giroux calls educated hope. Educated hope means holding in tension the material realities of power and the contingency of history. This orientation of educated hope knows very well what we're up against. However, in the face of seemingly totalizing power, it also knows that neoliberalism can never become total because the future is open. Educated hope is what allows us to see the fault lines, fissures, and potentialities of the present and emboldens us to think and work from that sliver of social space where we do have political agency and freedom to construct a new world. Educated hope is what undoes the power of capitalist realism. It enables affirmative speculation (such as discussed in Chapter 5), which does not try to hold the future to neoliberal horizons (that's cruel optimism!), but instead to affirm our commonalities and the potentialities for the new worlds they signal. Affirmative speculation demands a different sort of risk calculation and management. It senses how little we have to lose and how much we have to gain from knocking the hustle of our lives.

    Against De-democratization: Organizing and Collective Coverning

    We can think of educated hope and affirmative speculation as practices of what Wendy Brown calls "bare democracy" -- the basic idea that ordinary' people like you and me should govern our lives in common, that we should critique and try to change our world, especially the exploitative and oppressive structures of power that maintain social hierarchies and diminish lives. Neoliberal culture works to stomp out capacities for bare democracy by transforming democratic desires and feelings into meritocratic desires and feelings. In neoliberal culture, utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective governing to competing for equality.

    We have to get back that democractic feeling! As Jeremy Gilbert taught us, disaffected consent is a post-democratic orientation. We don't like our world, but we don't think we can do anything about it. So, how do we get back that democratic feeling? How do we transform our disaffected consent into something new? As I suggested in the last chapter, we organize. Organizing is simply about people coming together around a common horizon and working collectively to materialize it. In this way, organizing is based on the idea of radical democracy, not liberal democracy. While the latter is based on formal and abstract rights guaranteed by the state, radical democracy insists that people should directly make the decisions that impact their lives, security, and well-being. Radical democracy is a practice of collective governing: it is about us hashing out, together in communities, what matters, and working in common to build a world based on these new sensibilities.

    The work of organizing is messy, often unsatisfying, and sometimes even scary. Organizing based on affirmative speculation and coalition-building, furthermore, will have to be experimental and uncertain. As Lauren Berlant suggests, it means "embracing the discomfort of affective experience in a truly open social life that no

    one has ever experienced." Organizing through and for the common "requires more adaptable infrastructures. Keep forcing the existing infrastructures to do what they don't know how to do. Make new ways to be local together, where local doesn't require a physical neighborhood." 5 What Berlant is saying is that the work of bare democracy requires unlearning, and detaching from, our current stories and infrastructures in order to see and make things work differently. Organizing for a new world is not easy -- and there are no guarantees -- but it is the only way out of capitalist realism.

    Against Disposability: Radical Equality

    Getting back democratic feeling will at once require and help us lo move beyond the biopolitics of disposability and entrenched systems of inequality. On one hand, organizing will never be enough if it is not animated by bare democracy, a sensibility that each of us is equally important when it comes to the project of determining our lives in common. Our bodies, our hurts, our dreams, and our desires matter regardless of our race, gender, sexuality, or citizenship, and regardless of how r much capital (economic, social, or cultural) we have. Simply put, in a radical democracy, no one is disposable. This bare-democratic sense of equality must be foundational to organizing and coalition-building. Otherwise, we will always and inevitably fall back into a world of inequality.

    On the other hand, organizing and collective governing will deepen and enhance our sensibilities and capacities for radical equality. In this context, the kind of self-enclosed individualism that empowers and underwrites the biopolitics of disposability melts away, as we realize the interconnectedness of our lives and just how amazing it feels to

    fail, we affirm our capacities for freedom, political intervention, social interconnection, and collective social doing.

    Against Dispossession: Shared Security and Common Wealth

    Thinking and acting against the biopolitics of disposability goes hand-in-hand with thinking and acting against dispossession. Ultimately, when we really understand and feel ourselves in relationships of interconnection with others, we want for them as we want for ourselves. Our lives and sensibilities of what is good and just are rooted in radical equality, not possessive or self-appreciating individualism. Because we desire social security and protection, we also know others desire and deserve the same.

    However, to really think and act against dispossession means not only advocating for shared security and social protection, but also for a new society that is built on the egalitarian production and distribution of social wealth that we all produce. In this sense, we can take Marx's critique of capitalism -- that wealth is produced collectively but appropriated individually -- to heart. Capitalism was built on the idea that one class -- the owners of the means of production -- could exploit and profit from the collective labors of everyone else (those who do not own and thus have to work), albeit in very different ways depending on race, gender, or citizenship. This meant that, for workers of all stripes, their lives existed not for themselves, but for others (the appropriating class), and that regardless of what we own as consumers, we are not really free or equal in that bare-democratic sense of the word.

    If we want to be really free, we need to construct new material and affective social infrastructures for our common wealth. In these new infrastructures, wealth must not be reduced to economic value; it must be rooted in social value. Here, the production of wealth does not exist as a separate sphere from the reproduction of our lives. In other words, new infrastructures, based on the idea of common wealth, will not be set up to exploit our labor, dispossess our communities, or to divide our lives. Rather, they will work to provide collective social resources and care so that we may all be free to pursue happiness, create beautiful and/or useful things, and to realize our potential within a social world of living in common. Crucially, to create the conditions for these new, democratic forms of freedom rooted in radical equality, we need to find ways to refuse and exit the financial networks of Empire and the dispossessions of creditocracy, building new systems that invite everyone to participate in the ongoing production of new worlds and the sharing of the wealth that we produce in common.

    It's not up to me to tell you exactly where to look, but I assure you that potentialities for these new worlds are everywhere around you.

    [Feb 13, 2019] Microsoft patches 0-day vulnerabilities in IE and Exchange

    It is unclear how long this vulnerability exists, but this is pretty serious staff that shows how Hillary server could be hacked via Abedin account. As Abedin technical level was lower then zero, to hack into her home laptop just just trivial.
    Feb 13, 2019 | arstechnica.com

    Microsoft also patched Exchange against a vulnerability that allowed remote attackers with little more than an unprivileged mailbox account to gain administrative control over the server. Dubbed PrivExchange, CVE-2019-0686 was publicly disclosed last month , along with proof-of-concept code that exploited it. In Tuesday's advisory , Microsoft officials said they haven't seen active exploits yet but that they were "likely."

    [Feb 12, 2019] Older Workers Need a Different Kind of Layoff A 60-year-old whose position is eliminated might be unable to find another job, but could retire if allowed early access to Medicare

    Highly recommended!
    This is a constructive suggestion that is implementable even under neoliberalism. As everything is perverted under neoliberalism that might prompt layoffs before the age of 55.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Older workers often struggle to get rehired as easily as younger workers. Age discrimination is a well-known problem in corporate America. What's a 60-year-old back office worker supposed to do if downsized in a merger? The BB&T-SunTrust prospect highlights the need for a new type of unemployment insurance for some of the workforce. ..."
    "... One policy might be treating unemployed older workers differently than younger workers. Giving them unemployment benefits for a longer period of time than younger workers would be one idea, as well as accelerating the age of Medicare eligibility for downsized employees over the age of 55. The latter idea would help younger workers as well, by encouraging older workers to accept buyout packages -- freeing up career opportunities for younger workers. ..."
    Feb 12, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

    The proposed merger between SunTrust and BB&T makes sense for both firms -- which is why Wall Street sent both stocks higher on Thursday after the announcement. But employees of the two banks, especially older workers who are not yet retirement age, are understandably less enthused at the prospect of downsizing. In a nation with almost 37 million workers over the age of 55, the quandary of SunTrust-BB&T workforce will become increasingly familiar across the U.S. economy.

    But what's good for the firms isn't good for all of the workers. Older workers often struggle to get rehired as easily as younger workers. Age discrimination is a well-known problem in corporate America. What's a 60-year-old back office worker supposed to do if downsized in a merger? The BB&T-SunTrust prospect highlights the need for a new type of unemployment insurance for some of the workforce.

    One policy might be treating unemployed older workers differently than younger workers. Giving them unemployment benefits for a longer period of time than younger workers would be one idea, as well as accelerating the age of Medicare eligibility for downsized employees over the age of 55. The latter idea would help younger workers as well, by encouraging older workers to accept buyout packages -- freeing up career opportunities for younger workers.

    The economy can be callous toward older workers, but policy makers don't have to be. We should think about ways of dealing with this shift in the labor market before it happens.

    [Jan 29, 2019] 7th Circuit Rules Age Discrimination Law Does Not Include Job Applicants

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans. ..."
    "... Kleber filed suit, pursuing claims for both disparate treatment and disparate impact under the ADEA. The Chicago Tribune notes in Hinsdale man loses appeal in age discrimination case that challenged experience caps in job ads that "Kleber had out of work and job hunting for three years" when he applied for the CareFusion job. ..."
    "... Unfortunately, the seventh circuit has now held that the disparate impact section of the ADEA does not extend to job applicants. .Judge Michael Scudder, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority 8-4 opinion, which reverses an earlier 2-1 panel ruling last April in Kleber's favor that had initially overruled the district court's dismissal of Kleber's disparate impact claim. ..."
    "... hiring discrimination is difficult to prove and often goes unreported. Only 3 percent have made a formal complaint. ..."
    "... The decision narrowly applies to disparate impact claims of age discrimination under the ADEA. It is important to remember that job applicants are protected under the disparate treatment portion of the statute. ..."
    "... I forbade my kids to study programming. ..."
    "... I'm re reading the classic of Sociology Ain't No Makin It by Jay MacLeod, in which he studies the employment prospects of youths in the 1980s and determined that even then there was no stable private sector employment and your best option is a government job or to have an excellent "network" which is understandably hard for most people to achieve. ..."
    "... I think the trick is to study something and programming, so the programming becomes a tool rather than an end. ..."
    "... the problem is it is almost impossible to exit the programming business and join another domain. Anyone can enter it. (evidence – all the people with "engineering" degrees from India) Also my wages are now 50% of what i made 10 years ago (nominal). Also I notice that almost no one is doing sincere work. Most are just coasting, pretending to work with the latest toy (ie, preparing for the next interview). ..."
    "... I am an "aging" former STEM worker (histology researcher) as well. Much like the IT landscape, you are considered "over-the-hill" at 35, which I turn on the 31st. ..."
    "... Most of the positions in science and engineering fields now are basically "gig" positions, lasting a few months to a year. ..."
    Jan 29, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

    The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided in Kleber v. CareFusion Corporation last Wednesday that disparate impact liability under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) applies only to current employees and does not include job applicants.

    The case was brought by Dale Kleber, an attorney, who applied for a senior position in CareFusion's legal department. The job description required applicants to have "3 to 7 years (no more than 7 years) of relevant legal experience."

    Kleber was 58 at the time he applied and had more than seven years of pertinent experience. CareFusion hired a 29-year-old applicant who met but did not exceed the experience requirement.

    Kleber filed suit, pursuing claims for both disparate treatment and disparate impact under the ADEA. The Chicago Tribune notes in Hinsdale man loses appeal in age discrimination case that challenged experience caps in job ads that "Kleber had out of work and job hunting for three years" when he applied for the CareFusion job.

    Some Basics

    Let's start with some basics, as the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set out in a brief primer on basic US age discrimination law entitled Questions and Answers on EEOC Final Rule on Disparate Impact and "Reasonable Factors Other Than Age" Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 . The EEOC began with a brief description of the purpose of the ADEA:

    The purpose of the ADEA is to prohibit employment discrimination against people who are 40 years of age or older. Congress enacted the ADEA in 1967 because of its concern that older workers were disadvantaged in retaining and regaining employment. The ADEA also addressed concerns that older workers were barred from employment by some common employment practices that were not intended to exclude older workers, but that had the effect of doing so and were unrelated to job performance.

    It was with these concerns in mind that Congress created a system that included liability for both disparate treatment and disparate impact. What's the difference between these two concepts?

    According to the EEOC:

    [The ADEA] prohibits discrimination against workers because of their older age with respect to any aspect of employment. In addition to prohibiting intentional discrimination against older workers (known as "disparate treatment"), the ADEA prohibits practices that, although facially neutral with regard to age, have the effect of harming older workers more than younger workers (known as "disparate impact"), unless the employer can show that the practice is based on an [Reasonable Factor Other Than Age (RFAO)]

    The crux: it's much easier for a plaintiff to prove disparate impact, because s/he needn't show that the employer intended to discriminate. Of course, many if not most employers are savvy enough not to be explicit about their intentions to discriminate against older people as they don't wish to get sued.

    District, Panel, and Full Seventh Circuit Decisions

    The district court dismissed Kleber's disparate impact claim, on the grounds that the text of the statute- (§ 4(a)(2))- did not extend to outside job applicants. Kleber then voluntarily dismissed his separate claim for disparate treatment liability to appeal the dismissal of his disparate impact claim. No doubt he was aware – either because he was an attorney, or because of the legal advice received – that it is much more difficult to prevail on a disparate treatment claim, which would require that he establish CareFusion's intent to discriminate.

    Or at least that was true before this decision was rendered.

    Unfortunately, the seventh circuit has now held that the disparate impact section of the ADEA does not extend to job applicants. .Judge Michael Scudder, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority 8-4 opinion, which reverses an earlier 2-1 panel ruling last April in Kleber's favor that had initially overruled the district court's dismissal of Kleber's disparate impact claim.

    The majority ruled:

    By its terms, § 4(a)(2) proscribes certain conduct by employers and limits its protection to employees. The prohibited conduct entails an employer acting in any way to limit, segregate, or classify its employees based on age. The language of § 4(a)(2) then goes on to make clear that its proscriptions apply only if an employer's actions have a particular impact -- "depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to deprive any individual of em- ployment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect[ing] his status as an employee." This language plainly demonstrates that the requisite impact must befall an individual with "status as an employee." Put most simply, the reach of § 4(a)(2) does not extend to applicants for employment, as common dictionary definitions confirm that an applicant has no "status as an employee." (citation omitted)[opinion, pp. 3-4]

    By contrast, in the disparate treatment part of the statute (§ 4(a)(1)):

    Congress made it unlawful for an employer "to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privi- leges of employment, because of such individual's age."[opinion, p.6]

    The court compared the disparate treatment section – § 4(a)(1) – directly with the disparate impact section – § 4(a)(2):

    Yet a side-by-side comparison of § 4(a)(1) with § 4(a)(2) shows that the language in the former plainly covering appli-cants is conspicuously absent from the latter. Section 4(a)(2) says nothing about an employer's decision "to fail or refuse to hire any individual" and instead speaks only in terms of an employer's actions that "adversely affect his status as an employee." We cannot conclude this difference means nothing: "when 'Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another' -- let alone in the very next provision -- the Court presumes that Congress intended a difference in meaning." (citations omitted)[opinion, pp. 6-7]

    The majority's conclusion:

    In the end, the plain language of § 4(a)(2) leaves room for only one interpretation: Congress authorized only employees to bring disparate impact claims.[opinion, p.8]

    Greying of the Workforce

    Older people account for a growing percentage of the workforce, as Reuters reports in Age bias law does not cover job applicants: U.S. appeals court :

    People 55 or older comprised 22.4 percent of U.S. workers in 2016, up from 11.9 percent in 1996, and may account for close to one-fourth of the labor force by 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    The greying of the workforce is "thanks to better health in older age and insufficient savings that require people to keeping working longer," according to the Chicago Tribune. Yet:

    numerous hiring practices are under fire for negatively impacting older applicants. In addition to experience caps, lawsuits have challenged the exclusive use of on-campus recruiting to fill positions and algorithms that target job ads to show only in certain people's social media feeds.

    Unless Congress amends the ADEA to include job applicants, older people will continue to face barriers to getting jobs.

    The Chicago Tribune reports:

    The [EEOC], which receives about 20,000 age discrimination charges every year, issued a report in June citing surveys that found 3 in 4 older workers believe their age is an obstacle in getting a job. Yet hiring discrimination is difficult to prove and often goes unreported. Only 3 percent have made a formal complaint. Allowing older applicants to challenge policies that have an unintentionally discriminatory impact would offer another tool for fighting age discrimination, Ray Peeler, associate legal counsel at the EEOC, has said.

    How will these disparate impact claims now fare?

    The Bottom Line

    FordHarrison, a firm specialising in human relations law, noted in Seventh Circuit Limits Job Applicants' Age Discrimination Claims :

    The decision narrowly applies to disparate impact claims of age discrimination under the ADEA. It is important to remember that job applicants are protected under the disparate treatment portion of the statute. There is no split among the federal appeals courts on this issue, making it an unlikely candidate for Supreme Court review, but the four judges in dissent read the statute as being vague and susceptible to an interpretation that includes job applicants.

    Their conclusion: "a decision finding disparate impact liability for job applicants under the ADEA is unlikely in the near future."

    Alas, for reasons of space, I will not consider the extensive dissent. My purpose in writing this post is to discuss the majority decision, not to opine on which side made the better arguments.

    antidlc , January 27, 2019 at 3:28 pm

    8-4 opinion. Which judges ruled for the majority? Which judges ruled for the minority opinion?

    Sorry,,,don't have time to research right now. It says a Trump appointee wrote the majority opinion. Who were the other 7?

    grayslady , January 27, 2019 at 6:09 pm

    There were 3 judges who dissented in whole and one who dissented in part. Of the three full dissensions, two were Clinton appointees (including the Chief Justice, who was one of the dissenters) and one was a Reagan appointee. The partial dissenter was also a Reagan appointee.

    run75441 , January 27, 2019 at 11:25 pm

    ant: Not your law clerk, read the opinion. Easterbook and Wood dissented. Find the other two and and you can figure out who agreed.

    YankeeFrank , January 27, 2019 at 3:58 pm

    "depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect[ing] his status as an employee."

    –This language plainly demonstrates that the requisite impact must befall an individual with "status as an employee."

    So they totally ignore the first part of the sentence -- "depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to deprive any individual of employment opportunities " -- "employment opportunities" clearly applies to applicants.

    Its as if these judges cannot make sense of the English language. Hopefully the judges on appeal will display better command of the language.

    Alfred , January 27, 2019 at 5:56 pm

    I agree. "Employment opportunities," in the "plain language" so meticulously respected by the 7th Circuit, must surely refer at minimum to 'the chance to apply for a job and to have one's application fairly considered'. It seems on the other hand a stretch to interpret the phrase to mean only 'the chance to keep a job one already has'. Both are important, however; to split them would challenge even Solomonic wisdom, as I suppose the curious decision discussed here demonstrates. I am less convinced that the facts as presented here establish a clear case of age discrimination. True, they point in that direction. But a hypothetical 58-year old who only earned a law degree in his or her early 50s, perhaps after an earlier career in paralegal work, could have legitimately applied for a position requiring 3 to 7 years of "relevant legal experience." That last phrase, is of course, quite weasel-y: what counts as "relevant" and what counts as "legal" experience would under any circumstances be subject to (discriminatory) interpretation. The limitation of years of experience in the job announcement strikes me as a means to keep the salary within a certain budgetary range as prescribed either by law or collective bargaining.

    KLG , January 27, 2019 at 6:42 pm

    Almost like the willful misunderstanding of "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State "? Of course, that militia also meant slave patrols and the occasional posse to put down the native "savages," but still.

    Lambert Strether , January 28, 2019 at 2:08 am

    > "depriv[ing] or tend[ing] to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect[ing] his status as an employee."

    Says "or." Not "and."

    Magic Sam , January 27, 2019 at 5:53 pm

    They are failing to find what they don't want to find.

    Magic Sam , January 27, 2019 at 5:58 pm

    Being pro-Labor will not get you Federalist Society approval to be nominated to the bench by Trump. This decision came down via the ideological makeup of the court, not the letter of the law. Their stated pretext is obviously b.s.. It contradicts itself.

    Mattie , January 27, 2019 at 6:05 pm

    Yep. That is when their Utah et al property mgt teams began breaking into homes, tossing contents – including pets – outside & changing locks

    Even when borrowers were in approved HAMP, etc. pipelines

    PLUG: If you haven't yet – See "The Florida Project"

    nothing but the truth , January 27, 2019 at 7:18 pm

    as an aging "stem" (cough coder) worker who typically has to look for a new "gig" every few years, i am trembling at this.

    Luckily, i bought a small business when I had a few saved up, so I won't starve.

    Health insurance is another matter.

    I forbade my kids to study programming.

    Lambert Strether , January 28, 2019 at 2:09 am

    Plumbing. Electrical work. Permaculture. Get those kids Jackpot-ready!

    Joe Well , January 28, 2019 at 11:40 am

    I'm re reading the classic of Sociology Ain't No Makin It by Jay MacLeod, in which he studies the employment prospects of youths in the 1980s and determined that even then there was no stable private sector employment and your best option is a government job or to have an excellent "network" which is understandably hard for most people to achieve. So I'm genuinely interested in what possible options there are for anyone entering the job market today or God help you, re-entering. I am guessing the barriers to entry to those trades are quite high but would love to be corrected.

    jrs , January 28, 2019 at 1:39 pm

    what is the point of being jackpot ready if you can't even support yourself today? To fantasize about collapse while sleeping in a rented closet and driving for Uber? In that case one's personal collapse has already happened, which will matter a lot more to an individual than any potential jackpot.

    Plumbers and electricians can make money now of course (although yea barriers to entry do seem high, don't you kind of have to know people to get in those industries?). But permaculture?

    Ford Prefect , January 28, 2019 at 1:00 pm

    I think the trick is to study something and programming, so the programming becomes a tool rather than an end. A couple of my kids used to ride horses. One of the instructors and stable owners said that a lot of people went to school for equine studies and ended up shoveling horse poop for a living. She said the thing to do was to study business and do the equestrian stuff as a hobby/minor. That way you came out prepared to run a business and hire the equine studies people to clean the stalls.

    jrs , January 28, 2019 at 1:36 pm

    Do you actually see that many jobs requiring something and programming though? I haven't really. There seems no easy transition out of software work which that would make possible either. Might as well just study the "something".

    rd , January 28, 2019 at 2:21 pm

    Programming is a means to an end, not the end itself. If all you do is program, then you are essentially a machine lathe operator, not somebody creating the products the lathe operators turn out.

    Understanding what needs to be done helps with structured programs and better input/output design. In turn, structured programming is a good tool to understand the basics of how to manage tasks. At the higher level, Fred Brooks book "The Mythical Man-Month" has a lot of useful project management information that can be re-applied for non computer program development.

    We are doing a lot of work with mobile computing and data collection to assist in our regular work. The people doing this are mainly non-computer scientists that have learned enough programming to get by.

    The engineering programs that we use are typically written more by engineers than by programmers as the entire point behind the program is to apply the theory into a numerical computation and presentation system. Programmers with a graphic design background can assist in creating much better user interfaces.

    If you have some sort of information theory background (GIS, statistics, etc.) then big data actually means something.

    nothing but the truth , January 28, 2019 at 7:02 pm

    the problem is it is almost impossible to exit the programming business and join another domain. Anyone can enter it. (evidence – all the people with "engineering" degrees from India) Also my wages are now 50% of what i made 10 years ago (nominal). Also I notice that almost no one is doing sincere work. Most are just coasting, pretending to work with the latest toy (ie, preparing for the next interview).

    Now almost every "interview" requires writing a coding exam. Which other profession will make you write an exam for 25-30 year veterans? Can you write your high school exam again today? What if your profession requires you to write it a couple of times almost every year?

    Hepativore , January 28, 2019 at 2:56 pm

    I am an "aging" former STEM worker (histology researcher) as well. Much like the IT landscape, you are considered "over-the-hill" at 35, which I turn on the 31st. While I do not have children and never intend to get married, many biotech companies consider this the age at which a worker is getting long in the tooth. This is because there is the underlying assumption that is when people start having familial obligations.

    Most of the positions in science and engineering fields now are basically "gig" positions, lasting a few months to a year. A lot of people my age are finding how much harder it is to find any position at all in these areas as there is a massive pool of people to choose from, even for permatemp work simply because serfs in their mid-30s might get uppity about benefits like family health plans or 401k

    Steve , January 27, 2019 at 7:32 pm

    I am 59 and do not mind having employers discriminate against me due to age. ( I also need a job) I had my own business and over the years got quite damaged. I was a contractor specializing in older (historical) work.

    I was always the lead worker with many friends and other s working with me. At 52 I was given a choice of very involved neck surgery or quit. ( no small businesses have disability insurance!)

    I shut down everything and helped my friends who worked for me take some of the work or find something else. I was also a nationally published computer consultant a long time ago and graphic artist.

    Reality is I can still do many things but I do nothing as well as I did when I was younger and the cost to employers for me is far higher than a younger person. I had my chance and I chose poorly. Younger people, if that makes them abetter fit, deserve a chance now more than I do.

    Joe Well , January 27, 2019 at 7:49 pm

    I'm sorry for your predicament. Do you mean you chose poorly when you chose not to get neck surgery? What was the choice you regret?

    Steve , January 27, 2019 at 10:12 pm

    My career choices. Choosing to close my business to possibly avoid the surgery was actually a good choice.

    Joe Well , January 28, 2019 at 11:47 am

    I'm sorry for your challenges but I don't think there were many good careers you could have chosen and it would have required a crystal ball to know which were the good ones. Americans your age entered the job market just after the very end of the Golden Age of labor conditions and have been weathering the decline your entire working lives. At least I entered the job market when everyone knew for years things were falling apart. It's not your fault. You were cheated plain and simple.

    Lambert Strether , January 28, 2019 at 2:14 am

    > I had my chance and I chose poorly.

    I don't see how it's possible to predict the labor market years in advance. Why blame yourself for poor choices when so much chance is involved?

    With a Jobs Guarantee, such questions would not arise. I also don't think it's only a question of doing, but a question of sharing ("experience, strength, and hope," as AA -- a very successful organization! -- puts it, in a way of thinking that has wide application).

    Dianne Shatin , January 27, 2019 at 7:46 pm

    Unelected plutocrat and his international syndicate funded by former IBM artificial intelligence developer and social darwinian. data manipulation electronic platforms and social media are at the levels of power in the USA. Anti justice, anti enlightenment, etc.

    Since the installation of GW Bush by the Supreme Court, almost 20 yrs. ago, they have tunneled deeply, speaking through propaganda machines such as Rush Limbaugh gaining traction .making it over the finish line with KGB and Russian oligarch backing. The net effect on us? The loss of all built on the foundation of the enlightenment and an exceptional nation no king, a nation of, for and by the people, and the rule of law. There is nothing Judeo-Christian about social darwinism but is eerily similar to National Socialism (Nazis). The ruling againt the plaintiff by the 7th circuit in the U.S. and their success in creating chaos in Great Britain vis a vis "Brexit" by fascist Lafarge Inc. are indicators how easy their ascent.
    ows how powerful they have become.

    anon y'mouse , January 27, 2019 at 9:19 pm

    They had better get ready to lower the SSI retirement age to 55, then. Or I predict blood in the streets.

    jrs , January 28, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    I wish it was so. They just expect the older crowd to die quietly.

    How is it legal , January 27, 2019 at 10:04 pm

    Where are the Bipartisan Presidential Candidates and Legislators on oral and verbal condemnation of Age Discrimination , along with putting teeth into Age Discrimination Laws, and Tax Policy. – nowhere to be seen , or heard, that I've noticed; particularly in Blue ™ California, which is famed for Age Discrimination of those as young as 36 years of age, since Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed anyone over 35, over the hill in the early 2000's , and never got crushed for it by the media, or the Politicians, as he should have (particularly in Silicon Valley).

    I know those Republicans are venal, but I dare anyone to show me a meaningful Age Discrimination Policy Proposal, pushed by Blue Obama, Hillary, even Sanders and Jill Stein. Certainly none of California's Nationally known (many well over retirement age) Gubernatorial and Legislative Democratic Politicians: Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Ro Khanna (or the lesser known California Federal State and Local Democratic Politicians) have ever addressed it; despite the fact that homelessness deaths of those near 'retirement age' have been frighteningly increasing in California's obscenely wealthy homelessness 'hotspots,' such as Silicon Valley.

    Such a tragic issue, which has occurred while the last over a decade of Mainstream News and Online Pundits, have Proclaimed 50 to be the new 30. Sadistic. I have no doubt this is linked to the ever increasing Deaths of Despair and attempted and successful suicides of those under, and just over retirement age– while the US has an average Senate age of 65, and a President and 2020 Presidential contenders, over 70 (I am not at all saying older persons shouldn't be elected, nor that younger persons shouldn't be elected, I'm pointing out the imbalance, insanity, and cruelty of it).

    Further, age discrimination has been particularly brutal to single, divorced, and widowed females , whom have most assuredly made far, far less on the dollar than males (if they could even get hired for the position, or leave the kids alone, and housekeeping undone, to get a job):

    Patrick Button, an assistant economics professor at Tulane University, was part of a research project last year that looked at callback rates from resumes in various entry-level jobs. He said women seeking the positions appeared to be most affected.

    "Based on over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age, but considerably less evidence of age discrimination against men," according to an abstract of the study.

    Jacquelyn James, co-director of the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College, said age discrimination in employment is a crucial issue in part because of societal changes that are forcing people to delay retirement. Moves away from defined-¬benefit pension plans to less assured forms of retirement savings are part of the reason.

    Lambert Strether , January 28, 2019 at 2:15 am

    > "Based on over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age, but considerably less evidence of age discrimination against men," according to an abstract of the study.

    Well, these aren't real women, obviously. If they were, the Democrats would already be taking care of them.

    jrs , January 28, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    From the article: The greying of the workforce is "thanks to better health in older age and insufficient savings that require people to keeping working longer," according to the Chicago Tribune.

    Get on the clue train Chicago Tribune, because your like W and Trump not knowing how a supermarket works, that's how dense you are. Even if one saved, and even if one won the luck lottery in terms of job stability and adequate income to save from, healthcare alone is a reason to work, either to get employer provided if lucky, or to work without it and put most of one's money toward an ACA plan or the like if not lucky. Yes the cost of almost all other necessities has also increased greatly, but even parts of the country without a high cost of living have unaffordable healthcare.

    Enquiring Mind , January 27, 2019 at 11:07 pm

    Benefits may be 23-30% or so of payroll and represent another expense management opportunity for the diligent executive. One piece of low-hanging fruit is the age-related healthcare cost. If you hire young people, who under-consume healthcare relative to older cohorts, you save money, ceteris paribus. They have lower premiums, lower loss experience and they rebound more quickly, so you hit a triple at your first at-bat swinging at that fruit. Yes, metaphors are fungible along with every line on the income statement.

    If your company still has the vestiges of a pension or similar blandishment, you may even back-load contributions more aggressively, of course to the extent allowable. That added expense diligence will pay off when those annuated employees leave before hitting the more expensive funding years.

    NB, the above reflects what I saw and heard at a Fortune 500 company.

    rd , January 28, 2019 at 12:56 pm

    Another good reason for a Canadian style single payer system. That turns a deciding factor into a non-factor.

    Jack Hayes , January 28, 2019 at 8:15 am

    A reason why the court system is overburdened is lack of clarity in laws and regulations. Fix the disparity between the two sections of the law so that courts don't have to decide which section rules.

    rd , January 28, 2019 at 2:24 pm

    Polarization has made tweaks and repairs of laws impossible.

    Jeff N , January 28, 2019 at 10:17 am

    Yep. Many police departments *legally* refuse to hire anyone over 35 years old (exceptions for prior police experience or certain military service)

    Joe Well , January 28, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    It amazes me how often the government will give itself exemptions to its own laws and principles, and also how often "progressive" nonprofits and political groups will also give themselves such exemptions, for instance, regarding health insurance, paid overtime, paid training, etc. that they are legally required to provide.

    Ford Prefect , January 28, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    There are specific physical demands in things like policing. So it doesn't make much sense to hire 55 year old rookie policemen when many policemen are retiring at that age.

    Arthur Dent , January 28, 2019 at 2:59 pm

    Its an interesting quandary. We have older staff that went back to school and changed careers. They do a good job and get paid at a rate similar to the younger staff with similar job-related experience. However, they will be retiring at about the same time as the much more experienced staff, so they will not be future succession replacements for the senior staff.

    So we also have to hire people in their 20s and 30s because that will be the future when people like me retire in a few years. That could very well be the reason for the specific wording of the job opening (I haven't read the opinion). I know of current hiring for a position where the firm is primarily looking for somebody in their 20s or early 30s for precisely that reason. The staff currently doing the work are in their 40s and 50s and need to start bringing up the next generation. If somebody went back to school late and was in their 40s or 50s (so would be at a lower billing rate due to lack of job related experience), they would be seriously considered. But the firm would still be left with the challenge of having to hire another person at the younger age within a couple of years to build the succession. Once people make it past 5 years at the firm, they tend to stay for a long time with senior staff generally having been at the firm for 20 years or more, so hiring somebody really is a long-term investment.

    [Jan 17, 2019] The financial struggles of unplanned retirement

    People who are kicked out of their IT jobs around 55 now has difficulties to find even full-time McJobs... Only part time jobs are available. With the current round of layoff and job freezes, neoliberalism in the USA is entering terminal phase, I think.
    Jan 17, 2019 | finance.yahoo.com

    A survey by Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found on average Americans are retiring at age 63, with more than half indicating they retired sooner than they had planned. Among them, most retired for health or employment-related reasons.

    ... ... ...

    On April 3, 2018, Linda LaBarbera received the phone call that changed her life forever. "We are outsourcing your work to India and your services are no longer needed, effective today," the voice on the other end of the phone line said.

    ... ... ...

    "It's not like we are starving or don't have a home or anything like that," she says. "But we did have other plans for before we retired and setting ourselves up a little better while we both still had jobs."

    ... ... ...

    Linda hasn't needed to dip into her 401(k) yet. She plans to start collecting Social Security when she turns 70, which will give her the maximum benefit. To earn money and keep busy, Linda has taken short-term contract editing jobs. She says she will only withdraw money from her savings if something catastrophic happens. Her husband's salary is their main source of income.

    "I am used to going out and spending money on other people," she says. "We are very generous with our family and friends who are not as well off as we are. So we take care of a lot of people. We can't do that anymore. I can't go out and be frivolous anymore. I do have to look at what we spend - what I spend."

    Vogelbacher says cutting costs is essential when living in retirement, especially for those on a fixed income. He suggests moving to a tax-friendly location if possible. Kiplinger ranks Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Florida as the top five tax-friendly states for retirees. If their health allows, Vogelbacher recommends getting a part-time job. For those who own a home, he says paying off the mortgage is a smart financial move.

    ... ... ...

    Monica is one of the 44 percent of unmarried persons who rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income. At the beginning of 2019, Monica and more than 62 million Americans received a 2.8 percent cost of living adjustment from Social Security. The increase is the largest since 2012.

    With the Social Security hike, Monica's monthly check climbed $33. Unfortunately, the new year also brought her a slight increase in what she pays for Medicare; along with a $500 property tax bill and the usual laundry list of monthly expenses.

    "If you don't have much, the (Social Security) raise doesn't represent anything," she says with a dry laugh. "But it's good to get it."

    [Nov 13, 2018] "I understand your house is on fire ."

    Nov 13, 2018 | twitter.com

    [Nov 03, 2018] The evaluation system in which there was ALWAYS a "top 10 percent" and a "bottom ten percent" is sociopathic in it's nature

    Notable quotes:
    "... Four years in GTS ... joined via being outsourced to IBM by my previous employer. Left GTS after 4 years. ..."
    "... The IBM way of life was throughout the Oughts and the Teens an utter and complete failure from the perspective of getting work done right and using people to their appropriate and full potential. ..."
    "... As a GTS employee, professional technical training was deemed unnecessary, hence I had no access to any unless I paid for it myself and used my personal time ... the only training available was cheesy presentations or other web based garbage from the intranet, or casual / OJT style meetings with other staff who were NOT professional or expert trainers. ..."
    "... As a GTS employee, I had NO access to the expert and professional tools that IBM fricking made and sold to the same damn customers I was supposed to be supporting. Did we have expert and professional workflow / document management / ITIL aligned incident and problem management tools? NO, we had fricking Lotus Notes and email. Instead of upgrading to the newest and best software solutions for data center / IT management & support, we degraded everything down the simplest and least complex single function tools that no "best practices" organization on Earth would ever consider using. ..."
    "... And the people management paradigm ... employees ranked annually not against a static or shared goal or metric, but in relation to each other, and there was ALWAYS a "top 10 percent" and a "bottom ten percent" required by upper management ... a system that was sociopathic in it's nature because it encourages employees to NOT work together ... by screwing over one's coworkers, perhaps by not giving necessary information, timely support, assistance as needed or requested, one could potentially hurt their performance and make oneself look relatively better. That's a self-defeating system and it was encouraged by the way IBM ran things. ..."
    Nov 03, 2018 | www.zdnet.com

    Gravyboat McGee , Wednesday, April 26, 2017 9:00 PM

    Four years in GTS ... joined via being outsourced to IBM by my previous employer. Left GTS after 4 years.

    The IBM way of life was throughout the Oughts and the Teens an utter and complete failure from the perspective of getting work done right and using people to their appropriate and full potential. I went from a multi-disciplinary team of engineers working across technologies to support corporate needs in the IT environment to being siloed into a single-function organization.

    My first year of on-boarding with IBM was spent deconstructing application integration and cross-organizational structures of support and interwork that I had spent 6 years building and maintaining. Handing off different chunks of work (again, before the outsourcing, an Enterprise solution supported by one multi-disciplinary team) to different IBM GTS work silos that had no physical special relationship and no interworking history or habits. What we're talking about here is the notion of "left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing" ...

    THAT was the IBM way of doing things, and nothing I've read about them over the past decade or so tells me it has changed.

    As a GTS employee, professional technical training was deemed unnecessary, hence I had no access to any unless I paid for it myself and used my personal time ... the only training available was cheesy presentations or other web based garbage from the intranet, or casual / OJT style meetings with other staff who were NOT professional or expert trainers.

    As a GTS employee, I had NO access to the expert and professional tools that IBM fricking made and sold to the same damn customers I was supposed to be supporting. Did we have expert and professional workflow / document management / ITIL aligned incident and problem management tools? NO, we had fricking Lotus Notes and email. Instead of upgrading to the newest and best software solutions for data center / IT management & support, we degraded everything down the simplest and least complex single function tools that no "best practices" organization on Earth would ever consider using.

    And the people management paradigm ... employees ranked annually not against a static or shared goal or metric, but in relation to each other, and there was ALWAYS a "top 10 percent" and a "bottom ten percent" required by upper management ... a system that was sociopathic in it's nature because it encourages employees to NOT work together ... by screwing over one's coworkers, perhaps by not giving necessary information, timely support, assistance as needed or requested, one could potentially hurt their performance and make oneself look relatively better. That's a self-defeating system and it was encouraged by the way IBM ran things.

    The "not invented here" ideology was embedded deeply in the souls of all senior IBMers I ever met or worked with ... if you come on board with any outside knowledge or experience, you must not dare to say "this way works better" because you'd be shut down before you could blink. The phrase "best practices" to them means "the way we've always done it".

    IBM gave up on innovation long ago. Since the 90's the vast majority of their software has been bought, not built. Buy a small company, strip out the innovation, slap an IBM label on it, sell it as the next coming of Jesus even though they refuse to expend any R&D to push the product to the next level ... damn near everything IBM sold was gentrified, never cutting edge.

    And don't get me started on sales practices ... tell the customer how product XYZ is a guaranteed moonshot, they'll be living on lunar real estate in no time at all, and after all the contracts are signed hand the customer a box of nuts & bolts and a letter telling them where they can look up instructions on how to build their own moon rocket. Or for XX dollars more a year, hire a Professional Services IBMer to build it for them.

    I have no sympathy for IBM. They need a clean sweep throughout upper management, especially any of the old True Blue hard-core IBMers.

    [Oct 30, 2018] There are plenty of examples of people who were doing their jobs, IN SPADES, putting in tons of unpaid overtime, and generally doing whatever was humanly possible to make sure that whatever was promised to the customer was delivered within their span of control. As they grew older corporations threw them out like an empty can

    Notable quotes:
    "... The other alternative is a market-based life that, for many, will be cruel, brutish, and short. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Lorilynn King

    Step back and think about this for a minute. There are plenty of examples of people who were doing their jobs, IN SPADES, putting in tons of unpaid overtime, and generally doing whatever was humanly possible to make sure that whatever was promised to the customer was delivered (within their span of control... I'm not going to get into a discussion of how IBM pulls the rug out from underneath contracts after they've been signed).

    These people were, and still are, high performers, they are committed to the job and the purpose that has been communicated to them by their peers, management, and customers; and they take the time (their OWN time) to pick up new skills and make sure that they are still current and marketable. They do this because they are committed to doing the job to the best of their ability.... it's what makes them who they are.

    IBM (and other companies) are firing these very people ***for one reason and one reason ONLY***: their AGE. They have the skills and they're doing their jobs. If the same person was 30 you can bet that they'd still be there. Most of the time it has NOTHING to do with performance or lack of concurrency. Once the employee is fired, the job is done by someone else. The work is still there, but it's being done by someone younger and/or of a different nationality.

    The money that is being saved by these companies has to come from somewhere. People that are having to withdraw their retirement savings 20 or so years earlier than planned are going to run out of funds.... and when they're in nursing homes, guess who is going to be supporting them? Social security will be long gone, their kids have their own monetary challenges.... so it will be government programs.... maybe.

    This is not just a problem that impacts the 40 and over crowd. This is going to impact our entire society for generations to come.

    NoPolitician
    The business reality you speak of can be tempered via government actions. A few things:
    • One of the major hardships here is laying someone off when they need income the most - to pay for their children's college education. To mitigate this, as a country we could make a public education free. That takes off a lot of the sting, some people might relish a change in career when they are in their 50s except that the drop in salary is so steep when changing careers.
    • We could lower the retirement age to 55 and increase Social Security to more than a poverty-level existence.Being laid off when you're 50 or 55 - with little chance to be hired anywhere else - would not hurt as much.
    • We could offer federal wage subsidies for older workers to make them more attractive to hire. While some might see this as a thumb on the scale against younger workers, in reality it would be simply a counterweight to the thumb that is already there against older workers.
    • Universal health care equalizes the cost of older and younger workers.

    The other alternative is a market-based life that, for many, will be cruel, brutish, and short.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Soon after I started, the company fired hundreds of 50-something employees and put we "kids" in their jobs. Seeing that employee loyalty was a one way street at that place, I left after a couple of years. Best career move I ever made.

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Al Romig , Wednesday, April 18, 2018 5:20 AM

    As a new engineering graduate, I joined a similar-sized multinational US-based company in the early '70s. Their recruiting pitch was, "Come to work here, kid. Do your job, keep your nose clean, and you will enjoy great, secure work until you retire on easy street".

    Soon after I started, the company fired hundreds of 50-something employees and put we "kids" in their jobs. Seeing that employee loyalty was a one way street at that place, I left after a couple of years. Best career move I ever made.

    GoingGone , Friday, April 13, 2018 6:06 PM
    As a 25yr+ vet of IBM, I can confirm that this article is spot-on true. IBM used to be a proud and transparent company that clearly demonstrated that it valued its employees as much as it did its stock performance or dividend rate or EPS, simply because it is good for business. Those principles helped make and keep IBM atop the business world as the most trusted international brand and business icon of success for so many years. In 2000, all that changed when Sam Palmisano became the CEO. Palmisano's now infamous "Roadmap 2015" ran the company into the ground through its maniacal focus on increasing EPS at any and all costs. Literally. Like, its employees, employee compensation, benefits, skills, and education opportunities. Like, its products, product innovation, quality, and customer service. All of which resulted in the devastation of its technical capability and competitiveness, employee engagement, and customer loyalty. Executives seemed happy enough as their compensation grew nicely with greater financial efficiencies, and Palisano got a sweet $270M+ exit package in 2012 for a job well done. The new CEO, Ginni Rometty has since undergone a lot of scrutiny for her lack of business results, but she was screwed from day one. Of course, that doesn't leave her off the hook for the business practices outlined in the article, but what do you expect: she was hand picked by Palmisano and approved by the same board that thought Palmisano was golden.
    Paul V Sutera , Tuesday, April 3, 2018 7:33 PM
    In 1994, I saved my job at IBM for the first time, and survived. But I was 36 years old. I sat down at the desk of a man in his 50s, and found a few odds and ends left for me in the desk. Almost 20 years later, it was my turn to go. My health and well-being is much better now. Less money but better health. The sins committed by management will always be: "I was just following orders".

    [Oct 30, 2018] IBM age discrimination

    Notable quotes:
    "... Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original version of this story. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Consider, for example, a planning presentation that former IBM executives said was drafted by heads of a business unit carved out of IBM's once-giant software group and charged with pursuing the "C," or cloud, portion of the company's CAMS strategy.

    The presentation laid out plans for substantially altering the unit's workforce. It was shown to company leaders including Diane Gherson, the senior vice president for human resources, and James Kavanaugh, recently elevated to chief financial officer. Its language was couched in the argot of "resources," IBM's term for employees, and "EP's," its shorthand for early professionals or recent college graduates.

    Among the goals: "Shift headcount mix towards greater % of Early Professional hires." Among the means: "[D]rive a more aggressive performance management approach to enable us to hire and replace where needed, and fund an influx of EPs to correct seniority mix." Among the expected results: "[A] significant reduction in our workforce of 2,500 resources."

    A slide from a similar presentation prepared last spring for the same leaders called for "re-profiling current talent" to "create room for new talent." Presentations for 2015 and 2016 for the 50,000-employee software group also included plans for "aggressive performance management" and emphasized the need to "maintain steady attrition to offset hiring."

    IBM declined to answer questions about whether either presentation was turned into company policy. The description of the planned moves matches what hundreds of older ex-employees told ProPublica they believe happened to them: They were ousted because of their age. The company used their exits to hire replacements, many of them young; to ship their work overseas; or to cut its overall headcount.

    Ed Alpern, now 65, of Austin, started his 39-year run with IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman. He ended as a project manager in October of 2016 when, he said, his manager told him he could either leave with severance and other parting benefits or be given a bad job review -- something he said he'd never previously received -- and risk being fired without them.

    Albert Poggi, now 70, was a three-decade IBM veteran and ran the company's Palisades, New York, technical center where clients can test new products. When notified in November of 2016 he was losing his job to layoff, he asked his bosses why, given what he said was a history of high job ratings. "They told me," he said, "they needed to fill it with someone newer."

    The presentations from the software group, as well as the stories of ex-employees like Alpern and Poggi, square with internal documents from two other major IBM business units. The documents for all three cover some or all of the years from 2013 through the beginning of 2018 and deal with job assessments, hiring, firing and layoffs.

    The documents detail practices that appear at odds with how IBM says it treats its employees. In many instances, the practices in effect, if not intent, tilt against the company's older U.S. workers.

    For example, IBM spokespeople and lawyers have said the company never considers a worker's age in making decisions about layoffs or firings.

    But one 2014 document reviewed by ProPublica includes dates of birth. An ex-IBM employee familiar with the process said executives from one business unit used it to decide about layoffs or other job changes for nearly a thousand workers, almost two-thirds of them over 50.

    Documents from subsequent years show that young workers are protected from cuts for at least a limited period of time. A 2016 slide presentation prepared by the company's global technology services unit, titled "U.S. Resource Action Process" and used to guide managers in layoff procedures, includes bullets for categories considered "ineligible" for layoff. Among them: "early professional hires," meaning recent college graduates.

    In responding to age-discrimination complaints that ex-employees file with the EEOC, lawyers for IBM say that front-line managers make all decisions about who gets laid off, and that their decisions are based strictly on skills and job performance, not age.

    But ProPublica reviewed spreadsheets that indicate front-line managers hardly acted alone in making layoff calls. Former IBM managers said the spreadsheets were prepared for upper-level executives and kept continuously updated. They list hundreds of employees together with codes like "lift and shift," indicating that their jobs were to be lifted from them and shifted overseas, and details such as whether IBM's clients had approved the change.

    An examination of several of the spreadsheets suggests that, whatever the criteria for assembling them, the resulting list of those marked for layoff was skewed toward older workers. A 2016 spreadsheet listed more than 400 full-time U.S. employees under the heading "REBAL," which refers to "rebalancing," the process that can lead to laying off workers and either replacing them or shifting the jobs overseas. Using the job search site LinkedIn, ProPublica was able to locate about 100 of these employees and then obtain their ages through public records. Ninety percent of those found were 40 or older. Seventy percent were over 50.

    IBM frequently cites its history of encouraging diversity in its responses to EEOC complaints about age discrimination. "IBM has been a leader in taking positive actions to ensure its business opportunities are made available to individuals without regard to age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation and other categories," a lawyer for the company wrote in a May 2017 letter. "This policy of non-discrimination is reflected in all IBM business activities."

    But ProPublica found at least one company business unit using a point system that disadvantaged older workers. The system awarded points for attributes valued by the company. The more points a person garnered, according to the former employee, the more protected she or he was from layoff or other negative job change; the fewer points, the more vulnerable.

    The arrangement appears on its face to favor younger newcomers over older veterans. Employees were awarded points for being relatively new at a job level or in a particular role. Those who worked for IBM for fewer years got more points than those who'd been there a long time.

    The ex-employee familiar with the process said a 2014 spreadsheet from that business unit, labeled "IBM Confidential," was assembled to assess the job prospects of more than 600 high-level employees, two-thirds of them from the U.S. It included employees' years of service with IBM, which the former employee said was used internally as a proxy for age. Also listed was an assessment by their bosses of their career trajectories as measured by the highest job level they were likely to attain if they remained at the company, as well as their point scores.

    The tilt against older workers is evident when employees' years of service are compared with their point scores. Those with no points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff had worked at IBM an average of more than 30 years; those with a high number of points averaged half that.

    Perhaps even more striking is the comparison between employees' service years and point scores on the one hand and their superiors' assessments of their career trajectories on the other.

    Along with many American employers, IBM has argued it needs to shed older workers because they're no longer at the top of their games or lack "contemporary" skills.

    But among those sized up in the confidential spreadsheet, fully 80 percent of older employees -- those with the most years of service but no points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff -- were rated by superiors as good enough to stay at their current job levels or be promoted. By contrast, only a small percentage of younger employees with a high number of points were similarly rated.

    "No major company would use tools to conduct a layoff where a disproportionate share of those let go were African Americans or women," said Cathy Ventrell-Monsees, senior attorney adviser with the EEOC and former director of age litigation for the senior lobbying giant AARP. "There's no difference if the tools result in a disproportionate share being older workers."

    In addition to the point system that disadvantaged older workers in layoffs, other documents suggest that IBM has made increasingly aggressive use of its job-rating machinery to pave the way for straight-out firings, or what the company calls "management-initiated separations." Internal documents suggest that older workers were especially targets.

    Like in many companies, IBM employees sit down with their managers at the start of each year and set goals for themselves. IBM graded on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being top-ranked.

    Those rated as 3 or 4 were given formal short-term goals known as personal improvement plans, or PIPs. Historically many managers were lenient, especially toward those with 3s whose ratings had dropped because of forces beyond their control, such as a weakness in the overall economy, ex-employees said.

    But within the past couple of years, IBM appears to have decided the time for leniency was over. For example, a software group planning document for 2015 said that, over and above layoffs, the unit should seek to fire about 3,000 of the unit's 50,000-plus workers.

    To make such deep cuts, the document said, executives should strike an "aggressive performance management posture." They needed to double the share of employees given low 3 and 4 ratings to at least 6.6 percent of the division's workforce. And because layoffs cost the company more than outright dismissals or resignations, the document said, executives should make sure that more than 80 percent of those with low ratings get fired or forced to quit.

    Finally, the 2015 document said the division should work "to attract the best and brightest early professionals" to replace up to two-thirds of those sent packing. A more recent planning document -- the presentation to top executives Gherson and Kavanaugh for a business unit carved out of the software group -- recommended using similar techniques to free up money by cutting current employees to fund an "influx" of young workers.

    In a recent interview, Poggi said he was resigned to being laid off. "Everybody at IBM has a bullet with their name on it," he said. Alpern wasn't nearly as accepting of being threatened with a poor job rating and then fired.

    Alpern had a particular reason for wanting to stay on at IBM, at least until the end of last year. His younger son, Justin, then a high school senior, had been named a National Merit semifinalist. Alpern wanted him to be able to apply for one of the company's Watson scholarships. But IBM had recently narrowed eligibility so only the children of current employees could apply, not also retirees as it was until 2014.

    Alpern had to make it through December for his son to be eligible.

    But in August, he said, his manager ordered him to retire. He sought to buy time by appealing to superiors. But he said the manager's response was to threaten him with a bad job review that, he was told, would land him on a PIP, where his work would be scrutinized weekly. If he failed to hit his targets -- and his managers would be the judges of that -- he'd be fired and lose his benefits.

    Alpern couldn't risk it; he retired on Oct. 31. His son, now a freshman on the dean's list at Texas A&M University, didn't get to apply.

    "I can think of only a couple regrets or disappointments over my 39 years at IBM,"" he said, "and that's one of them."

    'Congratulations on Your Retirement!'

    Like any company in the U.S., IBM faces few legal constraints to reducing the size of its workforce. And with its no-disclosure strategy, it eliminated one of the last regular sources of information about its employment practices and the changing size of its American workforce.

    But there remained the question of whether recent cutbacks were big enough to trigger state and federal requirements for disclosure of layoffs. And internal documents, such as a slide in a 2016 presentation titled "Transforming to Next Generation Digital Talent," suggest executives worried that "winning the talent war" for new young workers required IBM to improve the "attractiveness of (its) culture and work environment," a tall order in the face of layoffs and firings.

    So the company apparently has sought to put a softer face on its cutbacks by recasting many as voluntary rather than the result of decisions by the firm. One way it has done this is by converting many layoffs to retirements.

    Some ex-employees told ProPublica that, faced with a layoff notice, they were just as happy to retire. Others said they felt forced to accept a retirement package and leave. Several actively objected to the company treating their ouster as a retirement. The company nevertheless processed their exits as such.

    Project manager Ed Alpern's departure was treated in company paperwork as a voluntary retirement. He didn't see it that way, because the alternative he said he was offered was being fired outright.

    Lorilynn King, a 55-year-old IT specialist who worked from her home in Loveland, Colorado, had been with IBM almost as long as Alpern by May 2016 when her manager called to tell her the company was conducting a layoff and her name was on the list.

    King said the manager told her to report to a meeting in Building 1 on IBM's Boulder campus the following day. There, she said, she found herself in a group of other older employees being told by an IBM human resources representative that they'd all be retiring. "I have NO intention of retiring," she remembers responding. "I'm being laid off."

    ProPublica has collected documents from 15 ex-IBM employees who got layoff notices followed by a retirement package and has talked with many others who said they received similar paperwork. Critics say the sequence doesn't square well with the law.

    "This country has banned mandatory retirement," said Seiner, the University of South Carolina law professor and former EEOC appellate lawyer. "The law says taking a retirement package has to be voluntary. If you tell somebody 'Retire or we'll lay you off or fire you,' that's not voluntary."

    Until recently, the company's retirement paperwork included a letter from Rometty, the CEO, that read, in part, "I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you well on your retirement While you may be retiring to embark on the next phase of your personal journey, you will always remain a valued and appreciated member of the IBM family." Ex-employees said IBM stopped sending the letter last year.

    IBM has also embraced another practice that leads workers, especially older ones, to quit on what appears to be a voluntary basis. It substantially reversed its pioneering support for telecommuting, telling people who've been working from home for years to begin reporting to certain, often distant, offices. Their other choice: Resign.

    David Harlan had worked as an IBM marketing strategist from his home in Moscow, Idaho, for 15 years when a manager told him last year of orders to reduce the performance ratings of everybody at his pay grade. Then in February last year, when he was 50, came an internal video from IBM's new senior vice president, Michelle Peluso, which announced plans to improve the work of marketing employees by ordering them to work "shoulder to shoulder." Those who wanted to stay on would need to "co-locate" to offices in one of six cities.

    Early last year, Harlan received an email congratulating him on "the opportunity to join your team in Raleigh, North Carolina." He had 30 days to decide on the 2,600-mile move. He resigned in June.

    David Harlan worked for IBM for 15 years from his home in Moscow, Idaho, where he also runs a drama company. Early last year, IBM offered him a choice: Move 2,600 miles to Raleigh-Durham to begin working at an office, or resign. He left in June. (Rajah Bose for ProPublica)

    After the Peluso video was leaked to the press, an IBM spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the " vast majority " of people ordered to change locations and begin reporting to offices did so. IBM Vice President Ed Barbini said in an initial email exchange with ProPublica in July that the new policy affected only about 2,000 U.S. employees and that "most" of those had agreed to move.

    But employees across a wide range of company operations, from the systems and technology group to analytics, told ProPublica they've also been ordered to co-locate in recent years. Many IBMers with long service said that they quit rather than sell their homes, pull children from school and desert aging parents. IBM declined to say how many older employees were swept up in the co-location initiative.

    "They basically knew older employees weren't going to do it," said Eileen Maroney, a 63-year-old IBM product manager from Aiken, South Carolina, who, like Harlan, was ordered to move to Raleigh or resign. "Older people aren't going to move. It just doesn't make any sense." Like Harlan, Maroney left IBM last June.

    Having people quit rather than being laid off may help IBM avoid disclosing how much it is shrinking its U.S. workforce and where the reductions are occurring.

    Under the federal WARN Act , adopted in the wake of huge job cuts and factory shutdowns during the 1980s, companies laying off 50 or more employees who constitute at least one-third of an employer's workforce at a site have to give advance notice of layoffs to the workers, public agencies and local elected officials.

    Similar laws in some states where IBM has a substantial presence are even stricter. California, for example, requires advanced notice for layoffs of 50 or more employees, no matter what the share of the workforce. New York requires notice for 25 employees who make up a third.

    Because the laws were drafted to deal with abrupt job cuts at individual plants, they can miss reductions that occur over long periods among a workforce like IBM's that was, at least until recently, widely dispersed because of the company's work-from-home policy.

    IBM's training sessions to prepare managers for layoffs suggest the company was aware of WARN thresholds, especially in states with strict notification laws such as California. A 2016 document entitled "Employee Separation Processing" and labeled "IBM Confidential" cautions managers about the "unique steps that must be taken when processing separations for California employees."

    A ProPublica review of five years of WARN disclosures for a dozen states where the company had large facilities that shed workers found no disclosures in nine. In the other three, the company alerted authorities of just under 1,000 job cuts -- 380 in California, 369 in New York and 200 in Minnesota. IBM's reported figures are well below the actual number of jobs the company eliminated in these states, where in recent years it has shuttered, sold off or leveled plants that once employed vast numbers.

    By contrast, other employers in the same 12 states reported layoffs last year alone totaling 215,000 people. They ranged from giant Walmart to Ostrom's Mushroom Farms in Washington state.

    Whether IBM operated within the rules of the WARN act, which are notoriously fungible, could not be determined because the company declined to provide ProPublica with details on its layoffs.

    A Second Act, But Poorer

    W ith 35 years at IBM under his belt, Ed Miyoshi had plenty of experience being pushed to take buyouts, or early retirement packages, and refusing them. But he hadn't expected to be pushed last fall.

    Miyoshi, of Hopewell Junction, New York, had some years earlier launched a pilot program to improve IBM's technical troubleshooting. With the blessing of an IBM vice president, he was busily interviewing applicants in India and Brazil to staff teams to roll the program out to clients worldwide.

    The interviews may have been why IBM mistakenly assumed Miyoshi was a manager, and so emailed him to eliminate the one U.S.-based employee still left in his group.

    "That was me," Miyoshi realized.

    In his sign-off email to colleagues shortly before Christmas 2016, Miyoshi, then 57, wrote: "I am too young and too poor to stop working yet, so while this is good-bye to my IBM career, I fully expect to cross paths with some of you very near in the future."

    He did, and perhaps sooner than his colleagues had expected; he started as a subcontractor to IBM about two weeks later, on Jan. 3.

    Miyoshi is an example of older workers who've lost their regular IBM jobs and been brought back as contractors. Some of them -- not Miyoshi -- became contract workers after IBM told them their skills were out of date and no longer needed.

    Employment law experts said that hiring ex-employees as contractors can be legally dicey. It raises the possibility that the layoff of the employee was not for the stated reason but perhaps because they were targeted for their age, race or gender.

    IBM appears to recognize the problem. Ex-employees say the company has repeatedly told managers -- most recently earlier this year -- not to contract with former employees or sign on with third-party contracting firms staffed by ex-IBMers. But ProPublica turned up dozens of instances where the company did just that.

    Only two weeks after IBM laid him off in December 2016, Ed Miyoshi of Hopewell Junction, New York, started work as a subcontractor to the company. But he took a $20,000-a-year pay cut. "I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," he says. (Demetrius Freeman for ProPublica)

    Responding to a question in a confidential questionnaire from ProPublica, one 35-year company veteran from New York said he knew exactly what happened to the job he left behind when he was laid off. "I'M STILL DOING IT. I got a new gig eight days after departure, working for a third-party company under contract to IBM doing the exact same thing."

    In many cases, of course, ex-employees are happy to have another job, even if it is connected with the company that laid them off.

    Henry, the Columbus-based sales and technical specialist who'd been with IBM's "resiliency services" unit, discovered that he'd lost his regular IBM job because the company had purchased an Indian firm that provided the same services. But after a year out of work, he wasn't going to turn down the offer of a temporary position as a subcontractor for IBM, relocating data centers. It got money flowing back into his household and got him back where he liked to be, on the road traveling for business.

    The compensation most ex-IBM employees make as contractors isn't comparable. While Henry said he collected the same dollar amount, it didn't include health insurance, which cost him $1,325 a month. Miyoshi said his paycheck is 20 percent less than what he made as an IBM regular.

    "I took an over $20,000 hit by becoming a contractor. I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," Miyoshi said.

    And lower pay isn't the only problem ex-IBM employees-now-subcontractors face. This year, Miyoshi's payable hours have been cut by an extra 10 "furlough days." Internal documents show that IBM repeatedly furloughs subcontractors without pay, often for two, three or more weeks a quarter. In some instances, the furloughs occur with little advance notice and at financially difficult moments. In one document, for example, it appears IBM managers, trying to cope with a cost overrun spotted in mid-November, planned to dump dozens of subcontractors through the end of the year, the middle of the holiday season.

    Former IBM employees now on contract said the company controls costs by notifying contractors in the midst of projects they have to take pay cuts or lose the work. Miyoshi said that he originally started working for his third-party contracting firm for 10 percent less than at IBM, but ended up with an additional 10 percent cut in the middle of 2017, when IBM notified the contractor it was slashing what it would pay.

    For many ex-employees, there are few ways out. Henry, for example, sought to improve his chances of landing a new full-time job by seeking assistance to finish a college degree through a federal program designed to retrain workers hurt by offshoring of jobs.

    But when he contacted the Ohio state agency that administers the Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, program, which provides assistance to workers who lose their jobs for trade-related reasons, he was told IBM hadn't submitted necessary paperwork. State officials said Henry could apply if he could find other IBM employees who were laid off with him, information that the company doesn't provide.

    TAA is overseen by the Labor Department but is operated by states under individual agreements with Washington, so the rules can vary from state to state. But generally employers, unions, state agencies and groups of employers can petition for training help and cash assistance. Labor Department data compiled by the advocacy group Global Trade Watch shows that employers apply in about 40 percent of cases. Some groups of IBM workers have obtained retraining funds when they or their state have applied, but records dating back to the early 1990s show IBM itself has applied for and won taxpayer assistance only once, in 2008, for three Chicago-area workers whose jobs were being moved to India.

    Teasing New Jobs

    A s IBM eliminated thousands of jobs in 2016, David Carroll, a 52-year-old Austin software engineer, thought he was safe.

    His job was in mobile development, the "M" in the company's CAMS strategy. And if that didn't protect him, he figured he was only four months shy of qualifying for a program that gives employees who leave within a year of their three-decade mark access to retiree medical coverage and other benefits.

    But the layoff notice Carroll received March 2 gave him three months -- not four -- to come up with another job. Having been a manager, he said he knew the gantlet he'd have to run to land a new position inside IBM.

    Still, he went at it hard, applying for more than 50 IBM jobs, including one for a job he'd successfully done only a few years earlier. For his effort, he got one offer -- the week after he'd been forced to depart. He got severance pay but lost access to what would have been more generous benefits.

    Edward Kishkill, then 60, of Hillsdale, New Jersey, had made a similar calculation.

    A senior systems engineer, Kishkill recognized the danger of layoffs, but assumed he was immune because he was working in systems security, the "S" in CAMS and another hot area at the company.

    The precaution did him no more good than it had Carroll. Kishkill received a layoff notice the same day, along with 17 of the 22 people on his systems security team, including Diane Moos. The notice said that Kishkill could look for other jobs internally. But if he hadn't landed anything by the end of May, he was out.

    With a daughter who was a senior in high school headed to Boston University, he scrambled to apply, but came up dry. His last day was May 31, 2016.

    For many, the fruitless search for jobs within IBM is the last straw, a final break with the values the company still says it embraces. Combined with the company's increasingly frequent request that departing employees train their overseas replacements, it has left many people bitter. Scores of ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said that managers with job openings told them they weren't allowed to hire from layoff lists without getting prior, high-level clearance, something that's almost never given.

    ProPublica reviewed documents that show that a substantial share of recent IBM layoffs have involved what the company calls "lift and shift," lifting the work of specific U.S. employees and shifting it to specific workers in countries such as India and Brazil. For example, a document summarizing U.S. employment in part of the company's global technology services division for 2015 lists nearly a thousand people as layoff candidates, with the jobs of almost half coded for lift and shift.

    Ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said the lift-and-shift process required their extensive involvement. For example, shortly after being notified she'd be laid off, Kishkill's colleague, Moos, was told to help prepare a "knowledge transfer" document and begin a round of conference calls and email exchanges with two Indian IBM employees who'd be taking over her work. Moos said the interactions consumed much of her last three months at IBM.

    Next Chapters

    W hile IBM has managed to keep the scale and nature of its recent U.S. employment cuts largely under the public's radar, the company drew some unwanted attention during the 2016 presidential campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump lambasted it for eliminating 500 jobs in Minnesota, where the company has had a presence for a half century, and shifting the work abroad.

    The company also has caught flak -- in places like Buffalo, New York ; Dubuque, Iowa ; Columbia, Missouri , and Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- for promising jobs in return for state and local incentives, then failing to deliver. In all, according to public officials in those and other places, IBM promised to bring on 3,400 workers in exchange for as much as $250 million in taxpayer financing but has hired only about half as many.

    After Trump's victory, Rometty, in a move at least partly aimed at courting the president-elect, pledged to hire 25,000 new U.S. employees by 2020. Spokesmen said the hiring would increase IBM's U.S. employment total, although, given its continuing job cuts, the addition is unlikely to approach the promised hiring total.

    When The New York Times ran a story last fall saying IBM now has more employees in India than the U.S., Barbini, the corporate spokesman, rushed to declare, "The U.S. has always been and remains IBM's center of gravity." But his stream of accompanying tweets and graphics focused as much on the company's record for racking up patents as hiring people.

    IBM has long been aware of the damage its job cuts can do to people. In a series of internal training documents to prepare managers for layoffs in recent years, the company has included this warning: "Loss of a job often triggers a grief reaction similar to what occurs after a death."

    Most, though not all, of the ex-IBM employees with whom ProPublica spoke have weathered the loss and re-invented themselves.

    Marjorie Madfis, the digital marketing strategist, couldn't land another tech job after her 2013 layoff, so she headed in a different direction. She started a nonprofit called Yes She Can Inc. that provides job skills development for young autistic women, including her 21-year-old daughter.

    After almost two years of looking and desperate for useful work, Brian Paulson, the widely traveled IBM senior manager, applied for and landed a position as a part-time rural letter carrier in Plano, Texas. He now works as a contract project manager for a Las Vegas gaming and lottery firm.

    Ed Alpern, who started at IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman, watched his son go on to become a National Merit Scholar at Texas A&M University, but not a Watson scholarship recipient.

    Lori King, the IT specialist and 33-year IBM veteran who's now 56, got in a parting shot. She added an addendum to the retirement papers the firm gave her that read in part: "It was never my plan to retire earlier than at least age 60 and I am not committing to retire. I have been informed that I am impacted by a resource action effective on 2016-08-22, which is my last day at IBM, but I am NOT retiring."

    King has aced more than a year of government-funded coding boot camps and university computer courses, but has yet to land a new job.

    David Harlan still lives in Moscow, Idaho, after refusing IBM's "invitation" to move to North Carolina, and is artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre (Too).

    Ed Miyoshi is still a technical troubleshooter working as a subcontractor for IBM.

    Ed Kishkill, the senior systems engineer, works part time at a local tech startup, but pays his bills as an associate at a suburban New Jersey Staples store.

    This year, Paul Henry was back on the road, working as an IBM subcontractor in Detroit, about 200 miles from where he lived in Columbus. On Jan. 8, he put in a 14-hour day and said he planned to call home before turning in. He died in his sleep.

    Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original version of this story.

    Do you have information about age discrimination at IBM?

    Let us know.

    Peter Gosselin joined ProPublica as a contributing reporter in January 2017 to cover aging. He has covered the U.S. and global economies for, among others, the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe, focusing on the lived experiences of working people. He is the author of "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families."

    Ariana Tobin is an engagement reporter at ProPublica, where she works to cultivate communities to inform our coverage. She was previously at The Guardian and WNYC. Ariana has also worked as digital producer for APM's Marketplace and contributed to outlets including The New Republic , On Being , the St. Louis Beacon and Bustle .

    Production by Joanna Brenner and Hannah Birch . Art direction by David Sleight . Illustrations by Richard Borge .

    [Oct 30, 2018] Elimination of loyalty: what corporations cloak as weeding out the low performers tranparantly reveals catching the older workers in the net as well.

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Great White North, Thursday, March 22, 2018 11:29 PM

    There's not a word of truth quoted in this article. That is, quoted from IBM spokespeople. It's the culture there now. They don't even realize that most of their customers have become deaf to the same crap from their Sales and Marketing BS, which is even worse than their HR speak.

    The sad truth is that IBM became incapable of taking its innovation (IBM is indeed a world beating, patent generating machine) to market a long time ago. It has also lost the ability (if it ever really had it) to acquire other companies and foster their innovation either - they ran most into the ground. As a result, for nearly a decade revenues have declined and resource actions grown. The resource actions may seem to be the ugly problem, but they're only the symptom of a fat greedy and pompous bureaucracy that's lost its ability to grow and stay relevant in a very competitive and changing industry. What they have been able to perfect and grow is their ability to downsize and return savings as dividends (Big Sam Palmisano's "innovation"). Oh, and for senior management to line their pockets.

    Nothing IBM is currently doing is sustainable.

    If you're still employed there, listen to the pain in the words of your fallen comrades and don't knock yourself out trying to stay afloat. Perhaps learn some BS of your own and milk your job (career? not...) until you find freedom and better pastures.

    If you own stock, do like Warren Buffett, and sell it while it still has some value.

    Danllo , Thursday, March 22, 2018 10:43 PM
    This is NOTHING NEW! All major corporations have and will do this at some point in their existence. Another industry that does this regularly every 3 to 5 years is the pharamaceutical industry. They'll decimate their sales forces in order to, as they like to put it, "right size" the company.

    They'll cloak it as weeding out the low performers, but they'll try to catch the "older" workers in the net as well.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Cutting 'Old Heads' at IBM

    Notable quotes:
    "... I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so awful. ..."
    "... Every former or prospective IBM employee is a potential future IBM customer or partner. How you treat them matters! ..."
    "... I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to stop the bleeding. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so awful.

    They actually did a presentation of their interim results - but it was a 52 slide package that they had presented to me in my previous job but with the names and numbers changed. see more

    DarthVaderMentor dauwkus , Thursday, April 5, 2018 4:43 PM

    Intellectual Capital Re-Use! LOL! Not many people realize in IBM that many, if not all of the original IBM Consulting Group materials were made under the Type 2 Materials clause of the IBM Contract, which means the customers actually owned the IP rights of the documents. Can you imagine the mess if just one customer demands to get paid for every re-use of the IP that was developed for them and then re-used over and over again?
    NoGattaca dauwkus , Monday, May 7, 2018 5:37 PM
    Beautiful! Yea, these companies so fast to push experienced people who have dedicated their lives to the firm - how can you not...all the hours and commitment it takes - way underestimate the power of the network of those left for dead and their influence in that next career gig. Memories are long...very long when it comes to experiences like this.
    davosil North_40 , Sunday, March 25, 2018 5:19 PM
    True dat! Every former or prospective IBM employee is a potential future IBM customer or partner. How you treat them matters!
    Playing Defense North_40 , Tuesday, April 3, 2018 4:41 PM
    I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to stop the bleeding.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career

    Under neoliberlaism the idea of loyalty between a corporation and an employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking ..."
    "... With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor ..."
    "... This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products ..."
    "... The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. ..."
    "... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org
    Jeff Russell , Thursday, March 22, 2018 4:31 PM
    I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business. The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative was bankruptcy.

    I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing, movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking .

    I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation.

    The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.

    DDRLSGC Jeff Russell , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
    John Kauai Jeff Russell , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.

    The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.

    MichiganRefugee , Friday, March 23, 2018 9:52 AM
    I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
    George Purcell , Friday, March 23, 2018 7:41 AM
    Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable as well.
    Bob Fritz , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:35 PM
    I read the article and all the comments.

    Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?

    I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.

    People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.

    petervonstackelberg , Thursday, March 22, 2018 2:00 PM
    I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.

    I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.

    davosil , Sunday, March 25, 2018 5:00 PM
    This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers; way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job.
    This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your middle class, so goes your country.
    ThinkingAloud , Friday, March 23, 2018 7:18 AM
    The last five words are chilling... This is an award-winning piece....
    RetiredIBM.manager , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:39 PM
    I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You nailed it!
    David , Thursday, March 22, 2018 3:22 PM
    IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
    CRAW David ,

    Now IBM still treats their employees like Disney - by replacing them with H-1B workers.

    MHV IBMer , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:35 PM
    I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions, bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone knew. Excellent article.
    Goldie Romero , Friday, March 23, 2018 2:31 PM
    Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more.
    I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be honest with your workers.
    High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company like IBM.
    jblog , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:37 AM
    From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):

    Throughout it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.

    The laid off employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as "downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes with experience.

    Frequently, an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch, perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased reward or opportunity.

    Most of the young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent, but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move up the pay scale.

    turquoisewaters , Thursday, March 22, 2018 10:19 PM
    This is why you need unions.
    Aaron Stackpole , Thursday, March 22, 2018 5:23 PM
    This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
    awb22 , Thursday, March 22, 2018 12:14 PM
    The same thing has been going on at other companies, since the end of WWII. It's unethical, whether the illegality can be proven or not.

    In the RTP area, where I live, I know many, many current and former employees. Times have changed, but the distinction between right and wrong hasn't.

    Dave Allen , Thursday, March 22, 2018 1:07 PM
    I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire.

    Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family."

    The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.

    It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer.

    Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.

    sometimestheyaresomewhatright Dave Allen , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
    Dave Allen sometimestheyaresomewhatright , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.

    Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion, etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.

    DDRLSGC Dave Allen , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven for the last 38 years.
    Danllo DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones, internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
    DDRLSGC Danllo , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies, sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
    NotSure DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan.

    The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
    DDRLSGC NotSure , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent, and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That is a fact.

    You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.

    DDRLSGC NotSure , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
    james Foster , Thursday, March 29, 2018 8:37 PM
    Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
    Philip Meyer james Foster , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
    George A , Tuesday, March 27, 2018 6:12 PM
    Warning to Google/Facebook/Apple etc. All you young people will get old. It's inevitable. Do you think those companies will take care of you?
    econdataus , Sunday, March 25, 2018 3:01 PM
    Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers. For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
    Buzz , Friday, March 23, 2018 12:00 PM
    I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc. The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague. I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with 30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past 2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
    OrangeGina , Friday, March 23, 2018 11:41 AM
    Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
    JeffMo , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:23 AM
    This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
    Frankie , Friday, March 23, 2018 1:00 AM
    Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.

    If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.

    The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone. Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.

    Rick Gundlach , Thursday, March 22, 2018 11:38 PM
    This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
    Jeff , Thursday, March 22, 2018 2:05 PM
    In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.

    Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer support position for the very product I helped develop.

    While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.

    A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">

    What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.

    Herb Jeff , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was "holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story .

    [Oct 30, 2018] American companies pay health insurance premiums based on their specific employee profiles

    Notable quotes:
    "... As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees. ..."
    "... The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    sometimestheyaresomewhatright , Thursday, March 22, 2018 4:13 PM

    American companies pay health insurance premiums based on their specific employee profiles. Insurance companies compete with each other for the business, but costs are actual. And based on the profile of the pool of employees. So American companies fire older workers just to lower the average age of their employees. Statistically this is going to lower their health care costs.

    As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees. They have an incentive to fire sick employees and employees with genetic risks. Those are harder to implement as ways to lower costs. Firing older employees is simple to do, just look up their ages.

    The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts.

    By the way, most tech companies are actually run by older people. The goal is to broom out mid-level people based on age. Nobody is going to suggest to a sixty year old president that they should self fire, for the good of the company.

    [Oct 30, 2018] It s all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte

    Notable quotes:
    "... It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole 11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon. ..."
    "... I used to say when I was there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers". ..."
    "... 1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated and even rewarded this abuse of Americans. ..."
    "... Well, starting in the 1980s, the American management was allowed by Reagan to get rid of its workforce. ..."
    "... It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster ..."
    "... Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's. ..."
    "... Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret not having retired before that changed. ..."
    "... Yeah, severance started out at 2 yrs pay, went to 1 yr, then to 6 mos. and is now 1 month. ..."
    "... You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | disqus.com

    dragonflap7 months ago I'm a 49-year-old SW engineer who started at IBM as part of an acquisition in 2000. I got laid off in 2002 when IBM started sending reqs to Bangalore in batches of thousands. After various adventures, I rejoined IBM in 2015 as part of the "C" organization referenced in the article.

    It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole 11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon.

    Stewart Dean7 months ago ,

    The lead-in to this piece makes it sound like IBM was forced into these practices by inescapable forces. I'd say not, rather that it pursued them because a) the management was clueless about how to lead IBM in the new environment and new challenges so b) it started to play with numbers to keep the (apparent) profits up....to keep the bonuses coming. I used to say when I was there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers".

    And then there's the Pig with the Wooden Leg shaggy dog story that ends with the punch line, "A pig like that you don't eat all at once", which has a lot of the flavor of how many of us saw our jobs as IBM die a slow death.

    IBM is about to fall out of the sky, much as General Motors did. How could that happen? By endlessly beating the cow to get more milk.

    IBM was hiring right through the Great Depression such that It Did Not Pay Unemployment Insurance. Because it never laid people off, Because until about 1990, your manager was responsible for making sure you had everything you needed to excel and grow....and you would find people that had started on the loading dock and had become Senior Programmers. But then about 1990, IBM starting paying unemployment insurance....just out of the goodness of its heart. Right.

    CRAW Stewart Dean7 months ago ,

    1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated and even rewarded this abuse of Americans.

    DDRLSGC Stewart Dean7 months ago ,

    Well, starting in the 1980s, the American management was allowed by Reagan to get rid of its workforce.

    Georgann Putintsev Stewart Dean7 months ago ,

    I found that other Ex-IBMer's respect other Ex-IBMer's work ethics, knowledge and initiative.

    Other companies are happy to get them as a valueable resource. In '89 when our Palo Alto Datacenter moved, we were given two options: 1.) to become a Programmer (w/training) 2.) move to Boulder or 3.) to leave.

    I got my training with programming experience and left IBM in '92, when for 4 yrs IBM offerred really good incentives for leaving the company. The Executives thought that the IBM Mainframe/MVS z/OS+ was on the way out and the Laptop (Small but Increasing Capacity) Computer would take over everything.

    It didn't. It did allow many skilled IBMers to succeed outside of IBM and help built up our customer skill sets. And like many, when the opportunity arose to return I did. In '91 I was accidentally given a male co-workers paycheck and that was one of the reasons for leaving. During my various Contract work outside, I bumped into other male IBMer's that had left too, some I had trained, and when they disclosed that it was their salary (which was 20-40%) higher than mine was the reason they left, I knew I had made the right decision.

    Women tend to under-value themselves and their capabilities. Contracting also taught me that companies that had 70% employees and 30% contractors, meant that contractors would be let go if they exceeded their quarterly expenditures.

    I first contracted with IBM in '98 and when I decided to re-join IBM '01, I had (3) job offers and I took the most lucrative exciting one to focus on fixing & improving DB2z Qry Parallelism. I developed a targeted L3 Technical Change Team to help L2 Support reduce Customer problems reported and improve our product. The instability within IBM remained and I saw IBM try to eliminate aging, salaried, benefited employees. The 1.) find a job within IBM ... to 2.) to leave ... was now standard.

    While my salary had more than doubled since I left IBM the first time, it still wasn't near other male counterparts. The continual rating competition based on salary ranged titles and timing a title raise after a round of layoffs, not before. I had another advantage going and that was that my changed reduced retirement benefits helped me stay there. It all comes down to the numbers that Mgmt is told to cut & save IBM. While much of this article implies others were hired, at our Silicon Valley Location and other locations, they had no intent to backfill. So the already burdened employees were laden with more workloads & stress.

    In the early to mid 2000's IBM setup a counter lab in China where they were paying 1/4th U.S. salaries and many SVL IBMers went to CSDL to train our new world 24x7 support employees. But many were not IBM loyal and their attrition rates were very high, so it fell to a wave of new-hires at SVL to help address it.

    Stewart Dean Georgann Putintsev7 months ago ,

    It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster

    IBM32_retiree • 7 months ago ,

    Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's.

    Dan Yurman7 months ago ,

    Bravo ProPublica for another "sock it to them" article - journalism in honor of the spirit of great newspapers everywhere that the refuge of justice in hard times is with the press.

    Felix Domestica7 months ago ,

    Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret not having retired before that changed.

    RonF Felix Domestica7 months ago ,

    Yeah, severance started out at 2 yrs pay, went to 1 yr, then to 6 mos. and is now 1 month.

    mjmadfis RonF7 months ago ,

    When I was let go in June 2013 it was 6 months severance.

    Terry Taylor7 months ago ,

    You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee.

    weelittlepeople Terry Taylor7 months ago ,

    Good Ol Ma Bell is following the IBM playbook to a Tee

    emnyc7 months ago ,

    ProPublica deserves a Pulitzer for this article and all the extensive research that went into this investigation.

    Incredible job! Congrats.

    On a separate note, IBM should be ashamed of themselves and the executive team that enabled all of this should be fired.

    WmBlake7 months ago ,

    As a permanent old contractor and free-enterprise defender myself, I don't blame IBM a bit for wanting to cut the fat. But for the outright *lies, deception and fraud* that they use to break laws, weasel out of obligations... really just makes me want to shoot them... and I never even worked for them.

    Michael Woiwood7 months ago ,

    Great Article.

    Where I worked, In Rochester,MN, people have known what is happening for years. My last years with IBM were the most depressing time in my life.

    I hear a rumor that IBM would love to close plants they no longer use but they are so environmentally polluted that it is cheaper to maintain than to clean up and sell.

    scorcher147 months ago ,

    One of the biggest driving factors in age discrimination is health insurance costs, not salary. It can cost 4-5x as much to insure and older employee vs. a younger one, and employers know this. THE #1 THING WE CAN DO TO STOP AGE DISCRIMINATION IS TO MOVE AWAY FROM OUR EMPLOYER-PROVIDED INSURANCE SYSTEM. It could be single-payer, but it could also be a robust individual market with enough pool diversification to make it viable. Freeing employers from this cost burden would allow them to pick the right talent regardless of age.

    DDRLSGC scorcher147 months ago ,

    The American business have constantly fought against single payer since the end of World War II and why should I feel sorry for them when all of a sudden, they are complaining about health care costs? It is outrageous that workers have to face age discrimination; however, the CEOs don't have to deal with that issue since they belong to a tiny group of people who can land a job anywhere else.

    pieinthesky scorcher147 months ago ,

    Single payer won't help. We have single payer in Canada and just as much age discrimination in employment. Society in general does not like older people so unless you're a doctor, judge or pharmacist you will face age bias. It's even worse in popular culture never mind in employment.

    OrangeGina scorcher147 months ago ,

    I agree. Yet, a determined company will find other methods, explanations and excuses.

    JohnCordCutter7 months ago ,

    Thanks for the great article. I left IBM last year. USA based. 49. Product Manager in one of IBMs strategic initiatives, however got told to relocate or leave. I found another job and left. I came to IBM from an acquisition. My only regret is, I wish I had left this toxic environment earlier. It truely is a dreadful place to work.

    60 Soon • 7 months ago ,

    The methodology has trickled down to smaller companies pursuing the same net results for headcount reduction. The similarities to my experience were painful to read. The grief I felt after my job was "eliminated" 10 years ago while the Recession was at its worst and shortly after my 50th birthday was coming back. I never have recovered financially but have started writing a murder mystery. The first victim? The CEO who let me go. It's true. Revenge is best served cold.

    donttreadonme97 months ago ,

    Well written . people like me have experienced exactly what you wrote. IBM is a shadow of it's former greatness and I have advised my children to stay away from IBM and companies like it as they start their careers. IBM is a corrupt company. Shame on them !

    annapurna7 months ago ,

    I hope they find some way to bring a class action lawsuit against these assholes.

    Mark annapurna7 months ago ,

    I suspect someone will end up hunt them down with an axe at some point. That's the only way they'll probably learn. I don't know about IBM specifically, but when Carly Fiorina ran HP, she travelled with and even went into engineering labs with an armed security detail.

    OrangeGina Mark7 months ago ,

    all the bigwig CEOs have these black SUV security details now.

    Sarahw7 months ago ,

    IBM has been using these tactics at least since the 1980s, when my father was let go for similar 'reasons.'

    Vin7 months ago ,

    Was let go after 34 years of service. Mine Resource Action latter had additional lines after '...unless you are offered ... position within IBM before that date.' , implying don't even try to look for a position. They lines were ' Additional business controls are in effect to manage the business objectives of this resource action, therefore, job offers within (the name of division) will be highly unlikely.'.

    Mark Vin7 months ago ,

    Absolutely and utterly disgusting.

    Greybeard7 months ago ,

    I've worked for a series of vendors for over thirty years. A job at IBM used to be the brass ring; nowadays, not so much.

    I've heard persistent rumors from IBMers that U.S. headcount is below 25,000 nowadays. Given events like the recent downtime of the internal systems used to order parts (5 or so days--website down because staff who maintained it were let go without replacements), it's hard not to see the spiral continue down the drain.

    What I can't figure out is whether Rometty and cronies know what they're doing or are just clueless. Either way, the result is the same: destruction of a once-great company and brand. Tragic.

    ManOnTheHill Greybeard7 months ago ,

    Well, none of these layoffs/ageist RIFs affect the execs, so they don't see the effects, or they see the effects but attribute them to some other cause.

    (I'm surprised the article doesn't address this part of the story; how many affected by layoffs are exec/senior management? My bet is very few.)

    ExIBMExec ManOnTheHill7 months ago ,

    I was a D-banded exec (Director-level) who was impacted and I know even some VPs who were affected as well, so they do spread the pain, even in the exec ranks.

    ManOnTheHill ExIBMExec7 months ago ,

    That's different than I have seen in companies I have worked for (like HP). There RIFs (Reduction In Force, their acronym for layoff) went to the director level and no further up.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Verizon is making similar moves, only sending them to third-party outsourcers instead of laying off.

    Oct 30, 2018 | arstechnica.com

    atomic.banjo , Smack-Fu Master, in training et Subscriptor 5 hours ago New Poster

    Legatum_of_Kain wrote:
    It is not a good thing towards employees that are getting fired before retirenment.

    https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm ... n-workers/

    Verizon is making similar moves, only sending them to third-party outsourcers instead of laying off.

    [Oct 30, 2018] If I were a Red Hat employee over 40, I'd be sweating right now.

    Oct 30, 2018 | arstechnica.com

    Morley Dotes , Ars Centurion et Subscriptor 4 hours ago

    jandrese wrote:
    IMHO this is perilous for RHEL. It would be very easy for IBM to fire most of the developers and just latch on to the enterprise services stuff to milk it till its dry.

    Why would you say that? IBM is renowned for their wonderful employee relations. </s>

    If I were a Red Hat employee over 40, I'd be sweating right now.

    Unless I had equity.

    NeghVar1 , Wise, Aged Ars Veteran 4 hours ago
    Reminds me of when Oracle bought Sun
    sviola , Ars Scholae Palatinae 4 hours ago
    Peevester wrote:
    Muon wrote:
    blockquote> We run just about everything on CentOS around here, downstream of RHEL. Should we be worried?

    I don't think so, at least no more than you should have already been. IBM has adopted RHEL as their standard platform for a lot of things, all the way up to big-iron mainframes. Not to mention, over the two decades, they've done a hell of a lot of enhancements to Linux that are a big part of why it scales so well (Darl Mcbride just felt like someone walked over his grave. Hey, let's jump on it a bit too!).

    Say what you like about IBM (like they've turned into a super-shitty place to work for or be a customer of), but they've been a damn good friend to Linux. If I actually worked for Red Hat though, I would be really unhappy because you can bet that "independence" will last a few quarters before everyone gets outsourced to Brazil.

    Brazil is too expensive. Last time I heard, they were outsourcing from Brazil to chapear LA countries...

    informationsuperhighway , Wise, Aged Ars Veteran et Subscriptor 2 hours ago
    CousinSven wrote:
    IBM are paying around 12x annual revenue for Red Hat which is a significant multiple so they will have to squeeze more money out of the business somehow. Either they grow customers or they increase margins or both.

    IBM had little choice but to do something like this. They are in a terminal spiral thanks to years of bad leadership. The confused billing of the purchase smacks of rush, so far I have seen Red Hat described as a cloud company, an info sec company, an open source company...

    So IBM are buying Red Hat as a last chance bid to avoid being put through the PE threshing machine. Red Hat get a ludicrous premium so will take the money.

    And RH customers will want to check their contracts...

    They will lay off Redhat staff to cut costs and replace them with remote programmers living in Calcutta. To big corporations a programmer is a fungible item, if you can swap programmer A woth programmer B at 1/4 the cost its a big win and you beat earnings estimate by a penny.

    Rotoars , Ars Centurion 2 hours ago
    bolomkxxviii wrote:
    No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness will kill Red Hat. Time to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.

    This will kill both companies. Red has trouble making money and IBM has trouble not messing up what good their is and trouble making money. They both die, but a slow, possibly accelerating, death.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Cutting Old Heads at IBM by Peter Gosselin and Ariana Tobin

    Mar 22, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    This story was co-published with Mother Jones.

    F or nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.

    As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.

    How the Crowd Led Us to Investigate IBM

    Our project started with a digital community of ex-employees. Read more about how we got this story.

    Email Updates

    Sign up to get ProPublica's major investigations delivered to your inbox.

    Do you have information about age discrimination at IBM?

    Let us know.

    But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large number of experienced and aging U.S. employees.

    The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would "correct seniority mix." It slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.

    In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

    Among ProPublica's findings, IBM:

    Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they've been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress. Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements. Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements. Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements. Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

    IBM declined requests for the numbers or age breakdown of its job cuts. ProPublica provided the company with a 10-page summary of its findings and the evidence on which they were based. IBM spokesman Edward Barbini said that to respond the company needed to see copies of all documents cited in the story, a request ProPublica could not fulfill without breaking faith with its sources. Instead, ProPublica provided IBM with detailed descriptions of the paperwork. Barbini declined to address the documents or answer specific questions about the firm's policies and practices, and instead issued the following statement:

    "We are proud of our company and our employees' ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the law. Our ability to do this is why we are the only tech company that has not only survived but thrived for more than 100 years."

    With nearly 400,000 people worldwide, and tens of thousands still in the U.S., IBM remains a corporate giant. How it handles the shift from its veteran baby-boom workforce to younger generations will likely influence what other employers do. And the way it treats its experienced workers will eventually affect younger IBM employees as they too age.

    Fifty years ago, Congress made it illegal with the Age Discrimination in Employment Act , or ADEA, to treat older workers differently than younger ones with only a few exceptions, such as jobs that require special physical qualifications. And for years, judges and policymakers treated the law as essentially on a par with prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and other categories.

    In recent decades, however, the courts have responded to corporate pleas for greater leeway to meet global competition and satisfy investor demands for rising profits by expanding the exceptions and shrinking the protections against age bias .

    "Age discrimination is an open secret like sexual harassment was until recently," said Victoria Lipnic, the acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, the independent federal agency that administers the nation's workplace anti-discrimination laws.

    "Everybody knows it's happening, but often these cases are difficult to prove" because courts have weakened the law, Lipnic said. "The fact remains it's an unfair and illegal way to treat people that can be economically devastating."

    Many companies have sought to take advantage of the court rulings. But the story of IBM's downsizing provides an unusually detailed portrait of how a major American corporation systematically identified employees to coax or force out of work in their 40s, 50s and 60s, a time when many are still productive and need a paycheck, but face huge hurdles finding anything like comparable jobs.

    The dislocation caused by IBM's cuts has been especially great because until recently the company encouraged its employees to think of themselves as "IBMers" and many operated under the assumption that they had career-long employment.

    When the ax suddenly fell, IBM provided almost no information about why an employee was cut or who else was departing, leaving people to piece together what had happened through websites, listservs and Facebook groups such as "Watching IBM" or "Geographically Undesirable IBM Marketers," as well as informal support groups.

    Marjorie Madfis, at the time 57, was a New York-based digital marketing strategist and 17-year IBM employee when she and six other members of her nine-person team -- all women in their 40s and 50s -- were laid off in July 2013. The two who remained were younger men.

    Since her specialty was one that IBM had said it was expanding, she asked for a written explanation of why she was let go. The company declined to provide it.

    "They got rid of a group of highly skilled, highly effective, highly respected women, including me, for a reason nobody knows," Madfis said in an interview. "The only explanation is our age."

    Brian Paulson, also 57, a senior manager with 18 years at IBM, had been on the road for more than a year overseeing hundreds of workers across two continents as well as hitting his sales targets for new services, when he got a phone call in October 2015 telling him he was out. He said the caller, an executive who was not among his immediate managers, cited "performance" as the reason, but refused to explain what specific aspects of his work might have fallen short.

    It took Paulson two years to land another job, even though he was equipped with an advanced degree, continuously employed at high-level technical jobs for more than three decades and ready to move anywhere from his Fairview, Texas, home.

    "It's tough when you've worked your whole life," he said. "The company doesn't tell you anything. And once you get to a certain age, you don't hear a word from the places you apply."

    Paul Henry, a 61-year-old IBM sales and technical specialist who loved being on the road, had just returned to his Columbus home from a business trip in August 2016 when he learned he'd been let go. When he asked why, he said an executive told him to "keep your mouth shut and go quietly."

    Henry was jobless more than a year, ran through much of his savings to cover the mortgage and health insurance and applied for more than 150 jobs before he found a temporary slot.

    "If you're over 55, forget about preparing for retirement," he said in an interview. "You have to prepare for losing your job and burning through every cent you've saved just to get to retirement."

    IBM's latest actions aren't anything like what most ex-employees with whom ProPublica talked expected from their years of service, or what today's young workers think awaits them -- or are prepared to deal with -- later in their careers.

    "In a fast-moving economy, employers are always going to be tempted to replace older workers with younger ones, more expensive workers with cheaper ones, those who've performed steadily with ones who seem to be up on the latest thing," said Joseph Seiner, an employment law professor at the University of South Carolina and former appellate attorney for the EEOC.

    "But it's not good for society," he added. "We have rules to try to maintain some fairness in our lives, our age-discrimination laws among them. You can't just disregard them."

    [Oct 30, 2018] Arbitrators overwhelmingly favor employers

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    When it comes to employment claims, studies have found that arbitrators overwhelmingly favor employers. Research by Cornell University law and labor relations specialist Alexander Colvin found that workers win only 19 percent of the time when their cases are arbitrated. By contrast, they win 36 percent of the time when they go to federal court, and 57 percent in state courts. Average payouts when an employee wins follow a similar pattern.

    Given those odds, and having signed away their rights to go to court, some laid-off IBM workers have chosen the one independent forum companies can't deny them: the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's where Moos, the Long Beach systems security specialist, and several of her colleagues, turned for help when they were laid off. In their complaints to the agency, they said they'd suffered age discrimination because of the company's effort to "drastically change the IBM employee age mix to be seen as a startup."

    In its formal reply to the EEOC, IBM said that age couldn't have been a factor in their dismissals. Among the reasons it cited: The managers who decided on the layoffs were in their 40s and therefore older too.

    [Oct 30, 2018] I see the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) problem as its nearly impossible to take the fact that we know PIP is a scam to court. IBM will say its an issue with you, your performance nose dived and your manager tried to fix that. You have to not only fight those simple statements, but prove that PIP is actually systematic worker abuse.

    Notable quotes:
    "... It is in fact a modern corporate horror story; it's also life at a modern corporation, period. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Cindy Gallop , Thursday, March 22, 2018 10:24 AM

    This makes for absolutely horrifying, chills-down-your-spine reading. A modern corporate horror story - worthy of a 'Black Mirror' episode. Phenomenal reporting by Ariana Tobin and Peter Gosselin. Thank you for exposing this. I hope this puts an end to this at IBM and makes every other company and industry doing this in covert and illegal ways think twice about continuing.
    Daisy S Cindy Gallop , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Agree..a well written expose'. I've been a victim of IBM's "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) strategy, not because of my real performance mind you, but rather, I wasn't billing hours between projects and it was hurting my unit's bottom line. The way IBM instructs management to structure the PIP, it's almost impossible to dig your way out, and it's intentional. If you have a PIP on your record, nobody in IBM wants to touch you, so in effect you're already gone.
    Paul Brinker Daisy S , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I see the PIP problem as its nearly impossible to take the fact that we know PIP is a scam to court. IBM will say its an issue with you, your performance nose dived and your manager tried to fix that. You have to not only fight those simple statements, but prove that PIP is actually systematic worker abuse.
    dragonflap Cindy Gallop , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Cindy, they've been doing this for at least 15-20 years, or even longer according to some of the previous comments. It is in fact a modern corporate horror story; it's also life at a modern corporation, period.
    Maria Stone dragonflap , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    This started happening in the 1990's when they added 5 years to your age and years of service and ASKED you to retire.
    Matt_Z , Thursday, March 22, 2018 6:01 PM
    After over 35 years working there, 19 of them as a manager sending out more of those notification letters than I care to remember, I can vouch for the accuracy of this investigative work. It's an incredibly toxic and hostile environment and has been for the last 5 or so years. One of the items I was appraised on annually was how many US jobs I moved offshore. It was a relief when I received my notification letter after a two minute phone call telling me it was on the way. Sleeping at night and looking myself in the mirror aren't as hard as they were when I worked there.
    IBM will never regain any semblance of their former glory (or profit) until they begin to treat employees well again.
    With all the offshoring and resource actions with no backfill over the last 10 years, so much is broken. Customers suffer almost as much as the employees.
    I don't know how in the world they ended up on that LinkedIn list. Based on my fairly recent experience there are a half dozen happy employees in the US, and most of them are C level.
    Jennifer , Thursday, March 22, 2018 9:42 AM
    Well done. It squares well with my 18 years at IBM, watching resource action after resource action and hearing what my (unusually honest) manager told me. Things got progressively worse from 2012 onward. I never realized how stressful it was to live under the shadow of impending layoffs until I finally found the courage to leave in 2015. Best decision I've made.

    IBM answers to its shareholders, period. Employees are an afterthought - simply a means to an end. It's shameful. (That's not to say that individual people managers feel that way. I'm speaking about IBM executives.)

    Herb Jennifer , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Well, they almost answer to their shareholders, but that's after the IBM executives take their share. Ginni's compensation is tied to stock price (apparently not earnings) and buy backs maintain the stock price.
    Ribit , Thursday, March 22, 2018 8:17 AM
    If the criteria for layoff is being allegedly overpaid and allegedly a poor performer, then it follows that Grinnin' Jenny should have been let go long ago.
    Mr. Hand Ribit , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Yes! After the 4th of those 22 consecutive quarters of declining revenues. And she's no spring chicken either. ;-)
    DDRLSGC Ribit ,
    Especially these CEOs who have ran their companies into the ground for the last 38 years.
    owswitch , Thursday, March 22, 2018 8:58 AM
    Just another fine example of how people become disposable.
    And, when it comes to cost containment and profit maximization, there is no place for ethics in American business.
    Businesses can lie just as well as politicians.

    Millennials are smart to avoid this kind of problem by remaining loyal only to themselves. Companies certainly define anyone as replaceable - even their over-paid CEO's.

    DDRLSGC owswitch

    The millennials saw what happen to their parents and grandparents getting screwed over after a life time of work and loyalty. You can't blame them for not caring about so called traditional American work ethics and then they are attacked for not having them when the business leaders threw away all those value decades ago.

    Some of these IBM people have themselves to blame for cutting their own economic throats for fighting against unions, putting in politicians who are pro-business and thinking that their education and high paying white collar STEM jobs will give them economic immunity.

    If America was more of a free market and free enterprise instead of being more of a close market of oligarchies and monopolies, and strong government regulations, companies would think twice about treating their workforce badly because they know their workforce would leave for other companies or start up their own companies without too much of a hassle.

    HiJinks DDRLSGC

    Under the old IBM you could not get a union as workers were treated with dignity and respect - see the 3 core beliefs. Back then a union would not have accomplished anything.

    DDRLSGC HiJinks
    Doesn't matter if it was the old IBM or new IBM, you wonder how many still actually voted against their economic interests in the political elections that in the long run undermine labor rights in this country.
    HiJinks DDRLSGC
    So one shouldn't vote? Neither party cares about the average voter except at election time. Both sell out to Big Business - after all, that's where the big campaign donations come from. If you believe only one party favors Big Business, then you have been watching to much "fake news". Even the unions know they have been sold out by both and are wising up. How many of those jobs were shipped overseas the past 25 years.
    DDRLSGC HiJinks ,
    No, they should have been more active in voting for politicians who would look after the workers' rights in this country for the last 38 years plus ensuring that Congressional people and the president would not be packing the court system with pro-business judges. Sorry, but it is the Big Business that have been favoring the Republican Party for a long, long time and the jobs have been shipped out for the last 38 years.

    [Oct 30, 2018] The women who run large US companies are as shallow and ruthless as the sociopathic men.

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Bob Gort , Saturday, March 31, 2018 9:49 PM

    Age discrimination has been standard operating procedure in IT for at least 30 years. And there are no significant consequences, if any consequences at all, for doing it in a blatant fashion. The companies just need to make sure the quota of H1B visas is increased when they are doing this on an IBM scale!
    900DeadWomen Bob Gort , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Age discrimination and a myriad other forms of discrimination have been standard operating procedure in the US. Period. Full stop. No need to equivocate.
    Anon , Friday, March 30, 2018 12:49 PM
    Wait for a few years and we can see the same happening to "millenials".

    And the women who run these companies are as shallow and ruthless as the sociopathic men.

    [Oct 30, 2018] I love how IBM says everything remains the same.

    Oct 30, 2018 | arstechnica.com

    Danathar , Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor 5 hours ago

    I love how IBM says everything remains the same.

    If that were the case....then why buy them? The whole POINT of acquiring a company is so that you can leverage what the acquired company has to improve your business.

    As time moves on, it's going to be obvious that some of the things RH does (partnerships, etc) compete with some of IBM's partnerships and/or products.

    At some point management will look at where there is crossover and kill the ones not making money or hurting existing products.

    Point is, over time RH is NOT going to just continue on as an independent entity with no effect from it's parent or vice versa.

    And....let's remember this is a ACQUISITION! Not a merger.

    [Oct 30, 2018] How do you say "Red Hat" in Hindi??

    Oct 30, 2018 | theregister.co.uk

    christie23356 , 14 hrs

    Re: How do you say "Red Hat" in Hindi??

    Hello)

    [Oct 30, 2018] Eventually all the people who I worked with that were outsourced to IBM were packaged off and all of our jobs were sent offshore.

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Joe Harkins , Saturday, March 24, 2018 12:12 PM

    I recall, back in the mid-1960s, encountering employees of major major corporations like IBM, US Steel, the Big Three in Detroit, etc, There was a certain smugness there. I recall hearing bragging about the awesome retirement incomes. Yes, I was jealous. But I also had a clear eye as to the nature of the beast they were working for, and I kept thinking of the famous limerick:

    There was a young lady of Niger
    Who smiled as she rode on a Tiger;
    They came back from the ride
    With the lady inside,
    And the smile on the face of the Tiger.

    JoeJoe , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:25 AM
    As an ex-IBM employee, I was given a package ( 6 months pay and a "transition" course) because I was getting paid too much or so I was told. I was part of a company (oil industry) that outsourced it's IT infrastructure support personnel and on several occasions was told by my IBM management that they just don't know what to do with employees who make the kind of money I do when we can do it much cheaper somewhere else (meaning offshore).

    Eventually all the people who I worked with that were outsourced to IBM were packaged off and all of our jobs were sent offshore. I just turned 40 and found work back in the oil industry. In the short time I was with IBM I found their benefits very restricted, their work policies very bureaucratic and the office culture very old boys club.

    If you weren't part of IBM and were an outsourced employee, you didn't fit in. At the time I thought IBM was the glory company in IT to work for, but quickly found out they are just a dinosaur. It's just a matter of time for them.

    [Oct 30, 2018] My impression, totally anecdotal, is that unless you can hire or move a very good architect/lead + project/product manager over there so you can interact in real-time instead of with a day delay, outsourcing is just a huge PITA and slows things down

    Oct 30, 2018 | arstechnica.com

    Drizzt321 , Ars Legatus Legionis et Subscriptor an hour ago

    I think a lot of the dislike for Indian developers is it's usually the outsourced, cheap as possible code monkey developers. Which can be a problem anywhere, for sure, but at least seem exacerbated by US companies outsourcing there. In my limited experience, they're either intelligent and can work up to working reasonably independently and expanding on a ticket intelligently. Or they're copy a pasta code monkey and need pretty good supervision of the code that's produced.

    Add in the problem if timezones and folks who may not understand English that great, or us not understanding their English, and it all gives them a bad name. Yet I agree, I know some quite good developers. Ones that didn't go to a US college.

    My impression, totally anecdotal, is that unless you can hire or move a very good architect/lead + project/product manager over there so you can interact in real-time instead of with a day delay, it's just a huge PITA and slows things down.

    Personally I'd rather hire a couple of seemingly competent 3 years out of college on their 2nd job (because they rarely stay very long at their first one, right?) and pay from there.

    [Oct 30, 2018] To a bean counter a developer in a RH office in North America or Europe who s been coding for RH for 10 years is valued same as a developer in Calcutta who just graduated from college

    Notable quotes:
    "... There's not an intrinsic advantage to being of a certain nationality, American included. Sure, there are a lot of bad companies and bad programmers coming from India, but there are plenty of incompetent developers right here too. ..."
    "... A huge problem with the good developers over there is the lack of English proficiency and soft skills. However, being born or graduated in Calcutta (or anywhere else for that matter) is not a determination of one's skill. ..."
    "... I get what the intention of the first comment was intended to be, but it still has that smugness that is dangerous to the American future. As the world becomes more interconnected, and access to learning improves, when people ask you why are you better than that other guy, the answer better be something more than "well, I'm American and he is from Calcutta" because no one is going to buy that. The comment could've said that to a bean counter a solid developer with 10 years of experience is worth the same as a junior dev who just came out of school and make the same point. What exactly was the objective of throwing in Calcutta over there? ..."
    "... I have dealt with this far too much these VPs rarely do much work and simply are hit on bottom line ( you are talking about 250k+), but management in US doesn't want to sit off hours and work with India office so they basically turn a blind eye on them. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | arstechnica.com

    dmoan, 2018-10-30T07:32:29-04:00

    Drizzt321 wrote: show nested quotes

    A.Felix wrote:

    Drizzt321 wrote:

    Dilbert wrote:

    motytrah wrote:

    bolomkxxviii wrote:

    No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness will kill Red Hat. Time to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.

    I agree. Redhat has dev offices all over. A lot of them in higher cost areas of the US and Europe. There's no way IBM doesn't consolidate and offshore a bunch of that work.

    This. To a bean counter a developer in a RH office in North America or Europe who's been coding for RH for 10 years is valued same as a developer in Calcutta who just graduated from college. For various definitions of word 'graduated'.

    I'm just waiting until some major company decides that some of the nicer parts of middle America/Appalachia can be a LOT cheaper, still nice, and let them pay less in total while keeping some highly skilled employees.

    I don't know about that. Cities can be expensive but part of the reason is that a lot of people want to live there, and supply/demand laws start acting. You'll be able to get some talent no doubt, but a lot of people who live nearby big cities wouldn't like to leave all the quality of life elements you have there, like entertainment, cultural events, shopping, culinary variety, social events, bigger dating scene, assorted array of bars and night clubs, theatre, opera, symphonies, international airports... you get the drift.

    I understand everyone is different, but you would actually need to pay me more to move to a smaller town in middle America. I also work with people who would take the offer without hesitation, but in my admittedly anecdotal experience, more tech people prefer the cities than small towns. Finally, if you do manage to get some traction in getting the people and providing the comforts, then you're just going to get the same increase in cost of living wherever you are because now you're just in one more big city.

    Costs of life are a problem, but we need to figure out how to properly manage them, instead of just saying "lets move them somewhere else". Also we shouldn't discount the capability of others, because going by that cost argument outsourcing becomes attractive. The comment you're replying to tries to diminish Indian engineers, but the reverse can still be true. A developer in India who has been working for 10 years costs even less than an American who just graduated, for various definitions of graduated. There's over a billion people over there, and the Indian Institutes of Technology are nothing to scoff at.

    There's not an intrinsic advantage to being of a certain nationality, American included. Sure, there are a lot of bad companies and bad programmers coming from India, but there are plenty of incompetent developers right here too. It's just that there are a lot more in general over there and they would come for cheap, so in raw numbers it seems overwhelming, but that sword cuts both ways, the raw number of competent ones is also a lot.

    About 5% of the American workforce are scientists and engineers, which make a bit over 7 million people. The same calculation in India brings you to almost 44 million people.

    A huge problem with the good developers over there is the lack of English proficiency and soft skills. However, being born or graduated in Calcutta (or anywhere else for that matter) is not a determination of one's skill.

    I get what the intention of the first comment was intended to be, but it still has that smugness that is dangerous to the American future. As the world becomes more interconnected, and access to learning improves, when people ask you why are you better than that other guy, the answer better be something more than "well, I'm American and he is from Calcutta" because no one is going to buy that. The comment could've said that to a bean counter a solid developer with 10 years of experience is worth the same as a junior dev who just came out of school and make the same point. What exactly was the objective of throwing in Calcutta over there? Especially when we then move to a discussion about how costly it is to pay salaries in America. Sounds a bit counterproductive if you ask me.

    I think a lot of the dislike for Indian developers is that they usually are the outsourced to cheap as possible code monkey developers. Which can be a problem anywhere, for sure, but at least seem exacerbated by US companies outsourcing there. In my limited experience, they're either intelligent and can work up to working reasonably independently and expanding on a ticket intelligently. Or they're copy a pasta code monkey and need pretty good supervision of the code that's produced. Add in the problem if timezones and folks who may not understand English that great, or us not understanding their English, and it all gives them a bad name. Yet I agree, I know some quite good developers. Ones that didn't go to a US college.

    My impression, totally anecdotal, is that unless you can hire or move a very good architect/lead + project/product manager over there so you can interact in real-time instead of with a day delay, it's just a huge PITA and slows things down. Personally I'd rather hire a couple of seemingly competent 3 years out of college on their 2nd job (because they rarely stay very long at their first one, right?) and pay from there.

    Companies/management offshore because it keep revenue per employee and allows them to be promoted by inflating their direct report allowing them to build another "cheap" pyramid hierarchy. A manager in US can become a director or VP easily by having few managers report to him from India. Even better this person can go to India ( they are most often Indian) and claim to lead the India office and improve outsourcing while getting paid US salary.

    I have dealt with this far too much these VPs rarely do much work and simply are hit on bottom line ( you are talking about 250k+), but management in US doesn't want to sit off hours and work with India office so they basically turn a blind eye on them.

    [Oct 30, 2018] IBM is bad, but it s just the tip of the iceberg. I worked for a major international company that dumped almost the entire IT workforce and replaced them with managed services , almost exclusively H-1B workers from almost exclusively India.

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org
    netmouse , Saturday, March 24, 2018 10:49 AM
    Outstanding. I had to train people in IBM India to do my job when (early) "retired". I actually found a new internal job in IBM, the hiring manager wrote/chat that I was a fit. I was denied the job because my current group said I had to transfer and the receiving group said I had to be on a contract, stalemate! I appealed and group HR said sorry, can't do and gave me one reason after another, that I could easily refute, then they finally said the job was to be moved overseas. Note most open jobs posted were categorized for global resources. I appealed to Randy (former HR SVP) and no change. At least I foced them to finally tell the truth. I had also found another job locally near home and received an email from the HR IBM person responsible for the account saying no, they were considering foreigners first, if they found no one suitable they would then consider Americans. I appealed to my IBM manager who basically said sorry, that is how things are now. All in writing, so no more pretending it is a skill issue. People, it is and always has been about cheap labor. I recall when a new IBM technology began, Websphere, and I was sent for a month's training. Then in mid-2000's training and raises pretty much stopped and that was when resource actions were stepped up.
    TVGizmo , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:36 PM
    IBM started downhill as a result of many factors.

    But the single most cause was when.....Respect for the Individual (the first Basic Belief) was ignored. Everything else was collateral damage.

    Former 'Manager of the Year' in the old Field Engineering Division.

    CRAW , Friday, March 23, 2018 9:51 AM
    IBM is bad, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. I worked for a major international company that dumped almost the entire IT workforce and replaced them with "managed services", almost exclusively H-1B workers from almost exclusively India. This has been occurring for decades in many, MANY businesses around the country large and small. Even this article seems to make a special effort to assure us that "some" workers laid off in America were replaced with "younger, less experienced, lower-paid American workers and moving many other jobs overseas." How many were replaced with H-1B, H-4 EAD, OPT, L-1, etc? It's by abusing these work visa programs that companies facilitate moving the work overseas in the first place. I appreciate this article, but I think it's disingenuous for ProPublica to ignore the elephant in the room - work visa abuse. Why not add a question or two to your polls about that? It wouldn't be hard. For example, "Do you feel that America's work visa programs had an impact on your employment at IBM? Do you feel it has had an impact on your ability to regain employment after leaving IBM?" I'd like to see the answer to THOSE questions.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Neoliberal way of screwing up people is via HR

    Notable quotes:
    "... I too was a victim of IBM's underhanded trickery to get rid of people...39 years with IBM, a top performer. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org
    xn0 , Monday, April 2, 2018 1:44 PM
    These practices are "interesting". And people still wonder why there are so many deadly amok runs at US companies? What do they expect when they replace old and experienced workers with inexperienced millenials, who often lack basic knowledge about their job? Better performance?

    This will run US tech companies into the ground. This sort of "American" HR management is gaining ground here in Germany as well, its troubling. And on top they have to compete against foreign tech immigrants from middle eastern and asian companies. Sure fire recipe for social unrest and people voting for right-wing parties.

    nottigerwoods , Friday, March 30, 2018 1:39 PM
    I too was a victim of IBM's underhanded trickery to get rid of people...39 years with IBM, a top performer. I never got a letter telling me to move to Raleigh. All i got was a phone call asking me if i wanted to take the 6 month exception to consider it. Yet, after taking the 6 month exception, I was told I could no longer move, the colocation was closed. Either I find another job, not in Marketing support (not even Marketing) or leave the company. I received no letter from Ginni, nothing. I was under the impression I could show up in Raleigh after the exception period. Not so. It was never explained....After 3 months I will begin contracting with IBM. Not because I like them, because I need the money...thanks for the article.
    doncanard , Friday, March 30, 2018 1:33 PM
    dropped in 2013 after 22 years. IBM stopped leading in the late 1980's, afterwards it implemented "market driven quality" which meant listen for the latest trends, see what other people were doing, and then buy the competition or drive them out of business. "Innovation that matters": it's only interesting if an IBM manager can see a way to monetize it.

    That's a low standard. It's OK, there are other places that are doing better. In fact, the best of the old experienced people went to work there. Newsflash: quality doesn't change with generations, you either create it or you don't.

    Sounds like IBM is building its product portfolio to match its desired workforce. And of course, on every round of layoffs, the clear criterion was people who were compliant and pliable - who's ready to follow orders ? Best of luck.

    [Oct 30, 2018] In the late 1980s, IBM offered decent packages to retirement eligible employees. For those close to retirement age, it was a great deal - 2 weeks pay for every year of service (capped at 26 years) plus being kept on to perform their old job for 6 months (while collecting retirement, until the government stepped in an put a halt to it).

    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    HiJinks , Sunday, March 25, 2018 3:07 AM

    I agree with many who state the report is well done. However, this crap started in the early 1990s. In the late 1980s, IBM offered decent packages to retirement eligible employees. For those close to retirement age, it was a great deal - 2 weeks pay for every year of service (capped at 26 years) plus being kept on to perform their old job for 6 months (while collecting retirement, until the government stepped in an put a halt to it). Nobody eligible was forced to take the package (at least not to general knowledge). The last decent package was in 1991 - similar, but not able to come back for 6 months.

    However, in 1991, those offered the package were basically told take it or else. Anyone with 30 years of service or 15 years and 55 was eligible and anyone within 5 years of eligibility could "bridge" the difference.

    They also had to sign a form stating they would not sue IBM in order to get up to a years pay - not taxable per IRS documents back then (but IBM took out the taxes anyway and the IRS refused to return - an employee group had hired lawyers to get the taxes back, a failed attempt which only enriched the lawyers).

    After that, things went downhill and accelerated when Gerstner took over. After 1991, there were still a some workers who could get 30 years or more, but that was more the exception. I suspect the way the company has been run the past 25 years or so has the Watsons spinning in their graves. Gone are the 3 core beliefs - "Respect for the individual", "Service to the customer" and "Excellence must be a way of life".

    Chris S. HiJinks

    could be true... but i thought Watson was the IBM data analytics computer thingy... beat two human players at Jeopardy on live tv a year or two or so back.. featured on 60 Minutes just around last year.... :

    ArnieTracey , Saturday, March 24, 2018 7:15 PM
    IBM's policy reminds me of the "If a citizen = 30 y.o., then mass execute such, else if they run then hunt and kill them one by one" social policy in the Michael York movie "Logan's Run."

    From Wiki, in case you don't know: "It depicts a utopian future society on the surface, revealed as a dystopia where the population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of 30. The story follows the actions of Logan 5, a "Sandman" who has terminated others who have attempted to escape death, and is now faced with termination himself."

    Jr Jr , Saturday, March 24, 2018 4:37 PM
    Corporate loyalty has been gone for 25 years. This isnt surprising. But this age discrimination is blatantly illegal.

    [Oct 30, 2018] Neoliberal IT working place is really a minefield for older workers

    Notable quotes:
    "... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
    Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    disqus_qN55ZbK3Ce , Friday, March 23, 2018 3:09 PM

    If anything, IBM is behind the curve. I was terminated along with my entire department from a major IBM subcontractor, with all affected employees "coincidentally" being over 50. By "eliminating the department" and forcing me to sign a waiver to receive my meager severance, they avoided any legal repercussions. 18 months later on the dot (the minimum legal time period), my workload was assigned to three new hires, all young. Interestingly, their combined salaries are more than mine, and I could have picked up all their work for about $200 in training (in social media posting, something I picked up on my own last year and am doing quite well, thank you).

    And my former colleagues are not alone. A lot of friends of mine have had similar outcomes, and as the article states, no one will hire people my age willingly in my old capacity. Luckily again, I've pivoted into copywriting--a discipline where age is still associated with quality ("dang kids can't spell anymore!"). But I'm doing it freelance, with the commensurate loss of security, benefits, and predictability of income.

    So if IBM is doing this now, they are laggards. But because they're so big, there's a much more obvious paper trail.

    Stephen McConnell , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:44 AM
    One of the most in-depth, thoughtful and enlightening pieces of journalism I've seen. Having worked on Capitol Hill during the early 1980's for the House and Senate Aging Committees, we worked hard to abolish the remnants of mandatory retirement and to strengthen the protections under the ADEA. Sadly, the EEOC has become a toothless bureaucracy when it comes to age discrimination cases and the employers, as evidenced by the IBM case, have become sophisticated in hiding what they're doing to older workers. Peter's incredibly well researched article lays the case out for all to see. Now the question is whether the government will step up to its responsibilities and protect older workers from this kind of discrimination in the future. Peter has done a great service in any case.
    Mark , Friday, March 23, 2018 1:05 AM
    The US tech sector has mostly ignored US citizen applicants, of all ages, since the early 2000s. Instead, preferring to hire foreign nationals. The applications of top US citizen grads are literally thrown in the garbage (or its electronic equivalent) while companies like IBM have their hiring processes dominated by Indian nationals. IBM is absolutely a poster-child for H-1B, L-1, and OPT visa abuse.
    CRAW Mark , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    EXACTLY. Work visas are the enabler of this discrimination. We are overrun.
    Warren Stiles , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:17 PM
    Bottom line is we have entered an era when there are only two classes who are protected in our economy; the Investor Class and the Executive Class. With Wall Street's constant demand for higher profits and increased shareholder value over all other business imperatives, rank and file workers have been relegated to the class of expendable resource. I propose that all of us over fifty who have been riffed out of Corporate America band together for the specific purpose of beating the pants off them in the marketplace. The best revenge is whooping their youngster butts at the customer negotiating table. By demonstrating we are still flexible and nimble, yet with the experience to avoid the missteps of misspent youth, we prove we can deliver value well beyond what narrow-minded bean counters can achieve.
    DDRLSGC Warren Stiles , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    or whipping the butts of the older managers who thought that their older workers were over the hill.
    Warren Stiles DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Just like they are...
    Jeff Russell , Thursday, March 22, 2018 4:31 PM
    I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business. The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative was bankruptcy.

    I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing, movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking. I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation. The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.

    DDRLSGC Jeff Russell , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
    John Kauai Jeff Russell , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.

    The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.

    MichiganRefugee , Friday, March 23, 2018 9:52 AM
    I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
    George Purcell , Friday, March 23, 2018 7:41 AM
    Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable as well.
    Bob Fritz , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:35 PM
    I read the article and all the comments.

    Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?

    I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.

    People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.

    petervonstackelberg , Thursday, March 22, 2018 2:00 PM
    I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.

    I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.

    davosil , Sunday, March 25, 2018 5:00 PM
    This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers; way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job.
    This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your middle class, so goes your country.
    ThinkingAloud , Friday, March 23, 2018 7:18 AM
    The last five words are chilling... This is an award-winning piece....
    RetiredIBM.manager , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:39 PM
    I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You nailed it!
    David , Thursday, March 22, 2018 3:22 PM
    IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
    CRAW David , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Now IBM still treats their employees like Disney - by replacing them with H-1B workers.
    MHV IBMer , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:35 PM
    I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions, bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone knew. Excellent article.
    Goldie Romero , Friday, March 23, 2018 2:31 PM
    Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more.
    I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be honest with your workers.
    High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company like IBM.
    jblog , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:37 AM
    From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):

    Throughout
    it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
    of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
    from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.

    The laid off
    employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
    younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
    no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
    "downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
    guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
    abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
    with experience.

    Frequently,
    an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
    employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
    hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
    perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
    them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
    much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
    reward or opportunity.

    Most of the
    young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
    true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
    but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
    up the pay scale.

    turquoisewaters , Thursday, March 22, 2018 10:19 PM
    This is why you need unions.
    Aaron Stackpole , Thursday, March 22, 2018 5:23 PM
    This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
    awb22 , Thursday, March 22, 2018 12:14 PM
    The same thing has been going on at other companies, since the end of WWII. It's unethical, whether the illegality can be proven or not.

    In the RTP area, where I live, I know many, many current and former employees. Times have changed, but the distinction between right and wrong hasn't.

    Suzan awb22 , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I was hired by one of the government agencies in RTP last year and then never given a start date after I submitted my SS number & birth certificate.

    Anyone familiar with this situation?

    Dave Allen , Thursday, March 22, 2018 1:07 PM
    I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire. Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family." The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer. Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
    sometimestheyaresomewhatright Dave Allen , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
    Dave Allen sometimestheyaresomewhatright , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.

    Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion, etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.

    DDRLSGC Dave Allen , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven for the last 38 years.
    Danllo DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones, internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
    DDRLSGC Danllo , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies, sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
    NotSure DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan.

    The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
    DDRLSGC NotSure , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent, and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That is a fact.

    You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.

    DDRLSGC NotSure , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
    james Foster , Thursday, March 29, 2018 8:37 PM
    Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
    Philip Meyer james Foster , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
    George A , Tuesday, March 27, 2018 6:12 PM
    Warning to Google/Facebook/Apple etc. All you young people will get old. It's inevitable. Do you think those companies will take care of you?
    econdataus , Sunday, March 25, 2018 3:01 PM
    Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers. For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
    Buzz , Friday, March 23, 2018 12:00 PM
    I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc. The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague. I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with 30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past 2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
    OrangeGina , Friday, March 23, 2018 11:41 AM
    Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
    JeffMo , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:23 AM
    This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
    Frankie , Friday, March 23, 2018 1:00 AM
    Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.

    If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.

    The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone. Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.

    Rick Gundlach , Thursday, March 22, 2018 11:38 PM
    This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
    Jeff , Thursday, March 22, 2018 2:05 PM
    In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.

    Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer support position for the very product I helped develop.

    While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.

    A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">

    What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.

    Herb Jeff , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to">
    Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was "holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story.
    AlmostNative , Sunday, April 1, 2018 4:27 PM
    Great article. And so so close to home. I worked at IBM for 23 years until I became yet another statistic -- caught up in one of their many "RA's" -- Resource Actions. I also can identify with the point about being encouraged to find a job internally yet hiring managers told to not hire. We were encouraged to apply for jobs outside the US -- Europe mainly -- as long as we were willing to move and work at the prevailing local wage rate. I was totally fine with that as my wife had been itching for some time for a chance to live abroad. I applied for several jobs across Europe using an internal system IBM set up just for that purpose. Never heard a word. Phone calls and internal e-mails to managers posting jobs in the internal system went unanswered. It turned out to be a total sham as far as I was concerned.

    IBM has laid off hundreds of thousands in the last few decades. Think of the MILLIONS of children, spouses, brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles, and other family members of laid-off people that were affected. Those people are or will be business owners and in positions to make technology decisions. How many of them will think "Yeah, right, hire IBM. They're the company that screwed daddy/mommy". I fully expect -- and I fully hope -- that I live to see IBM go out of business. Which they will, sooner or later, as they are living off of past laurels -- billions in the bank, a big fat patent portfolio, and real estate that they continue to sell off or rent out. If you do hire IBM, you should fully expect that they'll send some 20-something out to your company a few weeks after you hire them, that person will be reading "XYZ for Dummys" on the plane on the way to your offices and will show up as your IBM 'expert'.

    [Oct 29, 2018] A nasty but subtle practice of diminishing employee status and compensation that encourages the employee to prematurely consider retirement or employment elsewhere

    Oct 29, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    John Mamuscia , Monday, March 26, 2018 3:08 PM

    > I was given the choice, retire or get a bad review and get fired, no severance. I retired and have not been employed since because of my age. Got news for these business people, experience trumps inexperience. Recently, I have developed several commercial Web sites using cloud technology. In your face IBM.
    Stimpy , Friday, March 23, 2018 11:17 PM
    > This could well have been written about Honeywell. Same tactics exactly. I laid myself off and called it retirement after years of shoddy treatment and phonied up employee evaluations. I took it personally until I realized that this is just American Management in action. I don't know how they look themselves in the mirror in the morning.
    sukibarnstorm , Thursday, March 22, 2018 6:38 PM
    > As an HR professional, I get sick when I hear of these tactics. Although this is not the first company to use this strategy to make a "paradigm shift". Where are the geniuses at Harvard, Yale, or the Wharton school of business (where our genius POTUS attended)? Can't they come up with a better model of how to make these changes in an organization without setting up the corp for a major lawsuit or God forbid ......they treat their employees with dignity and respect.
    DDRLSGC , in reply to">
    > They are not trained at our business schools to think long-term or look for solutions to problems or turn to the workforce for solutions. They are trained to maximizes the profits and let society subsidies their losses and costs.
    John Kauai , in reply to">
    > Isn't it interesting that you are the first one (here or anywhere else that I've seen) to talk about the complicity of Harvard and Yale in the rise of the Oligarchs.

    Perhaps we should consider reevaluation of their lofty perch in American Education. Now if we could only think of a way to expose the fraud.

    [Oct 29, 2018] My employer outsourced a lot of our IT to IBM and Cognizant in India. The experience has been terrible and 4 years into a 5 year contract, we are finally realizing the error and insourcing rapidly.

    Oct 29, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Alex , Sunday, April 22, 2018 7:27 AM

    My employer outsourced a lot of our IT to IBM and Cognizant in India. The experience has been terrible and 4 years into a 5 year contract, we are finally realizing the error and insourcing rapidly.
    srichey321 , in reply to">
    Don't worry. A small group of people made some money in the short-term while degrading the long term performance of your employer.
    Johnny Player , Saturday, April 21, 2018 11:16 AM
    Great investigative work.

    Back in 1999 ATT moved about 4000 of us tech folks working on mainframe computers to IBM. We got pretty screwed on retirement benefits from ATT. After we moved over, IBM started slowly moving all of our workload overseas. Brazil and Argentina mainly.

    It started with just tier 1 help desk. Then small IBM accounts started to go over there. They were trained by 'unwilling' US based people. Unwilling in the sense that if you didn't comply, you weren't a team player and it would show on your performance review.

    Eventually the overseas units took on more and more of the workload. I ended up leaving in 2012 at the age of 56 for personal reasons.

    Our time at ATT was suppose to be bridged to IBM but the only thing bridged was vacation days. A lawsuit ensued and IBM/ATT won. I'm guessing it was some of that 'ingenious' paperwork that we signed that allowed them to rip us off like that. Thanks again for some great investigation.

    [Oct 29, 2018] In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the workplace.

    Notable quotes:
    "... In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the workplace. By the end of the 1980's unions were totally emasculated and you had workers "going postal" in an abusive workplace. When unions were at their peak of power, they could appeal to the courts and actually stop a factory from moving out of the country by enforcing a labor contact. ..."
    "... The American workplace is a nuthouse. Each and every individual workplace environment is like a cult. ..."
    "... The American workplace is just a byproduct of the militarization of everyday life. ..."
    "... Silicon Valley and Wall Street handed billions of dollars to this arrogant, ignorant Millennial Elizabeth Holmes. She abused any employee that questioned her. This should sound familiar to any employee who has had an overbearing know-it-all, bully boss in the workplace. Hopefully she will go to jail and a message will be sent that any young agist bully will not be given the power of god in the workplace. ..."
    Oct 29, 2018 | features.propublica.org

    Stauffenberg , Thursday, March 22, 2018 6:21 PM

    In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the workplace. By the end of the 1980's unions were totally emasculated and you had workers "going postal" in an abusive workplace. When unions were at their peak of power, they could appeal to the courts and actually stop a factory from moving out of the country by enforcing a labor contact.

    Today we have a President in the White House who was elected on a platform of "YOU'RE FIRED." Not surprisingly, Trump was elected by the vast majority of selfish lowlives in this country. The American workplace is a nuthouse. Each and every individual workplace environment is like a cult.

    That is not good for someone like me who hates taking orders from people. But I have seen it all. Ten years ago a Manhattan law firm fired every lawyer in a litigation unit except an ex-playboy playmate. Look it up it was in the papers. I was fired from a job where many of my bosses went to federal prison and then I was invited to the Christmas Party.

    What are the salaries of these IBM employees and how much are their replacements making? The workplace becomes a surrogate family. Who knows why some people get along and others don't. My theory on agism in the workplace is that younger employees don't want to be around their surrogate mother or father in the workplace after just leaving the real home under the rules of their real parents.

    The American workplace is just a byproduct of the militarization of everyday life. In the 1800's, Herman Melville wrote in his beautiful book "White Jacket" that one of the most humiliating aspects of the military is taking orders from a younger military officer. I read that book when I was 20. I didn't feel the sting of that wisdom until I was 40 and had a 30 year old appointed as my supervisor who had 10 years less experience than me.

    By the way, the executive that made her my supervisor was one of the sleaziest bosses I have ever had in my career. Look at the tech giant Theranos. Silicon Valley and Wall Street handed billions of dollars to this arrogant, ignorant Millennial Elizabeth Holmes. She abused any employee that questioned her. This should sound familiar to any employee who has had an overbearing know-it-all, bully boss in the workplace. Hopefully she will go to jail and a message will be sent that any young agist bully will not be given the power of god in the workplace.

    [Sep 29, 2018] True, this "living wage" issue has become now America's chronic illness.

    Sep 29, 2018 | www.unz.com

    Andrei Martyanov , says: Website August 11, 2017 at 8:18 pm GMT

    @iffen

    Employment at less than a living wage is not "employment."

    True, this "living wage" issue has become now America's chronic illness. Once one begins to look at the real estate dynamics, even for a good earners living in such places as Seattle, Portland (not to speak of L.A. or SF) becomes simply not affordable, forget buying anything decent. Hell, many rents are higher than actual mortgages, however insane they already are.

    [Jul 17, 2018] Doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*

    Notable quotes:
    "... Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*? Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world? ..."
    Jul 17, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Circe | Jul 17, 2018 6:25:12 PM | 135

    ...You can't put lipstick on an American fascist pig only because he pretends detente with Russia. It's tantamount to selling one's soul for an illusion. It's tantamount to treason if you live anywhere except in the U.S. OR Israel! And even if you live in the U.S. you are enabling the 1% and Zionist power.

    That's it. I'm tired of Trumpgod can do no wrong when everything he stands for is wrong. Get the snow out of your eyes!

    Guerrero | Jul 17, 2018 7:21:47 PM | 149

    Circe @135

    For sure I am in agreement: the "Trumpgod" is a shamanistic construction of a demoralized population.

    Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*? Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world?

    If that is how this Universe really works, and one has only force to work with, in the material realm, Donald Trump would seem well enough suited to the role of either lesser or greater-evil; either-way, hopefully leading-to dimunition of error, self-deception, and suffering of the children of Eve and Adam.

    Activist Potato , Jul 17, 2018 9:13:30 PM | 164

    @149 Guerrero said: "Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully
    confront *evil*?"

    Not often one sees metaphysics enter the realm of geo-political debate in this or any political forum. But, heck, why not? The unseen forces guiding the survival instincts of the universe (of which the Earth is a part) may indeed be at work. Trump - whatever one sees in him - seems to be the man for the times. Paradigms are bending, cracking, the conversation is changing.

    I'll never forget the shock in the MSM, almost to the point of stupefaction, at Trump accusing Obama during the election campaign of being the "founder of ISIS."

    What was even more amazing was how weak Obama's response was. I don't think anybody posting here would disagree that ISIS was Obama's baby - whether through adoption or progeny.

    But what serious candidate for President before Trump would ever say such a thing publicly - even if he knew it to be true? Whether by design or through blundering, boorish idiocy born of whatever flaws and motives you want to ascribe to him, Trump is very boisterously upsetting the political apple cart and with it the entire world order.

    If it is indeed for show as the world elites close their grip on the people of the planet - it is quite a show. But I don't think so...

    [Jul 14, 2018] McMaken The Military Is A Jobs Program... For Immigrants Many Others

    Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    by Tyler Durden Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:45 12 SHARES Authored Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    On the matter of immigration, even many commentators who support ease of migration also oppose the extension of government benefits to immigrants.

    The idea, of course, is that free movement of labor is fine, but taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize it. As a matter of policy, many also find it prudent that immigrants ought to be economically self sufficient before being offered citizenship. Switzerland, for instance, makes it harder to pursue citizenship while receiving social benefits.

    This discussion often centers around officially recognized "welfare" and social-benefits programs such as TANF and Medicaid. But it is also recognized that taxpayer-funded benefits exist in the form of public schooling, free clinics, and other in-kind benefits.

    But there is another taxpayer-supporter program that subsidizes immigration as well: the US military.

    Government Employment for Immigrants

    Last week, the AP began reporting that " the US Army is quietly discharging Immigrant recruits ."

    Translation: the US government has begun laying off immigrants from taxpayer-funded government jobs.

    It's unclear how many of these jobs have been employed, but according to the Department of Homeland security, "[s]ince Oct. 1, 2002, USCIS has naturalized 102,266 members of the military ."

    The Military as a Jobs Program

    Immigrants, of course, aren't the only people who benefit from government jobs funded through military programs.

    The military has long served as a jobs programs helpful in mopping up excess labor and padding employment numbers. As Robert Reich noted in 2011 , as the US was still coming out of the 2009 recession:

    And without our military jobs program personal incomes would be dropping faster. The Commerce Department reported Monday the only major metro areas where both net earnings and personal incomes rose last year were San Antonio, Texas, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. -- because all three have high concentrations of military and federal jobs.

    He's right. While the private sector must cut back and re-arrange labor and capital to deal with the new economic realities post-recession, government jobs rarely go away.

    Because of this, Reich concludes "America's biggest -- and only major -- jobs program is the U.S. military."

    Reich doesn't think this is a bad thing. He only highlights the military's role as a de facto jobs program in order to call for more de jure jobs programs supported by federal funding.

    Given the political popularity of the military, however, it's always easy to protect funding for the military jobs programs than for any other potential jobs programs. All the Pentagon has to do is assure Congress that every single military job is absolutely essential, and Congress will force taxpayers to cough up the funding.

    Back during the debate over sequestration, for example, the Pentagon routinely warned Congress that any cutbacks in military funding would lead to major jobs losses, bringing devastation to the economy.

    In other words, even the Pentagon treats the military like a jobs program when it's politically useful.

    Benefits for enlisted people go well beyond what can be seen in the raw numbers of total employed. As Kelley Vlahos points out at The American Conservative , military personnel receive extra hazard pay "even though they are far from any fighting or real danger." And then there is the "Combat Zone Tax Exclusion (CZTE) program which exempts enlisted and officers from paying federal taxes in these 45 designated countries. Again, they get the tax break -- which accounted for about $3.6 billion in tax savings for personnel in 2009 (the combat pay cost taxpayers $790 million in 2009)– whether they are really in danger or not."

    There's also evidence that military personnel receive higher pay in the military than do their private-sector counterparts with similar levels of education and training.

    Nor do the benefits of military spending go only to enlisted people. The Pentagon has long pointed to its spending on civilian jobs in many communities, including manufacturing jobs and white-collar technical jobs.

    This, of course, has long been politically useful for the Pentagon as well, since as political scientist Rebecca Thorpe has shown in her book The American Warfare State , communities that rely heavily on Pentagon-funded employment are sure to send Congressmen to Washington who will make sure the taxpayer dollars keep flowing to Pentagon programs.

    Whether you're talking to Robert Reich or some Pentagon lobbyist on Capitol Hill, the conclusion is clear: the military is both a jobs program and a stimulus program. Cut military spending at your peril!

    Military Spending Destroys Private Sector Jobs

    The rub, however, is that military spending doesn't actually improve the economy. And much the money spent on military employment would be best spent on the private, voluntary economy.

    This has long been recognized by political scientist Seymour Melman who has discussed the need for "economic conversion," or converting military spending into other forms of spending. Melman observes :

    Since we know that matter and energy located in Place A cannot be simultaneously located in Place B, we must understand that the resources used up on military account thereby represent a preemption of resources from civilian needs of every conceivable kind.

    Here, Melman is simply describing in his own way what Murray Rothbard explained in Man, Economy, and State . Namely, government spending distorts the economy as badly as taxation -- driving up prices for the private sector, and withdrawing resources from private sector use.

    Ellen Brown further explains :

    The military actually destroys jobs in the civilian economy. The higher profits from cost-plus military manufacturing cause manufacturers to abandon more competitive civilian endeavors; and the permanent war economy takes engineers, capital and resources away from civilian production.

    But, as a classic case of "the seen" vs. "the unseen," it's easy to point to jobs created by military spending. How many jobs were lost as a result of that same spending? That remains unseen, and thus politically irrelevant.

    Military fan boys will of course assure us that every single military job and every single dollar spent on the military is absolutely essential. It's all the service of "fighting for freedom." For instance, Mitchell Blatt writes , in the context of immigrant recruits, "I'm not worried about the country or origin of those who are fighting to defend us. What matters is that our military is as strong as it can be." The idea at work here is that the US military is a lean machine, doing only what is necessary to get the job done, and as cost effectively as possible. Thus, hiring the "best" labor, from whatever source is absolutely essential.

    This, however, rather strains the bounds of credibility. The US military is more expensive than the next eight largest militaries combined . The US's navy is ten times larger than the next largest navy. The US's air force is the largest in the world, and the second largest air force belongs, not to a foreign country, but to the US Navy.

    Yet, we're supposed to believe that any cuts will imperil the "readiness" of the US military.

    Cut Spending for Citizens and Non-Citizens Alike

    My intent here is not to pick on immigrants specifically. The case of military layoffs for immigrants simply helps to illustrate a couple of important points: government jobs with the military constitute of form of taxpayer-funded subsidy for immigrants. And secondly, the US military acts as a job program, not just for immigrants but for many native-born Americans.

    In truth, layoffs in the military sector ought to be far more widespread, and hardly limited to immigrants. The Trump Administration is wrong when it suggests that the positions now held by immigrant recruits ought to be filled by American-born recruits. Those positions should be left unfilled. Permanently.


    cougar_w Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:53 Permalink

    No you retarded fuck, the military is a taxpayer-funed merc army supporting the overseas hegemonic goals of American-style Corporatism . That the military is full of the sons and daughters of poor people is only because rich whites won't send their trustfund babies to kill brown people for oil.

    Smedley Butler, 1935: " War is a Racket "

    How anyone still gets this wrong is symptomatic of too much inbreeding.

    Expendable Container -> cougar_w Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:58 Permalink

    The military is a taxpayer-funded merc army supporting Isra hell's goals none of which benefit the US.

    cougar_w -> Expendable Container Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:12 Permalink

    No, asshole. It's about money. About cash and gold. Profit. Markets. Growth. About cheap or free resources. Access to labor. New customers.

    War makes companies rich, it might be the ONLY way they can get rich. War is waged when GM wants to sell trucks to the Pentagon. When Boeing wants to sell jets. When MIT wants money for arms research. When NATO wants a reason to exist. The dogs of war are loosed when oil gets tight. When countries won't "accept our cultural freedoms". When trade agreements aren't enough to open up new markets.

    Isreal has fleeting nothing to do with it, except maybe when war aligns with their perceived need for hegemony in their own sphere. But by loading all this on Isreal you encourage others to miss the real fox in the henhouse. You could wipe Isreal off the Earth tomorrow and still have wars for profit for a thousand years to come.

    This nation was born in war. It has practiced war since that day and will be at war with the rest of the world until humans are killed to the last and the last ounce of profit from war is had.

    TeethVillage88s -> cougar_w Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:08 Permalink

    or from systematic corruption of all US Institutions and the politicization of all US Institutions... you need a job, you want to work here, you say this, and you do this, ... tow the line, no politics, no whistleblowing,... and we won't blackball your ass from the industry... got it... u got debts, keep ur nose clean!

    Idiocracy's Not Sure Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:56 Permalink

    the US military has slacking pay.

    Quantify -> Idiocracy's Not Sure Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:58 Permalink

    Yes the pay sucks but you get more done before 8am than most people do in a week. But seriously its a pretty good gig in the long run. Medical care a decent retirement system, travel a chance to meet and integrate with different cultures and kill them...its pretty cool.

    AudiDoug Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:17 Permalink

    Excluding a small percentage, the military is much like the DMV. We have a cartoon vision of all enlisted being GI Joe, ready to grab a gun and fight evil. This in not the case at all. Most positions are very simple, repetitive bureaucratic positions. Really is a giant Jobs program to keep people busy.

    Debt Slave Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:22 Permalink

    "The idea at work here is that the US military is a lean machine, doing only what is necessary to get the job done, and as cost effectively as possible."

    Then why are we still in Afghanistan?

    No need to answer, the question is rhetorical.

    DingleBarryObummer Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:59 Permalink

    Support our B̶a̶n̶k̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ Troops!

    [Jun 10, 2018] Hiding the Real Number of Unemployed by Pete Dolack

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Globe and Mail ..."
    "... The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China ..."
    Jun 08, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

    ... ... ...

    Nonetheless, you might have noticed that happy days aren't exactly here again. The real U.S. unemployment figure -- all who are counted as unemployed in the "official" rate, plus discouraged workers, the total of those employed part-time but not able to secure full-time work and all persons marginally attached to the labor force (those who wish to work but have given up) -- is 7.6 percent . (This is the "U-6" rate.) That total, too, is less than half of its 2010 peak and is the lowest in several years. But this still doesn't mean the number of people actually working is increasing.

    Fewer people at work and they are making less

    A better indication of how many people have found work is the "civilian labor force participation rate." By this measure, which includes all people age 16 or older who are not in prison or a mental institution, only 62.7 percent of the potential U.S. workforce was actually in the workforce in May, and that was slightly lower than the previous month. This is just about equal to the lowest this statistic has been since the breakdown of Keynesianism in the 1970s, and down significantly from the peak of 67.3 percent in May 2000. You have to go back to the mid-1970s to find a time when U.S. labor participation was lower. This number was consistently lower in the 1950s and 1960s, but in those days one income was sufficient to support a family. Now everybody works and still can't make ends meet.

    And that brings us to the topic of wages. After reaching a peak of 52 percent in 1969, the percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product going to wages has fallen to 43 percent , according to research by the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve. The amount of GDP going to wages during the past five years has been the lowest it has been since 1929 , according to a New York Times report. And within the inequality of wages that don't keep up with inflation or productivity gains, the worse-off are doing worse.

    The Economic Policy Institute noted , "From 2000 to 2017, wage growth was strongest for the highest-wage workers, continuing the trend in rising wage inequality over the last four decades." The strongest wage growth was for those in the top 10 percent of earnings, which skewed the results sufficiently that the median wage increase for 2017 was a paltry 0.2 percent, the EPI reports. Inflation may have been low, but it wasn't as low as that -- the typical U.S. worker thus suffered a de facto wage decrease last year.

    What this sobering news tells us is that good-paying jobs are hard to come by. An EPI researcher, Elise Gould, wrote :

    "Slow wage growth tells us that employers continue to hold the cards, and don't have to offer higher wages to attract workers. In other words, workers have very little leverage to bid up their wages. Slow wage growth is evidence that employers and workers both know there are still workers waiting in the wings ready to take a job, even if they aren't actively looking for one."

    The true unemployment rates in Canada and Europe

    We find similar patterns elsewhere. In Canada, the official unemployment rate held at 5.8 percent in April , the lowest it has been since 1976, although there was a slight decrease in the number of people working in March, mainly due to job losses in wholesale and retail trade and construction. What is the actual unemployment rate? According to Statistics Canada's R8 figure , it is 8.6 percent. The R8 counts count people in part-time work, including those wanting full-time work, as "full-time equivalents," thus underestimating the number of under-employed.

    At the end of 2012, the R8 figure was 9.4 percent , but an analysis published by The Globe and Mail analyzing unemployment estimated the true unemployment rate for that year to be 14.2 percent. If the current statistical miscalculation is proportionate, then the true Canadian unemployment rate currently must be north of 13 percent. "[T]he narrow scope of the Canadian measure significantly understates labour underutilization," the Globe and Mail analysis conclude.

    Similar to its southern neighbor, Canada's labor force participation rate has steadily declined, falling to 65.4 percent in April 2018 from a high of 67.7 percent in 2003.

    The most recent official unemployment figure in Britain 4.2 percent. The true figure is rather higher. How much higher is difficult to determine, but a September 2012 report by Sheffield Hallam University found that the total number of unemployed in Britain was more than 3.4 million in April of that year although the Labour Force Survey, from which official unemployment statistics are derived, reported only 2.5 million. So if we assume a similar ratio, then the true rate of unemployment across the United Kingdom is about 5.7 percent.

    The European Union reported an official unemployment rate of 7.1 percent (with Greece having the highest total at 20.8 percent). The EU's Eurostat service doesn't provide an equivalent of a U.S. U-6 or a Canadian R8, but does separately provide totals for under-employed part-time workers and "potential additional labour force"; adding these two would effectively double the true EU rate of unemployed and so the actual figure must be about 14 percent.

    Australia's official seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 5.6 percent , according to the country's Bureau of Statistics. The statistic that would provide a more realistic measure, the "extended labour force under-utilisation" figure, seems to be well hidden. The most recent figure that could be found was for February 2017, when the rate was given as 15.4 percent. As the "official" unemployment rate at the time was 5.8 percent, it is reasonable to conclude that the real Australian unemployment rate is currently above 15 percent.

    Mirroring the pattern in North America, global employment is on the decline. The International Labour Organization estimated the world labor force participation rate as 61.9 percent for 2017, a steady decline from the 65.7 percent estimated for 1990.

    Stagnant wages despite productivity growth around the world

    Concomitant with the high numbers of people worldwide who don't have proper employment is the stagnation of wages. Across North America and Europe, productivity is rising much faster than wages. A 2017 study found that across those regions median real wage growth since the mid-1980s has not kept pace with labor productivity growth.

    Not surprisingly, the United States had the largest gap between wages and productivity. Germany was second in this category, perhaps not surprising, either, because German workers have suffered a long period of wage cuts (adjusted for inflation) since the Social Democratic Party codified austerity by instituting Gerhard Schröder's "Agenda 2010" legislation. Despite this disparity, the U.S. Federal Reserve issued a report in 2015 declaring the problem of economic weakness is due to wages not falling enough . Yes, the Fed believes your wages are too high.

    The lag of wages as compared to rising productivity is an ongoing global phenomenon. A separate statistical analysis from earlier this decade also demonstrated this pattern for working people in Canada, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Workers in both Canada and the United States take home hundreds of dollars less per week than they would if wages had kept up with productivity gains.

    In an era of runaway corporate globalization, there is ever more precarity. On a global scale, having regular employment is actually unusual. Using International Labour Organization figures as a starting point, John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney calculate that the "global reserve army of labor" -- workers who are underemployed, unemployed or "vulnerably employed" (including informal workers) -- totals 2.4 billion. In contrast, the world's wage workers total 1.4 billion. Writing in their book The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China , they write:

    "It is the existence of a reserve army that in its maximum extent is more than 70 percent larger than the active labor army that serves to restrain wages globally, and particularly in poorer countries. Indeed, most of this reserve army is located in the underdeveloped countries of the world, though its growth can be seen today in the rich countries as well." [page 145]

    Having conquered virtually every corner of the globe and with nowhere left to expand into nor new markets to take, capitalists will continue to cut costs -- in the first place, wages and benefits -- in their ceaseless scrambles to sustain their accustomed profits. There is no reform that can permanently alter this relentless internal logic of capitalism. Although she was premature, Rosa Luxemburg's forecast of socialism or barbarism draws nearer.

    Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog and has been an activist with several groups. His book, It's Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment , is available from Zero Books.

    [May 28, 2018] The Seven Pillars of the Matrix by Robert Bonomo>

    Notable quotes:
    "... The weakest part of this piece is that it makes all kinds of suppositions about about the true nature of mankind, that remind me of paleo diet nonsense. Humans evolved constantly so we were selected for domestication. It changed us. We are not the great apes of the savannah, but agriculturalists living in complex societies. This is our true nature and the conflict in our societies is between those who are more domesticated and those who are less domesticated. ..."
    "... This text shows us a little of the biblical allegory of Pandora's box, even though we know that it is based on the sins that are present inside the box. How is a short story, so I can invent upon an invention without a known author, that in fact as we open Pandora's Box, we will not spread hatred for Earth, there is no need to spread what is already widespread, but we will find the truth. And the truth is that we are animals like those we despise. Human culture is an illusion to keep sane people. ..."
    "... "Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better." ..."
    "... Despite some glaring inaccuracies and over-generalizations, overall the piece is interesting and thought-provoking. ..."
    "... Freedom is in inverse proportion to security. An individual in solitary-confinement in a maximum security prison has 100% security but 0% freedom. At the opposite extreme is the "hermit" living in self-imposed exile with 100% freedom but never entirely sure of when & where his next meal is coming from and if attacked by a predator, human or animal, he is entirely on his own. Between those two extremes there is a reasonable middle-ground. ..."
    Jul 29, 2014 | www.unz.com

    "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
    ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Contemporary baptized, corporatized and sanitized man rarely has the occasion to question his identity, and when he does a typical response might be, "I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran."

    His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to. Few if any of these were ever negotiated- they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.

    But is free the right adjective for him, or would modern domesticated simian be more apt? He has been told what to do, believe, think and feel since he can remember. A very clever rancher has bred billions of these creatures around the globe and created the most profitable livestock imaginable. They work for him, fight for him, die for him, believe his wildest tales, laugh at his jokes and rarely get out of line. When domesticated man does break one of the rules there are armies, jailers, psychiatrists and bureaucrats prepared to kill, incarcerate, drug or hound the transgressor into submission.

    One of the most fascinating aspects of domesticated man's predicament is that he never looks at the cattle, sheep and pigs who wind up on his plate and make the very simple deduction that he is just a talking version of them, corralled and shepherded through his entire life. How is this accomplished? Only animals that live in hierarchical groups can be dominated by man. The trick is to fool the animal into believing that the leader of the pack or herd is the person who is domesticating them. Once this is accomplished the animal is under full control of its homo sapien master. The domesticated man is no different, originally organized in groups with a clear hierarchy and maximum size of 150- it was easy to replace the leader of these smaller groups with one overarching figure such as God, King, President, CEO etc.

    The methodology for creating this exceptionally loyal and obedient modern breed, homo domesticus, can be described as having seven pillars from which an immense matrix captures the talking simians and their conscious minds and hooks them into a complex mesh from which few ever escape. The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can't accept the 'complexity of modern life', i.e. conspiracy nuts.

    Plato described this brilliantly in his Allegory of the Cave , where people only see man made shadows of objects, institutions, Gods and ideas:

    "–Behold! human beings living in an underground cave here they have been from their childhood necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall "

    It began with the word, which forever changed the ability of men to manipulate each other. Before language, every sensation was directly felt through the senses without the filter of words. But somewhere around 50,000 years ago language began to replace reality and the first pieces of code were put in place for the creation of the Matrix. As soon as the words began to flow the world was split, and from that fracturing was born man's angst and slavery. The words separated us from who we really were, creating the first screen onto which the images from Plato's cave were cast. Gurdjieff said it well, "Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself."

    It's no accident that in Hesiod's ages of man the Golden Age knew no agriculture, which appeared in the Silver age, and by the time we reach the Bronze age the dominant theme is toil and strife. The two key elements to the enslavement of man were clearly language and agriculture. In the hunter gatherer society, taking out the boss was no more complicated than landing a well placed fastball to the head. Only since the advent of farming was the possibility of creating full time enforcers and propagandists made possible, and hence enslavement inevitable.

    The search for enlightenment rarely if ever bears fruits in those temples of words, our schools and universities. Almost all traditions point to isolation and silence as the only paths to awakening; they are the true antidotes to modern slavery. As Aristotle wrote, "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."

    So from the institution from which we are mercilessly bombarded with words and enslaved to time, we begin our descent through the seven layers of the Matrix.

    Education

    There are things we are born able to do like eating, laughing and crying and others we pick up without much of an effort such as walking, speaking and fighting, but without strict institutional education there is no way that we can ever become a functioning member of the Matrix. We must be indoctrinated, sent to Matrix boot camp, which of course is school. How else could you take a hunter and turn him into a corporate slave, submissive to clocks, countless bosses, monotony and uniformity?

    Children naturally know who they are, they have no existential angst, but schools immediately begin driving home the point of schedules, rules, lists and grades which inevitably lead the students to the concept of who they aren't. We drill the little ones until they learn to count money, tell time, measure progress, stand in line, keep silent and endure submission. They learn they aren't free and they are separated from everyone else and the world itself by a myriad of divides, names and languages.

    It can't be stressed enough how much education is simply inculcating people with the clock and the idea of a forced identity. What child when she first goes to school isn't taken back to hear herself referred to by her full name?

    It's not as if language itself isn't sufficiently abstract- nothing must be left without a category. Suzy can't just be Suzy- she is a citizen of a country and a state, a member of a religion and a product of a civilization, many of which have flags, mascots, armies, uniforms, currencies and languages. Once all the mascots, tag lines and corporate creeds are learned, then history can begin to be taught. The great epic myths invented and conveniently woven into the archetypes which have come down through the ages cement this matrix into the child's mind.

    Even the language that she speaks without effort must be deconstructed for her. An apple will never again be just an apple- it will become a noun, a subject, or an object. Nothing will be left untouched, all must be ripped apart and explained back to the child in Matrixese.

    We are taught almost nothing useful during the twelve or so years that we are institutionalized and conditioned for slavery- not how to cook, farm, hunt, build, gather, laugh or play. We are only taught how to live by a clock and conform to institutionalized behaviors that make for solid careers as slaveocrats.

    Government

    In the countries that claim to be democratic the concept of a government created to serve the people is often espoused. Government, and the laws they create and enforce are institutionalized social control for the benefit of those who have seized power. This has always been the case and always will be. In the pre-democratic era it was much clearer to recognize who had power, but the genius of massive democratic states are the layers upon layers of corporatocracy and special interests which so brilliantly conceal the identify of those who really manage the massive apparatus of control.

    The functions of the state are so well ensconced in dogmatic versions of history taught in schools that almost no one questions why we need anything beyond the bare essentials of government to maintain order in the post-industrial age. The history classes never point the finger at the governments themselves as the propagators and instigators of war, genocide, starvation and corruption. In Hollywood's version of history, the one most people absorb, 'good' governments are always portrayed as fighting 'bad' ones. We have yet to see a film where all the people on both sides simply disengage from their governments and ignore the calls to violence.

    The state apparatus is based on law, which is a contract between the people and an organism created to administer common necessities- an exchange of sovereignty between the people and the state. This sounds reasonable, but when one looks at the mass slaughters of the 20th century, almost without exception, the perpetrators are the states themselves.

    The loss of human freedom is the only birthright offered to the citizens of the modern nation. There is never a choice. It is spun as a freedom and a privilege when it is in fact indentured servitude to the state apparatus and the corporatocracy that controls it.

    Patriotism

    Patriotism is pure abstraction, a completely artificial mechanism of social control. People are taught to value their compatriots above and beyond those of their own ethnic background, race or religion. The organic bonds are to be shed in favor of the great corporate state. From infancy children are indoctrinated like Pavlov's dogs to worship the paraphernalia of the state and see it as a mystical demigod.

    What is a country? Using the United States as example, what actually is this entity? Is it the USPS, the FDA, or the CIA? Does loving one's country mean one should love the IRS and the NSA? Should we feel differently about someone if they are from Vancouver instead of Seattle? Loving a state is the same as loving a corporation, except with the corporations there is still no stigma attached to not showing overt sentimental devotion to their brands and fortunately, at least for the moment, we are not obligated at birth to pay them for a lifetime of services, most of which we neither need nor want.

    Flags, the Hollywood version of history and presidential worship are drilled into us to maintain the illusion of the 'other' and force the 'foreigner/terrorist/extremist' to wear the stigma of our projections. The archaic tribal energy that united small bands and helped them to fend off wild beasts and hungry hordes has been converted into a magic wand for the masters of the matrix. Flags are waved, and we respond like hungry Labradors jumping at a juicy prime rib swinging before our noses. Sentimental statist propaganda is simply the mouthguard used to soften the jolt of our collective electroshock therapy.

    Religion

    As powerful as the patriotic sects are, there has always been a need for something higher. Religion comes from the Latin 're-ligare' and it means to reconnect. But reconnect to what? The question before all religions is, what have we been disconnected from? The indoctrination and alienation of becoming a card carrying slave has a cost; the level of abstraction and the disconnect from any semblance of humanity converts people into nihilistic robots. No amount of patriotic fervor can replace having a soul. The flags and history lessons can only give a momentary reprieve to the emptiness of the Matrix and that's why the priests are needed.

    The original spiritual connection man had with the universe began to dissolve into duality with the onset of language, and by the time cities and standing armies arrived he was in need of a reconnection, and thus we get our faith based religions. Faith in the religious experiences of sages, or as William James put it, faith in someone else's ability to connect. Of course the liturgies of our mainstream religions offer some solace and connection, but in general they simply provide the glue for the Matrix. A brief perusal of the news will clearly show that their 'God' seems most comfortable amidst the killing fields.

    If we focus on the Abrahamic religions, we have a god much like the state, one who needs to be loved. He is also jealous of the other supposedly non-existent gods and is as sociopathic as the governments who adore him. He wipes out his enemies with floods and angels of death just as the governments who pander to him annihilate us with cultural revolutions, atom bombs, television and napalm. Their anthem is, "Love your country, it's flag, its history, and the God who created it all"- an ethos force fed to each new generation.

    Circus

    The sad thing about circus is that it's generally not even entertaining. The slaves are told it's time for some fun and they move in hordes to fill stadiums, clubs, cinemas or simply to stare into their electrical devices believing that they are are being entertained by vulgar propaganda.

    As long as homo domesticus goes into the appropriate corral, jumps when she is told to and agrees wholeheartedly that she is having fun, than she is a good slave worthy of her two days off a week and fifteen days vacation at the designated farm where she is milked of any excess gold she might have accumulated during the year. Once she is too old to work and put to pasture, holes are strategically placed in her vicinity so she and her husband can spend their last few dollars trying to get a small white ball into them.

    On a daily basis, after the caffeinated maximum effort has been squeezed out of her, she is placed in front of a screen, given the Matrix approved beverage (alcohol), and re-indoctrinated for several hours before starting the whole cycle over again. God forbid anyone ever took a hallucinogen and had an original thought. We are, thankfully, protected from any substances that might actually wake us up and are encouraged stick to the booze. The matrix loves coffee in the morning, alcohol in the evening and never an authentic thought in between.

    On a more primal level we are entranced with the contours of the perfect body and dream of 'perfect love', where our days will be filled with soft caresses, sweet words and Hollywood drama. This is maybe the most sublime of the Matrix's snares, as Venus's charms can be so convincing one willingly abandons all for her devious promise. Romantic love is dangled like bait, selling us down the path of sentimentally coated lies and mindless consumerism.

    Money

    Money is their most brilliant accomplishment. Billions of people spend most of their waking lives either acquiring it or spending it without ever understanding what it actually is. In this hologram of a world, the only thing one can do without money is breath. For almost every other human activity they want currency, from eating and drinking to clothing oneself and finding a partner. Religion came from innate spirituality and patriotism from the tribe, but money they invented themselves- the most fantastic and effective of all their tools of domestication.

    They have convinced the slaves that money actually has some intrinsic value, since at some point in the past it actually did. Once they were finally able to disconnect money completely from anything other than their computers, they finally took complete control, locked the last gate and electrified all the fences. They ingeniously print it up out of the nothing and loan it with interest in order for 18-year-olds to spend four years drinking and memorizing propaganda as they begin a financial indebtedness that will most likely never end.

    By the time the typical American is thirty the debt is mounted so high that they abandon any hope of ever being free of it and embrace their mortgages, credit cards, student loans and car loans as gifts from a sugar daddy. What they rarely asks themselves is why they must work to make money while banks can simply create it with a few key strokes. If they printed out notes on their HP's and loaned them with interest to their neighbors, they would wind up in a penitentiary, but not our friends on Wall Street- they do just that and wind up pulling the strings in the White House. The genius of the money scam is how obvious it is. When people are told that banks create money out of nothing and are paid interest for it the good folks are left incredulous. "It can't be that simple!" And therein lies the rub- no one wants to believe that they have been enslaved so easily .

    Culture

    "Culture is the effort to hold back the mystery, and replace it with a mythology."
    – Terence McKenna

    As Terence loved to say, "Culture is not your friend." It exists as a buffer to authentic experience. As they created larger and larger communities, they replaced the direct spiritual experience of the shaman with priestly religion. Drum beats and sweat were exchanged for digitized, corporatized noise. Local tales got replaced by Hollywood blockbusters, critical thinking with academic dogma.

    If money is the shackles of the matrix, culture is its operating system. Filtered, centralized, incredibly manipulative, it glues all their myths together into one massive narrative of social control from which only the bravest of souls ever try to escape. It's relatively simple to see the manipulation when one looks at patriotism, religion or money. But when taken as a whole, our culture seems as natural and timeless as the air we breathe, so intertwined with our self conception it is often hard to see where we individually finish and our culture begins.

    Escaping the Grip of Control

    Some might ask why this all-pervasive network of control isn't talked about or discussed by our 'great minds'. Pre-Socratic scholar Peter Kingsley explains it well:

    "Everything becomes clear once we accept the fact that scholarship as a whole is not concerned with finding, or even looking for, the truth. That's just a decorative appearance. It's simply concerned with protecting us from truths that might endanger our security; and it does so by perpetuating our collective illusions on a much deeper level than individual scholars are aware of."

    Whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn't a fish. To leave the 'water', or Plato's cave takes courage and the knowledge that there is something beyond the web of control. Over 2,300 hundred years ago Plato described the process of leaving the Matrix in the Allegory of the Cave as a slow, excruciating process akin to walking out onto a sunny beach after spending years in a basement watching Kabuki.

    How can this awakening be explained? How do you describe the feeling of swimming in the ocean at dusk to someone who has never even seen the sea? You can't, but what you can do is crack open a window for them and if enough windows are opened, the illusion begins to lose its luster.


    rod1963 , August 3, 2014 at 12:03 am GMT

    I'll take Neil Postman, Chesterton or C.S. Lewis over Bonomo any day.

    His article merely takes a blowtorch to all and everything and worse showing very little understanding of the things he attacks is cringe worthy. There's no real analysis, no consideration of the ramifications for doing away with the state, community and faith. This is shoddy thinking at best.

    And his last part "Escaping the Grip of Control" is just so much gibberish. It's not thought out at all.

    Pseudonymic Handle , August 3, 2014 at 12:35 pm GMT
    The weakest part of this piece is that it makes all kinds of suppositions about about the true nature of mankind, that remind me of paleo diet nonsense. Humans evolved constantly so we were selected for domestication. It changed us. We are not the great apes of the savannah, but agriculturalists living in complex societies. This is our true nature and the conflict in our societies is between those who are more domesticated and those who are less domesticated.
    Bill , August 3, 2014 at 9:51 pm GMT

    "I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran."

    His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to. Few if any of these were ever negotiated- they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.

    Santoculto , August 4, 2014 at 8:17 pm GMT
    To talk about themselves and their superiority as human beings, civilization and biology, we have an average of 50 or more reviews.

    Have to discuss the illusion of the human ego, 12 comments, some of which were based on" not-so-children's arguments."

    This text shows us a little of the biblical allegory of Pandora's box, even though we know that it is based on the sins that are present inside the box. How is a short story, so I can invent upon an invention without a known author, that in fact as we open Pandora's Box, we will not spread hatred for Earth, there is no need to spread what is already widespread, but we will find the truth. And the truth is that we are animals like those we despise. Human culture is an illusion to keep sane people.

    The Plutonium Kid , August 7, 2014 at 6:50 pm GMT
    Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better.
    Santoculto , August 8, 2014 at 1:40 pm GMT
    "Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better."

    These "sensitive" people break my heart.

    I think Mr. Bonhomme has the right to say whatever you want. Perhaps, the "descriptions" also served to you, what do you think ??

    Mike , January 15, 2015 at 1:00 am GMT
    It's sadly obvious that most of the negative replies to Mr. Bonomo's article, comes from complete tools.I can see that most, if not all of you tools have been thoroughly educated by sitting in front of your TV's and burping and farting large amount of odorous gases from your beer infused bodies.A friendly bit of advice, remove your collective heads from your asses and get a real life.
    Stefano , February 3, 2015 at 1:57 pm GMT
    @Plutonium Kid

    Hahah.. did Bonomo's essay really scare you that much or did it merely strike such a chord of cognitive dissonance that it left you squirming in mental anguish? Lighten up dude!

    Stefano , February 3, 2015 at 2:13 pm GMT
    Despite some glaring inaccuracies and over-generalizations, overall the piece is interesting and thought-provoking.

    "The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can't accept the 'complexity of modern life', i.e. conspiracy nuts."

    Perhaps he means someone like a homeless person or pan-handler living on the street. Certainly few if anyone would consider a radical thinker like Noam Chomsky "mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers".

    Jeff77450 , July 21, 2015 at 5:27 pm GMT
    Mr. Bonomo, interesting take on things but ultimately I don't quite agree. Here is the subparagraph of my worldview that addresses the whole free-versus-slave thing: Freedom is in inverse proportion to security. An individual in solitary-confinement in a maximum security prison has 100% security but 0% freedom. At the opposite extreme is the "hermit" living in self-imposed exile with 100% freedom but never entirely sure of when & where his next meal is coming from and if attacked by a predator, human or animal, he is entirely on his own. Between those two extremes there is a reasonable middle-ground.

    The hunter-gatherers are (or were) about as free as it is possible to be and each individual not having to live as a hermit – but their lives were, as per Thomas Hobbs, "nasty, brutish and short." I've read that around the time of Christ the average lifespan was 20-22. (That's probably factoring in a lot of infant-mortality).

    My life is clean, comfortable, reasonably if not perfectly safe and I'm on-track to live well into my eighties. But I'm a "wage-slave" to a job that I hate, despise and loath and frankly, at home, my wife rules the roost. If I protest too much she could divorce me and take much of what I've worked roughly thirty-four years for so she's got me over a barrel.

    Hmmm, my day is ruined

    thx1138 , February 11, 2017 at 1:49 am GMT
    Well, years later I just want to thank you for this essay. It stated more clearly than I could the truth of the world. The only thing missing is the identity of the perpetrators, and many of us know who they are.

    [Apr 24, 2018] 12 Rules for Life An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson

    Notable quotes:
    "... We are complicated pieces in an even more complicated puzzle. ..."
    "... Peterson states that "life is tragic." His point is that people need to be ready to deal with adversity. Anyone can handle good times, because that's what we are able to rest and relax during. The true test of a person comes when they lose a loved one or a job or their health. They need to make a decision: what will they do in response. ..."
    "... His 12 Rules serve as a guide on how to go from that point of failure to a point of redemption, offering a series of suggestions and guidelines to take a life that is becoming corrupted by hatred of the world and everything in it and turn it into a vessel for growth and self-improvement. ..."
    Apr 24, 2018 | www.amazon.com

    ... Approaching Peterson a skeptic, I was not sure that reading a book would have the power to change anything in my life. The first few chapters were met with nods, hesitancy, and the concession of points that sounded good. I wasn't hostile to him, and I found many of his points quite clever.

    But when Peterson delved deeper into the archetypes and depth psychology I became suspicious. I had a moderate distrust of the Jungian method; I use it to teach literature, but I did not believe in using archetypes to assess personality.

    Peterson's point is that we are all part of something great and interconnected. Because it is so massive, we need to be working to make sense of it. It won't happen automatically, and if we go for an easy explanation we may find ourselves walking dark, treacherous paths of misanthropy and rejection.

    We are complicated pieces in an even more complicated puzzle. Peterson's approach is one of self improvement. When we take steps to sort ourselves out, we also need to enter a symbiotic process of bringing order to our world.

    The purpose of this is not to achieve some sort of superiority. It is to achieve survival. The world will change, and we will be forced to adapt.

    Peterson states that "life is tragic." His point is that people need to be ready to deal with adversity. Anyone can handle good times, because that's what we are able to rest and relax during. The true test of a person comes when they lose a loved one or a job or their health. They need to make a decision: what will they do in response.

    Peterson uses haunting examples to illustrate what happens when this goes wrong. Using everything from Dostoevsky to the Soviet Union (and countless other insights from modern and historical figures), he creates case studies of what happens when things go wrong and people turn to dysfunction rather than improving their situation.

    His 12 Rules serve as a guide on how to go from that point of failure to a point of redemption, offering a series of suggestions and guidelines to take a life that is becoming corrupted by hatred of the world and everything in it and turn it into a vessel for growth and self-improvement.

    Is it a perfect guide to living life? No. Is it helpful? Does it give insight to great truths? Yes.

    [Apr 23, 2018] 12 Rules for Life An Antidote to Chaos

    Notable quotes:
    "... his theme of the inevitability of suffering. ..."
    "... This book is too long, too verbose, too complicated for its purported goals ..."
    "... Unfortunately, this book reads a lot like one of those lectures. While Peterson still provides, as ever, a number of valuable insights, he often does so in chapters that are only ostensibly related to the point he's making. ..."
    "... His advice is mostly of the "No more Mr. Nice Guy" type, which I think has much to recommend. ..."
    "... Whenever he talks about things like competitiveness, aggression, and sexual selection he tends to commit the naturalistic fallacy (X is right because that's how we evolved, or that's how our distant ancestors behaved, or, worst of all, that's what women evolved to find attractive). ..."
    "... JP advocates the life of action and achievement, but he gives no *inspiring* reason to choose this kind of life over any of the other kinds recommended at various times by the world's philosophies and religions. ..."
    "... While I enjoy Peterson's YouTube videos, I cannot say the same for this book ..."
    "... While there are some good bits of insight in regards to raising children and dealing with various types of people, it's not worth reading 300+ pages of this man's thoughts when they could just as easily be viewed on YouTube. ..."
    "... Interesting, but ultimately flawed and superficial. Peterson's arguments should be studied by basic students of logic - you'll find classic examples of statement and false dilemmas presented left and right. ..."
    Apr 23, 2018 | www.amazon.com

    Alex on January 23, 2018

    This book = 12 Rules (rock solid advice) + Peterson's Philosophic musings

    Jordan Peterson is a beacon of light in this chaotic world, a psychologist whose writing combines science and common sense. One of his talents is his ability to articulate complex ideas to a wide audience. Regardless of whether you have a background in psychology or not, you will understand this book. It covers his twelve rules for life, which are intended not only as a guide for life of the individual, but as a remedy for society's present ills. Peterson believes that the cure for society starts with curing the individual, the smallest unit of society. Peterson's well-known advice to clean your room is a reflection of the truth that if you can't even manage the most basic and mundane responsibilities of life, then you have no business dictating to others how to fix society.

    One of the main themes of this book is: Personal change is possible. There's no doubt you can be slightly better today than you were yesterday. Because of Pareto's Principle (small changes can have disproportionately large results), this movement towards the good increases massively, and this upward trajectory can take your life out of hell more rapidly than you could believe. Life is tragic and full of suffering and malevolence. But there's something you can start putting right, and we can't imagine what good things are in store for us if we just fix the things that are within our power to do so.

    The 12 Rules for Life:

    In Peterson's own words, it's 12 rules to stop you from being pathetic, written from the perspective of someone who himself tried to stop being pathetic and is still working on it. Peterson is open about his struggles and shortcomings, unlike many authors who only reveal a carefully curated façade.

    Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. People have bad posture, and the meaning behind it can be demonstrated by animal behaviors. Peterson uses the example of the lobster. When a lobster loses a fight, and they fight all the time, it scrunches up a little. Lobsters run on serotonin and when he loses, levels go down, and when he wins, levels go up and he stretches out and is confident. Who cares? We evolutionarily diverged from lobsters 350 million years ago, but it's still the same circuit. It's a deep instinct to size others up when looking at them to see where they fit in the social hierarchy. If your serotonin levels fall, you get depressed and crunch forward and you're inviting more oppression from predator personalities and can get stuck in a loop. Fixing our posture is part of the psycho-physiological loop that can help you get started back up again.

    Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. People often have self-contempt whether they realize it or not. Imagine someone you love and treat well. You need to treat yourself with the same respect. Take care of yourself, your room, your things, and have respect for yourself as if you're a person with potential and is important to the people around you. If you make a pattern of bad mistakes, your life gets worse, not just for you, but for the people around you. All your actions echo in ways that cannot be imagined. Think of Stalin's mother and the mistakes she made in life, and how the ripple effects went on to affect the millions of people around him.

    Rule 3: Choose your friends carefully. It is appropriate for you to evaluate your social surroundings and eliminate those who are hurting you. You have no ethical obligation to associate with people who are making your life worse. In fact, you are obligated to disassociate with people who are trying to destroy the structure of being, your being, society's being. It's not cruel, it's sending a message that some behaviors are not to be tolerated.

    Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today . You need to improve, and you may even be in real bad shape, but many unfairly compare themselves to some more seemingly successful person. Up till around age 17, random comparisons to other people can make sense, but afterwards, especially age 30+, our lives become so idiosyncratic that comparisons with others become meaningless and unhelpful. You only see a slice of their life, a public facet, and are blind to the problems they conceal.

    Rule 5: Don't let children do things that make you dislike them. You aren't as nice as you think, and you will unconsciously take revenge on them. You are massively more powerful than your children, and have the ability and subconscious proclivity for tyranny deeply rooted within you.If you don't think this is true, you don't know yourself well enough. His advice on disciplinary procedure: (1) limit the rules. (2) use minimum necessary force and (3) parents should come in pairs.It's difficult and exhausting to raise children, and it's easy to make mistakes. A bad day at work, fatigue, hunger, stress, etc, can make you unreasonable.

    Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Life is tragic and there's malevolence. There's plenty to complain about, but if you dwell on it, you will become bitter and tread down a path that will take you to twisted places. The diaries of the Columbine killers are a chilling look into minds that dwelled on the unholy trinity of deceit, arrogance, and resentment) . So instead of cursing the tragedy that is life, transform into something meaningful. Start by stop doing something, anything, that you know to be wrong. Everyday you have choices in front of you. Stop doing and saying things that make you weak and ashamed. Do only those things that you would proudly talk about in public.

    Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). Meaning is how you protect yourself against the suffering that life entails. This means that despite the fact that we're all emotionally wounded by life, we've found something that makes it all worthwhile. Meaning, Peterson says, is like an instinct, or a form of vision. It lets you know when you're in the right place, and he says that the right place is midway between chaos and order. If you stay firmly ensconced within order, things you understand, then you can't grow. If you stay within chaos, then you're lost. Expediency is what you do to get yourself out of trouble here and now, but it comes at the cost of sacrificing the future for the present. So instead of doing what gets you off the hook today, aim high. Look around you and see what you can make better. Make it better. As you gain knowledge, consciously remain humble and avoid arrogance that can stealthily creep on you. Peterson also says to be aware of our shortcomings, whatever they may be; our secret resentments, hatred, cowardice, and other failings. Be slow to accuse others because we too conceal malevolent impulses, and certainly before we attempt to fix the world.

    Rule 8: Tell the truth -- or, at least, don't lie. Telling the truth can be hard in the sense that it's often difficult to know the truth. However, we can know when we're lying. Telling lies makes you weak. You can feel it, and others can sense it too. Meaning, according to Peterson, is associated with truth, and lying is the antithesis of meaning. Lying disassociates you with meaning, and thus reality itself. You might get away with lying for a short while, but only a short time. In Peterson's words "It was the great and the small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths of millions of people."

    Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't. A good conversation consists of you coming out wiser than you went into it. An example is when you get into an argument with your significant other, you want to win, especially if you get angry. If you're more verbally fluent than the other person then you can win. One problem is that the other person might see something better than you, but they can't quite articulate it as well. Always listen because there's a possibility they're going to tell you something that will prevent you from running headfirst into a brick wall. This is why Peterson says to listen to your enemies. They will lie about you, but they will also say true things about yourself that your friends won't. Separate the wheat from the chaff and make your life better.

    Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech: There is some integral connection between communication and reality (or structures of belief as he likes to say). Language takes chaos and makes it into a 'thing.' As an example, imagine going through a rough patch in your life where you can't quite put your finger on what's wrong. This mysterious thing that's bothering you -- is it real? Yes, if it's manifesting itself as physical discomfort. Then you talk about it and give it a name, and then this fuzzy, abstract thing turns into a specific thing. Once named, you can now do something about it. The unnameable is far more terrifying than the nameable. As an example, the movie the Blair Witch project didn't actually name or describe the evil. Nothing happens in the movie, it's all about the unnameable. If you can't name something, it means it's so terrifying to you that you can't even think about it, and that makes you weaker. This is why Peterson is such a free speech advocate. He wants to bring things out of the realm of the unspeakable. Words have a creative power and you don't want to create more mark and darkness by imprecise speech.

    Rule 11: Don't bother children when they are skateboarding. This is mainly about masculinity. Peterson remembers seeing children doing all kinds of crazy stunts on skateboards and handrails, and believes this is an essential ingredient to develop masculinity, to try to develop competence and face danger. Jordan Peterson considers the act of sliding down a handrail to be brave and perhaps stupid as well, but overall positive. A lot of rebellious behavior in school is often called 'toxic masculinity,' but Peterson would say to let them be. An example would be a figure skater that makes a 9.9 on her performance, essentially perfect. Then the next skater that follows her seems to have no hope. But she pushes herself closer to chaos, beyond her competence, and when successful, inspires awe. Judges award her 10's. She's gone beyond perfection into the unknown and ennobled herself as well as humanity as well.

    Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. This chapter is mainly autobiographical and he writes about tragedy and pain. When tragic things are in front of you and you're somewhat powerless, you must keep your eyes open for little opportunities that highlight the redemptive elements of life that make it all worthwhile. The title of this chapter comes from his experience of observing a local stray cat, and watching it adapt to the rough circumstances around it. Another thing you must do when life is going to pieces is to shorten your temporal horizon. Instead of thinking in months, you maybe think in hours or minutes instead. You try to just have the best next minute or hour that you can. You shrink the time frame until you can handle it, this is how you adjust to the catastrophe. You try to stay on your feet and think. Although this chapters deals about harsh things, it's an overall positive one. Always look for what's meaningful and soul-sustaining even when you're where you'd rather not be.

    Charles TOP 1000 REVIEWER on March 23, 2018
    Helpful, Fascinating--And Not Political (To My Surprise)

    A friend of mine has been pushing me to look into Jordan Peterson for the past six months. I thought, since my friend is conservative, that Peterson offered right-wing politics, and it is true that he has recently been in the news for his thoughts on certain charged topics. However, Peterson does not, in fact, offer politics, which is refreshing in these days of rage. Rather, "12 Rules For Life" is a self-help book constructed like a Russian matryoshka doll, a nested construct. It talks, and works, on multiple levels, some of which may have political implications, but if so, they are incidental to what the book offers to each human person, both the broken and the whole.

    The nested, complex nature of this book really should be no surprise, because Peterson's life's work is the study of the infinitely layered human mind, and his one earlier book, "Maps of Meaning," was an exhaustive analysis of intricate human myths, their roots in our moral beliefs, and their implications for today. In Peterson's view, all moral traditions are, at their root, exemplifications and explications of the opposition of order and chaos, as well as a way of creating shared beliefs, which are immensely valuable to any human society. His basic point in his Rules is that every individual can avoid the extremes of menacing chaos and tyrannical order by following the Way, the line between order and chaos, "through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic path." This is to "live properly," and if we can do this, we can "collectively flourish." Thus, his 12 Rules are guides to this end.

    As I says, this is not a political book, but politics is downstream of this book -- that is, if you buy into what Peterson is offering, it probably changes some of your political views. Peterson's basic principle is the imperative need to recognize that reality exists, and given that so much of politics today is built around a wholesale denial of reality, Peterson's statements often seem political. In fact, they are political, even if that is not Peterson's intent, or at least not his major intent. This is especially true of his view of men and women, which permeates the book.

    But let's treat the book as it is, rather than treating it as some form of archetype, for it is, if nothing else, highly original, and it is therefore hard to summarize. Peterson, both an academic and a practicing clinical psychologist, has spent a lifetime talking extensively to many people, most of them troubled, and he thinks very deeply about every word he says (as is clearly evident if you watch interviews with him available online). That doesn't mean he's didactic -- his writing tone is conversational and packed with anecdotes, carefully chosen to illustrate or add impact to the points he makes. But it does mean that nearly every sentence is crowded with meaning.

    Rule 1 is "Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back." This is the backbone of all the rules, really, for in its Peterson explains that we are how we are. We are not malleable beyond a certain point. His illustration is lobsters, who were already incredibly ancient at the dawn of the dinosaurs, yet who have much in common with humans -- so much so that anti-depressants perk defeated lobsters up. Lobsters have a dominance hierarchy. And, critically, male and female lobsters are radically different -- they act differently, yes, but more broadly, male and female lobster teleology, their purpose, is different, and that is reflected in how each behaves. For lobsters, and all other creatures, "The dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It's permanent. It's real. It is [rather than capitalism, or patriarchy, or some other ephemeral manifestation] a near-eternal aspect of the environment. . . . Dominance hierarchies are older than trees." Males, lobster or not, who fall in the dominance hierarchy have bad lives that get worse, often in a self-reinforcing loop; and they rise in the dominance hierarchy by fighting and winning, which means they get the best food, the best mental and physical health, the best shelter, and the best females. Similarly, females who rise (who fight only in their maternal stage, but compete otherwise) in the dominance hierarchy have the best mental health, and better physical circumstances by virtue of attracting high-quality suitors, that is, those high in the dominance hierarchy, whom they identify and pursue; those who fall; the reverse. Whether we like to admit it or not, humans are essentially the same as lobsters. They always have been, and they always will be.

    Unlike lobsters, though, humans can self-diagnose that they are at the bottom of the hierarchy, or heading there in a downward spiral, and they can take action to improve their situation. (Peterson's book is about taking action, most of all.) Falling in a human dominance hierarchy basically means you are being bullied, and though some can't fight back, almost always, it's that people won't fight back. While fighting back can be as simple as changing your view of life, "to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open," and "accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood," ultimately "[t]here is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character." Given that I have always believed that violence, or at least its threat, is the solution to most problems of human oppression, this certainly resonates with me, though reconciling that with turning the other cheek is difficult, and not something Peterson has much use for, despite obvious deep sympathy with Christianity. Through standing up for oneself, straight with your shoulders back, using force as necessary (and the willingness to use force likely means it will not be necessary), leads the path to human flourishing, for all.

    In Rule 2, "Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping," Peterson addresses why people sabotage themselves. He first delves deeply into human mythos, closely analyzing the first chapters of Genesis in particular, though also offering nods to other traditions, such as the Vedic. This is in service of a deeper exploration of the eternal opposition of order and chaos. Order is masculine; when good, it is the structure of society, the ice on which we skate; when bad, it is tyranny and stultification. Chaos is feminine; when good, it is the origin of all things and the maker of all things new, the substance from which all things are made; when bad, it is the dangerous unknown, the chthonic underworld, and the dark water under the ice. Calling these categories of reality masculine and feminine is not arbitrary; in fact, it comports with what may be the ultimate fundamental fact of human existence, the division into two very different sexes, male and female, "natural categories, deeply embedded in our perceptual, emotional and motivational structures." (You now begin to see why the transgender ideologues are not thrilled with Peterson.) As with Adam and Eve and their self-sabotage, we sabotage ourselves, not viewing ourselves as worthy of respect, since we are capable of stupidity and evil. "And with this realization we have well-nigh full legitimization of the idea, very unpopular in modern intellectual circles, of Original Sin." But we can choose to embody the Image of God, instead. "Back is the way forward -- as T. S. Eliot insisted [in "Little Gidding"] -- but back as awake beings, exercising the proper choice of awake beings."

    For Christians, though, this poses a perceived difficulty. Yes, as Peterson notes, Christianity reduced evil and barbarism in the areas it conquered. But it encouraged excessive self-sacrifice through erroneous thinking. "Christ's archetypal death exists as an example of how to accept finitude, betrayal and tyranny heroically -- how to walk with God despite the tragedy of conscious self-knowledge -- and not as a directive to victimize ourselves in the service of others." We have to care for others as we care for ourselves; only in that way can both of us flourish. Peterson explores this line of thought at considerable length; it is impossible to shorten his words and retain the meaning, but it is both fully compatible with Christian belief and an antidote to a certain line of Christian excessive self-abnegation (a failing I found in Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, though I hesitate to criticize a book of such renown).

    Rule 3 advises us to choose and to see our friends clearly. You must not only see the best in people. You can show them to what they should aspire, but you cannot lift them up unless they wish to be so lifted. "Not everyone who is failing is a victim, and not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise." "But Christ himself, you might object, befriended tax-collectors and prostitutes. How dare I cast aspersions on the motives of those who are trying to help? But Christ was the archetypal perfect man. And you're you. How do you know that your attempts to pull someone up won't instead bring them -- or you -- further down?" Again, nearly every word is perfect: "Success: that's the mystery. Virtue: that's what inexplicable. . . . . Things fall apart, of their own accord, but the sins of men speed their degeneration. And then comes the flood."

    Rule 4 returns to an internal focus, advising us to "Compare Yourself To Who You Were Yesterday, Not To Who Someone Else Is Today." Just because you can always find an area where someone, or everyone, is better, does not mean that area is or should be relevant to you. A myriad of games are possible in each person's life; choose your game, choose your starting point, and improve yourself, incrementally and gradually. In fact, you should reward yourself for doing so, as silly as that sounds. And if you resent someone else, you need to realize it is either stupid immaturity, in which case you should stop it, or it is a legitimate complaint, in which case you must address it, or it will only get worse and cause more problems.

    Next, on Rule 5, "Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them," Peterson switches gears, from the world of adults to the world of children as it intersects with adults. He strongly objects to certain psychological tendencies in child-rearing, especially the protection of children from dangers at the expense of making them fully functioning and competent human beings (a problem mainly with male children and their mothers, he says). Children must be socialized; they are not inherently good (or inherently bad, for that matter). Individual problems do not call for social restructuring, which is mostly stupid. "Each person's private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous." Socialization means limitations; limitations facilitate creative achievement, not crimp it. Along the way, Peterson discusses tangential topics, such as that hierarchies are rarely, if ever, arbitrary. He recognizes, of course, that each child is very different (as I know, having five myself), but certain basic approaches (including "discipline and punish," I assume a joke at Foucault's expense) are the most likely to lead to success, for all of child, parents, and society.

    In Rule 6, Peterson returns to adult self-help, "Set Your Own House In Perfect Order Before You Criticize The World." He evaluates here, as he does in more than one place in this book, the nihilism of the smarter Columbine killer, Eric Harris. This is of course topical, with the present focus on school shootings. True, they have not actually increased in recent decades, but they have increased from forty or fifty years ago, when children carrying guns to school was unexceptional, and the reason is almost certainly some form of this nihilism. Peterson is violently opposed to the idea that humans are some kind of plague, as Harris maintained, and he identifies this sort of thinking, common among certain elites today, who adhere to the self-definition of Goethe's Mephistopheles as "the spirit who negates," as among the worst in the modern world. (Peterson would prefer Normal Borlaug to William Vogt, in Charles Mann's excellent recent "The Wizard and the Prophet.") Yes, life is very hard, and suffering, great suffering, is nearly inevitable for everyone. But transformation, not vengeance, is the answer. Abel, not Cain. Rather than blaming everyone else for what is wrong, stop today what you know to be wrong, and start doing what you know to be right. Thereby, you help yourself, and you strike a blow for Being, for the Way, and against nihilism.

    Peterson continues the focus on suffering in Rule 7, "Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient)." Here, he dives into Egyptian mythology, as well as several passages from the New Testament. He returns to, and expands on, his earlier thoughts about the impact of Christianity and the resulting new problems, noting that "In consequence [of Christianity], the metaphysical conception of the implicit transcendent worth of each and every soul established itself against impossible odds as the fundamental presumption of Western law and society. That was not the case in the world of the past, and is not the case yet in most places in the world of the present." (I've been saying this for years, but it's nice to find someone prominent who agrees with me!) But in addition to the tendency toward self-abnegation, long a potential problem for flourishing in this life, Christianity's decline has left a void. Here Peterson talks of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Milton, Solzhenitsyn, and much more, including his own personal moral development, and returns again to suffering and nihilism, which are bad, but which at least point out, when addressed directly, that there is something good that opposes them. Expedience is lying and not facing up to your sins and the reality of things. Meaning is the balance between chaos and order, and it leads to good. "Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that." And by much the same token, but more personal and humanized, Rule 8: "Tell The Truth -- Or At Least, Don't Lie." Deceit leads to evil, which leads to, and is embodied, suffering.

    Rule 9 tells us to "Assume That The Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You Don't." Here a plea for, in essence, humility, along with some fascinating ideas about how to conduct disagreements with one's spouse, and related thoughts on memory and wisdom. Rule 10 says "Be Precise In Your Speech." As I say, Peterson embodies this rule. I like to say (which probably says something about me), in the context of political arguments, that I am a professional killer. I have nothing on Peterson, though. You can see the wheels turning when he is asked a question, and what comes out is precise and irrefutable, each word weighted with meaning and exquisitely interlocked, intertwining and supporting, with every other. (He never seems to say "um," that's for certain.) Lack of precision leads to chaos; lack of precision may be a failure of vocabulary, but it is more often a failure to communicate at all, to identify and address problems between two people before they grow to enormous, malevolent proportions. But, "If we speak carefully and precisely, we can sort things out, and put them in their proper place, and set a new goal, and navigate to it -- often communally, if we negotiate; if we reach consensus. If we speak carelessly and imprecisely, however, things remain vague. The destination remains unproclaimed. The fog of uncertainty does not lift, and there is no negotiating through the world."

    Next to last, in Rule 11, Peterson returns to children, "Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding." Danger, especially for men, is part of growth. And young men are the element of society at greatest risk today -- this is not a major theme of this book, but it is a major theme of Peterson's public thought. They are protected from developing properly, they are deliberately socialized like and as girls, yet they are blamed for the world's ills, and as a result, some turn to nihilism, and fascism, encouraged by certain other men who, in essence, Peterson calls evil.

    Here, Peterson returns emphatically to his proclamation of the deep and abiding differences between men and women. "[Some] insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social construct. It isn't. This isn't a debate. The data are in." For example, in the "emancipated" Scandinavian countries, girls choose traditionally feminine pursuits and behaviors at extremely high rates. And in the United States, it is just a lie that there are few women law firm partners due to discrimination; the reason is, purely, women's choice. (I know this from personal experience, although you are forbidden to say it at a law firm -- you would be fired instantly, yet another of many distortions of reality today, and a form of coerced lying and mass collective self-delusion.) The dominance hierarchy is only one example of this, but it is enormously important, like it or not, for young men, and making it so they can't win in any aspect of it is catastrophic for men -- and for women, who have a reduced selection of competent partners to meet their different, but complementary, needs.

    The movie Frozen is "deeply propagandistic," an embodied falsehood, not because a woman necessarily needs a man to rescue her, though she probably does to some extent, as does a man need a woman to make him whole, but because it pretends that masculine traits are of no consequence to human flourishing. The "oppression of the patriarchy" is a pack of lies. "The so-called oppression of the patriarchy was instead an imperfect collective attempt by men and women, stretching over millennia, to free each other from privation, disease and drudgery." The miserable result of denying this is what we see today. "We do not teach our children that the world is flat. Neither should we teach them unsupported ideologically-predicated theories about the nature of men and women -- or the nature of hierarchy." He even boldly directly attacks transgender ideology. "Gender is constructed, but an individual who desires gender re-assignment surgery is to be unarguably considered a man trapped in a woman's body (or vice versa). The fact that both of these cannot logically be true, simultaneously, is just ignored."

    The answer is simple. Rather than feeding or believing all these lies, men and women should each do, and be, what they are. "A woman should look after her children -- although that is not all she should do. And a man should look after a woman and children -- although that is not all he should do. But a woman should not look after a man, because she must look after children, and a man should not be a child. This means he must not be dependent." In this is found what men should do, not in a turn to nihilism or fascism, and equally not in a turn to emasculation and feminization to avert stupid accusations of "toxic masculinity."

    Finally, in Rule 12, "Pet A Cat When You Encounter One On The Street," Peterson turns most personal, describing the trials and suffering of his daughter from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. It is moving stuff, and Peterson returns again to his theme of the inevitability of suffering. But being open to cats, and myriad other joys, means you can "get a reminder that for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of Being might make up for the ineradicable suffering that accompanies it."

    Peterson ends with a series of fascinating brief questions and answers, along with short explanations of the answers, posed from himself to himself, on everything from "What shall I do with my life?" (Answer: "Aim for Paradise, and concentrate on today"), to "What shall I do with a torn nation?" (Answer: "Stitch it back together with careful words of truth"), to "What shall I do with my infant's death?" (Answer: "Hold my other loved ones and heal their pain"). These are meant to, in a type of stream of consciousness, embody some of the basic principles underlying the rules in the book. Really, though, they are more; they are nearly an entire philosophy of life, which is probably why this book is so popular. If you are broken, there is much in it for you. But Peterson's point is that everyone is broken, sometimes more, sometimes less -- so there is something in this book for everyone.

    By Laurel VanWilligen on February 13, 2018
    A few good nuggets

    There is a lot to like in this book. I apparently needed a bit of nudging about some things that maybe should have been self-evident. I especially liked the part in 'Rule 4' where he instructs on negotiating with your inner/child self on getting a few little things done without self-bullying. To me, that was the best part of the book.

    Therein lies one of my complaints. This book is too long, too verbose, too complicated for its purported goals. If you want to make the average person's life better (and of course sell more books), I think you could have cut out about 75% of the book. We already know (well, I do) that Jordan Peterson is well-read, erudite, incredibly introspective and ambitious. Of course if there were any doubt about that, you could read about how he'd "flown a hammerhead roll in a carbon fiber stunt plane....consulted for the UN Secretary General's High-level Panel on Sustainable Development....identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs in sixty different countries...." Really? Who was responsible for putting that on the last printed page? That alone almost made me throw the book away.

    Finally, I am an atheist. I have to say that hearing his complaints and criticism of atheists makes me wonder if all that erudition has done him any favors. He seems to have lost the ability to look out the windows of his own two eyes, without all of this information he's gleaned from other scholars, and realize that once you have an explanation for how the natural world works you can figure out how to optimize your place in it. Being self-destructive, or generally destructive, makes no sense and is not in your self-interest.

    So I looked to his book for some guidance on how to continue improving my life in this rational universe. And I found a few nuggets. I'm not positive the hours of slogging through the unnecessary parts was worth it. My jury's still out....

    The jury's back. I think for my purposes, 'Wear Sunscreen' by Mary Schmich (the 1997 'Commencement Address' often mistakenly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut) does as good a job, in a couple of pages that can be taped to my wall, than this tome. Maybe better. And it's free.

    By Arthur Figgis on February 12, 2018
    Standard JP; no major revelations, little structure

    If you're a fan of Peterson's, there's a lot to like here, and a good deal of it will be familiar.

    I was hoping that the written format would help reign in some of Peterson's desultory tendencies. When delivering a lecture, Peterson often allows himself to get off on tangents, and that is, in part, why his talks are so engaging and entertaining - you get the sense that you're watching someone engage in the hard work of real thought before your very eyes. That same tendency also highlights Peterson's wide-ranging erudition on religion, culture and history.

    Unfortunately, this book reads a lot like one of those lectures. While Peterson still provides, as ever, a number of valuable insights, he often does so in chapters that are only ostensibly related to the point he's making. His rules themselves are simple, logical and sensible, but he often focuses on the rules themselves for only a paragraph or two in each chapter. The rest is typical freewheeling Peterson - engaging and interesting, sure, but often failing to build a comprehensive, convincing argument. Major themes repeat themselves throughout chapters, which isn't a problem in and of itself - Peterson clearly has a few key concepts he's trying to instill to his readers - but the repetition of these concepts and the less-than-strict adherence to the given topic of each chapter can result in a generally samey feel: sure, life is a struggle between order and chaos; okay, dominance hierarchies are found across almost all life on earth - but I forget, is this the chapter about standing up straight, or the one about telling the truth?

    This is by no means a bad book, but I was eager to hear Peterson's thoughts presented in a more logical, organized, intentional manner, and that's not quite what this book is or does.

    By Stan S. on March 13, 2018
    Somewhat interesting but insanely overrated

    Let me say up front that I'm going to judge this book by a very high standard here. I have no doubt that this is one of the better books of its kind.

    Jordan Peterson offers some useful, if not completely original, practical advice. His advice is mostly of the "No more Mr. Nice Guy" type, which I think has much to recommend. Therefore, I praise the book wholeheartedly as a kind of how-to guide for getting certain things out of life, the kinds of things that most people want.

    But Peterson falls down whenever he waxes philosophical or moralistic. Whenever he talks about things like competitiveness, aggression, and sexual selection he tends to commit the naturalistic fallacy (X is right because that's how we evolved, or that's how our distant ancestors behaved, or, worst of all, that's what women evolved to find attractive). You'd be excused if you came away with the message that qualities like gentleness and compassion (what JP calls "agreeableness") are contemptible and bad, because they may not always further certain of your interests. But I for one would much rather live in a world where the average level of agreeableness were high than its opposite.

    Kant says in one of his ethical treatises that the purpose of reason is to live a moral life, not to make men happy, and that the happiest are usually those who use their instinct rather than their reason. JP seems to confuse morality with that which leads to practical success.

    JP advocates the life of action and achievement, but he gives no *inspiring* reason to choose this kind of life over any of the other kinds recommended at various times by the world's philosophies and religions. He only dangles the prospect of (to use a phrase from C.S. Lewis) "girls and gold and guns" thinking that this settles the issue. Perhaps he does not think very highly of his audience.

    I must mention I find his frequent, extensive use of the Bible to justify his biological reductionism rather irritating and inappropriate. I'd have given the book one more star if these parts had been edited out.

    As I said at the beginning, I don't doubt that this is one of the better, perhaps one of the best books of its kind. But, at least by my lights, it is overrated to a very great degree, and I'd be surprised of JP is much talked about or read ten, or even five years from now.

    By Amazon Customer on February 21, 2018
    Stick to Peterson's YouTube lectures

    While I enjoy Peterson's YouTube videos, I cannot say the same for this book. His style of writing is exactly like listening one of his lectures, which I do not feel translates well on paper. This style might be good for a lecture to get people thinking, but I found myself wondering why the heck he was expounding upon some things and not resolving them, while clarifying other concepts that did not feel as profound. Additionally, I cannot agree with his analysis of men and women (Men representing order and Women representing chaos), or some of his other theological points he tries to make (Eve shaming Adam to make him self-conscious into eating the forbidden fruit). It feels as though in these respects he oversteps his area of knowledge and delves into pop-psychology. While there are some good bits of insight in regards to raising children and dealing with various types of people, it's not worth reading 300+ pages of this man's thoughts when they could just as easily be viewed on YouTube.

    By Ken S on April 15, 2018
    OK at best

    Highly overrated - ramble ramble ramble, some good points buried in there somewhere.

    By KG on March 26, 2018
    Two Stars

    As a JBP fan and agnostic psych major I prefer his lectures to this book. Very different things

    By Pablo on March 27, 2018
    It is better to watch Peterson's conferences on-line than buying the book

    Shallow and vague. It is better to watch Peterson's conferences on-line than buying the book.

    By J. Rice on March 2, 2018
    Interesting, but ultimately flawed and superficial. Peterson's arguments ...

    Interesting, but ultimately flawed and superficial. Peterson's arguments should be studied by basic students of logic - you'll find classic examples of statement and false dilemmas presented left and right.

    There are some points that Peterson makes they are reasonable, but he attempts to extend them beyond all rational limits. As I said, mildly interesting but fundamentally flawed as an intellectual or philosophical work.

    By Vince on April 3, 2018
    Would have been a great blog post....otherwise pure drudgery.

    As some reviewers recommend, you have to put in the "work" to really read and appreciate the book. Well, I put in the work and it felt like work. Pure drudgery for me. This book could have been a good blog entry - 12 solid bullet points with the why and the how. If you are interested in the 12 Rules, pick any number of reviews here that summarize the book and you will get a more useful read, and certainly a better use of your time.

    Rule number 1 - stand up straight. I get it, I agree with it. I don't need to be beaten over the head with pages and pages of background into the biology of the lobster to understand how this can change my life.

    I like the idea and tried hard to like the book. Even tried the audio version read by the author - no better. Poorly executed and I can only guess what prompted all those 5 star reviews....maybe a pat on the back for having put in the "work"? "Hey, look at me...with my shoulders proudly back...I'm the alpha Lobster...I'm so enlightened thanks to this brilliant author."

    [Apr 22, 2018] Jordan Peterson and the Return of the Stoics by Tim Rogers

    Unlike almost every modern book in the self-help genre, happiness is a not a major theme here, and to Peterson it is not necessarily even a primary goal.
    His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers don't get it.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Pain is its one incontrovertible fact (he remarks at one point that it is a miracle that anything in the world gets done at all: such is the ubiquity of human suffering) ..."
    "... You will suffer. Accept that, and shift your focus to the one thing that is within your control: your attitude. ..."
    Apr 22, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers don't get it.

    "Aphorisms," wrote James Geary, "are like particle accelerators for the mind." When particles collide inside an accelerator, new ones are formed as the energy of the crash is converted into matter. Inside an aphorism, it is minds that collide, and what spins out is that most slippery of things, wisdom.

    ... ... ...

    These reviewers have done a disservice to their readers. In large measure, they have failed to engage with a work that is complex, challenging, and novel. Peterson is sketching out a draft for how we can survive, look in the mirror, and deal with psychological pain.

    To understand his message, the first task is not to be distracted by the title or genre, and look for the metaphorical glue that binds it all together. 12 Rules sets out an interesting and complex model for humanity, and it really has nothing to do with petting a cat or taking your tablets or being kind to lobsters. It is about strength, courage, responsibility, and suffering, but it is deep and difficult, and it is not easy to pigeonhole. In a sense, 12 Rules contains a number of hidden structures and hidden processes, and confusingly, these are not always made explicit in the text.

    The first of these is Deep Time. We are biological creatures, evolved beings who can only be truly understood through a model that encapsulates the notion of geological time. The concept of Deep Time is very recent: just a few generations ago science thought that the earth was a few thousand years old. The realization that the planet has been around for billions of years and that life itself not much younger has brought about a shift in the story of ourselves and our place in the world. We are the products of processes that are old, old, old. We stretch back across unfathomable reaches, incomprehensible spans, but we carry that history within us.

    ... ... ..

    Unlike almost every modern book in the self-help genre, happiness is a not a major theme here, and to Peterson it is not necessarily even a primary goal. Like Freud, Peterson sees life as suffering. Pain is its one incontrovertible fact (he remarks at one point that it is a miracle that anything in the world gets done at all: such is the ubiquity of human suffering). 12 Rules is not about the pursuit of pleasure, and indeed parts of his message are pure Stoicism. Resistance to life's depredations is futile. You will suffer. Accept that, and shift your focus to the one thing that is within your control: your attitude.

    ... His much-derided directive to "tidy your room" makes sense at every level. Indeed, if your room is too big, start with "tidy your desk," and then move forward. Find meaning in the tiniest acts of kindness, and push on from there. Concede the transience of pleasure and the inevitability of death. This isn't happiness, but it is a step closer to the Good Life, and contra the reviewers, readers are responding. Active, purposeful "Being in the World" is the dominant theme, and much of the book is taken up with exploring the whys and wherefores of this. Courage and strength and kindness, yes, to be sure, but importantly, courage "in spite of" and kindness "in spite of."

    Following Carl Rogers, meaning is to be found in active engagement in a wondrous and hazardous world, and here there is no shirking the "hazardous." It seems to me that Peterson is calling for a return to ataraxia , that imperturbability and equanimity that has been out of fashion amongst the intelligentsia (at least in the West) for a century or more.

    The underlying political philosophy is conservative, without question. As Christian Gonzalez identified in The American Conservative , Peterson's closest contemporary equivalent is Roger Scruton. "We have learned to live together and organize our complex societies slowly and incrementally, over vast stretches of time," he writes, "and we do not understand with sufficient exactitude why what we are doing works."

    Peterson on the American culture wars sounds like Scruton on the English Common Law: we are "from the soil," we need time, it is senseless to break what we barely understand. Each person's private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous. Those left-leaning critics who see "just another reactionary" have failed to understand the complexity. What permeates this project is an implicit biopsychosocial model of the human condition (Peterson spares the reader that dread term but it is the only description I know for his integrative model).

    ... ... ...

    Tim Rogers is a consultant psychiatrist in Edinburgh. He's written for Encounter magazine, and has published in both Quillette and Areo .

    [Apr 18, 2018] I believe Stoicism has a great deal of value for modern man.

    Apr 18, 2018 | thesaker.is

    Rob from Canada on April 15, 2018 , · at 5:39 pm UTC

    In my opinion, the ego becomes "mental" when it starts believing in duality, that it's the centre of the personality and in control. It's just the centre of the field of consciousness.

    I believe Stoicism has a great deal of value for modern man.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5897dMWJiSM&t=333s

    "The axiom of Maria. A precept in alchemy: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth."
    Jung used the axiom of Maria as a metaphor for the whole process of individuation. One is the original state of unconscious wholeness; two signifies the conflict between opposites; three points to a potential resolution; the third is the transcendent function; and the one as the fourth is a transformed state of consciousness, relatively whole and at peace."

    ­
    Stuart Harlan Doblin on April 16, 2018 , · at 5:43 pm UTC
    Good Day Rob from Canada – Stuart says, "Hi".

    "In my opinion, the ego becomes "mental" when it starts believing in duality, that it's the centre of the personality and in control. It's just the centre of the field of consciousness."

    Stuart begins: Our ego is a vestigal organ, long since gone by the by, and all that remains is a cell-wall-less gooey-plasma ready at the moment to luminesce and retire into nothingness.

    I take it as axiotmatic that our Whole Mind cannot lose it Self.

    OK, Rob from Canada, now to your opinions:

    One: "the ego becomes "mental" when it starts believing in duality".
    Two: "(the ego is) the centre of the personality".
    Three: "(the ego is) in control".
    Four: "(the ego) is the centre of the field of consciousness".

    Regarding Point One: Please explain how fracturing an entirely mistaken ideal can lead to dualism and not chaos?
    Two: "Who says?"
    Three: "Of What?"
    Four: An unconscious ideal cannot attain consciousness, except in illusions.

    Barry on April 15, 2018 , · at 10:46 pm UTC
    Hi Stuart! Here's my take on the issue of ego being mental, and from my own experience it is correct. With very little practice one can observe his thoughts and internal dialogue. It doesn't require meditation. It's simply a matter of paying attention to our internal dialogue. We all talk to ourselves. That internal dialogue is the ego talking to itself. The ego is a mental construction based on the brain's interpretation of it's experience since birth. So what are we witnessing the ego's internal dialogue and thoughts with? That's where our "spirituality" lies, regardless of religion or no religion. We all have immediate access to the witness to our own ego but few use it. The "witness" is silent. It observes and knows, but doesn't know how or why it knows. Call it "knowingness". That witnessing awareness is silent. Zen Buddhists call it the practice of "no mind". In modern sports it's called being in "The Zone". Though silent is is a very aware state of consciousness.
    Instead of using our brain to think when we want to use it to think, we let the brain's ego think us and think our lives for us. Our ego is our own worst enemy. The ego never sees the "big picture" of all involved. The ego/mind is always insecure and spends it's life trying to compensate is some way or another to overcome it's basic insecurity.
    Humans for the most part, identify with their mental chatter (the ego). Any real spiritual teaching, teaches us to identify, instead, with the observer of the ego, which is transcending the ego.
    All the problems we face on this planet are because of insecure individual egos, grouping to form tribal egos, such as tribes of nationalism, tribes of religious beliefs, tribes of political beliefs, tribes of sports team fans. Egos tend to be competitive and want to be "one up" in some way. One can easily see that the party of Democrats has an ego identity as does the party of Republicans. Egos are mental creations. Mental creations are not necessarily true. They are beliefs about our perception, whether actually correct or not. The witness or observer we all have and share knows the truth of the moment and the appropriate action to take. Of all the books on Spiritual Practices I've read through the years (I'm 80), I recommend Eckhart Tolle's "The Power Of Now". The best to you!
    Stiv R on April 16, 2018 , · at 1:59 am UTC
    To Barry, thank you for your post. I have read Tolle's book too, about 8 years ago, and found it really making good sense to me. Your explanation of our internal dialogue not being who we really are, is very clear and well-said. These can be hard concepts to get one's head around. You did an admirable job of it in your post.
    Thanks again for posting your thoughts.
    Anonymous on April 16, 2018 , · at 5:12 am UTC
    Insecure group think problems at the crux of existence.

    Simple, profound and, also from my experience, true.

    Thank you Barry.

    Stuart Harlan Doblin on April 16, 2018 , · at 5:35 pm UTC
    Barry, I pride myself in speaking to an octogenarian! "And from my own experience" .

    "Here's my take on the issue of ego being mental, and from my own experience it is correct. With very little practice one can observe his thoughts and internal dialogue. It doesn't require meditation. It's simply a matter of paying attention to our internal dialogue. We all talk to ourselves. That internal dialogue is the ego talking to itself. The ego is a mental construction based on the brain's interpretation of it's experience since birth."

    Barry, the internal dialogue of what you speak, is to me, your conscience and your inner self, not the ego talking to a hallucination of itself; for what can an illusion manifest but more illusions of : it : self.

    The ego is a misprojection from our higher mind; ergo, not mind, but misunderstanding, illusion, maya, separate from reality, separate from us, not us, not anyone, just lost awareness with no where to settle but nonexistence from which it came.

    Robin Gaura on April 17, 2018 , · at 5:51 pm UTC
    Cool. I´d take it a bit further, though. Putting the mind on emptiness, the place without characteristics, in a deep meditative state. One sees the way things really exist, the way consciousness creates our reality, the truth of emptiness and karma. Its called entering the stream. The beginning of the transformation to the divine being. Its an experience that changes you forever.
    Beyond words. Meditation is essential.

    [Apr 02, 2018] How Many Opioid Overdoses Are Suicides

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Martha Bebinger of WBUR. Originally published at Kaiser Health News ..."
    "... The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8255. ..."
    "... This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR , NPR and Kaiser Health News. ..."
    Apr 02, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Posted on March 30, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. See also this related Kaiser Health News story: Omissions On Death Certificates Lead To Undercounting Of Opioid Overdoses .

    It takes a lot of courage for an addict to recover and stay clean. And it is sadly not news that drug addiction and high levels of prescription drug use are signs that something is deeply broken in our society. There are always some people afflicted with deep personal pain but our system is doing a very good job of generating unnecessary pain and desperation.

    By Martha Bebinger of WBUR. Originally published at Kaiser Health News

    Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend's bathroom looking down at the sink.

    "I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back," Ohlman recalled. She doesn't remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how long she lay drugged-out on the floor.

    "But I remember being pissed because I could still get up, you know?"

    She wanted to be dead, she said, glancing down, a wisp of straight brown hair slipping from behind an ear across her thin face.

    At that point, said Ohlman, she'd been addicted to opioids -- controlled by the drugs -- for more than three years.

    "And doing all these things you don't want to do that are horrible -- you know, selling my body, stealing from my mom, sleeping in my car," Ohlman said. "How could I not be suicidal?"

    For this young woman, whose weight had dropped to about 90 pounds, who was shooting heroin just to avoid feeling violently ill, suicide seemed a painless way out.

    "You realize getting clean would be a lot of work," Ohlman said, her voice rising. "And you realize dying would be a lot less painful. You also feel like you'll be doing everyone else a favor if you die."

    Ohlman, who has now been sober for more than four years, said many drug users hit the same point, when the disease and the pursuit of illegal drugs crushes their will to live. Ohlman is among at least 40 percent of active drug users who wrestle with depression, anxiety or another mental health issue that increases the risk of suicide.

    Measuring Suicide Among Patients Addicted To Opioids

    Massachusetts, where Ohlman lives, began formally recognizing in May 2017 that some opioid overdose deaths are suicides. The state confirmed only about 2 percent of all overdose deaths as suicides, but Dr. Monica Bhare l, head of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said it's difficult to determine a person's true intent.

    "For one thing, medical examiners use different criteria for whether suicide was involved or not," Bharel said, and the "tremendous amount of stigma surrounding both overdose deaths and suicide sometimes makes it extremely challenging to piece everything together and figure out unintentional and intentional."

    Research on drug addiction and suicide suggests much higher numbers.

    "[Based on the literature that's available], it looks like it's anywhere between 25 and 45 percent of deaths by overdose that may be actual suicides," said Dr. Maria Oquendo , immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association.

    Oquendo pointed to one study of overdoses from prescription opioids that found nearly 54 percent were unintentional. The rest were either suicide attempts or undetermined.

    Several large studies show an increased risk of suicide among drug users addicted to opioids, especially women. In a study of about 5 million veterans, women were eight times as likely as others to be at risk for suicide, while men faced a twofold risk.

    The opioid epidemic is occurring at the same time suicides have hit a 30-year high , but Oquendo said few doctors look for a connection.

    "They are not monitoring it," said Oquendo, who chairs the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. "They are probably not assessing it in the kinds of depths they would need to prevent some of the deaths."

    That's starting to change. A few hospitals in Boston, for example, aim to ask every patient admitted about substance use, as well as about whether they've considered hurting themselves.

    "No one has answered the chicken and egg [problem]," said Dr. Kiame Mahaniah , a family physician who runs the Lynn Community Health Center in Lynn, Mass. Is it that patients "have mental health issues that lead to addiction, or did a life of addiction then trigger mental health problems?"

    With so little data to go on, "it's so important to provide treatment that covers all those bases," Mahaniah said.

    'Deaths Of Despair'

    When doctors do look deeper into the reasons patients addicted to opioids become suicidal, some economists predict they'll find deep reservoirs of depression and pain.

    In a seminal paper published in 2015, Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case tracked falling marriage rates, the loss of stable middle-class jobs and rising rates of self-reported pain. The authors say opioid overdoses, suicides and diseases related to alcoholism are all often "deaths of despair."

    "We think of opioids as something that's thrown petrol on the flames and made things infinitely worse," Deaton said, "but the underlying deep malaise would be there even without the opioids."

    Many economists agree on remedies for that deep malaise. Harvard economics professor David Cutle r said solutions include a good education, a steady job that pays a decent wage, secure housing, food and health care.

    "And also thinking about a sense of purpose in life," Cutler said. "That is, even if one is doing well financially, is there a sense that one is contributing in a meaningful way?"

    Tackling Despair In The Addiction Community

    "I know firsthand the sense of hopelessness that people can feel in the throes of addiction," said Michael Botticelli , executive director of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center; he is in recovery for an addiction to alcohol.

    Botticelli said recovery programs must help patients come out of isolation and create or recreate bonds with family and friends.

    "The vast majority of people I know who are in recovery often talk about this profound sense of re-establishing -- and sometimes establishing for the first time -- a connection to a much larger community," Botticelli said.

    Ohlman said she isn't sure why her attempted suicide, with multiple injections of heroin, didn't work.

    "I just got really lucky," Ohlman said. "I don't know how."

    A big part of her recovery strategy involves building a supportive community, she said.

    "Meetings; 12-step; sponsorship and networking; being involved with people doing what I'm doing," said Ohlman, ticking through a list of her priorities.

    There's a fatal overdose at least once a week within her Cape Cod community, she said. Some are accidental, others not. Ohlman said she's convinced that telling her story, of losing and then finding hope, will help bring those numbers down.

    The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8255.

    This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR , NPR and Kaiser Health News.

    [Mar 27, 2018] Cutting 'Old Heads' at IBM

    Mar 27, 2018 | news.slashdot.org

    (propublica.org) As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines swelled to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty. But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large number of experienced and aging U.S. employees .

    The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would "correct seniority mix." It slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years. In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

    [Jan 16, 2018] The New Stoicism by Leah Libresco

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs ..."
    "... Ego is the Enemy ..."
    "... The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living ..."
    "... Massimo Pigliucci does considerably better in his How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life ..."
    "... Ego is the Enemy ..."
    "... he Obstacle is the Way ..."
    "... Acknowledging that we are powerless to rectify a wrong can be true, denying that a wrong is wrong never is. ..."
    "... Both men praise the stoic practice of negative visualization as a way of preparing for (and perhaps avoiding) serious suffering. ..."
    "... The Obstacle is the Way ..."
    "... How to Be a Stoic ..."
    "... Stoicism is about endurance, not hope. Stoicism for the masses arms readers for small problems, but leaves them unprepared for the biggest disruption of all. ..."
    "... Christians cannot escape this reality. We know that we are created beings, sustained moment to moment by God. In his first Epistle, St. John the Evangelist writes almost the same thing as Epictetus: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world -- the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches -- comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever" (1 John 2:15-17, NRSVCE). ..."
    Jan 03, 2018 | farefwd.com
    No matter how much planning my teacher did for our fourth-grade field trip to the Circle Line Ferry, my personal commitment to Stoicism must have come as a surprise.

    We students had all packed lunches, which went in three big coolers, which were loaded onto our buses and were supposed to have come onto the ferry. Only two of the coolers were actually transferred, and the teachers were breaking the bad news to the children with no lunches, trying to forestall meltdowns. "All right, then," I said. "I just won't be hungry." My teacher seemed confused, so I explained, in my little, piping voice, "There's no point in being hungry if I don't have any food. I can't control whether there's lunch, I can only control if I'm upset about it. So I won't be."

    ... ... ...

    [Dec 25, 2017] American Carnage by Brad Griffin

    Notable quotes:
    "... It tells me that the bottom line is that Christmas has become a harder season for White families. We are worse off because of BOTH social and economic liberalism which has only benefited an elite few. The bottom half of the White population is now in total disarray – drug addiction, demoralization, divorce, suicide, abortion, atomization, stagnant wages, declining household income and investments – and this dysfunction is creeping up the social ladder. The worst thing we can do is step on the accelerator. ..."
    Dec 24, 2017 | www.unz.com

    As we move into 2018, I am swinging away from the Republicans. I don't support the Paul Ryan "Better Way" agenda. I don't support neoliberal economics. I think we have been going in the wrong direction since the 1970s and don't want to continue going down this road.

    1. Opioid Deaths: As we all know, the opioid epidemic has become a national crisis and the White working class has been hit the hardest by it. It is a "sea of despair" out there.
    2. White Mortality: As the family crumbles, religion recedes in his life, and his job prospects dwindle, the middle aged White working class man is turning to drugs, alcohol and suicide: The White suicide rate has soared since 2000:
    3. Median Household Income: The average household in the United States is poorer in 2017 than it was in 1997:
    4. Real GDP: Since the late 1990s, real GDP and real median household income have parted ways:
    5. Productivity and Real Wages: Since the 1970s, the minimum wage has parted ways with productivity gains in the US economy:
    6. Stock Market: Since 2000, the stock market has soared, but 10% of Americans own 80% of stocks. The top 1% owns 38% of stocks. In 2007, 3/4th of middle class households were invested in the stock market, but now only 50% are investors. Overall, 52% of Americans now own stocks, which is down from 65%. The average American has less than $1,000 in their combined checking and savings accounts.

    Do you know what this tells me?

    It tells me that the bottom line is that Christmas has become a harder season for White families. We are worse off because of BOTH social and economic liberalism which has only benefited an elite few. The bottom half of the White population is now in total disarray – drug addiction, demoralization, divorce, suicide, abortion, atomization, stagnant wages, declining household income and investments – and this dysfunction is creeping up the social ladder. The worst thing we can do is step on the accelerator.

    Paul Ryan and his fellow conservatives look at this and conclude we need MORE freedom. We need lower taxes, more free trade, more deregulation, weaker unions, more immigration and less social safety net spending. He wants to follow up tax reform with entitlement reform in 2018. I can't but see how this is going to make an already bad situation for the White working class even worse.

    I'm not rightwing in the sense that these people are. I think their policies are harmful to the nation. I don't think they feel any sense of duty and obligation to the working class like we do. They believe in liberal abstractions and make an Ayn Rand fetish out of freedom whereas we feel a sense of solidarity with them grounded in race, ethnicity and culture which tempers class division. We recoil at the evisceration of the social fabric whereas conservatives celebrate this blind march toward plutocracy.

    Do the wealthy need to own a greater share of the stock market? Do they need to own a greater share of our national wealth? Do we need to loosen up morals and the labor market? Do we need more White children growing up in financially stressed, broken homes on Christmas? Is the greatest problem facing the nation spending on anti-poverty programs? Paul Ryan and the True Cons think so.

    Yeah, I don't think so. I also think it is a good thing right now that we aren't associated with the mainstream Right. In the long run, I bet this will pay off for us. I predict this platform they have been standing on for decades now, which they call the conservative base, is going to implode on them. Donald Trump was only the first sign that Atlas is about to shrug.

    (Republished from Occidental Dissent by permission of author or representative)

    [Dec 15, 2017] The Crisis Ahead The U.S. Is No Country for Older Men and Women

    Notable quotes:
    "... The U.S. has a retirement crisis on its hands, and with the far right controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, as well as dozens of state governments, things promise to grow immeasurably worse. ..."
    "... It wasn't supposed to be this way. Past progressive presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, took important steps to make life more comfortable for aging Americans. FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law as part of his New Deal, and when LBJ passed Medicare in 1965, he established a universal health care program for those 65 and older. But the country has embraced a neoliberal economic model since the election of Ronald Reagan, and all too often, older Americans have been quick to vote for far-right Republicans antagonistic to the social safety net. ..."
    "... Since then, Ryan has doubled down on his delusion that the banking sector can manage Social Security and Medicare more effectively than the federal government. Republican attacks on Medicare have become a growing concern: according to EBRI, only 38 percent of workers are confident the program will continue to provide the level of benefits it currently does. ..."
    "... As 2017 winds down, Americans with health problems are still in the GOP's crosshairs -- this time because of so-called tax reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (both the House and Senate versions) includes provisions that would undermine Obamacare and cause higher health insurance premiums for older Americans. According to AARP, "Older adults ages 50-64 would be at particularly high risk under the proposal, facing average premium increases of up to $1,500 in 2019 as a result of the bill." ..."
    "... Countless Americans who are unable to afford those steep premiums would lose their insurance. The CBO estimates that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would cause the number of uninsured under 65 to increase 4 million by 2019 and 13 million by 2027. The bill would also imperil Americans 65 and over by cutting $25 billion from Medicare . ..."
    "... Analyzing W2 tax records in 2012, U.S. Census Bureau researchers Michael Gideon and Joshua Mitchell found that only 14 percent of private-sector employers in the U.S. were offering a 401(k) or similar retirement packages to their workers. That figure was thought to be closer to 40 percent, but Gideon and Mitchell discovered the actual number was considerably lower when smaller businesses were carefully analyzed, and that larger companies were more likely to offer 401(k) plans than smaller ones. ..."
    "... Today, millions of Americans work in the gig economy who don't have full-time jobs or receive W2s, but instead receive 1099s for freelance work. ..."
    "... The combination of stagnant wages and an increasingly high cost of living have been especially hellish for Americans who are trying to save for retirement. The United States' national minimum wage, a mere $7.25 per hour, doesn't begin to cover the cost of housing at a time when rents have soared nationwide. Never mind the astronomical prices in New York City, San Francisco or Washington, D.C. Median rents for one-bedroom apartments are as high as $1,010 per month in Atlanta, $960 per month in Baltimore, $860 per month in Jacksonville and $750 per month in Omaha, according to ApartmentList.com. ..."
    "... yeah, Canada has a neoliberal infestation that is somewhere between the US and the UK. France has got one too, but it is less advanced. I'll enjoy my great healthcare, public transportation, and generous paid time off while I can. ..."
    "... Europeans may scratch their heads, but they should recall their own histories and the long struggle to the universal benefits now enjoyed. Americans are far too complacent. This mildness is viewed by predators as weakness and the attacks will continue. ..."
    "... Not sure if many of the readers here watch non-cable national broadcast news, but Pete Peterson and his foundation are as everpresent an advertiser as the pharma industry. Peterson is the strongest, best organized advocate for gutting social services, social security, and sending every last penny out of the tax-mule consumer's pocket toward wall street. The guy needs an equivalent counterpoint enemy. ..."
    "... The social advantages that we still enjoy were fought in the streets, and on the "bricks" flowing with the participants blood. 8 hr. day; women's right to vote; ability and right for groups of laborers to organize; worker safety laws ..and so many others. There is no historical memory on how those rights were achieved. We are slowly slipping into an oligarchy greased by the idea that the physical possession of material things is all that matters. Sheeple, yes. ..."
    "... Mmm, I think American voters get what they want in the end. They want their politicians because they believe the lies. 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of wealth. A huge percentage of poor people believe they or their kids will (not can, but will) become wealthy. Most Americans can't find France on a map. ..."
    "... I may have been gone for about thirty years, but that has only sharpened my insights into America. It's very hard to see just how flawed America is from the inside but when you step outside and have some perspective, it's frightening. ..."
    "... Our government, beginning with Reagan, turned its back on promoting the general welfare. The wealthy soon learned that their best return on investment was the "purchase" of politicians willing to pass the legislation they put in their hands. Much of their investment included creating the right wing media apparatus. ..."
    "... The Class War is real. It has been going on for 40 years, with the Conservative army facing virtually no resistance. Conservatives welcome Russia's help. Conservatives welcome barriers to people voting. Conservatives welcome a populace that believes lies that benefit them. Conservatives welcome the social and financial decline of the entire middle class and poor as long as it profits the rich financially, and by extension enhances their power politically. ..."
    "... "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery" Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774 ME 1:193, Papers 1:125 ..."
    "... yes, my problem with the post as well, completely ignores democrat complicity the part where someone with a 26k salary will pay 16k in insurance? No they won't, the system would collapse in that case which will be fine with me. ..."
    "... As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more than expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social media-addled Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly suspect not. ..."
    "... This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and then got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because, you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do. ..."
    Dec 14, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Yves here. I imagine many readers are acutely aware of the problems outlined in this article, if not beset by them already. By any rational standard, I should move now to a much cheaper country that will have me. I know individuals who live most of the year in third-world and near-third world countries, but they have very cheap ways of still having a toehold in the US and not (yet or maybe ever) getting a long-term residence visa. Ecuador is very accommodating regarding retirement visas, and a Social Security level income goes far there, but yours truly isn't retiring any time soon. And another barrier to an international move (which recall I did once, so I have some appreciation for what it takes), is that one ought to check out possible destinations but if you are already time and money and energy stressed, how do you muster the resources to do that at all, let alone properly?

    Aside from the potential to greatly reduce fixed costs, a second impetus for me is Medicare. I know for most people, getting on Medicare is a big plus. I have a very rare good, very old insurance policy. When you include the cost of drug plans, Medicare is no cheaper than what I have now, and considerably narrows my network. Moreover, I expect it to be thoroughly crapified by ten years from now (when I am 70), which argues for getting out of Dodge sooner rather than later.

    And that's before you get to another wee problem Lambert points out that I would probably not be happy in a third world or high end second world country. But the only bargain "world city" I know of is Montreal. I'm not sure it would represent enough of an all-in cost saving to justify the hassle of an international move and the attendant tax compliance burdens .and that charitably assumes I could even find a way to get permanent residence. Ugh.

    By Alex Henderson, who has written for the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the Pasadena Weekly and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter @alexvhenderson. Originally published at Alternet

    Millions can no longer afford to retire, and may never be able when the GOP passes its tax bill.

    The news is not good for millions of aging Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the United States who are moving closer to retirement age. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual report on retirement preparedness for 2017, only 18 percent of U.S.-based workers feel "very confident" about their ability to retire comfortably ; Craig Copeland, senior research associate for EBRI and the report's co-author, cited "debt, lack of a retirement plan at work, and low savings" as "key factors" in workers' retirement-related anxiety. The Insured Retirement Institute finds a mere 23 percent of Baby Boomers and 24 percent of Gen Xers are confident that their savings will last in retirement. To make matters worse, more than 40 percent of Boomers and over 30 percent of Gen Xers report having no retirement savings whatsoever .

    The U.S. has a retirement crisis on its hands, and with the far right controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, as well as dozens of state governments, things promise to grow immeasurably worse.

    It wasn't supposed to be this way. Past progressive presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, took important steps to make life more comfortable for aging Americans. FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law as part of his New Deal, and when LBJ passed Medicare in 1965, he established a universal health care program for those 65 and older. But the country has embraced a neoliberal economic model since the election of Ronald Reagan, and all too often, older Americans have been quick to vote for far-right Republicans antagonistic to the social safety net.

    In the 2016 presidential election, 55 percent of voters 50 and older cast their ballots for Donald Trump against just 44 percent for Hillary Clinton. (This was especially true of older white voters; 90 percent of black voters 45 and older, as well as 67 percent of Latino voters in the same age range voted Democratic.)

    Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) economic proposals may have been wildly popular with millennials, but no demographic has a greater incentive to vote progressive than Americans facing retirement. According to research conducted by the American Association of Retired Persons, the three greatest concerns of Americans 50 and older are Social Security, health care costs and caregiving for loved ones -- all areas that have been targeted by Republicans.

    House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a devotee of social Darwinist Ayn Rand , has made no secret of his desire to privatize Social Security and replace traditional Medicare with a voucher program. Had George W. Bush had his way and turned Social Security over to Wall Street, the economic crash of September 2008 might have left millions of senior citizens homeless.

    Since then, Ryan has doubled down on his delusion that the banking sector can manage Social Security and Medicare more effectively than the federal government. Republican attacks on Medicare have become a growing concern: according to EBRI, only 38 percent of workers are confident the program will continue to provide the level of benefits it currently does.

    The GOP's obsession with abolishing the Affordable Care Act is the most glaring example of its disdain for aging Americans. Yet Obamacare has been a blessing for Boomers and Gen Xers who have preexisting conditions. The ACA's guaranteed issue plans make no distinction between a 52-year-old American with diabetes, heart disease or asthma and a 52-year-old who has never had any of those illnesses. And AARP notes that under the ACA, the uninsured rate for Americans 50 and older decreased from 15 percent in 2013 to 9 percent in 2016.

    According to the Congressional Budget Office, the replacement bills Donald Trump hoped to ram through Congress this year would have resulted in staggering premium hikes for Americans over 50. The CBO's analysis of the American Health Care Act, one of the earlier versions of Trumpcare, showed that a 64-year-old American making $26,500 per year could have gone from paying $1,700 annually in premiums to just over $16,000. The CBO also estimated that the GOP's American Health Care Act would have deprived 23 million Americans of health insurance by 2026.

    As 2017 winds down, Americans with health problems are still in the GOP's crosshairs -- this time because of so-called tax reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (both the House and Senate versions) includes provisions that would undermine Obamacare and cause higher health insurance premiums for older Americans. According to AARP, "Older adults ages 50-64 would be at particularly high risk under the proposal, facing average premium increases of up to $1,500 in 2019 as a result of the bill."

    The CBO estimates that the bill will cause premiums to spike an average of 10 percent overall, with average premiums increasing $890 per year for a 50-year-old, $1,100 per year for a 55-year-old, $1,350 per year for a 60-year-old and $1,490 per year for a 64-year-old. Premium increases, according to the CBO, would vary from state to state; in Maine, average premiums for a 64-year-old would rise as much as $1,750 per year.

    Countless Americans who are unable to afford those steep premiums would lose their insurance. The CBO estimates that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would cause the number of uninsured under 65 to increase 4 million by 2019 and 13 million by 2027. The bill would also imperil Americans 65 and over by cutting $25 billion from Medicare .

    As morally reprehensible as the GOP's tax legislation may be, it is merely an acceleration of the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top that America has undergone since the mid-1970s. (President Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid right-winger with authoritarian tendencies, but he expanded Medicare and supported universal health care.) Between the decline of labor unions, age discrimination, stagnant wages, an ever-rising cost of living, low interest rates, and a shortage of retirement accounts, millions of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers may never be able to retire.

    Traditional defined-benefit pensions were once a mainstay of American labor, especially among unionized workers. But according to Pew Charitable Trusts, only 13 percent of Baby Boomers still have them (among millennials, the number falls to 6 percent). In recent decades, 401(k) plans have become much more prominent, yet a majority of American workers don't have them either.

    Analyzing W2 tax records in 2012, U.S. Census Bureau researchers Michael Gideon and Joshua Mitchell found that only 14 percent of private-sector employers in the U.S. were offering a 401(k) or similar retirement packages to their workers. That figure was thought to be closer to 40 percent, but Gideon and Mitchell discovered the actual number was considerably lower when smaller businesses were carefully analyzed, and that larger companies were more likely to offer 401(k) plans than smaller ones.

    Today, millions of Americans work in the gig economy who don't have full-time jobs or receive W2s, but instead receive 1099s for freelance work. Tax-deferred SEP-IRAs were once a great, low-risk way for freelancers to save for retirement without relying exclusively on Social Security, but times have changed since the 1980s and '90s when interest rates were considerably higher for certificates of deposit and savings accounts. According to Bankrate.com, average rates for one-year CDs dropped from 11.27 percent in 1984 to 8.1 percent in 1990 to 5.22 percent in 1995 to under 1 percent in 2010, where it currently remains.

    The combination of stagnant wages and an increasingly high cost of living have been especially hellish for Americans who are trying to save for retirement. The United States' national minimum wage, a mere $7.25 per hour, doesn't begin to cover the cost of housing at a time when rents have soared nationwide. Never mind the astronomical prices in New York City, San Francisco or Washington, D.C. Median rents for one-bedroom apartments are as high as $1,010 per month in Atlanta, $960 per month in Baltimore, $860 per month in Jacksonville and $750 per month in Omaha, according to ApartmentList.com.

    That so many older Americans are renting at all is ominous in its own right. FDR made home ownership a primary goal of the New Deal, considering it a key component of a thriving middle class. But last year, the Urban Institute found that 19 million Americans who previously owned a home are now renting, 31 percent between the ages of 36 and 45. Laurie Goodman, one of the study's authors, contends the Great Recession has "permanently raised the number of renters," and that the explosion of foreclosures has hit Gen Xers especially hard.

    The severity of the U.S. retirement crisis is further addressed in journalist Jessica Bruder's new book "Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century," which follows Americans in their 50s, 60s and even 70s living in RVs or vans , barely eking out a living doing physically demanding, seasonal temp work from harvesting sugar beets to cleaning toilets at campgrounds. Several had high-paying jobs before their lives were blown apart by the layoffs, foreclosures and corporate downsizing of the Great Recession. Bruder speaks with former college professors and software professionals who now find themselves destitute, teetering on the brink of homelessness and forced to do backbreaking work for next to nothing. Unlike the big banks, they never received a bailout.

    These neo-nomads recall the transients of the 1930s, themselves victims of Wall Street's recklessness. But whereas FDR won in a landslide in 1932 and aggressively pursued a program of progressive economic reforms, Republicans in Congress have set out to shred what little remains of the social safety net, giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires . The older voters who swept Trump into office may have signed their own death warrants.

    If aging Americans are going to be saved from this dystopian future, the U.S. will have to forge a new Great Society. Programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will need to be strengthened, universal health care must become a reality and age discrimination in the workplace will have to be punished as a civil rights violation like racial and gender-based discrimination. If not, millions of Gen Xers and Boomers will spend their golden years scraping for pennies.

    Expat , , December 14, 2017 at 6:29 am

    I certainly will never go back to the States for these and other reasons. I have a friend, also an American citizen, who travels frequently back to California to visit his son. He is truly worried about getting sick or having an accident when he is there since he knows it might bankrupt him. As he jokes, he would be happy to have another heart attack here in France since it's free!

    For those of you who have traveled the world and talked to people, you probably know that most foreigners are perplexed by America's attitude to health care and social services. The richest nation in the world thinks that health and social security (in the larger sense of not being forced into the street) are not rights at all. Europeans scratch their heads at this.

    The only solution is education and information, but they are appalling in America. America remains the most ignorant and worst educated of the developed nations and is probably beaten by many developing nations. It is this ignorance and stupidity that gets Americans to vote for the likes of Trump or any of the other rapacious millionaires they send to office every year.

    A first step would be for Americans to insist that Congress eliminate its incredibly generous and life-long healthcare plans for elected officials. They should have to do what the rest of Americans do. Of course, since about 95% of Congress are millionaires, it might not be effective. But it's a start.

    vidimi , , December 14, 2017 at 6:40 am

    France has its share of problems, but boy do they pale next to the problems in America or even Canada. Life here is overall quite pleasant and I have no desire to go back to N.A.

    Marco , , December 14, 2017 at 6:46 am

    Canada has problems?

    WobblyTelomeres , , December 14, 2017 at 7:47 am

    Was in Yellowknife a couple of years ago. The First Nations people have a rough life. From what I've read, such extends across the country.

    vidimi , , December 14, 2017 at 8:03 am

    yeah, Canada has a neoliberal infestation that is somewhere between the US and the UK. France has got one too, but it is less advanced. I'll enjoy my great healthcare, public transportation, and generous paid time off while I can.

    JEHR , , December 14, 2017 at 1:46 pm

    The newest neoliberal effort in Canada was put forward by our Minister of Finance (a millionaire) who is touting a bill that will get rid of defined benefit pension plans given to public employees for so-called target benefit pension plans. The risk for target plans is taken by the recipient. Morneau's former firm promotes target benefit pension plans and the change could benefit Morneau himself as he did not put his assets from his firm in a blind trust. At the very least, he has a conflict of interest and should probably resign.

    There is always an insidious group of wealthy people here who would like to re-make the world in their own image. I fear for the future.

    JEHR , , December 14, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    Yes, I agree. There is an effort to "simplify" the financial system of the EU to take into account the business cycle and the financial cycle .

    Dita , , December 14, 2017 at 8:25 am

    Europeans may scratch their heads, but they should recall their own histories and the long struggle to the universal benefits now enjoyed. Americans are far too complacent. This mildness is viewed by predators as weakness and the attacks will continue.

    jefemt , , December 14, 2017 at 10:02 am

    We really should be able to turn this around, and have an obligation to ourselves and our 'nation state' , IF there were a group of folks running on a fairness, one-for-all, all-for-one platform. That sure isn't the present two-sides-of-the-same-coin Democraps and Republicrunts.

    Not sure if many of the readers here watch non-cable national broadcast news, but Pete Peterson and his foundation are as everpresent an advertiser as the pharma industry. Peterson is the strongest, best organized advocate for gutting social services, social security, and sending every last penny out of the tax-mule consumer's pocket toward wall street. The guy needs an equivalent counterpoint enemy.

    Check it out, and be vigilant in dispelling his message and mission. Thanks for running this article.

    Running away: the almost-haves run to another nation state, the uber-wealthy want to leave the earth, or live in their private Idaho in the Rockies or on the Ocean. What's left for the least among us? Whatever we create?
    https://www.pgpf.org/

    Scramjett , , December 14, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    I think pathologically optimistic is a better term than complacent. Every time someone dumps on them, their response is usually along the lines of "Don't worry, it'll get better," "Everything works itself out in the end," "maybe we'll win the lottery," my personal favorite "things will get better, just give it time" (honestly it's been 40 years of this neoliberal bullcrap, how much more time are we supposed to give it?), "this is just a phase" or "we can always bring it back later and better than ever." The last one is most troubling because after 20 years of witnessing things in the public sphere disappearing, I've yet to see a single thing return in any form at all.

    I'm not sure where this annoying optimism came from but I sure wish it would go away.

    sierra7 , , December 14, 2017 at 8:45 pm

    The "optimism" comes from having a lack of historical memory. So many social protections that we have/had is seen as somehow coming out of the ether benevolently given without any social struggles. The lack of historical education on this subject in particular is appalling. Now, most would probably look for an "APP" on their "dumbphones" to solve the problem.

    The social advantages that we still enjoy were fought in the streets, and on the "bricks" flowing with the participants blood. 8 hr. day; women's right to vote; ability and right for groups of laborers to organize; worker safety laws ..and so many others. There is no historical memory on how those rights were achieved. We are slowly slipping into an oligarchy greased by the idea that the physical possession of material things is all that matters. Sheeple, yes.

    Jeremy Grimm , , December 14, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    WOW! You must have been outside the U.S. for a long time. Your comment seems to suggest we still have some kind of democracy here. We don't get to pick which rapacious millionaires we get to vote for and it doesn't matter any way since whichever one we pick from the sad offerings ends up with policies dictated from elsewhere.

    Expat , , December 14, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    Mmm, I think American voters get what they want in the end. They want their politicians because they believe the lies. 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of wealth. A huge percentage of poor people believe they or their kids will (not can, but will) become wealthy. Most Americans can't find France on a map.

    So, yes, you DO get to pick your rapacious millionaire. You send the same scumbags back to Washington every year because it's not him, it the other guys who are the problem. One third of Americans support Trump! Really, really support him. They think he is Jesus, MacArthur and Adam Smith all rolled up into one.

    I may have been gone for about thirty years, but that has only sharpened my insights into America. It's very hard to see just how flawed America is from the inside but when you step outside and have some perspective, it's frightening.

    Disturbed Voter , , December 14, 2017 at 6:29 am

    The Democrat party isn't a reform party. Thinking it is so, is because of the "No Other Choice" meme. Not saying that the Republican party works in my favor. They don't. Political reform goes deeper than reforming either main party. It means going to a European plurality system (with its own downside). That way growing Third parties will be viable, if they have popular, as opposed to millionaire, support. I don't see this happening, because of Citizens United, but if all you have is hope, then you have to go with that.

    Carolinian , , December 14, 2017 at 8:05 am

    Had George W. Bush had his way and turned Social Security over to Wall Street, the economic crash of September 2008 might have left millions of senior citizens homeless.

    Substitute Bill Clinton for George Bush in that sentence and it works just as well. Neoliberalism is a bipartisan project.

    And many of the potential and actual horrors described above arise from the price distortions of the US medical system with Democratic acquiescence in said system making things worse. The above article reads like a DNC press release.

    And finally while Washington politicians of both parties have been threatening Social Security for years that doesn't mean its third rail status has been repealed. The populist tremors of the last election -- which have caused our elites to lose their collective mind -- could be a mere prelude to what will happen in the event of a full scale assault on the safety net.

    KYrocky , , December 14, 2017 at 12:05 pm

    Substitute Obama's quest for a Grand Bargain as well.

    Our government, beginning with Reagan, turned its back on promoting the general welfare. The wealthy soon learned that their best return on investment was the "purchase" of politicians willing to pass the legislation they put in their hands. Much of their investment included creating the right wing media apparatus.

    The Class War is real. It has been going on for 40 years, with the Conservative army facing virtually no resistance. Conservatives welcome Russia's help. Conservatives welcome barriers to people voting. Conservatives welcome a populace that believes lies that benefit them. Conservatives welcome the social and financial decline of the entire middle class and poor as long as it profits the rich financially, and by extension enhances their power politically.

    If retirees flee our country that will certainly please the Conservatives as that will be fewer critics (enemies). Also less need or demand for social programs.

    rps , , December 14, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery" Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774 ME 1:193, Papers 1:125

    tegnost , , December 14, 2017 at 8:59 am

    yes, my problem with the post as well, completely ignores democrat complicity the part where someone with a 26k salary will pay 16k in insurance? No they won't, the system would collapse in that case which will be fine with me.

    Marco , , December 14, 2017 at 6:55 am

    "President Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid right-winger with authoritarian tendencies, but he expanded Medicare and supported universal health care."

    "Gimme that old time Republican!"

    One of the reasons I love NC is that most political economic analysis is often more harsh on the Democrats than the Repubs so I am a bit dismayed how this article is way too easy on Team D. How many little (and not so little) knives in the back from Clinton and Obama? Is a knife in the chest that much worse?

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , December 14, 2017 at 3:57 pm

    This entire thread is simply heartbreaking, Americans have had their money, their freedom, their privacy, their health, and sometimes their very lives taken away from them by the State. But the heartbreaking part is that they feel they are powerless to do anything at all about it so are just trying to leave.

    But "People should not fear the government; the government should fear the people"

    tagio , December 14, 2017 at 4:39 pm

    It's more than a feeling, HAL. https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy Link to the academic paper embedded in article.

    As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more than expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social media-addled Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly suspect not.

    This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and then got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because, you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do.

    [Dec 13, 2017] A stunning 33% of job seekers ages 55 and older are long-term unemployed, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute

    Notable quotes:
    "... And, recent studies have shown, the longer you're out of work - especially if you're older and out of work - the harder it becomes to get a job offer. ..."
    Dec 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Livius Drusus , December 13, 2017 at 2:44 pm

    I thought this was an interesting article. Apologies if this has been posted on NC already.

    A stunning 33% of job seekers ages 55 and older are long-term unemployed, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute. The average length of unemployment for the roughly 1.2 million people 55+ who are out of work: seven to nine months. "It's emotionally devastating for them," said Carl Van Horn, director of Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, at a Town Hall his center and the nonprofit WorkingNation held earlier this year in New Brunswick, N.J.

    ... ... ...

    The fight faced by the long-term unemployed

    And, recent studies have shown, the longer you're out of work - especially if you're older and out of work - the harder it becomes to get a job offer.

    The job-finding rate declines by roughly 50% within eight months of unemployment, according to a 2016 paper by economists Gregor Jarosch of Stanford University and Laura Pilossoph of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "Unemployment duration has a strongly negative effect on the likelihood of subsequent employment," wrote researchers from the University of Maryland and the U.S. Census Bureau in another 2016 paper.

    "Once upon a time, you could take that first job and it would lead to the next job and the job after that," said Town Hall panelist John Colborn, chief operating officer at the nonprofit JEVS Human Services, of Philadelphia. "The notion of a career ladder offered some hope of getting back into the labor market. The rungs of the ladder are getting harder and harder to find and some of them are broken."

    In inner cities, said Kimberly McClain, CEO of The Newark Alliance, "there's an extra layer beyond being older and out of work. There are issues of race and poverty and being defined by your ZIP Code. There's an incredible sense of urgency."

    ... ... ...

    Filling a work gap

    If you are over 50, unemployed and have a work gap right now, the Town Hall speakers said, fill it by volunteering, getting an internship, doing project work, job-shadowing someone in a field you want to be in or taking a class to re-skill. These kind of things "make a candidate a lot more attractive," said Colborn. Be sure to note them in your cover letter and résumé.

    Town Hall panelist Amanda Mullan, senior vice president and chief human resources officer of the New Jersey Resources Corp. (a utility company based in Wall, N.J.), said that when her company is interviewing someone who has been out of work lately, "we will ask: 'What have you done during that time frame?' If we get 'Nuthin,' that shows something about the individual, from a motivational perspective."

    ... ... ...

    The relief of working again

    Finally finding work when you're over 50 and unemployed for a stretch can be a relief for far more than financial reasons.

    "Once I landed my job, the thing I most looked forward to was the weekend," said Konopka. "Not to relax, but because I didn't have to think about finding a job anymore. That's 24/7 in your head. You're always thinking on a Saturday: 'If I'm not doing something to find a job, will there be a posting out there?'"

    Full article: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jobs-are-everywhere-just-not-for-people-over-55-2017-12-08

    [Dec 13, 2017] Stress of long-term unemployment takes a toll on thousands of Jerseyans who are out of work by Leslie Kwoh

    Notable quotes:
    "... Leslie Kwoh may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 392-4147. ..."
    Jun 13, 2010 | www.nj.com

    At 5:30 every morning, Tony Gwiazdowski rolls out of bed, brews a pot of coffee and carefully arranges his laptop, cell phone and notepad like silverware across the kitchen table.

    And then he waits.

    Gwiazdowski, 57, has been waiting for 16 months. Since losing his job as a transportation sales manager in February 2009, he wakes each morning to the sobering reminder that, yes, he is still unemployed. So he pushes aside the fatigue, throws on some clothes and sends out another flurry of resumes and cheery cover letters.

    But most days go by without a single phone call. And around sundown, when he hears his neighbors returning home from work, Gwiazdowski -- the former mayor of Hillsborough -- can't help but allow himself one tiny sigh of resignation.

    "You sit there and you wonder, 'What am I doing wrong?'" said Gwiazdowski, who finds companionship in his 2-year-old golden retriever, Charlie, until his wife returns from work.

    "The worst moment is at the end of the day when it's 4:30 and you did everything you could, and the phone hasn't rung, the e-mails haven't come through."

    Gwiazdowski is one of a growing number of chronically unemployed workers in New Jersey and across the country who are struggling to get through what is becoming one long, jobless nightmare -- even as the rest of the economy has begun to show signs of recovery.

    Nationwide, 46 percent of the unemployed -- 6.7 million Americans -- have been without work for at least half a year, by far the highest percentage recorded since the U.S. Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948.

    In New Jersey, nearly 40 percent of the 416,000 unemployed workers last year fit that profile, up from about 20 percent in previous years, according to the department, which provides only annual breakdowns for individual states. Most of them were unemployed for more than a year.

    But the repercussions of chronic unemployment go beyond the loss of a paycheck or the realization that one might never find the same kind of job again. For many, the sinking feeling of joblessness -- with no end in sight -- can take a psychological toll, experts say.

    Across the state, mental health crisis units saw a 20 percent increase in demand last year as more residents reported suffering from unemployment-related stress, according to the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies.

    "The longer the unemployment continues, the more impact it will have on their personal lives and mental health," said Shauna Moses, the association's associate executive director. "There's stress in the marriage, with the kids, other family members, with friends."

    And while a few continue to cling to optimism, even the toughest admit there are moments of despair: Fear of never finding work, envy of employed friends and embarassment at having to tell acquaintances that, nope, still no luck.

    "When they say, 'Hi Mayor,' I don't tell a lot of people I'm out of work -- I say I'm semi-retired," said Gwiazdowski, who maxed out on unemployment benefits several months ago.

    "They might think, 'Gee, what's wrong with him? Why can't he get a job?' It's a long story and maybe people really don't care and now they want to get away from you."


    SECOND TIME AROUND

    Lynn Kafalas has been there before, too. After losing her computer training job in 2000, the East Hanover resident took four agonizing years to find new work -- by then, she had refashioned herself into a web designer.

    That not-too-distant experience is why Kafalas, 52, who was laid off again eight months ago, grows uneasier with each passing day. Already, some of her old demons have returned, like loneliness, self-doubt and, worst of all, insomnia. At night, her mind races to dissect the latest interview: What went wrong? What else should she be doing? And why won't even Barnes & Noble hire her?

    "It's like putting a stopper on my life -- I can't move on," said Kafalas, who has given up karate lessons, vacations and regular outings with friends. "Everything is about the interviews."

    And while most of her friends have been supportive, a few have hinted to her that she is doing something wrong, or not doing enough. The remarks always hit Kafalas with a pang.

    In a recent study, researchers at Rutgers University found that the chronically unemployed are prone to high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness and even substance abuse, which take a toll on their self-esteem and personal relationships.

    "They're the forgotten group," said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, and a co-author of the report. "And the longer you are unemployed, the less likely you are to get a job."

    Of the 900 unemployed workers first interviewed last August for the study, only one in 10 landed full-time work by March of this year, and only half of those lucky few expressed satisfaction with their new jobs. Another one in 10 simply gave up searching.

    Among those who were still unemployed, many struggled to make ends meet by borrowing from friends or family, turning to government food stamps and forgoing health care, according to the study.

    More than half said they avoided all social contact, while slightly less than half said they had lost touch with close friends. Six in 10 said they had problems sleeping.

    Kafalas says she deals with her chronic insomnia by hitting the gym for two hours almost every evening, lifting weights and pounding the treadmill until she feels tired enough to fall asleep.

    "Sometimes I forget what day it is. Is it Tuesday? And then I'll think of what TV show ran the night before," she said. "Waiting is the toughest part."


    AGE A FACTOR

    Generally, the likelihood of long-term unemployment increases with age, experts say. A report by the National Employment Law Project this month found that nearly half of those who were unemployed for six months or longer were at least 45 years old. Those between 16 and 24 made up just 14 percent.

    Tell that to Adam Blank, 24, who has been living with his girlfriend and her parents at their Martinsville home since losing his sales job at Best Buy a year and half ago.

    Blank, who graduated from Rutgers with a major in communications, says he feels like a burden sometimes, especially since his girlfriend, Tracy Rosen, 24, works full-time at a local nonprofit. He shows her family gratitude with small chores, like taking out the garbage, washing dishes, sweeping floors and doing laundry.

    Still, he often feels inadequate.

    "All I'm doing on an almost daily basis is sitting around the house trying to keep myself from going stir-crazy," said Blank, who dreams of starting a social media company.

    When he is feeling particularly low, Blank said he turns to a tactic employed by prisoners of war in Vietnam: "They used to build dream houses in their head to help keep their sanity. It's really just imagining a place I can call my own."


    LESSONS LEARNED

    Meanwhile, Gwiazdowski, ever the optimist, says unemployment has taught him a few things.

    He has learned, for example, how to quickly assess an interviewer's age and play up or down his work experience accordingly -- he doesn't want to appear "threatening" to a potential employer who is younger. He has learned that by occasionally deleting and reuploading his resume to job sites, his entry appears fresh.

    "It's almost like a game," he said, laughing. "You are desperate, but you can't show it."

    But there are days when he just can't find any humor in his predicament -- like when he finishes a great interview but receives no offer, or when he hears a fellow job seeker finally found work and feels a slight twinge of jealousy.

    "That's what I'm missing -- putting on that shirt and tie in the morning and going to work," he said.

    The memory of getting dressed for work is still so vivid, Gwiazdowski says, that he has to believe another job is just around the corner.

    "You always have to hope that that morning when you get up, it's going to be the day," he said.

    "Today is going to be the day that something is going to happen."

    Leslie Kwoh may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 392-4147.

    DrBuzzard Jun 13, 2010

    I collect from the state of iowa, was on tier I and when the gov't recessed without passing extension, iowa stopped paying tier I claims that were already open, i was scheduled to be on tier I until july 15th, and its gone now, as a surprise, when i tried to claim my week this week i was notified. SURPRISE, talk about stress.

    berganliz Jun 13, 2010

    This is terrible....just wait until RIF'd teachers hit the unemployment offices....but then, this is what NJ wanted...fired teachers who are to blame for the worst recession our country has seen in 150 years...thanks GWB.....thanks Donald Rumsfeld......thanks Dick Cheney....thanks Karl "Miss Piggy" Rove...and thank you Mr. Big Boy himself...Gov Krispy Kreame!

    rp121 Jun 13, 2010

    For readers who care about this nation's unemployed- Call your Senators to pass HR 4213, the "Extenders" bill. Unfortunately, it does not add UI benefits weeks, however it DOES continue the emergency federal tiers of UI. If it does not pass this week many of us are cut off at 26 wks. No tier 1, 2 -nothing.

    [Dec 13, 2017] Unemployment health hazard and stress

    The longer you are unemployed, the more you are effected by those factors.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they suffer few, and minor, ill effects. ..."
    "... Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system. ..."
    "... Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress. Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises. ..."
    "... Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem. ..."
    "... One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available. ..."
    "... Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. ..."
    "... Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either. ..."
    "... You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard. ..."
    Dec 13, 2017 | www.cvtips.com

    It's almost impossible to describe the various psychological impacts, because there are so many. There are sometimes serious consequences, including suicide, and, some would say worse, chronic depression.

    There's not really a single cause and effect. It's a compound effect, and unemployment, by adding stress, affects people, often badly.

    The world doesn't need any more untrained psychologists, and we're not pretending to give medical advice. That's for professionals. Everybody is different, and their problems are different. What we can do is give you an outline of the common problems, and what you can do about them.

    The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they suffer few, and minor, ill effects.

    For others, there are a series of issues, and the big three are:

    Stress

    Stress is Stage One. It's a natural result of the situation. Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system.

    Over an extended period, the body's natural hormonal balances are affected, and this can lead to problems. These are actually physical issues, but the effects are mental, and the first obvious effects are, naturally, emotional.

    Anger, and other negative emotions

    Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress. Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises.

    If the actual situation was already bad, this mental state makes it a lot worse. Constant aggravation doesn't help people to keep a sense of perspective. Clear thinking isn't easy when under constant stress.

    Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem.

    One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available.

    If you have reservations about seeking help, bear in mind it can't possibly be any worse than the problem.

    Depression

    Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. This is the next stage, and it's caused by hormonal imbalances which affect serotonin. It's actually a physical problem, but it has mental effects which are sometimes devastating, and potentially life threatening.

    The common symptoms are:

    • Difficulty in focusing mentally, thoughts all over the place in no logical order
    • Fits of crying for no known reason
    • Illogical, or irrational patterns of thought and behavior
    • Sadness
    • Suicidal thinking

    It's a disgusting experience. No level of obscenity could possibly describe it. Depression is misery on a level people wouldn't conceive in a nightmare. At this stage the patient needs help, and getting it is actually relatively easy. It's convincing the person they need to do something about it that's difficult. Again, the mental state is working against the person. Even admitting there's a problem is hard for many people in this condition.

    Generally speaking, a person who is trusted is the best person to tell anyone experiencing the onset of depression to seek help. Important: If you're experiencing any of those symptoms:

    • Get on the phone and make an appointment to see your doctor. It takes half an hour for a diagnosis, and you can be on your way home with a cure in an hour. You don't have to suffer. The sooner you start to get yourself out of depression, the better.
    • Avoid any antidepressants with the so-called withdrawal side effects. They're not too popular with patients, and are under some scrutiny. The normal antidepressants work well enough for most people.

    Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either.

    Alcohol, in particular, makes depression much worse. Alcohol is a depressant, itself, and it's also a nasty chemical mix with all those stress hormones.

    If you've ever had alcohol problems, or seen someone with alcohol wrecking their lives, depression makes things about a million times worse.

    Just don't do it. Steer clear of any so-called stimulants, because they don't mix with antidepressants, either.

    Unemployment and staying healthy

    The above is what you need to know about the risks of unemployment to your health and mental well being.

    These situations are avoidable.

    Your best defense against the mental stresses and strains of unemployment, and their related problems is staying healthy.

    We can promise you that is nothing less than the truth. The healthier you are, the better your defenses against stress, and the more strength you have to cope with situations.

    Basic health is actually pretty easy to achieve:

    Diet

    Eat real food, not junk, and make sure you're getting enough food. Your body can't work with resources it doesn't have. Good food is a real asset, and you'll find you don't get tired as easily. You need the energy reserves.

    Give yourself a good selection of food that you like, that's also worth eating.

    The good news is that plain food is also reasonably cheap, and you can eat as much as you need. Basic meals are easy enough to prepare, and as long as you're getting all the protein veg and minerals you need, you're pretty much covered.

    You can also use a multivitamin cap, or broad spectrum supplements, to make sure you're getting all your trace elements. Also make sure you're getting the benefits of your food by taking acidophilus or eating yogurt regularly.

    Exercise

    You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard.

    Don't just sit and suffer

    If anything's wrong, check it out when it starts, not six months later. Most medical conditions become serious when they're allowed to get worse.

    For unemployed people the added risk is also that they may prevent you getting that job, or going for interviews. If something's causing you problems, get rid of it.

    Nobody who's been through the blender of unemployment thinks it's fun.

    Anyone who's really done it tough will tell you one thing:

    Don't be a victim. Beat the problem, and you'll really appreciate the feeling.

    [Dec 13, 2017] Being homeless is better than working for Amazon by Nichole Gracely

    Notable quotes:
    "... According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers -- I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion ..."
    "... toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen. ..."
    "... ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later, all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring. ..."
    "... I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance ..."
    "... That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. ..."
    "... I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for food stamps. ..."
    Nov 28, 2014 | theguardian.com

    wa8dzp:

    Nichole Gracely has a master's degree and was one of Amazon's best order pickers. Now, after protesting the company, she's homeless.

    I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon.

    According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers -- I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion.

    During peak season, I trained incoming temps regularly. When that was over, I'd be an ordinary order picker once again, toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen.

    Superb performance did not guarantee job security. ISS is the temp agency that provides warehouse labor for Amazon and they are at the center of the SCOTUS case Integrity Staffing Solutions vs. Busk. ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later, all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring.

    I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance. Amazon could mandate overtime and I would have to comply with any schedule change they deemed necessary, and if there was not any work, they would send us home early without pay. I started to fall behind on my bills.

    At some point, I lost all fear. I had already been through hell. I protested Amazon. The gag order was lifted and I was free to speak. I spent my last days in a lovely apartment constructing arguments on discussion boards, writing articles and talking to reporters. That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. I walked away from Amazon's warehouse and didn't have any other source of income lined up.

    I cashed in on my excellent credit, took out cards, and used them to pay rent and buy food because it would be six months before I could receive my first unemployment compensation check.

    I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for food stamps.

    I furthered my Amazon protest while homeless in Seattle. When the Hachette dispute flared up I "flew a sign," street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: "I was an order picker at amazon.com. Earned degrees. Been published. Now, I'm homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps."

    I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and I make more money per hour than I will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.

    I flew my protest sign outside Whole Foods while Amazon corporate employees were on lunch break, and they gawked. I went to my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with them. And that was in Seattle. One woman asked, "What are you writing?" I told her about the descent from working poor to homeless, income inequality, my personal experience. She mentioned Thomas Piketty's book, we chatted a little, she handed me $10 and wished me luck. Another guy said, "Damn, that's a great story! I'd read it," and handed me a few bucks.

    [snip]

    [Dec 09, 2017] November Jobs Report: good month, same caveats

    Notable quotes:
    "... U6 underemployment rate rose +0.1% from 7.9% to 8.0% ..."
    Dec 09, 2017 | bonddad.blogspot.com

    So U6 is almost 10% of population. Scary...

    HEADLINES :
    • +228,000 jobs added
    • U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1%
    • U6 underemployment rate rose +0.1% from 7.9% to 8.0%
    Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates
    • Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: rose +53,000 from 5.175 million to 5.238 million
    • Part time for economic reasons: rose +48,000 from 4.753 million to 4.801 million
    • Employment/population ratio ages 25-54: rose +0.2% from 78.8% to 79.0%
    • Average Weekly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose +$.0.5 from a downwardly revised $22.19 to $22.24, up +2.4% YoY. (Note: you may be reading different information about wages elsewhere. They are citing average wages for all private workers. I use wages for nonsupervisory personnel, to come closer to the situation for ordinary workers.)
    Holding Trump accountable on manufacturing and mining jobs

    Trump specifically campaigned on bringing back manufacturing and mining jobs. Is he keeping this promise?
    • Manufacturing jobs rose by +31,000 for an average of +15,000 a month vs. the last seven years of Obama's presidency in which an average of 10,300 manufacturing jobs were added each month.
    • Coal mining jobs fell -400 for an average of -15 a month vs. the last seven years of Obama's presidency in which an average of -300 jobs were lost each month

    September was revised upward by +20,000. October was revised downward by -17,000, for a net change of +3,000.

    1. likbez December 9, 2017 7:52 pm

      There are now large categories of jobs, both part-time and full time, that can't provide for living and are paying below or close to minimum wage (plantation economy jobs). it looks like under neoliberalism this is the fastest growing category of jobs.

      Examples are Uber and Lift jobs (which are as close to predatory scam as one can get) . Many jobs in service industry, especially retail. See for example

      https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/16/jobs-earn-less-than-minimum-wage_n_2689419.html

      They should probably be calculated separately as "distressed employment", or something like that.

      Also in view of "seasonal adjustments" the number of created jobs is probably meaningless.

    [Dec 03, 2017] Nokia Shareholders Fight Back

    On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not.
    Notable quotes:
    "... On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not. ..."
    Slashdot

    noc007 (633443)

    On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not.

    The first is a golden rule of sorts on doing anything:

    • Cheap
    • Quality
    • Fast

    You can only pick two; NO exceptions. I've encountered so many upper management types that foolishly think they can get away with having all three. In my experience 9/10 of the time it turns out a lack of quality bites them in the butt sometime down the road when they assumed they somehow managed to achieve all three.

    The second is communication. Mostly everyone in at least the US has experienced the pain of being subjected to some company's outsourced customer service and/or tech support that can't effectively communicate with both parties on the same page of understanding one another. I really shouldn't need to explain why communication, understanding one another is so important. Sadly this is something I have to constantly explain to my current boss with events like today where my non-outsourced colleague rebooted a number of production critical servers when he was asked to reboot just one secondary server.

    Third is the employee's skill in doing the job. Again, another obvious one, but I've observed that it isn't always on the hiring menu. Additionally I've seen some people that interview well, but couldn't create a "Hello World" HTML page for a web developer position as an example. There's no point in hiring or keeping a hired individual to do a job that they lack the skill to do; even if it's an entry-level position with training, that person should be willing to put for the effort to learn and take notes. I accept that everyone has their own unique skills that can aide or hinder their ability to learn and be proficient with a particular task. However, I firmly believe anyone can learn to do anything as long as they put their mind to it. I barely have any artistic ability and my drawing skills are stick figures at best (XKCD is miles ahead of me); if I were to put forth the effort to learn how to draw and paint, I could become a good artist. I taught an A+ technician certification class at a tech school a while back and I had a retired Marine that served in the Vietnam War as one of my students. One could argue his best skill was killing and blowing stuff up. He worked hard and learned to be a technician and passed CompTIA's certification test without a problem. That leads me to the next point.

    Lastly is attitude of the end employee doing the actual work. It boggles my mind how so many managers loose the plot when it comes to employee morale and motivation. Productivity generally is improved when those two are improved and it usually doesn't have to involve spending a bunch of money. The employee's attitude should be getting the work done correctly in a reasonable amount of time. Demanding it is a poor approach. Poisoning an employee will result in poisoning the company in a small manner all the way up to the failure of the company. Employees should be encouraged through actual morale improvements, positive motivation, and incentives for doing more work at the same and/or better quality level.

    Outsourcing or keeping things in house can be successful and possibly economical if approached correctly with the appropriate support of upper management.

    Max Littlemore (1001285)

    How dramatic? Isn't outsourcing done (like it or not) to reduce costs?

    Outsourcing is done to reduce the projected costs that PHBs see. In reality, outsourcing can lead to increased costs and delays due to time zone differences and language/cultural barriers.

    I have seen it work reasonably well, but only when the extra effort and delays caused by the increased need for rework that comes from complex software projects. If you are working with others on software, it is so much quicker to produce quality software if the person who knows the business requirements is sitting right next to the person doing design and the person cutting code and the person doing the testing, etc, etc.

    If these people or groups are scattered around the world with different cultures and native languages, communication can suffer, increasing misunderstanding and reducing the quality. I have personally seen this lead to massive increase in code defects in a project that went from in house development to outsourced.

    Also, time zone differences cause problems. I have noticed that the further west people live, the less likely they are to take into account how far behind they are. Working with people who fail to realise that their Monday morning is the next day for someone else, or that by the time they are halfway through Friday, others are already on their weekend is not only frustrating, it leads to slow turn around of bug fixes, etc.

    Yeah, I'm told outsourcing keeps costs down, but I am yet to see conclusive evidence of that in the real world. At least in complex development. YMMV for support/call centre stuff.

    -- I don't therefore I'm not.

    [Dec 03, 2017] Business Has Killed IT With Overspecialization by Charlie Schluting

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams, server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything worked, and I mean everything. ..."
    "... Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free ticket for people to turn a blind eye. ..."
    "... Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no." As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups. Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team is. ..."
    "... The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue. ..."
    Apr 07, 2010 | Enterprise Networking Planet

    What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams, server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything worked, and I mean everything. Every application, every piece of network gear, and how every server was configured -- these people could save a business in times of disaster.

    Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free ticket for people to turn a blind eye.

    Specialization

    You know the story: Company installs new application, nobody understands it yet, so an expert is hired. Often, the person with a certification in using the new application only really knows how to run that application. Perhaps they aren't interested in learning anything else, because their skill is in high demand right now. And besides, everything else in the infrastructure is run by people who specialize in those elements. Everything is taken care of.

    Except, how do these teams communicate when changes need to take place? Are the storage administrators teaching the Windows administrators about storage multipathing; or worse logging in and setting it up because it's faster for the storage gurus to do it themselves? A fundamental level of knowledge is often lacking, which makes it very difficult for teams to brainstorm about new ways evolve IT services. The business environment has made it OK for IT staffers to specialize and only learn one thing.

    If you hire someone certified in the application, operating system, or network vendor you use, that is precisely what you get. Certifications may be a nice filter to quickly identify who has direct knowledge in the area you're hiring for, but often they indicate specialization or compensation for lack of experience.

    Resource Competition

    Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no." As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups. Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team is.

    The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue.

    Most often, I've seen competition between server groups result in horribly inefficient uses of hardware. For example, what happens in your organization when one team needs more server hardware? Assume that another team has five unused servers sitting in a blade chassis. Does the answer change? No, it does not. Even in test environments, sharing doesn't often happen between IT groups.

    With virtualization, some aspects of resource competition get better and some remain the same. When first implemented, most groups will be running their own type of virtualization for their platform. The next step, I've most often seen, is for test servers to get virtualized. If a new group is formed to manage the virtualization infrastructure, virtual machines can be allocated to various application and server teams from a central pool and everyone is now sharing. Or, they begin sharing and then demand their own physical hardware to be isolated from others' resource hungry utilization. This is nonetheless a step in the right direction. Auto migration and guaranteed resource policies can go a long way toward making shared infrastructure, even between competing groups, a viable option.

    Blamestorming

    The most damaging side effect of splitting into too many distinct IT groups is the reinforcement of an "us versus them" mentality. Aside from the notion that specialization creates a lack of knowledge, blamestorming is what this article is really about. When a project is delayed, it is all too easy to blame another group. The SAN people didn't allocate storage on time, so another team was delayed. That is the timeline of the project, so all work halted until that hiccup was restored. Having someone else to blame when things get delayed makes it all too easy to simply stop working for a while.

    More related to the initial points at the beginning of this article, perhaps, is the blamestorm that happens after a system outage.

    Say an ERP system becomes unresponsive a few times throughout the day. The application team says it's just slowing down, and they don't know why. The network team says everything is fine. The server team says the application is "blocking on IO," which means it's a SAN issue. The SAN team say there is nothing wrong, and other applications on the same devices are fine. You've ran through nearly every team, but without an answer still. The SAN people don't have access to the application servers to help diagnose the problem. The server team doesn't even know how the application runs.

    See the problem? Specialized teams are distinct and by nature adversarial. Specialized staffers often relegate themselves into a niche knowing that as long as they continue working at large enough companies, "someone else" will take care of all the other pieces.

    I unfortunately don't have an answer to this problem. Maybe rotating employees between departments will help. They gain knowledge and also get to know other people, which should lessen the propensity to view them as outsiders

    [Nov 28, 2017] The Stigmatization of the Unemployed

    "This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people with the right skills" . In the IT job markets such postings are often called purple squirrels
    Notable quotes:
    "... In particular, there seems to be an extremely popular variant of the above where the starting proposition "God makes moral people rich" is improperly converted to "Rich people are more moral" which is then readily negated to "Poor people are immoral" and then expanded to "Poor people are immoral, thus they DESERVE to suffer for it". It's essentially the theological equivalent of dividing by zero ..."
    "... That said, the ranks of the neoliberals are not small. They constitute what Jonathan Schell calls a "mass minority." I suspect the neoliberals have about the same level of popular support that the Nazis did at the time of their takeover of Germany in 1932, or the Bolsheviks had in Russia at the time of their takeover in 1917, which is about 20 or 25% of the total population. ..."
    "... The ranks of the neoliberals are made to appear far greater than they really are because they have all but exclusive access to the nation's megaphone. The Tea Party can muster a handful of people to disrupt a town hall meeting and it gets coast to coast, primetime coverage. But let a million people protest against bank bailouts, and it is ignored. Thus, by manipulation of the media, the mass minority is made to appear to be much larger than it really is. ..."
    Mar 20, 2011 | naked capitalism

    Spencer Thomas:

    Very good post. Thank you.

    Over the past three decades, large parts of our culture here in the US have internalized the lessons of the new Social Darwinism, with a significant body of literature to explain and justify it. Many of us have internalized, without even realizing it, the ideas of "dog eat dog", "every man for himself", "society should be structured like the animal kingdom, where the weak and sick simply die because they cannot compete, and this is healthy", and "everything that happens to you is your own fault. There is no such thing as circumstance that cannot be overcome, and certainly no birth lottery."

    The levers pulled by politicians and the Fed put these things into practice, but even if we managed get different (better) politicians or Fed chairmen, ones who weren't steeped in this culture and ideology, we'd still be left with the culture in the population at large, and things like the "unemployed stigma" are likely to die very, very hard. Acceptance of the "just-world phenomenon" here in the US runs deep.

    perfect stranger:

    "Religion is just as vulnerable to corporate capture as is the government or the academy."

    This is rather rhetorical statement, and wrong one. One need to discern spiritual aspect of religion from the religion as a tool.

    Religion, as is structured, is complicit: in empoverishment, obedience, people's preconditioning, and legislative enabler in the institutions such as Supreme – and non-supreme – Court(s). It is a form of PR of the ruling class for the governing class.

    DownSouth:

    perfect stranger,

    Religion, just like human nature, is not that easy to put in a box.

    For every example you can cite where religion "is complicit: in empoverishment, obedience, people's preconditioning, and legislative enabler in the institution," I can point to an example of where religion engendered a liberating, emancipatory and revolutionary spirit.

    Examples:

    •Early Christianity •Nominalism •Early Protestantism •Gandhi •Martin Luther King

    Now granted, there don't seem to be any recent examples of this of any note, unless we consider Chris Hedges a religionist, which I'm not sure we can do. Would it be appropriate to consider Hedges a religionist?

    perfect stranger:

    Yes, that maybe, just maybe be the case in early stages of forming new religion(s). In case of Christianity old rulers from Rome were trying to save own head/throne and the S.P.Q.R. imperia by adopting new religion.

    You use examples of Gandhi and MLK which is highly questionable both were fighters for independence and the second, civil rights. In a word: not members of establishment just as I said there were (probably) seeing the religion as spiritual force not tool of enslavement.

    Matt:

    This link may provide some context:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

    In particular, there seems to be an extremely popular variant of the above where the starting proposition "God makes moral people rich" is improperly converted to "Rich people are more moral" which is then readily negated to "Poor people are immoral" and then expanded to "Poor people are immoral, thus they DESERVE to suffer for it". It's essentially the theological equivalent of dividing by zero

    DownSouth:

    Rex,

    I agree.

    Poll after poll after poll has shown that a majority of Americans, and a rather significant majority, reject the values, attitudes, beliefs and opinions proselytized by the stealth religion we call "neoclassical economics."

    That said, the ranks of the neoliberals are not small. They constitute what Jonathan Schell calls a "mass minority." I suspect the neoliberals have about the same level of popular support that the Nazis did at the time of their takeover of Germany in 1932, or the Bolsheviks had in Russia at the time of their takeover in 1917, which is about 20 or 25% of the total population.

    The ranks of the neoliberals are made to appear far greater than they really are because they have all but exclusive access to the nation's megaphone. The Tea Party can muster a handful of people to disrupt a town hall meeting and it gets coast to coast, primetime coverage. But let a million people protest against bank bailouts, and it is ignored. Thus, by manipulation of the media, the mass minority is made to appear to be much larger than it really is.

    The politicians love this, because as they carry water for their pet corporations, they can point to the Tea Partiers and say: "See what a huge upwelling of popular support I am responding to."

    JTFaraday:

    Well, if that's true, then the unemployed are employable but the mass mediated mentality would like them to believe they are literally and inherently unemployable so that they underestimate and under-sell themselves.

    This is as much to the benefit of those who would like to pick up "damaged goods" on the cheap as those who promote the unemployment problem as one that inheres in prospective employees rather than one that is a byproduct of a bad job market lest someone be tempted to think we should address it politically.

    That's where I see this blame the unemployed finger pointing really getting traction these days.

    attempter:

    I apologize for the fact that I only read the first few paragraphs of this before quitting in disgust.

    I just can no longer abide the notion that "labor" can ever be seen by human beings as a "cost" at all. We really need to refuse to even tolerate that way of phrasing things. Workers create all wealth. Parasites have no right to exist. These are facts, and we should refuse to let argument range beyond them.

    The only purpose of civilization is to provide a better way of living and for all people. This includes the right and full opportunity to work and manage for oneself and/or as a cooperative group. If civilization doesn't do that, we're better off without it.

    psychohistorian:

    I am one of those long term unemployed.

    I suppose my biggest employment claim would be as some sort of IT techie, with numerous supply chain systems and component design, development, implementation, interfaces with other systems and ongoing support. CCNP certification and a history of techiedom going back to WEYCOS.

    I have a patent (6,209,954) in my name and 12+ years of beating my head against the wall in an industry that buys compliance with the "there is no problem here, move on now" approach.

    Hell, I was a junior woodchuck program administrator back in the early 70's working for the Office of the Governor of the state of Washington on CETA PSE or Public Service Employment. The office of the Governor ran the PSE program for 32 of the 39 counties in the state that were not big enough to run their own. I helped organize the project approval process in all those counties to hire folk at ( if memory serves me max of $833/mo.) to fix and expand parks and provide social and other government services as defined projects with end dates. If we didn't have the anti-public congress and other government leadership we have this could be a current component in a rational labor policy but I digress.

    I have experience in the construction trades mostly as carpenter but some electrical, plumbing, HVAC, etc. also.

    So, of course there is some sort of character flaw that is keeping me and all those others from employment ..right. I may have more of an excuse than others, have paid into SS for 45 years but still would work if it was available ..taking work away from other who may need it more .why set up a society where we have to compete as such for mere existence???????

    One more face to this rant. We need government by the people and for the people which we do not have now. Good, public focused, not corporate focused government is bigger than any entities that exist under its jurisdiction and is kept updated by required public participation in elections and potentially other things like military, peace corps, etc. in exchange for advanced education. I say this as someone who has worked at various levels in both the public and private sectors there are ignorant and misguided folks everywhere. At least with ongoing active participation there is a chance that government would, once constructed, be able to evolve as needed within public focus .IMO.

    Ishmael:

    Some people would say I have been unemployed for 10 years. In 2000 after losing the last of my four CFO gigs for public companies I found it necessary to start consulting. This has lead to two of my three biggest winning years. I am usually consulting on cutting edge area of my profession and many times have large staffs reporting to me that I bring on board to get jobs done. For several years I subcontacted to a large international consulting firm to clean up projects which went wrong. Let me give some insight here.

    1. First, most good positions have gate keepers who are professional recruiters. It is near impossible to get by them and if you are unemployed they will hardly talk to you. One time talking to a recruiter at Korn Fery I was interviewing for a job I have done several times in an industry I have worked in several times. She made a statement that I had never worked at a well known company. I just about fell out of my chair laughing. At one time I was a senior level executive for the largest consulting firm in the world and lived on three continents and worked with companies on six. In addition, I had held senior positions for 2 fortune 500 firms and was the CFO for a company with $4.5 billion in revenue. I am well known at several PE firms and the founder of one of the largest mentioned in a meeting that one of his great mistakes was not investing in a very successful LBO (return of in excess of 20 multiple to investors in 18 months) I was the CFO for. In a word most recruiters are incompetent.
    2. Second, most CEO's any more are just insecure politicians. One time during an interview I had a CEO asked me to talk about some accomplishments. I was not paying to much attention as I rattled off accomplishments and the CEO went nuclear and started yelling at me that he did not know where I thought I was going with this job but the only position above the CFO job was his and he was not going anywhere. I assured him I was only interested in the CFO position and not his, but I knew the job was over. Twice feed back that I got from recruiters which they took at criticism was the "client said I seemed very assured of myself."
    3. Third, government, banking, business and the top MBA schools are based upon lying to move forward. I remember a top human resource executive telling me right before Enron, MCI and Sarbanes Oxley that I needed to learn to be more flexible. My response was that flexibility would get me an orange jump suit. Don't get me wrong, I have a wide grey zone, but it use to be in business the looked for people who could identify problems early and resolve them. Now days I see far more of a demand for people who can come up with PR spins to hide them. An attorney/treasurer consultant who partnered with me on a number of consulting jobs told me some one called me "not very charming." He said he asked what that meant, and the person who said that said, "Ish walks into a meeting and within 10 minutes he is asking about the 10,000 pound guerilla sitting in the room that no one wants to talk about." CEO do not want any challenges in their organization.
    4. Fourth, three above has lead to the hiring of very young and inexperienced people at senior levels. These people are insecure and do not want more senior and experienced people above them and than has resulted in people older than 45 not finding positions.
    5. Fifth, people are considered expendable and are fired for the lamest reasons anymore. A partner at one of the larger and more prestigious recruiting firms one time told me, "If you have a good consulting business, just stick with it. Our average placement does not last 18 months any more." Another well known recruiter in S. Cal. one time commented to me, "Your average consulting gig runs longer than our average placement."

    With all of that said, I have a hard time understanding such statements as "@attempter "Workers create all wealth. Parasites have no right to exist." What does that mean? Every worker creates wealth. There is no difference in people. Sounds like communism to me. I make a good living and my net worth has grown working for myself. I have never had a consulting gig terminated by the client but I have terminated several. Usually, I am brought in to fix what several other people have failed at. I deliver basically intellectual properties to companies. Does that mean I am not a worker. I do not usually lift anything heavy or move equipment but I tell people what and where to do it so does that make me a parasite.

    Those people who think everyone is equal and everyone deserves equal pay are fools or lazy. My rate is high, but what usually starts as short term projects usually run 6 months or more because companies find I can do so much more than what most of their staff can do and I am not a threat.

    I would again like to have a senior challenging role at a decent size company but due to the reasons above will probably never get one. However, you can never tell. I am currently consulting for a midsize very profitable company (grew 400% last year) where I am twice the age of most people there, but everyone speaks to me with respect so you can never tell.

    Lidia:

    Ishmael, you're quite right. When I showed my Italian husband's resume to try and "network" in the US, my IT friends assumed he was lying about his skills and work history.

    Contemporaneously, in Italy it is impossible to get a job because of incentives to hire "youth". Age discrimination is not illegal, so it's quite common to see ads that ask for a programmer under 30 with 5 years of experience in COBOL (the purple squirrel).

    Hosswire

    Some good points about the foolishness of recruiters, but a great deal of that foolishness is forced by the clients themselves. I used to be a recruiter myself, including at Korn Ferry in Southern California. I described the recruiting industry as "yet more proof that God hates poor people" because my job was to ignore resumes from people seeking jobs and instead "source" aka "poach" people who already had good jobs by dangling a higher salary in front of them. I didn't do it because I disparaged the unemployed, or because I could not do the basic analysis to show that a candidate had analogous or transferrable skills to the opening.

    I did it because the client, as Yves said, wanted people who were literally in the same job description already. My theory is that the client wanted to have their ass covered in case the hire didn't work out, by being able to say that they looked perfect "on paper." The lesson I learned for myself and my friends looking for jobs was simple, if morally dubious. Basically, that if prospective employers are going to judge you based on a single piece of paper take full advantage of the fact that you get to write that piece of paper yourself.

    Ishmael:

    Hosswire - I agree with your comment. There are poor recruiters like the one I sited but in general it is the clients fault. Fear of failure. All hires have at least a 50% chance of going sideways on you. Most companies do not even have the ability to look at a resume nor to interview. I did not mean to same nasty things about recruiters, and I even do it sometimes but mine.

    I look at failure in a different light than most companies. You need to be continually experimenting and changing to survive as a company and there will be some failures. The goal is to control the cost of failures while looking for the big pay off on a winner.

    Mannwich:

    As a former recruiter and HR "professional" (I use that term very loosely for obvious reasons), I can honestly say that you nailed it. Most big companies looking for mid to high level white collar "talent" will almost always take the perceived safest route by hiring those who look the best ON PAPER and in a suit and lack any real interviewing skills to find the real stars. What's almost comical is that companies almost always want to see the most linear resume possible because they want to see "job stability" (e.g. a CYA document in case the person fails in that job) when in many cases nobody cares about the long range view of the company anyway. My question was why should the candidate or employee care about the long range view if the employer clearly doesn't?

    Ishmael:

    Manwhich another on point comment. Sometimes either interviewing for a job or consulting with a CEO it starts getting to the absurd. I see all the time the requirement for stability in a persons background. Hello, where have they been the last 15 years. In addition, the higher up you go the more likely you will be terminated sometime and that is especially true if you are hired from outside the orgnanization. Companies want loyalty from an employee but offer none in return.

    The average tenure for a CFO anymore is something around 18 months. I have been a first party participant (more than once) where I went through an endless recruiting process for a company (lasting more than 6 months) they final hire some one and that person is with the company for 3 months and then resigns (of course we all know it is through mutual agreement).

    Ishmael:

    Birch:

    The real problem has become and maybe this is what you are referring to is the "Crony Capitalism." We have lost control of our financial situation. Basically, PE is not the gods of the universe that everyone thinks they are. However, every bankers secret wet dream is to become a private equity guy. Accordingly, bankers make ridiculous loans to PE because if you say no to them then you can not play in their sand box any more. Since the govt will not let the banks go bankrupt like they should then this charade continues inslaving everyone.

    This country as well as many others has a large percentage of its assets tied up in over priced deals that the bankers/governments will not let collapse while the blood sucking vampires suck the life out of the assets.

    On the other hand, govt is not the answer. Govt is too large and accomplishes too little.

    kevin de bruxelles:

    The harsh reality is that, at least in the first few rounds, companies kick to the curb their weakest links and perceived slackers. Therefore when it comes time to hire again, they are loath to go sloppy seconds on what they perceive to be some other company's rejects. They would much rather hire someone who survived the layoffs working in a similar position in a similar company. Of course the hiring company is going to have to pay for this privilege. Although not totally reliable, the fact that someone survived the layoffs provides a form social proof for their workplace abilities.

    On the macro level, labor has been under attack for thirty years by off shoring and third world immigration. It is no surprise that since the working classes have been severely undermined that the middle classes would start to feel some pressure. By mass immigration and off-shoring are strongly supported by both parties. Only when the pain gets strong enough will enough people rebel and these two policies will be overturned. We still have a few years to go before this happens.

    davver:

    Let's say I run a factory. I produce cars and it requires very skilled work. Skilled welding, skilled machinists. Now I introduce some robotic welders and an assembly line system. The plants productivity improves and the jobs actually get easier. They require less skill, in fact I've simplified each task to something any idiot can do. Would wages go up or down? Are the workers really contributing to that increase in productivity or is it the machines and methods I created?

    Lets say you think laying off or cutting the wages of my existing workers is wrong. What happens when a new entrant into the business employs a smaller workforce and lower wages, which they can do using the same technology? The new workers don't feel like they were cut down in any way, they are just happy to have a job. Before they couldn't get a job at the old plant because they lacked the skill, but now they can work in the new plant because the work is genuinely easier. Won't I go out of business?

    Escariot:

    I am 54 and have a ton of peers who are former white collar workers and professionals (project managers, architects, lighting designers, wholesalers and sales reps for industrial and construction materials and equipment) now out of work going on three years. Now I say out of work, I mean out of our trained and experienced fields.

    We now work two or three gigs (waiting tables, mowing lawns, doing free lance, working in tourism, truck driving, moving company and fedex ups workers) and work HARD, for much much less than we did, and we are seeing the few jobs that are coming back on line going to younger workers. It is just the reality. And for most of us the descent has not been graceful, so our credit is a wreck, which also breeds a whole other level of issues as now it is common for the credit record to be a deal breaker for employment, housing, etc.

    Strangely I don't sense a lot of anger or bitterness as much as humility. And gratitude for ANY work that comes our way. Health insurance? Retirement accounts? not so much.

    Mickey Marzick:

    Yves and I have disagreed on how extensive the postwar "pact" between management and labor was in this country. But if you drew a line from say, Trenton-Patterson, NJ to Cincinatti, OH to Minneapolis, MN, north and east of it where blue collar manufacturing in steel, rubber, auto, machinery, etc., predominated, this "pact" may have existed but ONLY because physical plant and production were concentrated there and workers could STOP production.

    Outside of these heavy industrial pockets, unions were not always viewed favorably. As one moved into the rural hinterlands surrounding them there was jealously and/or outright hostility. Elsewhere, especially in the South "unions" were the exception not the rule. The differences between NE Ohio before 1975 – line from Youngstown to Toledo – and the rest of the state exemplified this pattern. Even today, the NE counties of Ohio are traditional Democratic strongholds with the rest of the state largely Republican. And I suspect this pattern existed elsewhere. But it is changing too

    In any case, the demonization of the unemployed is just one notch above the vicious demonization of the poor that has always existed in this country. It's a constant reminder for those still working that you could be next – cast out into the darkness – because you "failed" or worse yet, SINNED. This internalization of the "inner cop" reinforces the dominant ideology in two ways. First, it makes any resistance by individuals still employed less likely. Second, it pits those still working against those who aren't, both of which work against the formation of any significant class consciousness amongst working people. The "oppressed" very often internalize the value system of the oppressor.

    As a nation of immigrants ETHNICITY may have more explanatory power than CLASS. For increasingly, it would appear that the dominant ethnic group – suburban, white, European Americans – have thrown their lot in with corporate America. Scared of the prospect of downward social mobility and constantly reminded of URBAN America – the other America – this group is trapped with nowhere to else to go.

    It's the divide and conquer strategy employed by ruling elites in this country since its founding [Federalist #10] with the Know Nothings, blaming the Irish [NINA - no Irish need apply] and playing off each successive wave of immigrants against the next. Only when the forces of production became concentrated in the urban industrial enclaves of the North was this strategy less effective. And even then internal immigration by Blacks to the North in search of employment blunted the formation of class consciousness among white ethnic industrial workers.

    Wherever the postwar "pact of domination" between unions and management held sway, once physical plant was relocated elsewhere [SOUTH] and eventually offshored, unemployment began to trend upwards. First it was the "rustbelt" now it's a nationwide phenomenon. Needless to say, the "pact" between labor and management has been consigned to the dustbin of history.

    White, suburban America has hitched its wagon to that of the corporate horse. Demonization of the unemployed coupled with demonization of the poor only serve to terrorize this ethnic group into acquiescence. And as the workplace becomes a multicultural matrix this ethnic group is constantly reminded of its perilous state. Until this increasingly atomized ethnic group breaks with corporate America once and for all, it's unlikely that the most debilitating scourge of all working people – UNEMPLOYMENT – will be addressed.

    Make no mistake about it, involuntary UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLYEMT is a form of terrorism and its demonization is terrorism in action. This "quiet violence" is psychological and the intimidation wrought by unemployment and/or the threat of it is intended to dehumanize individuals subjected to it. Much like spousal abuse, the emotional and psychological effects are experienced way before any physical violence. It's the inner cop that makes overt repression unnecessary. We terrorize ourselves into submission without even knowing it because we accept it or come to tolerate it. So long as we accept "unemployment" as an inevitable consequence of progress, as something unfortunate but inevitable, we will continue to travel down the road to serfdom where ARBEIT MACHT FREI!

    FULL and GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT are the ultimate labor power.

    Eric:

    It's delicate since direct age discrimination is illegal, but when circumstances permit separating older workers they have a very tough time getting back into the workforce in an era of high health care inflation. Older folks consume more health care and if you are hiring from a huge surplus of available workers it isn't hard to steer around the more experienced. And nobody gets younger, so when you don't get job A and go for job B 2 weeks later you, you're older still!

    James:

    Yves said- "This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people with the right skills"

    In the IT job markets such postings are often called purple squirrels. The HR departments require the applicant to be expert in a dozen programming languages. This is an excuse to hire a foreigner on a temp h1-b or other visa.

    Most people aren't aware that this model dominates the sciences. Politicians scream we have a shortage of scientists, yet it seems we only have a shortage of cheap easily exploitable labor. The economist recently pointed out the glut of scientists that currently exists in the USA.

    http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

    This understates the problem. The majority of PhD recipients wander through years of postdocs only to end up eventually changing fields. My observation is that the top ten schools in biochem/chemistry/physics/ biology produce enough scientists to satisfy the national demand.

    The exemption from h1-b visa caps for academic institutions exacerbates the problem, providing academics with almost unlimited access to labor.

    The pharmaceutical sector has been decimated over the last ten years with tens of thousands of scientists/ factory workers looking for re-training in a dwindling pool of jobs (most of which will deem you overqualified.)

    http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/03/a_postdocs_lament.php

    Abe, NYC:

    I wonder how the demonization of the unemployed can be so strong even in the face of close to 10% unemployment/20% underemployment. It's easy and tempting to demonize an abstract young buck or Cadillac-driving welfare queen, but when a family member or a close friend loses a job, or your kids are stuck at your place because they can't find one, shouldn't that alter your perceptions? Of course the tendency will be to blame it all on the government, but there has to be a limit to that in hard-hit places like Ohio, Colorado, or Arizona. And yet, the dynamics aren't changing or even getting worse. Maybe Wisconsin marks a turning point, I certainly hope it does

    damien:

    It's more than just stupid recruiting, this stigma. Having got out when the getting was good, years ago, I know that any corporate functionary would be insane to hire me now. Socialization wears off, the deformation process reverses, and the ritual and shibboleths become a joke. Even before I bailed I became a huge pain in the ass as economic exigency receded, every bosses nightmare. I suffered fools less gladly and did the right thing out of sheer anarchic malice.

    You really can't maintain corporate culture without existential fear – not just, "Uh oh, I'm gonna get fired," fear, but a visceral feeling that you do not exist without a job. In properly indoctrinated workers that feeling is divorced from economic necessity. So anyone who's survived outside a while is bound to be suspect. That's a sign of economic security, and security of any sort undermines social control.

    youniquelikeme:

    You hit the proverbial nail with that reply. (Although, sorry, doing the right thing should not be done out of malice) The real fit has to be in the corporate yes-man culture (malleable ass kisser) to be suited for any executive position and beyond that it is the willingness to be manipulated and drained to be able to keep a job in lower echelon.

    This is the new age of evolution in the work place. The class wars will make it more of an eventual revolution, but it is coming. The unemployment rate (the actual one, not the Government one) globalization and off shore hiring are not sustainable for much longer.

    Something has to give, but it is more likely to snap then to come easily. People who are made to be repressed and down and out eventually find the courage to fight back and by then, it is usually not with words.

    down and out in Slicon Valley:

    This is the response I got from a recruiter:

    "I'm going to be overly honest with you. My firm doesn't allow me to submit any candidate who hasn't worked in 6-12 months or more. Recruiting brokers are probably all similar in that way . You are going to have to go through a connection/relationship you have with a colleague, co-worker, past manager or friend to get your next job .that's my advice for you. Best of luck "

    I'm 56 years old with MSEE. Gained 20+ years of experience at the best of the best (TRW, Nortel, Microsoft), have been issued a patent. Where do I sign up to gain skills required to find a job now?

    Litton Graft :

    "Best of the Best?" I know you're down now, but looking back at these Gov'mint contractors you've enjoyed the best socialism money can by.

    Nortel/TRW bills/(ed) the Guvmint at 2x, 3x your salary, you can ride this for decades. At the same time the Inc is attached to the Guvmint ATM localities/counties are giving them a red carpet of total freedom from taxation. Double subsidies.

    I've worked many years at the big boy bandits, and there is no delusion in my mind that almost anyone, can do what I do and get paid 100K+. I've never understood the mindset of some folks who work in the Wermacht Inc: "Well, someone has to do this work" or worse "What we do, no one else can do" The reason no one else "can do it" is that they are not allowed to. So, we steal from the poor to build fighter jets, write code or network an agency.

    Hosswire:

    I used to work as a recruiter and can tell you that I only parroted the things my clients told me. I wanted to get you hired, because I was lazy and didn't want to have to talk to someone else next.

    So what do you do? To place you that recruiter needs to see on a piece of paper that you are currently working? Maybe get an email or phone call from someone who will vouch for your employment history. That should not be that hard to make happen.

    Francois T :

    The "bizarre way that companies now spec jobs" is essentially a coded way for mediocre managers to say without saying so explicitly that "we can afford to be extremely picky, and by God, we shall do so no matter what, because we can!"

    Of course, when comes the time to hire back because, oh disaster! business is picking up again, (I'm barely caricaturing here; some managers become despondent when they realize that workers regain a bit of the higher ground; loss of power does that to lesser beings) the same idiots who designed those "overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people with the right skills" are thrown into a tailspin of despair and misery. Instead of figuring out something as simple as "if demand is better, so will our business", they can't see anything else than the (eeeek!) cost of hiring workers. Unable to break their mental corset of penny-pincher, they fail to realize that lack of qualified workers will prevent them to execute well to begin with.

    And guess what: qualified workers cost money, qualified workers urgently needed cost much more.

    This managerial attitude must be another factor that explain why entrepreneurship and the formation of small businesses is on the decline in the US (contrary to the confabulations of the US officialdumb and the chattering class) while rising in Europe and India/China.

    Kit:

    If you are 55-60, worked as a professional (i.e., engineering say) and are now unemployed you are dead meat. Sorry to be blunt but thats the way it is in the US today. Let me repeat that : Dead Meat.

    I was terminated at age 59, found absolutely NOTHING even though my qualifications were outstanding. Fortunately, my company had an old style pension plan which I was able to qualify for (at age 62 without reduced benefits). So for the next 2+ years my wife and I survived on unemployment insurance, severance, accumulated vacation pay and odd jobs. Not nice – actually, a living hell.

    At age 62, I applied for my pension, early social security, sold our old house (at a good profit) just before the RE crash, moved back to our home state. Then my wife qualified for social security also. Our total income is now well above the US median.

    Today, someone looking at us would think we were the typical corporate retiree. We surely don't let on any differently but the experience (to get to this point) almost killed us.

    I sympathize very strongly with the millions caught in this unemployment death spiral. I wish I had an answer but I just don't. We were very lucky to survive intact.

    Ming:

    Thank you Yves for your excellent post, and for bringing to light this crucial issue.

    Thank you to all the bloggers, who add to the richness of the this discussion.

    I wonder if you could comment on this Yves, and correct me if I am wrong I believe that the power of labor was sapped by the massive available supply of global labor. The favorable economic policies enacted by China (both official and unofficial), and trade negotiations between the US government and the Chinese government were critical to creating the massive supply of labor.

    Thank you. No rush of course.

    Nexus:

    There are some odd comments and notions here that are used to support dogma and positions of prejudice. The world can be viewed in a number of ways. Firstly from a highly individualised and personal perspective – that is what has happened to me and here are my experiences. Or alternatively the world can be viewed from a broader societal perspective.

    In the context of labour there has always been an unequal confrontation between those that control capital and those that offer their labour, contrary to some of the views exposed here – Marx was a first and foremost a political economist. The political economist seeks to understand the interplay of production, supply, the state and institutions like the media. Modern day economics branched off from political economy and has little value in explaining the real world as the complexity of the world has been reduced to a simplistic rationalistic model of human behaviour underpinned by other equally simplistic notions of 'supply and demand', which are in turn represented by mathematical models, which in themselves are complex but merely represent what is a simplistic view of the way the world operates. This dogmatic thinking has avoided the need to create an underpinning epistemology. This in turn underpins the notion of free choice and individualism which in itself is an illusion as it ignores the operation of the modern state and the exercise of power and influence within society.

    It was stated in one of the comments that the use of capital (machines, robotics, CAD design, etc.) de-skills. This is hardly the case as skills rise for those that remain and support highly automated/continuous production factories. This is symptomatic of the owners of capital wanting to extract the maximum value for labour and this is done via the substitution of labour for capital making the labour that remains to run factories highly productive thus eliminating low skill jobs that have been picked up via services (people move into non productive low skilled occupations warehousing and retail distribution, fast food outlets, etc). Of course the worker does not realise the additional value of his or her labour as this is expropriated for the shareholders (including management as shareholders).

    The issue of the US is that since the end of WW2 it is not the industrialists that have called the shots and made investments it is the financial calculus of the investment banker (Finance Capital). Other comments have tried to ignore the existence of the elites in society – I would suggest that you read C.W.Mills – The Power Elites as an analysis of how power is exercised in the US – it is not through the will of the people.

    For Finance capital investments are not made on the basis of value add, or contribution through product innovation and the exchange of goods but on basis of the lowest cost inputs. Consequently, the 'elites' that make investment decisions, as they control all forms of capital seek to gain access to the cheapest cost inputs. The reality is that the US worker (a pool of 150m) is now part of a global labour pool of a couple of billion that now includes India and China. This means that the elites, US transnational corporations for instance, can access both cheaper labour pools, relocate capital and avoid worker protection (health and safety is not a concern). The strategies of moving factories via off-shoring (over 40,000 US factories closed or relocated) and out-sourcing/in-sourcing labour is also a representations of this.

    The consequence for the US is that the need for domestic labour has diminished and been substituted by cheap labour to extract the arbitrage between US labour rates and those of Chinese and Indians. Ironically, in this context capital has become too successful as the mode of consumption in the US shifted from workers that were notionally the people that created the goods, earned wages and then purchased the goods they created to a new model where the worker was substituted by the consumer underpinned by cheap debt and low cost imports – it is illustrative to note that real wages have not increased in the US since the early 1970's while at the same time debt has steadily increased to underpin the illusion of wealth – the 'borrow today and pay tomorrow' mode of capitalist operation. This model of operation is now broken. The labour force is now being demonized as there is a now surplus of labour and a need to drive down labour rates through changes in legislation and austerity programs to meet those of the emerging Chinese and Indian middle class so workers rights need to be broken. Once this is done a process of in-source may take place as US labour costs will be on par with overseas labour pools.

    It is ironic that during the Regan administration a number of strategic thinkers saw the threat from emerging economies and the danger of Finance Capital and created 'Project Socrates' that would have sought to re-orientate the US economy from one that was based on the rationale of Finance Capital to one that focused in productive innovation which entailed an alignment of capital investment, research and training to product innovative goods. Of course this was ignored and the rest is history. The race to the lowest input cost is ultimately self defeating as it is clear that the economy de-industrialises through labour and capital changes and living standards collapse. The elites – bankers, US transnational corporations, media, industrial military complex and the politicians don't care as they make money either way and this way you get other people overseas to work cheap for you.

    S P:

    Neoliberal orthodoxy treats unemployment as well as wage supression as a necessary means to fight "inflation." If there was too much power in the hands of organized labor, inflationary pressures would spiral out of control as supply of goods cannot keep up with demand.

    It also treats the printing press as a necessary means to fight "deflation."

    So our present scenario: widespread unemployment along with QE to infinity, food stamps for all, is exactly what you'd expect.

    The problem with this orthodoxy is that it assumes unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources, particularly oil and energy. Growth is not going to solve unemployment or wages, because we are bumping up against limits to growth.

    There are only two solutions. One is tax the rich and capital gains, slow growth, and reinvest the surplus into jobs/skills programs, mostly to maintain existing infrastructure or build new energy infrastructure. Even liberals like Krugman skirt around this, because they aren't willing to accept that we have the reached the end of growth and we need radical redistribution measures.

    The other solution is genuine classical liberalism / libertarianism, along the lines of Austrian thought. Return to sound money, and let the deflation naturally take care of the imbalances. Yes, it would be wrenching, but it would likely be wrenching for everybody, making it fair in a universal sense.

    Neither of these options is palatable to the elite classes, the financiers of Wall Street, or the leeches and bureaucrats of D.C.

    So this whole experiment called America will fail.

    [Nov 22, 2017] Unemployment is Miserable and Doesn't Spawn an Upsurge in Personal Creativity

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog ..."
    "... The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. ..."
    "... The pattern of human concerns ..."
    "... The pattern of human concerns ..."
    "... Journal of Happiness Studies ..."
    "... The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective states). ..."
    "... Psychological Bulletin ..."
    "... 1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to unemployment". ..."
    "... 2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general loss of "morale". ..."
    "... in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime indicator of status and prestige. ..."
    "... Psychological Bulletin ..."
    "... Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such attendance". ..."
    "... In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work, often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this point. ..."
    "... The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status, social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over history. ..."
    "... I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people, often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here loses one of its main anchor points. ..."
    "... This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings. ..."
    "... When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices. Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out for it. ..."
    "... When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. ..."
    "... Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when you think about it, that the working class is about work . ..."
    Nov 22, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Posted on November 21, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. Reader UserFriendly sent this post with the message, "I can confirm this." I can too. And before you try to attribute our reactions to being Americans, note that the study very clearly points out that its finding have been confirmed in "all of the world's regions".

    By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog

    Here is a summary of another interesting study I read last week (published March 30, 2017) – Happiness at Work – from academic researchers Jan‐Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward. It explores the relationship between happiness and labour force status, including whether an individual is employed or not and the types of jobs they are doing. The results reinforce a long literature, which emphatically concludes that people are devastated when they lose their jobs and do not adapt to unemployment as its duration increases. The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. Further, they do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose. The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support. The overwhelming conclusion is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and that result is robust across different countries and cultures. Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being unemployed. And, nothing much has changed in this regard over the last 80 or so years. These results were well-known in the 1930s, for example. They have a strong bearing on the debate between income guarantees versus employment guarantees. The UBI proponents have produced no robust literature to refute these long-held findings.

    While the 'Happiness Study' notes that "the relationship between happiness and employment is a complex and dynamic interaction that runs in both directions" the authors are unequivocal:

    The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. The importance of having a job extends far beyond the salary attached to it, with non-pecuniary aspects of employment such as social status, social relations, daily structure, and goals all exerting a strong influence on people's happiness.

    And, the inverse:

    The importance of employment for people's subjective wellbeing shines a spotlight on the misery and unhappiness associated with being unemployed.

    There is a burgeoning literature on 'happiness', which the authors aim to contribute to.

    They define happiness as "subjective well-being", which is "measured along multiple dimensions":

    life evaluation (by way of the Cantril "ladder of life"), positive and negative affect to measure respondents' experienced positive and negative wellbeing, as well as the more domain-specific items of job satisfaction and employee engagement. We find that these diverse measures of subjective wellbeing correlate strongly with each other

    Cantril's 'Ladder of Life Scale' (or "Cantril Ladder") is used by polling organisations to assess well-being. It was developed by social researcher Hadley Cantril (1965) and documented in his book The pattern of human concerns .

    You can learn more about the use of the 'Cantril Ladder' HERE .

    As we read, the "Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale consists of the following":

    Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? (ladder-present) On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now? (ladder-future)

    [Reference: Cantril, H. (1965) The pattern of human concerns , New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press.]

    Christian Bjørnskov's 2010 article – How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life Satisfaction Data? – also describes how it works.

    [Reference: Bjørnskov, C. (2010) 'How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life Satisfaction Data?', Journal of Happiness Studies , 11 (1), 41-60.]

    The Cantril scale is usually reported as values between 0 and 10.

    The authors in the happiness study use poll data from 150 nations which they say "is representative of 98% of the world's population". This survey data is available on a mostly annual basis since 2006.

    The following graph (Figure 1 from the Study) shows "the self-reported wellbeing of individuals around the world according to whether or not they are employed."

    The "bars measure the subjective wellbeing of individuals of working age" by employment status .

    The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective states).

    People employed "evaluate the quality of their lives around 0.6 points higher on average as compared to the unemployed on a scale from 0 to 10."

    The authors also conduct more sophisticated (and searching) statistical analysis (multivariate regression) which control for a range of characteristics (gender, age, education, marital status, composition of household) as well as to "account for the many political, economic, and cultural differences between countries as well as year-to-year variation".

    The conclusion they reach is simple:

    the unemployed evaluate the overall state of their lives less highly on the Cantril ladder and experience more negative emotions in their day-to-day lives as well as fewer positive ones. These are among the most widely accepted and replicated findings in the science of happiness Here, income is being held constant along with a number of other relevant covariates, showing that these unemployment effects go well beyond the income loss associated with losing one's job.

    These results are not surprising. The earliest study of this sort of outcome was from the famous study published by Philip Eisenberg and Paul Lazersfeld in 1938. [Reference: Eisenberg, P. and Lazarsfeld, P. (1938) 'The psychological effects of unemployment', Psychological Bulletin , 35(6), 358-390.]

    They explore four dimensions of unemployment:

    I. The Effects of Unemployment on Personality.

    II. Socio-Political Attitudes Affected by Unemployment.

    III. Differing Attitudes Produced by Unemployment and Related Factors.

    IV. The Effects of Unemployment on Children and Youth.

    On the first dimension, they conclude that:

    1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to unemployment".

    2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general loss of "morale".

    Devastation, in other words. They were not surprised because they note that:

    in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime indicator of status and prestige.

    This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings. That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study in 1938.

    It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might currently hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create major social tensions. Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld also considered an earlier 1937 study by Cantril who explored whether "the unemployed tend to evolve more imaginative schemes than the employed".

    [Reference: Cantril, H. (1934) 'The Social Psychology of Everyday Life', Psychological Bulletin , 31, 297-330.]

    The proposition was (is) that once unemployed, do people then explore new options that were not possible while working, which deliver them with the satisfaction that they lose when they become jobless. The specific question asked in the research was: "Have there been any changes of interests and habits among the unemployed?" Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such attendance".

    On the third dimension, Eisenberg and Lazersfeld examine the questions – "Are there unemployed who don't want to work? Is the relief situation likely to increase this number?", which are still a central issue today – the bludger being subsidized by income support.

    They concluded that:

    the number is few. In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work, often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this point.

    So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on their own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond the income we earn. The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status, social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over history. The happiness paper did explore "how short-lived is the misery associated with being out of work" in the current cultural settings.

    The proposition examined was that:

    If the pain is only fleeting and people quickly get used to being unemployed, then we might see joblessness as less of a key public policy priority in terms of happiness.

    They conclude that:

    a number of studies have demonstrated that people do not adapt much, if at all, to being unemployed there is a large initial shock to becoming unemployed, and then as people stay unemployed over time their levels of life satisfaction remain low . several studies have shown that even once a person becomes re-employed, the prior experience of unemployment leaves a mark on his or her happiness.

    So there is no sudden or even medium-term realisation that being jobless endows the individual with a new sense of freedom to become their creative selves, freed from the yoke of work. To bloom into musicians, artists, or whatever.

    The reality is that there is an on-going malaise – a deeply entrenched sense of failure is overwhelming, which stifles happiness and creativity, even after the individual is able to return to work.

    This negativity, borne heavily by the individual, however, also impacts on society in general.

    The paper recognises that:

    A further canonical finding in the literature on unemployment and subjective wellbeing is that there are so-called "spillover" effects.

    High levels of unemployment "increase fear and heighten the sense of job insecurity". Who will lose their job next type questions?

    The researchers found in their data that the higher is the unemployment rate the greater the anxiety among those who remain employed.

    Conclusion

    The overwhelming conclusion is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and that result is robust across different countries and cultures.

    Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being unemployed.

    The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. They do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose.

    The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support.

    Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) allows us to understand that it is the government that chooses the unemployment rate – it is a political choice.

    For currency-issuing governments it means their deficits are too low relative to the spending and saving decisions of the non-government sector.

    For Eurozone-type nations, it means that in surrendering their currencies and adopting a foreign currency, they are unable to guarantee sufficient work in the face of negative shifts in non-government spending. Again, a political choice.

    The Job Guarantee can be used as a vehicle to not only ensure their are sufficient jobs available at all times but also to start a process of wiping out the worst jobs in the non-government sector.

    That can be done by using the JG wage to ensure low-paid private employers have to restructure their workplaces and pay higher wages and achieve higher productivity in order to attract labour from the Job Guarantee pool.

    The Series So Far

    This is a further part of a series I am writing as background to my next book with Joan Muysken analysing the Future of Work . More instalments will come as the research process unfolds.

    The series so far:

    1. When Austrians ate dogs .
    2. Employment as a human right .
    3. The rise of the "private government .
    4. The evolution of full employment legislation in the US .
    5. Automation and full employment – back to the 1960s .
    6. Countering the march of the robots narrative .
    7. Unemployment is miserable and does not spawn an upsurge in personal creativity .

    The blogs in these series should be considered working notes rather than self-contained topics. Ultimately, they will be edited into the final manuscript of my next book due in 2018. The book will likely be published by Edward Elgar (UK).

    That is enough for today!

    divadab , November 21, 2017 at 6:11 am

    Perhaps I'm utterly depressed but I haven't had a job job for over 5 years. Plenty of work, however, more than I can handle and it requires priorisation. But I am deliberately not part of the organized herd. I stay away from big cities – it's scary how managed the herd is in large groups – and I suppose that unemployment for a herd animal is rather distressing as it is effectively being kicked out of the herd.

    Anyway my advice, worth what you pay for it but let he who has ears, etc. – is to go local, very local, grow your own food, be part of a community, manage your own work, and renounce the energy feast herd dynamics. "Unemployment", like "recession", is a mechanism of control. Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in car payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?

    The Rev Kev , November 21, 2017 at 6:35 am

    I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people, often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here loses one of its main anchor points.

    Worse, there is a deliberate stigma attached with being long term unemployed. In that article you have seen the word bludger being used. In parts of the US I have read of the shame of 'living off the county'. And yes, I have been there, seen that, and got the t-shirt. It's going to be interesting as mechanization and computers turn large portions of the population from workers to 'gig' workers. Expect mass demoralization.

    nonclassical , November 21, 2017 at 10:24 am

    yes the lives many of us have lived, no longer exist though we appear not notice, as we "can" live in many of same "ways" ..rather well known psychologist defined some 40 years ago, best to "drop through cracks"

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 12:13 pm

    Well, you also lose money, maybe you become homeless etc. as you have nowhere else to turn (if there are kids involved to support it gets even scarier though there are some programs). Or maybe you become dependent on another person(s) to support you which is of course degrading as you know you must rely on them to live, whether it's a spouse or lover when you want to work and bring in money, or mom and dads basement, or the kindest friend ever who lets you sleep on their couch. I mean these are the things that really matter.

    Privileged people whose main worry in unemployment would be losing identity, wow out of touch much? Who cares about some identity for parties, but the ability to have a stable decent life (gig work hardly counts) is what is needed.

    sgt_doom , November 21, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    I believe your comment sums up the situation the best -- and most realistically.

    jgordon , November 21, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    I normally wouldn't comment like this, but you have brought up some extremely important points about identity that I would like to address.

    Recently I had the most intense mushroom experience of my entire life–so intense that my identity had been completely stripped and I was left in a formless state, at the level of seeing my bare, unvarnished animal neural circuitry in operation. Suddenly with a flash of inspiration I realized that the identity of everyone, all of us, is inextricably tied up in what we do and what we do for other people.

    Following from that, I understood that if we passively rely on others for survival, whether it be relying on friends, family, or government, then we do not have an identity or reason for existing. And the inner self, the animal core of who we are, will realise this lack of identity (even if the concious mind denies it), and will continually generate feelings of profound depression and intense nihilism that will inevitably destroy us if the root cause is not addressed.

    Before this experience I was somewhat ambivalent about my politics, but immediately after I knew that the political right was correct on everything important, from attitudes on sex to economic philosophy. People need a core of cultural stability and hard work to grow and become actualized. The alternative is rudderless dissatisfaction and envy that leads nowhere.

    On the topic of giving "out of kindnes and goodwill", giving without demanding anything in return is a form of abuse, as it deprives those who receive our feel-good generosity the motivation to form a coherent identity. If the parents of a basement-dweller were truly good people, instead of supporting said dweller they'd drag her out by the ear and make her grow food in the yard or some such. Likewise, those who have supported you without also giving concrete demands and expecations in return have been unkind, and for your own good I hope that you will immediately remove yourself from their support. On the other hand, if you have been thoughtlessly giving because it warms the cockles of your heart, then stop it now. You are ruining other people this way, and if your voting habits are informed by this kind of malevolence I'd encourage you to change those as well.

    Anyway the original poster is right about everything. Working and having a purpose in life is an entirely different animal from making money and being "successful" in the government-sponsored commercial economy. Society and government deliberately try to conflate the two for various reasons, primarily graft of labor and genius, but that is only a deliberate mis-framing that needlessly harms people when the mainstream economic system is in catastrophic decline, as ours is today. You should try to clear up this misconception within yourself as a way of getting better.

    Well, I hope this message can give you a few different thoughts and help you find your way out of the existential angst you're caught in. Don't wallow in helplessness. Think of something useful to do, anything, whether it earns you money or not, and go out and start doing it. You'll be surprised at how much better you feel about yourself in no time.

    skippy , November 22, 2017 at 12:45 am

    The problem is you said – I – had an extreme experience [burning bush], the truth was reviled to – I – and I alone during this extreme chemically altered state. Which by the way just happens to conform to a heap of environmental biases I collected. This is why sound methodology demands peer review. disheveled some people think Mister Toads Wild ride at Disneyland on psychotropics is an excellent adventure too.

    Jeremy Grimm , November 21, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    I think your observation about the importance of work to identity is most perceptive. This post makes too little distinction between work and a job and glosses over the place of work in defining who we are to ourselves and to others. I recall the scene in the movie "About a Boy" when the hero meets someone he cares about and she asks him what he does for a living.

    I believe there's another aspect of work -- related to identity -- missing in the analysis of this post. Work can offer a sense of mission -- of acting as part of an effort toward a larger goal no individual could achieve alone. However you may regard the value in putting man on the moon there is no mistaking the sense of mission deeply felt by the engineers and technicians working on the project. What jobs today can claim service to a mission someone might value?

    Henry Moon Pie , November 21, 2017 at 7:00 am

    Agreed on your points. Wage slavery is nothing to aspire to. Self-determination within a context of an interdependent community is a much better way to live. We do our thing in the city, however.

    ambrit , November 21, 2017 at 8:29 am

    Finding that "interdependent community" is the hard part. My experience has been that this endeavour is almost chance based; Serendipity if you will.
    Here Down South, the churches still seem to have a stranglehold on small and mid scale social organization. One of the big effects of 'churching' is the requirement that the individual gave up personal critical thinking. Thus, the status quo is reinforced. One big happy 'Holy Circlejerk.'

    UserFriendly , November 21, 2017 at 10:10 am

    from the article

    This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings.

    That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study in 1938. It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might currently hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create major social tensions.

    FelicityT , November 21, 2017 at 3:07 pm

    I would agree about the entenched cultural norms, etc. But not the pessimism and timeline for change. An individual can communicate a complex idea to millions in seconds, things move fast these days.

    For me, it seems that what we (we being UBI/radical change proponents) are lacking is a compelling easily accessible story. Not just regarding UBI (as that is but one part of the trully revolutionary transformations that must occur) but encompassing everything.

    We have countless think pieces, bits of academic writing, books, etc that focus on individual pieces and changes in isolation. But we've largely abandoned the all-encompassing narrative, which at their heart is precisely what religion offers and why it can be so seductive, successful, and resilient for so long.

    The status quo has this type of story, it's not all that compelling but given the fact that it is the status quo and has inertia and tradition on its side (along with the news media, political, entertainment, etc) it doesn't have to be.

    We need to abandon the single narrow issue activism that has become so prominent over the years and get back to engaging with issues as unseparable and intimately interconnected.

    Tinkering around the edges will do nothing, a new political religion is what is required.

    Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    Sorry, I disagree vehemently. Deeply held cultural attitudes are very slow to change and the study found that work being critical to happiness examined a large number of societies.

    Look at feminism. I was a half-generation after the time when women were starting to get a shot at real jobs. IIRC, the first class that accepted women at Harvard Law School was in the 1950 and at Harvard Business School, 1965. And the number of first attendees was puny. The 1965 class at HBS had 10 8 women out of a graduating class of over 800; my class in 1981 had only 11% women.

    In the 1980s, you saw a shift from the belief that women could do what men could do to promotion of the idea that women could/should be feminine as well as successful. This looked like seriously mixed messages, in that IMHO the earlier tendency to de-emphasize gender roles in the workplace looked like a positive development.

    Women make less than 80% of what men do in the US. Even female doctors in the same specialities make 80% of their male peers.

    The Speenhamland in the UK had what amounted to an income guarantee from the 1790s to 1832. Most people didn't want to be on it and preferred to work. Two generations and being on the support of local governments was still seen as carrying a stigma.

    More generally, social animals have strongly ingrained tendencies to resent situations they see as unfair. Having someone who is capable of working not work elicits resentment from many, which is why most people don't want to be in that position. You aren't going to change that.

    And people need a sense of purpose. There are tons of cases of rich heirs falling into drug addiction or alcoholism and despair because they have no sense of purpose in life. Work provides that, even if it's mundane work to support a family. That is one of the great dissservices the Democrats have done to the citizenry at large: sneering at ordinary work when blue-collar men were the anchors of families and able to take pride in that.

    FelicityT , November 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm

    So a few points.

    Regarding the large number of societies, we often like to think we're more different than we actually are focusing on a few glaringly obvious differences and generalizing from there. Even going back a few hundred years when ideas travelled slower we were still (especially the "west" though the "east" wasn't all that much more different either) quite similar. So I'm less inclined to see the large number of societies as evidence.

    Generally on societal changes and movements: The issue here is that the leadership has not changed, they may soften some edges here or there (only to resharpen them again when we're looking elsewhere) but their underlying ideologies are largely unchanged. A good mass of any population will go along to survive, whether they agree or not (and we find increasing evidence that many do not agree, though certainly that they do not agree on a single alternative).

    It may be impossible to implement such changes in who controls the levers of power in a democratic fashion but it also may be immoral not implement such changes. Of course this is also clearly a similar path to that walked by many a demonized (in most cases rightfully so) dictator and despot. 'Tread carefully' are wise words to keep in mind.

    Today we have a situation which reflects your example re: social animals and resentment of unfairness: the elite (who falls into this category is of course debatable, some individuals moreso than others). But they have intelligently, for their benefit, redirected that resentment towards those that have little. Is there really any logical connection between not engaging in wage labor (note: NOT equivalent to not working) and unfairness? Or is it a myth crafted by those who currently benefit the most?

    That resentment is also precisely why it is key that a Basic income be universal with no means testing, everyone gets the same.

    I think we should not extrapolate too much from the relatively small segment of the population falling into the the inherited money category. Correlation is not causation and all that.

    It also seems that so often individuals jump to the hollywood crafted image of the layabout stoner sitting on the couch giggling at cartoons (or something similarly negative) when the concept of less wage labor is brought up. A reduction of wage labor does not equate to lack of work being done, it simply means doing much of that work for different reasons and rewards and incentives.

    As I said in the Links thread today, we produce too much, we consume too much, we grow too much. More wage labor overall as a requirement for survival is certainly not the solution to any real problem that we face, its a massively inefficient use of resources and a massive strain on the ecosystems.

    Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 8:34 pm

    I am really gobsmacked at the sense of entitlement on display here. Why are people entitled to an income with no work? Being an adult means toil: cleaning up after yourself, cleaning up after your kids if you have them, if you are subsistence farmer, tending your crops and livestock, if you are a modern society denizen, paying your bills and your taxes on time. The idea that people are entitled to a life of leisure is bollocks. Yet you promote that.

    Society means we have obligations to each other. That means work. In rejecting work you reject society.

    And the touting of "creativity" is a top 10% trope that Thomas Frank called out in Listen, Liberal. It's a way of devaluing what the bottom 90% do.

    WobblyTelomeres , November 21, 2017 at 8:53 pm

    My argument with the article is that, to me, it smacks of Taylorism. A follow-on study would analyze how many hours a laborer must work before the acquired sense of purpose and dignity and associated happiness began to decline. Would it be 30 hours a week of backbreaking labor before dignity found itself eroded? 40? 50? 60? When does the worker break? Just how far can we push the mule before it collapses?

    The author alludes to this: "The overwhelming proportion relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job"

    Work equals happiness. Got it.

    But, as a former robotics instructor, and as one who watches the industry (and former students), I see an automated future as damn near inevitable. Massive job displacement is coming, life as a minimum wage burger flipper will cease, with no future employment prospects short of government intervention (WPA and CCC for all, I say). I'm not a Luddite, obviously, but there are going to be a lot of people, billions, worldwide, with no prospect of employment. Saying, "You're lazy and entitled" is a bit presumptuous, Yves. Not everyone has your ability, not everyone has my ability. When the burger flipping jobs are gone, where do they go? When roombas mop the floors, where do the floor moppers go?

    flora , November 21, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    "WPA and CCC for all, I say. "

    +1

    We could use a new Civilian Conservation Corps and and a Works Progress Administration. There's lots of work that needs doing that isn't getting done by private corporations.

    nihil obstet , November 21, 2017 at 10:05 pm

    The outrage at non-work wealth and income would be more convincing if it were aimed also at owners of capital. About 30% of national income is passive -- interest, rents, dividends. Why are the owners of capital "entitled to an income with no work?" It's all about the morality that underlies the returns to capital while sugaring over a devaluation of labor. As a moral issue, everyone should share the returns on capital or we should tax away the interest, rents, and dividends. If it's an economic issue, berating people for their beliefs isn't a reason.

    WobblyTelomeres , November 21, 2017 at 10:14 pm

    Why are the owners of capital "entitled to an income with no work?"

    THIS!!!! So much, THIS!!!! But, what else is a Wobbly to say, eh?

    Yves Smith Post author , November 22, 2017 at 2:27 am

    The overwhelming majority do work. The top 0.1% is almost entirely private equity managers who are able to classify labor income as capital gains through the carried interest loophole. Go look at the Forbes 400.

    The 1% are mainly CEOs, plus elite professionals, like partners at top law and consulting firms and specialty surgeons (heart, brain, oncology). The CEOs similarly should be seen as getting labor income but have a lot of stock incentive pay (that is how they get seriously rich) which again gets capital gains treatment.

    You are mistaking clever taking advantage of the tax code for where the income actually comes from. Even the kids of rich people are under pressure to act like entrepreneurs from their families and peers. Look at Paris Hilton and Ivanka as examples. They both could have sat back and enjoyed their inheritance, but both went and launched businesses. I'm not saying the kids of the rich succeed, or would have succeed to the extent they do without parental string-pulling, but the point is very few hand their fortune over to a money manager and go sailing or play the cello.

    IsotopeC14 , November 22, 2017 at 2:58 am

    Isn't the brother of the infamous Koch duo doing exactly that? Actually, if all the .001%ers were like him, we'd all be better off

    IsotopeC14 , November 22, 2017 at 1:34 am

    What's your take on Rutger Bergman's ted talk? i think most jobs aren't real jobs at all, like marketing and ceo's. why can't we do 20 hour work weeks so we don't have huge amounts of unemployment? Note, I was "unemployed" for years since "markets" decide not to fund science in the US. Yay Germany At least I was fortunate enough to not be forced to work at Walmart or McDonalds like the majority of people with absolutely no life choices. Ah the sweet coercion of capitalism.

    flora , November 21, 2017 at 9:09 pm

    Your hopes for a UBI are undone by some of the real world observations I've made over many years, with regard to how a guaranteed income increase, of any measure, for a whole population of an area, affects prices. Shorter: income going up means prices are raised by merchants to capture the new income.

    • Examples: A single industry town raises wages for all employees by 2% for the new calendar year. Within the first 2 weeks of the new year, all stores and restaurants and service providers in the town raise their prices by 2%. This happens every year there is a general wage increase.
    • Example: Medicare part D passes and within 2 years, Pharma now having new captive customers whose insurance will pay for drugs, raise prices higher and higher, even on generic drugs.
    • A more recent example: ACA passes with no drug price ceilings. Again, as with the passage of Medicare part D, Pharma raises drug prices to unheard of levels, even older and cheap but life saving drugs, in the knowledge that a new, large group will have insurance that will pay for the drugs – a new source of money.

    Your assumption that any UBI would not be instantly captured by raised prices is naive, at best. It's also naive to assume companies would continue to pay wages at the same level to people still employed, instead of reducing wages and letting UBI fill in the rest. Some corporations already underpay their workers, then encourage the workers to apply for food stamps and other public supports to make up for the reduced wage.

    The point of the paper is the importance of paid employment to a person's sense of well being. I agree with the paper.

    Andrew Dodds , November 22, 2017 at 2:48 am

    For the vast majority, a UBI would be income-neutral – it would have to be, to avoid massive inflation. So people would receive a UBI, but pay more tax to compensate. The effect on prices would be zero.

    The advantage of a UBI is mostly felt at the lower end, where insecure/seasonal work does now pay. At the moment, a person who went from farm labourer to Christmas work to summer resort work in the UK would certainly be working hard, but also relentlessly hounded by the DWP over universal credit. A UBI would make this sort of lifestyle possible.

    jsn , November 21, 2017 at 11:28 am

    Davidab, Good for you, but your perspicacity is not scalable. People are social animals and your attitude toward "the herd", at least as expressed here, is that of a predator, even if your taste doesn't run toward predation. Social solutions will necessarily be scalable or they won't be solutions for long.

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 1:44 am

    > the organized herd a herd animal trapped in the herd

    I don't think throwing 80% to 90% of the population into the "prey" bucket is especially perspicacious politically (except, of course, for predators or parasites). I also don't think it's especially perspicacious morally. You write:

    Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in car payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?

    Let me translate that: "Trapped in the herd as many are to support spouses and children." In other words, taking the cares of the world on themselves in order to care for others.

    BJ , November 21, 2017 at 6:37 am

    Unemployed stay at home dad here. My children are now old enough to no longer need a stay at home dad. Things I have done: picked up two musical instruments and last year dug a natural swimming pond by hand. Further, one would need to refute all the increased happiness in retirement (NBER). Why social security but not UBI? I get being part of the precariat is painful and this is a reality for most the unemployed no matter where you live in the world. A UBI is unworkable because it will never be large enough to make people's lives unprecarious. Having said that, I am almost positive if you gave every unemployed person 24 k a year and health benefits, there would be a mass of non working happy creative folks.

    divadab , November 21, 2017 at 7:41 am

    UBI seems to me to encourage non-virtuous behavior – sloth, irresponsibility, fecklessness, and spendthriftness. I like the Finnish model – unemployment insurance is not limited – except if you refuse work provided by the local job center. Lots of work is not being done all over America – we could guarantee honest work to all with some imagination. Start with not spraying roundup and rather using human labor to control weeds and invasive species.

    I do agree that universal health insurance is necessary and sadly Obamacare is not that.

    ambrit , November 21, 2017 at 8:34 am

    The crux of this problem is the definition used for "non-virtuous behaviour." A new CCC is a good place to start though. (Your Tax Dollars At Work! [For some definition of tax dollars.]) As for BJ above, I would suppose that child rearing was his "employment" for years. good so far, but his follow-up is untypical. The 'Empty Nester' mother is a well known meme.

    a different chris , November 21, 2017 at 9:19 am

    Spendthriftness on 24K a year? Seriously? If we are disgorging unprofessional opinions, I will add my own: sloth and irresponsibility are more signs of depression rather than freedom from having to work. In fact, I believe (and I think much of the stuff here) supports the idea that people want to be seen as useful in some way. Doesn't include me! :) .. unfortunately, I have the charmingly named "dependents" so there you have it.

    BJ , November 21, 2017 at 11:18 am

    I lived 6 years as a grad student on 24k a year and would say it was easy. Only thing I would have to had worried about was awful health insurance. A two household each with 24k would be even easier, especially if you could do it in a low cost area. So I am not sure what you mean by spendthrift. But again it will never happen, so we will be stuck with what we have or most likely an even more sinister system. I guess I am advocating for a JG with unlimited number of home makers per household.

    roadrider , November 21, 2017 at 9:23 am

    except if you refuse work provided by the local job center

    And who's to say that the local "job center" has work that would be appropriate for every person's specific talents and interests? This is no better than saying that you should be willing to go work for some minimum-wage retail job with unpredictable scheduling and other forms of employer abuses after you lose a high-paying job requiring special talents. I have to call bullshit on this model. I went through a two-year stretch if unemployment in no small part because the vast majority of the available jobs for my skill set were associated with the MIC, surveillance state or the parasitic FIRE sector. I was able to do this because I had saved up enough FY money and had no debts or family to support.

    I can also attest to the negative aspects of unemployment that the post describes. Its all true and I can't really say that I'e recovered even now, 2.5 years after finding another suitable job.

    Jesper , November 21, 2017 at 10:55 am

    The job center in the neighbouring Sweden had the same function. Had is the important word. My guess is that the last time someone lost their unemployment insurance payout due to not accepting a job was in the early 1980s. Prior to that companies might, maybe, possibly have considered hiring someone assigned to them – full employment forced companies to accept what was offered. Companies did not like the situation and the situation has since changed.

    Now, when full employment is a thing of the past, the way to lose unemployment insurance payouts is by not applying to enough jobs. An easily gamed system by people not wanting to work: just apply to completely unsuitable positions and the number of applications will be high. Many companies are therefore overwhelmed by applications and are therefore often forced to hire more people in HR to filter out the unsuitable candidates.
    People in HR tend not to know much about qualifications and or personalities for the job so they tend to filter out too many. We're all familiar with the skills-shortage .
    Next step of this is that the companies who do want to hire have to use recruitment agencies. Basically outsourcing the HR to another company whose people are working on commission. Recruiters sometimes know how to find 'talent', often they are the same kind of people with the same skills and backgrounds as people working in HR.

    To even get to the hiring manager a candidate has to go through two almost identical and often meaningless interviews. Recruiter and then HR. Good for the GDP I suppose, not sure if it is good for anything else.

    But back on topic again, there is a second way of losing unemployment insurance payout: Time. Once the period covered has passed there is no more payouts of insurance. After that it it is time to live on savings, then sell all assets, and then once that is done finally go to the welfare office and prove that savings are gone and all assets are sold and maybe welfare might be paid out. People on welfare in Sweden are poor and the indignities they are being put through are many. Forget about hobbies and forget about volunteering as the money for either of those activities simply aren't available. Am I surprised by a report saying unemployed in Sweden are unhappy? Nope.

    nonclassical , November 21, 2017 at 10:42 am

    meanwhile NYTimes testimonials Friday, show average family of 4 healthprofit costs (tripled, due to trump demise ACA) to be $30,000. per year, with around $10,000. deductible end of any semblance of affordable access, "murKa"

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/us/politics/obamacare-premiums-middle-class.html

    Jeremy Grimm , November 21, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    What do you mean by virtuous behavior?

    Where does a character like Bertie Wooster in "Jeeves" fit in your notions of virtuous behavior? Would you consider him more virtuous working in the management of a firm, controlling the lives and labor of others -- and humorously helped by his his brilliant valet, Jeeves, getting him out of trouble?

    For contrast -- in class and social status -- take a beer-soaked trailer trash gentleman of leisure -- and for sake of argument blessed with less than average intelligence -- where would you put him to work where you'd feel pleased with his product or his service? Would you feel better about this fellow enjoying a six-pack after working 8 hours a day 5 days a week virtuously digging and then filling a hole in the ground while carefully watched and goaded by an overseer? [Actually -- how different is that from "using human labor to control weeds and invasive species"? I take it you're a fan of chain-gangs and making the poor pick up trash on the highways?]

    What about some of our engineers and scientists virtuously serving the MIC? Is their behavior virtuous because they're not guilty of sloth, irresponsibility [in executing their work], fecklessness, and spendthriftness? On this last quality how do you feel about our government who pay the salaries for all these jobs building better ways to kill and maim?

    Bill Smith , November 21, 2017 at 8:01 am

    How big is the swimming pool and how long did it take? Where did you put the dirt?

    BJ , November 21, 2017 at 11:07 am

    It is a design by David Pagan Butler. It is his plunge pool design, deepend is 14 by 8 by 7 deep. I used the dirt to make swales around some trees. Win win all around.

    tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 9:32 am

    curious to know whether you are married to someone with a job?

    BJ , November 21, 2017 at 11:25 am

    The answer is yes my spouse works. So I do have a schedule of waking up to make her lunch everyday, meeting her at lunch to walk, and making dinner when she gets home, but we do all those things on her days off so .

    But again we would need to explain away, why people who are retired are happier? Just because they think they payed into social security? Try explaining to someone on the SS dole how the government spends money into existence and is not paid by taxes or that the government never saved their tax money, so there are not entitled to this money.

    David Kane Miller , November 21, 2017 at 6:55 am

    I hated working for other people and doing what they wanted. I began to feel some happiness when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects. Things improved even more when I could assure myself of some small guaranteed income by claiming Social Security at age 62. To arise in the morning when I feel rested, with interesting projects like gardens, fences, small buildings ahead and work at my own pace is the essence of delight for me. I've been following your arguments against UBI for years and disagree vehemently.

    a different chris , November 21, 2017 at 9:23 am

    I feel I would behave the same as you, if I had the chance. *But* no statements about human beings are absolute, and because UBI would work for either of us does not mean it would work for the majority. Nothing devised by man is perfect.

    Mel , November 21, 2017 at 9:42 am

    It's not you; it's not me. It's those deplorable people.

    tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 9:37 am

    first you had to buy the half acre in a suitable location, then you had to work many years to qualify for social security, the availability of which you paid for and feel you deserve. You also have to buy stuff for fences gardens and small buildings. At most that rhymes with a ubi but is significantly different in it's make up.

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 1:56 am

    > when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects

    That is, when you acquired the half acre, which not everyone can do. It seems to me there's a good deal of projecting going on with this thread from people who are, in essence, statistical outliers. But Mitchell summarizes the literature:

    So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on their own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond the income we earn.

    If the solution that works for you is going to scale, that implies that millions more will have to own land. If UBI depends on that, how does that happen? (Of course, in a post-collapse scenario, the land might be taken , but that same scenario makes the existence of institutions required to convey the UBI highly unlikely. )

    Carla , November 21, 2017 at 7:16 am

    Very glad to hear that Bill Mitchell is working on the "Future of Work" book, and to have this post, and the links to the other segments. Thank you, Yves!

    Andrew , November 21, 2017 at 7:25 am

    I don't agree with this statement. Never will. I'm the complete opposite. Give me more leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments and doing things that I enjoy. I recall back to when I was a student, I relished in the free time I got (believe me University gave me a lot of free time) between lectures, meaning I could enjoy this time pursuing creative activities. Sure I might be different than most people but I know countless people who are the same.

    My own opinion is that root problem lies in the pathology of the working mentality, that 'work' and having a 'job' is so engrained into our society and mindset that once you give most people the time to enjoy other things, they simply can't. They don't know what to do with themselves and they eventually become unhappy, watching daytime TV sat on the sofa.

    I recall back to a conversation with my mother about my father, she said to me, 'I don't know how your father is going to cope once he retires and has nothing to do' and it's that very example of where work for so many people becomes so engrained in their mindset, that they are almost scared of having 'nothing to do' as they say. It's a shame, it's this systemic working mentality that has led to this mindset. I'm glad I'm the opposite of this and proud by mother brought me up to be this way. Work, and job are not in my vocabulary. I work to live, not live to work.

    I_Agree , November 21, 2017 at 11:26 am

    I agree with Andrew. I think this data on the negative effects says more about how being employed fundamentally breaks the human psyche and turns them into chattel, incapable of thinking for themselves and destroying their natural creativity. The more a human is molded into a "good worker" the less they become a full fledged human being. The happiest people are those that have never placed importance on work, that have always lived by the maxim "work to live, not live to work". From my own experience every assertion in this article is the opposite of reality. It is working that makes me apathethic, uncreative, and miserable. The constant knowing that you're wasting your life, day after day, engaged in an activity merely to build revenue streams for the rich, instead of doing things that help society or that please you on a personal level, is what I find misery inducing.

    nycTerrierist , November 21, 2017 at 12:18 pm

    I agree. If financial insecurity is removed from the equation -- free time can be used creatively for self-actualization, whatever form that may take: cultivating the arts, hobbies, community activities, worthy causes and projects. The ideology wafting from Mitchell's post smells to me like a rationale for wage slavery (market driven living, neo-liberalism, etc.)

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    Besides how are people supposed to spend their time "exploring other opportunities" when unemployed anyway? To collect unemployment which isn't exactly paying that much anyway, they have to show they are applying to jobs. To go to the movies the example given costs money, which one may tend to be short on when unemployed. They probably are looking for work regardless (for the income). There may still be some free time. But they could go back to school? Uh in case one just woke up from a rock they were under for 100 years, that costs money, which one may tend to be short on when unemployed, plus there is no guarantee the new career will pan out either, no guarantee someone is just chomping at the bit to hire a newly trained 50 year old or something. I have always taken classes when unemployed, and paid for it and it's not cheap.

    Yes to use one's time wisely in unemployment in the existing system requires a kind of deep psychological maturity that few have, a kind of Surrender To Fate, to the uncertainty of whether one will have an income again or not (either that or a sugar daddy or a trust fund). Because it's not easy to deal with that uncertainty. And uncertainty is the name of the game in unemployment, that and not having an income may be the pain in it's entirety.

    FelicityT , November 21, 2017 at 3:18 pm

    Sadly this breaking down into a "good worker" begins for most shortly after they begin school. This type of education harms society in a myriad of ways including instilling a dislike of learning, deference to authority (no matter how irrational and unjust), and a destruction of a child's natural curiosity.

    Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 5:21 pm

    I don't buy your premise that people are "creative". The overwhelming majority do not have creative projects they'd be pursuing if they had leisure and income. Go look at retirees, ones that have just retired, are healthy, and have money.

    Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 4:29 pm

    You are really misconstruing what the studies have found and misapplied it to your situation. Leisure time when you have a job or a role (being a student) is not at all the same as having time when you are unemployed, with or without a social safety net.

    Summer , November 21, 2017 at 6:25 pm
    • Work: that can be me hiring someone to cut my yard, or another type of one-off thing filled with precariousness.
    • Job: that less temporary work, but by no means permanent. Just a step up from the precariousness of work.
    • Career: that is work in the same field over a long period of time and it is more likely that someone will develop an identity through performing the work. Still precarious, but maybe more fulfilling.
    • Sense of purpose: I was always under the impression that is something you have to give yourself. If it can be taken away by someone what was the purpose?
    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 6:37 pm

    one often has a role when unemployed: finding work. But it's not a very fulfilling one! But if one is trying to find work, it's not exactly the absence of a role either even if it still leaves significantly more free time than otherwise, maybe winning the lottery is the absence of a role.

    But then it's also not like we give people a UBI even for a few years (at any time in adult life) to get an education. Only if they take out a student loan approaching the size of a mortgage or have parents willing to pony up are they allowed that (to pay not just for the education but to live because having a roof over one's head etc. is never free, a UBI via debt it might be called).

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:00 am

    > Give me more leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments and doing things that I enjoy.
    Nothing to breed resentment of "the creative class" here! Blowback from Speenhamland brought on the workhouses, so be careful what you wish for.

    Jesper , November 21, 2017 at 7:47 am

    Again the UBI vs JG debate .

    UBI won't happen and JG has been tried (and failed).

    The argument that JG would allow the public sector to hire more people is demeaning to people already employed in the public sector and demonstrably false – people are hired into the public sector without there being a JG. It is most certainly possible to be against a JG while wanting more people working in the public sector.

    The way forward is to have a government acting for people instead of for corporations. Increase the amount of paid vacations, reduce the pension age and stop with the Soviet style worship of work: While some people are apparently proud of their friends and relatives who died while at work it is also possible to feel sad about that.

    diptherio , November 21, 2017 at 10:00 am

    JG has been tried (and failed).

    When and where? The NCCC seemed to work pretty good here in the Western US.

    Jesper , November 21, 2017 at 10:27 am

    The JG was tried in Communist countries in Europe, Asia and Americas. The arguments then and there were the same as here and now, made by the same type of social 'scientists' (economists).

    Would a JG be different here and now as the Republicans and Democrats are representing the best interests of the people? Or are they representing the same kind of interests as the Communist parties did?

    Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 4:39 pm

    Data, please. The USSR fell because it was spending on its military to keep up with the US, a much larger economy. Countering your assertion we have this:

    tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 10:00 am

    As long as people argue that "it's not fair" to fix the inequality issue and employ things like debt jubilee or student loan forgiveness, or if we fix the ridiculous cost of health care what will all those insurance agents do then we will wind up with the real kind of class warfare, rather than the current punching from the top down, the punching will come from the bottom, because the situation is not fair now, it's just TINA according to those who profit from it. In my own life there is a balance of creativity and work, and I find work enables my creativity by putting some pressure on my time, i.e., I get up earlier, I practice at 8:30 am instead of sleeping til 10 and winding up with S.A..D., I go to bed rather than watch tv or drink to excess.. in other words i have some kind of weird schedule, I have days off sort of When I've been unemployed I feel the way s described in the article. I find the arguments in favor of ubi tend to come from people who already have assets, or jobs, or family who they take care of which is actually a job although uncommonly described as such. The only truth I see in real life is that the unemployed I am intimately familiar with first are mentally oppressed by the notion that to repair their situation will require they work every waking hour at substandard wages for the rest of their life and that is a major barrier to getting started, and that is a policy choice the gov't and elite classes purposefully made which created the precariat and will be their undoing if they are unable to see this.

    tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 10:15 am

    Hey look, even the msm is looking at it
    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/is-uprising-the-only-way-out-of-gross-inequality-maybe-so/

    j84ustin , November 21, 2017 at 10:08 am

    As someone who works in the public sector I never quite thought of it like that, thanks.

    hunkerdown , November 21, 2017 at 7:53 am

    Disappointing that there's no analysis in this context of less employment, as in shorter work weeks and/or days, as opposed to merely all or none.

    nonclassical , November 21, 2017 at 10:45 am

    see – hear

    (but no possibility without healthcare access, rather than healthtprofit)

    Vatch , November 21, 2017 at 11:31 am

    Interesting point. I read a science fiction story in which the protagonist arrives for work at his full time job at 10:00 AM, and he's finished for the day at 4:00 PM. I can't remember the name of the story or novel, unfortunately.

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:04 pm

    Agreed. And they already have it in places like Denmark. Why don't we talk about that? It actually exists unlike utopian schemes for either total UBI or total work guarantee (government job creation is not utopian, but imagining it will employ everyone is, and I would like the UBI to be more widely tried, but in this country we are nowhere close). Funny how utopia becomes more interesting to people than actual existing arrangements, even though of course those could be improved on too.

    The Danish work arrangement is less than a 40 hour week, and mothers especially often work part-time but both sexes can. It's here in this country where work is either impossibly grueling or you are not working. No other choice. In countries with more flexible work arrangements more women actually work, but it's flexible and flexible for men who choose to do the parenting as well. I'm not saying this should be for parents only of course.

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:02 am

    Because the JG sets the baseline for employment, which private companies must meet, the JG (unlike the UBI) can do this.

    Otis B Driftwood , November 21, 2017 at 7:58 am

    My own situation is that I am unhappy in my well-paying job and would like nothing more than to devote myself to other interests. I'm thirty years on in a relationship with someone who grew up in bad financial circumstances and panics whenever I talk about leaving my job. I tell her that we have 2 years of living expenses in the bank but I can't guarantee making the same amount of money if I do leave my job. She has a job that she loves and is important and pays barely 1/2 of my own income. So she worries about her future with me. She worries about losing her home. I suppose that makes me the definition of a wage slave. And it makes for an increasingly unhappy marriage. I admire those who have faced similar circumstances and found a way through this. Sorry to vent, but this topic and the comments hit a nerve with me and I'm still trying to figure this out.

    ambrit , November 21, 2017 at 8:38 am

    Otis; We are presently going through a period where that "two year cushion" has evaporated, for various reasons. We are seeing our way through this, straight into penury and privation. Take nothing for granted in todays' economy.

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:11 pm

    yes find the lower paying job that you like more first. If you just quit for nothing in the hopes of finding one it might not happen. Of course unemployment also happens sometimes, whether we want it or not.

    bronco , November 21, 2017 at 12:47 pm

    The newer generations are worse when it comes to lifestyle. Those of that are older can at least remember a time without cellphones internet streaming services leasing a new car every 2 years etc.

    What about the young? My niece and her husband should be all set , his mom sunk money into a home on the condition she moved into a mother in law apartment. So far so good right? 2 years in they are imploding even with the free child care she provides. Combined their wireless bill a month is over $300. The sit on the couch side by side and stream netflix shows to dueling iphones in front of a 65 inch tv that is not even turned on. Wearing headphones in silence.

    Both driving new vehicles , both have gym memberships they don't use . They buy lattes 3 or 4 times a day which is probably another 500 a month.

    My uncle passed away recently and my niece asked if she was in the will. It was literally her only communication on the subject. They are going under and could easily trim a few thousand a month from the budget but simply won't. No one in the family is going to lift a finger for them at this point they burned every possible bridge already. I have seen people living in cars plenty lately but I think these will be the first I see to living in brand new cars .

    Somewhere along the line they got the impression that the american dream was a leased car a starbucks in one hand and an iphone in the other .

    Confront them with the concept of living within a paycheck and they react like a patient hearing he has 3 months to live.

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:03 am

    Ah. Reagan's "welfare queens" updated. Kids these days!

    JBird , November 22, 2017 at 3:00 am

    Yeah being poor, never mind growing up poor, just well and truly sucks and it can really @@@@ you up. Gives people all sorts of issues. I'm rather like her, but I have had the joy of multi-hour commutes to unexciting soul crushing work. Happy, happy, joy, joy! However don't forget that with the current political economy things are likely to go bad in all sorts of ways. This whole site is devoted to that. My suggestion is to keep the job unless you have something lined up. Not being able to rent has it own stresses too. Take my word for it.

    Thuto , November 21, 2017 at 8:00 am

    I may be engaging in semantics but I think conflating work and jobs makes this article a bit of a mixed bag. I know plenty of people who are terribly unhappy in their jobs, but nonetheless extract a sense of wellbeing from having a stable source of INCOME to pay their bills (anecdotally speaking, acute stress from recent job losses is closely linked to uncertainty about how bills are going to be paid, that's why those with a safety net of accumulated savings report less stress than those without). Loss of status, social standing and identity and the chronic stress borne from these become evident much later I.e. when the unemployment is prolonged, accompanied of course by the still unresolved top-of-mind concern of "how to pay the bills".

    As such, acute stress for the recently unemployed is driven by financial/income uncertainty (I.e. how am I going to pay the bills) whereas chronic stress from prolonged unemployment brings into play the more identity driven aspects like loss of social standing and status. For policy interventions to have any effects, policy makers would have to delineate the primary drivers of stress (or lack of wellbeing as the author calls it) during the various phases of the unemployment lifecycle. An Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) like we have here in South Africa appears to address the early stages of unemployment, and the accompanying acute stress, quite well by providing the income guarantee (for six months) that cushions the shock of losing a job. What's still missing of course are interventions that promote the quick return to employment for those on UIF, so maybe a middle of the road solution between UBI and a jobs guarantee scheme is how policy makers should be framing this, instead of the binary either/or we currently have.

    TroyMcClure , November 21, 2017 at 9:19 am

    Lots' of people think they're unhappy with their jobs. Let them sit unemployed for 9 months and ask them if they want that job back. The usual parade of anecdata is on display here in the comments. Mitchell's real data and analysis in the article above still stand.

    Thuto , November 21, 2017 at 10:06 am

    If you'd read through my comment, and not rushed through it with a view of dishing out a flippant response, you'd have seen that nowhere do I question the validity of his data, I merely question how the argument is presented in some areas (NC discourages unquestioning deference to the views of experts no??). By the way, anecdotes do add to richer understanding of a nuanced and layered topic (as this one is) so your dismissal of them in your haste to invalidate people's observations is hardly helpful.

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    Yes people many not like their jobs but prefer the security of having them to not. Yes even if the boss sexually harasses one (as we are seeing is very common). Yes even if there is other workplace abuse. Yes even when it causes depression or PTSD (but if one stays with such a job long term it ruins the self confidence that is one prerequisite to get another job!). Yes even if one is in therapy because of job stress, sexual harassment or you name it. The job allows the having health insurance, allows the therapy, allows the complaining about the job in therapy to make it through another week.

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:04 am

    > The usual parade of anecdata is on display here in the comments. Mitchell's real data and analysis in the article above still stand.

    Ding ding ding!

    Democrita , November 21, 2017 at 8:13 am

    When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices. Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out for it.

    I would love to see some more about happiness or its lack in retirement–referenced by stay-at-home dad BJ , above.

    I wonder, too, about the impact of *how* one loses one's job. Getting laid off vs fired vs quitting vs involuntary retirement vs voluntary, etc feel very different. Speaking from experience on that, too. I will search on these points and post anything of interest.

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:40 pm

    There are also other things that are degrading about the very process of being unemployed not mentioned here. What about the constant rejection that it can entail? One is unemployed and looking for work, one sends out resumes, many of them will never be answered, that's rejection. Then if one is lucky they get interviews, many will never lead to jobs, yet more rejection. Does the process of constant rejection itself have a negative effect on a human being whether it's looking for jobs or dates or whatever? Isn't it learned helplessness to if one keeps trying for something and keeps failing. Isn't that itself demoralizing entirely independent of any doubtful innate demoralizing quality of leisure.

    freedeomny , November 21, 2017 at 10:23 am

    I am not so sure if I agree with this article. I think it really depends on whether or not you have income to support yourself, hate or love your job, and the amount of outside interests you have, among other things. Almost everyone I know who lives in the NYC area and commutes into the city .doesn't like their job and finds the whole situation "soul-crushing".

    Those that live in Manhattan proper are (feel) a bit better off. I for one stopped working somewhat voluntarily last year. I write somewhat because I began to dislike my job so much that it was interfering with my state of well being, however, if I had been allowed to work remotely I probably would have stuck it out for another couple of years.

    I am close enough to 62 that I can make do before SS kicks in although I have completely changed my lifestyle – i.e. I've given up a materialistic lifestyle and live very frugally.

    Additionally I saved for many years once I decided to embark on this path. I do not find myself depressed at all and the path this year has been very enriching and exciting (and scary) as I reflect on what I want for the future. I'm pretty sure I will end up moving and buying a property so that I can become as self sufficient as possible. Also, I probably will get a job down the line – but if I can't get one because I am deemed too old that will be ok as well. The biggest unknown for me is how much health insurance will cost in the future .

    Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 5:15 pm

    The article made clear that the studies included "unemployed but with income" from government support. It is amazing the degree to which readers ignore that and want to make the findings about "unemployed with no income".

    JBird , November 22, 2017 at 3:30 am

    That's because we Americans all have work=good=worthy=blessed by God while workless=scum=worthless=accursed by God engraved into our collective soul. Our politics, our beliefs, are just overlays to that.

    Even when we agree that the whole situation just crushes people into paste, and for which they have no defense regardless of how hard they work, how carefully they plan, or what they do, that underlay makes use feel that this is their/our fault. Any suggestions that at least some support can be decoupled from work, and that maybe work, and how much you earn, should not determine their value, brings the atavistic fear of being the "undeserving poor," parasites and therefore reprobated scum.

    So we don't hear what you are saying without extra effort because it's bypassing our conscious thoughts.

    Jamie , November 21, 2017 at 10:43 am

    Add my voice to those above who feel that forced labor is the bane of existence, not the wellspring. All this study says to me is that refusing to employ someone in capitalist society does not make them happy. It makes them outcasts.

    So, I say yes to a JG, because anyone who wants work should be offered work. But at the same time, a proper JG is not forced labor. And the only way to ensure that it is not forced labor, is to decouple basic needs from wage slavery.

    Left in Wisconsin , November 21, 2017 at 12:02 pm

    I am critical of those who distinguish between the job and the income. Of course the income is critical to the dignity of the job. For many jobs, it is the primary source of that dignity. The notion that all jobs should provide some intrinsic dignity unrelated to the income, or that people whose dignity is primarily based on the income they earn rather than the work they do are deluded, is to buy in to the propaganda of "passion" being a requirement for your work and to really be blind to what is required to make a society function. Someone has to change the diapers, and wipe the butts of old people. (yes, I've done both.) It doesn't require passion and any sense of satisfaction is gone by about the second day. But if you could make a middle class living doing it, there would be a lot fewer unhappy people in the world.

    It is well known that auto factory jobs were not perceived as good jobs until the UAW was able to make them middle class jobs. The nature of the actual work itself hasn't changed all that much over the years – mostly it is still very repetitive work that requires little specialized training, even if the machine technology is much improved. Indeed, I would guess that more intrinsic satisfaction came from bashing metal than pushing buttons on a CNC machine, and so the jobs may even be less self-actualizing than they used to be.

    The capitalist myth is that the private sector economy generates all the wealth and the public sector is a claim on that wealth. Yet human development proves to us that this is not true – a substantial portion of "human capital" is developed outside the paid economy, government investment in R&D generates productivity growth, etc. And MMT demonstrates that we do not require private sector savings to fund public investment.

    We are still a ways from having the math to demonstrate that government investment in caring and nurturing is always socially productive – first we need productivity numbers that reflect more than just private sector "product." But I think we are moving in that direction. Rather than prioritize a minimum wage JG of make-work, we should first simply pay people good wages to raise their own children or look after their elderly and disabled relatives. The MMT JG, as I understand it, would still require people to leave their kids with others to look after them in order to perform some minimum wage task. That is just dumb.

    jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:31 pm

    Maybe it's dumb, it's certainly dumb in a system like the U.S. where work is brutal and often low paid and paid childcare is not well remunerated either. But caretakers also working seems to work in countries with greater income equality, good job protections, flexible work arrangements, and a decent amount of paid parental leave – yea Denmark, they think their children should be raised by professionals, but also work-life balance is still pretty good.

    Whiskey Bob , November 21, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    My take is that capitalism has made the benefits and malus of having a job so ingrained into culture and so reinforced. Having a job is so closely linked to happiness because it gives you the money needed to pursue it.

    A job affords you the ability to pursue whatever goals you want within a capitalist framework. "Everything" costs money and so having a job gives you the money to pay for those costs and go on to fulfill your pursuit of happiness.

    Analyzing whether people are happy or not under these conditions seem apparent that it is going to lead to results heavily biased towards finding happiness through employment.

    The unemployed are often living off someone else's income and feel like an undeserving parasite. Adults are generally ingrained with the culture that they have to grow up and be independent and be able to provide for a new family that they will start up. Becoming unemployed is like being emasculated and infantile, the opposite of what is expected of adults.

    There's also that not having a job is increasingly being punished especially in the case of America. American wages have stayed either largely static or have worsened, making being unemployed that much more of a burden on family or friends. Unemployment has been demonized by Reaganism and has become systematically punishable for the long term unemployed. If you are unemployed for too long, you start losing government support. This compounds the frantic rush to get out of unemployment once unemployed.

    There is little luxury to enjoy while unemployed. Life while unemployed is a frustrating and often disappointing hell of constant job applications and having many of them lead to nothing. The people providing support often start to become less so over time and become more convinced of laziness or some kind of lack of character or willpower or education or ability or whatever. Any sense of systemic failure is transplanted into a sense of personal failure, especially under neoliberalism.

    I am not so sure about the case of Europe and otherwise. I am sure that the third world often has little or no social safety nets so having work (in exploitative conditions in many cases) is a must for survival.

    Anyways, I wonder about the exact methodologies of these studies and I think they often take the current feelings about unemployment and then attempt to extrapolate talking points for UBI/JG from them. Yes, UBI wouldn't change culture overnight and it would take a very, very long time for people to let down their guard and adjust if UBI is to be implemented in a manner that would warrant trust. This article seems to understand the potential for that, but decides against it being a significant factor due to the studies emphasizing the malus of unemployment.

    I wonder how different the results would be if there were studies that asked people how they would feel if they were unemployed under a UBI system versus the current system. I know a good number of young people (mostly under 30) who would love to drop out and just play video games all day. Though the significance of such a drastic demographic shift would probably lead to great political consequences. It would probably prove the anti-UBI crowd right in that under a capitalist framework, the capitalists and the employed wouldn't tolerate the unemployed and would seek to turn them into an underclass.

    Personally I think a combination of UBI and JG should be pursued. JG would work better within the current capitalist framework. I don't think it is without its pitfalls due to similar possible issues (with the similar policy of full employment) either under Keynesianism (e.g. Milton Friedman sees it as inefficient) or in the USSR (e.g. bullshit jobs). There is the possibility of UBI having benefits (not having the unemployed be a burden but a subsidized contributer to the economy) so I personally don't think it should be fully disregarded until it is understood better. I would like it if there were better scientific studies to expand upon the implications of UBI and better measure if it would work or not. The upcoming studies testing an actual UBI system should help to end the debates once and for all.

    redleg , November 21, 2017 at 2:28 pm

    My $0.02: I have a creative pursuit (no money) and a engineering/physical science technical career (income!). I am proficient in and passionate about both. Over the last few years, the technical career became tenuous due to consolidation of regional consulting firms (endemic to this era)- wages flat to declining, higher work stress, less time off, conversation to contact employment, etc.- which has resulted in two layoffs.

    During the time of tenuous employment, my art took on a darker tone. During unemployment the art stopped altogether.

    I'm recently re-employed in a field that I'm not proficient. Both the peter principle and imposter syndrome apply. My art has resumed, but the topics are singular about despair and work, to the point that I feel like I'm constantly reworking the same one piece over and over again. And the quality has plummeted too.

    In some fields (e.g. engineering), being a wage slave is the only realistic option due to the dominance of a small number of large firms. The big players crowd out independents and free lancers, while pressuring their own employees through just-high-enough wages and limiting time off. Engineering services is a relationship- based field, and the big boys (and they are nearly all boys) have vastly bigger networks to draw work from than a small firm unless that small firm has a big contact to feed them work (until they get gobbled up). The big firms also have more areas of expertise which limits how useful a boutique firm is to a client pool, except under very narrow circumstances. And if you are an introvert like most engineering people, there's no way to compete with big firms and their marketing staff to expand a network enough to compete.

    In that way, consulting is a lot like art. To make a living at it you need either contacts or a sponsor. Or an inheritance.

    ChrisPacific , November 21, 2017 at 5:30 pm

    I would be interested to know what the definition of unemployment was for the purpose of this study (I couldn't find it in the supplied links). If it's simply "people who don't have a job," for example, then it would include the likes of the idle rich, retirees, wards of the state, and so on. Binary statements like this one do make it sound like the broad definition is the one in use:

    When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed.

    The conclusion seems at odds with results I've seen for some of those groups – for example, I thought it was fairly well accepted that retirees who are supported by a government plan that is sufficient for them to live on were generally at least as happy as they had been during their working life.

    If, on the other hand, the study uses a narrow definition (e.g. people who are of working age, want a job or need one to support themselves financially, but can't find one) then the conclusion seems a lot more reasonable. But that's a heavily loaded definition in economic and cultural terms. In that case, the conclusion (people are happier if they have a job) only holds true in the current prevailing model of society. It doesn't rule out the possibility of structuring society or the economy differently in such a way that people can be non-working and happy. The existence of one such population already (retirees) strongly suggests that outcomes like this are possible. A UBI would be an example of just such a restructuring of society, and therefore I don't think that this study and its result are necessarily a valid argument against it.

    nihil obstet , November 21, 2017 at 6:07 pm

    Which makes a person happier -- being considered worthless by one's society or valuable? How many studies do we need to answer that question? Apparently, a lot, because studies like this one keep on going. The underlying assumption is that jobs make one valuable. So if you don't have a job you're worthless. Now, who's happier on the whole, people with jobs or the unemployed? That's surely good for a few more studies. Did you know that members of socially devalued groups (minorities, non-heteros, and the like) have higher rates of dysfunction, rather like the unemployed? Hmm, I wonder if there's maybe a similar principle at work. And my solution is not to turn all the people of color white nor to change all the women to men nor to "cure" gays. Well, maybe a few more conclusive studies of this kind will convince me that we must all be the same, toeing the line for those whom it has pleased God to dictate our values to us.

    I am convinced that we shouldn't outlaw jobs, because I believe the tons of stories about happy people in their jobs However, I also believe we shouldn't force everyone into jobs, because I know tons of stories about happy people without jobs. You know, the stories that the JG people explain away: parents caring for their children (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a job!"), volunteers working on local planning issues (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a job, too. In fact, we'll make everything worth doing a job. The important thing is to be able to force people to work schedules and bosses, because otherwise, they'll all lie around doing nothing and be miserable"), the retired (JG -- "that's not really the same, but they'd be better off staying in a job"). And this is all before we get to those who can't really hold a job because of disability or geography or other responsibilities.

    I support the JG over the current situation, but as to what we should be working for, the more I read the JG arguments, the more paternalistic and just plain narrow minded judgmental they seem.

    Summer , November 21, 2017 at 6:52 pm

    If someone else gives you a sense of purpose and takes it away what was the purpose?

    Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 1:24 am

    Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when you think about it, that the working class is about work .

    * To put this another way, anybody who has really suffered the crawling inwardness of anxiety, in the clinical sense, knows that it affects every aspect of one's being. Anxiety is not something deplorables deploy as cover for less than creditable motives.

    [Nov 04, 2017] No Dress Code AHAHAHAHAHA by Lindsay Hill

    Nov 04, 2017 | lkhill.com

    [Oct 31, 2017] In many companies its questionable whether the process can even be ever understood well, unless you have significant in-company knowledge, which makes outsourcing a key risk

    Notable quotes:
    "... Personnel turnover in Indian firms is sky high. As soon as software engineers finish taking part in a project, they jot the reference on their CV, and rush to find another project, in a different area, to extend their skill set, beef up their CV and improve their chances of a higher salary in the IT market. ..."
    "... The consequence is that Indian IT firms in charge of the outsourced projects/products just cannot rely upon the implicit knowledge within the heads of their employees. In a sense, they cannot afford to have "key personnel", experienced people who know important, undocumented aspects of a piece of software and can be queried to clear up things -- all employees must be interchangeable. Hence the strict reliance on well-documented processes. ..."
    "... Outsourcing your core competencies or your competitive advantage -- that's the real beauty of outsourcing! What could go wrong? ..."

    Oct 30, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com ,

    Jesper , , October 30, 2017 at 7:40 am

    I've seen a couple of BPOs, Business Process Outsourcing deals.

    The key for success of BPO in the short term is to define the process -- document every step of the process of having something done and then introduce control-functions to ensure that the process is being followed. Possibly also develop some tools in supporting the process.

    If the process is understood and documented well -- so well that rare/expensive skill is no longer needed to follow the process -- then it is possible to look for the lowest possible cost employee to follow the process.

    As far as I can tell the most common mistake in BPO deals is that the process being outsourced isn't understood well. The documentation tends to be extensive but if the understanding is lacking then the process might be providing different results than wished for. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are introduced and then the gaming of the KPIs is begun .
    Even if the initial process was understood well and documented well then the next problem is that due to distance (provider to client) there might be difficulties in adapting the process to changing circumstances.

    And yes, there are similarities in BPOs and automation. Understanding of the process is key, without understanding of the process then the end result is usually bad. The key to learning and understanding is often humility and humility is often (in my experience) lacking in executives, senior management and project managers involved in BPO deals and/or efficiency projects.

    Automation in the Too Big bank Nordea:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-26/nordea-to-cut-at-least-6-000-jobs-in-fight-to-stay-competitive
    Time will tell if it is a success for Nordea and if other big banks will follow suit and cut 13% of their workforce.

    vlade , , October 30, 2017 at 8:35 am

    See, you put it right on "the process is not understood well". My point is, in many companies it's questionable whether the process can even be ever understood well, unless you have significant in-company knowledge, which makes outsourcing a key risk, even in absence of anything else.

    ejf , , October 30, 2017 at 9:54 am

    Yup,you got it -- Business Process Outsourcing. I've seen the ill-understood processes ruined when, e.g., software development was transferred to India. I saw this starting in 2000 up til the present day. Yankee management LOVED the idea of cheap labor, but never got back the software it originally intended and designed.

    It was the culture: Yankees are software cowboys -- able to change project as needed; Indians loved the process of development. The Indians sounded good but never go the job done.

    visitor , , October 30, 2017 at 11:02 am

    In the 1990s, I was quite impressed that the first company to reach a CMM level 5 was from India (a subsidiary from IBM, if I remember correctly) -- and thereafter seeing Indian software firms achieving ISO 9000/CMM compliance before large Western corporations.

    Later, I worked in several projects that were partly outsourced/externalized to India (the usual suspects like HCL or Wipro), and I understood. Personnel turnover in Indian firms is sky high. As soon as software engineers finish taking part in a project, they jot the reference on their CV, and rush to find another project, in a different area, to extend their skill set, beef up their CV and improve their chances of a higher salary in the IT market.

    Remaining in one domain area, with one set of technologies, is not considered a good thing for advancement in the Indian IT market, or when trying to get directly hired by a Western firm. They often have to support an extended family that paid for their computer science studies, so fast career moves are really important for them.

    The consequence is that Indian IT firms in charge of the outsourced projects/products just cannot rely upon the implicit knowledge within the heads of their employees. In a sense, they cannot afford to have "key personnel", experienced people who know important, undocumented aspects of a piece of software and can be queried to clear up things -- all employees must be interchangeable. Hence the strict reliance on well-documented processes.

    Jesper , , October 30, 2017 at 1:46 pm

    all employees must be interchangeable

    To expand on that I'd say that interchangeable employees have limited or no bargaining power leading to it being easier to keep salaries low. What is left for the interchangeable employee to do to increase earnings? Yep, change jobs leading to more focus on making employees interchangeable .
    The game (war) between the company and its employees escalates. Power is everything and all CEOs know that you don't get paid what you're worth -- you're paid what you negotiate. Maintaining power is worth the cost of churn.

    d , , October 30, 2017 at 3:12 pm

    dont we have some of the all employees must be interchangeable in the US too?

    Thuto , , October 30, 2017 at 8:18 am

    Pity the "build or buy" decision calculus has been perverted beyond what the firm needs as inputs into its final market ready products, but is increasingly being used as a defensive move by big companies to kill off competition from smaller firms via knock off products or "acqui-hiring" of talent.

    Thuto , , October 30, 2017 at 8:25 am

    Aqui-hiring aka acquiring the smaller firm, pretending to integrate its product into the big company's product line, starving the product of resources to slowly kill it off, then pulling the plug citing "dissapointing sales and take up in the market" to protect big company's market share

    Thuto , , October 30, 2017 at 8:41 am

    Then redeploying the acqui-hired "talent" (I.e. founders of the acquired firm) to work on the next generation of big company's products (except now they do so in a bureaucratic, red tape laden maze of "corporate innovation management" processes).

    Dan , , October 30, 2017 at 10:13 am

    Outsourcing your core competencies or your competitive advantage -- that's the real beauty of outsourcing! What could go wrong?

    WobblyTelomeres , , October 30, 2017 at 11:25 am

    I thought one would outsource the core competitive disadvantages. That is, a smaller firm would outsource (buy) when they could not competitively create a subassembly/subcomponent because the sourcing firm had successfully achieved superior economies of scale (EoS) . This is why multiple automobile manufacturers purchase their subcomponents (say, coils or sparkplugs or bearings) from a supplier instead of manufacturing them in-house as the supplier achieves superior EoS by supplying the entire industry.

    Even commenter Larry's above example ("offload liability risk with our larger insurance policy") is an EoS advantage/disadvantage, no?

    Problems occur when one side of the dance is dominated by one or two very large players (think WalMart or Takata) or political will (defined here as $) is involved.

    OTOH, I'm prolly just extremely naive.

    sgt_doom , , October 30, 2017 at 2:59 pm

    Naïve? No, you sound unholy ignorant, chum!

    When Corporate America started offshoring R&D, scientist jobs, engineering jobs, programming jobs, medical jobs, legal jobs, etc., etc., etc. beginning in the late 1970s, but exploding under Jack Welch at GE in 1984-1985 [and I was offered a position helping in the process -- so nobody dare contradict me] it simply exacerbates those offshored manufacturing jobs, for without them in the past, too many American inventors would never have come to fruition -- this of course requires some knowledge of the history of technology.

    The one absolute in human nature and human commerce: the greater the inequality, the lower the innovation -- IN EVERYTHING, IN EVERY AREA!

    In other words, the greatest innovation in America (and everywhere else throughout history) took place when this nation was at its lowest in inequality indices and closest to socialism: the 1950s to 1960s and early 1970s -- and almost everything has simply been incremental since then.

    As Leonardo da Vinci once remarked:

    " Realize that everything connects to everything else. "

    WobblyTelomeres , , October 30, 2017 at 7:44 pm

    In other words, the greatest innovation in America (and everywhere else throughout history) took place when this nation was at its lowest in inequality indices and closest to socialism: the 1950s to 1960s and early 1970s

    I disagree with this statement and would ask you to provide specific references for such a sweeping claim.

    and almost everything has simply been incremental since then.

    And would argue, with diagrams on a chalkboard if necessary, that all human knowledge is incremental. At least, that which requires more than simple immediate sensory perception.

    sgt_doom , , October 30, 2017 at 2:54 pm

    Thanks, Dan! Most of the comments here today are simply beneath commenting on, therefore your most sarcastic and cogent comments sums it up!

    I should be flabbergasted by them, but I have frankly given up!

    Recommended Reading (to the clueless, not Dan!):

    Sold Out by Michelle Malkin Outsourcing America by Ron Hira Take This Job and Ship It by Byron Dorgan

    [Oct 27, 2017] Freelancing Isn't Feminist -- It's Badly Negotiated Wage Labor for $5 an Hour

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Sophie Linden, an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA. Originally published at Alternet ..."
    "... HoneyBook's research is just one insight into wage gaps. As a largely deregulated economy with unparalleled growth, it is important to make visible the economic and social divides embedded in the independent workforce. We can start by debunking the claim that freelancing is a more equitable field to work in, and with it, the idea that any economy is without prejudice. ..."
    "... I would also argue that so called 'regular' employment is trending towards a "freelance" structure. Job tenures are supposedly shrinking and often going away completely. Now, that salaryman window tribe dweller is often outside of that window, washing it on a piecework basis, with no safety line. The underlying rationale for the rise of the 'freelance' work structure is to first crapify the freelance 'experience,' with lower wages a must, and then, second, extend the 'neo-crapified' work rules into the previously "safe" 'regular' work world. ..."
    "... Freelancers driving the price of their labor down to $5 per hour because they have to compete against all the other people who can't find steady work is not a feminist issue– its a class issue. And that is no less true if males make $2 more per hour because of sexual discrimination. The real enemy is the billionaire who owns the corporation, the politicians, and the enforcers that grind workers down into virtual servitude. ..."
    "... When a fat pig movie director pushes you down on the "casting couch" there has always been the choice to reach for the Mace or the revolver in the purse. Submitting is prostitution, choice is rejecting greed for riches and fame and joining with others to throw the boot off your neck. ..."
    "... When they turn 50, if they survive that long, they'll be replaced by younger cheaper labor. Nothing really changes, except the words we use to describe our sad condition and the lower and lower age at which we're discarded. ..."
    "... Freelancing is much like entrepreneurship in that it has been way oversold to the public. Most people don't do well either as freelancers or as entrepreneurs and would likely be better off as normal employees. The emphasis on "alternative" work arrangements has taken public attention away from improving the lot of traditional employees and contributes to the devaluation of ordinary workers by suggesting that they are lazy or stupid because they didn't become freelancers or gigsters or entrepreneurs of some sort. ..."
    Oct 27, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Yves here. Holey moley. One of the good things about working for fancy firms early in my professional life was I saw how much they charged, even when the work was often pedestrian or even dubious. So I was never shy about setting a healthy price for my time. But regardless, how could anyone bid under the minimum wage?

    The only time I could see that making any kind of sense would be if you were breaking into a new area and would have reason to expect the client would give you a very valuable reference, or better yet, referrals, if they liked what you did. But my experience has always been that clients who go cheap never appreciate the work done for them.

    By Sophie Linden, an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA. Originally published at Alternet

    Surround yourself with positivity, exploit all marketing outlets, choose a specialized skill -- this is the repetitive wisdom passed on to every budding creative entrepreneur. Less often do we hear advice like, "increase the price of an invoice," or "make it non-negotiable," especially as it relates to the gendered wages within self-employment.

    The freelance market is arguably trending across industries, with some figureheads going so far as to say " freelance is feminist ," mainly because women make up a slight majority. Unfortunately, before feminists get too heady on the issue, we need to look at whether the freelance market is any more "freeing" to the women in it, or if it is liberating any of its entrepreneurial workforce. Right now, it's just another deregulated economy in which workers are underpaid and largely invisible.

    A recent study published by HoneyBook gives some visibility to the subject, showing that women in the "creative economy" are actually paid significantly less than their male counterparts, sometimes taking in an average of $5 an hour .

    There are many reasons for concern about this wage discrepancy. Not only because HoneyBook found that 63% of men and women believed they were earning equal pay, but also because of the growing workforce within the world of freelance, where there are already 57.3 million freelancers in the U.S .

    Industry data from UpWork and the Freelance Labor Union suggests that freelancers will be the majority by 2027, growing three times faster than the U.S. workforce overall, and contributing over $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy annually. While scenes of cramped coffee shops may be an indicator of this burgeoning workforce, these numbers are still astounding. Without sites like UpWork and HoneyBook, they would also be hard to track.

    HoneyBook is the self-employed's business management tool, hosting clients similar to those in the aforementioned study. Labeled under the guise of "creative entrepreneurs," they are working professionals navigating gigs in industries like photography, graphic design and writing. With its niche data, the site analyzed over 200,000 client invoices from October 2016-2017 to look at wage discrepancy, finding that on average women made 32% less than their male competitors . This gap is even larger than the national average, where women earn 24% less than men nationally , 76 cents to the dollar. Troubling news for the largest, opportunist workforce around: that is, women in freelance.

    In 2015, women made up 53% of the freelance market . This slight dominance encouraged Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelance Labor Union, to preemptively call freelancing "feminist." Horowitz argued that the lifestyle of a freelancer was more palatable to the roles women desired, whether that was co-careers or gendered domestic labor. She also argued that freelance work allowed women to avoid male privilege in the workplace, notably the boys club at board meetings .

    While some of Horowitz's arguments hold value, we can clearly see how freelance work is still an unequal field, at least if pay is any measure of equality among genders. Women who do enter the field already consider themselves to have less bargaining power . Meanwhile, the majority of invoices in HoneyBook's study quoted a non-negotiable price, meaning women are more likely to charge less for the job. Clearly, the reasons for the gender pay gap are embedded and multi-layered. Nevertheless, the study shows that freelance is not entirely the liberated, equal rights, equal pay landscape Horowitz claims it to be.

    Asked why they enter the market, freelancers often cite the flexibility of the work in a number of terms: the ability to be their own boss, as well as the ability to choose their projects and work location. In essence, men and women draw upon idealistic dreams of escaping workplace power-dynamics to find economic independence in their pajamas -- a depiction that has been repeatedly critiqued . Freelancers still enter a labor force that has few congressional protections and is arguably as successful as the social networks you were economically born into. Essentially it is prey to the same laissez-faire ideals that have manipulated structural inequity across generations of workers in the U.S. It just imagines itself differently -- now under the guise of "creative" entrepreneurship.

    HoneyBook's research is just one insight into wage gaps. As a largely deregulated economy with unparalleled growth, it is important to make visible the economic and social divides embedded in the independent workforce. We can start by debunking the claim that freelancing is a more equitable field to work in, and with it, the idea that any economy is without prejudice.

    ambrit , October 27, 2017 at 8:04 am

    I would also argue that so called 'regular' employment is trending towards a "freelance" structure. Job tenures are supposedly shrinking and often going away completely. Now, that salaryman window tribe dweller is often outside of that window, washing it on a piecework basis, with no safety line.
    The underlying rationale for the rise of the 'freelance' work structure is to first crapify the freelance 'experience,' with lower wages a must, and then, second, extend the 'neo-crapified' work rules into the previously "safe" 'regular' work world.

    The only rational response to managements' claim that "we can get someone to replace you if you do not agree to our demands," is to simply walk away from the "golden opportunity." Sooner or later, all exploitative systems fall apart due to their own internal contradictions. It can be painful, but: No pain (economic micro-dislocation,) no gain (guillotines in Town Square.)

    On the feminism front, and please remember that this is an older man writing, I would find any situation where the individual allows outside forces to define said individuals self definition, as the opposite of "liberating." Except in rare cases, what else is 'freelancing' but a "race to the bottom?" If one is to accept the 'freelancing' ethos as presently presented, one may as well embrace the 'contemplative life' and accept fasting and privation as a path to communion with the godhead.

    Crazy Horse , October 27, 2017 at 5:22 pm

    Freelancers driving the price of their labor down to $5 per hour because they have to compete against all the other people who can't find steady work is not a feminist issue– its a class issue. And that is no less true if males make $2 more per hour because of sexual discrimination. The real enemy is the billionaire who owns the corporation, the politicians, and the enforcers that grind workers down into virtual servitude.

    There is always choice. There are always drugs to be transported and sold, money to be laundered, or accounting fraud to be fabricated. There is always choice even if the consequences are severe. It's long been known that the fastest (and only) way for a woman to become a movie star is on her back.

    When a fat pig movie director pushes you down on the "casting couch" there has always been the choice to reach for the Mace or the revolver in the purse. Submitting is prostitution, choice is rejecting greed for riches and fame and joining with others to throw the boot off your neck.

    Arizona Slim , October 27, 2017 at 8:57 am

    There is no organization called the Freelance Labor Union. Horowitz's organization is called the Freelancers Union and it is little more than a buyers club. It has yet to call a strike or organize a picket line. Nor does it call out the companies that exploit freelancers.

    Robert Murphy , October 27, 2017 at 9:14 am

    $583,283.25 – using the annuity formula from Stewart's 4th edition precalc book (it is surely the same formula in all his books ) & taking that 5 bucks an hour TIMES 2080 hours of pay in a year (40*52) = amount to save every year, for 30 years, at 4% interest.

    Now, realistically, whoever underpaid you just bought a few more trinkets for today's mansion, jet, yacht or mistress but you could have saved that money!

    rmm.

    agkaiser , October 27, 2017 at 9:33 am

    When they turn 50, if they survive that long, they'll be replaced by younger cheaper labor. Nothing really changes, except the words we use to describe our sad condition and the lower and lower age at which we're discarded.

    Arizona Slim , October 27, 2017 at 11:56 am

    Which is why I summarize fifty-plus freelancing this way: Too old to get a job and too young and broke to retire.

    Livius Drusus , October 27, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Freelancing is much like entrepreneurship in that it has been way oversold to the public. Most people don't do well either as freelancers or as entrepreneurs and would likely be better off as normal employees. The emphasis on "alternative" work arrangements has taken public attention away from improving the lot of traditional employees and contributes to the devaluation of ordinary workers by suggesting that they are lazy or stupid because they didn't become freelancers or gigsters or entrepreneurs of some sort.

    Many young people seem to have fallen into the trap of putting too much emphasis on work flexibility over a steady paycheck. These kinds of alternative work arrangements might be fun and cool when you are in your 20s but not so much after 30 and especially if you want to start a family and need a steady and reliable source of income.

    DJG , October 27, 2017 at 10:38 am

    I was a free lance in publishing for about twenty-five years. The tell here is the mention of pajamas: Are we still in the world of people who want to work in their pajamas? One thing I learned right away is that you have to get up each morning, dress like an adult, schedule the number of billable hours that you want to charge for, and send in invoices regularly. The successful free lances, male and female, did so. The people who started work at three in the afternoon, after cocoa with marshmallows all day, didn't succeed.

    I suspect that hourly charges among free lances are falling: That is part of our friend "right to work," which keeps wages down. It is also part of the massive amount of outsourcing going on. In publishing, responsibilities that always were kept in house and should remain in house are being outsourced.

    I'll also note that one of the reasons that I became a free lance, besides knowing what I could charge for my work, is that many offices are toxic environments socially and politically. There is a lot of stress on conformity. There is no concern for original thinking. Inventing the wheel is considered original.

    And as someone who has worked in publishing for many years and knows many talented and powerful women in publishing, I left my last job shortly after the head of the division introduced the new editor in chief for books as a woman. That's right. The first words: M.K. is a woman.

    M.K. turned out to be a nonentity who exploited the organization for personal ends. She was a great absentee manager! And I no longer had a desire to be around the endless re-runs of resentments of fellow employees.

    Arizona Slim , October 27, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    DJG, you're on to something.

    I can remember meeting freelancers in the 1980s and 1990s. The good ones were GOOD. As in, they had waiting lists -- you had to book them a couple of months in advance. And they charged accordingly.

    These days, that seldom happens. Why? Because there are too many people who can't find jobs, or they only get hired for part-time work, and they have to fill the rest of their time. Such trends do not make for increasing hourly rates.

    DJG , October 27, 2017 at 12:34 pm

    Arizona Slim: My dance card was always filled. But as you mention above, after age 50, I kept thinking, Am I a daring American entrepreneur and sole proprietor, or am I just terminally unemployed (and unemployable)?

    Ned , October 27, 2017 at 10:42 am

    OK, what's to stop women from charging higher rates? Lower self esteem? Are their lower wages for each hour worked? Or, do they work fewer hours?

    "they are working professionals navigating gigs in industries like photography, graphic design and writing ." Clean, no lifting, paid to create gigs where you don't get your hands dirty, or put your body in perilous exhausting situations.

    If women want to earn money, learn to be a plumber. Yes, you will get a face full of shit occasionally, will bleed, get burned and will earn $75 an hour, often in cash.

    There's a shortage of linepersons to install power lines. Up on that lift bucket, 80 feet in the air, leaning out and ratcheting in 10,000 volt live wires covered with a rubber shock cloth, you can make astounding amounts of money. Why aren't more women up there? Companies go out of their way to hire women.

    No mention of the free labor slave pit called "internships." How many of us have gone through that
    voluntary servitude?

    Arizona Slim , October 27, 2017 at 12:01 pm

    I have training in the trades and have worked as a bike mechanic. On the positive side, there's a pride of workmanship that you do not get from office work or from freelancing while sitting at a computer. And there's the camaraderie. I never experienced anything like it -- except in that hot, greasy, dirty bike shop.

    On the negative side, you can get too old and broken down to do the work. OTOH, you can be a sit-down freelancer until you die.

    FluffytheObeseCat , October 27, 2017 at 12:27 pm

    What stops women from negotiating male-equivalent wages varies. Timidity and poor negotiating skills is part of it. As Yves said above, it helps immensely to have been exposed to the billing practices of real winners in this game. And they are disproportionately men, specifically, men who operate like real machers.

    The biggest factor is IMO, information deficit. Professional class people throughout many industries are idiots when it comes to freely discussing remuneration with their fellow wage slaves. Everyone acts as though their compensation package were as private and faintly dirty as .. another package.

    It's idiotic. The vast majority of us would be better off if we blurted it out over lunch ever few months. And walking away a few tifmes is key. It's good for you. Likewise, if you do need to take a poorly paid gig some times, treat it as slightly less than full time. Keep lining up others. Create the bare minimum of deliverables as swiftly as you can, and get out. Those who underpay you do not deserve your maximum effort, and they're invariably shitty references, so do not anguish over doing only the job they've paid for.

    Just don't stiff or cheat anyone lower down the line if you take an underpaid gig. I watched a guy do that recently on a contract job that put him into contact with me, an under-remunerated grad student. He didn't cheat me, he cheated the agency I worked for of some small use fee. Right in front of me. His consulting firm is not one I'll be looking to work for any time soon.

    Also, always write a late charge fee in your contract. 120 day "billing cycles" are abusive garbage in the age of computers. After thirty days, the price goes up.

    Women who let themselves get stiffed all the time are a real danger to the interests of the guys in their line of work, not just themselves. I wish more guys could see that.

    DJG , October 27, 2017 at 12:39 pm

    Fluffy: Yes. Know rates, and have a group of friendly free lances who will tell you what they are being offered these days. And what hourly they will turn down.

    Firing clients is a necessity. I learned that from a sole proprietor who I worked for in a small typesetting / editorial / graphic design shop. The customer isn't always right. There are psychic benefits to firing a bad customer. And word sort-a gets around that there are people who / companies that you refuse to take work from.

    cnchal , October 27, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    . . . Why aren't more women up there?

    Pajamas?

    I went through an apprenticeship. It was the only time I was trapped by an employer.

    D , October 27, 2017 at 1:51 pm

    I suspect it's utter mythology that women do not attempt to attain far better paying manual labor jobs than they do.

    Speaking of high voltage wires, I know a woman who was in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union (Brotherhood says it all!). She worked on large commercial construction, such as the NUMI Plant (now Tesla). While she endured it through to her retirement she had a horridly abusive (and life threatening on one occasion) go of it. Sexual harassment (made worse by the fact that she had an hourglass figure), an actual physical threat, knife included, while being locked in a room with someone she had already reported as having harassed her, but was forced to work with him anyway; utter resentment of women on the job; and stunning racism (the black males in that Brotherhood , did not fare much better as to the racism) in the tolerant Bay Area.

    As to plumbing, the bay area has current and frequent plumbing school ads on TV which feature no women at all, and a real bro-bro atmosphere which all women who've been sexually harassed are familiar with. At one point in my life, despite having a licensed profession, I offered to apprentice to a plumber who just laughed at me (at the time, I was able to do twenty chin-ups).

    And, my experience (pre putting myself through college to attain a livable wage), trying to get a job doing manual labor that actually paid a decent wage was utterly unsuccessful. I did have a nursery job, and a very brief job at a thoroughbred stable (the owner was a horrid human being so I quit). At both of those jobs, the only males were illegal immigrants from Mexico, and the wages in both jobs were under regular minimum wage ag wages.

    Further, to imply that 'sit' down jobs don't have their fair share of health damage, is like saying that emotional abuse does not exist, and is not deadly when one's spirit is killed in a situation where the other wields far more economic and social power.

    Many, unfortunately too many woman included, still feel that a white or non-black male will do a better job, no matter what that job is. For instance (and I don't know what it's like now) I recollect while waitressing that only males were offered high end, far better tipping, jobs in pricier restaurants. At the time, I never saw a female waitress in a high end restaurant.

    [Oct 17, 2017] Use Spare Older Workers to Overcome 'Labour Shortages' naked capitalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Leith van Onselen. Originally published at MacroBusiness ..."
    "... "remains low by historical standards" ..."
    "... There's a myth that innovation comes from the 20 something in their basement, but that's just not the case. ..."
    Oct 17, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Yves here. On the one hand, as someone who is getting to be pretty long in tooth, I'm not sure about calling un and under-employed older workers "spare". But when the alternative is being thrown on the trash heap, maybe that isn't so unflattering.

    Even though this analysis is from Australia, most of if not all of its finding would almost certainly prove out in the US. However, there is a whole 'nother set of issues here. Australia is 85% urban, with most of the population living in or near four large cities. So its labor mobility issues are less pronounced than here. Moreover, a lot of the whinging in the US about worker shortages, as even readers of the Wall Street Journal regularly point out in its comment section is:

    1. Not being willing to pay enough to skilled workers, which includes not being willing to pay them to relocate

    2. Not being willing to train less skilled workers, as companies once did as a matter of course

    By Leith van Onselen. Originally published at MacroBusiness

    A few weeks back, the Benevolent Society released a report which found that age-related discrimination is particularly rife in the workplace, with over a quarter (29%) of survey respondents stating they had been turned down for a job because of their old age, whereas 14% claimed they had been denied a promotion because of their old age.

    Today, the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) has warned that Australia is facing a pension crisis unless employers stop their "discrimination" against older workers. From The ABC :

    [RAI] has warned the Federal Government's pension bill would rise from $45 billion to $51 billion within three years, unless efforts were made to help more mature workers gain employment, particularly in regional communities.

    Chief executive Jack Archer said continued unemployment of people older than 55 would cut economic growth and put a greater strain on public resources.

    "We hear that there is a lot of people who would like to work, who would love to stay in the workforce either part-time or full-time even though they're in their late 50s, 60s and even into their 70s," he said.

    "But we're not doing a very good job of giving them the training, giving them the incentives around the pension, and working with employers to stop the discrimination around employing older workers"

    "It basically means you've got a lot of talent on the bench, a lot of people who could be involved and contributing who are sitting around homes and wishing they were doing something else," he said

    Mr Archer said as the population aged the workforce shrank, and that risked future economic growth.

    But he said that could be reversed provided employers embraced an older workforce

    "[When] those people are earning [an income], their pension bills will either disappear or be much lower and the government will get a benefit from that."

    For years the growth lobby and the government has told us that Australia needs to run high levels of immigration in order to alleviate so-called 'skills shortages' and to mitigate an ageing population. This has come despite the Department of Employment showing that Australia's skills shortage "remains low by historical standards" and Australia's labour underutilisation rate tracking at high levels:

    Economic models are often cited as proof that a strong immigration program is 'good' for the economy because they show that real GDP per capita is moderately increased via immigration, based on several dubious assumptions.

    The most dubious of these assumptions is that population ageing will necessarily result in fewer people working, which will subtract from per capita GDP (due to the ratio of workers to dependents falling).

    Leaving aside the fact that the assumed benefit to GDP per capita from immigration is only transitory, since migrants also age (thereby requiring an ever-bigger immigration intake to keep the population age profile from rising), it is just as likely that age-specific workforce participation will respond to labour demand, resulting in fewer people being unemployed. This is exactly what has transpired in Japan where an ageing population has driven the unemployment rate down to only 2.8% – the lowest level since the early-1990s:

    The ABS last month revealed that more Australians are working past traditional retirement age, thereby mitigating concerns that population ageing will necessarily reduce the employment-to-population ratio:

    Clearly, however, there is much further scope to boost workforce participation among older workers.

    Rather than relying on mass immigration to fill phantom 'labour shortages' – in turn displacing both young and older workers alike – the more sensible policy option is to moderate immigration and instead better utilise the existing workforce as well as use automation to overcome any loss of workers as the population ages – as has been utilised in Japan.

    It's worth once again highlighting that economists at MIT recently found that there is absolutely no relationship between population ageing and economic decline. To the contrary, population ageing seems to have been associated with improvements in GDP per capita, thanks to increased automation:

    If anything, countries experiencing more rapid aging have grown more in recent decades we show that since the early 1990s or 2000s, the periods commonly viewed as the beginning of the adverse effects of aging in much of the advanced world, there is no negative association between aging and lower GDP per capita on the contrary, the relationship is significantly positive in many specifications.

    The last thing that Australia should be doing is running a mass immigration program which, as noted many times by the Productivity Commission cannot provide a long-term solution to ageing, and places increasing strains on infrastructure, housing and the natural environment.

    The sustainable 'solution' to population ageing is to better utilise the existing workforce, where significant spare capacity exists.

    Enquiring Mind , October 17, 2017 at 10:26 am

    At what point might an impatient constituency demand greater accountability by its elected representatives? In the business world, the post-2000 accounting scandals like Enron resulted in legislation to make company execs sign off on financial statements under threat of harsh personal penalties for misrepresentation. If legislators were forced by constituents to enact similar legislation about their own actions, the transparency could be very enlightening and a type of risk reduction due to acknowledgement of material factors. Imagine seeing in print the real reasons for votes, the funding sources behind those votes and prospect of jail time for misrepresentation about what is just their damn job. Call it Truth-In-Legislating, similar to the prior Truth-In-Lending act.

    Vatch , October 17, 2017 at 11:29 am

    It's a nice idea, but I don't think that very many executives have been penalized under the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Jamie Dimon certainly wasn't penalized for the actions of the London Whale. I guess we'll see what happens in the near future to the executives of Wells Fargo. I suspect that a Truth-In-Legislating law would be filled with loopholes or would be hampered by enforcement failures, like current Congressional ethics rules and the Sarbanes Oxley Act.

    sgt_doom , October 17, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    At what point might an impatient constituency demand greater accountability by its elected representatives?

    At that point when they start shooting them (as they did in Russian in the very early 1900s, or lop their heads off, as they once did in France).

    Personally, I'll never work for any Ameritard corporation ever again, as real innovation is not allowed, and the vast majority are all about financialization in some form or other!

    My work life the past thirty years became worse and worse and worse, in direct relation to the majority of others, and my last jobs were beyond commenting up.

    My very last position, which was in no manner related to my experience, education, skill set and talents -- like too many other American workers -- ended with a most tortuous layoff: the private equity firm which was owner in a failed "pump and dump" brought a "toxic work environment specialist" whose job was to advise the sleazoid senior executives (and by that time I was probably one of only four actual employee workers there, they had hired a whole bunch of executives, though) on how to create a negative work environment to convince us to leave instead of merely laying us off (worked for two, but not the last lady there I myself).

    The American workplace sucks big time as evidenced by their refusal to raise wages while forever complaining about their inability to find skilled employees -- they are all criminals today!

    RUKidding , October 17, 2017 at 10:55 am

    Interesting article and thanks.

    I lived and worked in Australia in the late '70s and early '80s. Times were different. Back then, the government jobs came with mandatory retirement. I believe (but could be wrong) that it was at 63, but you could request staying until 65 (required approval). After that, one could continue working in the private sector, if you could find a job.

    The population was much less than it is now. I believe the idea was to make room for the younger generation coming up. Back then, government workers, as well as many private sector workers, had defined benefit pension plans. So retiring younger typically worked out ok.

    I had one friend who continued working until about 70 because she wanted to; liked her job; and wasn't interested in retiring. However, I knew far more people who were eager to stop at 63. But back then, it appeared to me that they had the financial means to do so without much worry.

    Things have changed since then. More of my friends are putting off retirement bc they need the money now. Plus defined benefit pension plans have mostly been dispensed with and replaced by, I believe (I'm not totally clear on this), the Aussie version of a 401 (k) (someone can correct me if I'm wrong).

    What the article proposes makes sense. Of course here in the USA, older workers/job seekers face a host of discriminatory practices, especially for the better paying jobs. Nowadays, though, US citizens in their golden years can sell their house, buy an RV, and become itinerant workers – sometimes at back breaking labor, such as harvesting crops or working at an Amazon gulag – for $10 an hour. Yippee kay-o kay-aaay!

    So let us also talk about cutting Medicare for all of those lazy slacker Seniors out there. Woo hoo!

    jrs , October 17, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    There is really two issues:
    1) for those whom age discrimination in employment is hitting in their 50s or even younger, before anyone much is retiring, it needs to be combatted
    2) eventually (sometimes in their 60's and really should be at least by 65) people ought to be allowed to retire and with enough money to not be in poverty. This work full time until you drop garbage is just that (it's not as if 70 year olds can even say work 20 hours instead, no it's the same 50+ hours or whatever as everyone else is doing). And most people won't live that much longer, really they won't, U.S. average lifespans aren't that long and falling fast. So it really is work until you die that is being pushed if people aren't allowed to retire sometime in their 60s. Some people have good genes and good luck and so on (they may also have a healthy lifestyle but sheer luck plays a large role), and will live far beyond that, but averages

    RUKIdding , October 17, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    Agree with you about the 2 issues.

    Working past 65 is one of those things where it just depends. I know people who are happily (and don't "really" need the money) working past 65 bc they love their jobs and they're not taking a toll on their health. They enjoy the socialization at work; are intellectually stimulated; and are quite happy. That's one issue.

    But when people HAVE TO work past 65 – and I know quite a few in this category – when it starts taking a toll on their health, that is truly bad. And I can reel off several cases that I know of personally. It's just wrong.

    Whether you live much longer or not is sort of up to fate, no matter what. But yes, if work is taking a toll on your heath, then you most likely won't live as long.

    cocomaan , October 17, 2017 at 11:06 am

    In January, economists from MIT published a paper, entitled Secular Stagnation? The Effect of Aging on Economic Growth in the Age of Automation, which showed that there is absolutely no relationship between population aging and economic decline. To the contrary, population aging seems to have been associated with improvements in GDP per capita, thanks to increased automation:

    From the cited article.

    I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but there's no reason to ditch your most knowledgeable, most skilled workers toward the eve of their careers except if you don't want to pay labor costs. Which we know that most firms do not, in their mission for profit for shareholders or the flashy new building or trying to Innuhvate .

    There's a myth that innovation comes from the 20 something in their basement, but that's just not the case. Someone who has, for instance, overseen 100 construction projects building bridges needs to be retained, not let go. Maybe they can't lift the sledge anymore, but I'd keep them on as long as possible.

    Good food for thought! I enjoyed this piece.

    HotFlash , October 17, 2017 at 4:19 pm

    There's a myth that innovation comes from the 20 something in their basement, but that's just not the case.

    Widely held by 20 somethings. Maybe it's just one of those Oedipus things.

    fresno dan , October 17, 2017 at 11:08 am

    1. Not being willing to pay enough to skilled workers, which includes not being willing to pay them to relocate

    2. Not being willing to train less skilled workers, as companies once did as a matter of course

    3. older workers have seen all the crap and evil management has done, and is usually in a much better position than young less established employees to take effective action against it

    Disturbed Voter , October 17, 2017 at 1:26 pm

    This. Don't expect rational actors, in management or labor. If everyone was paid the same, regardless of age or training or education or experience etc then the financial incentives for variant outcomes would decrease. Except for higher health costs for older workers. For them, we could simply ban employer provide health insurance then that takes that variable out of the equation too. So yes, the ideal is a rational Marxism or the uniformity of the hive-mind-feminism. While we would have "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" we will have added it as an axiom that all have the same need. And a whip can encourage the hoi polloi to do their very best.

    Jeremy Grimm , October 17, 2017 at 2:25 pm

    Fully agee! To your list I would add a corollory to your item #3 -- older workers having seen all the crap and evil management has done are more likely to inspire other employees to feel and act with them. -- This corollory is obvious but I think it bears stating for emphasis of the point.

    I believe your whole list might be viewed as symtoms resulting from the concept of workers as commodity -- fungible as cogs on a wheel. Young and old alike are dehumanized.

    The boss of the branch office of the firm I last worked for before I retired constantly emphasized how each of us must remain "fungible" [he's who introduced me to this word] if we wanted to remain employed. The firm would win contracts using one set of workers in its bids and slowly replace them with new workers providing the firm a higher return per hour billed to the client. I feel very lucky I managed to remain employed -- to within a couple of years of the age when I could apply for Medicare. [Maybe it's because I was too cowed to make waves and avoided raises as best I could.]

    [I started my comment considering the idea of "human capital" but ran into trouble with that concept. Shouldn't capital be assessed in terms of its replacement costs and its capacity for generating product or other gain? I had trouble working that calculus into the way firms treat their employees and decided "commodity" rather than "capital" better fit how workers were regarded and treated.]

    BoycottAmazon , October 17, 2017 at 11:16 am

    "skills vs. demand imbalance" not labor shortage. Capital wants to tip the scale the other way, but isn't willing to invest the money to train the people, per a comment I made last week. Plenty of unemployed or under-employed even in Japan, much less Oz.

    Keeping the elderly, who already have the skills, in the work place longer is a way to put off making the investments. Getting government to tax the poor for their own training is another method. Exploiting poor nations education systems by importing skills yet another.

    Some business hope to develop skills that only costs motive power (electric), minimal maintenance, and are far less capital intensive and quicker to the market than the current primary source's 18 years. Capitalism on an finite resource will eat itself, but even capitalism with finite resources will self-destruct in the end.

    Jim Haygood , October 17, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    Importantly, the chart labeled as Figure 2 uses GDP per capita on the y-axis.

    Bearing in mind that GDP growth is composed of labor force growth times productivity, emerging economies that are growing faster than the rich world in both population and GDP look more anemic on a per capita basis, allowing us rich country denizens to feel better about our good selves. :-)

    But in terms of absolute GDP growth, things ain't so bright here in the Homeland. Both population and productivity growth are slowing. Over the past two-thirds century, the trend in GDP groaf is relentlessly down, even as debt rises in an apparent attempt to maintain unsustainable living standards. Chart (viewer discretion advised):

    https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/us-annual-gdp-growth-rate-2015.png

    Van Onselen doesn't address the rich world's busted pension systems. To the extent that they contain a Ponzi element premised on endless growth, immigration would modestly benefit them by adding new victims workers to support the greying masses of doddering Boomers.

    Will you still need me
    Will you still feed me
    When I'm sixty-four?

    -- The Beatles

    Arthur Wilke , October 17, 2017 at 1:44 pm

    There's been an increase in the employment of older people in the U.S. in the U.S. population. To provide a snapshot, below are three tables referring to the U.S. by age cohorts of 1) the total population, 2) Employment and 3) employment-population ratios (percent).based on Bureau of Labor Statistics weightings for population estimates and compiled in the Merge Outgoing Rotation Groups (MORG) dataset by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS).

    The portion of the population 16 to 54 has declined while those over 54 has increased.
    1. Percent Population in Age Cohorts: 1986 & 2016

    1986 2016 AGE
    18.9 15.2 16-24
    53.7 49.6 25-54
    12.2 16.3 55-64
    9.4 11.2 65-74
    5.8 7.7 75 & OVER
    100.0 100.0 ALL

    The portion of the population 16 to 54 employed has declined while the portion over 54 has increased..

    2 Percent Employed in Age Cohorts: 1986 & 2016

    1986 2016 AGE
    18.5 12.5 16-24
    68.4 64.7 25-54
    10.4 16.9 55-64
    2.3 4.8 65-74
    0.4 1.0 75 & OVER
    100.0 100.0 ALL

    The employment-population ratios (percents) show significant declines for those under 25 while increases for those 55 and above.

    3. Age-Specific Employment Population Ratios (Percents)

    1986 2016 AGE
    59.5 49.4 16-24
    77.3 77.9 25-54
    51.8 61.8 55-64
    14.8 25.9 65-74
    3.8 7.9 75 & OVER
    60.7 59.7 ALL

    None of the above data refute claims about age and experience inequities. Rather these provide a base from which to explore such concerns. Because MORG data are representative samples with population weightings, systematic contingency analyses are challenging.

    In the 30 year interval of these data there have been changes in population and employment by education status, gender, race, citizenship status along with industry and occupation, all items of which are found in the publicly available MORG dataset.

    AW

    Yves Smith Post author , October 17, 2017 at 4:54 pm

    I think you are missing the point. Life expectancy at birth has increased by nearly five years since 1986. That renders simple comparisons of labor force participation less meaningful. The implication is that many people are not just living longer but are in better shape in their later middle age. Look at the dramatic drop in labor force participation from the 25-54 age cohort v. 55 to 64. How can so few people in that age group be working given that even retiring at 65 is something most people cannot afford? And the increase over time in the current 55=64 age cohort is significantly due to the entry of women into the workplace. Mine was the first generation where that became widespread.

    The increase in the over 65 cohort reflects desperation. Anyone who can work stays working.

    Arthur Wilke , October 17, 2017 at 6:27 pm

    Even if life-expectancy is increasing due to improved health, the percentage of those in older cohorts who are working is increasing at an even faster rate. If a ratio is 6/8 for a category and goes up to 10/12 the category has increased (8 to 12 or 50%) and the subcategory has increased (6 to 10 i or 67% and the ratios go from 6/8 or 75/100 to 10/12 or 83.3/100)

    I assume you are referencing the employment-population (E/P) ratio when noting "the dramatic drop in labor force participation from the 25-54 age cohort v. 55 to 64." However the change in the E/P ratio for 25-54 year olds was virtually unchanged (77.3/100 in 1986 to 77.9/100 in 2016) and for the 55-64 year olds the E/P ratio INCREASED significantly, from 51.8/100 in 1986 to 61.8/100 in 2016.

    You query: "How can so few people in that age group be working given that even retiring at 65 is something most people cannot afford?" That's a set of concerns the data I've compiled cannot and thus cannot address. It would take more time to see if an empirical answer could be constructed, something that doesn't lend itself to making a timely, empirically based comment. The data I compiled was done after reading the original post.

    You note: ". . . ;;[T] the increase over time in the current 55-64 age cohort is significantly due to the entry of women into the workplace." Again, I didn't compute the age-gender specific E/P ratios. I can do that if there's interest. The OVERALL female E/P ratio (from FRED) did not significantly increase from December 1986 ( 51.7/100) to December 2016 (53.8/100).

    Your write: "The increase in the over 65 cohort reflects desperation. Anyone who can work stays working." Again, the data I was using provided me no basis for this interpretation. I suspect that the MORG data can provide some support for that interpretation. However, based on your comments about longer life expectancy, it's likely that a higher proportion of those in professional-middle class or in the upper-middle class category Richard Reeves writes about (Dream Hoarders) were able and willing to continue working. For a time in higher education some institutions offered incentives for older faculty to continue working thereby they could continue to receive a salary and upon becoming eligible for Social Security draw on that benefit. No doubt many, many vulnerable older people, including workers laid off in the wake of the Great Recession and otherwise burdened lengthened their or sought employment.

    Again the MORG data can get somewhat closer to your concerns and interests, but whether this is the forum is a challenge given the reporting-comment cycle which guides this excellent site.

    paul , October 17, 2017 at 1:54 pm

    Institutional memory (perhaps, wisdom) is a positive threat to institutional change (for the pillage).

    In my experience,those in possession of it are encouraged/discouraged/finally made to go.

    The break up of British Rail is a salient,suppurating example.

    The break up of National Health Service is another.

    It would be easy to go on, I just see it as the long year zero the more clinical sociopaths desire.

    Livius Drusus , October 17, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    I don't understand how the media promotes the "society is aging, we need more immigrants to avoid a labor shortage" argument and the "there will be no jobs in the near future due to automation, there will be a jobs shortage" argument at the same time. Dean Baker has discussed this issue:

    http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/badly-confused-economics-the-debate-on-automation

    In any event, helping to keep older workers in the workforce can be a good thing. Some people become physically inactive after retirement and their social networks decline which can cause depression and loneliness. Work might benefit some people who would otherwise sink into inactivity and loneliness.

    Of course, results might vary based on individual differences and those who engaged in hard physical labor will likely have to retire earlier due to wear and tear on their bodies.

    flora , October 17, 2017 at 7:42 pm

    Increase in life expectancy is greatly influenced by a decrease in childhood mortality. People are living longer because they aren't dying in large numbers in childhood anymore in the US. So many arguments that start out "we're living longer, so something" confuse a reduction in childhood mortality with how long one can expect to live to in old age, based on the actuarial charts. Pols who want to cut SS or increase the retirement age find this confusion very useful.

    " Life expectancy at birth is very sensitive to reductions in the death rates of children, because each child that survives adds many years to the amount of life in the population. Thus, the dramatic declines in infant and child mortality in the twentieth century were accompanied by equally stunning increases in life expectancy. "

    http://www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/dmortality.htm

    TarheelDem , October 17, 2017 at 5:24 pm

    I've noticed ever since the 1990s that "labor shortage" is a signal for cost-cutting measures that trigger a recession. Which then becomes the excuse for shedding workers and really getting the recession on.

    It is not just older workers who are spare. There are other forms of discrimination that could fall by the wayside if solving the "labor shortage" was the sincere objective.

    JBird , October 17, 2017 at 5:57 pm

    Often productively, sales, and profits decrease with those cost cuttings, which justified further cuts which decreases productivity, sales, and profits which justifies

    It's a pattern I first noticed in the 1990s and looking back in the 80s too. It's like some malevolent MBAs went out and convinced the whole of American middle and senior business management that this was the Way to do it. It's like something out of the most hidebound, nonsensical ideas of Maoism and Stalinism as something that could not fail but only be failed. It is right out of the Chicago Boys' economics playbook. Thirty-five years later and the Way still hasn't succeeded, but they're still trying not to fail it.

    SpringTexan , October 17, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    Love your reflections. Yeah, it's like a religion that they can't pay more, can't train, must cut people till they are working to their max at ordinary times (so have no slack for crises), etc. etc., and that it doesn't work doesn't change the faith in it AT ALL.

    JBird , October 17, 2017 at 5:42 pm

    This is ranting, but most jobs can be done at most ages. If want someone to be a SEAL or do 12 hours at farm labor no of course not, but just about everything else so what's the problem?

    All this "we have a skilled labor shortage" or "we have a labor surplus" or "the workers are all lazy/stupid" narratives" and "it's the unions' fault" and "the market solves everything" and the implicit "we are a true meritocracy and the losers are waste who deserve their pain" and my favorite of the "Job creators do make jobs" being said, and/or believed all at the same time is insanity made mainstream.

    Sometimes I think whoever is running things are told they have to drink the Draught of UnWisdom before becoming the elites.

    Dan , October 17, 2017 at 7:12 pm

    So I'm a middle aged fella – early thirties – and have to admit that in my industry I find that most older workers are a disaster. I'm in tech and frankly find that most older workers are a detriment simply from being out of date. While I sympathize, in some cases experience can be a minus rather than a plus. The willingness to try new things and stay current with modern technologies/techniques just isn't there for the majority of tech workers that are over the hill.

    flora , October 17, 2017 at 7:46 pm

    Well, if you're lucky, your company won't replace you with a cheaper HiB visa holder or outsource your job to the sub-continent before you're 40.

    [Oct 15, 2017] Two Cheers For Trump's Immigration Proposal Especially "Interior Enforcement" - The Unz Review

    Notable quotes:
    "... In the 1970s a programming shop was legacy American, with only a thin scattering of foreigners like myself. Twenty years later programming had been considerably foreignized , thanks to the H-1B visa program. Now, twenty years further on, I believe legacy-American programmers are an endangered species. ..."
    "... So a well-paid and mentally rewarding corner of the middle-class job market has been handed over to foreigners -- for the sole reason, of course, that they are cheaper than Americans. The desire for cheap labor explains 95 percent of U.S. immigration policy. The other five percent is sentimentality. ..."
    "... Now they are brazen in their crime: you have heard, I'm sure, those stories about American workers being laid off, with severance packages conditional on their helping train their cheaper foreign replacements. That's our legal ..."
    "... A "merit-based" points system won't fix that. It will quickly and easily be gamed by employers to lay waste yet more middle-class occupational zones for Americans. If it was restricted to the higher levels of "merit," we would just be importing a professional overclass of foreigners, most East and South Asians, to direct the labors of less-meritorious legacy Americans. How would that ..."
    "... Measured by the number of workers per year, the largest guestworker program in the entire immigration system is now student visas through the Optional Practical Training program (OPT). Last year over 154,000 aliens were approved to work on student visas. By comparison, 114,000 aliens entered the workforce on H-1B guestworker visas. ..."
    "... A History of the 'Optional Practical Training' Guestworker Program , ..."
    "... incredible amount ..."
    "... on all sorts of subjects ..."
    "... for all kinds of outlets. (This ..."
    "... no longer includes ..."
    "... National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and ..."
    "... and several other ..."
    "... . He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: ..."
    "... ( also available in Kindle ) and ..."
    "... Has it ever occurred to anyone other than me that the cost associated with foreign workers using our schools and hospitals and pubic services for free, is more than off-set by the cheap price being paid for grocery store items like boneless chicken breast, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce etc, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive even for the wealthy? ..."
    Oct 15, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Headliner of the week for immigration patriots was President Trump's immigration reform proposal , which he sent to Congress for their perusal last Sunday. The proposal is a very detailed 70-point list under three main headings:

    Border Security (27 items) Interior Enforcement (39 items) Merit-Based Immigration System (four items)

    Item-wise, the biggest heading there is the second one, "Interior Enforcement." That's very welcome.

    Of course we need improved border security so that people don't enter our country without permission. That comes under the first heading. An equally pressing problem, though, is the millions of foreigners who are living and working here, and using our schools and hospitals and public services, who should not be here.

    The President's proposals on interior enforcement cover all bases: Sanctuary cities , visa overstays , law-enforcement resources , compulsory E-Verify , more deportations , improved visa security.

    This is a major, wonderful improvement in national policy, when you consider that less than a year ago the White House and Justice Department were run by committed open-borders fanatics. I thank the President and his staff for having put so much work into such a detailed proposal for restoring American sovereignty and the rights of American workers and taxpayers.

    That said, here come the quibbles.

    That third heading, "Merit-Based Immigration System," with just four items, needs work. Setting aside improvements on visa controls under the other headings, this is really the only part of the proposal that covers legal immigration. In my opinion, it does so imperfectly.

    There's some good meat in there, mind. Three of the four items -- numbers one, three, and four -- got a fist-pump from me:

    cutting down chain migration by limiting it to spouse and dependent children; eliminating the Diversity Visa Lottery ; and limiting the number of refugees admitted, assuming this means severely cutting back on the numbers, preferably all the way to zero.

    Good stuff. Item two, however, is a problem. Quote:

    Establish a new, points-based system for the awarding of Green Cards (lawful permanent residents) based on factors that allow individuals to successfully assimilate and support themselves financially.

    sounds OK, bringing in talented, well-educated, well-socialized people, rather than what the late Lee Kuan Yew referred to as " fruit-pickers ." Forgive me if I have a rather jaundiced view of this merit-based approach.

    For most of my adult life I made a living as a computer programmer. I spent four years doing this in the U.S.A. through the mid-1970s. Then I came back in the late 1980s and worked at the same trade here through the 1990s. (Pictured right–my actual H-1B visa ) That gave me two clear snapshots twenty years apart, of this particular corner of skilled middle-class employment in America.

    In the 1970s a programming shop was legacy American, with only a thin scattering of foreigners like myself. Twenty years later programming had been considerably foreignized , thanks to the H-1B visa program. Now, twenty years further on, I believe legacy-American programmers are an endangered species.

    So a well-paid and mentally rewarding corner of the middle-class job market has been handed over to foreigners -- for the sole reason, of course, that they are cheaper than Americans. The desire for cheap labor explains 95 percent of U.S. immigration policy. The other five percent is sentimentality.

    On so-called "merit-based immigration," therefore, you can count me a cynic. I have no doubt that American firms could recruit all the computer programmers they need from among our legacy population. They used to do so, forty years ago. Then they discovered how to game the immigration system for cheaper labor.

    Now they are brazen in their crime: you have heard, I'm sure, those stories about American workers being laid off, with severance packages conditional on their helping train their cheaper foreign replacements. That's our legal immigration system in a nutshell. It's a cheap-labor racket.

    A "merit-based" points system won't fix that. It will quickly and easily be gamed by employers to lay waste yet more middle-class occupational zones for Americans. If it was restricted to the higher levels of "merit," we would just be importing a professional overclass of foreigners, most East and South Asians, to direct the labors of less-meritorious legacy Americans. How would that contribute to social harmony?

    With coming up to a third of a billion people, the U.S.A. has all the talent, all the merit , it needs. You might make a case for a handful of certified geniuses like Einstein or worthy dissidents like Solzhenitsyn, but those cases aside, there is no reason at all to have guest-worker programs. They should all be shut down.

    Some of these cheap-labor rackets don't even need congressional action to shut them down; it can be done by regulatory change via executive order. The scandalous OPT-visa scam, for example, which brings in cheap workers under the guise of student visas.

    Here is John Miano writing about the OPT program last month, quote:

    Measured by the number of workers per year, the largest guestworker program in the entire immigration system is now student visas through the Optional Practical Training program (OPT). Last year over 154,000 aliens were approved to work on student visas. By comparison, 114,000 aliens entered the workforce on H-1B guestworker visas.

    Because there is no reporting on how long guestworkers stay in the country, we do not know the total number of workers in each category. Nonetheless, the number of approvals for work on student visas has grown by 62 percent over the past four years so their numbers will soon dwarf those on H-1B visas.

    The troubling fact is that the OPT program was created entirely through regulation with no authorization from Congress whatsoever. [ A History of the 'Optional Practical Training' Guestworker Program , CIS, September 18, 2017]

    End quote. (And a cheery wave of acknowledgement to John Miano here from one of the other seventeen people in the U.S.A. that knows the correct placement of the hyphen in "H-1B.")

    Our legal immigration system is addled with these scams. Don't even get me started on the EB-5 investor's visa . It all needs sweeping away.

    So for preference I would rewrite that third heading to include, yes, items one, three, and four -- cutting down chain migration, ending the Diversity Visa Lottery, and ending refugee settlement for anyone of less stature than Solzhenitsyn; but then, I'd replace item two with the following:

    End all guest-worker programs, with exceptions only for the highest levels of talent and accomplishment, limit one hundred visas per annum .

    So much for my amendments to the President's October 8th proposals. There is, though, one glaring omission from that 70-item list. The proposal has no mention at all of birthright citizenship.

    have abandoned it . It leads to obstetric tourism : women well-advanced in pregnancy come to the U.S.A. to give birth, knowing that the child will be a U.S. citizen. It is deeply unpopular with Americans , once it's explained to them.

    Yes, yes, I know: some constitutional authorities argue that birthright citizenship is implied in the Fourteenth Amendment , although it is certain that the framers of that Amendment did not have foreign tourists or illegal entrants in mind. Other scholars think Congress could legislate against it.

    The only way to find out is to have Congress legislate. If the courts strike down the legislation as unconstitutional, let's then frame a constitutional amendment and put it to the people.

    Getting rid of birthright citizenship might end up a long and difficult process. We might ultimately fail. The only way to find out is to get the process started . Failure to mention this in the President's proposal is a very glaring omission.

    Setting aside that, and the aforementioned reservations about working visas, I give two cheers to the proposal. email him ] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books . He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT ( also available in Kindle ) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013 . (Republished from VDare.com by permission of author or representative)

    SimpleHandle > > , October 14, 2017 at 2:56 am GMT

    I agree with ending birthright citizenship. But Trump should wait until he can put at least one more strict constitutionalist in the supreme court. There will be a court challenge, and we need judges who can understand that if the 14th Amendment didn't give automatic citizenship to American Indians it doesn't give automatic citizenship to children of Mexican citizens who jumped our border.

    Diversity Heretic > > , October 14, 2017 at 5:04 am GMT

    @Carroll Price

    Insofar as your personal situation is concerned, perhaps you would find yourself less "relatively poor" if you had a job with higher wages.

    Diversity Heretic > > , October 14, 2017 at 5:16 am GMT

    John's article, it seems to me, ignores the elephant in the room: the DACA colonists. Trump is offering this proposal, more or less, in return for some sort of semi-permanent regularization of their status. Bad trade, in my opinion. Ending DACA and sending those illegals back where they belong will have more real effect on illegal and legal immigration/colonization than all sorts of proposals to be implemented in the future, which can and will be changed by subsequent Administrations and Congresses.

    Trump would also be able to drive a much harder bargain with Congress (like maybe a moratorium on any immigration) if he had kept his campaign promise, ended DACA the afternoon of January 20, 2017, and busloads of DACA colonists were being sent south of the Rio Grande.

    The best hope for immigration patriots is that the Democrats are so wedded to Open Borders that the entire proposal dies and Trump, in disgust, reenacts Ike's Operation Wetback.

    bartok > > , October 14, 2017 at 6:32 am GMT

    @Carroll Price

    Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans refuse to do are run out the country, then what?

    White people couldn't possibly thrive without non-Whites! Why, without all of that ballast we'd ascend too near the sun.

    Negrolphin Pool > > , October 14, 2017 at 7:53 am GMT

    Well, in the real world, things just don't work that way. It's pay me now or pay me later. Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans refuse to do are run out the country, then what?

    Right, prior to 1965, Americans didn't exist. They had all starved to death because, as everyone knows, no Americans will work to produce food and, even if they did, once Tyson chicken plants stop making 50 percent on capital they just shut down.

    If there were no Somalis in Minnesota, even Warren Buffett couldn't afford grapes.

    Joe Franklin > > , October 14, 2017 at 12:24 pm GMT

    Illegal immigrants picking American produce is a false economy.

    Illegal immigrants are subsidized by the taxpayer in terms of public health, education, housing, and welfare.

    If businesses didn't have access to cheap and subsidized illegal alien labor, they would be compelled to resort to more farm automation to reduce cost.

    Cheap illegal alien labor delays the inevitable use of newer farm automation technologies.

    Many Americans would likely prefer a machine touch their food rather than a illegal alien with strange hygiene practices.

    In addition, anti-American Democrats and neocons prefer certain kinds of illegal aliens because they bolster their diversity scheme.

    Carroll Price > > , October 14, 2017 at 12:27 pm GMT

    @Realist "Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans refuse to do are run out the country, then what?"

    Eliminate welfare...then you'll have plenty of workers. Unfortunately, that train left the station long ago. With or without welfare, there's simply no way soft, spoiled, lazy, over-indulged Americans who have never hit a lick at anything their life, will ever perform manual labor for anyone, including themselves.

    Jonathan Mason > > , October 14, 2017 at 2:57 pm GMT

    @Randal Probably people other than you have worked out that once their wages are not being continually undercut by cheap and easy immigrant competition, the American working classes will actually be able to earn enough to pay the increased prices for grocery store items, especially as the Americans who, along with machines, will replace those immigrants doing the "jobs Americans won't do" will also be earning more and actually paying taxes on it.

    The "jobs Americans/Brits/etc won't do" myth is a deliberate distortion of reality that ignores the laws of supply and demand. There are no jobs Americans etc won't do, only jobs for which the employers are not prepared to pay wages high enough to make them worthwhile for Americans etc to do.

    Now of course it is more complicated than that. There are jobs that would not be economically viable if the required wages were to be paid, and there are marginal contributions to job creation by immigrant populations, but those aspects are in reality far less significant than the bosses seeking cheap labour want people to think they are.

    As a broad summary, a situation in which labour is tight, jobs are easy to come by and staff hard to hold on to is infinitely better for the ordinary working people of any nation than one in which there is a huge pool of excess labour, and therefore wages are low and employees disposable.

    You'd think anyone purporting to be on the "left", in the sense of supporting working class people would understand that basic reality, but far too many on the left have been indoctrinated in radical leftist anti-racist and internationalist dogmas that make them functional stooges for big business and its mass immigration program.

    Probably people other than you have worked out that once their wages are not being continually undercut by cheap and easy immigrant competition, the American working classes will actually be able to earn enough to pay the increased prices for grocery store items, especially as the Americans who, along with machines, will replace those immigrants doing the "jobs Americans won't do" will also be earning more and actually paying taxes on it.

    There might be some truth in this. When I was a student in England in the 60′s I spent every summer working on farms, picking hops, apples, pears, potatoes and made some money and had a lot of fun too and became an expert farm tractor operator.

    No reason why US students and high school seniors should not pick up a lot of the slack. Young people like camping in the countryside and sleeping rough, plus lots of opportunity to meet others, have sex, smoke weed, drink beer, or whatever. If you get a free vacation plus a nice check at the end, that makes the relatively low wages worthwhile. It is not always a question of how much you are paid, but how much you can save.

    George Weinbaum > > , October 14, 2017 at 3:35 pm GMT

    We can fix the EB-5 visa scam. My suggestion: charge would-be "investors" $1 million to enter the US. This $1 is not refundable under any circumstance. It is paid when the "investor's" visa is approved. If the "investor" is convicted of a felony, he is deported. He may bring no one with him. No wife, no child, no aunt, no uncle. Unless he pays $1 million for that person.

    We will get a few thousand Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes a year under this program

    As to fixing the H-1B visa program, we charge employer users of the program say $25,000 per year per employee. We require the employers to inform all employees that if any is asked to train a replacement, he should inform the DOJ immediately. The DOJ investigates and if true, charges managerial employees who asked that a replacement be trained with fraud.

    As to birthright citizenship: I say make it a five-year felony to have a child while in the US illegally. Make it a condition of getting a tourist visa that one not be pregnant. If the tourist visa lasts say 60 days and the woman has a child while in the US, she gets charged with fraud.

    None of these suggestions requires a constitutional amendment.

    Auntie Analogue > > , October 14, 2017 at 7:10 pm GMT

    In the United States middle class prosperity reached its apogee in 1965 – before the disastrous (and eminently foreseeable) wage-lowering consequence of the Hart-Celler Open Immigration Act's massive admission of foreigners increased the supply of labor which began to lower middle class prosperity and to shrink and eradicate the middle class.

    It was in 1965 that ordinary Americans, enjoying maximum employment because employers were forced to compete for Americans' talents and labor, wielded their peak purchasing power . Since 1970 wages have remained stagnant, and since 1965 the purchasing power of ordinary Americans has gone into steep decline.

    It is long past time to halt Perpetual Mass Immigration into the United States, to end birthright citizenship, and to deport all illegal aliens – if, that is, our leaders genuinely care about and represent us ordinary Americans instead of continuing their legislative, policy, and judicial enrichment of the 1-percenter campaign donor/rentier class of transnational Globali$t Open Border$ E$tabli$hment $ellout$.

    Jim Sweeney > > , October 14, 2017 at 8:26 pm GMT

    Re the birthright citizenship argument, that is not settled law in that SCOTUS has never ruled on the question of whether a child born in the US is thereby a citizen if the parents are illegally present. Way back in 1897, SCOTUS did resolve the issue of whether a child born to alien parents who were legally present was thereby a citizen. That case is U.S. vs Wong Kim Ark 169 US 649. SCOTUS ruled in favor of citizenship. If that was a justiciable issue how much more so is it when the parents are illegally present?

    My thinking is that the result would be the same but, at least, the question would be settled. I cannot see justices returning a toddler to Beijing or worse. They would never have invitations to cocktail parties again for the shame heaped upon them for such uncaring conduct. Today, the title of citizen is conferred simply by bureaucratic rule, not by judicial order.

    JP Straley > > , October 14, 2017 at 9:42 pm GMT

    Arguments Against Fourteenth Amendment Anchor Baby Interpretation
    J. Paige Straley

    Part One. Anchor Baby Argument, Mexican Case.
    The ruling part of the US Constitution is Amendment Fourteen: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

    Here is the ruling part of the Mexican Constitution, Section II, Article Thirty:
    Article 30
    Mexican nationality is acquired by birth or by naturalization:
    A. Mexicans by birth are:
    I. Those born in the territory of the Republic, regardless of the nationality of
    their parents:
    II. Those born in a foreign country of Mexican parents; of a Mexican father and
    a foreign mother; or of a Mexican mother and an unknown father;
    III. Those born on Mexican vessels or airships, either war or merchant vessels. "

    A baby born to Mexican nationals within the United States is automatically a Mexican citizen. Under the anchor baby reasoning, this baby acquires US citizenship at the same time and so is a dual citizen. Mexican citizenship is primary because it stems from a primary source, the parents' citizenship and the law of Mexico. The Mexican Constitution states the child of Mexican parents is automatically a Mexican citizen at birth no matter where the birth occurs. Since the child would be a Mexican citizen in any country, and becomes an American citizen only if born in America, it is clear that Mexico has the primary claim of citizenry on the child. This alone should be enough to satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment jurisdiction thereof argument. Since Mexican citizenship is primary, it has primary jurisdiction; thus by the plain words of the Fourteenth such child is not an American citizen at birth.

    [MORE]
    There is a second argument for primary Mexican citizenship in the case of anchor babies. Citizenship, whether Mexican or American, establishes rights and duties. Citizenship is a reciprocal relationship, thus establishing jurisdiction. This case for primary Mexican citizenship is supported by the fact that Mexico allows and encourages Mexicans resident in the US, either illegal aliens or legal residents, to vote in Mexican elections. They are counted as Mexican citizens abroad, even if dual citizens, and their government provides widespread consular services as well as voting access to Mexicans residing in the US. As far as Mexico is concerned, these persons are not Mexican in name only, but have a civil relationship strong enough to allow a political voice; in essence, full citizenship. Clearly, all this is the expression of typical reciprocal civic relationships expressed in legal citizenship, further supporting the establishment of jurisdiction.

    Part Two: Wong Kim Ark (1898) case. (Birthright Citizenship)

    The Wong Kim Ark (WKA) case is often cited as the essential legal reasoning and precedent for application of the fourteenth amendment as applied to aliens. There has been plenty of commentary on WKA, but the truly narrow application of the case is emphasized reviewing a concise statement of the question the case was meant to decide, written by Hon. Horace Gray, Justice for the majority in this decision.

    "[W]hether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution." (Italics added.)

    For WKA to justify birthright citizenship, the parents must have " permanent domicile and residence " But how can an illegal alien have permanent residence when the threat of deportation is constantly present? There is no statute of limitation for illegal presence in the US and the passage of time does not eliminate the legal remedy of deportation. This alone would seem to invalidate WKA as a support and precedent for illegal alien birthright citizenship.

    If illegal (or legal) alien parents are unemployed, unemployable, illegally employed, or if they get their living by illegal means, then they are not ". . .carrying on business. . .", and so the children of indigent or criminal aliens may not be eligible for birthright citizenship

    If legal aliens meet the two tests provided in WKA, birthright citizenship applies. Clearly the WKA case addresses the specific situation of the children of legal aliens, and so is not an applicable precedent to justify birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens.

    Part three. Birth Tourism

    Occasionally foreign couples take a trip to the US during the last phase of the wife's pregnancy so she can give birth in the US, thus conferring birthright citizenship on the child. This practice is called "birth tourism." WKA provides two tests for birthright citizenship: permanent domicile and residence and doing business, and a temporary visit answers neither condition. WKA is therefore disqualified as justification for a "birth tourism" child to be granted birthright citizenship.

    Realist > > , October 14, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT

    @Carroll Price Unfortunately, that train left the station long ago. With or without welfare, there's simply no way soft, spoiled, lazy, over-indulged Americans who have never hit a lick at anything their life, will ever perform manual labor for anyone, including themselves. Then let them starve to death. The Pilgrims nipped that dumb ass idea (welfare) in the bud

    Alfa158 > > , October 15, 2017 at 2:10 am GMT

    @Carroll Price

    An equally pressing problem, though, is the millions of foreigners who are living and working here, and using our schools and hospitals and public services, who should not be here.
    Has it ever occurred to anyone other than me that the cost associated with foreign workers using our schools and hospitals and pubic services for free, is more than off-set by the cheap price being paid for grocery store items like boneless chicken breast, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce etc, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive even for the wealthy?

    Let alone relatively poor people (like myself) and those on fixed incomes? What un-thinking Americans want, is having their cake and eating it too. Well, in the real world, things just don't work that way. It's pay me now or pay me later. Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans refuse to do are run out the country, then what? Please look up;History; United States; pre mid-twentieth century. I'm pretty sure Americans were eating chicken, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce, etc. prior to that period. I don't think their diet consisted of venison and tree bark.
    But since I wasn't there, maybe I'm wrong and that is actually what they were eating.
    I know some people born in the 1920′s; I'll check with them and let you know what they say.

    [Sep 24, 2017] Inside Amazon's Warehouses: Thousands of Senior Citizens and the Occasional Robot Mishap

    Sep 24, 2017 | hardware.slashdot.org

    (wired.com) Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 23, 2017 @09:30PM from the looking-inside dept. Amazon aggressively recruited thousands of retirees living in mobile homes to migrate to Amazon's warehouses for seasonal work, according to a story shared by nightcats . Wired reports: From a hiring perspective, the RVers were a dream labor force. They showed up on demand and dispersed just before Christmas in what the company cheerfully called a "taillight parade." They asked for little in the way of benefits or protections . And though warehouse jobs were physically taxing -- not an obvious fit for older bodies -- recruiters came to see CamperForce workers' maturity as an asset. These were diligent, responsible employees. Their attendance rates were excellent. "We've had folks in their eighties who do a phenomenal job for us," noted Kelly Calmes, a CamperForce representative, in one online recruiting seminar... In a company presentation, one slide read, "Jeff Bezos has predicted that, by the year 2020, one out of every four workampers in the United States will have worked for Amazon." The article is adapted from a new book called " Nomadland ," which also describes seniors in mobile homes being recruited for sugar beet harvesting and jobs at an Iowa amusement park, as well as work as campground hsots at various national parks. Many of them "could no longer afford traditional housing," especially after the financial downturn of 2008. But at least they got to hear stories from their trainers at Amazon about the occasional "unruly" shelf-toting "Kiva" robot: They told us how one robot had tried to drag a worker's stepladder away. Occasionally, I was told, two Kivas -- each carrying a tower of merchandise -- collided like drunken European soccer fans bumping chests. And in April of that year, the Haslet fire department responded to an accident at the warehouse involving a can of "bear repellent" (basically industrial-grade pepper spray). According to fire department records, the can of repellent was run over by a Kiva and the warehouse had to be evacuated.

    [Sep 16, 2017] Will Millennials Be Forced Out of Tech Jobs When They Turn 40?

    Notable quotes:
    "... Karen Panetta, the dean of graduate engineering education at Tufts University and the vice president of communications and public relations at the IEEE-USA, believes the outcome for tech will be Logan's Run -like, where age sets a career limit... ..."
    "... It's great to get the new hot shot who just graduated from college, but it's also important to have somebody with 40 years of experience who has seen all of the changes in the industry and can offer a different perspective." ..."
    Sep 16, 2017 | it.slashdot.org

    (ieeeusa.org)

    Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 03, 2017 @07:30AM

    dcblogs shared an interesting article from IEEE-USA's "Insight" newsletter: Millennials, which date from the 1980s to mid-2000s, are the largest generation. But what will happen to this generation's tech workers as they settle into middle age ?

    Will the median age of tech firms rise as the Millennial generation grows older...? The median age range at Google, Facebook, SpaceX, LinkedIn, Amazon, Salesforce, Apple and Adobe, is 29 to 31, according to a study last year by PayScale, which analyzes self-reported data...

    Karen Panetta, the dean of graduate engineering education at Tufts University and the vice president of communications and public relations at the IEEE-USA, believes the outcome for tech will be Logan's Run -like, where age sets a career limit...

    Tech firms want people with the current skills sets and those "without those skills will be pressured to leave or see minimal career progression," said Panetta... The idea that the tech industry may have an age bias is not scaring the new college grads away. "They see retirement so far off, so they are more interested in how to move up or onto new startup ventures or even business school," said Panetta.

    "The reality sets in when they have families and companies downsize and it's not so easy to just pick up and go on to another company," she said. None of this may be a foregone conclusion.

    Millennials may see the experience of today's older workers as a cautionary tale, and usher in cultural changes... David Kurtz, a labor relations partner at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, suggests tech firms should be sharing age-related date about their workforce, adding "The more of a focus you place on an issue the more attention it gets and the more likely that change can happen.

    It's great to get the new hot shot who just graduated from college, but it's also important to have somebody with 40 years of experience who has seen all of the changes in the industry and can offer a different perspective."

    [Jun 26, 2017] How Can A Human Justify Asking To Be Paid $15 To Work Zero Hedge

    Jun 26, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    McDonald's announced it will replace cashiers in 2,500 stores with self-service kiosks.

    The story buzzed across the internet but Business Insider reported McDonald's shoots down fears it is planning to replace cashiers with kiosks .

    "McDonald's has repeatedly said that adding kiosks won't result in mass layoffs, but will instead move some cashiers to other parts of the restaurant where it's adding new jobs, such as table service. The burger chain reiterated that position again on Friday."

    Is McDonald's denial believable? What would you expect the company to say?

    McDonald's has to deny the story or it might have a hiring problem, a morale problem, and other problems.

    "Our CEO, Steve Easterbrook, has said on many occasions that self-order kiosks in McDonald's restaurants are not a labor replacement," a spokeswoman told Business Insider. "They provide an opportunity to transition back-of-the-house positions to more customer service roles such as concierges and table service where they are able to truly engage with guests and enhance the dining experience."

    Move cashiers to table service? Really?

    Yeah, right.

    An interesting political rule from the British sitcom "Yes, Minister" is to "never believe anything until it's officially denied".

    Will Humans Be Necessary?

    When someone can be replaced by a robot, how can the push for $15 be justified?

    Psychology Today asks Will Humans Be Necessary?

    Will automation kill as many jobs as is feared? A widely cited Oxford University study predicts that 47% of jobs could be automated in the next decade of two. Price Waterhouse pegs the U.S. risk at 38%. McKinsey estimates that 45% of what people are paid for could be automated using existing technology!

    No less than Tesla's Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking fear the loss of jobs will cause world cataclysm.

    Lower-level jobs at risk

    Let's start with jobs likely to be eliminated, starting with the present and with those lower-level jobs.

    Already, don't you prefer a ATM to a teller, self-checkout to the supermarket checker, drive-through tolls rather than stop for the toll-taker, automated airline check-in rather than waiting for a clerk, shopping on Amazon rather than fighting traffic, parking, and the check-out experience with a live clerk, assuming the store has what you want in your size? Indeed, malls are closing while online retailers led by Amazon are growing.

    As minimum wage and mandated benefits rise, fast-food restaurants especially are accelerating use of, for example, order-taking kiosks, which McDonald's is rolling out in 2,500 stores, robotic burger flippers and fry cooks, even pizza, ramen and sushi makers . Even that fail-safe job, barista, is at-risk, Bosch now makes an automated barista . Mid-range restaurants such as Olive Garden, Outback, and Applebee are replacing waiters with tabletop tablets . Will you really miss having your conversation interrupted by a waiter hawking hors de oeuvres and expecting a 15+% tip? If you owned a fast-food franchise, mighn't you be looking to replace people with automated solutions? Can it really be long until there are completely automated fast-food and even mid-range restaurants?

    Robots are already being used as security guards. There are humanoid robots that can move heavy boxes, walk in uneven snow, and get up, not annoyed when thrown to the ground. (And won't sue for failure to supervise or an OSHA violation.)

    Instead of hiring architects for tens of thousands of dollars, many people are opting to spend just a few hundred bucks to instantly get any of thousands of often award-winning house plans which, if needed, can be inexpensively customized to suit. Far fewer architects needed.

    BlackRock, the world's largest fund company has replaced seven of its 53 analysts with AI-driven stock-picking.

    The remaining jobs

    In such a world, how can a human justify asking to be paid to work?

    Four scenarios

    The range of scenarios would seem circumscribed by these. How likely do you think each of these are?

  • Continue on the current path: The world continues to slowly make progress, e.g., birth rates declining in developing nations, slowed global warming, more education and health care. Those positives would be mitigated by declining jobs, more concentration of wealth.
  • World socialism.
  • Mass population reduction, for example, by nuclear war, pandemic, or, per Clive Cussler, highly communicable biovirus simultaneously put into the water supply of a half-dozen cruise ships?
  • A world run by machines and the few people they deem worthy.
  • Here is a debate between an optimistic and a pessimist on the future of the world.

    The truth may well be something we can't even envision. After all, he who lives by the crystal ball usually eats broken glass.

    Note that Psychology Today author Marty Nemko did not ask about $15. He wonders if pay for some jobs is worth anything at all.

    saudade -> 2banana , Jun 26, 2017 5:15 AM

    How about just reinstitute slavery and be done with it.

    Erek -> AVmaster , Jun 26, 2017 6:21 AM

    When all the jobs are taken over by machines there won't be anybody with money left to buy or pay for anything at all. WTF then? A world of no work is a world of little or no income. The ones who survive are the ones who know how to provide for themselves without the use of currency (barter, trade, farming, etc ).

    crazzziecanuck -> Erek , Jun 26, 2017 6:59 AM

    Before that happens, these machines will be heavily vandalized. It's all part of the inevitable ISEP problem (It's Someone Else's Problem).

    For one firm to do this, it's understandable, but for an entire sector, they're ripping their face off and everyone else's. But those making the decisions are unwilling or unable to care about even their long-term positions. To start, they largely exist to kick the can down the road until ... you guess it! ... it's ISEP. It's a problem for the next round of overcompensated intellectual-light and morally-bankrupt executives.

    But don't think "the market" is going to fix that. Markets never do. Markets have failures all the time yet people still pretend like they have this inherent magical property. Markets would be fine ... in a human-free world ... because anything a sociopath touches will be turned to sh*t. And power, be it government or "market" will attract these people. Any ideology can work, but only until the sociopaths game the sh*t out of the system and destroy it from the inside.

    Now, the less stupid people in these positions will realize the ISEP problem but know full well the government of the future can be extorted into, effectively, bailing them out somehow. Think of the "mandate" of ObamaCare and realize "thinkers" at the Heritage Institute saw this down the road back in the early 1980s. Right now, I'm starting to wonder if this whole "livable wage" is just a proxy bailout on behalf of large actors like McDonald's (who can no longer expect growth as the incomes and costs at the bottom shrink in the former and explode in the latter). That leadership knows full well that even if they took a leadership position on living wages, they'll be expected to be the only ones. The sociopaths at the other firms will think ... you got it! ... ISEP. Those firms can continue on f**king their employees while a large firm like McDonald's is expected to shoulder the entire burden or drive them into bankruptcy. In either of those cases, the status quo remains across the industry.

    FIRE-HC-E (Financial, Insurance, Real Estate, Healthcare, Education; the major rackets of ourlives) is destroying the markets for not just McDonald's employees, but also markets for other brick-and-mortar companies like Apple or Home Depot. This is why I focus heavily on our poor leadership because the leadership of the industrial sectors as a whole just sat back and watched as the likes of Wall Street slowly eroded the bedrock of the economy.

    Everything is a racket.

    Took Red Pill -> blown income , Jun 26, 2017 7:40 AM

    The author, Mike Shedlock, links to a POS article in Psychology Today, authored by Marty Nemko Ph.D. Did anyone else read that? It says under An optimistic vision "Longer term, it's even possible that we'll be able to accomplish more of what we want by using gene therapy or a chip embedded in our brain -Research to make that happen is already being funded by the federal government." Ah, no thank you!

    Mike also asks " how can the push for $15 be justified? And links to the Psycholgy Today article which say "we may also need a guaranteed basic income paid heavily by successful corporations and wealthy individuals". Which view do you support Mike?

    Psychology Today article also states "What about journalism? Even in major media outlets, many journalism jobs have already been lost to the armies of people willing to write for free. In addition, software such as Quill can replace some human journalists" Maybe in this case, that's not a bad thing.

    NidStyles -> Took Red Pill , Jun 26, 2017 8:05 AM

    More like Shylock....

    If it's being printed commercially, it's probably bullshit.

    [Jun 26, 2017] In Towns Already Hit by Steel Mill Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs

    Jun 26, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Fred C. Dobbs , June 25, 2017 at 09:03 PM

    In Towns Already Hit by Steel Mill Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs

    https://nyti.ms/2u369Ph
    NYT - RACHEL ABRAMS and ROBERT GEBELOFF - JUNE 25, 2017

    Thousands of workers face unemployment as retailers
    struggle to adapt to online shopping. But even as
    e-commerce grows, it isn't absorbing these workers.

    JOHNSTOWN, Pa. - Dawn Nasewicz comes from a family of steelworkers, with jobs that once dominated the local economy. She found her niche in retail.

    She manages a store, Ooh La La, that sells prom dresses and embroidered jeans at a local mall. But just as the jobs making automobile springs and rail anchors disappeared, local retail jobs are now vanishing.

    "I need my income," said Ms. Nasewicz, who was told that her store will close as early as August. "I'm 53. I have no idea what I'm going to do."

    Ms. Nasewicz is another retail casualty, one of tens of thousands of workers facing unemployment nationwide as the industry struggles to adapt to online shopping.
    Continue reading the main story
    Photo
    A sporting goods store in a Johnstown, Pa., mall is having a going-out-of-business sale. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times

    Small cities in the Midwest and Northeast are particularly vulnerable. When major industries left town, retail accounted for a growing share of the job market in places like Johnstown, Decatur, Ill., and Saginaw, Mich. Now, the work force is getting hit a second time, and there is little to fall back on.

    Moreover, while stores in these places are shedding jobs because of e-commerce, e-commerce isn't absorbing these workers. Growth in e-commerce jobs like marketing and engineering, while strong, is clustered around larger cities far away. Rural counties and small metropolitan areas account for about 23 percent of traditional American retail employment, but they are home to just 13 percent of e-commerce positions.

    E-commerce has also fostered a boom in other industries, including warehouses. But most of those jobs are being created in larger metropolitan areas, an analysis of Census Bureau business data shows.

    Almost all customer fulfillment centers run by the online shopping behemoth Amazon are in metropolitan areas with more than 250,000 people - close to the bulk of its customers - according to a list of locations compiled by MWPVL International, a logistics consulting firm. An Amazon spokeswoman noted, however, that the company had recently opened warehouses in two distressed cities in larger metropolitan areas, Fall River, Mass., and Joliet, Ill.

    The Johnstown metropolitan area, in western Pennsylvania, has lost 19 percent of its retail jobs since 2001, and the future is uncertain. At least a dozen of Ooh La La's neighbors at the mall have closed, and a "Going out of business" banner hangs across the front of the sporting goods store Gander Mountain.

    "Every time you lose a corner store, every time you lose a restaurant, every time you lose a small clothing store, it detracts from the quality of life, as well as the job loss," said John McGrath, a professor of management at the University of Pittsburgh Johnstown.

    This city is perhaps still best known for a flood that ravaged it nearly 130 years ago. After rebuilding, Johnstown eventually became prosperous from its steel and offered a clear path to the middle class. For generations, people could walk out of high school and into a steady factory job.

    But today, the area bears the marks of a struggling town. Its population has dwindled, and addiction treatment centers and Dollar Generals stand in place of corner grocers and department stores like Glosser Brothers, once owned by the family of Stephen Miller, President Trump's speechwriter and a policy adviser.

    When Mr. Trump spoke about "rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation" in his Inaugural Address, people like Donald Bonk, a local economic development consultant, assumed that Mr. Miller - who grew up in California but spent summers in Johnstown - was writing about the old Bethlehem Steel buildings that still hug long stretches of the Little Conemaugh River.

    The county voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, eight years after it helped to elect Barack Obama. (It also voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but not by as wide a margin.)

    Here and in similar towns, when the factory jobs left, a greater share of the work force ended up in retail.

    Sometimes that meant big-box retailers like Walmart, which were often blamed for destroying mom-and-pop stores but at least created other jobs for residents. The damage from e-commerce plays out differently. Digital firms may attract customers from small towns, but they are unlikely to employ them.

    Some remaining retailers are straining for solutions. ...

    [Jun 25, 2017] The idea of basic income is incompatible with the neoliberalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but a conversation about what a welfare state is for. In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation, a reduction in the working week, and a diminution of the work ethic. Williams and Srnicek believe that without these other provisions, UBI could essentially act as an excuse to get rid of the welfare state. ..."
    "... What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but an entirely different conversation about what a welfare state is for. As David Lammy MP said, after the Grenfell Tower disaster: "This is about whether the welfare state is just about schools and hospitals or whether it is about a safety net." The conversation, in light of UBI, could go even further: it's possible for the welfare state not just to act as a safety net, but as a tool for all of us to do less work and spend more time with our loved ones, pursuing personal interests or engaging in our communities. ..."
    Jun 25, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Christopher H. June 25, 2017 at 07:01 AM

    https://lanekenworthy.net/2017/06/23/in-work-poverty-in-the-us/

    Lane Kenworthy's article shows how America is already great, with many more people working in poverty than in the UK, Ireland or Australia. Maybe the robots stole better paying jobs? Maybe they need more education and to skill up?

    Christopher H. , June 25, 2017 at 07:02 AM

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/23/universal-basic-income-ubi-welfare-state?CMP=share_btn_tw

    Love the idea of a universal basic income? Be careful what you wish for

    Ellie Mae O'Hagan

    Friday 23 June 2017 10.36 EDT

    Yes, UBI could be an important part of a radical agenda. But beware: its proponents include neoliberals hostile to the very idea of the welfare state

    For some time now, the radical left has been dipping its toes in the waters of universal basic income (or unconditional basic income, depending on who you talk to). The idea is exactly as it sounds: the government would give every citizen – working or not – a fixed sum of money every week or month, with no strings attached. As time goes on, universal basic income (UBI) has gradually been transitioning from the radical left into the mainstream: it's Green party policy, is picking up steam among SNP and Labour MPs and has been advocated by commentators including this newspaper's very own John Harris.

    Supporters of the idea got a boost this week with the news that the Finnish government has piloted the idea with 2,000 of its citizens with very positive results. Under the scheme, the first of its kind in Europe, participants receive €560 (£473) every month for two years without any requirements to fill in forms or actively seek work. If anyone who receives the payment finds work, their UBI continues. Many participants have reported "decreased stress, greater incentives to find work and more time to pursue business ideas." In March, Ontario in Canada started trialling a similar scheme.

    Given that UBI necessarily promotes universalism and is being pursued by liberal governments rather than overtly rightwing ones, it's tempting to view it as an inherently leftwing conceit. In January, MEPs voted to consider UBI as a solution to the mass unemployment that might result from robots taking over manual jobs.

    From this perspective, UBI could be rolled out as a distinctly rightwing initiative. In fact it does bear some similarity to the government's shambolic universal credit scheme, which replaces a number of benefits with a one-off, lower, monthly payment (though it goes only to people already on certain benefits, of course). In the hands of the right, UBI could easily be seen as a kind of universal credit for all, undermining the entire benefits system and providing justification for paying the poorest a poverty income.

    In fact, can you imagine what UBI would be like if it were rolled out by this government, which only yesterday promised to fight a ruling describing the benefits cap as inflicting "real misery to no good purpose"?

    Despite the fact that the families who brought a case against the government had children too young to qualify for free childcare, the Department for Work and Pensions still perversely insisted that "the benefit cap incentivises work". It's not hard to imagine UBI being administered by the likes of A4e (now sold and renamed PeoplePlus), which carried out back-to-work training for the government, and saw six of its employees receive jail sentences for defrauding the government of £300,000. UBI cannot be a progressive initiative as long as the people with the power to implement it are hostile to the welfare state as a whole.

    What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but a conversation about what a welfare state is for. In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation, a reduction in the working week, and a diminution of the work ethic. Williams and Srnicek believe that without these other provisions, UBI could essentially act as an excuse to get rid of the welfare state.

    What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but an entirely different conversation about what a welfare state is for. As David Lammy MP said, after the Grenfell Tower disaster: "This is about whether the welfare state is just about schools and hospitals or whether it is about a safety net." The conversation, in light of UBI, could go even further: it's possible for the welfare state not just to act as a safety net, but as a tool for all of us to do less work and spend more time with our loved ones, pursuing personal interests or engaging in our communities.

    UBI has this revolutionary potential – but not if it is simply parachuted into a political economy that has been pursuing punitive welfare policies for the last 30 years.

    On everything from climate change and overpopulation to yawning inequality and mass automation, modern western economies face unprecedented challenges. These conditions are frightening but they also open up the possibility of the kind of radical policies we haven't seen since the postwar period. UBI could be the start of this debate, but it must not be the end.

    Christopher H. -> Christopher H.... , June 25, 2017 at 07:06 AM
    "In January, MEPs voted to consider UBI as a solution to the mass unemployment that might result from robots taking over manual jobs."

    MEPs stands for Members of the European Parliament.

    Julio -> Christopher H.... , June 25, 2017 at 08:41 AM
    One of the reasons I support UBI is that it refocuses political discussions to some of the fundamental issues, as this article points out.
    libezkova -> Julio ... , June 25, 2017 at 11:21 AM
    > "One of the reasons I support UBI is that it refocuses political discussions to some of the fundamental issues, as this article points out."

    I agree. UBI might probably be the most viable first step of Trump's MAGA. But he betrayed his electorate. Similarly it would be a good step in Obama's "change we can believe in" which never materialized. The level of automation that currently exists makes UBI quite a possibility.

    But...

    The problem is the key idea of neoliberalism is "socialism for rich and feudalism and/or plantation slavery for poor." So neither Republicans, nor Clinton Democrats are interested in UBI. It is anathema for neoliberals.

    [May 20, 2017] Outsourcing higher wage work is more profitable than outsourcing lower wage work

    Notable quotes:
    "... Baker correctly diagnoses the impact of boomers aging, but there is another effect - "knowledge work" and "high skill manufacturing" is more easily outsourced/offshored than work requiring a physical presence. ..."
    "... That's what happened with American IT. ..."
    May 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    cm, May 20, 2017 at 04:51 PM
    Baker correctly diagnoses the impact of boomers aging, but there is another effect - "knowledge work" and "high skill manufacturing" is more easily outsourced/offshored than work requiring a physical presence.

    Also outsourcing "higher wage" work is more profitable than outsourcing "lower wage" work - with lower wages also labor cost as a proportion of total cost tends to be lower (not always).

    And outsourcing and geographically relocating work creates other overhead costs that are not much related to the wages of the local work replaced - and those overheads are larger in relation to lower wages than in relation to higher wages.

    libezkova -> cm... May 20, 2017 at 08:34 PM

    "Also outsourcing "higher wage" work is more profitable than outsourcing "lower wage" work"

    That's what happened with American IT.

    [May 18, 2017] Toward a Jobs Guarantee at the Center for American Progress by Lambert Strether

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Lambert Strether of Corrente ..."
    "... The Financial Times ..."
    "... customer ..."
    May 17, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on May 17, 2017 By Lambert Strether of Corrente

    I had another topic lined up today, but this ( hat tip alert reader ChrisAtRU ) is so remarkable - and so necessary to frame contextualize immediately - I thought I should bring it your attention, dear readers. The headline is "Toward a Marshall Plan for America ," the authors are a gaggle of CAP luminaries with Neera Tanden leading and Rey Teixeira trailing, and the "Marshall Plan" indeed includes something called a "Jobs Guarantee." Of course, I trust Clinton operatives like Tanden, and Third Way types like Teixeira, about as far as I can throw a concert grand piano. Nevertheless, one sign of an idea whose time has come is that sleazy opportunists and has-beens try to get out in front of it to seize credit[1] and stay relevant. So, modified rapture.

    In this brief post, I'm going to look at the political context that drove CAP - taking Tanden, Teixeira, and the gaggle as a proxy for CAP - to consider a Jobs Guarantee (JG), briefly describe the nature and purpose of a JG, and conclude with some thoughts on how Tanden, Teixeira would screw the JG up, like the good liberals they are.

    Political Context for CAP's JG

    Let's begin with the photo of Prairie du Chien, WI at the top of CAP's JG article. Here it is:

    I went to Google Maps Street View, found Stark's Sports Shop (and Liquor Store), and took a quick look round town. Things don't look too bad, which is to say things look pretty much like they do in my own home town, in the fly-over state of Maine; many local businesses. The street lamps make my back teeth itch a little, because along with bike paths to attract professionals, they're one of those panaceas to "bring back downtown," but as it turns out Prairie du Chien has marketed itself to summer tourists quite successfully as " the oldest Euro-American settlement established on the Upper Mississippi River," so those lamps are legit! (Of course, Prairie du Chien, like so much of flyover country, is fighting an opioid problem , but that doesn't show up in Street View, or affect the tourists in any way.)

    More to the point, Crawford County WI, in which Prairie du Chien is located, was one of the counties that went for Obama, twice, and then flipped to Trump ( 50.1% Trump, 44.6% Clinton ), handing Trump the election, although the CAP authors don't mention this. AP has a good round-up of interviews with Prairie du Chien residents , from which I'll extract the salient points. On "flipping," both from Obama (since he didn't deliver) and away from Trump (if he doesn't deliver):

    In 2012, [Lydia Holt] voted for Barack Obama because he promised her change, but she feels that change hasn't reached her here. So last year she chose a presidential candidate unlike any she'd ever seen, the billionaire businessman who promised to help America, and people like her, win again. Many of her neighbors did, too .

    In this corner of middle America, in this one, small slice of the nation that sent Trump to Washington, they are watching and they are waiting, their hopes pinned on his promised economic renaissance. And if four years from now the change he pledged hasn't found them here, the people of Crawford County said they might change again to someone else.

    "[T]hings aren't going the way we want them here," she said, "so we needed to go in another direction."

    And the issues:

    [Holt] tugged 13 envelopes from a cabinet above the stove, each one labeled with a different debt: the house payment, the student loans, the vacuum cleaner she bought on credit.

    Lydia Holt and her husband tuck money into these envelopes with each paycheck to whittle away at what they owe. They both earn about $10 an hour and, with two kids, there are usually some they can't fill. She did the math; at this rate, they'll be paying these same bills for 87 years.

    Kramer said she's glad the Affordable Care Act has helped millions get insurance, but it hasn't helped her he and her husband were stunned to find premiums over $1,000 a month. Her daughter recently moved into their house with her five children, so there's no money to spare. They opted to pay the penalty of $2,000, and pray they don't get sick until Trump, she hopes, keeps his promise to replace the law with something better.

    Among them is a woman who works for $10.50 an hour in a sewing factory, who still admires Obama, bristles at Trump's bluster, but can't afford health insurance. And the dairy farmer who thinks Trump is a jerk - "somebody needs to get some Gorilla Glue and glue his lips shut" - but has watched his profits plummet and was willing to take the risk.

    And of course jobs (as seen in this video, "Inside the Minds and Homes of Voters in Prairie du Chien, WI," made by students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).

    So that's Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. CAP frames the electoral context this way:

    While the election was decided by a small number of votes overall, there was a significant shift of votes in counties in critical Electoral College states, including Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

    (I could have told them that. In fact, I did! ) And the reasons for the shift:

    What was going on in these heavily white working-class counties that might explain support for Trump? Without diminishing the importance of cultural and racial influences, it is clear to us that lingering [sic] economic pressures among important voting blocs helped to create a larger opening for Trump's victory.

    We do not yet know the exact reasons for the drop in turnout among young people and black voters. But with President Obama not on the ticket to drive voter enthusiasm, it is quite possible that lingering job and wage pressures in more urban areas with lots of young people, and in areas with large populations of African-Americans, yielded similar, if distinct, economic anxiety in ways that may have depressed voter turnout among base progressives. The combined effect of economic anxiety may have been to drive white noncollege voters toward Trump and to drive down voter engagement and participation among base progressives.

    Either way, issues related to lost jobs, low wages, high costs, and diminished mobility played a critical role in setting the stage for a narrow populist victory for Trump.

    (I could have told them that, too. In fact, I did! ) Note the lingering "Obama Coalition" / identity politics brain damage that casually assumes "base progressives" equate to African-Americans and youth. Nevertheless, mild kudos to CAP for fighting through to the concept that "economic pressures among important voting blocs helped to create a larger opening for Trump's victory." The CAP paper then goes on to recommend a JG as an answer to such "economic pressures."[2]

    Nature and Purpose of a JG

    Here's the how and why of a JG (though I wrote it up, I had the help of practioners):

    How would the JG work from the perspective of a working person (not an owner?) Or from the perspective of the millions of permanently disemployed? The MMT Primer :

    If you are involuntarily unemployed today (or are stuck with a part-time job when you really want to work full time) you only have three choices:

    Employ yourself (create your own business-something that usually goes up in recessions although most of these businesses fail) Convince an employer to hire you, adding to the firm's workforce Convince an employer to replace an existing worker, hiring you

    The second option requires that the firm's employment is below optimum-it must not currently have the number of workers desired to produce the amount of output the firm thinks it can sell. &#8230;

    If the firm is in equilibrium, then, producing what it believes it can sell, it will hire you only on the conditions stated in the third case-to replace an existing worker. Perhaps you promise to work harder, or better, or at a lower wage. But, obviously, that just shifts the unemployment to someone else.

    It is the "dogs and bones" problem: if you bury 9 bones and send 10 dogs out to go bone-hunting you know at least one dog will come back "empty mouthed". You can take that dog and teach her lots of new tricks in bone-finding, but if you bury only 9 bones, again, some unlucky dog comes back without a bone.

    The only solution is to provide a 10 th bone. That is what the JG does: it ensures a bone for every dog that wants to hunt.

    It expands the options to include:

      There is a "residual" employer who will always provide a job to anyone who shows up ready and willing to work.

    It expands choice. If you want to work and exhaust the first 3 alternatives listed above, there is a 4 th : the JG.

    It expands choice without reducing other choices. You can still try the first 3 alternatives. You can take advantage of all the safety net alternatives provided. Or you can choose to do nothing. It is up to you.

    If I were one of the millions of people permanently disemployed, I would welcome that additional choice. It's certainly far more humane than any policy on offer by either party. And the JG is in the great tradition of programs the New Deal sponsored, like the CCC, the WPA, Federal Writers' Project , and the Federal Art Project . So what's not to like? ( Here's a list of other JGs). Like the New Deal, but not temporary!

    Intuitively: What the JG does is set a baseline[3] for the entire package offered to workers, and employers have to offer a better package, or not get the workers they need. When I came up here to Maine I'd quit my job voluntarily and so wasn't eligible for unemployment. Then the economy crashed, and I had no work (except for blogging) for two years. There were no jobs to be had. I would have screamed with joy for a program even remotely like this, and I don't even have dependents to take care of. It may be objected that the political process won't deliver an offer as good as the Primer suggests. Well, don't mourn. Organize. It may be objected that a reform like the JG merely reinforces the power of the 0.01%. If so, I'm not sure I'm willing to throw the currently disemployed under the bus because "worse is better," regardless. Anyhow, does "democratic control over the living wage" really sound all that squillionaire-friendly to you? Aren't they doing everything in their power to fight anything that sounds like that? The JG sounds like the slogan Lincoln ran on, to me: "Vote yourself a farm!" [3]

    So, what does the JG for the economy? MMT was put together by economists; from an economists perspective, what is it good for? Why did they do that? The Primer once more:

    some supporters emphasize that a program with a uniform basic wage[4] also helps to promote economic and price stability.

    The JG/ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer as employment in the program grows in recession and shrinks in economic expansion, counteracting private sector employment fluctuations. The federal government budget will become more counter-cyclical because its spending on the ELR program will likewise grow in recession and fall in expansion.

    Furthermore, the uniform basic wage will reduce both inflationary pressure in a boom and deflationary pressure in a bust. In a boom, private employers can recruit from the program's pool of workers, paying a mark-up over the program wage. The pool acts like a "reserve army" of the employed, dampening wage pressures as private employment grows. In recession, workers down-sized by private employers can work at the JG/ELR wage, which puts a floor to how low wages and income can fall.

    Finally, research indicates that those without work would prefer to have it :

    Research by Pavlina Tcherneva and Rania Antonopoulos indicates that when asked, most people want to work. Studying how job guarantees affect women in poor countries, they find the programs are popular largely because they recognize-and more fairly distribute and ­compensate-all the child- and elder care that is now often performed by women for free (out of love or duty), off the books, or not at all.

    Enough of this crap jobs at crap wages malarky!

    And here's the how and why of a JG, as described by CAP :

    We propose today a new jobs guarantee, and we further expect a robust[3] agenda to be developed by the commission.

    The low wages and low employment rates for those without college degrees only exist because of a failure of imagination. There is no shortage of important work that needs to be done in our country. There are not nearly enough home care workers to aid the aged and disabled. Many working families with children under the age of 5 need access to affordable child care. Schools need teachers' aides, and cities need EMTs. And there is no shortage of people who could do this work. What has been missing is policy that can mobilize people.

    To solve this problem, we propose a large-scale, permanent program of public employment and infrastructure investment-similar to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression but modernized for the 21st century. It will increase employment and wages for those without a college degree while providing needed services that are currently out of reach for lower-income households and cash-strapped state and local governments. Furthermore, some individuals may be hired into paying public jobs in which their primary duty will be to complete intensive, full-time training for high-growth, in-demand occupations. These "public apprenticeships" could include rotations with public and private entities to gain on-the-ground experience and lead to guaranteed private-sector employment upon successful completion of training.

    Such an expanded public employment program could, for example, have a target of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age workers without a bachelor's degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent. Currently, this would require the creation of 4.4 million jobs. At a living wage-which we can approximate as $15 per hour plus the cost of contributions to Social Security and Medicare via payroll taxes-the direct cost of each job would be approximately $36,000 annually. Thus, a rough estimate of the costs of this employment program would be about $158 billion in the current year. This is approximately one-quarter of Trump's proposed tax cut for the wealthy on an annual basis.

    With tis background, let's look at how liberals would screw the JG up.

    How a CAP JG Would Go Wrong

    Before getting into a little policy detail, I'll examine a few cultural/framing issues. After all, CAP does want the program's intended recipients to accept it with good grace, no? Let me introduce the over-riding concern, from Joan C. Williams in The Financial Times : "They don't want compassion. They want respect" :

    Williams warns that Republican errors alone won't give Democrats back the WWC.

    Or any part of the WC; as even CAP recognizes, although WWC disproportionately voted Trump, and non-WWC disproportionately stayed home.

    While [Williams] agrees that the Democrats have mobilised their base since Trump's election, she has "one simple message" for the party: it needs to show the WWC respect, "in a tone suitable for grown-ups". Democrats must say: "We regret that we have disrespected you, we now hear you." She asks: "Is this so hard? Although the risk is that the response will be, 'Oh, those poor little white people with their opioid epidemics, let's open our hearts in compassion to them.' That's going to infuriate them. They don't want compassion, they want respect."

    To show respect, it would really behoove liberals to deep-six the phrase "economic anxiety," along with "economic frustrations," "economic concerns," "economic grievances," and "lingering economic pressures."[4] All these phrases make successful class warfare a psychological condition, no doubt to be treated by a professional (who by definition is not anxious, not frustrated, has no grievances, and certainly no economic pressures, because of their hourly rate (or possibly their government contract).

    To show respect, it would also behoove liberals to deep-six the concept that markets come first; people who sell their labor power by the hour tend to be sensitive about such things. Take, for a tiny example, the caption beneath the image of Prairie du Chein. Let me quote it:

    A customer crosses the street while leaving a shop along the main business district in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, January 2017.

    Really? A customer ? Does the human figure have to be a customer ? Why?

    Along the same lines, drop the "affordable" crap; ObamaCare should have ruined that branding already; what seems like it's affordable to CAP writers in the Beltway probably isn't affordable at all to somebody making $10 an hour. Anyhow, if something like childcare or for that matter #MedicareForAll ought to be a universal direct material benefit, then deliver it!

    To show respect, abandon the "Marshall Plan" framing immediately. Because it means the "winners" are going to graciously help the "losers," right? And prudentially, liberals don't really want to get the working class asking themselves who conducted a war against them, and why, right?

    To show respect, make the JG a truly universal benefit, a real guarantee, and don't turn it into an ObamaCare-like Rube Goldberg device of means-testing, worthiness detection, gatekeeping, and various complex forms of insult and degradation, like narrow networks. This passage from CAP has me concerned:

    Such an expanded public employment program could, for example, have a target of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age workers without a bachelor's degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent.

    That 'target" language sounds to me very much like the "dogs and bones" problem. Suppose currently we have 6 bones and 10 dogs. The "target" is 7 bones. Suppose we meet it? There are still 3 dogs without bones! Some guarantee! The JG should be simple: A job for everyone who wants one. None of this targeting or slicing and dicing demographics. The JG isn't supposed to be an employment guarantee for macro-economists (who basically have one anyone).

    To show respect, make the JG set the baseline for wages (and working conditions). This passage from CAP has me concerned:

    Second, because it would employ people to provide services that are currently needed but unaffordable, it would not compete with existing private-sector employment.

    This language seems a bit slippery to me. If Walmart is paying $10.00 an hour, is the JG really going to pay $9.50?

    Finally, you will notice that the CAP JG is shorn of any macro-economic implications. Note, for example, that replacing our current cruel system of regulating the economy by throwing people out of work isn't mentioned. Note also that CAP also accepts the false notion that Federal taxes pay for Federal spending. That puts CAP in the austerity box, meaning that the JG might be cut back just when it is most needed, not least by working people.

    Conclusion

    I do want to congratulate CAP, and without irony, for this passage:

    [The JG] would provide the dignity of work, the value of which is significant. When useful work is not available, there are large negative consequences, ranging from depression, to a decline in family stability, to "deaths of [sic] despair."

    It's good to see the Case-Deaton study penetrating the liberal hive mind. Took long enough. Oh, and this makes the JG a moral issue, too. The pallid language of "economic anxiety" should be reformulated to reflect this, as should the program itself.

    NOTES

    [1] The JG originally comes from the MMT community; here is a high-level summary . Oddly, or not, there's no footnote crediting MMTers. Interestingly, Stephanie Kelton, who hails from the University of Missouri at Kansas City's MMT-friendly economics department, before Sanders brought her onto the staff at the Senate Budget committee, was not able to persuade Sanders of the correctness and/or political utility of MMT generally or the JG in particular.

    [2] I guess those famous Democrat 2016 post mortems will never be published, eh? This will have to do for a poor substitute. Or maybe the Democrats just want us to read Shattered .

    [3] In my view, "robust" is a bullshit tell. Back when I was a hotshot consultant, the operational definition of "robust" was "contained in a very large three-ring binder."

    [4] Dear God. Are these people demented? Nobody who is actually under "economic pressure" would use these words. And so far as I can tell, "lingering" means permanent.

    About Lambert Strether

    Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism ("Because markets"). I don't much care about the "ism" that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don't much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue - and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me - is the tens of thousands of excess "deaths from despair," as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics - even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton's wars created - bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow - currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press - a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let's call such voices "the left." Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn't allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I've been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

    ChrisAtRU , May 17, 2017 at 1:38 pm

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

    Clive , May 17, 2017 at 2:37 pm

    No, thank you!

    Dead Dog , May 17, 2017 at 4:40 pm

    Yes, a great essay. And thank you commentariat.
    Of course, there is a potential conflict from those who want a basic income, but don't want to work. Such a position frames such people badly, but a basic income remains an essential part of a JG world IMO.
    The JG would provide incentive if you didn't lose the safety net and could add to it by working in a JG program.
    Most here in this place accept that a sovereign government can pay for programs which are not funded by taxes (or debt) and the JG and basic income concepts could be a way to test this in a controlled way.
    The main reason I think that politicians continue to have blinkers (LA LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU) with respect to MMT is that they are scared witless of a government with unlimited spending powers. That's why we can't have nice things.

    jrs , May 17, 2017 at 5:26 pm

    don't want to work, hmm I don't even know if I could work in a job without a decent amount of slack (A.D.D. mind may not be capable of it or something and often not for lack of trying, though I do a decent amount of unpaid work in my precious leisure time). Or at least not the full 40 hours, so if the job guarantee bosses are slave drivers, I don't know, I'd probably be fired from my job guaranteed job period.

    But what if a job was aligned with one's interest? Don't know, never experienced that.

    But all that aside and never even mind unemployment, given how horrible the job circumstances are that I see many people caught in (and I definitely don't mean having slack – that's a good thing, I mean verbal ABUSE, I mean working endless hours of unpaid overtime etc.), any alternative would seem good.

    nycTerrierist , May 17, 2017 at 6:19 pm

    +1!

    PKMKII , May 17, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    The "target" language also makes me worry that they're defining optimal employment by the inflation-obsessed standards of Chicago-school economists, thus coming up short in the name of protecting the investor class.

    Minor quibble: Does Maine constitute flyover country? Usually that term means the parts of the country that the well-to-do "fly over" from east coast cities to west coast ones, with perhaps an exception for Chicago. You wouldn't fly over Maine for any of those routes. Not to mention, Maine is a popular vacationing/summer home state for rich New Englanders, so it doesn't exactly have an "other" status for them the way rural Wisconsin would.

    Huey Long , May 17, 2017 at 4:22 pm

    I think Maine is legit flyover country as flying over Maine was once mandatory on the transatlantic route in order to Gander Airport in Newfoundland. I know, I know, it's a bit of a stretch but I'm trying here!

    As for Maine's other status, you're spot on about "down east" (coastal) Maine and some of the lakes being popular with the landed gentry, but the interior of the state is sparsely populated, poor, white, and marginalized. Many of the paper mills have gone belly-up and the economy in many places consists of picking potatoes or cutting down trees.

    Knifecatcher , May 17, 2017 at 5:06 pm

    I used to do a lot of business travel to Nova Scotia. Hard to get there from the US without flying over Maine. But I think Lambert meant flyover in the pejorative "why would you live here when you could be an artisanal pickle maker in Brooklyn" sense.

    Peham , May 17, 2017 at 2:17 pm

    Thanks much! A JG as you describe plus nationalizing all our current rentier industries ought to just about do the trick.

    Sutter Cane , May 17, 2017 at 2:24 pm

    Are you still guaranteed a job if you happen to make any negative comments about Neera Tanden? (Asking for Matt Bruenig)

    nihil obstet , May 17, 2017 at 6:50 pm

    Matt Bruenig had other issues with the article: More Job Guarantee Muddle . While he points out that the jobs suggested in the article should be permanent rather than temporary jobs, I go on with my own little sense of discomfort that they all involve putting the otherwise jobless in charge of caring for the helpless. I don't find that a good idea. I've spent enough time both working with and volunteering in human service organizations to have observed that it's not really appropriate work for a lot of people, even for many good-hearted volunteers. It really dampens my enthusiasm for a JG that I have yet to see an argument for it that doesn't invoke child and elderly care as just great jobs that the jobless can be put to doing.

    Just another quibble with this post. I first heard of a job guarantee and heard arguments for it in the U.S. civilian society from Michael Harrington in the early 1980s (guaranteed jobs have been a feature of the state capitalist societies that call themselves socialist throughout the 20th c.), so I don't find it particularly odd when the MMT community isn't mentioned as originating the idea. In fact, I tend to respond with "Hey, MMTers, learn some history."

    jrs , May 17, 2017 at 7:06 pm

    good points.

    Susan the other , May 17, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    Thanks for this article Lambert. Why should we trust CAP to handle this when they have done nothing toward this end in their entire history. In fact, in undeniable fact, if we don't do something about demand in this country we will have no economy left at all. For these guys to even approach a JG you know they are panicked. Nobody goes over this fact because it turns them all into instant hypocrites. I spent yesterday listening to some MMTers on U-Tube, Wray and some others. They all clearly and succinctly explain the systemic reasons for JG. Not nonsense. In fact, MMT approaches a JG as the opposite of nonsense on so many levels. As you have pointed out – these CAP people are a little late to reality. And their dear leader Obama is first in line for the blame, followed closely by Bill Clinton and his balance-the-budget cabal of bankster idiots. And etc. And these JG jobs could be just the jobs we need to turn global warming around. It could be the best spent money ever. It is a very straight-forward calculation.

    Sue , May 17, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    Dispel ambiguity. Call it LWUJG, Living Wage Universal Job Guarantee

    Sandler , May 17, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    I don't know how you even bother. America is so far away from this intellectually and culturally, there is no chance. Right now the "jobs guarantee" is get arrested for something bogus and be sentenced to prison to do forced labor for outsourcing corporations (yes this is real). Look where the GOP stands on basic issues which were settled long ago in Europe, they are in the Stone age. The Dems are right wing everywhere else.

    With US institutions usually run horribly how do you expect this to be well run? Is the VA a shining example? I certainly would not have hope for this at the federal level.

    Murph , May 17, 2017 at 3:43 pm

    I feel the same way often but I've got to allow myself some hope once in a while. This development is at least turn in the right direction for the moment, nothing else. There's nothing wrong with being (aprehensively) pleased about that.

    Sandler , May 17, 2017 at 5:29 pm

    I'd like to get a basic unemployment welfare scheme going first. We don't even have that! We have an "insurance" program which requires you to first have held a job which paid enough for long enough, and then get fired, not quit. And it only pays for six months. Again, this was settled in other rich countries a long time ago.

    Darius , May 17, 2017 at 6:38 pm

    Swing for the fences, ladies or gentlemen. Throw incremental change overboard, along with Hillary, Tim Kaine and Neera.

    Disturbed Voter , May 17, 2017 at 6:03 pm

    There is a job guarantee in Castro's Cuba. So wonderful, people are swimming from Miami to Havana ever day.

    Though you have it exactly right in the US the job guarantee is to be a felon on a privatized prison farm usually called a "plantation". I am looking forward to my neighbors finally being put to work. At least it is only building a Presidential Library for Obama, not a pyramid for Pharaoh.

    witters , May 17, 2017 at 6:40 pm

    "There is a job guarantee in Castro's Cuba. So wonderful, people are swimming from Miami to Havana ever day."

    That is why Cuba will never last! It will die in minutes, without any outside help!

    Mind you, here's a thought. Maybe the one's who didn't want to work, left for Florida!

    diptherio , May 17, 2017 at 3:49 pm

    My prediction: by the time this makes it through Congress, it will be a guarantee for no more than 15 hours per week at slightly below the minimum wage and you'll only be able to be in the program for nine months, total during your lifetime. Or am I being overly cynical?

    Maybe we need to update that old saw: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they co-opt your idea and strip the soul out of it, then you kinda win but not really, but hey that's progress, right?"

    Even though I'm cynical, I'm with Lambert in being for just about anything that makes us bottom-20%ers lives better, even if it is highly flawed. Heck, I'd even be for a BIG on that basis, even if Yves is right about the negative side-effects of that policy.

    Huey Long , May 17, 2017 at 4:29 pm

    they co-opt your idea and strip the soul out of it, then you kinda win but not really, but hey that's progress, right?"

    SPOT ON!!!

    This is EXACTLY what Bismark did in 1883 with his Staatssozialismus (state socialism) reforms.

    Disturbed Voter , May 17, 2017 at 6:03 pm

    In 1883, Germany still had hope it was only 12 years old!

    Jeff , May 17, 2017 at 3:50 pm

    If I understood correctly, Norway is running such a program since many years.
    Basically, when you are out of a job, you get unemployment benefits (a low but decent salary, health care and other modern facilities unheard of is the US) – which last forever .
    On the other hand, any public institution can call you in to help a hand: washing dishes at the school kitchen one day, waiting on the elderly the other day, helping out in the local library wherever hands are needed but not available.
    So it is not really a JG, but you are guaranteed to help out your local community, and you are guaranteed a minimal income. That seems close enough to me.

    Fred1 , May 17, 2017 at 4:27 pm

    This is just positioning to defend against a challenger from the left who is promoting a genuine JG.

    See we agree about a JG, I'm for it too and here is my 9 point proposal on my website.

    robnume , May 17, 2017 at 5:56 pm

    Thanks, Lambert, for a very interesting post. I combed through CAP's panel of "experts." I was not impressed.
    I'm going to start my own think tank. Gonna call it CRAP: Center for Real American Progress.

    lyle , May 17, 2017 at 7:18 pm

    Of course in the north in the winter you could go back to shoveling snow with snow shovels (no machines allowed) and ban use by public employees of riding lawnmowers in the summer in favor of powered walk behind mowers. From what I have read this is what china did on the 3 gorges dam, partly making the project a jobs project by doing things in a human intensive way. (of course you could go back to the hand push non powered reel mower but then you have to worry about folks and heart attacks. (Or use those in their 20s for this. Growing up in MI and In this is how we mowed the yard. (in the 1950s and 1960) and for snow shoveling, my dad got a snow blower when I went off to college.
    Now if you really want a low productivity way of cutting grass get one of the hand grass trimmers and set to work cutting it by that, it would employ a lot of folks and not have the exertion problem of a push mower (Again I used these in the 1960s in MI before we had the string trimmers and edgers etc. (also recall the old hand powered lawn edgers.)

    craazyboy , May 17, 2017 at 8:19 pm

    I'm partial to John Cleese Silly Walks. It would be creative and artistic. We need more art.

    Samuel Conner , May 17, 2017 at 9:46 pm

    It sounds like the CAP JG proposal is "top down" in that the "palette" of jobs to be funded is decided by the same agency (or an agency at the same level of government) as the fund disbursement authority, or is specified in the law itself.

    IIRC, the JG concept proposed in the MMT primer would devolve the decision of "how to usefully employ willing underutilized workers" to local level. Funding would still be Federal. There would be some kind of "request for proposals/peer review" process to decide which locally-wanted projects would receive JG dollars (presumably in order to be a guarantee, enough projects would be approved for every locality to employ the available under-utilized willing workforce. If a locality only proposed one project, that would be funded)

    It that right, Lambert? Is "top down" another way that centrists could screw up a JG? And might the "local devolution" aspect of the NEP/MMT Primer concept appeal to folks on the right?

    washunate , May 18, 2017 at 12:13 am

    Great write up. I obviously have a long-running disagreement on the policy prescription of JG, but I do find it interesting talking about how groups like CAP present it outside the specific confines of MMT (and, apparently, without even tipping the hat to them ?).

    One concrete bit of info I would love to know is how they estimate 4.4 million workers for take-up. First, it's a hilarious instance of false precision. Second, it's remarkably low. $15/hr is approximately the median wage. Tens of millions of workers would sign up, both from the ranks of the crap jobs and from the ranks of those out of the labor force.

    [May 07, 2017] Prime-Age Employment Rate Hits New High for Recovery

    May 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    point , May 07, 2017 at 05:34 AM
    Perhaps this report raises the possibility that this low pressure low growth economy may actually lead to a new high in the prime working age cohort, still with little wage growth.
    libezkova -> point... , May 07, 2017 at 01:33 PM
    Boomers are retiring and that increases employment in prime age (25-54) cohort. So to take only prime age is a little bit disingenuous. This effect needs to be taken into consideration.

    Those who were born before 1950 were probably the most numerous. They all will be over 67 at the end of the year.

    [Apr 19, 2017] Paul Krugman Gets Retail Wrong: They are Not Very Good Jobs

    Apr 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne , April 17, 2017 at 05:55 AM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/paul-krugman-gets-retail-wrong-they-are-not-very-good-jobs

    April 17, 2017

    Paul Krugman Gets Retail Wrong: They are Not Very Good Jobs

    Paul Krugman used his column * this morning to ask why we don't pay as much attention to the loss of jobs in retail as we do to jobs lost in mining and manufacturing. His answer is that in large part the former jobs tend to be more white and male than the latter. While this is true, although African Americans have historically been over-represented in manufacturing, there is another simpler explanation: retail jobs tend to not be very good jobs.

    The basic story is that jobs in mining and manufacturing tend to offer higher pay and are far more likely to come with health care and pension benefits than retail jobs. A worker who loses a job in these sectors is unlikely to find a comparable job elsewhere. In retail, the odds are that a person who loses a job will be able to find one with similar pay and benefits.

    A quick look at average weekly wages ** can make this point. In mining the average weekly wage is $1,450, in manufacturing it is $1,070, by comparison in retail it is just $555. It is worth mentioning that much of this difference is in hours worked, not the hourly pay. There is nothing wrong with working shorter workweeks (in fact, I think it is a very good idea), but for those who need a 40 hour plus workweek to make ends meet, a 30-hour a week job will not fit the bill.

    This difference in job quality is apparent in the difference in separation rates by industry. (This is the percentage of workers who lose or leave their job every month.) It was 2.4 percent for the most recent month in manufacturing. By comparison, it was 4.7 percent in retail, almost twice as high. (It was 5.2 percent in mining and logging. My guess is that this is driven by logging, but I will leave that one for folks who know the industry better.)

    Anyhow, it shouldn't be a mystery that we tend to be more concerned about the loss of good jobs than the loss of jobs that are not very good. If we want to ask a deeper question, as to why retail jobs are not very good, then the demographics almost certainly play a big role.

    Since only a small segment of the workforce is going to be employed in manufacturing regardless of what we do on trade (even the Baker dream policy will add at most 2 million jobs), we should be focused on making retail and other service sector jobs good jobs. The full agenda for making this transformation is a long one (higher minimum wages and unions would be a big part of the picture, along with universal health care insurance and a national pension system), but there is one immediate item on the agenda.

    All right minded people should be yelling about the Federal Reserve Board's interest rate hikes. The point of these hikes is to slow the economy and reduce the rate of job creation. The Fed's concern is that the labor market is getting too tight. In a tighter labor market workers, especially those at the bottom of the pecking order, are able to get larger wage increases. The Fed is ostensibly worried that this can lead to higher inflation, which can get us to a wage price spiral like we saw in the 70s.

    As I and others have argued, *** there is little basis for thinking that we are anywhere close to a 1970s type inflation, with inflation consistently running below the Fed's 2.0 percent target, (which many of us think is too low anyhow). I'd love to see Krugman pushing the cause of full employment here. We should call out racism and sexism where we see it, but this is a case where there is a concrete policy that can do something to address it. Come on Paul, we need your voice.

    * https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/opinion/why-dont-all-jobs-matter.html

    ** https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm

    *** http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/overall-and-core-cpi-fall-in-march

    -- Dean Baker

    Fred C. Dobbs -> anne... , April 17, 2017 at 06:17 AM
    PK: Consider what has happened to department stores. Even as Mr. Trump was boasting about saving a few hundred jobs in manufacturing here and there, Macy's announced plans to close 68 stores and lay off 10,000 workers. Sears, another iconic institution, has expressed "substantial doubt" about its ability to stay in business.

    Overall, department stores employ a third fewer people now than they did in 2001. That's half a million traditional jobs gone - about eighteen times as many jobs as were lost in coal mining over the same period.

    And retailing isn't the only service industry that has been hit hard by changing technology. Another prime example is newspaper publishing, where employment has declined by 270,000, almost two-thirds of the work force, since 2000. ...

    (To those that had them, they were probably
    pretty decent jobs, albeit much less 'gritty'
    than mining or manufacturing.)

    BenIsNotYoda -> anne... , April 17, 2017 at 06:42 AM
    Dean is correct. Krugman just wants to play the racism card or tell people those who wish their communities were gutted that they are stupid.
    JohnH -> BenIsNotYoda... , April 17, 2017 at 06:48 AM
    Elite experts are totally flummoxed...how can they pontificate solutions when they are clueless?

    Roger Cohen had a very long piece about France and it discontents in the Times Sunday Review yesterday. He could not make heads or tails of the problem. Not worth the read.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/sunday/france-in-the-end-of-days.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Froger-cohen&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0

    And experts wonder why nobody listens to them any more? Priceless!!!

    BenIsNotYoda -> JohnH... , April 17, 2017 at 07:34 AM
    clueless experts/academics. well said.
    paine -> anne... , April 17, 2017 at 08:27 AM
    Exactly dean
    Tom aka Rusty -> anne... , April 17, 2017 at 07:39 AM
    Krugman is an arrogant elitist who thinks people who disagree with him tend to be ignorant yahoos.

    Sort of a Larry Summers with a little better manners.

    anne -> Tom aka Rusty... , April 17, 2017 at 08:18 AM
    Krugman is an arrogant elitist who thinks people who disagree with him tend to be ignorant yahoos.

    [ This is a harsh but fair criticism, and even the apology of Paul Krugman was conditional and showed no thought to the other workers insulted. ]

    cm -> Tom aka Rusty... , April 17, 2017 at 08:11 AM
    There is a lot of elitism to go around. People will be much more reluctant to express publicly the same as in private (or pseudonymously on the internet?). But looking down on other people and their work is pretty widespread (and in either case there is a lot of assumption about the nature of the work and the personal attributes of the people doing it - usually of a derogatory type in both cases).

    I find it plausible that Krugman was referring those widespread stereotypes about job categories that (traditionally?) have not required a college degree, or have been relatively at the low end of the esteem scale in a given industry (e.g. in "tech" and manufacturing, QA/testing related work).

    It must be possible to comment on such stereotypes, but there is of course always the risk of being thought to hold them oneself, or indeed being complicit in perpetuating them.

    As a thought experiment, I suggest reviewing what you yourself think about occupations not held by yourself, good friends, and family members and acquaintainces you like/respect (these qualifications are deliberate). For example, you seem to think not very highly of maids.

    Of course, being an RN requires significantly more training than being a maid, and not just once when you start in your career. But at some level of abstraction, anybody who does work where their autonomy is quite limited (i.e. they are not setting objectives at any level of the organization) is "just a worker". That's the very stereotype we are discussing, isn't it?

    anne -> cm... , April 17, 2017 at 08:26 AM
    Nicely explained.
    paine -> anne... , April 17, 2017 at 08:40 AM
    Yes
    anne -> Tom aka Rusty... , April 17, 2017 at 08:24 AM
    Krugman thinks nurses are the equivalent of maids...

    [ The problem is that Paul Krugman dismissed the work of nurses and maids and gardeners as "menial." I find no evidence that Krugman understands that even after conditionally apologizing to nurses. ]

    paine -> anne... , April 17, 2017 at 08:42 AM
    Even if there are millions of mcjobs
    out there
    none are filled by mcpeople

    [Apr 16, 2017] The most common characteristic of people running their own business was that theyd been fired twice

    Notable quotes:
    "... things might have worked out with better luck on timing), you need your head examined to start a small business ..."
    "... If you can tolerate the BS, it is vastly better to be on a payroll. 90% of all new businesses fail and running one is no picnic. ..."
    "... And new business formation has dived in the US, due mainly IMHO to less than robust demand in many sectors of the economy. ..."
    "... You're so right. It used to be that there were set asides for small businesses but nowadays Federal and State Governments are only interested in contracts with large businesses. The SBA classification for small business is based on NAICS code (used to be SIC code) is usually $1-2 million or up to 500 employees. I wonder how they can be small businesses! ..."
    "... To survive, small businesses need to sell their goods/services to large businesses. Most of the decision makers who purchase these items are unreachable or already have their favorites. Unless your small business has invented a better mousetrap you're SOL! ..."
    Apr 16, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Yves Smith, April 16, 2017 at 5:00 pm

    As someone who has started three businesses, two of them successful (I went to Australia right before the Gulf War started, which led to new business in Sydney coming to a complete halt for six months; things might have worked out with better luck on timing), you need your head examined to start a small business. The most common characteristic of people running their own business was that they'd been fired twice.

    If you can tolerate the BS, it is vastly better to be on a payroll. 90% of all new businesses fail and running one is no picnic.

    And new business formation has dived in the US, due mainly IMHO to less than robust demand in many sectors of the economy.

    steelhead , April 16, 2017 at 5:41 pm

    Unless your family fully bankrolls you until BK kicks in (snark). I would have loved to write as a career. Unfortunately, at the time, promises that had been made were broken and I had to go to work for a F500 just to survive right after my undergraduate degree was completed. Fate and Karma.

    oh , April 16, 2017 at 5:56 pm

    You're so right. It used to be that there were set asides for small businesses but nowadays Federal and State Governments are only interested in contracts with large businesses. The SBA classification for small business is based on NAICS code (used to be SIC code) is usually $1-2 million or up to 500 employees. I wonder how they can be small businesses!

    To survive, small businesses need to sell their goods/services to large businesses. Most of the decision makers who purchase these items are unreachable or already have their favorites. Unless your small business has invented a better mousetrap you're SOL!

    [Apr 12, 2017] Why losing your job leads to a very long-lasting decline in your lifetime wages

    Apr 12, 2017 | lse.ac.uk
    Gregor Jarosch (2015, Chicago, Stanford): Jarosch writes a model to explain why losing your job leads to a very long-lasting decline in your lifetime wages. His hypothesis is that this is due to people climbing a ladder of jobs that are increasingly secure, so that when one has the misfortune of losing a job, this leads to a fall down the ladder and a higher likelihood of having further spells of unemployment in the future. He uses administrative social security data to find some evidence for this hypothesis.

    [Apr 09, 2017] Time to do some fact checking on this right wing spin

    Apr 09, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    DeDude , April 08, 2017 at 12:31 PM
    Now isn't that amazing. When you increase the income of the consumer class workers you grow the economy.

    http://ritholtz.com/2017/04/new-seattle-post/

    Nobody could have predicted that - at least not if they were addicted to right wing narratives.

    pgl -> DeDude... , April 08, 2017 at 12:31 PM
    Ritholtz has had a field day debunking the right wing intellectual garbage of Martin Perry but today he turns on right wing toadie Tim Worstall.

    Great link!

    pgl -> pgl... , April 08, 2017 at 12:38 PM
    Worstall:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/04/05/seattles-2-9-unemployment-rate-tells-us-nothing-about-the-effects-of-seattles-minimum-wage-rise/#782d373068b8

    "Sure, it's lovely that unemployment in Seattle dips under 3%. But an attempt to tie that drop in the unemployment rate to the minimum wage isn't going to work. For we can as easily note that the unemployment rate has dropped everywhere in the US over this same time period and the minimum wage hasn't risen everywhere over that time period. We've not even got a consistent correlation between minimum wages and unemployment that is.mWhat we've actually got to do is try to work out some method of what would have happened in Seattle from all of the effects of everything else other than the minimum wage, then compare it to what did happen with the minimum wage. The difference between these two will be the effect of the minimum wage rise. Seattle City Council know this, which is why they asked the University of Washington to run exactly such a study."

    Worstall reaches back to this July 2016 paper:

    https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/MinWageReport-July2016_Final.pdf

    Time to do some fact checking on this right wing spin.

    [Apr 06, 2017] Approximately 10 million males ages 25-54 are unemployed. Fifty-seven percent of these are on disability

    Apr 06, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    New Deal democrat , April 05, 2017 at 05:56 AM
    Via Business Insider
    http://www.businessinsider.com/jamie-dimon-ceo-letter-jpmorgan-on-education-and-labor-force-participation-2017-4

    This is from Jamie Dimon's letter to stockholders:

    "If the work participation rate for this group [men ages 25-54] went back to just 93% – the current average for the other developed nations – approximately 10 million more people would be working in the United States. Some other highly disturbing facts include: Fifty-seven percent of these non-working males are on disability"

    I don't know where he got the statistic from, but if it is true it is potent evidence that the main factor behind the 60 year long decline in prime age labor force participation by men is an increase in those on disability, probably due to both the expansion of the program, and better longevity and diagnostics -- and probably also tied in to opiate addiction as well.

    pgl -> New Deal democrat... , April 05, 2017 at 08:14 AM
    So does Jamie sitting on his mountain of other people's money have some magic solution that will get this EPOP back to 93%? I guess if we all bank at JPMorganChase, all will be fine? C'mon Jamie.
    New Deal democrat -> pgl... , April 05, 2017 at 08:54 AM
    I'm only citing him for the disability stat.

    Do you happen to have any source material that would indicate whether that stat is correct or not?

    pgl -> New Deal democrat... , April 05, 2017 at 09:37 AM
    There has been a bit of a discussion on this - most of which I sort of found unconvincing. Sorry but I am not the expert on this one. And I doubt Jamie Dimon is not either.
    EMichael -> New Deal democrat... , April 05, 2017 at 08:26 AM
    Never, ever listen to Jamie Dimon about anything.

    "This is another common explanation for the drop in male participation. But again it doesn't explain more than a fraction of the phenomenon.

    There's not much doubt that Social Security Disability Insurance takes people out of the workforce, often by inelegant design. In order to qualify for disability payments, people typically have to prove that they cannot work full-time. SSDI critics say this policy sidelines many people who might otherwise be able to contribute to the economy.

    But how many people does SSDI really remove? From 1967 to 2014, the share of prime-age men getting disability insurance rose from 1 percent to 3 percent. There is little chance that this increase is entirely the result of several million fraudulent attempts to get money without working. But even if it were, SSDI would still only explain about one-quarter of the decline in the male participation rate over that time. There are many good reasons to reform disability insurance. But it's not the singular driving force behind the decline of working men."

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-missing-men/488858/

    pgl -> EMichael... , April 05, 2017 at 08:28 AM
    When Dimon makes a recommendation re regulating his own sector, the best thing to do is just the opposite.

    [Apr 04, 2017] Americans Want More Than Just Money to Live On

    Apr 04, 2017 | www.bloomberg.com

    APRIL 3, 2017 9:00 AM EDT

    Donald Trump's election as president should have reminded liberals that Americans want more than money from their work. They responded to Trump's promise of jobs more than to Hillary Clinton's promise of government benefits because in addition to money, people also need dignity, a sense of self-reliance and respect within their community. For centuries, jobs have provided all of those.

    To say that work is disappearing would be an exaggeration. But despite the low unemployment rate, fewer Americans have jobs than in years past:

    [chart]

    This new class of non-workers may be able to survive on the government dole, the charity of friends and family or via black-market activities like drug sales. But they've probably lost some of the dignity and respect that used to come with working for a living. Falling employment has been linked to declining marriage rates, reduced happiness and opiate abuse. Some economists even blame disappearing jobs for the recent rise in mortality rates afflicting white Americans.

    What's more, the longer people stay out of the labor force, the more trouble they will have getting back into it. They lose work ethic, skills and connections, and employers become suspicious of the large gaps in the resumes. Economists Brad DeLong and Larry Summers have shown that this so-called labor-market hysteresis can have potentially large, long-lasting negative effects on the economy.

    When the economy is in recession, the best approach is probably a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus. But when the labor-force dropout problem is chronic, as it is now, a different kind of policy may be needed -- a government-job guarantee.

    The U.S. has used an approach like this before. In 1935, the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration, which employed millions of American men, mostly in public-works projects. WPA employees received hourly wages similar to other unskilled workers in the surrounding area. Most of them built infrastructure and buildings, but a few were paid to make art and write books. The total cost of the program was high -- $1.3 billion a year, or about 1.7 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. An equivalent expenditure now would be a little more than $300 billion, or about half of federal defense spending. But the popularity of the program is hard to deny, given Roosevelt's resounding victory in his reelection bid in 1936.

    The idea of a new work program isn't a new one -- economists on all sides of the political spectrum have been kicking it around for years now. It has received support from Stephanie Kelton, an adviser to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and from Kevin Hassett, who is reportedly Trump's pick to lead the Council of Economic Advisers. Jeff Spross has an excellent article in Democracy exploring the idea in depth.

    William Darity of Duke University has been a particularly avid promoter of a job guarantee. He describes it thus:

    Any American 18 years or older would be able to find work through a federally funded public service employment program -- a "National Investment Employment Corps." Each National Investment Employment Corps job would offer individuals non-poverty wages, a minimum salary of $20,000, plus benefits including federal health insurance. The types of jobs offered could address the maintenance and construction of the nation's physical and human infrastructure, from building roads, bridges, dams and schools, to staffing high quality day care.
    There is no shortage of work to be done. Even beyond the tasks Darity lists, the U.S. is full of jobs that need doing, from elder care to renovation of old decaying buildings, to cleanup of lead and other pollution, to construction and staffing of transit systems.

    Darity estimates the cost of the program at $750 billion a year, Spross at $670 billion. That's about equivalent to all of the U.S.'s current anti-poverty programs, and would be about twice the size of the old WPA. So this would be a very big deal. But the true cost to society would be considerably less, because the jobs would provide value. Better infrastructure, more child care and elder care, and a cleaner, healthier environment would make the nation a richer, better place to live -- in other words, those benefits should defray much of the program's cost. Also, the program would take people off of the welfare rolls and cut government anti-poverty spending. Finally, even when the economy isn't in a recession, more income will probably increase demand in the local economy.

    All told, the program could end up being a bargain. And if the guarantee is limited to distressed, low-employment areas, which could lower the costs down even more, and allow for pilot programs to establish the viability of the concept.

    Many people on the left and elsewhere don't like this idea. They doubt that government make-work will provide dignity. And they believe strongly in the theory that automation will soon put large numbers of people out of a job entirely. The only solution, they say, is to change U.S. culture and values to make work less important, and to rely on programs like universal basic income. On the right, some would inevitably see the plan as a first step on the road to socialism.

    Maybe the critics will prove right in the long run. But for now, forcing a dramatic change on American culture is a lot harder than simply giving people jobs. Robot-driven unemployment and new social values are still mostly in the realm of science fiction, while the American public wants jobs now. A job guarantee looks like a very good thing to try.

    Peter K. said in reply to Peter K.... Do both, the UBI and Job Guarantee.

    Why doesn't Noah Smith discuss Fed Fail in detail and about how conservatives forced unprecedented austerity on the economy.

    This is not just "natural" or the evolution of technology, demographics and innovation.

    He should be supporting an NGDP target, etc.

    At very least run the economy hot.

    Reply Tuesday, April 04, 2017 at 12:08 PM Peter K. said in reply to Peter K.... What Smith does not discuss is how the Fed is currently raising rates to kill jobs. Reply Tuesday, April 04, 2017 at 12:09 PM

    [Mar 22, 2017] Stephen Williamson New Monetarist Economics What is full employment anyway, and how would we know if we are there

    Mar 22, 2017 | newmonetarism.blogspot.com
    Sunday, March 19, 2017 What is full employment anyway, and how would we know if we are there? What are people talking about when they say "full employment?" Maybe they don't know either? Whatever it is, "full employment" is thought to be important for policy, particularly monetary policy. Indeed, it typically enters the monetary policy discussion as "maximum employment," the second leg of the Fed's dual mandate - the first leg being "price stability."

    Perhaps surprisingly, there are still people who think the US economy is not at "full employment." I hate to pick on Narayana, but he's a convenient example. He posted this on his Twitter account:

    Are we close to full emp? In steady state, emp. growth will be about 1.2M per year. It's about *twice* that in the data. (1) Employment is growing much faster than long run and inflation is still low. Conclusion: we're well below long run steady state. end
    Also in an interview on Bloomberg, Narayana gives us the policy conclusion. Basically, he thinks there is still "slack" in the economy. My understanding is that "slack" means we are below "full employment."

    So what is Narayana saying? I'm assuming he is looking at payroll employment - the employment number that comes from the establishment survey. In his judgement, in a "steady state," which for him seems to mean the "full employment" state, payroll employment would be growing at 1.2M per year, or 100,000 per month. But over the last three months, the average increase in payroll employment has exceeded 200,000 per month. So, if we accept all of Narayana's assumptions, we would say the US economy is below full employment - it has some catching up to do. According to Narayana, employment can grow for some time in excess of 100,000 jobs per month, until we catch up to full employment, and monetary policy should help that process along by refraining from interest rate hikes in the meantime.

    Again, even if we accept all of Narayana's assumptions, we could disagree about his policy recommendation. Maybe the increase in the fed funds rate target will do little to impede the trajectory to full employment. Maybe it takes monetary policy a period of time to work, and by the time interest rate hikes have their effect we are at full employment. Maybe the interest rate hikes will allow the Fed to make progress on other policy goals than employment. But let's explore this issue in depth - let's investigate what we know about "full employment" and how we would determine from current data if we are there or not.

    Where does Narayana get his 1.2M number from? Best guess is that he is looking at demographics. The working age population in the United States (age 15-64) has been growing at about 0.5% per year. But labor force participation has grown over time since World War II, and later cohorts have higher labor force participation rates. For example, the labor force participation rate of baby-boomers in prime working age was higher than the participation rate of the previous generation in prime working age. So, this would cause employment growth to be higher than population growth. That is, Narayana's assumptions imply employment growth of about 0.8% per year, which seems as good a number as any. Thus, the long-run growth path for the economy should exhibit a growth rate of about 0.8% per year - though there is considerable uncertainty about that estimate.

    But, we measure employment in more than one way. This chart shows year-over-year employment growth from the establishment survey, and from the household survey (CPS): For the last couple of years, employment growth has been falling on trend, by both measures. But currently, establishment-survey employment is growing at 1.6% per year, and household survey employment is growing at 1.0% per year. The latter number is a lot closer to 0.8%. The establishment survey is what it says - a survey of establishments. The household survey is a survey of people. The advantages of the establishment survey are that it covers a significant fraction of all establishments, and reporting errors are less likely - firms generally have a good idea how many people are on their payrolls. But, the household survey has broader coverage (includes the self-employed for example) of the population, and it's collected in a manner consistent with the unemployment and labor force participation data - that's all from the same survey. There's greater potential for measurement error in the household survey, as people can be confused by the questions they're asked. You can see that in the noise in the growth rate data in the chart.

    Here's another interesting detail: This chart looks at the ratio of household-survey employment to establishment-survey employment. Over long periods of time, these two measures don't grow at the same rate, due to changes over time in the fraction of workers who are in establishments vs. those who are not. For long-run employment growth rates, you should put more weight on the household survey number (as this is a survey of the whole working-age population), provided of course that some measurement bias isn't creeping into the household survey numbers over time. Note that, since the recession, establishment-survey employment has been growing at a significantly higher rate than household-survey employment.

    So, I think that the conclusion is that we should temper our view of employment growth. Maybe it's much closer to a steady state rate than Narayana thinks.

    But, on to some other measures of labor market performance. This chart shows the labor force participation rate (LFPR) and the employment-population ratio (EPOP). Here, focus on the last year. LFPR is little changed, increasing from 62.9% to 63.0%, and the same is true for EPOP, which increased from 59.8% to 60.0%. That looks like a labor market that has settled down, or is close to it.

    A standard measure of labor market tightness that labor economists like to look at is the ratio of job vacancies to unemployment, here measured as the ratio of the job openings rate to the unemployment rate: So, by this measure the labor market is at its tightest since 2001. Job openings are plentiful relative to would-be workers.

    People who want to argue that some slack remains in the labor market will sometimes emphasize unconventional measures of the unemployment rate: In the chart, U3 is the conventional unemployment rate, and U6 includes marginally attached workers (those not in the labor force who may be receptive to working) and those employed part-time for economic reasons. The U3 measure is not so far, at 4.7%, from its previous trough of 4.4% in March 2007, while the gap between current U6, at 9.2% and its previous trough, at 7.9% in December 2006, is larger. Two caveats here: (i) How seriously we want to take U6 as a measure of unemployment is an open question. There are problems even with conventional unemployment measures, in that we do not measure the intensity of search - one person's unemployment is different from another's - and survey participants' understanding of the questions they are asked is problematic. The first issue is no worse a problem for U6 than for U3, but the second issue is assuredly worse. For example, it's not clear what "employed part time for economic reasons" means to the survey respondent, or what it should mean to the average economist. Active search, as measured in U3, has a clearer meaning from an economic point of view, than an expressed desire for something one does not have - non-satiation is ubiquitous in economic systems, and removing it is just not feasible. (ii) What's a normal level for U6? Maybe the U6 measure in December 2006 was undesirably low, due to what was going on in housing and mortgage markets.

    Another labor market measure that might be interpreted as indicating labor market slack is long term unemployment (unemployed 27 weeks or more) - here measured as a rate relative to the labor force: This measure is still somewhat elevated relative to pre-recession times. However, if we look at short term unemployment (5 weeks or less), this is unusually low: As well, the insured unemployment rate (those receiving unemployment insurance as a percentage of the labor force) is very low: To collect UI requires having worked recently, so this reflects the fact that few people are being laid off - transitions from employment to unemployment are low.

    An interpretation of what is going on here is that the short-term and long-term unemployed are very different kinds of workers. In particular, they have different skills. Some skills are in high demand, others are not, and those who have been unemployed a long time have skills that are in low demand. A high level of long-term unemployed is consistent with elevated readings for U6 - people may be marginally attached or wanting to move from part-time to full-time work for the same reasons that people have been unemployed for a long time. What's going on may indicate a need for a policy response, but if the problem is skill mismatch, that's not a problem that has a monetary policy solution.

    So, if the case someone wants to make is that the Fed should postpone interest rate increases because we are below full employment - that there is still slack in the labor market - then I think that's a very difficult case to make. We could argue all day about what an output gap is, whether this is something we should worry about, and whether monetary policy can do much about an output gap, but by conventional measures we don't seem to have one in the US at the current time. In terms of raw economic performance (price stability aside), there's not much for the Fed to do at the current time. Productivity growth is unusually low, as is real GDP growth, but if that's a policy problem, it's in the fiscal department, not the monetary department.

    But there is more to Narayana's views than the state of the labor market. He thinks it's important that inflation is still below the Fed's target of 2%. Actually, headline PCE inflation, which is the measure specified in the Fed's longer-run goals statement, is essentially at the target, at 1.9%. I think what Narayana means is that, given his Phillips-curve view of the world, if we are close to full employment, inflation should be higher. In fact, the long-run Fisher effect tells us that, after an extended period of low nominal interest rates, the inflation rate should be low. Thus, one might actually be puzzled as to why the inflation rate is so high. We know something about this, though. Worldwide, real rates of interest on government debt have been unusually low, which implies that, given the nominal interest rate, inflation will be unusually high. But, this makes Narayana's policy conclusion close to being correct. The Fed is very close to its targets - both legs of the dual mandate - so why do anything?

    A neo-Fisherian view says that we should increase (decrease) the central bank's nominal interest rate target when inflation is too low (high) - the reverse of conventional wisdom. But maybe inflation is somewhat elevated by increases in the price of crude oil, which have since somewhat reversed themselves. So, maybe the Fed's nominal interest rate target should go up a bit more, to achieve its 2% inflation target consistently.

    Though Narayana's reasoning doesn't lead him in a crazy policy direction, it would do him good to ditch the Phillips curve reasoning - I don't think that's ever been useful for policy. If one had (I think mistakenly) taken Friedman to heart (as appears to be the case with Narayana), we might think that unemployment above the "natural rate" should lead to falling inflation, and unemployment below the natural rate should lead to rising inflation. But, that's not what we see in the data. Here, I use the CBO's measure of the natural rate of unemployment (quarterly data, 1990-2016): According to standard Friedman Phillips-curve logic, we should see a negative correlation in the chart, but the correlation is essentially zero.

    Posted by Stephen Williamson at 1 comment:

    1. Avraam J Dectis March 21, 2017 at 7:58 AM

      .
      Nice insightful column.

      One thing I wonder about is the possibility that policy implementing economists are a bit insulated from reality. It seems possible their personal experiences might reinforce a feeling that everything is all right.

      Meanwhile countervailing data may subconsciously be given short shrift. A shrinking middle class, stagnant wages, declining labor force participation of adult males all seem ignored.

      Could it be argued that full employment is characterized by a robust and growing middle class? Economics is both a hard and social science and social criteria may belong in the definition of full employment.

      Is it wise to try to throttle growth as soon as policy mandates are achieved, thus seeking to maintain a virtuous steady state equilibrium? Might it not be better to attempt more of a sine wave economic policy, deliberately overshooting targets to bring the marginal sidelined workers into the economy where they can gain experience and then, if necessary, briefly overshooting constraining measures to quickly contain possible excesses?

    [Mar 19, 2017] When inequality is driven by extremes at the tail, using median means that you dont see much change in the demographics

    Mar 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    libezkova : March 16, 2017 at 09:51 PM , 2017 at 09:51 PM
    "the U.S. middle class - with household incomes ranging from two-thirds to double the national median"

    Median household income in the US in 2015 was less the $60K. Two-thirds is $40K. That's almost poverty not middle class.

    Sociologically the middle class is a quasi-elite of professionals and managers, who are largely immune to economic downturns and trends such as out-sourcing.

    reason -> libezkova... , March 17, 2017 at 04:24 AM
    The definition game? Define something to something else as is being talked about and then claim, claims based on a completely different definition are false?
    Lyle -> libezkova... , March 17, 2017 at 12:47 PM
    Actually with the change in ratio professionals and managers now tend to upper middle class, (29% of us is upper middle now, 32% middle).

    One of the influences is that post WWII it was possible to be middle class and work on an assembly line in a job that was described as check your brain at the door. Automation and process changes have wiped the high pay of such jobs out. Steel makers for example thru mainly process changes (electric furnaces using scrap, continuous casting and the like) mean that it takes 1/5 the hours to produce a ton of steel in did in the 1970s.

    The movement of assembly line jobs to the middle class occured because there was a period where the US was much less involved with the rest of the world economically, because their industries had all been destroyed. The change started during the Johnson admin, and showed up in the high inflation of the Nixon admin.

    cm -> libezkova... , March 17, 2017 at 10:48 PM
    Most "professionals and managers" are nowhere near being immune to downturns and outsourcing, in aggregate.

    You could likewise claim that "low skilled" or any other occupations are "immune" as somewhere around 70-80% of their members continue being employed through tough times, in aggregate.

    If you take "tech", companies laying off around 5-10% or even more of their staff in busts is a frequent enough occurrence. And that's in addition to the "regular" age discrimination and cycling of workers justified with "outdated skills". Being young and (supposedly) impressionable is a skill!

    D. C. Sessions -> libezkova... , March 18, 2017 at 10:16 AM
    "the U.S. middle class - with household incomes ranging from two-thirds to double the national median"

    That's almost tautological. By definition, there can't be a whole lot of change in the population of groups defined relative to median. Income and wealth of those groups, though, can be enlightening.

    Substitute "mean" for "median" and watch what happens. When inequality is driven by extremes at the tail, using "median" means that you don't see much change in the demographics. (Hint: if "middle class" is defined as half to twice the average income, there are damned few in that bracket.)

    [Mar 17, 2017] The best existing research suggests that modest increases in minimal wage have had little or no employment-reducing impact.

    Mar 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Denis Drew : March 17, 2017 at 08:29 AM , 2017 at 08:29 AM
    Re: America's employment problem - Lane Kenworthy

    "It can do so by increasing the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour and indexing it to inflation. The best existing research suggests that modest increases such as this have had little or no employment-reducing impact. And the government should also increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit for workers, for people who don't have children (a strategy Brooks endorses)."

    Here we go again. First, I thought we had left EITC behind as any kind of substantial answer to underpaid Americans: redistributing all of 1/2 of one percent of overall income when 45% of our workforce is earning less than what we think the minimum wage should be, $15 an hour.

    $15 may be the most fast food can pay. Sometimes in McDonald's there are more people behind the counter than in front (most customers come through the drive through). If fast food (33% labor costs) can pay $15, then maybe Target (10%-15%) can pay $20, and maybe super efficient WalMart (7%) can pay $25.

    Always keeping in mind that labor bought and sold sort of on margin. Doubling Walmart's pay could add only 7% to prices.

    Bottom 45% of workforce now takes 10% share of overall income -- used to be 20%. Top 1% now 20% instead of 10%. How to get that 10% back -- how to supply the economic and political muscle to TAKE IT BACK: just put some teeth in the (federal) law that already says union busting is illegal.

    States can do this without any fear of confronting federal preemption. States can make it a crime for wholesalers for instance to pressure individual retailers from combining their bargaining power -- same such law can overlap federal labor area; especially since fed left blank for 80 years. Blank or not: may overlap as with min wage.

    No need for complicated policy researches; no need to spend a dime: states just make union busting a felony and let people organize if they wish to -- and get out of their way. :-)

    Back to min wage. If you sell fewer labor hours for more dollars that works out better for labor than for potatoes -- because in the labor market the potatoes get the money to spend -- and they are more likely to spend it more on other potatoes than more upscale. Why min wage raises often followed by higher min wage employment. (Higher wage jobs lost -- everybody looking in wrong place.)

    ***************************

    My minimum wage worksheet

    (2013 dollars)
    yr..per capita...real...nominal...dbl-index...%-of

    68...15,473....10.74..(1.60)......10.74......100%
    69-70-71-72-73 *
    74...18,284.....9.43...(2.00)......12.61
    75...18,313.....9.08...(2.10)......12.61
    76...18,945.....9.40...(2.30)......13.04........72%
    77 *
    78...20,422.....9.45...(2.65)......14.11
    79...20,696.....9.29...(2.90)......14.32
    80...20,236.....8.75...(3.10)......14.00
    81...20,112.....8.57...(3.35)......13.89........62%
    82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89 *
    90...24,000.....6.76...(3.80)......16.56
    91...23,540.....7.26...(4.25)......16.24........44%
    92-93-94-95 *
    96...25,887.....7.04...(4.75)......17.85
    97...26,884.....7.46...(5.15)......19.02........39%
    98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06 *
    07...29,075.....6.56...(5.85)......20.09
    08...28,166.....7.07...(6.55)......19.45
    09...27,819.....7.86...(7.25)......19.42........40%
    10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17 *

    anne -> Denis Drew ... , March 17, 2017 at 08:45 AM
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=d30R

    January 4, 2017

    Real Federal Minimum Hourly Wage for Nonfarm Workers, 1964-2016

    (Indexed to 2016)

    Denis Drew -> Denis Drew ... , March 17, 2017 at 09:05 AM
    Re: The Man Who Made Us See That Trade Isn't Always Free - Noah Smith

    "Instead, he and his co-authors found that trade with China in the 2000s left huge swathes of the U.S. workforce permanently without good jobs -- or, in many cases, jobs at all.

    "This sort of concentrated economic devastation sounds like it would hurt not just people's pocketbooks, but the social fabric. In a series of follow-up papers, Autor and his team link Chinese import competition to declining marriage rates and political polarization. Autor told me that these social ills make the need for new thinking about trade policy even more urgent."

    Here we go again. US manufacturing going from 16% of employment from 2000 to 12% in 2016 (half due automation) nowhere near as sucking-all-the-oxygen-out-of-life as the the bottom 45% of earners taking 10% of overall income, down from 20% over two generations -- more and more being recognized due to the loss of collective bargaining power ...

    ... for which loss the usual litany of causatives NEVER seem to include one mention of the complete lack of teeth protecting union organizing from market power in US labor law.

    Simple answer: no studies or research needed, not a dollar appropriated: simply make union busting a felony at state level -- and get out of people's way.

    States can do this without conflict with federal preemption. States can make it a crime for wholesalers for instance to pressure individual retailers from combining their bargaining power -- same such law can overlap federal labor area; especially since fed left blank for 80 years. Blank or not: may overlap as with min wage.

    Don't do this and you'll never bring back collective bargaining power -- and all the genuine populist politics that goes with it!

    anne -> Denis Drew ... , March 17, 2017 at 09:10 AM
    http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpslutab3.htm

    January 15, 2017

    United States Union Membership Rates, 1992-2016

    Private wage and salary workers

    1992 ( 11.5)
    1993 ( 11.2) Clinton
    1994 ( 10.9)

    1995 ( 10.4)
    1996 ( 10.2)
    1997 ( 9.8)
    1998 ( 9.6)
    1999 ( 9.5)

    2000 ( 9.0)
    2001 ( 8.9) Bush
    2002 ( 8.6)
    2003 ( 8.2)
    2004 ( 7.9)

    2005 ( 7.8)
    2006 ( 7.4)
    2007 ( 7.5)
    2008 ( 7.6)
    2009 ( 7.2) Obama

    2010 ( 6.9)
    2011 ( 6.9)
    2012 ( 6.6)
    2013 ( 6.7)
    2014 ( 6.6)

    2015 ( 6.7)
    2016 ( 6.4)

    [Mar 17, 2017] Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple. You can't create jobs by cutting the amount you paid workers. Taxes are prices that workers .pay You dodge taxes by underpaying workers. If taxes are cut, both paying workers is cut AND paying workers to dodge taxes is cut. ..."
    Mar 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    mulp -> DrDick ... March 16, 2017 at 09:54 AM , 2017 at 09:54 AM
    Forecasting is done to change human behavior to invalidate the forecasts.

    Thus forecasts are by design never accurate about the future.

    This is different than designing systems using natural laws.

    A plane is designed to fly, because every forecast for it crashing has resulted in design changes to invalidate that forecast.

    Conservatives hate forecasts because they hate changing their plans. To forecast slower gdp growth and job creation, or even contraction from tax cuts and spending cuts is unacceptable. Thus they strive to change forecasts or discredit them to get their policy implemented.

    My forecast in the late 90s and early 00s was for economic disaster as a result of conservative policy eventually being implemented.

    Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple. You can't create jobs by cutting the amount you paid workers. Taxes are prices that workers .pay You dodge taxes by underpaying workers. If taxes are cut, both paying workers is cut AND paying workers to dodge taxes is cut.

    That would have been the forecast in the 60s.

    Today even Krugman and Bernie support job killing tax cuts based on that creating jobs. Lots of bad forecasting is done to back tax cuts. The tax cuts fail to create jobs, so the bad forecasts are blamed so every forecast is ignored, even the good ones.

    New Deal democrat -> John Williams... , March 16, 2017 at 08:02 AM
    That ecosystem forecasting system is safe until the animals and plants learn how to read. ;-)
    Thi$ World$ Banker$ -> New Deal democrat... , March 16, 2017 at 09:03 AM

    Believe it!

    When Congressional critters learned to read, 45th POTUS was suddenly and permanently unable to drain the swamp of critters who grow fat on the pork-barrel-legislation that drains the public treasure of We the Workers and Savers.

    These parasitic critters will grow fat and strong, strong enough to gobble up the the once brave workers who feed the fat in DC.

    Thanks,
    NDD --

    [Mar 14, 2017] No wonder the unemployed increasingly kill themselves, or others. The whole economy tells them, indirectly but unmistakably, that their human value does not exist.

    Mar 14, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Noni Mausa : March 13, 2017 at 04:13 PM

    What the wealthy right wing has decided in the past 40 years is that they don't need citizens. At least, not as many citizens as are actually citizens. What they are comfortable with is a large population of free range people, like the longhorn cattle of the old west, who care for themselves as best they can, and are convenient to be used when the "ranchers" want them.

    Of course, this is their approach to foreign workers, also, but for the purpose of maintaining a domestic society within which the domestic rich can comfortably live, only native born Americans really suit.

    With the development of high productivity production, farming, and hands-off war technology the need for a large number of citizens is reduced. The wealthy can sit in their towers and arrange the world as suits them, and use the rest of the world as a "farm team" to supply skills and labour as needed.

    Proof of this is the fact that they talk about the economy's need for certain skills, training, services and so on, but never about the inherent value of citizens independent of their utility to someone else.

    No wonder the unemployed increasingly kill themselves, or others. The whole economy tells them, indirectly but unmistakably, that their human value does not exist. ken melvin : , March 13, 2017 at 04:48 PM

    Can someone get me from $300 billion tax cut for the rich to getting the markets work for health care?
    ken melvin : , March 13, 2017 at 04:54 PM
    It isn't about 'markets', never is. It is about extraction of as much profit as possible using whatever means necessary. This is what the CEOs of insurance companies get payed to do. Insurance policies they don't pay out, the ones Ryan is referring to, are as good as any for scoring.
    libezkova : , March 13, 2017 at 07:09 PM
    "It isn't about 'markets', never is. It is about extraction of as much profit as possible using whatever means necessary. This is what the CEOs of insurance companies get payed to do."

    What surprises me most in this discussion is how Obamacare suddenly changed from a dismal and expensive failure enriching private insurers to a "good deal".

    Lesseevilism in action ;-)

    ilsm : , March 13, 2017 at 01:41 PM
    When the PPACA band-aid is pulled off the US health care mess the gusher will be blamed on "the Russians running the White House".

    Cuba does better than the US despite being economically sanctioned for 55 years. Distribution of artificially scarce health care resources is utterly broken. This failed market is financed by a mix of 'for profit' insurance and medicare (which sublets a big part to 'for profit' insurance).

    Coverage!!! PPACA added taxpayers' money to finance a bigger failed market. It did nothing to address the market fail!

    Single payer would not address the market failure. Single payer would put the government financing most of the failed market.

    Democrats have put band-aids on severe bleeds since Truman made the cold war more important than Americans.

    At least we know what Trump stands for!

    jeff fisher said in reply to ilsm... , March 13, 2017 at 01:58 PM
    Cuba is the shining example of how doing the first 20% of healthcare well for everyone gets you 80% of the benefit cheap.

    The US is the shining example of how refusing to do the first 20% of healthcare well for everyone only gets you 80% of the benefit no matter how much you spend.

    jonny bakho : , March 13, 2017 at 12:09 PM
    Mark's very nice argument does nothing to address The Official Trump Counter Argument:

    [Shorter version: Obamacare is doomed, going to blow up. Any replacement is therefore better than Obamacare; Facts seldom win arguments against beliefs]

    "During a listening session on healthcare at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump said Republicans "are putting themselves in a very bad position by repealing Obamacare."

    Trump said that his administration is "committed to repealing and replacing" Obamacare and that the House Obamacare replacement will lead to more choice at a lower cost. He further stated, "[T]he press is making Obamacare look so good all, of a sudden. I'm watching the news. It looks so good. They're showing these reports about this one gets so much, and this one gets so much. First of all, it covers very few people, and it's imploding. And '17 will be the worst year. And I said it once; I'll say it again: because Obama's gone."

    He continued, "And the Republicans, frankly, are putting themselves in a very bad position - I tell this to Tom Price all the time - by repealing Obamacare. Because people aren't gonna see the truly devastating effects of Obamacare. They're not gonna see the devastation. In '17 and '18 and '19, it'll be gone by then. It'll - whether we do it or not, it'll be imploded off the map."

    He added, "So, the press is making it look so wonderful, so that if we end it, everyone's going to say, 'Oh, remember how great Obamacare used to be? Remember how wonderful it used to be? It was so great.' It's a little bit like President Obama. When he left, people liked him. When he was here, people didn't like him so much. That's the way life goes. That's human nature."

    Trump further stated that while letting Obamacare collapse on its own was the best thing to do politically, it wasn't the right thing to do for the country.

    http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/03/13/trump-republicans-putting-bad-position-repealing-obamacare/

    [Mar 03, 2017] The crazy world of IT hiring

    The drive to "efficiency" produced monstrously perverted results in IT hiring. Design for 100% match of the resume is absurd.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that tech companies were looking for people with more years of experience with certain programming languages than the programming languages even existed ..."
    "... That's a very good and historically accurate point (in 90th Java was a crush ;-). And this type of parasitism continues to flourish even now. ..."
    "... Also it is not necessary to have exactly all the asked experiences, at least when your resume will be selected/reviewed by a human. Of course if the recruiting process has been made "efficient" that will filter resumes by strict criteria, then the honest/modest applicants will be disproportionately screened out. ..."
    "... In a lot of big corps, the early stages of recruiting (processing/screening incoming resumes) are often outsourced to HR who obviously have little idea about the subject matter of the work, and can only go by buzzwords, possibly using computer software (OCR processing of resumes). ..."
    "... I can tell you that, from a consulting standpoint, I have been on several contracts where we've interviewed someone who had great skills, and the person who showed up had zero. So now companies will Skype with people to make sure they're talking to the actual consultant. ..."
    "... Sadly, that is true of far too many companies of all sorts today, who refuse to train their workers and expect them to come preprogrammed with the company's proprietary software. ..."
    Mar 03, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    "Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that tech companies were looking for people with more years of experience with certain programming languages than the programming languages even existed (in a form to be usable for commercial work)."

    That's a very good and historically accurate point (in 90th Java was a crush ;-). And this type of parasitism continues to flourish even now. Just with the new buzzwords...

    When employee's complain that that can't fill open positions that often means that they painstakingly define the position is such a way that the person deemed suitable can hit ground running on the first day or week on the job. No retraining period is needed. Like a new brake pads in a car. Totally replaceable.

    To say nothing that in reality Google and other giants (Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc) are to a large extent "cemeteries" for IT talent. What's so exciting is creating Gmail and many other Google products ? Absolutely nothing. This is a pretty disgusting reimplementation work.

    cm -> New Deal democrat... March 01, 2017 at 07:55 AM, 2017 at 07:55 AM

    One issue that you both don't mention is lags. Translating a demand for skill into available skill takes years to decades in the best of circumstances. Even for many so called "low skilled" jobs, people have to be trained commonly for several years. For "knowledge work" or "new technology paradigms", you basically have to bring up a new generation of school/college graduates.

    Expecting training to happen "just like that", or to be funded by the workers themselves, is a non-starter.

    And when the business has to pay for the training (with the risk that some of the cost cannot be recouped because trained up people may leave), then we are back at "lack of profitability".

    Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that tech companies were looking for people with more years of experience with certain programing languages than the programming languages even existed (in a form to be usable for commercial work).

    reason -> cm... , March 01, 2017 at 07:57 AM
    "Back in the mid/late 90's, there was a running joke that tech companies were looking for people with more years of experience with certain programing languages than the programming languages even existed (in a form to be usable for commercial work)."

    The trouble is, I think that was no joke, it was literally true. Which means that were deliberately recruiting liars. Maybe that explains a lot.

    cm -> reason ... , March 01, 2017 at 08:24 AM
    Yes, the joke was based on true anecdotes. Not sure about "deliberately", my most plausible assumption is that they just plugged the "skill" description into the standard job ad templates.

    Looking for about 5 years experience - enough to (presumably) be able to do stuff, but not yet too old/tainted.

    cm -> reason ... , March 01, 2017 at 08:27 AM
    Also it is not necessary to have exactly all the asked experiences, at least when your resume will be selected/reviewed by a human. Of course if the recruiting process has been made "efficient" that will filter resumes by strict criteria, then the honest/modest applicants will be disproportionately screened out.
    cm -> reason ... , March 01, 2017 at 08:30 AM
    In a lot of big corps, the early stages of recruiting (processing/screening incoming resumes) are often outsourced to HR who obviously have little idea about the subject matter of the work, and can only go by buzzwords, possibly using computer software (OCR processing of resumes).

    I have heard the story often that hiring managers are presented with unsuitable resumes/candidates, and often find better matches going through the raw data themselves. But that costs time ("inefficient").

    Anachronism -> cm... , March 01, 2017 at 09:44 AM
    I can tell you that, from a consulting standpoint, I have been on several contracts where we've interviewed someone who had great skills, and the person who showed up had zero. So now companies will Skype with people to make sure they're talking to the actual consultant.
    DrDick -> cm... , March 01, 2017 at 11:28 AM
    Sadly, that is true of far too many companies of all sorts today, who refuse to train their workers and expect them to come preprogrammed with the company's proprietary software.

    [Feb 25, 2017] Unemployment versus Underemployment: Assessing Labor Market Slack

    Feb 25, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Unemployment versus Underemployment: Assessing Labor Market Slack : The U-3 unemployment rate has returned to prerecession levels and is close to estimates of its longer-run sustainable level. Yet other indicators of slack, such as the U-6 statistic, which includes people working part-time but wanting to work full-time (often referred to as part-time for economic reasons, or PTER), has not declined as quickly or by as much as the U-3 unemployment rate.

    If unemployment and PTER reflect the same business-cycle effects, then they should move pretty much in lockstep. But as the following chart shows, such uniformity hasn't generally been the case. In the most recent recovery, unemployment started declining in 2010, but PTER started to move substantially lower beginning only in 2013. The upshot is that for each unemployed worker, there are now many more involuntary part-time workers than in the past.

    anne : , February 21, 2017 at 01:01 PM
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cNuM

    January 4, 2017

    Unemployment and Unemployment-Underemployment * rates, 1994-2017

    * Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; age 16 and over.


    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cNuZ

    January 4, 2017

    Unemployment and Unemployment-Underemployment * rates, 1994-2017

    * Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; age 16 and over.

    (Indexed to 1994)

    New Deal democrat : , February 21, 2017 at 01:19 PM
    "during the last recession, firms reduced the hours of workers in low-skill jobs more than they cut the number of low-skill jobs"

    I believe this is the correct explanation. I used to tack growth in hours vs. growth in payrolls, and what I found was that, had the 2008 recession followed the pattern of previous recessions, the peak unemployment rate would have been considerably higher. Let me do a little digging ....

    New Deal democrat -> New Deal democrat... , February 21, 2017 at 01:29 PM
    Here we go: aggregate hours vs. aggregate payrolls (indexed to 100 in 1964):

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cNwf

    The value reached its lowest level ever in 2009. In other words, relative more hours than jobs were cut in the Great Recession, even compared to other recessions.

    anne -> New Deal democrat... , February 21, 2017 at 05:13 PM
    Nicely done.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cNIF

    February 21, 2017

    Aggregate Weekly Hours for Production and Nonsupervisory Employees as a percent of Total Nonfarm Employees, 1980-2017

    (Indexed to 1980)

    anne -> anne... , February 21, 2017 at 03:37 PM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/trump-and-trade-he-s-largely-right

    February 21, 2017

    Trump and Trade: He's Largely Right

    -- Dean Baker

    pgl -> anne... , February 21, 2017 at 03:57 PM
    Dean covers a ton of material here. One is his points is right in one sense. We are below full employment so we need some sort of aggregate demand expansion. Would trade protection do this for the US? Perhaps if we had fixed exchange rates and we did not suffer a trade war. But as Dean has noted elsewhere, we need more expansionary monetary policy. Dean repeats something that Jared Bernstein wrote:

    'If we wanted better data on bilateral trade flows, then it would be desirable to pull out the re-exports from both our exports to Canada and our imports from Germany. This adjustment would make our trade deficit with Canada appear larger and trade deficit with Germany smaller, but would leave our total trade balance unchanged.'

    So Dean and Jared thinks that a US multinational that buys a product from Mexico at $80 which ultimately sells in Canada for $100 charges the Canadian distribution affiliate only $80? Dean knows better as he in the past has written about transfer pricing. No - transfer pricing games do affect the current reporting of the trade balance. Dean needs to read Brad Setser.

    [Feb 25, 2017] Trump and Trade He's Largely Right Beat the Press Blogs Publications The Center for Economic and Policy Research

    Feb 25, 2017 | cepr.net
    According to CBO , potential GDP for the 4 th quarter of 2016 was $19,049 billion. This is 1.0 percent higher than the estimate of GDP for the quarter of $18,860.8 billion. This means that if CBO is right, if there had been more demand in the economy, for example due to imports being replaced by domestically produced goods, GDP could have been 1.0 percent higher last quarter.

    Of course CBO's estimates of potential GDP are not especially accurate. Its most recent estimates for potential GDP in 2016 are more than 10 percent below what it had projected for potential GDP in 2016 back in 2008, before the severity of the crash was recognized. It is possible it overstated potential by a huge amount in 2008, but it is also possible it is understating potential today. It also hugely understated potential GDP in the mid-1990s, with 2000 GDP coming in more than 5 percent above the estimate of potential that CBO made in 1996. In other words, it would not be absurd to think that the economy could sustain a level of output that is 2.0 percent above the current level. (The fact that the employment rate of prime age workers [ages 25-54] is still 4.0 percentage points below the 2000 peak is certainly consistent with this view.)

    Suppose that GDP were consistently 2.0 percent higher than current projections over the next decade due to a lower trade deficit. This would imply an additional $4.6 trillion in output over this period. If the government captures 30 percent of this in higher taxes and lower spending on transfer programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps, this would imply a reduction in the projected deficit of $1.38 trillion over the decade. That's not quite the $1.74 trillion projected by Navarro, but close enough to make the derision unwarranted.

    In terms of how you get a lower trade deficit, Navarro's strategy of beating up on China is probably not the best way to go. But there is in fact precedent for the United States negotiating a lower value for the dollar under President Reagan, which had the desired effect of reducing the trade deficit.

    There is no obvious reason it could not pursue a similar path today, especially since it is widely claimed in business circles that China actually wants to raise the value of its currency. The U.S. could help it.

    The second area of seemingly gratuitous Trump trade bashing comes from a Wall Street Journal news article on the Trump administration's efforts to correct for re-exports in trade measures. Before getting to the article, it is important to understand what is at issue.

    Most of what the United States exports to countries like Mexico, Japan, or elsewhere are goods and services produced in the United States. However, some portion of the goods that we export to these countries consists of items imported from other countries which are just transshipped through the United States.

    The classic example would be if we offloaded 100 BMWs on a ship in New York and then 20 were immediately sent up to Canada to be sold there. The way we currently count exports and imports, we would count the 20 BMWs as exports to Canada and also as imports from Germany. These re-exports have zero impact on our aggregate trade balance, but they do exaggerate out exports to Canada and our imports from Germany.

    If we wanted better data on bilateral trade flows, then it would be desirable to pull out the re-exports from both our exports to Canada and our imports from Germany. This adjustment would make our trade deficit with Canada appear larger and trade deficit with Germany smaller, but would leave our total trade balance unchanged.

    This better measure of trade flows would be useful information to have if we wanted to know what happened to trade with a specific country following a policy change, for example the signing of a trade deal like NAFTA. The inclusion of re-exports in our export data would distort what had happened to actual flows of domestically produced exports and imports for domestic consumption.

    The United States International Trade Commission already produces a measure of trade balances that excludes imports that are re-exported. However this measure is still not an accurate measure of bilateral trade balances since it still includes the re-exports on the import side. In the case mentioned above, it would include the BMWs imported from Germany that were immediately sent to Canada, as imports. In principle, we should be able to construct a measure that excludes these items on the import side as well. If this is what the Trump administration is trying to do, then it is asking for a perfectly reasonable adjustment to the data.

    This is where we get to the WSJ article. According to the piece, the Trump administration was asking the Commerce Department to produce measures of bilateral trade balances that took out the re-exports on the export side, but left them in on the import side. This would have the effect of artificially inflating our trade deficit with a bogus number. If this is in fact what the Trump administration is trying to do, then we should be shooting at them with all guns. (This is metaphorical folks, I'm not advocating violence.)

    However some skepticism might be warranted at this point. No one with a name actually said the Trump administration asked for this bogus measure of trade balances. The sole source listed is "one person familiar with the discussions."

    There was an official statement from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which collects and compiles the data:

    "Any internal discussions about data collection methods are no more than the continuation of a longstanding debate and are part of the bureau's normal process as we strive to provide the most precise statistics possible."

    I take very seriously efforts to mess with the data. We are fortunate to have independent statistical agencies with dedicated civil servants who take their work very seriously. However we should wait until we have a bit more solid evidence before assuming that the Trump administration is trying to interfere in their independence, as opposed to trying to make a totally legitimate adjustment to the data that the BEA staff would almost certainly agree is an improvement.

    • Abe Lincoln was protectionist • 2 hours ago Yes - Pres. Trump is MUCH MUCH better at economics than many so-called American economists.

      Also ignores transfer pricing. US corporations are good at gaming their own tax system but face tough regulations elsewhere. Their solution to pulling profits out of their foreign operations and putting them in a non-taxed US is to export phantom products to foreign countries from their American subsidiaries. The US is Ireland on a large scale - the real trade deficit with China is probably closer to $10 in imports for every $1 of export rather than the official $4 in imports to $1 in exports.

    • urban legend 5 hours ago Economists often seem to pooh-pooh the employment-to-population ratio as some kind of unrealistic never-again-to-be achieved holy grail -- as if the phenomenon of women going back into the labor force had been completely expended and there would thereafter be no change in the education level of working age adults. In fact, women entering the labor force continued to grow, and faster than men dropping out, and the education level (and employability) of working age adults has been improving, especially in Southern states that had relatively low high school or college graduation rates and, therefore, low employment-to-population ratios that pulled down the national rate.

      While looking at the employment rate of all non-institutional adults 16 and older may be complicated by baby boomers hitting senior status, the prime working age (25-54) employment rate should be even higher than it was in 2000, not just the same or lower. We saw an inkling then of what full employment might look like, and an inflation problem did not raise its ugly head.

      It's also to be noted that while in January 1994 when the "marginally attached to the labor force" and "discouraged worker" measures were first reported, only two million members of the 16+ adult population were counted as marginally attached and only 600,000 were considered to be discouraged. Yet as demand grew, almost 20 million people crawled out from outside the labor force or from being counted as potential workers by any measurement and took jobs when they became available. That's 18 million more than BLS statistics suggested would be the outermost limit to the size of the labor force.

      In other words, it seems absurd, indeed absurd enough to consider it almost to be offered in bad faith, to suggest that we are anywhere remotely close to full employment. One must ask what the agenda is for it to continue to be suggested, since slowing growth has certain consequences that may help the wealthier members of our society while hurting everyone else.

      • pieceofcake urban legend 5 hours ago 'In other words, it seems absurd, indeed absurd enough to consider it almost to be offered in bad faith, to suggest that we are anywhere remotely close to full employment.'

        If We would be anywhere remotely close to full employment - there would be NO 'gig-economy' - no companies on the Internet which help you to (still) write all these resumes - and probably NO Uber - as - do you know anybody who is willing to work as a Uber driver if he or she can have a real Job?

        And about the wealthier members of our society - Yeah they did that!

        • pieceofcake pieceofcake 5 hours ago - and since I'm back again in the homeland - I have been the guest of 63 Uber-Drivers in 16 different cities -(right now I'm in Redwood City CA) - and the overwhelming majority of the drivers agreed with me - that there might be no better measure for the real unemployment situation in the homeland and the terrible Job market - that so many Americans - who actually have learned some real Jobs - end up driving idiots like me around.

          For heavens sake - the other day I even had a History Prof. - and if I will get Mr. Baker one day as my driver - I tell'ya - I will get really worried.

    [Feb 21, 2017] People like Summers, DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying this for 30 years ever since NAFTA was passed. The voters no longer believe them. Theyre like the boy who cried wolf

    Feb 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. -> Peter K.... February 20, 2017 at 08:13 AM

    , 2017 at 08:13 AM
    https://www.ft.com/content/cd4e8576-e934-11e6-967b-c88452263daf

    Revoking trade deals will not help American middle classes

    The advent of global supply chains has changed production patterns in the US

    by Larry Summers
    FEBRUARY 5, 2017

    Trade agreements have been central to American politics for some years. The idea that renegotiating trade agreements will "make America great again" by substantially increasing job creation and economic growth swept Donald Trump into office.

    More broadly, the idea that past trade agreements have damaged the American middle class and that the prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership would do further damage is now widely accepted in both major US political parties.

    As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, participants in political debate are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The reality is that the impact of trade and globalisation on wages is debatable and could be substantial. But the idea that the US trade agreements of the past generation have impoverished to any significant extent is absurd.

    There is a debate to be had about the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and inequality. Increased imports have displaced jobs. Companies have been able to drive harder bargains with workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of the threat they can outsource. The advent of global supply chains has changed production patterns in the US.

    My judgment is that these effects are considerably smaller than the impacts of technological progress. This is based on a variety of economic studies, experience in hypercompetitive Germany and the observation that the proportion of American workers in manufacturing has been steadily declining for 75 years. That said I acknowledge that global trends and new studies show that the impact of trade on wages is much more pronounced than a decade ago.

    But an assessment of the impact of trade on wages is very different than an assessment of trade agreements. It is inconceivable that multilateral trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have had a meaningful impact on US wages and jobs for the simple reason that the US market was almost completely open 40 years ago before entering into any of the controversial agreements.

    American tariffs on Mexican goods, for example, averaged about 4 per cent before Nafta came into force. China had what was then called "most favoured nation" trading status with the US before its accession to the World Trade Organization and received the same access as other countries. Before the Korea Free Trade Agreement, US tariffs on Korea averaged a paltry 2.8 per cent.

    The irrelevance of trade agreements to import competition becomes obvious when one listens to the main arguments against trade agreements. They rarely, if ever, take the form of saying we are inappropriately taking down US trade barriers.

    Rather the naysayers argue that different demands should be made on other countries during negotiations - on issues including intellectual property, labour standards, dispute resolution or exchange rate manipulation. I am sympathetic to the criticisms of TPP, but even if they were all correct they do not justify the conclusion that signing the deal would increase the challenges facing the American middle class.

    The reason for the rise in US imports is not reduced trade barriers. Rather it is that emerging markets are indeed emerging. They are growing in their economic potential because of successful economic reforms and greater global integration.

    These developments would have occurred with or without US trade pacts, though the agreements have usually been an impetus to reform. Indeed, since the US does very little to reduce trade barriers in our agreements, the impetus to reform is most of what foreign policymakers value in them along with political connection to the US.

    The truth too often denied by both sides in this debate is that incremental agreements like TPP have been largely irrelevant to the fate of middle class workers. The real strategic choice Americans face is whether the objective of their policies is to see the economies of the rest of the world grow and prosper. Or, does the US want to keep the rest of the world from threatening it by slowing global growth and walling off products and people?

    Framed this way the solution appears obvious. A strategy of returning to the protectionism of the past and seeking to thwart the growth of other nations is untenable and would likely lead to a downward spiral in the global economy. The right approach is to maintain openness while finding ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress, trade or other challenges.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 08:16 AM
    " The right approach is to maintain openness while finding ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress, trade or other challenges."

    People like Summers, DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying this for 30 years ever since NAFTA was passed.

    The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy who cried wolf.

    cm -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 01:05 PM
    I would actually agree with the stance in general, if there would be an actuall intention to help the affected people/populations, but there is none. Retraining for yet another job that doesn't exist (in sufficient volume so you can realistically get it) is not help. It is just cover for victim blaming - see we forgive you for choosing an incorrect career, here is your next chance, don't blow that one too (which we know "you will" as there are not enough jobs there either).
    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 08:14 AM
    http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/02/must-read-four-things-are-going-on-technology-globalization-macro-policy-trade-agreements-lawrence-summ.html

    DeLong Feb. 20, 2017

    Must-Read: Five things are going on with respect to America's blue-, pink-, and--increasingly--white lower-middle and middle-middle working classes. Three of them are real, and two of them are fake:

    Technology: It has--worldwide--greatly amplified manufacturing labor productivity, accompanied by limited demand for manufactured goods: few of us want more than one full-sized refrigerator, and very very few of us want more than two. That means that if you are hoping to be relatively high up in the wage distribution by virtue of your position as a hard-to-replace cog on a manufacturing assembly line, you are increasingly out of luck. If you are hoping for high blue-collar wages to lift your own via competition, you are increasingly out of luck.

    Legal and institutional bargaining power: The fact that bargaining power has flowed to finance and the executive suite and away from the shop- and assembly-floor is the second biggest deal here. It could have been otherwise--this is, primarily, a thing that has happened in English-speaking countries. It has happened much less elsewhere. It could have happened much less here.

    Macro policy: Yes, the consequences of the Reagan deficits were to cream midwestern manufacturing and destroy worker bargaining power in export and import-competing industries. Yes, the low-pressure economies of Volcker, late Greenspan, and Bernanke wreaked immense damage. Any more questions?

    Globalization: Globalization deepens the division of labor, and does so in a way that is not harmful to high-paying manufacturing jobs in the global north. The high-paying manufacturing jobs that require skills and expertise (as opposed to the lower-paying ones that just require being in the right place at the right time with some market power) are easier to create and hold on to if you can be part of a globalized value chain than otherwise. This is largely fake.

    Trade agreements: This is a nothingburger: completely fake.

    As somebody who strongly believes that supply curves slope up--are neither horizontal nor vertical--and that demand curves slope down--are neither horizontal nor vertical--I think that Larry Summers is misguided here when he talks about how "companies have been able to drive harder bargains with workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of the threat they can outsource." This was certainly true since the 1950s with the move of American manufacturing to the south, and the rise of deceptively-named "right-to-work" laws. But the threat to outsource is zero-sum on a national level: the balance of payments balances. Individual sectors lose--and manufacturing workers have been big losers. But that is, I think, only because of our macro policies. If we were a normal global North manufacturing power--a Germany or a Japan--exporting capital and running a currency policy that did not privilege finance, he would not be talking a out how "companies have been able to drive harder bargains with workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of the threat they can outsource." He would be talking about how the opportunity to participate in global value chains increases the productivity of semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing workers in the U.S.

    Thus I think Larry conceded too much here. Blame macro policy. Blame technology. Blame the conflict between the market society's requirements that only property rights matter and that everything pass a profitability test against people's strong beliefs that even if they have no property rights they have rights to stable communities, stable industries, and stable occupations. But, to channel Pascal Lamy, look not at the finger but at the moon here.

    However, Larry is right on his main point: NAFTA really ain't the problem:

    Lawrence Summers: Revoking Trade Deals Will Not Help American Middle Classes: "There is a debate to be had about the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and inequality...

    Tom aka Rusty -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 09:27 AM
    For Delong to be right on trade, thousands of rust belt politicians, journalists, and business leaders and a few hundred thousand workers would have to be delusional.

    He is right in the sense that it is too late to revoke NAFTA, the damage is done.

    [Feb 21, 2017] Debt slavery and high unemployment are two the most direct method of keeping wages low

    Feb 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    J ohnH -> New Deal democrat... February 20, 2017 at 07:31 AM , 2017 at 07:31 AM
    I expect that if you look at the pre-bellum South, there will be plenty of examples of stagnant wages, low interest rates...

    In Mexico, wages never rose regardless of monetary policy.

    The point that I've been making for a while: despite a few progressive economists delusions for rapid economic growth to tighten wages, it won't happen for the following reasons.

    1) most employers will just say 'no,' probably encouraged centrally by the US Chamber of Commerce and other industry associations. Collusion? You bet.

    2) employers will just move jobs abroad, where there's plenty of slack. Flexible labor markets has been one of the big goals of globalization, promoted by the usual suspects including 'librul' economists like Krugman.

    3) immigration, which will be temporarily constrained as Trump deports people, but will ultimately be resumed as employers demand cheap, malleable labor.

    New Deal democrat -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 07:35 AM
    If what we get is easy money, no inflation, and stagnant wages, then that is the Coolidge bubble. We know how that ends.
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 07:36 AM
    I disagree. It happened in late 90s. The ideas you mention are factors, including the decline of unions.

    What has happened in recent decades is that asset bubbles - like the dot.com and housing bubbles - have popped sending a high pressure economy into a low pressure one with higher unemployment.

    Neoliberal economists often talk about "flexible labor markets" as desirable but I don't think Krugman ever has. Maybe he has in a roundabout, indirect way.

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 07:58 AM
    Peter K still insists on propagating the myth that the 1990s was a period of easy money that led to increasing wages. Not so:
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

    Fed funds rates were consistently about double the rate of inflation.

    The fact that the economy boomed and wages increased was due to the tech boom--an unrepeatable anomaly. The Fed and Clinton administration unsuccessfully attempted to stifle it with high rates and budget balancing.

    To make sure that wages never rose again, Clinton signed China PNTR, granting China access to WTO, ushering in the great sucking sound of jobs going to China. Krugman cheered.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 08:28 AM
    Again I just disagree with you.

    "Fed funds rates were consistently about double the rate of inflation."

    That doesn't matter. What matters is if they were tightening or loosening. Where they reducing access to credit or expanding it.

    The real history is that Democrats on the FOMC wanted to raise rates - as Dean Baker has discussed.

    Greenspan decided not to raise rates for various reasons and unemployment stayed low at around 4 percent with wages sharing in productivity gains until the Dot.com stock bubble popped.

    I see no reason why you should believe labor markets will never get tight again and that even if they do it won't lead to increased worker bargaining power and higher wages.

    Your reasoning and logic isn't sound.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 08:30 AM
    Some people were afraid of inflation but it never came. But wages did share in productivity gains.
    JohnH -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 03:17 PM
    There are numerous reasons why wages won't increase even if labor markets tighten...you just don't want to acknowledge the nefarious consequences of neoliberal policies: business collusion, offshoring, immigration, and the tax system's preference for returns of returns to capital over wages, which preferences technology.
    pgl -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 10:36 AM
    The real interest rate was around 2.5% per your own argument which was a lot lower than real rates in the 1980's. So by any reasonable standard - we did have easy money.
    JohnH -> pgl... , February 20, 2017 at 01:35 PM
    lol!!! 2.5% real Fed funds rates as cheap money? Who are you kidding???

    If pgl is good at anything, it's producing nonsense!

    Julio -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 08:35 AM
    Another round of tax and regulatory giveaways can create a short-term boom and keeping jobs at home.

    Of course, with the giveaways they're hitting the zero lower bound...

    JohnH -> Julio ... , February 20, 2017 at 03:21 PM
    "Another round of tax and regulatory giveaways can create a short-term boom," as part of the race to the bottom for wages...IOW Republicans and their Democratic allies will have succeeded when American wages are about the same as wages in China or Mexico. But, per their logic, then jobs will be plentiful because there will be no need to off-shore.
    pgl -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 09:11 AM
    "the pre-bellum South"? You mean slavery. Yeah - wages were incredibly low.
    JohnH -> pgl... , February 20, 2017 at 01:37 PM
    Yep...slavery is the most direct method of keeping wages low. The policies I outlined--monopsony, offshoring, and immigration--are all a fall back, to be used when industry can't use their best policy.
    libezkova -> JohnH... , February 20, 2017 at 12:02 PM
    If the neoliberal elite can't part with at least a small part of their privileges, the political destabilization will continue and they might lose everything.

    "People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

    ilsm -> libezkova... , February 20, 2017 at 12:53 PM
    You may know that JK Galbraith served on the US' evaluation of strategic bombings effect in WW II.

    He is one of the minority whose opinion was suppressed by the military industry complex which concluded outside the A bomb no relation to bombing and victory was proven, including both industry output and energy production in Germany.

    Allied bombing did kill a lot of civilians, which if Germans or Japan had won bomber commanders would have been hanged.

    Julio -> libezkova... , February 20, 2017 at 05:44 PM
    "...the political destabilization will continue and they might lose everything."

    Or they might find a way to end the political destabilization. You know, we're not arresting you, we just want to know, in the war on Muslim terrorists and Mexican criminals, are you with us or against us? You'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't!) how the question is enough to quiet everybody down.

    Julio -> Julio ... , February 20, 2017 at 05:46 PM
    Just heard an interview clip with candidate Trump defending his Muslim ban as being the same as the Japanese interment, and saying we're in a war.

    [Feb 20, 2017] Tech Jobs Took a Big Hit Last Year

    Feb 20, 2017 | tech.slashdot.org

    Barb Darrow, writing for Fortune:

    Tech jobs took it on the chin last year. Layoffs at computer, electronics, and telecommunications companies were up 21 percent to 96,017 jobs cut in 2016 , compared to 79,315 the prior year.

    Tech layoffs accounted for 18 percent of the total 526,915 U.S. job cuts announced in 2016, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement firm based in Chicago.

    Of the 2016 total, some 66,821 of the layoffs came from computer companies, up 7% year over year.

    Challenger attributed much of that increase to cuts made by Dell Technologies, the entity formed by the $63 billion convergence of Dell and EMC. In preparation for that combination, layoffs were instituted across EMC and its constituent companies, including VMware.

    [Feb 20, 2017] People like Summers, DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying this for 30 years ever since NAFTA was passed. The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy who

    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. -> Peter K.... February 20, 2017 at 08:13 AM , 2017 at 08:13 AM
    https://www.ft.com/content/cd4e8576-e934-11e6-967b-c88452263daf

    Revoking trade deals will not help American middle classes

    The advent of global supply chains has changed production patterns in the US

    by Larry Summers
    FEBRUARY 5, 2017

    Trade agreements have been central to American politics for some years. The idea that renegotiating trade agreements will "make America great again" by substantially increasing job creation and economic growth swept Donald Trump into office.

    More broadly, the idea that past trade agreements have damaged the American middle class and that the prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership would do further damage is now widely accepted in both major US political parties.

    As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, participants in political debate are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The reality is that the impact of trade and globalisation on wages is debatable and could be substantial. But the idea that the US trade agreements of the past generation have impoverished to any significant extent is absurd.

    There is a debate to be had about the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and inequality. Increased imports have displaced jobs. Companies have been able to drive harder bargains with workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of the threat they can outsource. The advent of global supply chains has changed production patterns in the US.

    My judgment is that these effects are considerably smaller than the impacts of technological progress. This is based on a variety of economic studies, experience in hypercompetitive Germany and the observation that the proportion of American workers in manufacturing has been steadily declining for 75 years. That said I acknowledge that global trends and new studies show that the impact of trade on wages is much more pronounced than a decade ago.

    But an assessment of the impact of trade on wages is very different than an assessment of trade agreements. It is inconceivable that multilateral trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have had a meaningful impact on US wages and jobs for the simple reason that the US market was almost completely open 40 years ago before entering into any of the controversial agreements.

    American tariffs on Mexican goods, for example, averaged about 4 per cent before Nafta came into force. China had what was then called "most favoured nation" trading status with the US before its accession to the World Trade Organization and received the same access as other countries. Before the Korea Free Trade Agreement, US tariffs on Korea averaged a paltry 2.8 per cent.

    The irrelevance of trade agreements to import competition becomes obvious when one listens to the main arguments against trade agreements. They rarely, if ever, take the form of saying we are inappropriately taking down US trade barriers.

    Rather the naysayers argue that different demands should be made on other countries during negotiations - on issues including intellectual property, labour standards, dispute resolution or exchange rate manipulation. I am sympathetic to the criticisms of TPP, but even if they were all correct they do not justify the conclusion that signing the deal would increase the challenges facing the American middle class.

    The reason for the rise in US imports is not reduced trade barriers. Rather it is that emerging markets are indeed emerging. They are growing in their economic potential because of successful economic reforms and greater global integration.

    These developments would have occurred with or without US trade pacts, though the agreements have usually been an impetus to reform. Indeed, since the US does very little to reduce trade barriers in our agreements, the impetus to reform is most of what foreign policymakers value in them along with political connection to the US.

    The truth too often denied by both sides in this debate is that incremental agreements like TPP have been largely irrelevant to the fate of middle class workers. The real strategic choice Americans face is whether the objective of their policies is to see the economies of the rest of the world grow and prosper. Or, does the US want to keep the rest of the world from threatening it by slowing global growth and walling off products and people?

    Framed this way the solution appears obvious. A strategy of returning to the protectionism of the past and seeking to thwart the growth of other nations is untenable and would likely lead to a downward spiral in the global economy. The right approach is to maintain openness while finding ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress, trade or other challenges.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 08:16 AM
    " The right approach is to maintain openness while finding ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress, trade or other challenges."

    People like Summers, DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying this for 30 years ever since NAFTA was passed.

    The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy who cried wolf.

    [Feb 20, 2017] With high unemployment rate employers can more broadly discriminate

    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. : Reply Monday, February 20, 2017 at 10:35 AM , February 20, 2017 at 10:35 AM
    PGL says "reverse hysteresis" is fair dust.

    More trolling from out neoliberal friend?

    https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/undoing-the-structural-damage-to-potential-growth/?_r=0

    Economix - Explaining the Science of Everyday Life

    Undoing the Structural Damage to Potential Growth
    By JARED BERNSTEIN MARCH 3, 2014 11:00 AM

    What follows is macroeconomics, but I'll start with the micro - a microcosm, in fact, of the larger idea I'm hoping to get at here.

    I think it was around 1998, and I was on a tram between terminals at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Two young men, who clearly worked for the airport (they had a bunch of badges dangling around their necks) were trying to figure out how they knew each other, while I eavesdropped. Turned out they had met each other in prison.

    At the time, I was beginning a research project on the benefits of full employment, and my first thought was, "Aha - another example of how tight labor markets pull in the hard-to-employ." This was also the era of work-based welfare reform, and while analysts worried that employers would avoid those with welfare histories, strong demand turned out to an antidote to such preferences.

    Basically, profiling based on gender, race and experience is a luxury that employers can't afford when the job market is really tight. That is not to imply, of course, that employers broadly discriminate, but there is strong evidence that many do, most recently against the long-term unemployed. In tight markets, however, they face a choice of indulging their preferences or leaving profits on the table, and profits usually win.

    Now, put this story aside for a second and let's turn to the macro. A few months ago, I reported on a study by a few Federal Reserve economists with pretty striking results of the damage done to the economy's future growth rate by the deep and protracted downturn known as the Great Recession. The Congressional Budget Office just published a similar analysis, resulting in the chart below showing growth in gross domestic product as projected in 2007, before the recession, and a revised projection from this year. By 2017, the budget office predicts that the new and decidedly not-improved level of G.D.P. will be 7.3 percent below the old projection.

    What does 7.3 percent of lost gross domestic product actually mean? Well, last year G.D.P. amounted to about $16.8 trillion, and 7.3 percent of that comes to around $1.2 trillion. Conventional estimates translate that into more than 10 million jobs.

    It would be very good to avoid that fate. The thing is, both the Fed economists and the Congressional Budget Office basically argue that while their estimates are admittedly uncertain, that fate cannot be avoided - it's baked into the economic cake by the assumption that once your trend growth rate slows as ours has, it does not come back barring some positive, unforeseen shock. Here is how the Fed guys put it:

    Policy makers cannot undo labor market damage once it has occurred, but must instead wait for it to fade away on its own accord; in other words, there is no special advantage, given this specification, to running a high-pressure economy.

    I disagree! I think the damage can be at least partly reversed precisely by running "a high-pressure economy." I saw it myself that day in the airport.

    Technically, I'm talking about "reverse hysteresis." When a cyclical problem morphs into a structural one, economists invoke the concept of hysteresis. When this phenomenon takes hold, the rate at which key economic inputs like labor supply and capital investment enter the economy undergoes a downshift that lasts through the downturn and well into the expansion, reducing the economy's speed limit. But what I'm suggesting here is that by running the economy well below conventional estimates of the lowest unemployment rate consistent with stable inflation, and doing so for a while, we can pull workers back in, raise their career trajectories, improve their pay and their living standards, and turn that downshift to an upshift that raises the level and growth rate of G.D.P.

    Won't that be inflationary? Three points. First, if anything, the current economy is suffering from inflation that is too low (same with Europe), so near-term growth-oriented policy seems clearly safe in this regard. Second, the precise relationship between full employment and inflation is poorly understood. When that latter-1990s story above was taking place, economists frequently and incorrectly warned that full employment would dangerously juice inflation. Third, the correlation between these two variables - inflation and labor market tightness - has become far weaker in recent years (i.e., the Phillips Curve has flattened, for those who like the jargon).

    How do we reverse the hysteresis process (which is to ask: How do we get back to very tight labor markets)? In earlier posts, I've suggested a number of policies that would help, including investment in public goods, direct job creation, reducing the trade deficit and work-sharing. Still, you may well be wondering, "Wait a minute - this dude wants us to go with him down this path because of a conversation he overheard 16 years ago?"

    O.K., I'll admit that the economic journals are not busting with evidence in support of reverse hysteresis. But those of us who closely monitored full-employment economies have observed and documented significantly positive labor supply and investment outcomes. (True, a lot of that investment has flowed into bubbles; I'm not saying this idea solves every problem.)

    The employment rates for young African-American adults, like the guys I saw in the airport, averaged around 70 percent in the 1970s and '80s, but hit 80 percent in the late 1990s; they are in the mid-60s now. The employment rates for single mothers also hit new highs in those years. The labor force participation rate, itself an important victim of hysteresis right now, hit its all-time high at the end of the 1990s expansion. In other words, full employment pulled a lot of new people into the job market.

    As part of the full-employment project I'm running at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (and have written about before on this blog), a number of top economists are looking into the relationships between fiscal policy, and hysteresis and reverse hysteresis. They are coming up with some compelling findings, which I'll share once they are ready. For now, allow me to assert the following: We have shown we can do a lot of economic damage. With the political will, sorely lacking these days, it can also be undone.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 10:38 AM
    "What does 7.3 percent of lost gross domestic product actually mean? Well, last year G.D.P. amounted to about $16.8 trillion, and 7.3 percent of that comes to around $1.2 trillion. Conventional estimates translate that into more than 10 million jobs."

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-28/president-obama-s-economic-disappointment

    Obama's Economic Disappointment by Narayana Kocherlakota

    In January 2009, at the beginning of Obama's first term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a 10-year forecast for the U.S. economy, including such indicators as unemployment, gross domestic product, the budget deficit, government debt and interest rates. Here's a table comparing the CBO's expectations for the year 2015 to what has actually happened:

    NGDP forecast to grow 33 percent, actually grew 22 percent.

    Real GDP, forecast 20 percent, actual 10.

    ----------------

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 10:42 AM
    https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/yellen20150327a.htm

    Yellen

    "A final argument for gradually adjusting policy relates to the desirability of achieving a prompt return of inflation to the FOMC's 2 percent goal, an objective that would be advanced by allowing the unemployment rate to decline for a time somewhat below estimates of its longer-run sustainable level. To a limited degree, such an outcome is envisioned in many participants' most recent SEP projections. A tight labor market may also work to reverse some of the adverse supply-side developments resulting from the financial crisis. The deep recession and slow recovery likely have held back investment in physical and human capital, restrained the rate of new business formation, prompted discouraged workers to leave the labor force, and eroded the skills of the long-term unemployed.15 Some of these effects might be reversed in a tight labor market, yielding long-term benefits associated with a more productive economy. That said, the quantitative importance of these supply-side mechanisms are difficult to establish, and the relevant research on this point is quite limited."

    [Feb 12, 2017] What The Jobs Report DIDNT Tell You Last Week

    Notable quotes:
    "... First of all, the unemployment rate in the USA actually increased from 4.7% to 4.8%, despite the job growth. ..."
    "... Simply put, due to the way the Bureau of Labour Statistics is gathering its data, almost 700,000 people have been 'removed' from the civilian population. The total size of the civilian population is rebalanced on a yearly basis, in January. ..."
    "... The smaller size of the civilian population caused the labor force participation rate to increase by 0.2%, and this by itself caused the unemployment rate to increase as well, despite the job creation number. ..."
    "... But perhaps even more important is the extremely disappointing update on the average hourly earnings ('AHE') . The AHE increase fell to just 0.1% in January on a month/month comparison, but the real catch is in the details. ..."
    Feb 12, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    Ever since the gold report was published, the gold price moved up. This caught several investors by surprise, as some of them even continued to dump gold, scared by what appeared to be a good jobs report.

    'Appeared to be', because?

    Yes, 227,000 new jobs were created , and we can't deny that's a positive evolution. However, the increased job number is also the only positive thing in the jobs report, and there are two other issues that haven't really been highlighted.

    Two issues that could, and probably will, have an impact on the interest rate decisions later this year.

    First of all, the unemployment rate in the USA actually increased from 4.7% to 4.8%, despite the job growth.

    How is that possible?

    Simply put, due to the way the Bureau of Labour Statistics is gathering its data, almost 700,000 people have been 'removed' from the civilian population. The total size of the civilian population is rebalanced on a yearly basis, in January.

    Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

    The smaller size of the civilian population caused the labor force participation rate to increase by 0.2%, and this by itself caused the unemployment rate to increase as well, despite the job creation number.

    And as the unemployment rate is one of the key factors the Federal Reserve is looking at to determine whether or not a rate hike is appropriate, this small increase could have an impact on the decision making process. And keep in mind this is the second consecutive increase in the unemployment rate as the December unemployment rate also came in higher than the unemployment rate in November (and this did not include any population rebalancing exercise).

    But perhaps even more important is the extremely disappointing update on the average hourly earnings ('AHE') . The AHE increase fell to just 0.1% in January on a month/month comparison, but the real catch is in the details.

    Exactly because the 0.1% increase is focusing on a monthly update, the revision of the wage increase in December is actually telling you something more serious is going on. The December wages have been revised down by 0.2%, so if that would NOT have happened, the average hourly wage would have DECREASED in January.

    ... ... ...

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    [Feb 04, 2017] The End of Employees

    Notable quotes:
    "... Start focusing on the predators at the top of the pyramid scheme and then watch how those same culprits and their networks "come to the rescue" in order to capitalize on the "pain and suffering" they help to create. I see a pattern, don't you? ..."
    "... Don't forget student debt. Not only are many recent graduates underemployed or unemployed, they're in the hole tens of thousands. Further incentive not to make any sort of financial commitment. Student debt should be cancelled to promote earlier family formation. ..."
    "... It's almost a negative feedback loop. ..."
    "... Very true. Capitalism only works as long as enough people (or states) are able to take up ever-larger debt, to close the gap (called "profit") between expensive goods and comparatively cheap labour. ..."
    "... Good to point out Gat Gourmet. Almost all outsourced jobs in the beginning of places where I have worked were once part of the company. ..."
    "... Still, it's hard not to notice there could be nothing more convenient to the corporate and governmental powers-that-be than a nonprofit that takes it upon itself to placate, insure, and temper the precarious middle-class. ..."
    "... So which ivy-league management school / guru is most culpable in unleashing the whole lean-mean-outsourcing-machine monster because it's slowly destroying my ability to remain in IT. ..."
    "... "how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment has declined and is expected to fall further." – ..."
    "... Story of my life! I'm still trying to get paid for freelance work that I did in December. This payment delay is wreaking havoc with MY cash flow. ..."
    "... Another area of friction and waste with IT consulting and other contracting, is that an employee of a company simply and efficiently plugs into their existence administrative system (HR, timekeeping, payroll, etc). ..."
    "... I work in engineering at a gigantic multinational vehicle manufacturer and the role of "consultants" has been expanding with time. Rather than consultants being people with specific technical expertise who work on one subsystem component with clear interfaces to other things, it now encapsulates project managers and subsystem / function responsible people who need to have large networks inside the company to be effective. ..."
    "... Considering the huge amount of time it takes to get a new hire up and running to learn the acronyms and processes and the roles of different departments, it's a bit absurd to hire people for such roles under the assumption that they can be quickly swapped out with a consultant from Company B next week. ..."
    "... It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability and seeks to avoid it as much as possible. ..."
    "... Because they, unlike us, understand class. I can state for a fact that the Big Three auto companies are well aware of how much cheaper health care costs are for them in Canada and how much better off they would be here, cost-wise, with a national health care system where McDonald's and Wal-mart have to pay the same per hour or per employee cost as they do. But it turns out cost isn't everything. Corporate (capitalist) solidarity rules. ..."
    "... Michelle Malkin ..."
    "... “The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destructionâ€. ..."
    Feb 04, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    The Wall Street Journal has an important new story, The End of Employees , on how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment has declined and is expected to fall further.

    Some key sections of the article:

    Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people. The outsourcing wave that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to India is now just as likely to happen inside companies across the U.S. and in almost every industry.

    The men and women who unload shipping containers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouses are provided by trucking company Schneider National Inc.’s logistics operation, which in turn subcontracts with temporary-staffing agencies. Pfizer Inc. used contractors to perform the majority of its clinical drug trials last year .

    The shift is radically altering what it means to be a company and a worker. More flexibility for companies to shrink the size of their employee base, pay and benefits means less job security for workers. Rising from the mailroom to a corner office is harder now that outsourced jobs are no longer part of the workforce from which star performers are promoted

    For workers, the changes often lead to lower pay and make it surprisingly hard to answer the simple question “Where do you work?†Some economists say the parallel workforce created by the rise of contracting is helping to fuel income inequality between people who do the same jobs.

    No one knows how many Americans work as contractors, because they don’t fit neatly into the job categories tracked by government agencies. Rough estimates by economists range from 3% to 14% of the nation’s workforce, or as many as 20 million people.

    As you can see, the story projects this as an unstoppable trend. The article is mainly full of success stories, which naturally is what companies would want to talk about. The alleged benefits are two-fold: that specialist contractors can do a better job of managing non-core activities because they are specialists and have higher skills and that using outside help keeps companies lean and allows them to be more "agile".

    The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth . The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how complex they are. While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple to hand off, the larger ones are not. For instance, for IT outsourcing, a major corporation will need to hire a specialist consultant to help define the requirements for the request for proposal and write the document that will be the basis for bidding and negotiation. That takes about six months. The process of getting initial responses, vetting the possible providers in depth, getting to a short list of 2-3 finalists, negotiating finer points with them to see who has the best all-in offer, and then negotiating the final agreement typically takes a year. Oh, and the lawyers often fight with the consultant as to what counts in the deal.

    On the one hand, the old saw of "a contract is only as good at the person who signed it" still holds true. But if a vendor doesn't perform up to the standards required, or the company's requirements change in some way not contemplated in the agreement, it is vasty more difficult to address than if you were handling it internally. And given how complicated contracting is, it's not as if you can fire them.

    So as we've stressed again and again, these arrangements increase risks and rigidity. And companies can mis-identify what is core or not recognize that there are key lower-level skills they've mis-identified. For instance, Pratt & Whitney decided to contract out coordination of deliveries to UPS. Here is the critical part:

    For years, suppliers delivered parts directly to Pratt’s two factories, where materials handlers unpacked the parts and distributed them to production teams. Earl Exum, vice president of global materials and logistics, says Pratt had “a couple hundred†logistics specialists. Some handlers were 20- or 30-year veterans who could “look at a part and know exactly what it is,†he adds .

    Most of the UPS employees had no experience in the field, and assembly kits arrived at factories with damaged or missing parts. Pratt and UPS bosses struggled to get the companies’ computers in sync, including warehouse-management software outsourced by UPS to another firm, according to Pratt..

    The result was $500 million in lost sales in a quarter. Pratt & Whitney tried putting a positive spin on the tale, that all the bugs were worked out by the next quarter. But how long will it take Pratt & Whitney to recover all the deal costs plus the lost profits?

    There's even more risk when the company using contractor doesn't have much leverage over them. As a Wall Street Journal reader, Scott Riney, said in comments:

    Well managed companies make decisions based on sound data and analysis. Badly managed companies follow the trends because they're the trends. A caveat regarding outsourcing is that, as always, you get what you pay for. Also, the vendor relationship needs to be competently managed. There was the time a certain, now bankrupt technology company outsourced production of PBX components to a manufacturer who produced components with duplicate MAC addresses. The contract manufacturer's expertise obviously didn't extend to knowing jack about hardware addressing, and the management of the vendor relationship was incompetent. And what do you do, in a situation like that, if your firm isn't big enough that your phone calls get the vendor's undivided attention? Or if you're on different continents, and nothing can get done quickly?

    We've discussed other outsourcing bombs in past posts, such as when British Airways lost "tens of millions of dollars" when its contractor, Gate Gourmet, fired employees. Baggage handlers and ground crew struck in sympathy, shutting down Heathrow for 24 hours. Like many outsourced operations, Gate Gourmet had once been part of British Airways. And passengers blamed the airline , not the wprkers.

    Now admittedly, there are low-risk, low complexity activities that are being outsourced more, such as medical transcription, where 25% of all medical transcriptionists now work for agencies, up by 1/3 since 2009. The article attributes the change to more hospitals and large practices sending the work outside. But even at its 2009 level, the use of agencies was well established. And you can see that it is the sort of service that smaller doctor's offices would already be hiring on a temp basis, whether through an agency or not, because they would not have enough activity to support having a full-time employee. The story also describes how SAP has all its receptionists as contractors, apparently because someone looked at receptionist pay and concluded some managers were paying too much. So low level clerical jobs are more and more subject to this fad. But managing your own receptionists is hardly going to make a company less flexible.

    Contracting, like other gig economy jobs, increase insecurity and lower growth. I hate to belabor the obvious, but people who don't have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major financial commitments, like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids, or even buying consumer durables. However, one industry likely makes out handsomely: Big Pharma, which no doubt winds up selling more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or depression. The short-sightedness of this development on a societal level is breath-taking, yet overwhelmingly pundits celebrate it and political leaders stay mum.

    With this sort of rot in our collective foundation, the rise of Trump and other "populist" candidates should not come as a surprise.

    I would add this. It was deplorable for Trump to have fired Acting AG Sally Yates after she ordered Justice Department lawyers to stop defending Mr. Trump’s executive order banning new arrivals to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

    But Sally Yates was a hero for another reason. Yates was cracking down on systemic abuses by holding top healthcare executives personally accountable for false Medicare and Medicaid claims and illegal physician relationships.

    Now it's personal: Top execs made to pay for companies' false claims
    http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20161001/MAGAZINE/310019964/now-its-personal-top-execs-made-to-pay-for-companies-false-claims

    BeliTsari , February 3, 2017 at 6:38 am

    I remember hoping: Well, maybe Obama will actually get some decent folks into the Judiciary bring kids home from Iraq, maybe try for Medicare over 55 (to the advantage of the insurance & Pharma sectors?) But the one thing I'd actually expected him to accomplish was enact https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/2044 which would get the Kleptocrats a few more years out of the moldering corpse of American Labor (and not hurt multinationals, who'd off-shored, outsourced or speciously re-classified their largely undocumented, 3rd party, contingency/ gig employees decades previously).

    Wage-theft Democrats was a new concept to some of us more easily deluded working class Yankees, reeling from Bush. I think a strong fantasy life's essential nowadays.

    jrs , February 3, 2017 at 3:06 pm

    No kidding on that law, so basic. Why can't we have that law passed? (and other nice things)

    BeliTsari , February 4, 2017 at 3:52 pm

    I imagine that this is among the pesky downsides of living in our YOOJ autocratic neo-Confederate theocratic kleptocracy; wage theft has always been right at the top of both parties' platforms? If they can't hide it, who will they blame it on?

    GlassHammer , February 3, 2017 at 6:52 am
    • "people who don’t have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major financial commitments, like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids"
    • "more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or depression."

    Decline in family formation and a populace seeking to anesthetize itself are indications of a civilization in decline. Our problem is much bigger than employment.

    Disturbed Voter , February 3, 2017 at 7:02 am

    You can employ deplorables, you can enslave deplorables, you can kill deplorables. The only way that a "return maximizing" system won't choose killing, is if the unit cost of killing is higher than enslavement or employment. I can hope that the bureaucratic effect of increasing costs will work faster on the cost of killing or enslavement. Reducing the cost of employment (regulations) wouldn't hurt.

    BeliTsari , February 3, 2017 at 7:26 am

    We'd guessed this was why Dickens, Niccolò Machiavelli, Frederick Douglass, E. A. Blair & Marx were being burnt by the DeVos Christians. Why teach management for FREE, when the drooling Know Nothings will PAY to send their dead-eyed vipers to seminars or A Beka online curricula?

    redleg , February 3, 2017 at 1:13 pm

    It does hurt workers, contract or not.

    Eliminate environmental protections and the entire industry that investigates, researches, enforces, litigates, and mitigates environmental impacts are likewise eliminated. These are generally highly skilled professions, and has wide ranging impacts from workers all the way to the global ecosystem. Then there are economic ripple effects on top of that.

    If we are going to eliminate an entire career tree, health insurance is a better choice.

    jrs , February 3, 2017 at 3:10 pm

    Not sure what this has to do with the article, but yes people will LOSE jobs to Trump, skilled and socially beneficial jobs like at the EPA.

    For heaven knows what, jobs building useless walls to nowhere I guess, which somehow in Trumps warped mind is a more productive line of work (it won't even work to curtail immigration).

    BeliTsari , February 4, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    Thank you for your astute, pertinent & seldom mentioned comment (which to those of us in QA, is something we've believed central to the issue, not a tangent or unexpected side benefit of our sharecropper corporatocracy).

    We'd noticed contract buy-outs & forced early-retirement in the steel industry, in the 90's, our clients' engineers (scruffy & cantankerous, who'd stand by us if we were right & replace us if we got out of hand) were all replaced by clueless, gullible desk jockeys, devoid of empirically honed judgement eventually, we'd have 2-3 gnarled old timers, amidst crews of neophytes (first they tried very well trained & knowledgeable foreign nationals, then pensioners, let go from the vendors) finally, they tried to 1099 the desperate ones, on the run from skip-chasers, deputies & repo-men.

    They'd try sending us half way across the country, mention nothing, then see what we'd do (once we figured out we'd earned no overtime?)

    We'd be in Indian or Russian owned mills where 80% of the employees were totally undocumented foreign nationals, many of the balance wildly underpaid temps.

    And the good-old-boy management resembled characters outa Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lots of our counterparts were straight back from Afghanistan & Iraq, verifying that most of their gig- economy contingency employment had all been the same, regardless of industry sector: off-shored aircraft, as well as bridge, structural, water, nuclear, inspectors what regulation?

    Dave , February 3, 2017 at 11:49 am

    Leveraging guilt to rationalize the Invitation of the least educated into your nation from the most barbaric failed states and cultures in the world is another sign of civic decay.

    MP , February 3, 2017 at 12:21 pm

    or those with potential who are "educated" and are "victims" of false advertising campaigns I mean propaganda

    Dave , February 3, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    Yup, many of the Taxi and Uber drivers around here arrived and took out private loans to get "educated" and now are deep in debt and are too ashamed to go home.

    MP , February 4, 2017 at 9:26 am

    Start focusing on the predators at the top of the pyramid scheme and then watch how those same culprits and their networks "come to the rescue" in order to capitalize on the "pain and suffering" they help to create. I see a pattern, don't you?

    Barbarians are at the gates but you may be looking in the wrong place. Beware all types of people are "vulnerable" and they will more easily identify with other human beings living under a variety of diminished circumstances. Victim shaming won't be a viable option in the not so distant future.

    JEHR , February 3, 2017 at 2:50 pm

    Dave, I hope you are not including Syria in your "failed states and cultures" description. Syrians are very well educated and will add much to any nation's economy.

    It is not a sign of "civic decay" in the Syrian culture, but a sign of civic decay in a nation that will not accept people from a war zone. An invitation should not be dependent on one's education but on one's need and desire to survive a war zone..

    wilroncanada , February 3, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    Iraqis were also comparatively educated, right up through university, under its autocratic leader. Libyans were, by and large, well educated, or at least getting so, under its autocratic leader. The most poorly educated, probably, are those countries which have been under US or European hegemony for generations: a lot of Central and south America, a lot of Africa, etc. Not to mention the US itself, which has been colonizing its own hinterland for many decades. The same applies to countries like Canada, Australia, etc. particularly in terms of their indigenous populations.

    Felix_47 , February 3, 2017 at 6:20 pm

    How about the worst drought in 900 years, and an exploding population? That had nothing to do with the problem?

    Peter , February 3, 2017 at 7:07 pm

    Don't forget student debt. Not only are many recent graduates underemployed or unemployed, they're in the hole tens of thousands. Further incentive not to make any sort of financial commitment. Student debt should be cancelled to promote earlier family formation.

    thoughtful person , February 3, 2017 at 6:57 am

    This trend matches up with the trends of dropping life expectancy, especially among the lower half of income earners, and with slowing economies globally.

    It's almost a negative feedback loop.

    Politcal implications: the rise of far right politics; if you are a monarchist, or want to create an aristocracy, these trends are probably in your interest.

    Praedor , February 3, 2017 at 8:54 am

    Sure, it is partly psychological but it also has direct connection (by DESIGN) to the fact that such people don't have healthcare, even with Obamacare insurance. The idiots that sing the praises of Obamacare and how millions now have insurance seem to think that means those people have HEALTHCARE to go with it.

    Insurance is theft. Insurance is not even remotely "healthcare". Much of those newly insured have their insurance, thanks to a government subsidy, but STILL lack healthcare because their premiums and deductibles are too high to allow them to see doctors. Thus, they're dying or going to die sooner due to untreated maladies, but at least they paid insurance company CEOs their bonuses with their subsidized insurance payments!

    Bugs Bunny , February 3, 2017 at 9:41 am

    Mutual insurance however is (was) socialist by nature. The true mutuals were crushed out of existence by share for share conversions to private companies that ripped off policy holders and gave a big payday to the C suites and the lawyers. Thanks to inept state insurance commissioners and assemblies for that one.

    d , February 3, 2017 at 1:14 pm

    while having health insurance doesnt mean you have health care, not having it does mean not having health care at all, short of having a life or death condition, as hospitals (for now an way) are only required to stabilize you. they arent required to cure you.

    but then the high deductible insurance is one of those scams that some politicians gave us because they could suggest that the patient (customer) could just shop around for better deals. course that depends on us patients knowing what medical treatment is best for us, and which is the cheapest of those., the former pretty much requires patients to be as knowledgeable as doctors. the latter means we have to know what the treatments cost. could luck with that

    David , February 3, 2017 at 7:14 am

    I would force policy-makers in every advanced western nation to read and reflect on the last paragraph, because it describes a mindset and a series of practices that are now found everywhere in western economies.

    As David Harvey reminds us in his book on the Contradictions of Capitalism, Marx identified long ago that there was a contradiction between holding down employees wages, and still expecting them to have the purchasing power to buy the goods their cheap labour was making.

    This problem has become more acute with time, simply because we buy a lot more "stuff" than they did in the 19th century, and we take a lot longer to pay for it, often on credit. Houses, cars, household goods, even computers, are now significant expenditure decisions, repaid at least over months, if not years and even decades. The social corollary of mass home ownership, after all, is some assurance that you will be employed over the life of the mortgage. Otherwise, not only won't you buy the house, you won't improve or extend it, or even maintain it, so a whole series of other purchases won't get made, and the construction and maintenance industries will have less work. Instead, you'll save money, so removing purchasing power from the economy.

    I assume there are people in large private sector companies clever enough to under stand this, but as always they are focused on how much money they can extract from the system in the next few years. After that, if the system crashes, well, who cares, They're all right.

    susan the other , February 3, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    old tricks. John D. Rockefeller became a zillion times richer after he was forced to divest himself of his majority interest in his various companies.

    And back then it was a simple case of anti-trust. There were no benefits to reclaim as profit or revenue or whatever.

    This won't work in today's world because there really isn't anything left to exploit – but half-baked ideas die hard sometimes.

    Altandmain , February 3, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    There's a quote on this one:

    http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/16/robots-buy-cars/

    Henry Ford II: Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?

    Walter Reuther: Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?

    The Economist Article this one refers to is pretty awful, and totally ignores the wage-productivity gap.

    Here's an interesting article on that:
    https://www.salon.com/2013/05/30/millennials_dont_hate_cars_they_cant_afford_them/

    ThePanopticoin , February 3, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    Very true. Capitalism only works as long as enough people (or states) are able to take up ever-larger debt, to close the gap (called "profit") between expensive goods and comparatively cheap labour. Watching developments in recent years, this very source of profit and thus base of the economic system is, even on a global level, quite limited

    David Barrera , February 4, 2017 at 2:36 am

    Sure. Marx Capital 1 on the crisis of production. Marx capital 2 on the crisis of realization but this constitutes just one undesirable aspect-this one indeed very macro- among the many others which the expansion of the "contracting-subcontracting chain" has brought and will bring about.

    The Wall Street Journal article is-as it is to expect- late, blind to the core problems of workers and incapable to see and understand the true practical raison ( & reasons) d'être of outsourcing. I guess Yves Smith purpose was just to broadly replicate WSJ article

    stukuls , February 3, 2017 at 7:34 am

    Good to point out Gat Gourmet. Almost all outsourced jobs in the beginning of places where I have worked were once part of the company. The entire art department save two management employees were played off and rehired by a new company doing the same work with less benefits.

    Then that company was later disolved. I have seen this many times in the corporate design field now. Usually ends with disaster and he hire of folks some back to full time but most to freelance. So I guess in a way it works out for the company in the end and not for the worker. Amazing the amount of money a company is willing to lose this way then use the same to pay workers better.

    Arizona Slim , February 3, 2017 at 8:18 am

    But-but-but freelancing is SO hip and cool! Just ask the Freelancers Union!

    Arizona Slim , February 3, 2017 at 10:13 am

    Here is the organization's official website:

    https://www.freelancersunion.org/

    And here is a critique, which I agree with:

    http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-i-in-union

    H. Alexander Ivey , February 3, 2017 at 10:45 pm

    An excellent critique, for those who were wondering. The take away paragraph, summing up the actual work done and purpose of, the Freelancers Union:

    Still, it's hard not to notice there could be nothing more convenient to the corporate and governmental powers-that-be than a nonprofit that takes it upon itself to placate, insure, and temper the precarious middle-class.

    As we sixties people use to say: "Right on!"

    Marco , February 3, 2017 at 8:18 am

    So which ivy-league management school / guru is most culpable in unleashing the whole lean-mean-outsourcing-machine monster because it's slowly destroying my ability to remain in IT.

    BeliTsari , February 3, 2017 at 8:40 am

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/40584994?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Indentured servitude had pretty strong adherents, before chattel slavery gained ascendancy in the colonies. You might as well credit Pharaoh Khufu?

    Katharine , February 3, 2017 at 9:21 am

    I don't know the answer to your question, but you would have to go back over twenty years to find it. What I find remarkable is that even though everybody affected in the early stages could see what a dumb, destructive idea it was, the MBA types never caught on, even though most of them were not so far up the hierarchy they could not ultimately be affected.

    just_kate , February 3, 2017 at 12:34 pm

    Jack Welch

    Gaylord , February 3, 2017 at 8:39 am

    Contractors need Guilds or Trade Associations that are well organized and legally able to set minimum standards for billing and performance. This is an area where Trade Unions have failed with respect to some professions, and apparently (from what I've heard) the RICO statutes need to be amended to allow for this. It's time to rig the other side to make companies think twice before replacing employees with temp workers or contractors, to keep jobs within the US, and to provide a cushion and a "floor" to those that take the risk of entrepreneurship, preventing a race to the bottom.

    akaPaul LaFargue , February 3, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    Yes! Geographically bound temp unions or hiring halls for all temp workers allied with low-wage worker associations. This is NOT something that established unions want, so who will agitate for it?

    jrs , February 3, 2017 at 3:21 pm

    Something like the I.W.W is what I'd like to see. Yea I know the response is: they are still around? Well not what they were long ago of course, but with the prison strike, yes around and rising.

    Northeaster , February 3, 2017 at 8:40 am

    "how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment has declined and is expected to fall further." –

    This line pissed me off this morning more than most other mornings. I literally just said goodbye to a long-time colleague (Big Pharma) who is being outsourced as of today. The kicker(s):

    1. The job is not high tech
    2. Employee(s) trained their replacement who are H-1B from India
    3. The company is moving the division to India

    Of note, my state (MA) is responsible for over one-quarter of all H-1B's every year. Thankfully a few in the industry are helping get the word out, like Nanex's Eric Hunsader yesterday. The outsourcing, off-shoring, and H-1B abuse has to stop, but not sure The People have the will to hold political office holders accountable enough to truly change this paradigm.

    https://twitter.com/nanexllc/status/827185042761859073

    Northeaster , February 3, 2017 at 9:00 am

    Edit: MA is in the top 10, California is number one:

    https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pdf/PerformanceData/2016/H-1B_Selected_Statistics_FY2016_Q4_updated.pdf

    Vatch , February 3, 2017 at 9:56 am

    Norm Matloff's blog often covers H-1B issues. Here's one of his recent posts:

    https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/h-1b-reform-proposal-a-great-start-or-a-cruel-ruse/

    Ann , February 3, 2017 at 1:10 pm

    He has an op-ed piece in the Huffington Post today:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-h-1b_us_5890d86ce4b0522c7d3d84af

    sgt_doom , February 3, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    Agreed, but I've been saying the exact same thing since 1980, so I've been lobbying and being a volunteer activist against this for many years, and yet I still run into women (not too many men anymore) in their 60s and 70s who believe offshoring of American jobs, and insourcing foreign visa replacement workers is fantastic (truly, we are a dumbed down society today, where they routinely protest on behalf of the financial hegemons).

    Best book on this (and I am no conservative and have never voted r-con) is Michelle Malkin's book (with John Miano), Sold Out!

    This has been going on for a long time, and by design: with every "jobless recovery" one-fifth of the workforce is laid off, and one-half of that one-fifth will never find another job, while one-half of the remainder, will only find lower-paying jobs.

    And each and every time, more jobs are restructured as temporary or contractor type jobs. We've had a lot of "jobless recoveries" to date.

    A recent study from Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger found that 94% of the new jobs created over the past some years were all part-time, while a study from Rutgers University a year or so ago found that one-third of the new jobs created couldn't be verified as actually existing!

    Nothing particularly new here, as it has been going on for quite some time (another great book is Ron Hira's book, Outsourcing America ).

    Damian , February 3, 2017 at 8:46 am

    In every category of labor – blue and white collar – the press is on to increase the supply and reduce the demand for labor.

    The book ends: The Clintons in 92′ put thru the WTO / NAFTA – shut down 10's of millions of jobs and factories – blue & white collar. Obama did the same, with anticipating Hillary would be elected, put forth the TTP to enable unlimited H1-b for tech workers from off shore. The Neo Liberal Democrats were at the forefront of of this 25 year Plan for labor devaluation (with Republican help).

    The Immigration Policy by government both illegal and legal were at the epicenter of increasing the supply in all categories with various programs while Obama also increased the regulations to wipe out more factories and deliberately reduce demand.

    The solution is eliminate immigration in all forms until the 95 Million are employed and wages rise by the equivalent of what was lost in the past 15 years plus Tariffs to enable a marginal cost compared to imports to allow domestic factories to expand demand.

    Increase the demand and lower the supply of labor will mean potentially a switch will occur from 1099 to W-2 as companies have to secure labor reliability in a short labor market which is squeezed.

    The Millennials sooner or later will figure it out. Identity Politics which enables a greater supply of labor and diversion of attention to intangible values at the expense of tangible values has to be substituted for Labor Only Politics.

    These young people have been duped based on the recent focus of the demonstrations. They don't understand they were screwed deliberately and with great malice by "Going with Her".

    sgt_doom , February 3, 2017 at 6:56 pm

    I've been keeping count over the years, and as close as I can find, over 170,000 production facilities were shipped out of the country. (Or, as David Harvey phrased it: "Identity politics instead of class analysis.")

    Scott , February 3, 2017 at 8:58 am

    One aspect of outsourcing that the article does not hit upon is the impact on company cash flows, which has some importance to large outsourcing initiatives. A company must pay its employees within 6 (it might be 7) days of the end of the pay cycle, which is typically two week. By contrast, when outsourcing, at the end of the month the contractor will provide an invoice, the company will then pay according to its payment cycle. This could be 30, 45, 60, 90, or even 120 days. The contractor still must pay its bills, in essence it's providing a low cost loan to firm (which often has a lower cost of capital). This approach, including the extension of payments has been largely driven by financial/business consultants.

    Arizona Slim , February 3, 2017 at 10:15 am

    Story of my life! I'm still trying to get paid for freelance work that I did in December. This payment delay is wreaking havoc with MY cash flow.

    Scott , February 3, 2017 at 11:25 am

    It can actually get worse – they might not pay you at all, hoping that you'll file a lawsuit, which will be interpreted according to the contract, rather than legislation which covers employment issues. The litigation costs might exceed any payments you'd receive.

    My guess is that this wouldn't happen to an individual working under a 1099 (as word might get around), and very large firms often have leverage (not providing continuing services), but medium-size firms often get held up for months and years (especially once the contract has ended).

    redleg , February 3, 2017 at 10:16 pm

    Or they can go Chapter 7 during that time, where your almost 6 figures in billables gets paid 4 years later as mid- 2 figures.

    Left in Wisconsin , February 3, 2017 at 10:49 am

    Excellent point.

    Another thing the article glosses over is that most outsourcing is simply wage cutting. I have never once seen confirmation of the notion that "specialist" firms provide better services at comparable labor costs than firms can do in-house. The double-bubble is that firms (and public sector employers) often spend more on outsourcing than they would doing the work in house despite the wage savings, which all accrue to the outsourcer of course.

    diogenes , February 3, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    When the airlines went on their deliberate BK spree in the 90's, they outsourced flying to regional carriers. Regional a/c (45-90 seaters) have higher CASM's than the a/c the airlines actually owned. In brief, it is cheaper to transport 100 passengers on a 100 seat a/c than to transport 100 passengers on two 50 seat a/c. That's been a fact since the Wright brothers broke the ground.

    FWIW, SouthWest never went the regional route, never went BK and pays their unionized employees quite well.

    The BK spree was all about breaking labor, not operational efficiencies that would actually save money.

    d , February 3, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    but now it seems the majors are not to happy with the regionals , cause customers cant tell the difference between them, the next problem is that for some reason the regionals cant find pilots. seems that pilots dont want to work for less than 30,000 a year.

    Harris , February 3, 2017 at 4:53 pm

    The FAA increased the number of hours required to be a pilot to 1,500 from 250.

    Yves Smith Post author , February 4, 2017 at 4:45 am

    Yes, but that is a one-time benefit. Once you've shifted the payment cycle, your quarterly reported cash flow will be more or less the same.

    PKMKII , February 3, 2017 at 9:24 am

    Another area of friction and waste with IT consulting and other contracting, is that an employee of a company simply and efficiently plugs into their existence administrative system (HR, timekeeping, payroll, etc).

    With a consultant, there has to be reconciliation between the vendor's records and the company's records, which means work hours burned matching everything up. And that assumes they do match up neatly; If the vendor says "our consultant worked 50 hours this week, pay them as such" and whoever oversees the consultant at the company claims they only approved for 40 hours, now you've got a mess on your hands, could potentially go to the lawyers.

    rusti , February 3, 2017 at 10:03 am

    The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth. The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how complex they are. While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple to hand off, the larger ones are not.

    I work in engineering at a gigantic multinational vehicle manufacturer and the role of "consultants" has been expanding with time. Rather than consultants being people with specific technical expertise who work on one subsystem component with clear interfaces to other things, it now encapsulates project managers and subsystem / function responsible people who need to have large networks inside the company to be effective.

    Considering the huge amount of time it takes to get a new hire up and running to learn the acronyms and processes and the roles of different departments, it's a bit absurd to hire people for such roles under the assumption that they can be quickly swapped out with a consultant from Company B next week.

    It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability and seeks to avoid it as much as possible.

    Jim Haygood , February 3, 2017 at 12:24 pm

    " It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability. "

    No doubt correct. But why is that? Over time, mandates on employers - particularly large employers - just keep escalating. Health care; pensions; overtime; layoff notifications: regulators just keep raising the ante. Employers respond by trying to reduce their profile and present a smaller target to their predators. Staying under 50 employees wins a lot of exemptions from federal regulations.

    Taken to an extreme, some developing countries (Argentina being one example) have European-style labor regulations guaranteeing job security and mandating generous compensation when employees are laid off. With hardscrabble small businesses being in no position to shoulder such risks, the result is that about 40 percent of employment is trabajo en negro , with no benefits or protections whatsoever - a perfect example of unintended consequences.

    Editorial comments such as "these [contracting] arrangements increase risks and rigidity" ignore that government employment regulations also increase risks and rigidity. There's a balance of power. Overreaching, such as Obama's surprise order to vastly increase the number of employees subject to overtime pay, leads to employer pushback in the form of more contracting and outsourcing. Getting whacked out of the blue with a big new liability is unfair.

    diogenes , February 3, 2017 at 12:47 pm

    Actually, the overtime rules were an attempt to restore overtime that GWB took away:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/23/us/controversial-overtime-rules-take-effect.html?_r=0

    Concur about costs, and health care is the big one. Every other industrialized nation we compete against has national health care. Given that, why doesn't business support Medicare for all and get health costs off their books? Plus it would be a damsite easier to start up a business if one had health care.

    susan the other , February 3, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    Yes. I've never understood why corporations aren't all over this.

    Left in Wisconsin , February 3, 2017 at 8:08 pm

    Because they, unlike us, understand class. I can state for a fact that the Big Three auto companies are well aware of how much cheaper health care costs are for them in Canada and how much better off they would be here, cost-wise, with a national health care system where McDonald's and Wal-mart have to pay the same per hour or per employee cost as they do. But it turns out cost isn't everything. Corporate (capitalist) solidarity rules.

    H. Alexander Ivey , February 3, 2017 at 10:56 pm

    Yes, yes, damn yes!! It's about your class, not your race, not your education, not your gender. As Lambert might say, identity politics (your race, your education, your gender) is used to keep your eye off the prize: economic opportunity and security.

    DH , February 3, 2017 at 2:21 pm

    It is also easier to have part-time workers because they are still covered by health insurance in some sort of national health insurance system. In the US, the part-time workers will have high turnover as they look for full-time jobs to get access to health insurance.

    Workers are also more likely to start their own businesses to provide services since the health insurance is just a fee they pay instead of an astronomical non-group insurance bill. COBRA insurance premiums are ginormous if you need to continue coverage after you leave a company.

    Economists have been decrying the lack of employee mobility and small business formation over the past decade or so. Health insurance is probably a primary reason for this. Obamacare hasn't been around long enough and with enough certainty to change that dynamic yet.

    jrs , February 3, 2017 at 3:37 pm

    It's probably part of it, though I suspect the bad labor market is part of it as well. It's one thing to quit a job to start a business when you think "if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to my old career and easily be hired", another when quitting a good job means one might not land another ever.

    susan the other , February 3, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    haven't seen any more info on Hollande's "Flex – Security" plans to give corporations a way to lay off workers to improve the corporation's revenue. French Labor was having none of it and then Hollande went negative in the polls and was done for. Our contracting out former corporation departments sounds like bad quality control at best. If the state – whatever state you can name – is going to prop up all corporations everywhere because they can no longer successfully compete then something is fundamentally wrong with the system that demands such murderous and mindless competition.

    d , February 3, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    well there also that wage theft rules, that employers don't like. course if you look at work mans comp, you will find that it no longer works to protect employees any more. and maybe that is also why employers are get rid of employees. plus there is all of that needing to manage them. but you still end up having to manage vendors too, and while i suppose you could hire another vendor to manage the vendors (not really sure this will work out well), it still leaves the biggest problem

    since consumers are about 70% of the entire economy (always wonder if this is true. because almost all corporate 'investment' is done because of customer demand), seems like this business fad, will end up with fewer customers (which seems to be the way its working too, as evidenced by the falling sales figures from companies, even Apple), so it like business is like lemmings, going a cliff, because some one else started

    Lune , February 4, 2017 at 3:09 pm

    So are you a proponent of Medicare-for-all? It would be a tremendous benefit to corporations to get out of the healthcare business and also increase employees' willingness to become freelancers and consultants, since they'd never have to worry about healthcare.

    The truth is that citizens expect a certain amount of social welfare and security. This can be provided by 1) individuals themselves, 2) private players e.g. corporations, or 3) public players e.g. govt. Each has downsides. If you expect individuals to provide for themselves, it will less inefficient than having professional managers, and individuals will cut down on other consumption and save more, thereby hurting an economy such as ours which is highly dependent on consumption. This leaves companies and government. If companies lobby against public welfare programs like nationalized health insurance, unemployment insurance, social security, etc., they shouldn't be surprised if government foists those requirements back on them through back-door regulations.

    To be fair to companies, most of the ones engaged in the "real economy" e.g. manufacturing, actually wouldn't mind medicare for all, or some other program that relieves them of the burden of providing healthcare to their employees. But they're being drowned out by the financial economy of Wall St., banking, insurance, etc. who depend on putting more money in the hands of individuals from whom they can extract much higher fees than they ever could from govt or corporate HR depts.

    If companies don't want increased health mandates, for example, their enemy wasn't Obama: it was the private health insurance companies that didn't want a public plan.

    Lune , February 4, 2017 at 3:17 pm

    Sorry, I meant individuals will be less *efficient*.

    Altandmain , February 3, 2017 at 1:45 pm

    Yeah when I worked for one of the big 3 at an assembly plant, I felt that the use of temporary contractors could have very negative implications.

    Most of the staff though were reasonably well paid, although asked to work long hours. I think though that overall, highly paid permanent workers pay for themselves many times over.

    DJG , February 3, 2017 at 10:11 am

    One aspect of the whole fandango that I don't get is how the IRS allows whole departments within a company to be outsourced: If people show up at your plant or office every day to work on your tasks, they are your employee, not a contractor. Is this melting away of the idea of an employee because of lack of enforcement or some change in IRS rules that I am not aware of?

    Basically, if you control a worker's day, and if that worker works regularly for you, the person is your employee. I don't see how companies get away with this sleight of hand–avoiding, at the most basic legal level, who is on staff or not. [Unless the result, as many note above, is to increase class warfare.]

    goldie , February 3, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    The company doesn't get away with it if someone is willing to whistleblow to the IRS and said company fails the IRS 20-Factor Test (IC vs. employee). The nice thing there too, is that the tax burden will be on the company and not the employee. While I don't advocate being a stoolie, if a company wants to screw me over turn-about is fair play. I do the best I can to avoid those kinds of companies in the first place.

    sgt_doom , February 3, 2017 at 7:02 pm

    " One aspect of the whole fandango that I don’t get is how the IRS allows whole departments within a company to be outsourced . . "

    If I understand your question correctly it is because a federal regulation was enacted by congress (I believe one of them was faux-progressive, Jim McDermott, no longer in congress but co-founder of the India Caucus, to replace American workers with foreign visa workers from India) which forbids oversight of the foreign visa program - and yes, they established a federal regulation killing oversight of the program by the government!

    Suggested reading:

    Sold Out, by Michelle Malkin and John Miano

    fooco1 , February 4, 2017 at 2:54 am

    Someone quoted Norm Matloff (a known bigot) above. You are now quoting anchor child Filipino bigot Michelle Malkin of all people ? It's not helping your case.

    The H1-B program is a few hundred thousand legal tax paying people a year. There are 21 million Mexican illegals in this country. What do you think has more downward pressure on wages ? .005% H1-B (yeah, you read that right) of the total immigrant/wage pressure ? It's idiotic and a purely bigoted worldview.

    Yves Smith Post author , February 4, 2017 at 3:08 am

    We are supposed to regard "a few hundred thousand" as bupkis when they are concentrated in one sector?

    The H1-B visa program has has a huge impact on wages in the IT sector and has virtually eliminated entry-level computer science jobs. This is strategically foolhardy, in that the US is not creating the next generation of people capable of running critical infrastructure.

    And the illegal immigrants do pay taxes: sales, gas, and property taxes through their rents. And many actually do pay FICA. The Treasury recognizes that certain Social Security numbers are reused many times, and it's almost certainly for illegal immigrants. In fact, the IRS encourages illegal immigrants to "steal" Social Security numbers:

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/04/13/irs-admits-it-encourages-illegals-to-steal-social-security-numbers-for-taxes/

    That article whinges about possible tax credit scamming, but even that estimate is well below what they pay in FICA, $12 billion. And pretty much none of them will draw benefits.

    This is from memory, but I believe they collect over $4 billion from these SSN per year. And most of these jobs are seasonal and/or too low wage for them to pay much in the way of income taxes when they are being paid in cash.

    fooco1 , February 4, 2017 at 7:31 pm

    H1-B is not in one industry, the .005% is spread across entry level jobs in all industries: finance, automotive, insurance, arts, film, automation, etc. The total amount of H1-B is minuscule, vanishingly close to zero in a country of 300+ million and 20+ million illegals.

    You don't seem to be complaining about the tens of millions that used to concentrated in one sector..actual manufacturing. Wonder why ? Here's a hint: that sector used to make computer peripherals, keyboards, mice, terminals, monitors, LCD's, chips, motherboards, pretty much everything in the USA.

    Employees in china, taiwan, etc pay zero USA taxes and they displaced millions of manufacturing jobs. And ironically, you are using an entirely outsourced computer (that actually displaced tens of millions of jobs in the aggregate) to complain about the minuscule .005% H1-B effect. A few hundred thousand entry level coding jobs (which are ridiculously simple and lo-tech, google 13 year olds getting Microsoft certified to see how low down on the value chain this is). You genuinely think writing a few for-loops (I am simplifying a little but you get the idea) is hard ?

    Certainly, way way less capital intensive and way way less barrier to entry than Hi-Tech manufacturing. It's all going to be outsourced much faster than manufacturing was, since there is literally no barrier to entry. And H1-B is a good thing, relatively speaking, compared to full on outsourcing (just like manufacturing was).

    Like I said, the only explanation for these anti H1-B posts is plain old bigotry. No other explanation comes close.

    fooco1 , February 4, 2017 at 8:08 pm

    Might as well finish my train of thought..then I'm outta here.

    There are less H1-B visas this year than refugees , Refugees (not to mention the 20 million illegals) also put downward pressure on wages across all industries, but of course, those are all food servicing/picking/janitorial jobs and who cares about those people right ? (sarcasm for the impaired)

    So, coming back to H1-B's..let's take the logical alternative and ban all H1-B's entirely and deport the ones on H1-B visas. What happens then ?

    1) They can do the job exactly as well remotely (all they need is email/internet/skype).
    2) They get paid even less (but more than zero).
    3) They pay no taxes.
    4) Their output is words..code is the same as prose and math. Good luck banning math/words..if it can be printed on a t-shirt, it ain't bannable. (See the famous bernstein crypto case from the early 90's for a illustration of this).
    5) And finally..there are zero new jobs added for native USA'ians (which would now cost more, given the alternative).

    It makes the situation far worse than it is today. There is fewer local coffee shop selling coffee, fewer rental units getting rented, fewer groceries getting bought, cars being purchased, etc.

    For a easily displaceable and low barrier to entry coding gig, there isn't any easy answer. H1-B's are actually the best solution (or at the very least neutral), not the problem.

    FluffytheObeseCat , February 4, 2017 at 7:22 am

    The H1-B visa program is operated so as to wreck the bargaining power of native born young U.S. workers. Young Americans are increasingly likely to be nonwhite AND from the less valued (not Asian) subgroups of nonwhite. The damage H1-Bs do to our white Baby Boomers is almost incidental at this point; they are aging out of the workforce. And given the intense age bigotry of the IT subculture, they are not a factor within it at all at this point.

    H1-B visas lock our striving, capable working class young people out of upward mobility. Kids who are now graduating from say, San Jose State with skills as good as those of South Asians don't get jobs that they are qualified for, because they are shut out of entry to the business. They are disdained in Silicon Valley because the majority of entry level conduits to employment are now locked up (via social contacts, and "who-you-know" relationships) by men from the subcontinent.

    Your race argument is pernicious and I suspect, promoted in the full the knowledge of this fact. It is a great shame that we are relying on kooks like Malkin to promote obvious truths, but the shame belongs to our morally derelict 'liberal' chattering class, not those who listen to her and her ilk for lack of other sources.

    vegeholic , February 3, 2017 at 10:22 am

    An underappreciated aspect of contracting versus cultivating your own employees is that it hollows out the organization to the point that it may no longer have competence to perform its mission. Having an apparent success at contracting out menial tasks, the temptation is to keep going and begin to contract out core functions. This pleases the accountants but leaves the whole organization dependent on critical talent that has very little institutional loyalty. When an inevitable technical paradigm shift occurs, who can you count on to give you objective and constructive advice?

    Costs of training and cultivating employees are high, and it is tempting to think that these costs can be eliminated by using contractors. It is strictly an apparent, short-term gain which will in due time be revealed as a strategic mistake. Do we have to learn every lesson the hard way?

    Portia , February 3, 2017 at 10:55 am

    yes, and when I read that Pfizer farms out research, I also wondered if retention of the outsource company contract is results-related. could new drug results hinge on a company wanting to keep their Pfizer contract by telling them what they want to hear?

    Ann , February 3, 2017 at 1:06 pm

    Agreed. Every time a company offshores jobs or goes through another round of layoffs, it loses its institutional memory. This is particularly acute in the mainframe IT systems that prop up the TBTFs (yep, they offshored these too). After a while, nobody understands exactly how these systems work and can only get to the bottom of them by reading code, which is a pretty flawed way to learn the business. This has been going on for years and nobody cares.

    sgt_doom , February 3, 2017 at 7:03 pm

    Amen to that, something I've been preaching for over 35 years now!

    wilroncanada , February 3, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    It pleases the accountants, that is, until their jobs too are outsourced. First they came for the janitors

    Denis Drew , February 3, 2017 at 10:35 am

    Centralized bargaining - a.k.a., sector wide labor agreements - is the only strategic answer to contracting out. Done in continental Europe, French Canada, Argentina, Indonesia.

    (Take a vacation from reality with Soma - one gram and I don't give a damn.)

    L , February 3, 2017 at 10:40 am

    The one word I don't see in your excellent writeup is loyalty . Companies, like countries depend to a great extent on social constraints to keep people committed to the group. You cannot monitor all people all the time and doing so causes them to turn against you. But companies staffed with contractors and temps and temps supervising contractors have no loyalty to the company. Ergo no one employee has any reason to go the extra inch or to turn down the chance to sell out for personal gain should the opportunity arise.

    All that imposes real costs that companies conveniently ignore because they are not always realized in share price.

    PhilM , February 3, 2017 at 5:54 pm

    I was going to add the same thought, but use the label "goodwill." It is something that appears on balance sheets in enormous amounts depending on what the accountants think it may represent.

    There is a "goodwill bank" in the labor pool of any given company, and when the balance hits zero, the company will fail, "emigrate" its capital, or go public to the greater fools. Companies are engaged in a savage race to the bottom that is inherent in corporate structure: executives are now playing with somebody else's money, and somebody else's life. If corporate liability were suddenly returned to the days of the partnership, what a change we would see. And those days were not so long ago: Wall Street remembers the 1960s.

    PS What a treat to come here and see informative journalism and commentary instead of the monkey cage.

    oliverks , February 3, 2017 at 11:52 am

    My daughter was recruited and interviewed by Genentech and then sent to work for an organization called PPD. PPD did nothing in this relationship, other than take money from Genentech pocketed about 1/2 of that and then pay her the rest. I really couldn't figure out what the heck the point of this was, other than some long running strategy to ultimately depress salaries of Genentech chemists.

    DH , February 3, 2017 at 2:29 pm

    One of my kids works in a unionized metal foundry (they still exist in the US!). When they need new workers, they bring several in through a temp agency for several months. If they can cut it and are acceptable, then they get pulled into the union or into the plant management team. This allows them to try out several people on a rent-to-own basis, but in the long run they become loyal company employees with very low turnover.

    jrs , February 3, 2017 at 3:45 pm

    Contract-to-hire is not new. The problem from an employee perspective is trying to evaluate when a company is actually serious about hiring if the contractee does a good job, and when it's just empty promises and they have no intent of making full time job offers at all.

    DH , February 3, 2017 at 2:31 pm

    BTW – the Genentech scientists probably get a bunch of benefits like bonuses and stock options, etc. that are not available to the contract workers. They probably have more protections if they are terminated or laid off whereas the contract workers would be done that day. The really good contract workers may get offers to work at the company for the long-run.

    j84ustin , February 3, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    Outsourcing is done in the public realm, too; my first job after grad school was with a major housing authority – except it wasn't for them (despite me having a "housingauthority.org" email address). I worked for a contractor of the housing authority, who paid us shit and treated us like cattle. I lasted three months.

    j84ustin , February 3, 2017 at 12:36 pm

    ***but I was still a W2 employee! silver lining.

    jrs , February 3, 2017 at 3:48 pm

    Oh yes it definitely happens in the public realm, a lot with local government, more and more it seems.

    akaPaul LaFargue , February 3, 2017 at 12:19 pm

    One area not discussed in this post is municipal outsourcing. What this means in practice is the loss of organizational memory . assuming that records are not adequately maintained since the "old-timers" were still around. But with the loss of human memory banks, no new ones (digital?) have taken their place. Further, when consultants are hired for a specific project, when they have completed that project, what they have learned as ancillary knowledge is lost cuz the end-product is all that counts, not the process.

    Dave , February 3, 2017 at 12:57 pm

    i.e. Rip up the entire street to find where the pipe is because the old public works director who was replaced with a bright young woman with a degree before he qualified for his pension, got even and deleted the maps on the software. :-)

    wilroncanada , February 3, 2017 at 6:41 pm

    Didn't Yves mention this loss of institutional memory in reference to fianancial services, or was it banks, and their IT?

    Further to government outsourcing:
    Back a few years my wife and I worked for a school district on the East coast of Canada. The janitorial service had been outsourced a few years previously, with the former head janitor becoming the main contractor, who then hired other cleaning staff to work for him. He/she was already being squeezed to reduce his rates, leading to work not done or his working from 8AM to midnight to save an after-school employee. So–lower employment overall, all at minimum wage, including the main contractor.

    One district had bucked the province-wide trend by keeping its own cleaning staff. Visiting the schools in that district those few years later, one could see the result, in vastly superior level of cleanliness, better co-ordination between admin and teaching staff with cleaners, and much better relations with students as well.

    The staff weren't bosses, the cleaners weren't minions, and the students weren't customers. They were a team.

    Glen , February 3, 2017 at 12:21 pm

    I don't think there will be a change in this because it's too profitable for the CEOs to strip mine the companies assets (knowledgeable employees are an asset) for maximum "shareholder value" (always replace "shareholder value" with "my compensation"). I suppose this will change when all companies are stripped to the bone and go under. But we now call these "too big to fail" and prop them up with taxpayer dollars.

    We need to change incentives. These might help:

    Make corporations really pay taxes so that it makes sense to invest in the company rather than strip it.

    Don't prop up TBTF companies, let them fail so that many small companies can grow.

    Stop all the fraud and corruption. Send corrupt CEOs to jail.

    Medicare for All would be a boon for businesses, especially the smaller and mid-sized ones.

    Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest, was once asked where he ranked shareholders vs employees. He replied employees were first (because if the employees are not happy, then the customers are not happy), customers (they pay the bills), and shareholders (they buy and sell shares in seconds). If the company is successful, the shareholders will come. We somehow need to get back to these company values. A successful company starts with the employees.

    Arizona Slim , February 3, 2017 at 2:12 pm

    Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, Glen!

    JimTan , February 3, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    Wow – good post.

    This is a pretty ugly development in our history. The 'end of employees' is a very accurate description of what is going on in our gig economy related to a specific legal contradiction. In the U.S., we've adopted a vast body of labor laws ( many in response to the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression ) that are primarily designed to protect "employees" from exploitation. Buried deep in our tax law is a second designation for worker called "independent contractor", defined as a self-employed person providing services to other businesses that is exempt from most labor laws on the principle that a self-employed person can't exploit themselves. The key here is labor laws protect 'employees' from 'employer' abuses. Changing a workers classification from employee to ( self-employed ) contractor, will change an employers classification to customer, and remove the workers legal protections from exploitation. Labor law protections include minimum wage and hours, workplace safety and health, wrongful dismissal protections, anti-discrimination protections, employee benefits security, and worker compensation protections. This contradiction is allowing many companies to sidestep centuries of laws enacted to stabilize and and protect our society. Some companies push this power imbalance even further by transferring many of the business costs associated with their revenue to employee contractors ( see Uber ).

    Hopefully when there is enough public outcry, regulators and prosecutors will decide to challenge these interpretations of existing laws and force businesses back in line regardless of their political influence.

    Arizona Slim , February 3, 2017 at 2:09 pm

    Call it what it really is - the frig economy. Because it keeps frigging us over.

    JimTan , February 3, 2017 at 2:24 pm

    Incidentally, the slippery logic that removes labor law protections by classifying a worker as self-employed ( both employer and employee ) might also grant businesses protections from their workers via consumer protection laws against fraud and unfair practices ( when businesses become customers of their now self-employed former employees ).

    vegeholic , February 3, 2017 at 1:44 pm

    As has been stated several times, sometimes government entities are the worst offenders here. Grover Norquist & Co. insisted on shrinking the size of government. The obedient elected officials and managers immediately replaced employees with contractors and could claim that they had indeed reduced the size of government. Unfortunately the budget probably went up since we now have to provide profit for the rent extracting contract vendors.

    redleg , February 3, 2017 at 10:37 pm

    They replaced govt employees with their contractors.
    FIFY
    Dual purpose- Eliminate the government's ability to govern while capturing the tax revenue.

    Democrita , February 3, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    A few years ago I was working for a family of local weekly papers, run on a shoestring (of course) with pathetic salaries for the tiny staff. At one point, they heard about possibly outsourcing design–layout of modular pages–to cheap labor in Romania. But when they ran the numbers .our in-house designers were already cheaper than the Romanians!

    Second point: At my current magazine I am one of just two full-time staffers on the edit side. Our copy-editor/proofreader is paid on an hourly basis, and works off-site. Our designer works on a monthly retainer, off-site. And so on.

    That makes the relationship between us and our workers competitive and antagonistic: They try to do the least amount of work, and we try to pay the least amount of money. So when the publisher wants to be "innovative" or try something different, the designer resists. He doesn't want to spend any more time on us than he normally does. So we don't do anything well, we get by with just good enough.

    Point 3 – institutional knowledge: One of our key competitive advantages has been/is being eroded because there are things we haven't done in two years due to turnover. When I arrived and took up one such project, hugely important to the company's bottom line, no one could tell me how it was done. Everyone who had been involved in it was gone. We've now spent several months reinventing this particular wheel.

    But the publisher doesn't see that as money. He only sees money as money.

    DH , February 3, 2017 at 2:24 pm

    BTW – the financial sector is ripe for this. Automation is taking over many positions and people in active investing is getting slashed big-time. Ironically, places like Vanguard may actually be some of the last bastions of actual employees.

    Detrei , February 3, 2017 at 2:35 pm

    The problem with these short term contract jobs are immense. Employees that don't have a steady income have difficulty getting loans for cars or homes. They certainly have less protection too. Our son worked for SKY TV as a part time employee through a temp agency for 3 years, working 40 hour weeks. But when an unstable full time employee assaulted him, in front or several witnesses, he was the one fired on the spot without explanation. He was a non-person. The temp agency didn't want to get involved for fear of losing their contract. With no union, no rights and little money, there was little he could do. They knew he couldn't afford a lawyer and involving the police wouldn't get his job back. This goes on all the time now. 20 years ago would have been unthinkable. I see a revolution coming, in many countries

    Pelham , February 3, 2017 at 2:39 pm

    Given the long evident fact that our corporate owners and their servants in government will not do a bloody thing to make life better for us, what can we do? As a first step toward any solution, we need to recognize that nothing is possible within the narrow boundaries of our political and economic system.

    Vatch , February 3, 2017 at 3:03 pm

    What you describe as a first step seems a lot like a claim of inevitable failure. Rather than expect failure, I recommend as a first step that we try to block a few of Trump's predatory cabinet nominations. Andrew Puzder, the nominee to head the Labor Department, and Steven Mnuchin, nominated to be the Secretary of the Treasury, seem to be very relevant to the scope of this article. Also Tom Price, nominated to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Tell your Senators that you don't want them to be confirmed. It's easy, although you might need to make a few extra phone calls, because the Congressional phone lines are often busy these days.

    https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

    Sorry, I know I'm being repetitious. But it's better to do something positive than to bewail our political impotence.

    JEHR , February 3, 2017 at 3:04 pm

    Or everything is possible within Witness–Trump as Pres.!!!!!

    JEHR , February 3, 2017 at 3:03 pm

    I ask, Why can't banks be fully automated? You wouldn't need CEOs and COOs and CFOs in banks because IT can do all those jobs automatically. Then we would find out that we only need ONE bank–the central bank and, voila, the banks no longer can create money by making loans. (I'm sure there is a weak point in this argument!!!) However, I can see something like this happening in the future if only we separate investment banking from commercial banking.

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 3, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    Marx saw capitalism as an endless class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

    He wasn’t far wrong.

    1920s – high inequality, high banker pay, low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons, reckless bankers, globalisation phase (bourgeoisie in the ascendency)

    1970s â€" low inequality, worker and union power, high taxes on the wealthy (proletariat in the ascendency) (probably more true in the UK than the US)

    2000s â€" high inequality, high banker pay, low taxes on the wealthy, robber CEOs, reckless bankers, globalisation phase (bourgeoisie in the ascendency)

    The pendulum swings back and forth and always swings too far in both directions.

    If the human race could take a more sensible, big picture view they might see it as a balance between the supply side (bourgeoisie) and the demand side (proletariat).

    The neoliberal era has been one where a total ignorance of debt has held sway.

    Redistributive capitalism was removed to be replaced with a capitalism where debt based consumption has become the norm. without a single mainstream economist realising the problem.

    The world is maxing out on debt, this system is set to fail due to a lack of demand. The Bourgoisie have been in the ascendency and made their usual mistake.

    “The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destructionâ€.

    Keynes thought income was just as important as profit, income looks after the demand side of the equation and profit looks after the supply side.

    He has the idea of balance.

    Just maximising profit â€" The Bourgeoisie looking after their own short term, self interest with no thought of the longer term.

    1) Money at the top is mainly investment capital as those at the top can already meet every need, want or whim. It is supply side capital.

    2) Money at bottom is mainly consumption capital and it will be spent on goods and services. It is demand side capital.

    You need to keep the balance.

    Too much capital at the bottom and inflation roars away.

    Too much capital at the top and there is no where sensible to invest and the Bourgeoisie indulge in rampant speculation leading to the inevitable Wall Street Crash, 1929 and 2008.

    Today’s negative yield investments?
    Too much capital at the top, no one wants it and you have to pay people to take it off your hands.

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 3, 2017 at 5:07 pm

    We are actually using 1920s economics, neoclassical economics.

    No wonder everything looks familiar, the Bourgeoisie have no imagination.

    “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.â€Irving Fisher 1929.

    In 2007, Ben Bernanke could see no problems ahead.

    Their beliefs were based on an absolute faith in markets based on neoclassical economics which states markets reach stable equilibriums.

    We should actually learn from mistakes, not repeat them.

    1920s levels of inequality â€" what a surprise it’s the same economics.

    We have moved on to the 1930s now:

    1930s/2010s â€" Global recession, currency wars, rising nationalism and extremism

    1940s â€" Global war

    Something to look forward to.

    jerry , February 3, 2017 at 5:24 pm

    "You need to keep the balance." The post war era was balance, that was the middle of the pendulum swing, we have never seen you're next sentence:

    "Too much capital at the bottom and inflation roars away." When? Name one instance outside of extraordinary political situations like weimar germany and zimbabwe where this has occurred?

    Inflation is the boogey man that the elite throw around to scare us into submission. They don't care when its inflation of house prices, they don't care when its inflation of healthcare costs, education costs, etc. etc. But they damn sure start sweating a lot when its the cost of labor that goes up. Shocker.

    Check my article about this very topic (shameless self promotion) : https://marginallyattachedblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/inflation-worries-from-trump-fiscal-stimulus/

    FreeMarketApologist , February 3, 2017 at 3:28 pm

    "Gate Gourmet had once been part of British Airways. And passengers blamed the airline."

    You can transfer expenses, you can transfer legal and regulatory liability risk, you can transfer financial risk, but it is virtually impossible to transfer reputational risk. Companies who think they can do so (or ignore the fact) do so at their own peril.

    Barbara , February 3, 2017 at 4:37 pm

    My d-i-l, a research professional, has survived five down-sizings, assuming an additional work load each time. The last time she also got a small promotion (well, you'd think they'd give her something positive after all this). To myself I thought, they're going to wear this woman out till she has nothing left to give and dump her.

    It's worse. The corporation (company is a concept from my early working days) just announced that everyone would have to bid for their projects(jobs). What this means of course is "how much are you willing to give?" not to mention pitting one employee against another.

    Not prescient enough, was I?

    jerry , February 3, 2017 at 5:30 pm

    Love the article.

    I "work" (temp/contract/no benefits) at a large multinational electronics company in cust service and have seen this first hand. In response to a couple years of dropping profits, they outsourced the entire department (couple hundred employees) to the Philippines. They cut full time employees, replace them with temps for half the pay, because people will do it, and we live in desperate times with no bargaining power.

    As someone mentioned, its a negative feedback loop, less demand, less employment, less demand, until the whole world is greece. We won't make it through another world war, the world is too globalized, too connected, too advanced technologically. We need a relatively peaceful populist revolution – which we seem to be seeing the first real signs of – or our species is done for.. and the sad part is I'm not even exaggerating.

    sgt_doom , February 3, 2017 at 7:07 pm

    Best overall reading list on this subject:

    Sold Out by Michelle Malkin

    Outsourcing America by Ron Hira

    America: Who Stole the Dream? by Donald L. Barlett

    One Nation Under Contract by Allison Stanger

    Dick Burkhart , February 4, 2017 at 6:07 pm

    One point you missed is that a company cannot manage, let alone write a contract very well unless it has sufficient expertise on staff. It is not sufficient to hire a consultant unless that arrangement is more or less permanent. Too many things can go wrong, as they often do even with competent staff when projects are complex or innovative.

    [Jan 28, 2017] Solution for rempant unempolyment and underemployment in the USA requres sacrifies of the rich, which they are unwilliong to do

    Notable quotes:
    "... Your analysis is wrong. The wealthy elites backed Jeb! Bush and Rubio. Trump picked up the economic nationalism of Jeff Session, Steve Bannon and talk radio. The rubes voted for Trump in the primary even though the wealthy spent a lot on their candidates. The rubes want to scapegoat both parties (Bill Clinton and the corrupt Republican insiders - drain the swamp). ..."
    "... Trump channeled the anger of the rubes. Hillary didn't get the turnout that hope and change Obama got. She flip-flopped on the TPP while Obama spent his remaining months trying to pass it. Now it's dead. ..."
    "... The actual solutions will require sacrifice from the rich. Even more important (and difficult); it will require that we abandon the narrative of the rugged individual who "takes care of himself" and "don't need no gobinment". The future belongs to countries that can build up effective systems to educate each individual to the fullest extend of their capabilities (not their wallets) - thereby making sure that critical human resources do not go to waste. The future doesn't belong to the dying empire of the US. ..."
    "... Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual GDP growth over his 8 years after the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. ..."
    "... This is very true. Even if you want to quibble about whether trade is somewhat more important than Delong says it is. The real problem is the US does not have a functioning workforce policy. ..."
    "... And trade is more easily scapegoated- I mean who can argue against technological progress? The overall problem will not be addressed by focusing all attention on job loss due to trade. ..."
    "... Excellent comment by jonny bakho. Much better than Delong's I think. ..."
    "... But it is also true that scapegoating trade can get you votes, so there is a political problem. ..."
    Jan 28, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    jonny bakho : , January 28, 2017 at 03:53 AM
    Worker dislocation by factory closings and layoffs is an issue the US does not address very well for lack of a workforce policy

    Dislocations can be caused by offshoring and trade
    Dislocations can be caused by technological advance.
    We make more goods today with fewer workers; from 30 percent to 8.6 percent
    As DeLong points out, 18 of the 21% loss is due to technology.
    0.1% is due to NAFTA and trade agreements.

    The problem of worker dislocation will never be addressed if all the focus is on the 0.1% and the 18% is ignored.

    The wealthy elites are happy to scapegoat NAFTA because addressing dislocation properly would require transfer payments. The wealthy always want to avoid paying their fair share so they are more than happy to blame NAFTA and cheer on the pols who scapegoat trade. The wealthy don't tolerate pols that propose to truly address the issue in ways that involve transfer payments.

    It is easy to drum up anti trade sentiments using xenophobia, racism and nativism. It is more difficult to get people to be introspective and consider changing what they do

    Peter K. -> jonny bakho... , January 28, 2017 at 06:18 AM
    Your analysis is wrong. The wealthy elites backed Jeb! Bush and Rubio. Trump picked up the economic nationalism of Jeff Session, Steve Bannon and talk radio. The rubes voted for Trump in the primary even though the wealthy spent a lot on their candidates. The rubes want to scapegoat both parties (Bill Clinton and the corrupt Republican insiders - drain the swamp).

    Dean Baker:

    "The 2016 GDP growth brought the average for the eight years of the Obama administration to 1.7 percent."

    Trump channeled the anger of the rubes. Hillary didn't get the turnout that hope and change Obama got. She flip-flopped on the TPP while Obama spent his remaining months trying to pass it. Now it's dead.

    DeDude -> jonny bakho... , January 28, 2017 at 06:50 AM
    You are absolutely correct. The actual solutions will require sacrifice from the rich. Even more important (and difficult); it will require that we abandon the narrative of the rugged individual who "takes care of himself" and "don't need no gobinment". The future belongs to countries that can build up effective systems to educate each individual to the fullest extend of their capabilities (not their wallets) - thereby making sure that critical human resources do not go to waste. The future doesn't belong to the dying empire of the US.
    jonny bakho -> DeDude... , January 28, 2017 at 09:35 AM
    Yes. The wealthy will need to sacrifice to fund these programs. And yes, the idea of every man for himself (rugged individual) needs to be abandoned.

    Unfortunately, racism gets in the way of educating ALL Americans and hurts all poor people, not just blacks and Hispanics. Abandoning white male patriarchy will require sacrifice on the part of many.

    Peter K. -> jonny bakho... , January 28, 2017 at 08:21 AM
    "It is easy to drum up anti trade sentiments using xenophobia, racism and nativism."

    Only in bad times. People want scapegoats.

    Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual GDP growth over his 8 years after the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

    More people voted for Hillary, but Sanders ran a popular campaign. Trump wont the primary and electoral college by playing to the uneducated's fears and attacking the elite as corrupt.

    Yes he scapegoated trade and offshoring, but he provided an explanation for the stagnating incomes and shrinking middle class that voters have been experiencing for decades.

    Jerry Brown -> jonny bakho... , January 28, 2017 at 08:43 AM
    Jonny backho:

    "Worker dislocation by factory closings and layoffs is an issue the US does not address very well for lack of a workforce policy.

    Dislocations can be caused by offshoring and trade
    Dislocations can be caused by technological advance

    We make more goods today with fewer workers; from 30% to 8.6%. As Delong points out 18 of the 21% loss is due to technology.
    .1% is due to Nafta and trade agreements.

    The problem of worker dislocation will never be addressed if all the focus is on the 0.1% and the 18% is ignored."

    This is very true. Even if you want to quibble about whether trade is somewhat more important than Delong says it is. The real problem is the US does not have a functioning workforce policy.

    And trade is more easily scapegoated- I mean who can argue against technological progress? The overall problem will not be addressed by focusing all attention on job loss due to trade.

    Excellent comment by jonny bakho. Much better than Delong's I think.

    Jerry Brown -> Jerry Brown... , January 28, 2017 at 08:47 AM
    But it is also true that scapegoating trade can get you votes, so there is a political problem.

    [Jan 21, 2017] The Travesty Is We Have 23.5 Million Americans Aged 25-To-54 Outside The Labor Force

    Notable quotes:
    "... we have, in addition to 7.5 million officially unemployed (a number that is closer to 15 million when all the hidden unemployment is accounted for), 23.5 million Americans aged 25-to-54 who reside outside the confines of the labor force. And at a time when job openings are at record highs. ..."
    "... Even the most ardent ''supply-sider" would admit that labor input is key to the outlook and this should really be at the top of the agenda - closing the widening and unprecedented gap between job openings and new hiring. There simply is no replacement for excellent education achievement with respect to maximizing labor productivity. ..."
    "... So about all those job openings? Do they all pay a living wage ? ..."
    "... So about all those job openings? They are FAKE job openings. They basically want to hire someone with $100K/year worth of experience & qualifications for $30K/year. And then when no one applies, the companies whine that they need H1B visa to fill the void. ..."
    "... It boggles my mind, the kind of bullshit experienced by an acquaintance who is a Waitress, on top of all the shitty employers and scummy customers, she has to pay taxes on Estimated Tips, by a Percentage of Transactions regardless of whether she actually Received a Tip. ..."
    "... The government assumes a tip exists at 8% and the waitress must pay on the assumption or the business owner gets pissed off because he/she will catch shit from the IRS at Tax time. Black people only tip on the 29th of February if it is a full moon, a trick they learned from the cheap Canadian bastards who got the idea from the Asians who also, mostly, do not tip. An establishment owner selling Beer/ Wine/ Liquor is responsible for the customers action after leaving the establishment, if they get in a wreck / DUI, ..."
    "... That is just the Bar / Restaurant biz. Mc Donalds and the Fast food scam clan are often getting 50% of an employees wages paid through special programs for hiring recently released Felons, drug rehab grads and recent immigrants to name a few, so you already paid for half that burger and fries before you ordered it and Mc Donald is doing quite nicely, thank you. I could go on into the Construction and Manufacturing realms but life is short. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Some observations on recent negative trends in productivity, employment mismatch, and labor training and education from the increasingly more bearish David Rosenberg, who notes that the Trump's proposed policies may end up helping growth on the margins, but fail to focus on what is really important, making tens of millions of US workers competitive and qualified for today's jobs market.

    From Breakast with Rosie, via Gluskin Sheff

    I don't think we have a productivity problem - in fact, the demise of productivity is vastly overstated and that is because the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is likely vastly overstating labor input, and I'm talking here about how hours worked are estimated.

    But the real travesty, and what I think deserves top priority (but I don't see it), is that we have, in addition to 7.5 million officially unemployed (a number that is closer to 15 million when all the hidden unemployment is accounted for), 23.5 million Americans aged 25-to-54 who reside outside the confines of the labor force. And at a time when job openings are at record highs.

    The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record high . The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is absent is at an unprecedented level - and this was an overriding theme in the latest edition of the Fed's Beige Book.

    The question is what is in the policy playbook to redress this situation?

    What we need is a policy playbook that makes education, apprenticeship and training a major priority - the one plank that I had hoped would be yanked out of Bernie Sanders' platform.

    While deregulation and simplifying the tax code obviously are constructive segments of the Trump plan, they are not the most important obstacles in the way of growth. Neither is globalization.

    Even the most ardent ''supply-sider" would admit that labor input is key to the outlook and this should really be at the top of the agenda - closing the widening and unprecedented gap between job openings and new hiring. There simply is no replacement for excellent education achievement with respect to maximizing labor productivity.

    I see scant attention being paid to this file - su rely this is more important than U.S. involvement in Brexit or trying to play a role in breaking up the European Union, don't you think?

    johngaltfla -> FredFlintstone •Jan 21, 2017 4:44 PM

    This figure is what terrifies Yellen and Obama. Steve Mnuchin and Trump have both called the formula Obama changed to estimate the unemployment/employment rates pretty much total bullshit.

    Once the figures are revised back to 2006 we will probably find a steady 9%+ REAL unemployment rate since 2007, and that tarnishes Janet's bullspray from her mouth and Obama's precious and fading fast legacy.

    Wulfkind -> FredFlintstone •Jan 21, 2017 4:53 PM

    So about all those job openings? Do they all pay a living wage ? That is to say...can they pay a person enough money to cover all normal living expenses ( not including debt you didn't need to obtain but including debt like a mortgage or rent )....with enough left over to save ? Also....will those jobs be linked to inflation so over time your once living wage does not stagnate and drop below inflation so that you are actually taking a pay cut every year from then on out ? My suspicion is no. These fools only count the number of job postings without looking into the quality of said jobs. And if they are shit jobs they'll just go to wetbacks anyway and thus not help real Americans. Thus....the high number of people not in the labor force.

    rbg81 -> Wulfkind •Jan 21, 2017 5:24 PM

    So about all those job openings? They are FAKE job openings. They basically want to hire someone with $100K/year worth of experience & qualifications for $30K/year. And then when no one applies, the companies whine that they need H1B visa to fill the void.

    Or undocumented who will work 14 hour days for minimum wage (or less) and not complain.

    therover -> rejected •Jan 21, 2017 5:13 PM

    So glad I am on the same side of the fence as you. I keep telling people when they ask where my 17 year old son is going to school or what his SAT scores none of their business and fuck that path of higher education bullshit where you spend 100K+ on some degree that will probably get you no where. That 100K+ that I have saved up is going to build him a woodshop filled with tools so he can hone his creative skills in wood working or lead to a path toward carpentry, or it's going to buy him a van filled with plumbing equipment so he can work with his uncle as a plumber. As part of that path, going to community college for some business courses and striving to getting first a 2 year associates that if needed, can matriculate to a 4 year degree in business ( for his OWN BUSINESS). Not spending tons of cash right out of the gate on a 4 year school. Shit..I know that scenario... been there done that. Plus every parent knows their child (at least the should) and my guy takes his time with stuff so I know that first year or so at that 50K plus a year school will be wasted. Bottom line is he will be getting something other than a worthless degree when he ends up flipping pancakes at an IHOP or waiting on tables at an Applebees. Not to say they are meaningless/dead end jobs...they are if you spent 100K+ on a degree and STILL HAVE THAT JOB.

    Peak Finance •Jan 21, 2017 4:51 PM

    I simply don't believe this:

    The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record high. The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is absent is at an unprecedented level

    I think this is a lie to justify the continuation of immigration and the hateful damaging H1B program. I remember their bullshit lies from the early 00's , posting want adds for people with "10 years of Java Experience" when Java had come out like 2 year prior, and other impossible requests, and then being unable to fill those jobs were allowed to ship in people from overseas.

    Falling Down -> Peak Finance •Jan 21, 2017 5:00 PM

    Correct. The only real shortages are in certain skilled trades, in certain metros.

    Giant Meteor -> Peak Finance •Jan 21, 2017 6:14 PM

    Indeed. Labor arbitrage.

    besnook •Jan 21, 2017 4:58 PM

    i know several people from my parents generation who got jobs in major corporations upon high school graduation who were hired by the companies for their aptitude and trained into the skill the comapny needed. a couple were trianed engineers and another a chemist besides pipe fitter, ironworker and mechanic.

    companies don't do that anymore because stockholders won't let them do it. there are some privately held companies who still do it.

    Giant Meteor -> besnook •Jan 21, 2017 5:27 PM

    Companies don't do that anymore because that would step on the toes of the Educational Industrial Complex gravy train. Professional courtesy is all. Loyalty and human potential is no longer factored in ... Lets not even get started on the government jerbs ....

    Twee Surgeon -> Giant Meteor •Jan 21, 2017 6:42 PM

    A major problem too, is getting past the Human Resources Department in a larger company in the Productive industries (Machine,Construction,Refinery, etc.) First you meet the ancient grey goddess with the chains on her eyeglasses and she will direct you to the Interviewer who will be Jennifer Eye-candy, Kanisha Token-Black or Juan De Bilingualo, who all have a diploma from a college but know nothing about the industry at hand, you are more likely to get hired on the Excellence of your new Nike tennis shoes than anything related to the Skills required for the position. If you can get past the women in Human Resources and talk to the guy that actually runs the shop and look each other in the eye and talk about 'Making Stuff', then you might have the job. That is how that works.

    QQQBall -> besnook •Jan 21, 2017 7:26 PM

    besnook. Exactly. not just engineers, but service reps, sales people, etc., that then were promoted up thru the ranks of the same company. My lady retired from AT&T as a project manager at like 54 yo.

    She was hired after taking a test that only 4 peeps in the room passed. worked her way up - they had reciprocal/mutually beneficial investments in each other. She is smart and had a degree from UC here in Kali. Now, no loyalty either way in most cases.

    Twee Surgeon -> DrData02 •Jan 21, 2017 6:21 PM

    Exactly, people are finding other ways to get by. I'm not sure how many ZH'ers have experienced the modern non-corporate job market. Unless you have a .gov job you are pretty much The next disposable android who can be worked to death and replaced when the bearings are shot or an inconvenience arrives. Employers don't want to Hire because it's too expensive due to various regulations, taxations and obligations to the City, State, County and Federal government, all of which are Constantly Expanding and must pay for the ever increasing pay-roll size and the unfunded liabilities and the pension plan and the grant for the new skate board park etc, and so on, forever and ever.

    It boggles my mind, the kind of bullshit experienced by an acquaintance who is a Waitress, on top of all the shitty employers and scummy customers, she has to pay taxes on Estimated Tips, by a Percentage of Transactions regardless of whether she actually Received a Tip.

    The government assumes a tip exists at 8% and the waitress must pay on the assumption or the business owner gets pissed off because he/she will catch shit from the IRS at Tax time. Black people only tip on the 29th of February if it is a full moon, a trick they learned from the cheap Canadian bastards who got the idea from the Asians who also, mostly, do not tip. An establishment owner selling Beer/ Wine/ Liquor is responsible for the customers action after leaving the establishment, if they get in a wreck / DUI,

    Whatever, and that was all from Ronald Ray-guns era, the Small Business and Independence messiah. (The Dramm shop Act, I think, Google has that hidden though.)

    That is just the Bar / Restaurant biz. Mc Donalds and the Fast food scam clan are often getting 50% of an employees wages paid through special programs for hiring recently released Felons, drug rehab grads and recent immigrants to name a few, so you already paid for half that burger and fries before you ordered it and Mc Donald is doing quite nicely, thank you. I could go on into the Construction and Manufacturing realms but life is short.

    The Problem with the USA is the Government, I'm not holding my breath for Trump to make a change, I remember the song and Dance when Ronny won the White house. Nothing fucking changed for most people. It just began the Road to Barry Obama and here we are.

    Donewithit22 •Jan 21, 2017 5:35 PM

    This is only a problem when people start to realize the systems that we have in place are by nature a ponzi scheme. I partner and I dropped out of the workforce 2011ish. We realized by the time we paid for health care, which was now mandated, city tax, state tax, fed tax, s/s tax etc....what was the point of going to work.....

    We both have degree and are in our mid 30's.

    we sold everything we had bought land and have build a homestead doing most things ourselves. we do odd jobs for extra cash and we live better , less stress then we used too. we are going on vacation to Peru in about 3 weeks for 15 days and we often do a few days here or there just to see the US. We love not being in the labor pool and we are both sorry we didnt do this sooner.

    thisguyoverhere •Jan 21, 2017 5:38 PM

    In the skilled trades there are many former welders, ironworkers, boilermakers and fitters, over 60 years old, working as consultants. These men (and some women) command high rates, the respect of their union halls or fellow tradesman because of their body of knowledge and experience. Much of that knowledge will not be passed on, will be lost because these experienced 'field engineers' (the real thing, no bull$hit diploma) are sick of the politics and seeing the honest labor of skilled workers being siphoned off while some spoiled brat takes a sallary in 'the office'. I have a degree. I learned more usefull skills in 6 months than 4 years of school. We have a structural problem within our framework of 'educating' the next generation. The result, many today have the cultivated tastes, but no capital to purchase the lifestyle.

    Son of Captain Nemo •Jan 21, 2017 5:55 PM

    "The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record high. The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is absent is at an unprecedented level - and this was an overriding theme in the latest edition of the Fed's Beige Book." Because U.S. corporations would rather spend the time and expense seeking the lowest labor rate to do the job than retraining an existing workforce that has been dormant or obsolete because of lack of work or "No work" at all... This includes bending the rules for H1B and related visas... Even if we have a war on terror and a Department of Homeland Security we've been waging since 2002 which places "very high standards" on what moves in and out of the Country since 9/11! Go figure!!!

    Duc888 •Jan 21, 2017 8:03 PM

    Speaking specifically of those aged 16 to say......30 Largely unemployable. Lord knows I've tried to employ a dozen or so in the last few years.

    1. Won't put down the gdamned smart phone.
    2. Don't want to get their hands dirty.
    3. Apparently they've spent so much time pushing buttons on a game controller while growing up they skipped what young guys have done while growing up in the last 75+ years, you know, taking shit apart, putting shit back together, screwing it up, modifying shit, putting it back together a second time and generally learning how shit works.
    4. Complete and total lack of knowledge of the use of common hand tools and rudimentary pneumatic powered tools.
    5. Absolutely no attention span.
    6. Absolutely no common sense.
    7. See know value in actually learning any skills involved in a trade, they want / need instant gratification.
    8. Absolutely no critical thinking skills, (If I do this...the likely outcome will be A._______ B._________ or C.________

    They have no training in creating some type of mental flow chart in their head to have at least some basic predictive skills.} 9. They have more excuses for missing work than any ten guys I knew while growing up. 10. most do not have access to reliable transportation to get to the work site / job. Seems like the feminization has worked wonderfully.

    [Jan 21, 2017] If we look at the numbers for involuntary part-time workers, it dropped from 6.8 million in December of 2014 to 5.6 million in December of 2016.

    Jan 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : January 20, 2017 at 07:53 AM , 2017 at 07:53 AM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/people-are-choosing-to-work-part-time-why-is-that-so-hard-for-economic-reporters-to-understand

    January 20, 2017

    People are Choosing to Work Part-Time, Why Is that So Hard for Economic Reporters to Understand?

    It is really amazing how major news outlets can't seem to find reporters who understand the most basic things about the economy. I guess this is evidence of the skills shortage.

    Bloomberg takes the hit today in a piece * discussing areas where the economy is likely to make progress in a Trump administration and areas where it is not. In a middle "muddle through" category, we find "Full-Time Work Is Likely to Stay Elusive for Part-Timers." The story is:

    "Trump has highlighted the number of part-time workers in the U.S. economy, saying 'far too many people' are working in positions for which they are overqualified and underpaid. While the proportion of full-time workers in the labor force remains below its pre-recession high, it's made up most of the ground lost during the downturn. But it hasn't budged much in the last two years, even as the job market has gotten tighter. Some economists point to the gig economy as the driving force (pun intended) behind part-timers. Others see a broader shift in the labor market that's left many workers stuck with shorter hours, lower wages and weaker benefits."

    Okay, wrong, wrong, and wrong. In its monthly employment survey (the Current Population Survey - CPS), the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks people whether they are working more or less than 35 hours a week. If they are working less than 35 hours they are classified as part-time. The survey then asks the people who are working part-time why they are working part-time. It divides these workers into two categories, people who work part-time for economic reasons (i.e. they could not find full-time jobs) and people who work part-time for non-economic reasons. In other words the second group has chosen to work part-time.

    If we look at the numbers for involuntary part-time workers, it dropped from 6.8 million in December of 2014 to 5.6 million in December of 2016. That is a drop of 1.2 million, or almost 18 percent. That would not seem to fit the description of not budging much. Of course Bloomberg may have been adding in the number of people who chose to work part, which grew by 1.4 million over this two year period, leaving little net change in total part-time employment.

    Of course there is a world of difference between a situation where people need full-time jobs, but work part-time, because that is the only work they can find and a situation in which people work part-time because they don't want to spend 40 hours a week on the job. Most of us would probably consider it a good thing if people who wanted to spend time with their kids, or did not want to full time for some other reason, had the option to work part-time. This is what in fact has been happening and it has been going on for three years, not two.

    Come on Bloomberg folks -- did you ever hear of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare")? As a result of Obamacare workers are no longer dependent on employers for health care insurance. This means that many people have opted to work part rather than full time. This has opened up full time jobs ** for people who need them, even though it has left total part-time employment little changed.

    In total, the number of people involuntarily working part-time has fallen by 2.2 million since the ACA has been in effect, while the number choosing to work part-time has risen by 2.4 million. The sharpest increase in voluntary part-time employment has been among young mothers *** and older workers **** just below Medicare age.

    It is really incredible that this shift from involuntary part-time to voluntary part-time is not more widely known. It is a very important outcome from the ACA.

    * https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-how-well-know-if-trump-is-making-america-great-again/

    ** http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/obamacare-and-part-time-work-part-2-involuntary-part-time-employment

    *** http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/the-affordable-care-act-still-family-friendly

    **** http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/obamacare-is-good-for-older-workers-too

    -- Dean Baker

    libezkova -> anne... , January 20, 2017 at 10:34 AM
    My impression here is that in this particular issue Dean Baker is out of touch with reality.

    Question: how many people in this 1.2 million drop because they retired at 62 forced to take a half of their SS pension, or left workforce?

    Also, can you consider Wal-Mart or Shop Right cashier working 36 hours for $7.5 an hour and without any benefits (as he/she can't afford them) fully employed.

    Single mothers are probably the most important category to analyze here.

    sanjait -> anne... , January 20, 2017 at 01:33 PM
    This is an example of how the libertarian and Republican conceptions of liberty and freedom are so off the mark.

    When people can afford to work part time instead of full time to do things like raise children, attain higher education or start companies, that is freedom. When the inaccessibility of health insurance forces them to work full time when they would otherwise prefer not, that is not enhanced freedom.

    [Jan 11, 2017] Jared Bernstein questions Paul Krugman's sudden concern about crowding out

    Jan 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    New Deal democrat : , January 10, 2017 at 05:36 AM
    Today Jared Bernstein (see sidebar on right of this blog) questions Paul Krugman's sudden concern about crowding out. I agree.

    In the first place, conditions have not changed drastically in the last two months. Krugman's would have more credibility on this subject had he voiced similar concerns at any point before the election. I don't remember him having any problems with Hillary's infrastructure spending plan for example.

    Also, looking at two of my favorite metrics for underemployment -- Not in Labor Force but Want a Job Now, and Part Time for Economic reasons -- are each about 1,000,000 above their numbers in the late 1990s and the 2005-06 peaks. Since the jobs situation is clearly decelerating from its peak two years ago, I do not believe this 2,000,000 shortfall is ever going to be filled before the next recession.

    In short, I really don't see the basis for a "crowding out" argument at this time.

    pgl -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 06:01 AM
    If we are below full employment (I think we are in part for reasons you note) then concerns about crowding out are indeed premature. But if we were at full employment (again I have my doubts) then this issue should be part of (not the end all) policy discussions.
    Fred C. Dobbs -> pgl... , January 10, 2017 at 06:22 AM
    1 in 3 Workers Employed in Gig Economy,
    But Not All By Choice
    http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-10-11/1-in-3-workers-employed-in-gig-economy-but-not-all-by-choice
    US News - Andrew Soergel - Oct 11, 2016

    A new study published by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates the U.S. holds between 54 million and 68 million "independent workers," which it defines as "someone who chooses how much to work and when to work, who can move between jobs fluidly and who has multiple employers or clients over the course of the year." It includes individuals working on short-term contracts and those who rent or sell goods and services.

    "A full-time job with one employer has been considered the norm for decades, but increasingly, this fails to capture how a large share of the workforce makes a living," the report said. "Digital platforms are transforming independent work, building on the ubiquity of mobile devices, the enormous pools of workers and customers they can reach and the ability to harness rich real-time information to make more efficient matches." ...

    Independent work: Choice,
    necessity, and the gig economy
    http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy?cid=soc-web

    Peter K. -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 07:35 AM
    To me the "crowding out" argument put forward by Krugman and conservative economists demonstrates a bias against the government. They want monetary policy not fiscal policy to be the means by which investment and employment levels are managed by the government.

    J.W. Mason has interesting blog post about the Zero Lower Bound.

    "In the dominant paradigm, this is a specific technical problem of getting interest rates below zero. Solve that, and we are back in the comfortable Walrasian world. But for those of us on the heterodox side, it is never the case that the central bank can reliably keep output at potential - maybe because market interest rates don't respond to the policy rate, or because output doesn't respond to interest rates, or because the central bank is pursuing other objectives, or because there is no well-defined level of "potential" to begin with. (Or, in reality, all four.) So what people like Gourinchas and Rey, or Paul Krugman, present as a special, temporary state of the economy, we see as the general case.

    One way of looking at this is that the ZLB is a device to allow economists like Krugman and Gourinchas and Rey - who whatever their scholarly training, are aware of the concrete reality around them - to make Keynesian arguments without forfeiting their academic respectability."

    http://jwmason.org/slackwire/rogoff-on-the-zero-lower-bound/

    JohnH -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 08:02 AM
    What's shocking to me is that, according to 'liberal' economists like PK and pgl, the goal of monetary and fiscal policy is not just full employment but rising real wages.

    So far the economy has somehow managed to reach low unemployment, though nowhere near maximum employment (the Fed's mandate.) And real wages, except for supervisory personnel, have yet to show real growth.

    Nonetheless PK and pgl want to preempt any move to maximum employment and rising real wages by advocating that Trump avoid any fiscal stimulus!!!

    Methinks that these 'liberals' are really conservatives in sheeps clothing...or maybe working in New York has given them too close an affinity to the Wall Street worldview.

    New Deal democrat -> JohnH... , January 10, 2017 at 08:16 AM
    The common thread between your comment and Peter K's, I think, is that there is intelligent deficit spending and then there is counterproductive deficit spending.

    It's pretty clear that significant infrastructure spending, like the building of canals in the 19th century (because water transportation is so cheap in terms of energy needs), doesn't crowd out, because of all of the growth it produces. On the other hand, if government just gives away money that will be parked unproductively, that will tend to crowd out.

    The bottom line is that Krugman's concern is premature. There may be a hidden agenda, of course, that his real concern is that the GOP wants big deficits in order to "starve the beast" and attempt to justify cuts in programs like social insurance.

    Peter K. -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 08:31 AM
    I agree with Jared Bernstein who says the Republicans' tax cuts for the rich can be opposed on their own merits or demerits.

    Fear of deficits has been too often used by the Pete Petersons and Republicans to advocate against government spending. The economics isn't clear.

    http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/paul-krugman-goes-all-crowd-out-on-us-is-he-right/

    JohnH -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 08:34 AM
    Exactly. I prefer Bernie's approach: work with Trump if he wants to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, oppose him if he simply wants to enrich the wealthy.

    Stimulus that boosts employment and wages is still needed. Opposing any stimulus now is not appropriate.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 10, 2017 at 08:37 AM
    I agree but I doubt Paul Ryan or the Freedom Caucus will allow any government spending of the kind Sanders would approve of.

    Possibly Trump will want some drama and mix it up with Republicans over an infrastructure bill.

    I just think they might need some Democrats to pass the measure and am not clear on the legistlative mechanics.

    Bush was able to pass his tax cuts for the rich on a simple majority vote because of the "reconciliation" maneuver.

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 10, 2017 at 09:25 AM
    I expect enough Democrats will be readily available to assist Trump. If not, there are parliamentary procedures that can be used...procedures that Democrats refused to sully themselves using for the common good.
    Peter K. -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 08:35 AM
    "if government just gives away money that will be parked unproductively, that will tend to crowd out."

    I guess I agree with you that government or private investment has to be judged on the merits of each case.

    But just look at the epic housing bubble. It would have been better if the government had taken that money and just gave it out to the average citizen to spend.

    Dan Kervick -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 08:12 AM
    I think Krugman is basically lobbying for the Fed to Volckerize any potential positive economic impact of Trump spending with a big anti-inflationary rate hike, which he & his party cronies can then blame on crowding out and the "market" response to excessive government borrowing. They want a quick hard recession that they can use to win Congress in 2018. Remember that the orthodox BS about monetary policy is that the Fed doesn't in any way set, determine or engineer rates, but just uses anti-price-stickiness nudges to help the market achieve the "neutral" equilibrium rate rate it is in some sense "trying" to get to on its own. So, if the Fed trashes the economy, they & Krugman will say its hands are clean.

    Remember:

    1. Krugman is a party hack in the first place;

    2. Krugman represents the faction of the party that has no solid ideas about how to fix what is wrong with our country and our planet; so they can only succeed politically if the other side fails worse;

    3. Krugman is on record as believing that the US has suffered something like a coup engineered by a conspiracy between the FBI and Vladimir Putin. So at this point, given the politically extreme circumstances he thinks prevail, there is no reason to think he is beyond making things up for the cause, as exigencies require.

    Peter K. -> Dan Kervick... , January 10, 2017 at 08:28 AM
    Of course you are right, Krugman advocates different economics depending on whether a Democrat or Republican is in office.

    But I am not strongly against the idea of the Fed raising rates too quickly, despite the morale shadiness of the idea.

    They seem intent on doing it anyway even if Hillary had won.

    Yes ultimately I guess I would be in favor Yellen "helping" Trump (or low wage workers) as Trump regularly accused her of doing for Obama during the campaign.

    It would improve workers' bargaining power and lives. But a Republican loss in 2018 would also help.

    Hobson's choice. Pick your poison.

    More fundamentally, I think Krugman is pushing a conservative view of economics which happens to line up with mainstream academic economics.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 10, 2017 at 08:32 AM
    The other thing is that if Trump gets some of his policies through the Fed would eventually be facing asset bubbles again.
    Dan Kervick -> Peter K.... , January 10, 2017 at 08:47 AM
    "More fundamentally, I think Krugman is pushing a conservative view of economics which happens to line up with mainstream academic economics."

    Yes, this is a real problem. Krugman has a fundamentally conservative ("New Keynesian") view of the economy and how it should work. It's a free enterprise & market economy that generally just needs some helpful stimulatory nudges from the government: monetary nudges most of the time; fiscal nudges when we're in the special circumstances of a liquidity trap.

    The problem is that by laying down all of these orthodox, conservative markers, our ability to do anything truly dramatic and socially innovative is damaged over the long haul.

    pgl -> Dan Kervick... , January 10, 2017 at 08:56 AM
    Keynesians are the new conservatives? Is this like Wednesdays are the new Thursdays? Party on!
    Dan Kervick -> pgl... , January 10, 2017 at 09:21 AM
    "New Keynesians"

    New Keynesianism was neither Keynesian nor New Classical, but somewhere in between the two. It modified the New Classical approach based on rational expectations and efficient markets by accepting that prices were sometimes sticky in the short run and markets sometimes imperfect. Two of the leading figures of New Keynsianism were Paul Krugman and Gregory Mankiw.

    Ultimately, the differences between the New Classicals and the New Keynsianians are relatively minor. Both accept the long-run optimizing efficiency of a liberal capitalist economy, but disagree only over how much government and central bank gear-greasing is needed.

    pgl -> Dan Kervick... , January 10, 2017 at 09:33 AM
    I have stated many times - I'm an old fashion Keynesian. Krugman is too. So take your straw man to the set of The Wiz.
    Dan Kervick -> pgl... , January 10, 2017 at 10:01 AM
    Krugman is not really an old-fashioned Keynesianism. He was one of the creators of "New Keynesiansim". Also read his introduction to Keynes's General Theory. He pours cold water on the really important policy suggestions at the end of the book in Book VI, which he mistakenly suggests Keynes's did not seriously intend.

    Even more old-fashioned "Hicksian" Old Keynesianism is just one version of conventional liberal macro, which is primarily a tool for the countercyclical stabilization of our day-to-day capitalist economy. That's not enough to fix what is wrong with our planet or or domestic society, both of which are facing deeper, more structural economic crises that are very grave. We're going to have to be much more radical and ambitious.

    Peter K. -> Dan Kervick... , January 10, 2017 at 09:03 AM
    Yes as Jared Bernstein writes

    "One implication Paul draws from these dynamics is that Republicans, motivated not by improving the economy but by bashing Obama and the D's, inveighed against deficits when we needed them and are about to shift to not caring about them when deficits – again, according to the model – could actually do some harm.

    But how reliable is this crowd-out hypothesis? It's actually pretty hard to find a correlation between larger budget deficits and higher interest rates in the data.

    ...

    So is Paul making a mistake to continue to depend on the model that has heretofore served him-and anyone else willing to listen-so well? My guess is that deficit crowd-out is not likely to be a big problem, as in posing a measurable threat to growth, anytime soon, even if deficits, which are headed up anyway according to CBO, were to rise more than expected.

    The global supply of loanable funds is robust and, in recent years, rising rates have drawn in more capital (pushing out the LM curve). Larger firms have enjoyed many years of profitability without a ton of investment so they could use retained earnings (the fact of unimpressive investment at very low rates presents another challenge to this broad model). And most importantly, while we're surely closer to full employment, there are still a lot of prime-age workers who could be drawn in to the job market if demand really did accelerate.

    (This, by the way, is the only part of Paul's rap today that I found a bit confusing. He's a strong advocate of the secular stagnation hypothesis, wherein secular forces suppress demand and hold rates down, even in mature recoveries. His prediction today seems at odds with that view.)"

    http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/paul-krugman-goes-all-crowd-out-on-us-is-he-right/

    Bernstein isn't that radical. He was chief economist for Joe Biden in the White House.

    I think the epic housing bubble, financial crisis and slow recovery are causing to people to push back against the New Keynesian compromise and search for a better economics, which just may be an older type of economics.

    John San Vant -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 11:14 AM
    This is incorrect. Full Time employment has accelerated after a slowdown earlier this year while part time employment yry was noticeably lower in the 4th quarter. That created the illusion of slowdown in NFP. The U-6 was quite quite different.

    This will probably reverse in the first half of 2017 as yry full time employment growth goes ahead of 2016 boosting overhead NFP and continuing to lower U-6 down to 8.7-8% by June.


    New Deal democrat -> John San Vant... , January 10, 2017 at 11:53 AM
    Here is the data in support of my argument:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032194
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NILFWJN

    Compare now vs. 1999 and 2007. Each is about 1 million higher than during those periods.

    anne -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 12:11 PM
    Nicely done:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ckxp

    January 10, 2017

    Part-time for economic reasons, 1994-2016

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ckxr

    January 10, 2016

    Not in labor force but want a job now, 1994-2016

    John San Vant -> New Deal democrat... , January 10, 2017 at 12:12 PM
    You are undermining your argument with those graphs. The point is, NFP will likely reaccelerate unless there is another slowdown. Most likely that gap will close in the coming year.

    I think need to let the inventory slump go. It was a mistake and it being recorrected.

    New Deal democrat -> John San Vant... , -1
    I hope I am wrong and you are right.

    But ... If you check out YoY growth in payrolls, it tends to be very regular and in-noisy, peaking in roughly mid-cycle. The only exceptions have been where we managed to avoid a recession during a Fed tightening cycle.

    YoY employment peaked at the end of 2014, and has been decelerating ever since. So unfortunately I disagree with you.

    [Jan 08, 2017] Contingent labor as in being on call for positions such as retail clerk. A person who must be available for uncertain hours loses the opportunity to find a second job.

    Jan 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    point -> pgl... , January 07, 2017 at 05:37 AM
    It seems the lightning speed spread of contingent labor in the 2010s should be evidence of this. Contingent labor as in being "on call" for positions such as retail clerk. A person who must be available for uncertain hours loses the opportunity to find a second job. The employer demanding contingent labor is essentially demanding uncompensated work hours.

    In any event, the practice seems to have become near universal by a couple years ago, suggesting a level of employer market power far in excess of what one would think by looking at numbers like the official unemployment rate. It may also suggest that labor market monopsony may exist at quite small employer size.

    cm -> point... , January 07, 2017 at 08:39 AM
    What you describe is in general not due to monopsony. There is still a substantial number of independent retail and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions and job function designs.

    It is just regular supply and demand dynamics, in combination with social feedback (actors observing what "peers" are getting away with and trying the same, and after a while it works its ways into a new normal).

    In corporate lingo it is known as "best practices" - don't innovate process, just copy what has worked elsewhere.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> cm... , January 07, 2017 at 09:46 AM
    Unfortunately, in the contemporary corporate Zeitgeist "best" usually means "worst", at least from the POV of employees.
    Zeppelin Hindenburg Delivery -> cm... , January 07, 2017 at 09:58 AM

    retail and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating
    "

    Although they have an app for coordinating plus incentive to coordinate, they fully understand that by the time they begin coordinating the game is over. The game for brick and mortar retail is now hanging by a tread.

    16% of retail is now intertube orders being shipped out by USPS, Fedex, Amazon airship drone & UPS. For the next 2 years the 16% will double each year then slowly expand toward the 99% asymptote. Sure!

    When you ski at Aspen you will see old-time-y shops for retail, shops that only the wealthy will use for more than window-shop. Plenty time for best practices but

    no time to
    innovate --

    Libezkova -> cm... , January 07, 2017 at 10:53 AM
    cm,
    "companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions and job function designs."

    That happens by default.

    Wall-Mart dominates retail (5K stores I think out of over 11,593 stores and clubs in 28 countries) and it is a very cruel company. Other companies copy Wall-Mart practices.

    They have no "social conscience" at all and try to drive their labor as hard as possible paying as little as possible. In other words, they can be viewed as a corporate psychopath.

    [Jan 07, 2017] Contingent labor as in being on call for positions such as retail clerk. A person who must be available for uncertain hours loses the opportunity to find a second job.

    Jan 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    point -> pgl... , January 07, 2017 at 05:37 AM
    It seems the lightning speed spread of contingent labor in the 2010s should be evidence of this. Contingent labor as in being "on call" for positions such as retail clerk. A person who must be available for uncertain hours loses the opportunity to find a second job. The employer demanding contingent labor is essentially demanding uncompensated work hours.

    In any event, the practice seems to have become near universal by a couple years ago, suggesting a level of employer market power far in excess of what one would think by looking at numbers like the official unemployment rate. It may also suggest that labor market monopsony may exist at quite small employer size.

    cm -> point... , January 07, 2017 at 08:39 AM
    What you describe is in general not due to monopsony. There is still a substantial number of independent retail and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions and job function designs.

    It is just regular supply and demand dynamics, in combination with social feedback (actors observing what "peers" are getting away with and trying the same, and after a while it works its ways into a new normal).

    In corporate lingo it is known as "best practices" - don't innovate process, just copy what has worked elsewhere.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> cm... , January 07, 2017 at 09:46 AM
    Unfortunately, in the contemporary corporate Zeitgeist "best" usually means "worst", at least from the POV of employees.
    Zeppelin Hindenburg Delivery -> cm... , January 07, 2017 at 09:58 AM

    retail and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating
    "

    Although they have an app for coordinating plus incentive to coordinate, they fully understand that by the time they begin coordinating the game is over. The game for brick and mortar retail is now hanging by a tread.

    16% of retail is now intertube orders being shipped out by USPS, Fedex, Amazon airship drone & UPS. For the next 2 years the 16% will double each year then slowly expand toward the 99% asymptote. Sure!

    When you ski at Aspen you will see old-time-y shops for retail, shops that only the wealthy will use for more than window-shop. Plenty time for best practices but

    no time to
    innovate --

    Libezkova -> cm... , January 07, 2017 at 10:53 AM
    cm,
    "companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions and job function designs."

    That happens by default.

    Wall-Mart dominates retail (5K stores I think out of over 11,593 stores and clubs in 28 countries) and it is a very cruel company. Other companies copy Wall-Mart practices.

    They have no "social conscience" at all and try to drive their labor as hard as possible paying as little as possible. In other words, they can be viewed as a corporate psychopath.

    [Jan 07, 2017] A neolib victory, with participation rate for 24 to 54 still in the dumps

    Notable quotes:
    "... A neolib victory, with participation rate for 24 to 54 still in the dumps. ..."
    "... Krugman is an arrogant elitist who is good at math but has no real grasp of the real world (much like Trump has no grasp of reality). ..."
    Jan 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs :

    As observed, Dems don't like deficits when GOPsters do them, and the GOP doesn't like them unless they do them.

    PK: 'And meanwhile I and other Keynesians are getting mail accusing us of being the hypocrites: "You were for deficits when Obama was in, now they're bad!"

    But as I just said, the situation has changed.' ...

    As even I have noted, deficits are *useful* when employment is down and infrastructure needs building. We haven't done enough of that lately, for sure.

    Like with that wall, maybe.

    Reply Friday, January 06, 2017 at 12:54 PM Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , January 06, 2017 at 01:24 PM
    Paul Krugman ‏@paulkrugman · 4 hours ago

    Labor markets are much closer to normal than they were in 2010-2012. So giving different policy advice is rational, not hypocritical

    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/817415994700402688

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 06, 2017 at 01:41 PM
    A neolib victory, with participation rate for 24 to 54 still in the dumps.
    anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 06, 2017 at 01:55 PM
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cirl

    January 4, 2017

    Average Hourly Earnings of All Private Workers and Quits Rate, 2007-2016

    (Percent change)

    Jesse : , January 06, 2017 at 12:59 PM

    It may not be overwhelming in its effect, but he did DO something, and had an effect, made an example.

    Gee, what a terrible thing to do.

    What the Wall Street Dems have done is feel the average worker's pain, hand out some questionably progressive programs like the Heritage Foundation's ACA, and explain why it was all necessary in the name of free trade and globalization.

    And the rubes like it. What a bunch of dopes.

    Uh huh.

    ilsm -> Jesse... , January 06, 2017 at 01:40 PM
    Trump is neither neolib nor neocon enough for the non-deplorables.
    sanjait -> Jesse... , January 06, 2017 at 03:47 PM
    Hey, Rube:

    Remember when the "Wall Street Dems" saved the ENTIRE US-branded auto manufacturing industry?

    Trump hands out crumbs and the rubes think he's a leader.

    Libezkova -> sanjait... , January 06, 2017 at 04:51 PM
    >" Remember when the "Wall Street Dems" saved the ENTIRE US-branded auto manufacturing industry?"

    Did not they save their friends investment portfolios (and some saved their own). Collapse of auto sector means plunge of S&P500, because of interconnection with other sectors. the lowest point of S&P 500 during this period was around 670. I think they have no other options.

    Tom aka Rusty : , January 06, 2017 at 01:27 PM
    a show intended to impress the rubes,

    At least now we know what Krugman thinks of working people, as in people who do honest work.

    Krugman is an arrogant elitist who is good at math but has no real grasp of the real world (much like Trump has no grasp of reality).

    ilsm -> Tom aka Rusty... , January 06, 2017 at 01:39 PM
    it ain't deplorables who Trump attracted it is us whom the crooks and neolibs [like poor pk of the] DNC drive away in disgust.
    sanjait -> Tom aka Rusty... , -1
    Krugman didn't call working people rubes, you lying sack.

    [Jan 07, 2017] On an average month, there are 1.5 million "involuntary" job separations (as opposed to voluntary quits), or 75,000 per working day.

    Notable quotes:
    "... On Thursday, at a rough estimate, 75,000 Americans were laid off or fired by their employers. Some of those workers will find good new jobs, but many will end up earning less, and some will remain unemployed for months or years. ..."
    "... In an average month, there are 1.5 million "involuntary" job separations (as opposed to voluntary quits), or 75,000 per working day. ..."
    "... Krugman refuses to admit the possibility that Trump may actually have shifted the cost-benefit of moving jobs abroad. Now corporations will have to weigh the cost of being condemned in the court of public opinion for moving jobs abroad...negative publicity that they can ill afford. ..."
    Jan 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Economist's View

    ... ... ...
    The Age of Fake Policy, by Paul Krugman, NY Times : On Thursday, at a rough estimate, 75,000 Americans were laid off or fired by their employers. Some of those workers will find good new jobs, but many will end up earning less, and some will remain unemployed for months or years.
    If that sounds terrible to you..., I'm just assuming that Thursday was a normal day in the job market. ... In an average month, there are 1.5 million "involuntary" job separations (as opposed to voluntary quits), or 75,000 per working day. Hence my number. ...
    Global Freezing -> ilsm... , January 06, 2017 at 02:45 PM

    assuming that Thursday was a normal day in the job market. ... In an average month, there are 1.5 million "involuntary" job separations (as opposed to voluntary quits), or 75,000 per
    "

    Bless your fat bones pK!
    At last you have saved the day!

    Tell me something! How many of the 75,000 were fired because their employer figured he could stay in business longer if he didn't have to raise their wages by virtue of the *minimum wage regulation*?

    How many of such lost jobs could have been saved had our governmental gals and guys opted for maximum wage regulation instead? For example a maximum wage regulation that would have cut your fat salary in half to reduce the inequality in this fair city? A maximum wage regulation would require less overhead in light of the fewer wage earners at the top of the heap but generate more of wage dispersion since there is more fat to cut at the apex of the pyramid than fat to gain at entry level salaries.

    Can't you just see it now? pK and his wealthy colleagues staging a violent demonstration? An objection from the mob? pK heaving industrial strength cherry bombs at innocent constables?

    Cell phone movies galore going

    viral on the
    internet --

    kurt -> Global Freezing... , January 06, 2017 at 04:10 PM
    Just in case you are an honest broker and just not actually aware of the policy preference differences between Republicans and Democrats (and between someone like Kudlow and someone like Krugman) - one of these key policy difference is that Democrats have a policy platform to raise, rather than lower, the top marginal rate (the amount of money that triggers the highest tax rate on all dollars earned after reaching that point). A higher marginal rate, usually any rate that exceeds 70%, is in practice a maximum wage.

    Also - the minimum wage is really low in historic value. It isn't likely to be what causes job loss.

    JohnH : , -1
    Krugman refuses to admit the possibility that Trump may actually have shifted the cost-benefit of moving jobs abroad. Now corporations will have to weigh the cost of being condemned in the court of public opinion for moving jobs abroad...negative publicity that they can ill afford.

    By contrast, Obama had eight years to use the bully pulpit...but could never figure out what it was...

    Now if Krugman and Democrats only had a plan for saving jobs. Sadly, they can muster nothing more than a 'just suck it up,' because the jobs are gone for good...

    ilsm -> JohnH... , -1
    jumped shark, a lot of folks took a few days off from embarrassing themselves after the crooked neocon was beaten.
    JohnH : , -1
    Meanwhile China will invest $361 Billion into renewable energy by 2020, 40% of it into solar. It will create 13 million jobs.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-renewables-idUSKBN14P06P

    Where is Democrats' War on Climate Change? Where is Krugman's?
    [Of course, pgl, the 'progressive liberal' mocks job creation potential of solar power...just like Trump.]

    Instead of bashing Trump 24/7, Democrats and Krugman would be better served promoting a green, high employment future.

    anne -> pgl... , -1
    Important point.

    Knowing how large infrastructure spending will be relative to the size of an economy is important. Chinese planners will be spending $860 billion between 2017 and 2020 on alternative energy and high-speed rail projects or $360 and $500 billion respectively.

    The $860 billion comes to $215 billion yearly or 2.6% of current Gross Domestic Product taken in simple dollar terms.

    [Jan 03, 2017] Fake News on Germany's Unemployment Rate at the New York Times

    Jan 03, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : , -1
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/fake-news-on-germany-s-unemployment-rate-at-the-nyt

    January 3, 2017

    Fake News on Germany's Unemployment Rate at the New York Times

    Alright, that is not entirely fair, but when the NYT told readers * that Germany's unemployment rate is 6.0 percent it seriously misled readers. The issue is that this figure refers to Germany's unemployment rate as calculated by Germany's government. This measure counts workers who are employed part-time, but want full-time jobs, as being unemployed. By contrast, the standard measure of the unemployment rate in the United States counts these workers as being employed.

    This would be reasonable if the German government measure was the only one available, but it isn't. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calculates a harmonized unemployment rate that is essentially the same as the unemployment rate generally used for the United States. By this measure ** Germany's unemployment rate is just 4.0 percent.

    The NYT can be partially forgiven since this was a Reuters story that it made available on its web site. (I don't know if it ran in the print edition.) Still, it would not be hard to add a sentence either explaining the difference or alternatively including the OECD measure.

    In this same vein, and it's a new year, let me also harp on the practice of printing other country's growth rates as quarterly figures. While the rate of GDP growth is always expressed as an annual rate in the United States, most other countries express their growth as a quarterly rate. Typically this raises the U.S. growth rate by a factor of four. For example, a 0.5 percent quarterly growth rate translates into a 2.0 percent annual rate. (To be precise, the growth rate should be taken to the fourth power. For low growth rates this will typically be the same as multiplying by four.)

    Anyhow, articles often appear in the NYT and elsewhere that just print the growth rate as a quarterly rate, frequently without even pointing out that it is a quarterly rate. This gives readers an inaccurate impression of the growth rate in other countries.

    It really should not be too much to expect a newspaper to convert the growth rates in annualized rates. After all, the reporters are more likely to have the time to do this than the readers. And, this is supposed to be about providing information to readers, right?

    * http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/01/03/business/03reuters-germany-economy-unemployment.html

    ** https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur.htm

    -- Dean Baker

    [Dec 27, 2016] Facing Layoff, An IT Employee Makes A Bold Counteroffer

    Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large IT outsourcing firm
    Notable quotes:
    "... Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements , and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs . ..."
    "... Foreign workers are willing to do a job at a lower salary in most if not all cases b/c the cost of living in their respective countries is a fraction of ours. ..."
    Dec 26, 2016 | it.slashdot.org
    (computerworld.com) 134

    Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday December 25, 2016 @05:05PM from the Bob-Cratchit-vs-Scrooge dept.

    ComputerWorld reports:

    In early December, Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large IT outsourcing firm. The employees had a choice: Either agree to take a job with the contractor or leave without severance. The employees had until the week before Christmas to make a decision about their future with the cruise line.

    By agreeing to a job with Paris-based Capgemini, employees are guaranteed employment for six months, said Roger Frizzell, a Carnival spokesman.

    "Our expectation is that many will continue to work on our account or placed into other open positions within Capgemini" that go well beyond the six-month period, he said in an email.

    Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements , and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs . "After receiving his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer.

    It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely hope that you can fulfill these terms."

    And he's also working directly with a lawyer for an advocacy group that aims to "stop the abuse of H-1B and other foreign worker programs ."

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 5 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @06:00PM ( #53553189 )

    Foreign workers are willing to do a job at a lower salary in most if not all cases b/c the cost of living in their respective countries is a fraction of ours.

    I would be willing to do my job at a fraction of what I am paid currently should that (that being how expensive it is to live here) change. It is equally infuriating to me when American companies use loopholes in our ridiculously complicated tax code to shelter revenues in foreign tax shelters to avoid paying taxes while at the same time benefiting from our infrastructure, emergency services, military, etc..

    Its assholes like you that always spout off about free market this or that, about some companies fiduciary responsibilities to it's shareholders blah blah blah... as justification for shitty behavior.

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 2 ) by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @06:13PM ( #53553247 )
    It is equally infuriating to me when American companies use loopholes in our ridiculously complicated tax code to shelter revenues in foreign tax shelters to avoid paying taxes

    So who are you infuriated at? The companies that take advantage of those loopholes, or the politicians that put them there? Fury doesn't help unless it is properly directed. Does your fury influence who you vote for?

    ... while at the same time benefiting from our infrastructure, emergency services, military, etc.

    No. Taxes are only sheltered on income generated overseas, using overseas infrastructure, emergency services, etc. I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product made in China and sold in France.

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 2 ) by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @06:33PM ( #53553303 )
    I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product made in China and sold in France.

    In a seriously silly Monty Python sketch about taxes, someone mildly suggested:

    "I think we should tax foreigners, living abroad."

    Kinda sorta the same idea . . .

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 3 ) by fibonacci8 ( 260615 ) writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @08:43PM ( #53553777 )

    I suppose it's related to the idea that intellectual property "rights" granted by a country of origin should still have the same benefits and drawbacks when transferred to another country. Or at the very least should be treated as an export at such time a base of operations moves out of country.

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 5 , Insightful) by Rob Y. ( 110975 ) writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @06:37PM ( #53553317 )

    Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written in the US, using US infrastructure, etc . And the company is making the bogus claim that their Irish subsidiary owns the rights to that software. It's a scam - not a loophole.

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 5 , Insightful) by geoskd ( 321194 ) writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @07:35PM ( #53553547 )
    It's a scam - not a loophole.

    They are the same thing. The only way to ensure that there are no tax dodges out there is to simplify the tax code, and eliminate the words: "except", "but", "excluding", "omitting", "minus", "exempt", "without", and any other words to those same effects.

    Americans are too stupid to ever vote for a poltiician that states they will raise taxes. This means that either politicians lie, or they actively undermine the tax base. Both of those situations are bad for the majority of americans, but they vote for the same scumbags over and over, and will soundly reject any politician who openly advocates tax increases. The result is a race to the bottom. Welcome to reaping what you sow, brought to you by Democracy(tm).

    Re: ( Score: 2 ) by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) writes:

    Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written in the US, using US infrastructure, etc .

    That makes no sense. Plenty of non-American companies develop software in America. Yet only if they are incorporated in America do they pay income tax on their overseas earnings, and it is irrelevant where their engineering and development was done.

    It has nothing whatsoever to do with "using infrastructure". It is just an extraterritorial money grab that is almost certainly counterproductive since it incentivizes American companies to invest and create jobs overseas.

    Re: Dear Matthew ( Score: 2 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward writes:

    Yes, taxes are based on profits. So Google, for instance, makes a bunch of money in the US. Their Irish branch then charges about that much for "consulting" leaving the American part with little to no profits to tax.

    Re: ( Score: 2 ) by SwashbucklingCowboy ( 727629 ) writes:

    Oh get real. Companies make it appear that nearly all income is generated overseas in order to get around that. It's mostly a scam.

    Re:Dear Matthew ( Score: 4 , Insightful) by msauve ( 701917 ) writes: on Sunday December 25, 2016 @07:45PM ( #53553601 )

    "I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product made in China and sold in France."

    Because the manufacturing and sales are controlled by a US based company, as is the profit benefit which results. If a US entity, which receives the benefits of US law, makes a profit by any means, why should it not be taxed by the US?

    [Dec 27, 2016] Suicide rates rise after jobs move overseas, study finds

    Notable quotes:
    "... In Bristol County, which includes Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton, manufacturing employed nearly a quarter of the workforce in 2000; now it provides jobs for only one in 10 workers. ..."
    "... Most of the manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 are unlikely to return, economists said. Automation has made manufacturing much more specialized, requiring more education and fewer workers, leaving parts of the country struggling to figure out how to reinvent their economies. ..."
    "... "We will probably never have as many manufacturing jobs as we had in 1960," Dunn said. "The question is how do we train workers and provide them opportunities to feel productive. What's clear from the election is an increasing number of people don't have those opportunities or don't feel that those opportunities will be available." ..."
    "... Characteristics of people dying by suicide after job loss, financial difficulties and other economic stressors during a period of recession (2010–2011): A review of coroners׳ records ..."
    Dec 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs : December 27, 2016 at 03:37 AM

    Suicide rates rise after jobs move overseas, study finds
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/12/26/suicide-rates-rise-after-jobs-move-overseas-new-study-funds/yVhFkZOslgnODKEjTfcDTK/story.html?event=event25
    via @BostonGlobe - Deirdre Fernandes - December 27, 2016

    FALL RIVER - In this struggling industrial city, changes in trade policy are being measured not only in jobs lost, but also in lives lost - to suicide.

    The jobs went first, the result of trade deals that sent them overseas. Once-humming factories that dressed office workers and soldiers, and made goods to furnish their homes, stand abandoned, overtaken by weeds and graffiti.

    And now there is research on how the US job exodus parallels an increase in suicides. A one percentage point increase in unemployment correlated with an 11 percent increase in suicides, according to Peter Schott, a Yale University economist who coauthored the report with Justin Pierce, a researcher at the Federal Reserve Board.

    The research doesn't prove a definitive link between lost jobs and suicide; it simply notes that as jobs left, suicides rose. Workers who lost their jobs may have been pushed over the edge and turned to suicide or drug addiction, lacking financial resources or community connections to get help, the authors suggest.

    The research contributes to a growing body of work that shows the dark side of global trade: the dislocation, anger, and despair in some parts of the country that came with the United States' easing of trade with China in 2000. The impact of job losses was greatest in places such as Fall River and other cities in Bristol County, along with rural manufacturing counties in New Hampshire and Maine, vast stretches of the South, and portions of the Rust Belt.

    "There are winners and losers in trade," Schott said. "If you go to these communities, you can see the disruptions."

    The unemployment rate in Fall River remains persistently high and at 5.5 percent in September was a good two points above the Massachusetts average. Nearly one in three households gets some sort of public assistance.

    Opposition to global trade policies became a rallying cry in Donald Trump's campaign, propelling him into the White House with strategic wins in the industrial Midwest and the South. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Chinese goods and has bashed recent US trade pacts. ...

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 27, 2016 at 03:41 AM

    ... Previous trade deals, including the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, chipped away at US manufacturing towns. But economists say the decision to normalize relations with China was far more disruptive. Some economists have estimated the United States may have lost at least 1 million manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2007 due to freer trade with China.

    In Bristol County, which includes Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton, manufacturing employed nearly a quarter of the workforce in 2000; now it provides jobs for only one in 10 workers.

    Most of the manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 are unlikely to return, economists said. Automation has made manufacturing much more specialized, requiring more education and fewer workers, leaving parts of the country struggling to figure out how to reinvent their economies.

    "We will probably never have as many manufacturing jobs as we had in 1960," Dunn said. "The question is how do we train workers and provide them opportunities to feel productive. What's clear from the election is an increasing number of people don't have those opportunities or don't feel that those opportunities will be available."

    Officials in Fall River and Bristol County said they are trying to provide appropriate training, including computer programming, a prerequisite for many manufacturing jobs.

    They also point out there have been recent victories.

    • Amazon.com opened a distribution warehouse in Fall River and has been hiring in recent months to fill 500 jobs.
    • Companies are eyeing Taunton for its cheaper land, access to highways, and state tax breaks.
    • Norwood-based Martignetti Cos., among the state's largest wine and spirits distributors, last year agreed to move its headquarters to a Taunton industrial park.

    Mayor Tom Hoye said Taunton has also been more active in recent years, holding community meetings and expanding social services for residents facing distress and drug addiction.

    Despite the hits the city and its residents have taken, there is reason to be optimistic about the future, he said.

    Jobs are returning, and the county's suicide rate dropped from 13 per 100,000 people in 2014 to 12 per 100,000 in 2015.

    "We're reinventing ourselves," Hoye said on a recent morning as he sat in an old elementary school classroom that has served as the temporary mayor's office for several years.

    "It's tough to lift yourself out of the hole sometimes. But we're much better off than we were 10 years ago."

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 27, 2016 at 03:55 AM
    'The research doesn't prove a definitive
    link between lost jobs and suicide; it
    simply notes that as jobs left,
    suicides rose.'

    Pierce, Justin R., and Peter K. Schott (2016). "Trade Liberalization and Mortality:
    Evidence from U.S. Counties," Finance and Economics Discussion Series
    2016-094. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

    https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2016/files/2016094pap.pdf

    http://faculty.som.yale.edu/peterschott/files/research/papers/pierce_schott_pntr_20150301.pdf

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 27, 2016 at 04:00 AM
    (Note: The 2nd link is to a
    different paper, same authors.)

    'The Surprisingly Swift Decline
    of US Manufacturing Employment'

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 27, 2016 at 04:27 AM
    Understanding vulnerability to self-
    harm in times of economic hardship
    and austerity: a qualitative study
    M C Barnes, et al.

    'This is the first UK study of self-harm
    among people experiencing economic or
    austerity-related difficulties.'

    December 2015

    http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/2/e010131.full.pdf

    ---

    Characteristics of people dying by suicide after job loss, financial difficulties and other economic stressors during a period of recession (2010–2011): A review of coroners׳ records
    Caroline Coope, et al

    Journal of Affective Disorders
    Volume 183, 1 - September 2015

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032715002694/pdfft?md5=bebc4ce035acbeeee6cb0b9bd586a5e3&pid=1-s2.0-S0165032715002694-main.pdf

    Chris G -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Suicide rates rise after jobs move overseas, study finds

    That's consistent with the GOP's notion of how to most effectively cover health problems: shoveled dirt.

    [Dec 27, 2016] Trump should say, Thanks, Obama!

    Notable quotes:
    "... I would say both parties are for the rich and both do their best to distract their respective base with talk of abortion or race, while neither would like these red meat distractions disappear by being in any solved. ..."
    "... Why do they like these particular distractions? Because the rich don't care about either. ..."
    "... Trump broke the mold by talking about jobs in a meaningful way immigration and exporting factories both boost unemployment, suppressing wages while boosting profits; these topics have been forbidden since Ross Perot spoke of millions of jobs going south on account of Nafta, exactly what happened. ..."
    "... 8mm official unemployment. 16mm reduced participation since 2005 in 25-54 age group. ..."
    "... 24mm total, not counting part timers that want full time and 10mm fewer voted for dems in 2016 than 2008. ..."
    "... Exactly the same number that voted for Romney voted for trump, so Hillary lost obamas third term not because of a wave of trump racists but because there was somehow dissatisfaction among former dem voters regarding the great jobs program, low cost healthcare, and prosecution of bankers and other elites that drove the economy off the cliff. Granted, nominating the second most unpopular person in America might not guarantee success ..."
    Dec 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    John k, December 26, 2016 at 2:33 pm

    Dems are the party of the rich and poor.

    Really? When did they do something that benefitted the poor?

    I would say both parties are for the rich and both do their best to distract their respective base with talk of abortion or race, while neither would like these red meat distractions disappear by being in any solved.

    Why do they like these particular distractions? Because the rich don't care about either.

    Trump broke the mold by talking about jobs in a meaningful way immigration and exporting factories both boost unemployment, suppressing wages while boosting profits; these topics have been forbidden since Ross Perot spoke of millions of jobs going south on account of Nafta, exactly what happened.

    8mm official unemployment. 16mm reduced participation since 2005 in 25-54 age group.

    24mm total, not counting part timers that want full time and 10mm fewer voted for dems in 2016 than 2008.

    Exactly the same number that voted for Romney voted for trump, so Hillary lost obamas third term not because of a wave of trump racists but because there was somehow dissatisfaction among former dem voters regarding the great jobs program, low cost healthcare, and prosecution of bankers and other elites that drove the economy off the cliff. Granted, nominating the second most unpopular person in America might not guarantee success

    Anyway, Trump should say, Thanks, Obama!

    Synoia , December 26, 2016 at 2:40 pm

    8mm official unemployment. 16mm reduced participation since 2005 in 25-54 age group.
    24mm total, not counting part timers that want full time

    Obama's legacy. Read it and weep.

    John k , December 26, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    I mis spoke.
    Nominating her had risks, but it assured Bernie would not be president, and Bernie was a far greater risk to bankers and the other dem paymasters than trump. Remember, for them it was existential, bernie would have jailed bankers. Trump is one of the oligarchs.
    With her nom bankers let out a sigh of relief and could thankfully murmur, 'mission accomplished!'

    WheresOurTeddy , December 26, 2016 at 3:29 pm

    Bernie would not be president only if they Bobby Kennedy'd him.

    It didn't come to that. They just fixed the primary.

    Vatch , December 26, 2016 at 7:12 pm

    If Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, and he had been "Bobby Kennedy'd", people besides the conspiracy enthusiasts would have started to notice a pattern. Instead, there are millions of people who actually believe that Sanders lost the primaries to Clinton fair and square. Some of us know better. . . .

    As for patterns, Trump's nominations for cabinet level offices are showing a pattern: billionaires, hecto-millionaires, overt vassals of the ultra-rich, and at least one (alleged) criminal: Ryan Zinke.

    Yves Smith , December 26, 2016 at 10:22 pm

    The one unambiguously positive feature of Obamacare was Medicaid expansion, which does help the poor.

    marym , December 26, 2016 at 10:47 pm

    It does help people, but increased privatization and estate recovery make it not unambiguous.

    ambrit , December 27, 2016 at 4:42 am

    True. Because of estate recovery, I am doing without medical "insurance" of any kind. As I tell Phyllis, if I get anything serious, just put me in my ragged old canvas chair in the back yard and keep the beer coming until I stop complaining.

    This entire Medicade story is curious. I had thought that any self respecting oligarchy would want reasonably powerful clients to buttress the oligarch's power and influence. Instead, the Medicade Oligarchy buys into a "power base" of the poor and disenfranchised. The funds for this complex relationship are supplied, as best as I can discern, by the central government. What will the Medicade Oligarchs do when the "X" Oligarchs cut off or even just restrict the flow of funds from the central government?

    Cry Shop , December 27, 2016 at 5:36 am

    Not just estate recovery. Loading Medicaid with more claimants, particularly poor, ethnic minority claimants, was a great way to stress it's gonig to need a neo-liberal cure, if the neo-cons don't use the opportunity Obama gave them to out right kill it. Medicaid isn't Medicare, and the retired folks know it. They, the retires, would kill it in a second if they could get an extra $100 per annum in free drugs.

    ambrit , December 27, 2016 at 5:46 am

    I'm not too sure about the "Retired" "Poor" divide anymore. The two groups are converging and merging. Any animus experienced here would be the result of restriction of total benefits available. In other words, an artificially engineered conflict.
    Once the "old folks" realize that they, as a class, are the poor, all bets will be off.

    marym , December 27, 2016 at 8:44 am

    Once the "old folks" actually are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid (dual eligible) they are at risk for being tossed off Medicare into Medicaid managed care .

    marym , December 27, 2016 at 8:50 am

    Nor is Medicare Medicare, in the sense of being a fully public program. Medicare Advantage, Medicare supplemental insurance, and prescription drug insurance are all privatized.

    Tully , December 27, 2016 at 11:41 am

    the funds supplied by the central government. No.
    they are supplied by the taxpayers.
    That is the system – taxpayers subsidize private sector profits.

    steelhead , December 26, 2016 at 2:59 pm

    43 years. The decline started in 1973, the year I graduated from high school.

    Nittacci , December 26, 2016 at 3:00 pm

    "I'm guessing that upwards of 90% of United States voters work for wages"

    How is that possible with a 62% labor participation rate? Do you believe unemployed, retired, students and stay-at-home parents don't vote?

    grayslady , December 26, 2016 at 5:48 pm

    Yes, I had a problem with that phrase, as well; especially as older people (read "retired") are known to have the highest percentage of actual voters. Assuming that the 90% is an overstatement, I don't believe it negates the point that all ages and all races can find common ground on certain issues–Medicare for All being one of those issues. Seniors would definitely get behind an improved Medicare, just as students, unemployed, working poor, and others would support such a sensible universal health care program.

    ambrit , December 27, 2016 at 4:46 am

    " sensible universal health care program."
    Sensible for whom? For the presently entrenched oligarchs, the system in use now is perfectly sensible.

    Baldacci , December 26, 2016 at 9:31 pm

    Only 30-35% of the total US population votes in any one election. 90% would be possible.

    funemployed , December 27, 2016 at 9:34 am

    They old though – retired folks love them some voting. Work or have worked for wages, or had vital domestic labor supported by a wage earning family member would surely get us over 90 IMO. (sorry for quibbling Lambert. I think we all get the point. Thanks for the lovely essay)

    [Dec 27, 2016] The government's 20th century growth as a factory underestimates service sector growth and our continued share shrink in 20th century

    Dec 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    AngloSaxon : December 26, 2016 at 10:24 PM , 2016 at 10:24 PM
    In my opinion, probably not. The government's 20th century "growth as a factory" underestimates service sector growth and our continued share shrink in 20th century industrial production means our "potential" growth is by this factory methiod, in decline. If we grow 3% it is a gaudy number by the government's own statistical backwardness.

    To regenerate American factory growth is not possible right now under a market system. I mean, it simply isn't. If we tried, we would crater industrial growth as well with consumption cuts.

    likbez -> AngloSaxon... , -1
    Growth of the service sector is also under attack due to increasing "robotization", replacing salaried workers with "perma-temps" and underpaid contractors (Uber) as well as offshoring of help desk and such.

    What's left? Military Keynesianism ?

    [Dec 27, 2016] On Krugman And The Working Class - Tim Duys Fed Watch

    Notable quotes:
    "... Excellent critique. Establishment Democrats are tone-deaf right now; the state of denial they live in is stunning. I'd like to think they can learn after the shock of defeat is over, but identity politics for non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual is what the Democratic party is about today and has been the last decade or so. ..."
    "... That's the effect of incessant Dem propaganda pitting races and sexes against each other. ..."
    "... And Democrats' labeling of every Republican president/candidate as a Nazi - including Trump - is desensitizing the public to the real danger created by discriminatory policies that punish [white] children and young adults, particularly boys. ..."
    "... So, to make up for the alleged screw job that women and minorities have supposedly received, the plan will be screwing white/hetro/males for the forseeable future. My former employer is doing this very plan, as we speak. Passed over 100 plus males, who have been turning wrenches on airplanes for years, and installed a female shop manager who doesn't know jack-$##t about fixing airplanes. No experience, no certificate......but she has a management degree. But I guess you don't know how to do the job to manage it. ..."
    "... Bernie Sanders was that standard bearer, but Krugman and the Neoliberal establishment Democrats (ie. Super Delegates) decided that they wanted to coronate Clinton. ..."
    "... Evolution of political parties happens organically, through evolution (punctuated equilibrium - like species and technology - parties have periods of stability with some sudden jumps in differentiation). ..."
    "... If Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (highly likely), it will be the best thing to happen to Republicans since Lincoln. They will lose even more seats. ..."
    "... The Coastal Pelosi/Schumer wing is still in power, and it will take decimation at the ballot box to change the party. The same way the "Tea Party" revolution decimated the Republicans and led to Trump. Natural selection at work. ..."
    "... The central fact of the election is that Hillary has always been extraordinarily unlikable, and it turned out that she was Nixonianly corrupt ..."
    "... I'm from Dallas. Three of my closest friends growing up (and to this day), as well as my brother in law, are hispanic. They, and their families, all vote Republican, even for Trump. Generally speaking, the longer hispanics are in the US, the more likely they tend to vote Republican. ..."
    "... The Democratic Establishment and their acolytes are caught in a credibility trap. ..."
    "... I also think many Trump voters know they are voting against their own economic interest. The New York Times interviewed a number who acknowledge that they rely on insurance subsidies from Obamacare and that Trump has vowed to repeal it. I know one such person myself. She doesn't know what she will do if Obamacare is repealed but is quite happy with her vote. ..."
    "... Krugman won his Nobel for arcane economic theory. So it isn't terribly surprising that he spectacularly fails whenever he applies his brain to anything remotely dealing with mainstream thought. He is the poster boy for condescending, smarter by half, elite liberals. In other words, he is an over educated, political hack who has yet to learn to keep his overtly bias opinions to himself. ..."
    "... Funny how there's all this concern for the people whose jobs and security and money have vanished, leaving them at the mercy of faceless banks and turning to drugs and crime. Sad. Well, let's bash some more on those lazy, shiftless urban poors who lack moral strength and good, Protestant work ethic, shall we? ..."
    "... Clinton slammed half the Trump supporters as deplorables, not half the public. She was correct; about half of them are various sorts of supremacists. The other half (she said this, too) made common cause with the deplorables for economic reasons even though it was a devil's bargain. ..."
    "... I have never commented here but I will now because of the number of absurd statements. I happen to work with black and Hispanic youth and have also worked with undocumented immigrants. To pretend that trump and the Republican Party has their interest in mind is completely absurd. As for the white working class, please tell me what programs either trump or the republican have put forward to benefit them? I have lost a lot of respect for Duy ..."
    "... The keys of the election were race, immigration and trade. Trump won on these points. What dems can do is to de-emphasize multiculturalism, racial equality, political correctness etc. Instead, emphasize economic equality and security, for all working class. ..."
    "... Krugman more or less blames media, FBI, Russia entirely for Hillary's loss, which I think is wrong. As Tim said, Dems have long ceased to be the party of the working class, at least in public opinion, for legitimate reasons. ..."
    "... All Mr. Krugman and the Democratic establishment need to do is to listen, with open ears and mind, to what Thomas Frank has been saying, and they will know where they went wrong and most likely what to do about it, if they can release themselves from their fatal embrace with Big Money covered up by identity politics. ..."
    "... Pretty sad commentary by neoliberal left screaming at neoliberal right and vice versa. ..."
    "... The neoliberals with their multi-culti/love them all front men have had it good for a while, now there's a reaction. Deal with it. ..."
    Dec 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Jason Nordsell : , November 27, 2016 at 08:02 AM
    Excellent critique. Establishment Democrats are tone-deaf right now; the state of denial they live in is stunning. I'd like to think they can learn after the shock of defeat is over, but identity politics for non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual is what the Democratic party is about today and has been the last decade or so.

    The only way Dems can make any headway by the midterms is if Trump really screws up, which is a tall order even for him. He will pick the low-hanging fruit (e.g., tax reform, Obamacare reform, etc), the economy will continue to recover (which will be attributed to Trump), and Dems will lose even more seats in Congress. And why? Because they refuse to recognize that whites from the middle-class and below are just as disadvantaged as minorities from the same social class.

    If white privilege exists at all (its about as silly as the "Jews control the banks and media" conspiracy theories), it exists for the upper classes. Poor whites need help too. And young men in/out of college today are being displaced by women - not because the women have superior academic qualification, but because they are women. I've seen it multiple times firsthand in some of the country's largest companies and universities (as a lawyer, when an investigation or litigation takes place, I get to see everyone's emails, all the way to CEO/board). There is a concerted effort to hire only women and minorities, especially for executive/managerial positions. That's not equality.

    That's the effect of incessant Dem propaganda pitting races and sexes against each other. This election exposed the media's role, but its not over. Fortunately, Krugman et al. are showing the Dems are too dumb to figure out why they lost. Hopefully they keep up their stupidity so identity politics can fade into history and we can get back to pursuing equality.

    bob -> Jason Nordsell... , November 28, 2016 at 03:02 PM
    "There is a concerted effort to hire only women and minorities, especially for executive/managerial positions."

    Goooooolllllllllllllly, gee. Now why would that be? I hope you're not saying there shouldn't be such an effort. This is a good thing. It exactly and precisely IS equality. It may be a bit harsh, but if certain folks continually find ways to crap of women and minorities, then public policies would seem warranted.

    Are you seriously telling us that pursuing public policies to curb racial and sexual discrimination are a waste of time?

    How, exactly, does your vision of "pursuit of equality" ameliorate the historical fact of discrimination?

    Jason Nordsell -> bob... , November 29, 2016 at 10:17 AM
    You don't make up for past discrimination with discrimination. You make up for it by equal application of the law. Today's young white men are not the cause of discrimination of the 20th century, or of slavery. If you discriminate against them because of the harm caused by other people, you're sowing the seeds of a REAL white nationalist movement. And Democrats' labeling of every Republican president/candidate as a Nazi - including Trump - is desensitizing the public to the real danger created by discriminatory policies that punish [white] children and young adults, particularly boys.

    Displacement of white men by lesser-qualified women and minorities is NOT equality.

    Paid Minion -> bob... , December 26, 2016 at 01:29 PM
    So, to make up for the alleged screw job that women and minorities have supposedly received, the plan will be screwing white/hetro/males for the forseeable future. My former employer is doing this very plan, as we speak. Passed over 100 plus males, who have been turning wrenches on airplanes for years, and installed a female shop manager who doesn't know jack-$##t about fixing airplanes. No experience, no certificate......but she has a management degree. But I guess you don't know how to do the job to manage it.

    God forbid somebody have to "pay some dues" before setting them loose as suit trash.

    This will not end well.

    Richard -> Jason Nordsell... , November 30, 2016 at 03:45 PM
    You had me nodding until the last part.

    Back when cultural conservatives ruled the roost (not that long ago), they didn't pursue equality either. Rather, they favored (hetero Christian) white men. So hoping for Dem stupidity isn't going to lead to equality. Most likely it would go back to favoring hetero Christian white men.

    Todd : , November 27, 2016 at 08:46 AM
    "...should they find a new standard bearer that can win the Sunbelt states and bridge the divide with the white working class? I tend to think the latter strategy has the higher likelihood of success."

    Easy to say. What would that standard bearer or that strategy look like?

    Bill -> Todd... , November 27, 2016 at 08:59 AM
    Bernie Sanders was that standard bearer, but Krugman and the Neoliberal establishment Democrats (ie. Super Delegates) decided that they wanted to coronate Clinton. Big mistake that we are now paying for...
    Bob Salsa -> Bill... , November 28, 2016 at 12:56 PM
    Basic political math - Sanders would have been eaten alive with his tax proposals by the GOP anti-tax propaganda machine on Trump steroids.

    His call to raise the payroll tax to send more White working class hard-earn money to Washington would have made election night completely different - Trump would have still won, it just wouldn't have been a surprise but rather a known certainty weeks ahead.

    dwb : , November 27, 2016 at 10:47 AM
    Evolution of political parties happens organically, through evolution (punctuated equilibrium - like species and technology - parties have periods of stability with some sudden jumps in differentiation).

    Old politicians are defeated, new ones take over. The old guard, having been successful in the past in their own niche rarely change.

    If Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (highly likely), it will be the best thing to happen to Republicans since Lincoln. They will lose even more seats.

    The Coastal Pelosi/Schumer wing is still in power, and it will take decimation at the ballot box to change the party. The same way the "Tea Party" revolution decimated the Republicans and led to Trump. Natural selection at work.

    In 1991, Republicans thought they would always win, Democrats thought the country was relegated to Republican Presidents forever. Then along came a new genotype- Clinton. In 2012, Democrats thought that they would always win, and Republicans were thought to be locked out of the electoral college. Then along came a new genotype, Trump.

    A new genotype of Democrat will have to emerge, but it will start with someone who can win in flyover country and Texas. Hint: They will have to drop their hubris, disdain and lecturing, some of their anti-growth energy policies, hate for the 2nd amendment, and become more fiscally conservative. They have to realize that *no one* will vote for an increase in the labor supply (aka immigration) when wages are stagnant and growth is anemic. And they also have to appreciate people would rather be free to choose than have decisions made for them. Freedom means nothing unless you are free to make mistakes.

    But it won't happen until coastal elites like Krugman and Pelosi have retired.


    swampwiz -> dwb... , November 28, 2016 at 12:59 AM
    My vote for the Democratic Tiktaalik is the extraordinarily Honorable John Bel Edwards, governor of Louisiana. The central fact of the election is that Hillary has always been extraordinarily unlikable, and it turned out that she was Nixonianly corrupt (i.e., deleted E-mails on her illegal private server) as well - and she still only lost by 1% in the tipping point state (i.e., according to the current count, which could very well change).
    bob -> dwb... , November 28, 2016 at 03:09 PM
    You know what will win Texas? Demographic change. Economic growth. And it is looking pretty inevitable on both counts.

    I'm also pretty damned tired of being dismissed as "elitist", "smug" and condescending. I grew up in a red state. I know their hate. I know their condescension (they're going to heaven, libruls are not).

    It cuts both ways. The Dems are going into a fetal crouch about this defeat. Did the GOP do that after 2008? Nope. They dug in deeper.

    Could be a lesson there for us.

    Smugly your,

    dwb -> bob... , November 28, 2016 at 06:27 PM
    Ahh yes, all Texas needs is demographic change, because all [Hispanics, Blacks, insert minority here] will always and forever vote Democrat. Even though the Democrats take their votes for granted and Chicago/Baltimore etc. are crappy places to live with no school choice, high taxes, fleeing jobs, and crime. Even though Trump outperformed Romney among minorities.

    Clinton was supposed to be swept up in the winds of demographics and the Democrats were supposed to win the White House until 2083.

    Funny things happen when you take votes for granted. Many urban areas are being crushed by structural deficits and need some Detroit type relief. I predict that some time in the next 30 years, poles reverse, and urban areas are run by Republicans.

    If you are tired of being dismissed as "elitist", "smug" and condescending, don't be those things. Don't assume people will vote for your party because they have always voted that way, or they are a certain color. Respect the voters and work to earn it.

    Jason Nordsell -> bob... , November 29, 2016 at 10:27 AM
    The notion that hispanic=democrat that liberals like bob have is hopelessly ignorrant.

    I'm from Dallas. Three of my closest friends growing up (and to this day), as well as my brother in law, are hispanic. They, and their families, all vote Republican, even for Trump. Generally speaking, the longer hispanics are in the US, the more likely they tend to vote Republican.

    The Democratic Party's plan to wait out the Republicans and let demographics take over is ignorant, racist and shortsighted, cooked up by coastal liberals that haven't got a clue, and will ultimately fail.

    In addition to losing hispanics, Democrats will also start losing the African American vote they've been taking for granted the last several decades. Good riddance to the Democratic party, they are simply unwilling to listen to what the people want.

    RJ -> bob... , December 06, 2016 at 11:20 PM
    You might be tired of it, but clearly you are elitist, smug, and condescending.

    Own it. Fly your freak flag proudly,

    Tom : , November 27, 2016 at 11:42 AM
    This is a really shoddy piece that repeats the medias pulling of Clintons quote out of context. She also said "that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

    Now maybe it is okay to make gnore this part of the quote because you think calling racism "deplorable" is patently offensive. But when the ignored context makes the same points that Duy says she should have been making, that is shoddy.

    dwb -> Tom... , November 27, 2016 at 12:07 PM
    There are zero electoral college votes in the State of Denial. Hopefully you understand a)the difference between calling people deplorable and calling *behavior* deplorable; b) Godwin's Law: when you resort to comparing people to Hitler you've lost the argument. Trump supporters were not racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or any other phobic. As a moderate, educated, female Trump supporter counseled: He was an a-hole, but I liked his policies.

    Even my uber liberal friends cannot tell me what Clinton's economic plan was. Only that they are anti-Trump.

    Trump flanked Clinton on the most popular policies (the left used to be the anti-trade party of union Democrats): Lower regulation, lower taxes, pro-2nd amendment, trade deals more weighted in favor of US workers, and lower foreign labor supply. Turn's out, those policies are sufficiently popular that people will vote for them, even when packaged into an a-hole. Trump's anti-trade platform was preached for decades by rust belt unions.

    The coastal Democrats have become hostages to pro-big-government municipal unions crushing cities under structural deficits, high taxes, poorly run schools, and overbearing regulations. The best thing that can happen for the Democrats is for the Republicans to push for reforms of public pensions, school choice, and break municipal unions. Many areas see the disaster in Chicago and Baltimore, run by Democrats for decades, and say no thank you. Freed of the need to cater to urban municipal unions, Democrats may be able to appeal to people elsewhere.

    Nick : , November 27, 2016 at 01:16 PM
    Where can you move to for a job when wages are so low compared to rents?
    The young generations are not happy with house prices or rents as well.
    Giant_galveston -> Tim C.... , December 05, 2016 at 08:43 PM
    Tim, I believe you've missed the point: by straightforward measures, Democratic voters in USA are substantially under-represented. The problem is likely to get much worse, as the party whose policies abet minority rule now controls all three branches of the federal government and a substantial majority of state governments.
    Tim C. : , November 27, 2016 at 02:50 PM
    This is an outstanding takedown on what has been a never-ending series of garbage from Krugman.

    I used to hang on every post he'd made for years after the 2008 crisis hit. But once the Clinton coronation arose this year, the arrogant, condescending screed hit 11 - and has not slowed down since. Threads of circular and illogical arguments have woven together pathetic - and often non-liberal - editorials that have driven me away permanently.

    Since he's chosen to ride it all on political commentary, Krugman's credibility is right there with luminaries such as Nial Ferguson and Greg Mankiw.

    Seems that everyone who chooses to hitch their wagon to the Clintons ends up covered in bilge..... funny thing about that persistent coincidence...

    dazed and confused : , November 27, 2016 at 02:58 PM
    "And it is an especially difficult pill given that the decline was forced upon the white working class.... The tsunami of globalization washed over them....in many ways it was inevitable, just as was the march of technology that had been eating away at manufacturing jobs for decades. But the damage was intensified by trade deals.... Then came the housing crash and the ensuing humiliation of the foreclosure crisis."

    All the more amazing then that Trump pulled out such a squeaker of an election beating Clinton by less than 2% in swing states and losing the popular vote overall. In the shine of Duy's lights above, I would have imagined a true landslide for Trump... Just amazing.

    Jesse : , November 27, 2016 at 04:29 PM

    The Democratic Establishment and their acolytes are caught in a credibility trap.

    dimknight : , November 27, 2016 at 11:48 PM
    "I don't know that the white working class voted against their economic interest".

    I think you're pushing too hard here. Democrats have been for, and Republicans against many policies that benefit the white working class: expansionary monetary policy, Obamacare, housing refinance, higher minimum wage, tighter worker safety regulation, stricter tax collection, and a host of others.

    I also think many Trump voters know they are voting against their own economic interest. The New York Times interviewed a number who acknowledge that they rely on insurance subsidies from Obamacare and that Trump has vowed to repeal it. I know one such person myself. She doesn't know what she will do if Obamacare is repealed but is quite happy with her vote.

    Doug Rife : , November 28, 2016 at 07:17 AM
    There is zero evidence for this theory. It ignores the fact that Trump lied his way to the White House with the help of a media unwilling to confront and expose his mendacity. And there was the media's obsession with Clinton's Emails and the WikiLeaks daily release of stolen DNC documents. And finally the Comey letter which came in the middle of early voting keeping the nation in suspense for 11 days and which was probably a violation of the hatch act. Comey was advised against his unjustified action by higher up DOJ officials but did it anyway. All of these factors loomed much larger than the deplorables comment. Besides, the strong dollar fostered by the FOMC's obsession with "normalization" helped Trump win because the strong dollar hurts exporters like farmers who make up much of the rural vote as well as hurting US manufacturing located in the midwest states. The FOMC was objectively pro Trump.
    Nate F : , November 28, 2016 at 07:57 AM
    I was surrounded by Trump voters this past election. Trust me, an awful lot of them are deplorable. My father is extremely anti semetic and once warned me not to go to Minneapolis because of there being "too many Muslims." One of our neighbors thinks all Muslims are terrorists and want to do horrible things to all Christians.

    I know, its not a scientific study. But I've had enough one on one conversations with Trump supporters (not just GOP voters, Trump supporters) to say that yes, as a group they have some pretty horrible views.

    Giant_galveston -> Nate F... , December 05, 2016 at 08:38 PM
    Yep. I've got plenty of stories myself. From the fact that there are snooty liberals it does NOT follow that the resentment fueling Trump's support is justified.
    Denis Drew : , November 28, 2016 at 08:41 AM
    One should note that the "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it ... " voted for Obama last time around.

    When the blue collar voter (for lack of a better class) figures out that the Republicans (Trump) are not going to help them anymore than the Dems did -- it will be time for them to understand they can only rely on themselves, namely: through rebuilding labor union density, which can be done AT THE STATE BY PROGRESSIVE STATE LEVEL.

    To keep it simple states may add to federal protections like the minimum wage or safety regs -- just not subtract. At present the NLRB has zero (no) enforcement power to prevent union busting (see Trump in Vegas) -- so illegal labor market muscling, firing of organizers and union joiners go completely undeterred and unrecoursed.

    Recourse, once we get Congress back might include mandating certification elections on finding of union busting. Nothing too alien: Wisconsin, for instance, mandates RE-certification of all public employee unions annually.

    Progressive states first step should be making union busting a felony -- taking the power playing in our most important and politically impacting market as seriously as taking a movie in the movies (get you a couple of winters). For a more expansive look (including a look at the First Amendment and the fed cannot preempt something with nothing, click here):
    http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2016/11/first-100-days-progressive-states-agenda.html

    Labor unions -- returned to high density -- can act as the economic cop on every corner -- our everywhere advocates squelching such a variety of unhealthy practices as financialization, big pharam gouging, for profit college fraud (Trump U. -- that's where we came into this movie). 6% private union density is like 20/10 bp; it starves every other healthy process (listening blue collar?).

    Don't panic if today's Repub Congress passes national right-to-work legislation. Germany, which has the platinum standard labor institutions, does not have one majority union (mostly freeloaders!), but is almost universally union or covered by union contracts (centralized bargaining -- look it up) and that's what counts.

    Gary Anderson : , November 28, 2016 at 09:47 AM
    Trump took both sides of every issue. He wants high and low interest rates. He wants a depression first, (Bannonomics) and inflation first, (Trumponomics), he wants people to make more and make less. He is nasty and so he projected that his opponent was nasty.

    Now he has to act instead of just talk out of both sides of his mouth. That should not be as easy to do.

    C Jones : , November 28, 2016 at 10:31 AM
    Hi Tim, nice post, and I particularly liked your last paragraph. The relevant question today if you have accepted where we are is effectively: 'What would you prefer - a Trump victory now? Or a Trump type election victory in a decade or so? (with todays corresponding social/economic/political trends continuing).
    I'm a Brit so I was just an observer to the US election but the same point is relevant here in the UK - Would I rather leave the EU now with a (half sensible) Tory government? Or would I rather leave later on with many more years of upheaval and a (probably by then quite nutty) UKIP government?
    I know which one I prefer - recognise the protest vote sooner, rather than later.
    Bob Salsa : , November 28, 2016 at 12:48 PM
    Sure they're angry, and their plight makes that anger valid.

    However, not so much their belief as to who and what caused their plight, and more importantly, who can and how their plight would be successfully reversed.

    Most people have had enough personal experiences to know that it is when we are most angry that we do the stupidest of things.

    Lars : , November 28, 2016 at 05:58 PM
    Krugman won his Nobel for arcane economic theory. So it isn't terribly surprising that he spectacularly fails whenever he applies his brain to anything remotely dealing with mainstream thought. He is the poster boy for condescending, smarter by half, elite liberals. In other words, he is an over educated, political hack who has yet to learn to keep his overtly bias opinions to himself.
    Douglas P Anthony : , November 29, 2016 at 08:16 AM
    Tim's narrative felt like a cold shower. I was apprehensive that I found it too agreeable on one level but were the building blocks stable and accurate?

    Somewhat like finding a meal that is satisfying, but wondering later about the ingredients.

    But, like Tim's posts on the Fed, they prompt that I move forward to ponder the presentation and offer it to others for their comment. At this time, five-stars on a 1-5 system for bringing a fresh approach to the discussion. Thanks, Professor Duy. This to me is Piketty-level pushing us onto new ground.

    JohnR : , November 29, 2016 at 12:07 PM
    Funny how there's all this concern for the people whose jobs and security and money have vanished, leaving them at the mercy of faceless banks and turning to drugs and crime. Sad. Well, let's bash some more on those lazy, shiftless urban poors who lack moral strength and good, Protestant work ethic, shall we?
    Raven Onthill : , November 29, 2016 at 04:12 PM
    Clinton slammed half the Trump supporters as deplorables, not half the public. She was correct; about half of them are various sorts of supremacists. The other half (she said this, too) made common cause with the deplorables for economic reasons even though it was a devil's bargain.

    Now, there's a problem with maternalism here; it's embarrassing to find out that the leader of your political opponents knows you better than you know yourself, like your mother catching you out in a lie. It was impolitic for Clinton to have said this But above all remember that when push came to shove, the other basket made common cause with the Nazis, the Klan, and so on and voted for a rapey fascist.

    Rick McGahey : , November 30, 2016 at 02:44 PM
    "Economic development" isn't (and can't) be the same thing as bringing back lost manufacturing (or mining) jobs. We have had 30 years of shifting power between labor and capital. Restoring labor market institutions (both unions and government regulation) and raising the floor through higher minimum wages, single payer health care, fair wages for women and more support for child and elder care, trade policies that care about working families, better safe retirement plans and strengthened Social Security, etc. is key here, along with running a real full employment economy, with a significant green component. See Bob Polllin's excellent program in https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/back-full-employment

    That program runs up against racism, sexism, division, and fear of government and taxation, and those are powerful forces. But we don't need all Trump supporters. We do need a real, positive economic program that can attract those who care about the economics more than the cultural stuff.

    Sandra Williams : , December 01, 2016 at 12:20 AM
    How about people of color drop the democrats and their hand wringing about white people when they do nothing about voter suppression!! White fragility is nauseating and I'm planning to arm myself and tell all the people of color I know to do the same. I expect nothing from the democrats going forward.
    Robert Hurley : , December 01, 2016 at 11:04 AM
    I have never commented here but I will now because of the number of absurd statements. I happen to work with black and Hispanic youth and have also worked with undocumented immigrants. To pretend that trump and the Republican Party has their interest in mind is completely absurd. As for the white working class, please tell me what programs either trump or the republican have put forward to benefit them? I have lost a lot of respect for Duy
    Giant_galveston -> Robert Hurley... , December 05, 2016 at 08:32 PM
    Couldn't agree more.
    RJ -> Robert Hurley... , December 06, 2016 at 11:26 PM
    No one should advocate illegal immigration. If you care about being a nation of laws.
    [email protected] : , December 01, 2016 at 06:13 PM
    I think much of appeal of DJT was in his political incorrectness. PC marginalises. Very. Of white working class specifically. it tells one, one cannot rely on one's ideas any more. In no uncertain terms. My brother, who voted for Trump, lost his job to PC without offending on purpose, but the woman in question felt free to accuse him of violating her, with no regard to his fate. He was never close enough to do that. Is that not some kind of McCarthyism?
    Eclectic Observer : , December 05, 2016 at 10:55 AM
    Just to be correct. Clinton was saying that half (and that was a terrible error-should have said "some") were people that were unreachable, but that they had to communicate effectively with the other part of his support. People who echo the media dumb-ing down of complex statements are part of the problem.

    Still, I believe that if enough younger people and african-americans had come out in the numbers they did for Obama in some of those states, Clinton would have won. Certainly, the media managed to paint her in more negative light than she objectively deserved-- even if she deserved some negatives.

    I am in no way a fan of HRC. Still, the nature of the choice was blurred to an egregious degree.

    Procopius : , December 05, 2016 at 08:40 PM
    "The tough reality of economic development is that it will always be easier to move people to jobs than the jobs to people."

    This is indisputable, but I have never seen any discussion of the point that moving is not cost-free. Back in the '90s I had a discussion with a very smart person, a systems analyst, who insisted that poor people moved to wherever the welfare benefits were highest.

    I tried to point out that moving from one town to another costs more than a bus ticket. You have to pay to have your possessions transported. You have to have enough cash to pay at least two months' rent and maybe an additional security deposit.

    You have to have enough cash to pay for food for at least one month or however long it takes for your first paycheck or welfare check to come in. There may be other costs like relocating your kids to a new school system and maybe changing your health insurance provider.

    There probably are other costs I'm not aware of, and the emotional cost of leaving your family and your roots. The fact that some people succeed in moving is a great achievement. I'm amazed it works at all in Europe where you also have the different languages to cope with.

    Kim Kaufman : , December 07, 2016 at 10:03 PM
    I'm not sure the Hillary non-voters - which also include poor black neighborhoods - were voting against their economic interests. Under Obama, they didn't do well. Many of them were foreclosed on while Obama was giving the money to the banks. Jobs haven't improved, unless you want to work at an Amazon warehouse or for Uber and still be broke. Obama tried to cut social security. He made permanent Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Wars and more wars. Health premiums went up - right before the election. The most Obama could say in campaigning for Hillary was "if you care about my legacy, vote for Hillary." He's the only one that cares about his legacy. I don't know that it's about resentment but about just having some hope for economic improvement - which Trump offered (no matter how shallow and deceptive) and Hillary offered nothing but "Trump's an idiot and I'm not."

    I believe Bernie would have beat Trump's ass if 1) the DNC hadn't put their fingers on the scale for Hillary and 2) same with the media for Hillary and Trump. The Dems need more than some better campaign slogans. They really need a plan for serious economic equality. And the unions need to get their shit together and stop thinking that supporting corrupt corporate Dems is working. Or perhaps the rank and file need to get their shit together and get rid of union bosses.

    IHiddenDragon : , December 10, 2016 at 09:01 AM
    The keys of the election were race, immigration and trade. Trump won on these points. What dems can do is to de-emphasize multiculturalism, racial equality, political correctness etc. Instead, emphasize economic equality and security, for all working class.

    Lincoln billed the civil war as a war to preserve the union, to gain wide support, instead of war to free slaves. Of course, the slaves were freed when the union won the war. Dems can benefit from a similar strategy

    IHiddenDragon : , December 10, 2016 at 09:05 AM
    Krugman more or less blames media, FBI, Russia entirely for Hillary's loss, which I think is wrong. As Tim said, Dems have long ceased to be the party of the working class, at least in public opinion, for legitimate reasons.

    Besides, a lot voters are tired of stale faces and stale ideas. They yearn something new, especially the voters in deep economic trouble.

    Maybe it's time to try some old fashioned mercantilism, protectionism? America first is an appealing idea, in this age of mindless globalization.

    Jesse : , December 26, 2016 at 11:08 AM
    All Mr. Krugman and the Democratic establishment need to do is to listen, with open ears and mind, to what Thomas Frank has been saying, and they will know where they went wrong and most likely what to do about it, if they can release themselves from their fatal embrace with Big Money covered up by identity politics.

    But they cannot bring themselves to admit their error, and to give up their very personally profitable current arrangement. And so they are caught up in a credibility trap which is painfully obvious to the objective observer.

    c1ue : , December 26, 2016 at 12:11 PM
    Pretty sad commentary by neoliberal left screaming at neoliberal right and vice versa.

    It seems quite clear that the vast majority of commenters live as much in the ivory tower/bubble as is claimed for their ideological opponent.

    It is also quite interesting that most of these same commenters don't seem to get that the voting public gets what the majority of it wants - not what every single group within the overall population wants.

    The neoliberals with their multi-culti/love them all front men have had it good for a while, now there's a reaction. Deal with it.

    [Dec 26, 2016] Stoics Do Care about Social Justice: A Response to Irvine by Eric O. Scott

    Notable quotes:
    "... complacency ..."
    "... Lives of the Eminent Philosophers ..."
    "... De Constantia ..."
    "... highly recommended ..."
    "... A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt-And Why They Shouldn't ..."
    "... Thank you to Kristen de K., John Martin, Charmika Stewart, and Arianna Scott for their very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article. ..."
    "... writes the blog ..."
    "... . He is interested in moral practice as a way of life, and in how secular and religious people can find common ethical ground (a question which Socrates raised in Plato's ..."
    "... ). In real life, he is a PhD student in computer science at George Mason University, where he does research on machine learning and evolutionary algorithms. ..."
    Dec 26, 2016 | exeter.ac.uk
    20 Replies ... ... ...

    We Stoics always have to navigate a fragile balance when we present our ideas to the world. Many of our most powerful and appealing psychological tools revolve around accepting events that happen and recognizing that they are ultimately outside of our control. The reason that Stoicism is relevant to such a large and diverse array of people today is exactly because it purports to offer a powerful solution to almost any source of distress: "retire into yourself" ( Meditations , 7.28). We are perpetually at risk, however, of having our doctrine of "indifference" toward externals misconstrued for a "neglect" of externals. The benefits of inner peace speak for themselves-but the extreme emphasis that our philosophy puts on personal virtue as an "inner citadel" puts us in an understandably delicate position, politically speaking.

    Any speech extolling the merits of inner peace and apatheia goes wrong-and in fact becomes positively toxic-the moment that the audience begins to suspect that our school advocates for complacency in the face of social injustice. A great deal of the world's harms are not inevitable, and in fact are immanently preventable (fate permitting), if only we humans could get our act together. If Stoicism teaches that we should be passive toward these fixable harms, or if our school is quick to "blame the victim" for their own unhappiness while simultaneously ignoring injustice, then our philosophy is immoral, and ought to be immediately rejected as such.

    Of course, Stoicism teaches no such thing! To the contrary, we believe that no man or woman can be moral (or Happy) unless they work tirelessly for the benefit of all humanity. Justice and Benevolence must be a guide to all of our actions-"any action of yours," in fact, "which has no reference, whether direct or indirect, to these social ends, tears your life apart!" ( Meditations , 9.23). We do not believe that our doctrine of inner peace is mutually exclusive with Justice in any way whatsoever. "It is difficult, to be sure, to unite and combine these two states of mind," says Epictetus, "the vigilance of one who feels attracted by outside objects, and the composure of one who feels indifferent to them; but all the same it is not impossible" ( Discourses , 2.5.9).

    People are right to be concerned, though, that Stoicism might teach an inappropriately shallow sort of fatalism. The more unilateral emphasis we put on the inner fortress as a shield against injustice, the more rational reason people have for fearing that we are abandoning our natural responsibility to work diligently in defense of the downtrodden. Moreover, there are well-founded reasons for being concerned that the ancients themselves failed to emphasize Justice as much as they should have. "About the institution of slavery," say the authors of the introduction to the Chicago University Press's series of Seneca translations, "there is silence, and worse than silence: Seneca argues that true freedom is internal freedom, so the external sort does not really matter."

    I believe that contemporary Stoics need to be absolutely unambiguous about the fundamental moral imperatives that are essential to our ethics. Say it loud and clear: the way that we treat each other-and the way that we allow others to be treated by our society-is not "indifferent" at all. Stoicism is a system of virtue ethics, not only therapy, and as such it demands that each practitioner strive to be a force for Justice and Benevolence at all levels of society.

    The Need for Charity

    There is a little anecdote, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, where we find Zeno confronting a man who had been strongly critical of Antisthenes. Zeno apparently felt that the man had not done his due diligence as a critic, and he reprimanded the man strongly for it: "are you not ashamed," he said, "to pick out and mention anything wrong said by Antisthenes, while you suppress his good things without giving them a thought?" ( Lives of the Eminent Philosophers , 7.1.19). Donald Robertson likes to retell this story and interpret it as illustrating a strong normative principle: if we are going to criticize a person or school, we ought to engage the best of their thinking along with the worst, and to acknowledge what their ideas have to teach us about virtue. This is an idea that philosophers sometimes refer to as the " principle of charity ." Far from prohibiting or undermining criticism, the principle of charity is supposed to make us better, more just, and more incisive critics of flawed ideas.

    Threading the needle of Stoic Justice becomes doubly difficult when a Stoic tries to go about offering advice to activists about how they can better run their movement. In many cases, criticism of activism effectively amounts to telling victims of hardship, injustice, and oppression how we think they ought to bear their plight more virtuously. This is a very difficult thing for anyone to do in a fair and sensitive way-it requires a lot of research and a generous dose of the principle of charity. It is virtually impossible to achieve, moreover, if it is not clear whether you actually, in fact, care about the injustice in question in the first place.

    Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of can of worms that Bill Irvine stirred up at Stoicon 2016 in his presentation on what he has called "insult pacifism." If you missed the talk, it closely follows a post he published the previous week on the Oxford University Press blog, titled " How would the ancient Stoics have dealt with hate speech? "

    Irvine's central point is that we can teach people to be resilient to injustice. Insults don't need to be emotionally damaging, and when we judge them to be inherently bad and horrible, we end up suffering unnecessarily. Channeling the advice of the Stoics, Irvine argues that a stance of non-retaliation, or of "receiving these people's insults as jokes" (as Seneca puts it in De Constantia ), can not only protect us from emotional disturbance, but can in fact send a highly effective normative signal: "on failing to provoke a rise in his target," says Irvine, "an insulter is likely to feel foolish."

    I am completely on board with the notion of insult pacifism. I was raised to value the principle that evil is best repaid with kindness (Romans 12:20), and "that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:39). I'm delighted at Irvine's effort to popularize similar Stoic ideas in his books and elsewhere. In my own personal practice, in fact, I am currently trying to use pacifism toward automotive insults to counter my own tendency toward road rage: pacifism comes highly recommended when you are barreling down the highway in a 3,000 pound projectile!

    Irvine's manner of treating the topic leaves a great deal to be desired, however, and I fear that it only reinforces the notion that Stoics are disinterested in Justice in general, and that modern Stoicism, far from taking a charitable interest in contemporary activism, is indifferent or even hostile to the concerns of marginalized people.

    Irvine's Criticism of Social Justice

    First, Irvine's Stoicon presentation is lopsided in that he is largely silent on the need for Stoics to work for Justice at all-a weakness that is shared by his 2013 book, A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt-And Why They Shouldn't (Oxford University Press). But his approach indeed becomes "worse than silence" when he chooses to frame his talk as a one-sided criticism of contemporary social justice activism.

    In the chapter of his book titled "Societal Responses to Insults"-which could have included a discussion on how we can work to make the world a better, more Just place for everyone-Irvine opts only to zero in on what he calls the "political correctness code" that emerged in the 1970's and has since, in his opinion, gotten way out of hand. "If Stoic philosopher Epictetus had been alive to watch the rise of hate speech laws, and, more generally, the political correctness movement," concludes Irvine, "he would have shaken his head in disbelief. According to him, the best way to spare people the pain of being insulted is not to change the world so that they never feel insults; it is instead to change people so that they are, in effect, immune to insults" (p. 182).

    Now, there is plenty worth criticizing when it comes to activism on college campuses and society more broadly. Whatever nuances may be involved, I don't for a moment pretend that all of the widely publicized cases in which students have inappropriately stifled free speech, inhibited their own exposure to challenging ideas, or capriciously assaulted the academic freedom of university professors in the name of "safe spaces" are defensible (if this specific issue is of relevance to you, I encourage you to have a look at the 102-page report that PEN America released this week; a short summary can be found here ). I myself accept the Stoic view that anger is always irrational and vicious-a position which, if I'm not careful, easily gets me into hot water with the activist community!

    The problem is not that Irvine has criticized these abuses of popular social justice ideas, or even that he apparently finds the concept of microaggressions to be useless (though, personally, I would implore him not to throw the baby out with the bathwater). Rather, the problem is that, in the same way that he has approximately nothing to say in defense of Justice despite our school's well-known reputation for a shallow fatalism, Irvine chooses to show no sympathy-and instead only active contempt-for the fundamental concerns that motivate activism.

    For contrast, I invite you to have a look at the nuanced criticism of trigger warnings that Massimo Pigliucci wrote last year-which delved headlong into similarly sensitive waters, but only served to spark a very productive and cordial conversation among a diverse readership. I think it forms an exemplary model of how Stoics can treat such difficult topics while remaining true to Zeno's advice, and while making it clear that we do care deeply about Justice.

    Irvine, meanwhile, admits that he is "puzzled" by the surge in concern over social justice issues on college campuses. He is perplexed that students feel "humiliated and even downtrodden" by the behavior of their peers, when in previous decades these issues were not very high in the public consciousness. Rather than engaging the many complex reasons that these students and other activists might give for their societal concerns, Irvine chooses to blanketly suggest that the systemic injustice so many are working to dismantle is simply a product of the imagination of feeble-minded youths: the infamous "hypersensitivity" of the activist. He lays the blame for the most recent round of sensitivity in efforts to teach people to recognize microaggressions, which are "such will-o'-the-wisp things that it takes training to spot them." And the idea of microaggressions, he believes, is motivated-not by a concern that the longstanding systemic injustices that plague the United States are enabled and aggravated by deep and pernicious social norms-but by a singular and simple purpose: to find new and innovative ways to feel "insulted."

    In short, just as Zeno worried, Irvine opts to "pick out and mention" everything that is wrong with contemporary activism, but to "suppress the good things without giving them a thought." He allows the imprudent behavior of a misguided minority of activists-behavior which otherwise very much deserves to be criticized-to completely overshadow and eclipse the efforts of those who are working seriously and virtuously to bring Justice to the world. This approach is incomplete, reactive, and cavalier, and it is doubly problematic in a talk that explicitly purports to give marginalized people advice on how best to cope with oppression and hate speech.

    Pigliucci, meanwhile, also strongly rejects what he sees as the general thrust of student activism with regard to trigger warnings. But he takes care to acknowledge the legitimate concerns, where they exist, that motivate the various voices involved in the controversy. Faculty have a human and professional duty, he says, "to be sensitive, rather than dismissive, to students' concerns." The result is not just a presentation that is less likely to offend, but one that comes across as better researched, commonsensical, and highly persuasive. These are the fruits of charity.

    No doubt, Irvine only meant to use a few vicious behaviors by some college students as an illustrative example for his ideas. I'm sure that Irvine does believe that Justice is important (even if he chooses not to emphasize it for fear of exacerbating existing abuses in the activist community). Instead, however, his contribution to Stoicon gave a strong impression that modern Stoicism is indifferent or even hostile to the social concerns of historically marginalized groups and minorities-such as women, people of color, and LGBTs. Between his deafening silence on the moral imperative to Justice and his uncharitable characterization of activist's concerns, his presentation lends credence to the erroneous idea that because Stoics believe that "true freedom is internal freedom," they also believe "the external sort does not really matter."

    The Alienating Effect on Minorities

    As Irvine delivered his pithy summary of campus activism, the predominantly white male audience laughed heartily-oblivious, it seems, to the sensitivity of the subject.

    In the meantime, my wife-a black, female graduate student who is probably better educated in the scientific literature on microaggressions than both Irvine and 90% of the Stoicon audience-was having a very different social experience. She had come along to New York as a favor to me, to see what this philosophy is that I've become so interested in lately, and to learn about how it relates to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and REBT. But in that moment, she became acutely aware of one simple fact: it did not appear that ethnic minorities or their distinctive concerns are welcome or wanted, much less understood, in the modern Stoic community. "Alienating" is perhaps too weak a word to describe how she experienced Stoicon.

    Stoicism is remarkable among the world's major religio-philosophical traditions for its history of including the voices not just of emperors and wealthy statesmen but also of people with physical disabilities, mental illness, and chronic pain, victims of torture and PTSD, and prisoners serving life sentences. But when marginalized people encounter Stoicism today, do they come away believing that Stoicism has something to offer them? Or do they come away with the impression-right or wrong-that Stoicism is just one more system created by privileged people who are out of touch with the severity of the world's fixable injustices?

    If people find modern Stoicism's advice for victims of injustice off-putting, it may have more to do with the choices we make about how to go about presenting that advice than with what the ancients have said. Being resilient to insults and being an active agent for Justice are not inimical objectives, and while I accept Irvine's call to the former, I would caution him that he has gone too far in his neglect of the latter.

    Stoics for Justice

    Stoicism is not a political theory. I agree with Pigliucci when he says that demanding a specific social vision from our school is a "category mistake." To the contrary, he says that "one can be a Stoic conservative or progressive, as well as a Stoic atheist or theist. But as long as we all practice virtue and attempt to become better people, we will be more likely to engage in constructive dialogue over what and how to change society for the better."

    I believe that Stoicism can do amazing things in the world of politics and philanthropy if we create a space for those "constructive dialogues" to take place-especially if those dialogues are rooted in Zeno's principle of charity, and if they implement the Socratic model, in which we "stop at point after point, and make out what each person is willing to admit and what he denies" (Cicero, De Finibus , 2.3).

    Moreover, I strongly suspect that the Stoic emphasis on the four cardinal virtues offers a uniquely powerful antidote to the pervasive miscommunication, polarization, and rancor that seemingly attend all political arguments. A Stoic is someone who cares about personal resilience and Temperance, but who also cares deeply about Justice. If we present ourselves this way, the world should never have reason to be confused on this point, or to doubt our support for both social justice (whatever exactly that means) and personal virtue. Our school teaches that virtue is one, after all, and that if we separate it into pieces, we destroy it.

    In my opinion, Stoicon left something to be desired when it comes to getting these values across (notwithstanding Christopher Gill's excellent and helpful presentation on the history of Stoic activism). But the conversations at Stoicon were neither the first nor the last word on the matter.

    That is why, starting now, some of us are coming together to form a Facebook group called " Stoics for Justice ," as a space to push Stoic philanthropy forward and to find ways of working together to pursue the "common benefit" (as Marcus liked to say). Whether you prefer radical activism aimed at disrupting oppressive power structures, or whether you see your role in the world as focused on community building, education, and hands-on philanthropy-or, yes, even therapeutic training in becoming resilient to insults-you should be able to find a role to play in any hypothetical Stoic-led movement for Justice and Benevolence.

    Come join us at Stoics for Justice and let us know how you think we might move Stoic philanthropy forward on the issues you care about most!

    Thank you to Kristen de K., John Martin, Charmika Stewart, and Arianna Scott for their very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

    Eric "Siggy" Scott writes the blog Euthyphroria . He is interested in moral practice as a way of life, and in how secular and religious people can find common ethical ground (a question which Socrates raised in Plato's Euthyphro ). In real life, he is a PhD student in computer science at George Mason University, where he does research on machine learning and evolutionary algorithms.

    [Dec 26, 2016] Stoicism A QuickStart Guide To Stoic Philosophy, Wisdom, Wealth, Happiness, and Fulfillment! - Kindle edition by Marcus Colema

    Dec 26, 2016 | www.amazon.com
    By Naila B McKenzie on November 11, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition
    I reflected on life after reading this

    " My thoughts after reading this book: we do not know what the future holds and we have to accept the fact that life is full of surprises whether bad or good, we have to face them. Life is short so we better make every moment count. We have to be steadfast, strong and in control of ourselves. And finally, we are often not satisfied with what life has to offer because we always let our emotions dominate us rather than seeing the logic behind every situation. I know it will take time for me to internalize all of these, but it makes sense to me now why most stoics lead a happier life than most of us.

    5 stars Excellent guide to stoicism! By Athea Howard on November 1, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase This is a very readable, easily understood book; a short guide to the philosophy of stoicism. The author gives a history of this philosophy, some good suggestions of practical uses of stoicism, and ends with how he personally practices stoicism. I have to conclude that stoicism has a great deal to contribute to a psychologically balanced, happy attitude. It makes us aware of how we often sabotage ourselves by negative or unrealistic thinking.

    [Dec 26, 2016] Amazon.com Stoicism Today Selected Writings (Volume 1) (9781502401922) Patrick Ussher Books

    Dec 26, 2016 | www.amazon.com
    By Karl Janssen on July 20, 2015 Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
    Applying ancient philosophy to modern life

    " Stoicism is an ancient school of philosophy founded in Athens in the 3rd century BC. It is a practical philosophy, intended as a guide for how to live one's life. The Stoics stressed that we have no control over what happens in our lives, only control over our perceptions. They advocated living one's life in accordance with nature (not "nature" as in grass and trees, but "nature" as in the order of the universe). By concentrating one's thoughts and choices on what is good and virtuous, and disregarding the "indifferent" distractions of everyday life, one can avoid negative emotions like fear, anger, grief, and frustration, and live a life of happiness and tranquility.

    In recent years, there has been a burgeoning resurgence in Stoicism, with modern writers producing manuals on how to apply Stoic principles to life in today's world, such as William B. Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life. Along similar lines, Stoicism Today is a blog published out of the University of Exeter in England, edited and largely written by a team of British philosophers. This 2014 book, edited by Patrick Ussher, is the first volume of writings reprinted from the blog. 36 articles are included in the collection, covering a mixed bag of Stoic-related topics.

    The collection starts out strong with essays summarizing and explaining the core concepts of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. These ancient Roman writers are the most prominent Stoics whose teachings survive today. The 21st-century writers clarify the ancient Stoic precepts and discuss their applicability to modern life. Though the bloggers hold PhDs in philosophy and command a thorough understanding of their subject, they do a great job of expressing these complex concepts in language that is accessible to the general reader, without dumbing down the subject matter.

    While the first half of the book provides a good, broad education on Stoicism, the second half covers a diverse assortment of topics and perspectives. A section called "Life Stories" consists of accounts by people of various walks of life on how they use Stoicism in their daily lives and work, including a lawyer, a doctor, and a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury. The most fascinating and inspiring story is that of Sam Sullivan, a quadriplegic who became mayor of Vancouver. Next is a section on how Stoicism can be applied to parenthood and the education of children. This is followed by a section on Stoicism and psychotherapy which will mostly appeal to psychiatric professionals, as it will likely be over the head of most general readers. Three articles deal with the concept of Stoic "mindfulness" and its relation or lack of relation to Buddhism. Finally, the book falls apart somewhat with its final section on Stoicism in popular culture. It includes an excerpt from a Stoicism-infused novel about prison inmates which is OK, but also a sample chapter from a horrible science fiction novel. The book's final selection is a pretty good examination of the portrayal of Stoicism in the Star Trek television series.

    This collection by its very nature is a hodgepodge, and the selections vary greatly in quality as well as subject matter. The core team of philosophers are good writers for the most part, but the ensemble cast of guest bloggers is hit and miss. Nevertheless, if you've read all the Stoic classics and are looking for further advice on how to put Stoicism into practice, you're bound to find something here that will interest you. Had A Calming Effect By Elizabeth Echavarria on March 24, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase After getting through some of the stories I was able to gain some perspective on what it means to be stoic and utilize some stoic principles in my own life.

    4.0 out of 5 stars STOICISM: Shift your values to what is truly good, beautiful and virtuous By Ernest Kienzle on December 27, 2014 Format: Paperback | Verified Purchase STOICISM TODAY is the Western counterpart to Buddhism. 2014, the year of the Stoic, heralds the awakening of a new golden age of practical, living philosophy led by Stoic physics, logic, and ethics. Actually, Stoicism was never asleep. Read articles in this book by modern philosophers, therapists, and professionals who reveal the link between ancient stoic techniques and modern challenges in the world we live in.

    [Dec 26, 2016] Insult Pacifism A Reply to Eric O. Scott

    Notable quotes:
    "... In my recent remarks, I was passing on the advice I think the ancient Stoics would offer to modern targets of insults... The Stoics' advice: shrug or, better still, laugh them off. This advice is a consequence of the Stoic insistence that we divide the things in our life into two categories: those we can control and those we can't. We can't control whether other people insult us. We can very much control, though, how we respond to those insults, and in particular, we can respond in a way that minimizes the harm they do us. College students would do well to give this Stoic strategy a try. ..."
    "... When we examine the lives of Stoics, we find that many of them were targets of injustice. Musonius Rufus, for example, was exiled to the desolate island of Gyaros, but he did not spend his time there complaining about the unfairness of it all. This is in large part because he refused to play the role of victim, a refusal that doubtless made his exile far more endurable than it otherwise would have been. More generally, when we look at the Stoics, we cannot find a "victim" among them-and if we could, Stoicism probably wouldn't have remained a viable philosophy of life for two thousand years. ..."
    "... is professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and the author of ..."
    "... For more on his life and other writings, visit his author website . ..."
    Dec 26, 2016 | exeter.ac.uk

    Let me begin by thanking Eric O. Scott for taking the time to respond to my Oxford University Press blog and my STOICON talk (I start talking at 58:00; sorry about the poor quality of the audio!). As I like to tell my students, if what we seek is the truth, we have the most to gain from those who challenge our views, since they will be the quickest to discover our mistakes.

    The Stoics were very much interested in transforming themselves into better human beings. As part of their program of self-transformation, they attempted to develop their own character. Such efforts might have included doing things that they were afraid of doing, simply as an exercise in overcoming fear. Or it might have included intentionally interacting with difficult people, simply so they could practice preventing anger from arising within them.

    But besides being concerned with their own well being, Stoics felt a social duty to make their world a better place. This could be done, they knew, by introducing other people to Stoicism, but it could also involve helping extract non-Stoics from the trouble they got themselves into as a result of their misguided views regarding what in life is valuable. Marcus Aurelius is a prime example of a Stoic who took his social duty very seriously, but despite being the emperor, he failed to bring about a just society. The Rome that he ruled still allowed or even encouraged slavery and acts of human cruelty.

    It is easy for us to judge Marcus harshly, but before we do so, we should realize that future generations are likely to do the same to us. Eric Scott says we live in an unjust world. I agree entirely, but I think I have a different perception of that injustice than he does. It is this difference in perception, which I will now explain, that makes me critical of some of the campus protests that have recently been in the news.

    ... ... ...

    In my recent remarks, I was passing on the advice I think the ancient Stoics would offer to modern targets of insults... The Stoics' advice: shrug or, better still, laugh them off. This advice is a consequence of the Stoic insistence that we divide the things in our life into two categories: those we can control and those we can't. We can't control whether other people insult us. We can very much control, though, how we respond to those insults, and in particular, we can respond in a way that minimizes the harm they do us. College students would do well to give this Stoic strategy a try.

    I was surprised, by the way, that Scott would refer to those who experience injustice as "victims." They are certainly targets , but the Stoics would tell us that they are victims only if they choose to see themselves as such. They would add that if you choose to play the role of victim, your suffering will be intensified.

    When we examine the lives of Stoics, we find that many of them were targets of injustice. Musonius Rufus, for example, was exiled to the desolate island of Gyaros, but he did not spend his time there complaining about the unfairness of it all. This is in large part because he refused to play the role of victim, a refusal that doubtless made his exile far more endurable than it otherwise would have been. More generally, when we look at the Stoics, we cannot find a "victim" among them-and if we could, Stoicism probably wouldn't have remained a viable philosophy of life for two thousand years.

    ... ... ...

    William B. Irvine is professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and the author of A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy and A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt And Why They Shouldn't . For more on his life and other writings, visit his author website .

    1. Alan Pitman 19th Nov, 2016 at 11:32

      I cannot help but agree. Identity politics and political correctness diminishes agency and casts entire groups as "victims" – this strikes me as in opposition to the stoic call to individuality and self examination, and as William argues, formulating strategies for living that sometimes reveal harsh truths.

      As William also points out there is much logical incoherence and moral inconsistency at the heart of political correctness. I would draw your attention to Professor Jordan Peterson, a Canadian academic and Psychologist currently challenging key tenants of campus style social justice and at risk of losing his position at the University of Toronto.

      1. O.D. 19th Nov, 2016 at 14:31

        Outstanding post! "Political Correctness" and "Social Justice" are only concerned with silencing debate, and they need to be confronted wherever and whenever they try and push their misguided beliefs.

    1. Duff 19th Nov, 2016 at 20:01

      When a friend who is not a Stoic is experiencing external challenges such as the loss of a loved one or debilitating physical illness, I could respond in one of two ways:

      1) I could tell this person that their hardship is illusory for it is outside of the sphere of choice, and thus they are being irrational by causing themselves needless suffering. I could talk about how they would be better served by hardening themselves against all externals, and about how people in developing nations have it far worse so their concerns are unimportant. I could talk about how they are exemplifying a politically correct culture of crybullies that is just attention seeking and needs to get over it.

      2) Or instead I could listen to their story, I could offer my sympathy and condolences. I could empathize by imagining what it would be like to be in their position. I could seek to understand why this person is so affected by this event. And then perhaps after all that, I could ask them what is in their control to do now, or perhaps make a suggestion for how they might respond wisely and effectively to the external event.

      Which option is more virtuous? I would propose the latter is the clear winner for a practicing Stoic.

      Even if you feel like your friend is upset over nothing - for as Epictetus recommended to say to all externals, "this is nothing to me" - it is still more virtuous to empathize and at least *pretend* for the moment that externals really do cause people to feel bad.

      Then after some time, perhaps it would be useful and wise to offer a perspective that could help your friend to become more resourceful and respond more effectively.

      Even you completely disagree with a particular activist or an entire activist movement, justice is still one of the four central virtues of Stoicism. Seneca frequently talked in his letters about being human to people, even when they suffer "needlessly" from externals. Marcus Aurelius talked about loving all people as our brother (or sister), even those annoying people who bother you every day because they don't know good from evil.

      When we ignore justice, or diminish the experiences of those who suffer from unjust systems, we lose out on an opportunity to practice virtue with practical wisdom. I think the Stoic Sage is clearly the person who listens and empathizes first, and that's the type of person I aim to become.

    1. Palamedes 26th Nov, 2016 at 01:05

      Review your premiss: The concept of a 'just' of 'fair' world is very modern. The Spartans trained their youth that the world was NOT fair or just. No Stoic ever claimed our world to be either fair of just: they spoke of fortune and of doing what is right for you, the individual. Thus: if YOU think you or others are not being treated fairly or justly, you would do better to change you thinking than to attempt to change the world.

      1. E. O. Scott 26th Nov, 2016 at 01:23

        Palamedes: "if YOU think you or others are not being treated fairly or justly, you would do better to change you thinking than to attempt to change the world."

        But doesn't a the virtuous person always do both at once? Why must it be either or?

        Stoicism teaches that virtue is the only good-and surely you don't believe that it is virtuous to be an idle bystander to injustice!

    1. Brian Vuong 28th Nov, 2016 at 03:50

      Amazing post. Thank you for sharing

      It is indeed amazing how much more energy you have to work with when you aren't letting yourself play a victim to fate

      Great analogy with any treatment that is to cure you will cause discomfort at first

    [Dec 26, 2016] Can you be a Stoic and a political activist by Christopher Gill Stoicism Today

    Notable quotes:
    "... ' through him [Severus] I have come to understand Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dio, Brutus, and have grasped the idea of a state based on equality before the law, which is administered according to the principles of equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy, which values above all the liberty of its subjects' ..."
    "... Antipater, one of the Hellenistic heads of the Stoic school (in 159-129 BCE), argued that when we are doing business, for instance, selling a house, we should be open and honest about the faults of the property, even if we make less money ..."
    "... he maintained that anyone who becomes a tyrant (unjust ruler) puts himself outside the brotherhood of humanity or the 'body' of rational human agents. More controversially he maintained that this principle justified the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE ( On Duties ..."
    "... how we should have vote in the British referendum on our membership of the EU (June 2016) or the recent US presidential election (November 2016), but they certainly can provide ideas on which we can reflect in making such decisions. In particular, I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind or co-citizenship of the world has a special value for us in the present political climate. ..."
    "... I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind can help to place these questions in a broader perspective and can lead us to recognize that treating whole classes of people who differ from us in one of these ways as somehow less than human or wholly outside the boundaries of our ethical concern is morally unacceptable. ..."
    "... The middle path is where wisdom, courage, justice and moderation lead, where Stoic wisdom is based on the knowledge that we are all part of the One and the One is the living conscious Cosmos. ..."
    "... In accord with classical Stoicism, good governance is what is to be encouraged regardless of if it is based on a monarchy, a dictatorship, a senate of powerful individuals or some form of elected term limited dictatorship that we in the West tend to call democracy. After all democracy is not and never has been the be-all-to-end-all. ..."
    "... In accord with Stoic ideas, diplomacy will achieve much where 'regime change' will bring nothing but chaos. ..."
    "... The intellectual drive towards globalisation is leading to an opposite drive towards division and warfare whereby countries are breaking down into 'warring' clans and tribes be they based on territory, nationality, ethnic divisions or just opposing political parties. ..."
    "... We have need as Stoics not to just consider intellectualised principles, but to also consider the nature of the animal that we are and so to encourage the 'establishments' to govern us appropriately. ..."
    Dec 26, 2016 | exeter.ac.uk
    The second strand of ethical development centres on our relationship to other people. The Stoics believed that, alongside the natural motive of self-preservation, there is a second natural motive, namely to care for others of our kind. The instinct, found in all animals, including human beings, to love and care for our children, is a clear example of this motive. As we develop, human beings express this motive in more complex and rational ways, which also express a growing understanding of the virtues. This leads to two main kinds of outcome. One is social involvement (in family, communal, or political life), in a form that expresses understanding of the virtues. Another is the recognition that all human beings – because they are all capable of this process of rational, ethical development – are, in a sense, brothers and sisters to us, or fellow-members of a single world-community. Although different Stoic sources emphasize one or other of these outcomes, they are often seen as compatible or mutually supporting. Social or political involvement in a specific, local context is achieved in the best way (the way that expresses the virtues), if it is combined with recognition of the fundamental kinship or co-citizenship of all human beings as rational agents.

    This Stoic theory of ethical development makes sense, I think, of their thinking on political involvement. Our evidence for their ideas on this topic is rather limited, and, as with other topics, different Stoics seem to have interpreted these ideas in somewhat different ways. But there are some consistent themes.

    First of all, the Stoics thought that, other things being equal, we should get involved in community and political life in our specific or local context – unlike the Epicureans, for instance, who thought such involvement was likely to undermine our own peace of mind.

    Secondly, our involvement should be carried out in a way that also expressed and promoted our understanding of the virtues (wisdom, courage, justice, self-control).

    Thirdly, our involvement at a local level should also reflect the recognition that, although different kinds of people have different claims on us, all human beings as such have a kinship and in a sense co-citizenship with us. These principles have a direct bearing on the sense in which Stoicism encourages us to be political active; it also has a bearing on how far one can be a Stoic and also a political activist, which usually means challenging the established political order in some way. I'll give some examples of how the ancient Stoics put these ideas into practice and then discuss how they might help us to formulate our own approach now.

    First, were ancient Stoics active in politics and if so how? In looking at this question it's worth bearing in mind that, for much of the time that ancient Stoicism was most active (from the third century BCE to the second century CE), Greece and later Rome were ruled by kings or emperors, even though at other times, Athens had been a democracy and Rome a republic. It's also worth noting that, for the most part, and unlike some other ancient philosophies, Stoicism did not consistently recommend one form of government as the best one absolutely.

    Rather, they maintained that, whatever context we find ourselves in (with exceptions noted shortly), we should be involved politically in a way that is consistent with our specific situation in life, character and talents, and our ethical principles. In Hellenistic Greece (that is, third to first century BCE), the main options were either involvement in local or community politics or being a philosophical advisor to a king, and some Stoics played both these roles.

    Also, simply being a philosophical teacher in Athens was regarded as a kind of public or political role. It's worth remembering that this often meant teaching and arguing in a public place, such as the colonnade or Stoa after which the school was named. In Rome, a number of members of the political élite adopted Stoicism as their philosophy, and combined this with various forms of political involvement. These included being a leading politician and general under the Republic (Cato the younger, first century BCE), advising an emperor (Seneca, advisor to Nero, first century CE), and being the emperor himself (Marcus Aurelius, second century CE). At the other end of the social scale, Epictetus, an ex-slave (first-second century CE), took on the role of a philosophical teacher; he had no direct involvement in politics, but taught many students who went into political life. So, ancient Stoics seem overall to have practised what they preached, and to have become involved in politics to the extent that was feasible in their context and personal situation.

    How far did this involvement express distinctively Stoic values? And did it lead them to engage in political activ ism , that is, challenging political authority on the grounds of injustice? This is, in fact, a very well-marked feature of political life in the late Roman republic and Empire. It mainly took the form of exemplary gestures, designed to signal moral disapproval of a given political ruler or regime, typically a dictator or emperor. Although Stoicism did not reject sole rule as a constitutional form (or indeed any given constitutional form), they rejected tyrannical abuse of power, seeing it as an exercise of injustice in the political sphere. This is the common thread underlying a series of famous exemplary gestures.

    Cato committed suicide (in 46 BCE), in a very deliberate and obvious way, rather than submit to what he saw as Julius Caesar's illegitimate and unjust replacement of the Roman republic by dictatorship. A number of Roman senators, such as Helvidius Priscus and Thrasea Paetus (both first century CE), signalled their disapproval of the injustice of the emperor in power, for instance, Nero or Domitian. They did so by refusing to attend the senate, by remaining silent there, or walking out in protest – and these gestures were recognized as challenges to the regime and often led to exile or execution. (There was in fact a general expulsion of philosophers in 89 CE under Domitian, in response to this kind of attitude.)

    Seneca's attempt to retire from his role of Nero's adviser, when it was clear his attempt to control Nero's excesses had failed, was taken as a gesture of disapproval and led to his enforced suicide in 65 CE. These are clear cases where Stoic principle (the refusal to be complicit in an unjust political order) led certain Romans from being politically active to being political activists , using exemplary gestures in the way that Gandhi did successfully in his campaign of passive resistance to the British rule of India which he saw as unjust.

    This passage of Marcus Aurelius Meditations sums up the two features of Stoic political thought considered so far. ' through him [Severus] I have come to understand Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dio, Brutus, and have grasped the idea of a state based on equality before the law, which is administered according to the principles of equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy, which values above all the liberty of its subjects' (1.14).

    Marcus refers to a number of the well-known Stoic activists I have just discussed. Marcus also sums up his own credo as an emperor. Although not all Stoics would necessarily have shared this approach, it clearly represents a Stoic type of ideal, namely Marcus' attempt to play his role in life (as an emperor) in a way that was consistent with expressing the virtues in a political context.

    What about the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humanity or co-citizenship in the world? What role did this play in their political thinking? Sometimes it provides a kind of objective or broader framework for more localized political action, placing this in a broader moral framework: as in this quotation from Marcus. 'As Antoninus, my city and fatherland is Rome, as a human being, it is the universe. It is only what benefits these cities which is good for me' (6.44.6). At other times this idea is brought more directly into moral or political decision-making. Antipater, one of the Hellenistic heads of the Stoic school (in 159-129 BCE), argued that when we are doing business, for instance, selling a house, we should be open and honest about the faults of the property, even if we make less money , bearing in mind that all those involved are members of the brotherhood of humankind and deserve just treatment (Cicero, On Duties 3.52). Cicero (106-43 BCE), though not a Stoic himself, sometimes adopted Stoic principles; he maintained that anyone who becomes a tyrant (unjust ruler) puts himself outside the brotherhood of humanity or the 'body' of rational human agents. More controversially he maintained that this principle justified the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE ( On Duties 3.22-28, 32).

    These examples give us some idea how the idea of the brotherhood of humankind was used to support both political involvement and social and political activism in the sense I am considering here.

    Finally, what lessons can we learn from Stoic thinking and practice on this subject that might help us today? I would not want to suggest that Stoic political principles provide a straightforward answer to any given political question, for instance how we should have vote in the British referendum on our membership of the EU (June 2016) or the recent US presidential election (November 2016), but they certainly can provide ideas on which we can reflect in making such decisions. In particular, I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind or co-citizenship of the world has a special value for us in the present political climate.

    Many of the most intense debates today on both sides of the Atlantic centre on how we should respond to the claims of refugees from war-zones, how we should respond to people who want to become immigrants in our country, or how we should treat people whose religion is different from our own, or from that prevalent in our country.

    I think the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of humankind can help to place these questions in a broader perspective and can lead us to recognize that treating whole classes of people who differ from us in one of these ways as somehow less than human or wholly outside the boundaries of our ethical concern is morally unacceptable. More generally, I believe the Stoic approach of locating questions of political involvement and activism within the broader framework of human ethical development is a helpful one.

    I think there is considerable value in trying to view one's life as an on-going project of ethical progress, centred on bringing together our growing understanding of the virtues and of how to treat other people better; and that this view can help us to adopt a more thoughtful and constructive view of political engagement than is often held.

      1. Nigel Glassborow 12th Dec, 2016 at 08:08

        Old Rambo here is a prime example of where Stoicism without its faith can take us. Stoicism is neither 'left' nor 'right' of the political spectrum – it is for what is appropriate and such is mostly the middle path.

        The middle path is where wisdom, courage, justice and moderation lead, where Stoic wisdom is based on the knowledge that we are all part of the One and the One is the living conscious Cosmos.

        Take out the faith and the basis of what is virtue can be easily lost. Which is why if one is going to go down the path of Neo-Stoicism one needs to have a very strong basis for one's moral compass otherwise much of the Stoic practices and training can lead to the 'idiote' believing that they are 'perceiving' matters correctly and that they are making 'correct value judgments' when all the time their judgments are based only on what they erroneously believe is in their own individual best interest having not correctly considered what is in the interest of the whole.

        ... ... ...

        Nigel

        Reply
    • Nigel Glassborow 11th Dec, 2016 at 12:59

      To pull the debate together:

      • Christopher Gill says, " treating whole classes of people who differ from us in one of these ways as somehow less than human or wholly outside the boundaries of our ethical concern is morally unacceptable."
      • C. Florius Lupus says, "When people become a threat to us, to our kinship or to justice itself, then logic and reason demand that they have to be destroyed. It would not be stoic, if we let irrational affections and feelings prevent us from doing what is necessary, even if it requires harsh actions against other human beings."
      • Ron Peters says, "Rather, he's warning against the kind of blanket hatred of all Muslims that is being encouraged by many high-profile, thoughtless and cruel politicians in the UK, the EU and US. And that kind of hatred is simply unjust and insupportable by Stoics."

      As we can see this subject is mostly considered against what are intellectualised emotionally driven generalisations.

      Yes, hatred of whole groups of people is irrational and mostly fear based with the fear being driven by the natural 'tribalism' that is part of our make up where we are naturally careful, even wary of those who live amongst our 'tribe' but who are 'different' and/or make little or no effort to fit in.

      It is perceived that such 'outsiders' are a threat to our collective control over our 'tribe's territory'. Whether it be through warfare or invasion, in accordance with our nature as 'animals', group instincts start to kick in whereby our natural inclination to be sociable to our fellow kind (humanity) is overridden by the drive to see the 'invader' as not of our 'tribe' (less than human), whereby we start to pull the circle of universal inclusion back in so as to be able to allow the instincts that support us in self-defence to override the instincts that support us as 'social animals'.

      So we have need to be careful both regards the risk of triggering the 'they are not us' instincts through oration and regards letting situations get out of control whereby the 'they are not us' instinct is going to be triggered regardless – just by the sheer mass of any migration of 'others' into our 'national' territories, especially where a minority of the 'outsiders' are known to be a threat in the manner of 'wolves in sheep's clothing'.

      If the leaders and the thinkers are seen to be blinded to such considerations by fear of being accused of being xenophobic or racist then those who feel 'threatened' will feel even more insecure and fearful and so will surrender yet further to the defensive instincts of humankind – defensive instincts that have been built into us all by the processes of Nature, the very Nature that we as Stoics turn to for guidance as to what is appropriate.

      Politicians need to be allowed to look to the need to control any influx of 'outsiders' so as not to cause mass insecurity without being berated by those who have not looked to the wider picture. Western politicians also need to stop the crusade whereby they peddle their chosen system of government and so upset the balance in other counties so causing the mass migrations.

      In accord with classical Stoicism, good governance is what is to be encouraged regardless of if it is based on a monarchy, a dictatorship, a senate of powerful individuals or some form of elected term limited dictatorship that we in the West tend to call democracy. After all democracy is not and never has been the be-all-to-end-all.

      We also need to look to what we consider to be good governance. Some peoples, because of their culture and their history, need the 'strong leader' form of governance. We in the West have been gradually trying to remove all such 'strong leaders' from power – with disastrous effects. Better some issues of individual freedoms etcetera rather than whole counties being decimated due to the loss of the necessary 'tough' leadership that keeps warring tribes from tearing each other apart.

      In accord with Stoic ideas, diplomacy will achieve much where 'regime change' will bring nothing but chaos.

      Evolution ensures the 'survival of the fittest' through competition and diversity. Any drive to force what are 'tribal' animals to live totally as one people with no 'boundaries' will lead to great suffering.

      As with much in Stoicism, opposites are compatible. So there is a need to accept division as well as unity.

      The intellectual drive towards globalisation is leading to an opposite drive towards division and warfare whereby countries are breaking down into 'warring' clans and tribes be they based on territory, nationality, ethnic divisions or just opposing political parties.

      We have need as Stoics not to just consider intellectualised principles, but to also consider the nature of the animal that we are and so to encourage the 'establishments' to govern us appropriately.

      As Dutch says, "Getting from those largely self-regarding fundamental principles to the philosophy's broader ethical outlook as discussed here takes time and a fair bit of study."

      This is why the Stoic is taught to view themselves as a servant of the whole while also being an autonomous individual – where 'one' is both the whole and the individual.

      Nigel

    [Dec 26, 2016] Someone needs to buy Paul Krugman a one way ticket to Camden and have him hang around the devastated post-industrial hell scape his policies helped create.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Someone needs to buy Paul Krugman a one way ticket to Camden and have him hang around the devastated post-industrial hell scape his policies helped create. ..."
    "... Krugman should be temporarily barred from public discourse until he apologizes for pushing NAFTA and all the rest. Hundreds of millions of people were thrust into dire poverty because of the horrible free trade policies he and 99.9% of US economists pushed. ..."
    "... Extremes meet: extreme protectionism is close to extreme neoliberal globalization in the level of devastation, that can occur. ..."
    "... But please do not forget that Krugman is a neoliberal stooge and this is much worse then being protectionist. This is close to betrayal of the nation you live it, people you live with, if you ask me. ..."
    "... To me academic neoliberals after 2008 are real "deplorables". And should be treated as such, despite his intellect. There not much honor in being an intellectual prostitute of financial oligarchy that rules the country. ..."
    Dec 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Lincoln / McKinley tariffs...
    Economists are still oblivious to the devastation created by 40 years of free trade.

    Someone needs to buy Paul Krugman a one way ticket to Camden and have him hang around the devastated post-industrial hell scape his policies helped create.

    Krugman should be temporarily barred from public discourse until he apologizes for pushing NAFTA and all the rest. Hundreds of millions of people were thrust into dire poverty because of the horrible free trade policies he and 99.9% of US economists pushed.

    They have learned nothing and they have forgotten much.

    pgl -> Lincoln / McKinley tariffs ... , December 26, 2016 at 11:25 AM
    Oh yea - bring on the tariffs which will lead to a massive appreciation of the dollar. Which in turn will lead to massive reductions in US exports. I guess our new troll is short selling Boeing.
    likbez -> pgl, -1
    I tend to agree with you. Extremes meet: extreme protectionism is close to extreme neoliberal globalization in the level of devastation, that can occur.

    But please do not forget that Krugman is a neoliberal stooge and this is much worse then being protectionist. This is close to betrayal of the nation you live it, people you live with, if you ask me.

    To me academic neoliberals after 2008 are real "deplorables". And should be treated as such, despite his intellect. There not much honor in being an intellectual prostitute of financial oligarchy that rules the country.

    [Dec 26, 2016] Wolf Richter: New Census Data Shows Why the Job Market is Still "Terrible" (as Trump said)

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street ..."
    "... should head down ..."
    "... not ..."
    "... A population of less than 100 million in 1945 became more than 200 million in 1976 and over 320 million in 2016! Tripling your population in 70 years is a really bad idea. At this rate over a billion US citizens will exist in 2086. ..."
    "... 'Merika is the third most populous nation in the world followed by Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria. ..."
    Dec 26, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on December 26, 2016 by Lambert Strether Lambert here: I blame Putin.

    By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street

    Hardly any improvement for individuals since the Great Recession.

    When Donald Trump campaigned on how "terrible" the jobs situation was, while the Obama Administration touted the jobs growth since the employment bottom of the Great Recession in 2010, it sounded like they were talking about two entirely different economies at different ends of the world. But they weren't. Statistically speaking, they were both right.

    Since 2011, the US economy created 14.6 million "nonfarm payrolls" as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics – whether or not they're low-wage or less than full-time jobs. But for individuals, this job market, statistically speaking, looks almost as tough as it was during the Great Recession.

    Obviously, a lot of people have found jobs, and some of them have found good jobs since then, and there are a ton of "job openings." But the Census Bureau just told us why the job market is still, to use Trump's term, "terrible" when it released its population estimates for 2016, just before clocking out for the holidays.

    According to this report: From the beginning of 2010 – in terms of jobs, the darkest days of the Great Recession – through December 2016, the US "resident population" (not counting overseas-stationed military personnel) grew by 16 million people.

    But since the beginning of 2010 through November 2016, nonfarm payrolls grew by only 13.8 million.

    Note that in 2010, nonfarm payrolls declined by 900,000, after having plunged by over 5 million in 2009. The first year with growth in nonfarm payrolls was 2011.

    The chart below shows this peculiar relationship between the "resident population" of the US (top green line) and nonfarm payrolls (bottom blue line). Both rose. But the bottom line (nonfarm payrolls) didn't rise nearly enough.

    The difference between the two is the number of people that are not on nonfarm payrolls. They might be students, unemployed, retirees, or working in a job that the "nonfarm payrolls" do not capture (more on that in a moment). This is reflected by the red line, whose slope should head down in an economy where jobs grow faster than the population:

    For the first five years of this seven-year period, the number of people not occupying a job as captured by nonfarm payroll data, kept growing (red numbers), even as the touted jobs growth was kicking in. Why? Because population growth outpaced jobs growth over the five years from 2010 through 2014.

    Only in 2015 and 2016 has growth in "nonfarm payrolls" edged past population growth. Those were the only two years since the Great Recession when people on an individual basis actually had improving chances of getting a job.

    The nonfarm payrolls data is not a complete measure of the US jobs situation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , it excludes "proprietors, the unincorporated self-employed, unpaid volunteer or family employees, farm employees, and domestic employees. It also excludes military personnel, and employees of a big part of the intelligence community, including the CIA, the NSA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

    There are many folks who'd contend that this population growth is mostly young people who are not yet in the work force and old people who refuse to die, and that for working age people (say, 18 to 65), the jobs growth has been phenomenal.

    But that's not the case. According to the Census report, in 2016, the percentage of people 18 and over grew to 249.5 million, making up 77.2% of the total US population, up from 76.8% in 2015 (247.3 million), and up from 76.2% in 2010! The millennials have moved into adulthood, elbowing each other while scrambling for jobs.

    And boomers are not retiring from the working life. Why should they. Many of them are fit and don't want to sit around bored, and many of them have to work because they can't afford to quit working, even if they would like to. So the number of workers 65+ has soared 45% since the end of 2009, from 6.2 million to 9.0 million. So now there are nearly 3 million more of them on nonfarm payrolls than there had been in 2010:

    The natural growth rate of the population (births minus deaths) has been declining for years. In 2016, it dropped to 0.38%, a new low. The growth rate from immigration, which fluctuates somewhat with the economy, edged down to 0.31%. So total population growth dropped to a new low of 0.69%. Of note: the natural growth rate via births won't impact the labor force until the babies are young adults. But the vast majority of new immigrants are of working age, and they add to the labor force immediately.

    So the number of jobs since 2010 has risen by 13.8 million – which the economists are endlessly touting, along with the even better sounding 14.8 million since 2011. But the population has increased by 16 million since 2010. Most of them are people of working age, jostling for position to grab one of these jobs that would put them on the nonfarm payrolls. And this is why the job market for many individuals is "terrible," as Trump said.

    But those might have been the good times. Read Red Flag on Recession Crops up in NY Fed's Coincident Economic Index, first time since November 2009

    0 0 0 0 1 1 This entry was posted in Dubious statistics , Guest Post , Politics , The destruction of the middle class on December 26, 2016 by Lambert Strether . About Lambert Strether

    Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com KK , December 26, 2016 at 5:55 am

    A population of less than 100 million in 1945 became more than 200 million in 1976 and over 320 million in 2016! Tripling your population in 70 years is a really bad idea. At this rate over a billion US citizens will exist in 2086. There are resource limits to growth. And a car, house, vacation, pension, healthcare,and large family will cease to be possible for all or even the majority. Study how the average Indian or Chinese family live and that albeit with a few bits of technology is the future.

    Arizona Slim , December 26, 2016 at 6:53 am

    True.

    But the pro-natalists don't want to hear any discussion of overpopulation. Because of all those inconvenient facts.

    MtnLife , December 26, 2016 at 8:41 am

    A lot of "pro-natalists" are religious fundamentalists who do actually see the population/resource crunch coming for which they are trying to stack the numbers on their team.

    TG , December 26, 2016 at 9:54 am

    Good points!

    But I think most of the "pro-natalists" are rich people who, more than anything else, want cheap labor. And there is no better way to get cheap labor than to force population growth ever higher.

    We are not importing foreign workers because the natives refuse to breed 'enough' children. The natives (of all races) are limiting their family sizes because they are worried about having more children than they can support, just like they did in the great depression. Left to themselves, that would start to tighten up the labor market and produce powerful forces raising wages. But not if we keep forcing ever more foreign workers into the labor pool. Which is of course the whole idea.

    Cheap labor uber alles!

    jefemt , December 26, 2016 at 10:26 am

    'Merika is the third most populous nation in the world followed by Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria. Seems to be a mind-jarring fat to most when I bring it up .

    Ed , December 26, 2016 at 11:10 am

    Alot of poorer countries in the "developing world" ensured they stayed poorer by letting their population growth get out of control. A big, if not the main, reason for China's economic success since 1975 was in getting its population growth under control, that is a big reason for the contrast between China and India.

    Unlike, for example, Japan, the rulers of the United States decided to emulate the developing countries that let their populations expand too much, importing people from the developing world to get the job done.

    sd , December 26, 2016 at 6:29 am

    Interesting about excluding domestic employees when it would appear there's been a huge surge in nannies as well as home aides since the 1990s.

    Larry , December 26, 2016 at 7:35 am

    Very true, though most of these positions are by definition crappy jobs.

    McWatt , December 26, 2016 at 8:44 am

    The key to saving the planet is dealing with population growth.

    diptherio , December 26, 2016 at 10:02 am

    The planet can take care of itself. I think you mean "the key to saving ourselves." Also I think consumption patterns of the "global North" are more of a problem than simply population.

    George Phillies , December 26, 2016 at 8:46 am

    That resident population number appears to include under-16-year-olds who are in most cases not looking for employment. I have no idea how that number has changed. Ditto, it includes the voluntarily retired.

    Jack , December 26, 2016 at 9:10 am

    This article appears to be another argument for immigration. I am very much a progressive liberal, excepting the standard progressive immigration stance that more is better and that illegal immigration is o.k.

    What would our job market look like without immigrants, even just legal immigrants?

    Between 1970 and 2014, the percentage of foreign-born workers in the civilian labor force more than tripled, from 5 percent to 17 percent. In 2014 immigrants accounted for 17% of the work force; 27.6 million out of 159.5 million. What is that number was cut in half?

    The number of US unemployed peaked in 2009 at 15,352,000. Today its 7,400,000 (if you believe the official numbers).

    That means if we had cut immigration by just 30% there would be 0 unemployment. Of course this is a simplistic analysis but it is interesting to compare the two. And of course with near 0 unemployment wages would be pushed up.

    No wonder the powers that be keep yammering about immigration but never do anything about it. More people in the country willing to work for less money means increased profits for the rich.

    diptherio , December 26, 2016 at 10:13 am

    Did you not read the article or simply fail to grasp it? Richter points out that the population has grown faster than the number of jobs and also that immigration is the largest part of that pop. growth (especially the adult population). He nowhere makes an argument for more illegal (or legal) immigration.

    On immigration, how about we ask ourselves why it is that so many people are immigrating here and what we might do to discourage them? For instance, a kind of Marshall Plan for Central and South America would probably go a long way, as most people prefer to stay where they are from, if they can make a reasonable life there.

    Pat , December 26, 2016 at 10:30 am

    Call me crazy, but considering that the Clinton campaign had access to a certain portion of this information, their inability to understand the appeal of Sanders and Trump is clearly delusional.

    Certainly the latest data just came out, but some of this about the period until 2014 and even a little after had to be out there. They had to know that until recently there really were not enough jobs to go around, and that there was a good chance that any gains in the last year or so were not enough to remotely cover the deficit up to that point. I get they might not have had the information that beyond not being enough most of the jobs created were part time and benefit free. That doesn't explain not seeing and getting that most Americans have seen little or no recovery.

    It appears the DLC Democratic Party must be similar to that narrative driven NY Times environment, you only survive if you embrace the narrative even as the success of the enterprise you are apart loses more and more.

    Art Eclectic , December 26, 2016 at 10:46 am

    "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

    ― Upton Sinclair

    All career elected politicians on both sides of the aisle are paid to not understand the jobs problem by donors with very large wallets who do not want the jobs problem solved. Follow the money. Who wants cheap labor and what's the best way to get it if you can't offshore operations?

    We cannot rebuild the DLC or any leftist party until we figure out how to fund campaigns without donor money that is interested in maintaining the status quo.

    cocomaan , December 26, 2016 at 10:58 am

    You can use data points ("14 million jobs created!!!!") to push whatever narrative you want.

    Data driven decision making really is just excuse making by outsourcing your choices to endless computer-created pages of data.

    Ed , December 26, 2016 at 11:16 am

    I will comment elsewhere, but I keep on hearing arguments on the lines that if only Hillary Clinton had understood the problems of the white working class she would have won or something along these lines.

    The Trump and Sanders campaigns were protest vehicles -- and there were precursors in previous elections -- over how the country has been run for the past several decades. Since 1981 either the Clintons or the Bushes have either lived in the White House or held really high ranking positions in the US government.

    Members of neither family can credibly run against globalization (or "invade the world/ invite the world" as Steve Sailer puts it) or really other major policies pursued by the US government since the 1980s. They own it.

    They have to run on a globalization platform. Hillary Clinton in fact did surprisingly well at the polls, considering this.

    Enquiring Mind , December 26, 2016 at 11:13 am

    There can be types of verbal Marshall Plans, too. Some percentage of the US transient population has self-deported already, although likely not enough to upset the temporary Obama Rush of 1,500+ per day streaming in to claim amnesty prior to January 20th. Announce that undocumented entrants will be turned back, instead of throwing benefits at them, and that will help stem the human tide.

    Supplement that with specific policies to aid and abet Mexico and Central American governments in their internal and border control efforts to stop the human tide further south. Publicize those efforts and stick to them.

    Both policies would change the dynamic and would allow some degree of US control over its own population growth. Then put in place specific, actionable steps to identify and facilitate thoughtful population growth to meet US needs and to allow for legitimate humanitarian relief instead of bleeding heart efforts that externalized ill-considered policies.

    [Dec 26, 2016] IBM Promises To Hire 25,000 Americans As Tech Executives Set To Meet Trump

    Dec 26, 2016 | politics.slashdot.org
    (reuters.com) 241 Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @10:30PM from the lick-and-a-promise dept. IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty has pledged to "hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States " as she and other technology executives prepared to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday. Reuters reports: IBM had nearly 378,000 employees at the end of 2015, according to the company's annual report. While the firm does not break out staff numbers by country, a review of government filings suggests IBM's U.S. workforce declined in each of the five years through 2015. When asked why IBM planned to increase its U.S. workforce after those job cuts, company spokesman Ian Colley said in an email that Rometty had laid out the reasons in her USA Today piece. Her article did not acknowledge that IBM had cut its U.S. workforce, although it called on Congress to quickly update the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act that governs federal support for vocational education. "We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving," she said. "As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills -- which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting." She said IBM intended to invest $1 billion in the training and development of U.S. employees over the next four years. Pratt declined to say if that represented an increase over spending in the prior four years.

    [Dec 25, 2016] Quotations from major Stoic philosophers

    Epictetus:

    Marcus Aurelius:

    Seneca the Younger:

    [Dec 23, 2016] The Case for Protecting Infant Industries

    Notable quotes:
    "... The fact remains, however, that every single developed country got there by using protectionist policies to nurture the develop local industries. Protectionism in developed countries does have strongly negative consequences, but it is beneficial for developing economies. ..."
    "... You are exactly right about Japan and I lived through that period. Please name one advanced economy which did not rely on protectionist laws to support domestic industries. All of the European industrial countries did it. The US did it. Japan and Korea did it. China is currently doing it and India has done it. ..."
    "... Nobody cared about US labor or about hollowing out the US economy. Krugman frequently noted that the benefits to investors and 'strategic' considerations for free trade were more important that job losses. ..."
    "... This extra demand for dollars as a commodity is what drives the price of the dollar higher, leading to the strategic benefits and economic hollowing out that I noted above. ..."
    "... There really is no "post-industrialization era", no matter what fantasies the FIRE sector wants to sell. To the extent there is, the existing global trade agreements (including the WTO, World Bank, IMF, and related organization) accomplish that as well by privileging the position of first world capital. ..."
    "... "Over the long haul, clearly automation's been much more important - it's not even close," said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change. No candidate talked much about automation on the campaign trail. Technology is not as convenient a villain as China or Mexico, there is no clear way to stop it, and many of the technology companies are in the United States and benefit the country in many ways. ..."
    "... Globalization is clearly responsible for some of the job losses, particularly trade with China during the 2000s, which led to the rapid loss of 2 million to 2.4 million net jobs, according to research by economists including Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of M.I.T. ..."
    "... People who work in parts of the country most affected by imports generally have greater unemployment and reduced income for the rest of their lives, Mr. Autor found in a paper published in January. Still, over time, automation has had a far bigger effect than globalization, and would have eventually eliminated those jobs anyway, he said in an interview. "Some of it is globalization, but a lot of it is we require many fewer workers to do the same amount of work," he said. "Workers are basically supervisors of machines." ..."
    "... Clarification of 3: that is, infant industry protection as traditionally done, i.e. "picking winners", won't help. What would help is structural changes that make things relatively easier for small enterprises and relatively harder for large ones. ..."
    "... Making direct lobbying of state and federal politicians by industry groups and companies a crime punishable by 110% taxation of net income on all the participants would be a start. ..."
    "... "Over time, automation has generally had a happy ending: As it has displaced jobs, it has created new ones. But some experts are beginning to worry that this time could be different. Even as the economy has improved, jobs and wages for a large segment of workers - particularly men without college degrees doing manual labor - have not recovered." ..."
    "... So why have manufacturing jobs plummeted since 2000? One answer is that the current account deficit is the wrong figure, since it also includes our surplus in trade in services. If you just look at goods, the deficit is closer to 4.2% of GDP. ..."
    "... trade interacts with automation. Not only do we lose jobs in manufacturing to automation, but trade leads us to re-orient our production toward goods that use relatively less labor (tech, aircraft, chemicals, farm produces, etc.), while we import goods like clothing, furniture and autos. ..."
    "... There are industries that are closely connected with the sovereignty of the country. That's what neoliberals tend to ignore as they, being closet Trotskyites ("Financial oligarchy of all countries unite!" instead of "Proletarian of all countries unite!" ;-) do not value sovereignty and are hell bent on the Permanent Neoliberal Revolution to bring other countries into neoliberal fold (in the form of color revolutions, or for smaller countries, direct invasions like in Iraq and Libya ). ..."
    "... Neoliberal commenters here demonstrate complete detachment from the fact that like war is an extension of politics, while politics is an extension of economics. For example, denying imports can and is often used for political pressure. ..."
    "... Now Trump want to play this game selectively designating China as "evil empire" and providing a carrot for Russia. Will it works, or Russia can be wiser then donkeys, I do not know. ..."
    "... The US propagandists usually call counties on which they impose sanction authoritarian dictatorships to make such actions more politically correct, but the fact remains: The USA as a global hegemon enjoys using economic pressure to crush dissidents and put vassals in line. ..."
    "... Neoliberalism as a social system is past it pinnacle and that creates some problems for the USA as the central player in the neoliberal world. The triumphal march of neoliberalism over the globe ended almost a decade ago. ..."
    Dec 23, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Noah Smith:
    The Case for Protecting Infant Industries : I must say, it's been almost breathtaking to see how fast the acceptable terms of debate have shifted on the subject of trade. Thanks partly to President-elect Donald Trump's populism and partly to academic research showing that the costs of free trade could be higher than anyone predicted, economics commentators are now happy to lambast the entire idea of trade. I don't want to do that -- I think a nuanced middle ground is best. But I do think it's worth reevaluating one idea that the era of economic dogmatism had seemingly consigned to the junk pile -- the notion of infant-industry protectionism. ...
    DrDick -> pgl...

    The fact remains, however, that every single developed country got there by using protectionist policies to nurture the develop local industries. Protectionism in developed countries does have strongly negative consequences, but it is beneficial for developing economies.

    DrDick -> sanjait... , December 22, 2016 at 04:52 PM
    You are exactly right about Japan and I lived through that period. Please name one advanced economy which did not rely on protectionist laws to support domestic industries. All of the European industrial countries did it. The US did it. Japan and Korea did it. China is currently doing it and India has done it.
    JohnH -> pgl... , -1
    Japan and other developed countries took advantage of the strong dollar/reserve currency, which provided their industries de facto protection from US exports along with a price umbrella that allowed them export by undercutting prices on US domestic products. The strong dollar was viewed as a strategic benefit to the US, since it allowed former rivals to develop their economies while making them dependent on the US consumer market, the largest in the world. The strong dollar also allowed the US to establish bases and fight foreign wars on the cheap, while allowing Wall Street to buy foreign economies' crown jewels on the cheap.

    Nobody cared about US labor or about hollowing out the US economy. Krugman frequently noted that the benefits to investors and 'strategic' considerations for free trade were more important that job losses.

    JohnH -> anne... , December 22, 2016 at 05:06 PM
    Even pgl's guy, Milton Friedman, recognized that "overseas demand for dollars allows the United States to maintain persistent trade deficits without causing the value of the currency to depreciate or the flow of trade to re-adjust."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_use_of_the_U.S._dollar

    This extra demand for dollars as a commodity is what drives the price of the dollar higher, leading to the strategic benefits and economic hollowing out that I noted above.

    John San Vant -> JohnH... , -1
    That is because you get a persistent trade surplus in services, which offsets the "Goods" trade deficit. The currency depreciated in the 2000's because said surplus in services began to decline creating a real trade deficit.
    DrDick -> Mike Sparrow... , December 22, 2016 at 04:57 PM
    "What about the post-industrialization era?"

    There really is no "post-industrialization era", no matter what fantasies the FIRE sector wants to sell. To the extent there is, the existing global trade agreements (including the WTO, World Bank, IMF, and related organization) accomplish that as well by privileging the position of first world capital.

    anne -> DrDick... , -1
    There really is no "post-industrialization era", no matter what fantasies the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sectors want to sell....

    [ Interesting assertion. Do develop this further. ]

    Greg : , -1
    The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It's Automation.
    ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html?ref=economy&_r=0 )

    1. I'm moderately surprised that this piece hasn't shown up in Links.

    2. The Lump of Labor Fallacy is exposed as a fallacy - Sandwichman has been right all along.

    3. Infant industry protection won't help in this environment

    anne -> Greg... , December 22, 2016 at 01:08 PM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html

    December 21, 2016

    The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It's Automation.

    By Claire Cain Miller

    The first job that Sherry Johnson, 56, lost to automation was at the local newspaper in Marietta, Ga., where she fed paper into the printing machines and laid out pages. Later, she watched machines learn to do her jobs on a factory floor making breathing machines, and in inventory and filing.

    "It actually kind of ticked me off because it's like, How are we supposed to make a living?" she said. She took a computer class at Goodwill, but it was too little too late. "The 20- and 30-year-olds are more up to date on that stuff than we are because we didn't have that when we were growing up," said Ms. Johnson, who is now on disability and lives in a housing project in Jefferson City, Tenn.

    Donald J. Trump told workers like Ms. Johnson that he would bring back their jobs by clamping down on trade, offshoring and immigration. But economists say the bigger threat to their jobs has been something else: automation.

    "Over the long haul, clearly automation's been much more important - it's not even close," said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change. No candidate talked much about automation on the campaign trail. Technology is not as convenient a villain as China or Mexico, there is no clear way to stop it, and many of the technology companies are in the United States and benefit the country in many ways.

    Mr. Trump told a group of tech company leaders last Wednesday: "We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. Anything we can do to help this go along, we're going to be there for you."

    Andrew F. Puzder, Mr. Trump's pick for labor secretary and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, extolled the virtues of robot employees over the human kind in an interview with Business Insider in March. "They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case," he said.

    Globalization is clearly responsible for some of the job losses, particularly trade with China during the 2000s, which led to the rapid loss of 2 million to 2.4 million net jobs, according to research by economists including Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of M.I.T.

    People who work in parts of the country most affected by imports generally have greater unemployment and reduced income for the rest of their lives, Mr. Autor found in a paper published in January. Still, over time, automation has had a far bigger effect than globalization, and would have eventually eliminated those jobs anyway, he said in an interview. "Some of it is globalization, but a lot of it is we require many fewer workers to do the same amount of work," he said. "Workers are basically supervisors of machines."

    When Greg Hayes, the chief executive of United Technologies, agreed to invest $16 million in one of its Carrier factories as part of a Trump deal to keep some jobs in Indiana instead of moving them to Mexico, he said the money would go toward automation.

    "What that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs," he said on CNBC....

    Greg -> Greg... , December 22, 2016 at 01:08 PM
    Clarification of 3: that is, infant industry protection as traditionally done, i.e. "picking winners", won't help. What would help is structural changes that make things relatively easier for small enterprises and relatively harder for large ones.

    Making direct lobbying of state and federal politicians by industry groups and companies a crime punishable by 110% taxation of net income on all the participants would be a start.

    anne -> Greg... , December 22, 2016 at 01:09 PM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/what-s-different-about-stagnating-wages-for-workers-without-college-degrees

    December 21, 2016

    What's Different About Stagnating Wages for Workers Without College Degrees

    There seems to be a great effort to convince people that the displacement due to the trade deficit over the last fifteen years didn't really happen. The New York Times contributed to this effort with a piece * telling readers that over the long-run job loss has been primarily due to automation not trade.

    While the impact of automation over a long enough period of time certainly swamps the impact of trade, over the last 20 years there is little doubt that the impact of the exploding trade deficit has had more of an impact on employment. To make this one as simple as possible, we currently have a trade deficit of roughly $460 billion (@ 2.6 percent of GDP). Suppose we had balanced trade instead, making up this gap with increased manufacturing output.

    Does the NYT want to tell us that we could increase our output of manufactured goods by $460 billion, or just under 30 percent, without employing more workers in manufacturing? That would be pretty impressive. We currently employ more than 12 million workers in manufacturing, if moving to balanced trade increase employment by just 15 percent we would be talking about 1.8 million jobs. That is not trivial.

    But this is not the only part of the story that is strange. We are getting hyped up fears over automation even at a time when productivity growth (i.e. automation) has slowed to a crawl, averaging just 1.0 percent annually over the last decade. The NYT tells readers:

    "Over time, automation has generally had a happy ending: As it has displaced jobs, it has created new ones. But some experts are beginning to worry that this time could be different. Even as the economy has improved, jobs and wages for a large segment of workers - particularly men without college degrees doing manual labor - have not recovered."

    Hmmm, this time could be different? How so? The average hourly wage of men with just a high school degree was 13 percent less in 2000 than in 1973. ** For workers with some college it was down by more than 2.0 percent. In fact, stagnating wages for men without college degrees is not something new and different, it has been going on for more than forty years. Hasn't this news gotten to the NYT yet?

    * http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html

    ** http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-table-4-15-hourly-wages-men-education/

    -- Dean Baker

    Peter K. : , -1
    http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/inequality-technology-globalization-and-the-false-assumptions-that-sustain-current-inequities/

    Inequality, technology, globalization, and the false assumptions that sustain current inequities

    by Jared Bernstein

    December 22nd, 2016 at 3:24 pm

    Here's a great interview* with inequality scholar Branko Milanovic wherein he brings a much-needed historical and international perspective to the debate (h/t: C. Marr). Many of Branko's points are familiar to my readers: yes, increased trade has upsides, for both advanced and emerging economies. But it's not hard to find significant swaths hurt by globalization, particularly workers in rich economies who've been placed into competition with those in poorer countries. The fact that little has been done to help them is one reason for president-elect Trump.

    As Milanovic puts it:

    "The problems with globalization arise from the fact that gains from it are not (and can never be) evenly distributed. There would be always those who gain less than some others, or those who lose even in absolute terms. But to whom can they "appeal" for redress? Only to their national governments because this is how the world is politically organized. Thus national governments have to engage in "mop up" operations to fix the negative effects of globalization. And this they have not done well, led as they were by the belief that the trickle-down economics will take care of it. We know it did not."

    But I'd like to focus on a related point from Branko's interview, one that gets less attention: the question of whether it was really exposure to global trade or to labor-saving technology that is most responsible for displacing workers. What's the real problem here: is it the trade deficit or the robots?

    Branko cogently argues that "both technological change and economic polices responded to globalization. The nature of recent technological progress would have been different if you could not employ labor 10,000 miles away from your home base." Their interaction makes their relative contributions hard to pull apart.

    I'd argue that the rise of trade with China, from the 1990s to the 2007 crash, played a significant role in moving US manufacturing employment from its steady average of around 17 million factory jobs from around 1970 to 2000, to an average today that's about 5 million less (see figure below; of course, manufacturing employment was falling as a share of total jobs over this entire period).

    ....

    * https://newrepublic.com/article/139432/understand-2016s-politics-look-winners-losers-globalization

    Peter K. : , -1
    market monetarist Scott Sumner makes a good point about the post-war years.

    http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=32214

    Do current account deficits cost jobs

    Over at Econlog I have a post that suggests the answer is no, CA deficits do not cost jobs.

    But suppose I'm wrong, and suppose they do cost jobs. In that case, trade has been a major net contributor to American jobs during the 21st century, as our deficit was about 4% of GDP during the 2000 tech boom, and as large as 6% of GDP during the 2006 housing boom. Today it is only 2.6% of GDP. So if you really believe that rising trade deficits cost jobs, you'd be forced to believe that the shrinking deficits since 2000 have created jobs.

    So why have manufacturing jobs plummeted since 2000? One answer is that the current account deficit is the wrong figure, since it also includes our surplus in trade in services. If you just look at goods, the deficit is closer to 4.2% of GDP.

    But even that doesn't really explain very much, because it's slightly lower than the 4.35% of GDP trade deficit in goods back in 2000. So again, the big loss of manufacturing jobs is something of a mystery. Yes, we import more goods than we used to, but exports of goods have risen at about the same rate since 2000. So why does it seem like trade has devastated our manufacturing sector?

    Perhaps because trade interacts with automation. Not only do we lose jobs in manufacturing to automation, but trade leads us to re-orient our production toward goods that use relatively less labor (tech, aircraft, chemicals, farm produces, etc.), while we import goods like clothing, furniture and autos.

    So trade and automation are both parts of a bigger trend, Schumpeterian creative destruction, which is transforming big areas of our economy. It's especially painful as during the earlier period of automation (say 1950-2000) the physical output of goods was still rising fast. So the blow of automation was partly cushioned by a rise in output. (Although not in the coal and steel industries!) Since 2000, however, we've seen slower growth in physical output for a number of reasons, including slower workforce growth, a shift to a service economy, and a home building recession (which normally absorbs manufactured goods like home appliances, carpet, etc.) We are producing more goods than ever, but with dramatically fewer workers.

    Update: Steve Cicala sent me a very interesting piece on coal that he had published in Forbes. Ironically, environmental regulations actually helped West Virginia miners, by forcing utilities to install scrubbers that cleaned up emissions from the dirtier West Virginia coal. (Wyoming coal has less sulfur.) He also discusses the issue of competition from natural gas.

    If Economists hadn't ignored US and World Economic History they would have had a clue : , December 22, 2016 at 07:53 PM
    The historical record is totally unambiguous. Protectionism always leads to wealth and industrial development. Free trade leads you to the third world. This was true four hundred years ago with mercantilist England and the navigation acts; it was true with Lincoln's tariffs in the 1860's, it was true of East Asia post 1945.

    Economists better abandon silly free trade if they want to have any credibility and not be seen as quacks.

    Peter K. : , -1
    http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-tariffs/

    Trump team floats a 10% tariff on imports

    By John King and Jeremy Diamond, CNN

    Updated 3:57 PM ET, Thu December 22, 2016

    Washington (CNN)President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is discussing a proposal to impose tariffs as high as 10% on imports, according to multiple sources.

    A senior Trump transition official said Thursday the team is mulling up to a 10% tariff aimed at spurring US manufacturing, which could be implemented via executive action or as part of a sweeping tax reform package they would push through Congress.

    Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus floated a 5% tariff on imports in meetings with key Washington players last week, according to two sources who represent business interests in Washington. But the senior transition official who spoke to CNN Thursday on the condition of anonymity said the higher figure is now in play.

    Such a move would deliver on Trump's "America First" campaign theme, but risks drawing the US into a trade war with other countries and driving up the cost of consumer goods in the US. And it's causing alarm among business interests and the pro-trade Republican establishment.

    The senior transition official said the transition team is beginning to find "common ground" with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, pointing in particular to the border adjustment tax measure included in House Republicans' "Better Way" tax reform proposal, which would disincentivize imports through tax policy.

    Aides to Ryan and Brady declined to say they had "common ground" with Trump, but acknowledged they are in deep discussions with transition staffers on the issue.

    Curbing free trade was a central element of Trump's campaign. He promised to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. He also vowed to take a tougher line against other international trading partners, almost always speaking harshly of China but often including traditional US allies such as Japan in his complaint that American workers get the short end of the stick under current trade practices.

    Gulf with GOP establishment

    It is an area where there is a huge gulf between Trump's stated positions and traditional GOP orthodoxy. Business groups and GOP establishment figures -- including Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- have been hoping the transition from the campaign to governing would bring a different approach.

    Ryan did signal in a CNBC interview earlier this month that Trump's goals of spurring US manufacturing could be accomplished through "comprehensive tax reform."

    "I'll tell him what I've been saying all along, which is we can get at what he's trying to get at better through comprehensive tax reform," Ryan said.

    The pro-business GOP establishment says the new Trump administration could make clear it would withdraw from NAFTA unless Canada and Mexico entered new talks to modernize the agreement to reflect today's economy. That would allow Trump to say he kept a promise to make the agreement fairer to American workers without starting a trade war and exacerbating tensions with America's neighbors and vital economic partners.

    But there remain establishment jitters that Trump, who views his tough trade message as critical to his election victory, will look for ways to make an early statement that he is serious about reshaping the trade playing field.

    And when Priebus told key Washington players that the transition is mulling a 5% tariff on imports, the reaction was one of fierce opposition, according to two sources who represent business interests in Washington and spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations with the Trump team were confidential.

    Priebus, the sources said, was warned such a move could start trade wars, anger allies, and also hurt the new administration's effort to boost the rate of economic growth right out of the gate.

    Role of Wilbur Ross

    One of the sources said he viewed the idea as a trial balloon when first raised, and considered it dead on arrival given the strong reaction in the business community -- and the known opposition to such protectionist ideas among the GOP congressional leadership.

    But this source voiced new alarm Tuesday after being told by allies within the Trump transition that defending new tariffs was part of the confirmation "murder board" practice of Wilbur Ross, the President-elect's choice for commerce secretary.

    At least one business community organization is worried enough about the prospect of the tariff it already has prepared talking points, obtained by CNN Wednesday night.

    "This $100 billion tax on American consumers and industry would impose heavy costs on the US economy, particularly for the manufacturing sector and American workers, with highly negative political repercussions," according to the talking points. "Rather than using a trade policy sledgehammer that would inflict serious collateral damage, the Trump administration should use the scalpel of US trade remedy law to achieve its goals."

    The talking points also claim the tariffs would lead to American job loss and result in a tax to consumers, both of which would harm the US economy.

    Trump aides have signaled that Ross is likely to be a more influential player in trade negotiations than recent Commerce secretaries. Given that, the aides know his confirmation hearings are likely to include tough questioning -- from both Democrats and Republicans -- about Trump's trade-related campaign promises.

    "The way it was cast to me was that (Trump) and Ross are all over it," said one source. "It is serious."

    The second source was less certain about whether the tariff idea was serious or just part of a vigorous debate about policy options. But this source said the unpredictability of Trump and his team had the business interests nervous.

    The business lobbying community is confident the GOP leadership would push back on any legislative effort to impose tariffs, which organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufactures and others, including groups representing farmers, believe would lead to retaliation against US industries heavily dependent on exports.

    But the sources aligned with those interests told CNN the conversation within the Trump transition includes using executive authority allowed under existing trade laws. Different trade laws enacted over the course of the past century allow the president to impose tariffs if he issues a determination the United States is being subjected to unfair trade practices or faces an economic or national security threat because of trade practices.

    likbez : , December 23, 2016 at 08:25 AM
    There are industries that are closely connected with the sovereignty of the country. That's what neoliberals tend to ignore as they, being closet Trotskyites ("Financial oligarchy of all countries unite!" instead of "Proletarian of all countries unite!" ;-) do not value sovereignty and are hell bent on the Permanent Neoliberal Revolution to bring other countries into neoliberal fold (in the form of color revolutions, or for smaller countries, direct invasions like in Iraq and Libya ).

    For example, if you depends of chips produced outside the country for your military or space exploration, then sabotage is possible (or just pure fraud -- selling regular ships instead of special tolerant to cosmic radiation or harsh conditions variant; actually can be done with the support of internal neoliberal fifth column).

    The same is probably true for cars and auto engines. If you do not produce domestically a variety at least some domestic brans of cars and trucks, your military trucks and engines will be foreign and that will cost you tremendous amount of money and you might depend for spare parts on you future adversary. Also such goods are overprices to the heaven. KAS is a clear example of this as they burn their money in the war with Yemen as there is no tomorrow making the US MIC really happy.

    So large countries with say over 100 million people probably need to think twice before jumping into neoliberal globalization bandwagon and relying in imports for strategically important industries.

    Neoliberal commenters here demonstrate complete detachment from the fact that like war is an extension of politics, while politics is an extension of economics. For example, denying imports can and is often used for political pressure.

    That was one of factors that doomed the USSR. Not that the system has any chance -- it was doomed after 1945 as did not provide for higher productivity then advanced capitalist economies.

    But this just demonstrates the power of the US sanctions mechanism. Economic sanctions works and works really well. The target country is essentially put against the ropes and if you unprepared you can be knocked down.

    For example now there are sanctions against Russia that deny them advanced oil exploration equipment. And oil is an important source of Russia export revenue. So the effect of those narrow prohibitions multiples by factor of ten by denying Russia export revenue.

    That's how an alliance between Russia and China was forged by Obama administration. because China does produce some of this equipment now. And Russia paid dearly for that signing huge multi-year deals with China on favorable for China terms.

    Now Trump want to play this game selectively designating China as "evil empire" and providing a carrot for Russia. Will it works, or Russia can be wiser then donkeys, I do not know.

    And look what countries are on the USA economic sanctions list: many entries are countries that are somewhat less excited about the creation of the global neoliberal empire led by the USA. KAS and Gulf monarchies are not on the list. So much about "spreading democracy".

    The US propagandists usually call counties on which they impose sanction authoritarian dictatorships to make such actions more politically correct, but the fact remains: The USA as a global hegemon enjoys using economic pressure to crush dissidents and put vassals in line.

    The problem with tariffs on China is an interesting reversion of the trend: manufacturing is already in China and to reverse this process now is an expensive proposition. So alienating Chinese theoretically means that some of USA imports might became endangered, despite huge geopolitical weight of the USA. They denied export of rare metals to Japan in the past. They can do this for Apple and without batteries Apple can just fold.

    Also it is very easy to prohibit Apple sales in China of national security grounds (any US manufacturer by definition needs to cooperate with NSA and other agencies). I think some countries already prohibit the use of the USA companies produced cell phones for government officials.

    So if Trump administration does something really damaging, for Chinese there are multiple ways to skin the cat. Neoliberalism as a social system is past it pinnacle and that creates some problems for the USA as the central player in the neoliberal world. The triumphal march of neoliberalism over the globe ended almost a decade ago.

    [Dec 23, 2016] Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94% Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time

    Growing inequality. We are already at Gini coefficients normally only found in banana republics.
    Notable quotes:
    "... from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as "alternative work" soared during the Obama era, from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or "gig" work is defined as "temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers", and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits. ..."
    "... The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015-with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm. ..."
    Dec 23, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
    Just over six years ago, in December of 2010, we wrote " Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society ", in which we predicted - and showed - that in light of the underlying changes resulting from the second great depression, whose full impacts remain masked by trillions in monetary stimulus and soon, perhaps fiscal, America is shifting from a traditional work force, one where the majority of new employment is retained on a full-time basis, to a "gig" economy, where workers are severely disenfranchised, and enjoy far less employment leverage, job stability and perks than their pre-crash peers. It also explains why despite the 4.5% unemployment rate, which the Fed has erroneously assumed is indicative of job market at "capacity", wage growth not only refuses to materialize, but as we showed yesterday, the growth in real disposable personal income was the lowest since 2014 .

    When we first penned our article, it was dubbed "fringe" tinfoil hattery, or in the latest vernacular, "fake news."

    Fast forward 6 years, when a report by Harvard and Princeton economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger , confirms exactly what we warned. In their study, the duo show that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as "alternative work" soared during the Obama era, from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or "gig" work is defined as "temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers", and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits.

    The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015-with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm.

    Krueger, who until 2013 was also the top White House economist serving as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, was "surprised" by the finding.

    Quoted by quartz , he said " We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category ," said Krueger. "And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers." In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.

    While the finding is good news for some, such as graphic designers and lawyers who hate going to an office, for whom new technology and Obamacare has made it more appealing to become an independent contractor. But for those seeking a steady administrative assistant office job, the market is grim. It also explains why despite an apparent recovery in the labor market, wage growth has been non-existant, due to the lack of career advancement and salary increase options for this vast cohort which was hired over the past decade.

    The decline of conventional full-time work has impacted every demographic. Whether this change is good or bad depends on what kinds of jobs people want. " Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost," said Krueger. He then added, perhaps sarcastically, that "while many of those who value flexibility and have a spouse with a steady job have probably gained."

    Yes, well, spousal support aside, it also confirms another troubling finding this website reported first earlier this month, namely that the number of multiple jobholders has recently hit the highest number this century.

    [Dec 21, 2016] The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches

    Notable quotes:
    "... At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash. ..."
    "... The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches. ..."
    "... If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won) there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative policy by the the next election. ..."
    "... I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are going to completely sell out the "Trump voters." ..."
    "... But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone is against it. ..."
    "... If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in recent memory was Bush 41. ..."
    "... Upper class tax cuts were central to his policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy shares in Arizona swampland. ..."
    "... trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires. ..."
    "... That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different from the individuals hopes and desires. ..."
    "... And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society. ..."
    "... Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment. ..."
    "... The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes). ..."
    "... Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents (see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president. ..."
    "... The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying gathered money to burn. ..."
    Dec 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    DeDude -> jonny bakho... December 20, 2016 at 07:40 AM
    At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash.

    The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches. It was the old tea-partiers insisting that their anti-rich/Anti-Wall street sentiments be inserted into the GOP.

    If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won) there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative policy by the the next election.

    Peter K. -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 07:56 AM

    hey, a good comment!

    I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are going to completely sell out the "Trump voters."

    George W. Bush wasn't completely horrible (besides Iraq, John Roberts, tax cuts for the rich, the Patriot act and the surveillance state, Katrina, etc. etc. etc.). He was good on immigration, world AIDS prevention, expensive Medicare drug expansion, etc.

    But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone is against it.

    To some extent Bush demoralized the Republican base and they didn't turn out in 2008.

    JohnH -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 08:04 AM
    If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in recent memory was Bush 41.

    About the only thing that can derail Trump is a big recession in 2019.

    DrDick -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 08:18 AM
    "The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches."

    While generally enthusiastically embracing them. Upper class tax cuts were central to his policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy shares in Arizona swampland.

    DeDude -> DrDick... , December 20, 2016 at 08:35 AM
    He never came out directly saying or tweeting that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich than anybody else - he said he would give bigger tax cuts. It is true that people with a college education had an easy time figuring him out even before the election. But the populist messages he campaigned on were anti-establishment including suggesting that the "hedge-fund guys" were making a killing by being taxed at a lower rate.
    yuan -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 10:00 AM
    trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires.
    DeDude -> yuan... , December 20, 2016 at 11:19 AM
    "his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires"

    That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different from the individuals hopes and desires. The reason Trump was able to beat even a Tea party darling, was the backlash against big money having taken over the Tea party. The backlash against Trump_vs_deep_state being "taken over by big money" interest will be interesting to observe, especially if the Dems find the right way to play it.

    yuan -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 11:36 AM
    i hope you are right! however, history shows that a political movement can remain irrational longer than your government can remain democratic.
    DrDick -> jonny bakho... , December 20, 2016 at 08:14 AM
    And that is the least of the damage they will inflict.
    New Deal democrat said in reply to pgl... , December 20, 2016 at 05:10 AM
    Following up on Johnny Bakho's comment below, let's assume that average wage growth YoY for nonsupervisory workers never reaches 3% before the next recession hits. Wage growth rates always decline in recessions, usually by over 2%.

    If in the next recession, we see actual slight nominal wage decreases, is a debt-deflationary wage-price spiral inevitable? Or could there be a small decline of less than -1% without triggering such a spiral.

    Got any opinion? Is there any research on this?

    pgl -> New Deal democrat... , December 20, 2016 at 06:04 AM
    "is a debt-deflationary wage-price spiral inevitable?"

    Good question. It all depends on the response of policy makers. If we continue with the stupid fiscal austerity that began in 2011, it may be inevitable. Which is why doing public infrastructure investment is a very good idea.

    New Deal democrat said in reply to pgl... , December 20, 2016 at 06:28 AM
    We're doomed.
    DrDick -> New Deal democrat... , December 20, 2016 at 08:19 AM
    I knew that immediately after the election.
    JF -> DrDick... , December 20, 2016 at 01:07 PM
    And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society.
    Peter K. -> pgl... , December 20, 2016 at 07:08 AM
    "Which is why doing public infrastructure investment is a very good idea."

    If Hillary Clinton was so progressive according to people like you and Krugman, then why was her infrastructure plan so meager?

    Alan Blinder said it would be small small that it wouldn't effect the Fed's thinking on its rate hike schedule.

    JF -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 01:10 PM
    Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment.
    ilsm -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 03:52 PM
    EMike said it about Bernie..... no soup for you!

    For Clinton dems, the ones the wiki revealed are con artists, doing for the peeps [like Bernie stood for] is too far ideologically for the faux centrists.

    They are neoliberals market monetarists who keep the bankers green and everyone else takes the back seats.

    DeDude -> pgl... , December 20, 2016 at 07:49 AM
    At this point in time pretty much anything the policy makers do will be countered by the Fed. The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes).

    Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents (see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president.

    pgl -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 07:55 AM
    As long as the FED thinks the natural rate of the employment to population ratio is only 60% - you'd be right. But then the FED is not thinking clearly.
    yuan -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 10:59 AM
    like many of my fellow socialists, i fulminated about bernanke's coddling of banks and asset holders. i was somewhat wrong. bernanke was a evidently a strong voice for banking regulation and an end to the moral hazard of TBTF. it is a pity that obama did not listen to him.

    https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2016/05/13/ending-too-big-to-fail-whats-the-right-approach/

    JF -> yuan... , -1
    The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying gathered money to burn.

    Will the Fed use rulemaking to control bubbling in the financial asset marketplaces as they wont want to rause rates too much. I hope they are paying attention

    [Dec 21, 2016] Bad News for America's Workers

    Dec 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 05:34 AM
    https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-economy-hurts-workers-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2016-12

    December 19, 2016

    Bad News for America's Workers
    By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

    NEW YORK – As US President-elect Donald Trump fills his cabinet, what have we learned about the likely direction and impact of his administration's economic policy?

    To be sure, enormous uncertainties remain. As in many other areas, Trump's promises and statements on economic policy have been inconsistent. While he routinely accuses others of lying, many of his economic assertions and promises – indeed, his entire view of governance – seem worthy of Nazi Germany's "big lie" propagandists.

    Trump will take charge of an economy on a strongly upward trend, with third-quarter GDP growing at an impressive annual rate of 3.2% and unemployment at 4.6% in November. By contrast, when President Barack Obama took over in 2009, he inherited from George W. Bush an economy sinking into a deep recession. And, like Bush, Trump is yet another Republican president who will assume office despite losing the popular vote, only to pretend that he has a mandate to undertake extremist policies.

    The only way Trump will square his promises of higher infrastructure and defense spending with large tax cuts and deficit reduction is a heavy dose of what used to be called voodoo economics. Decades of "cutting the fat" in government has left little to cut: federal government employment as a percentage of the population is lower today than it was in the era of small government under President Ronald Reagan some 30 years ago.

    With so many former military officers serving in Trump's cabinet or as advisers, even as Trump cozies up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and anchors an informal alliance of dictators and authoritarians around the world, it is likely that the US will spend more money on weapons that don't work to use against enemies that don't exist. If Trump's health secretary succeeds in undoing the careful balancing act that underlies Obamacare, either costs will rise or services will deteriorate – most likely both.

    During the campaign, Trump promised to get tough on executives who outsource American jobs. He is now holding up the news that the home heating and air conditioning manufacturer Carrier will keep some 800 jobs in my home state of Indiana as proof that his approach works. Yet the deal will cost taxpayers $7 million, and still allow Carrier to outsource 1,300 jobs to Mexico. This is not a sound industrial or economic policy, and it will do nothing to help raise wages or create good jobs across the country. It is an open invitation for a shakedown of the government by corporate executives seeking handouts.

    Similarly, the increase in infrastructure spending is likely to be accomplished through tax credits, which will help hedge funds, but not America's balance sheet: such programs' long track record shows that they deliver little value for money. The cost to the public will be especially high in an era when the government can borrow at near-zero interest rates. If these private-public partnerships are like those elsewhere, the government will assume the risks, and the hedge funds will assume the profits.

    The debate just eight years ago about "shovel-ready" infrastructure seems to be a distant memory. If Trump chooses shovel-ready projects, the long-term impact on productivity will be minimal; if he chooses real infrastructure, the short-term impact on economic growth will be minimal. And back-loaded stimulus has its own problems, unless it is managed extremely carefully.

    If Trump's pick for US Treasury Secretary, the Goldman Sachs and hedge-fund veteran Steven Mnuchin, is like others from his industry, the expertise he will bring to the job will be in tax avoidance, not constructing a well-designed tax system. The "good" news is that tax reform was inevitable, and was likely to be undertaken by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his staff – giving the rich the less progressive, more capital-friendly tax system that Republicans have long sought. With the abolition of the estate tax, the Republicans would finally realize their long-held ambition of creating a dynastic plutocracy – a far cry from the "equality of opportunity" maxim the party once trumpeted....

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 05:36 AM
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/19/what-the-us-economy-doesnt-need-from-donald-trump

    December 19, 2016

    What the US economy doesn't need from Donald Trump
    The only way he can square higher infrastructure and defence spending with tax cuts is voodoo economics
    By Joseph Stiglitz - Guardian

    As Donald Trump fills his cabinet, what have we learned about the likely direction and impact of his administration's economic policy?

    To be sure, enormous uncertainties remain. As in many other areas, Trump's promises and statements on economic policy have been inconsistent. While he routinely accuses others of lying, many of his economic assertions and promises – indeed, his entire view of governance – seem worthy of Nazi Germany's "big lie" propagandists.

    Trump will take charge of an economy on a strongly upward trend, with third-quarter GDP growing at an impressive annual rate of 3.2% and unemployment at 4.6% in November. By contrast, when Barack Obama took over in 2009, he inherited from George W Bush an economy sinking into a deep recession. And, like Bush, Trump is yet another Republican president who will assume office despite losing the popular vote, only to pretend that he has a mandate to undertake extremist policies.

    The only way Trump will square his promises of higher infrastructure and defence spending with large tax cuts and deficit reduction is a heavy dose of what used to be called voodoo economics. Decades of "cutting the fat" in government has left little to cut: federal government employment as a percentage of the population is lower today than it was in the era of small government under Ronald Reagan about 30 years ago.

    With so many former military officers serving in Trump's cabinet or as advisers, even as Trump cozies up to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and anchors an informal alliance of dictators and authoritarians around the world, it is likely that the US will spend more money on weapons that don't work to use against enemies that don't exist. If Trump's health secretary succeeds in undoing the careful balancing act that underlies Obamacare, either costs will rise or services will deteriorate – most likely both.

    During the campaign, Trump promised to get tough on executives who outsource American jobs. He is now holding up the news that the home heating and air-conditioning manufacturer Carrier will keep around 800 jobs in my home state of Indiana as proof that his approach works. Yet the deal will cost taxpayers $7m, and still allow Carrier to outsource 1,300 jobs to Mexico. This is not a sound industrial or economic policy, and it will do nothing to help raise wages or create good jobs across the country. It is an open invitation for a shakedown of the government by corporate executives seeking handouts.

    Similarly, the increase in infrastructure spending is likely to be accomplished through tax credits, which will help hedge funds, but not America's balance sheet: such programmes' long track record shows that they deliver little value for money. The cost to the public will be especially high in an era when the government can borrow at near-zero interest rates. If these private-public partnerships are like those elsewhere, the government will assume the risks, and the hedge funds will assume the profits....

    Fred C. Dobbs : , December 20, 2016 at 05:37 AM
    Millennials aren't lazy, they're workaholics
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/12/19/millennials-aren-lazy-they-workaholics/3ZD86pLBYg954qUEYa3SUJ/story.html?event=event25
    via @BostonGlobe - Katie Johnston - December 20, 2016

    As soon as he awakes, Brian Porrell checks his e-mail, sometimes firing off a message before he gets out of bed. He makes calls during his commute to the Waltham staffing firm WinterWyman, spends 10 to 12 hours at the office and out visiting clients, and keeps his phone by his side at night, checking work e-mails while he watches sports on TV.

    Like many workers today, Porrell, 30, is on the job wherever he is - and he doesn't count out-of-office exchanges in his 50-plus hour week.

    The millennial generation, the first to grow up with smartphones in their hands, is often stereotyped as lazy and entitled. But workplace experts say workaholics are common among 19-to-35-year-olds, perhaps more so than among older members of Generation X and baby boomers.

    In one online study, more than 4 in 10 millennials consider themselves "work martyrs" - dedicated, indispensable, and racked with guilt if they take time off.


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    What's more, nearly half of millennials want to be seen that way, according to the survey of 5,600 workers by Project: Time Off, a Washington, D.C., coalition that promotes vacation time.

    So why are millennials bent on being workaholics? Even though the economy has improved markedly in recent years, young people in the workforce today have record levels of student loan debt. They are also less likely than previous generations to earn more than their parents, according to a Stanford University report. The percentage of children who are better off than their parents has dropped dramatically - 50 percent of those born in the 1980s have a higher standard of living than their parents, compared with 90 percent of those born in the 1940s.

    (December 8, 2016 - Today's children face tough
    prospects of being better off than their parents,
    Stanford researchers find http://stanford.io/2ghwtmj
    via @Stanford)

    The way millennials were raised may play into their always-on mindset, too, said Bob Kelleher, a Boston-based employee engagement consultant and author. Many of them were highly scheduled, he said, going to soccer camps, enrolling in SAT prep courses, and competing on the debate team in order to get into a good college.

    And some have delayed several of the responsibilities of adulthood, he noted, living with their parents and putting off marriage and kids. That frees them up to work even more.

    "This is a driven generation," he said.

    Jane Alexander, 26, a staffing manager at WinterWyman, said she is often one of the first to arrive and the last to leave the office but acknowledged she will probably work less when she has kids. "That is part of why I want to crank it now while I do have time," she said.

    The concept of 24/7 work has become so prevalent that workplace analysts are starting to talk about "work-life blending" instead of "work-life balance."

    The ability to work anytime, anywhere, helps propel this blending of work and life, in part because answering a work text at a coffee shop doesn't feel as much like work as sitting in a cubicle. Indeed, nearly one in five people said they don't consider after-hours texts from clients or customers to be work, according to Workforce Institute at Kronos Inc., a think tank set up by the Chelmsford human resources software provider.

    "If a friend texted me at the gym I would answer their text. Answering a work e-mail is just a natural extension of that," said Jessica Molson, a 24-year-old integration manager at Beacon Communities, the Boston real estate developer and property management firm. "I don't think of it as working; it's just communicating."

    Molson finds herself answering e-mails and jumping on conference calls even when she's on vacation, once distracting other participants with the sound of seagulls in the background while she was in Florida with her family. But going on a real vacation is a rarity for Molson, who tends to take long weekends because she's afraid of missing something at work - and also because she loves what she does.

    Like many millennials, Molson came of age when the economy was reeling, and the uncertain job market had a profound effect on her.

    "I'm very anxious to rack up as much experience as possible," she said.

    Millennials are also more likely to forfeit paid days off than older generations of workers, with a quarter of 18-to-25-year-olds reporting they weren't using any of their paid vacation days this year, according to the personal finance website Bankrate.com. The rise of companies offering unlimited vacation time may contribute to that, workplace consultants say, noting that when there is no set bank of "use it or lose it" vacation time, people are less likely to take days off than they otherwise would be.

    But not being able to truly get away from work can have serious downsides. Employees who don't disconnect experience more stress and anxiety, which leads to reduced productivity and a higher rate of burnout, said Dan Schawbel, research director at Future Workplace, an executive development firm in New York.

    "If all you're doing is trying to be the perfect employee, it's actually not going to work out in your favor because it's going to make you less happy," said Schawbel, who describes working too much as "a weakness disguised as a strength."

    Seeing co-workers hunched over their desks late at night can cause others to feel they should be doing the same and increase guilt, or resentment, among employees who strive to keep their work and home lives separate.

    It can also lead people working around the clock to hold it against their employer - "even if it's your own fault," Schawbel noted. Indeed, people who see being a "work martyr" as a good thing are more likely to be unhappy with their jobs, and less likely to receive bonuses, according to the Project: Time Off study.

    That can lead to retention problems, particularly among millennials, who aren't afraid to quit. Two out of three young workers expect to leave their current job by 2020, according to a recent study by Deloitte.

    Still, workaholics aren't necessarily unhappy - many are ambitious or simply enjoy their work. At Beacon Communities, several employees work 60 to 70 hours a week no matter what adjustments supervisors make. Adding more people to an overachiever's team doesn't help, said chief administrative officer Darlene Perrone: "They just find another project." ...

    reason -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 05:44 AM
    I have enormous problems with generationism. Anything that starts with {generation} is/are(n't) I know what is coming is mostly nonsense. It is exactly the same as if you replaced {generation} with {race} {gender} {nationality} it is sure to be wrong for a significant (perhaps even a majority) of the addressed category.
    Fred C. Dobbs -> reason ... , December 20, 2016 at 06:06 AM
    It never concerned me (much) whether I
    was 'doing better' than my parents, but
    as a parent, my children's success does
    concern me. Go figure.
    point -> reason ... , December 20, 2016 at 06:17 AM
    There does seem to be a fruitful direction to take in "generational" analysis, though.

    It may be that the mechanism by which increasing inequality works is by reducing the prospects of new young workers while generally maintaining the income of older ones. Thus by age cohort, lifetime incomes follow a lower and lower track as the young age compared to older workers.

    If that is what is happening, and someone with sufficiently fine data may be able to show it, then it would be trivial to forecast future inequality by re-composing forecasts of lifetime income profiles for the various cohorts and the inflow of new young cohorts.

    The possibility is that there is a much more severe inequality on the way that is embedded in the current age cohorts, if we could display them.

    Pinkybum -> reason ... , December 20, 2016 at 09:59 AM
    I agree with this. I don't believe all the bullshit categories come up with like Generation X, Millenials etc. However, the ruling classes like to use age divisions to divide and conquer so we will keep on hearing about how unengaged, bored, lazy, vapid, greedy and irresponsible young people are. And we have heard it going back at least to Plato and Socrates!
    Peter K. -> Pinkybum... , December 20, 2016 at 01:36 PM
    Or Clinton supporters like pgl Krugman talking about Bernie Bros.
    Pinkybum -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 06:39 PM
    I know you love Krugman really.
    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 06:03 AM
    Today's children face tough prospects
    of being better off than their parents
    http://stanford.io/2ghwtmj
    via @Stanford - Dec 8

    Parents often expect that their kids will have a good shot at making more money than they ever did.

    But young people entering the workforce today are far less likely to earn more than their parents when compared to children born two generations before them, according to a new study by Stanford researchers.

    In a new study, Stanford economist Raj Chetty found that the link between income and life expectancy varies from one area to another within the United States.

    The findings show that the fraction of kids earning more than their parents has fallen dramatically – from 90 percent for kids born in the 1940s to 50 percent for kids born in the 1980s.

    "It's basically a coin flip as to whether you'll do better than your parents," said economics Professor Raj Chetty, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and one of the study's authors.

    One of the most comprehensive studies of intergenerational income mobility to date, the study used a combination of Census data and anonymized Internal Revenue Service records to measure the rate of "absolute income mobility" – or the percentage of children who earned more than their parents – for people born between 1940 and 1984.

    What emerged from the empirical analysis was an economic portrait of the fading American Dream, and growing inequality appeared to be the main cause for the steady decline.

    "One of the defining features of the American Dream is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents," Chetty said. "We assessed whether the U.S. is living up to this ideal, and found a steep decline in absolute mobility that likely has a lot to do with the anxiety and frustration many people are feeling, as reflected in the election." ...

    The paper was co-authored by David Grusky, a SIEPR senior fellow, sociology professor and director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality; Maximilian Hell, a sociology doctoral student at Stanford; Professor Nathaniel Hendren and doctoral student Robert Manduca, both of Harvard; and Jimmy Narang, a former SIEPR predoctoral fellow who is currently a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley.

    The study – and more information about the team's research – can be found on The Equality of Opportunity Project website run by Chetty and Hendren.

    http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

    Fred C. Dobbs : , December 20, 2016 at 06:20 AM
    Which Trump Will the World See?
    http://nyti.ms/2i4v5UT
    NYT - DESMOND LACHMAN - Dec 20

    One of the basic themes of Donald J. Trump's election campaign was that the United States was being ripped off by foreign countries and that his administration would reduce our trade deficit.

    Yet the budget policies he is now proposing would be sharply at odds with that goal. By advocating an expansive budget through tax cuts and infrastructure spending, Mr. Trump's plan would most likely lower national savings and propel the United States dollar ever higher, creating the very conditions to widen rather than to narrow the trade deficit.

    Mr. Trump seems to be overlooking a matter of basic arithmetic. While a country's trade balance is the difference between a country's exports and imports, it is also the difference between the amount it saves and invests, as can be derived from rearranging the components of a country's aggregate demand equation. If a country saves more than it invests, it will run a trade surplus. Conversely, a country that saves less than it invests will run a trade deficit.

    Seemingly oblivious to this basic math, Mr. Trump is proposing far-reaching and seemingly unfunded cuts in both corporate and household tax rates. Worse yet, he is simultaneously proposing large increases in both public infrastructure and military spending.

    He is doing so in the unrealistic hope that these policies will cause the economy to accelerate from its present 2 percent growth rate to between 3 and 4 percent. And he is counting on such faster economic growth to generate additional tax revenue.

    Should a significant pickup in economic growth not materialize, the net effect of these tax cuts and public spending policies will almost certainly lead to a significant widening of the budget deficit and to a corresponding decline in public savings. That, in turn, would in all probability lead to a significant widening of the trade deficit as the country's overall savings rate would decline.

    A further basic weakness of Mr. Trump's budget proposal is that it would add stimulus to the economy at the very time that the economy is at or very close to full employment. That policy is bound to raise concerns about inflation and to push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more than it is currently contemplating in order to meet its inflation target.

    One of the distinguishing characteristics of the global economy right now is the divergence of monetary policy stances among the world's major central banks. The United States Federal Reserve is now embarked on a path of raising interest rates at a time when the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan are still engaged in aggressive rounds of quantitative easing in an effort to kick-start their moribund economies.

    Forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at a faster pace than it is presently contemplating will only serve to widen the difference between it and the other major central banks. This would more than likely put further upward pressure on the dollar.

    Since the November election, the United States dollar has already appreciated significantly, to its strongest level in the past 14 years. The last thing that the country needs if it is to reduce its trade deficit is a further dollar appreciation. Such an appreciation would make our exports across the board more expensive in foreign markets and make our imports cheaper in United States dollar terms. That would hardly seem to be the way to reduce the country's trade deficit. ...

    Related:

    Room for Debate: Can Trump's Infrastructure
    Plan Work? http://nyti.ms/2i4tuye

    Much of President-elect Donald J. Trump's pledge to
    be a job creator rests on his call for a $1 trillion in
    infrastructure spending over 10 years. While few question
    the need for such investment, many have questioned how he
    would finance it and what it would fund. Can Trump's plan
    effectively repair the nation's infrastructure?

    (Five pundits discuss.)

    Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 08:05 AM
    "A further basic weakness of Mr. Trump's budget proposal is that it would add stimulus to the economy at the very time that the economy is at or very close to full employment. That policy is bound to raise concerns about inflation and to push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more than it is currently contemplating in order to meet its inflation target."

    Centrist fail.

    Krugman might be right that Trump's policies don't add much actual stimulus.

    (He's better on economics than on politics.)

    And so Obama's Fed might actually raise rates too quickly.

    Combined with a strong dollar and weakening exports this could bring on a recession.

    (EMichael is horrified at the fact that Obama's Fed might be considered anti-worker.)

    Mohammed El-Erian talks about the international aspect in today's links.

    He says the same thing as Krugman and pgl (except adds the Republican BS about tax cuts and deregulation being pro-growth.)

    https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/international-cooperation-for-trumps-economic-plan-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2016-12

    DeDude -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 08:21 AM
    "Mr. Trump seems to be overlooking a matter of basic arithmetic. While a country's trade balance is the difference between a country's exports and imports, it is also the difference between the amount it saves and invests,"

    Exactly, his understanding of economics is at the 5'th grade level. Furthermore, just as he thinks he known "more than the generals", he also thinks he knows more than the economists. We have elected a narcissistic moron like Turkey's Ergodan and the Philippine's Duterte. We will se the same erratic and destructive policies they have seen, because he is equally incapable of leading a nation. The hope is that our institutions checks and balances will prevent us from slipping into the same type of semi-democracy.

    RGC -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 10:02 AM
    This is a very misleading presentation.

    "If a country saves more than it invests, it will run a trade surplus. Conversely, a country that saves less than it invests will run a trade deficit."

    But:

    GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the value of all goods and services sold within a country during one year. GDP measures flows rather than stocks (example: the public deficit is a flow, the government debt is a stock). Flows are derived from the National Accounting relationship between aggregate spending and income. Ergo:

    (1) Y = C + I + G + (X – M)
    where Y is GDP (expenditure), C is consumption spending, I is private investment spending, G is government spending, X is exports and M is imports (so X – M = net exports).

    Another perspective on the national income accounting is to note that households can use total income (Y) for the following uses:
    (2) Y = C + S + T
    where S is total saving and T is total taxation (the other variables are as previously defined).

    You can then bring the two perspectives together (because they are both just "views" of Y) to write:
    (3) C + S + T = Y = C + I + G + (X – M)
    You can then drop the C (common on both sides) and you get:

    (4) S + T = I + G + (X – M)

    Then you can convert this into the following sectoral balances accounting relations, which allow us to understand the influence of fiscal policy over private sector indebtedness. Hence, equation (4) can be rearranged to get the accounting identity for the three sectoral balances – private domestic, government budget and external:

    (S – I) = (G – T) + (X – M)

    The sectoral balances equation says that total private savings (S) minus private investment (I) has to equal the public deficit (spending, G minus taxes, T) plus net exports (exports (X) minus imports (M)), where net exports represent the net savings of non-residents.

    Thus, (S-I) can be positive if (G-T) ( the federal deficit) is greater than (X-M) ( an assumed trade deficit).

    Also:

    "Should a significant pickup in economic growth not materialize, the net effect of these tax cuts and public spending policies will almost certainly lead to a significant widening of the budget deficit and to a corresponding decline in public savings."

    But (S – I) = (G – T) + (X – M), i.e., a federal deficit increase that exceeds a trade deficit increase means greater public savings.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances

    DeDude -> RGC... , December 20, 2016 at 11:34 AM
    "a federal deficit increase that exceeds a trade deficit increase means greater public savings."

    Or "export" of treasuries, dollars and other pieces of paper that allow the private sector and government to run deficits at the same time. Nobody in the US need to save as long as we either print more money or sell more paper assets to savers in the non-US part of the world.

    RGC -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 11:42 AM
    The equation includes all exchanges.
    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 06:36 AM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/how-to-get-new-drugs-at-generic-prices

    December 20, 2016

    How to Get New Drugs at Generic Prices

    The New York Times had an interesting piece * discussing the National Institutes of Health collaboration with private companies in the development of new cancer drugs. As the piece points out, this collaboration has proven very profitable for the drug companies, but leads to drugs that are very expensive because the drug companies are allowed to have patent monopolies, with no restriction on the price they charge.

    It also suggests an alternative path. It shows, contrary to conventional wisdom in right-wing circles, everything the government funds is not worthless garbage. If the tables were turned, and all the funding came from the government (rather than relying on government imposed patent monopolies), then the new drugs could be sold at generic prices since everyone already would have been paid for their research.

    In many cases, the generic price would be less than one percent of the patent protected price. New cancer drugs that might sell for $100,000 for a year's treatment, might sell for hundreds of dollars. ** Policy types who don't work for the pharmaceutical industry should be looking into more efficient alternatives for financing drug research.

    * http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/health/harnessing-the-us-taxpayer-to-fight-cancer-and-make-profits.html

    ** http://www.thebodypro.com/content/78658/1000-fold-mark-up-for-drug-prices-in-high-income-c.html

    -- Dean Baker

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 06:43 AM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/health/harnessing-the-us-taxpayer-to-fight-cancer-and-make-profits.html

    December 18, 2016

    Harnessing the U.S. Taxpayer to Fight Cancer and Make Profits
    By MATT RICHTEL and ANDREW POLLACK

    Enthusiasm for cancer immunotherapy is soaring, and so is Arie Belldegrun's fortune.

    Dr. Belldegrun, a physician, co-founded Kite Pharma, a company that could be the first to market next year with a highly anticipated new immunotherapy treatment. But even without a product, Dr. Belldegrun has struck gold.

    His stock in Kite is worth about $170 million. Investors have profited along with him, as the company's share price has soared to about $50 from an initial price of $17 in 2014.

    The results reflect widespread excitement over immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to attack cancer and has rescued some patients from near-certain death. But they also speak volumes about the value of Kite's main scientific partner: the United States government.

    Kite's treatment, a form of immunotherapy called CAR-T, was initially developed by a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute, led by a longtime friend and mentor of Dr. Belldegrun. Now Kite pays several million a year to the government to support continuing research dedicated to the company's efforts.

    The relationship puts American taxpayers squarely in the middle of one of the hottest new drug markets. It also raises a question: Are taxpayers getting a good deal?

    Defenders say that the partnership will likely bring a lifesaving treatment to patients, something the government cannot really do by itself, and that that is what matters most.

    Critics say that taxpayers will end up paying twice for the same drug - once to support its development and a second time to buy it - while the company reaps the financial benefit.

    "If this was not a government-funded cancer treatment - if it was for a new solar technology, for example - it would be scandalous to think that some private investors are reaping massive profits off a taxpayer-funded invention," said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, an advocacy group concerned with access to medicines.

    The debate goes squarely to one of the nation's most vexing challenges: rising health care and drug prices. Kite is one of a growing number of drug and biotech companies relying on federal laboratories. Analysts expect the company to charge at least $200,000 for the new treatment, which is intended as a one-time therapy for patients.

    While the law allows the government to demand drug-price concessions from its private-sector partners, the government has declined to do so with Kite and generally disdains the practice.

    Insisting on lower prices, federal researchers say, would drive away innovative partners that speed the drug-development process and benefit patients. But with the government doing so much pivotal research, others say that the private sector cannot afford to walk away.

    "The market is so reliant on the knowledge and know-how that comes out of the government and academic labs," said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston....

    Fred C. Dobbs : , December 20, 2016 at 06:46 AM
    Paul Krugman ‏✔ @paulkrugman · 8 minutes ago

    Are people noticing that the Trump economic team is shaping up as a gathering of gold bugs? 1/

    Treasury goes to a guy with little public profile, but hangs out with John Paulson (who is also close to Trump) 2/

    (Trump's Treasury Pick Moves in Secretive Hedge
    Fund Circles http://nyti.ms/2i3aZu6
    NYT - MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN and ALEXANDRA STEVENSON - Dec 19)

    And Paulson has been predicting inflation -- sometimes double-digit -- from Fed policy for years 3/

    (John Paulson: Gold Will Rise In
    Proportion To Bernanke's Dollar Printing http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/04/14/john-paulson-gold-will-rise-in-proportion-to-bernankes-dollar-printing/ Forbes - April 14, 2011)

    Budget director appears to be John Bircher and conspiracy theorist (but aren't they all? But note economic views 4/

    (Trump's Budget Director Pick Rick
    Mulvaney Spoke at a John Birch Society Event
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/trump-mulvaney-john-birch-society via @motherjones)

    Birchers want return to gold and silver, Mulvaney seems to agree 5/

    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/811217899528429569

    In this crew, Kudlow -- who thinks it's always the 1970s, but doesn't seem to see hyperinflation under his bed -- is the most reasonable 6/

    Whoops -- forgot Mulvaney's Bitcoin derp: "He praised bitcoin as a currency that is "not manipulatable by any government."" 7/

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 06:47 AM
    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/811219022695890948
    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 07:15 AM
    (Is there also a place for Jim Cramer?)

    Kudlow Close to Being Named
    Trump Chief Economist, Paper Says http://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/2016/12/15/kudlow-close-to-being-named-trump-chief-economist-adviser-says
    via @Bloomberg - Dec 18

    President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is close to picking economic commentator Larry Kudlow to be chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, according to a report in the Detroit News.

    Kudlow, 69, has served as an informal adviser to the Trump campaign, primarily focused on tax policy and teaming primarily with Stephen Moore, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and fellow alumnus of President Ronald Reagan's economic team. Moore was cited by the newspaper as saying Thursday the selection of Kudlow would be announced in the next 48 hours.

    Kudlow's appointment, which would require Senate confirmation, marks another non-traditional pick by the incoming administration. Kudlow doesn't hold a Ph.D. in economics, unlike former heads of the CEA. For five years, he hosted a show on CNBC on business and politics, and he's worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. During Reagan's first term, Kudlow was associate director for economics and planning in the White House's Office of Management and Budget. ...

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 04:05 PM
    Kudlow & Cramer (was) a CNBC American business
    and politics television program hosted by
    conservatives Lawrence Kudlow and Jim Cramer, which aired weekdays from 2002 to 2005. (Wikipedia)
    Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 07:32 AM
    "In this crew, Kudlow -- who thinks it's always the 1970s, but doesn't seem to see hyperinflation under his bed -- is the most reasonable 6/"

    Maybe pgl will insult Krugman like he insulted Bernstein who pgl said was soft on Kudlow.

    pgl -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 07:58 AM
    Misrepresenting 24/7 we see. No - Krugman got this right. And yes Jared was nicer to Kudlow than I could ever be. But soft? A day without a PeterK lie is like a day without sunshine.
    Peter K. -> pgl... , December 20, 2016 at 08:16 AM
    It's funny how you refuse to stand up for your own arguments.

    Your inconsistency reminds me of Kudlow in a way.

    DeDude : , December 20, 2016 at 07:16 AM
    What is the appropriate response when an adversary throws the election to ensure their favorite candidate becomes our president?

    http://www.vox.com/world/2016/12/20/14001118/putin-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-trump-election-podesta-emails

    Peter K. -> DeDude... , December 20, 2016 at 07:34 AM
    Whip up some xenophobic, anti-Russia hysteria to distract people from the fact that your lame centrist candidate lost to a laughable reality TV star?
    DeDude -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 09:09 AM
    Oh buh-hu-hu. Get over it and stop the whining.

    You candidate was to weak to win the semifinals, and he would have been crushed in the finals. He didn't have what it takes to win in little league, and he wouldn't have had what it takes to win in the big league either. Maybe the democrats could have found someone who would have won against Trump; but it sure as hell wasn't any of the losers of their primary contest.

    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 07:32 AM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/someone-has-to-tell-john-williams-inflation-is-not-accelerating

    December 20, 2016

    Someone Has to Tell John Williams Inflation Is Not Accelerating

    The Federal Reserve Board raising interest rates last and seem poised to do so again in the not distant future. The rationale is that the economy is now near or at full employment and that if job growth continues at its recent pace it will lead to a harmful acceleration in the inflation rate.

    We have numerous pieces raising serious questions about whether the labor market is really at full employment, noting for example the sharp drop * in employment rates (for all groups) from pre-recession levels and the high rate of involuntary part-time ** employment. But the story of accelerating inflation is also not right.

    This is particularly important, since John Williams, the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, cited accelerating inflation as a reason to support last week's rate hike, and possibly future rate hikes, in an interview in the New York Times this morning. Williams has been a moderate on inflation, so there are many members of the Fed's Open Market Committee who are more anxious to raise rates than him.

    A close look at the data does not provide much evidence of accelerating inflation. The core personal consumption expenditure deflator, the Fed's main measure of inflation, has risen 1.7 percent over the last year, which is still under the 2.0 percent target. This target is an average, which means that the Fed should be prepared to allow the inflation rate to rise somewhat above 2.0 percent, with the idea that inflation will drop in the next recession.

    Anyhow, the 1.7 percent rate is slightly higher than a low of 1.3 percent reached in the third quarter of 2015, but it is exactly the same as the rate we saw in the third quarter of 2014. In other words, there has been zero acceleration in the rate of inflation over the last two years.

    Furthermore, even this modest acceleration has been entirely due to the more rapid increase in rent over the last two years. The inflation rate in the core consumer price index, stripped of its shelter component, actually has been falling slightly over the last year. It now stands at 1.1 percent over the last year.

    [Consumer Price Index Minus Food, Energy and Shelter, 2006-2016]

    It is reasonable to pull shelter out of the CPI because rents do not follow the same dynamic as most goods and services. In fact, higher interest rates, by reducing construction, are likely to increase the pace of increase in rents rather than reduce them.

    This issue is hugely important, since if the Fed prevents the labor market from tightening further it will be preventing millions of people from getting jobs. These people are disproportionately African American and Hispanic and also less-educated workers. The decision to tighten will also lessen the bargaining power of a much larger group of workers, making it more difficult for them to get pay increases.

    The weak labor market of the Great Recession resulted in a large redistribution from wages to profits. The tightening of the labor market in the last two years has reversed part of this shift. If the Fed raises interest rates enough to prevent further tightening, then it will be locking in place this redistribution to profits. That would be bad news for tens of millions of workers, especially if the decision was based on a misreading of inflation data.

    * http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/men-who-don-t-work-when-did-economists-stop-being-wrong-about-the-economy

    ** http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/the-rise-of-involuntary-part-time-employment-by-race-gender-age-industry-and-occupation

    *** http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/upshot/feds-john-williams-feels-uncertainty-among-business-leaders.html

    -- Dean Baker

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 07:34 AM
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cbCB

    January 15, 2016

    Consumer Price Index Less Food and Energy & Consumer Price Rent Index, 2000-2016

    (Percent change)


    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cbCD

    January 15, 2016

    Consumer Price Index Less Food and Energy & Consumer Price Rent Index, 2000-2016

    (Indexed to 2000)

    Fred C. Dobbs : , December 20, 2016 at 07:36 AM
    (Only 4 billionaires though,
    counting Trump, totaling $12.65B.)

    Trump's Cabinet picks so far worth a combined $13b
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/12/20/trump-cabinet-picks-far-are-worth-combined/XvAJmHCgkHhO3lSxgIKvRM/story.html?event=event25
    via @BostonGlobe - Matt Rocheleau - December 20, 2016

    President-elect Donald Trump boasted about his wealth during his campaign. Now he's surrounding himself with people who have similarly unimaginable riches.

    Collectively, the wealth of his Cabinet choices so far is about five times greater than President Obama's Cabinet and about 34 times greater than the one George W. Bush led at the end of his presidency.

    And Trump still has four more key advisory spots left to fill.

    The net worth of the Cabinet Trump had selected as of Monday was at least $13.1 billion, based on available estimates, or more than the annual gross domestic product of about 70 small countries.

    That included the $3.7 billion Trump is estimated to be worth, according to Forbes. (Trump has claimed to be worth much more - around $10 billion.)

    It also included the $5.1 billion in net worth that Forbes estimated belongs to the family of Betsy DeVos, the former Michigan Republican Party chair and education activist selected to be education secretary.

    Investor Wilbur Ross, picked to become commerce secretary, is estimated to be worth $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.

    Linda McMahon, a former WWE executive and U.S. Senate candidate, has been picked to serve as small business administrator. She and her husband Vincent McMahon are worth at least an estimated $1.35 billion, according to Bloomberg.

    Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson, nominated to become secretary of state, is estimated to be worth $365 million, according to Bloomberg.

    Steven Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive in line to become Treasury secretary, is worth at least $46 million, according to Politico.

    Retired neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate Ben Carson, who is in line to become the housing and urban development secretary, was worth $26 million, according to a Forbes estimate from 2015.

    The pick for transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, the former labor secretary, was worth an estimated $16.9 million as of 2008, when she last held public office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks campaign finance data.

    Two other Cabinet picks - Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Georgia Representative Tom Price for health and human services secretary - were estimated to be worth about $7.5 million and $13.6 million, respectively, as of 2014, according to the center.

    Former Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry, selected to be energy secretary, is estimated to be worth about $3 million, according to the Associated Press.

    U.S. Representative from South Carolina Mick Mulvaney, picked to become director of the Office of Management and Budget, was worth an estimated $2.6 million as of 2014, according to the center.

    Fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, picked to fill the role of labor secretary, is also a multi-millionaire, according to Politico.

    U.S. Representative from Montana Ryan Zinke, picked to become interior secretary, was worth an estimated $675,000 as of 2014, according to the center. ...

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 08:31 AM
    The 5 richest Cabinet members of all time http://on.mktw.net/2h8iBvr

    (Andrew Mellon tops the list. Treasury
    secretary under Harding, Coolidge and
    Hoover, worth $50 billion in current
    dollars. No one else is even close.)

    Mellon was the third-richest American of his time - behind only John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford - and has been ranked the 14th richest American of all time, in inflation-adjusted dollars.

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 09:34 AM
    'Collectively, the wealth of his Cabinet choices so far is about five times greater than President Obama's Cabinet and about 34 times greater than the one George W. Bush led at the end of his presidency.'

    So, the Obama cabinet is worth $2.6B apparently.

    That would largely be due to Penny Pritzker,
    #3 on the MarketWatch list above,
    who is said to be worth $1.85B.

    And, believe it or not, the Bush Jr
    cabinet was apparently only worth
    $382M, a pittance.

    Peter K. : , December 20, 2016 at 08:08 AM
    Mohamed A. El-Erian on Trump's macro and international economics.

    https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/international-cooperation-for-trumps-economic-plan-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2016-12

    This sounds a lot like what pgl and Krugman are saying about a strong dollar providing headwinds to the economy.

    My question though is consider a thought experiment where Comey didn't throw the election to Trump.

    Hillary's fiscal policies were supposedly budget neutral and wouldn't really effect the rate of Fed hikes.

    Would the strong dollar effect have been applicable to a strengthening Clinton economy as well to a Trump economy?

    Much depends on the rate of Fed hikes?

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 08:11 AM
    Obviously without the tax cuts for the rich, Hillary's budget would have allowed more fiscal room for stimulus in the event of a downturn.

    Her infrastructure spending, such as it was, would have provided more automatic stabilizers and helped give the Fed room to lower rates later on.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 08:14 AM
    When Yellen says there's no need for fiscal stimulus - which should be blasphemous to all "real" progressives* - what she's saying is that the Fed can just use uncoventional monetary policy again the next time there is a downturn.

    They gave us the recovery they wanted this past time after all.

    * of course pgl refuses to discuss this episode. His lies of omission are the biggest of all. Krugman too refuses to address Yellen's blasphemy. Only DeLong was brave enough and honest enough to disagree.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 08:21 AM
    Good News For Guys and the Gals that love them and outstandingly clever science

    "Surgeons have described a new treatment for early stage prostate cancer as "truly transformative"

    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38304076

    "Prostate cancer laser treatment 'truly transformative'"

    By James Gallagher, HEalth and science reporter...BBC News...12-20-2016...7 hours ago

    "The approach, tested across Europe, uses lasers and a drug made from deep sea bacteria to eliminate tumours, but without causing severe side effects.

    Trials on 413 men - published in The Lancet Oncology - showed nearly half of them had no remaining trace of cancer.

    Lifelong impotence and incontinence are often the price of treating prostate cancer with surgery or radiotherapy.

    Up to nine-in-10 patients develop erectile problems and up to a fifth struggle to control their bladders.

    That is why many men with an early stage tumour choose to "wait and see" and have treatment only when it starts growing aggressively.

    "This changes everything," said Prof Mark Emberton, who tested the technique at University College London.

    Triggered to kill

    The new treatment uses a drug, made from bacteria that live in the almost total darkness of the seafloor and which become toxic only when exposed to light.

    Ten fibre optic lasers are inserted through the perineum - the gap between the anus and the testes - and into the cancerous prostate gland.

    When the red laser is switched on, it activates the drug to kill the cancer and leaves the healthy prostate behind..."

    Fred C. Dobbs -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 01:40 PM
    Light therapy effectively treats early prostate
    cancer: New non-surgical treatment for low-risk
    prostate cancer can effectively kill cancer cells
    while preserving healthy tissue
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161219202008.htm

    Padeliporfin vascular-targeted photodynamic
    therapy versus active surveillance in men with low-
    risk prostate cancer (CLIN1001 PCM301): an open-
    label, phase 3, randomised controlled trial
    http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045%2816%2930661-1/abstract

    Peter K. : , December 20, 2016 at 08:22 AM
    Krugman:

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/the-facts-have-a-well-known-center-left-bias/

    The Facts Have A Well-Known Center-Left Bias

    MAY 9, 2016 8:01 AM

    "But I'm also hearing from Berniebros, insisting that anything I say must be wrong, because I criticized their hero. And this suggests to me that we may need a clarification of the doctrine that facts have a well-known liberal bias. More specifically, they seem to have a center-left bias: conservatives are big on empirical denial, but so is some of the U.S. left."

    I'd say the center-left is big on empirical denial, especially when it comes to the rise of populism and globalization.

    They'd rather focus on Putin's hackers.

    But some are coming around or at least asking questions. See Tim Duy, DeLong, and Noah Smith.

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/2016/12/responsibility.html

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-16/four-ways-to-help-the-midwest

    http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of-insufficient-market-wages-inadequate-social-insurance-polanyian-disruption-of-patterns-of-life-.html

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 08:24 AM
    From a New York Times article on the growing popularity of the universal basic income idea.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/business/economy/universal-basic-income-finland.html

    "he search has gained an extraordinary sense of urgency as a wave of reactionary populism sweeps the globe, casting the elite establishment as the main beneficiary of economic forces that have hurt the working masses. Americans' election of Donald J. Trump, who has vowed to radically constrain trade, and the stunning vote in Britain to abandon the European Union, have resounded as emergency sirens for global leaders. They must either update capitalism to share the spoils more equitably, or risk watching angry mobs dismantle the institutions that have underpinned economic policy since the end of World War II."

    The center-left, like Krugman, EMichael, pgl, Bakho, etc. argue that's just racism. That's it.

    There's been an upsurge in racism and tribalism worldwide for some inexplicable reason. Fox News.
    Or Obama.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 08:27 AM
    Krugman discusses the 1930s but fails to recall how the Great Depression helped lead to the rise of National Socialism and Hitler.

    He forgets Keynes's The Economic Consequences of The Peace.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 20, 2016 at 08:32 AM
    Even the U.S you had Father Coughlin, the populist Huey Long, and Charles Lindbergh's America First movement which was isolationist just like Trump.

    "Europe as a whole was badly hit, in both rural and industrial areas. Democracy was discredited and the left often tried a coalition arrangement between Communists and Socialists, who previously had been harsh enemies. Right wing movements sprang up, often following Italy's fascist mode."

    Like Greece's fascist Golden Dawn.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 08:29 AM
    Not expecting this, but here it is anyway

    The shocking election of demagogic hate monger Trump has let Genie out of the Bottle, the Liberal Genie

    "Why US liberals are now buying guns too"

    http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38297345

    "Why US liberals are now buying guns too"

    By Brian Wheeler...BBC News, Washington DC...12-20-2016...6 hours ago

    "Gun ownership has traditionally been associated with the right wing in America but the election of Donald Trump has prompted some left-wingers to join gun clubs - and even start preparing for the collapse of society.

    "I really didn't expect to be thinking about purchasing a gun. It was something that my father did and I rolled my eyes at him."

    Clara, a 28-year-old nursing student, grew up in the Mid-West, where "the folks that had guns were seen as hicks" or were just "culturally different", she says.

    But since the election of Donald Trump in November she has started going to a gun range for the first time and is shopping around for a semi-automatic pistol.

    "It's been seeing the way that Trump's election has mobilised a lot of the far right and given them hope," she says, citing a rise in reports of hate crimes and neo-Nazi activity.

    As a transgender woman, she does not fear for her personal safety in the Californian city where she now lives but she says she knows people in rural areas "who woke up and found a bunch of swastikas and words like 'faggot' and 'trannie' scrawled all over their building".

    She foresees a wide-ranging struggle between the Trump administration and the left over issues such as immigration and racial politics.

    But won't buying a gun just increase tensions?

    "Things are already escalating and they will continue to do so and me not engaging or being prepared to defend my friends by force... isn't going to stop people from being attacked or harassed," Clara says.

    Gun sales in America hit record levels in October amid fears a Hillary Clinton election victory would lead to increased controls.

    Many expected the election of Donald Trump, whose candidacy was backed by the National Rifle Association, to bring an end to the panic buying. Shares in gun manufacturers dropped by as much as 18% following his victory.

    But instead FBI background checks for gun transactions soared to a new record for a single day - 185,713 - during the Black Friday sales on 25 November, according to gun control news site The Trace.

    Some of this has been put down to gun retailers selling off stock at reduced prices, but there have also been reports of more "non-traditional" buyers, such as African Americans and other minorities, turning up at gun shops and shooting ranges..."

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 08:59 AM
    Item #1 of 3 in your Briefing that explains THE WAY BACK

    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/single-greatest-force-american-politics-partisanship-n698186

    "The Single Greatest Force in American Politics? Partisanship"

    by Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann...Dec 20 2016...8:56 am ET

    "Why partisanship is the single greatest force in American politics"

    Want to know why partisanship -- or party identification -- is the single greatest force in American politics today? Just check out these shifting attitudes about the economy and nation's direction in the latest NBC/WSJ poll:

    ... 68% of Republicans believe the economy will get better in the next 12 months (versus just 14% of GOPers who said this a year ago in the Dec. 2015 NBC/WSJ poll).

    ... By contrast, only 19% of Democrats said the economy will improve next year (compared with 37% of them who said this last December).

    ... Right now, 52% of Republicans say the country is headed in the right direction (versus just 5% who said this in December 2015).

    ... Conversely, only 18% of Democrats say the country is headed in the right direction (compared with 37% of them who said this a year ago).

    Folks, the underlying dynamics of the U.S. economy have remained pretty much the same over the past year. The only thing that has changed is the party that will be in the White House next year. It's all confirmation that so much public opinion is shaped through Americans' partisan lenses, and little else. Want another example of this from our NBC/WSJ poll? A combined 86% of Democrats say they are bothered a great deal/quite a bit by Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, versus just 29% of Republican respondents who say this..."

    im1dc -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 09:01 AM
    Item #2 of 3 of THE WAY BACK briefing

    same NBC source

    "Asymmetrical warfare: Democrats have knives, Republicans have guns"

    "But if partisanship is the greatest force in American politics, there's maybe a more important dynamic at play -- the asymmetrical warfare between the two parties. As the New York Times' David Leonhardt writes in comparing how Barack Obama is leaving the White House versus how Republican Pat McCory is leaving power in North Carolina, Democrats are wielding knives while Republicans have guns. Think of the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff. Mitch McConnell denying Obama's Supreme Court pick to even get a hearing. And now what's playing out in North Carolina. Republicans are playing a different game than Democrats are playing."

    im1dc -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 09:02 AM
    Item #3 of 3 of THE WAY BACK briefing

    same NBC source

    "Trump's popularity improves -- but he's still the most unpopular president-elect in the history of our poll"

    "Also from our NBC/WSJ poll: 40% of Americans now have a positive view of Donald Trump, versus 46% who have a negative view. That's up considerably from his 29%-62% rating in the October NBC/WSJ poll. Still, Trump's 40%-46% fav/unfav score is the WORST in the history of our poll for a president-elect and the first time it's a net-negative. Bill Clinton's was 60%-19% in Dec. 1992, George W. Bush's was 48%-35% in Dec. 2000, and Barack Obama's was 67%-16% in Dec. 2008.

    For the rest on our poll, click here. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/poll-majority-americans-pessimistic-or-uncertain-about-trump-presidency-n697971

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 09:12 AM
    My prescription and takeaway is for the next four years for the Democratic Party especially those in D.C. is for Hyper Partisanship, no holds barred bare knuckle deliberate faithless drug out deliberations and negotiations with the GOP, and the ceaseless cacaphonic BLAME, BLAME, BLAME media game of imagined, fake, and real failures of every Republican especially Donald Trump and his family.

    There you have it, your assignment for the next next Presidential Election.

    im1dc -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 09:23 AM
    This is, of course, the opposite of the Democratic Party Obama-way and the Clinton-way that reasonably expected the American Electorate to see through and reject those same tactics used on President Obama and Hillary Clinton when they relied upon logic not lies, facts not falsehoods, and intellectual and scientific critical thinking instead of rants, ravings, and unhinged screeds to win the argument and sway the Electorate.

    IOW, time to stick it to Middle America Fly Over country and make them see how wrong they were to vote for Trump while aiding the BiCoastal States, and the majority of voters in the last Election, survive the next 4 years.

    First and foremost start by insisting on cutting off or at least severely reducing any and all AG support welfare and corporate welfare for noncompetitive manufacturers before any support for cutting Obamacare, SS, and Medicare, which are the highest items on Ryan's and the GOP's agenda.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 09:40 AM
    Trump and his assembled Cabinet picks and Team are a full month away from taking the Oath of Office and have loaded the DEMS up with issues at the heart of every American Worker, Blue and Middle Class: Class Warfare and Pay Inequality

    http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/why-donald-trump-could-spell-doom-ceo-pay-transparency-n698156

    "Why Donald Trump Could Spell Doom for CEO Pay Transparency"

    by Martha C. White...Dec 20 2016...7:49 am ET

    "Outsized CEO pay is an issue coming under increasing scrutiny, and Donald Trump has already promised to do away with legislation that would require companies to be more transparent.

    However, compensation experts say an executive branch filled with corporate titans could benefit the relative few atop the corporate ladder at the expense of everyone else.

    The implicit assumption is that these CEOs will look out for their own.

    Furthermore, because Trump is one of those CEOs himself, it might very well "put a halo effect around the whole issue [of executive pay] for a while," said John Challenger, CEO of executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

    Repeal of Dodd-Frank?

    "I think the first year will be a true measure of who he is as a policy person," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank...

    ...Starting next year, the Securities and Exchange Commission planned to require companies to disclose how much their CEO makes as a ratio of median employee pay, giving shareholders - and ordinary Americans - a window into how companies treat their CEO compared to the rank-and-file workers, but the future of that rule is in limbo.

    Donald Trump, although he railed against fat CEO pay packages during his campaign, calling them "disgraceful," also vowed to "dismantle" the Dodd-Frank Act, which provided the mandate for the new SEC rule...

    ...For the future, many expect the SEC's push for increased transparency to be scuttled, in keeping with Donald Trump's promise to roll back regulations of all types...

    ..."they believe now that it's likely to be pulled out is when you look at the cabinet Trump is putting together, there are a lot of billionaires, a lot of CEOs," Kropp said.

    "It seems to me that the pressure is going to abate. There's going to be less scrutiny," Challenger predicted..."

    Observer : , December 20, 2016 at 09:48 AM
    This doubling of the sub fleet was outlined in a defense White Paper earlier this year. Basically, its due to concerns about China. The article doesn't say, but I assume these are AIP powered.


    Australia, France sign submarine deal

    "Australia and France on Tuesday signed the final agreement for French naval contractor DCNS to build 12 submarines in what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a "critically important step in the development of our security."

    The 34.9 billion euro ($36.3 billion) deal, including separate agreements with US and Australian contractors, is one of the world's largest defense contracts.

    Turnbull described the deal as the "last foundation stone needed to ensure Australia is able to develop a cutting-edge sovereign submarine capability."

    The submarines will be a conventionally-powered version of France's 4,700-tonne nuclear-fuelled Barracuda complete with stealth technology. France and Australia agreed in April to the deal, for which Germany and Japan were also contending.

    Most of the submarine production will be in the southern city of Adelaide and create 2,800 high-skilled jobs, Turnbull said.

    US defense giant Lockheed Martin will produce the combat systems for the Barracudas."

    http://www.dw.com/en/australia-france-sign-submarine-deal/a-36839878

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Observer... , December 20, 2016 at 11:56 AM
    Submarines deal: Why is
    Australia paying for old technology?

    Dick Smith (#) furious at $50 billion submarines 'fiasco' - September 14, 2016
    http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/dick-smith-furious-at-50-billion-subs-fiasco/news-story/6f85752a58e5a7afa5472c0ac5453065

    A war of words has erupted between a group of prominent Australian businessmen and seemingly the entire southern state over the Federal Government's controversial French submarines deal.

    (Adelaide, South Australia, is to be
    a recipient of much employment related
    to this deal.)

    The group, which includes entrepreneur Dick Smith, Gary Johnston of Jaycar Electronics and adman John Singleton, took out a full-page advertisement in
    The Australian on Tuesday slamming the move to go with French producer DCNS, suggesting buying off-the-shelf nuclear subs would be a better option.

    They warned the current deal, announced on April 28 this year, will "condemn our sailors to their graves". The group says it can't understand the Federal Government's decision to award a multi-billion deal to French supplier DCNS, which will be required to deliver 12 diesel-powered submarines for which there are no drawings and no plans.

    They said under the deal, the navy's next fleet of conventionally-powered subs would come into service at a time when the rest of the world would be operating nuclear fleets, which would be "like putting a propeller plane up against a modern jet".

    "We will be condemning our sailors to their graves," the advertisement said. It also questioned the economics of the decision, saying it would be cheaper to subsidise car industry jobs, if creating jobs was the desired outcome. Mr Johnston said DCNS was being asked to build a diesel-powered version of what is essentially a nuclear-powered sub.

    "It's a bit like trying to turn a cat into a dog. It's crazy. Why would you do it?" he told Sky News. "They haven't got a drawing, they haven't got a plan. Their current nuclear submarine, the Barracuda, is sitting on a slipway. It won't even be tested until next year."

    DCNS declined to comment on the row, but the Federal Government said the decision to award the contract to the company came after a competitive evaluation process, which involved the best experts available. It said the new subs would be regionally superior and would allow Australia to pursue its national and international interests. ...

    The government estimates building the submarines in Adelaide will create 2800 jobs.

    That would be the equivalent of giving every single one of those 2800 workers a cheque for $5.4 million - or handing every single man, woman and child in South Australia a cheque for nearly $9000.

    Speaking on 2GB, Mr Johnston said "if we were smart" we would simply buy the French or British nuclear sub, or even the "ultimate" US Virginia class nuclear submarine, which has 33 years of fuel.

    "You don't have to have a nuclear industry in Australia - you just simply buy the thing and 33 years later you trade it in on a new one," he said.

    "It's unbelievable how these things are just such an order of magnitude better than a diesel sub. Every one of the enemy we would hopefully not ever encounter, but if we do, would have nuclear submarines which will blow diesel submarines out of the water."

    But the group was dismissed as "sad old men" by South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, who rubbished their proposal to go nuclear. "[It] looked like it was scribbled on the back of a serviette after a long lunch," Mr Weatherill tweeted on Tuesday.

    Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, who holds the South Australian seat of Sturt, described the criticism as "misinformed, misguided" and "entirely wrong". "We don't have nuclear energy in Australia and therefore we can't have nuclear submarines," Mr Pyne told ABC radio on Wednesday.

    "The advice from defence was entirely clear and that was that the French DCNS design was the best for what we needed.

    "Quite clearly we are not getting a Short Fin Barracuda submarine, we are getting a unique design for Australian conditions. We've chosen DCNS because we believe that they have the best record and the best designs in terms of large submarines both nuclear and non nuclear." ...

    #- Richard Harold "Dick" Smith, AC (*) is an Australian entrepreneur, businessman, aviator, philanthropist, and political activist. He is the founder of Dick Smith Electronics, Dick Smith Foods and Australian Geographic, and was selected as the 1986 Australian of the Year. In 2010 he founded the media production company Smith&Nasht with the intention of producing films about global issues. In 2015 he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia (*), and is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. (Wikipedia)

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 12:30 PM
    Fun facts: (Wikipedia)

    Shortfin barracuda may refer to:
    Australian barracuda, a fish found
    mainly outside Australia & New Zealand

    (Australian barracuda, arrow barracuda,
    Australian sea pike, sea pike, snook, or
    shortfin barracuda, Sphyraena novaehollandiae)

    Shortfin Barracuda-class submarine, a submarine class proposed for Australia's Collins-class replacement

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 04:12 PM
    Super batteries, high efficiency motor generators, materials......

    going diesel is not old tech!

    In fact there are cost suggestions that CVN's are too expensive to have to find oilers all the time for gas guzzling jets.

    Where all that waste goes for two full reactors 'sets'............

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 10:05 AM
    From the GOPsters Playbook 'First move on the poor to deny necessities of life'

    Wisconsin, US - 6m ago

    "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker asks President-elect Trump for flexibility to implement drug screening, testing of some adults on SNAP - statement"

    Read more on walker.wi.gov

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 10:10 AM
    Gee, what a surprise...more lying disingenuousness from Republicans in D.C.

    2016 US elections - 1h ago

    "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says no select committee needed to investigate Russian meddling; says 'no question' on election interference - The Hill"

    Read more on thehill.com

    im1dc -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 10:13 AM
    This should serve as a warning to those here that put their faith in some Republican senators such as S. Lindsey Graham and S. John McCain, they can not trusted, they are straw men, sent out to make their Party look less extreme than it is in fact.
    im1dc -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 10:22 AM
    Embracing xenophobia is not the way for Americans

    US immigration reform debate - 2h ago

    "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker asks Donald Trump for more control over refugees - AP"

    Read more on madison.com

    ilsm -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 04:16 PM
    let's have the committees read the wikileaks' stuff into the congressional record!
    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 10:30 AM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html

    December 18, 2016

    How Republics End
    By Paul Krugman

    Roman politics involved fierce competition among ambitious men. But for centuries that competition was constrained by some seemingly unbreakable rules. Here's what Adrian Goldsworthy's "In the Name of Rome" says: *

    "However important it was for an individual to win fame and add to his own and his family's reputation, this should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic. The same belief in the superiority of Rome that made senators by the second century BC hold themselves the equals of any king ensured that no disappointed Roman politician sought the aid of a foreign power."

    * http://erenow.com/ancient/in-the-name-of-rome-the-men-who-won-the-roman-empire/7.html

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 10:31 AM
    http://erenow.com/ancient/in-the-name-of-rome-the-men-who-won-the-roman-empire/7.html

    2003

    In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire
    By Adrian Goldsworthy

    General in exile: Sertorius and the Civil War

    Quintus Sertorius (c. 125–72 BC)

    The Roman political élite was not unique in its competitiveness and desire to excel. The aristocracies of most Greek cities – and indeed of the overwhelming majority of other communities in the Mediterranean world – were just as eager to win personal dominance and often unscrupulous in their methods of achieving this. Roman senators were highly unusual in channelling their ambitions within fairly narrow, and universally recognized, boundaries. The internal disorder and revolution which plagued the public lives of most city states were absent from Rome until the last century of the Republic. Even then, during civil wars of extreme savagery when the severed heads of fellow citizens were displayed in the Forum, the Roman aristocracy continued to place some limits on what means were acceptable to overcome their rivals. A common figure in the history of the ancient world is the aristocratic exile – the deposed king or tyrant, or the general forced out when he was perceived to be becoming too powerful – at the court of a foreign power, usually a king. Such men readily accepted foreign troops to go back and seize power by force in their homeland – as the tyrant Pisistratus had done at Athens – or actively fought against their own city on their new protector's behalf, like Alcibiades.

    Rome's entire history contains only a tiny handful of individuals whose careers in any way followed this pattern. The fifth-century BC, and semi-mythical, Caius Marcius Coriolanus probably comes closest, for when banished from Rome he took service with the hostile Volscians and led their army with great success. In the story he came close to capturing Rome itself, and was only stopped from completing his victory by the intervention of his mother. The moral of the tale was quintessentially Roman. However important it was for an individual to win fame and add to his own and his family's reputation, this should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic. The same belief in the superiority of Rome that made senators by the second century BC hold themselves the equals of any king ensured that no disappointed Roman politician sought the aid of a foreign power. Senators wanted success, but that success only counted if it was achieved at Rome. No senator defected to Pyrrhus or Hannibal even when their final victory seemed imminent, nor did Scipio Africanus' bitterness at the ingratitude of the State cause him to take service with a foreign king.

    The outbreak of civil war did not significantly change this attitude, since both sides invariably claimed that they were fighting to restore the true Republic. Use was often made of non-Roman troops, but these were always presented as auxiliaries or allies serving from their obligations to Rome and never as independent powers intervening for their own benefit. Yet the circumstances of Roman fighting Roman did create many highly unorthodox careers, none more so than that of Quintus Sertorius, who demonstrated a talent for leading irregular forces and waging a type of guerrilla warfare against conventional Roman armies. Exiled from Sulla's Rome, he won his most famous victories and lived out the last years of his life in Spain, but never deviated from the attitudes of his class or thought of himself as anything other than a Roman senator and general....

    ilsm -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 04:18 PM
    Anne, the analogy to the Roman republic is so far fetched.

    I am deeply dismayed with pk.

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 10:36 AM
    Paul Krugman has drawn on the writing of Adrian Goldsworthy to make sense of and point out what he obviously considers to be a possible undermining of the American republic. The complete Goldsworthy passage strikes me as critical in understanding Krugman.

    Though Krugman has mentioned Goldsworthy before, I only began to read "In the Name of Rome" yesterday.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 10:43 AM
    Update re F-35

    The Pentagon's fight for the F-35 with Trump has broken into the open

    http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2016/12/20/F-35-program-is-not-out-of-control-JSF-chief-fires-back-at-Trump/9951482251830/

    "F-35 program is not 'out of control', JSF chief fires back at Trump"

    By Ryan Maass ... Dec. 20, 2016 ... 1:01 PM

    "WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The F-35 program is not "out of control" as President-elect Donald Trump suggests, the head of the F-35 program office asserted.

    F-35 executive director Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan maintained the program was going as planned in response to the incoming president's controversial tweet, which appeared to threaten the plane's funding.

    "The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th," Trump tweeted on Dec. 12.

    The Lockheed Martin-led effort has been characterized by numerous delays since its inception. Despite the setbacks, however, Bogdan contends the program's leaders have reined in the finances for the production of the 5th-generation fighter.

    "I have no doubt, that given the controversy on the F-35 program over the years, that there's a perception that this program is out of control," Bogdan told reporters. "That's in the past."

    The program director went on to say industry partners have made necessary adjustments and cut excessive expenditures. However, he also conceded the development phase of the program could face additional delays..."

    ilsm -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 04:22 PM
    Before Bogdan came to F-35 he sold the KC 46 (Boeing*) tanker which is going to be a $47B boondoggle.

    Development delays.......

    there are 160 "production" aircraft on the line and how much development is undone and more untested.

    Out of control is buy something that ain't yet designed.

    Control is relative.... what is 'in control' in Bogdan's staff meeting is not the real world.

    *losing money on a fixed price Boeing will get bailed out like F-35, neither know the extent of the bail out.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 10:46 AM
    The only problem with Trump and the GOP today is what they think and what they do

    THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

    "There is always an easy solution for every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong."

    H.L. Mencken

    RGC : , December 20, 2016 at 11:02 AM
    Stuck

    A Reason writer returns to Appalachia to ask: Why don't people who live in places with no opportunity just leave?
    ...............
    So why don't people just leave? That question is actually surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80 percent of McDowell's population, including my grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.
    ......................

    http://reason.com/archives/2016/12/10/stuck

    anne -> RGC... , December 20, 2016 at 11:10 AM
    So why don't people just leave? That question is actually surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80 percent of McDowell's population, including my grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.

    [ This is critically important to understand. What has been and is necessary in economically depressed areas where development over several years time would be unlikely is to assist migration. This is precisely what was done in East Germany to pronounced benefit through Germany but is little recognized or accepted by American analysts. ]

    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 11:14 AM
    http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/must-read-simon-wren-lewis-_understanding-free-trade_-there-you-have-in-one-calm-and-measured-paragraph-the-con.html

    December 20, 2016

    Simon Wren-Lewis: Understanding Free Trade: * "There you have, in one calm and measured paragraph, the contradiction at the heart of the argument...

    ...put forward by Liam Fox and others that leaving the European Union will allow the UK to become a 'champion of free trade'. You cannot be a champion of free trade, and have sovereignty in the form of taking back control. It is not a contradiction, of course, if you are happy to accept the regulatory standards of the US, China or India. That appears to be the position of Leave leaders like MP Jacob Rees Mogg. Ellie Mae O'Hagan spells out what this may mean in practice. Lead in toys--bring them in so we can sign a trade agreement with China. And you can be sure that this will be the nature of the discussion every time a trade deal is signed. In each case we will be told that we have to accept this drop in regulatory standards, because British export jobs are on the line.

    This is the point of Dani Rodrik's famous impossible trilemma: ** you cannot have all three of the nation state, democratic politics and deep economic integration (aka free trade). His trilemma replaces sovereignty, by which is meant in this context the nation state being able to do what it likes, by democracy. In the past I have always found this problematic. Surely a democracy can decide to give away a bit of its sovereignty in return for the benefits of international cooperation (in the form of trade deals, or indeed any other kind of international cooperation). After all, every adult in a relationship knows that this relationship means certain restrictions on doing just what they would like...

    * https://mainly macro.blogspot.com/2016/12/understanding-free-trade.html

    ** http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html

    -- Brad DeLong

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 11:15 AM
    "Mainly Macro" must be divided to post a reference link.
    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 11:33 AM
    Having carefully read the essay by Simon Wren-Lewis, along with this passage from Brad DeLong, the argument here against leaving the European Union makes no sense. Though I think the UK would fare better in the EU, the bitter argument by Wren-Lewis leaves me indifferent. The idea that the UK apart from the EU would suddenly be exploited by the likes of India or China has no logic that I can find.

    I have not understood the bitterness of Wren-Lewis to the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn since the Brexit vote, especially so since Corbyn wanted the UK to remain part of the EU.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 11:19 AM
    The Trump Two-Step

    Carlos Slim travels to Trump at Mar-a-Lago yet tells the Lousiana victory rally ""Do not worry. We are going to build the wall,"

    So who gets what they want Trump voters or Carlos Slim?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-dines-with-carlos-slim-as-relations-warm-with-mexican-leaders/2016/12/19/652ccf7c-c60f-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html

    "Trump meets with Carlos Slim as Mexican leaders seek better relations"

    By Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Joshua Partlow...December 19 at 7:29 PM

    "In the closing days of his campaign, Donald Trump vilified one of the world's richest men - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim - as part of a globalist cabal conspiring to extinguish his populist candidacy.

    Yet over the weekend, Slim journeyed to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for what the president-elect described as "a lovely dinner with a wonderful man."

    The peacemaking gesture - the culmination of weeks of back-channel negotiations that included a secret visit to Mexico City by a Trump envoy - signals a possible thawing between Trump and Mexico's business and political elite, which he had used relentlessly as a foil throughout his campaign.

    The communications raised hopes in Mexico's business community that Trump might reconsider his vow to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement and be persuaded to adopt less hard-line immigration and economic policies, which were cornerstones of his campaign..."

    Fred C. Dobbs -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 11:33 AM
    "Do not worry. We are going to build the wall,"
    Trump said, reiterating his promise to erect a
    wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out
    undocumented immigrants and to make Mexico pay for it.
    im1dc -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 01:27 PM
    Clarification

    Carlos Slim travels to Trump at Mar-a-Lago yet Trump tells the Lousiana victory rally ""Do not worry. We are going to build the wall,"

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 01:36 PM
    Trump running the country is a train wreck waiting to happen, imo, of course

    POLITICS

    "China Crisis Was Over Before Trump Even Tweeted About It
    President-Elect Would Have Known If He Took Daily Intel Briefing"

    ilsm -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 04:26 PM
    A crisis is when a CVN goes under.

    Losing a less than useful drone on a mission of no consequence......

    What did Trump say? Let them keep it.

    Why not?

    The better question is why waste your money and sailors time chasing a UUV?

    To show a huge land power US is a maritime bully?

    Fred C. Dobbs : , December 20, 2016 at 01:50 PM
    Obama Races to Empty Guantánamo Before Term's End

    Obama Administration Intends to Transfer 17 or 18
    Guantánamo Detainees http://nyti.ms/2i9aL0z
    NYT - CHARLIE SAVAGE - December 19, 2016

    WASHINGTON - When Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy visited the White House in October for a state dinner, he made a commitment to President Obama: Italy, which resettled a Yemeni detainee from Guantánamo Bay last summer, would take one more person on the transfer list. But before the deal was completed, Mr. Renzi resigned.

    So a day after his successor, Paolo Gentiloni, formed a government on Dec. 14, Secretary of State John Kerry called to congratulate Mr. Gentiloni - and to urge him to follow through on the commitment, according to an official familiar with the negotiations. Mr. Gentiloni agreed, leading a rush to finalize the details and paperwork.

    The effort was part of a burst of urgent, high-level diplomatic talks aimed at moving as many as possible of Guantánamo's 22 prisoners who are recommended for transfer. By law, the Pentagon must notify Congress 30 days before a transfer, so the deadline to set in motion deals before the end of the Obama administration was Monday.

    By late in the day, officials said, the administration had agreed to tell Congress that it intended to transfer 17 or 18 of the 59 remaining detainees at the prison; they would go to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If all goes as planned, that will leave 41 or 42 prisoners in Guantánamo for Donald J. Trump's administration. Mr. Trump has vowed to keep the prison operating and "load it up with some bad dudes." ...

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs ... , December 20, 2016 at 04:27 PM
    7.5 years too slow!

    Of course we are growing his Iraq ending!

    Good thing we dumped the crook!

    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 01:56 PM
    December 20, 2016

    Valuation

    The Shiller 10-year price-earnings ratio is currently 28.08, so the inverse or the earnings rate is 3.56%. The dividend yield is 1.98%. So an expected yearly return over the coming 10 years would be 3.56 + 1.98 or 5.54% provided the price-earnings ratio stays the same and before investment costs.

    Against the 5.54% yearly expected return on stock over the coming 10 years, the current 10-year Treasury bond yield is 2.56%.

    The risk premium for stocks is 5.54 - 2.56 = 2.98

    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 01:56 PM
    http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/

    Ten Year Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings Ratio, 1881-2016

    (Standard and Poors Composite Stock Index)

    December 20, 2016 PE Ratio ( 28.08)

    Annual Mean ( 16.71)
    Annual Median ( 16.05)

    -- Robert Shiller

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 01:57 PM
    http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/

    Dividend Yield, 1881-2016

    (Standard and Poors Composite Stock Index)

    December 20, 2016 Div Yield ( 1.98)

    Annual Mean ( 4.38)
    Annual Median ( 4.33)

    -- Robert Shiller

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 01:56 PM
    "The Subpoena That Rocked The Election Is Legal Garbage, Experts Say"

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-subpoena-that-rocked-the-election-is-legal-garbage-attorney-say_us_58597cd9e4b03904470b0633

    "The Subpoena That Rocked The Election Is Legal Garbage, Experts Say"

    'The warrant assumes that the mere existence of emails from or to Hillary Clinton is probable cause that a crime occurred'

    by Matt Ferner, National Reporter, Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief & Nick Baumann, Senior Enterprise Editor all of The Huffington Post...12/20/2016... 02:25 pm ET...Updated 16 minutes ago

    "The warrant connected to the FBI search that Hillary Clinton says cost her the election shouldn't have been granted, legal experts who reviewed the document released on Tuesday told The Huffington Post.

    FBI Director James Comey shook up the presidential race 11 days before the election by telling Congress the agency had discovered new evidence in its previously closed investigation into the email habits of Clinton, who was significantly ahead in the polls at the time.

    When Comey made the announcement, the bureau did not have a warrant to search a laptop that agents believed might contain evidence of criminal activity. The FBI set out to rectify that two days later, on Oct. 30, when agents applied for a warrant to search the laptop, which was already in the FBI's possession. The FBI had seized the computer as part of an investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

    The unsealed warrant "reveals Comey's intrusion on the election was as utterly unjustified as we suspected at time," Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said on Twitter Tuesday.

    Clinton's lead in the polls shrank in the wake of Comey's announcement. Then, just days ahead of election, the FBI announced its search was complete, and it had found no evidence of criminal activity. Clinton officials believe that second announcement damaged her as much as, or more than, the first, by enraging Trump supporters who believed the fix was in.

    The legal experts' argument against the validity of the subpoena boils down to this: The FBI had already publicly announced that it could not prove Clinton intended to disclose classified information. Without that intent, and without evidence of gross negligence, there was no case. The warrant offers no suggestion that proving those elements of the crime would be made easier by searching new emails.

    The essence of the warrant application is merely that the FBI has discovered new emails sent between Clinton and Abedin.

    That's not enough. The idea that the mere existence of emails involving Clinton may be evidence of a crime is startling, said Ken Katkin, a professor at Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

    "The warrant application seems to reflect a belief that any email sent by Hillary Clinton from a private email server is probably evidence of a crime," Katkin said. "If so, then it must be seen as a partisan political act, rather than a legitimate law enforcement action."

    The warrant never should have been granted, attorney Randol Schoenberg argued. "I see nothing at all in the search warrant application that would give rise to probable cause, nothing that would make anyone suspect that there was anything on the laptop beyond what the FBI had already searched and determined not to be evidence of a crime, nothing to suggest that there would be anything other than routine correspondence between Secretary Clinton and her longtime aide Huma Abedin," Schoenberg wrote in an email.

    "I am appalled," he added, noting that the name of the agent in charge had been redacted in the copy of the document publicly released.

    Katkin agreed. "This search warrant application appears to have been meritless. The FBI should not have sought it, and the magistrate judge should not have granted it," he :

    ...Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox, who approved the search warrant, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

    "The Fourth Amendment requires you to pretty much know that what you're looking for is there ― not speculation. This is just speculation," Cunningham said."

    ilsm -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 04:29 PM
    Find an expert who actually read the Federal Records Act.

    Then find another expert who has held a security clearance and stayed awake for the annual refreshed.

    Appeal to unproved authority......

    anne : , December 20, 2016 at 01:56 PM
    http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/

    Dividend Yield, 1881-2016

    (Standard and Poors Composite Stock Index)

    December 20, 2016 Div Yield ( 1.98)

    Annual Mean ( 4.38)
    Annual Median ( 4.33)

    -- Robert Shiller

    anne -> anne... , December 20, 2016 at 02:08 PM
    Accidentally posted here, should have been and was subsequently posted above.
    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 03:11 PM
    Bogle on factoring in Total Return on stocks vs Speculative Return

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jack-bogles-secrets-to-becoming-a-winning-investor-2016-12-20

    "Jack Bogle tells you the secret to becoming a winning investor"

    By Chuck Jaffe, Columnist...Dec 20, 2016...11:40 a.m. ET

    ..."On smart beta investing in general:

    Bogle: Smart beta is stupid.

    So not one of these new index products is intriguing?

    Bogle: No, no, no, no, no. Academics can find anything with these masses of data they have on their computers. They can find something that works in the past, it's as easy as rolling off a log. But it almost never works in the future – and not for very long - because they all forget the most important single thing that happens in our markets reversion to the mean. As the Good Book says, 'And the first shall be last and the last shall be first.'...

    On what to expect from the market:

    Bogle: The key to stock market investment returns is today's dividend yield [around 2%] plus future earnings growth. Nobody knows what that earnings growth will be, but I am guessing it will be maybe in the range of 4% to 5%. That seems like an informed reasonable expectation.

    You compare that with history and we are looking at something very different. An average dividend yield not of 2% but of maybe 4.5%, and earnings growth has averaged over 6% over the last 50 years.

    So we have lower earnings forecast and a much lower dividend yield built in. No one is going to change that. It's like buying a bond, what is the interest rate when you buy in. So we're talking about lower returns from investment side, from what corporations do.

    The other side of total return on stocks is what we call speculative return, and that's how bullish or bearish investors are, which is measured by the price/earnings multiple -- how many times earnings your companies sell at or the total stock market sells at. Over the long-term past, that number has been about 15 times earnings. Today, depending on who you are listening to, it could be as high as 25 times earnings. ...I look backward at reported earnings after all the bad stuff and I'm looking at a p/e of 25. So the market is at least fully valued and I think it is reasonable to expect possibly negative returns but certainly no positive speculative return.

    So we're looking at future market returns, if we are lucky, of 4-5% before the costs of investing are deducted."

    Mr. Bill : , December 20, 2016 at 03:14 PM
    "So many opinions, yet, only one truth".

    Mr. Bill (maybe)

    Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 20, 2016 at 03:18 PM
    I mean that I am suffering, physically, about the ramifications of Donald Trump being officially elected as the next President of the United States of America. I feel despondent, looking through gloomy glass, looking for a bright shiny object to deflect, even if only for a moment.
    ilsm -> Mr. Bill... , December 20, 2016 at 04:31 PM
    Come to Massachusetts weed is legal!
    im1dc -> Mr. Bill... , December 20, 2016 at 04:32 PM
    Relax, the Republic will survive, but stay vigilant and active.
    Mr. Bill : , December 20, 2016 at 03:22 PM
    I mean if we immediately try to impeach him, we would have Mike Pence (ak Tung) as president. Maybe we could embroil him in a four year impeachment process.

    As he slashes his way, destroying Social Security and Medicare.

    Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 20, 2016 at 03:35 PM
    Oh my God, who is a female, doesn't like me much and is totally disgusted with humans, in general.

    Mike Pence as president of the new nighted state of merica.

    Double, or triple, the security around Trump.

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 03:55 PM
    About the US Weekly Rig Count - DETAILS

    http://maritime-executive.com/article/us-rig-count-up-on-land-flat-offshore

    "U.S. Rig Count Up on Land, Flat Offshore
    permian"

    By MarEx...2016-12-16

    "For the seventh week in a row, the benchmark Baker Hughes Rig Count trended upwards, bringing the combined count of active oil and gas rigs in the U.S. to 637. However, only 22 of these were offshore rigs, essentially unchanged from the same period last year.

    The largest part of the onshore increase was in Texas, where activity in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford fields has brought the state's count by 14 rigs in one week. Taken together, the Permian and Eagle Ford accound for nearly half of U.S. drilling activity, with 302 rigs between them. Compared with offshore projects, onshore shale drilling campaigns like those in the Eagle Ford are remarkably inexpensive and brief; a shale well's breakeven price point is typically in the range of $30-40, depending on the field, and it is often a matter of weeks between setting up a rig and pumping first oil.

    West Texas Intermediate crude prices were at $52 per barrel on Friday, well above the price point that would induce shale producers to begin new drilling, analysts say. In addition, Goldman Sachs raised its outlook for crude oil prices for mid-2017, predicting WTI prices at $57.50 by the second quarter. Goldman cited the recent OPEC and non-OPEC agreements to cut production by 1.6 million barrels per day, and said that it expects compliance with the cut agreement in excess of 80 percent.

    However, assuming that the OPEC agreement holds and that competitors do not raise output to offset it, a price of $57.50 is still below the level at which many offshore projects become competitive, says Wood Mackenzie. In July, the firm found that only 20 percent of deep- and ultra-deepwater projects at the pre-FID stage are commercially viable at $60 per barrel – suggesting that offshore activity may remain quiet until prices rise further."

    im1dc : , December 20, 2016 at 04:19 PM
    U.S. Tests Autonomous Swarmboats

    aka CARACaS

    http://maritime-executive.com/article/us-tests-autonomous-swarmboats

    "U.S. Tests Autonomous Swarmboats"

    YouTube Video link:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGsdaqpq-5w

    "...The autonomy technology being developed by ONR is called Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing, or CARACaS. The components that make up CARACaS (some are commercial off-the-shelf) are inexpensive compared to the costs of maintaining manned vessels..."

    ilsm -> im1dc... , December 20, 2016 at 04:32 PM
    If they work as good as a littoral combat ship......

    What could go wrong?

    ilsm : , -1
    Results of the coup:

    Unfaithful Electors:

    Clinton -5

    Trump -2

    Cuckoo beats crook! Again.

    [Dec 21, 2016] Michigan Lame Duck Legislature

    Dec 21, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

    The Republican controlled House and Senate has been largely busy passing bills in the few days left in 2016. This particular one caught my eye.

    Michigan had put in place a new Unemployment System (Michigan Data Automated System or MiDAS) to help in detecting unemployment fraud. With the passage of Senate Bill 1008 by the Republican led House , $10 million is transferred from the Unemployment Contingent Fund to the General Fund to be done with in the General Fund as determined by the Republican held Legislature.

    Just a little history; MiDAS was put in place (2013) by Governor Rick Snyder of Flint, Michigan fame to automate the system away from the manual process. The system sends out a series of questions, which the Unemployment Applicant has to answer picking from listed answers. There is no room for explanation. The claimants chosen answers from the list of answers are then loaded into the MiDAS data base and notification is sent to the former employer who then confirms the answers the claimant has listed in the system. If there is any discrepancy, MiDAS assumes the claimant has committed a potential fraud.

    Another questionnaire is then sent to the claimant, which is also limited to listed responses. If you do not respond in 10 days, it is assumed a fraud has been committed as determined by MiDAS. A notice is "supposedly" sent out and the claimant has 30 days to answer. If no notice is sent out and the claimant does not answer, MiDAS assumes fraud and the issue goes to collections where just about anything can take place to collect the unemployment funds already given to the claimant. There is little or no human interaction throughout the process and little can be done to explain circumstance during the process.

    " The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency , partly at the request of the federal government and partly on its own, reviewed 22,427 cases in which a computer determined a claimant had committed civil fraud between October 2013 and October 2015 and found that 20,965 of those cases did not involve fraud. Unemployment Insurance Agency spokesman Dave Murray said on Wednesday. That's an error rate of more than 93%."

    The $10 million will be transferred from the Unemployment Contingent Fund which had already grown by 400% after the MiDAS caused spike in fraud cases of which nearly all of them unfounded. Senate Bill 1008 is balancing the state budget on the backs of innocent citizens wrongfully accused of false unemployment claims.

    Governor Rick Snyder spent $47 million of taxpayer funds to install MiDAS which has been shown to be correct in determining fraud < 7% of the time. Rather than give the funds to those who were unjustly denied Unemployment Compensation by MiDAS, the Republican led Michigan legislature and Republican governor Rick Snyder are keeping much of it in the Unemployment Contingent (used to train workers and for rainy days) and will also transfer $10 million of it to the General Fund to help balance the budget. This is the same as using the additional Medicaid funding received from the expansion to balance the budget rather than set it aside for later years which would have kept Michigan from having to add to Medicaid funding till 2027. It too was used to balance the budget. By doing so in both cases, the Republicans do not have to raise taxes on the rich in income.

    Longtooth , December 18, 2016 8:14 pm

    What? You mean to tell me that a conservative right wing republican controlled government is trying to eliminate or grossly reduce a valued safety net feature provided by government (public funds)?

    What is the world coming to?

    P.S. Did you perhaps think conservatives favor and support public funds use in safety nets for labor (as opposed to capital owner's safety nets)? Whatever gave you that idea? Reagan's "welfare queen" speech perhaps?

    run75441 , December 18, 2016 10:24 pm

    Actually, it is the failure of Snyder and the Repubs to acknowledge the error of "MiDAS" in swindling all Michigan citizens in general and have chosen to keep the funds they have swindled rather than acknowledge the error publically and give the funds to those hurt by "MiDAS." Mistakes do happen and it would have been easy enough to fix by adding an area for explanation and in doing two mailings of the questionnaire to the Unemployment applicant. The state is attempting to eliminate people using a computer system which does not allow for applicant error and inturn is not 100% fool-proof in mailing out notification.

    The state has already acknowledged that 93% of the time it has made an error and yet they have failed to reconcile it.

    beene , December 19, 2016 7:26 am

    Run, if you want to correct problems like this; where error is a feature. Make it a criminal fraud to sell the state or federal government a program that the error rate is more than 4%.

    Beverly Mann , December 19, 2016 9:13 am

    The problem with that suggestion, Beene, is that fraud-criminal or civil-requires knowledge of falsity, or intent to steal. The idea of declaring a particular error rate a criminal fraud is a non sequitur; it's absurd.

    But selling a system that so clearly had no ability to accomplish its supposed purpose, and whose purpose seems to have actually been to simply kill the unemployment compensation program-and whose method was accusing virtually everyone of fraud who applied for unemployment compensation-does not appear to be mere incompetence. It does appear to be knowing-i.e., a fraud.

    And I would think it is prosecutable. The Justice Dept. apparently hasn't pursued the matter, and of course under Sessions it won't. But two years from now, there will be a Democrat about to be inaugurated as governor and, hopefully also, a Dem as AG. Ingram County (Lansing, the state capitol) is always Dem, I believe, and even now it's prosecutors probably could launch a criminal-fraud inquiry-and it should. But the statute of limitations probably will not have run by, say, mid-2019, so it will still be prosecutable then by a Dem AG's office. And presumably, this will be a big campaign issue statewide in 2018.

    Which brings me to this: In virtually every instance (the one exception is Romney during his first two years as governor after running as a moderate, before starting to run as far-right presidential primary candidate) of some rightwing successful businessperson winning a state governorship (and now, president), on the claim that he's been such a success at business, and, well, shouldn't the government be run like a business, that person has proved utterly incompetent. Snyder and Illinois governor Bruce Rauner are exhibits A and B; Florida governor Rick Scott is Exhibit C.

    As for people who were falsely accused of fraud under what itself was a fraudulent system, they should file a class action lawsuit in state court against the folks who sold the state that snake oil.

    Warren , December 19, 2016 9:44 am

    You seem to be assuming the problem is with the computer system. If the computer system is simply implementing the law, then there is no fraud by the company that created it. Perhaps the problem is in the law itself, or with the people who do not return the forms when they are supposed to.

    Bill White , December 19, 2016 1:44 pm

    There is a very interesting book, written by the estimable Math Babe (www.mathbabe.org), Cathie O'Neill about this phenomenon called Weapons of Math Destruction. I can't recommend it enough. Combining the supposed lack of bias of statistics, conservative's ardent desire to treat the government as just another tool for personal monetary profit and the right's natural desire to kick people when they are down and steal their lunch money means these stories will just proliferate.

    The headline in last Sunday's San Jose Mercury News was all about AI as the next wave of technological profit making. The future is not likely to be comforting. Instead of asking where our jetpacks are, we will be asking where all our stuff went.

    [Dec 19, 2016] Michigan unemployment agency made 20,000 false fraud accusations – report

    Notable quotes:
    "... One bankruptcy attorney told the Detroit Metro Times he had as many as 30 cases in 2015 tied to debt from the UIA; before the automated system was implemented, he said he would typically have at most one per year with such claims. The newspaper also found claimants who were charged with fraud despite never having received a single dollar in unemployment insurance benefits. ..."
    "... A pair of lawsuits were filed in 2015 against the UIA over Midas. According to a pending federal case, in which the state revealed it had discontinued using Midas for fraud determinations, the system "resulted in countless unemployment insurance claimants being accused of fraud even though they did nothing wrong". ..."
    "... Blanchard told the Guardian in February that many unemployment applicants may not have realized they were even eligible to appeal against the fraud charge, due to the setup of Midas. Attorneys representing claimants have said that many refuse to ever apply for unemployment benefits again. ..."
    "... Levin, who represents part of metropolitan Detroit, said in his statement that Michigan officials had to fully account for the money that has flowed into the unemployment agency's contingent fund. ..."
    Dec 18, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
    Michigan government agency wrongly accused individuals in at least 20,000 cases of fraudulently seeking unemployment payments, according to a review by the state.

    The review released this week found that an automated system had erroneously accused claimants in 93% of cases – a rate that stunned even lawyers suing the state over the computer system and faulty fraud claims.

    "It's literally balancing the books on the backs of Michigan's poorest and jobless," attorney David Blanchard, who is pursuing a class action in federal court on behalf of several claimants, told the Guardian on Friday.

    The Michigan unemployment insurance agency (UIA) reviewed 22,427 cases in which an automated computer system determined a claimant had committed insurance fraud, after federal officials, including the Michigan congressman Sander Levin, raised concerns with the system.

    The review found that the overwhelming majority of claims over a two-year period between October 2013 and August 2015 were in error. In 2015, the state revised its policy and required fraud determinations to be reviewed and issued by employees. But the new data is the first indication of just how widespread the improper accusations were during that period .

    The people accused lost access to unemployment payments, and reported facing fines as high as $100,000. Those who appealed against the fines fought the claims in lengthy administrative hearings. And some had their federal and state taxes garnished. Kevin Grifka, an electrician who lives in metro Detroit, had his entire federal income tax garnished by the UIA, after it accused him of fraudulently collecting $12,000 in unemployment benefits.

    The notice came just weeks before Christmas in 2014.

    "To be honest with you, it was really hard to see your wife in tears around Christmas time, when all of this went on for me," Grifka said.

    The computer system claimed that he had failed to accurately represent his income over a 13-week period. But the system was wrong: Grifka, 39, had not committed insurance fraud.

    In a statement issued on Friday, Levin called on state officials to review the remaining fraud cases that were generated by the system before the policy revision.

    "While I'm pleased that a small subset of the cases has been reviewed, the state has a responsibility to look at the additional 30,000 fraud determinations made during this same time period," he said.

    Figures released by the state show 2,571 individuals have been repaid a total of $5.4m. It's unclear if multiple cases were filed against the same claimants.

    The findings come as Michigan's Republican-led legislature passed a bill this week to use $10m from the unemployment agency's contingent fund – which is composed mostly of fines generated by fraud claims – to balance the state's budget. Since 2011, the balance of the contingent fund has jumped from $3.1m to $155m, according to a report from a Michigan house agency.

    The system, known as the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System (Midas), caused an immediate spike in claims of fraud when it was implemented in October 2013 under the state's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, at a cost of $47m.

    In the run-up to a scathing report on the system issued last year by Michigan's auditor general, the UIA began requiring employees to review the fraud determinations before they were issued.

    The fraud accusations can carry an emotional burden for claimants.

    "These accusations [have] a pretty big burden on people," Grifka said. While he said the new findings were validating and his own case had been resolved, he called for state accountability.

    "There's no recourse from the state on what they're doing to people's lives. That's my biggest problem with all of this."

    Steve Gray, director of the University of Michigan law school's unemployment insurance clinic, told the Guardian earlier this year that he routinely came across claimants facing a significant emotional toll. As a result, he said, the clinic added the number for a suicide hotline to a referral resource page on the program's website.

    "We had just a number of clients who were so desperate, saying that they were going to lose their house they've never been unemployed before, they didn't know," said Gray, who filed a complaint with the US labor department in 2015 about the Midas system.

    The fines can be enormous. Residents interviewed by local news outlets have highlighted fraud penalties from the UIA upwards of $100,000 . Bankruptcy petitions filed as a result of unemployment insurance fraud also increased during the timeframe when Midas was in use.

    One bankruptcy attorney told the Detroit Metro Times he had as many as 30 cases in 2015 tied to debt from the UIA; before the automated system was implemented, he said he would typically have at most one per year with such claims. The newspaper also found claimants who were charged with fraud despite never having received a single dollar in unemployment insurance benefits.

    A pair of lawsuits were filed in 2015 against the UIA over Midas. According to a pending federal case, in which the state revealed it had discontinued using Midas for fraud determinations, the system "resulted in countless unemployment insurance claimants being accused of fraud even though they did nothing wrong".

    Blanchard told the Guardian in February that many unemployment applicants may not have realized they were even eligible to appeal against the fraud charge, due to the setup of Midas. Attorneys representing claimants have said that many refuse to ever apply for unemployment benefits again.

    A spokesman for the unemployment insurance agency, Dave Murray, said it appreciated Levin's work on the issue and said it was continuing "to study fraud determinations".

    The agency had already made changes to the fraud determination process, he said, and "we appreciate that the state legislature this week approved a bill that codifies the reforms we've set in place".

    Levin, who represents part of metropolitan Detroit, said in his statement that Michigan officials had to fully account for the money that has flowed into the unemployment agency's contingent fund.

    "While I am pleased that $5m has been repaid, it strikes me as small compared to the amount of money that was collected at the time," he said. "Only a full audit will ensure the public that the problem has been fully rectified."

    ManuSHeloma 12 Feb 2016 9:02

    Another failure of Gov Snyder's administration: first Flint water, now this. What can the people of Michigan expect next? The recall of Snyder should be automated.
    stuinmichigan pepspotbib 12 Feb 2016 10:02
    It's not just Snyder and his lackies. You should see the radically gerrymanderd Michigan legislature, run by rightist extremists, directed by the Koch Brothers, the DeVos family and others, via the ALEC program that provides them with the radical right legislation they have passed and continue to pass. Snyder ran saying that sort of stuff was not really on his agenda, but continues to sign it. He's either a liar, an unprincipled idiot, or both. It's bad here. And it's getting worse.
    DarthPutinbot 12 Feb 2016 9:09
    What the f*ck is wrong in Michigan? Split it up among the surrounding states and call it good. Michigan destroyed Detroit and cutoff their water. Michigan deliberately poisoned the residents of Flint. Too many Michigan lawyers are crooks or basically inept. The court system screws over parents in divorce cases. And now, Michigan is wrongly trying to collect money from people on trumped up fraud charges. Stop it. The federal government needs to take over the state or bust it up.
    Non de Plume 12 Feb 2016 9:23
    Hell, when the system *works* it's ridiculous. Watching my Dad - who had worked continuously since 14 years old save a few months in the early 90s - sitting on hold for hours... At least once a week, to 'prove' he still deserved money from a system he paid into. Hours is not an exaggeration.

    And now this. Goddammit Lansing! How many other ways can you try to save/take money from the poor and end up costing us so much more?!?

    Bailey Wilkins stuinmichigan 12 Feb 2016 21:56
    Nothing against The Guardian's reporting, but if you follow the links, you'll see FOX 17 has been covering the story locally since last May. It's their investigation that got the attention of all the other publications (including Detroit Metro Times.) Local papers could have done a better job though, agreed on that.
    talenttruth 12 Feb 2016 12:48
    Leering, Entitled Republican bastards like Governor Snyder simply HATE poor people. And THAT is because all such bullies are cowards, through-and-through, always selecting as their "victims" those who can't fight back. And, since such Puritan Cretins as Snyder "Believe" that they are rich because of their superior merit, it stands to reason (doesn't it) that "poor people" (actually, all us Little Folk) have NO merit, because we didn't inherit a Trust Fund, Daddy's Business or other anciently stolen wealth. These people deserve stunningly BAD Karma. Unfortunately, Karma has its own timeline and doesn't do what seems just, on a timely basis (usually).
    Jim Uicker 12 Feb 2016 13:29
    With today's sophisticated algorithms, computers are used to flag insurance claims all the time. The hit rate is usually much better than 8%. But how can they even consider automating the adjudication of fraud? Fraud is a crime; there should be a presumption of innocence and a right to due process. Without telling people they had a right to appeal, didn't this system violate the constitutional rights of Michigan's most vulnerable citizens: those with no job and therefore no money to defend themselves?

    And what about the employers who paid unemployment insurance premiums month after month, expecting the system to protect their employees from business conditions that would necessitate layoffs? Michigan has defrauded them as well, by collecting premiums and not paying claims.

    Jim Uicker 12 Feb 2016 13:51
    Even if the problem with Midas can be entirely blamed on the tech workers who built and tested the software, there is no excuse for the behavior of the Snyder administration when they became aware of the problem. Just like the cases of legionnaires disease, where the state failed to alert the public about the outbreak and four more people died, the Snyder administration is again trying to sweep its mistakes under the rug.

    Before taking Midas offline, the UIA refused to comment on the Metro Times investigation, and Snyder himself artfully avoided reporters' questions after being made aware of the result of an investigation by a local television station. Now the state only revealed that it shut down Midas to a pending lawsuit.

    The state spent $47 million dollars on a computer system and then took it offline because it didn't work. The flaws in the system are now costing the state many millions more. This level of secrecy is evidence of bad government. The state is supposed to be accountable to taxpayers for that money! Even if the Snyder administration isn't responsible for all of these tragedies, it is definitely responsible for covering them up.

    Jefferson78759 12 Feb 2016 13:55
    This is the GOP "governing"; treat the average person like a criminal, "save" money on essential infrastructure like water treatment, regardless of the consequences.

    I get why the 1% votes GOP but if you're an average person you're putting your financial and physical well being on the line if you do. Crazy.

    MaryLee Sutton Henry 12 Feb 2016 22:30
    I was forced to plead guilty by a public defender to the UIA fraud charge & thrown in jail for 4 days without my Diabetic meds or diet in Allegan county. As it stands right now the State of Michigan keeps sending me bills that are almost $1000 more then what the county says I own. I have done community service, and between witholding tax refunds and payments I have paid over $1200 on a $4300 total bill. I have literally spend hours on the phone with UIA and faxing judgements trying to straighten this out, yet still get bills for the higher amount from UIA. Its a nightmare, I have a misdominer, until its paid and refuse to pay no more then $50 per month until they straighten this out. Maybe joining the class action law suit would help. Does anyone have any better ideas??
    Teri Roy 13 Feb 2016 13:27
    My son and I both got hit, I was able to dispute mine but he has autism and they would not dismiss his, so at 24 yrs old he's paying back 20 grand in pentailies and interest. Just not right
    Outragously Flawless 14 Feb 2016 9:42
    I also received a letter stating I owe and hadn't file taxes since 2007. I had to find all of my taxes from 2007 to 2013 my question is why did they wait over 5yrs to contact me, or is that the set up H&R block does my taxes and they didn't have records that far back.#sneakyass government

    [Dec 18, 2016] Ancient principles of Stoicism for the modern world

    Dec 18, 2016 | www.sott.net
    Marcus Aurelius (121-180CE) was emperor of Rome at the height of its influence and power. One can only imagine the pressures that a person in his position might have experienced. The military might of the empire was massive, and much could happen in the fog of war. Conspiracies ran rampant through the imperial court. What might be lurking right around the corner seemed unforeseeable. Economies flourished and fell into ruin. Barbarians at the Gates! And if Marcus was stressed out, how much more might the ordinary Roman suffer from this uncertainty?

    But, as we start 2015, is Marcus's world really all that different from ours?

    Today, global financial markets seem to move of their own accord as life savings vanish . Conflict around the world and violence at home seems hopelessly incomprehensible for most of us . US elections have seen some of their lowest voter turnout in recent memory, and the country seems more polarized than ever. The constant flow of information from the media and internet can make one feel small and ineffectual.

    If all these stresses push one into a state of despair, or at least a sense of futility, maybe we can follow Marcus' advice and turn to philosophy. In particular, the philosophy of Stoicism.

    The principles of Stoicism

    Stoicism was founded in Athens around 300 BCE, and had its zenith during the Roman Imperial period of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, in the writings of such thinkers as Seneca and Epictetus, as well as Marcus Aurelius.

    Stoicism promised that a good life is available to us even in the face of overwhelming circumstances, which might partly explain its attractiveness to even the mighty emperor of the most powerful empire of its time.

    Central to this life, according to the Stoics, is a certain set of cognitive approaches to what goes on in the world around us.

    First, we must recognize that the vast majority of circumstances and events are out of our control. What is in our control is how we react to them. Thus, what matters to having a good life is not what happens to us, but rather how we deal with it.

    The second major point is that those things under our control - - our thoughts - are both the source of our suffering, and something that we can learn to control. When we learn to have the appropriate reactions and thoughts, we can then live a happy and fruitful life even in the face of enormous difficulties.

    In the words of Epictetus:

    If you think that things naturally enslaved are free or that things not your own are your own, you will be thwarted, miserable, and upset, and will blame both gods and men. But if you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is, just as it is, not your own, then no one will ever coerce you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, you will not accuse anyone, you will not do a single thing unwillingly, you will have no enemies, and no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.
    Stoicism applied to contemporary life

    A growing number of deeply thoughtful people, from scholars to practicing therapists, are following Marcus' advice today. For example, a group at the University of Essex in the UK has developed "Stoic Week," and produced guidelines for anyone to participate in stoic practices for a week and share their experiences.

    Having just concluded its third iteration, this experiment in stoic living has indicated that stoicism may in fact be a helpful tool in modern life. Preliminary results from the first stoic week suggest that the majority of participants had significant reductions in negative feelings associated with stress and anxiety, etc.

    The practice of stoicism is also now being pursued in the US. The University of Wyoming hosts a Stoic Camp, first run in May of 2014, putting students and faculty together to live by stoic principles on a 24 hour basis.

    Stoic camp in Wyoming

    Based in the Snowy Range outside of Centennial, WY, the initial camp hosted only students from Wyoming, but further iterations will accept students from other universities.

    On a typical day, campers rise early in order to practice meditation based in the ancient texts and use this practice to help structure the rest of the day. Each morning and afternoon, the camp breaks into groups to read and discuss portions of Marcus's Meditations and consider how they reflected his stoic values and advice. By repeating this process, these ideas can become part of our cognitive equipment. Campers also engaged in outdoor activities to emphasize our affinity with nature and the universe as a whole.

    Image © Robert S. Colter
    Engaging with philosophy in Wyoming. Some of the campers were deeply affected by their experience. One camper told me, "Stoic camp was a continual reminder that so little is under our control, and also that there is no reason to stress over it. The repetition made this realization longer lasting, and gave us tools to use in living life in the face of stressful situations."

    So, these cognitive realizations and tools may help us to live a happy, fruitful life. As the Stoics emphasize, however, such a life cannot consist in making the world bend to our will . Rather it must consist in making ourselves more fit to live well in the world as it is.

    As Marcus says, "Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live ... while you have life in you, while you still can, make yourself good."
    Comment: As a follow up on Marcus's quote, read what George I. Gurdjieff wrote about The Last Hour of Life:

    Imagine, that you have only a few minutes, maybe an hour left to live; somehow you have discovered exactly when you will die. What would you do with this precious hour of your stay on Earth? Would you be able to complete all your things in this last hour, do you have a conscious idea about how to do it?

    And letting go your last breath would you feel satisfaction from knowing that you have done everything possible in this life to fulfill that you are constantly present, always vibrating, always waiting, like the son is waiting for the father-sailor? In the manifested world everything has its beginning and its end. In the Real World everything is always present and one beautiful day you will be allowed to forget everything and leave the world "forever".

    Freedom is worth a million times more than [political] liberation. The free man, even in slavery, remains a master of himself. For example, if I give you something, let's say, a car, in which there is no fuel, the car cannot move. Your car needs a special fuel, but it is only you who is able to define what kind of fuel is needed and where to get it.

    You have to define yourself how to digest my ideas to make them yours, so that they belong only to you. Your car cannot work on the same fuel my car is working on. I suggest to you only the primary material. You have to get from it what you can use. So, more bravely, sit down at the steering wheel.

    The organic life is very fragile. The planetary body can die at any moment. It is always one step from death. And if you could manage to live one more day, it is only a chance accidentally given to you by nature. If you will be able to live even one more hour, you can consider yourself to be a lucky person. From the moment of conception we are living on borrowed time.

    Living in this world you have to feel death each second, so settle all your life affairs, even in your last hour. But how can anyone know exactly his last hour? For the sense of security make up your things with nature and yourself in every hour given to you, then you will never be met unprepared. The man has to be taught this starting from the [esoteric] school: how to breath, to eat, to move and to die right. This has to become a part of an educational programme. In this programme it is necessary to include the teaching about how to realize the presence of "I" and also how to establish consciousness.

    Question: How to act if you do not feel that there is something unfinished?

    Gurdjieff answered after a pause. He took a deep breath and replied:

    Ask yourself who will be in difficulty if you die like a dog. At the moment of death you have to be wholly aware of yourself and feel that you have done everything possible to use all, within your abilities, in this life which was given to you.

    Now you do not know much about yourself. But with each day you dig deeper and deeper into this bag of bones and start knowing more and more details. Day by day you will be finding out what you should have done and what you have to re-do among the things you have done. A real man is one who could take from life everything that was valuable in it, and say: "And now I can die". We have to try to live your lives so that we could say any day: "Today I can die and not be sorry about anything".

    Never spend fruitlessly the last hour of your life because it can become the most important hour for you. If you use it wrongly, you may be sorry about it later. This sincere excitement that you feel now can become for you a powerful source of the force that can prepare you for perfect death. Knowing that the next hour can become the last one for you, absorb the impressions which it will bring to you as a real gourmet. When lady death will call you, be prepared, always. The master knows how to take from each tasty piece the last bit of the most valuable. Learn to be the master of your life.

    When I was young I learned to prepare fragrances. I learned to extract from life its essence, its most subtle qualities. Search in everything the most valuable, learn to separate the fine from the coarse. One who has learned how to extract the essence, the most important from each moment of life, has reached a sense on quality.

    He is able to do with the world something that can not be done by an aboriginal.

    It could be that in the last moments of your life you will not have the choice where and with whom to be, but you will have a choice to decide how fully you will live them. The ability to take the valuable from life - is the same as to take from the food, air and the impressions the substances needed to build up your higher bodies. If you want to take from your life the most valuable for yourself, it has to be for the good of the higher; for yourself it is enough to leave just a little. To work on yourself for the good of others is a smart way to receive the best from life for yourself. If you will not be satisfied with the last hour of your life, you will not be happy about the whole of your life. To die means to come through something which is impossible to repeat again. To spend your precious time in nothing means to deprive yourself the opportunity to extract from life the most valuable.

    In this world, to live life through, from the beginning to the end - means another aspect of the Absolute. All greatest philosophers were carefully preparing for the last hour of their life. And now I will give you the exercise to prepare for the last hour on the Earth. Try not to misinterpret any word from the given exercise.

    The Exercise

    Look back at the hour that has passed, as if it was the last hour for you on the earth and that you have just acknowledged that you have died. Ask yourself, were you satisfied at that hour?

    And now reanimate yourself again and set up the aim for yourself. In the next hour (if you are lucky to live one more) try to extract from life a little more than you did in the last hour. Define, where and when you should have been more aware, and where you should have put more inner fire.

    And now open your eyes wider, and by this I mean - open more possibilities for yourself, be a little more brave, than you were in the previous hour. Since you know that this is your last hour and you have nothing to loose, try to gain some bravery - at least now. Of course, you don't have to be silly about it.

    Get to know yourself better, look at your machine as if from the outside. Now, when you are dying, there is no sense to keep your reputation and your prestige.

    And now onward, until the real last hour, aspire with persistence to receive the most you can from life that is of value, develop your intuition. Take just a few moments each hour to watch at the hour that passed, without judgment, and then tune yourself to extracting more from the following hour.

    If we look at each hour like at a separate life unit, you can try to do as much as you can to use every unit totally. Force yourself and find the way to make the next hour much more than the one before, but also be aware that you have taken care of the debts you collected till now. Increase the self-sensing and self-knowledge of yourself, and also increase the ability to master yourself, this will change the work of your machine, which is always out of your control. And these abilities can become the indication of the real changes. And it is absolutely unimportant what the machine is thinking about this.

    ...To live the rest of your life rehearsing your death hour by hour - is not at all pathological. None can receive more from life than the cancer patient, who knows approximately when he will die. And since he already recognized how he wishes to spend the rest of his life, he will not have to make the total change in it, but he will be able to go somewhere, where he always wished to go, but would not do it in other circumstances.

    The man who knows that he will die soon, will try to use to the maximum every hour of the rest of his life. This is exactly what Christ meant when he said that the last days will come soon - the days before the Last Judgment. We are all standing in front of the Judge, but it is not the others who are judging us, but we ourselves do the last estimation of our life. We do not have to fail the most important examination, where the most serious judge is ourselves.

    Each moment, taken alone, represents the particle of the eternal Creation. Therefore each moment we can extract the most subtle substances, that we can call "the essence of life".

    Imagine yourself the substance "air" or the substance "impressions". Finally, draw in your mind the substance "moment". Yes, even the moments of time are the substances.

    If we will be able to extract the finest substances from the coarser, sooner or later we will have to
    pay for it. This law is called The Law of Balance. That is why we will learn how to pay immediately for those that we receive from life. Only then we will not have any debts. To pay immediately - this is what is called "real doing". "To do" - is to think, to feel, to act, but "real doing" - is to pay immediately.

    To do - may mean only one thing: to extract the essence from each moment of life and at the same moment to pay all the debts to the nature and yourself; but only when you have "I", can you pay immediately.

    Real life is not a change of activity, but a change of the quality of the activity. Destiny - is destiny. Each one of us has to find himself in the whole order of things. It is not too late yet to start doing it now, although you have spent the greater part of your life in sleep. Starting from today you can begin to prepare yourself for death and, at the same time, to increase the quality of your living. But do not delay with the start - maybe you really only have just one more hour of life.

    Question: Can we share this with others? I think it is very important what we have heard about this evening.

    - You can retell it word by word, but until you will [can?] do this [exercise] yourself, it would mean nothing for others. Existence is the means, or the instrument, for action. Think about this and you will find out why it is so.

    Question: Therefore, we cannot pay the debts, if we do not exist, or if our "I" is absent?

    - Why do you have such a need to pay? Pay for what? If life is only a coincidence, then there is no sense to go on. This does not mean that you have to end your life with a suicide. Opposite, you have to put all your effort into "to live". Ordinary man always lives, just going with the flow. He is not just sleeping, he is absolutely dead. To really live, it is necessary to support the efforts of nature, to take actively from life, and not to act passively - wherever it flows.

    Extracting from life the most precious, you have to be able to operate your emotions. See how fairly you can estimate yourself. Look attentively at yourself and you will see many remarkable ways to be fair. Each time notice for yourself different moments when the desires appear. Act as before, but always be aware of their presence. Transport to the world the part of your blood, but one of the higher level.

    At the end of each hour after you have estimated its usefulness, imagine that you just woke up in the absolutely unknown in comparison to the previous one gone by. It is important to note that the apparent continuation of the last hour is in reality changing with every hour, although things and people seem the same as before. With the time you will learn to see yourself as a spirit of a special substance, who is coming from one world to another, as an uninvited guest of nature.

    Looking from this point of view evaluate everything you do in your life. Looking at the results of all your efforts of the past and think what sense they all have now, in the last hour of your life. Those who are engaged in the Work, are dead to this world and at the same time they are more alive in this world than anyone else. Work...something strange, imperceptible, but for many it is impossible to live without it.

    The ordinary way of understanding life is vanity of vanities. However big the result is according to earthly measures, sooner or later it will fail. Even the sand is being rubbed into dust by time. Even the most significant people of history are being forgotten. To understand the real possibilities of this world, it is necessary to find what we can reach in this world that will be very useful in the Real World.

    Attentively look at the lives of all the greatest people, those who were commanding armies, who had power over others. What is the benefit for them from all their great actions now, when they are dead? Even when they were alive, all these great actions were no more than empty dreams. We are not here to praise ourselves and to prove ourselves, the most disgusting in the ordinary man is the ability to quickly satisfy his flesh.

    The majority of people find many excuses not to work on themselves. They are in a complete prison of their weaknesses. But right now we do not speak about them, but about you.

    Understand me right, I do not need followers, I am rather interested in finding the good organizers, the real warriors of the new world. I understand the weakness of the organization, because right now we do not speak about the usual organisation which would consist of initiates.

    I remind you once again, learn to live each of your hours with a bigger benefit. Create a detailed plan of the last hour of your life. To understand how one should die, you should grow deep roots into life, only then you will be able to die like a human being, not like a dog. Although, it is not given to everyone - to die. You can become manure for our planet, but it does not really mean do die. To die to this world forever - is an honour. For this honour you have to pay with Conscious Labour and Intentional Suffering. You have to earn this right.

    Try to imagine yourself relatively clearly the last hour of your life on earth. Write a kind of a script of this last hour, as if you were writing the script for a film. Ask yourself: "Is this how Iwant to dispose my life". If you are not satisfied with the answer, rewrite the script until you likeit.

    Look at life like as business. Time is your money for life. When you came into this world, a definite amount of money was given to you and this you cannot exceed. Time is the only currency with which you pay for your life. Now you see, how you used the biggest part of it in a stupid way. You have not even reached the main goal of life - to have rest. You failed as a businessman, and as a user of life - you deceived yourself. All your life you thought that everything is given to you for free, and now suddenly you discovered that - it is not free. You pay for using the time, that is why each moment of your stay here costs something.

    So how would it be possible for you to reimburse [recover] at least somehow these losses? Check, if the deficit on your bank account is only temporary or is it perhaps constant? Did you loose the time or could you invest it successfully? If you have spent all your money on vacations, then there is nothing to do but to be sorry about the past.

    For many years you have been spending you life as if your parents gave you a bank account with unlimited credit. But now the amount is used and you see that you are all alone and that there is none to rely on. There is no more time on your bank account. Now you are forced to earn each hour of your life. All your life you behaved like a child and spent time just like a newly married couple on their honeymoon.

    Our main enemy, which is hindering us from applying the necessary efforts - is hopelessness. I know, you will have many excuses not to prepare yourself for the last hour of your life. The habit is a big force, but starting once, you can learn to do each time more and more.

    Do not fiddle all day, force yourself at least one hour a day to make an effort, otherwise you will loose everything. Think about the rehearsal of your last hour as if it was ballet exercises - you have to do it all your life.

    I dedicate four hours a day for this exercise, but when I was young, I spent on it two times longer.

    Translation from Russian by Alexandra Kharitonova, with free English rendering by Reijo Oksanen. unearthed by Ilya Kotz & Avi Solomon of the Jerusalem Nyland Group.

    [Dec 18, 2016] A good dose of Stoic philosophy is necessary for coping with troubling times

    Notable quotes:
    "... Ryan Holiday is the author of ..."
    "... (Profile Books, £9.99). To order a copy for £8.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com ..."
    Dec 18, 2016 | www.sott.net

    Some of us are stressed. Others are overworked, struggling with the new responsibilities of parenthood, or moving from one flawed relationship to another. Whatever it is, whatever you are going through, there is wisdom from the Stoics that can help.

    Followers of this ancient and inscrutable philosophy have found themselves at the centre of some of history's most trying ordeals, from the French Revolution to the American Civil War to the prison camps of Vietnam. Bill Clinton reportedly reads Roman Emperor and stoic Marcus Aurelius's Meditations once a year, and one can imagine him handing a copy to Hillary after her heart-wrenching loss in the US presidential election.

    Stoicism is a school of philosophy which was founded in Athens in the early 3rd century and then progressed to Rome, where it became a pragmatic way of addressing life's problems. The central message is, we don't control what happens to us; we control how we respond .

    The Stoics were really writing and thinking about one thing: how to live. The questions they asked were not arcane or academic but practical and real. "What do I do about my anger?" "What do I do if someone insults me?" "I'm afraid to die; why is that?" "How can I deal with the difficult situations I face?" "How can I deal with the success or power I hold?"

    There also happens to be a decent amount of advice on how to live under the looming threat of a tyrant ("I may wish to be free from torture, but if the time comes for me to endure it, I'll wish to bear it courageously with bravery and honor," wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca). All of which makes Stoic philosophy particularly well-suited to the world we live in.

    While it would be hard to find a word dealt a greater injustice at the hands of the English language than "stoicism"- with its mistaken connotations of austerity and lack of emotion - in fact, nothing could be more necessary for our times than a good dose of Stoic philosophy.

    When the news media provokes us with overwhelming amounts of information, Epictetus, another Roman philosopher, cuts through the noise: "If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters." When it feels like people are ruder and more selfish than ever, Marcus Aurelius urges us to ask when we ourselves have behaved the same way - and says that the best revenge is simply "to not be like that".

    When the natural inclination is to focus on achievement and money, Seneca's reminder to his father-in-law, who had just been removed from a prominent position, rings true: "Believe me, it's better to produce the balance sheet of your own life than that of the grain market."

    In their writings - often private letters or diaries - and in their lectures, the Stoics struggled to come up with real, actionable answers. They held duty and honor as sacred obligations and they believed that every obstacle they faced was simply an opportunity - to test themselves and be better.

    Now Stoicism is finding resonance with new followers. Just last month in New York, a conference called Stoicon was declared to be the largest gathering of Stoics in history.

    This kind of philosophy is not an idle pursuit but a crucial tool. As Seneca said, "Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own."

    About the author

    Ryan Holiday is the author of The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living (Profile Books, £9.99). To order a copy for £8.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com

    [Dec 11, 2016] Comic Book Hayek The Planners Promise Utopia

    Notable quotes:
    "... I had always thought Hayek made some good critical points about the illusions of socialists/utopians and then chose to ignore the fact that his criticism also applied to his ..."
    "... So maybe Hayek didn't overlook the fact that his critique also applied to his utopia. Maybe he knew full well he was misrepresenting what he was selling, engaging in exactly the same propaganda techniques that he attributed to others. ..."
    "... A Rovian strategy - conceal your weakness by attacking others on precisely that issue. ..."
    "... The Road to Serfdom put out in the US after WWII, which was full of this inflammatory sort of thing that doing anything to ameliorate the harder edges of capitalism put one inexorably on the road to serfdom. ..."
    "... In the actual RtS one finds Hayek himself supporting quite a few such amiliorations, most notably social insurance, especially national health insurance well beyond what we even have in the US now with ACA. ..."
    "... The problem for lovers of Hayek, and arguably Hayek himself, is that he simply never repudiated this comic book version of his work, even as he and many of his followers got all worked up when people, such as Samuelson, would criticize Hayek for this comic book version of the RtS, pointing out his support for these ameliorations in the original non-comic book version. ..."
    "... However, Samuelson in his last remarks on Hayek, which I published in JEBO some years ago, effectively said that Hayek had only himself to blame for this confusion. ..."
    "... I have been thinking that maybe both "sides" in our mostly brainwashed America today could agree with the meme of "DRAIN-THE-SWAMP" and hope to see it carried proudly on protest signs by the non-zombies of both sides in the ongoing social upheaval. ..."
    "... I agree that "accuse the other side of doing what you are doing" is a familiar ploy of the right. ..."
    Dec 11, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

    Sandwichman | December 10, 2016 12:51 am
    In his neo-Confederate "Mein Kampf," Whither Solid South , Charles Wallace Collins quoted a full paragraph from Hayek's The Road to Serfdom regarding the emptying out of the meaning of words. My instinct would be not to condemn Hayek for the politics of those who quote him. Even the Devil quotes Shakespeare.

    But after taking another look at the Look magazine comic book edition of Hayek's tome, I realized that Collins's depiction of full employment as a sinister Stalinist plot was, after all, remarkably faithful to the comic-book version of Hayek's argument. With only a little digging, one can readily infer that what the comic book refers to as "The Plan" is a policy also known as full employment (or, if you want to get specific, William Beveridge's Full Employment in a Free Society ). "Planners" translates as cartoon Hayek's alias for Keynesian economists and their political acolytes.


    To be sure, Hayek's sole reference to full employment in the book is unobjectionable - even estimable almost:

    That no single purpose must be allowed in peace to have absolute preference over all others applies even to the one aim which everybody now agrees comes in the front rank: the conquest of unemployment. There can be no doubt that this must be the goal of our greatest endeavour; even so, it does not mean that such an aim should be allowed to dominate us to the exclusion of everything else, that, as the glib phrase runs, it must be accomplished "at any price". It is, in fact, in this field that the fascination of vague but popular phrases like "full employment" may well lead to extremely short-sighted measures, and where the categorical and irresponsible "it must be done at all cost" of the single-minded idealist is likely to do the greatest harm.

    Yes, single-minded pursuit at all costs of any nebulous objective will no doubt be short-sighted and possibly harmful. But is that really what "the planners" were advocating?

    Hayek elaborated his views on full employment policy in a 1945 review of Beveridge's Full Employment in a Free Society, in which he glibly characterized Keynes's theory of employment as "all that was needed to maintain employment permanently at a maximum was to secure an adequate volume of spending of some kind."

    Beveridge, Hayek confided, was "an out-and-out planner" who proposed to deal with the difficulty of fluctuating private investment "by abolishing private investment as we knew it." You see, single-minded pursuit of any nebulous objective will likely be short-sighted and even harmful unless that objective is the preservation of the accustomed liberties of the owners of private property, in which case it must be done at all cost!

    Further insight into Hayek's objection to Keynesian full-employment policy can be found in The Constitution of Liberty . The problem with full employment is those damn unions. On this matter, he quoted Jacob Viner with approval:

    The sixty-four dollar question with respect to the relations between unemployment and full employment policy is what to do if a policy to guarantee full employment leads to chronic upward pressure on money wages through the operation of collective bargaining .

    and

    it is a matter of serious concern whether under modern conditions, even in a socialist country if it adheres to democratic political procedures, employment can always be maintained at a high level without recourse to inflation, overt or disguised, or if maintained whether it will not itself induce an inflationary wage spiral through the operation of collective bargaining

    Sharing Viner's anxiety about those damn unions inducing an inflationary wage spiral "through the operation of collective bargaining" was Professor W, H, Hutt, author of the Theory of Collective Bargaining, who "[s]hortly after the General Theory appeared argued that it was a specific for inflation."

    Hutt, whose earlier book on collective bargaining "analysed [and heralded] the position of the Classical economists on the relation between unions and wage determination," had his own plan for full employment . It appeared in The South African Journal of Economics in September, 1945 under the title "Full Employment and the Future of Industry." I am posting a large excerpt from Hutt's eccentric full employment "plan" here because it makes explicit principles that are tacit in the neo-liberal pursuit of "non-inflationary growth":

    Full employment and a prosperous industry might yet be achieved if what I propose to call the three "basic principles of employment" determine our planning .

    The first basic principle is as follows. Productive resources of all kinds, including labour, can be fully employed when the prices of the services they render are sufficiently low to enable the people's existing purchasing power to absorb the full flow of the product.

    To this must be added the second basic principle of employment. When the prices of productive service have been thus adjusted to permit full employment, the flow of purchasing power, in the form of wages and the return to property is maximised .

    continued .

    The assertion that unemployment is "voluntary" and can be cured by reducing wages is the classical assumption that Keynes challenged in the theory of unemployment. Hutt's second principle, that full employment, achieved by wage cuts, will maximize the total of wages, profit and rent thus would be not be likely to command "more or less universal assent," as Hutt claimed. But even if it did, Hutt's stress on maximizing a total , regardless of distribution of that total between wages and profits, is peculiar. Why would workers be eager to work more hours for less pay just to generate higher profits? Hutt's principles could only gain "more or less universal assent" if they were sufficiently opaque that no one could figure out what he was getting at, which Hutt's subsequent exposition makes highly unlikely.

    Hutt's proposed full employment plan consisted of extending the hours of work, postponing retirement and encouraging married women to stay in the work force. He advertised his idea as a reverse lump-of-labor strategy. Instead of insisting - as contemporary economists do - that immigrants (older workers, automation or imports) don't take jobs, Hutt boasted they create jobs, specifically because they keep wages sufficiently low and thus maximize total returns to property and wages combined. He may have been wrong but he was consistent. Nor did he conceal his antagonism toward trade unions and collective bargaining behind hollow platitudes about inclusive growth .

    The U.S. has been following Hutt-like policies for decades now and the results are in :

    For the 117 million U.S. adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong.

    Or perhaps Hutt was right and what has held back those at the bottom of the income distribution is that wages have not been sufficiently low to insure full employment and thus to maximize total returns to labor and capital. The incontestable thing about Hutt's theory is that no matter how low wages go, it will always be possible to claim that they didn't go sufficiently low enough to enable people's purchasing power to absorb the full flow of their services.

    coberly , December 10, 2016 11:52 am

    I can't claim to know all of what Hayek meant. but I did read one of his books and it was clear he did not mean what the right has taken him to not only mean, but to have proved.

    In any case it is dangerous (and a bit stupid) to base policy on what someone said or is alleged to have said. Especially economists who claim to have "proved" some "law" of economics.

    That said, i wonder if some of what is said here is the result of over-reading what someone (else) as said: to be concerned with policies "to the exclusion of all else" is not the same as rejecting the policies while keeping other things in mind. and to recognize the potential of labor unions to force inflationary levels of wages is not the same as opposing labor unions.

    neither the advocates in favor of or those opposed to the extreme understanding of these cautions –including the authors of them if that is the case - are contributing much to the development of sane and humane policy.

    Sandwichman , December 10, 2016 12:40 pm

    I had always thought Hayek made some good critical points about the illusions of socialists/utopians and then chose to ignore the fact that his criticism also applied to his neo-liberal utopia. But I followed up the passage quoted by Collins and it turns out that Hayek was discussing a statement made by Karl Mannheim, which he quoted out of context and egregiously misrepresented -- a classic right-wing propaganda slander technique. So here is Hayek talking about emptying out the meaning from words and filling them with new content and he is doing just that to the words of another author.

    So maybe Hayek didn't overlook the fact that his critique also applied to his utopia. Maybe he knew full well he was misrepresenting what he was selling, engaging in exactly the same propaganda techniques that he attributed to others. By accusing others first of doing what he was doing, it made it awkward for anyone to point out that he was doing it, too. A Rovian strategy - conceal your weakness by attacking others on precisely that issue.

    Barkley Rosser , December 10, 2016 1:21 pm

    One of the problems with Hayek is that there was always this conflict between the "comic book Hayek" and the more scholarly and careful Hayek. In fact, there really was a comic book version of The Road to Serfdom put out in the US after WWII, which was full of this inflammatory sort of thing that doing anything to ameliorate the harder edges of capitalism put one inexorably on the road to serfdom.

    In the actual RtS one finds Hayek himself supporting quite a few such amiliorations, most notably social insurance, especially national health insurance well beyond what we even have in the US now with ACA.

    The problem for lovers of Hayek, and arguably Hayek himself, is that he simply never repudiated this comic book version of his work, even as he and many of his followers got all worked up when people, such as Samuelson, would criticize Hayek for this comic book version of the RtS, pointing out his support for these ameliorations in the original non-comic book version.

    However, Samuelson in his last remarks on Hayek, which I published in JEBO some years ago, effectively said that Hayek had only himself to blame for this confusion.

    psychohistorian , December 10, 2016 3:08 pm

    To me it comes down to whether government is structured to serve all or some obfuscated minority of all. With that as the divider it is easy to decipher Hayek's work and others.

    I have been thinking that maybe both "sides" in our mostly brainwashed America today could agree with the meme of "DRAIN-THE-SWAMP" and hope to see it carried proudly on protest signs by the non-zombies of both sides in the ongoing social upheaval.

    coberly , December 10, 2016 6:41 pm

    Sammich

    I agree that "accuse the other side of doing what you are doing" is a familiar ploy of the right.

    I don't know what Hayek was really saying, or if he let the comic book version stand because he was so flattered to have his child receive such adulation, or just because he was in his dotage and didn't really understand how he was being misrepresented if he was.

    but the fun thing to do with Hayek is to point out what he "really" said to those who have only heard the comic book version

    if anyone is still talking about him at all. seems there was a big rush of talk about Hyak a few years ago and now it has faded.

    [Dec 07, 2016] Stoicism Buddhism-mindfulness Stoicism Today

    Notable quotes:
    "... is a board certified hospice and palliative care physician. In her work she helps people make decisions about their medical treatment, helping them elucidate their values, preferences, and goals given the constraints of their medical situation and their limited time to live. Mary began practicing an intuitive form of Stoicism as a child. She discovered Stoic philosophy in middle age. She finds Stoicism essential, not only for her personal life, but also to avoid having patients, their loved ones, and herself becoming overwhelmed by the difficulties of taking care of the sickest and most fragile patients in the medical system ..."
    Dec 07, 2016 | exeter.ac.uk
    As happens with many Stoics, my Stoic practice developed spontaneously as a response to difficulties in my life. I was orphaned when I was seven, causing the life I had known to evaporate. In order to survive this loss, using my own intuition I developed some potent Stoic techniques for tolerating difficult situations. Unfortunately, I did not develop any techniques for avoiding difficult situations. Thus my personal brand of Stoicism carried me straight from suboptimal foster care right into a bad marriage.

    A couple of decades and several life changes later, my boyfriend introduced me to Stoic philosophy. I was shocked to discover how much of my self-developed philosophy of living and coping techniques those ancient Greeks had known about all along. Thus, well into middle age, I started the formal practice of Stoic philosophy. Those ancient Greeks had a trick or two to teach me. My life got even better with their help.

    At this point, I rely on my Stoic techniques when things start to go wrong inside my head. Earlier this week, a dying patient was reviewing his life with me. He told me about how much he valued the teamwork he and his wife shared to raise their children. It is a beautiful story and my eyes start to fill with tears. No problem so far. I am not expected to be without feelings, but if my feelings take control of my thinking, I cannot focus enough to be a good doctor.

    As I listen to my patient talk about how raising their children deepened his relationship with his wife, I realize the one thing I wanted most out of life was to raise my kids well. I married and had children with a man who always had his way and whose method of childrearing I disagreed with. I could not figure out how to challenge his child rearing ideas or how to divorce him for twenty five years. Now I am too old to have more children, and will never get to have the experience of raising a child with a partner. I didn't get a father; I only got a mother for seven years. Life couldn't even deliver me a decent husband. I don't ask for much. My eyes are dripping tears now and I realize that I am not paying any attention to my patient.

    I need to pull myself away from the attraction of self-pity and into the present. Even if I had the skills to turn my feelings off, that would not be helpful; I need them in order to take care of my patient. I remind myself of the Stoic maxim: "It seemed so to you at the time."

    I have a sense that I am shoving my foot in a slamming door. If I can keep the door from closing, I can maintain control of myself, and my equanimity will be only briefly disturbed. It feels as though the force of emotion that wells up must be countered with something forceful. If what I bring to bear on it is not forceful, it will fail. Once the tears start forming, my Buddhist practice has nothing to offer me. Once I have started to lose my equanimity, my emotions flood me if I attempt to use Buddhist techniques. I have found that only Stoic techniques overcome the waves of emotion. Buddhist techniques feel more general and unfocussed.

    What my Buddhist meditation practice does offer me is a decrease in my overall reactivity. When I am meditating regularly, I am less apt to be bothered by the unavoidable emotional events of life. This pattern has repeated itself a dozen or more times. I fall away from my meditation practice. I become more easily riled. I recognize this and resume meditating. Things improve until I fall away from my meditation practice again.

    I asked people on the Facebook Stoicism Group about their experiences, and learned this is typical. The only consensus was that Stoic mindfulness practices are useful for the immediately present threat to equanimity, and Buddhist mindfulness practices help strengthen equanimity overall.

    It is not surprising to me that Buddhist meditation works well for us on a daily basis because it has been honed over thousands of years by hundreds of thousands of people. What is surprising to me is that it does not always work well for me and my Facebook friends. It surprises me that our Buddhist practice fails us in the pinch.

    Why does Buddhism not include techniques like "Amor Fati" or negative visualization? Are these incompatible with the Buddhist philosophy? I do not know enough about Buddhism to answer that.

    It seems to me that if there were a significant fraction of people whose needs were not being met by Buddhism, and that there were non-Buddhist techniques that met their needs, then Buddhism would have figured out how to respond to them. Either these techniques would have been incorporated into Buddhism or variant forms of Buddhism would have developed that were compatible with these techniques. I think it is more likely that the Buddhist techniques worked well enough for most people in the society in which Buddhism developed.

    When I receive a disturbing impression and begin to formulate my response to it, Buddhism would say that I need to distance myself from that nascent thought and to examine it scientifically as I would someone else's emotion. So far, this is very similar to the Stoic teachings on disturbing impressions as I understand them. Buddhism recommends that I next lean into the unpleasant emotion, to really examine it, get to know it and to realize that it will pass soon. This technique results in me wallowing in my emotion as I wait for it to pass. I become so attracted to it that I will grasp it firmly and become unable to function. Perhaps if I practiced this technique for decades, it would work, but the dying patient in front of me does not have decades while I grapple with my inner demons.

    Stoicism offers me techniques that I can use right in the moment. Instead of leaning in, I counter the emotion with a maxim that I have prepared and have at the ready for whenever disturbing emotions arise. The part of my mind that is not wrapped up in my personal tragedy can recite Stoic maxims forcefully to counter the attraction of "I didn't get and I want." Stoicism gets between my mind and the idea it is about to grip onto and stays my grasp before it happens. For me, for the most disturbing impressions, this is what works.

    There is an idea in neurology of over-learning. Things which one repeats thousands of times during one's lifetime such as the ABC's or the response to "how are you today?" are over-learned. When a person is demented and has lost the ability to think in any meaningful fashion, they can often still recite the ABC's or other over-learned phrases. It seems to me that when I am caught by my deep feelings of deprivation and grief that I am like a demented person and can only say over-learned things. The little bit of my brain that is not sucked into the black hole of "I lack" can barely squeak out "It seemed so to you at the time." If it can however, it breaks the spell and the attractiveness of the disturbing impression is diminished.

    Another common observation is that Western culture has more emphasis on independence and individuality. It seems likely that this emphasis develops minds that are more likely to work with individually oriented techniques. Stoicism emphasizing my personal inner citadel rather than Buddhism emphasizing dissolution of myself feels more comfortable to me. When I am most in pain, standing steadfast against an ocean crashing against the seawall of my personal virtue makes me feel less pain whereas the paradoxical teachings of Buddhism simply frustrate me.

    I find that Buddhist techniques on an ongoing basis combined with Stoic ones on an as needed basis work best for me to maximize my equanimity. I do not have a good explanation for why. I am more at peace, at rest and am flourishing more than ever before in my life.

    This reminds me of another Stoic technique that I practice. It has a Buddhist analog: I am grateful.

    Mary Braun, MD is a board certified hospice and palliative care physician. In her work she helps people make decisions about their medical treatment, helping them elucidate their values, preferences, and goals given the constraints of their medical situation and their limited time to live. Mary began practicing an intuitive form of Stoicism as a child. She discovered Stoic philosophy in middle age. She finds Stoicism essential, not only for her personal life, but also to avoid having patients, their loved ones, and herself becoming overwhelmed by the difficulties of taking care of the sickest and most fragile patients in the medical system .

    [Dec 07, 2016] Buddhism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism

    Notable quotes:
    "... And even in Buddhism it is hard to find much in the way of political or social engagement, outside of a general attitude of compassion (and, again, acceptance) for the suffering of creatures. I won't go as far as agreeing with Marx that the point is not to understand the world, but to change it, but surely a positive philosophy has to explicitly engage with how to improve the human condition, not just at the individual level, but socially. ..."
    "... Epicureans insisted on the value of friendship, for instance, which I do believe is a fundamental component of a flourishing existence. Their assault on fear-engendering superstition can also be counted as one of their most enduring legacies. ..."
    "... And all three philosophies have in common the idea that it is wise to attempt to understand the world as it actually is, as opposed to the way it superficially appears to be ..."
    Dec 07, 2016 | rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com

    However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them? (Buddha)

    It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself. (Epicurus)

    Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live. (Marcus Aurelius)

    I have been pondering for a while that there are some striking similarities among the three ancient philosophies of Buddhism , Epicureanism and Stoicism . Let me premise that I don't know as much about the first as about the latter two, and even there I'm certainly no expert, so take what follows with a commensurately sized grain of salt.

    Buddhism is the more complicated of the three, largely - I think - because it has a much longer history as a live philosophy. It has therefore had significantly more time to develop diverging schools of thoughts and interpretations. It is also different from Epicureanism and Stoicism in belonging to the Eastern rather than the Western philosophical tradition, which means that it is more imbued with mysticism and much less grounded in the Greek style of logical argument (it is not by chance that Buddhism, but not the other two, is often referred to as a "religion," though even there the term only applies partially and only to some Buddhist traditions).

    Interestingly, all three philosophies arose in similar times, both chronologically and in terms of social setting. The founder of Epicureanism was, of course, Epicurus, a historical figure about whom we know a good deal. He lived between 341 and 269 BCE in Greece. Stoicism was established, also in ancient Greece, by Zeno of Citium (334-262 BCE), who was therefore a contemporary of Epicurus (indeed, the two schools were rivals throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods). The birth of Buddhism is much less clear, but it originated in the northeastern Indian subcontinent in the 5th century BCE (so about one and a half centuries before Epicureanism and Stoicism). Not as much is known about the actual life of its founder, Siddhārtha Gautama, but there is no reason to believe that he was not an actual historical figure and that the general course of his life took place along the lines accepted by tradition.

    Perhaps more interestingly, though, all three philosophies arose and thrived in times of social and political turmoil, within their respective geographical areas. This is relevant because I think it may go some way toward explaining some of the similarities I am interested in. Of course, Buddhism still thrives today, with hundreds of millions of followers. Epicureanism and Stoicism, on the contrary, largely exist in textbooks, the main reason being Christianity: as soon as the Christians took over the Roman empire they put their newly found political and military might in the service of the one true god and persecuted both Epicureans and Stoics. Both schools were officially abolished in 529 CE by the emperor Justinian I, that prick.

    There are several interesting aspects of all three philosophies that I will simply ignore here, particularly their more scientific ones (such as, most prominently, Epicurean atomism, which was inherited from pre-Socratic thinkers like Leucippus, Democritus, Heraclitus and Parmenides). I will concentrate instead on the metaphysics and ethics of the three schools. I also need to add that I am quite skeptical of the attempts that various people make of attributing almost miraculous "scientific" insights to ancient philosophies. Yes, the Epicureans were talking about atoms, but that concept had very little to do with modern physics. The same goes for the Buddhist idea that the self is an illusion, allegedly anticipating modern neuroscience. Indeed, in the latter case, I think that treating the self as an illusion is a profound mistake, based on a misunderstanding of neurobiology (but not of Buddhism, which really does claim something along those lines!). But that's another story for another post.

    Let's begin, then, with the basics of Epicureanism. Of the three, it was by far the least mystical set of doctrines. Epicurus was a pretty strict materialist, and even though he believed in the existence of a god, said god had nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of the universe or human affairs, and indeed he was made of atoms just like everything else.

    Thanks to sustained Christian slurring, we moderns associate Epicureanism with hedonism, but Epicurus' principle of pleasure had very little to do with sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. His basic idea was that human suffering is caused by our misunderstanding of the true nature of the world (a thought common also to Stoicism and Buddhism), and to our preoccupation with human matters such as - ironically - sensual pleasures and political power. All of this, according to Epicurus, interfered with the real goal of human existence, reaching a state that he called ataraxia (which usually translates as tranquillity). To achieve ataraxia one has to eliminate both bodily and mental pains, and particularly one has to conquer the fundamental fears of death and punishment in the afterlife. Hence, Epicureanism's profoundly anti-religious, and eventually anti-Christian, character. Indeed, Epicureans' only social involvement was in the fight against religion and superstition, which they regarded as a principal cause of human unhappiness.

    It seems to me that the Epicurean concept of ataraxia , as well as their teachings on how to achieve it, are not that different in spirit (though they certainly are in detail) from the Buddhist idea of nirvana , the highest happiness possible for a sentient being. Indeed, nirvana derives from a Sanskrit word that means something along the lines of "cessation of craving and ignorance," an idea that both Stoics and Epicureans would have been very comfortable with (though nirvana has a decidedly more mystical meaning than either the Stoics or especially the Epicureans would have been comfortable with).

    Basic Buddhist teachings begin with the Four Noble Truths . (I noticed that Buddhists have a penchant for numbering things: there are four noble truths, the noble path is eightfold, there are four "immeasurables," three "marks of existence," "three jewels" to seek refuge in, five precepts for basic Buddhism, and so on. You get the idea.) The four noble truths are: i) that dukkha (suffering) originates from physical and mental illness, the anxiety engendered by constant change, and a general dissatisfaction pervading all life forms; ii) that the origin of dukkha can be known by human beings, and that its roots are craving and ignorance (see Epicureanism above!); iii) that the cessation of dukkha is indeed possible; and iv) that such cessation is achieved through the noble eightfold path.

    Said noble eightfold path , in turn, is essentially a recipe to achieve the cessation of dukkha and eventually nirvana , the eight components being meant to be pursued in parallel, not sequentially: 1) Right View, viewing the world for what it is, not as it appears to be (easier said than done, but still); 2) Right Intention, the pursuit of renunciation, freedom and harmlessness; 3) Right Speech, speaking truthfully and without harming others; 4) Right Action, acting without harming others; 5) Right Livelihood, living without causing harm; 6) Right Effort, that is making an effort to improve oneself (yes, you will notice the recurring deployment of the notion of self in Buddhism, despite the fact that it allegedly doesn't exist); 7) Right Mindfulness, which means awareness of both how things are and of the reality within one self (!); and 8) Right Concentration, engaging in meditation or concentration of the right kind.

    One of the most problematic Buddhist concepts, I think, is that of karma , which refers to a cosmic force driving the cycle of suffering and rebirth of every being. The idea is that one's actions during a lifetime determine one's rebirth at the next cycle. (I think that there is a fundamental contradiction between the Buddhist rejection of the idea of an enduring self and the very concept of beings that go through different lifetimes. Buddhists do have answers to this objection, of course, but I find them extremely unconvincing.) The goal, so to speak, is to be reborn on higher "planes of existence" (there are 31 of them, grouped in 6 "realms"), until eventually one achieves enlightenment and escapes the cycle of rebirth altogether.

    I say that karma is problematic for a variety of reasons. To begin with, it seems to be plucked out of nowhere, with neither empirical or even logical support. It amounts to an automatic cosmic scoring chart which will affect a new being who has, in fact, no memory of what his "predecessor" actually did to gain positive or negative karma points. Ethically, it is hard to imagine why one should be responsible for (or should gain from) the previous round in her or his "dependent arising."

    Be that as it may, the idea that there is a cosmic framework within which we act is reminiscent of (though it is quite distinct from) the Stoic idea of logos , which is a sort of universal reason that determines the unfolding of events. For the Stoics too, the goal is to become clear about reality, and a major objective is to develop a degree of self-control that allows one to overcome destructive emotions (which arise precisely from errors of judgment about how the world works). Again, the parallels with both Epicureanism and Buddhism seem obvious.

    Stoics aimed not at getting rid of emotions (despite the popular caricature of Stoics as Spock-like figures), but rather to channel them in a more productive direction. This was achieved through a combination of logic, concentration and reflection, and eventually evolved into various contemporary forms of cognitive behavioral therapy. (In this sense, both Buddhism - with its various meditative techniques - and Stoicism have entered the realm of modern practices, which can be pursued essentially independently of the philosophies that gave origin to them.) The ultimate goal of the Stoic was apatheia , or peace of mind, which I think is akin to both the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia and the Buddhist goal of nirvana (again, with due consideration given to the significant differences in the background conditions and specific articulation of the three philosophies). And of course Stoics too had a ready-made recipe for their philosophy, in the form of a short list of virtues to practice (nothing compared to the above mentioned panoply of Buddhist lists though!). These were: courage, justice, temperance and wisdom.

    I am sure one could continue with this conceptual cross-mapping for a while, and of course scholars within each of the three traditions would object to or modify my suggestions. What I am interested in here, however, is pursuing the further questions of what the common limitations of the philosophies of Buddhism, Epicureanism and Stoicism are, as well as what positive contributions they have made to humanity's thinking about (and dealing with!) the universe.

    I am inclined to reject both Buddhism's and Stoicism's metaphysics, being significantly more happy with the Epicurean view of the world. I don't think there is any reason to think that concepts like logos or karma have any philosophical substance, nor do they do any work in actually explaining why things are the way they are. The Epicurean embracing of a materialist metaphysics, instead, is in synch with the development of natural philosophy and eventually of modern science. True, there are no "atoms" in the sense in which Epicurus and his predecessors where thinking of them, and the free will-enabling "swerve" seems a rather arbitrary conceit that has been superseded by better philosophical treatment of the problem it was supposed to address. But all in all I think Epicurean metaphysics handily beats the other two.

    However, of concern is the limited social engagement of all three philosophies. While they do differ in degree on this count too, Buddhism, Epicureanism and Stoicism all preach a level of detachment that seems alien to being human and that may easily lead to social disengagement. On this issue, I'm with David Hume (and with much modern neuroscience) when he argued that emotions aren't something to get rid of or overcome (or drastically alter), but instead they are the very reason we give a crap about anything to begin with.

    All three philosophies certainly imply a good measure of compassion for our fellow creatures, but the Epicureans in particular expressly rejected involvement in politics, and their only social engagement was manifested in their relentless attack on religion and superstition as the primary causes of fear. The Stoics were opposed to slavery and preached brotherly love, but their insistence on understanding and accepting whatever the logos set out easily slides into a somewhat passive stance devoid of social action. And even in Buddhism it is hard to find much in the way of political or social engagement, outside of a general attitude of compassion (and, again, acceptance) for the suffering of creatures. I won't go as far as agreeing with Marx that the point is not to understand the world, but to change it, but surely a positive philosophy has to explicitly engage with how to improve the human condition, not just at the individual level, but socially.

    As I mentioned earlier, though, perhaps this common degree of passivity toward the social and emphasis on the individual's understanding and acceptance of the world resulted from the fact that all three philosophies were born at a time of social turmoil and uncertainty, when surely an attitude of recoiling into one's internal world must have seemed like the only available option in the face of events that were hard to control and that often resulted in painful consequences for large swaths of society.

    On the positive side, I am a firm believer that philosophy is a continuous source of valuable insight into the human condition, so I think most philosophies offer something that is worth plucking and adding to the store of our collective wisdom. In the cases of these three, and despite my reservations about their dearth of social engagement, there is quite a bit to be recommended.

    Epicureans insisted on the value of friendship, for instance, which I do believe is a fundamental component of a flourishing existence. Their assault on fear-engendering superstition can also be counted as one of their most enduring legacies. Both Buddhists and Stoics, for their part, developed techniques to improve people's mental well being, and there is good empirical evidence that those techniques do work (though my personal preference is for the more reflective Stoic approach rather than the overly meditative Buddhist one). And all three philosophies have in common the idea that it is wise to attempt to understand the world as it actually is, as opposed to the way it superficially appears to be (though, again, I think the Buddhists were more off the mark than the other two, particularly the Epicureans).

    In the end, I don't consider myself an Epicurean or a Stoic, and I am certainly no Buddhist. But this does not preclude me from appreciating what some of the greatest minds of human antiquity had to say to their fellow travelers. Their thoughts still resonate vibrantly more than two millennia after they were first conceived, and that is no small accomplishment by any human standard.

    [Dec 02, 2016] Since 2014 The US Has Added 571,000 Waiters And Bartenders And Lost 34,000 Manufacturing Workers Zero Hedge

    Notable quotes:
    "... the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, also known as waiters and bartenders. In October, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by "food services and drinking places" rose by another 18,900, the US workforce lost another 4,000 manufacturing workers. ..."
    "... National Restaurant Association's Restaurant performance activity index showed in October, overall industry sentiment is the worst since the financial crisis, due to declines in both same-store sales and customer traffic, suggesting that restaurant workers should now be in the line of fire for mass layoffs. ..."
    "... Putting this divergence in a long context, since the official start of the last recession in December 2007, the US has gained 1.8 million waiters and bartenders, and lost 1.5 million manufacturing workers. Worse, while the latter series had been growing, if at a slower pace than historically, it has now clearly rolled over, and in 2016, some 60,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. ..."
    Dec 02, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

    As another month passes, the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, also known as waiters and bartenders. In October, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by "food services and drinking places" rose by another 18,900, the US workforce lost another 4,000 manufacturing workers.

    This is the fourth consecutive month of declining manufacturing workers, and the 7th decline in the past 10 months.

    The chart below puts this in context: since 2014, the US had added 571,000 waiters and bartenders, and has lost 34,000 manufacturing workers.

    While we would be the first to congratulate the new American waiter and bartender class, something does not smell quite right. On one hand, there has been a spike in recent restaurant bankruptcies or mass closures (Logan's, Fox and Hound, Bob Evans), which has failed to reflect in the government report. On the other hand, as the National Restaurant Association's Restaurant performance activity index showed in October, overall industry sentiment is the worst since the financial crisis, due to declines in both same-store sales and customer traffic, suggesting that restaurant workers should now be in the line of fire for mass layoffs.

    However, what we find more suspect, is that according to the BLS' seasonally adjusted "data", starting in March of 2010 and continuing through September of 2016, there has been just one month in which restaurant workers lost jobs, and alternatively, jobs for waiters and bartenders have increased in 80 out of the past 81 months, with just one month of job losses, something unprecedented in this series history.

    Putting this divergence in a long context, since the official start of the last recession in December 2007, the US has gained 1.8 million waiters and bartenders, and lost 1.5 million manufacturing workers. Worse, while the latter series had been growing, if at a slower pace than historically, it has now clearly rolled over, and in 2016, some 60,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.

    Like last month, we remain curious what this "data" series will look like after it is revised by the BLS shortly after the NBER declares the official start of the next recession.

    [Nov 19, 2016] Men arent interested in working at McDonalds for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is... steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life

    Notable quotes:
    "... The economic point is that globalisation has boosted trade and overall wealth, but it has also created a dog eat dog world where western workers compete with, and lose jobs to, people far away who will do the work for much less. ..."
    "... But neither Trump nor Farage have shown any evidence of how realistically they can recreate those jobs in the west. And realistically god knows how you keep the wealth free trade and globalisation brings but avoid losing the good jobs? At least the current mess has focused attention on the question and has said that patience has run out. ..."
    "... Compared to the real economic problems, the identity politics is minor, but it is still an irritant that explains why this revolution is coming from the right not from the left. ..."
    "... And what "age" has that been Roy? The "age" of: climate change, gangster bankers, tax heavens, illegal wars, nuclear proliferation, grotesque inequality, the prison industrial complex to cite just a few. That "age"? ..."
    "... the right wing press detest one kind of liberalism, social liberalism, they hate that, but they love economic liberalism, which has done much harm to the working class. ..."
    "... Most of the right wing press support austerity measures, slashing of taxes and, smaller and smaller governments. Yet apparently, its being socially liberal that is the problem ..."
    Nov 19, 2016 | profile.theguardian.com
    goodtable, 3d ago

    A crucial point "WWC men aren't interested in working at McDonald's for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is... steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life."

    The economic point is that globalisation has boosted trade and overall wealth, but it has also created a dog eat dog world where western workers compete with, and lose jobs to, people far away who will do the work for much less.

    But neither Trump nor Farage have shown any evidence of how realistically they can recreate those jobs in the west. And realistically god knows how you keep the wealth free trade and globalisation brings but avoid losing the good jobs? At least the current mess has focused attention on the question and has said that patience has run out.

    Compared to the real economic problems, the identity politics is minor, but it is still an irritant that explains why this revolution is coming from the right not from the left.

    If you're white and male it's bad enough losing your hope of economic security, but then to be repeatedly told by the left that you're misogynist, racist, sexist, Islamophobic, transgenderphobic etc etc is just the icing on the cake. If the author wants to see just how crazy identity politics has become go to the Suzanne Moore piece from yesterday accusing American women of being misogynist for refusing to vote for Hillary. That kind of maniac 'agree with me on everything or you're a racist, sexist, homophobe' identity politics has to be ditched. Reply

    EnglishMike -> goodtable 3d ago
    Funny, I've been a white male my whole life and not once have I been accused of being a misogynist, racist, sexist, Islamophobic, or transgenderphobic. I didn't think being a white male was so difficult for some people... Reply
    garrylee 3d ago
    "Are we turning our backs on the age of enlightenment?".

    And what "age" has that been Roy? The "age" of: climate change, gangster bankers, tax heavens, illegal wars, nuclear proliferation, grotesque inequality, the prison industrial complex to cite just a few. That "age"?

    Bazz Leaveblank -> garrylee 3d ago
    I agree hardly an age of enlightenment. My opinion... the so called Liberal Elite are responsible for many of the issues in the list. The poor and the old in this country are not being helped by the benefits system. Yet the rich get richer beyond the dreams of the ordinary man.

    I would pay more tax if I thought it might be spent more wisely...but can you trust politicians who are happy to spend 50 billion on a railway line that 98% of the population will never use.

    No solutions from me ...an old hippy from the 60s "Love and peace man " ...didn't work did it :)

    aronDi 3d ago
    I have come under the impression that the right wing press detest one kind of liberalism, social liberalism, they hate that, but they love economic liberalism, which has done much harm to the working class.

    Most of the right wing press support austerity measures, slashing of taxes and, smaller and smaller governments. Yet apparently, its being socially liberal that is the problem.

    [Nov 16, 2016] Being now a party of Wall street, neolibral democrats did not learn the lesson and do not want to: they attempt to double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized middle class how great the economy is

    Notable quotes:
    "... I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. ..."
    "... I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ..."
    "... Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever. ..."
    "... These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. ..."
    "... Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 ..."
    "... Chronicle for Higher Education: ..."
    "... Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars. ..."
    "... "Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income. ..."
    "... Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains." ..."
    "... There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it). ..."
    "... It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign. ..."
    "... The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing. ..."
    "... The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. ..."
    "... Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party. ..."
    "... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
    Nov 16, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

    mclaren 11.16.16 at 9:52 am 7

    Eric places the blame for this loss squarely on economics, which, it seems to me, gets the analysis exactly right. And the statistics back up his analysis, I believe.

    It's disturbing and saddening to watch other left-wing websites ignore those statistics and charge off the cliff into the abyss, screaming that this election was all about racism/misogyny/homophobia/[fill in the blank with identity politics demonology of your choice]. First, the "it's all racism" analysis conveniently lets the current Democratic leadership off the hook. They didn't do anything wrong, it was those "deplorables" (half the country!) who are to blame. Second, the identity politics blame-shifting completely overlooks and short-circuits any real action to fix the economy by Democratic policymakers or Democratic politicians or the Democratic party leadership. That's particularly convenient for the Democratic leadership because these top-four-percenter professionals "promise anything and change nothing" while jetting between Davos and Martha's Vineyard, ignoring the peons who don't make $100,000 or more a year because the peons all live in flyover country.

    "Trump supporters were on average affluent, but they are always Republican and aren't numerous enough to deliver the presidency (538 has changed their view in the wake of the election result). Some point out that looking at support by income doesn't show much distinctive support for Trump among the "poor", but that's beside the point too, as it submerges a regional phenomenon in a national average, just as exit polls do. (..)
    "When commentators like Michael Moore and Thomas Frank pointed out that there was possibility for Trump in the Rust Belt they were mostly ignored or, even more improbably, accused of being apologists for racism and misogyny. But that is what Trump did, and he won. Moreover, he won with an amateurish campaign against a well-funded and politically sophisticated opponent simply because he planted his flag where others wouldn't.

    "Because of the obsession with exit polls, post-election analysis has not come to grips with the regional nature of the Trump phenomenon. Exit polls divide the general electorate based on individual attributes: race, gender, income, education, and so on, making regional distinctions invisible. Moreover, America doesn't decide the presidential election that way. It decides it based on the electoral college, which potentially makes the characteristics of individual states decisive. We should be looking at maps, not exit polls for the explanation. Low black turnout in California or high Latino turnout in Texas do not matter in the slightest in determining the election, but exit polls don't help us see that. Exit polls deliver a bunch of non-explanatory facts, in this election more than other recent ones."
    http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/11/11/23174/

    "Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future.

    "Trump, who in his campaign pledged to be a voice for `forgotten Americans,' beat Hillary Clinton in counties with slower job growth and lower wages. And he far outperformed her in counties where more jobs are threatened by automation or offshoring, a sign that he found support not just among workers who are struggling now but among those concerned for their economic future."

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/

    Meanwhile, the neoliberal Democrats made claims about the economy that at best wildly oversold the non-recovery from the 2009 global financial meltdown, and at worst flat-out misrepresented the state of the U.S. economy. For example, president Obama in his June 1 2016 speech in Elkhart Indiana, said:

    "Now, one of the reasons we're told this has been an unusual election year is because people are anxious and uncertain about the economy. And our politics are a natural place to channel that frustration. So I wanted to come to the heartland, to the Midwest, back to close to my hometown to talk about that anxiety, that economic anxiety, and what I think it means. (..) America's economy is not just better than it was eight years ago - it is the strongest, most durable economy in the world. (..) Unemployment in Elkhart has fallen to around 4 percent. (Applause.) At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in 10 homeowners in the state of Indiana were either behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure; today, it's one in 30. Back then, only 75 percent of your kids graduated from high school; tomorrow, 90 percent of them will. (Applause.) The auto industry just had its best year ever. (..) So that's progress.(..) We decided to invest in job training so that folks who lost their jobs could retool. We decided to invest in things like high-tech manufacturing and clean energy and infrastructure, so that entrepreneurs wouldn't just bring back the jobs that we had lost, but create new and better jobs By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency. That's the truth. That's true. (Applause.) It's true. (Applause.) Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs - that's the longest stretch of consecutive private sector job growth in our history. We've seen the first sustained manufacturing growth since the 1990s."

    None of this is true. Not is a substantive sense, not in the sense of being accurate, not in the sense of reflecting the facts on the ground for real working people who don't fly their private jets to Davos.

    The claim that "America's economy is the strongest and most durable economy in the world" is just plain false. China has a much higher growth rate, at 6.9% nearly triple the U.S.'s - and America's GDP growth is trending to historic long-term lows, and still falling. Take a look at this chart of the Federal Reserve board's projections of U.S. GDP growth since 2009 compared with the real GDP growth rate:

    http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/2015-03-2.png

    "[In the survey] [t]he Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew?

    "Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.

    " I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5-literally-while I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs.

    I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ."

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/

    " Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever.

    " These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.

    " Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 .

    "`The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming,' said Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings issues."

    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/965e48ed609245539ed315f83e01b6a2

    The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations - unemployment has dropped to 4 percent because so many people have stopped looking for work and moved into their parents' basements that the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer counts them as unemployed. Meanwhile, the fraction of working-age adults who are not in the workforce has skyrocketed to an all-time high. Few homeowners are now being foreclosed in 2016 compared to 2009 because the people in 2009 who were in financial trouble all lost their homes. Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. Since 2009, businesses did indeed create 14 million new jobs - mostly low-wage junk jobs, part-time minimum-wage jobs that don't pay a living wage.

    "The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

    "In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html

    And the jobs market isn't much better for highly-educated workers:

    New research released Monday says nearly half of the nation's recent college graduates work jobs that don't require a degree.

    The report, from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, concludes that while college-educated Americans are less likely to collect unemployment, many of the jobs they do have aren't worth the price of their diplomas.

    The data calls into question a national education platform that says higher education is better in an economy that favors college graduates.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/underemployed-overeducated_n_2568203.html

    Don't believe it? Then try this article, from the Chronicle for Higher Education:

    Approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled-occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation's stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor's degree or more.

    http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-great-college-degree-scam/28067

    As for manufacturing, U.S. manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs in 2016, and manufacturing employment remains 2.2% below what it was when Obama took office.

    Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars.

    "Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income.

    Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains."

    https://thinkprogress.org/the-1-percent-have-gotten-all-the-income-gains-from-the-recovery-6bee14aab1#.1frn3lu8y

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/upshot/wall-street-bonuses-vs-total-earnings-of-full-time-minimum-wage-workers.html

    Does any of this sound like "the strongest, most durable economy in the world"? Does any of this square with the claims by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that "By almost every economic measure, America is better off "? The U.S. economy is only better off in 2016 by disingenuous comparison with the stygian depths of the 2009 economic collapse.

    Hillary Clinton tied herself to Barack Obama's economic legacy, and the brutal reality for working class people remains that the economy today has barely improved for most workers to what it was in 2009, and is in many ways worse. Since 2009, automation + outsourcing/offshoring has destroyed whole classes of jobs, from taxi drivers (wiped out by Uber and Lyft) to warehoues stock clerks (getting wiped out by robots) to paralegals and associates at law firms (replaced by databases and legal search algorithms) to high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers from India and China).

    Yet vox.com continues to run article after article proclaiming "the 2016 election was all about racism." And we have a non-stop stream of this stuff from people like Anne Laurie over at balloon-juice.com:

    "While the more-Leftist-than-thou "progressives" - including their latest high-profile figurehead - are high-fiving each other in happy anticipation of potential public-outrage gigs over the next four years, at least some people are beginning to push back on the BUT WHITE WORKING CLASS HAS ALL THE SADS!!! meme so beloved of Very Serious Pundits."

    That's the ticket, Democrats double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized middle class how great the economy is. Because that worked so well for you this election.

    Cranky Observer 11.16.16 at 12:34 pm ( 11 )

    = = = mclaren@9:52 am: The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations -[ ] Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. = = =

    Some food for thought in your post, but you don't help your argument with statements such as this one. Rich people and well-off professionals make up at most 10% of the population. US homeownership rate in 2005 was 68.8%, in 2015 is 63.7. That's a big drop and unquestionably represents a lot of people losing their houses involuntarily. Still, even assuming no "well-off professionals" lost their houses in the recession that still leaves the vast majority of the houses owned by the middle class. Which is consistent with foreclosure and sales stats in middle class areas from 2008-2014. Remember that even with 20% unemployment 80% of the population still has a job.

    Similarly, I agree that the recession and job situation was qualitatively worse than the quantitative stats depicted. Once you start adding in hidden factors not captured by the official stats, though, where do you stop? How do you know the underground economy isn't doing far better than it was in the boom years of the oughts, thus reducing actual unemployment? Etc.

    Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed areas? I got hit bad by the recession myself. Know what helped from 2010 forward? Knowing that I could change jobs, keep my college-age children on my spouse's heath plan, not get hit with pre-existing condition fraud, and that if worse came to worse in a couple years I would have the plan exchange to fall back on. Kansas has tried the Ryan/Walker approach, seen it fail, doubled down, and seen that fail 4x as badly. Now we're going to make it up on unit sales by trying the Ryan plan nationally? How do you expect that to "work out for you"?

    WLGR 11.16.16 at 4:11 pm

    mclaren @ 7: "high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers from India and China)"

    I'm on board with the general thrust of what you're saying, but this is way, way over the line separating socialism from barbarism. The fact that it's not even true is beside the point, as is the (quite frankly) fascist metaphor of "flood" to describe human fucking beings traveling in search of economic security, at least as long as you show some self-awareness and contrition about your language. Some awareness about the insidious administrative structure of the H1-B program would also be nice - the way it works is, an individual's visa status more or less completely depends on remaining in the good graces of their employer, meaning that by design these employees have no conceivable leverage in any negotiation over pay or working conditions, and a program of unconditional residency without USCIS as a de facto strikebreaker would have much less downward pressure on wages - but anti-immigration rhetoric remaining oblivious to actual immigration law is par for the course.

    No, the real point of departure here from what deserves to be called "socialism" is in the very act of blithely combining effects of automation (i.e. traditional capitalist competition for productive efficiency at the expense of workers' economic security) and effects of offshoring/outsourcing/immigration (i.e. racialized fragmentation of the global working class by accident of birth into those who "deserve" greater economic security and those who don't) into one and the same depiction of developed-world economic crisis. In so many words, you're walking right down neoliberal capitalism's ideological garden path: the idea that it's not possible to be anticapitalist without being an economic nationalist, and that every conceivable alternative to some form of Hillary Clinton is ultimately reducible to some form of Donald Trump. On the contrary, those of us on the socialism side of "socialism or barbarism" don't object to capitalism because it's exploiting American workers , we object because it's exploiting workers , and insisting on this crucial point against all chauvinist pressure ("workers of all lands , unite!") is what fundamentally separates our anticapitalism from the pseudo-anticapitalism of fascists.

    marku52 11.16.16 at 5:01 pm 16

    Maclaren: I'm with you. I well remember Obama and his "pivot to deficit reduction" and "green shoots" while I was screaming at the TV 'No!! Not Now!"

    And then he tried for a "grand bargain" with the Reps over chained CPI adjustment for SS, and he became my active enemy. I was a Democrat. Where did my party go?

    politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm ( 17 )

    Just chiming in here: The implicit deal between the elites and the hoi polloi was that the economy would be run with minimal competence. Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it.

    I'm less inclined to attach responsibility to Obama, Clinton or the Democratic Party than some. If Democrats had their way, the economy would have been managed considerably more competently.

    Always remember that the rejection of the elites wasn't just a rejection of Democrats. The Republican elite also took it in the neck.

    I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism.

    engels 11.16.16 at 7:12 pm 18

    I find the discussions over identity politics so intensely frustrating. A lot of people on the left have gone all-in on self-righteous anger

    Identity politics (and to some extent probably the rhetorical style that goes with it) isn't a 'left' thing, it's a liberal thing. It's a bête noire for many on the left-see eg. Nancy Fraser's work.

    The Anglo/online genus what you get when you subtract class, socialism and real-world organisation from politics and add in a lot of bored students and professionals with internet connections in the context of a political culture (America's) that already valorises individual aggression to a unique degree.

    Omega Centauri 11.16.16 at 7:15 pm ( 19 )

    As polticalfoorball @15 says. The Democrats just didn't have the political muscle to deliver on those things. There really is a dynamic thats been playing out: Democrats don't get enough governing capacity because they did poorly in the election, which means their projects to improve the economy are neutered or allowed through only in a very weakened form. Then the next election cycle the neuterers use that failure as a weapon to take even more governing capacity away. Its not a failure of will, its a failure to get on top of the political feedback loop.

    Manta 11.16.16 at 7:32 pm 20

    @15 politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm
    "Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it."

    Could you specify some "elite" that has been punished?

    nastywoman 11.16.16 at 7:36 pm ( 21 )

    @13
    'I'm not sure what the thinking is here.'

    The definition of 'Keynesianism' is:

    'the economic theories and programs ascribed to John M. Keynes and his followers; specifically : the advocacy of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment and spending'

    – and if it is done wisely – like in most European countries before 2000 it is one of the least 'braindead' things.

    But with the introduction of the Euro – some governmental programs – lead (especially in Spain) to horrendous self-destructive housing and building bubbles – which lead to the conclusion that such programs – which allow 'gambling with houses' are pretty much 'braindead'.

    Or shorter: The quality of Keynesianism depends on NOT doing it 'braindead'.

    mclaren 11.16.16 at 8:28 pm ( 25 )

    Cranky Observer in #11 makes some excellent points. Crucially, he asks: "Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed areas?"

    There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it).

    It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign.

    As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes were snapped up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented those homes out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive. Much of the home-buying since the 2009 crash has been investment purchases. Foreclosure home purchases for rent is now a huge thriving business, and it's fueling a second housing bubble. Particularly because in many ways it repeats the financially frothy aspects of the early 2000s housing bubble - banks and investment firms are issuing junks bonds based on rosy estimates of ever-escalating rents and housing prices, they use those junk financial instruments (and others like CDOs) to buy houses which then get rented out at inflated prices, the rental income gets used to fund more tranches of investment which fuels more buy-to-rent home buying. Rents have already skyrocketed far beyond incomes on the East and West Coast, so this can't continue. But home prices and rents keep rising. There is no city in the United States today where a worker making minimum wage can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment and have money left over to eat and pay for a car, health insurance, etc. If home ownership were really so robust, this couldn't possibly be the case. The fact that rents keep skyrocketing even as undocumented hispanics return to Mexico in record numbers while post-9/11 ICE restrictions have hammered legal immigration numbers way, way down suggests that home ownership is not nearly as robust as the deceptive numbers indicate.

    Political football in #15 remarks: "I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism."

    Race was important, but not the root cause of the Trump victory. How do we know this? Tump himself is telling us. Look at Trump's first announced actions - deport 3 million undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, ram through vast tax cuts for the rich, and end the inheritance tax.

    If Trump's motivation (and his base's motivation) was pure racism, Trump's first announced action would be something like passing laws that made it illegal to marry undocumented workers. His first act would be to roll back the legalization of black/white marriage and re-instate segregation. Trump isn't promising any of that.

    Instead Trump's (bad) policies are based around enriching billionaires and shutting down immigration. Bear in mind that 43% of all new jobs created since 2009 went to immigrants and you start to realize that Trump's base is reacting to economic pressure by scapegoating immigrants, not racism by itself. If it were pure racism we'd have Trump and Ryan proposing a bunch of new Nuremberg laws. Make it illegal to have sex with muslims, federally fund segregated black schools and pass laws to force black kids to get bussed to them, create apartheid-style zones where only blacks can live, that sort of thing. Trump's first announced actions involve enriching the fantastically wealthy and enacting dumb self-destructive protectionism via punitive immigration control. That's protectionism + class war of the rich against everyone else, not racism. The protectionist immigration-control + deportation part of Trump's program is sweet sweet music to the working class people in the Rust Belt. They think the 43% of jobs taken by immigrants will come back. They don't realize that those are mostly jobs no one wants to do anyway, and that most of those jobs are already in the process of getting automated out of existence.

    The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing.

    Here's an argument that may resonate: the first two groups in Trump's coalition are unreachable. Liberal Democrats can't sweet-talk racists out of being racist and we certainly have nothing to offer the plutocrats. So the only part of Trump's coalition that is really reachable by liberal Democrats is the third group. Shouldn't we be concentrating on that third group, then?

    The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. Since the plutocrats are perceived as running giant corporations that import large numbers of non-white immigrants to lower wages, the racists are not big fans of that group either.

    Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party.

    Why? Because the stormfront types consider elite U.S. institutions like CitiBank as equally culpable with Democrats in supposedly destroying white people in the U.S. According to Bannon's twisted skinhead logic, Democrats are allegedly race traitors for cultural reasons, but big U.S. corporations and elite institutions are supposedly equally guilty of economic race treason by importing vast numbers of non-white immigrants via H1B visas, by offshoring jobs from mostly caucasian-populated red states to non-white countries like India, Africa, China, and by using elite U.S. universities to trawl the world for the best (often non-white) students, etc. Bannon's "great day of the rope" includes the plutocrats as well as people of color.

    These natural fractures in the Trump coalition are real, and Democrats can exploit them to weaken and destroy Republicans. But we have to get away from condemning all Republicans as racists because if we go down that route, we won't realize how fractured and unstable the Trump coalition really is.

    bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm 31 ( 31 )

    The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.

    Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.

    engels 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm 32

    Ps. Should prob add that identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT politics, etc. They're all needed now more than ever.

    What we don't need more of imo is a particular liberal/middle-class form of those things with particular assumptions (meritocratic and individualist), epistemology (strongly subjectivist) and rhetorical style (which often aims humiliating opponents from a position of relative knowledge/status rather than verbal engagement).

    Helen 11.16.16 at 10:35 pm ( 33 )

    I don't know why I'm even having to say this, as it's so obvious. The "leftists" (for want of a better word) and feminists who I know are also against neoliberalism. They are against the selloff of public assets to enterprises for private profit. They want to see a solution to the rapidly shrinking job market as technology replaces jobs (no, it's not enough for the Heroic Workers to Seize the Means of Production – the means of production are different now and the solution is going to have to be more complex than just "bring back manufacturing" or "introduce tariffs".) They want to roll back the tax cuts for the rich which have whittled down our revenue base this century. They want corporations and the top 10% to pay their fair share, and concomitantly they want pensioners, the unemployed and people caring for children to have a proper living wage.

    They support a universal "single payer" health care system, which we social democratic squishy types managed to actually introduce in the 1970s, but now we have to fight against right wing governments trying to roll it back They support a better system of public education. They support a science-based approach to climate change where it is taken seriously for the threat it is and given priority in Government policy. They support spending less on the Military and getting out of international disputes which we (Western nations) only seem to exacerbate.

    This is not an exhaustive list.

    Yet just because the same people say that the dominant Western countries (and my own) still suffer from institutionalised racism and sexism, which is not some kind of cake icing but actually ruin lives and kill people, we are "all about identity politics" and cannot possibly have enough brain cells to think about the issues I described in para 1.

    I don't find it instructive or useful.

    Main Street Muse 11.16.16 at 10:54 pm 34

    The slow recovery was only one factor. Wages have been stagnant since Reagan. And honestly, if a white Republican president had stabilized the economy, killed Osama Bin Laden and got rid of pre-existing condition issue with healthcare, the GOP would be BRAGGING all over it. Let's remember that we have ONE party that has been devoted to racist appeals, lying and putting party over country for decades.

    Obama entered office as the economy crashed over a cliff. Instead of reforming the banks and punishing the bankers who engaged in fraudulent activities, he waded into healthcare reform. Banks are bigger today than they were in 2008. And tell me again, which bankers were punished for the fraud? Not a one All that Repo 105 maneuvering, stuffing the retirement funds with toxic assets – etc. and so on – all of that was perfectly legal? And if legal, all of that was totally bonusable? Yes! In America, such failure is gifted with huge bonuses, thanks to the American taxpayer.

    Meanwhile, homeowners saw huge drops the value of their homes. Some are still underwater with the mortgage. It's a shame that politicians and reporters in DC don't get out much.

    Concurrently, right before the election, ACA premiums skyrocketed. If you are self-insured, ACA is NOT affordable. It doesn't matter that prior to ACA, premiums increased astronomically. Obama promised AFFORDABLE healthcare. In my state, we have essentially a monopoly on health insurance, and the costs are absurd. But that's in part because the state Republicans refused to expand Medicaid.

    Don't underestimate HRC's serious issues. HRC had one speech for the bankers and another for everyone else. Why didn't she release the GS transcripts? When did the Democrats become the party of Wall Street?

    She also made the same idiotic mistake that Romney did – disparage a large swathe of American voters (basket of deplorables is this year's 47%.)

    And then we had a nation of voters intent on the outsider. Bernie Sanders had an improbable run at it – the Wikileaks emails showed that the DNC did what they could to get rid of him as a threat.

    Well America has done and gone elected themselves an outsider. Lucky us.

    [Nov 16, 2016] We need the adoption of a federal job guarantee, a policy that would insure the option for anyone to work in a public sector program, similar to what the Works Progress Administration established in the 1930s.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation's physical and human infrastructure needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep and the provision of quality child care services"" ..."
    Nov 16, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    financial matters November 16, 2016 at 8:30 am

    Not sure if Trump realizes this but there is already a blueprint for creating infrastructure jobs. (hat tip SK)

    http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/07/11/are-we-ready-for-the-next-recession/a-guaranteed-federal-jobs-program-is-needed

    ""A lot of this has to do with the fact that Americans continue to be subjected to bad jobs or unstable employment - and those who are employed often face stagnant or even declining wages. The fragility of Americans' economic well-being is epitomized by the National Coalition for the Homeless' estimate that 44 percent of homeless persons actually have jobs, albeit poorly paid jobs.

    The expansion of "flex work" arrangements, which make work hours uncertain, contribute significantly to income volatility for workers in low-pay sectors of the economy. Around 50 percent of Americans could not meet a $400 emergency expense by drawing upon their personal savings if they had to.

    An alternative to these conditions is the adoption of a federal job guarantee, a policy that would insure the option for anyone to work in a public sector program, similar to what the Works Progress Administration established in the 1930s.

    Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation's physical and human infrastructure needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep and the provision of quality child care services""

    [Nov 15, 2016] Trump in the White House by Noam Chomsky

    Notable quotes:
    "... The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan ..."
    "... As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards. ..."
    "... in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work. ..."
    Nov 15, 2016 | www.defenddemocracy.press
    According to current information, Trump broke all records in the support he received from white voters, working class and lower middle class, particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural and suburban, primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger throughout the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in the unanticipated Brexit vote and the collapse of centrist parties in continental Europe. The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan – St. Alan as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed in 2007-8, threatening to bring the whole world economy down with it. As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards.

    Working people who have been the subjects of these experiments in economic theory are, oddly, not particularly happy about the outcome. They are not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work.

    The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage – which sets a floor for other wages – tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

    With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force participation remains below the earlier norm. And for a working man, there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with little security in some service profession. Apart from wages, benefits, and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the future, of a sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role.

    The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschild's sensitive and illuminating portrayal of a Trump stronghold in Louisiana, where she lived and worked for many years. She uses the image of a line in which these people are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they work hard and keep to all the conventional values. But their position in the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see people leaping forward, but that does not cause much distress, because it is "the American way" for (alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is what is happening behind them.

    ... ... ...

    These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are deluded to believe that Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates the opposite – posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance desperately needed changes.

    Exit polls reveal that the passionate support for Trump was inspired primarily by the belief that he represented change, while Clinton was perceived as the candidate who would perpetuate their distress. The "change" that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it is understandable that the consequences are not clear to isolated people in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations (like unions) that can educate and organize. That is a crucial difference between today's despair and the generally hopeful attitudes of many working people under much greater duress during the great depression of the 1930s.

    [Oct 29, 2016] Those economists who deny that unemployment can drive people into crime are idiot jerks.

    Notable quotes:
    "... In Huntsville Alabama, I was part of a group that visited prisoners in the county jail. I visited the women prisoners every Sat. There was a recession in Reagan's term, and Reagan didn't think the government should help the unemployed. Before the recession, there were usually only one or two women prisoners at a time. The most they had at one time was four. ..."
    "... During the recession, the number of prisoners grew greatly. The number of women ballooned to at least a dozen. Because of the increase in the number of male prisoners, the women were all crowded into a single cell, with mattresses on the floor. Most of the women were in jail had children, and were in jail for passing bad checks. ..."
    Oct 29, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Patricia Shannon : October 29, 2016 at 12:47 PM

    Those economists who deny that unemployment can drive people into crime are idiot jerks.

    http://voxeu.org/article/relationship-between-job-displacement-and-crime

    In Huntsville Alabama, I was part of a group that visited prisoners in the county jail. I visited the women prisoners every Sat. There was a recession in Reagan's term, and Reagan didn't think the government should help the unemployed. Before the recession, there were usually only one or two women prisoners at a time. The most they had at one time was four.

    During the recession, the number of prisoners grew greatly. The number of women ballooned to at least a dozen. Because of the increase in the number of male prisoners, the women were all crowded into a single cell, with mattresses on the floor. Most of the women were in jail had children, and were in jail for passing bad checks.

    When they were able to get jobs, they did not pass bad checks.
    There was a national increase in crime at this time, and Reagan claimed that the high rate and long duration of unemployment did not cause an increase in crime.

    If you have ever been out of work so long that you were losing weight because you couldn't afford enough food, and were in danger of having to live in your car, you would know how wrong Reagan was. It would have to be much worse for parents. I guess if you are unemployed, you are expected to allow yourself and your children to starve to death, so as not to inconvenience those more fortunate.

    This is one of the reasons that if I believed in such things, I would consider Reagan to be a manifestation of the anti-Christ.

    [Oct 27, 2016] In late 2007, before the recession started, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio in the U.S. was about the same as in other Group of Seven developed nations (which also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.). The U.S., however, experienced a much larger decline during the recession, and remains much farther from undoing the damage.

    Oct 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Peter K. : October 26, 2016 at 08:07 AM , In late 2007, before the recession started, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio in the U.S. was about the same as in other Group of Seven developed nations (which also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.). The U.S., however, experienced a much larger decline during the recession, and remains much farther from undoing the damage.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-25/the-u-s-job-recovery-is-a-global-laggard

    Kocherlakota on U.S. macro policy fail:

    "In late 2007, before the recession started, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio in the U.S. was about the same as in other Group of Seven developed nations (which also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.). The U.S., however, experienced a much larger decline during the recession, and remains much farther from undoing the damage. As of June, the G-7 as a whole had recovered almost completely, while the U.S. was only 60 percent back from its lowest point:"

    [Oct 25, 2016] The Problem with unemployed men in the USA

    Oct 25, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne : October 25, 2016 at 05:09 AM

    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-problem-with-the-problem-with-men

    October 24, 2016

    The Problem with the Problem with Men

    We continue to see a steady drumbeat of news stories and opinion pieces about the problem of men, and especially less-educated men, in the modern economy. The pieces always start with the fact that large numbers of prime-age men (ages 25–54) have dropped out of the labor force. The latest entry is a New York Times column * by Susan Chira that highlighted recent research showing that a large percentage of men who are not in the labor force are in poor health and frequent users of pain medication.

    ... ... ...

    Undoubtedly many are, although the extent to which these problems are the result of their unemployment or a cause will often not be clear. Nonetheless, steps that can improve public health will be a good thing, but the better place to look to solve the problem of unemployment is Washington.

    * http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/opinion/campaign-stops/men-need-help-is-hillary-clinton-the-answer.html

    ** http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/more-on-the-non-mystery-of-non-work-germany-v-us/

    *** http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/men-who-don-t-work-when-did-economists-stop-being-wrong-about-the-economy

    -- Dean Baker

    Reply Tuesday, anne -> anne... , October 25, 2016 at 05:10 AM
    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/men-who-don-t-work-when-did-economists-stop-being-wrong-about-the-economy

    September 14, 2016

    Men Who Don't Work: When Did Economists Stop Being Wrong About the Economy?
    By Cherrie Bucknor and Dean Baker

    ... ... ...

    Since there is a drop in prime-age EPOPs for all groups, this would seem to suggest that the main problem is a lack of demand and not some new difficulty that some relatively narrow group of workers has in dealing with the labor market. Before going through these trends, it is worth making an additional point; this decline in EPOPs was not expected before it happened.

    For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2001 projected that EPOPs would continue to rise from their 2000 peaks. It projected that the potential labor force would grow at an average annual rate of 1.1 percent over the next decade, implying that it would be 11.6 percent larger in 2010 than in 2000. This growth was driven in part by population growth, but also by the expectation that the trend of rising EPOPs for women would continue.

    In fact, the labor force in 2010 was just 7.9 percent larger than in 2000. This 3.7 percentage point difference corresponds to a labor force that was 5 million smaller in 2010 than CBO had projected for that year in 2001. (It is worth noting that the CBO projections were not an outlier. CBO tries to ensure that its projections lie close to the middle of the pack for economic forecasters.)

    If the argument that structural factors have led to a permanent lowering of prime-age EPOPs is right, as opposed to just weakness in demand reducing employment, then the 2001 projections for the growth of the potential labor force were clearly wrong. Of course official projections have often proven wrong, but this should give us caution about our ability to accurately assess the structural determinants of employment rates. After all, it's not obvious that our knowledge of the economy is very much better in 2016 than it was in 2001.

    The figure below shows the employment to population ratios for prime-age workers by gender and education levels.

    [Figure]

    The ratios for 2000 are set at 100 to allow for a clear view of the drop off from this peak. As noted, all groups see some drop from this peak, with the smallest drop for college-educated women, followed by college-educated men. The drop for prime-age workers with some college is considerably sharper, with the drop for women being somewhat larger than the drop for men. The drop for workers with a high school degree or less is even greater, but here also the drop is larger for women than for men. The decline in EPOPs for prime-age men with a high school degree or less is 7.8 percent, while the drop for women is 14.0 percent. Given the much sharper drop in EPOPs for less-educated women, it is difficult to understand why the policy debate has focused on men leaving the labor force.

    The more fundamental issue is that it is difficult to explain a drop in EPOPS for all workers, regardless of education levels, as being a problem of workers lacking skills or a desire to work. This looks pretty clearly like a story of weak demand. In other words, the problem is not them; it is us, where "us" is the people who make economic policy.

    * https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-12/debating-government-s-role-in-boosting-growth

    ________________________________

    [1] This discussion focuses on EPOPs rather than labor force participation rates (LFPR) because the latter has likely been affected by the tightening of rules for getting unemployment insurance. It is widely recognized that many unemployed workers drop out of the labor force when they are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. With many states having instituted stricter rules on benefits over this period, we would have expected a decline in LFPR even with no changes in the workforce or the economy.

    JohnH -> anne... , -1
    Economist should also be looking at labor participation rates in other industrial growth which are experiencing the same economic stagnation as the US. In the UK and Japan EPOPs are near record highs, while US rates are near 40 year lows. Why such a disparity?

    My hunch is that economists are trying to find ways to explain away the low EPOP rates in the US, because the crux of the problem goes back to investor friendly/worker hostile policies that they have advocated for years--trade policy and trickle down monetary policy.

    [Oct 01, 2016] The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger

    Notable quotes:
    "... Why all the bullshit jobs? And why are the most necessary and useful jobs, almost inevitably the lowest prestige and lowest paid? Capitalism. It's a nasty, nasty, nasty tangle of perverse incentives and evil. ..."
    Oct 01, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Kurt Sperry October 1, 2016 at 11:44 am

    David Graeber I think hits one out of the park today: http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/

    Why all the bullshit jobs? And why are the most necessary and useful jobs, almost inevitably the lowest prestige and lowest paid? Capitalism. It's a nasty, nasty, nasty tangle of perverse incentives and evil.

    BecauseTradition October 1, 2016 at 12:52 pm

    The answer clearly isn't economic: it's moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the '60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them. David Graeber from http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/

    Also, as several here have noted, one can work without a job if they have such resources as land or a workshop and, dare I say it, an income.

    Nice article!

    Jomo October 1, 2016 at 2:28 pm

    Yes! Just read! Forwarding to friends and family! Love comments community on NC site.

    [Sep 28, 2016] The Consequences of Long Term Unemployment - NBER

    Sep 28, 2016 | www.nber.org

    [Sep 26, 2016] Another way of eliminating employees and forcing the customer to do the work

    Notable quotes:
    "... I refuse to use self-checkouts at grocery stores, as well. I see that, and this new Sam's app, as doing nothing more than 'outsourcing' the job onto the customers themselves (but even better, as they have to pay no one), eliminating jobs, while increasing their profits by cutting the overhead for the company we're patronizing. ..."
    "... IMO I think we, as the public, should refuse to use such apps, forcing companies such as these to keep employees rather than allowing them to eliminate jobs to increase their profits. The words 'customer service' are rare enough in businesses these days, already. ..."
    Sep 26, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Walmart's Sam's Club Scan-and-Go App May Make Cash Registers Obsolete

    As of 2014, nearly 30% of the US households no internet access. How do you think that maps onto WalMart customers? Plue get outside the big cities, you see a big drop in smart phone use. Even in wealthy Mountain Brook, Alabama (yes, believe it or not, it looks like the better parts of Westchester County), you see a fraction of the device use in NYC. These analysts need to get out and see more of the heartland.

    KurtisMayfield September 25, 2016 at 7:39 am

    Re: the street article on the Walmart app.

    #1 I am happy that the news industry has found new sources of revenue, because that story read like a Walmart advertisement. Don't they have to disclose if they are getting paid for it?

    #2. They already have these prescan guns in supermarkets. I see a very small percentage of people us them. I doubt that it saves you any time shopping because the register person can probably scan the items faster than an amateur. If you wanted to save time at the store you would have ordered online.

    crittermom September 25, 2016 at 11:13 am

    I certainly agree with you on #1. It did read like a Walmart ad.

    The part that jumped out at me was: "If the item doesn't have a barcode, it could be easily looked up."

    Really? How is the barcode looked up? And by whom? The customer?
    It didn't say how in that 'ad'. (poor reporting)

    It all sounds like another way of eliminating employees and forcing the customer to do the work. Obviously 'checking out' is one job that can't be outsourced, so now they've discovered a way to still eliminate the employees by forcing the customer to do the work instead.

    As Yves mentioned, many of us living rural don't have dumbphones because we don't have service. I've never had a cell phone because there's never been coverage where I've lived out in the country, but even if I did, I'd resent having to 'check myself out' to increase the profits of the company. Oh, hell no!

    I refuse to use self-checkouts at grocery stores, as well. I see that, and this new Sam's app, as doing nothing more than 'outsourcing' the job onto the customers themselves (but even better, as they have to pay no one), eliminating jobs, while increasing their profits by cutting the overhead for the company we're patronizing.

    SS recently required a cell phone to access your account online. They quickly dialed that back when they realized that many of us don't have one. Duh? I agree with Yves that these analysts need to get out into the heartland more.

    And I hope their vehicle breaks down while there, so reality smacks 'em hard. To quote a comedian, "Here's your sign!"

    Regarding #2, I have no experience with those. My nearest Walmart is hours away so what little I do buy from them I order online and have it shipped to me.

    IMO I think we, as the public, should refuse to use such apps, forcing companies such as these to keep employees rather than allowing them to eliminate jobs to increase their profits. The words 'customer service' are rare enough in businesses these days, already.

    [Sep 26, 2016] EconoSpeak All Models are False The Internet-Computer Explanation of Major Recessions

    Notable quotes:
    "... Female labor force participation in the U.S. is well below its pre-crisis level. Maybe video games are now marketed equally toward men and women. ..."
    "... Cowen is an idiot. I think the man needs to get some serious first hand experience on how much "fun" unemployment is. ..."
    Sep 24, 2016 | econospeak.blogspot.com
    Uneasy Money has a wonderful post on the "all models are false dodge". Nothing really to add but I especially enjoyed this:
    Romer's most effective rhetorical strategy is to point out that the RBC core of modern DSGE models posit unobservable taste and technology shocks to account for fluctuations in the economic time series, but that these taste and technology shocks are themselves simply inferred from the fluctuations in the times-series data, so that the entire structure of modern macroeconometrics is little more than an elaborate and sophisticated exercise in question-begging.
    I used to ask the New Classical crowd what the great negative real shock was during the early 1980's. The massive real appreciation of the dollar may have lowered net export demand but that was one of those Keynesian things. One would think the rise in the relative price of domestically supplied goods would have increased employment. Same with the alleged wonders of the Reagan tax cut. Oh but it was paid for by reducing transfer payments – another one of those Keynesian things. If poor people got less government assistance, then they should have gone all Jeb! and worked harder. And of course we were enjoying the start of the computer and technology revolution. But here is where the list gets hysterical – the line was that these new tools were being used to do less work in the office. But before you fall in the floor laughing at this excuse consider a recent excuse ala Tyler Cowen :
    There are a few reasons, but the internet may be the biggest. It is easier to have fun while unemployed. That's a social problem for some people.
    Tyler was debating Noah Smith. Noah had just argued for more infrastructure investment on the Keynesian notion that we were still below full employment. Tyler seems to think the low employment to population ratio is still somehow consistent with full employment. Noah disagreed noting that real wage growth is weak to which Tyler continues:
    Maybe employers just aren't that keen to hire those males who prefer to live at home, watch porn and not get married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of the worker than a market failure?
    Oh my – boys will be boys! Noah had some good counters including:
    Female labor force participation in the U.S. is well below its pre-crisis level. Maybe video games are now marketed equally toward men and women.
    Thankfully Tyler did not respond by suggesting the ladies in the office were going crazy over hot dudes on Instragram. Posted by ProGrowthLiberal at

    DrDick said... September 25, 2016 at 10:45 AM

    Sweet spreadable Jeebus on a matzoh, Cowen is an idiot. I think the man needs to get some serious first hand experience on how much "fun" unemployment is.
    Anonymous said... September 25, 2016 at 4:38 PM
    I take it you don't put much stock in articles like this in The Post, then?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/23/why-amazing-video-games-could-be-causing-a-big-problem-for-america/

    ProGrowthLiberal September 25, 2016 at 4:46 PM
    The Washington Post article noted this presentation:
    "Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men"
    Presenter: Mark Bils, University of Rochester
    Coauthors: Mark Aguiar, Kerwin Charles, and Erik Hurst
    Discussant: John Kennan, University of Wisconsin

    https://www.frbatlanta.org/news/conferences/2016/0922-unemployment-wages-productivity/agenda

    did not provide a link so I have not read this "research".

    Until I do - I am not taking stock into this thesis.

    Anonymous said... September 25, 2016 at 5:51 PM
    Fair enough.

    As it happens, Dean Baker was the only person who noted that "the drop in employment rates among less-educated women over the last 15 years has been even sharper. Furthermore there has been a decline in employment rates among all groups of prime age workers (25-54), even those with college degrees."

    This seems to put a pretty big whole in the idea from the get go, doesn't it?

    ProGrowthLiberal September 25, 2016 at 6:42 PM
    Anon- Dean's point was pretty clear. We have seen a broad based drop in the employment to population ratio which is better described by weak aggregate demand than some strange tale that the kids stay home to watch video games. And the weakness in real wage growth is better explained by demand rather than supply factors. The rest is details.

    [Sep 26, 2016] In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great Depression.

    Notable quotes:
    "... "In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great Depression. If we were back at 1965 levels today, nearly 10 million additional men would have paying jobs. The collapse of male work is due almost entirely to a flight out of the labor force-and that flight has on the whole been voluntary. The fact that only 1 in 7 prime-age men are not in the labor force points to a lack of jobs as the reason they are not working." ..."
    "... "these unworking men are floated by other household members (wives, girlfriends, relatives) and by Uncle Sam. Government disability programs figure prominently in the calculus of support for unworking men-ever more prominently over time." ..."
    Sep 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

    pgl : , In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great Depression.

    A hat tip to PeterK for alerting us to the latest from Nicholas Eberstadt (AEI):

    http://time.com/4504004/men-without-work/

    "In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great Depression. If we were back at 1965 levels today, nearly 10 million additional men would have paying jobs. The collapse of male work is due almost entirely to a flight out of the labor force-and that flight has on the whole been voluntary. The fact that only 1 in 7 prime-age men are not in the labor force points to a lack of jobs as the reason they are not working."

    Uh Nick – thanks for telling us what we already knew – labor force participation is down. But do you realize how you just contradicted yourself. Keynesians like myself would agree that is due to a lack of jobs (aka low aggregate demand). So is this a voluntary thing?

    Let's read on:

    "these unworking men are floated by other household members (wives, girlfriends, relatives) and by Uncle Sam. Government disability programs figure prominently in the calculus of support for unworking men-ever more prominently over time."

    Since government provided benefits have not been scaled up by our policy makers – he must think the hard working ladies are cuddling young men for their good lucks or something. Uh Nick – come to NYC and you will see that the ladies here think this is so stupid. His next excuse is all those dudes in prison. Seriously? Does this AEI clown not realize crime is much lower than it was a generation ago? This piece was dumb even by AEI "standards". But at least he did not dwell on the Tyler Cowen porn thing.And at the risk of repeating myself (and Noah Smith) if their thesis that young men had suddenly decided to loaf, then the inward shift of the labor supply curve would mean higher real wages than we are seeing.

    pgl -> pgl... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:43 AM
    I decided to put these thoughts in the following Econospeak post which goes a little further debunking the misrepresentations from the AEI hack:

    http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-new-men-without-jobs-conservative.html

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron : , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:10 AM
    [A reply from Paine:

    "paine -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...


    Joe playing hill
    courtier

    Who knows what he thinks

    Reply Friday, September 23, 2016 at 01:29 PM"

    Reminded me of this entirely by accident or maybe incident:]

    http://unionsong.com/u017.html


    Joe Hill

    A song by Alfred Hayes, Music by Earl Robinson©1938 by Bob Miller, Inc.

    I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
    Alive as you or me
    Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
    I never died, says he
    I never died, says he

    In Salt Lake, Joe, says I to him
    Him standing by my bed
    They framed you on a murder charge
    Says Joe, But I ain't dead
    Says Joe, But I ain't dead

    The copper bosses killed you, Joe
    They shot you, Joe, says I
    Takes more than guns to kill a man
    Says Joe, I didn't die
    Says Joe, I didn't die

    And standing there as big as life
    And smiling with his eyes
    Joe says, What they forgot to kill
    Went on to organize
    Went on to organize

    Joe Hill ain't dead, he says to me
    Joe Hill ain't never died
    Where working men are out on strike
    Joe Hill is at their side
    Joe Hill is at their side

    From San Diego up to Maine
    In every mine and mill
    Where workers strike and organize
    Says he, You'll find Joe Hill
    Says he, You'll find Joe Hill

    I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
    Alive as you or me
    Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
    I never died, says he
    I never died, says he


    [More about Joe Hill and Alfred Hayes at the link.]

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:14 AM
    Fortunately I will have very little spare time for idle or addle minded leisure now until well after the election and even well after the subsequent coronation save those days so rainy that outdoor activity is entirely impractical.
    pgl : , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 11:55 AM
    I never liked Ross Douhart. The political right thinks he has written something very important:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/opinion/campaign-stops/clintons-samantha-bee-problem.html?_r=0

    "At the same time, outside the liberal tent, the feeling of being suffocated by the left's cultural dominance is turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion - which may be one reason the Obama years, so good for liberalism in the culture, have seen sharp G.O.P. gains at every level of the country's government. This spirit of political-cultural rebellion is obviously crucial to Trump's act."

    Vote for a racist like Trump because liberals are suffocating. Did I say I really do not like Ross Douhart?

    Peter K. -> pgl... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 01:38 PM
    Again we agree. (Signs of the apocalypse? I guess Trump is going to win.)

    Douchehat is the worst hypocrite. He wants readers to believe he's an expert in morality and morale rectitude and that's what conservative should be known for when in reality Republicans chose Trump as their candidate, one grand example of immorality and dishonesty.

    And still Douthat turns on the liberals as behaving badly. Suffocating? Howabout the insanity of the Republican convention? That was suffocating.

    He even quotes Internet Troll Steve Sailor!!!

    *rubs eyes*

    "(The alt-right-ish columnist Steve Sailer made the punk rock analogy as well.)"

    It's like Douthat writing about JohnH or BINY. Every one of Sailor's Internet comments would be racist ones about immigration. He's mentally unhinged.

    "But it remains an advantage for the G.O.P., and a liability for the Democratic Party, that the new cultural orthodoxy is sufficiently stifling to leave many Americans looking to the voting booth as a way to register dissent."

    Clueless Douthat. The culture is getting better in certain ways because the TV executives just want to sell advertising and these performers are popular. It's capitalism at work.

    Kudos to John Oliver for winning an Emmy.

    "Among millennials, especially, there's a growing constituency for whom right-wing ideas are so alien or triggering, left-wing orthodoxy so pervasive and unquestioned, that supporting a candidate like Hillary Clinton looks like a needless form of compromise."

    Note the disdain for millennials. "Triggering."

    Conservative like Douthat and Bobo Brooks "trigger" the hate and anger centers of my brain.

    The fact is that Samantha Bee is right and NBC facilitated the rise of Trump with the Apprentice and treating him well on other shows like Jimmy Fallon and SNL.

    Here's the offending video.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/samantha-bee-slams-jimmy-fallon-nbc-for-softball-donald-trump-interview_us_57e12dbbe4b0071a6e095c1f

    anne -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 02:44 PM
    --------- is the worst hypocrite....

    [ Do not use sickening language on this blog. Never ever use such language here. ]

    pgl : , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 12:24 PM
    I have provided this link to some of the papers by Michael Bruno – many co-authored by Jeffrey Sachs – for a couple of reasons:

    http://www.nber.org/authors/michael_bruno

    The minor reason is they have a nice paper on the Dutch Disease – something JohnH thinks he understands but he needs to read up on this topic. But the main reason has to do with a stupid comment from Paine on my Econospeak post, which goes to show how very little Paine actually learned in graduate school.

    I was try to paint a picture of some Real Business Cycle claim that Bruno and Sachs emphasized when I was in graduate school. I never truly bought their story as I was (and still am) a die hard Keynesian. But here is how it went as applied to the early 1980's (the period I was talking about). If a nation enjoys a massive real appreciation and if aggregate demand does not matter (the New Classical view which we Keynesians do not buy) then the real wages of its domestic workers rise. These workers supply more labor driving down wages relative to domestic prices. So domestic firms hire more workers.

    That is their story. I do not buy it as I was clearly mocking it. Alas Paine never learned this. And so he mocks someone who did. Just another day at the EV comment section. Aals.

    [Sep 26, 2016] Neoliberal prostitute Cowen about unemployment

    Sep 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne -> djb... September 25, 2016 at 07:29 AM https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-12/debating-government-s-role-in-boosting-growth

    September 12, 2016

    Debating Government's Role in Boosting Growth: Cowen and Smith
    By Tyler Cowen & Noah Smith

    Smith: If that's true -- if we're seeing a greater preference for leisure -- why are we not seeing wages go up as a result? Is that market also broken?

    Cowen: Maybe employers just aren't that keen to hire those males who prefer to live at home, watch porn and not get married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of the worker than a market failure? Reply Sunday, DrDick -> djb... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 07:49 AM

    This is a man who has never visited reality.
    Paine -> DrDick... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 12:03 PM
    And he's well compensated for his pipe dreaming

    Why seek truth from facts
    When from scratch
    story telling pays so much better

    DrDick -> Paine ... , -1
    ;-)
    cm -> djb... , -1
    And I thought it was "video games".

    There will always be water carriers "explaining" lack of success by lack of virtue. Likewise, before large scale automation and "globalization", we didn't need PISA studies to highlight the failures of the education systems and alleged lack of student/graduate preparedness.

    Sandwichman had multiple expositions on the early lump of labor fallacy debates where the plight of laborers was ascribed to their carrying their money to the ale house.

    pgl -> djb... , -1
    He lacks basic logic. If his story was valid, real wages would have risen. Inward shift of the supply curve v. movement along a supply curve? Hello? What do they teach the kids at GMU?
    Peter K. -> pgl... , -1
    This month's Time magazine - with Kaepernick on the cover - has a column by an AEI hack, Eberstadt, who pushes the exact same line Cowen is pushing. The lazy/entertained male meme.

    His reasoning is that the decline in the labor force participation rate is consistent through boom times and recessions. (I'm not going to bother linking.)

    "Consider: America's prime-male workforce participation has been declining at a virtually linear rate for half a century - a trajectory unaffected by good times or recessions."

    Again I suspect the conservatives are just lying. The Age of Niallism.

    Excellent Econospeak post by PGL. He can be quite good when not trolling or mud-wrestling with trolls.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 06:42 AM
    Dean Baker also takes on the new conservative meme:

    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/if-men-don-t-work-because-of-video-games-what-explains-women-not-working

    If Men Don't Work Because of Video Games, What Explains Women Not Working?

    by Dean Baker

    Published: 24 September 2016

    As is widely known the Washington Post never misses an opportunity to blame the victims of policy for bad outcomes, rather than rich and powerful folks who design policy. We are treated to yet another example of this charade with the Post running a major article that claims that video games are a major reason that fewer young men are working today than 15 years ago.

    The basic story is that many young men, particularly those with less education, have dropped out of the labor force in the last 15 years. According to survey data, they appear to be spending much of their time playing video games. They also report to be relatively happy. See, all you people who thought it was a bad economy are mistaken, the problem is the video games are just too much fun.

    Okay, that's a great Trumpian level of analysis, but let's get back to the real world. Less-educated young men are not the only group with declines in employment rates. In fact, the drop in employment rates among less-educated women over the last 15 years has been even sharper. Furthermore there has been a decline in employment rates among all groups of prime age workers (25-54), even those with college degrees.

    This general drop in employment rates might suggest that the real problem is a lack of demand. In other words, young men are not working for the same reason young women are not working, the Washington Post and other advocates of austerity have been successful in reducing demand in the economy by reducing the government budget deficit. So the problem has little to do with video games, the problem is the policy, but hey, if the Post can use video games to distract attention from what its favored policies are doing to people -- why not?

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 06:43 AM
    Not just Time magazine, but the Washington Post as well. A large problem is MediaMacro or the corporate media.
    cm -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 08:40 AM
    What, is there a presumption that young women don't play video games? (Or indulge in other online/"social media" entertainment formats?)

    Of course lack of employment is not the consequence but the cause of filling one's day with any available entertainment - and due to cheap offshore manufacturing the hardware is overall a minor expenditure, as well as due to the near zero marginal cost of software replication, the games are quite affordable. For online games there are data center expenses but they are distributed over many players which fits the budget of involuntary or semi-voluntary "Hotel Mama" residents.

    Of course puritans cannot have it that the un(der)employeds are not suffering every inconvenience there is, particularly the soul crushing boredom of an absence of any engaging activity. Hence the mindset that the welfare state must provide exactly the measure of life support that keeps the beneficiaries from death but in this particular state of suffering. Being able to play games or having sexual relations (with others or oneself) defeats the whole purpose.

    Peter K. -> cm... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:16 AM
    Well said.
    JF -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:25 AM
    You mean reducing Spending in the economy, and yes via political controls that stop the govt from spending at levels that might fill the gaps.

    But the point is, to me, that private spending is where it is and will not increase to fill the gaps. Only the public acting as society's agent vua its govt can increase spending to fill the gaps - uh, jusy as Keynes and many ithers have said for quite some time.

    I'm pretty sure you agree, but the point is about spending, not about the fiscal math (a deficit is just 2nd grade math, not a policy). The other party does not want to fill gaps and does not want the public to understand its role in governance - political control for infirm reasons, and that is not a word containing a typo.

    Spending to cause gaps to fill. How to get this.

    pgl -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:23 AM
    I will have to take a peek at this Eberstadt piece. Maybe he will explain to us how a supposed inward shift of the labor supply curve is consistent with weak real wage growth. Oh wait - he writes for the AEI so maybe not.
    Peter K. -> pgl... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:15 AM
    That's what I thought. When I saw he was from AEI I knew we were getting lies. Just like with Trump.

    That it was in a column in Time magazine depressed me.

    Reading your blogpost shredding Cowen cheered me up!

    Thanks.

    pgl -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:45 AM
    I have a new Econospeak post going after this horrible AEI post. Thanks again for the alert.
    pgl -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:39 AM
    Just posted a link to this really awful piece from this AEI goofball. Thanks for the tip. Along with the link, I rip its sheer stupidity. Tyler Cowen was really bad but this AEI guy is incredibly incoherent.
    Paine -> pgl... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 11:18 AM
    Try this on for incoherent

    " ...One would think the rise in the relative price of domestically supplied goods would have increased employment. "

    Typo or
    banana peel ?

    pgl -> Paine ... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 11:45 AM
    I see standard aka Econ 101 theory - which is what the New Classical crowd pushes - is lost on you. Do try to follow the discussion before your usual babbling. Jesus H. Christ - even JohnH is trying to grasp the economics of the Dutch disease. OK - he is doing his usual terrible job but you do not even try.
    Paine -> pgl... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 12:24 PM
    Look carefully my friend

    It's your good fortune no ump stands over your shoulder to rub your face in this goof

    Higher dollar leads to lower domestic employment in trade good industries
    That or lower wage rates

    Or some combo of both

    Paine -> Paine ... , -1
    RBC. Modelers
    Largely Ignore the complications of open systems
    U invoke the forex rate

    Then fumble the ball behind the line of scrimmage

    You are actual more careless and over confident then most here realize

    My adivice avoid actual economists
    Stay in the boon docks
    And at that very gentl hetero fox site econo speak

    Where loons can flock with mavericks
    Lions lie down with skunks

    anne -> pgl... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 07:00 AM
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_business-cycle_theory

    Real business-cycle theory (RBC theory) are a class of New classical macroeconomics models in which business-cycle fluctuations to a large extent can be accounted for by real (in contrast to nominal) shocks. Unlike other leading theories of the business cycle, RBC theory sees business cycle fluctuations as the efficient response to exogenous changes in the real economic environment. That is, the level of national output necessarily maximizes expected utility, and governments should therefore concentrate on long-run structural policy changes and not intervene through discretionary fiscal or monetary policy designed to actively smooth out economic short-term fluctuations.

    According to RBC theory, business cycles are therefore "real" in that they do not represent a failure of markets to clear but rather reflect the most efficient possible operation of the economy, given the structure of the economy.

    DrDick -> pgl... , -1
    Conservative economics, like RBC, cannot survive exposure to reality. Your post in the list today quite nicely shreds that kind of nonsense.

    [Sep 14, 2016] Yes, Donald Trump is wrong about unemployment. But he's not the only one

    Spirited defense of the establishment from one of financial oligarchy members. " The economy overall is doing just fine." Does this include QE? If the Fed is pouring billions of new money into the economy, how accurate is it to say that the economy is doing just fine?
    Notable quotes:
    "... "That was a number that was devised, statistically devised, to make politicians - and in particular, presidents - look good. And I wouldn't be getting the kind of massive crowds that I'm getting if the number was a real number." ..."
    "... In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, organized labor was fairly convinced that the government was purposely underestimating inflation and the cost of living to keep Social Security payments low and wages from rising. George Meany, the powerful head of the American Federation of Labor at the time, claimed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiled both employment and inflation numbers, had "become identified with an effort to freeze wages and is not longer a free agency of statistical research." ..."
    "... Employment figures are sometimes seen as equally suspect. Jack Welch, the once-legendary former CEO of GE, blithely accused the Obama administration of manipulating the final employment report before the 2012 election to make the economic recovery look better than it was. "Unbelievable jobs numbers … these Chicago guys will do anything … can't debate so change numbers," he tweeted ..."
    "... His arguments were later fleshed out by New York Post columnist John Crudele , who went on to charge the Census Bureau (which works with BLS to create the samples for the unemployment rate) with faking and fabricating the numbers to help Obama win reelection. ..."
    "... The chairman of the Gallup organization, Jim Clifton, sees so many flaws with the way unemployment is measured that he has called the official rate a "Big Lie." In the Democratic presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders has also weighed in, saying the real unemployment rate is at best above 10 percent. ..."
    "... What a useless article. The author explains precisely nothing about what the official statistics do and do not measure, what they miss and what they capture. ..."
    "... I had the same impression as well. Notice he does not mention that the Gallop number is over 10% and is based on their polling data. ..."
    "... But never mentioned that Reagan changed how Unemployment was figured in the early 80's. He included all people in the military service, as employed. Before that, they was counted neither way. He also intentionally left out that when Obama, had the unemployed numbers dropped one month before the election, from 8.1% to 7.8% --because it was believed that no one could be reelected if it was above 8%. ..."
    "... U6 is 9.8% for March 2016. We still have 94 million unemployed and you want to say its 5 % what journalistic malpractice. ..."
    "... Trump has emphasized that he is looking at the percent of the population that is participating in the workforce - and that this participation rate is currently at historical lows -- and Trump has been clear that his approach to paying down the national debt is based on getting the participation rates back to historical levels ..."
    "... "The government can't lie about a hundred billion dollars of Social Security money stolen for the Clinton 'balanced budget', that would be a crime against the citizens, they would revolt. John, come one now. " ..."
    "... I didn't say it first, Senator Ernest Hollings did, on the Senate floor. ..."
    "... And here is how they did it: http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16 ..."
    "... There is plenty of evidence the figures are cooked, folks, enough to fill a book: Atlas Shouts. Don't believe trash like this article claims. GDP, unemployment and inflation are all manipulated numbers, as Campbell's Law predicts. ..."
    "... I can't believe the Washington Post prints propaganda like this. ..."
    "... I do remember when the officially-announced unemployment rate stopped including those who were no longer looking for work. That *was* a significant shift, and there's no doubt it made politicians (Reagan, I think it was) look better; of course, no President since then has reversed it, as it would instantly make themselves look worse. ..."
    "... Working one hour a week, at minimum wage, is 'employed', according to the government. No wonder unemployment is at 5%. ..."
    "... Add in people who are working, but want and need full time jobs, add in people who have dropped out of the labor market and/or retired earlier than they wanted to, and unemployment is at least 10%. Ten seconds on Google will show you that. ..."
    "... The writer should be sacked for taking a very serious issue and turning it into a piece of non-informative fluff. Bad mouthing Trump and Sanders is the same as endorsing Hilly. ..."
    Apr 08, 2016 | The Washington Post
    Yes, Donald Trump is wrong about unemployment. But he's not the only one. - The Washington Post

    Listen to President Obama, and you'll hear that job growth is stronger than at any point in the past 20 years, and - as he said in his final State of the Union address - "anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction."

    Listen to Donald Trump and you'll hear something completely different. The billionaire Republican candidate for president told The Washington Post last week that the economy is one big Federal Reserve bubble waiting to burst, and that as for job growth, "we're not at 5 percent unemployment. We're at a number that's probably into the 20s if you look at the real number." Not only that, Trump said, but the numbers are juiced: "That was a number that was devised, statistically devised, to make politicians - and in particular, presidents - look good. And I wouldn't be getting the kind of massive crowds that I'm getting if the number was a real number."

    It's easy enough to dismiss - as a phalanx of economists and analysts did - Trump's claims as yet another one of his all-too-frequent campaign lines that have little to do with reality. But with this one, at least, Trump is tapping into a deep and mostly overlooked well of popular suspicion of government numbers and a deeply held belief that what "we the people" are told about the economy by the government is lies, damn lies and statistics designed to benefit the elite at the expense of the working class. The stubborn persistence of these beliefs should be a reminder that just because the United States is doing well in general, that doesn't mean everyone in the country is. It's also a warning to experts and policymakers that in the real world, there is no "the economy," there are many, and generalizations have a way of glossing over some very rough patches.

    Since the mid-20th century, when the U.S. government began keeping and compiling our modern suite of economic numbers, there has been constant skepticism of the reports, coming from different corners depending on economic trends and the broader political climate. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, organized labor was fairly convinced that the government was purposely underestimating inflation and the cost of living to keep Social Security payments low and wages from rising. George Meany, the powerful head of the American Federation of Labor at the time, claimed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiled both employment and inflation numbers, had "become identified with an effort to freeze wages and is not longer a free agency of statistical research."

    Over the decades, those views hardened. Throughout the 1970s, as workers struggled with unemployment and stagflation, the government continually tweaked its formulas for measuring prices. By and large, these changes and new formulas were designed to make the figures more accurate in a fast-changing world. But for those who were already convinced the government was trying to paint a deliberately false picture, the tweaks and innovations were interpreted as a devious way to avoid spending money to help the ailing middle class, not trying to measure what was actually happening to design policies to help address it. The commissioner of BLS at the time, Janet Norwood, dismissed those concerns in testimony to Congress in the late 1970s, saying that when people don't get the number they want, "they feel there must be something wrong with the indicator itself."

    Employment figures are sometimes seen as equally suspect. Jack Welch, the once-legendary former CEO of GE, blithely accused the Obama administration of manipulating the final employment report before the 2012 election to make the economic recovery look better than it was. "Unbelievable jobs numbers … these Chicago guys will do anything … can't debate so change numbers," he tweeted after that last October report showed better-than-expected job growth and lower-than-anticipated unemployment rate. His arguments were later fleshed out by New York Post columnist John Crudele, who went on to charge the Census Bureau (which works with BLS to create the samples for the unemployment rate) with faking and fabricating the numbers to help Obama win reelection.

    These views are not fringe. Type the search terms "inflation is false" into Google, and you will get reams of articles and analysis from mainstream outlets and voices, including investment guru Bill Gross (who referred to inflation numbers as a "haute con job"). Similar results pop up with the terms "real unemployment rate," and given how many ways there are to count employment, there are legitimate issues with the headline number.

    The cohort that responds to Trump reads those numbers in a starkly different light from the cohort laughing at him for it. Whenever the unemployment rate comes out showing improvement and hiring, those who are experiencing dwindling wages and shrinking opportunities might see a meticulously constructed web of lies meant to paint a positive picture so that the plight of tens of millions who have dropped out of the workforce can be ignored. The chairman of the Gallup organization, Jim Clifton, sees so many flaws with the way unemployment is measured that he has called the official rate a "Big Lie." In the Democratic presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders has also weighed in, saying the real unemployment rate is at best above 10 percent.

    Beneath the anger and the distrust - which extend to a booming stock market that helps the wealthy and banks flush with profit even after the financial crisis - there lies a very real problem with how economists, the media and policymakers discuss economics. No, the bureaucrats in the Labor and Commerce departments who compile these numbers aren't a cabal engaged in a cover-up. And no, the Fed is not an Illuminati conspiracy. But the idea that a few simple big numbers that are at best averages to describe a large system we call "the economy" can adequately capture the stories of 320 million people is a fiction, one that we tell ourselves regularly, and which millions of people know to be false to their own experience.

    It may be true that there is a national unemployment rate measured at 5 percent. But it is also true that for white men without a college degree, or white men who had worked factory jobs until the mid-2000s with no more than a high school education, the unemployment reality is much worse (though it's even worse for black and Hispanic men, who don't seem to be responding by flocking to Trump in large numbers). Even when those with these skill sets can get a job, the pay is woefully below a living wage. Jobs that don't pay well still count, in the stats, as jobs. Telling people who are barely getting by that the economy is just fine must appear much more than insensitive. It is insulting, and it feels like a denial of what they are experiencing.

    The chords Trump strikes when he makes these claims, therefore, should be taken more seriously than the claims themselves. We need to be much more diligent in understanding what our national numbers do and do not tell us, and how much they obscure. In trying to hang our sense of what's what on a few big numbers, we risk glossing over the tens of millions whose lives don't fit those numbers and don't fit the story. "The economy" may be doing just fine, but that doesn't mean that everyone is. Inflation might be low, but millions can be struggling to meet basic costs just the same.

    So yes, Trump is wrong, and he's the culmination of decades of paranoia and distrust of government reports. The economy overall is doing just fine. But people are still struggling. We don't have to share the paranoia or buy into the conspiratorial narrative to acknowledge that. A great nation, the one Trump promises to restore, can embrace more than one story, and can afford to speak to those left out of our rosy national numbers along with those whose experience reflect them.

    the3sattlers, 4/8/2016 1:05 PM EDT

    " The economy overall is doing just fine." Does this include QE? If the Fed is pouring billions of new money into the economy, how accurate is it to say that the economy is doing just fine?

    james_harrigan, 4/8/2016 10:14 AM EDT

    What a useless article. The author explains precisely nothing about what the official statistics do and do not measure, what they miss and what they capture.

    Derbigdog, 4/8/2016 11:40 AM EDT

    I had the same impression as well. Notice he does not mention that the Gallop number is over 10% and is based on their polling data.

    captdon1, 4/8/2016 5:51 AM EDT

    Not reported by WP
    The first two years of Obama's presidency Democrats controlled the house and Senate. The second two years, Republicans controlled the Senate. The last two years of Obama's term, the Republicans controlled house and Senate. During this six years the national debt increase $10 TRILLION and the Government collected $9 TRILLION in taxes and borrowed $10 TRILLION. ($19 Trillion In Six Years!!!) (Where did our lovely politicians spend this enormous amount of money??? (Republicans and Democrats!)

    reussere, 4/8/2016 1:43 AM EDT

    Reading the comments below it strikes me again and again how far out of whack most people are with reality. It's absolutely true that using a single number for the employment rate reflects the overall average of the economy certainly doesn't measure how every person is doing, anymore than an average global temperature doesn't measure any local temperatures.

    One thing not emphasized in the article is that there is a number of different statistics. The 5% figure refers to the U-3 statistic. Nearly all of the rest of the employment statistics are higher, some considerably so because they include different groups of people. But when you compare U-3 from different years, you are comparing apples and apples. The rest of the numbers very closely track with U-3. That is when U-3 goes up and down, U-6 go up and down pretty much in lockstep.

    It is unfortunate that subpopulations of Americans are doing far worse (and some doing far better) than average. But that is the nature of averages after all. It is simply impossible for a single number (or even a group of a dozen different employment measurements) to accurately reflect a complex reality.

    Smoothcountryside, 4/8/2016 12:04 PM EDT

    The alternative measures of labor underutilization are defined as U-1 through U-6 with U-6 being the broadest measure and probably the closes to the "true" level of unemployment. Otherwise, all the rest of your commentary is correct.

    southernbaked, 4/7/2016 11:02 PM EDT

    Because this highly educated writer is totally bias, he left out some key parts, I personally lived though. He referred back to the late 70's twice. But never mentioned that Reagan changed how Unemployment was figured in the early 80's. He included all people in the military service, as employed. Before that, they was counted neither way. He also intentionally left out that when Obama, had the unemployed numbers dropped one month before the election, from 8.1% to 7.8% --because it was believed that no one could be reelected if it was above 8%.

    Then after he was sworn in--- in January, they had to readjust the numbers back up. They blamed it on one employees mistakes-- PS. no one was fired or disciplined for fudging. Bottom line is, for every 1.8 manufacturing job, there are 2 government jobs, that is disaster. Because this writer is to young to have lived in America when it was great. When for every 1 government job, you had 3 manufacturing jobs.

    I will enlighten him. I joined the workforce -- With no higher education -- when you merely walked down the road, and picked out a job. Because jobs hang on trees like apples. By 35 I COMPLETELY owned my first 3 bedroom brick house, and the 2 newer cars parked in the driveway. Anyone care to try that now ??

    As for all this talk about education-- I have a bit of knowledge about that subject-- because I paid in full to send all under my roof through it. Without one dime of aide from anyone. The above writer is proof-- you can be heavily educated, and DEAD WRONG. There is nothing good about this economy. Signed, UN-affiliated to either corrupted party

    Bluhorizons, 4/7/2016 9:43 PM EDT

    "we're not at 5 percent unemployment. We're at a number that's probably into the 20s if you look at the real number." Trump is correct. The unemployment data is contrived from data about people receiving unemployment compensation but the people who's unemployment has ended and people who have just given up is invisible.

    "It may be true that there is a national unemployment rate measured at 5 percent. But it is also true that for white men without a college degree, or white men who had worked factory jobs until the mid-2000s with no more than a high school education, the unemployment reality is much worse "

    The author goes on and on about the legitimate distrust of government unemployment data and then tells us Trump is wrong. But the article convinces us Trump is right! So, this article its not really about the legitimate distrust of government data is is about the author's not liking Trump. Typical New Left bs

    Aushax, 4/7/2016 8:24 PM EDT

    Last jobs report before the 2012 election the number unusually dropped then was readjusted up after the election. Coincidentally?

    George Mason, 4/7/2016 8:15 PM EDT

    U6 is 9.8% for March 2016. We still have 94 million unemployed and you want to say its 5 % what journalistic malpractice.

    F mackey, 4/7/2016 7:57 PM EDT

    hey reporter,Todays WSJ, More than 40% of the student borrowers aren't making payments? WHY? easy,they owe big $ money$ & cant get a job or a well paying job to pay back the loans,hey reporter,i'd send you $10 bucks to buy a clue,but you'd probably get lost going to the store,what a %@%@%@,another reporter,who doesn't have a clue on whats going on,jmo

    SimpleCountryActuary, 4/7/2016 7:57 PM EDT

    This reporter is a Hillary tool. Even the Los Angeles Times on March 6th had to admit:

    "Trump is partly right in saying that trade has cost the U.S. economy jobs and held down wages. He may also be correct - to a degree - in saying that low-skilled immigrants have depressed salaries for certain jobs or industries..."

    If this is the quality of reporting the WaPo is going to provide, namely even worse than the Los Angeles Times, then Bezos had better fire the editorial staff and buy a new one.

    Clyde4, 4/7/2016 7:34 PM EDT [Edited]

    This article dismissing Trump is exactly what is wrong with journalism today - all about creating a false reality for people instead of investigating and reporting

    Trump has emphasized that he is looking at the percent of the population that is participating in the workforce - and that this participation rate is currently at historical lows -- and Trump has been clear that his approach to paying down the national debt is based on getting the participation rates back to historical levels

    The author completely ignored the big elephant in the room -- that is irresponsible journalism

    The author may want to look into how the unemployment rate shot up in 2008 when the government extended benefits and then the unemployment rate plummeted again when unemployment benefits were decrease (around 2011, I believe) - if I were the author I would do a little research into whether the unemployment rate correlates with how much is paid out in benefits or with unemployment determined through some other approach (like surveys

    dangerbird1225, 4/7/2016 7:25 PM EDT

    Bunch of crap. If you stop counting those that stop looking for a job, your numbers are wrong. Period. Why didn't this apologist for statistics mention that?

    watchkeptoverthewatcher, 4/7/2016 6:27 PM EDT

    Ya with a labor participation rate of 63%

    http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

    AtlasRocked, 4/7/2016 5:12 PM EDT

    "The government can't lie about a hundred billion dollars of Social Security money stolen for the Clinton 'balanced budget', that would be a crime against the citizens, they would revolt. John, come one now. "

    I didn't say it first, Senator Ernest Hollings did, on the Senate floor.

    "Both Democrats and Republicans are all running this year and next and saying surplus, surplus. Look what we have done. It is false. The actual figures show that from the beginning of the fiscal year until now we had to borrow $127,800,000,000." - Senate speech, Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings, October 28, 1999

    http://www.c-span.org/video/?c3319676 at 5:30

    And here is how they did it: http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

    rgengel, 4/7/2016 5:03 PM EDT

    Go to New Orleans Chicago Atlanta Los Angeles Detroit stop anybody on the street and ask if unemployment is 5% and that there is a 95% chance a guy can get a job.

    Then you will have a statistic reference point. Its not a Democratic or republican issue because both of them have manipulated the system for so long its meaningless. Go Trump 2016 and get this crap sorted out with common sense plain English

    AtlasRocked, 4/7/2016 4:37 PM EDT

    There is plenty of evidence the figures are cooked, folks, enough to fill a book: Atlas Shouts. Don't believe trash like this article claims. GDP, unemployment and inflation are all manipulated numbers, as Campbell's Law predicts.

    I can't believe the Washington Post prints propaganda like this.

    TimberDave, 4/7/2016 2:23 PM EDT

    I do remember when the officially-announced unemployment rate stopped including those who were no longer looking for work. That *was* a significant shift, and there's no doubt it made politicians (Reagan, I think it was) look better; of course, no President since then has reversed it, as it would instantly make themselves look worse.

    astroboy_2000, 4/7/2016 1:28 PM EDT

    This would be a much more intelligent article if the writer actually said what the government considers as 'employed'.

    Working one hour a week, at minimum wage, is 'employed', according to the government. No wonder unemployment is at 5%.

    Add in people who are working, but want and need full time jobs, add in people who have dropped out of the labor market and/or retired earlier than they wanted to, and unemployment is at least 10%. Ten seconds on Google will show you that.

    The writer should be sacked for taking a very serious issue and turning it into a piece of non-informative fluff. Bad mouthing Trump and Sanders is the same as endorsing Hilly.

    Manchester0913, 4/7/2016 2:12 PM EDT

    The number you're referencing is captured under U6. However, U3 is the traditional measure.

    Son House, 4/7/2016 2:24 PM EDT

    The government doesn't claim that working one hour a week is employed. Google U 3 unemployment. Then google U 6 unemployment. You can be enlightened.

    Liz in AL, 4/7/2016 7:21 PM EDT

    I've found this compilation of all 6 of the "U-rates" very useful. It encompasses the most restrictive (and thus smallest) U-1 rate, though the most expansive U-6. It provides brief descriptions of what gets counted for each rate, and (at least for more recent years) provides the ability to compare at the monthly level of detail. U6 Unemployment Rate Portal Seven

    [Sep 12, 2016] 'It Pays to Work: Work Incentives and the Safety Net'

    Sep 12, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Via Brad DeLong:
    It Pays to Work: Work Incentives and the Safety Net: Isaac Shapiro, Robert Greenstein, Danilo Trisi, and Bryann DaSilva, CBPP : Some critics of various low-income assistance programs argue that the safety net discourages work. In particular, they contend that people receiving assistance from these programs can receive more, or nearly as much, from not working - and receiving government aid - than from working. Or they argue that low-paid workers have little incentive to work more hours or seek higher wages because losses in government aid will cancel out the earnings gains.
    Careful analysis of the data and research demonstrates, however, that such charges are largely incorrect and that it pays to work. In the overwhelming majority of cases, in fact, adults in poverty are significantly better off if they get a job, work more hours, or receive a wage hike.

    Various changes in the safety net over the past two decades have transformed it into more of what analysts call a "work-based safety net" and substantially increased incentives to work for people in poverty. ...

    [Sep 12, 2016] Volcker overcorrected and defanged labor to the delight of the wealthy elites.

    September 02, 2015 economistsview.typepad.com

    bakho said...

    The late 70s 80s inflation was due to 2 components.
    1. Wage inflation fueled by COLA.
    2. Price inflation fueled by the oil shock and the response of fuel switching and conservation, both of which were expensive and subtracted from productivity. (Same amount of product made, more work if you count work dedicated to remediation).

    Volcker overcorrected and defanged labor to the delight of the wealthy elites.

    That inflation did not return even when unemployment declined to low levels validates that other factors were driving inflation (oil) and that was corrected by Carter energy policy.

    The wealthy elites give zero credit to regulatory and fiscal policy under Carter for fixing the problem. Reagan fiscal policy made inflation worse, but by then, Carter energy policy had taken full effect.

    During the Great Moderation, we do see inflation start to appear during oil shocks (such as Gulf War 1).

    We have rewritten history discounting policies that worked, thus preventing us from learning the truth about the value of fiscal and regulatory policy and limitations of monetary policy.

    Monetary policy only worked by creating a bad recession with high unemployment.

    Fiscal and regulatory policy tackled the energy issues without causing the social harm from high unemployment.

    [Sep 09, 2016] Brexit and Americas Growing Nationalism Movement

    Looks like now line in 1920th the global pendulum moves toward nationalism. So in a way neoliberalism breeds nationalism and transnational elite paves the way for dictators like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin in the past. Transnational elites start to recognize the danger, but they can do nothing about it as Trump has shown so vividly in the USA.
    High unemployment logically lead to nationalism and all those neoliberal politicians understood that they are destroying the county but continue to plunder it anyway. Biden already cried uncle about the danger of far right nationalism on CNN. But reality in the USA is not then different from the reality in Britain.
    Notable quotes:
    "... No wonder Donald Trump's campaign has ignited a growing nationalism movement. We're creating jobs and giving them away. We've let globalization get away from us. It's abundantly clear that we don't have the right public policies in place to incentivize corporations to keep Americans gainfully employed. ..."
    "... Grove's bold piece was embraced by some, panned by others and largely ignored. Whether he or Trump have exactly the right solution to the globalization and immigration problems plaguing free-market economies throughout the western world doesn't matter. What matters is that they've identified a problem that needs to be solved before it's too late. So did the British people when they voted to exit the EU. ..."
    "... Economic prosperity and security must trump political correctness and ideology. The Brits got it right. Will we? ..."
    Jul 04, 2016 | Fox Business
    Just five weeks ago, polling indicated that Brits overwhelmingly favored remaining in the European Union by an 18-point margin, 57% to 39%. What changed? Maybe it was a startling report showing that 80% of new jobs over the past year had gone to foreign-born workers taking advantage of the EU's free movement policy.

    It's hard to say if that was the wakeup call that led to a sharp reversal and Thursday's historic vote to leave the EU, but it was nevertheless a stunning realization that Prime Minister David Cameron had failed to stem the tide of immigrant workers flooding the UK's job market, as he had promised to do.

    Meanwhile, a laundry list of commentators from the Washington Post and Esquire to Vox and the New York Times chalked it all up to millions of racist xenophobes who are terrified of immigrants mucking up their pristine white privileged world. If that sounds at all similar to the anti-Trump rhetoric, you can sort of see where this is going.

    The thing is, there's nothing even remotely irrational or bigoted about the alarming transformation of Britain's job market. Since 1997, the number of foreign-born workers has doubled to one in six. And since 2014, three EU migrants have found jobs for every Brit, according to official government figures. And, as we'll see in a minute, there are concerning parallels on this side of the pond, as well.

    I hear from college grads and experienced professionals looking for jobs all the time, but a recent inquiry from a 27-year-old Edinburgh, Scotland woman with a BS in microbiology and excellent grades got my attention. She has applied for more than 400 jobs without managing to secure an interview. Not a single one.

    ... ... ...

    While the situation in America isn't nearly as bad, there are clear parallels. In 1970, foreign-born workers accounted for just 5% of the U.S. civilian labor force, but that number has since more than tripled to one in six – identical to the UK figure.

    More concerning is that the workforce itself has continued to shrink over the same period. Whether that reflects increasing competition, lack of in-demand skillsets or both doesn't really matter. The net result is that foreigners are getting more of our jobs, and that's as true of offshore jobs as it is of onshore jobs.

    Think about it. Apple has created well over a million jobs, but 90% of them are outsourced to China. Google may not make phones and tablets, but the vast majority of Android-enabled mobile devices are manufactured in Asia. Of course, that's true of nearly every industry, old or new.

    We may not face the identical migrant worker problem that the UK has, but the net result is the same: By giving up more and more jobs we create to foreign-born immigrants and offshore contractors, that leaves fewer and fewer jobs and increasing competition for American citizens.

    No wonder Donald Trump's campaign has ignited a growing nationalism movement. We're creating jobs and giving them away. We've let globalization get away from us. It's abundantly clear that we don't have the right public policies in place to incentivize corporations to keep Americans gainfully employed.

    Back in 2010, former Intel chairman Andy Grove penned How America Can Create Jobs. The front-page Bloomberg BusinessWeek feature clearly outlined the perils of losing our manufacturing muscle and declared the need for public policy that puts jobs first, even if it does means constraining free trade with tariffs, trade war be damned.

    Grove's bold piece was embraced by some, panned by others and largely ignored. Whether he or Trump have exactly the right solution to the globalization and immigration problems plaguing free-market economies throughout the western world doesn't matter. What matters is that they've identified a problem that needs to be solved before it's too late. So did the British people when they voted to exit the EU.

    Economic prosperity and security must trump political correctness and ideology. The Brits got it right. Will we?

    [Aug 24, 2016] Good jobs disaappered and middle class had shruk dramatically in the USA

    Notable quotes:
    "... That said, what I believe is needed in the USA is a doubling down on Corporate Boards of Directors and CEOs to create a crisis, an American intervention, if you will, that demands companies bring back the idea that Profits alone are not all that matters. Serving the Nation you are born in, raised in, educated in, and then making a profitable income from certainly needs to be focused in on. ..."
    "... An additional factor in the financial woes of the falling middle class is the changing demographics here in the US - the growing numbers of single mothers, who are far more likely to struggle financially than a two income household. I make no judgment regarding how people form their family units, but life is especially hard for single mothers. ..."
    "... Its even more difficult for journalists in Guardian. They have to destroy chances of only candidate addressing inequality and climate change (Bernie), completely surrender their integrity to corporations, lament over those issues post factum, and yet be paid miserably only in hundreds of thousands for such colossal betrayal of humanity. Its worth at billions to actively participate in destroying future of your kids. Or is it? ..."
    "... We need a new Federal Minimum Wage, and the wealthiest need to start paying up. Trump claims that business in the US pay the highest tax rate. That's just not true. I'm not talking about putting the burden on small business, but the multi-nationals and Wall Street. ..."
    "... And we can blame Billary and Hussein for it. Their "free-trade" decisions, along with their shameful endorsement of open-borders, have lowered wages for everyone, except for financiers. Interestingly, it was those who've suffered the brunt of the elites' decisions who voted for Britain to leave the EU. Ironically, those who professed to stand for the middle and lower classes, revealed their hypocrisy when they joined the Mandarins in opposing for Britain to leave the totalitarian EU. ..."
    "... Like the Trojans fearing present-giving presents, so should the working man loath the elites who promised to have their best interests at heart. That is the same promise communism gave the workers, only to turn on and enslave them. Today the workers don't stand a chance: the Marxists and bankers are on the same side sneering at the working classes who are demeaned as being racist, jingoistic xenophobes. ..."
    "... An article in Forbes that explains why Obamacare is a scam. ObamaCare Enriches Only The Health Insurance Giants and Their Shareholders ..."
    "... I agree with you that he never did. Obama is a corporatist and globalist. If you think Obamacare is bad wait until his trade deals are past. He sold Americans out for the profits of multinational corporations. Hillary will continue his work. I understand the true meaning of his words now. ..."
    "... The US middle class has been disintegrating for decades as inequity grows ..."
    "... Clinton is in hiding. I can't find her in the Guardian today. She is a habitual liar and the whole world has all the evidence it needs. All of her promises are bullshit. Bernie has been right the whole time and he is smart not to endorse. Bernie has always known what she is and Bernie's supporters have no reason to support her. ..."
    "... It means she is corrupt, dishonest, and unqualified to be anything but an inmate. ..."
    "... the middle class has been decimated.. This financial category is only about 35% of was it was in the early 70's.. additionally the definition of middle class has changed drastically as well.. believe it or not your middle class if your earn more than 50k a year!.. this is part of the reason we are as a nation borrowing a trillion dollars a year.. when will the silenced majority wake up and start voting and stop spending on products that are vastly over priced. ..."
    "... My kid had a persistent tummy ache. Doc said intestinal blockage; take him to the ER immediately. Seven hours and one inconclusive CAT scan later, he's home again with symptoms unchanged. Two days later the pain went away. Cost: $12,000 with about $10,000 covered by union health insurance. So that's at least $2,000 out of pocket to me for seven hours in hospital, zero diagnosis and zero relief from symptoms. Medicine as a criminal enterprise? So what? Who's gonna stop it? The press? The law? ..."
    "... I sympathize. I also agree with you. The US medical system is criminal. It is cruel, discriminatory, ruthless, often ineffective, and often incompetent. The only reason the administrators ("health" maintenance corporations) aren't in jail is because they use some of their obscene profits to buy Congress -- which passes laws like Obama's ACA or Bush's big Pharma swindle. I have no idea what to do about it though -- maybe if everyone refused to pay their premiums and medical bills, the money managers would notice. A sort of strike. ..."
    "... SIngle-payer is the answer. Of course, the insurance companies and big pharma use scare tactics to stop that from happening. They talk about government waste, completely ignoring their own waste. They ignore the billions of dollars that they skim off of the top each year before applying any money for actual medical care. Wake up, people. Medical care should be run by the government or non-profit organizations, not by for-profit corporations. ..."
    "... Despite the financial situation in middle-and lower income families that has been steadily declining under the past 8 years of the Obama administration, most in that group will support Hillary and propagate the Same problems for 4 more years. They stand no hope unless they break from the knee-jerk support of the "Democratic" Party. ..."
    "... So they should support Donald Trump and the conservative party? Last time I checked raising taxes on the middle class while lowering taxes on the rich didn't really help anyone but the rich. The Republican party never gave two shits about middle and lower class, and there's no point believing they will start now. ..."
    "... Isn't choosing to have three children very selfish if you cannot support them financially. People always find someone else to blame. ..."
    "... "Race" card!!?? Where the hell did I mention anything about race or are you really as dumb as your reply suggests. Plus, you don't require a test to decide if you can afford children or not. It basic family planning. It's people like you in society that has the place in a mess with your "blame anyone but meself attitude" If I'm considered horrible, at least I'm not totally dumb and irrisponsible like you. ..."
    "... Bill Maher recently (July 1, 2016; Overtime) editorialized about the state "laboratories" where new ideas are tested and evaluated. Maher compared the divergent fates of California and Kansas plus Louisiana. ..."
    "... It's interesting. According to my household income I'm in the "upper" tier for the DC-metro region. But it really doesn't feel that way. Even those of us who make a good income are more and more stretched. In comparison to most of the country, I am well off. I own a car, just bought a house, I can afford to go out to eat a couple times a week. But, I even get to the end of the month with only $100 in the bank. That's because other downward pressures on pay aren't taken into account, such as student debt. My expensive undergraduate and graduate education didn't come cheap, and while that education affords people higher pay, if you end up taking less of it home. It kinda equals out. ..."
    "... Sometimes my husband and I think about having kids, and then we realise that even with our good paying jobs, we can't afford day care in our area. I get paid the most, so I can't quit my job but if my husband quit to care for a child, we would really be strapped. Can I really be considered an upper tier household if I can't afford to have kids? If I can't afford to go on vacation once a year? If I haven't bought new clothes in two years? If I have no savings and a freak medical bill might just tip me over the edge? ..."
    "... Suggest you give Andrew Tobias' book a read to think outside the box a good education often constructs for us: https://www.amazon.com/Only-Investment-Guide-Youll-Ever/dp/0544781937?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc ..."
    "... You can cut student debt in the U.S. by attending a good community college for two years and then transferring to a state university. Most kids are unwilling to do this--no frats or prestige in community colleges! ..."
    "... Beginning in the 1970s, a majority of the middle class began to resent the taxation needed to continue support for these liberal policies, and they began to vote for conservative politicians who promised to remove them as they "only helped the undeserving poor." White racism played a role in this as the lower class was invariably portrayed in political speeches and advertising as group of lazy black people. ..."
    "... No, it was created in response to the Bolshevik revolution, in particular, to that genius who said "Let's just shoot the royal family and be done with this." ..."
    "... All of these things have come under attack since the USSR fell apart, probably on that exact day. And who overthrew the USSR? Overeducated middle class, not the poor or the rich. Who was Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring... the recent protests against the French labor law tightenings, ALL the middle class. ..."
    "... The greatest threat to governments has, and always will be, from within. And this threat is from the middle class, almost exclusively. Therefore, we are to be crushed and controlled tightly ..."
    "... funny how this media outlet didn't publish these types of reports while the primary was hot. It was all "Hilary is inevitable and supporting Bernie is supporting Trump" type garbage. ..."
    "... Probably he means to say Americans habitually ask new acquaintances, "What do you do for a living?" That's absolutely a query about income and personal worth, though slightly disguised, and it's a question I have never widely encountered anywhere else in the world, nor while living overseas the last ten years. ..."
    "... This article is extremely dishonest. First, it claims that she has 'three other jobs'. Second, she has children, for whom she presumably gets child support. So what's her *real* income? ..."
    "... When those in poverty or on the verge of it are single mothers, you tend to wonder if there are some other issues as well. I don't recall a time in American history where a single mother of several children could take care of herself when completely on her own. ..."
    "... I teach in inner city schools. There are so many problems, money is one of them but all the money won't solve the problem of poor learning attitudes, disaffection, poor discipline and nonexistent work ethic . ..."
    "... A lot of the students get no discipline at home and their parents don't expect them to learn anything. They are resistant to the whole process of focus on new knowledge , absorb, drill, recall , deploy newly learned thing. ..."
    "... I don't know what solution there is to this. My nieces and nephews did well in school, studied hard, and went on to university. They didn't do drugs, rape or be raped, and stayed away from unsavory kids. BUT--they went home to two parents every night, a father and mother, which I think would have made them successful at school no matter what their income. ..."
    "... The US economy isn't competitive anymore. It started with the labor cost being too high, so factories moved out. Then the entire supply chain moved out. Now the main consumer market is also moving out. Once that is gone, we will have no more leverage. ..."
    "... The US education is good, but students are lazy, undisciplined, and incurious. In silicon valley, more than 75% of highly paid technical personnel are foreign born. Corporations making money with foreign workers here and abroad, on foreign markets. Taking these away and you will see the economy crash. ..."
    "... Labor costs were too high. Have some more kool-aid. The elite didn't want labor to have any bargaining power whatsoever . They wanted to dictate the terms to labor believing that they were the only ones who should have any say in matters. The elite wanted to maximize their profits at the expense of their own citizens. They wanted slave labor . They wanted powerless people to dance to their tune. How could an advanced nation's labor possibly compete with slave labor . ..."
    "... Sadly ..... thee isn't any hope for these people in the foreseeable future . Their economic decline has been happening for quite some time now and shows no sign of abating whatsoever . The economic foundations of their lives have been steadily pulled out from under them by the financial elite and their subservient political cultures , the Republican and Democratic Parties . The Republicans have never really given a damn about them and the Democrats have long abandoned them . These poor people of North Carolina are adrift on a sinking raft on easy ocean of indifference by the political cultures of America . To those in power , they don't exist . They don't count . They don't matter . ..."
    "... The trend in the U.S, along with almost every other major nation in the world over the past 35 years has been to exclusively serve the interests of the financial elite and only their needs . All sense of fairness , justice and decency have been totally discarded . ..."
    "... Tax breaks after tax breaks , tax shelters , free movement of capital , etc., etc. would sum up the experience of the financial elite over the past 35 years . They have become incredibly wealthy now and are still not satisfied . They want more . They want it all . They want what little you have and their political servants which help them get . ..."
    "... Political discourse pertaining to the plight of those like these folks in North Carolina is all window dressing . In the end , you can be certain that it will amount to nothing . Just like it has for decades now . The financial elite are in control and they are not going to give any of that control up . As a matter of fact , they are going to tighten their grip . They will invent crisis to have their agendas imposed upon an increasingly powerless and bewildered public . They will take advantage of every naturally occurring crisis to advance their agenda . ..."
    "... The problem is the job exporting American elite class. NAFTA was an economics, political, and social experiment with all the downside on the former, mostly lower middle class. Non-aligned examination of the available data shows how disastrous NAFTA has been to America's bubbas. Thanks to Bush 41 and Bill Clinton. WTO was all Bill. Of the mistakes Obama has made TPP would be the worst. The question is, really, do we favor global fairness (an even playing field for all earth's peoples) and a climate-killing consumerist world, or our own disadvantaged (courtesy of our financial and political elite) citizens. Not an easy choice. Death by poison or hanging. No treaty can benegotiated fairly in secret. ..."
    "... The tragic irony is that the anger against rule by the 1% manifests in things like support for Trump, a typical example of the greed and excess of the 1%. Americans need to question outside their desperately constrained paradigms more. It will help focus their anger more strategically, and possibly lead to solutions. Don't hold your breath, the inequality gap is accelerating the wrong way. ..."
    "... I think the US is heDing for trouble. It is the middle class that maintains civil society and gives a sense of hope. This is an interesting open letter by a zillionaire to his peers warning them what happens without a string middle class. A thought provoking read. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014 ..."
    "... The elite of the USA have done exactly what the Romans did and what the Pre-Revolutionary French did.... drain the lower classes while enriching themselves. "Taxes are for little people" is not just a pithy quote, it has become the reality as the elite rig the system so they benefit and the lower classes pay. They need to wake up or they will get exactly what the Romans Got (collapsed empire) or the French got (Violent Revolution). Wake up America! It is time to choose your side in the class war the elite continue to execute while telling us there is no "Class War" - you can't pull yourself up by your boot straps while they are pulling the rug out from under you! ..."
    "... My wife used to employ recent graduates from Georgetown University with poli. sci., psychology, sociology degrees, to stack books for $10/hr. It took them on average 2-3 years, before finding work in their field. ..."
    "... Education is NOT about finding a job! It's about learning ways to seek wisdom and rationality, and to assimilate (not deny) new knowledge throughout your life--and that's exactly what's lacking in the US! Our schools are factories to turn out standard robots to be used by the owners of this country, whether they practice law or flip burgers. ..."
    Aug 24, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
    HopeWFaith, 9 Jul 2016 16:04

    I was stumped by the very idea that someone has the $money, the time, the energy to go out and study for 3 bachelor degrees. This woman doesn't look old enough to have had time to get 3 degrees.

    That said, what I believe is needed in the USA is a doubling down on Corporate Boards of Directors and CEOs to create a crisis, an American intervention, if you will, that demands companies bring back the idea that Profits alone are not all that matters. Serving the Nation you are born in, raised in, educated in, and then making a profitable income from certainly needs to be focused in on.

    Why on earth isn't Main Stream Media doing this, along with all of CONGRESS and the President? What is their excuse? Even if you brought back all the robotic jobs to US soil, you would also end up bringing a large number of administrative jobs back here, too, just to keep up with the business at hand. It is critical that we rebuild our infrastructure, yet we see NO immediate or Long-term plans to do so. How can we, without the support of the Business Class to support the whole nation through Paying their Taxes to the US Tax System? There is no excuse that will do, in my book. Profits to the top tier need to be STOPPED so long as businesses are going outside of the United States Borders. Period.

    SluethforTruth , 2016-07-07 12:39:08

    Typical of what's happening around the world. The trillions of dollars lurking in tax havens is the reason why economies are stagnating. Money makes the world go round, however detouring to the Cayman Islands, the flow stops and the poverty begins. Spend locally and reject multi national corporations. Give your local communities a chance to prosper,
    Snaggletooth718 , 2016-07-07 12:40:07
    An additional factor in the financial woes of the falling middle class is the changing demographics here in the US - the growing numbers of single mothers, who are far more likely to struggle financially than a two income household. I make no judgment regarding how people form their family units, but life is especially hard for single mothers.
    saladbowl , 2016-07-07 12:46:52
    "The 2016 presidential race has superficially been dominated by talk of this declining middle. First from Bernie Sanders, then Hillary Clinton and even Donald Trump's promise to Make America Great Again"

    "And even"??? What a laugh. Even if you hate Trump its clear The Guardian has written every article possible to prevent his rise and they have failed miserably. Hillary amd Sanders are dominating conversatiin. Trump is by far.

    One thing us for sure. 15 million illegals and thousands more every month is not making the middle class more secure.

    They are shrinking, and you expect them to tolerate "Make America Mexico Again"? In these times?

    Donor money is ruining the country. They hate Trump because he doesnt need these arrogant donors who have never heard "no" their whole lives.

    peonyrose , 2016-07-07 12:47:08
    If ordinary people have to work three jobs to make ends meet, then you need to say that wages in the US are too low.
    Slavenko Sucur -> peonyrose , 2016-07-07 14:29:52
    Its even more difficult for journalists in Guardian. They have to destroy chances of only candidate addressing inequality and climate change (Bernie), completely surrender their integrity to corporations, lament over those issues post factum, and yet be paid miserably only in hundreds of thousands for such colossal betrayal of humanity. Its worth at billions to actively participate in destroying future of your kids. Or is it?
    SusanPrice58 , 2016-07-07 12:53:59
    It isn't immigration that costing jobs - it's employers who know they can pay these people less for their work. We need a new Federal Minimum Wage, and the wealthiest need to start paying up. Trump claims that business in the US pay the highest tax rate. That's just not true. I'm not talking about putting the burden on small business, but the multi-nationals and Wall Street.
    RaceOfStalwarts -> SusanPrice58 , 2016-07-07 14:06:02
    You can see in western Europe at the moment that a minimum wage desn't work without a whole host of other protective legislation. A minimum wage doesn't reach to the self employed, and it doesn't prevent the use of flexible or non-guaranteed hours contracts making use of a larger than is required labour pool. Not to mention the black market / cash in hand trade.
    BritainFirst2016 , 2016-07-07 12:55:21
    And we can blame Billary and Hussein for it. Their "free-trade" decisions, along with their shameful endorsement of open-borders, have lowered wages for everyone, except for financiers. Interestingly, it was those who've suffered the brunt of the elites' decisions who voted for Britain to leave the EU. Ironically, those who professed to stand for the middle and lower classes, revealed their hypocrisy when they joined the Mandarins in opposing for Britain to leave the totalitarian EU.

    Like the Trojans fearing present-giving presents, so should the working man loath the elites who promised to have their best interests at heart. That is the same promise communism gave the workers, only to turn on and enslave them. Today the workers don't stand a chance: the Marxists and bankers are on the same side sneering at the working classes who are demeaned as being racist, jingoistic xenophobes.

    pawildcat -> BritainFirst2016 , 2016-07-07 13:51:28
    You realize most of the votes in favor of NAFTA were Republican and most against were Democratic, right? You know that "free trade" has been an item in the Republican platform (and increasingly the Democratic one) for years before Clinton and Obama were ever in office, right? Know some elementary facts about U.S, politics before posting nonsense.
    daWOID -> Ed Thurmann , 2016-07-07 13:47:41
    Ed Thurmann: it's not teacher-bashing, it's just the old recycled "black family values" spiel that was introduced into the poverty debate in the '60s by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan, not so BTW, is Hillary Clinton's intellectual hero. So you can expect a hell of a lot more of these cliches after January of next year.
    Juillette , 2016-07-07 13:26:03
    An article in Forbes that explains why Obamacare is a scam. ObamaCare Enriches Only The Health Insurance Giants and Their Shareholders

    Robert Lenzner , CONTRIBUTOR
    I'm trying to wise up 300 million people about money & finance

    So far in 2013 the value of the S& P health insurance index has gained 43%. Thats more than double the gains made in the broad stock market index, the S & P 500. The shares of CIGNA are up 63%, Wellpoint 47% and United Healthcare 28%. And if you go back to the early 2010 passage of ObamaCare, you will find that Obama's sellout of the public interest has allowed the public companies the ability to raise their premiums, especially on small business, dramatically multiply their profits and send the value of their common stocks up by 200%-300%. This is bloody scandalous and should be a cause for concern even as the Republican opponents of the bill threaten the close-down of the government.

    We warned you back on December4, 2009 in my blog " The Horrendous Truth About Health Care Reform" that the Obama White House was handing a " free ride for the health insurance industry" that would allow premium hikes of 8%-10% a year by CIGNA, Humana HUM +1.56%, Aetna AET +0.45%, UnitedHealth Group UNH +0.58% and Wellpoint, and as well a $500 billion taxpayer subsidy, a half trillion dollars without any requirement that the health insurers had to spend the subsidy on medical care. Several US Senators including Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia spoke to me openly of the outrageous sellout being foisted on the nation's uninsured citizens.

    At the time I wrote, Goldman Sachs research operation estimated that the 5 giants would increase profits by 10% a year from 2010 to 2019, sending their shares up an average of 59%. In truth, the shares of CIGNA and some others are up a multiple of several times since the contest was resolved by a very tight vote in early 2010. One startling reason for this amazing performance was that Obama took off the table "proposals to significantly reduce health care costs" as the giveaway in getting the bill through, according to Ron Susskind's best-selling book ,"Confidence Men," which I wrote about in a blog on September 24, 2011. ( "Obama's Incoherent Policy-Making") Some 3 years later, UnitedHealthCare Group(UNH) was rewarded by being added to the elite list of the Dow 30 industrials.

    I understood belatedly that there would have been no Affordable Care Act of 2010 if the White House had not given into demands from the giant profit-making health insurance companies. Had he not done so, I am being assured that there would have been no bill passed, a priority goal that Obama promised in his 2008 Presidential campaign. How the profits have risen so impressively requires further investigation as the bill is meant to limit the profits earned to 20% of the revenues.

    One of the other downsides to the supposed reform bill was the surprisingly unfair treatment of small business owners who faced even larger potential premiums for their employees. It has been the fear of these higher health costs that has resulted in the overwhelming trend toward hiring part-time employees whom the employers need not offer healthcare insurance.

    So much for the reforms embedded in the mis-labeled Affordable Care Act of 2010. It may not die a bloody demise this month, but it is certain to be reformed itself, let's hope for the benefit of the 300 million, not just the millions of lucky shareholders who may have understood the ramification of ObamaCare, which was to multiply the profits of five giant insurance companies, just as the major bank oligopoly was rewarded by the federal bailouts and Fed monetary policy.

    Juillette -> Andrew Kac , 2016-07-07 14:16:34
    I agree with you that he never did. Obama is a corporatist and globalist. If you think Obamacare is bad wait until his trade deals are past. He sold Americans out for the profits of multinational corporations. Hillary will continue his work. I understand the true meaning of his words now.

    "We are a nation of immigrants" meaning he prefers cheap illegal labor when 46 million Americans live in poverty. Soon cheap foriegn will be unlimited and legal in the US with worker mobility. Even for professional jobs. Can you imagine competing with foreigners in the US who make 30 cents an hour? It's depressing really. Here are some of the highlights of the TPP that will throw Americans further into poverty.

    http://www.citizen.org/TPP

    Also research Tisa.

    barbkay , 2016-07-07 13:49:42
    My heart goes out to these beleaguered families. In the late 1970s/80s I held down a full-time job in DC and freelanced feverishly to make ends meet. I lived below the official poverty line in an expensive, yet thoroughly crappy, flat. That recession-riddled era of energy chaos, leading into Reagan's 'voodoo' economics regime (the risible idea of 'trickle-down', the US becoming the world's largest debtor), was another hot mess.

    The US middle class has been disintegrating for decades as inequity grows, thanks in large part to the poor governance of Republican presidents (Nixon's stagflation, the disastrous shifts under GW Bush).

    FugitiveColors , 2016-07-07 13:53:22
    Clinton is in hiding. I can't find her in the Guardian today. She is a habitual liar and the whole world has all the evidence it needs. All of her promises are bullshit. Bernie has been right the whole time and he is smart not to endorse. Bernie has always known what she is and Bernie's supporters have no reason to support her.

    Her disapproval ratings will top Trump now. The voters are now going to show her what the meaning of is, really is.

    It means she is corrupt, dishonest, and unqualified to be anything but an inmate.

    MasonInNY -> FugitiveColors , 2016-07-07 16:08:57
    Her disapproval ratings are high, but not up with Trump's and they never will be. You can vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in November. Or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian. But Bernie will not be a candidate, and he will eventually endorse Clinton -- after he is sure he's won certain concessions in the Democratic platform. That's your reality in July 2016, not in February.
    brianBT , 2016-07-07 14:16:48
    the middle class has been decimated.. This financial category is only about 35% of was it was in the early 70's.. additionally the definition of middle class has changed drastically as well.. believe it or not your middle class if your earn more than 50k a year!.. this is part of the reason we are as a nation borrowing a trillion dollars a year.. when will the silenced majority wake up and start voting and stop spending on products that are vastly over priced..Turn off your phone, stop buying all but essentials.. we need to force prices down until we complain and start voting with our dollars little will change
    MtnClimber -> ojeemabalzitch , 2016-07-07 15:37:37
    What about the millions of married couples with kids..when the parents lose their jobs? That happens very frequently. Should we take the kids away? Are you suggesting that poor people not be allowed to have children?

    Then we have the religious nutcases that are against contraception and abortion, yet demonize poor women for having children.

    NYbill13 , 2016-07-07 14:34:59
    My kid had a persistent tummy ache. Doc said intestinal blockage; take him to the ER immediately. Seven hours and one inconclusive CAT scan later, he's home again with symptoms unchanged. Two days later the pain went away. Cost: $12,000 with about $10,000 covered by union health insurance. So that's at least $2,000 out of pocket to me for seven hours in hospital, zero diagnosis and zero relief from symptoms. Medicine as a criminal enterprise? So what? Who's gonna stop it? The press? The law?

    Hahahahahahahaha.

    ojeemabalzitch -> NYbill13 , 2016-07-07 14:58:00
    So? If your car breaks down it will cost a fortune to repair. Same if you have to replace the roof on your house. Life ain't fair, is it?
    MiltonWiltmellow -> NYbill13 , 2016-07-07 15:14:26

    Medicine as a criminal enterprise? So what? Who's gonna stop it? The press? The law?

    I sympathize. I also agree with you. The US medical system is criminal. It is cruel, discriminatory, ruthless, often ineffective, and often incompetent. The only reason the administrators ("health" maintenance corporations) aren't in jail is because they use some of their obscene profits to buy Congress -- which passes laws like Obama's ACA or Bush's big Pharma swindle. I have no idea what to do about it though -- maybe if everyone refused to pay their premiums and medical bills, the money managers would notice. A sort of strike.

    MtnClimber -> MiltonWiltmellow , 2016-07-07 15:35:28
    SIngle-payer is the answer. Of course, the insurance companies and big pharma use scare tactics to stop that from happening. They talk about government waste, completely ignoring their own waste. They ignore the billions of dollars that they skim off of the top each year before applying any money for actual medical care. Wake up, people. Medical care should be run by the government or non-profit organizations, not by for-profit corporations.

    Corporations have only one goal...to make as much money as possible for themselves. Health care is just a necessary nuisance.

    Ykuos1 , 2016-07-07 14:37:56
    Despite the financial situation in middle-and lower income families that has been steadily declining under the past 8 years of the Obama administration, most in that group will support Hillary and propagate the Same problems for 4 more years. They stand no hope unless they break from the knee-jerk support of the "Democratic" Party.
    Sam Ahmed -> Ykuos1 , 2016-07-07 14:45:51
    So they should support Donald Trump and the conservative party? Last time I checked raising taxes on the middle class while lowering taxes on the rich didn't really help anyone but the rich. The Republican party never gave two shits about middle and lower class, and there's no point believing they will start now.
    KMdude , 2016-07-07 14:43:46
    This article mentions Latonia Best and her three children. Is there a Mr Best around? It has always been tough to raise a family on the salary of a single parent.

    The breakdown of the American family is a probably the biggest reason for the supposed struggles of the middle class. People have to take responsibility for their lives.

    Elephantmoth -> KMdude , 2016-07-07 14:56:57
    Sure, because every misfortune can be blamed on the individual. You have no idea why Mr Best isn't around so please spare us your moralising.
    rebeccazg -> KMdude , 2016-07-07 14:57:51
    traditionally, the middle class had the guy going out to work, and his wife staying at home to look after the kids. Once children are in school and childcare is reduced, I don't see how a woman working and raising her kids alone, is any more expensive than a man supporting himself, his wife and their kids.

    It used to be possible. It used to be doable. wealth disparity ind income inequality mean that is no longer the case, at least certainly not for the average middle class. In the UK anyway, it's now a sign of wealth. This has nothing top do with the family and everything to do with income disparity.

    Liverpooljack1 , 2016-07-07 15:02:53
    Isn't choosing to have three children very selfish if you cannot support them financially. People always find someone else to blame.
    MtnClimber -> Liverpooljack1 , 2016-07-07 15:27:08
    Ah. I was waiting for some "bubba" to pull the race card. Congratulations. Maybe we should make everyone take a test to prove that they can afford children. No children for poor people. Nice.

    You are a horrible person.

    Liverpooljack1 -> MtnClimber , 2016-07-07 16:05:10
    "Race" card!!?? Where the hell did I mention anything about race or are you really as dumb as your reply suggests.
    Plus, you don't require a test to decide if you can afford children or not. It basic family planning. It's people like you in society that has the place in a mess with your "blame anyone but meself attitude" If I'm considered horrible, at least I'm not totally dumb and irrisponsible like you.
    Quesera -> Donald Inks , 2016-07-07 16:00:32
    $3,333.33 is actually not a lot of money to raise a family of four on. Let's do some math, shall we?!

    Taxes: $800 (rough estimate)
    Health Insurance: I'm going to estimate $300 because she probably has dependents on her coverage and that's what I paid one dependent a while back.
    Car: I'm going to estimate $150. My car payment is $300, but let's say she got a cheaper, used car.
    Rent: Let's say $1,000/month (I did a quick search and found that this seemed like a good price for a two bedroom)
    Bills: Let's round up to $150/month for gas, electricity, water, sewage
    Food: Let's say she spends $80/week, so roughly $320 a month (you know, she's a thrifty shopper)

    All of that leaves about $313 left for gas, phone, college tuition, maybe internet and cable at home. I don't know how she does it.

    MiltonWiltmellow , 2016-07-07 15:04:56

    Worst of all was the town of Goldsboro – one of three metropolitan areas in North Carolina at the bottom of the national league table.

    North Carolina, Michigan, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma ... more ...

    Sad stories in states run by Republicans. Toxic rivers, shootings, poisoned tap water, bankruptcy, daily earthquakes ...

    Bill Maher recently (July 1, 2016; Overtime) editorialized about the state "laboratories" where new ideas are tested and evaluated. Maher compared the divergent fates of California and Kansas plus Louisiana.

    Kansas is going bankrupt under the Republican governor and legislature, the Louisiana economy is a basket case thanks to Republican Bobby Jindal while just a few years ago, under Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, California was billions in debt.

    In California they threw out the Republicans, put Democrats in charge, raised taxes on the rich and voila -- now with a surplus, California is ranked as the sixth largest economy in the world:

    Only five countries produced more last year than California: the U.S., China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

    So -- North Carolina with fouled rivers, a collapsing middle class, discriminatory laws -- or a thriving California?

    Goldsboro remains far from the sort of economic catastrophe seen in parts of the rust belt, but these are signs of financial stress that are hard to ignore. The strain on the middle class across much of the country may not have gone unnoticed by politicians, but locals here fear there is little talk of the investment in skills, high-paying jobs and civic infrastructure needed to arrest the slide.

    Republican shills will have to admit -- finally that Republican policies ruin lives, ruin the economy and ruin the environment. Truth appears more powerful than slogans and slanders. Who knows? They might even acknowledge climate change.

    Profhambone -> MiltonWiltmellow , 2016-07-07 15:47:30
    I believe it is the wars and needs of the military-industrial-banking complex that sap far too much from the economy. Both parties are guilty of supporting them.
    ehmaybe -> MiltonWiltmellow , 2016-07-07 15:52:52
    North Carolina with fouled rivers, a collapsing middle class, discriminatory laws -- or a thriving California?

    Since 2013, North Carolina has the fastest GDP growth of any state. The NC economy is not in bad shape. This lady lives in one of the poorest areas in the state, she should move 45 minutes north to thriving Raleigh or Durham - the population in that area is booming, they need teachers.

    The dumping of coal ash into the Dan river was a corporate crime, not a policy decision. Neither party is responsible for criminal actions by individuals or corporations, that's just silly. (The republicans have been too lax in holding Duke Energy to account but the damage done is not a political issue)

    HB2 is a disgrace but the legislature is in the process of correcting it and the Governor is likely to lose the election in the fall which bodes well for anti-HB2 people. Don't forget that California voters voted to ban gay marriage not even 10 years ago. It's not a paradise of wealth and enlightenment, no place is.

    Voltaire21 , 2016-07-07 15:16:57
    Why should we feel sorry for the American middle class they have elected for all the misery that has befallen them!

    If America was a fascist state I could sympathise but it's not. Americans have let their social rights being eroded by a mendacious and cunning establishment.

    One good example of how Americans don't give a shit is the very expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have cost gazillions to the US taxpayer and not a whimper from the US population.

    If one can compare that to the Vietnam war which created its own critical cinema genre, protest songs, large demonstrations etc...you know that todays average Americans responsibility for the mess they find themselves in is non existent. They just bend over and take it and have little whine about it from time to time.

    Quesera -> Voltaire21 , 2016-07-07 15:48:37
    What about the people that didn't vote for the "misery" as you call it?

    What about the fact that whichever way you vote in the US you're screwed?

    And I don't know about you, but you must not know many Americans. The number of my friends who have been tear gassed during marches against the Iraq war flies in the face of your argument. Have you, yourself, even uttered a whimper against it?

    Bardolphe , 2016-07-07 15:20:20
    I will support proper child-support and healthcare and everything that can be done to make this woman's life easier and secure her kids' futures BUT

    Three kids is a LOT for two people to handle, let alone one.

    To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to raise one child alone may be regarded as a misfortune; to attempt to raise three looks like carelessness. To try to raise three alone in the United States is MADNESS.

    I live in the USA. I'm in a stable long-term relationship. I don't make much money. I can't afford kids.

    2 + 2 = 4

    Poor me. I don't say I have a right to kids because I need them or I have so much love to give or blah, blah, blah. I just can't. Not here. This is a cruelly individualistic country. It is built to serve those who serve themselves. Namely, the young, healthy, smart, motivated and single. There is no political foundation or tradition of altruism here. Maybe back in Ireland where there's a system to support me and some healthcare and family. Not here. Madness.

    Happyduckling -> Bardolphe , 2016-07-07 15:36:41
    But she's got the kids now. What is she supposed to do? Hand them back to someone? If she and the childrens' father had them when life was looking more stable and she didn't have to work 4 jobs to make ends meet, she can hardly be blamed now for their existence.

    You are living in the now and choose not to have children because you feel you can't afford them. However, in the future, you may find that you can afford them, and therefore choose to conceive. If your circumstances change after that and you are no longer able to afford to care for them without working excessive hours and living in poverty, there's not a lot you can do other than get on with it. No point blaming her for something that is irreversible.

    Bardolphe -> OinkImSammy , 2016-07-07 15:41:05
    That is not my point and you absolutely know it is not my point.

    Stop pretending that birth control doesn't exist. It exists.

    Quesera , 2016-07-07 15:42:11
    It's interesting. According to my household income I'm in the "upper" tier for the DC-metro region. But it really doesn't feel that way. Even those of us who make a good income are more and more stretched. In comparison to most of the country, I am well off. I own a car, just bought a house, I can afford to go out to eat a couple times a week. But, I even get to the end of the month with only $100 in the bank. That's because other downward pressures on pay aren't taken into account, such as student debt. My expensive undergraduate and graduate education didn't come cheap, and while that education affords people higher pay, if you end up taking less of it home. It kinda equals out.

    Sometimes my husband and I think about having kids, and then we realise that even with our good paying jobs, we can't afford day care in our area. I get paid the most, so I can't quit my job but if my husband quit to care for a child, we would really be strapped. Can I really be considered an upper tier household if I can't afford to have kids? If I can't afford to go on vacation once a year? If I haven't bought new clothes in two years? If I have no savings and a freak medical bill might just tip me over the edge?

    There's something very, very wrong. How rich do you need to be before you don't feel like you're struggling?

    Scott Plantier -> Quesera , 2016-07-07 15:55:19
    Thanks for the great post, but whatever will be, will be, unless you get in front of it and plan.

    Suggest you give Andrew Tobias' book a read to think outside the box a good education often constructs for us: https://www.amazon.com/Only-Investment-Guide-Youll-Ever/dp/0544781937?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

    Spunky325 -> Quesera , 2016-07-07 20:31:21
    You can cut student debt in the U.S. by attending a good community college for two years and then transferring to a state university. Most kids are unwilling to do this--no frats or prestige in community colleges!
    Nash25 , 2016-07-07 15:48:56
    The huge middle class in the USA was created by the liberal economic polices of the 1930s, which were designed to help the lower class.

    Beginning in the 1970s, a majority of the middle class began to resent the taxation needed to continue support for these liberal policies, and they began to vote for conservative politicians who promised to remove them as they "only helped the undeserving poor." White racism played a role in this as the lower class was invariably portrayed in political speeches and advertising as group of lazy black people.

    What the middle class did not understand was that their continued existence depended on these liberal programs, as most of the benefits went to the middle class, not the lower class as they assumed. As the liberal programs began to disappear, so did the economic security of the middle class.

    One would think they would have figured all of this out by now, but they have not, and they continue to vote for conservatives.

    pbalrick -> DrSallyWinterton , 2016-07-07 17:21:27
    No, it was created in response to the Bolshevik revolution, in particular, to that genius who said "Let's just shoot the royal family and be done with this." When that happened, the ruling class got scared, and said "OK, minimum wage, vacation, sick pay, 40 hr work week, no child labor, great schooling, etc"

    All of these things have come under attack since the USSR fell apart, probably on that exact day. And who overthrew the USSR? Overeducated middle class, not the poor or the rich. Who was Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring... the recent protests against the French labor law tightenings, ALL the middle class.

    The greatest threat to governments has, and always will be, from within. And this threat is from the middle class, almost exclusively. Therefore, we are to be crushed and controlled tightly.

    Scott Plantier , 2016-07-07 15:49:55
    " squeezed middle class tell tales of struggle " Too bad they voted for the big squeeze herself -- Bernie could have set them free from the path of exploitation she has planned for them immediately after her election by imposing the TPP upon the very fools who will elect her. Stop watching the Kartrashians and read about actual policy implications for your family and especially your children, if you had, none of you would have supported Clinton.
    pbalrick -> Scott Plantier , 2016-07-07 17:15:29
    funny how this media outlet didn't publish these types of reports while the primary was hot. It was all "Hilary is inevitable and supporting Bernie is supporting Trump" type garbage.
    biglio , 2016-07-07 15:58:38
    Education in the US...oh boy....

    I lived in Pittsburgh for 8 years, being European I sent them to public school...well, after a year in which my six years old son was suspended twice for running around at lunchtime when he shouldn't (six years old tend to do that), numerous recesses where they were put in front of a TV (we cannot send them outside, insurance doesn't cover if they get hurt and we got sued before), and notes from teachers full of spelling mistakes......I had to send them to private school perpetuating a cycle of poor people in public system and rich people (or middle class as i was at the time) to private schools....

    i don't know what needs to be done to fix the issue but it's the whole society that is really divided along money lines and race lines and inequality is getting worse. But money trumps everything, the US is the only place int he world where it's not considered unpolite to ask people :"what's your worth?" meaning how much you make, what are your assets, etc.....instilling in people a mentality of self worth based on money and consequentially a cutthroat environment where the more you have the more you are worth, so at the top they squeeze the lower end, to make more money but also because they think they are really not that worthy....its a perverse cycle that history taught us doesn't bring any good because at a certain point the poor reach a critical mass that will just revolt......I'm waiting for that, good luck...

    biglio -> ehmaybe , 2016-07-07 16:24:09
    I'm afraid my friend we disagree on that, excellent public schools are exceptions, there are some but they are a minority (International statistics on education quality validate that), I don't live in the US anymore but travel a lot there for business (at least 20 times a year). As for the worth question I had it asked to me quite a few times and kind of everywhere, maybe it's unpolite, I believe it's unpolite, but it happens regularly and only in the US (let me rephrase, in the rest of the world it wouldn't be considered unpolite, that's too mild of a term, it would be considered inconceivable). Said that I hope the US makes it and the "American Values" that you talk about prevail, but i am afraid those values have changed and being substituted by less noble ones...
    jsaralan -> ehmaybe , 2016-07-07 16:33:16
    Probably he means to say Americans habitually ask new acquaintances, "What do you do for a living?" That's absolutely a query about income and personal worth, though slightly disguised, and it's a question I have never widely encountered anywhere else in the world, nor while living overseas the last ten years. The question is so ingrained, though, that Americans who ask it don't think of it as a query about net worth. They do, however, react with overflowing respect toward those who answer in certain ways, and something akin to sympathy to those who answer in other ways. All my foreign friends have noticed it, and all think it's weird.
    DrSallyWinterton , 2016-07-07 16:45:46
    This article is extremely dishonest. First, it claims that she has 'three other jobs'. Second, she has children, for whom she presumably gets child support. So what's her *real* income?
    Michael Williams , 2016-07-07 17:50:39
    I do not know how things stand today, but I went to school in the UK and in the US in the 70s and 80s.

    The schools in the UK were so superior to the US that I thought I had been placed in a remedial class when I returned to the States.

    At the time, I would have bet that the average 16 year old in the UK was better educated than most American college graduates.

    I would like to hear what you all think.

    biglio -> Michael Williams , 2016-07-07 18:22:25
    Agree, I did my last year of high school in the US, in North Carolina of all places, in a top private school, i was a middling student in Europe with flashes of brilliance in some subjects but definitely far from the top of the class. When I arrived (it was in the 80s) I didn't speak English. Well, I graduated with high honors int he top 5% and got my high school diploma, honestly without having to study that much, school was not totally comparable but definitely way less challenging.
    eastbayradical -> biglio , 2016-07-07 18:33:35
    Contrary to conventional wisdom, a lot of private schools in the United States are severely lacking in the rigor department. This is even true for many--not all--private schools that cater to well-to-do families.
    LelouchVIBrittania , 2016-07-07 18:13:10
    When those in poverty or on the verge of it are single mothers, you tend to wonder if there are some other issues as well. I don't recall a time in American history where a single mother of several children could take care of herself when completely on her own.

    I know of single mothers who are doing fine, but they employed and are also being helped by siblings and parents who already have some wealth and free time to take care of the child. Maybe the issue is the fact that these people are having kids at the wrong time or without enough thought. Divorce rates are incredibly high in the US, and the percentage of children who have non-birth parents is very high as well. What this all means is that the USA isn't teaching its citizens about having kids and the responsibility.

    The USA is also not teaching men and women about birth control, or about being holding potential partners to higher standards (and I don't mean looks). A lot of people in the USA are too shallow and focus too much on aesthetics over reliability and now we have single mothers with fathers who refuse to pay child support at all costs. There are too many problems with the USA, but I feel that personal hygiene and responsibility with sexual partners should be on the top.

    PlatosNave , 2016-07-07 18:35:03
    I teach in inner city schools. There are so many problems, money is one of them but all the money won't solve the problem of poor learning attitudes, disaffection, poor discipline and nonexistent work ethic .

    A lot of the students get no discipline at home and their parents don't expect them to learn anything. They are resistant to the whole process of focus on new knowledge , absorb, drill, recall , deploy newly learned thing.

    Americans have a religious reverence for individualism and learning new things is a humbling experience and many people don't like it. Sure the adults bang on about education but they aren't serious about it. They think all you need is to spend more money , not do any actual work.

    Spunky325 -> PlatosNave , 2016-07-07 20:18:08
    The problems in the inner city are so intransigent that I doubt anything can fix it. I have three friends, all dedicated teachers, who taught in inner city schools in New Jersey and the stories they have told me make my mind reel: a mother who punched a teacher (and gave her a concussion) who "disrespected" her kid (by failing him, deservedly, in algebra), 15-year-olds who had pagers so their pimps could call them, children who had five brothers and sisters--all with different fathers. You couldn't make this stuff up.

    I don't know what solution there is to this. My nieces and nephews did well in school, studied hard, and went on to university. They didn't do drugs, rape or be raped, and stayed away from unsavory kids. BUT--they went home to two parents every night, a father and mother, which I think would have made them successful at school no matter what their income.

    thomasmccabe , 2016-07-07 18:49:47
    The Pew survey you cited noted that "...the share living in middle-income households fell from 55% in 2000 to 51% in 2014. Reflecting the accumulation of changes at the metropolitan level, the nationwide share of adults in lower-income households increased from 28% to 29% and the share in upper-income households rose from 17% to 20% during the period." In other words, most of the decline in the middle class was due to their moving into the upper class.

    The article was mostly about a declining rural area. The Guardian grinding its usual axes and reaching the conclusion it intended to reach?

    NoSerf , 2016-07-07 19:24:28
    Middle class job death inflicted by cronie capitalism entertained by the political establishment (examples): Private equity is not scrutinized by anti-trust legislation, buys any company and sends jobs overseas. Cronie supporters of politicians get help in that some industry gets indicted (e.g. more or less entire coal industry) or regulated into oblivion, for fake reasons, so that cronie (solar panel) company gets subsidies. Of course, the latter goes under, no company on IV survives without IV. Banks get bailed out, others not. GM gets bailed out, to maintain jobs, then outsources.

    The old members of middle class are not tolerated by our government and the cronies. Who is tolerated as middle class is any kind of civil servant, and new immigrants. Revenge from 2 sides. Or call it cultural revolution Mao style: Take their habitat.

    Curtis Gomez , 2016-07-07 19:49:24
    Growing up in the SF Bay Area during the 70's there was a large disparity in academics between schools even in the same district. At 11 years old the school district was rezoned and the new school that I attended had much lower standards. So much so, that I came home the very first day and complained to my mother that I had been assigned to a class for slow learners. Being so bored, my grades started to drop. At 13 years, I tested out of mathematics and eventually tested out of high school altogether and joined the military.

    There my intelligence was appreciated (believe it or not). The military provided a valuable work ethic and training in technology that have provided a decent career and lifestyle since. It's too bad that America can't seem to provide adequate learning to the vast majority.

    jacknbox , 2016-07-07 19:54:54
    The US economy isn't competitive anymore. It started with the labor cost being too high, so factories moved out. Then the entire supply chain moved out. Now the main consumer market is also moving out. Once that is gone, we will have no more leverage.

    The US education is good, but students are lazy, undisciplined, and incurious. In silicon valley, more than 75% of highly paid technical personnel are foreign born. Corporations making money with foreign workers here and abroad, on foreign markets. Taking these away and you will see the economy crash.

    Then you have Hillary wanting to sub divide a rapidly diminishing pie, and Trump wanting to return to 1946. Good luck to them both.

    enodesign -> jacknbox , 2016-07-08 01:25:43
    Get real .

    Labor costs were too high. Have some more kool-aid. The elite didn't want labor to have any bargaining power whatsoever . They wanted to dictate the terms to labor believing that they were the only ones who should have any say in matters. The elite wanted to maximize their profits at the expense of their own citizens. They wanted slave labor . They wanted powerless people to dance to their tune. How could an advanced nation's labor possibly compete with slave labor .

    This is the same argument that slave owning , southern plantation owners used to fight against the freeing of slaves . They to said that they would not longer be competitive and the overall economy would suffer .

    Are you telling us that an economy needs slave labor to exist ?

    enodesign , 2016-07-07 20:02:24
    Sadly ..... thee isn't any hope for these people in the foreseeable future . Their economic decline has been happening for quite some time now and shows no sign of abating whatsoever . The economic foundations of their lives have been steadily pulled out from under them by the financial elite and their subservient political cultures , the Republican and Democratic Parties . The Republicans have never really given a damn about them and the Democrats have long abandoned them . These poor people of North Carolina are adrift on a sinking raft on easy ocean of indifference by the political cultures of America . To those in power , they don't exist . They don't count . They don't matter .

    The trend in the U.S, along with almost every other major nation in the world over the past 35 years has been to exclusively serve the interests of the financial elite and only their needs . All sense of fairness , justice and decency have been totally discarded .

    Tax breaks after tax breaks , tax shelters , free movement of capital , etc., etc. would sum up the experience of the financial elite over the past 35 years . They have become incredibly wealthy now and are still not satisfied . They want more . They want it all . They want what little you have and their political servants which help them get .

    Political discourse pertaining to the plight of those like these folks in North Carolina is all window dressing . In the end , you can be certain that it will amount to nothing . Just like it has for decades now . The financial elite are in control and they are not going to give any of that control up . As a matter of fact , they are going to tighten their grip . They will invent crisis to have their agendas imposed upon an increasingly powerless and bewildered public . They will take advantage of every naturally occurring crisis to advance their agenda .

    There will be an end to their abuse , greed and domination until one day when everything changes . The day when people have had enough . When people can't take it any more . History has demonstrated this fact so often before . The mighty do fall . They always fall ..... but their fall is nowhere to be seen at this time .

    There is going to a great deal more pain for average folk before things get better .

    A Presidential election featuring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is clear evidence of this fact.

    Hopefully , these two bottom feeding , utter human failures represent the bottom of the barrel but I doubt if they do .

    Good luck to the good folks of North Carolina and countless others like them .... they / we / myself are going to need it .

    enodesign -> DrSallyWinterton , 2016-07-08 01:18:46
    On the contrary .... it's money that the elite have not paid out in wages .

    It's money that the elite have illegally hidden from the taxman . It's money the the elite need to pay for the infrastructure that makes it possible to do business in the first place . It's money that has been made from insider trading and backroom deals . It's money from the wealth that labour has basically created in the first place .

    It's money that contributes to the social maintenance on a safe , civil society . It's money that the wealthy do not need .... they have all they could ever need now .

    It is money that when distributed fairly keeps money in motion creating it's transfer into additional hands which further circulates that money creating even more spending by people and the consumption of goods and services which result in the creation of even more wealth .

    Static capital kills economies .

    I know that the elite like to think that they are the exclusive ones to create wealth but wealth creation is the marriage between capital and labour . You can have all of the capital in the world but without labour transforming it into greater wealth it can not possibly grow .

    If anyone is guilty of stealing money it is the elite who steal from the economy causing the economy's ill health .

    The last 35 years are more than testimony to this fact .

    Economies are dying wherever the elite have gotten their way .

    The elite are the real killers of wealth and economies . Just look at any economy in the world throughout history where the elite had all of the wealth to themselves . Their economies are highly dysfunctional and their societies are full of social problems and crime .

    This is an indisputable fact .

    Greed kills wealth development .

    Wealth development is directly tied to the well being of labour which allows for mass consumption of goods and services .

    You would have to be a complete idiot not to see this fact .

    So my good doctor .... the money in any given economy really belongs to everyone , not just the greedy elite .

    You need to get a real perspective instead of constantly eyeing you own pile of wealth .

    Matt C , 2016-07-07 20:32:07
    so the woman chose to have 3 daughters, is now choosing to foot the bill for their college education, and wants me to feel sorry because she has to work her ass off to do all these things? how about this.... don't have children you can't afford. a little personal responsibility in one's life goes a long, long way.
    Bajanova -> Matt C , 2016-07-07 21:03:04
    She is taking personal responsibility! She is working!
    DrSallyWinterton , 2016-07-07 20:35:37
    Everybody here is debating the life of a person who probably doesn't even exist.
    JudeUSA -> DrSallyWinterton , 2016-07-07 23:20:41
    Go to the website of the school she works for. Her picture is on the website and the NC pay for a 3 year teacher is about 40K. I think she exists.
    jecoz , 2016-07-07 20:59:28
    We need to redefine middle class. I grew up middle class. We had one TV. Not a lot of clothes. Took short, cheap vacations. Had no credit cards. Our lives were perfectly enjoyable. Many people here in the US live way beyond their means.
    Turrialba -> jecoz , 2016-07-07 21:36:59
    We piled into the station wagon and headed out on short trips in the region. We visited historic sites and were enriched by the experience. None of this $1000s on the trip to Disneyland. We didn't feel deprived or entitled.
    jacknbox -> jecoz , 2016-07-07 23:26:14
    The key is not money but optimism. America is still richer, cleaner, and better run than most other places. But the gap is rapidly closing. Scaling back the spending would not help here. It would only further reduce the drive.
    skwawshbug , 2016-07-07 22:08:36
    As a North Carolinian, there are two major issues. One, the right to bear arms and also, teacher tenure and working conditions. Republicans have already taken away tenure from my younger colleagues, but as an older teacher, I still have mine. Secondly, democrats want to take away gun rights on the federal level, but state dems are usually more pro-gun in the conservative state.

    SO for me, I will vote for a democratic state government and a republican federal government. I will be proudly putting a Roy Cooper bumper sticker on my car. But due to the peaceful liberals, I would be afraid to put a TRUMP sticker on my car because of recent violence against Trump supporters.

    DrSallyWinterton -> skwawshbug , 2016-07-07 22:30:35
    Teachers who can't be thrown out, no matter how incompetent they are, are a major reason why the US educational system is in such a mess.
    Shillingfarmer , 2016-07-07 22:15:18
    The problem is the job exporting American elite class. NAFTA was an economics, political, and social experiment with all the downside on the former, mostly lower middle class. Non-aligned examination of the available data shows how disastrous NAFTA has been to America's bubbas. Thanks to Bush 41 and Bill Clinton. WTO was all Bill. Of the mistakes Obama has made TPP would be the worst. The question is, really, do we favor global fairness (an even playing field for all earth's peoples) and a climate-killing consumerist world, or our own disadvantaged (courtesy of our financial and political elite) citizens. Not an easy choice. Death by poison or hanging. No treaty can benegotiated fairly in secret.
    SocratesP , 2016-07-07 22:30:13
    The tragic irony is that the anger against rule by the 1% manifests in things like support for Trump, a typical example of the greed and excess of the 1%. Americans need to question outside their desperately constrained paradigms more. It will help focus their anger more strategically, and possibly lead to solutions. Don't hold your breath, the inequality gap is accelerating the wrong way.
    DrSallyWinterton , 2016-07-07 22:40:20
    Fake, fake fake. A woman with $40k and three children would *not* be paying 1/3 of her income in tax. This woman does *not* live on $40k net or gross - she has three other jobs. And her name looks *very* made up.
    Bronwyn Holmberg , 2016-07-07 22:41:01
    I think the US is heDing for trouble. It is the middle class that maintains civil society and gives a sense of hope. This is an interesting open letter by a zillionaire to his peers warning them what happens without a string middle class. A thought provoking read. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014
    Chris Westcott , 2016-07-07 22:41:01
    The elite of the USA have done exactly what the Romans did and what the Pre-Revolutionary French did.... drain the lower classes while enriching themselves. "Taxes are for little people" is not just a pithy quote, it has become the reality as the elite rig the system so they benefit and the lower classes pay. They need to wake up or they will get exactly what the Romans Got (collapsed empire) or the French got (Violent Revolution). Wake up America! It is time to choose your side in the class war the elite continue to execute while telling us there is no "Class War" - you can't pull yourself up by your boot straps while they are pulling the rug out from under you!
    veloboldie , 2016-07-07 22:41:01
    My wife used to employ recent graduates from Georgetown University with poli. sci., psychology, sociology degrees, to stack books for $10/hr. It took them on average 2-3 years, before finding work in their field. I keep telling my kids you need to earn a degree that has a skill for life and will always be in demand, i.e. doctor, dentist, vet, engineer, scientist. Additionally, include work oversees in your career.
    Ardnas1936 -> veloboldie , 2016-07-07 22:41:01
    Education is NOT about finding a job! It's about learning ways to seek wisdom and rationality, and to assimilate (not deny) new knowledge throughout your life--and that's exactly what's lacking in the US! Our schools are factories to turn out standard robots to be used by the owners of this country, whether they practice law or flip burgers.

    I was lucky that my parents were born and raised before that happened. They went to what used to be called "country schools"--my dad to a 1-room schoolhouse. Some of the so-called "knowledge" was patriotic trash, serving only the rich elites, but they learned to be sturdy and to think for themselves, so I was lucky and learned a lot at home. Without parents who practice the empathetic, rational morality needed in a democracy, all the jobs in the world--especially if most are for flipping burgers--won't save this dreary country.

    nataliesutler -> veloboldie , 2016-07-07 22:41:01
    You make an excellent point. Thinking about your life rather than just going for a crip major in college would be an excellent way NOT to wind up stacking books for $10 an hour with a degree. I can't count the number of my kids friends who select communications majors, or sociology or women's studies and then are completely surprised when there are no jobs demanding their educational background. What is it that they think they will be qualified to do after college?
    mikegood , 2016-07-07 22:41:01
    From the article.... "Some lucky families saw themselves promoted to the upper income bracket." Here in a nutshell we see the author's underlying worldview. Getting to the upper income bracket has nothing to do with effort. Rather it's the result of luck. It's something that is done to you by an outside force.

    [Aug 23, 2016] How Abusive Employers Combined With Job Insecurity Lead to Suicides

    Notable quotes:
    "... During the 15 months that I worked at Pitt, I felt the brunt of this lady's abuse. She'd call me into the office, launch into a blistering tirade, and I would sit there, stunned. And, to her, that was another cause for anger. Why was I just sitting there and not reacting? ..."
    "... The authors fail to get to the real fundamentals of this phenomenon. The two ends of the spectrum that they delineate can be housed under a single umbrella, that of neoliberalism. And it is obvious that neoliberalism can kill. And Durkheim would have agreed readily that ideas can kill, and not just via suicide. ..."
    "... Give yourself a break inode_buddha. Thirty years ago, you, and myself as well, made a rational decision as to what direction to take. At the time, construction and the associated trades were honourable and respectable. A decent living could be made, and a future was in sight. Neo-Liberalism has, since then, destroyed most things that benefited anyone other than the criminal management classes. Humanity has had to stand up and fight for decency and equality throughout history. ..."
    "... I have to tell you, as a small business owner myself, this "regulations are burdensome" argument is a crock. Lobbyists in DC learned decades ago that the best way to put a sympathetic face on their efforts to get waivers for big businesses is to have small business owners act as their mouthpieces. And there are enough extreme libertarians everywhere that it's not hard to find someone to screech that the regulations he is subject to are horrible irrespective of how much a burden they really are. ..."
    "... "Perhaps this world is another planet's hell." – Aldous Huxley. Yes, it is definitely. Perhaps pretty soon they will start strip search employees when they come to work. ..."
    "... Increasing numbers of suicides are one outcome of these environments. But as the writers point out, there are a number of other symptoms associated with these toxic workplaces, none good. They range from physical and mental health issues, to various forms of addiction, burnout, and secondary effects on employees' personal lives and those of their family members or partners. ..."
    "... I agree that neoliberal ideology, globalization, and the basic structures of our debt-based economy all play a key role in enabling the intentional development of these organizational environments. ..."
    "... I believe the roots of the problem lie in a broader and deeper systemic failure. ..."
    "... market failure ..."
    "... This article highlights suicide, but drug and alcohol abuse are just as much a result of poor employment outcomes as suicide and for the same reasons. ..."
    Aug 22, 2016 | naked capitalism

    Yves here. It's hardly a secret that employers have become more abusive towards employees because they can get away with it. The difficulty of finding new employment, particularly for mid and senior level jobs, combined with the fact that most workers (even comparatively well paid ones) are only a paycheck or two away from financial desperation, means bosses have tremendous leverage over workers. And more and more firms embrace coerciveness as a virtue. In the past, it's more often taken the form of cultishness, which is a very effective business model, as Goldman and Bain attest, but more recently, outright mistreatment is becoming common. For instance, Amazon has so successfully cultivated a "culture of fear" that t he overwhelming majority of employees cry at work .

    Note the claim in the article about elevated suicide rates at Apple supplier Foxconn is contested; some contend that statistically, its rate of suicides is no higher than for other employers. However, many of the dorms apparently had mesh canopies to prevent suicides, so one wonders if direct comparisons are apt.

    By Sarah Waters, a Senior Lecturer in French Studies, University of Leeds and Jenny Chan, a Departmental Lecturer in Sociology and China Studies, University of Oxford. Originally published at The Conversation

    A Paris prosecutor recently called for the former CEO and six senior managers of telecoms provider, France Télécom, to face criminal charges for workplace harassment. The recommendation followed a lengthy inquiry into the suicides of a number of employees at the company between 2005 and 2009. The prosecutor accused management of deliberately "destabilising" employees and creating a "stressful professional climate" through a company-wide strategy of "harcèlement moral" – psychological bullying.

    All deny any wrongdoing and it is now up to a judge to decide whether to follow the prosecutor's advice or dismiss the case. If it goes ahead, it would be a landmark criminal trial, with implications far beyond just one company.

    Workplace suicides are sharply on the rise internationally, with increasing numbers of employees choosing to take their own lives in the face of extreme pressures at work. Recent studies in the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, China, India and Taiwan all point to a steep rise in suicides in the context of a generalised deterioration in working conditions.

    Rising suicides are part of the profound transformations in the workplace that have taken place over the past 30 years. These transformations are arguably rooted in the political and economic shift to globalisation that has radically altered the way we work.

    In the post-war Fordist era of industry (pioneered by US car manufacturer Henry Ford), jobs generally provided stability and a clear career trajectory for many, allowing people to define their collective identity and their place in the world. Strong trade unions in major industrial sectors meant that employees could negotiate their working rights and conditions.

    But today's globalised workplace is characterised by job insecurity, intense work, forced redeployments, flexible contracts, worker surveillance, and limited social protection and representation . Zero-hour contracts are the new norm for many in the hospitality and healthcare industries , for example.

    Now, it is not enough simply to work hard. In the words of Marxist theorist Franco Berardi, "the soul is put to work" and workers must devote their whole selves to the needs of the company.

    For the economist Guy Standing, the precariat is the new social class of the 21st century, characterised by the lack of job security and even basic stability. Workers move in and out of jobs which give little meaning to their lives. This shift has had deleterious effects on many people's experience of work, with rising cases of acute stress, anxiety, sleep disorders, burnout, hopelessness and, in some cases, suicide .

    Holding Companies to Account

    Yet, company bosses are rarely held to account for inflicting such misery on their employees. The suicides at France Télécom preceded another well-publicised case in a large multinational company – Foxconn Technology Group in China – where 18 young migrant workers aged between 17 and 25 attempted suicide at one of Foxconn's main factories in 2010 (14 of whom died ).

    The victims all worked on the assembly line making electronic gadgets for some of the world's richest corporations, including Samsung, Sony and Dell. But it was Apple that received the most criticism, as Foxconn was its main supplier at the time.

    ... ... ...

    upstater , August 22, 2016 at 10:36 am

    One of our son's best friends from high school was a funny, bright kid that got a BS/MS in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) a few years ago. He did his first coop at a software firm in Boston that dealt with electricity demand management.

    Then he went to work for Apple, first as a coop then as an employee.

    Last April the poor kid killed himself in a conference room at Apple's HQ .

    By the time his name was announced to the media, everything about him on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc had disappeared. They scrubbed him off the internet. We don't know if he posted anything before his death, but our son said his pages were pretty generic for a 25 year old.

    Let it suffice to say something went terribly wrong in the libertarian paradise of Silicon Valley, really just a ritzier version of FoxConn. Having known him through high school and occasional visits thereafter, one never would have thought such an end would have been possible.

    RIP, Ed.

    Swendr , August 22, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    It's happening on the job, at school, and damn near any other social institution where the stakes can be ratcheted up in intensity. Suicide is one end of the spectrum of dysfunction. Going postal is another. Our elites don't like wet work much, so they find other ways to get rid of the undesirables. I doubt they planned it this way, but isn't it sweet that all you have to do is stop being fake-nice as a boss and the problem takes care of itself?

    nobody , August 22, 2016 at 11:40 am

    It's not only corporations, of course, that have problems with endemic abuse and need to be taking responsibility, nor is the issue restricted to institutions where profits take precedence über alles. Here is the link for the site "Academia Is Killing My Friends," which is described in the "About" section like this:

    I am a final year PhD student in the Social Sciences. Last year a fellow PhD student committed suicide after being harassed by a lecturer. I got angry and made this site. This site is a response to the cultures of violence, fear and silence I have witnessed and experienced in my academic community. Sexual harassment, mental illness and unpaid labor are the accepted and expected norms. Abusive academics are well known and yet remain in the community. We are powerless and afraid of backlash, unemployment and failure. All of this gets worse as public spending is cut and universities become increasingly neoliberal institutions. This site is a 'fuck you' to the silence and fear. It is, I hope, a space where we can share our stories of abuse, exploitation and suffering in academia.

    There are now 104 stories and counting. An excerpt from a recent post (#103):

    I started out an idealistic and hopeful student. Worked to pay for college, good grades, got into a good PhD program. Worked hard, had a good mentor, published, moved on to postdoc. I thought that I could keep working hard, publish and move into some reasonable career trajectory. Right?

    Well, we all know why we're here. I can't even go into the details. It's a familiar story – sexism, racism. Abuse by an advisor, with nowhere to turn. Rampant discrimination and harassment. When I looked for help (from the wrong people, apparently), I was told to suck it up, work harder. Constant financial worries. Every little setback used up my savings. I got sick and never really recovered… stress and overwork guaranteed that. I was good at living modestly, but that wasn't enough to sustain me. Now, I'm just trying to pick up the pieces. I feel floored by the lack of opportunities and support through most of my career. I had no idea how much a career in academia would rely on having money to begin with. I feel like this work has stolen my life away. And I'm not the only one – I know plenty of people who have had a similar experience. The best people leave early.

    Worst of all, I don't even feel that I can tell my story. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody would lift a finger to protect me from retribution. Nobody wants to address problems like this. I feel so much grief for the good I might have done in another profession, the life I could have lived. I don't know what to do with this grief.

    nobody , August 22, 2016 at 12:06 pm

    Where did the link go? Well, here it is:

    http://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com/

    Arizona Slim , August 22, 2016 at 12:47 pm

    Some of the worst abuse I ever experienced was in academia. Here's an example:

    During the mid-1980s, I was on the staff of a journal at the University of Pittsburgh. My boss, the departmental librarian, must have come from the Attila the Hun School of Management, because that's how she treated people. Shortly after I started my job, I got on her bad side. I have no idea why this happened. Thirty years late, I still can't figure it out.

    It may have had something to do with the introductory meeting we were supposed to have with the journal's publisher.

    Well, being the good little employee that I thought I was, I had my office clock set to the correct time. I didn't know it at the time, but the library clock was 10 minutes fast. Yep, the same trick that bars pull on their customers. Getting them out the door before the official closing time.

    So, I got to the library a few minutes before 9 a.m. Plenty of time to for the boss and me to walk over to the publisher's office. Bossola was SEETHING. I was LATE! Just look at that CLOCK! It was already after nine!

    Over to the publisher's office we walked, and guess what. They weren't even ready for us. So we sat in the waiting area for a while.

    The publisher and his staff couldn't have been nicer. The polar opposite of my boss.

    During the 15 months that I worked at Pitt, I felt the brunt of this lady's abuse. She'd call me into the office, launch into a blistering tirade, and I would sit there, stunned. And, to her, that was another cause for anger. Why was I just sitting there and not reacting?

    During her final tirade, when she told me to start looking for another job, I'd had enough. I told her that I was going to start looking for another city.

    Well, guess who sat there, stunned.

    She insisted that I didn't have to do anything THAT drastic. But my mind was made up. I was done with her, done with Pitt, and done with Pittsburgh.

    Three and a half months and several wonderful bicycling miles later, I landed in Tucson, and I'm still here. Without that nasty boss, I probably wouldn't be in this wonderful city.

    As for Ms. Nasty, she left Pitt and went on to become the head librarian at Chatham College, which was nearby. Small women's college. Known for its caring, friendly, and supportive environment. Ms. Nasty didn't last very long there.

    And she didn't last very long at St. Michael's College in northern Vermont. I think that she was fired from that institution, but I'm not sure. Let's just say that I hope she was, because she deserved a taste of her own medicine.

    Softie , August 22, 2016 at 2:55 pm

    Here is a story that scared shit of Academia's organized crime ring for a little while in the early 90s.

    "The University of Iowa shooting took place at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa on November 1, 1991. The gunman was Gang Lu, a 28-year-old former graduate student at the university. He killed four members of the university faculty and one student, and seriously wounded another student, before taking his own life."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Iowa_shooting

    Nelson Lowhim , August 22, 2016 at 4:11 pm

    Damn. Thing is I've heard this from Actuarials and docs. It's everywhere the "well, just work harder". But some of it is on the employees. None have the frame of mind to kick back, to unionize, and hard (when was unionizing ever easy?). None. All have the neoliberal view that: work hard and you'll be fine. And so when that button is pushed, they go for broke until burned out. It's that or be labeled lazy. Well, being unemployed is also an issue, but there's also the matter of having the language to fight back, to not feel guilty for working less than 100 hours a week etc.

    PlutoniumKun , August 22, 2016 at 5:15 pm

    I think an important point about Unions which people forget is that they provide an opportunity for people to vent and let off frustration. I've been a Union rep at various places and many times I would have people come in to have a rant about a certain manager or policy. At the end I would say 'do you want to make a formal complaint?' and the answer would be no – the person just wanted to get it off their chest in a confidential manner.

    And to know that if they needed it, there was back up. Non-union places I've worked in, even good ones, lack that safety valve.

    FluffytheObeseCat , August 22, 2016 at 7:14 pm

    The last post on this tumblr is from February of 2016. It's been inactive for half a year. The links may be valuable however.

    inode_buddha , August 22, 2016 at 12:16 pm

    I'm in the process of paying a personal price for this BS as I type this, having walked off the job a few months ago. I'm not gonna drive 30 miles each way for 1/2 of what I should be making only to be treated like shit by management brown-nosers. Bad news is, I'm mid-career and not a spring chicken. Considering leaving the field altogether or doing my own startup. But if I had known then what I know now, I would have had the voice recorder app on my phone, recording everything….

    thump , August 22, 2016 at 12:36 pm

    Thanks for posting about the blog "Academia is Killing My Friends," but I couldn't find the link, so here it is:

    http://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com/

    larry , August 22, 2016 at 12:36 pm

    The authors fail to get to the real fundamentals of this phenomenon. The two ends of the spectrum that they delineate can be housed under a single umbrella, that of neoliberalism. And it is obvious that neoliberalism can kill. And Durkheim would have agreed readily that ideas can kill, and not just via suicide.

    PQS , August 22, 2016 at 1:01 pm

    Ugh. After twenty years in commercial construction, I thought our industry was an outlier for abuse, psychotic management, and general HR mayhem. Apparently not. Arizona Slim, I could have profiled Mrs. Nasty at any number of firms I worked for…she's not unusual.

    I stay at smaller companies with good people for less money because I just can't handle the high pressure and abusive environment of Big Time Construction Firms. I also have zero interest in big projects anymore – too many psycho Owners who appear to delight in torturing the contractor as a hobby. The men I work with think I'm nuts to turn down some work. I tell them, there's no reward for it. No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no big promotion – just health problems and more commuting for the same old, same old.

    inode_buddha , August 22, 2016 at 1:59 pm

    You too? Abuse, and psycho management is why I'm considering leaving the trade altogether, too bad I've invested 30 years and a few schools into it…. but of course, nobody *made* me invest in myself and believe in the american dream /sarc

    ambrit , August 22, 2016 at 2:11 pm

    Give yourself a break inode_buddha. Thirty years ago, you, and myself as well, made a rational decision as to what direction to take. At the time, construction and the associated trades were honourable and respectable. A decent living could be made, and a future was in sight. Neo-Liberalism has, since then, destroyed most things that benefited anyone other than the criminal management classes. Humanity has had to stand up and fight for decency and equality throughout history.

    redleg , August 22, 2016 at 8:20 pm

    The decent living in the construction trades, for me anyways, has started and (so far) ended as a contract employee. I'm at the cusp of 50 and am looking at disaster if I can't find something permanent. My spouse has her dream job (that unfortunately comes with mediocre pay) so moving the fam for a job is our of the question. I'm one dropped contract away from my professional expiration date – too old for entry level, not experienced enough for management, unable to move to a better job market if such a thing existed.

    But at least I paid off my student loans, so that's not hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles.

    ambrit , August 22, 2016 at 2:01 pm

    Living on the road, out of town, at the jobsite, etc. etc. There's a reason why so many of the Superintendents and Foremen I've encountered on big jobs drink to excess.

    I've had my share of Mz/Mr Nasty bosses. The worst thing one can do to one of these persons, as I learned one afternoon, is to laugh at them when they "put you in your place." The program is going south anyway. If the wherewithall is available for a drive home, go ahead and let 'them' know you're not going to put up with abuse anymore. (Easier said than done, I'll agree, but, as long as you and yours aren't starving, why not? You'll sleep better at night. Take my word for it.)
    Smaller outfits are, from my experience, easier to get along with because the manager is often the owner or family and not divorced from the ground floor experience. Reason is used instead of formula.

    I used to hold the same belief about construction being the bilge of the work world. Then I worked for the USPS for almost three years. Then the dreaded Lowes Home Improvement set its avernal brand sizzling on my soul.

    Ah my, what a picaresque novel all this would make.

    PQS , August 22, 2016 at 3:01 pm

    Picaresque novel or hilarious TV show. I've written the scripts in my head a thousand times….clueless architects, raging Owners, ridiculous Inspectors, overfed upper management/sales staff, etc. etc.

    I agree that laughter is truly the best medicine in this business. As a friend once told me, "Sometimes you gotta let the crazy people be crazy."

    Jim Haygood , August 22, 2016 at 8:42 pm

    'what a picaresque novel all this would make"

    Charles Bukowski [lowbrow NC spell checker don't know him] has covered the USPS bit.

    Over to ambrit for the Lowe's sequel. :-)

    ambrit , August 22, 2016 at 10:09 pm

    Hmmm..

    Some titles: "Faking, Inc.," "Department of Imaginary Tools," "Bargain Employee of the Month," and the annual winner, "Going Out of Business Sale: Season Three."
    Since I'll need to go back to work for a few years, until my miniscule SS kicks in, I might do a Home Depot Equal Opportunity for Exploitation Edition.

    (When I grow up I want to be a Day Trader! Maybe I'll take a flutter in pork bellies on the Chicago Exchange.)

    Arizona Slim , August 22, 2016 at 3:51 pm

    In her own strange way, Ms. Nasty had quite a positive effect on my life. As our relationship deteriorated, I started piling up the savings. I was planning my escape, even before that final tirade.

    My last six weeks at Pitt were amazing. After I tended my resignation (on Friday, February 13, 1987), the whole department was impressed with how relaxed and happy I was. It was as if a different Slim had moved into my body.

    Yes, there was that farewell luncheon where Ms. Nasty refused to raise her glass in a toast, but you know what? I was going to be out the door in a few hours, so I no longer cared. In fact, I found her refusal rather amusing.

    What came next was even better. That pile of savings was deployed for something I really enjoyed. Long-distance bike touring! Rode thousands of miles in a little over three months! And then I settled here in Tucson!

    Where I found a job similar to my Pitt job, but with a nice boss. That was my last FT job. I've been a freelancer since 1994.

    So, Ms. Nasty, thanks for the motivation. And I do hope that you learned how to be nice to people who are, ahem, beneath you.

    Synoia , August 22, 2016 at 1:18 pm

    That's what Labor (or socialist) political parties used to do, and Corbyn's trying to re-institute in the UK.

    One cannot be pro-trade (as currently defined) and pro democratic not pro citizen, not pro-labor.

    The US has never permitted socialism, and prefers crony capitalism, which is actually close to fascism.

    The whole defense Military Industry Complex of Government and Industry is a definition of fascism in the US. I place no regard on Ike's warning about the MIC as he did noting until the end of his reign, and then made a speech.

    Roquentin , August 22, 2016 at 1:49 pm

    At long last I've finally managed to get out of a job I couldn't stand after working there for nearly a decade. The pay was ridiculously low, even relative to the industry standard. Management routinely promoted narcissistic, ignorant cronies who never told them the word "no." I couldn't be happier it's finally over. They've had so much turnover in the past couple of years entire departments are composed of entirely new people. The CEO cares about nothing except looking good to the shareholders and owners, and that's pretty much the attitude from the top on down. Look good to the people with power and to hell with the rest.

    I'd be surprised if the company still existed 5-10 years from now.

    DarkMatters , August 22, 2016 at 2:20 pm

    Soooo glad I'm retired. I was starting to see more and more of this over the last couple of decades, and it escalated as times worsened. I wish libertarians and free-marketers would contemplate the situations described here, and consider what kind of a world it would be if financial oligarchs held even more power. What hope would there be to counter this sort of abuse?

    Nelson Lowhim , August 22, 2016 at 4:19 pm

    This works perfectly into their view of "weaker" elements being discarded. Pretty fascist at the end of the day.

    kareninca , August 22, 2016 at 7:56 pm

    I wouldn't exactly call myself a libertarian (I'm not sure what I am), but I think that the libertarian response would be that if there were fewer pointless regulations people would be much more readily able to work for themselves, and not for an abusive boss. It is unbelievably hard to start a business now, even a solo one, due to regs. And I'm not talking about reasonable regs (don't dump toxins in waterways). I'm talking about regs that have been invented by big existing businesses to keep upstarts from starting.

    A number of years ago there was an article about someone who tried to start a storage company in the CT/RI area and how they eventually gave up because the regs made the process insane; there's not much that's simpler than a storage company. Most small business owners I know tell me they could not start now because it has all gotten too complicated; they have been able to cobble together responses to the new regs as they go, but starting at this point would be impossible for them.

    Picture what it would be like if you could look at your skill set, and go out and work for yourself without a huge amount of extremely complex taxes and paperwork. A strange thought, isn't it?

    I'm not saying this would be an option for most people ( not at all ), but it does not now even exist as an escape valve. Now you have to have millions in start-up funds to start some BS company (e.g. one more stupid company that delivers food to patron's homes) that isn't actually meant to make money (it just exists to get money from investors), and you need that much to deal with the paperwork.

    And, if someone wants to pop up and say "the paperwork is not so bad and complicated," please remember that you are a NC poster and are in the top ten percent of the population for ability to deal with paperwork.

    Yves Smith Post author , August 23, 2016 at 5:41 am

    I have to tell you, as a small business owner myself, this "regulations are burdensome" argument is a crock. Lobbyists in DC learned decades ago that the best way to put a sympathetic face on their efforts to get waivers for big businesses is to have small business owners act as their mouthpieces. And there are enough extreme libertarians everywhere that it's not hard to find someone to screech that the regulations he is subject to are horrible irrespective of how much a burden they really are.

    Specifically, regarding a storage business, I can't fathom your view that storage companies should not be regulated. If I am putting my valuable stuff in the hands of someone else, I sure as hell want protection that they won't cut all the locks and run off with everything, or find more legitimate ways of stealing, like create excuses to jack up my storage costs by 10X and hold my goods hostage. And what about requiring them to have adequate fire protection and security? Even if they aren't crooks, cheap and reckless will also result in my property being stolen or damaged.

    In general, entrepreneurship is way oversold in America to legitimate the bad treatment of workers: "If things are as bad as you say, why put up with it? Go start your own business!" That's ridiculous since staring your own business requires that you be both a good salesman and a good general manager, and good salesmen are almost without exception terrible managers, as anyone in Corporate America will tell you. And it's extremely hard to make partnerships work unless the principals worked together in the same company for years (ie, they grew up with the same training and rules, and so will default to the same assumptions as to how things are done). Even in consulting, I've seldom seen people who come of of different large firms work well together absent a strong organization around them.

    The proof that pretty much no one should go into business for themselves is 9 out of every 10 businesses fail within three years. The percentabe is no doubt higher if you extend the time frame to five years. I've started two successful businesses in the US and one that didn't work out in Oz, but an overseas launch is much harder and it seemed too dodgy to go beyond the two years I'd invested (as in I might have made it a go had I kept on, but I decided it was more prudent to cut my losses).

    And I don't know where you get your information about new business from. It's pretty clear you aren't in that world. You don't need millions in funds. The overwhelming majority of new ventures are funded from savings, credit cards, and loans from friends and family.

    And if you aren't able to handle regulatory filings (or find a lawyer or accountant who can help) you aren't competent to be in business for yourself. Running a business means you run into obstacles all the time and need to find ways around them. Do you not think that private firms also require paperwork, like vendor approval processes and documenting your invoices? If you can't handle paperwork, you need to stay on a payroll.

    cyclist , August 23, 2016 at 10:47 am

    While I agree with Yves that there is too much libertarian bitching about regulations, there are a lot of really stupid laws on the books that we could easily do without. As an example, I was recently looking at an RFP from a public agency in the state of MI. One of the requirements for bidders responding was to provide a notarized affidavit that the company was not controlled by the Republic of Iran! Apparently this is Michigan Public Act 517 of 2012. BTW, the winning bidder, a large US corporation, certified they are not secretly controlled by the evil Ayatollahs.

    jrs , August 22, 2016 at 8:39 pm

    yes but most people won't be able to work until they are dead, because they aren't able to or because noone is going to hire them (it's why people collect social security at 62, it's not because this is the smartest financial plan, it's clearly not) and I hope most don't take the "therefore middle aged or senior aged suicide" route.

    If you are able to work until you die a natural death good for you I guess (even better to be able to choose to retire of course), but it's not going to be an option for many people even if they want it to be, health or the job market WILL force them out.

    Softie , August 22, 2016 at 2:46 pm

    "Perhaps this world is another planet's hell." – Aldous Huxley. Yes, it is definitely. Perhaps pretty soon they will start strip search employees when they come to work.

    ambrit , August 22, 2016 at 10:13 pm

    "Out of the Silent Planet" by C. S. Lewis.

    Chauncey Gardiner , August 22, 2016 at 4:12 pm

    Excellent and timely article. As the writers observe, the problem is global in nature. If you work in or have worked in corporate America, you likely have personally experienced or seen the results of the deliberate creation of a stressful professional climate and workplace environment, abusive psychological bullying, and intentional destabilization of employees.

    Increasing numbers of suicides are one outcome of these environments. But as the writers point out, there are a number of other symptoms associated with these toxic workplaces, none good. They range from physical and mental health issues, to various forms of addiction, burnout, and secondary effects on employees' personal lives and those of their family members or partners.

    Although it seems that individuals with psychopathic characteristics often rise in management in many of these organizations, I believe the roots of the problem lie in a broader and deeper systemic failure. I agree that neoliberal ideology, globalization, and the basic structures of our debt-based economy all play a key role in enabling the intentional development of these organizational environments.

    nobody , August 22, 2016 at 6:13 pm

    It may be a global problem, but it seems particularly acute in the US. Ian Welsh's observations ring true to me:

    One of the most striking things about much of American culture is the simple meanness of it. The cruelty… There is also a culture of punching down… America has a high-violence, high-bullying society… [Y]ou can have a high-violence society in which it is considered unacceptable to attack the weak (doing so is viewed as cowardice), but that's not the case in America. In American culture, the weak are the preferred target. Failure is punishable by homelessness, suffering, and death… You'd better get down on your knees and do whatever your boss wants, because if you're fired or let go you may never work again, and if you do hang on at a bottom-wage job, well, your life will suck… Having learned that the right way to treat anyone who is weaker than them is with demands for acquiescence and dominance displays, to many Americans, to interpret any sign of weakness as requiring them, as a moral duty, to dominate and hurt the weak person. People become what is required of them. They learn from authority figures how to behave… The entire process makes America a far more unpleasant place to live or visit than is necessary. The structure of dominance, meanness and cruelty is palpable to the visitor, and distressing; even as it warps the best inhabitant.
    Tony Baloney , August 22, 2016 at 7:02 pm

    You nailed it "nobody".

    James Kroeger , August 22, 2016 at 10:01 pm

    I believe the roots of the problem lie in a broader and deeper systemic failure.

    Yes, a systemic failure, but to be more precise, it is ultimately a particular kind of market failure that gives employers an incentive to abuse their employees.

    The best way to understand what I mean is to imagine a labor market where there are always more jobs available than there are people to fill them. In an economy that is experiencing a chronic labor shortage, employers would have a market incentive to actually start treating their employees with respect.

    In markets where labor surpluses are carefully maintained (virtually every market you've ever known), business owners/managers feel free to express anger at any employee shehe feels a 'power advantage' over. They sense they have this advantage when/if they believe the employee fears losing hiser job more than the employer fears losing the employee.

    It really would force a profound change in employer-employee relations, generally. Employers would be compelled by the marketplace to not only find ways to motivate their employees to work hard, but also to find ways to make them feel content , psychologically.

    In an economy that is experiencing a sustained labor shortage, the crudest and least sympathetic methods of motivating employees would be gradually phased out.

    'Bottom feeders' in the competition for scarce labor would have a constant incentive to try to retain employees, and to 'go the extra mile' to work with people who are having problems. Individuals who are having personal problems would not be simply cast aside, as they are now.

    The national government could do something to help those businesses that are struggling within very [price-] competitive markets, providing counseling services, etc., to help those employees who are struggling with various problems outside of the job environment.

    In our current labor surplus economy, lawsuits may give some employers an incentive to treat their people with respect, but it won't get anywhere close to providing THE solution to the problem that we would experience if we were to create and indefinitely maintain a labor shortage in the economy.

    so , August 22, 2016 at 7:05 pm

    humans sure do have a long way to go.

    Jim Haygood , August 22, 2016 at 8:53 pm

    Low end, dead end, godsend, pretend
    it don't matter anyway

    Perfect chorus of a country song.

    perpetualWAR , August 22, 2016 at 10:06 pm

    Quiet desperation. Isn't that the life of most Americans?

    ambrit , August 22, 2016 at 10:17 pm

    And to think that Pink Floyd recorded the verse; "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way." Back in 1968.
    Quiet desperation is a characteristic of a declining society.

    redleg , August 23, 2016 at 12:08 am

    As far as I can tell quiet desperation is the life of most people.
    This article highlights suicide, but drug and alcohol abuse are just as much a result of poor employment outcomes as suicide and for the same reasons.
    When people stop being quietly desperate is when change happens.
    I refer to CCR's Effigy although as a Gen-X -er I Prefer the Uncle Tupelo version

    veganjules , August 22, 2016 at 10:17 pm

    Guys. You're also forgetting that if the U.S. took in the Nazi Scientists and Death Specialists and used them and their techniques to crush real democratic, fair, egalitarian societies in Latin America (Chomsky) and then learned to transmute overt war (+nazi techniques) and colonialism into Finance (Hudson)–then we are currently dealing with something 'worse than Nazi Germany' (my 90 year old neighbor).

    [Aug 22, 2016] Twenty Years Since Welfare Reform How Has America Fared - The Atlantic by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer

    Notable quotes:
    "... there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with children reporting incomes of less than $2 per person per day, a fact we documented in our book, $2 a Day ..."
    "... What it did in reality was essentially kill the U.S. cash welfare system. (We use the term "cash welfare" to distinguish it from other forms of assistance, such as housing vouchers and food stamps, which have pre-designated uses.) ..."
    "... Prior to August 22, 1996, families such as that one-families with little or no cash income-were entitled by law to a check from the government, thanks to AFDC. The program had many flaws. Yet it provided a cash floor that could have eased the hardships of folks at the end of their ropes. ..."
    "... We've traveled to many different parts of the country getting to know people in need. While greedy, heartless landlords were sometimes a source of their troubles, their biggest problem-by far-has been the lack of access to a cash safety net-money-when failing to find or keep a job. In 21st-century America, a family needs at least some cash to have any chance at stability. Only money can pay the rent (though a minority of families get subsidies via a housing voucher). Only money buys socks, underwear, and school supplies. Money is what's needed to keep the utilities on. Each of the families we followed-technically eligible if our reading of the rules is right-weren't getting that money from TANF. ..."
    "... Yet these desperately needy families either didn't know the program existed, felt the stigma and hassle weren't worth it, or had been rebuffed at the welfare office. ..."
    "... Why has TANF left so many needy families behind? Its advocates argue that it reduces dependency and promotes work. Its critics contend that the time limits and work requirements it imposes are too punitive. Yet a careful look under the hood reveals that both of these claims fail to grasp the fundamental nature of what TANF has become. ..."
    "... Built into the very core of TANF are perverse incentives for states to shed families from the welfare rolls. If they do so, they get to keep the money and use it for other things. And outside of what's spent on cash aid, there is virtually no meaningful oversight on how the rest of the money is spent. ..."
    "... What are states doing with their TANF dollars if they aren't providing cash welfare to families? Some states, such as Ohio, spend a considerable portion on child care, no doubt a boon to the working poor, yet folks not in jobs or in work programs aren't eligible. Likewise other states, such as Wisconsin, use some of their block grant to fund state tax credits that benefit the working poor. ..."
    "... When TANF is used to pay for giveaways for the non-poor or to plug budget holes, it becomes welfare for states and not for people. ..."
    "... What states spend astonishingly little on-besides cash assistance-is helping the poor find employment. In 2014, Ohio-which is about at the national average here-allocated only 8 percent of combined federal and state TANF funding to vital "hand-up" activities linking recipients to jobs. ..."
    "... Ronald Regan brought the image of the infamous-albeit mythical-welfare queen into the national consciousness. Bill Clinton probably owes his first term in office to his promise to "end welfare as we know it," and possibly his second to signing the reform into law. Both politicians railed against AFDC's so-called "perverse disincentives." TANF offered states a lot of flexibility to innovate, to allow a flowering of new ideas to help the poor. But that's not what the country got. Instead it got a new kind of welfare queens: states. States, not people, are using TANF to close the holes in their budgets. It is states, not people, who are falling prey to the "perverse disincentives" of welfare. ..."
    Aug 20, 2016 | theatlantic.com
    America's poorest are still dealing with the consequences of the legislation that Bill Clinton signed into law two decades ago today. As recently as April of this year, former president Bill Clinton defended the welfare reform bill he signed into law on August 22, 1996-twenty years ago today-as one of the great accomplishments of his presidency. The bill scrapped the welfare program known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and created a new one that lasts to this day-Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). There was a grandiose idea behind the change: TANF was no simple safety net; it was also meant to be a springboard to self-sufficiency through employment, which it encouraged recipients to find work by imposing work requirements and limiting how long they could receive benefits.

    Today, across the country, welfare is-at best-a shadow of its former self. In much of the Deep South and parts of the West, it has all but disappeared. In the aftermath of welfare reform, there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with children reporting incomes of less than $2 per person per day, a fact we documented in our book, $2 a Day. As of 2012, according to the most reliable government data available on the subject, roughly 3 million American children spend at least three months in a calendar year living on virtually no money. Numerous other sources of data confirm these findings. According to the most recent data available (2014), TANF rolls are now down to about 850,000 adults with their 2.5 million children-a whopping decline of 75 percent from 1996. TANF was meant to "replace" AFDC. What it did in reality was essentially kill the U.S. cash welfare system. (We use the term "cash welfare" to distinguish it from other forms of assistance, such as housing vouchers and food stamps, which have pre-designated uses.)

    Cleveland, where the Republicans hosted their convention this year, is one of the poorest cities in the country and a place where the effects of this reform can be seen most plainly. What has happened to welfare in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and its inner suburbs, is reflective of its fate elsewhere in the nation. Currently, the county's TANF-to-poverty ratio (the fraction of poor families with children who are actually receiving help from the program) sits at 22 percent-right about at Ohio's, and the nation's, average. (In some states, it is dramatically lower, such as Georgia, where it is just six, and Texas, where it is five.)

    What's happened to poor people as a result? Since 2013, we've spent considerable time in the city trying to find out. Each year, we catch up with several families who, in 2013, had spent at least three months living without money income exceeding $2 per person per day. To deepen our perspective, we also spend time trying to understand what's going on for the city's poorest, more broadly speaking. Earlier this month, one of us-Kathryn-spent a day talking to supplicants at a west-side food pantry. She spent an afternoon walking the streets of one neighborhood, striking up casual conversations with residents as they took out the garbage or sat on their porches. Yet the toughest experience was when Kathryn went for a ride-along with bailiffs assigned to the Cleveland Housing Court as they went about their daily rounds, evicting a family from their west-side apartment mid-meal.

    Prior to August 22, 1996, families such as that one-families with little or no cash income-were entitled by law to a check from the government, thanks to AFDC. The program had many flaws. Yet it provided a cash floor that could have eased the hardships of folks at the end of their ropes.

    TANF ought to be able to help-albeit temporarily, as the name implies. Yet many of the people we have studied have never received it. One woman, a high-school graduate and a mother of two, told us she doesn't think it's worth it. She believes that in order to meet the program's requirements, she would have to work full time at a make-work job, leaving her no time to find legitimate employment.

    Others have tried to get it and failed. When one mother we know lost her job at Walmart after her only means of transportation failed, she initially refused to apply for TANF out of pride, insisting that she was a worker, not a leach on the government. Finally, after months of fruitless job search, plus a list of health diagnoses a mile long, she broke down and applied. Since then, she has been sent away three times, all for no legitimate reason we, as TANF experts, can discern. Now, she, her daughter, and her fiancé are tripled-up with friends in a house that lacks heat and running water but offers a free roof over her head.

    And many more aren't even aware TANF is available. During her visit to the west-side food pantry a few weeks ago, Kathryn met families camping in unfinished basements of friends, a couple who survived a Cleveland winter while sleeping in a tent (they advised finding a thick mattress to keep your body off the ground and to keep a candle burning), and a family in the process of breaking apart-the three children parceled off to relatives-until a laid-off Ford assembly line worker and his partner of 14 years, who cleaned suburban homes until her car was repossessed, can secure stable jobs and a place to live. When we asked why they didn't apply for TANF, we were met with blank stares. If our experiences across the city this summer are any guide, many poor Clevelanders-even those in desperate straits-don't even realize the program exists.

    We've traveled to many different parts of the country getting to know people in need. While greedy, heartless landlords were sometimes a source of their troubles, their biggest problem-by far-has been the lack of access to a cash safety net-money-when failing to find or keep a job. In 21st-century America, a family needs at least some cash to have any chance at stability. Only money can pay the rent (though a minority of families get subsidies via a housing voucher). Only money buys socks, underwear, and school supplies. Money is what's needed to keep the utilities on. Each of the families we followed-technically eligible if our reading of the rules is right-weren't getting that money from TANF.

    How did they survive? Nearly all had sold plasma from time to time, some regularly. In 2014, so-called "donations" hit an all-time high at 32.5 million, triple the rate recorded a decade prior. They collected tin cans for an average yield of about $1 an hour. They traded away their food stamps, usually at the going rate of 50 or 60 cents on the dollar. Some traded sex for cash or-more commonly-the payment of their cell phone bill, a room to stay in, a meal, or some other kind of help. One 15-year-old was lured into a sexual relationship with her teacher on the promise of food. Yet these desperately needy families either didn't know the program existed, felt the stigma and hassle weren't worth it, or had been rebuffed at the welfare office.

    Some would argue that families are better off without cash welfare. Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned that welfare was "a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." Yet even Ron Haskins, one of the Republican architects of the program, recognizes that the problem of "disconnected mothers"-those neither working nor on welfare-is "a serious policy issue, that its magnitude is increasing, and that in two decades the nation has not figured out how to address the problem."

    Why has TANF left so many needy families behind? Its advocates argue that it reduces dependency and promotes work. Its critics contend that the time limits and work requirements it imposes are too punitive. Yet a careful look under the hood reveals that both of these claims fail to grasp the fundamental nature of what TANF has become.

    To put it plainly, TANF is not really a welfare program at all. Peter Germanis, a conservative expert on welfare policy and former Reagan White House aide, describes it best, as a "fixed and flexible funding stream"-think slush fund-for states, provided by what are known as "block grants." Yes, some block-grant dollars are used to provide cash aid to struggling families. But three of every four dollars allocated to TANF is directed toward other purposes.

    How can this be? After the 1996 welfare reform bill was signed into law, states were no longer obligated to give out a dime to those in need. The rules governing TANF are so flexible that states can potentially eliminate cash handouts all together. What's more, TANF's rules threaten to penalize states that continue to provide cash assistance, such as California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Vermont. It is easier to comply with TANF regulations by simply pushing people off the rolls, as Cuyahoga County has done.

    Built into the very core of TANF are perverse incentives for states to shed families from the welfare rolls. If they do so, they get to keep the money and use it for other things. And outside of what's spent on cash aid, there is virtually no meaningful oversight on how the rest of the money is spent.

    If past is prologue, the dollars devoted to cash assistance will only continue to dwindle. Even in 2006, TANF had far greater reach than it does now. Meanwhile, counts of the number of families knocking on the doors of the nation's food pantries have reached the highest point ever recorded. "Donations" of blood plasma in exchange for cash have tripled in the last decade. School-aged children are increasingly likely to be homeless or doubled up. In sum, on many measures, child and family wellbeing has taken a nosedive.

    Welfare reform is certainly not the only factor driving these trends. An increasingly perilous low-wage labor market and a growing affordable-housing crisis are critical drivers too. Yet a simple thought experiment brings the role of welfare reform in focus. Imagine a world in which states are prohibited by law from denying any family who meets eligibility criteria. Now envision a world in which denying a family in need is perfectly legal, and states who do so get to keep the cash. This is America before and after welfare reform. On the eve of welfare reform, roughly seven in 10 poor families claimed cash aid; only about two in 10 now do so. If the safeguards governing AFDC were in place today, this sort of extreme poverty would be a fraction of what it is now.

    What are states doing with their TANF dollars if they aren't providing cash welfare to families? Some states, such as Ohio, spend a considerable portion on child care, no doubt a boon to the working poor, yet folks not in jobs or in work programs aren't eligible. Likewise other states, such as Wisconsin, use some of their block grant to fund state tax credits that benefit the working poor.

    But the remainder goes to an assortment of other activities not necessarily benefitting the impoverished at all. Michigan funds college scholarships for young adults with no children, under the rationale that doing so may reduce teen pregnancy. Texas spends a large chunk of its block grant on its child welfare-system, an expense the state would have to assume responsibility for otherwise. When TANF is used to pay for giveaways for the non-poor or to plug budget holes, it becomes welfare for states and not for people.

    What states spend astonishingly little on-besides cash assistance-is helping the poor find employment. In 2014, Ohio-which is about at the national average here-allocated only 8 percent of combined federal and state TANF funding to vital "hand-up" activities linking recipients to jobs.

    Ronald Regan brought the image of the infamous-albeit mythical-welfare queen into the national consciousness. Bill Clinton probably owes his first term in office to his promise to "end welfare as we know it," and possibly his second to signing the reform into law. Both politicians railed against AFDC's so-called "perverse disincentives." TANF offered states a lot of flexibility to innovate, to allow a flowering of new ideas to help the poor. But that's not what the country got. Instead it got a new kind of welfare queens: states. States, not people, are using TANF to close the holes in their budgets. It is states, not people, who are falling prey to the "perverse disincentives" of welfare.

    [Jul 03, 2016] Men Exiting Workforce as Low-Wage Jobs Vanish by Yves Smith

    Notable quotes:
    "... The report dismisses the myths that access to Social Security disability or that men are not choosing to work as culprits. More than a third were in poverty. Fewer that 25% of the men not working have a spouse supporting them and that percentage has dropped in the last 50 years. The CEA's analysis find that Social Security disability explains at most 0.5% of the reduction. ..."
    "... Similarly, the problem with European-style job training programs is that US employers do not want to hire people with general training, even in a particular skill area. Their strong preference is to hire someone who is doing the exact same job for a similar company, so as to minimize their effort (in theory; in practice, the extra time spent on the search probably offsets the theoretical savings). The cure for that is a much more robust job market, where employers realize they are not going to find the perfect candidate and take someone approximate and give them the training and other guidance they need to become productive. ..."
    "... Friends of mine visited Germany last year, noticed that for curb, pothole repair where in the US you see 2-3 guys and a bunch of equipment, there he would see 8 guys with shovels and little to no equipment. ..."
    "... Yes, when I was working at UT-Austin, they cut the janitorial staff so that offices were only vacuumed once a month. ..."
    "... The reality of what is happening is on the economic/political level. It involves a small number of people, living in a rich, opulent high tower, who for years acted and enacted without the slightest bit of empathy or selflessness. These same people have literally no depth to their thought and are ruled by the very gluttony/ego so valued in todays consumerist society. This type used to live in Rome during Diocletian's rule, in Egypt during the Hyskos invasion, in the Mayan Empire during the Postclassic period, etc ad infinitum. The overall picture has repeated itself, as an empire is a microcosm of any living organism; it gets old and becomes very susceptible to change, that is, the ruling class become so removed from reality that their decision making begins to deviate further and further from the actuality of the current situation. The Housing Crisis is a prime example. The banks saw fit to literally scam their own customers with no government intervention! Twice! This type of thinking quickly affects the entire nation. People begin to see a futility in living morally and truthfully, and start to wonder if the entire system is a scam. ..."
    "... I've visited enough towns in the Mid West where everyone is on some pharmaceutical, usually Percocet or valium, yet have no money for a proper house with heating and cooling. ..."
    "... So entire industries now eschew people older than 30 in favor of being staffed entirely by 20 something's. This will surely end well. ..."
    "... They are bring these workers from India where starting IT salaries are $10,000/year. Check early in the morning and late at night and you will see the buses delivering the workers who lived crammed in surrounding apartments. One told me his Indian outsourcers had eight of them living in a two-bedroom apartment with one bathroom - while working 80-100 hours per week. They are threatened with deportation if they complain, and in some cases, their families back home are physically threatened. ..."
    "... granting automatic work authorization to all H-1B spouses. ..."
    "... expanding Bush's "Optional Practical Training" now allowing stem graduates to work for three years ..."
    "... lowered qualifying requirements for L-1B visas. L-1b visas allow corporations to import their foreign employee to work in the US at the home nation salaries. And has lead to widespread abuse such as foreign employees being paid $1.73/hour. ..."
    "... modified the B-1 visa, used attended training and meetings, to incorporate the "B-1 in lieu of H-1B" which now allows some foreign workers to work in the US on the B-1 visa ..."
    "... There are now well over a million foreign guest workers in the US and the numbers are growing. Curiously (ha ha!), DHS does not even keep count of the above admissions. ..."
    "... Wow, didn't know they expanded the student work permission to three years. Used to be one year. Essentially if you go to college here you have bought yourself a ticket to live in America and take a job from an American. ..."
    "... I was replaced by a 20-something. Actually, at my last job (3 years ago) both the older employees, myself and another employee, were replaced. One employee who had worked there for 15 years and was 60, so TWO years away from retirement, was let go. (I hope he sued the pants off that horrible firm!) ..."
    "... Yes indeed, there's a reason big business doesn't want medicare for all – it would result in the ultimate 'flexible workforce'. Workers immediately bailing out of every shit show employment situation they manage to fall into at the drop of the hat with no COBRA or insurance dead zones. But on the other side of the coin, it would ramp up the Uber jitney economy of on-demand disposable workers lined up holding signs displaying their skill sets for a day's pay at the highway on-ramps at 6:30 AM (or, as the neo-liberal mindset would frame it – the entrepreneurs). ..."
    "... Thats pretty much how the movie/tv industry operates in Hollywood. ..."
    "... History of Work Comp as I remember it - speaking of how "the company" counts its beans: Johns Manville had a problem with people getting slowly sicker on the job (handling asbestos) starting late in the 1800s paid doctors to do studies that proved the asbestos-asbestosis-mesothelioma connection, and gave some rates of worsening of the diseases and hence points at which workers could no longer work. The researchers and doctors were paid for and threatened into silence on the findings, and required to ignore their Hippocratic obligations. Workers had to go to company doctors, who would nurse them along until they were fired for inability. ..."
    "... All labor reform policies put forth by Republicans and their policy activation arm (Dems) have been to make life easier and richer for CEO's, not to help workers. So now economists are surprised by the results? What a useful profession they are. ..."
    "... The 40 hour work week was established under Roosevelt. If you wish to reverse or stave off the declining Participation Rate, then decrease the required number of hours work to 32. We have agreed before that Labor is the lowest cost when compared to Overhead or Materials. In the end, the difference in cost would be made up by higher productivity. ..."
    June 21, 2016 | nakedcapitalism.com

    A new Council of Economic Advisers study released by the White House on the fall in labor force participation among men of prime working age (25 to 54) should be subtitled, "It's the Neoliberal Economy, Stupid."

    The report does a useful job in documenting where the level and nature of the decline in male workforce participation, which peaked at 98% in 1954 and is now at 88%, the third lowest among OECD countries. The decline is concentrated among less educated:

    Screen shot 2016-06-21 at 4.20.59 AM

    Blacks have been hit harder than other groups:

    Screen shot 2016-06-21 at 4.22.31 AM

    And the general outlook for employment has been deteriorating over time. However, bear in mind that this decay somewhat overlaps with the story that less educated groups have been harder hit. US educational attainment has fallen over time.

    Screen shot 2016-06-21 at 4.09.30 AM

    The report dismisses the myths that access to Social Security disability or that men are not choosing to work as culprits. More than a third were in poverty. Fewer that 25% of the men not working have a spouse supporting them and that percentage has dropped in the last 50 years. The CEA's analysis find that Social Security disability explains at most 0.5% of the reduction.

    The cause is the state of the job market:

    • Participation has fallen particularly steeply for less-educated men at the same time as their wages have dropped relative to more-educated men, consistent with a decline in demand.

    o In recent decades, less-educated Americans have suffered a reduction in their wages relative to other groups. From 1975 until 2014, relative wages for those with a high school degree fell from over 80 percent of the amount earned by workers with at least a college degree to less than 60 percent

    While doing a fine job dimensioning profile of the groups that have been hit the worst, the authors, after invoking hoary neoliberal defenses, as in these workers are the losers in a globalized market, the paper gives a coded acknowledgment that policies that are hostile to workers have produced the expected result:

    This reduction in demand, as reflected in lower wages, could reflect the broader evolution of technology, automation, and globalization in the U.S. economy.

    Conventional economic theory posits that more "flexible" labor markets-where it is easier to hire and fire workers-facilitate matches between employers and individuals who want to work. Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD-with low levels of labor market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of collective bargaining coverage-the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor force participation rates of OECD member countries.

    It is remarkably cheeky to see the authors attempt to depict "flexible" labor markets, where workers can be tossed on the trash heap, as beneficial to laborers.

    The recommendations are tepid, and the authors assert "A number of policies proposed by the Administration would help to boost prime-age male labor force participation." In other words, we are to believe the problem is those Republican meanies in Congress, as opposed to Obama not pushing hard for these measures in his first term, when he had the opportunity to pass wide-ranging reforms.

    One proposal is the new conventional wisdom of more infrastructure spending to create more jobs for unskilled workers directly, improving community colleges and other training so workers will have skills that line up with hot job markets. The problem with the latter idea is that demand can shift quickly (look at how the oil patch was robust a few years back and is now just starting to get back on its feet). Moreover, employers are extremely prejudiced against both older people and people who've been out of the workforce, and the age which is deemed to be "older" has collapsed. Per Wolf Richter (emphasis original):

    Now I've come across a fascinating piece on MarketWatch, an article on what to do to get into the cross hairs of a recruiter whose algos are combing through millions of profiles on LinkedIn.

    No recruiter in his right might is personally clicking through LinkedIn profiles. They're all scanned by algos by the millions in nanoseconds. And so the trick is structuring your profile to get the algos to pay attention. This isn't a human-to-human scenario, but a human-to-algo scenario. You're trying to second-guess an algo that's going to decide your future….

    But apparently the lifespan of a degree has been shortened from 20 or 25 years to just 10 years! Then it rots, and it has to be swept under the rug. The article put it this way (emphasis added):

    Older job-seekers….

    I mean, I'm already seething.

    Older job-seekers need to walk a fine line. Unless you made the cover of "Time" or discovered a solar galaxy, experience has a shelf life on LinkedIn, says Scott Dobroski, career trends analyst at Glassdoor. There's no need to wax lyrical about a job that's more than 10 years old, he says. And those who g raduated from college a decade ago may want to exclude the date they graduated. "Your college graduation date will age you," he says, "and although ageism is illegal, it's happening all the time." On the other hand, if you're applying for a job as CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you graduated in 1986, it's okay to leave the date, Dobroski says.

    Note the word "older job seekers" in connection with a college degree from 10 years ago. Those older job seekers are early Millennials!

    Yves here. Admittedly, candidates on LinkedIn are more educated than the group this study is most concerned about, but consider the message: even among the educated, the shelf life of a degree has diminished greatly due to ageism. Why would it be less bad among the less well educated?

    Similarly, the problem with European-style job training programs is that US employers do not want to hire people with general training, even in a particular skill area. Their strong preference is to hire someone who is doing the exact same job for a similar company, so as to minimize their effort (in theory; in practice, the extra time spent on the search probably offsets the theoretical savings). The cure for that is a much more robust job market, where employers realize they are not going to find the perfect candidate and take someone approximate and give them the training and other guidance they need to become productive.

    And finally, the report claims that Obama has been pumping for one of the most needed remedies:

    Increasing wages for workers by raising the minimum wage, supporting collective bargaining, and ensuring that workers have a strong voice in the labor market.

    Help me.

    So I'm at a loss to understand the political purpose of this report. It's useless as a policy driver given that this is an election year when Obama is a lame duck. Perhaps it is a weak effort at legacy-bolstering by showing that even though the decline in labor force participation among men was marked in the Obama Administration, it started long before he took office. But it still ignores some elephants in the room, like the fact that employers stopped sharing the benefits of productivity gains with workers starting in the mid-1970s and lack of sufficient demand in the economy. What it does reveal is one of the many time-bombs that Obama has left for the next President.

    Marco , June 21, 2016 at 7:27 am

    Time to start blaming those darn "stay-at-home" dads!! (PEW via CalculatedRisk) How much more evidence will it take for orthodox economists to stop manufacturing silly excuses for a crappy job market.

    Benedict@Large , June 21, 2016 at 8:52 am

    Economists since the 1970s have been primarily involved with explaining away unemployment; that is, saying it doesn't exist. This is because their theory of inflation (printing money = inflation) breaks the rules of elementary algebra if unemployment does exist. To normal people (non-economists) confronted with such a situation, the theory would quickly be abandoned as nonsense, but to economists this is not an option, because this theory also says that big government is bad, a truism that in the economics profession needs no explanation.

    So you see, Marco, there is no crappy jobs market because there's no such thing as unemployment. Ask any economist. They'll tell you.

    Simon , June 22, 2016 at 9:08 am

    Here are some nice nuggets from the CEA study on the stay-at-home dad myth:

    "Participation rates have fallen for both parents and nonparents alike, but prime-age males without children saw a larger decline of 9.4 percentage points since 1968 compared to 4.9 percentage points among prime-age males with children. This suggests that men dropping out of the labor force to be stay-at-home fathers is likely not an important factor in the overall decline; moreover, only around a quarter of prime-age men who are not in the labor force are parents (down from around 40 percent in 1968)."

    and

    "Based on [American Time Use Survey] data, there is little evidence that men are staying home to care for children or to do house work. "

    Of course, I am preaching to the choir here!

    ambrit , June 21, 2016 at 7:34 am

    "Blame the victim."

    av av , June 21, 2016 at 10:20 am

    Blame technology. Low skilled workers are easiest to replace. Example, you used to have people sweeping and washing floors in shopping centers or subway stations.
    Now you have one person on a sweeper or washer.

    Pat , June 21, 2016 at 11:50 am

    And how well is that working out? I'm serious. Perhaps they need a couple of more people ALONG with the washers and sweepers. Sorry to use Disney, but part of the reason the parks are pristine is because they have a whole lot of people going along picking up the trash and sweeping up.

    It is not just technology, it is a management that doesn't understand how much labor they really need and ignore the signs they do not have enough, because then their numbers might be down. And this is even when their numbers are already down.

    jsn , June 21, 2016 at 3:06 pm

    It's really about how the priorities are set and by whom.

    In a sane society, the issuer of the currency would pay people to do things people like to do or benefit from doing themselves and pay for equipment/robots to do things people don't like.

    We live a long way from there.

    collins , June 21, 2016 at 4:26 pm

    Friends of mine visited Germany last year, noticed that for curb, pothole repair where in the US you see 2-3 guys and a bunch of equipment, there he would see 8 guys with shovels and little to no equipment.

    SpringTexan , June 21, 2016 at 4:27 pm

    Yes, when I was working at UT-Austin, they cut the janitorial staff so that offices were only vacuumed once a month.

    There is work to do. But not willingness to have people do it.

    Steve Gunderson , June 21, 2016 at 5:08 pm

    Maybe teaching people to pickup after themselves should be a Freshman level course?

    Michael , June 21, 2016 at 8:19 pm

    Carpets need to be vacuumed.

    inhibi , June 22, 2016 at 4:26 pm

    It is not as simple as "technology". I often find that those who say lines like "robots are going to take away all the jobs!" are those without actual degrees in those subjects. Technology simply moves the plane of thought, processing, manufacturing, etc to the next level. The invention of the computer spawned an entire multi-TRILLION dollar industry with millions of jobs. Robotics will be/is the same.

    The reality of what is happening is on the economic/political level. It involves a small number of people, living in a rich, opulent high tower, who for years acted and enacted without the slightest bit of empathy or selflessness. These same people have literally no depth to their thought and are ruled by the very gluttony/ego so valued in todays consumerist society. This type used to live in Rome during Diocletian's rule, in Egypt during the Hyskos invasion, in the Mayan Empire during the Postclassic period, etc ad infinitum. The overall picture has repeated itself, as an empire is a microcosm of any living organism; it gets old and becomes very susceptible to change, that is, the ruling class become so removed from reality that their decision making begins to deviate further and further from the actuality of the current situation. The Housing Crisis is a prime example. The banks saw fit to literally scam their own customers with no government intervention! Twice! This type of thinking quickly affects the entire nation. People begin to see a futility in living morally and truthfully, and start to wonder if the entire system is a scam.

    Now imagine the modern US economy as a sinking ship. The top level execs, elites, are busy pillaging as much as they can, because they all see that US supremacy isn't going to last. Manufacturing all moved to China, now Mexico, retail is dead in the water, the US consumer is getting weaker and weaker. Only healthcare is staying afloat, due more to political reasons than anything else.

    The easiest and most common method to increase your salary as a corporate exec is to get rid of overhead: sell off portions of the business, layoffs, etc. They are all doing it regularly with no impunity. US manufacturing is all but GONE. Its all been sold to PE firms that install a puppet as the CEO, who then begins the extraction process of selling off parts of the business, instating capital controls, and layoffs. Now it moved to retail. Eventually, America will be a literal husk. Every place will just have the same options of a few fast food and retail chains. The entire Midwest is already there, hence "Rust Belt". The only places that will be spared in America will be the bubble of wealth concentrated on the coasts, but even these will begin to whither as wealth starts to move to other, happier countries.

    So in this milieu, put yourself in the place of a average HS educated American. You have two options for your career: work your ass off and make next to nothing, or go to college and graduate a debt-slave, also making next to nothing. However, a third option presents itself, complements of the Welfare State: collect unemployment and have all the free time in the world. Then imagine what you see and hear everyday. Banks illegally foreclosing on homes, executives getting away with fraud in the hundreds of millions, a militarized police, potent pharmaceuticals given away like candy, a plant that causes mild decrease in heart pressure illegalized, politicians lying again and again, the wealthy talking on TV about how "easy" it is to open a business and selling books about it, etc. It all concentrates down to the worst of all emotions: depression, self-loathing, and envy.

    The depression comes from the hopelessness of most American's situation: poorly educated with no future career, not even a path to take which will ensure a brighter future. The self-loathing comes from the media, as most people get an HOURLY reminder of how shitty they look, how poor they are. Even shows like Shameless don't touch on the reality of being poor in America. It isn't a day to day struggle to pay bills. Its a day to day struggle to even feel worth something. To feel part of society.

    Then there's envy. You feel envious of the wealth, the attractiveness of others you see in the media, which you misplace as being the vast majority of people in America because you see them everyday and everywhere: online, on billboards, in movies, commercials, etc. You begin to feel like SOMETHING should be given to you. The Government, fearing rebellion, realized this during the last Great Depression when they began to expand the Welfare State. Welfare is a form of suppression. It keeps people on the lowest rung just happy enough to forget about rebelling. Big Pharma is a BIG factor in this as well. I've visited enough towns in the Mid West where everyone is on some pharmaceutical, usually Percocet or valium, yet have no money for a proper house with heating and cooling.

    So in summary, the extraction of wealth by the upper class, (through "global" trade agreements, stock market manipulation, tax evasion, offshoring, etc) along with lax regulation & prosecution by the political body (they are very much one and the same these days) caused immense physical (monetary) and mental depression/suppression of the masses, which are steadily moving toward Welfare as it becomes the only of options with a glimmer of stability & free time.

    FedUpPleb , June 21, 2016 at 8:10 am

    So entire industries now eschew people older than 30 in favor of being staffed entirely by 20 something's. This will surely end well.

    Arizona Slim , June 21, 2016 at 8:55 am

    I would like to see where all of these highly skilled and motivated 20-somethings are coming from. Because I am not seeing them around here.

    NoGig , June 21, 2016 at 11:06 am

    They are bring these workers from India where starting IT salaries are $10,000/year. Check early in the morning and late at night and you will see the buses delivering the workers who lived crammed in surrounding apartments. One told me his Indian outsourcers had eight of them living in a two-bedroom apartment with one bathroom - while working 80-100 hours per week. They are threatened with deportation if they complain, and in some cases, their families back home are physically threatened.

    With the defeat of H-1B expansion, Obama has now vastly increased foreign guest workers through executive actions that include:

    1. granting automatic work authorization to all H-1B spouses.
    2. expanding Bush's "Optional Practical Training" now allowing stem graduates to work for three years in the US on a student visa. The OPT has no caps, little labor protections, and no salary requirement.
    3. lowered qualifying requirements for L-1B visas. L-1b visas allow corporations to import their foreign employee to work in the US at the home nation salaries. And has lead to widespread abuse such as foreign employees being paid $1.73/hour.
    4. modified the B-1 visa, used attended training and meetings, to incorporate the "B-1 in lieu of H-1B" which now allows some foreign workers to work in the US on the B-1 visa

    There are now well over a million foreign guest workers in the US and the numbers are growing. Curiously (ha ha!), DHS does not even keep count of the above admissions.

    America, this is not YOUR government.

    John , June 21, 2016 at 11:00 pm

    Wow, didn't know they expanded the student work permission to three years. Used to be one year. Essentially if you go to college here you have bought yourself a ticket
    to live in America and take a job from an American.

    perpetualWAR , June 21, 2016 at 11:25 am

    I was replaced by a 20-something. Actually, at my last job (3 years ago) both the older employees, myself and another employee, were replaced. One employee who had worked there for 15 years and was 60, so TWO years away from retirement, was let go. (I hope he sued the pants off that horrible firm!)

    weinerdog43 , June 21, 2016 at 11:51 am

    Oh, they're all out beating down the door over in Philadelphia to work as substitute teachers for $75 per day. Just google 'substitute teacher shortage' and you'll see plenty of job opportunities.

    snark

    inhibi , June 22, 2016 at 4:36 pm

    Its called "turnover" and companies use it nowadays to suppress wages. Why pay a 30 yr old 85K when you can pay a 20 yr old 50k?

    Most of the work is simple anyways, unless you work in the STEM field. And unfortunately, in the STEM field, the largest industry (software) takes this approach to the next level.

    flora , June 21, 2016 at 8:14 am

    Great post. Thanks.

    mark , June 21, 2016 at 9:08 am

    Yes it is.

    "supporting collective bargaining"

    Guffaw.

    fresno dan , June 21, 2016 at 8:17 am

    Incentives matter – if the end all and be all is GDP, you get GDP. TPP is an "industrial" policy, or more accurately a re-distribution policy – yeah – re-distribution – the fact that it is re-distribution from the poorer to the richer is a novel use of the concept, but we should never under estimate the cleverness of Davos man.

    The fact that it is espoused by those who incessantly yammer about how government policy should be "neutral" exposes that these people are just making the rules for their own benefit. The fact that so many laws ("reforms") must be instituted to advance this agenda just exposes the intellectual dishonesty. Or would they have us believe that the advent of neoliberalism and the increase in inequality is just a happy (sarc) coincidence? The idea that this is some unstoppable force of nature just wants to make me puke.

    If you think that work matters, that participation in society is important, and that a nation is more than airbnb beds for Davos man conference attendees, you can have policies that punish outsourcing, decide that limiting H4B workers increases demand for workers here with commensurate increases in wages. There are a zillion ways the tax code as well as other laws are inimical to US workers. It STARTS with the idea that paying labor more does NOT harm society….

    These policies are not a function of physics or of God's will – they are made by men at the behest of the few to reward the few. It can be changed if we choose to change it – although I fear we are rapidly reaching a point, and may have already reached it, where we are a defacto plutocracy and any "reform" is mere window dressing.

    Linda , June 21, 2016 at 8:41 am

    I agree with you wholeheartedly. We are on a straight path to plutocracy and I too fear we have already passed the point of no return. I hear (read) daily the awful word, redistribution; always in the context of taking a small amount away from the rich and powerful to give to those not as fortunate; but never in the context of what is actually happening on a grand scale; the taking from the lower classes and giving it to the upper 1% and above. When will it stop? I don't know; I do know that unless we continue to try and make the masses actually understand what is happening to them and to get them off their apathetic arses and involved in the political process, thereby voting out of office the scrads of politicians devoted to and enamored of neoliberalism, we will continue down this prophetic road of self destruction. It is our choice. It will be hard. It may, in fact, already be too late. But, we have to try. We have to keep working; working to explain the awful policies of neoliberalism.

    templar555510 , June 21, 2016 at 9:20 am

    Agreed. So what MUST the demand be ? Let the capitalist go after FULL AUTOMATION and balance that with UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME . Everything to do with money can be defined as a balance sheet so this should be the balance sheet for the 21st Century . The demand should come from all . And it's coming. I know the Swiss just rejected it , but the fact that they just called a referendum to decide it ( for now ) tells us it's there in the ether and the Swiss are not alone ; the Dutch, the Finns are all working on this . It's the genuine great leap forward.

    tegnost , June 21, 2016 at 9:52 am

    sorry but basic income guarantee is simply creating demand for the plutocrats, and is exactly why food stamps are in the agriculture budget. This is why the 13,000/yr BIG floated a week or two ago already, at it's inception, takes 3,000 and puts it towards medical care-oops, i mean insurance- you won't get care unless you pay extra, don't kid yourself. And this gravy train will have as many cars attached to it as it can carry, how much will your BIG be in the form of food stamps? rent subsidy? by the time it's implemented the person at the root of the issue won't get a thin dime, but the cronies will have a basic income guarantee, the true purpose of this terrible idea, I and others like me want things to do, not a snap card (more likely digital wallet brought generously to you by apple and jp morgan, which of course will charge a fee, and conveniently keep track of where you are at all times) that allows me to buy gmo food (yes, there will be foods that are for the poor and foods for the rich, want organic? what's your net worth?) The silicon valley parlors where these moronic ideas are hatched are filled with people who are trying to cement their presence in the upper class which is funny on the meritocrat side because many of my tech friends didn't go to college, they were good at video games and now it's robots robots robots because that's their gravy train and the BIG is their lame ass apology, while getting some demand into the economy to pay for their craptastic junk toys.

    TheCatSaid , June 21, 2016 at 11:59 am

    Great observations about BIG. I never thought of it that way, and you make it very obvious. Thank you.

    lightningclap , June 21, 2016 at 1:21 pm

    ++ I have long been in favor of BIG but you point to the obvious strings that would be attached if formulated by our Valley "disruptors".

    jrs , June 21, 2016 at 4:03 pm

    then instead provide the basics of life to people, like healthcare and shelter, rather than money? That completely solves that problem doesn't it?

    samhill , June 21, 2016 at 8:10 pm

    Excellent, my vote post of the week. The best answer is to pay people to actually work, the work would be to pay them to undo the damage of the last 300 years of industrial revolution. We had created a large middle middle class and secure working class destroying the planet, we can create the same wealth cleaning it up. Instill hope on a dying planet, and for the first time in its history give humanity a reason to get up in the morning other than just exploiting each other in a rat race.

    Norb , June 22, 2016 at 2:35 am

    One way of looking at how a BIG can be manipulated by owners is considering slavery. It seems we are entering a new phase in the never ending capitalist struggle to secure cheep labor. Cheep labor and resources are the driving force of the current system. The logical end result is to have a self-sustaining labor force. One that makes just enough to survive and work- with little room for anything else. That is where we are headed.

    Advancing technology and the desire to shed costs related to slave upkeep can be argued as important factors in slavery's demise in it's original social form as one individual owning another as property. Why bother taking on the responsibility for slave upkeep when you can rig the system in ways that require workers to enslave themselves to businesses and the system as a whole. You need the labor power, not the person.

    A BIG will be sold for all the typical humanitarian half-truths, but in reality is a natural development to maintain the capitalist system. The powers that be have demonstrated no interest in maintaining a middle class workforce. Debt bondage and BIG coercion are on the horizon.

    As Goethe observed: None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

    lin1 , June 22, 2016 at 1:47 pm

    Your using an abstract moral excuse to argue against fulfilling a real actual need.Until the revolution comes, BIG is a solution I will support.

    Fred Rucker , June 21, 2016 at 10:52 am

    How wonderfully well stated, thank you

    Bill Smith , June 21, 2016 at 8:34 am

    Why does there have to be a political purpose for the release of the report? I would guess that the end of a presidency works a little like late Friday afternoon when stuff get dumped to the public at their point of lowest interest.

    Raising the minimum wage works at cross purposes. It helps in the short run but in the longer run – other things held constant – it makes automation more likely.

    When the small company I worked for years ago was faced with replacing a piece of equipment, at some point after the minimum wage had been raised, the company replaced it with one that was more automated and took few people to operate. The cost of labor had moved up and cost of capital was lower due the interest rates. The numbers were close enough that it could have gone either way but the feeling was that the cost of labor would continue to go up. Going with the more automated equipment locked in more of our costs.

    a different chris , June 21, 2016 at 9:02 am

    It's weird how people can pretend to conflate technology assisting labor with replacing labor with cheaper labor, in order to derail the subject.

    As far as your "point", they invented the nail and hammer and now we don't have to drill holes and put pegs in. Fine. Nobody is talking about going technologically backwards, in fact just the opposite. We are talking about the race to the bottom in labor itself. I suspect a bit of looking around can find a lot of places where 1 American + 1 machine is slightly more expensive than 4 third-worlders + shipping + no machine. Sometimes the machines have progressed so fast that work has moved back onshore (and funny that all the moaning about "helping people that live on 2cents/day" isn't heard when that happens), which is cool but it still is the exception.

    But: how limited is the number of "capitalists" that are going to bother to invest in bringing down the cost of that machine when you can drive the cost of humans down in almost unlimited fashion? - there are actually limits, and we will eventually hit them but it will get a lot uglier if we do it that way.

    Cry Shop , June 21, 2016 at 9:32 am

    And the whole issue is treating fellow human beings as less deserving, less worthy of employment just because of their nationality.

    There will always be that other half of the working class that can be used to kill the other half when pushed hard enough, any definition will do for separating the class in to us vs them, so that the war can start. Unions blew it when in the 1970s when their leadership sold out, refused to go international with trade agreements, and focused on protecting an indefensible position, indefensible from both an economics view and from an ethics view.

    Jay M , June 21, 2016 at 3:48 pm

    During the cold war the American Labor union movement was thoroughly anti-communist and in bed with the CIA as far coordinating with international labor. See wiki on Jay Lovestone for a bit of the flavor of the times.

    Bill Smith , June 21, 2016 at 11:41 am

    My point was that we ended up with one less minimum wage job because the cost of labor made it better for the company to buy the more automated piece of equipment.

    That example had nothing to do with off-shoring – though I now work in a company of about two dozen people who has off-shored some work. I am going to guess about the equivalent of two full time jobs.

    I was quite surprised when that decision was made given our small size but it has worked as explained to us when it started.

    Steve Gunderson , June 21, 2016 at 5:12 pm

    How many things does the new machine buy?

    cnchal , June 21, 2016 at 11:40 pm

    Looked at that way, the machine buys it's consumables and raw material used in the process. It would have done that anyway, were Bill's company to decide to buy a simpler machine and employ one more person, but because of the automation, and as long as sales justify it, the more advanced machine will process more raw material and use more consumables because it has the potential to run 24 hours per day, whereas an employee would be seeing stars after an eight hour shift, due to repetitious boring work.

    Felix_47 , June 21, 2016 at 9:26 am

    Good point. Also consider litigation costs which to most employers in Ca at least is a huge financial and management burder. A couple of worker's comp sore backs or knees combined with chiropractor, "pain management doctors," surgeons, secondary psychic stress etc. makes a lot of employers including me realize that every employee is a ticking liability time bomb just waiting to call that 1-800-hurt at work number. No business can hire Americans in this legal environment unless they are very well paid well beyond their value so they have no option but to do the job. In fact, in my business litigation/medical/disability costs are far more significant than hourly wages. We just can't take the risk and we outsource everything and hire as few as possible and I am not alone.. We do everything possible to avoid hiring low level workers and when we do we want young recent immigrants who are not "Americanized" and lawyer prone. Even then we get burned more often than not with claims for age related conditions. Then it is simply 1-800-Lastimado en Trabajo and you can see the ads all over the busses in TJ before they come over….ads for Ca worker's comp attorneys!!!! Lawyers, since they control the democratic party are a huge part of our unemployment problem. No employer can take the worker's comp risk of an older employee. If they feel back ache or knee ache or neck ache on the job…it is "aggravated" and the employer is often out hundreds of thousands….thanks to the lawyers who write the laws. Don't count on this lawyer in chief or the next one to do anything about it. Age discrimination and automation and outsourcing are survival tactics for most of the businesses I work with, including my own.

    tegnost , June 21, 2016 at 9:58 am

    medicare for all

    JohnnySacks , June 21, 2016 at 10:41 am

    Yes indeed, there's a reason big business doesn't want medicare for all – it would result in the ultimate 'flexible workforce'. Workers immediately bailing out of every shit show employment situation they manage to fall into at the drop of the hat with no COBRA or insurance dead zones. But on the other side of the coin, it would ramp up the Uber jitney economy of on-demand disposable workers lined up holding signs displaying their skill sets for a day's pay at the highway on-ramps at 6:30 AM (or, as the neo-liberal mindset would frame it – the entrepreneurs).

    Steve Gunderson , June 21, 2016 at 5:13 pm

    Thats pretty much how the movie/tv industry operates in Hollywood.

    armchair , June 21, 2016 at 10:17 am

    Damn it, we could unleash potent forces if we just got rid of the lawyers. When a person's knee gets torn up on the job, give em' a couple grand, an aspirin and tell them to get over it. That's all you need to do.

    Think about this. If the states weren't so desperate for money, they wouldn't have to run the system on the cheap. If health costs were lowered, then the system wouldn't be so expensive. A worker's comp agency has to balance its objectives between not bankrupting the state and not screwing over hurt people. A hurt worker without an advocate is a sitting duck. One way to make lawyers go away is to abolish worker's rights. Alternatively the worker's comp system would be cheaper if health costs were cheaper, and realistic settlements without the assistance of a lawyer might be possible if states had more revenue to pay bills.

    JTMcPhee , June 21, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    History of Work Comp as I remember it - speaking of how "the company" counts its beans: Johns Manville had a problem with people getting slowly sicker on the job (handling asbestos) starting late in the 1800s paid doctors to do studies that proved the asbestos-asbestosis-mesothelioma connection, and gave some rates of worsening of the diseases and hence points at which workers could no longer work. The researchers and doctors were paid for and threatened into silence on the findings, and required to ignore their Hippocratic obligations. Workers had to go to company doctors, who would nurse them along until they were fired for inability.

    At first, the court system's tort law provided the persistent with some compensation and support commensurate with the harm. Many cases settled, but all contained non-disclosure mousetraps (tell anyone and you lose everything.) And of course the "experts" who testified for both sides were sworn to secrecy too, for money or from fear. But Manville and other corporate creatures got inspired, starting around the 1890s I think, to pitch and successfully write (lobby) into law that "workers comp" system that persists - places an administratively determined value on the "injury," percent of disability, and the rest, bars tort litigation for WC-"covered" injuries. Even with all that, a lawyer is often needed because the fokking corporate swine do everything in their considerable power and corrupting reach to avoid even paying out the pittance WC provides, especially long-term treatments and care for the many horrific injuries. Once again, the hope is that the injured worker will GO DIE. And yes, there are cheaters, but gee, how surprising that the profits from fokking over the workers so far outweigh the little bits that a few people scam from the other side. Many of the patients I tried to help when I worked as a nurse were WC, and the treatment they got from the insurers, and the "employee advocates" and "nurse case managers" and defense lawyers acting on screw-the-worker policies of long standing, was amazingly cruel.

    "Bankrupting the state?" WC is paid, far as I know, at least in FL, out of an insurance pool that is funded by employers. Subject to the same kinds of actuarial calculations that any other large-pool insurance game undertakes in underwriting. And yes, universal health care (not Obamacare) would, if it could be managed without the full usual apparently inescapable corruption by neoliberal interests and thinking, reduce EVERYONE's costs. And states are "desperate for money" largely because the Chamber of Commerce and other neoliberal fokkers like the Kochs have strangled the public general-welfare income stream and diverted most of what is left to various kinds of "white man's welfare" and corporate gifts.

    Here in FL, "worker's rights" are already largely abolished, and the mopping up continues. Just so's you know. There are still lawyers who will (for a cut of the limited amounts that WC will pay out if they finally prevail, to the worker's and family's detriment, "take cases." What I learned in law school, first week in Contracts and Torts and Constitutional Law, is that "There are no rights without effective remedies." What remedies do workers have?

    And for those who want to shoot at the VA, on "inefficiency" grounds and the other neoliberal overt and covert assaults, VA disability is a Workers Comp program too. Max payout for a GI who is 100% permanently and totally disabled is around $30,000 a year. There is no component as with other kinds of insurance structures for enhanced damages for "bad faith" on the part of the government and the privatized functions that make up the disability administration. "Thank you for your service, Sucker!!" And that "award" usually only comes after a decade or more of fighting with a well documented opposition from the people who administer the "system" and requires persistence, luck, and occasionally benefits (not so much any more) from intervention by the injured GI's elected representative…

    animalogic , June 21, 2016 at 8:57 pm

    All this talk of workplace injury, lawyers and workers comp misses the obvious point that some of these workplaces must be UNSAFE. (It's always the other workplace that's unsafe–"our" worker comp payouts are always rorts).

    The answer to all worker comp issues is the same: universal mandatory insurance run by the state and work that minimises physical/psychological injury.
    Naturally it won't occur as its a cost to business….

    reslez , June 21, 2016 at 1:03 pm

    Heaven forbid employers pay for the body parts they use up and destroy in their workers.

    I agree with Anon, universal health care would resolve a lot of these issues. When the cost is spread out employers whine less when their workers are hurt.

    allan , June 21, 2016 at 8:36 am

    Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD-with low levels of labor market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of collective bargaining coverage-the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor force participation rates of OECD member countries.

    Francois Hollande to the white courtesy phone.

    Larry , June 21, 2016 at 9:56 am

    This song was made in 1983…and the same crap that Run-DMC mention in the lyrics still exists today:

    Unemployment at a record highs
    People coming, people going, people born to die
    Don't ask me, because I don't know why
    But it's like that, and that's the way it is
    People in the world tryin to make ends meet
    You try to ride car, train, bus, or feet
    I said you got to work hard, you want to compete
    It's like that, and that's the way it is
    Huh!
    Money is the key to end all your woes
    Your ups, your downs, your highs and your lows
    Won't you tell me the last time that love bought you clothes?
    It's like that, and that's the way it is
    Bills rise higher every day
    We receive much lower pay
    I'd rather stay young, go out and play
    It's like that, and that's the way it is
    Huh!
    Wars going on across the sea
    Street soldiers killing the elderly
    Whatever happened to unity?
    It's like that, and that's the way it is

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hN1SKVx31s

    tony , June 21, 2016 at 3:36 pm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUoiFH6Aw7o

    I like old Ice-T.

    The thing about being a man near the bottom in a country with low social mobility means it is extremely hard to get girls. Jordan B Peterson said in The Age of Unequals discussion that the primary motivation for men to become criminals is because it is the only way to have a chance at attractive women. That has been my personal experience with crime too.

    Enquiring Mind , June 21, 2016 at 9:56 am

    Ageism takes many forms, some more subtle than others. When your friendly local HR department makes a few tweaks to benefits, the newer employees don't notice, but the wizened veterans take notice. They see the handwriting earlier, and brace themselves for the next steps.

    The HR folks are acting rationally in their supply-side worldview as they look out for shareholders first and consider employees well down the list, if not at the bottom. That treatment of personnel represents a policy of a very high effective discount rate on human capital in the aggregate. When parsed out, there are a few nuances that make the picture clearer. When the top handful get outsized payouts, they are incentivized to reinforce that high human capital discount rate, to the detriment of those down range.

    The graphics showed an acceleration in the ominous trends in the early and mid 1990s. That coincided with the great outsourcing, re-engineeing, re-euphemising of jobs and the economy. In that era, Fortune magazine published a series of articles about the changing nature of the social contract at work.

    One takeaway reflected the new bargain: companies needed to provide interesting work to retain employees, and the latter had to continue to make themselves employable. Those veteran employees referenced above discerned that there wasn't a bargain but a mandate to become more efficient, all presented with the window dressing of so-called interesting work.

    A more honest presentation would have said work that meets the interest or discount rate, as part of the increasing financialization of the world. The decline in trust also accelerated during that period, whether in companies or the media. We continue to reap the results of that widespread mistrust and discontent during the current election cycle.

    wobblie , June 21, 2016 at 10:08 am

    A result of blind Liberal/Conservative policies.

    https://therulingclassobserver.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/ruling-class-axioms/

    Winston , June 21, 2016 at 10:16 am

    a different Chris , please listen (see below) and read what Clayton Christensen has been saying. Big companies are mostly brands now. Have offshored main parts of company. Last stage in that development is decline of company, as in case of steel. IBM is presently also classic case as on road to failure as well for same reason. It started at IBM with Gerstner.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/18/clayton-christensen-how-pursuit-of-profits-kills-innovation-and-the-us-economy/#3e737b19992a

    Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

    Christensen at Gartner Symposium:
    http://gartner.mediasite.com/mediasite/play/9cfe6bba5c7941e09bee95eb63f769421d?t=1320659595

    Gartner Symposium ITExpo

    Oh and state/local gopvts favor large companies over small companies!

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/05/30/why-ibm-is-in-decline/#5aaa6e284c53

    Why IBM Is In Decline

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-end-in-sight-for-ibm-decline-as-shares-near-six-year-low-141729837.html
    No end in sight for IBM decline as shares near six-year low

    http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/shortchanging
    Shortchanging Small Business: How Big Businesses Dominate State Economic Development Incentives

    Denis Drew , June 21, 2016 at 10:59 am

    In a labor market that contains for the sake of argument 50% rich country workers (e.g., American raised) and 50% poor country workers (anywhere else raised) - must be something like Chicago which is 40% white, 40% black, 20% Hispanic …

    … where pay is set by what I call "subsistence-plus"; meaning set STARTING at the absolute minimum pay workers will tolerate (e.g., $800/wk for American born taxi drivers, me; $400 for foreign born) and then PLUS some more for each additional level of skill (bottom for McDonald's, more for better English in Starbucks, more for college English and more competent organizing in Whole foods?) …
    instead of pay set by the highest price the consumer is willing to pay - by collective bargaining or a minimum wage …

    … a huge dropout of low skilled, rich country workers will occur as low skilled work pays much below what rich country workers look at as "minimum subsistence" (the labor market will not clear). E.g., American born taxi drivers (me again) and the Crips and the Bloods. How else explain that 100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 Chicago, gang-age males are in street gangs?

    To make the psychological point about "minimum subsistence", today's rich county labor would gladly work for half of today's poor country minimum - if it were 100 years ago and that's the best a much less productive economy could pay. It's psychological, but a lot of psychological if DNA immutable.

    Now here's the wind-up - that should implant permanently the unquestionable need for collective bargaining in all labor transactions: A what I call subsistence-plus labor market with 100% rich country workers will have lower pay levels than a collective bargaining labor market with 50% rich/50% poor country workers.

    That's the whole law and the profits about the need to make union busting a felony (starting in progressive states) as far as I'm concerned.

    PS. This is not an endorsement of Donald Trump's anti-immigration bender - that would kick down the pillars that our whole civilization is built on (sorry Native Americans) - that could mean 250 million Americans by 2050 instead of the anticipated 500 million. This IS an endorsement or rebuilding high labor union density - the missing balance-of-power pillars of our civilization. (Don't forget centralized bargaining - the "compleat" balance-of-power pillar of a unionized labor market.

    Charger01 , June 22, 2016 at 2:48 pm

    David Simon covered this in "The Wire" and "Show me a Hero", you have entire sections of the population that are forced to leave or participate in crime as a viable form of employment. We have a surplus population now- and going forward that are not supporter by their labor or any other resource other than transfer payments.
    Please pause a moment and consider that concept. We have a paucity of credible jobs that people can cobble together a living, let alone increase their opportunities going forward.

    nothing but the truth , June 21, 2016 at 11:33 am

    when everyone is trying to game the system no one has the right to cry morality.

    i have some small businesses that i am selling off. Too many overhead, insurance and legal costs. The line of business is becoming a slave to govt mandated costs and regulations. Customers more interested in injury lawsuits. IQ and attitude of younger employees noticeably poor.

    not looking good.

    Sandwichman , June 21, 2016 at 11:44 am

    "THE LONG-TERM DECLINE IN PRIME-AGE MALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION" report states:

    "Conventional economic theory posits that more 'flexible' labor markets-where it is easier to hire and fire workers-facilitate matches between employers and individuals who want to work. Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD-with low levels of labor market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of collective bargaining coverage-the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor force participation rates of OECD member countries."

    I have been following this so-called "conventional economic theory" closely for nearly 20 years now and can attest that it is not a theory but a hollow assertion. Empirical "evidence" for this assertion is based on "strong priors": models containing assumptions that generate outcomes consistent with the assertions. GIGO!

    At the core of the flexible labour markets dogma is obeisance to the great god NAIRU, which Jamie Galbraith exposed in all its Emperor's New Clothes nakedness 20 long years ago: "Time to Ditch the NAIRU"

    https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.11.1.93

    "The concept of a natural rate of unemployment, or non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), remains controversial after twenty-five years. This essay presents a brief for no-confidence, in four parts. First, the theoretical case for the natural rate is not compelling. Second, the evidence for a vertical Phillips curve and the associated accelerationist hypothesis that lowering unemployment past the NAIRU leads to unacceptable acceleration of inflation is weak. Third, economists have failed to reach professional consensus on estimating the NAIRU. Fourth, adherence to the concept as a guide to policy has major social costs but negligible benefits."

    In "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market" Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman grafted the dubious NAIRU concept onto the anachronistic lump-of-labor fallacy claim to create the hybrid chimera "LUMP-OF-OUTPUT FALLACY" in which central banks enforcing NAIRU anti-inflation policy would ensure that you couldn't redistribute working time. You can't make this stuff up. But Layard, Nickell and Jackman did. Nonsense on stilts.

    "To many people, shorter working hours and early retirement appear to be common-sense solutions for unemployment. But they are not, because they are not based on any coherent theory of what determines unemployment. The only theory behind them is the lump-of-output theory: output is a given. In this section we have shown that output is unlikely to remain constant."

    This is simply not true. Shorter working hours is based on the same theory as the theory of full employment fiscal policy. Keynes's theory. But don't take my word for it. In an April 1945 letter to T.S. Eliot, Keynes wrote:

    "The full employment policy by means of investment is only one particular application of an intellectual theorem. You can produce the result just as well by consuming more or working less. Personally I regard the investment policy as first aid. In U.S. it almost certainly will not do the trick. Less work is the ultimate solution."

    Galbraith's "Time to Ditch NAIRU" has 293 citations on Google Scholar. Layard et al's "Unemployment" has 5824. Economists flock to dogma like flies to shit.

    Jefe , June 21, 2016 at 12:01 pm

    Old and in the way….

    dc , June 21, 2016 at 12:30 pm

    The Oxycontin Report

    Ishmael , June 21, 2016 at 2:00 pm

    Some strong starting points without requiring additional govt interference:

    Shut down both legal and illegal immigration. When you can not employ the ones who are here why let more in.

    Inforce the borders and deport people who are here illegally.

    Get rid of anchor babies

    Put tariffs on imports and I mean substantial tariffs. Worrying about Smoot Hawley is a canard. At that time the US was the biggest exporter now we are the biggest importer. I would also have a sliding scale depending upon labor rights. Some would scream we need to worry about the poor in these countries. How about worrying about the poor in this country. It has reached the point that you need to look around at your family and friends and say what would you do so that these people prosper. If you are not willing to say practically anything legally then you will probably not prosper.

    Cut back govt at all levels. This is a major misallocation of resources. This is especially true of the military industrial security area. Come up with new health care laws. Focus resources to generate more doctors in the US and less people with unproductive degrees.

    Close down overseas bases. Stop wars.

    Ishmael , June 21, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    One other thing, if you look at a lot of the jobs that men use to take and make a good living it was construction, plumbing, gardening, janitorial, cooks and etc. All of these jobs have been filled by illegal aliens who live 25 to a house, pay no taxes, get free health care and suppress wages.

    I know, I am a racist!

    tony , June 21, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    Assuming there are enough natural resources, it is quite possible to arrange an economy in a way that benefits the population of the recipient country. Think about it. The immigrants are healthy, hardworking adults. So you get their labour without investing in twenty years of raising them and then taking on the burden of those who are unhealthy or anti-social.

    The US is an immigrant country with a weak safety net so an intelligent policy could easily benefit both parties.

    hunkerdown , June 21, 2016 at 4:10 pm

    With respect, if your givens were in the least interesting or useful to the greater good, rather than articles of faith (which is just a polite term for self-delusion that benefits the power structure) designed to benefit your imaginary friends, satisfy your need to dominate and abuse others, and give your poor lonely misery some company, you might have something worth a detailed, thoughtful response. As it is, I think you need to explain yourself a bit better.

    Ishmael , June 21, 2016 at 4:52 pm

    Seems very clear to me. You must have a low IQ if you need someone to explain it to you.

    Illegal aliens generally do not pay taxes because they get paid with cash! Sorry, if they have to pay such taxes like sales tax that everyone else needs to pay.

    hunkerdown , June 21, 2016 at 5:52 pm

    "Stupid" is typical American conformist speak for "would offend my bosses".

    You had two points that sounded reasonable: "Shut down both legal and illegal immigration. When you can not employ the ones who are here why let more in." Because markets. Those who own a government that was designed to be bought want to drive down the price and increase the availability ("flexibility") of all labor, of course. Plenty of Americans would be happy to work off the books for a less demeaning wage under less demeaning conditions and less demeaning people. (As if Social Security isn't going to be looted by the oligarchs by the time I'm of age to retire) They wouldn't risk death and torture to come here if EMPLOYERS weren't withdrawing the benefits of employment from those already here and offering those benefits to others. While stopping the influx would be a fine idea, until you get control over those who are paying them to come here - making EMPLOYERS into felons for any support of immigration violations would be a far, far more effective use of enforcement power than beating down brown people at arm's length to satisfy your cultural conceits - supply and demand works both ways.

    And "Put tariffs on imports and I mean substantial tariffs" is in the right spirit, but fails to acknowledge, with the usual hostility to self-awareness and past actions that defines the USAmerican "mind", that other nations have just as much right to respond any way they feel like, and the "trade agreements" the USA has signed grant them contractual grounds (pacta sunt servandum, remember?) to respond disproportionately with their own tariffs, penalties against the USG, and other demerits in the international sphere which are not constrained by your triumphalism in any way. Those means would not be as effective as simply repudiating every multilateral "trade"-related agreement the USA has ever signed and not, quite literally, pawning the USA for a mess of bourgeois pottage.

    It's ridiculous that you should be depending on the US government to evaluate human rights conditions, when human authorities are never bound by evidence unless they want to be. Malaysia's admission into the TPP, and the politically-driven mulligan they received on their human rights conditions, shows the utter folly of letting ambitious bourgeois careerists hide behind corporate veils of any sort.

    If you only believe that people who pay taxes should have rights, you support the very definition of plutocracy, and that makes you a disease vector.

    ProNewerDeal , June 21, 2016 at 4:25 pm

    "illegal aliens…pay no taxes, get free health care"

    You have it back-a*ward. Undocumented workers pay taxes (FICA, SS, etc deductions), that they will not receive when they reach old/SS age, even if they are in the US at that future time. There is no "free health care" for undocumented workers, not eligible for Medicaid or ACA. Emergency room service does not qualify as health care.

    Even US citizens have to go through a bureaucratic nightmare to get & maintain Medicaid or ACA, which is CRAPPY INSURANCE, not ACTUAL HEALTH CARE. At the point of needing actual health care, USians are often denied the service or the insurance refuses to pay after the service is done & face another bureaucratic nightmare in fighting the payment refusal. Undocumented workers lack access to even this crapified level of "health coverage".

    I do agree that increasing supply (H1-B for STEM pros, undocumented for HS-degreed workers) lowers wages. Also, restricting supply (AMA restricting physician graduates such that US physicians per capita lower than OECD levels) increases wages. Econ101 supply & demand, perhaps neoliberal economists need "retraining" & should enroll in Econ101 at the local community college.

    If there was an actual desire to limit undocumented immigration, the solution is large fines on Illegal Employers. How about $100K per undocumented worker found. In addition, end the Drug War, which causes violence & refugees, especially in Mexico & Central America. Revoke or at least amend NAFTA to un-decimate the MEX agricultural industry.

    Ishmael , June 21, 2016 at 4:53 pm

    Generally I have no problem with large fines for companies which employ illegal aliens.

    marym , June 21, 2016 at 4:39 pm

    People who work "off the books" don't pay income taxes regardless of their immigration status. They do pay many other types of taxes, often regressive – sales tax, excise tax, property tax (or their landlord's property tax.

    DarkMatters , June 21, 2016 at 11:58 pm

    1. "When you can not employ the ones who are here why let more in."
    Cui bono? Because EMPLOYERS love it, from large corporations to my neighbors who hire low-paid gardeners. Maybe this class-ifies me, but that would have considered to be an extravagance when I was growing up. I wonder how many people who complain about illegal immigrants actually rely on their services?

    2. "Inforce the borders and deport people who are here illegally. Get rid of anchor babies"
    Bit late for that. I do agree we really have made a mess that needs attention and an intelligent cleanup. Even so, do you think we could competently amend the Constitution at this point, which is what it would take? Practically, I do think that better border security coupled with (really) improved labor conditions, both here and in Mexico (Imagine! An international labor effort!) could improve things. But TTIP and TTP are pushing the other way.

    3. "Put tariffs on imports and I mean substantial tariffs."
    I like the idea, but only sovereign nations can do this, and we're not. We're subject to international courts. In this case, specifically, expect corporate lawsuits against the USA, arguing that the US should compensate corporations for loss of profits caused by said tariffs. These will be arbitrated by Investor-State Dispute Resolution panels, courtesy of said TTIP and TTP, where the no-appeal panels are staffed by international trade lawyers, who otherwise work for international corporations. Yes, by all means, worry about the poor in this country, but don't leave out anyone else.

    4. "Cut back government at all levels."
    Down with traffic lights! (This statement of yours hooked me into writing this entire reply). Strict libertarians strike me as being more than a little Pollyann-ish. The only historical example that comes close are now called the dark ages. In those idyllic times, a bunch of French Norman good-ol' boys could hie themselves over to Italy and wreak havoc, I mean make their fortune. Governments are necessary to contain dispute resolution, and so require power superior to all other factions, but, for the sake of equal justice, should be accountable in some way to all. I could go on, but "no government" advocacy in our times leaves a power vacuum just at a time when corporations and financiers are doing their best to take over. As the Federalists argued, we do need a strong government, to ensure that the will of the people can be vigorously asserted. Not to say that it's working out so great right now, but it would be nice if we could in some way place competent people at the helm to right the ship. Speaking of Pollyanna….

    RD , June 21, 2016 at 4:33 pm

    All labor reform policies put forth by Republicans and their policy activation arm (Dems) have been to make life easier and richer for CEO's, not to help workers. So now economists are surprised by the results? What a useful profession they are.

    run75441 , June 21, 2016 at 7:59 pm

    Yves:

    You already have him on your thread. The 40 hour work week was established under Roosevelt. If you wish to reverse or stave off the declining Participation Rate, then decrease the required number of hours work to 32. We have agreed before that Labor is the lowest cost when compared to Overhead or Materials. In the end, the difference in cost would be made up by higher productivity.

    Sandwichman is a proponent of this and I agree with his analysis.

    [May 01, 2016] Why I (Belatedly) Blew the Whistle on the SECs Failure to Properly Investigate Goldman Sachs

    Notable quotes:
    "... By James A. Kidney, former SEC attorney. Originally published at Watch the Circus ..."
    "... Pro Publica ..."
    "... Pro Publica's ..."
    "... The New York Times ..."
    "... The New York Times ..."
    "... The New York Times ..."
    "... The New York Times ..."
    "... Dodd-Frank at best imposes generalized rules about bank size and other generic issues, rather than addressing the kinds of fraudulent actions that actually occurred. It is appropriate for the SEC or Federal Reserve to impose narrower changes in corporate practice to address specific kinds of fraud. They are called "undertakings" and are often imposed by civil settlements with the SEC or in litigated relief. It did not happen with the Big Bank frauds. ..."
    "... The only reason to keep the information secret is to prevent embarrassment to the SEC or to those people who made decisions for the agency. Most of them left the SEC years ago. For public consumption, I have tried to redact all names of the non-supervisory personnel in the Division of Enforcement who worked on Goldman. I also must add that, as the emails show, for a period of time those dedicated investigators were excited about the notion of bringing at least a slightly broader action than their supervisors wanted. As is the case with much of the Division of Enforcement, the worker bees try hard and usually are fearless. It is their bosses who frequently suppress their enthusiasm for policy, political, or personal reasons. ..."
    "... The author is trying very hard to be nice to the point of being delusional. This is criminality and corruption through and through, and it didn't end in '08. Don't be sad… get mad. ..."
    "... This man has risked a lot to do what he did. He's lost more than many of you will realize. If he can't just crap on the old life and the old profession, please, cut the man a little slack. You don't want to be him. ..."
    "... James A. Kidney, former trial attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, retired from the SEC in 2014 at the age of 66 after 24 years working there. Looks like he had a full career, although had to put up with a lot of bullshit, and possibly soured some relationships on his way out. ..."
    "... Very similar situation here. Going on 50, unemployed in my chosen field, etc. And yes, its hard to just walk away sometimes… I have to keep my mind focused ahead instead of looking back. ..."
    "... I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters who wound up losing their jobs who initially blame themselves, than come to accept that the system in which they operated was fundamentally corrupt, that even if some people locally really were trying to do the right thing, it was bound to either 1. go nowhere, 2. be allowed to proceed to a more meaningful level if it was cosmetic or served some larger political purpose or 3. got elevated because the organization was suddenly in trouble and they needed to burnish their cred in a big way (a variant of 2, except with 3, you might have a something serious take place by happenstance of timing). ..."
    "... (other whistleblowers) ..."
    "... (other whistleblowers) ..."
    "... (other whistleblowers) ..."
    "... (other whistleblowers) ..."
    "... the system in which they operated ..."
    "... (some employees) ..."
    "... 'investigating fraud' ..."
    April 24, 2016

    Yves here. Two things struck me about Jim Kidney's article below. One is that he still wants to think well of his former SEC colleagues. I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters who wound up losing their jobs who initially blame themselves, than come to accept that the system in which they operated was fundamentally corrupt, that even if some people locally really were trying to do the right thing, it was bound to either 1. go nowhere, 2. be allowed to proceed to a more meaningful level if it was cosmetic or served some larger political purpose or 3. got elevated because the organization was suddenly in trouble and they needed to burnish their cred in a big way (a variant of 2, except with 3, you might have a something serious take place by happenstance of timing). Kidney does criticize corrosive practices, particularly the SEC stopping developing its own lawyers and becoming dependent on the revolving door, but his criticisms seem muted relative to the severity of the problems.

    Number two, and related, are the class assumptions at work. The SEC does not want to see securities professionals at anything other than bucket shops as bad people. At SEC conferences, agency officials are virtually apologetic and regularly say, "We know you are honest people who want to do the right thing." Please tell me where else in law enforcement is that the underlying belief.

    By James A. Kidney, former SEC attorney. Originally published at Watch the Circus

    The New Yorker and Pro Publica websites today posted an article by Pro Publica's Jesse Eisinger about the de minimis investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into the conduct of Goldman Sachs in the sale of derivatives based on mortgage-backed securities during the run-up to the Great Recession of 2008. The details of the SEC's failure to aggressively pursue Goldman in the particular investigation, Abacus, and its refusal to investigate fully misconduct by Goldman and other "Too Big to Fail" banks, stands not only as a historic misstep by the SEC and its Division of Enforcement, but undermines the claim that the Obama Administration has been "tough on Wall Street." The Pro Publica version contains links to a few of the documents I provided.

    No one in authority who was involved in the Goldman investigation ever gave me an explanation for why the effort was so slight. Mr. Eisinger's article doesn't offer any explanation from the one investigation participant brave enough to comment. The details of the investigation into Abacus at my level as trial counsel, which I provided to Pro Publica earlier this year, compels the conclusion that the SEC, its chairman at the time, Mary Schapiro, and the leadership of the Division of Enforcement were more interested in a quick public relations hit than in pursuing a thorough investigation of Goldman, Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan and other large Wall Street firms.

    Although the emails and documents I produced to Pro Publica stemming from my role as the designated (later replaced) trial attorney for the Division of Enforcement are excruciatingly boring to all but the most dedicated securities lawyer, even a lay person can observe that the Division of Enforcement was more anxious to publicize a quick lawsuit than to follow the trail of clues as far up the chain-of-command at Goldman as the evidence warranted. Serious consideration also never was given to fraud theories in any of the Big Bank cases stemming from the Great Recession that would better tell the story of how investors were defrauded and who was responsible, due either to dereliction or design.

    Instead, the SEC restricted its investigation to the narrowest theory of liability, had to be pressed (by me) to go even one short rung above the lowest level Goldman supervisor in its investigation (which took months to push through, though investigative subpoenas are frequently issued on far less in far smaller cases) and finally dropped other investigations of Goldman in return for a $550 million settlement announced July 15, 2010. To my knowledge (I retired in March 2014), the SEC never again pursued Goldman for its mortgage securities fraud or other major fraud. There is no evidence on the SEC website that it did so.

    Nearly six years later, long after the statute of limitations for securities fraud expired and individuals, pension funds and corporate entities are no longer able to bring private actions against the Big Banks, the Department of Justice announced another settlement with Goldman for its deceptive conduct in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. In this one, Goldman agreed to pay more than $5 billion "in connection with its sale of residential mortgage-backed securities."

    At a minimum, it can be said that the SEC left 90 percent of the money on the table at a time when a more aggressive investigation of the company, as well as others, could have counted for something by disclosing, in a detailed court complaint, Wall Street wrongs that might have helped policy makers better address the subject and allow damaged individuals and entities to bring their own lawsuits.

    It is very important to emphasize emphatically several points. First, I have zero evidence, and would be very surprised, if any of the individuals at the Division of Enforcement, including senior supervisors or the SEC chairman or associate commissioners, acted unlawfully or were motivated principally to protect Goldman and other big banks. All of these people appeared well-intentioned from their point of view, even they never really explained, to me, or to many others at the Commission, their motives in limiting investigations. The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.) All of them were gentlemen. These factors make it all the more surprising that I never got a clear answer as to why the investigation was so constipated, as it obviously was. Its range was clearly limited from the outset: we will sue the bank and not look hard for evidence of individual participation beyond the lowest levels.

    By the same token, it is unfair to assume as a fact that any of the individuals at Goldman not sued, or anyone at Paulson & Co., violated the securities laws, civilly or criminally. Like any citizen, they are entitled to a day in court. Absent such opportunity, they are innocent of any wrongdoing. Arguments in my internal correspondence that evidence was sufficient to sue should be viewed only as that - arguments.

    So my point in releasing these documents to Pro Publica is not to chastise or hold up to public criticism those involved at the SEC, Paulson & Co. or Goldman, though criticism of the process and of the underlying financial conduct certainly is inevitable. All of these institutions have substantial influence in the investment industry. Rather, it is to bring to light the actual conduct of one of several SEC investigations into Big Bank fraud leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

    As I told Mr. Eisinger when I met him, I hoped he would go to the individuals in charge of the SEC investigation at the time and find out why the investigation was so limited. I have spent six years wondering what is the true answer to that question. Perhaps there were sound reasons, other than the urge to get out a quick press release, which led experienced criminal prosecutors with histories in Wall Street to smother a major investigation by limiting it to the lowest level employee possible, to express total resistance to even investigating further up the chain of command, and ignoring without serious explanation and analysis what I and others, including my own immediate supervisors, viewed as the more appropriate theory for civil prosecution. I hope there are such reasons. As a trial attorney at the SEC for over 20 years, I bled SEC blue. I believed that the agency usually tried to do the best it could, using analog era procedures and processes to combat fraud in a digital age. I am saddened to release this information. But the notion that "the Administration was tough on Wall Street" must be addressed by facts, not press releases and self-serving interviews, else the system's problems cannot be adequately addressed and repaired to deal with the next financial crisis.

    Not only is the issue of how the financial sector enforcement agencies handled the wrongs of the Great Recession an important political issue, but it is important to history. It is important that the facts not be shielded from the public so that we can all learn for the future. And it is a melancholy thought that, presented with the opportunity for a rigorous investigation and airing of facts in civil or criminal proceedings gone, history will be denied a fairer story of both the financial crisis itself and how the government responded.

    As many news organizations have noted , the taxpayer and Goldman shareholders will pay the combination of penalties and repayments in the DOJ settlement. No individual was named as liable in the civil settlement with Goldman nor in any of the other similar, and even larger, financial settlements entered into with the Department of Justice, all of which are vastly greater than what the SEC obtained in its "quick hit, one and done" enforcement actions. DOJ must be credited with what appears to have been a far more thorough investigation of wrongdoing than the SEC performed, but the public is properly mystified that no individuals were charged, criminally or civilly, although the DOJ press releases contains the usual caveat that "the investigation continues."

    The settlements with Goldman and other Big Banks were resolved under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), which allows the Feds to ignore the normal five-year statute of limitations for fraud, but does not permit suit by private party victims. As has been the practice with DOJ when dealing with Wall Street, no criminal charge was brought. In fact, no complaint was filed in any of these cases. Instead, DOJ entered into contractual arrangements with the banks. Failing to fulfill their obligations under the contract would subject them to civil enforcement as a breach of contract matter, not a contempt charge in federal District Court.

    Contrary to claims by politicians, it is clear that the Obama Administration has not been hard-hitting on Wall Street fraudsters. The large fines obtained by the Department of Justice, while a short-term pinch, are simply a cost of doing business. Relying on fines to penalize rich Wall Street banks, which, after all, specialize in making money and do it well, if not always honestly, is like fining Campbell Soup in chicken broth. It costs something, but doesn't change anything in the way of operations or personnel.

    Despite billions in fines representing many more billions in fraud, the enforcement agencies of the United States have been unable to find anyone responsible criminally or civilly for this huge business misconduct other than a janitor or two at the lowest rung of the companies. Nor have they sought to impose systemic changes to these banks to prevent similar frauds from happening again.

    Yessir, according to the Obama administration, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank and other institutions made their contributions to tearing down the economy, but no one was responsible. They are ghost companies. And nothing needs to be done to prevent such intent or dereliction in the future.

    Law enforcement by contract? Clearly, the banks made it a condition of settlement that no complaint, civil or criminal, be filed. That might gum up the works by requiring state regulators to take action under their own rules, or cause other collateral consequences.

    Ah, say the defenders of the status quo, don't forget about Dodd-Frank, the unwieldy legislation passed by feckless Democrats influenced by big money contributors and their own fear of appearing too aggressive (a particular Democratic Party contagion). Dodd-Frank was and is a virtual chum pool for Wall Street lawyers and lobbyists, leaving most of the substance to regulatory agencies such as the SEC and the Federal Reserve, who for years have been significantly captured by those they are supposed to regulate. The private sector lawyers and lobbyists have open doors to these places to "help" write the rules and add complexity, which they later complain about in court, challenging those same rules as too complex.

    Dear citizen, just remember this: complexity favors fraud, and certainly favors Wall Street and corporate America. You can't understand the rules and neither can Congress or all but the most dedicated experts. That's a lot of room to disguise misdeeds. To take a current example, which came to my attention just before completing this post, Congress is trying to use sentencing reform, generally thought of as intending to remove inequities from the criminal justice system, to also make it even tougher to prosecute and punish white-collar crime. Is this why the Koch Brothers suddenly show such public attention to the poor and needy by favoring such legislation? See this discussion of adding the "mens rea" requirement to such legislation. Burying an important but legalistic issue in otherwise liberal leaning legislation is a current example of disguising lax enforcement of white-collar crime in a complicated package. As one Democratic congressman suggested, how can a liberal vote against sentencing reform? The explanation of the badger buried in the woodpile is too complicated for the average voter.

    Not coincidentally, adding a requirement to the law that it is a defense to either the crime itself or to sentencing that "I didn't know my acts were against the law" is a get out of jail free card as the complexity of laws addressed to ever more sophisticated business misconduct grows. Wall Street clearly has shown no shame in using the defense that "no one knew". Can't blame them. It has worked so far. Maybe they don't even need new legislation.

    I was told repeatedly when I entered the Goldman investigation that synthetic CDOs were just too complex for me to understand. Of course, it appeared to be plain vanilla fraud selling a product designed to fail but nicely packaged for chumps to buy. Claims of complexity hide many easily understood sins.

    At least for the major sins, we don't need even more complex regulations. Instead, put leadership in place who will aggressively enforce the laws we have already. That would raise plenty of eyebrows and put some bums in prison, or at least make them pay civil and criminal penalties personally. As many have noted, prison or, at least, personal financial liability, beats corporate concessions every time and pays back in future reluctance to break the law. The country should try it sometime.

    So back to little me, a small and ineffective cog in the larger system. Why is this release of documents so long after the investigation?

    My friends know that I have been upset since 2010 about the way the SEC handled the Goldman case and, in my view (confirmed by other trial lawyers), that it became a template for other SEC civil suits against the Big Banks. In 2011 I wrote an anonymous letter to The New York Times complaining about the lack of investigative effort by the Division of Enforcement and the impact of the "revolving door" bringing Wall Street defense lawyers into the highest reaches of the SEC. This is a practice that Obama has continued at most departments and agencies having to do with the financial system, following in Bill Clinton's footsteps. The New York Times letter was based entirely on publicly available information.

    I was dismayed to not find any follow-up to my letter in The New York Times . I gave up trying to bring attention to the investigative lassitude of the agency. Interest appeared to be over.

    A year after I retired, I sent a copy of the letter to The Times , under a cover letter identifying myself. One of the addressees on the original letter called and told me the original letter never was received. The caller suggested that was because I misaddressed it to the old location of The New York Times . I felt foolish, of course, but I guess that in 2014, when the letter was finally received, The Times didn't see fit to follow-up the information even knowing its source. This was another indication to me that the time for debate over the law enforcement treatment of wrong doers on Wall Street had passed.

    Once, years earlier and only for a brief time, the SEC was an agency that was at least sometimes fearless of Wall Street institutions. In those days, the directors of the Division of Enforcement were home-grown, not imported from Wall Street law firms. After 1996, that ended. Every director since has been nurtured as a Wall Street defense lawyer. The decline in performance has followed an expected arc. No one has seemed bothered by this. It seems the phrase "lawyers represent client interests" is sufficient explanation to insulate this practice from critics. In this view (pushed by lawyers), lawyers are the only people in America who are not influenced by their work experience, including friendships and defense of client practices. They are SO exceptional! So give it up, Jim, I finally told myself. It's the nature of Washington to put foxes in hen houses and claim they are protecting the fowl.

    But in April 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his presidential candidacy, based principally on anger over how Wall Street has escaped being held seriously responsible for its misdeeds. If you credit Sanders with nothing else, praise him for not letting go of the notion of justice for those who suffered and those who caused pain and anger for millions. Yes, the banks are not solely responsible for the Great Recession, but they contributed more than their fair share and leveraged immensely the damage initially caused by others.

    Sanders was not treated seriously. The publications I read made it clear that Sanders was, like Donald Trump, a flash in the pan. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton would be nominated. Anger against Wall Street and inequality were issues, but not worthy vehicles for a political campaign. Nothing here. Move on.

    It turns out that the ravages caused by Wall Street are the gift that keeps on giving. As Sanders campaigned with far more success than predicted, and Secretary of State Clinton defended President Obama as "tough on Wall Street," it was evident that my small contribution to correcting the record might be timely.

    So here it is.

    Do I think Obama is responsible for the ineffective and embarrassing lay downs at the SEC and DOJ? Yes, I do. I have no idea if the President communicated to his law enforcement appointees that they should "go easy on Wall Street." Rarely is such overt instruction necessary in Washington. But it is not hard to believe that in some fashion he did send such signals, since he came into office with a mantra of letting bygones be bygones, including in the far more important arena of the false narratives for invading Iraq.

    In any event, the chairman of the SEC and the attorney general are appointed by the President. At a minimum, we can say with certainty that Obama was satisfied with their performance. It is difficult to conceive that, as a Harvard educated lawyer who also taught law at the University of Chicago, it never crossed his mind how massive civil or criminal misconduct could go on without the supervision or knowledge of at least mid-level executives. Certainly, the public criticism was brought to his attention. His response was to create a joint task force on the subject of fraud in general. Its main visible public function is to collect all the press releases on fraud prosecutions, including small-time fraud, on one website . It also offers advice to "elders" on how to avoid fraudulent scams. The pro forma mention of the task force in DOJ's announcement of the Goldman settlement signals that the Task Force doesn't do much. Again, law enforcement by press release.

    The alternative possibility, never mentioned because it is preposterous, is that big Wall Street firms so lack supervision of their lower level employees that fraud on a huge scale can be conducted without the knowledge of even mid-level executives. At the SEC, at least, such a conclusion should call for application of its "regulatory" function to impose supervisory conditions on the banks. No such action was ever undertaken. Instead, it was "pay up some money and nevermind."

    Dodd-Frank at best imposes generalized rules about bank size and other generic issues, rather than addressing the kinds of fraudulent actions that actually occurred. It is appropriate for the SEC or Federal Reserve to impose narrower changes in corporate practice to address specific kinds of fraud. They are called "undertakings" and are often imposed by civil settlements with the SEC or in litigated relief. It did not happen with the Big Bank frauds.

    I believe that the American public is entitled to accurate information about how their government works, including the important regulatory agencies. One way to do this is to fully disclose how the sausage is made, especially when the process is defective. Self-promoting press releases swallowed by a fawning business press is not sufficient. I knew I would not disclose any non-public information about the Goldman investigation while the lawsuit against Fabrice Tourre was pending. He was the one guy at Goldman the SEC sued personally. In fact, I think he was the only guy employed by any of the big banks sued personally. (Another fellow who worked with the banks - not for the banks - was sued in another case. He was found not liable, with the jury asking how come higher-ups were not in the dock and urging the investigation to continue. It wasn't.) The Tourre case concluded a few years ago with a verdict against the defendant. All appeals are exhausted. The statute of limitations has expired for private actions. Disclosure of the information I had can do no harm to the public or to pending litigation.

    The only reason to keep the information secret is to prevent embarrassment to the SEC or to those people who made decisions for the agency. Most of them left the SEC years ago. For public consumption, I have tried to redact all names of the non-supervisory personnel in the Division of Enforcement who worked on Goldman. I also must add that, as the emails show, for a period of time those dedicated investigators were excited about the notion of bringing at least a slightly broader action than their supervisors wanted. As is the case with much of the Division of Enforcement, the worker bees try hard and usually are fearless. It is their bosses who frequently suppress their enthusiasm for policy, political, or personal reasons.

    As final egotistical end note, I must say that, despite all of my personal reservations about his dedication to effective law enforcement in the financial sector, I voted for the President twice. I will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee. But I ask myself: Is this the best that two political parties given de facto monopoly over selection of presidential candidates can do?

    Whoever is nominated and elected, Republican or Democrat, I hope that he or she will recognize the need to end the practice of hiring Wall Street personnel to run our financial enforcement agencies. They should begin by looking to home-trained personnel to lead the major departments and agencies, such as Treasury, the SEC and the Department of Justice, including the chief of the Antitrust Division. These are the people who are responsible for these institutions on a daily basis and also understand the nature and importance of their mission. They have a career stake in doing an effective job. Outsiders are, in general, more interested in resume polishing for the next private job. Additionally, much great talent leaves these agencies for their own more lucrative private careers when they see their own chances for advancement blocked by outsiders or their energies trying to fairly but aggressively enforce the law sapped by timid leadership.

    One party has chastised our government on every occasion for nearly 40 years and shows no intention of reining in Big Business or Wall Street. Directly or by implication, these attacks tarnish government employees in general, making a public service career less attractive to our most talented citizens. The other party has been indifferent or ineffective in its defense of civil service and has addressed financial sector wrongs by adding to the complexity of the system rather than cutting through it. As a result, some of our businesses are above the law.

    Something has got to change. It will. The question is, will it be for the better?

    Gaylord , April 24, 2016 at 4:40 am

    The author is trying very hard to be nice to the point of being delusional. This is criminality and corruption through and through, and it didn't end in '08. Don't be sad… get mad.

    James Levy , April 24, 2016 at 6:24 am

    When it's your career, you get sad.

    A little history: I was hired, first as an adjunct, then a tenure-track professor, by the interdisciplinary Freshman teaching unit at my old university. Two years before I would have come up for tenure (and gotten it) they axed the program and switched me, against its will, to the History Department. And they reset my tenure clock to zero. Long story short, they were never going to tenure me. So I slogged on and earned my pay and got my two kids through high school. By then, my wife wanted out of the suburbs and said she was leaving, preferably with me, but leaving. So we moved to the country. This cut me off from the academic life (and nice $72,000 a year paycheck) that I had struggled for years to enter and excel in.

    So what? So, It's gone. I'm cut off. My intended life's work is ruined. At 51 I'm an unemployed naval historian with two books and seven refereed journal articles and I can't get an interview for a full-time job at a community college. How painful is this? It's murder. Hurts all the time. No more exciting lectures to give. No more university library at my beck and call. No more access to journals. No more conferences. It's an occasional one-off course and driving a delivery van.

    This man has risked a lot to do what he did. He's lost more than many of you will realize. If he can't just crap on the old life and the old profession, please, cut the man a little slack. You don't want to be him.

    H. Alexander Ivey , April 24, 2016 at 6:58 am

    Mr Levy, I am very sympathetic to your situation – long story short, I was in the forefront of the late 70s to the present, layoffs in various industries where I found myself game-fully employed. I too, no longer believe I will ever be employed full time at any job.

    But I argue that it is not that the gods do not favour us; it is that we are the outcome of bad gov't policies and unregulated (regulated for the consumer) businesses practices. Hence, my lack of sympathy or willingness to tolerate breast beating (see my April 24, 2016 at 6:44 am posting) by those who put us here.

    ahimsa , April 24, 2016 at 7:48 am

    @James Leavy

    Not sure I follow you?

    James A. Kidney, former trial attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, retired from the SEC in 2014 at the age of 66 after 24 years working there. Looks like he had a full career, although had to put up with a lot of bullshit, and possibly soured some relationships on his way out.

    From Bloomberg: SEC Goldman Lawyer Says Agency Too Timid on Wall Street Misdeeds

    inode_buddha , April 24, 2016 at 7:57 am

    Very similar situation here. Going on 50, unemployed in my chosen field, etc. And yes, its hard to just walk away sometimes… I have to keep my mind focused ahead instead of looking back.

    Are there any yacht clubs nearby you? There is like 4 of them within 10 minutes of me (I'm on the Great Lakes) You could teach sailing and rigging no doubt. Bonus: Union crane operators are required to know their rigging – they may need teachers too.

    Norb , April 24, 2016 at 10:54 am

    More than ever, I am convinced the capitalist system needs to be rejected as the means determining how goods and services are delivered. The injustice and inequality generated are too great. Finding a positive expressive outlet for this dissatisfaction will require leadership- and a new vision for the future.

    The amount of social damage being inflicted by the elite is almost beyond comprehension. Since they have successfully insulated themselves form the consequences of their actions, they remain aloof and uncaring for the plight of ordinary people, not to mention the health of the planet. This system will continue to cut more and more people off from the benefits of collective social action and effort. The work of the many, supporting the desires of the few cannot stand.

    We all have to decide the level of inequality we are willing to live with. How people answer this question will naturally sort them into common communities. Leave the isolated gated communities to the elite. Careerism, like capitalism, is a dead end if your position cannot be guaranteed. The amount of talent and passion for work wasted under the current system is another undercounted fact. Sustainability and democracy are not compatible with capitalism.

    Getting mad is only the beginning. The anger must be directed in some productive fashion. Any resistance to the current order must have broad social support and that support only has strength if self-reliant. Building these self-reliant structures is what the future will hold. If the plutocrats can build a world for themselves, why can't the common man. It only takes work,discipline, and control over the means of production.

    Workers without power, influence, and the means to obtain life necessities are slaves. Is the best the human mind can conceive a life of benevolent serfdom?

    By the way, I believe I would enjoy sitting in on one of your lectures. I'm sure I would learn much- and be a better man for it.

    local to oakland , April 24, 2016 at 11:43 am

    @James Levy … sorry to hear. I know a few who have been chewed up by the academic meat grinder. I hope you can find a productive outlet for your scholarship. Exile is hard.

    I have been helped by the stoics, and Dante.

    Ben , April 24, 2016 at 10:01 am

    And now GS is caught in the middle of 1MDB bond issue scandal using fraudulent and information.

    H. Alexander Ivey , April 24, 2016 at 6:44 am

    "The explanation of the badger buried in the woodpile is too complicated for the average voter."

    That's it! Stop right there! I will not let you (speaking to the author) BS your guilty conscience over my internet link. The average voter clearly knows they are getting screwed, that Wall Street and the voter's own bank is ripping the voter off, and most clearly, that the justice department, from state and local to federal, is enabling this injustice.

    You sir, are swimming with sharks. Your morality is "is it legal?", your justification is "for the shareholder". Therefore, you refuse to see the mendacity and instead excuse it for ignorance.

    JACK SKWAT , April 24, 2016 at 7:39 am

    I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters who wound up losing their jobs who initially blame themselves, than come to accept that the system in which they operated was fundamentally corrupt, that even if some people locally really were trying to do the right thing, it was bound to either 1. go nowhere, 2. be allowed to proceed to a more meaningful level if it was cosmetic or served some larger political purpose or 3. got elevated because the organization was suddenly in trouble and they needed to burnish their cred in a big way (a variant of 2, except with 3, you might have a something serious take place by happenstance of timing).

    Wow, that's a mouthful – and it's only one sentence. Whilst I love your pieces, I've noticed that many of the articles – at least the run up summation to the articles – tend to be written in a stream-of-consciousness style that, frankly, is hard to digest. This seems to be the case more now than in the past. I don't know if you're harried or on an impossible schedule, but could you please make your syntax easier to read? Thanks from a long-time reader and donator.

    readerOfTeaLeaves , April 24, 2016 at 3:18 pm

    Because it's a Sunday and I have time to goof off, one potential revision - b/c I believe what Mr Kidney has to say is important enough for me to spend a few minutes on one potential suggestion. I've amended and added what I hope are accurate meanings:

    ----
    Focusing on these as the key subject /verb pairs:
    I know (other whistleblowers)
    (other whistleblowers) [lost their jobs]
    (other whistleblowers) [blamed themselves – initially]

    (other whistleblowers) [finally… accept]
    the system in which they operated … [was corrupt]
    … even if… (some employees) tried to [be competent]

    (It - there's a problem with 'it' as the subject, because we are unclear what 'it' refers back to - I'll interpret 'it' as 'investigating fraud' ) was bound to…
    -------------–

    I know other whistleblowers and internal dissenters. They wound up losing their jobs.
    Initially, they blamed themselves, until they finally came to accept that the system in which they operated was so fundamentally corrupt that they could not retain a sense of their own integrity while working within the organization.

    Despite the fact that some people really were trying to do the right thing, for reasons that I will explain, investigating fraud was bound to go in one of only three directions:
    1. fraud would not be investigated at all,
    2. fraud investigation would serve the agency's need for better public relations - in other words, the appearance of fraud investigation would be allowed to proceed, but only if it was merely cosmetic (or served some larger political purpose), or else
    3. fraud investigation became temporarily elevated, but only because the organization* was suddenly in trouble – and consequently, needed to burnish its credibility by actually investigating fraud.

    (Although 3 is a variant of 2, in the third option, credible fraud investigation could occur if, and only if, political necessity enabled competent SEC employees to actually investigate fraud in order to maintain the reputation of the SEC).

    [NOTE: *It's not entirely clear here whether 'the organization' is the target business, or whether it is the SEC (which would need to burnish it's cred in the face of bad publicity)]
    ------------

    Not sure how close I came to the author's intended meanings, but I thought that I'd give it a shot.

    Yves Smith Post author , April 24, 2016 at 4:25 pm

    The sentence parses correctly even though it is long. Stream of consciousness often does not parse correctly, plus another characteristic is the jumbling of ideas or observations. The point is to try to recreate the internal state of the character.

    For instance, from David Lodge's novel "The British Museum Is Falling Down":

    It partook, he thought, shifting his weight in the saddle, of metempsychosis, the way his humble life fell into moulds prepared by literature. Or was it, he wondered, picking his nose, the result of closely studying the sentence structure of the English novelists? One had resigned oneself to having no private language any more, but one had clung wistfully to the illusion of a personal property of events. A find and fruitless illusion, it seemed, for here, inevitably came the limousine, with its Very Important Personage, or Personages, dimly visible in the interior. The policeman saluted, and the crowd pressed forward, murmuring 'Philip', 'Tony', 'Margaret', 'Prince Andrew'.

    More generally:

    The Stream of Consciousness style of writing is marked by the sudden rise of thoughts and lack of punctuations.

    The sentence may be longer than you like but this is not stream of consciousness. A clear logical structure ("first, second, third") is the antithesis of stream of consciousness.

    fiscalliberal , April 24, 2016 at 8:13 am

    I fail to see why fraud is not prosecuted. We can get cute with fancy words but fraud is clear and simple. Also – Enron results in SARBOX which seems to be clearly ignored. Yves – do we know of any SARBOX prosecutions? Clinton started deregulation, Bush implemented deregulation and Obama maintains it. No wonder the kids are mad. The financial industry makes the Koch brothers look like pikers.

    Yves Smith Post author , April 24, 2016 at 4:30 pm

    There is actually a high legal bar to prosecuting fraud.

    I have written at length re Sarbox and the answer is no. And under Sarbox, you don't need to prosecute, you can start with a civil case and flip it to criminal if you get strong enough evidence in discovery. There was only one case (IIRC, with Angelo Mozilo) where the SEC filed Sarbox claims, one in which it also filed securities law claims. The judge threw out the Sarbox claims with no explanation. I assume it was because the judge regarded that as doubling up: you can do Sarbox or securities law (the claims to have some similarity) but not both. But the SEC as it so often does seems to have lost its nerve after that one.

    afisher , April 24, 2016 at 9:22 am

    Interestingly, the SEC has been warned about more of the same type of fraud: https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-16-15/s71615-60.pdf

    I don't know if an election would have consequences and if a new administration headed by Sanders would make it the SEC more responsible to the taxpayers and not the investors / banks.

    It only took a decade for Markopolos to have his ponzi scheme information read by SEC.

    diptherio , April 24, 2016 at 9:48 am

    I want to like this guy, I really do. But then he goes and says stuff like this:

    The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.) All of them were gentlemen. These factors make it all the more surprising that I never got a clear answer as to why the investigation was so constipated, as it obviously was.

    So he doesn't understand how the revolving door works…or he does but he's being purposefully obtuse about it. Sacrifice my ass! Gentleman my heiny! And claiming that there's no proof of criminality when, as is pointed out above, Sarbanes-Oxley was obviously violated isn't helping things either.

    Listen dude, pick a side. It's either the American people or Wall Street crooks and their abettors in government. You don't get to have it both ways. This kind of minimization and wishy-washyness is only helping the crooks. More disappointing than I exepected.

    diptherio , April 24, 2016 at 9:59 am

    I mean, at least he lays blame at Obama's feet, and calls the fraud what it is: fraud. Good on him!

    …But then he pulls out the "vote for Dems no matter what they do!" line and I just shake my head….

    polecat , April 24, 2016 at 1:37 pm

    diptherio……. excuse me for a momen--BARFFFF!!!!!!-- Whew ……… that felt better !! ……….

    yes …I agree….these kinds of articles are nothing more than defensive measures against a growing public rage !!!

    bu…bu…but Just Us !!

    diptherio , April 24, 2016 at 5:18 pm

    these kinds of articles are nothing more than defensive measures against a growing public rage !!!

    I don't actually agree. I think the guy feels a little guilty for not doing more, now he's trying to salve his conscience. Still, he can't quite bring himself to admit that the people he was working for may well have been criminals. They were just so nice!

    Self-reflection is not comfortable, and most people don't have much tolerance for it. I think this guy's legitimately trying to do the right thing (not cover up for criminality) it's just that it's really psychologically difficult to admit certain aspects of reality. It's not like he's the only one.

    polecat , April 24, 2016 at 6:07 pm

    I find it telling that suddenly now (within the last year or so) that all these people ( people in high finance, their underlings, traders, hedge funders, and other assorted enablers of massive fraud upon the general public, are suddenly having a 'come to hayzeus' epiphany! I'm not buying whatever faux sincerity they're trying to project…….

    They've screwed millions of trusting people with their fraudulent grifting!

    reslez , April 24, 2016 at 7:09 pm

    > I find it telling that suddenly now (within the last year or so) that all these people […], are suddenly having a 'come to hayzeus' epiphany!

    Especially when it comes after a fat retirement and a lengthy career of going along. I have much more respect for people who really did put their daily bread on the line, and there are plenty of those people, a lot of whom Obama sent to jail. So, yeah, great, you finally told the truth… but where were you when the country needed you to speak out?

    perpetualWAR , April 24, 2016 at 11:32 am

    How about where the guy said "until proven guilty, they are innocent." Hahahahahahaha

    Crooks, the lot of them.

    diptherio , April 24, 2016 at 12:59 pm

    Couldn't we use civil forfeiture to go after them regardless of whether we can prove any actual crime? What's good for the average citizen is surely good for the elite banker…

    polecat , April 24, 2016 at 1:42 pm

    …but you just might need some of those 'Yehadis' to back you up ;-)

    reslez , April 24, 2016 at 7:06 pm

    It's a good thing they're gentlemen. I don't know if I could handle all the looting and self-dealing if it came from common ruffians. Truly we are fortunate to be in such hands, my fellow countrymen!

    ChrisPacific , April 26, 2016 at 12:36 am

    Yes, I had trouble getting past that line as well. Either he is being ironic or he has a massive blind spot on that point.

    Lars Jorgensen , April 24, 2016 at 10:00 am

    According to Bill Black in a ted talk 2014. After the Savings and loans debacle, where the regulators went after the worst of the worst criminals, they made 30.000 criminal referrals and 1000 procecutions with a 90% succes rate.

    Now after the 2008 crisis, which was 70 times bigger causing 10 million job losses and costing 11 trillion dolllars, the Obama administration has not made one single criminal referral. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JBYPcgtnGE

    Today I fell over some information about the IMF, that the organization is exempt from legal prosecutions and taxes. Can this be true?

    From the article: "The employees who bare the IMF badge are pretty much exempt from all forms of government intervention. And, according to LisaHavenNews, the IMF "law book," the Articles of Agreement lists the reasons and requirements for exclusion from government mandate."

    http://www.truthandaction.org/revealed-imf-granted-complete-immunity-form-legal-prosecution-taxation/

    polecat , April 24, 2016 at 1:45 pm

    …..criminals are, as criminals do, as criminals take…..

    Steve in Dallas , April 24, 2016 at 2:35 pm

    Thank you, I was hoping someone would mention Bill Black.

    I'm a software/hardware product/business development engineer. In 2008, after 20 years of reading the WSJ and stunned by the sellout to Murdoch, I went to the internet independent media (IM) to follow the 'economic crisis'. Within a few months it was clear to me 1) I had learned nothing of substance reading the WSJ, 2) the U.S. MSM, education system, and government are thoroughly captured/corrupt.

    Being a 'reader' (note: I don't know anyone who reads non-fiction) for me this 'worldview transition' was quite natural, nothing really surprised me, and it was a big relief to discover such good information/analysis so easily available on the internet. However, eight years later, I have yet to meet a single person who has rejected the MSM or tuned in to what's happening, via the IM or otherwise. In fact, after leaving the university in 1990, I have yet to meet a single person with any basic understanding of (or the slightest interest in, or concern about) the extreme institutional criminality of the the Savings & Loan Crisis, Asian Economic Crisis, Technology Bubble, the 2008 crisis, or the many economic/military wars-of-aggression methodically destroying one government/economy/country after another.

    To me, nothing made the global/economic/organized/mafia criminality more clear than the 2008/2009 articles by Bill Black. Back then I again foolishly assumed people would rally behind Dr. Black to reestablish basic law enforcement against yet another obvious largest-ever "epidemic" of organized crime. Looking back, the highly organized (and very successful) criminality of the Paulson/Obama/Geithner/Bernanke/etc. cabal was truly an amazing operation to behold. Perhaps the most shocking news came in 2010 when numerous studies confirmed that the top 7% of Americans had already "profited" from the economic crisis, that the criminally organized upper class had not only increased their net wealth but, more importantly, had increased their rate of wealth accumulation relative to the bottom 93%. Still, to me, infinitely more amazing, the bottom 93% didn't, and still don't, seem to care, or if they do, they've done absolutely nothing to even start to fight back.

    Today, when reading these articles, I'm astounded how completely meek and 'unorganized' the bottom 93% are compared to the extremely vicious and organized top 7%. Year after year the wealthy elite, who's core organizing philosophy is "take or be taken, kill or be killed", increasingly wallow in dangerously high and unprecedented levels of wealth accumulated by blatant/purposeful/methodical/criminal/vicious looting while their victims, the bottom 93% 'working class', do absolutely nothing (what are they doing?…. other than playing with their phone-toys, facebook, video games, movies?). At this point, the main (only?) reason I continue to 'read' is to perhaps someday 'behold' the working class 93% attempting to educate themselves and consequently 'organize' to defend themselves.

    lightningclap , April 24, 2016 at 4:48 pm

    +1

    diptherio , April 24, 2016 at 5:21 pm

    Dude, you need to move to Austin, stat!

    lyman alpha blob , April 24, 2016 at 10:11 am

    I sympathize with Mr. Kidney and applaud him for doing what he can to try to rectify this abhorrent situation. I also applaud him for placing the blame squarely on Obama and his reasons for doing so are solid.

    What I find much harder to understand is why he would vote for Obama even in 2012 after it became apparent that Obama was ultimately responsible for stonewalling his investigation, and his complete willingness to vote for the corrupt Democrat party no matter what going forward.

    As long as enough people continue to have that attitude things will never change until the whole system comes crashing down. I'd much rather see an FDR-type overhaul of the system rather than a complete collapse as I'm rather fond of civilization. But I've come to expect the latter rather than the former so I'll be reading my weekly Archdruid report for the foreseeable future.

    Carolinian , April 24, 2016 at 10:25 am

    The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.) All of them were gentlemen. These factors make it all the more surprising that I never got a clear answer as to why the investigation was so constipated, as it obviously was.

    Yes poor babies for that "significant personal sacrifice" that resulted in "even more lucrative" private employment. The author explains the problem then scratches his head over what it might be.

    In a rational world there would be a strict separation between the regulated and the regulators. The government would hire professional experts at decent salaries and they never ever would be allowed to then move on to jobs with the regulated. Clearly the assumption underlying our current–irrational–system is that these high status technocrats are "gentlemen" with a code of honor. Welcome to the 19th century. Those long ago plutocrats in their stately English mansions were all gentlemen and therefore entitled to their privileges by their superior breeding. They were the better sort.

    Meanwhile for lesser mortals it seems totally unsurprising when laws are ignored because you hire your police from the ranks of the criminal gangs. No head scratching needed.

    Alex morfesis , April 24, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    Reid Muoio (boss of kidney @ $EC) has a brother at a major tall bldg law firm whose job is to help fortune 500 companies deal with D & O insurance issues…so when in the article Muoio says "He" did not go thru the revolving door…it was fraud by omission…his brother sits on the opposite side of these private settlement agreements…

    so is Kidney unaware…leaving us to maybe accept he was never much of an investigator…or just forgot to point it out for us…

    The world is full of govt types who tell us TINA…

    The wealthy Elliott Spitzer told us he would have loved to help "the little people" but the OCC and then scotus with waters v wachovia…except scotus ruled only direct subsidiaries get protection and the OCC specifically said the trustee operations of OCC regulated entities are also not covered/protected…

    A really big shoe
    as Ed used to remind us….

    susan the other , April 24, 2016 at 1:25 pm

    Does anyone else think this was insider demolition – not just the failure to prosecute, but the whole financial implosion in the first place? Who writes up nothing but "shitty deals" – all the while saying to each other: IBGYBG and survives to slink away? They must have had a heads up that the financial system as we had known it in the 20th c. was done. They had a heads up and then they got free passes. My only question is, Wasn't there a better way to bring down the system, an honest way that protected us all? By the end of the cold war money itself had become an inconvenience because of diminishing returns. And now the stuff is just plain dangerous because everyone who got screwed (99%) wants their fair share still. It is paralyzing our thinking. Obama maintains he personally "prevented another depression". I honestly think he might be insane. What we need is a recognition that the old system was completely irrational and it isn't coming back. And most of us are SOL. Somebody is going to figure out how to maintain both the value and usefulness of money very soon, because we've got work to do.

    cnchal , April 24, 2016 at 2:03 pm

    The GFC was the first great financial crime of this millenium, and Goldman Sachs was at the epicenter. A heist of gargantuan proportions, they didn't even need a safecracker after Bernanke spun the dials and opened the door wide.

    Imagine if the FBI and the Mafia exchanged their top leaders every few months. That's what we have here with the SEC and Wall Street.

    Bernie Sanders: The business of Wall Street is fraud and greed.
    We can add to that. The business of the SEC is to provide cover.

    polecat , April 24, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    It's all about 'their protection'….not ours!

    and Obama………..

    He's a f#cking psychopathic peacock!

    KYrocky , April 24, 2016 at 2:17 pm

    In Yves intro she shares her views, first, that Kidney still wants to think well of his former SEC colleagues and his criticisms seem muted relative to the severity of the problems, and second, that there are class assumptions at work.

    The first is obvious, as the SEC is an utter failure in its responsibility to investigate and prosecute financial criminals. While Mr. Kidney devotes a fair amount of his passages pondering how it can be that no individuals within these financial institutions bear personal responsibility, Mr. Kidney fails to see the SEC through that same lens. To say Kidney's criticism of his coworkers is muted is an understatement. The individuals at the SEC are corrupt. The individuals at the Justice Department are corrupt. Probably all nice people: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends, etc. Just like those folks at the financial institutions. Mr. Kidney cuts them slack because of his personal relationships with them. Mr. Kidney chooses to give them the benefit of doubt when the totality of their professional performance at the SEC make clear this cannot be true.

    With respect to class assumptions at work, Yves illustrates with the deference shown by SEC officials and investigators toward these financial criminals and their presumption that these individuals are honest. Mr. Kidney does share some of his disappointment in President Obama and Obama's administration but fails to properly connect the dots. In short, the lack of financial crime prosecutions is the result of a deliberate, planned and orchestrated effort.

    Mr. Kindney's investigations were prevented in going forward by his superiors. He was never given an explanation for this despite his asking. But Kidney believes his superiors are all good people.

    No, they are not. They are compromised people who have placed their career employment above their sworn duty. The fact that their bosses have done the same, as have those in the Justice Department as well as President Obama, should not diminish this fact. The phrase "class assumptions" is too euphemistic when describing a system where there is no justice for the victims of financial crimes, a system where the Justice Department and Administration coordinate to shield financial criminals based on where they work.

    This is America. In today's America the fact is certain individuals are above the law because our elected officials at all levels accept that this is okay. Victims of these individuals will be prevented access to their legal recourse, and that these criminals are protected from the highest level of our government down. This goes way, way beyond class assumptions.

    readerOfTeaLeaves , April 24, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    Yves has written extensively about how corporate interests have funded academic sinecures, as well as continuing legal education seminars attended by attorneys and judges. This is part of the fallout; if you want more, check out her section of ECONned where she explains how legal thinking was perverted by business interests.

    flora , April 24, 2016 at 2:37 pm

    Thanks for this post. Glad to see the SEC story is still alive. I'm sure the SEC and Obama would prefer it quietly go away.

    dk , April 24, 2016 at 2:55 pm

    As someone who has fallen on their sword more than once (and again recently), I just want to say that "placed their career employment above their sworn duty" is accurate but also oversimplifies the situation.

    People with families tell themselves that they balance performance of most (some?) of those duties, while shirking the balance in order to protect their families (a "good" (as in, expensive) college for the kids)… this actually comes down to sustaining their social status, in a culture (political as well as corporate) where loyalty is valued equal to and above performance, and honorable action is diminished, trivialized, even ridiculed; and not just within the context of the financial industry.

    This is not at all a defense of the choice, but the choice is made in a very class-stratified social context, and arises in that general context. People take out loans to buy cars and houses, they squirrel earnings away into investments (to avoid taxes) which they are reluctant to draw from… they feel less ready to abandon their addictive income streams for honor, and fudge their responsibilities. It's not isolated to regulators, or government, or even finance. It occurs so constantly and on so many fronts that addressing specific cases doesn't make a dent in the compromise of the entire culture. And that compromise is fueled and maintained by a very twisted set of ideas about money, and career, and social status (not to mention compromises in journalism, education, science, you name it).

    Synoia , April 24, 2016 at 3:37 pm

    I read Mr kidney as being very sarcastic. I could not write this with a serious sarcastic (Lawsuit Avoiding) view:

    The most senior level supervisors left more lucrative jobs in the private sector to head the Division of Enforcement, taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice. (They then returned to even more lucrative employment or even more high-profile public positions.)

    taking plum jobs but at significant personal sacrifice

    Oh really? Must have hurt. And from a legal point of view does not appear libelous.

    polecat , April 24, 2016 at 6:12 pm

    Yeah…stubbed toes only…….

    [Apr 21, 2016] Exercise 30 Minutes a Day? Who Knew!

    news.health.com

    Despite 14 years of public education campaigns, only one-third of Americans know about national recommendations for a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day, and fewer than half meet that goal, a new study has found. The lack of awareness is greatest among men, the unemployed and people born in the United States, the researchers said. Their finding camefrom [...]

    [Apr 21, 2016] For Mental Health, Bad Job Worse than No Job by Matt McMillen

    Notable quotes:
    "... Unemployed people who found a job that rated well in these areas reported a substantial improvement in their mental health. By contrast, newly employed people who felt overwhelmed, insecure about their employment, underpaid, and micromanaged reported a sharp decline in their mental health, including increased symptoms of depression and anxiety. Even those who couldn't find a job fared better. This last finding was "striking," Butterworth says. "This runs counter to a common belief that any job offers psychological benefits for individuals over the demoralizing effects of unemployment." ..."
    "... Policymakers should address the impact that the workplace has on mental - and not just physical - health, Butterworth says. "In the same way that we no longer accept workplaces that are physically unsafe or in which employees are exposed to dangerous or toxic substances, there could be a greater focus on ensuring a more positive psychosocial environment at work." ..."
    March 14, 2011 | Health.com

    With unemployment still high, job seekers who have been discouraged by a lack of work might be inclined to take the first opportunity they're offered. That will help pay the bills, but it could cause other problems: A new study suggests that some jobs are so demoralizing they're actually worse for mental health than no [...]

    With unemployment still high, job seekers who have been discouraged by a lack of work might be inclined to take the first opportunity they're offered. That will help pay the bills, but it could cause other problems: A new study suggests that some jobs are so demoralizing they're actually worse for mental health than not working at all.

    The findings add a new wrinkle to the large body of research showing that being out of work is associated with a greater risk of mental health problems. In the study, which followed more than 7,000 Australians over a seven-year period, unemployed people generally reported feeling calmer, happier, less depressed, and less anxious after finding work, but only if their new jobs were rewarding and manageable.

    "Moving from unemployment to a poor-quality job offered no mental health benefit, and in fact was more detrimental to mental health than remaining unemployed," says the lead author of the study, Peter Butterworth, PhD, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University, in Canberra.

    The study was published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

    Butterworth and his colleagues analyzed data from an annual survey in which participants described their mental state, their employment status, and-for those with a job-details of the working conditions that they enjoyed (or didn't enjoy, as the case may be). The survey respondents were asked how strongly they agreed with statements such as "My job is complex and difficult" and "I worry about the future of my job."

    The researchers focused on four job characteristics that are closely linked with mental health: the complexity and demands of the work, job security, compensation, and job control (i.e., the freedom to decide how best to do the job, rather than being ordered around).

    Unemployed people who found a job that rated well in these areas reported a substantial improvement in their mental health. By contrast, newly employed people who felt overwhelmed, insecure about their employment, underpaid, and micromanaged reported a sharp decline in their mental health, including increased symptoms of depression and anxiety. Even those who couldn't find a job fared better.

    This last finding was "striking," Butterworth says. "This runs counter to a common belief that any job offers psychological benefits for individuals over the demoralizing effects of unemployment."

    Although certain types of jobs-such as working in a customer-service call center-are more likely to be downers, the working environment tends to have a greater impact on mental health than the job description itself, Butterworth adds.

    Managers are especially important to employee well-being, says Robert Hogan, PhD, an expert on personality in the workplace and a former chair of the department of psychology at the University of Tulsa. "Bad bosses will make anybody unhappy," Hogan says. "Stress comes from bad managers."

    Policymakers should address the impact that the workplace has on mental - and not just physical - health, Butterworth says. "In the same way that we no longer accept workplaces that are physically unsafe or in which employees are exposed to dangerous or toxic substances, there could be a greater focus on ensuring a more positive psychosocial environment at work."

    [Apr 20, 2016] How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci

    Notable quotes:
    "... Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He edits the Scientia Salon webzine and produces the Rationally Speaking podcast. His latest book, co-edited with Maarten Boudry, is "Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem." ..."
    The New York Times
    Throughout the rest of the day, my Stoic practice is mostly about mindfulness, which means to remind myself that I not only I live "hic et nunc," in the here and now, where I must pay attention to whatever it is I am doing, but, more importantly, that pretty much every decision I make has a moral dimension, and needs to be approached with proper care and thoughtfulness. For me this often includes how to properly and respectfully treat students and colleagues, or how to shop for food and other items in the most ethically minded way possible (there are apps for that, naturally).

    Finally, my daily practice ends with an evening meditation, which consists in writing in a diary (definitely not meant for publication!) my thoughts about the day, the challenges I faced, and how I handled them. I ask myself, as Seneca put it in "On Anger": "What bad habit have you put right today? Which fault did you take a stand against? In what respect are you better?"

    Stoicism, of course, may not appeal to or work for everyone. It is a rather demanding philosophy of life, where your moral character is pretty much stipulated to be the only truly worthy thing to cultivate in life (though health, education, and even wealth are considered to be "preferred indifferents"). Then again, it does have a lot of points of contact with other philosophies, as well as religions: Buddhism, Christianity, and - I think - even modern secular movements such as secular humanism or ethical culture. There is something very appealing for me as a non religious person in the idea of an ecumenical philosophy, one that can share goals and at the least some general attitudes with other major ethical traditions across the world.

    There are also challenges that remain unresolved. The original Stoicism was a comprehensive philosophy that included not just a particular view of ethics, but also a metaphysics, a take on natural science, and specific approaches to logic and epistemology (i.e., a theory of knowledge). Many of the particular notions of the ancient Stoics have ceded place to modern science and philosophy, and need to be updated.

    Take, for instance, the Stoic concept of Logos, the rational principle that governs the universe. For the Stoics, this was the manifestation of a divine creative mind, a notion I certainly cannot subscribe to as a modern secular philosopher and scientist. But I am on board with the idea that the universe is organized according to rational-mathematical principles (otherwise we could not understand it scientifically), and I share the Stoic belief in universal cause and effect, which in turn has profound implications for the way Stoics look at both our place in the cosmos and our conduct of everyday life.

    Given all this, I am willing to invest some time into exploring just how much one can recover of the original Stoic spirit, update it with modern knowledge, and still reasonably call it "Stoicism" (or, more properly, neo-Stoicism). If it turns out that it can't be done, I will at least have learned much from the search.

    In the end, of course, Stoicism is simply another path some people can try out in order to develop a more or less coherent view of the world, of who they are, and of how they fit in the broader scheme of things.

    The need for this sort of insight seems to be universal.

    Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He edits the Scientia Salon webzine and produces the Rationally Speaking podcast. His latest book, co-edited with Maarten Boudry, is "Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem."

    [Apr 20, 2016] Can a person become a stoic in this era?

    Notable quotes:
    "... My idea of the modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. ..."
    "... What is wrong is not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means. ..."
    "... The stoic is a person who combines the qualities of wisdom, upright dealing, and courage. The stoic will thus be immune from life's gyrations as he will be superior to the wounds from some of life's dirty tricks. ..."
    "... In some ways stoicism resembles a Western form of Buddhism. ..."
    "... The world has learned to thrive on positive illusion to drive reality; the world of the Ideal controls the Material more and more through illusory concepts, half-baked in our Romantic minds. Because the Stoic ideal depends on self-mastery and reason rather than emotion, it certainly is more difficult than ever before to be a Stoic. ..."
    www.quora.com
    Sourav Roy, Mar 27, 2014

    I was introduced to stoicism by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile. The stoic learns from mistakes and practices tranquility of mind in the face of chaos, and hence is very much applicable in today's time. Taleb says,

    My idea of the modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
    Stoicism is often misunderstood as being a cold or glum. This is far from the case. Taleb says
    Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word ..There is nothing wrong and undignified with emotions-we are cut to have them. What is wrong is not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means. It is the attempt by man to get even with probability ..stoicism has rather little to do with the stiff-upper-lip notion that we believe it means ..The stoic is a person who combines the qualities of wisdom, upright dealing, and courage. The stoic will thus be immune from life's gyrations as he will be superior to the wounds from some of life's dirty tricks.
    Stoicism is a philosophy not a religion and is therefore applicable in all periods of time and compatible with all faiths including atheism and agnosticism. In some ways stoicism resembles a Western form of Buddhism.
    Assaph Mehr, Failed Stoic. Miserable Existentialist. Atheist. Sep 4, 2013
    I think so, or at least I'd like to think so :)

    Before anything else, I would highly recommend you read The Antidote (Amazon.com: The Antidote: Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking eBook: Oliver Burkeman: Kindle Store). There is a lot in it about modern Stoicism.

    Now as for the point of view of someone who tries to live life Stoically (on the emotional detachment level): It's bloody hard, that's what it is!

    Besides providing pithy quotes and inspirational sayings, I think you have to accept the following existential views as the road:

    • You have one life, and this is it
    • The is no "end goal" in life, it is all about how you live each moment. Put another way, the meaning of life is how you chose to live life itself
    • Perfection is not something you achieve, it is something you strive towards
    • Stoicism is an ideal. Keep striving while accepting occasional failures. Some tools that might help you on your way:
      • The above book. Probably an easier read than Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (at least for me)
      • Mindful meditation. This will help you recognise your own thoughts, so that you can catch yourself in the act and re-route thoughts and neural pathways.
      • Start with Existentialism (e.g. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning), in the sense that you accept that the only thing you can control are your words, your actions, your thoughts and your emotions. When faced with a situation brought on by external circumstances and people and that affects you, analyze yourself as to why it does and how can you use it (this is where meditation helps).
      • I have heard good things about NLP, but there are a lot of mixed and bad reviews as well.
    In essence, accept that it will not be easy. As things affect you, catch yourself in the act and ask why? And then re-route your thinking on the subject, for next time.

    Anything that helps you do this - meditation, NLP, philosophy books - is good, but it's a very personal journey.

    Anonymous, Updated Sep 3, 2014
    I think it is impossible to be a true and honest Stoic in any single era, because of the logical inconsistencies in the entire ethical philosophy. By Stoicism, I am assuming you are talking about the ethical aspect rather than the other advancements they made such as logic and natural theory.

    To first answer this question directly, I think that it is certainly more difficult nowadays to achieve the Stoic dream than ever because of the rampant Romanticism that envelops us all in the modern age. I think the ethical discourse in the modern age encourages a neo-Romanticism aspect on almost everything, from relationships, to consumerism, dreams (American Dream especially), propaganda (e.g. KONY 2012), and advertisement.

    The world has learned to thrive on positive illusion to drive reality; the world of the Ideal controls the Material more and more through illusory concepts, half-baked in our Romantic minds. Because the Stoic ideal depends on self-mastery and reason rather than emotion, it certainly is more difficult than ever before to be a Stoic.


    Now onto the problems of Stoic ethics and the impossibility of Stoicism:

    By ethical aspect, I mean their philosophy of happiness derived mainly from the texts of Aurelius and Epictetus, in which it is generally accepted:

    "The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage-a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection-would not undergo them."
    Stoicism mirrors Buddhism in the renunciation of desire, and that I believe is the fatal logical flaw. It is impossible to rid yourself of all desires. The life well lived to the Stoics depends upon the extinction of all desire, whereas a more common-sensical approach would be the moderation of desires, the philosophy that the opposing school of philosophy (Epicureanism) proposed.

    Human beings are emotional first, and reason is nothing but a string of empathy that extends throughout our shared experiences. The goal of Stoicism is impossible in nature, and to fully shut out emotions is a terrifying way to live. At best, we can trick ourselves into thinking that we have no desire, and in that case our "Stoic" lives become lies.

    To become a Stoic is a desire in-itself. Thus the entire prospect is doomed from the start.

    The Stoic dream is a desire to have no desires -- and that is a nightmare of a life.


    Another issue I have with Stoicism is in the ability to ignore all circumstances in order to find happiness. Find exactly what you are responsible for, and if the negative event is not of your own bringing, then you have no reason to be unhappy. Incapability is not a valid reason to feel no unhappiness. Because you could not have done otherwise, even in a deterministic system fails to validate the disappearance of emotion.

    Epictetus also proposed that self-mastery and knowing oneself would lead to this keen ability to distinguish between self and circumstance. He makes it out to seem as if a conclusion can really be reached. For example, if I am trying to intervene in a friend's suicide, what can I do? Should I:

    • A) Come to understand that it is out of my control, and state that my free will only goes so far as to not interfere with another's free will? (Rousseau).
    • B) Should I try anyways in conclusion that any attempt may help this friend of mine from committing suicide?
    • C) Should I believe that it is fully my responsibility being in my friend's presence to prevent suicide?

    There is little we can do in tough decisions and states of being to draw a line between self and circumstance. We ourselves are not aware of the limits of our influence, and thus this self mastery is a joke. Our influence does not always depend on us. It is a matter of circumstance, itself. We are circumstance.

    Stoicism depends upon self-mastery and heavy introspection which is of course valued across the board -- it is the dream of the Enlightenment and can be found in Kant's What is Enlightenment? Therefore, it is not an accomplishment specific to Stoicism. After all, that dream of the Enlightenment is also disputed, especially since it often depends upon the notion of free will.

    Other than a collection of "inspirational quotes" by Aurelius and Epictetus for the layman, there is little else that makes sense in Stoic ethics.

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    Stephen Matthew, Student • View Upvotes

    No, Stoicism's ethical philosophy is flawed right from the beginning. Can you ever imagine emotionally satisfying each human being on Earth? Ethics have always been dictated by people with power and capacity and the world is organised by power hierarchy rather than ethics.

    Ethics is important in many day to day human interactions but loses its hold after a point.Eastern philosophy on the other hand propose ethically wholesome lifestyle while giving primary importance to transformation of human energy or expanding one's consciousness.Once there is a conscious absorption in higher forms of energy/intensity it will make him powerful enough to dictate ethics.Increasing and bringing clarity of perception in life is much more important than being ethical.

    Following is the criticism of any ethical philosophy(including stoicism) as proposed by Eastern Philosopher -Sri Aurobindo:
    " The Limitations of Morality
    There is an area of our being which is a source of both great difficulty and great power. A source of difficulty, because it blurs all the communications from outside or above by frantically opposing our efforts to silence the mind and bogging down the consciousness at its own level of petty occupations and interests, thus hindering its free movement toward other regions. A source of power, because it is the outcropping of the great force of life in us. This is the region located between the heart and the sex center, which Sri Aurobindo calls the vital.

    It is a place full of every possible mixture: pleasure is inextricably mixed with suffering, pain with joy, evil with good, and make-believe with truth. The world's various spiritual traditions have found it so troublesome that they have preferred to reject this dangerous zone altogether, allowing only the expression of so-called religious emotions and strongly advising the neophyte to reject everything else. Everyone seems to agree: human nature is unchangeable. But this kind of moral surgery,57 as Sri Aurobindo calls it, has two drawbacks: first, it does not bring about any real purification, because the higher emotions, however refined they may appear to be, are as mixed as the lower ones, since they are sentimental in essence and hence partial; secondly, it does not really prevent anything – it merely represses. The vital is a force of its own, entirely independent of our rational or moral arguments. If we try to overpower it or ill-treat it by radical asceticism or discipline, the slightest letup can bring on an open rebellion – and it knows how to take revenge with interest. Or, if we have enough willpower to impose our mental or moral rules upon it, we may prevail, but at the cost of drying up the life-force in ourselves, because the frustrated vital will go on strike and we will find ourselves purified not only of the evil but also of the good in life: we will have become colorless and odorless. What is more, morality works only within the bounds of the mental process; it does not have access to the subconscious or superconscious regions, or to death, or to sleep (which happens to take up one day out of every three in our existence, so that a sixty-year life span would entitle us to forty years of waking moral life and twenty years of immortality – a strange arithmetic). In other words, morality does not go beyond the limits of our small frontal personality. "

    Sri Aurobindo: So long as you need to be virtuous you have not attained the pure spiritual height where you have not to think whether the action is moral or not. These people hastily conclude that when you ask them to rise above morality, you are asking them to sink down below good and evil. That is not at all the case.
    - They believe that a man can advance only by morality, i.e. by remaining moral.
    Sri Aurobindo: Nobody denies that. By morality you become more human, but you do not go beyond humanity. Morality has done much good to man, maybe; it has also done much harm. The question is whether you can rise to something above man by morality. That sort of mental limitation is not conductive to the growth into the Spirit.
    - But they always confuse morality with spirituality.
    The Upanishads and the Gita are loud with and full of the idea of going beyond morality. For instance, when the Upanishad says: "he does not need to think whether he is doing is good or bad" (sadhu, asadhu). Such a man attains a consciousness in which there is no need to think about morality because the action proceeds from the Truth.
    "The attempt of human thought to force an ethical meaning into the whole of Nature is one of those acts of wilful and obstinate self-confusion, one of those pathetic attempts of the human being to read himself, his limited habitual human self into all things and judge them from the stand-point he has personally evolved, which most effectively prevent him from arriving at real knowledge and complete sight."

    So,Stoicism's ethical theory makes one incapable of self defense in a sense lifeless.But I agree with with other aspects of natural theory like the concepts of Logos and Eros.

    The opposition of good and evil is not finally resolved in ethical plane but can achieved through spiritual/human energy focus & transcendence

    Abi Saafir, Written Aug 28, 2013

    Had a thought, then thought more thoughts

    Not in a historical sense. The Stoics were an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded in Athens during the Hellenistic period.

    In a philosophical sense, you can absolutely become a Stoic. I recommend starting with the Roman Imperial stoics, Epictitus and Seneca.

    Stoicism
    http://plato.stanford.edu/entrie...

    Seneca
    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

    Related Questions

    Related Questions

    [Apr 20, 2016] What is Stoicism

    Notable quotes:
    "... This isn't as cold as it might at first sound: we ought to overcome harmful, negative emotions that are based on mistaken judgments while embracing correct positive emotions, replacing anger with joy. ..."
    "... There is nothing to be gained from trying to resist these larger processes except anger, frustration, and disappointment. While there are many things in the world that we can change, there are many others we cannot and we need to understand this and accept it. ..."
    Stoicism Today

    Stoicism was one of the four principal schools of philosophy in ancient Athens, alongside Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, and Epicurus' Garden, where it flourished for some 250 years. It proved especially popular among the Romans, attracting admirers as diverse as the statesman Seneca, the ex-slave Epictetus, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The works of these three authors have come down to us and have won admirers from the Renaissance through to the present day. Although the philosophy of Stoicism as a whole is complex, embracing everything from metaphysics to astronomy to grammar, the works of the three great Roman Stoics focus on practical advice and guidance for those trying to achieve wellbeing or happiness. Here are four central ideas:

    • Value – the only thing that is truly good is an excellent mental state, identified with virtue and reason. This is the only thing that can guarantee our happiness. External things such as money, success, fame and the like can never bring us happiness. Although there is nothing wrong with these things and they do hold value and may well form part of a good life, often the pursuit of these things actually damages the only thing that can bring us happiness: an excellent, rational mental state.
    • Emotions – our emotions are the project of our judgements, of thinking that something good or bad is happening or is about to happen. Many of our negative emotions are based on mistaken judgements, but because they are due to our judgements it means they are within our control. Change the judgements and you change the emotions. Despite the popular image, the Stoic does not repress or deny his emotions; instead he simply doesn't have them in the first place. This isn't as cold as it might at first sound: we ought to overcome harmful, negative emotions that are based on mistaken judgments while embracing correct positive emotions, replacing anger with joy.
    • Nature – the Stoics suggest we ought to live in harmony with Nature. Part of what they mean by this is that we ought to acknowledge that we but small parts of a larger, organic whole, shaped by larger processes that are ultimately out of our control. There is nothing to be gained from trying to resist these larger processes except anger, frustration, and disappointment. While there are many things in the world that we can change, there are many others we cannot and we need to understand this and accept it.
    • Control – in the light of what we have seen, there are some things we have control over (our judgements, our own mental state) and some things that we do not (external processes and objects). Much of our unhappiness is caused by confusing these two categories: thinking we have control over something that ultimately we do not. Happily the one thing we do have control over is the only thing that can guarantee a good, happy life.

    The three Roman Stoics Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of practical advice aimed at helping people incorporate these ideas into their daily lives.

    [Apr 20, 2016] Five Reasons Why Stoicism Matters Today by Kare Anderson

    Notable quotes:
    "... Stoicism took off because it offered security and peace in a time of warfare and crisis. The Stoic creed didn't promise material security or a peace in the afterlife; but it did promise an unshakable happiness in this life. ..."
    "... Stoicism tells us that no happiness can be secure if it's rooted in changeable, destructible things. Our bank accounts can grow or shrink, our careers can prosper or falter, even our loved ones can be taken from us. There is only one place the world can't touch: our inner selves, our choice at every moment to be brave, to be reasonable, to be good. ..."
    "... The world might take everything from us; Stoicism tells us that we all have a fortress on the inside. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was born a slave and crippled at a young age, wrote: "Where is the good? In the will If anyone is unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone." ..."
    "... While it's natural to cry out at pain, the Stoic works to stay indifferent to everything that happens on the outside, to stay equally happy in times of triumph and disaster. It's a demanding way of life, but the reward it offers is freedom from passion–freedom from the emotions that so often seem to control us, when we should control them. A real Stoic isn't unfeeling. But he or she does have a mastery of emotions, because Stoicism recognizes that fear or greed or grief only enter our minds when we willingly let them in. ..."
    "... But Stoicism is still there at the foundation of the Christian religion, in some of its most basic terms and concepts. ..."
    "... before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves first. Our attempts to exert influence on the world are subject to chance, disappointment, and failure–but control of the self is the only kind that can succeed 100% of the time ..."
    "... The Stoics taught that we fail far more often than we succeed, that to be human is to be fearful, selfish, and angry far more often than we'd like. ..."
    Sep 28, 2012 | Forbes

    we've spent the past few years studying and writing on another politician famous for his coolness: Cato the Younger.

    He was a practitioner of Stoicism, an ancient Greek religion that he helped bring to Rome. We aren't claiming that the president's a secret Stoic. But we do think that the public response to his self-control shows how poorly Stoic qualities can go over in our times: a philosophy built on emotional control seems strange in the age of over-sharing.

    ... ... ...

    We think that's a shame. Stoicism still has a tremendous amount to teach us, especially in these passion-saturated times. What's more, the Stoic legacy has shaped our world in more ways than you might expect. Here are five reasons why Stoicism matters:

    1. It was built for hard times.

    Stoicism was born in a world falling apart. Invented in Athens just a few decades after Alexander the Great's conquests and premature death upended the Greek world, Stoicism took off because it offered security and peace in a time of warfare and crisis. The Stoic creed didn't promise material security or a peace in the afterlife; but it did promise an unshakable happiness in this life.

    Stoicism tells us that no happiness can be secure if it's rooted in changeable, destructible things. Our bank accounts can grow or shrink, our careers can prosper or falter, even our loved ones can be taken from us. There is only one place the world can't touch: our inner selves, our choice at every moment to be brave, to be reasonable, to be good.

    The world might take everything from us; Stoicism tells us that we all have a fortress on the inside. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was born a slave and crippled at a young age, wrote: "Where is the good? In the will If anyone is unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."

    While it's natural to cry out at pain, the Stoic works to stay indifferent to everything that happens on the outside, to stay equally happy in times of triumph and disaster. It's a demanding way of life, but the reward it offers is freedom from passion–freedom from the emotions that so often seem to control us, when we should control them. A real Stoic isn't unfeeling. But he or she does have a mastery of emotions, because Stoicism recognizes that fear or greed or grief only enter our minds when we willingly let them in.

    A teaching like that seems designed for a world on edge, whether it's the chaotic world of ancient Greece, or a modern financial crisis. But then, Epictetus would say that–as long as we try to place our happiness in perishable things–our worlds are always on edge.

    ... ... ...

    3. If you're Christian, you're already part-Stoic.

    Imagine a religion that stressed human brotherhood under a benevolent creator God; that told us to moderate and master our basic urges rather than giving into them; that nevertheless insisted that all humans, because we're human, are bound to fail at this mission; and that spent a lot of time talking about "conscience" and the multiple aspects, or "persons," of a unitary God. All of that might sound familiar. But the philosophy that invented all of those ideas was not Christianity, but Stoicism.

    It makes sense that Christianity is a deeply Stoic religion. Stoicism dominated Roman culture for centuries - and Christianity went mainstream in the same culture. What's more, many of the leaders of the early Christian church were former Stoics. Of course Christianity borrowed much of its thought and terminology from Stoicism – because thinking about religion in the early 1st millennium meant thinking like a Stoic.

    As Christianity continued to grow, church leaders, who wanted to emphasize the uniqueness of their faith, began to downplay this Stoic connection. But Stoicism is still there at the foundation of the Christian religion, in some of its most basic terms and concepts.

    4. It's the unofficial philosophy of the military.

    In 1965, James Stockdale's A-4E Skyhawk was shot down over Vietnam. He later remembered the moment like this: "After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed And so help me, I whispered to myself: 'Five years down there, at least. I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.'"

    Stockdale spent more than seven years in a Vietnamese prison, and he wrote that Stoicism saved his life. Stockdale had spent years studying Stoic thought before deploying, and he drew on those teachings to endure his captivity. These words from Epictetus kept coming back to him: "Do you not know that life is a soldier's service? If you neglect your responsibilities when some severe order is laid upon you, do you not understand to what a pitiful state you bring the army?" While some of his fellow POWs tormented themselves with false hopes of an early release, Stockdale's Stoic practice helped him confront the grim reality of his situation, without giving in to despair and depression.

    Stockdale was not alone as a military man who drew strength from Stoicism. In her book The Stoic Warrior, Nancy Sherman, who taught philosophy at the Naval Academy, argued that Stoicism is a driving force behind the military mindset – especially in its emphasis on endurance, self-control, and inner strength. As Sherman writes, whenever her philosophy class at Annapolis turned to the Stoic thinkers, "many officers and students alike felt they had come home."

    5. It's a philosophy for leadership.

    Stoicism teaches us that, before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves first. Our attempts to exert influence on the world are subject to chance, disappointment, and failure–but control of the self is the only kind that can succeed 100% of the time. From emperor Marcus Aurelius on, leaders have found that a Stoic attitude earns them respect in the face of failure, and guards against arrogance in the face of success.

    ... ... ...

    Stoicism has an appeal for anyone who faces uncertainty–that is, for all of us.

    ...Cato the Younger subscribed to this philosophy from his young adulthood to his death, but he was also prone to violent outbursts of anger, obstinate pride, and occasional drunkenness.

    Yet in his most courageous moments–when he faced down the army of Julius Caesar and certain defeat without blinking–Cato lived out the Stoic ideal. The Stoics taught that we fail far more often than we succeed, that to be human is to be fearful, selfish, and angry far more often than we'd like. But they also taught a realistic way to be more.

    The more we practice Stoic qualities in good times, the more likely that we'll find them in ourselves when they're most needed.

    [Apr 20, 2016] Unemployment's Toll Can Be Heartbreaking By Serena Gordon

    April 11, 2016 | HealthDay News

    As anyone who's lost a job can attest, stress and worry often quickly follow. But the health of your heart after unemployment can also take a tumble. Job loss can cause immediate heart issues, and the stress and bad habits that frequently come with unemployment can build up over time, causing cardiovascular damage, health exerts [...]

    [Apr 20, 2016] Anger at God Common During Times of Crisis, Study Finds By Serena Gordon

    Jan 1, 2016 | HealthDay News

    Although people rarely talk about it, almost everyone experiences anger toward God at some point in their lives, commonly after the diagnosis of a serious illness, the death of a loved one or a trauma. In fact, nearly two out of three people report that they've felt angry at God, according to a study in the January issue of he [...]

    [Apr 20, 2016] Praying for Others Seems to Help Anger Fade

    WEDNESDAY, March 30 (HealthDay News) -- Saying a prayer for another person may help people control their negative emotions after being insulted by a stranger, researchers report. A series of studies found that after people were intentionally provoked into anger, asking them to pray for a person who needs extra help or support (a cancer patient, for example), helped calm them down. The researchers [...]

    [Apr 20, 2016] Serotonin Levels Determine Sense of Fairness

    THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) - Levels of a brain chemical known as serotonin govern the way people react to unfair offers when they play the game of life, a new study indicates. Serotonin, which carries messages between neurons, is involved in emotional control. One recent study found that the expression of anger in women was affected by variations in a gene governing the receptors forserotonin [...]

    [Apr 02, 2016] Unemployment Rate Edges Higher as Prime-Age Workers Reenter Labor Market

    Notable quotes:
    "... Self-employment has risen substantially since the ACA took effect. ..."
    "... One of the desired outcomes from the ACA was that it would free people from dependence on their employer for health care insurance, allowing them to work part-time or start a business if they so choose and get insurance through the exchanges. ..."
    "... Yes labor force participation has increased but it still is only 63%. Yes the employment to population ratio is now 59.9% but it should be 62%. Slow progress with a long way to go. ..."
    "... But the negatives, especially among the series that lead, are beginning to outweigh the positives. Revisions were mixed. The manufacturing workweek declined, and manufacturing jobs are now down YoY. Although temporary jobs rose this month, they have failed to top their December peak for the last 3 months. Short term unemployment has continued to rise slightly. A coincident indicator, aggregate hours, also failed to exceed its January high. ..."
    April 01, 2016 | Economist's View
    Dean Baker:
    Unemployment Rate Edges Higher as Prime-Age Workers Re-enter Labor Market : Self-employment has risen substantially since the ACA took effect.

    The economy added 215,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate rounding up to 5.0 percent from February's 4.9 percent. However, the modest increase in unemployment was largely good news, since it was the result of another 396,000 people entering the labor force. There has been a large increase in the labor force over the last six months, especially among prime-age workers. Since September, the labor force participation rate for prime-age workers has increased by 0.8 percentage points. This seems to support the view that the people who left the labor market during the downturn will come back if they see jobs available. However, even with this recent rise, the employment-to-population ratio for prime-age workers is still down by more than two full percentage points from its pre-recession peak. Another positive item in the household survey was a large jump in the percentage of unemployment due to voluntary quits. This sign of confidence in the labor market rose to 10.5 percent, the highest level in the recovery to date, although it's still more than a percentage point below the pre-recession peaks and almost five percentage points below the peak reached in 2000.

    Other items in the household survey were mixed. The number of people involuntarily working part-time rose by 135,000, reversing several months of declines. However, involuntary part-time work is still down by 550,000 from year-ago levels. The number of people voluntarily working part-time fell in March, but it is still 654,000 above its year-ago level.

    One of the desired outcomes from the ACA was that it would free people from dependence on their employer for health care insurance, allowing them to work part-time or start a business if they so choose and get insurance through the exchanges. There has been a substantial rise in self-employment since the exchanges began operating in 2014. In the first quarter of 2016, incorporated self-employment was up by more than 400,000 (7.8 percent) from the same quarter of 2013. Unincorporated self-employment was also up by almost 360,000 (3.9 percent).

    While the employment growth in the establishment survey was in line with expectations, average weekly hours remained at 34.4, down from 34.6 in January. This indicates that February's drop in hours was not just a result of bad weather. As a result, the index of aggregate hours worked is down by 0.2 percent from the January level. This could be a sign of slower job growth in future months. ...

    The average hourly wage rose modestly in March after a reported decline in February. There is zero evidence of any acceleration in wage growth. The average for the last three months increased at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent compared with the average of the prior three months. This is virtually identical to the increase over the last year.

    On the whole this is a positive report, both because the economy continues to create jobs at a healthy pace and even more importantly because it indicates that people are returning to the labor market. The continuing weakness in wage growth is discouraging, but also should signal to the Fed that there is little reason to raise interest rates.

    PPaine :

    The job markets are coming alive

    But is the punch bowl headed for the kitchen sink ?


    We need to set much higher target ratios for E to P

    We need 15 million more jobs in short order
    To get near vickrey zone conditions on job markets


    Obviously we won't go there
    But just how far will we go
    Before the bastards turkey wire the system ?

    PPaine -> PPaine ...
    We need the quit rate to go up another 30% at least
    PPaine -> PPaine ...
    I mean on top of the 50% rise to match the high water mark of the Clinton miracle
    anne -> PPaine ...
    https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Ppz

    January 30, 2016

    Total nonfarm quits, 2000-2016

    [ The quits rate only needs to climb 15% to get back to the Clinton level. ]

    anne -> PPaine ...
    Never ever explain what "Vickrey zone conditions" are, as long as there is no concern with being understood.
    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> anne...
    [Google William Vickrey. Highlights of Wikipedia:]

    ...Vickrey's economic philosophy was influenced by John Maynard Keynes and Henry George. He was sharply critical of the Chicago school of economics and was vocal in opposing the political focus on achieving balanced budgets and fighting inflation, especially in times of high unemployment...
    Selected works[edit]

    "Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders", Journal of Finance, 1961. The paper originated auction theory, a subfield of game theory.
    "Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism: A Disquisition on Demand Side Economics". October 5, 1996.

    Arrow, Kenneth Joseph; Arnott, Richard J.; Atkinson, Anthony A.; Drèze, Jacques (editors) (1997). Public Economics: Selected Papers by William Vickrey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59763-3.

    Warner, Aaron W.; Forstater, Mathew; Rosen, Sumner M. (editors) (2000). Commitment to Full Employment: The Economics and Social Policy of William S. Vickrey. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-7656-0633-X.

    Pavlina R. Tcherneva; Forstater, Mathew (2004). Full Employment and Price Stability: The Macroeconomic Vision of William S. Vickrey. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 1-84376-409-1.

    [Paine repeatedly references William Vickrey because of his substantial commitment to full employment policy as sound economics (as if human well being for the masses actually mattered).]

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
    And Anne repeatedly asks "What does this reference to Vickrey mean?" Maybe Anne's battery is almost dead and working memory gets reset each time the solar generator powers down. The programming still functions because it is stored in non-volatile memory on the hard drive, but volatile RAM is wiped each time that the sunsets after the battery storage is exhausted.
    anne -> PPaine ...
    We need 15 million more jobs in short order. To get near Vickrey zone conditions on job markets

    [ Where did the 15 million number come from, and I still have no idea what Vickrey zone conditions are? ]

    pgl :
    Yes labor force participation has increased but it still is only 63%. Yes the employment to population ratio is now 59.9% but it should be 62%. Slow progress with a long way to go.
    pgl -> pgl...
    I may be setting the bar too low with my call for a 62% employment to population ratio. Brad DeLong puts it north of 62.5%:

    http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/04/must-read-the-federal-reserve-is-looking-at-the-past-six-months-and-seeing-significant-improvement-in-the-labor-market.html

    New Deal democrat :
    But the negatives, especially among the series that lead, are beginning to outweigh the positives. Revisions were mixed. The manufacturing workweek declined, and manufacturing jobs are now down YoY. Although temporary jobs rose this month, they have failed to top their December peak for the last 3 months. Short term unemployment has continued to rise slightly. A coincident indicator, aggregate hours, also failed to exceed its January high.

    So while we can cheer yet another month of jobs added to the economy, and the jump in participation, this report just adds to my concern about next year.

    pgl -> New Deal democrat...
    I won't cheer until the employment to population ratio reaches 62% and real wages actually rise on a consistent basis.
    sanjait -> New Deal democrat...
    Don't look at peaks in monthly data, look at rolling average trends.

    Also, while manufacturing specific data can be meaningful ... these days the dynamics in those data are largely dominated by swings in O&G, which is in a historic funk.

    sanjait :
    In general, the trends look good. The working age E/P number is, to me, the most meaningful single indicator we have, and it appears to be continuing to rise and at an accelerating rate. That's a very good sign. It's very arguable that things could and should be improving at a faster rate, but when this stat is rising things are indeed improving.

    Baker's note about ACA and self-employment is also an important one. One important aspect of ACA is that it is GREAT for entrepreneurship. People are more free to leave jobs and start companies when their ability to get health insurance isn't predicated on their working for a large company with a group plan.

    The GOP makes a lot of noise about how ACA supposedly kills jobs and stifles industry, but the reality is that tomorrow's tech leaders, and major employers, are getting a boost today from ACA.

    Ben Groves :
    It is not sustainable and will reverse in April imo. Driving unemployment down.

    [Mar 23, 2016] How to Lay Off An Employee - the Right Way

    Their dirty ways: " One day last October, when employees at Cenovus Energy showed up at the office, many discovered that they couldn't access their computer files on the company's internal system. That's how they found out they were being laid off.
    Alberta Oil Magazine
    How to Lay Off An Employee - the Right Way

    Companies that fought to attract and keep staff have been learning the hard way how to shed them in a hurry. But that doesn't mean it can't – and shouldn't – be done right

    One day last October, when employees at Cenovus Energy showed up at the office, many discovered that they couldn't access their computer files on the company's internal system. That's how they found out they were being laid off. Two months earlier, employees at Hutchison Ports Australia in Sydney and Brisbane got a text message, then an email in the middle of the night inviting them to a beachside hotel. They, too, were being laid off.

    Cenovus called its move a mistake. Hutchison Ports Australia said it had begun its consultations with staff and unions regarding redundancies in June. Whatever the explanation, companies need to start approaching layoffs more carefully. And though everyone in the energy business is hoping the bloodletting is over, if it isn't, there are ways to soften the blow of layoffs, and do them fairly and transparently.

    Communication

    A company should keep its employees informed of the economic forces acting on the business and their employment prospects, says Martin Birt, president of HRaskme.com and a human resources consultant with 30 years in the business. "Closures should never, in my view, be a surprise," he says. Neither should layoffs. You can communicate messages with your employees such as how decisions will be made in what Birt calls a "long-game communications plan," a set of HR principles that will be applied should anything be decided regarding the company's long-term employment potential. That way, employees have some context as to what to expect when market circumstances change.

    If you choose not to share your long-game communications plan in your employee manual, when speaking to the people you're laying off, at least communicate how, why and when you made the decision, Birt says. Your actions will get back to suppliers, contractors and layoff survivors. And if you've communicated fairly and awarded appropriate compensation and benefits, the external environment will understand what kind of corporate citizen you are.

    Listen to Your Experts

    Involve the correct teams – operations, human resources and legal – and involve them as early in the decision-making process as possible, says Birt. These teams will protect you as a corporation from any liability associated with a layoff.

    Soften the Blow

    Henry Hornstein is an assistant professor at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario's Algoma University, specializing in organizational change management. In the early 1990s, he was among the staff let go from Imperial Oil's Strathcona refinery. "It was not pleasant," says Hornstein, "but the way Imperial Oil handled that at the time cushioned the blow." They provided him with a year's worth of salary and benefits, and services with an outplacement firm. These included resumé writing, interview training and networking support. "Rather than treating people as commodities, people are treated compassionately," says Hornstein of the experience. You can provide your employees with psychological support in addition to proper severance, benefits and outplacement services, he says. Consider offering group meetings where people can talk to others about the negative psychological impacts of downsizing that they've experienced. "Downsizing is a significant assault on an individual's self-esteem Everybody has a story, and when somebody is downsized, the organization can [seem to] take an approach that they don't care what the background story is, they just want to get rid of the people." says Hornstein. Birt agrees, saying companies should be prepared to offer an employee assistance program (EAP), a short-term counseling service for employees in need of support. This can also add a buffer against the company's liability.

    Confidentiality

    Having said that, to maintain confidentiality, limit the planning group to only those whose participation is necessary, says Birt. Consider using specific project-related confidentiality agreements, as well, and clearly describe the consequences for breaching confidentiality. He also suggests reminding participants with pre-existing confidentiality agreements of the terms of those agreements. If you are a publicly traded company, you should know if you are required to first inform the markets of your actions. If that is the case, managers must be prepared to communicate with employees immediately after informing the markets.

    Finalize the Details

    Before you deliver the news of layoffs, finalize all the details with human resources and legal, including severance, benefits and pension entitlements, says Birt. You'll be prepared to immediately answer individual questions. Everything you say orally in a termination meeting should be captured in a termination letter as well, he says. However, give terminated employees a few days to review their termination package and ask any questions, says Fraser Johnson, a professor at the Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario. "As soon as you hear the words that you're being laid off, your mind might go blank," he says.

    Share the Pain

    Rather than targeting employees with layoffs, share the cuts across the corporation, just as Canadian Natural Resources did when all staff pay was cut by up to 10 percent. Or, introduce flexible work arrangements like part-time work, voluntary leaves of absence, or deferred compensation in which an employee can work full-time at 80 percent salary for several years before taking a paid sabbatical.

    [Jan 13, 2016] Three Ways to Help the Working Class

    Notable quotes:
    "... Yes. The ratio of population to jobs needs to change dramatically. Bust out of the old cycle where the ratio thru out the cycle remains bad. Yes even at the peak of employment -- We need a far higher sustained rate of spending on domestically produced goods and services ..."
    "... One problem with MMTers is they talk about very common ideas, like deficit financed spending, and pretend like they just invented something radically new, while completely failing to acknowledge or address the rest of the conversation that others have been having for years. ..."
    "... Oh no! Whatever you do, cried Brer Rabbit, Dont throw me into the briar patch! ..."
    "... ...So long as business interests dominate the political process, it will be hard to reverse the trend toward increasing inequality. ..."
    "... Mark and most of his ilk support an open door for corporations to import smart, hard working and desperate workers from around the world...impact of that at the margins for wages(along with many other things) have been a disaster for the bottom 80% over the past 30 years. ..."
    economistsview.typepad.com
    I have a new column:
    Three Ways to Help the Working Class : ... In graduate school, I was once told that "people don't have marginal products, jobs do." What does this mean? ...

    I wish I would have connected the last part to the Supreme Court case on public unions.

    RGC :

    "If you took 100 dogs and you buried 95 bones in a field and you told the dogs their job was to go out and find a bone, what's the very best case scenario? The best you can possibly hope for is that 95 dogs come back with bones. Five dogs can't get bones. More likely, some dogs will get lucky; they'll stumble across a few extras. Some may have better skills; they'll find three or four. So, the number of dogs that come back without bones may be ten or fifteen.

    (c. 9:38) "The conventional economist would gather the dogs together, the ones that had no bones, and train them to sniff out bones more effectively. Then they would send those hundred dogs back out into the field and tell them to go come back with a bone. And, again, the best you can get is 95 dogs with bones. What's wrong is that there aren't enough bones. There's nothing wrong with the dogs. The bones are the jobs. There's nothing wrong with the unemployed. There simply aren't enough jobs.

    - Stephanie Kelton at the Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. She is Creator and Editor of New Economic Perspectives. Her research expertise is in Federal Reserve operations, fiscal policy, social security, healthcare, international finance, and employment policy.

    PPaine -> RGC...
    Yes. The ratio of population to jobs needs to change dramatically. Bust out of the old cycle where the ratio thru out the cycle remains bad. Yes even at the peak of employment -- We need a far higher sustained rate of spending on domestically produced goods and services
    sanjait -> RGC...
    The very conventional new Keynesian response to a shortfall in demand is expansionary demand management policies.

    One problem with MMTers is they talk about very common ideas, like deficit financed spending, and pretend like they just invented something radically new, while completely failing to acknowledge or address the rest of the conversation that others have been having for years.

    RGC -> sanjait...
    It's cute the way you make obviously ignorant assertions with such apparent confidence.
    PPaine -> RGC...
    Don't be too harsh. He very often makes good points. Why he's so hard on MMTers escapes me

    Has he read kalecki Lerner and Vickrey ?
    The young James Meade
    The young Lawrence Klein

    The Post war macro left
    These are not MMTers

    anne -> PPaine ...
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/business/economy/lawrence-r-klein-economist-who-forecast-global-trends-dies-at-93.html

    October 21, 2013

    Lawrence R. Klein, Economic Theorist
    By GLENN RIFKIN

    Lawrence R. Klein, who predicted America's economic boom after World War II and was awarded the 1980 Nobel in economic science for developing statistical models that are used to analyze and predict global economic trends, died on Sunday at his home in Gladwyne, Pa. He was 93.

    His daughter Hannah Klein confirmed the death.

    As World War II was ending, Professor Klein, widely regarded as a brilliant theorist, disputed the conventional wisdom that the postwar period would drive the American economy back into a long depression.

    Using his econometric models based on mathematical equations, he predicted correctly that the pent-up demand for consumer goods and housing after the war, coupled with the purchasing power of the returning soldiers, would result not in economic crisis but in a surge in spending and a flourishing economy.

    Though he often testified before federal bodies and served as an economic adviser to Jimmy Carter during his 1976 presidential campaign, Professor Klein chose to remain in academia - he taught economics at the University of Pennsylvania for 33 years - and rejected an offer to join the Carter administration.

    "I am just an academic giving advice," he told People magazine in 1976. "If you are a technician and are asked for help, it is a social obligation of citizenship to give it."

    Professor Klein's use of vast survey data to build statistical economic models for the United States and several other countries has been adopted by economists around the world. "Few, if any, research workers in the empirical field of economic science have had so many successors and such a large impact as Lawrence Klein," the Nobel committee wrote in awarding him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science....

    anne -> PPaine ...
    Where is a reference? Repeated name-dropping, with no references is widly inconsiderate. Since you use the names repeatedly, why not just have a set of references to put down?

    What should a person read of Lawrence Klein?

    anne -> PPaine ...
    http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kalecki220510.html

    1942

    Political Aspects of Full Employment
    By Michal Kalecki

    http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=timothy_canova

    March, 1997

    The Macroeconomics of William Vickrey
    By Timothy A. Canova

    http://crookedtimber.org/2015/12/17/piketty-meade-and-predistribution/

    December 17, 2015

    Piketty, Meade and Predistribution
    By MARTIN O'NEILL

    anne -> PPaine ...
    http://community.middlebury.edu/~colander/books/map.html

    1980

    MAP: A Market Anti-Inflation Plan
    By David Colander and Abba Lerner

    Preface

    This is a small book about a big topic. This is not the usual book on inflation, simplified- or oversimplified- to make accepted doctrines intelligible to the layman. It presents a new plan- MAP (Market Anti-inflation Plan)- that makes it possible to succeed in curing our inflation. The ideas in it are not easily absorbed. They form a radical new framework- a new way of looking at inflation, and indeed at all macroeconomics, which is at the same time only a synthesis of many divergent old trains of thought. As Albert Einstein said, "Ideas should be expressed as simply as possible, but not more so." We think we have made the book intelligible to nonspecialists, even though its ideas are challenging for all readers, and perhaps even more so for advanced economists.

    We approach inflation as an economic problem, but we make allowances for political realities in designing MAP. Although we believe MAP should be adopted in some form, the book is not written from an advocatory position. We try to consider all arguments, both pro and con, and do not attempt to minimize potential difficulties.

    The methodology is realytic - an unusual word that indicates a contrast with analytic. This means that we are primarily concerned with solving real problems. We believe that the book also contributes importantly to extending theoretical understanding, but it does this only where necessary to solve the problem at hand. *

    * http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1085393/Abba-P-Lerner#ref849102

    Sandwichman -> RGC...
    Ah-ha the lump of bones fallacy! Dogs looking for bones will create a supply of bones as a consequence of their demand for bones.

    Dog gets no bone.
    Dog starves.
    Vultures (capitalists) eat meat off dead dog.
    Bones!

    anne :
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/us/politics/at-supreme-court-public-unions-face-possible-major-setback.html

    January 11, 2016

    Supreme Court Seems Poised to Deal Unions a Major Setback
    By ADAM LIPTAK

    WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court seemed poised on Monday to deliver a severe blow to organized labor.

    In a closely watched case brought by 10 California teachers, the court's conservative majority seemed ready to say that forcing public workers to support unions they have declined to join violates the First Amendment.

    A ruling in the teachers' favor would affect millions of government workers and culminate a political and legal campaign by a group of prominent conservative foundations aimed at weakening public-sector unions. Those unions stand to lose fees from both workers who object to the positions the unions take and those who simply choose not to join while benefiting from the unions' efforts on their behalf.

    Under California law, public employees who choose not to join unions must pay a "fair share service fee," also known as an "agency fee," typically equivalent to members' dues. The fees, the law says, are meant to pay for collective bargaining activities, including "the cost of lobbying activities." More than 20 states have similar laws.

    Government workers who are not members of unions have long been able to obtain refunds for the political activities of unions like campaign spending. Monday's case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, No. 14-915, asks whether such workers must continue to pay for any union activities, including negotiating for better wages and benefits. A majority of the justices seemed inclined to say no.

    Collective bargaining, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said, is inherently political when the government is the employer. "Many critical points are matters of public concern," he said, mentioning issues like tenure, merit pay, promotions and classroom size.

    The best hope for a victory for the unions had rested with Justice Antonin Scalia, who has written and said things sympathetic to their position. But he was consistently hostile on Monday.

    "The problem is that everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, almost by definition," he said.

    The court's four liberal members were on the defensive, asking whether there was good reason to overturn a 1977 decision by the court that allowed the fees....

    anne -> anne...
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/us/politics/union-fees-friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association.html

    January 8, 2016

    Mandatory Union Fees Getting Hard Look by Supreme Court
    By ADAM LIPTAK

    The justices have already voiced skepticism about making people give money to public unions. They may now be ready to rule that it's unconstitutional.

    PPaine -> anne...
    The unins have no choice but to attack on all fronts

    Public sector insulation from savage attacks ended long ago
    This is just a after dinner beltch by the union eaters

    Peter K. :
    One way to increase worker bargaining power is to employ aggressive macro (fiscal, monetary, currency/trade) policy so that labor markets are tight and businesses are fighting over workers.

    In the late 90s, labor shared in productivity gains as unemployment fell below 4 percent. This ended with the tech stock bubble which morphed into the housing bubble.

    As DeLong recently wrote:

    "What we need now is 1) debt relief to unwind the overhang and 2) much tighter financial regulation to prevent the growth of new fragilities. And if those prove inconsistent with full recovery, then we need massive government spending on infrastructure and other investments financed by money printing until full employment is reattained."

    It could be that achieving aggressive macro policy is as difficult politically as making the environment more favorable towards unions.

    If we look at the post-war social democratic years, both helped raise living standards. Also the financial system was much smaller and much more regulated.

    Peter K. -> Peter K....
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-delong/global-economic-depression_b_8924596.html?1452263364

    DeLong's quote

    Peter K. -> Peter K....
    Other ideas include work-sharing during downturns, and shorter hours.
    Sandwichman -> Peter K....
    "Oh no! Whatever you do," cried Brer Rabbit, "Don't throw me into the briar patch!"
    pgl :
    Point #2: "We also need to do a better job of providing the educational resources people need to reach their full potential."

    I can see conservative economists echoing this but what specifically do they want policy to do to make this happen? More Pell Grants No - they want to cut that kind of support. Now Greg Mankiw will tell you that you will get a great education if you manage to get into Harvard and pay $300 for his textbook!

    mulp -> pgl...
    If getting a Harvard PhD for every worker means that the California farm worker cutting broccoli and lettuce, or changing bed pans for the bedridden in nursing homes, gets paid $120,000 per year, then I'm all for eliminating poverty by education.

    My guess is education is not the path to eliminating poverty.

    If you think education is the solution, explain why it takes a college degree to pay farm workers, home care workers, child care workers, cleaning people who scrub toilet, middle class wages, instead of simply paying them middle class wages right now.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron :
    "...So long as business interests dominate the political process, it will be hard to reverse the trend toward increasing inequality."

    [Actually it is the interest of management and the capital owning class that are dominating the political process. Businesses would do just fine if wages were higher, rent seeking - not so much.]

    Peter K. :
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/yanis-varoufakis-interview-jeremy-corbyn-greece-eurozone-tsipras/

    The Man Who Knew Too Much

    An illustrated interview with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

    g :
    Mark and most of his ilk support an open door for corporations to import smart, hard working and desperate workers from around the world...impact of that at the margins for wages(along with many other things) have been a disaster for the bottom 80% over the past 30 years.
    PPaine -> Paine...
    Even the great dani rodick and joe Stigilitz could push tis harder
    But they are one worlders

    An honorable club but... Perhaps we need bordered areas to heal themselves first with national policies of true full employment and balance trade forex

    Denis Drew :
    That's right ... You cannot make the retail clerk any more productive. That's talking about the people I care about: bus drivers (taxi drivers -- me :-]), home carers, janitors, etc. But, you can make the economy they inhabit more productive -- and then the economy can pay them more (not less every year!): why barbers in France get paid more than barbers in Poland (classic example).

    US per capita income in 1968, $15,000. In 2016, $30,000.

    Minimum wage nearly $4 an hour below what it was in 1968 (adjusted). Ditto for the price of US labor across the mid-to-lower board.

    US mid-to-low labor price so extraordinarily low that half (HALF! -- 100,000!) of Chicago's gang age, minority males would rather join a street gang. Then there's my gang, Chicago's old (mostly retired) American born taxi drivers. Wouldn't get us into that job today for $500, if lucky, for 60 grueling hours.
    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/

    The core American trouble isn't wages not keeping up with productivity per se (though that parallels); the core labor sickness is wages not even remotely approaching what the consumer (not the boss) might be very willing to pay.

    We do not need to attract businesses that provide good jobs -- the jobs cannot be good if the pay is miserly. High wage opportunities don't happen -- they are made (ask Jimmy Hoffa).

    Educational resources are not needed to help retail clerks reach their full potential. Good pay for retail clerks is needed to help Detroit's schools reach their full potential. Nationwide: poverty area schools don't work because students (and teachers!) don't feel it worth making the effort -- given the job market doesn't promise anything remunerative enough to strive for when it's time for them to go to work.
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00332EXDM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

    "I believe this is mainly due to differences in bargaining power." Which is mainly due to absurdly unenforceable labor laws in this country which -- uniquely in all markets -- allows one side in the labor market to bully the other side out of being able to meaningfully bargain. Simple enough solution: make union busting a felony (like every other kind of market warping -- try to take a movie in the movies and telling them you were only kidding).

    The labor laws enabling collective bargaining have long been in place; the need for collective barraging presumably settled. So when are progressive states going to begin -- one state at a time; forget Congress -- to make these laws enforceable? Federal preemption means individual states cannot subtract from national law, but states may add. In Maryland for one, Democrats have a 33-17 edge in the State Senate and a 91-50 edge in the House. WA, OR, CA, IL, NY, anybody listening?

    IS ANYBODY, ANYWHERE LISTENING?! Retail clerks (and their hungry families) desperately want to know.

    PPaine -> PPaine ...
    Criminalize anti union activity
    mulp -> Denis Drew ...
    Conservatives want lower gdp growth.

    Or else they believe in free lunch economics:

    Step 1. Cut wages to increase profits
    Step 2. Produce more and price it twice as high
    Step 3. Demand government allow workers to borrow at high interest rates to buy twice as much as before their wages were cut in half
    Step 4. Blame government, and especially Obama when the math does not work out.

    If you want faster gdp growth, you must pay workers, who are after all 99% of the consumers, more and increase their pay faster.

    Economies are zero sum.

    It is possible to time shift, say by exporting more than imported and taking the difference and saving it by buying debt, or stored labor, in other countries, but at some point, the process is reversed. For the US, savings has flowed into the US blocking exports and increasing imports. At some point, that will need to reverse. Someone will need to work more and consume less. That will need to be the 1% because for decades, most US workers have worked more and consumed less, unless they got to borrow and consume so they will need to work more and consume less.

    Unless there is a massive redistribution of wealth, either war, or bankruptcy. Trying to tax wealth to redistribute will only destroy the wealth. After all, 99% of the wealth in the US was not built by labor, but inflated into existence by pump and dump asset churn or by high rents inflating decaying scarce assets in price.

    [Jan 09, 2016] How people survive when economy dies

    Notable quotes:
    "... His motto (which he shares with me every other day), is, "Never throw anything away". And damned if he can't find exactly what I need when I come over to scrounge at what I call, "Our Store". ..."
    "... We wear our clothes out and watch what we buy. We don't travel by air, and limit trips to local visits with family. In the future, perhaps this will be the norm for most instead of today's extravagent consumption which is thought of as normal for Canadians and a birthright. ..."
    "... Perhaps as a group, as a species, it seems as if we never learn and make the same and even greater mistakes over and over. But as individuals we can try to do things better, live better; until we can't go on. That is my plan, and I am sticking with it until I can't go on. ..."
    "... the banjo prevailed and damned if it isn't getting better. I am well on the way to mastering (to use that term loosely) an Iris Dement version of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms", "I can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash, and "I Believe In You" by Don Williams. I think I have sub-conciously chosen these songs to combat my own confessions of doom and gloom. ..."
    peakoilbarrel.com

    aws. , 01/08/2016 at 10:50 pm

    Back in early 2012, the Premier of Ontario suggested that the loonie (Canadian dollar) was becoming a petro-dollar. He was slapped down by the Cons, and walked back his comment.
    "That has knocked the wind out of Ontario exporters and manufacturing in particular," explained McGuinty.

    "The only reason the dollar is high - it's a petro dollar , right? It's been driven by the global demand for oil and gas to be sourced in Western Canada.

    "So if I had my preferences, as to whether we have a rapidly growing oil-and-gas sector in the West or a lower dollar benefiting Ontario, I'll tell you where I'd stand - with the lower dollar."

    Canadian Dollar's Worst Rout Ever Raises Petro-State Worries

    Ari Altstedter, Bloomberg, January 4, 2016

    By the middle of 2014, oil's share of Canada's total exports reached 19 percent from about 6 percent a decade earlier. Meanwhile, the Ontario-based auto industry was seeing its share of the export pie fall to to 14 percent from 22 percent. The heavier reliance on crude became an issue in last October's national election, as Harper and his Western-based Conservatives were accused by all their opponents of having favored oil to the detriment of other regions.

    In the process, the Canadian dollar had effectively joined the ranks of petro-currencies. The correlation between movements in the price of oil and the loonie has increased five-fold since 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2015, while all commodity-exporting countries faced currency pressure, the Canadian dollar was more sensitive to oil price movements than such petro-states as Mexico, Norway and Russia.

    I don't actually see low oil prices re-balanacing the Canadian economy. The cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. Would you invest in an export dependent industry in Canada? One can reasonably model a scenario where the price of oil goes up to $100/barrel, the loonie returns to parity with the greenback and an exporters competitiveness disappears with our petro-loonie's parity with the U.S. dollar.

    Being a petro-state makes for a pretty ugly domestic economy.

    Paulo , 01/08/2016 at 11:40 pm
    AWS (and Ron)

    I believe the decline will bring us Canadians back to our roots and strengths. Personally, I have been disgusted with our past 30 year transformation into urban consumers, no matter what part of the country we live in.

    I remember my Grandparents playing penny poker on winter evenings. I grew up with stories of the Depression. While I am 60, my good friend down the road is 75. He often tells me about living in our Valley from '46 onwards ..a time of bailing water from the river into a 45 for home supply, canned venison and salmon for winter, oil lamps because Hydro did not arrive until the latter '60s. His Dad built up a sawmill and his folks provided room and board for 'the crew'. His mom washed their clothing by hand on Saturdays and finally got a gas powered ringer washer to make it easier. Nowadays, he scrounges scrap steel (old bedframes and the like) from the recycling bins for our welding projects. He helps me make up power saw chains from scraps and pieces. His motto (which he shares with me every other day), is, "Never throw anything away". And damned if he can't find exactly what I need when I come over to scrounge at what I call, "Our Store".

    I don't know what will happen to the Vancouverites or Torontonians when property values dive. I imagine that many will lose everything they think they have, (when their debt bomb blows). I guess then we will see what people are made of. Will they whine? Or will they pick themselves up and make the best of it?

    As for Ron's post, it is similar to one last year. I could hardly read that one as well. Yes, there are deserts and sewers made by man, and that will be the best that many can hope for. But what is your sphere of influence and power to change things? I have replanted several thousand trees on our property and let most of it regen into a bramble-filled mixed forest. I have put in a pond that trout have found from the drainage ditches and flooded wetlands next door. I have cut trails for deer and elk crossing routes. We grow our gardens without pesticides and with as much compost as possible. We wear our clothes out and watch what we buy. We don't travel by air, and limit trips to local visits with family. In the future, perhaps this will be the norm for most instead of today's extravagent consumption which is thought of as normal for Canadians and a birthright.

    Ron, the facts are glum. Your story is true. I accept that. What I don't accept is allowing it to bring me down and giving up .on myself, my loved ones, and my people. Perhaps as a group, as a species, it seems as if we never learn and make the same and even greater mistakes over and over. But as individuals we can try to do things better, live better; until we can't go on. That is my plan, and I am sticking with it until I can't go on.

    I am teaching myself to play the banjo. (My blessed wife is so so patient). Today, the weather was cold and foggy, my lumber is frozen into ice lumps, and I was quite house bound being sick of crunching around my frozen yard trying to be productive. So, the banjo prevailed and damned if it isn't getting better. I am well on the way to mastering (to use that term loosely) an Iris Dement version of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms", "I can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash, and "I Believe In You" by Don Williams. I think I have sub-conciously chosen these songs to combat my own confessions of doom and gloom. Sometimes, it is all we have. For you post readers, I will provide the Youtube links for a pick-me-up. A nice glass of whiskey makes for a good listening partner.

    regards and thanks for your heartfelt honesty and efforts

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGbxrNqK4-4
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSsqWHtg7Ig
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Biz5kBIAtic

    [Dec 14, 2015] Offshoring and Unskilled Labor Demand Evidence That Trade Matters

    Notable quotes:
    "... I actually think that the bigger effect is not just offshoring, but a vicious circle relating to increasing inequality. After all, most of the economy today is services, but if normal people cant afford the services anymore, then that will of course stagnate, forcing down wages decreasing the affordability even more (or causing substitution of inferior automated or remote services). ..."
    "... That is why the one employment bright spot is medical services which are subsidised (one way or the other) almost everywhere. We really have to investigate more the distribution of the circulation of money, how the concentration of money in a few hands means that money circulates through relatively hands. I dont know of anybody who actually investigates this. You could say, it is the disaggregation-is-important problem. ..."
    "... One thing that really annoys with political discussion today is the dominance of money illusion. This is particularly extreme in the Euro area today where Germans keep complaining that so and so will be taking our tax money . No one ever seems to stop and think, where does the money come from in the first place , and yet, in macro-economics, this is absolutely the most important question. Nobody even seems to notice that both deleveraging and bankruptcy actively destroy money and that money needs to be replaced. ..."
    "... Foreign companies like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a "good enough" syndrome and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to give consumers what they really wanted - reliability, the latest technology and good design at a reasonable cost. ..."
    "... Yes, I see offshoring as a transitional stage while foreign workers are cheaper than machines. ..."
    "... The plot was about automation, but the moral was about humanity. :) ..."
    "... "The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings, said Paul, not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems." ..."
    "... It is not the PRODUCERS who have a huge incentive to make sure it never happens. Au contraire, they want their consumers to have more money. It is the OWNERS who want to make sure it never happens because that would dilute their power. ..."
    Dec 14, 2015 | Economist's View

    Syaloch said in reply to cm...

    So you think that offshoring does not eventually increase living standards in the destination countries? That's odd. What's your evidence?

    Automation may not be the first response, but it's always in the equation:

    CEO: "Those pesky foreign workers are asking for more again! Machines are so much easier to work with. Can we replace them with machines yet?"

    CTO: "Let me check... No, not yet, but a lot of smart people are working on it."

    CEO: "OK, then let's look for another offshoring partner with more complacent workers for now and revisit this later."

    The answer to this automation question only has to be yes once to permanently change the playing field.

    reason said...

    I actually think that the bigger effect is not just offshoring, but a vicious circle relating to increasing inequality. After all, most of the economy today is services, but if normal people can't afford the services anymore, then that will of course stagnate, forcing down wages decreasing the affordability even more (or causing substitution of inferior automated or remote services).

    That is why the one employment bright spot is medical services which are subsidised (one way or the other) almost everywhere. We really have to investigate more the distribution of the circulation of money, how the concentration of money in a few hands means that money circulates through relatively hands. I don't know of anybody who actually investigates this. You could say, it is the disaggregation-is-important problem.

    reason said...

    One thing that really annoys with political discussion today is the dominance of money illusion. This is particularly extreme in the Euro area today where Germans keep complaining that so and so will be taking "our tax money". No one ever seems to stop and think, "where does the money come from in the first place", and yet, in macro-economics, this is absolutely the most important question. Nobody even seems to notice that both deleveraging and bankruptcy actively destroy money and that money needs to be replaced.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to pgl...

    "...the empty suits running GM and Ford were both greedy and incompetent..."

    [Yep!]

    http://www.amazon.com/The-United-States-Toyota-Squandered/dp/1592993028

    The United States of Toyota: How Detroit Squandered Its Legacy and Enabled Toyota to Become America's Car Company

    September 11, 2007

    by Peter M. DeLorenzo

    The United States of Toyota is many stories in one. First and foremost, it is a business story, detailing the decline of the American automobile industry - and the simultaneous rise of an Asian manufacturer to take its place. It is also a history book, providing an intimate portrait of the larger-than-life personalities and cars that led the American auto industry through its glory days and down the path toward extinction. It is a political/current affairs piece, presenting the rise of a Japanese company - Toyota - not just in terms of its sales success but also in terms of its cultural success, as it works to assimilate into American society. And finally, it is a never-before-seen primer on Detroit - The Motor City - a town and a region dominated by the auto companies, their suppliers and their ad agencies - and by a mindset and culture all its own. In commentary that is as accurate as it is blunt, Peter De Lorenzo presents the players and the action in the auto business in a way not seen before in print. His voice is unique and refreshingly candid. His provocative analyses and assessments - grounded in personal experience and a lifelong immersion in all things automotive - present a compelling picture of the state of the auto business - how it used to be, what it has become and where it is headed. From the arrogance and short-sightedness of the Detroit manufacturers to the acumen and relentlessness of Toyota, The United States of Toyota paints an insightful portrait of an iconic American industry as it struggles for survival in the early years of the 21st century.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Detroit-American-Market/dp/0385507704

    The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market


    September 21, 2004
    by Micheline Maynard

    An in-depth, hard-hitting account of the mistakes, miscalculations and myopia that have doomed America's automobile industry.

    In the 1990s, Detroit's Big Three automobile companies were riding high. The introduction of the minivan and the SUV had revitalized the industry, and it was widely believed that Detroit had miraculously overcome the threat of foreign imports and regained its ascendant position. As Micheline Maynard makes brilliantly clear in THE END OF DETROIT, however, the traditional American car industry was, in fact, headed for disaster. Maynard argues that by focusing on high-profit trucks and SUVs, the Big Three missed a golden opportunity to win back the American car-buyer.

    Foreign companies like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a "good enough" syndrome and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to give consumers what they really wanted - reliability, the latest technology and good design at a reasonable cost. Drawing on a wide range of interviews with industry leaders, including Toyota's Fujio Cho, Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, Chrysler's Dieter Zetsche, BMW's Helmut Panke, and GM's Robert Lutz, as well as car designers, engineers, test drivers and owners, Maynard presents a stark picture of the culture of arrogance and insularity that led American car manufacturers astray. Maynard predicts that, by the end of the decade, one of the American car makers will no longer exist in its present form.

    *

    [Like the executives of the US steel industry before them, the management of the big three (plus one) US automakers possessed legendary inabilities when it came to product development and production quality control. One can only imagine that their golf games must have been better than their understanding of auto making.]

    pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

    Exactly - products designs that were better than our. Lean production which we were slow to adapt. And there are those Jan commercials. Toyotas are selling like crazy. But at least Ford and GM is finally under new management.

    sanjait said in reply to pgl...

    A few decades later ... Ford and GM do indeed look to be getting their act together. I'd buy a car from either one of those companies today.

    lower middle class said...

    Paging Dr. Proteus... Dr. Paul Proteus!

    cm said in reply to lower middle class...

    That was automation, not offshoring.

    Syaloch said in reply to cm...

    In the end that's a distinction without a difference.

    Julio said in reply to Syaloch...

    Yes, I see offshoring as a transitional stage while foreign workers are cheaper than machines.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Julio...

    Machines could not open up SE Asian markets to US firms in the way that offshoring could.

    Syaloch said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

    Suppose we visited those factories from Player Piano and discovered that the few highly educated workers remaining were not overseeing automated machines, but rather shipping raw materials over to a foreign country where goods were produced by low-wage laborers. In terms of the domestic economy, would that make any difference?

    Large-scale offshoring was enabled by machines that made the exchange of goods and information between remote locations possible. Whatever residual labor component is involved is merely an automation problem that hasn't been solved... yet.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Syaloch...

    MNCs wanted their capital investment to have access to the markets with the most growth potential. Regulatory and FOREX arbitrage helped. Labor costs were low on the totem pole.

    Syaloch said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

    That's more true with offshored manufacturing than with services. US companies aren't sending call center jobs to India because they hope to serve the Indian market.

    But even with regard to manufacturing labor costs are obviously a major consideration. Just watch any episode of "Shark Tank" and listen to the sharks explain how stupid anyone is for trying to manufacture anything here in the US. Are t-shirts sewn in Bangladesh because of the huge growth potential in apparel sales there? Were the Mexican maquiladoras set up to have better access to the Mexican market?

    lower middle class said in reply to cm...

    The plot was about automation, but the moral was about humanity. :)

    "The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems."
    ― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

    Syaloch said in reply to lower middle class...

    Toward the end of Player Piano the Shah of Bratpuhr asks a very good question: What are people for?

    When I first read Player Piano I also happened by pure chance to be reading a collection of essays by Wendell Berry titled "What Are People For?"

    The eponymous essay from Berry's collection was a great complement to Vonnegut's book.

    lower middle class said in reply to Syaloch...

    Time for me to visit the library, thanks Syaloch!

    reason said...

    New Deal democrat
    Yes, it is part of your name (and was copied then throughout the Western world). Then of course there was the Russian and Chinese revolutions, which at least initially were very egalitarian.

    New Deal democrat said in reply to reason...

    I think you misunderstood my point, which was about liberalizing international trade. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that was a really high priority of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. :)

    pgl said in reply to New Deal democrat...

    I studied Russian history. Free trade was not exactly what drove Lenin. And it is certainly not what drives Putin.

    PPaine said in reply to New Deal democrat...

    There was a significant debate about trade early on with bukharin advocating. Two way openness. And Lenin a two way state monopoly. Lenin anticipated what happened to russia after the wall fell ....70 or so years later.

    He had a keen insight into MNCs free for all tactics. Unfortunately state concessions which he supported faced a tacit constriction.

    Despite notable exceptions including Pater Koch

    reason said...

    P.S. New Deal democrat

    It is not the PRODUCERS who have a huge incentive to make sure it never happens. Au contraire, they want their consumers to have more money. It is the OWNERS who want to make sure it never happens because that would dilute their power.

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to reason...

    Yep. Capital gains... and gains... and gains, until there is little left for labor gains.

    pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

    Nike makes obscene profits. And for what? Designing new shoes? They don't make anything - their third party Chinese manufacturers do the hard work at low wages. BTW - the US does not get to tax those Nike profits as they end up in Bermuda.

    [Dec 11, 2015] Demand, Supply, and what is new after 2008

    Notable quotes:
    "... Robert Waldmann writes that that the reason Krugman was surprised by the failure of the supply side is that he didn't pay enough attention to the European unemployment problem. The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then with low inflation. By 2008, the flat Phillips curve was already very clear to anyone who read Italian newspapers. ..."
    angrybearblog.com
    Angry Bear

    ... ... ...

    The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then with low inflation.

    Krugman posted a graph showing how the US graph of inflation and unemployment has changed (just click the link and look). In the past high unemployment gradually lead to lower inflation and then to lower inflation and unemployment - this is the pattern predicted by Friedman, Phelps, Tobin (and discussed already by Samuelson and Solow in 1960). But in the recent past extremely high unemployment has come with low and stable core inflation.

    Things used look very different here in Italy than in the USA. Here is a graph of data from before January 2008. Extremely high unemployment was consistent with moderate and then with low inflation. The only clear shift in inflation occurred in 1996 and 1997 (which may or may not be when Italians began to think they might actually earn the wonderful reward of being allowed to adopt the Euro).

    filipograph

    By 2008, The flat Phillips curve (the Fillipo curve?) was already very clear to anyone who read Italian newspapers.

    Here are all data which are available on FRED (yes I sit in Rome and surf to St Louis for Italian data). Oddly the harmonized unemployment series is only available (at FRED) from 1983 on.

    filipo2

    In this graph there is also very little sign of Friedman-Phelps cycles. The old pattern was a steady decline from extremely high inflation - it looks almost like an expectations unaugmented Phillips curve. But then (really from 1986 on) there was fairly stable moderate to low inflation along with extreme swings in unemployment. I stress that this is CPI inflation including food and energy not core inflation. the peak oil spike in 2007 and the collapse in 2008 are clearly visible. It is possible that the most recent observations show a slide to actual persistent deflation, but it is more likely that the recent decline in inflation is due to the collapse of the price of oil.

    Unlearning economic paradigms | Bruegel , November 30, 2015 7:22 am

    […] Robert Waldmann writes that that the reason Krugman was surprised by the failure of the supply side is that he didn't pay enough attention to the European unemployment problem. The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then with low inflation. By 2008, the flat Phillips curve was already very clear to anyone who read Italian newspapers. […]

    [Dec 04, 2015] About those possible limits to creative destruction…

    You need to distinguish "creative destruction" due to new technologies invented from "greed based" destruction caused by financization and outsourcing... In both cases old job dissaper, but in case of finanzition based destruction of jobs no new jobs are ever created. It's just plain vanilla wealth transfer to upper 1% of the society.
    ftalphaville.ft.com
    The social instability that comes alongside creative destruction - or 'disruption' - is often justified by the notion that unemployment effects are only temporary since in the long run a multitude of new jobs (many of which we can't even imagine yet) will inevitably be created.

    Well, a new Oxford Martin School study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Thor Berger has found…

    • Only 0.5% of the US labor force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000.
    • Even in Silicon Valley, only 1.8% of workers are employed in new industries
    • The majority of the 71 new 'tech' jobs relate to the emergence of digital technologies, (such as online auctions, video and audio streaming and web design) but also include renewable energy and biotech.
    • New jobs cluster in skilled cities, making economic activity increasingly concentrated and contributing to growing regional inequalities.

    This, in other words, is the reality of the new "zero to one" tech world, where moving fast and breaking things (including jobs), then not worrying about the consequences until you're a billionaire who can give his wealth away in one billion dollar tranches, is the acceptable norm. (Even though, arguably, the accumulation of those billions in the first place is often the job-destroying problem.)

    Dr. Frey adds the valuable commentary that:

    "Because digital businesses require only limited capital investment, employment opportunities created by technological change may continue to stagnate as economies become increasingly digitized. Major economies like the US need to think about the implications for lower-skilled workers, to ensure that vast swathes of people don't get left behind."

    Very fair point.

    Limited capital investment equals extremely low barriers to entry. This in turn equals absolutely ruthless competition, which - somewhat ironically - leads to the "why should I bother investing in anything at all since there's nothing in it for me in the long run" effect. The real-world equivalent, if you will, of the Grossman Stiglitz Paradox.

    As a consequence, faddy network effects - a.k.a who's first to benefit from natural monopoly formation or old-fashioned populism by another name - increasingly mean everything, reducing successful entrepreneurial enterprise to a simple lottery/gambling game or (at best) a highly politicised popularity contest, wherein marketing spend stands equivalent to political campaigning outlay.

    Except, whereas political campaigns pay off electorate loyalty with promises of better lives in material terms, the most successful technology campaigns tend to do the opposite: pay off users for network loyalty with the promises of better digital returns, at the same time as transferring a greater share of material wealth to a tiny platform owning elite.

    Indeed, because tech firms are mainly focused on redistributing existing wealth rather than creating more of it, for them to profit, some share of real economy product must be snatched from those who actually worked to produce it. That's Schumpeterian creative destruction in action, albeit at the cost of producers who tend to share their profits with workforces through wages.

    The lowest cost producer will always be the one with smallest human workforce.

    All of which then sparks a dangerous race to the bottom focused on cutting out the most expensive material input: the human.

    What's worse, once that race starts, there's little to no incentive for anyone to invest in any business which ever involves human capital again.

    The irony is, without any beneficiary workforce within the new business structure, it's only capital owners (or lucky billionaire charity cases) who get to benefit from the dividends created by the system. Demand for products and services is destroyed. To wit, a vicious deflationary cycle begins, which shrinks the pie rather than grows it.

    Regarding the labour-destroying digital/tech trend, Frey and Berger's paper says specifically:

    Relative to major corporations of the early computer revolution, the companies leading the digital revolution have created few employment opportunities: while IBM and Dell still employed 431,212 and 108,800 workers respectively, Facebook's headcount reached only 7,185 in 2013.

    To be blunt, that arguably means it's not looking good for three of the core Schumpeterian presumptions, namely:

    • Technological disruption will eventually create jobs of equal merit elsewhere in the system (i.e. unemployment is temporary).
    • Recessions lead to efficiency gains that create social well-being for all.
    • Successful innovation must be rewarded with a temporary monopoly if it's to continue incentivising anyone to bear the risks of entrepreneurship.
    It is, however, looking better for the Schumpeterian conclusion that eventually capitalism must give way to socialism if it's to create a widespread commonwealth.

    Why? Because, whilst it's never been easier, cheaper or less risky to grab yourself a ticket for the 'monopoly reward' lottery - and thus more profitable when you do win - these cheap tickets are only available to businesses redistributing existing wealth that's focused on contracting consumer surplus as a whole.

    In the digital tech era, that's at best an exercise in political-populism (marketing spend to get consumers to support this platform rather than another, for as low a consumer surplus cost as possible to the platform leader) and at worst an exercise in total utter randomness. Neither, consequently, really justifies outsized rewards to any winning party.

    To the contrary, if you're in the business of creating new value utilising real human workforces or focused on creating new areas of demand, it's arguably never been more difficult, expensive or risky to take a punt on success - and thus less profitable if you do win. And that's because the very concept of rewarding a large workforce or consumer base with a steady, dependable and secure consumer surplus is considered to be a fundamental competitive disadvantage.

    Related links:

    Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

    [Nov 20, 2015] How information technology is shrinking the pie

    FT Alphaville

    An essential read from Martin Wolf this Thursday on the manner in which corporate surpluses are contributing to the savings glut problem and causing all sorts of distributive chaos in the process.

    So, whereas it used to be the sovereigns over-hoarding international claims and under-consuming/under-investing in their own infrastructure for the benefit of getting a leg up in the global hierarchal order, it's now corporates over-hoarding retained earnings for the sake of protecting their dominant positions instead (retaining earning piles being different to explicit cash piles, which can be generated with debt not just profit).

    Says Wolf:

    The observation that a structural surplus of savings over investment appears to have emerged in the corporate sectors of the big high-income countries is highly significant. It is significant for the growth of potential supply, since it reflects relatively feeble investment, but it is also significant for the shape of aggregate demand.

    If the corporate sector runs a structural surplus of savings over investment, other sectors must run offsetting structural deficits. If the government is to be in financial balance, either households or foreigners must run these deficits. In the eurozone, this logic has led to huge current-account surpluses (a financial deficit for foreigners). For the UK and US, it is likely to mean renewed household deficits - a perilously destabilising possibility.

    Why is corporate investment structurally so weak then? Wolf proposes a few reasons. One is the ageing of societies, which lowers the level of investment needed. The other is globalisation, which motivates relocation out of high-income countries. But the one we think might be most relevant is his proposition that technological innovation is quietly killing the incentive to invest. This is critical:
    Much investment today is in IT, whose price is collapsing: constant nominal investment finances rising real investment. Again, much innovation seems to reduce the need for capital: consider the substitution of warehouses for retail stores.
    We've taken for granted that "technology" is a force for good in the world. But perhaps the reality is a little different? Perhaps for every 'good' information tech creates, an equal and equivalent 'ungood' is created too? Or perhaps more so, the reason we're seeing the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics is precisely because information technology is and always has been another manifestation of a rent-extracting financial type of business.

    Here's a chart by way of Iren Levina at Kingston University to cement our argument that banks were the original network-based technology platform unicorns - with business models equally focused on gathering privileged data about customer behaviours for the purpose of influencing more profitable behaviours elsewhere:

    It is with good reason, then, that banks dedicate the biggest chunk of operating expenses to personnel, algorithms, IT infrastructure and hardware equipment. Banks, like information tech firms today, are and always have been information processing businesses.

    On which note, Diana Hancock, of the Fed, argued convincingly in the 1990s that the Financial Firm is a financial technology which takes input (data), processes said input, and then creates monetary goods which distribute existing capital to sectors which can draw returns more effectively than others, in exchange for a leasing fee for that matching service.

    But as Hancock says, financial profits can only be assured only if the purchase cost of one unit of the capital good less the rental received during the period is equal to the discounted depreciated value of the capital good in the rental period.

    That's another way of saying bank profits are only justifiable if the added value from redistributing leased capital more than compensates for its natural depreciation - something that's only possible if the total value add is over and above total lease fees charged by the intermediaries. If at the end of the rental period society has no more capital (or less!) than it had to begin with, fees charged on an ex-ante basis will have proven unjustified.

    The parallels between banks and technology platforms are thus uncanny.

    In the banking process, data input represents the process by which information about future consumption (or lack thereof) - as extrapolated from previous behaviour - is collected from user networks to facilitate more constructive consumption elsewhere. By the time capital is returned, enough new capital is supposed to have been created to ensure both the original investors can be paid back as well as the banking/intermediary layer compensated for. Banking crises emerge when it turns out investments have failed to compensate for the natural depreciation rate.

    Shrinking the pie?

    In the unicorn IT process, data input represents the process by which information about future consumption (or lack thereof) - as extrapolated from previous behaviour - is collected from user networks to facilitate less constructive consumption at source.

    In other words, instead of using information about long-term non-consumption to benefit value-adding industries which grow the pie for all, tech firms are focused on using information about fleeting periods of non-consumption to draw down existing capital more efficiently.

    The better tech firms are at predicting or shaping behaviours through their information processes, the less new capital investment is needed, because reduced consumer optionality allows for increased supplier predictability. To wit, those who can predict their customer's behaviours best or mould them, become the lowest cost marginal producers - deferring more risky capital investment (by way of retained earnings) to the moment they can be sure they're the last monopolists left standing.

    The pie as a whole stops growing, with only information tech providers - the modern-day rentiers of the system - benefiting from the structure.

    To conclude, some points from Hancock's book which incidentally highlight the parallels between financial firms and modern-day unicorns:

    The amount of profit generated, depends upon the strength of the banking system's monopoly position.

    And..:

    The traditional reason given for deposit rate ceilings is that bank competition for deposits allegedly leads to a high rate of bank failures. According to this view, bank competition for deposits led individual banks in the 1920′s and early 1930′s to offer higher interest rates in order to maintain or increase individual share of the market. The banks were forced to rely on higher yielding riskier assets to offset incurred deposit costs. This placed the banks in a vulnerable position. Any adverse economic developments, either national or local, would be sufficient to make these risky assets uncollectible by the bank. Deposit rate ceilings affect consumers, since they receive less for deposits than would otherwise be the case, but the accompanying increased monopoly power of financial institutions makes them allegedly more sound.

    The techies would argue they're just making the world more efficient.

    We can't help wonder if solutions based on substituting new goods for pre-existing goods (or virtual ones) are somewhat different to solutions which grow the pie for everyone. There seems to us an inherent risk in creating monopolistic systems which overstretch themselves to the point they essentially run on empty.

    Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

    Related links:
    When a man cannot choose, is he still a consumer? - FT Alphaville
    Assessing "Abenomics", again - FT Alphaville

    [Nov 12, 2015] A Closer Look at All Those New U.S. Jobs Elliott Wave International

    Notable quotes:
    "... In truth, the real jobless rate would be 9.8% if those who have given up looking for work and part-timers who want a full-time job were included. ..."
    "... The labor force participation rate is at its lowest level in 38 years. ..."
    "... This Federal Reserve chart (November 6) shows that only 62.4% of working-age Americans are employed or looking for work ..."
    "... A record 94,610,000 Americans were not in the workforce in September. But the questionable health of the U.S. labor market doesn't stop here. ..."
    "... the point is that many of the new jobs in the U.S. have been at the lower end of the income brackets. ..."
    Safehaven.com

    U.S. labor force participation rate is at its lowest level in 38 years

    Editor's note: You'll find a text version of the story below the video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9qPHWirD9o

    In truth, the real jobless rate would be 9.8% if those who have given up looking for work and part-timers who want a full-time job were included.

    The labor force participation rate is at its lowest level in 38 years.

    This Federal Reserve chart (November 6) shows that only 62.4% of working-age Americans are employed or looking for work:

    A record 94,610,000 Americans were not in the workforce in September. But the questionable health of the U.S. labor market doesn't stop here.

    Even those who are working are struggling to make headway.

    And what about the 2.95 million new jobs that were created in 2014, and the slightly more than 2 million so far in 2015?

    The numbers sound impressive until you dig deeper. This is from the Atlantic magazine (September 4):

    According to new research, between 2009 and 2014, wage loss across all jobs averaged 4 percent. But for those in the bottom quintile, those losses averaged 5.7 percent. ... The [jobs] where declines in real wages have been the most acute -- are also the jobs that have hired the highest share of new workers during the recovery.

    It's true that average hourly earnings increased by nine cents in October. Even so, the point is that many of the new jobs in the U.S. have been at the lower end of the income brackets.

    Also consider that in September, the U.S. Consumer Price Index fell 0.2% and that the Producer Price Index declined by 0.5%.

    All told, our stance remains that deflation is knocking at the door.

    Get the full picture of what we see as a worldwide deflationary trend in our new report, Deflation and the Devaluation Derby .

    Here's what you will learn:

    • Currency devaluation's role in the developing global crisis
    • How the self-reinforcing aspect of deflation is already apparent in commodities trading
    • Why the top 1% of earners are in for a rude awakening
    • How Europe's biggest economies are screeching to a halt
    • The hair-raising future for U.S. stocks

    Just recall how swiftly the 2007-2009 financial crisis unfolded. We anticipate that the next global financial crisis could be even more sudden and severe.

    [Nov 08, 2015] Meanwhile

    Probably the same is now true for IT ;-) ...
    Nick Geoghegan

    [Nov 07, 2015] Barbara Garson How to Become a Part-Time Worker Without Really Trying

    Aug 22, 2013 | naked capitalism

    Clive:

    Found the link now:

    http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/21/bank-intern-death-working-hours

    LucyLulu:

    I don't recall where I read another story about this, but it said the cause of death was unknown. It also showed a portion of his webpage with the Serenity Prayer quoted and I wondered (granted, was speculative) if he had a history of addiction. Then I read the Guardian link posted and saw it reported that toxicology results were pending (yeah, it's routine testing for a death of unknown cause, but not typically highlighted in press reports IME). So, I question how accurate "working himself to death" might be. A gut feeling says his death was drug-related, not that it becomes any less tragic or senseless for being so.

    That being said, if he did struggle with addiction or had become sober relatively recently, working those type of hours would have put his sobriety at risk. He either would have or should have been warned to limit himself to ~40 hours/week, even if it meant skipping the internship (as whatever is deemed more important than staying clean will be lost…… or so is the common wisdom).

    I wonder if Merrill Lynch was unaware of his being at risk, or if they knew and ignored it. I could be wrong but it seems an internship and the mentoring role would (or perhaps the mother in me thinks it should) imply some sort of custodial responsibility on the part of Merrill, or whatever the correct term would be.

    Clive:

    You're right of course Lucy - innocent until proven guilty applies to everyone or not at all.

    I would add that suicidality, depression / stress, chemical or behavioural dependency are often co-morbid. If an individual is predisposed to these conditions, it will be exacerbated by a presence of overwork.

    Overwork can also be a trigger. I'm not sure we ever want to normalise a culture where 15 hour days are routinely tolerated and thus degenerate into employment Darwinism where only the strongest survive.

    Yves Smith

    LucyLulu,

    I don't know if you've every worked the sort of hours young people on the investment banking (NOT trading) side work at big firms. I had one of these jobs back in the early 1980s. It is simply inconceivable unless you've been in it. It's worse than what medical residents are put through. You are not permitted to say no, you have (in my case) 100 people who can give you work (30+ clients, typically 2 or more people at the firm who could ask that something be done, plus the client would often call the junior staffers directly if they wanted something small done quickly) with none of them caring what the other 99 had you doing. Priorities changing all the time intra day as markets moved and deals got accelerated or delayed and pitches to clients had to be changed based on changing market info (you could not finalize any client marketing piece until you had closing prices at 4, which meant inevitably you were working into the evening, and that was the more ordered part of the work).

    How do these firms get away with it? They are the most prestigious, sought after employers. They can hire whoever they want. They seek people who are smart, intensely competitive, and insecure. They then wind up in an environment that has much in common with a cult. People wind up largely abandoning all their former friends and spending much less time with their families due to the hours and the pay gap (people who make that much money are quickly acculturated to eat out and spend what little recreational time they have at a lavish level). The environments are also extremely conformist. Social psychologists write about the power of social assent, that if enough people in your environment do something, you'll see it as normal, even required. And the extreme hours are most certainly required. Young people in these jobs are expected to have no boundaries. When asked to do something, they are not permitted to say "No, I already have too much on my plate, I can't take that on". The only acceptable answer is "When do you need it?"

    I known one someone at Salomon who started vomiting under the stress. Every half hour. Went back and kept working after each incident. Electrolytes got so messed up he collapsed and had to be hospitalized. I know another person at Lazard, working on a big deal. Was seen in the office lying on the floor on one side reading documents over the weekend. People asked if she was OK. She waved them away, insisted she was fine. The pain eventually got so bad she went home and called her boyfriend. He ran up and took her immediately to the hospital. The operated straight away, thinking it was appendicitis. It was diverticulitis, which is usually a disease of old people but can be brought on by stress and bad diet. They had to remove half her colon. Had they gotten to her a half hour later, her colon would have ruptured and she would have died.

    Same woman later lost 90% of her vision in one eye due to glaucoma, didn't have time to get regular eye exams. This was the price of becoming the first woman partner in M&A at any major firm.

    I can give you other stories like that. Breakdown is hardly unheard of.

    I did 2 all nighters in a row and was starting to have trouble with motor function (coordination for inputting data was starting to go). Three, which is what this young man did, amounts to torture. And you can do that on mere caffeine.

    Your blaming his death on drugs when I am highly confident you've never done more than one all nighter and have no idea what that does to you is uninformed and is supporting the banks and abusive work environments generally.

    LucyLulu:

    I read the link you posted and one other article. If it was mentioned that he had stayed up three nights in a row, somehow I overlooked it. And yes, I've done several (successive) all-nighters in the past, having to be on call for a week at a time, and work 12 hour days even if up all night (fairly often). I didn't fare well, and didn't stay at the job long.

    I wasn't meaning to be judgmental towards the intern. I consider his death just as tragic and senseless if it was fatigue-induced, and my point about responsibility lying with the mentoring firm still stands.

    In fact, I don't understand why the practice is allowed to continue. Medical residents and related professions have since had limits imposed on the number of hours that can be asked to work without time off.

    Yves Smith:

    Lucy,

    Thanks for the reply, but even then, your experience with all nighters is not directly comparable. I meant all nighters while you were working, as in 48+ hours of continuous work except for dealing with essential bodily functions and some hygiene. And this is also in an environment that is intolerant of errors, where typos or computation errors are career enders or severely detrimental.

    So even working 12 hours and not sleeping well/at all by being on call is not the same as having to keep working except for eating and showering/clothes change time/pottie breaks. The stress level is considerably worse.

    As to the three all-nighters, it has been reported but not confirmed. And BofA will clearly try to make what happened look less awful than it was:

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/bank-of-america-intern-found-dead-alleged-to-have-pulled-three-all-nighters-in-a-row/article13897556/

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/slavery-in-the-city-death-of-21yearold-intern-moritz-erhardt-at-merrill-lynch-sparks-furore-over-long-hours-and-macho-culture-at-banks-8775917.html

    http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/08/20/bank-of-america-intern-died-after-pulling-three-all-nighters-re/

    DolleyMadison:

    yep…I used to wonder how battered women stayed with their abusers…I didn't realize until after I LEFT BofA that I was essentially a battered woman…surrounded by her enabling in laws.

    You don't realize how crazy it is until you leave. It really is like a cult.

    If you raise your hand to question the regime, retribution is swift and sure, even among "friends" with decades long relationships, and even against spouses. I truly believe some of my former co-workers would even commit murder if their overlords insisted on it.

    Nathanael:

    I'm glad to be immune to that particular sort of coercion thanks to abnormal psychology. I wish more people were like me.

    Worth noting: the particular psychological oddities which make people resistant to that type of coercion seem to be the same ones which make people good at computer programming. I have no idea what the social consequences of that combination will be.

    LucyLulu:

    I'm really not trying to be argumentative, but actually I WAS talking about working all night, as I took after-hours call from home, at least until I had to go get somebody admitted or petitioned or go out and do an emergency assessment or something. It was clear what you meant when I said I had done it also. I would also argue that mistakes kinda aren't tolerated in the health field either, though perhaps for different reasons.

    Nobody should be expected to work for 72 hours straight, nor is there a need, it's sheer exploitation to maximize profits. It's more than the human body and mind can endure. Workers need to stand up and say no. I think that's something people tend to learn as they get older, gain confidence, and their priorities become more clear. 21 is still very young. And saying no, if it means possibly the loss of the job, is not so easy when employment is scarce and an income is needed, or it's a standard requirement for one's chosen career, as apparently it must be in finance (Higher Power sending initial clue that one has chosen lousy career??). Workers no longer have unions to help them negotiate collectively….. though nursing never joined unions in most parts of the country, It was deemed to be beneath the professional status of a registered nurse to be a union member, rather conveniently. Thee places I ended working, almost exclusively in the south, it was risky to be overheard mentioning "unions" within earshot of management. IIRC, the provision of nursing staff is easily a hospital's single largest expenditure. With unionized nursing, how can a hospital pay their CEO their $15M living wage?

    fajensen:

    I wonder if Merrill Lynch was unaware of his being at risk, or if they knew and ignored it.

    Easy to find out*: If the HR-bods either knew or suspected anything they would have taken out a life insurance on the poor guy, with Merill Lynch as beneficiaries.

    Gotta play them odds!

    *) Or maybe not so easy – It is depressingly common for employers to buy a little bet on the early demise of the "Human Ressources".

    Nathanael:

    "But what of the next generation, mired in debt and subject to the extraction by the multitude of licensed protection racket players in healthcare, finance, education or housing ? How can they ever get ahead ?"

    Off-the-books economy. Find one part-time job which gives you enough tenuous connection to the on-the-books economy that the police state doesn't get suspicious, then do *ALL* your other work off the books.

    Lambert Strether:

    "Off-the-books economy." And commit perjury on your ObamaCare application?

    LucyLulu:

    If it's off the books, you're already committing tax fraud (or tax evasion, or something like that) on your IRS return.

    Nathanael, The off-the-book work would also have to be something that could be done on a flexible schedule since the part time job hours will change every week. But any work where you can be your own boss and set your own hours is preferable to dependence upon the 'good will' of an employer, IMO. I'm working on that one myself. (I knew I should have taken basketweaving.)

    LucyLulu:

    This link by Charlie Stross was on Jesse's page and was an intriguing read on the implications of the current labor culture. Stross theorizes that Snowden and Alynikov type defectors will become the norm now that Gen Y, first born in the early 80′s, are starting to flood the labor market (most employers don't have the vast resources for retribution of the US gov and Goldman-Sachs). Gen Y is the first generation having no prior work experience in a culture that favors mutual employee/employer commitment, nor having grown up witnessing parents in more secure "jobs-for-life" and termination-for-cause employment. They've only had experience with jobs that are outsourced, offshored, laid-off, contract, zero-hours, temporary, part-time, etc.

    Gen Y believes in the workplace golden rule ("do unto others as they do unto you"… okay, I've taken some liberties paraphrasing Stross). Thus today's employees will have no less reticence about 'screwing' their (former) employers to advance their own self-interests, than employers have about 'screwing' their workers to maximize profits. It's a good read.

    With any luck, it won't be merely wishful thinking to say: Karma's a bitch!

    Doug Terpstra:

    Yes, it's "funny" how the Wal-Mart right-to-work churn, permanent student debt, gross inequality, and social insecurity caused by a triumphant class war has fractured American cultural cohesion, especially within Gen Y. At this juncture economic dynamism can no longer be sustained, and along with it, autonomic patriotism. Following up on fajensen above, in a climate of callous top-down disloyalty, the roster of conscientious whistleblowers such as Snowden, Manning, Assange, Kiriakou, Darby (Abu Ghraib), Drake (NSA) and many more, is certain to grow. Dissent rises gradually, then rapidly, as things fall apart and the center cannot hold.

    I think we have a great disharmonic convergence coming, likely this year. Ben Shalom is leaving and is almost sure to take away the punch bowl before Summers is seated.

    psychohistorian:

    Karma is a bitch.

    That is what is going to bring the current system to a halt. The young ones are not daft, I am finding.

    The current economic/social system runs on computers and if servers stop/slow or the networks begin not working right, the trust level is eventually broke and all hell breaks loose…..geometric finger pointing and cascading fail overs between and among vendors.

    Being an old techie I engage every other techie I run into and the young contract techies keeping the NSA sub contractors running are a hairsbreath from mayhem the management can't contain.

    Go long on popcorn and don't be surprised if techie shit gets less reliable for a while. Prepare for a bouncy ride.

    Kievite:

    psychohistorian,

    The trend toward less qualification in IT is probably present as younger people did not experience the emerging of all those technologies as oltimers did. So they have less "in-depth" knowledge that old-timers acquired due to this process. But there are old-timers and old-timers. A lot of old-times are just accidental people which moved to the field during boom years of IT (say, 1990-1998). Many of them are barely competent in what they are doing even now.

    I would not get too exited about new generation of IT workers (mostly part-time and lower paid) greatly affecting network or server reliability. May be something will happen on the margins. But it looks completely remote to me. May be due to commodization of the technology the IT support on the level of the firm now matter less. Complex issues are solved by vendor support, or professional consultants. Enterprise software is also more or less standardized.

    Where huge blunders are now made is at senior level, where people became generally detached from technology (and sometimes from reality). Also too many technically illiterate bean counters were promoted to senior positions. And they often rely on fashion (and vendor hype and/or bribing) in adopting new technologies for the firm. But at the end of the day this is just modest cost overruns. Nothing to be exited about. So something that cost $100K is bought for a million and cost another couple of million in maintenance fees and internal costs before being abandoned. That's about it. Remember IT is generally around 1% of the total cost of a large company operations.

    hazmat:

    Employers destroyed the golden rule in the work place. As an employee, you simply cannot continue to treat them the way you wish to be treated over a sustainable period of time when they offer only these kinds of abuses in return.

    Reciprocity is the new rule for employees. If they take care of you, take care of them and treat them well. Pamper them. If they screw you over, return the favor a multitude worse. Make it painful.

    Doug Terpstra:

    Thank you, Yves, for another great bottom-line assessment of the change Obama has inflicted on us - the exact inverse of his electoral campaign. Although Ms. Garson says nothing of Obamacare directly, the ACA (the Insurance Racket Bailout Act) is now a huge reason for the great bait-and-switch acceleration to part-time and freelance jobs. As Lambert has reported it is hugely damaging socio-economic engineering.

    https://www.facebook.com/Forever21/posts/10151671544189550.

    This is Obama's legacy, shaping up to be not abysmal but disastrous. Even worse, I suspect it's intentional, the deliberate creative destruction of disaster capitalism in a grab for absolute power. That's the most disheartening apprehension.

    Here are a few more inconvenient truths about our change president from "33 Shocking Facts Which Show How Badly The Economy Has Tanked Since Obama Became President". It's an objective and damning assessment of real change under Obama. People won't be able to ignore these much longer, and eventually even veal pen journalists (MSDNC) will have to acknowledge certain stubborn facts:

    #1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.

    #2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs. [87% of job creation…part-time; this differs from the post(?)] … #5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time 11 since the 2006-2007 school year. … #8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

    #20 Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president, and Obamacare is going to make things far worse. … #23 In 2008, that total amount of student loan debt in this country was 440 billion dollars. At this point, it has shot up to about a trillion dollars.

    #24 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

    http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/33-shocking-facts-which-show-how-the-u-s-economy-has-tanked-since-obama-became-president

    You get the idea. And those are only some of the economic changes, without even broaching disastrous militarism, and police-state espionage.

    Robert Dudek:

    I've got a good title for a book on this phenomenon. Unfortunately, it's already been taken: Road to Serfdom.

    reason

    And you seriously think this is all Obama's fault and that the GOP had nothing to do with it?

    Michael Fiorillo:

    Needless to say, the GOP has much to do with it, but it's two hands washing each other.

    The infernal brilliance of the Overclass' support for Obama is his ability to misdirect and divert whatever energies for resistance remain within what passes for the Left.

    What insidious genius to have a Black man (well, sort of) be the one to undermine Social Security, public education (his policies are at least as bad as Bush's, probably worse) and institutionalize the National Security State.

    Sure, the GOP is at fault, but Obama was hired to make sure that potential opposition remains paralyzed.

    Doug Terpstra:

    All O's fault? No, but it's his legacy, like it or not. Clearly it doesn't bother him.

    Blame the last four and a half years on Republicans if you like. So then, let's just say O's been implausibly impotent and hopelessly inept.

    Not only are none of the foregoing economic failures his fault,

    • he couldn't close Gitmo;
    • couldn't bring himself to prosecute a single one of his Wall Street investors (Corzine);
    • couldn't renegotiate NAFTA;
    • couldn't stop Republicans from ramrodding thru three new SHAFTA agreements and initiating TPP (oh, wait…);
    • ... ... ...

    I could go on and on but it would bore informed NC readers to tears. You may think Obama is hapless and incompetent to the point of making Herbert Hoover look like an activist progressive. I happen to believe he's brilliant, an epic false messiah, a diabolically-hypnotic charlatan who's a total eclipse of his idol Reagan.

    Nathanael:

    "You may think Obama is hapless and incompetent to the point of making Herbert Hoover look like an activist progressive. I happen to believe he's brilliant, an epic false messiah, a diabolically-hypnotic charlatan who's a total eclipse of his idol Reagan."

    And I don't really care which he is. I judge entirely by results. Whatever is in his "deepest heart", in practice Obama has been very close to G.W.Bush's third and fourth terms. (Oh, there are weird little exceptions, like railway funding, but I think Obama wasn't paying ANY attention to that.)

    bluntobj:

    Laying blame on one side or the other is like sitting in a stadium and cheering for your team, red or blue. The owners of both teams are up in the owner's box, drinking champagne together and counting the ticket & concession sales cash.

    Just entering that stadium means you've bought in to their propaganda. The only safe path is to opt out and create an alternative to the game inside for yourself.

    George:

    None of this is a surprise. . . a few years ago at my company, it was decided to withdraw all benefits for freelance employees, many who were putting in full time hours as any staff employee. The freelancers staged a walk out and the company relented in the short term by grandfathering those freelancers employed at that time with their current benefits.

    Since then, the benefits for those freelancers have been reduced to the barest of medical plans with high deductibles. Any new freelancers who come in don't get health insurance unless they work a consecutive number of days in a row, which is near to impossible since the company forces them to take 6 weeks off throughout the year, thus cementing the fact that they'll never receive health insurance.

    At that time, the company cited being competitive in the global market, and pointed to our competitors which made similar changes years earlier. Considering we've been earning healthy profits after the first year of the Great Recession, and the CEO and other high level execs lining their pockets with record sums, it's pretty clear they're more interested in short term gains as pushed by Wall Street.

    That greed is really what's ruining this country and those playing the game won't be satisfied till they've squeezed us for all the money we have, laughing all the way to the bank in Singapore

    Handgrip:

    Give me one good reason "to work" at all?

    bluntobj:

    Only work for yourself by opting out of the game being played in the stadium.

    You will be considered a whacko and stupid, but those insults will be coming from people with underwater houses, CC debt up to their eyeballs, a job they hate, a 101k retirement plan coming in September, and a heart condition due to stress.

    Think alternatively, and be much happier.

    Wat Tyler:

    Saying from the old Soviet Union:

    "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

    No society can survive if work is not valued at the economic and psychological levels.

    [Nov 05, 2015] Silly Robots! by William Davies

    Important point is that the answer to virtually any economic policy question was "education" is the neoliberal ploy. This is simply not true in the current environment. It is important what specialty to choose at the university. And taking into account shifting job market it is difficult to choose right (decimation of IT is one great story in this respect). Stories of university graduates working as bartenders are abundant. Especially graduates from such fields as psychology, public relations, English literature, etc.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The labor market is no less pivotal to Marxist analyses of capitalism. The treatment of labor as a commodity, to be bought and sold on a market, is what allows capitalists to acquire more value from workers than they actually pay for, which explains the accrual of profits. Without labor, there could be no value. Without labor markets, there could be no capitalism. ..."
    "... Marx liked to depict capital as a vampire that sucked the blood from living labor. But the fantasy of fully automated capitalism contains a different monstrosity altogether: the zombie that no longer needs us at all. ..."
    "... This question lurks in Thomas Piketty's Capital, which highlights how the inheritance of capital is a far more effective route to riches than the exertion of effort in the workplace. Piketty's account forces us to pay attention to the family as a source of income - work is an increasingly unlikely path to acquiring wealth. ..."
    "... Theories of financialization, such as those of the economist Costas Lapavitsas or the sociologist Greta Krippner, point in a similar direction, showing how firms have deliberately sought to shift away from productive activities and toward balance-sheet manipulation and financial innovations as sources of profit. ..."
    "... The neoliberal ploy that each individual be treated as a chunk of capital was present in the discourse of the 1990s knowledge economy, and the answer to virtually any economic policy question was education. This no longer feels adequate ..."
    "... An economy in which capital has replaced labor may witness the rise of a few thousand well-paid YouTube stars, but it would also feature a promulgation of unpaid internships, adults living off their parents, and unpaid workfare contracts. ..."
    "... Ford advocates a basic income guarantee, an idea that is accumulating support right now. If the labor market will not provide the income that people need, some other institution will be required to take its place. He makes the case well, dismissing the simplistic policy narrative that people need to be cajoled and incentivized to work or else the economy will grind to a halt. On the contrary, neoliberal economies seem to be teeming with people wanting to do fulfilling and creative things but struggling to get paid for them. ..."
    "... Piketty's proposal for a global wealth tax, they require not only greater political coordination than seems available right now, but also a wholesale inversion of policy orthodoxy. Neoclassical economics, which provides the basis for so much policy, starts from the assumption that resources and time are scarce. ..."
    Nov 01, 2015 | The Chronicle of Higher Education

    Since the Victorian era, the labor market has been the arena in which the virtues and injuries of capitalism can been seen. Classical economic liberals look at the labor market and see a platform for social mobility, one in which individual effort is matched by monetary reward. The neoliberals of the 20th century took this optimism further still, adding the notion of human capital - that people could augment themselves through education or self-branding so as to increase their own value in the market.

    The labor market is no less pivotal to Marxist analyses of capitalism. The treatment of labor as a commodity, to be bought and sold on a market, is what allows capitalists to acquire more value from workers than they actually pay for, which explains the accrual of profits. Without labor, there could be no value. Without labor markets, there could be no capitalism.

    Marx liked to depict capital as a vampire that sucked the blood from living labor. But the fantasy of fully automated capitalism contains a different monstrosity altogether: the zombie that no longer needs us at all. As the economist Joan Robinson has written, if there is one thing worse than being exploited by capital, it is not being exploited by capital. The vision that Kaplan and Ford put before us is of a world in which machines don't even bother to extract value from us any longer - they're too busy trading with one another. What might capitalism look like if labor markets lose their political centrality? Would this even be capitalism?

    This question lurks in Thomas Piketty's Capital, which highlights how the inheritance of capital is a far more effective route to riches than the exertion of effort in the workplace. Piketty's account forces us to pay attention to the family as a source of income - work is an increasingly unlikely path to acquiring wealth.

    Theories of financialization, such as those of the economist Costas Lapavitsas or the sociologist Greta Krippner, point in a similar direction, showing how firms have deliberately sought to shift away from productive activities and toward balance-sheet manipulation and financial innovations as sources of profit. The vaudevillian horror show of machines broken free from human control is mirrored in the anxieties of contemporary political economy. The specter of autonomous machines is also the specter of autonomous capital, no longer anchored in society via the wage relation.

    The neoliberal ploy that each individual be treated as a chunk of capital was present in the discourse of the 1990s "knowledge economy," and the answer to virtually any economic policy question was "education." This no longer feels adequate. As Kaplan and Ford point out, the market value of most qualifications is diminishing all the time. Given the possible scale of automation, Ford argues, the idea that education can achieve prosperity for all is like "believing that, in the wake of the mechanization of agriculture, the majority of displaced farmworkers would be able to find jobs driving tractors."

    An economy in which capital has replaced labor may witness the rise of a few thousand well-paid YouTube stars, but it would also feature a promulgation of unpaid internships, adults living off their parents, and unpaid workfare contracts. As Ford points out, even where humans are cheaper than robots to employ, there are various reasons that automation may nevertheless be preferable. Robots bring less baggage than people. The prospects for inequality under these conditions are terrifying.

    ... ... ...

    Ford advocates a basic income guarantee, an idea that is accumulating support right now. If the labor market will not provide the income that people need, some other institution will be required to take its place. He makes the case well, dismissing the simplistic policy narrative that people need to be cajoled and incentivized to work or else the economy will grind to a halt. On the contrary, neoliberal economies seem to be teeming with people wanting to do fulfilling and creative things but struggling to get paid for them.

    The chance of such policy ideas being adopted is slim at best. As with Piketty's proposal for a global wealth tax, they require not only greater political coordination than seems available right now, but also a wholesale inversion of policy orthodoxy. Neoclassical economics, which provides the basis for so much policy, starts from the assumption that resources and time are scarce. Hence the curiosity that as our national productive capacity swells from year to year, political discourse seems ever more fixated on constraints and cuts.

    ... ... ...

    ...there is an unavoidable sense in which the robots can't understand what they're doing. Their inability to complain, which is precisely what makes them attractive to the likes of Uber and Amazon, is also what renders them somewhat stupid after all. They are locked into what Max Weber termed instrumental rationality. Endlessly performing, relentlessly producing, they are incapable of ever saying "enough's enough."

    In this they hold up a daunting mirror for us to look in. They represent an impossible benchmark of success and efficiency, one that recedes so far into the distance ahead that the only sane response is to abandon the idea of humans as capital altogether.

    ... ... ...

    William Davies is a senior lecturer in politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of The Happiness Industry (Verso, 2015).


    [Nov 04, 2015] Americas labour market is not working

    Notable quotes:
    "... the wilful DENIAL inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. Everything is awesome. Repeat till it becomes fact. ..."
    "... To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists. ..."
    "... That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art horse of greater transparency for the private sector, and we are the worlds police in their foreign policy. ..."
    "... That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you nuts if not worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families. ..."
    "... The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs in its money machine. ..."
    "... American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes for your next dinner party. ..."
    "... Wolf has a point. Im in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. Im also very physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was well-qualified but too senior, I stopped looking. ..."
    "... ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply lifes necessities - food, clothing and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set. ..."
    "... Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the US ..."
    "... In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folks mental health than staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists. ..."
    "... @cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing: US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported low level jobs. ..."
    "... The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment is much higher than reported. ..."
    "... I was amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys. ..."
    "... Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. ..."
    "... The FT published my letter to the editor in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. ..."
    "... In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too big and way too dominant. ..."
    "... The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s). ..."
    "... Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago. ..."
    "... the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting. ..."
    "... @lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of the earnings is off the books ) the results look better. You cannot make an apples to apples comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different. ..."
    "... You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006 period). ..."
    "... Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for it. ..."
    "... I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents. ..."
    "... Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary schemes have been reducing in number. ..."
    FT.com

    Ex NHS Surgeon

    The causes are multi factorial, but what is really disturbing is the wilful DENIAL inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. 'Everything is awesome'. Repeat till it becomes fact.

    To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists.

    The discovery mechanisms in America's so called free markets are terminally broken.

    The whole charade is necessary to keep the terrifying monster that circles the deep below the surface: debt. Irreconcilable, measured in numbers so stupendous it makes Zimbabwe's terminal hyperinflation seem tame by comparison.

    There is only one way the monster of debt can be tamed: war.

    E. Scrooge, 3 hours ago

    The rise of the underground economy, pay cash and you can get sizable discounts on construction, repairs, all sorts of things. Many, but not all of those able, are providing products and mainly services as part of the underground economy. This was and I still believe is the fastest growing segment of the US economy. Mostly out of necessity, but will likely remain a very significant part of the overall economy for quite some time, as many of these workers are years away from Social Security eligible.

    ceteris paribus

    The irony of this title. The American labour force--the people who do real jobs in the real economy are working harder than ever, for less and less money to keep themselves afloat. So American labour does work while the American labour market is apparently on a permanent vacation.

    Kevin Alexanderman

    "America's labour market is not working"?

    You mean "America's government is not working".

    That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art horse of "greater transparency" for the private sector, and "we are the world's police" in their foreign policy.

    They can't even competently establish metrics to adequately assess performance of their economy.

    Mr. Martin, you say "In all, the proportion of the fall in the unemployment rate because of lower participation cannot be more than a quarter." Is that your best attempt at one-liner humour? Are you still mocking Greenspan-speak?

    So I gather you are saying that a fall from 10% to 5% is more on the order of a fall from 10% to 6.25%.

    That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you "nuts" if not worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families.

    Astrophysicist111

    Interesting that the author doesn't consider the possible role of the increased death rate among middle aged U.S. whites - as recently reported, e.g. in the NY Times - to be a factor in the low labor participation rate. As one economist who studied the data observed: "There are a half million people dead who shouldn't be". This is over the interval 1993-2014. Prior to 1993 the specific age demographic, 45-64 years old, had enjoyed a 2 percent improvement in life span - but no more. The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs in its money machine.

    Legal Tender

    For those interested, here is an NPR piece (and follow-up from The Atlantic) on the disability situation in the US. Note that an adult need not be disabled themselves to collect payments and leave the workforce. Children are eligible for disability payments in the US for learning disabilities (including ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc) with the income going to the parent (reducing the need for that parent to enter the workforce).

    From 2009 to 2013, there were 2.5 million jobs created in the US while 5.9 million people were added to the disability system.

    fmayer314

    One thing I enjoy a great deal is good comedy. And as an American reader I find plenty of fabulous comedy in these "what's wrong with America" articles. Soaring rates of morbidity among white middle-aged Americans? How can that be? Pathologically low LFP rates? What could possibly explain that? Billionaire clowns near the top of opinion polls? Go figure!

    After the first course, one then moves on to the comments, littered with the aromatic excretions of right-wing American idiots. The incredulous replies subsequently posted are often quite hilarious, because respondents find it so hard to believe the amazing levels of stupidity on display.

    American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes for your next dinner party.

    Thanks FT!

    TJG

    Thank you Mr. Wolf for pointing out that the declining employment participation rate portends significant community and social problems. I would like to suggest that two issues play a significant role in this decline. The low minimum wage combined with the high cost of competent child care make it financially pointless for a spouse earning less than $10.00/hour to work. Secondly racially tinged mass incarceration has produced an ever growing number of unemployable people. The moment an applicant indicates he or she has been incarcerated it is pretty certain the application will be rejected. Until societal attitudes and public policies change the problems illuminated by Mr. Wolf's opinion piece will only continue to grow.

    JMC22

    The title of this piece -- that the US labour market is not working -- is way out of line with the content. A highly contentious issue regarding the fall in the measured participation rate is hardly an indication of a non-working labour market, especially given the huge increase in employment in recent years. One issue not discussed -- the fact of a very considerable increase in the employment in the grey markets. Self-employed persons, partly growing out of internet activities, are not properly measured. Nor are those who simply work outside the formal economy, including many illegal immigrants.

    ciwp1

    @JMC22 Good points. Worth bearing in mind also, wrt self-employed, there are large numbers 'officially' self-employed who are not doing much; similar irregular work patterns afflict temps, part-time works, zero hours...

    Mark Feldman

    Mr. Wolfe, the problem is a lack of education. And I don't mean a lack of degrees.

    I'm not an economist (I'm a former math professor.), but it certainly seems to me that if an economy needs educated (Again, don't confuse that with "degreed".), workers, and they aren't readily available, then there will be more unemployment.

    What I mean by "degreed but uneducated" should be obvious, but I do want to make one point with an example.

    If you learn how to do calculus - just how to do it period - that will not make it easier to learn how to use a spreadsheet; but, if you really learn calculus, you will find it much easier to use a spreadsheet. That is because you will have trained your mind to think quantitatively. It's that simple.

    In the 60's students who took calculus learned it. Now, they mainly just get certified in it. (If you doubt me, just compare today's AP Calculus with the one from 1970.)

    This same phenomena is true across all disciplines. It is because the American higher educational system, as a whole, is corrupt. (In a recent issue,The Economist has done an excellent job reporting and analyzing the system. Thank you.)

    But here is what is even worse.

    The effect of this corruption has seeped down to America's K-12 system. To see how, just ask yourself where high school teachers go to learn, and within what system do "professors" at regional state schools get their "credentials", and why it might be in the interest of more "elite" schools to credential them.

    For anyone who wants to know more, I have a blog inside-higher-ed that has convincing examples and documentation.

    Veiled One

    Wolf has a point. I'm in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. I'm also very physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was "well-qualified but too senior," I stopped looking.

    Now, I'm a rentier with 100% free time, and read the FT every morning. I suppose I should be happy to enjoy the guerdons of a career when very young.

    Kevin Alexanderman

    @Veiled One ,

    Sounds like you are a victim of age-racism. The leftist journalist crowd know the money is with the older people. Just as they slander the banks, (who have the money), and as the German national socialists slandered the Jews (who had the money), today's socialists slander older people.

    The leftists are preparing some kind of way to swindle more experienced people out of their money, just haven't figured out how yet.

    Gail Johnson

    This is a political problem. Ordinary Americans are no longer represented by the national government. In other major industrialized democracies, the equivalent of US congressional districts include about 100,000 people. For example, in the UK there are 650 members of the House of Commons representing about 64 million people. In a district with 100,000 people it is possible to contest an election without a $1 million war chest.

    In the US congressional districts average over 700,000 people. There are 435 representatives for over 310 million people. Congress has an approval rating on the low teens, and yet in the last election 95% of incumbents got reelected. Why? Their demonstrated willingness to vote the way big money tells them to in return for the funds needed to stay in office.

    Thus, ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply life's necessities - food, clothing and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set.

    http://www.twoyearstodemocracy.com/

    LJH

    The US is focused on Austerity. Cultural, Economic and Political Austerity. The right wing drive to kill everything for everyone ( save for the elite that are rapidly accumulating it all) has destroyed the infrastructure and the fabric of the country. The US is the laggard in the 'leading developed countries' of the world and is certainly vectored in the wrong direction.

    Michael Moran

    I wonder how much of this can be explained by furtive self-employment. The ridiculous tax system provides every reason for a smart person to try and avoid formal employment through LLCs or other dodges. The LLC structure and their tax status is unique to the US, after all. It could be part of the explanation.

    RDRAVID


    @Michael Moran

    If someone is self-employed they would be counted as actively participating in the Labour market. Rather than self-employment, I think the issue is a growth in informal activity in the US. Its becoming more common there for people to do undeclared work, whether of the handyman, domestic helper or running a mobile food shack.

    The bottom 20% in the US are effectively living a third world style life.

    Isaias

    I always said that if US unemployment was measured by Spain unemployment standards ( the strictest in the EU ), it would probably be around 12 % if not more.

    What free market?

    While Martin Wolf explains a deeply worrying trend, particularly for those who have given up the struggle to find work, there is another bar to job creation.

    Small businesses find the bureaucratic hassle of taking on staff a nightmare: the intrusion of form filling, record keeping, the tax authorities, local authorities etc, all of which have their own, separate agendas, is sufficient deterrent to employing anyone except on a casual basis - which the very young and old are happy to engage with the process.

    The only common strategy for bureaucrats and tax men is job creation - theirs and those of the ilk - their role is job destructive in the real economy.

    gkjames

    @What free market? Really? How so? What "bureaucratic hassle"? Are standard record-keeping and accounting practices an "intrusion" or, more likely, a useful mechanism by which shareholders can track the health of the enterprise? In most US states, by the way, it takes all of a single form and a modest fee to incorporate. As for the alleged "common strategy for bureaucrats and tax men," you do realize, presumably, that it is elected legislatures who write the tax laws, laws that reflect extensive (and, not infrequently, exclusive) input from the business community.

    What free market?

    Yes, it is BIG business that controls the output of legislatures, small business does not get a look in - those running them are too busy running their businesses and coping with bureaucracy. It is often overlooked that rules and regulations that are imposed universally suit big business but place a disproportionate burden on small business who have to comply with the same dictats but without the administrative cohort and infrastructure that large firms can justify.

    What free market?

    Indeed, without sounding too conspiratorial, I would say there is an unwritten pact between big business and legislators that allows big business to comply with onshore rules and forces competing small business to do the same.

    Meanwhile offshore, big business can engage in tax evasion on a massive scale using offshore tax havens, transfer pricing and the freedom from jurisdictional control that obviates their need to remit revenues that would be taxable (viz Apple) . Small businesses are captive, they have to be 100% complient and that suits big business as the administrative burden crushes incipient competition from small business.

    Anon2

    Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the US and the subsequent poor performance in school, crime, prison etc. I guarantee those not participating exhibit a higher percentage of having had no father in the home as a child.

    LJH

    @Anon2 Yes, we don't like poor people in the US, or minorities - including women. The problem is the ruling class of white rich men is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

    Those that create the problems are usually not the first to suffer the consequences. That comes later as the empire crumbles.

    M_T

    @Hell No -- Given the minimal welfare in the US, and that it seems implausible that one in eight American working age men are starving, my personal assumption would be that a large proportion of the remainder are working in the unregistered economy. That includes crime but would also include casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc.

    RiskAdjustedReturn

    @M_T @Hell No --

    "... casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc."

    In my local bank, on a Saturday morning, one will see lines of middle-aged white guys standing in line to take out thousands of dollars each in cash, which I'm assuming is meant to pay their workers

    Adam Bartlett

    An issue that's only going to get more severe and widespread as technological unemployment continues its advance.

    In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folk's mental health than staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists.

    The choice facing us is probably between the statist solution of a massive increase in public sector employment, or the relatively libertarian option of a generous universal basic income. Let's pray it won't be too many years before such options get to the table.

    pangloss

    Surely an American (or any other) worker is worth no more than say a Chinese worker + some translation factor. The translation factor includes the presence of infrastructure and human capital on both sides. The low skill worker suffers first because of an early and easy shift in the translation factors. Sooner or later the high-end designers of Silicon Valley will suffer the same fate. Excluding nuclear war there is likely to be a flattening of wages across the developed world. This is especially bad news for those at the lower end of the ability scale, no credible amount of education or training will make enough difference. There are limits to human capital. Start thinking about redistribution and the niches that are immune from this effect.

    nonuthin

    The question that bothered me through this is what do they actually do if they're not "working". Clearly not all sustained by welfare, does this indicate a significant increase in either the black economy, the criminal economy or both. E.g. it would be statistically fascinating ( if politically unachievable) to see the impact of a legally licenced drugs trade on the employment participation rates.

    Adam Bartlett

    @nonuthin Some in single earner households, having to accept a lower material quality of life than they would if both adults could earn. Others drawing down savings and living frugally. Many dependent on food banks and other forms of charity. Others subsisting in the informal economy, but activity one would call 'grey' at worst, not the black or criminal economy.

    Big Dipper

    There is more to life's responsibilities than your "men and women whose responsibilities should make earning a good income". Perhaps you could consider high-quality child raising, other care activity, community and education. The ratio is dangerous.

    cg12348

    Every week Martin Wolf reminds me why the self proclaimed experts are really idiots - you can make stats sing if you know what you are doing........but the reality is easy to see. Americans have a work force that is seeing its jobs exported - notice he does not give the stats on companies moving out of the US over the past 30 years. Again the experts say we could not stop It - NO they cant stop it that is true - but there is a way to stop it.

    They would further tell you that the 11 million immigrant workers have little to no effect because they take jobs that we don't want - wrong again. As you age your are happy to be employed even if the job does not hold the allure of your previous job. What immigrant workers do is they take less money because they are willing to live at a lower standard. They will live many families to one home etc. In fact if they were not here to take the job the job would get done when the pay increased to attract a willing worker - FACT. Finally what stats do not capture is the moral of a work force.

    There is nothing "decent" about our unemployment stats. We are not a nation of any one race we are a nation of opportunity with one of the most powerful economies and plenty of natural resources and demand and opportunity for innovation - so what sickness has befallen the US - large government - corporate taxation - political mediocrity - the same thing that has recently become apparent in Germany and France - idiots who give away what we worked hard for and expect us to pay more for those they choose to support.

    Todays social programs breed a generation that no longer asks what they can do for their nation - but what their nation can do for them. Obama and his ilk have handed the world to those who were unwilling to fight to fix their own countries - instead they want to come here for opportunity that did not exist at home and then in a great act of irony turn our land into theirs - we do not want to be Europe - nor do we want to be Mexico and we certainly do not want to be the middle east - instead what we want those who love our opportunity to come here and become American - but in numbers and within a legal process that does not exacerbate or marginalize those who were born here and should have the right to the first jobs here.

    Profitsee

    @cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing: US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported "low level" jobs. Even as a Democrat, I confess, you provide a lucid argument.

    Tiger II

    The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment is much higher than reported. Sclerotic labor laws and regulations make it impossible to create many jobs that can produce more than they cost, especially given the dumbing down of the work force by public monopoly schools. Regulated labor markets are one of the biggest drivers of unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic and should be abolished.

    Brian Reading

    While not disputing in any way Martin Wolf's analysis, the devil may still be in the detail. Population estimates by age cohorts come from ten-yearly census data - the denominator for participation rates. These estimates are interpolated between censuses from births, deaths and migration data. The numerator, the number in each age cohort at work or seeking work, comes from regular household sample surveys. Using one source for denominator and another for numerator, which cannot be avoided, entails a margin of error. In looking into this, I was amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys.

    DougInCalifornia

    What I am seeing where I live is the emergence of a part-time, informal service economy. You might call it the Craigslist/Ebay/PayPal economy. I think that a lot of people make a (minimal) living this way. And my guess is that most of it doesn't get picked up in official statistics. I think that "employment" will need to be measured differently in the post-internet era.

    RiskAdjustedReturn

    @cg12348 @Boston1

    "Show me a middle class kid that expects to work his way up and willing to start at the bottom and I will show you..."


    ...a recent immigrant.

    WL - Minneapolis

    One clue into the declining labor force participation rate may have been discovered in a study reported in the NY Times today, that may account for a substantial portion. The death rate among middle-aged (45-54) whites with high school education or less has increased in recent years, reversing a long-term trend. The cause appears to be poor health/chronic pain/mental health issues that result in death by drug/alcohol abuse and/or suicide.

    Clearly unskilled and low-skilled workers have more trouble finding well paying jobs, and the wages for those jobs have fallen around 19% since 2000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. But an increase in health problems of one sort or another may also be the cause of the lower participation rate as well.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html

    Paul A. Myers

    Excellent article on education difficulties in the US by Edouardo Porter in today's NYT. One problem is that children living in poverty in the US struggle to learn in the education system partially because overall public support for impoverished families is so poor in the US.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/business/economy/school-vs-society-in-americas-failing-students.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

    KKB

    If we think the current labor market is not working, wait till the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal passes the US Congress & signed into law .
    Capital ($), aided by misguided policies of the US economic elites, will prevail over (skilled) Labor.

    Paul A. Myers

    A major contributor to lack of hiring men age 25-54 is the massive underinvestment in infrastructure in the U.S. This is a prime age for construction employment and this industry provides a ladder of advancement from low and semi-skilled labor up to more skilled labor. My experience with construction contractors in Southern California is that they are interested in individuals who can get to the job site and do the work and are often willing to overlook criminal records. A dollar of public spending on construction puts American workers to work, not someone in Korea. You can't import a highway or a building from the Far East.

    The other major failure is the large urban school district. These "too big to succeed" institutions have a record for over a half a century of failure to turn out skilled young people. In the massive Los Angeles Unified School District, they shut down skill-based vocational education during the period 1970-1990 with the lame excuse of everyone is going to college. The duopoly of a wooden-headed educational establishment fostered by graduate schools of education and powerful job-protecting, mediocrity-fostering teachers unions have created the largest statist failure since the collapse of East Germany. (And you can remember how much Germany paid to clean up that mess!)

    There are recent reports that there are 4-5 million unfilled jobs in the US due to lack of skilled applicants.

    A crummy labor market is almost always the creation of bad public policy. And today's America swims in bad public policies.

    beforethecollapse.com

    @Paul A. Myers As an educator, I wonder what role poor nutrition plays in the US?

    beforethecollapse.com

    Also, I must say that the family unit is far more influential and important to the youth than any teacher. The teacher can operate as a third parent, or second parent if the family breaks down, but a youth needs a stable environment for healthy emotional and instinctual development. Excellent diet, physical exercise and regimented sleep patterns are essential. It's easy for parents to blame teachers but I have noted that such complaints arise from personalities that resent strong authority figures and duty enforces. As such, they are incapable of disciplining their own child.

    In China, society encourages the family to be unconditionally supportive to the child, this is balanced by the teacher who is a strict disciplinarian, often by way of corporeal punishment.

    Philip Verleger

    @Paul A. Myers A crummy labor market can also be the result of increased monopsonistic power of employers. Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. The employers cannot offer more because their customers - the large airlines and the big shippers will not pay more. The trained workers are there. They just will not accept the scarps.

    The public policy mistake was allowing the creation of such large monopolies/monopsonies.

    Look outside your silo!

    Paul A. Myers

    @Philip Verleger @Paul A. Myers Good points. The FT published my letter to the editor in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. (I think I was seriously outside my silo and I think the FT editors were very receptive to this argument--then and now.)

    Oligopolies (the only kind of major corporations and markets in the US today) produce lower volumes, at higher prices, and with fewer employees than a more competitive economic sector would employ, produce, price.

    In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too big and way too dominant. In the 1950s and 60s, it used to be the Big Three in most sectors; today is at most the Big Two.

    The Progressives understood the economic concentration argument; the Democratic Leadership Council generation embraces concentration's contributory support.

    Philip Verleger

    @Paul A. Myers @Philip Verleger

    Could not agree more. I am on the board of a family firm. We cannot find truck drivers although we pay well and train (to move gasoline - it takes an extra license). There is just little interest in joining the profession because the large companies keep wages down.

    The FTC and Justice Department unfortunately failed to do their jobs.

    BelCan

    Mr Wolf seems to have missed the fact that the FT already covered this issue on 16 October.

    See http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2015/10/16/us-statisticians-are-in-the-dark-over-the-20-million-working-age-americans-who-dont-want-a-job/

    nb

    No cause for concern. The decline in the LFP rate is simply a social readjustment

    https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/october-2013/a-closer-look-at-the-decline-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate

    The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s).

    The main factors that keep the aggregate LFP rate from falling further are the increase of the LFP rate of those 55 and older and the strong attachment to the labor force of Hispanic and Asian people, who constitute the main share of the immigrant population.

    Henry C

    @nb Your good post is reinforced plenty by the more recent talk by Bullard. He notes:

    "If you know only one aspect of the data on labor force participation, it should be this: Labor force participation used to be relativelylow, it rose during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,peaking in 2000, and it has generally been declining since 2000.From 1948 to 1966, the labor force participation rate was relatively low and relatively stable, averaging 59.1 percent. That's substantially lower than today's value of 63 percent. It is important to note that we normally consider the U.S. economy to have performed relatively well during this period, especially during the long expansion of the 1960s.

    Evidently, low labor force participation does not equate with weak economic growth. Surely this is because the factors driving economic growth are different from the factors driving labor force participation."

    https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Files/PDFs/Bullard/remarks/Bullard_ExchequerClub_19Feb2014_final.pdf

    beforethecollapse.com

    Why are you surprised? You genuflected to my employer.. The People's Republic of China.

    Where slavery is a tool for political control. Perhaps you should have thought harder and better when you and your friends were nattering on about The Great Moderation. What was your long game? Did you think there would be a revolution or revolt that you could manipulate? Or were you a true believer in The Circular Theory of Income?

    Action? What action? How are you going to move production back to the West? How can you undo what you are responsible for?

    Chinese Competition Exposes Americans to Cruelty

    Henry C

    I'm not sure I want to worry about the US LFPR, and whether it's it's indicative of Americans' feelings that they can't support a family.


    The literature on US LFPR is pretty consensual on the main effect being demographic (ageing) and virtually nothing else. The St. Louis Fed's Bullard's recent talk is illustrative: see https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Files/PDFs/Bullard/remarks/Bullard_ExchequerClub_19Feb2014_final.pdf .

    As to family support, the other aspect one might look at is whether US household disposable income growth has been deficient relative to other G7 countries (which all have higher LFPR). But that's not the case: see

    https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm

    So on the face of it, it seems to take a higher LFPR in other G7 countries to match the same approximate growth in US disposable income in the long run.

    L'anziano

    "What might explain the extent to which prime-aged men and women have been withdrawing from the labour market in the US over a long period?"

    Heartless as this sounds (and I am sure I will not gain any friends for this on this page) the reason on the male side of the equation is that it is much easier to fire ineffective, unproductive, middle-aged, male dinosaurs in the US than it is in the UK, France or Japan. At least this has always been the case in every global firm in which I have worked. I am acutely aware of this as a middle aged man myself.

    lennerd

    Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago.

    This, of course, is the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting.

    Olaf von Rein

    @lennerd Those income statistics right? Frightening.

    Legal Tender

    @lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of the earnings is "off the books") the results look better. You cannot make an "apples to apples" comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different.

    If Europe admits millions of refugees over the next few years, I can assure you it will depress average male household earnings. But you always need to look at what has changed in the composition of the data before drawing conclusions about the data. The fact that there might be millions of Middle Eastern and African arrivals earning very little (officially) would impact the overall data for wages but may not accurately describe the experience of the pre-existing labour force.

    You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006 period).

    Cuibono

    As somebody who has worked in both Europe and the US I would add to the list of underlying causes mentioned. First employee rights in the US are abysmal. Poor conditions, no training or upward mobility, little or no personal privacy, cult like "motivation" exercises, passive aggressive annual reviews, drug testing, binding non-compete contracts that disallow moving to competitors for long periods of time and now declining benefits. The list goes on and on.

    The employer gets everything and gives nothing more than an "at-will" commitment to continue employment.

    It gets to a point where it's not profitable to bother.

    Raver

    @Cuibono Yes it's gotten pretty bad. The benefit packages are barely cheaper than what you can buy in the health insurance marketplace, maybe $20 less a month if you're lucky.

    Banker

    @Cuibono yea but salaries are 2-3x as much as in the UK.

    Cuibono

    @Banker @Cuibono Right, until you factor in the cost of health care and college tuition for your kids.

    Banker

    @Cuibono @Banker @Cuibono Ahm? Most ivies have $0 fees for families under $60k and a lot of support. Health insurance also provided from employer covers everything. Have you even got any idea how expensive private healthcare is in the UK? Unless you want to use 3rd world NHS ofcourse.

    All public universities also charge minimum £9k/year fees here.

    Learn your facts before you post.

    Cuibono

    Well I believe I know facts. I also have manners, and you apparently don't. So get off your high horse before you post!

    Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for it.

    You 9k per year number is, frankly hilarious to any middle class US parent. Try 60k per year for fees and board for a good university.

    And if you are earning 60k per year how are you going to afford the basic second level education, complete with top SAT scores and cultural experiences that will get you selected to the mythical ivy.- especially if you are white and without legacy connections? You should take your own advice and read up on US colleges and their outrageous manipulation of statistics to hide the fact that they are little more than vehicles that allow the elite to transfer status across generations.

    You are upset about an opinion I expressed based on my own experiences and you set yourself up as the comment police to challenge that opinion without.

    Something to think about. . .

    US corporations have the developed world's highest remuneration scale to executives and the lowest benefits to other employees. How else can these corporate executive maintain their life style without hiring from the two employee pools (young and old) that work for such low wages? Young are beginning and old augmenting income.

    ForgottenHistory

    I recall how in the Netherlands and in Germany (and i think to a lesser degree also in France but haven't got a clue on the UK in this matter) policymakers and governments were very concerned for just this: an increase in the longer -and ultimately eternally- unemployed. Therefore people weren't just been laid off but held on and send on courses or only half-employed(=50% or so) and the government added some funds to that.

    This way people retained and even improved their skills, in stead of losing skills and become unemployable and ultimately end up being a costly burden for society.

    It doesn't surprise me at all this didn't happen in the US, as the US has equal opportunities(supposed to) but no proper sense of community in the sense of a government with a long term-planning; US has been doing the opposite, e.g. cutting-off anything which would help the unemployed, poor, or disadvantaged -that's equal opportunities in reality.

    Smyrna Cracker

    I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents.

    Mr Passive

    Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary schemes have been reducing in number.

    Is it another function of very low bond yields & therefore pension rates, the side-effects of QE we may call it.

    Time for the CBs to hold up their hands and admit they've done all they can and at the margin further extra-ordinary measures will be counter productive.

    Massachusetts

    @Mr Passive In the US the only age group that has seen incomes increase consistently is the 65-74 decile. I cannot speak to the UK.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/business/economy/young-households-are-losing-ground-in-income-despite-education.html
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/business/economy/american-seniors-enjoy-the-middle-class-life.html

    [Nov 04, 2015] America's labour market is not working

    Notable quotes:
    "... the wilful DENIAL inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. 'Everything is awesome'. Repeat till it becomes fact. ..."
    "... To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists. ..."
    "... That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art horse of "greater transparency" for the private sector, and "we are the world's police" in their foreign policy. ..."
    "... That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you "nuts" if not worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families. ..."
    "... The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs in its money machine. ..."
    "... American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes for your next dinner party. ..."
    "... Wolf has a point. I'm in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. I'm also very physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was well-qualified but too senior, I stopped looking. ..."
    "... ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply life's necessities - food, clothing and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set. ..."
    "... Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the US ..."
    "... In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folk's mental health than staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists. ..."
    "... @cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing: US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported low level jobs. ..."
    "... The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment is much higher than reported. ..."
    "... I was amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys. ..."
    "... Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. ..."
    "... The FT published my letter to the editor in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. ..."
    "... In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too big and way too dominant. ..."
    "... The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s). ..."
    "... Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago. ..."
    "... the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting. ..."
    "... @lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of the earnings is off the books ) the results look better. You cannot make an apples to apples comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different. ..."
    "... You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006 period). ..."
    "... Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for it. ..."
    "... I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents. ..."
    "... Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary schemes have been reducing in number. ..."
    FT.com

    Ex NHS Surgeon

    The causes are multi factorial, but what is really disturbing is the wilful DENIAL inherent in U.S. Govt. analysis of the American Labour (Labor) market. 'Everything is awesome'. Repeat till it becomes fact.

    To me, this is the central problem: the corruption and demise of American democracy, leading to paralysis of fair, efficient, effective government. Instead, government serves as the enactor or enabler of rules, regulations, statutes and laws that protect the kleptocratic crony capitalists.

    The discovery mechanisms in America's so called free markets are terminally broken.

    The whole charade is necessary to keep the terrifying monster that circles the deep below the surface: debt. Irreconcilable, measured in numbers so stupendous it makes Zimbabwe's terminal hyperinflation seem tame by comparison.

    There is only one way the monster of debt can be tamed: war.

    E. Scrooge, 3 hours ago

    The rise of the underground economy, pay cash and you can get sizable discounts on construction, repairs, all sorts of things. Many, but not all of those able, are providing products and mainly services as part of the underground economy. This was and I still believe is the fastest growing segment of the US economy. Mostly out of necessity, but will likely remain a very significant part of the overall economy for quite some time, as many of these workers are years away from Social Security eligible.

    ceteris paribus

    The irony of this title. The American labour force--the people who do real jobs in the real economy are working harder than ever, for less and less money to keep themselves afloat. So American labour does work while the American labour market is apparently on a permanent vacation.

    Kevin Alexanderman

    "America's labour market is not working"?

    You mean "America's government is not working".

    That the US cannot deliver an unemployment rate devoid of trickery and opacity is an indictment of their government, not their labour market, especially when they ride the holier-than-thou-art horse of "greater transparency" for the private sector, and "we are the world's police" in their foreign policy.

    They can't even competently establish metrics to adequately assess performance of their economy.

    Mr. Martin, you say "In all, the proportion of the fall in the unemployment rate because of lower participation cannot be more than a quarter." Is that your best attempt at one-liner humour? Are you still mocking Greenspan-speak?

    So I gather you are saying that a fall from 10% to 5% is more on the order of a fall from 10% to 6.25%.

    That, of course, almost every US academic would question, and call you "nuts" if not worse for standing up to their chicanery. Intelligent, honest people, on the other hand, would say that in 2014, the unambiguous US unemployment figure was 12 per cent. Your whole piece is not about splitting hairs, or even splitting limbs, but more to the point-breaking families.

    Astrophysicist111

    Interesting that the author doesn't consider the possible role of the increased death rate among middle aged U.S. whites - as recently reported, e.g. in the NY Times - to be a factor in the low labor participation rate. As one economist who studied the data observed: "There are a half million people dead who shouldn't be". This is over the interval 1993-2014. Prior to 1993 the specific age demographic, 45-64 years old, had enjoyed a 2 percent improvement in life span - but no more. The reasons: death from drug overdoses, suicide, other addictions and diseases resulting therefrom, i.e. kidney and liver failure. Perhaps this is a sign that something is indeed very wrong with the whole U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system which regards citizens as mere cogs in its money machine.

    Legal Tender

    For those interested, here is an NPR piece (and follow-up from The Atlantic) on the disability situation in the US. Note that an adult need not be disabled themselves to collect payments and leave the workforce. Children are eligible for disability payments in the US for learning disabilities (including ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc) with the income going to the parent (reducing the need for that parent to enter the workforce).

    From 2009 to 2013, there were 2.5 million jobs created in the US while 5.9 million people were added to the disability system.

    fmayer314

    One thing I enjoy a great deal is good comedy. And as an American reader I find plenty of fabulous comedy in these "what's wrong with America" articles. Soaring rates of morbidity among white middle-aged Americans? How can that be? Pathologically low LFP rates? What could possibly explain that? Billionaire clowns near the top of opinion polls? Go figure!

    After the first course, one then moves on to the comments, littered with the aromatic excretions of right-wing American idiots. The incredulous replies subsequently posted are often quite hilarious, because respondents find it so hard to believe the amazing levels of stupidity on display.

    American newspapers are quite droll by comparison because frank discussions of on-the-ground realities in this country are strictly taboo. Much more important is the burning question of which bathroom should be used by trans students, or - as in the New York Times - what are the best recipes for your next dinner party.

    Thanks FT!

    TJG

    Thank you Mr. Wolf for pointing out that the declining employment participation rate portends significant community and social problems. I would like to suggest that two issues play a significant role in this decline. The low minimum wage combined with the high cost of competent child care make it financially pointless for a spouse earning less than $10.00/hour to work. Secondly racially tinged mass incarceration has produced an ever growing number of unemployable people. The moment an applicant indicates he or she has been incarcerated it is pretty certain the application will be rejected. Until societal attitudes and public policies change the problems illuminated by Mr. Wolf's opinion piece will only continue to grow.

    JMC22

    The title of this piece -- that the US labour market is not working -- is way out of line with the content. A highly contentious issue regarding the fall in the measured participation rate is hardly an indication of a non-working labour market, especially given the huge increase in employment in recent years. One issue not discussed -- the fact of a very considerable increase in the employment in the grey markets. Self-employed persons, partly growing out of internet activities, are not properly measured. Nor are those who simply work outside the formal economy, including many illegal immigrants.

    ciwp1

    @JMC22 Good points. Worth bearing in mind also, wrt self-employed, there are large numbers 'officially' self-employed who are not doing much; similar irregular work patterns afflict temps, part-time works, zero hours...

    Mark Feldman

    Mr. Wolfe, the problem is a lack of education. And I don't mean a lack of degrees.

    I'm not an economist (I'm a former math professor.), but it certainly seems to me that if an economy needs educated (Again, don't confuse that with "degreed".), workers, and they aren't readily available, then there will be more unemployment.

    What I mean by "degreed but uneducated" should be obvious, but I do want to make one point with an example.

    If you learn how to do calculus - just how to do it period - that will not make it easier to learn how to use a spreadsheet; but, if you really learn calculus, you will find it much easier to use a spreadsheet. That is because you will have trained your mind to think quantitatively. It's that simple.

    In the 60's students who took calculus learned it. Now, they mainly just get certified in it. (If you doubt me, just compare today's AP Calculus with the one from 1970.)

    This same phenomena is true across all disciplines. It is because the American higher educational system, as a whole, is corrupt. (In a recent issue,The Economist has done an excellent job reporting and analyzing the system. Thank you.)

    But here is what is even worse.

    The effect of this corruption has seeped down to America's K-12 system. To see how, just ask yourself where high school teachers go to learn, and within what system do "professors" at regional state schools get their "credentials", and why it might be in the interest of more "elite" schools to credential them.

    For anyone who wants to know more, I have a blog inside-higher-ed that has convincing examples and documentation.

    Veiled One

    Wolf has a point. I'm in the U.S., in my prime at 52, and have stopped looking for for work after losing a job for no fault of my own. My undergraduate and graduate education was at elite universities in technical disciplines, and I have much experience. I'm also very physically fit and energetic. But after more than a year of hearing that I was "well-qualified but too senior," I stopped looking.

    Now, I'm a rentier with 100% free time, and read the FT every morning. I suppose I should be happy to enjoy the guerdons of a career when very young.

    Kevin Alexanderman

    @Veiled One ,

    Sounds like you are a victim of age-racism. The leftist journalist crowd know the money is with the older people. Just as they slander the banks, (who have the money), and as the German national socialists slandered the Jews (who had the money), today's socialists slander older people.

    The leftists are preparing some kind of way to swindle more experienced people out of their money, just haven't figured out how yet.

    Gail Johnson

    This is a political problem. Ordinary Americans are no longer represented by the national government. In other major industrialized democracies, the equivalent of US congressional districts include about 100,000 people. For example, in the UK there are 650 members of the House of Commons representing about 64 million people. In a district with 100,000 people it is possible to contest an election without a $1 million war chest.

    In the US congressional districts average over 700,000 people. There are 435 representatives for over 310 million people. Congress has an approval rating on the low teens, and yet in the last election 95% of incumbents got reelected. Why? Their demonstrated willingness to vote the way big money tells them to in return for the funds needed to stay in office.

    Thus, ordinary people who rely on jobs to supply life's necessities - food, clothing and shelter - get short shrift when economic priorities are being set.

    http://www.twoyearstodemocracy.com/

    LJH

    The US is focused on Austerity. Cultural, Economic and Political Austerity. The right wing drive to kill everything for everyone ( save for the elite that are rapidly accumulating it all) has destroyed the infrastructure and the fabric of the country. The US is the laggard in the 'leading developed countries' of the world and is certainly vectored in the wrong direction.

    Michael Moran

    I wonder how much of this can be explained by furtive self-employment. The ridiculous tax system provides every reason for a smart person to try and avoid formal employment through LLCs or other dodges. The LLC structure and their tax status is unique to the US, after all. It could be part of the explanation.

    RDRAVID


    @Michael Moran

    If someone is self-employed they would be counted as actively participating in the Labour market. Rather than self-employment, I think the issue is a growth in informal activity in the US. Its becoming more common there for people to do undeclared work, whether of the handyman, domestic helper or running a mobile food shack.

    The bottom 20% in the US are effectively living a third world style life.

    Isaias

    I always said that if US unemployment was measured by Spain unemployment standards ( the strictest in the EU ), it would probably be around 12 % if not more.

    What free market?

    While Martin Wolf explains a deeply worrying trend, particularly for those who have given up the struggle to find work, there is another bar to job creation.

    Small businesses find the bureaucratic hassle of taking on staff a nightmare: the intrusion of form filling, record keeping, the tax authorities, local authorities etc, all of which have their own, separate agendas, is sufficient deterrent to employing anyone except on a casual basis - which the very young and old are happy to engage with the process.

    The only common strategy for bureaucrats and tax men is job creation - theirs and those of the ilk - their role is job destructive in the real economy.

    gkjames

    @What free market? Really? How so? What "bureaucratic hassle"? Are standard record-keeping and accounting practices an "intrusion" or, more likely, a useful mechanism by which shareholders can track the health of the enterprise? In most US states, by the way, it takes all of a single form and a modest fee to incorporate. As for the alleged "common strategy for bureaucrats and tax men," you do realize, presumably, that it is elected legislatures who write the tax laws, laws that reflect extensive (and, not infrequently, exclusive) input from the business community.

    What free market?

    Yes, it is BIG business that controls the output of legislatures, small business does not get a look in - those running them are too busy running their businesses and coping with bureaucracy. It is often overlooked that rules and regulations that are imposed universally suit big business but place a disproportionate burden on small business who have to comply with the same dictats but without the administrative cohort and infrastructure that large firms can justify.

    What free market?

    Indeed, without sounding too conspiratorial, I would say there is an unwritten pact between big business and legislators that allows big business to comply with onshore rules and forces competing small business to do the same.

    Meanwhile offshore, big business can engage in tax evasion on a massive scale using offshore tax havens, transfer pricing and the freedom from jurisdictional control that obviates their need to remit revenues that would be taxable (viz Apple) . Small businesses are captive, they have to be 100% complient and that suits big business as the administrative burden crushes incipient competition from small business.

    Anon2

    Maybe it has something to do with the breakdown of the lower middle class family in the US and the subsequent poor performance in school, crime, prison etc. I guarantee those not participating exhibit a higher percentage of having had no father in the home as a child.

    LJH

    @Anon2 Yes, we don't like poor people in the US, or minorities - including women. The problem is the ruling class of white rich men is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

    Those that create the problems are usually not the first to suffer the consequences. That comes later as the empire crumbles.

    M_T

    @Hell No -- Given the minimal welfare in the US, and that it seems implausible that one in eight American working age men are starving, my personal assumption would be that a large proportion of the remainder are working in the unregistered economy. That includes crime but would also include casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc.

    RiskAdjustedReturn

    @M_T @Hell No --

    "... casual work where the employer doesn't pay proper taxes etc."

    In my local bank, on a Saturday morning, one will see lines of middle-aged white guys standing in line to take out thousands of dollars each in cash, which I'm assuming is meant to pay their workers

    Adam Bartlett

    An issue that's only going to get more severe and widespread as technological unemployment continues its advance.

    In light of studies showing that low quality jobs are worse for folk's mental health than staying unemployed, further deregulation is only an answer to be entertained by sadists.

    The choice facing us is probably between the statist solution of a massive increase in public sector employment, or the relatively libertarian option of a generous universal basic income. Let's pray it won't be too many years before such options get to the table.

    pangloss

    Surely an American (or any other) worker is worth no more than say a Chinese worker + some translation factor. The translation factor includes the presence of infrastructure and human capital on both sides. The low skill worker suffers first because of an early and easy shift in the translation factors. Sooner or later the high-end designers of Silicon Valley will suffer the same fate. Excluding nuclear war there is likely to be a flattening of wages across the developed world. This is especially bad news for those at the lower end of the ability scale, no credible amount of education or training will make enough difference. There are limits to human capital. Start thinking about redistribution and the niches that are immune from this effect.

    nonuthin

    The question that bothered me through this is what do they actually do if they're not "working". Clearly not all sustained by welfare, does this indicate a significant increase in either the black economy, the criminal economy or both. E.g. it would be statistically fascinating ( if politically unachievable) to see the impact of a legally licenced drugs trade on the employment participation rates.

    Adam Bartlett

    @nonuthin Some in single earner households, having to accept a lower material quality of life than they would if both adults could earn. Others drawing down savings and living frugally. Many dependent on food banks and other forms of charity. Others subsisting in the informal economy, but activity one would call 'grey' at worst, not the black or criminal economy.

    Big Dipper

    There is more to life's responsibilities than your "men and women whose responsibilities should make earning a good income". Perhaps you could consider high-quality child raising, other care activity, community and education. The ratio is dangerous.

    cg12348

    Every week Martin Wolf reminds me why the self proclaimed experts are really idiots - you can make stats sing if you know what you are doing........but the reality is easy to see. Americans have a work force that is seeing its jobs exported - notice he does not give the stats on companies moving out of the US over the past 30 years. Again the experts say we could not stop It - NO they cant stop it that is true - but there is a way to stop it.

    They would further tell you that the 11 million immigrant workers have little to no effect because they take jobs that we don't want - wrong again. As you age your are happy to be employed even if the job does not hold the allure of your previous job. What immigrant workers do is they take less money because they are willing to live at a lower standard. They will live many families to one home etc. In fact if they were not here to take the job the job would get done when the pay increased to attract a willing worker - FACT. Finally what stats do not capture is the moral of a work force.

    There is nothing "decent" about our unemployment stats. We are not a nation of any one race we are a nation of opportunity with one of the most powerful economies and plenty of natural resources and demand and opportunity for innovation - so what sickness has befallen the US - large government - corporate taxation - political mediocrity - the same thing that has recently become apparent in Germany and France - idiots who give away what we worked hard for and expect us to pay more for those they choose to support.

    Todays social programs breed a generation that no longer asks what they can do for their nation - but what their nation can do for them. Obama and his ilk have handed the world to those who were unwilling to fight to fix their own countries - instead they want to come here for opportunity that did not exist at home and then in a great act of irony turn our land into theirs - we do not want to be Europe - nor do we want to be Mexico and we certainly do not want to be the middle east - instead what we want those who love our opportunity to come here and become American - but in numbers and within a legal process that does not exacerbate or marginalize those who were born here and should have the right to the first jobs here.

    Profitsee

    @cg12348 And this is why I read the FT Comments section. Bravo -- One fact was missing: US imports educated foreign naturals more than exported "low level" jobs. Even as a Democrat, I confess, you provide a lucid argument.

    Tiger II

    The employment numbers are a political fiction as with all developed economies. Unemployment is much higher than reported. Sclerotic labor laws and regulations make it impossible to create many jobs that can produce more than they cost, especially given the dumbing down of the work force by public monopoly schools. Regulated labor markets are one of the biggest drivers of unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic and should be abolished.

    Brian Reading

    While not disputing in any way Martin Wolf's analysis, the devil may still be in the detail. Population estimates by age cohorts come from ten-yearly census data - the denominator for participation rates. These estimates are interpolated between censuses from births, deaths and migration data. The numerator, the number in each age cohort at work or seeking work, comes from regular household sample surveys. Using one source for denominator and another for numerator, which cannot be avoided, entails a margin of error. In looking into this, I was amazed to discover that legal immigration averaged one million a year in the 1990s. I suspect estimated illegal immigrant, mostly prime-aged, are included in population estimates but do not appear in household surveys.

    DougInCalifornia

    What I am seeing where I live is the emergence of a part-time, informal service economy. You might call it the Craigslist/Ebay/PayPal economy. I think that a lot of people make a (minimal) living this way. And my guess is that most of it doesn't get picked up in official statistics. I think that "employment" will need to be measured differently in the post-internet era.

    RiskAdjustedReturn

    @cg12348 @Boston1

    "Show me a middle class kid that expects to work his way up and willing to start at the bottom and I will show you..."


    ...a recent immigrant.

    WL - Minneapolis

    One clue into the declining labor force participation rate may have been discovered in a study reported in the NY Times today, that may account for a substantial portion. The death rate among middle-aged (45-54) whites with high school education or less has increased in recent years, reversing a long-term trend. The cause appears to be poor health/chronic pain/mental health issues that result in death by drug/alcohol abuse and/or suicide.

    Clearly unskilled and low-skilled workers have more trouble finding well paying jobs, and the wages for those jobs have fallen around 19% since 2000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. But an increase in health problems of one sort or another may also be the cause of the lower participation rate as well.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html

    Paul A. Myers

    Excellent article on education difficulties in the US by Edouardo Porter in today's NYT. One problem is that children living in poverty in the US struggle to learn in the education system partially because overall public support for impoverished families is so poor in the US.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/business/economy/school-vs-society-in-americas-failing-students.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

    KKB

    If we think the current labor market is not working, wait till the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal passes the US Congress & signed into law .
    Capital ($), aided by misguided policies of the US economic elites, will prevail over (skilled) Labor.

    Paul A. Myers

    A major contributor to lack of hiring men age 25-54 is the massive underinvestment in infrastructure in the U.S. This is a prime age for construction employment and this industry provides a ladder of advancement from low and semi-skilled labor up to more skilled labor. My experience with construction contractors in Southern California is that they are interested in individuals who can get to the job site and do the work and are often willing to overlook criminal records. A dollar of public spending on construction puts American workers to work, not someone in Korea. You can't import a highway or a building from the Far East.

    The other major failure is the large urban school district. These "too big to succeed" institutions have a record for over a half a century of failure to turn out skilled young people. In the massive Los Angeles Unified School District, they shut down skill-based vocational education during the period 1970-1990 with the lame excuse of everyone is going to college. The duopoly of a wooden-headed educational establishment fostered by graduate schools of education and powerful job-protecting, mediocrity-fostering teachers unions have created the largest statist failure since the collapse of East Germany. (And you can remember how much Germany paid to clean up that mess!)

    There are recent reports that there are 4-5 million unfilled jobs in the US due to lack of skilled applicants.

    A crummy labor market is almost always the creation of bad public policy. And today's America swims in bad public policies.

    beforethecollapse.com

    @Paul A. Myers As an educator, I wonder what role poor nutrition plays in the US?

    beforethecollapse.com

    Also, I must say that the family unit is far more influential and important to the youth than any teacher. The teacher can operate as a third parent, or second parent if the family breaks down, but a youth needs a stable environment for healthy emotional and instinctual development. Excellent diet, physical exercise and regimented sleep patterns are essential. It's easy for parents to blame teachers but I have noted that such complaints arise from personalities that resent strong authority figures and duty enforces. As such, they are incapable of disciplining their own child.

    In China, society encourages the family to be unconditionally supportive to the child, this is balanced by the teacher who is a strict disciplinarian, often by way of corporeal punishment.

    Philip Verleger

    @Paul A. Myers A crummy labor market can also be the result of increased monopsonistic power of employers. Trucking companies cannot find drivers and regional airlines cannot find pilots. There are plenty available - but many will not accept the low wages offered. The employers cannot offer more because their customers - the large airlines and the big shippers will not pay more. The trained workers are there. They just will not accept the scarps.

    The public policy mistake was allowing the creation of such large monopolies/monopsonies.

    Look outside your silo!

    Paul A. Myers

    @Philip Verleger @Paul A. Myers Good points. The FT published my letter to the editor in about 2010 that economic concentration in virtually every economic sector of the US had reached unprecedented levels and represented a major threat to the US economy. (I think I was seriously outside my silo and I think the FT editors were very receptive to this argument--then and now.)

    Oligopolies (the only kind of major corporations and markets in the US today) produce lower volumes, at higher prices, and with fewer employees than a more competitive economic sector would employ, produce, price.

    In virtually every industrial sector of the US economy, the top competitors are way too big and way too dominant. In the 1950s and 60s, it used to be the Big Three in most sectors; today is at most the Big Two.

    The Progressives understood the economic concentration argument; the Democratic Leadership Council generation embraces concentration's contributory support.

    Philip Verleger

    @Paul A. Myers @Philip Verleger

    Could not agree more. I am on the board of a family firm. We cannot find truck drivers although we pay well and train (to move gasoline - it takes an extra license). There is just little interest in joining the profession because the large companies keep wages down.

    The FTC and Justice Department unfortunately failed to do their jobs.

    BelCan

    Mr Wolf seems to have missed the fact that the FT already covered this issue on 16 October.

    See http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2015/10/16/us-statisticians-are-in-the-dark-over-the-20-million-working-age-americans-who-dont-want-a-job/

    nb

    No cause for concern. The decline in the LFP rate is simply a social readjustment

    https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/october-2013/a-closer-look-at-the-decline-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate

    The BLS lists the following factors as primary drivers of the decline in the LFP rate since 2000: (1) the aging of the baby boomer cohort; (2) the decline in the participation rate of those 16-24 years old; (3) the declining LFP rate of women (since its peak in 1999), and (4) the continuous decline of the LFP rate of men (since the 1940s).

    The main factors that keep the aggregate LFP rate from falling further are the increase of the LFP rate of those 55 and older and the strong attachment to the labor force of Hispanic and Asian people, who constitute the main share of the immigrant population.

    Henry C

    @nb Your good post is reinforced plenty by the more recent talk by Bullard. He notes:

    "If you know only one aspect of the data on labor force participation, it should be this: Labor force participation used to be relativelylow, it rose during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,peaking in 2000, and it has generally been declining since 2000.From 1948 to 1966, the labor force participation rate was relatively low and relatively stable, averaging 59.1 percent. That's substantially lower than today's value of 63 percent. It is important to note that we normally consider the U.S. economy to have performed relatively well during this period, especially during the long expansion of the 1960s.

    Evidently, low labor force participation does not equate with weak economic growth. Surely this is because the factors driving economic growth are different from the factors driving labor force participation."

    https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Files/PDFs/Bullard/remarks/Bullard_ExchequerClub_19Feb2014_final.pdf

    beforethecollapse.com

    Why are you surprised? You genuflected to my employer.. The People's Republic of China.

    Where slavery is a tool for political control. Perhaps you should have thought harder and better when you and your friends were nattering on about The Great Moderation. What was your long game? Did you think there would be a revolution or revolt that you could manipulate? Or were you a true believer in The Circular Theory of Income?

    Action? What action? How are you going to move production back to the West? How can you undo what you are responsible for?

    Chinese Competition Exposes Americans to Cruelty

    Henry C

    I'm not sure I want to worry about the US LFPR, and whether it's it's indicative of Americans' feelings that they can't support a family.


    The literature on US LFPR is pretty consensual on the main effect being demographic (ageing) and virtually nothing else. The St. Louis Fed's Bullard's recent talk is illustrative: see https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Files/PDFs/Bullard/remarks/Bullard_ExchequerClub_19Feb2014_final.pdf .

    As to family support, the other aspect one might look at is whether US household disposable income growth has been deficient relative to other G7 countries (which all have higher LFPR). But that's not the case: see

    https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm

    So on the face of it, it seems to take a higher LFPR in other G7 countries to match the same approximate growth in US disposable income in the long run.

    L'anziano

    "What might explain the extent to which prime-aged men and women have been withdrawing from the labour market in the US over a long period?"

    Heartless as this sounds (and I am sure I will not gain any friends for this on this page) the reason on the male side of the equation is that it is much easier to fire ineffective, unproductive, middle-aged, male dinosaurs in the US than it is in the UK, France or Japan. At least this has always been the case in every global firm in which I have worked. I am acutely aware of this as a middle aged man myself.

    lennerd

    Perhaps Mr Wolf should follow up this article with one about the abysmal record on male and household median earnings since 1970. Male median earnings are now lower than in 1973, more than 4 decades agao and household median earnings are back to the late 1980s, a generation ago.

    This, of course, is the evisceration of the middle class by globalisation and other factors that has progressed further and faster in the US than elsewhere, resulting in the proceeds of growth being concentrated on the top 1 per cent, or even the top 10 per cent of the top 1 per cent. His views on why and what should be done would be interesting.

    Olaf von Rein

    @lennerd Those income statistics right? Frightening.

    Legal Tender

    @lennerd If you want to look at the data you need to realise the US imported 10-15 million low-skilled, non-English speaking immigrants during the 1990s and 2000s. If you take out the very bottom of the income distribution (note that their income is understated as a good portion of the earnings is "off the books") the results look better. You cannot make an "apples to apples" comparison between the US labour force of the 1970s and 1980s and the labour force of the 1990s and 2000s. The demographics are very different.

    If Europe admits millions of refugees over the next few years, I can assure you it will depress average male household earnings. But you always need to look at what has changed in the composition of the data before drawing conclusions about the data. The fact that there might be millions of Middle Eastern and African arrivals earning very little (officially) would impact the overall data for wages but may not accurately describe the experience of the pre-existing labour force.

    You might even say that the US has employed its native population AND created jobs for millions of unskilled, non-English speaking workers who are now earning two or three times what they were in their home countries and sending tens of billions annually back to those countries to increase wealth there. That sounds like a success story (well, I would not classify the current economy or labour market as a success story, but on par it does describe much of the 1990-2006 period).

    Cuibono

    As somebody who has worked in both Europe and the US I would add to the list of underlying causes mentioned. First employee rights in the US are abysmal. Poor conditions, no training or upward mobility, little or no personal privacy, cult like "motivation" exercises, passive aggressive annual reviews, drug testing, binding non-compete contracts that disallow moving to competitors for long periods of time and now declining benefits. The list goes on and on.

    The employer gets everything and gives nothing more than an "at-will" commitment to continue employment.

    It gets to a point where it's not profitable to bother.

    Raver

    @Cuibono Yes it's gotten pretty bad. The benefit packages are barely cheaper than what you can buy in the health insurance marketplace, maybe $20 less a month if you're lucky.

    Banker

    @Cuibono yea but salaries are 2-3x as much as in the UK.

    Cuibono

    @Banker @Cuibono Right, until you factor in the cost of health care and college tuition for your kids.

    Banker

    @Cuibono @Banker @Cuibono Ahm? Most ivies have $0 fees for families under $60k and a lot of support. Health insurance also provided from employer covers everything. Have you even got any idea how expensive private healthcare is in the UK? Unless you want to use 3rd world NHS ofcourse.

    All public universities also charge minimum £9k/year fees here.

    Learn your facts before you post.

    Cuibono

    Well I believe I know facts. I also have manners, and you apparently don't. So get off your high horse before you post!

    Having experienced both the NHS and the private US system, I promise you the NHS wins hands down in every department, most especially in quality of care. I do know the UK private system, but if you want third world care with chaotic service delivery and outrageous hidden costs, please feel free to come to the US and pay over of thousand per month (for a family) with co-pays for it.

    You 9k per year number is, frankly hilarious to any middle class US parent. Try 60k per year for fees and board for a good university.

    And if you are earning 60k per year how are you going to afford the basic second level education, complete with top SAT scores and cultural experiences that will get you selected to the mythical ivy.- especially if you are white and without legacy connections? You should take your own advice and read up on US colleges and their outrageous manipulation of statistics to hide the fact that they are little more than vehicles that allow the elite to transfer status across generations.

    You are upset about an opinion I expressed based on my own experiences and you set yourself up as the comment police to challenge that opinion without.

    Something to think about. . .

    US corporations have the developed world's highest remuneration scale to executives and the lowest benefits to other employees. How else can these corporate executive maintain their life style without hiring from the two employee pools (young and old) that work for such low wages? Young are beginning and old augmenting income.

    ForgottenHistory

    I recall how in the Netherlands and in Germany (and i think to a lesser degree also in France but haven't got a clue on the UK in this matter) policymakers and governments were very concerned for just this: an increase in the longer -and ultimately eternally- unemployed. Therefore people weren't just been laid off but held on and send on courses or only half-employed(=50% or so) and the government added some funds to that.

    This way people retained and even improved their skills, in stead of losing skills and become unemployable and ultimately end up being a costly burden for society.

    It doesn't surprise me at all this didn't happen in the US, as the US has equal opportunities(supposed to) but no proper sense of community in the sense of a government with a long term-planning; US has been doing the opposite, e.g. cutting-off anything which would help the unemployed, poor, or disadvantaged -that's equal opportunities in reality.

    Smyrna Cracker

    I suspect that declining levels of health, especially for those lacking a college degree may account for some of the falling work-force participation rates. Recent studies have uncovered a rise in death rates with this same population that may be part of the same phenomena. Rural populations seem especially venerable with declining access to mental health services and rising levels of substance abuse. Red America may have outsized political power but its leadership has no interest in serving the population it represents.

    Mr Passive

    Pensioners with no pensions; they are more reliable at shelf stacking and other such jobs. There are going to be so many people over 60 in the UK working in the future now that final salary schemes have been reducing in number.

    Is it another function of very low bond yields & therefore pension rates, the side-effects of QE we may call it.

    Time for the CBs to hold up their hands and admit they've done all they can and at the margin further extra-ordinary measures will be counter productive.

    Massachusetts

    @Mr Passive In the US the only age group that has seen incomes increase consistently is the 65-74 decile. I cannot speak to the UK.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/business/economy/young-households-are-losing-ground-in-income-despite-education.html
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/business/economy/american-seniors-enjoy-the-middle-class-life.html

    [Nov 01, 2015] Employment growth is submerged in stagnation

    Notable quotes:
    "... Nevertheless, the truth is that the United States economy is not exactly in good health. The labour market data published during the 12 months before March of 2015 is not as robust as was presumed by the Federal Reserve: the Department of Labor recognized recently that it had overestimated the jobs created by the private sector by at least 255,000 [3]. ..."
    "... The policies of the Federal Reserve are not capable of increasing the economy by their own efforts [6]. Yellen bet everything on a reduction of the unemployed, hence businesses would be pressured to increase wages, so that the acquisitive power of families and price levels would increase (inflation). ..."
    "... This has not happened. While the rate of unemployment fell from 5.7 to 5.1% between January and September of this year, hourly wages hardly increased 2.2% in annual terms the past month, still far from the levels reached before the crisis, when increases above 4% were noted. Inflation has not succeeded in passing 2% in more than 3 years, the objective of the US central bank [7]. ..."
    www.voltairenet.org

    The ego of Janet Yellen has broken into a thousand pieces. The new data published some days ago by the US Department of Labor confirms the hypothesis of the economist Ariel Noyola Rodríguez, who had maintained since last year that the United States' labour market was much more fragile than was presumed by the head of the Federal Reserve. If the situation of the North American economy continues to get worse it is probable that in coming weeks new measures will be taken to mitigate structural unemployment.

    In her public discourses, the president of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has avoided the serious problems that the United States economy suffers. When in mid-September the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) took the decision to maintain the federal funds rate between zero and 0.25% the target of Yellen's worries was directed to China [1] and the debts of emerging economies [2].

    In accord with the President of the Federal Reserve, the process of recovery of the North American economy has been strengthening for considerable time. And, because of this, if the FOMC has not raised the cost of credit is due, above all, to a high rate of "obligation" and "responsibility" with the rest of the world.

    Nevertheless, the truth is that the United States economy is not exactly in good health. The labour market data published during the 12 months before March of 2015 is not as robust as was presumed by the Federal Reserve: the Department of Labor recognized recently that it had overestimated the jobs created by the private sector by at least 255,000 [3].

    On the other hand, during the month of September the non-agricultural employment reached 143,000, much less than the 200,000 hoped for [4]. The greatest reversals were in sectors tied to external trade and energy. The rise of the dollar, and the fall in prices of commodities and the extreme weakness of global demand with the rest of the world precipitated the structural deterioration of the US economy.

    The bad news does not end here: the numbers of the jobs generated in July and August were also lower [5]. Now we know that in August only 136,000 jobs were created, rather than the 176,000 originally reported: while in the month of July there were created 21,000 fewer jobs than those counted in the previous revision.

    Hence with the data actualized by the Department of Labor, in the United States there were registered an average of 167,000 new jobs between July and September, an amount that represents less than 65% of the 260,000 (average per month) that were created during the previous year.

    The policies of the Federal Reserve are not capable of increasing the economy by their own efforts [6]. Yellen bet everything on a reduction of the unemployed, hence businesses would be pressured to increase wages, so that the acquisitive power of families and price levels would increase (inflation).

    This has not happened. While the rate of unemployment fell from 5.7 to 5.1% between January and September of this year, hourly wages hardly increased 2.2% in annual terms the past month, still far from the levels reached before the crisis, when increases above 4% were noted. Inflation has not succeeded in passing 2% in more than 3 years, the objective of the US central bank [7].

    Hence it is now clear that the fall of the unemployment rates in recent months depends more on the reduction of the rate of participation in the labour market - as a consequence of the despair of thousands of US citizens - and less on the creation of quality long range jobs: on Friday October 2 it was announced that in September 350,000 persons abandoned the search for work [8]. There is no turning around, in the United States job growth has been submerged in stagnation.

    [Oct 23, 2015] Unemployed and Older, and Facing a Jobless Future

    Notable quotes:
    "... "don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself." ..."
    "... More and more I have to accept this is the Third Act in Life and working for a traditional company in a traditional job is no longer a reality ..."
    "... Without real income, you eventually become another victim of our perverse, experience-averse corporate economy. ..."
    Jul 26, 2013 | The New York Times

    For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year, according to the Labor Department, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers.

    There are numerous reasons - older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization. They're more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they're attractive targets if layoffs are needed.

    Even as they do all the things they're told to do - network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and turn it into a job - many struggle with the question of whether their working life as they once knew it is essentially over.

    This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

    ... ... ...

    Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help. My friend Shelley's husband, Neal, who also asked that I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a friend was "don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself."

    He also has friends facing the same issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups, whether formal or informal, are very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president of the American Counseling Association and professor emerita of counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.

    "Legitimizing the fact that this stinks also helps," she said. "I find that when I say this, clients are so relieved. They thought I was going to say, 'buck up.' "

    And even more, "they should know the problem is not with them but with a system that has treated them like a commodity that can be discarded," said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who works with the older unemployed in suburb of Boston. "I try to help clients get in touch with their anger about that. They shouldn't blame themselves."

    Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do. "I know not to take it personally," Neal said, "but sure, I wonder at times, what's wrong with me? Is there something I should be doing differently?"

    It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to wonder if he is somehow standing in his own way, like a cancer patient who is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.

    Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary "Set for Life" about the older jobless, said she stopped posting articles like "Five Easy Steps to get a New Job." "People are so frustrated," she said. "They don't want to hear, 'Get a new wardrobe, get on LinkedIn.' "

    As one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said, "I've been told to redo my résumé twice now. The first 'expert' tells me to do it one way, the next 'expert' tells me to put it back the way I had it."

    Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although he believes he'll never make as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic about some consulting jobs.

    But the reality is that the problem of the older unemployed "was acute during the Great Recession, and is now chronic," Ms. Sipprelle said. "People's lives have been upended by the great forces of history in a way that's never happened before, and there's no other example for older workers to look at. Some can't recoup, though not through their own fault. They're the wrong age at the wrong time. It's cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you just dye your hair, you'll get that job."


    Flatlander, August 5, 2013

    Age discrimination is a sad reality today and always has been. It is also very difficult to prove in a legal action. From what I have heard,...

    Jay, August 5, 2013

    Ok, I took some knocks on this, one that I deserve. I really do feel badly for the guys that didn't make it. I was wrong on that one. Yes,...

    Walter, August 5, 2013

    This is a great article. I'm in this situation but worse. Trying to entice myself to nowadays corporations I went and enrolled in a MBA program and got myself into a $40K student loan debt. I had already paid my previous loans long time ago so I figure, if I update myself educational-wise and prove these people that my mind is still fresh and sharp at a high level that I could raise my chances.

    Now, I am 56 and I still cant get a job. Taking a minimum wage position is out of the question for me since all my salary would actually go to pay my debt and I would not have money even for transportation back and forth to work.

    What I find amazing is that employer are failing to understand that old folks like us would really appreciate the opportunity and work harder to try to excel than probably any of nowadays young kids, that, like the article mentioned, are more prone to leave the company to get promotions. I keep telling my friends that I would even sign a contract guaranteeing that I would work for them until the day I die or retire.

    I like the idea presented by one of the readers here that the government should provide some kind of economic incentive in the way of lower taxation for businesses that hire people over 50. They do it for career criminals. Why not for qualified and educated/trained people.

    This is totally age discrimination and it is a federal offense. However, I try that channel also and I got no response from the Labor Dept. I thank the NYT for bringing this up.


    Jovality, Las Vegas, NV. August 5, 2013

    I'm 57 and have or had been employed in the high tech industry for over 25 years with never a period of more than two weeks unemployment until now. During that time I rose from a software developer to product manager, to VP of Sales and Marketing. I was laid off from that position at the end of 2012, but luckily I was able to reach out to an old colleague who was able to sneak me into a marketing position in his company at less than half my previous salary.

    I was surprised by the younger people's reaction to me. They said things to me I had to take as compliments such as, "You're really cool for an older guy." "I would never expect someone your age would know so much or be so talented".

    Unfortunately the company had a major layoff which I was caught in. Now I am like many of the others who have posted her, "A ghost with a resume". Since being laid off in June of 2013 I have sent out 100's of resumes with only a very limited response.

    More and more I have to accept this is the "Third Act in Life" and working for a traditional company in a traditional job is no longer a reality. It's time to take the vast experience and talents I've built up or an entire career and use them to open my own business. It's a frighten challenge to be sure.

    But as someone once told me there is only one real form of security in life, when life knocks you down you must have the drive and self-confidence to get up handle the situation and both survive and succeed.

    Jon K. Polis, East Greenwich, Rhode Island August 3, 2013

    Bohemienne: In answer to your question; look up the movie " Soylent Green " from 1973, that starred Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson....and see what fate be-fell Mr. Robinson's character....if our government today offered me the same options/opportunities to me that they offered to him; I would take advantage of them in a heartbeat...

    Glenn, Cary, NC July 31, 2013

    "People's lives have been upended by the great forces of history...."

    Nonsense. People's lives have been upended by soulless capitalists and their lackeys in Congress (read Republicans). There are no great forces of history at work here, just good, old-fashioned GREED.

    Rhea Goldman, Sylmar, CA July 31, 2013

    I find it strange, very strange indeed, that all of us have so easily accepted our plight of hardship. Have we been so cowed that collectively we take no action to put a stop to this harsh treatment from employers? Re-read Dickens' Christmas Carol.....we are allowing the economics of the United States to make Bob Cratchets of us all.

    J. Campbell, Chicago, IL July 31, 2013

    I'm amazed that an article from the NYT (to which I subscribe) actually suggests that people in their 50's who are unemployed can somehow just "accept that they may *never* work again". How could we live? What legal source of income could we obtain that would bridge us to Social Security (even for those of us eventually eligible for SS retirement)? What are the people responsible for this article (including the NYT editors who released it) thinking? What if someone suggested that *they* accept a future where they never worked again, and had no income?

    If there were several major American riots, that involved hundreds of thousands of unemployed people (a fraction of the millions of current long-term unemployed in the US), the NYT would be out front in demanding that order be restored *at any cost*. Where is the mainstream press demand that *economic stability for the working class* be restored at any cost?

    Or do you think, because of our current corporate/NSA state, such riots are impossible? If so, look at Europe--right now.

    Sam, Florida July 31, 2013

    My husband was just laid off due to company merger. His entire department was eliminated. The only good news, is that we've been expecting the lay off for about a year or so, as such we had time to prepare. We also, have worked very hard to get our finances in order since we got married. We killed all our unsecured debt in 2007, $55,000+, and we have saved a good chunk every year since then. I'm still working on our lay off budget, but I hope that we will be able to cover our regular monthly expenses on my salary.

    http://adventures-of-sam.blogspot.com/

    Glenn, Cary, NC August 3, 2013

    Been there. Done that. It didn't work. The money disappeared - slowly but surely. Without real income, you eventually become another victim of our perverse, experience-averse corporate economy.

    MJ, New York City August 5, 2013

    Actually, it is possible to live on one salary. Best way is to start early on in the marriage, keeping your first home rather than moving "up." Even if you have moved "up" it is possible and no shame at all to move "down." It is a brave journey and takes real guts, but in many cases it can be done.

    Sam, Florida July 31, 2013

    In addition to the costs to the individual and the families, their is a cost to society. Obviously there is a cost to support many of these people in their later years, but there is also an uncalculated cost to workers in their peak earning years, the height of their careers falling out of the job market.

    There is a cost to society to lose this knowledge, to losing their mentoring and training skills for the next generation, to losing their consumer spending power, etc.

    Melanie Dukas, Saugus, mass July 31, 2013

    I am 59 years old, and I lost my job during the high tech bust in 2002 as marketing communications manager at a fiber optic start-up. In Massachusetts, this was for many of us worse than the Great Recession. At the height of my career at 48 years old, I was determined to get a job and interviewed for 5 years. I drove a taxi and limo 6 days a week, but still couldn't make ends meet, so I moved in with my parents 5 years ago and started my own business developing websites and marketing. I just couldn't take interviewing anymore! It was like heartbreaking, kind of like dating - I would go on the interview and get so excited and they never called.

    It's been a long road, but at I am happy to be working in my field and making a living. Luckily, I had done this before and although I would have preferred to work at a company full time, at my age in marketing the jobs are few are far between and I need to work for the rest of my life because I have no retirement. Even if I get a job, it is unlikely to last and then I would be back in the same boat. Now I am in.

    Henry, New York July 31, 2013

    I think people must understand that the nature of WORK is changing. - In the past you worked from 9-5 for a Company and as long you performed adequately you continued on your Job...

    Well, welcome to the New Economy ...

    Companies can no longer afford to Hire all the people they need "full time" people. The cost is becoming prohibitive, especially if you add on the benefits costs ( avg. est. 30 % above salary).

    In the future, I believe most people will become Independent Contractors and/or work on a Part-time basis - to be utilized when needed and working Jobs or "Gigs" for many different employers- with periods of " downtime."

    This type of flexible Work will, soon become the mainstay. Therefore the "grayling" workforce must adapt and think and plan accordingly. - In fact, there are many Employment Firms or " Headhunters" who are already adapting this model. - and as the Baby Boomers retire en masse, they will be looking for people since, in my opinion, there will not be enough "younger" to fill all the jobs needed.

    Splenetix, Muskegon August 3, 2013

    The conversion of full-time workers into freelancers is an exploitation of capitalism, forcing you to waste your time self-marketing and administering. You won't have any of the scales of economy that larger businesses enjoy so you won't be competitive.You won't succeed, you won't be able to manage and get the work done. It's all about worker repression.

    [Oct 23, 2015] Workers over 50 are the new unemployables

    Notable quotes:
    "... Older workers were less likely to lose their jobs during the recession, but those who were laid off are facing far tougher conditions than their younger colleagues. Workers in their fifties are about 20% less likely than workers ages 25 to 34 to become re-employed, according to an Urban Institute study published last year. ..."
    "... The point made in several articles of this nature revolve around lack of knowledge and experience with newer technologies. In an effort to address this issue, I went back to school (again) to obtain expertise in IT Networking and Security, PMP Path Project Management and ITIL. Now I am being told that my education is of no value since I do not have the requisite 'Real World' experience using these newly acquired skills. ..."
    Feb. 26, 2013 | money.cnn.com
    On one hand, they're too young to retire. They may also be too old to get re-hired.

    Call them the "new unemployables," say researchers at Boston College.

    Older workers were less likely to lose their jobs during the recession, but those who were laid off are facing far tougher conditions than their younger colleagues. Workers in their fifties are about 20% less likely than workers ages 25 to 34 to become re-employed, according to an Urban Institute study published last year.

    "Once you leave the job market, trying to get back in it is a monster," said Mary Matthews, 57, who has teetered between bouts of unemployment and short temp jobs for the last five years. She applies for jobs every week, but most of the time, her applications hit a brick wall.

    Employers rarely get back to her, and when they do she's often told she is "overqualified" for the position. Sometimes she wonders: Is that just a euphemism for too old?

    Her resume shows she has more than 30 years of experience working as a teacher, librarian, academic administrator and fundraiser for non-profits.

    "I've thought about taking 10 years off my resume," she said. "It's not like we're senile. The average age of Congress is something like 57. Joe Biden is 70. Ronald Reagan was in his 70s when he was president. So what's the problem?"

    ... ... ...

    About 23,000 age discrimination complaints were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in fiscal 2012, 20% more than in 2007.

    Proving discrimination is next to impossible, though, unless it's blatant.

    "It's very difficult to prove hiring discrimination, because unless somebody says, 'you're too old for this job,' you don't know why you weren't hired," said Michael Harper, a law professor at Boston University.

    Related: Am I too old to be hired?

    EconomistNC, May 5, 2015

    As a former public servant teaching University Level Econometrics for nearly 15 years and possessing numerous 'Excellence' awards, this development is nothing short of shameful. I have had dozens of recruiters and HR 'specialists' debase my public service as not being 'Real World' experience despite the fact that without my commitment to 'Real World Applications' education, many of those with whom I apply for employment would not hold a college degree. Indeed, I find many of the hiring managers with whom I speak regarding positions for which I have both technical and applications experience, there is impenetrable discrimination once they meet me in person.

    The point made in several articles of this nature revolve around lack of knowledge and experience with newer technologies. In an effort to address this issue, I went back to school (again) to obtain expertise in IT Networking and Security, PMP Path Project Management and ITIL. Now I am being told that my education is of no value since I do not have the requisite 'Real World' experience using these newly acquired skills.

    Indeed, to meet the criteria for many positions I find open requires that I be a 'recent college graduate.' When I point out that I have been continually retraining and taking online courses to keep my IT skills current, I am once again met with the lack of 'Real World' experience requirement. For a society that purports itself to value education and hard work, for those among us that have worked very hard for substandard pay and benefits to be so casually cast aside is absolutely inexcusable.

    Paul Stukin, Apr 24, 2015

    This is nothing new, especially if you are in IT. I was laid off from IBM in August 2001, then 9/11, and the bottom fell out of the jobs market. I have not worked in IT since. I truncated my resume to show the last 10 years of "relevant" experience and then got interviews, but never the job.

    DJM22, Apr 24, 2015

    @Richard Thwaites

    Where does this group turn; what is this demographic to do. For instance in my case based on the type of work I've done for a lifetime I've been laid off a total of 5 times. The monies you've had saved during these periods had to be used for survival and take care of family. No it wasn't wasted.

    But now boomers are going into that area where as they are tooyoung to retire in order to just obtain social security. And then this won't be a whole bunch.

    Are we suppose to give up everything we've worked for and live a less than mediocre livelihood? That's a good 10/15 years away. Then they will say next how the boomers are becoming more of a problem and mooching in order to survive. I'm not suggesting hand outs, but if ageism is going to be the problem for boomers then boomers need to press somewhere, someone, something so we don't end up with problems that will become even more major problems. What a way to end your career and what a legacy to leave your children.

    Look at all the characters in our government. None of them worked, simply kept chairs warmed and signed papers they were told to sign and as stated they're up in their 70's + and have enough money to aid their next 10 generations and the normal joe can't even complete his generation.

    [Oct 23, 2015] The unemployed and over-50 need help

    Notable quotes:
    "... The NC Employment Security agent told a bunch of us to try to conceal our age when interviewing. When asked if age discrimination wasn't against the law, he said very candidly it is, but there is no penalty for it in these times. ..."
    May 15, 2013 | MarketWatch.com

    When the most recent employment report was released, PBS NewsHour presented a segment on a group of people over 50 who had been out of work. The participants said that employers had little interest in even talking to them. Sometimes, when applying for jobs, these older applicants deleted up to 15 years of experience from their resumes to get through the door, but as soon as the interviewers saw how old the applicants were, their faces dropped and they cut the interview short.

    ... ... ...

    Add to this mix the results of a recent study that explored the relationship between the number of weeks of unemployment and the likelihood of receiving a callback after submitting an application. The researchers submitted fictitious resumes to real online job postings in each of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. They sent roughly 12,000 resumes to roughly 3,000 job postings in sales, customer service, administrative support and clerical job categories. They tried to make their fictitious resumes look as close as possible to real resumes posted on job boards. In some cases, the resumes showed the applicant as currently employed, in other cases as unemployed for spells of between one and 36 months. They found that the callback rate sharply declined during the first eight months of unemployment – from 7% to 4% – and then stabilized. This 45% decline compares to the results of another study where black-sounding names received 33% fewer callbacks than white-sounding names.

    ... ... ...

    The problem is that when the stigma of being unemployed is added to the stigma of being old, the chance of getting a job becomes very, very small. This outcome is not only unfair, but also wasteful from a national perspective as a substantial amount of experience and talent goes unused. Extended periods of unemployment also destroy the lives of the individuals affected. They use up their savings, they tap their 401(k)s, they sell their homes, and then they are left with nothing. And the number of older unemployed workers is large. As of 2012, almost 2 million people over 50 had been unemployed for more than six months; 1.3 million for a year or more. We need a jobs corps for these individuals and we need it fast.

    Robert E. Pin, May 15, 2013

    I applied for one of the numerous jobs online and they asked point blank - what year did you graduate HS? OMG! It was a required field so it was either lie, or put 1979. I felt it was good Karma to say the truth.

    So hard to prove age discrimination in this case but boy would I love to give them a piece of my mind.

    Doc y, May 15, 2013

    @Brady White What would it do to your karma if you told them you were a child prodigy and graduated at six years old? Also, for the math challenged, I often give my age as 28 years old, when counting in base 20.

    Sort of like there are 10 types of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't.

    Wayne MacNeil, May 15, 2013

    Bravo Alicia. Finally someone who understands what is going on. Only the numbers are probably much higher. Age discrimination is supposed to be against the law. This needs to be enforced just as strongly as discrimination against women or religion. There is a crisis in unemployment for those over 50. Many of these people are the best educated and would be among the most capable workers in the country. Someone has to pave a path requiring companies to employ older capable workers. This is criminal and as mentioned by the author is destroying people, families, retirements. People who have been productive for 30 years are losing everything. And younger workers dont seem to get it. If they dont stand up to this - their time is coming too.

    People think they will need to work until they are 70 to pay their debts. The shock comes when the system wont let the majority work after they are about 50.

    Rainier Rollo, May 15, 2013

    Wayne -- I once asked a friend in her late 50s who was lamenting her long term unemployment how many people over the age of 40 she hired when she was in a position to hire --- the answer was ZERO. So don't just say that today's young people are afflicted with this way of looking at people. Most of those now unemployed 50+ in poisitons of hiring also passed over older candidates.

    Lois Land, May 15, 2013

    In that PBS segment, it was amazing to watch that university woman (clearly over 60) talk about how people become less productive after the age of 40.

    Then doesn't she owe it to the university to resign/retire? Or does she think she's special/different?

    I might be special/different too. I'm 64 and I've never been sharper or more productive.

    Doc y, May 15, 2013

    @Lois Land I hate to admit it, but something that has enhanced my productivity now that I am 50+ is I no longer have to leave work to attend kids' events, or take them to their appointments, etc. I miss my children very much, but they are grown and on their own. I loved doing stuff with them, and I made their activities my number one priority while they were growing up. Being laid off three years after the youngest left home was never in the financial plan, and like others on this site, employers have not been breaking my door down to come work for them.

    The NC Employment Security agent told a bunch of us to try to conceal our age when interviewing. When asked if age discrimination wasn't against the law, he said very candidly it is, but there is no penalty for it in these times.

    richard harris, May 15, 2013

    The root cause of massive unemployment in the over 50 crowd is legal immigration. The 2010 census reported 40 million legal immigrants were residing in the US. These 40 million immigrants translate to about 24 million potential workers. The real unemployment level is 23 million people. Thus the real unemployment level of 23 million people is approximately equal to the work force inflation caused by legal immigration.

    Thus the only hope for the over 50 chronically unemployed is to ban all further legal immigration.

    [Sep 16, 2015] This Is Why Hewlett-Packard Just Fired Another 30,000

    "...An era of leadership in computer technology has died, and there is no grave marker, not even a funeral ceremony or eulogy ... Hewlett-Packard, COMPAQ, Digital Equipment Corp, UNIVAC, Sperry-Rand, Data General, Tektronix, ZILOG, Advanced Micro Devices, Sun Microsystems, etc, etc, etc. So much change in so short a time, leaves your mind dizzy."
    Zero Hedge

    SixIsNinE

    yeah thanks Carly ...

    HP made bullet-proof products that would last forever..... I still buy HP workstation notebooks, especially now when I can get them for $100 on ebay ....

    I sold HP products in the 1990s .... we had HP laserjet IIs that companies would run day & night .... virtually no maintenance ... when PCL5 came around then we had LJ IIIs .... and still companies would call for LJ I's, .... 100 pounds of invincible Printing ! .... this kind of product has no place in the World of Planned-Obsolesence .... I'm currently running an 8510w, 8530w, 2530p, Dell 6420 quad i7, hp printers hp scanners, hp pavilion desktops, .... all for less than what a Laserjet II would have cost in 1994, Total.

    Not My Real Name

    I still have my HP 15C scientific calculator I bought in 1983 to get me through college for my engineering degree. There is nothing better than a hand held calculator that uses Reverse Polish Notation!

    BigJim

    HP used to make fantastic products. I remember getting their RPN calculators back in th 80's; built like tanks.

    Then they decided to "add value" by removing more and more material from their consumer/"prosumer" products until they became unspeakably flimsy. They stopped holding things together with proper fastenings and starting hot melting/gluing it together, so if it died you had to cut it open to have any chance of fixing it.

    I still have one of their Laserjet 4100 printers. I expect it to outlast anything they currently produce, and it must be going on 16+ years old now.

    Fuck you, HP. You started selling shit and now you're eating through your seed corn. I just wish the "leaders" who did this to you had to pay some kind of penalty greater than getting $25M in a severance package.

    Automatic Choke

    +100. The path of HP is everything that is wrong about modern business models. I still have a 5MP laserjet (one of the first), still works great. Also have a number of 42S calculators.....my day-to-day workhorse and several spares. I don't think the present HP could even dream of making these products today.

    nope-1004

    How well will I profit, as a salesman, if I sell you something that works?

    How valuable are you, as a customer in my database, if you never come back?

    Confucious say "Buy another one, and if you can't afford it, f'n finance it!"

    It's the growing trend. Look at appliances. Nothing works anymore.

    Normalcy Bias

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

    Son of Loki

    GE to cut Houston jobs as work moves overseas

    http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2015/09/15/ge-to-cut-houston-job...

    " Yes we can! "

    Automatic Choke

    hey big brother.... if you are curious, there is a damn good android emulator of the HP42S available (Free42). really it is so good that it made me relax about accumulating more spares. still not quite the same as a real calculator. (the 42S, by the way, is the modernization/simplification of the classic HP41, the real hardcord very-programmable, reconfigurable, hackable unit with all the plug-in-modules that came out in the early 80s.)

    Miss Expectations

    Imagine working at HP and having to listen to Carly Fiorina bulldoze you...she is like a blow-torch...here are 4 minutes of Carly and Ralph Nader (if you can take it):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC4JDwoRHtk

    Miffed Microbiologist

    My husband has been a software architect for 30 years at the same company. Never before has he seen the sheer unadulterated panic in the executives. All indices are down and they are planning for the worst. Quality is being sacrificed for " just get some relatively functional piece of shit out the door we can sell". He is fighting because he has always produced a stellar product and refuses to have shit tied to his name ( 90% of competitor benchmarks fail against his projects). They can't afford to lay him off, but the first time in my life I see my husband want to quit...

    unplugged

    I've been an engineer for 31 years - our managements's unspoken motto at the place I'm at (large company) is: "release it now, we'll put in the quality later". I try to put in as much as possible before the product is shoved out the door without killing myself doing it.

    AGuy

    Do they even make test equipment anymore?

    HP test and measurement was spun off many years ago as Agilent. The electronics part of Agilent was spun off as keysight late last year.

    HP basically makes computer equipment (PCs, servers, Printers) and software. Part of the problem is that computer hardware has been commodized. Since PCs are cheap and frequent replacements are need, People just by the cheapest models, expecting to toss it in a couple of years and by a newer model (aka the Flat screen TV model). So there is no justification to use quality components. Same is become true with the Server market. Businesses have switched to virtualization and/or cloud systems. So instead of taking a boat load of time to rebuild a crashed server, the VM is just moved to another host.

    HP has also adopted the Computer Associates business model (aka Borg). HP buys up new tech companies and sits on the tech and never improves it. It decays and gets replaced with a system from a competitor. It also has a habit of buying outdated tech companies that never generate the revenues HP thinks it will.

    BullyBearish

    When Carly was CEO of HP, she instituted a draconian "pay for performance" plan. She ended up leaving with over $146 Million because she was smart enough not to specify "what type" of performance.

    GeezerGeek

    Regarding your statement "All those engineers choosing to pursue other opportunities", we need to realize that tech in general has been very susceptible to the vagaries of government actions. Now the employment problems are due to things like globalization and H1B programs. Some 50 years ago tech - meaning science and engineering - was hit hard as the US space program wound down. Permit me this retrospective:

    I graduated from a quite good school with a BS in Physics in 1968. My timing was not all that great, since that was when they stopped granting draft deferments for graduate school. I joined the Air Force, but as an enlisted airman, not an officer. Following basic training, I was sent to learn to operate PCAM operations. That's Punched Card Accounting Machines. Collators. Sorters. Interpreters. Key punches. I was in a class with nine other enlistees. One had just gotten a Masters degree in something. Eight of us had a BS in one thing or another, but all what would now be called STEM fields. The least educated only had an Associate degree. We all enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the Marines. (Not that there's anything wrong with the Marines, but all of us proclaimed an allergy to energetic lead projectiles and acted accordingly. Going to Canada, as many did, pretty much ensured never getting a job in STEM fields later in life.) So thanks to government action (fighting in VietNam, in this case) a significant portion of educated Americans found themselves diverted from chosen career paths. (In my case, it worked out fine. I learned to program, etc., and spent a total of over 40 years in what is now called IT. I think it was called EDP when I started the trek. Somewhere along the line it became (where I worked) Management Information Systems. MIS. And finally the department became simply Information Technology. I hung an older sign next to the one saying Information Technology. Somehow MIS-Information Technology seemed appropriate.)

    Then I got to my first duty assignment. It was about five months after the first moon landing, and the aerospace industry was facing cuts in government aerospace spending. I picked up a copy of an engineering journal in the base library and found an article about job cuts. There was a cartoon with two janitors, buckets at their feet and mops in their hands, standing before a blackboard filled with equations. Once was saying to the other, pointing to one section, "you can see where he made his mistake right here...". It represented two engineers who had been reduced to menial labor after losing their jobs.

    So while I resent all the H1Bs coming into the US - I worked with several for the last four years of my IT career, and was not at all impressed - and despise the politicians who allow it, I know that it is not the first time American STEM grads have been put out of jobs en masse. In some ways that old saying applies: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

    If you made it this far, thanks for your patience.

    adr

    Just like Amazon, HP will supposedly make billions in profit analyzing things in the cloud that nobody looks at and has no use to the real economy, but it makes good fodder for Power Point presentations.

    I am amazed how much daily productivity goes into creating fancy charts for meetings that are meaningless to the actual business of the company.

    IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!!!!!

    I designed more products in one year for the small company I work for than a $15 billion corporation did throughout their entire design department employing hundreds of people. That is because 90% of their workday is spent preparing crap for meetings and they never really get anything meaningful done.

    It took me one week to design a product and send it out for production branded for the company I work for, but it took six months to get the same type of product passed through the multi billion dollar corporation we license for. Because it had to pass through layer after layer of bullshit and through every level of management before it could be signed off. Then a month later somebody would change their mind in middle management and the product would need to be changed and go through the cycle all over again.

    Their own bag department made six bags last year, I designed 16. Funny how I out produce a department of six people whose only job is to make bags, yet I only get paid the salary of one.

    Maybe I'm just an imbecile for working hard.

    Bear

    You also have to add all the wasted time of employees having to sit through those presentations and the even more wasted time on Ashley Madison

    cynicalskeptic

    'Computers' cost as much - if not more time than they save, at least in corporate settings. Used to be you'd work up 3 budget projections - expected, worst case and best case, you'd have a meeting, hash it out and decide in a week. Now you have endless alternatives, endless 'tweaking' and changes and decisions take forever, with outrageous amounts of time spent on endless 'analysis' and presentations.

    EVERY VP now has an 'Administrative Assistant' whose primary job is to develop powerpoint presentations for the endless meetings that take up time - without any decisions ever being made.

    Computers stop people from thinking. In ages past when you used a slide rule you had to know the order of magnitude of the end result. Now people make a mistake and come up with a ridiculous number and take it at face value because 'the computer' produced it.

    Any exec worht anythign knew what a given line in their department or the total should be +or a small amount. I can't count the number of times budgets and analyses were WRONG because someone left off a few lines on a spreadsheet total.

    Yes computer modeling for advanced tech and engineering is a help, CAD/CAM is great and many other applications in the tech/scientific world are a great help but letting computers loose in corporate and finance has produced endless waste AND - worsde - thigns like HFT (e.g. 'better' more effective ways to manipulate and cheat markets.

    khnum

    A recent lay off here turned out to be quite embarrassing for Parmalat there was nobody left that knew how to properly run the place they had to rehire many ex employees as consultants-at a costly premium

    Anopheles

    Consultants don't come at that much of a premium becaue the company doesn't have to pay benefits, vacation, sick days, or payroll taxes, etc. Plus it's really easy and cheap to get rid of consultants.

    arrowrod

    Obviously, you haven't worked as a consultant. You get paid by the hour.

    To clean up a mess. 100 hours a week are not uncommon. (What?, is it possible to work 100 hours a week? Yes, it is, but only for about 3 months.)

    RaceToTheBottom

    HP Executives are trying hard to bring the company back to its roots:

    The ability to fit into one garage...

    PrimalScream

    ALL THAT Meg Whitman needs to do ...

    is to FIRE EVERYBODY !!

    Then have all the products made in China, process all the sales orders in Hong Kong, and sub-contract the accounting and tax paperwork to India. Then HP can use all the profits for stock buybacks, except of course for Meg's salary ... which will keep rising astronomically!

    Herdee

    That's where education gets you in America.The Government sold out America's manufacturing base to Communist China who holds the debt of the USA.

    Who would ever guess that right-wing neo-cons(neo-nazis) running the government would sell out to communists just to get the money for war? Very weird.

    Really20

    "Communist"? The Chinese government, like that of the US, never believed in worker ownership of businesses and never believed that the commerical banking system (whether owned by the state, or private corporations which act like a state) should not control money. Both countries believe in centralization of power among a few shareholders, who take the fruits of working people's labor while contributing nothing of value themselves (money being but a token that represents a claim on real capital, not capital itself.)

    Management and investors ought to be separate from each other; management should be chosen by workers by universal equal vote, while a complementary investor board should be chosen by investors much as corporate boards are now. Both of these boards should be legally independent but bound organizations; the management board should run the business while the investor board should negotiate with the management board on the terms of equity issuance. No more buybacks, no more layoffs or early retirements, unless workers as a whole see a need for it to maintain the company.

    The purpose of investors is to serve the real economy, not the other way round; and in turn, the purpose of the real economy is to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans should stop being slaves to perpetual growth.

    Really20

    HP is laying off 80,000 workers or almost a third of its workforce, converting its long-term human capital into short-term gains for rich shareholders at an alarming rate. The reason that product quality has declined is due to the planned obsolescence that spurs needless consumerism, which is necessary to prop up our debt-backed monetary system and the capitalist-owned economy that sits on top of it.

    NoWayJose

    HP - that company that sells computers and printers made in China and ink cartridges made in Thailand?

    Dominus Ludificatio

    Another company going down the drain because their focus is short term returns with crappy products.They will also bring down any company they buy as well.

    Barnaby

    HP is microcosm of what Carly will do to the US: carve it like a pumpkin and leave the shell out to bake in the sun for a few weeks. But she'll make sure and poison the seeds too! Don't want anything growing out of that pesky Palm division...

    Dre4dwolf

    The world is heading for massive deflation.

    Computers have hit the 14 nano-meter lithography zone, the cost to go from 14nm to say 5nm is very high, and the net benefit to computing power is very low, but lets say we go from 14nm to 5nm over the next 4 years.

    Going from 5nm to 1nm is not going to net a large boost in computing power and the cost to shrink things down and re-tool will be very high for such an insignificant gain in performance.

    What does that mean

    1) Computers (atleast non-quantum ones) have hit the point where about 80-90% of the potential for the current science has been tap'd

    2) This means that the consumer is not going to be put in the position where they will have to upgrade to faster systems for atleast another 7-8 years.... (because the new computer wont be that much faster than their existing one).

    3) If no one is upgrading the only IT sectors of the economy that stand to make any money are software companies (Microsoft, Apple, and other small software developers), most software has not caught up with hardware yet.

    4) We are obviously heading for massive deflation, consumer spending levels as a % are probably around where they were in the late 70s - mid 80s, this is a very deflationary environment that is being compounded by a high debt burden (most of everyones income is going to service their debts), that signals monetary tightening is going on... people simply don't have enough discretionary income to spend on new toys.

    All that to me screams SELL consumer electronics stocks because profits are GOING TO DECLINE , SALES ARE GOING TO DECLINE.

    There is no way , no amount of buy backs will float the stocks of corporations like HP/Dell/IBM etc... it is inevitable that these stocks will be worth 30% less over the next 5 - 8 years

    But what do I know? maybe I am missing something.

    In anycase a lot of pressure is being put on HP to do all it can at any cost to boost the stock valuations, because so much of its stock is institution owned, they will strip the wallpaper off the walls and sell it to a recycling plant if it would give them more money to boost stock valuations.

    That to me signals that most of the people pressuring the board of HP to boost the stock, want them to gut the company as much as they can to boost it some trivial % points so that the majority of shares can be dumped onto muppets.

    To me it pretty much also signals something is terribly wrong at HP and no one is talking about it.

    PoasterToaster

    Other than die shrinks there really hasn't been a lot going on in the CPU world since Intel abandoned its Netburst architecture and went back to its (Israeli created) Pentium 3 style pipeline. After that they gave up on increasing speed and resorted to selling more cores. Now that wall has been hit, they have been selling "green" and "efficient" nonsense in place of increasing power.

    x86 just needs to go, but a lot is invested in it not the least of which is that 1-2 punch of forced, contrived obsolesence carried out in a joint operation with Microsoft. 15 years ago you could watch videos with no problem on your old machine using Windows XP. Fast forward to now and their chief bragging point is still "multitasking" and the ability to process datastreams like video. It's a joke.

    The future is not in the current CPU paradigm of instructions per second; it will be in terms of variables per second. It will be more along the lines of what GPU manufacturers are creating with their thousands of "engines" or "processing units" per chip, rather than the 4, 6 or 12 core monsters that Intel is pushing. They have nearly given up on their roadmap to push out to 128 cores as it is. x86 just doesn't work with all that.

    Dojidog

    Another classic "Let's rape all we can and bail with my golden parachute" corporate leaders setting themselves up. Pile on the string of non-IT CEOs that have been leading the company to ruin. To them it is nothing more than a contest of being even worse than their predecessor. Just look at the billions each has lost before their exit. Compaq, a cluster. Palm Pilot, a dead product they paid millions for and then buried. And many others.

    Think the split is going to help? Think again. Rather than taking the opportunity to fix their problems, they have just duplicated and perpetuated them into two separate entities.

    HP is a company that is mired in a morass of unmanageable business processes and patchwork of antiquated applications all interconnected to the point they are petrified to try and uncouple them.

    Just look at their stock price since January. The insiders know. Want to fix HP? All it would take is a savvy IT based leader with a boatload of common sense. What makes money at HP? Their printers and ink. Not thinking they can provide enterprise solutions to others when they can't even get their own house in order.

    I Write Code

    Let's not beat around the bush, they're outsourcing, firing Americans and hiring cheap labor elsewhere:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-15/hewlett-packard-to-cut-up-to-30-000-more-jobs-in-restructuring

    It's also shifting employees to low-cost areas, and hopes to have 60 percent of its workers located in cheaper countries by 2018, Nefkens said.

    yogibear

    Carly Fiorina: (LOL, leading a tech company with a degree in medieval history and philosophy)

    While at ATT she was groomed from the Affirmative Action plan.

    Alma Mater: Stanford University (B.A. in medieval history and philosophy);
    University of Maryland (MBA); Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    ==================================================================

    Patricia Russo: (Lucent) (Dedree in Political Science).
    Another lady elevated through the AA plan
    Russo got her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in political science and history in 1973.
    She finished the advanced management program at Harvard Business School in 1989

    Both ladies steered their corporations to failure.

    Clowns on Acid

    It is very straightforward. Replace 45,000 US workers with 100,000 offshore workers and you still save millions of USD ! Use the "savings" to buy back stock, then borrow more $$ at ZIRP to buy more stock back.

    You guys don't know nuthin'.

    homiegot

    HP: one of the worst places you could work. Souless.

    Pancho de Villa

    Ladies and Gentlemen! Integrity has left the Building!

    space junk

    I worked there for a while and it was total garbage. There are still some great folks around, but they are getting paid less and less, and having to work longer hours for less pay while reporting to God knows who, often a foreigner with crappy engrish skills, yes likely another 'diversity hire'. People with DEEP knowledge, decades and decades, have either gotten unfairly fired or demoted, made to quit, or if they are lucky, taken some early retirement and GTFO (along with their expertise - whoopsie! who knew? unintended consequences are a bitch aren't they? )....

    If you look on a site like LinkedIN, it will always say 'We're hiring!'. YES, HP is hiring.....but not YOU, they want Ganesh Balasubramaniamawapbapalooboopawapbamboomtuttifrutti, so that they can work him as modern day slave labor for ultra cheap. We can thank idiot 'leaders' like Meg Pasty Faced Whitman and Bill 'Forced Vaccinations' Gates for lobbying Congress for decades, against the rights of American workers.

    Remember that Meg 'Pasty Faced' Whitman is the person who came up with the idea of a 'lights out' datacenter....that's right, it's the concept of putting all of your computers in a building, in racks, in the dark, and maybe hiring an intern to come in once a month and keep them going. This is what she actually believed. Along with her other statement to the HP workforce which says basically that the future of HP is one of total automation.....TRANSLATION: If you are a smart admin, engineer, project manager, architect, sw tester, etc.....we (HP management) think you are an IDIOT and can be replaced by a robot, a foreigner, or any other cheap worker.

    Race to the bottom is like they say a space ship approaching a black hole......after a while the laws of physics and common sense, just don't apply anymore.

    InnVestuhrr

    An era of leadership in computer technology has died, and there is no grave marker, not even a funeral ceremony or eulogy ... Hewlett-Packard, COMPAQ, Digital Equipment Corp, UNIVAC, Sperry-Rand, Data General, Tektronix, ZILOG, Advanced Micro Devices, Sun Microsystems, etc, etc, etc. So much change in so short a time, leaves your mind dizzy.

    [Apr 03, 2015] Americans Not In The Labor Force Soar To Record 93.2 Million As Participation Rate Drops To February 1978 Levels

    "... the labor force participation rate dropped once more, from 62.8% to 62.7%, a level seen back in February 1978, even as the BLS reported that the entire labor force actually declined for the second consecutive month, down almost 100K in March to 156,906. ..."

    So much for yet another "above consensus" recovery, and what's worse it is, well, about to get even worse, because while the Fed keeps baning some illusory drum that slack in the economy is almost non-existent, the reality is that in March the number of people who dropped out of the labor force rose by yet another 277K, up 2.1 million in the past year, and has reached a record 93.175 million. Indicatively, this means that the labor force participation rate dropped once more, from 62.8% to 62.7%, a level seen back in February 1978, even as the BLS reported that the entire labor force actually declined for the second consecutive month, down almost 100K in March to 156,906.

    [Apr 02, 2015] Congressional Budget Plans Get Two-Thirds of Cuts From Programs for People With Low or Moderate Incomes'

    March 23, 2015 | Economist's View
    The true goal of Republican's "deficit fetishism":
    Congressional Budget Plans Get Two-Thirds of Cuts From Programs for People With Low or Moderate Incomes, by Richard Kogan and Isaac Shapiro, CBPP: The budgets adopted on March 19 by the House Budget Committee and the Senate Budget Committee each cut more than $3 trillion over ten years (2016-2025) from programs that serve people of limited means. These deep reductions amount to 69 percent of the cuts to non-defense spending in both the House and Senate plans.

    Each budget plan derives more than two-thirds of its non-defense budget cuts from programs for people with low or modest incomes even though these programs constitute less than one-quarter of federal program costs. Moreover, spending on these programs is already scheduled to decline as a share of the economy between now and 2025.[1]

    The bipartisan deficit reduction plan that Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles (co-chairs of the National Commission on Federal Policy) issued in 2010 adhered to the basic principle that deficit reduction should not increase poverty or widen inequality. The new Congressional plans chart a radically different course, imposing their most severe cuts on people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. ...

    DeDude

    What they increase instead of cutting is our absurdly overblown defense spending. It should be turned around with all the cuts in defense and a slight increase in non-defense (as we desperately need to invest in infrastructure.


    ilsm said in reply to DeDude...

    They cannot cut defense, how will they pay to fix the F-35's they are taking possession of?

    Billions a year in contracts because we pay soldiers too much to do combat support services......

    Perpetual war is "security", just not the kind that a poor kids food stamps should pay for.

    400 ppm CO2 said in reply to ilsm...

    "Perpetual war is..."
    ~~ilsm~

    Perpetual war is perpetual refugees. Most of the young kids are fleeing Ukraine as we network. Older folks are glued to their retirement plans which are being taxed to the max.

    We need to write to Congressional Creatures and beg for some refugee relief for our cousins now in Ukraine. We need to organize community action. Make a place for some of them here. A daunting task, but somebody has got to do it before even more Ukrainians get maimed and killed.

    Russian cousins should also get their shjt together and help relocate some of the refugees. It will be easier for the Живаго-s to extricate victims. Живаго-s are closer than we. It is everyone's responsibility.

    Zinsky said...

    This is an immoral piece of proposed legislation. The wealthy in the United States are doing just fine, thank you, and don't need another gratuitous tax cut. Especially given the fact that it wouldn't do a thing to stimulate the U.S. economy, all the right-wing rhetoric to the contrary.

    The United States is a very wealthy country. We can afford to feed the hungry and help trodden. In fact, if we truly were a Judeo-Christian country, we would be morally obligated to do so. Of course, most conservatives are phony Christians who care not a whit for the poor and broken. Shame on them.

    Darryl FKA Ron said in reply to Zinsky...

    [Yep! Ayn Rand was an atheist.]

    [Mar 16, 2015] File Under Improving Economy, Not

    If the US is at Full Employment and the Economy is at full steam ( as Obot lackeys keep telling us), then why is the Fed Funds rate still at 0%. Isn't 0% Fed rate an indicator of an Economy On Life Support. Tell me why I'm wrong.
    March 14, 2015 | naked capitalism

    participant-observer-observed, March 14, 2015 at 5:19 am


    This is int'l but insofar as City sleeps with Wall St, it may be relevant to see that City has a new boyfriend, getting front page coverage at the Taipei Times

    Beijing yesterday hailed Britain's announcement that it would seek to join a Chinese-led development bank, after Washington voiced caution about the move.

    . . . .

    London's move drew a cautious response from Washington, a rare note of discord in their "special relationship," which follows criticism from the US about Britain's cuts to defense spending.

    China and 20 other countries signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the Beijing-headquartered bank in October.

    "We believe any new multilateral institution should incorporate the high standards of the World Bank and the regional development banks," US National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.

    "Based on many discussions, we have concerns about whether the AIIB will meet these high standards, particularly related to governance, and environmental and social safeguards."

    The bank has support from countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

    China's official Xinhua news agency rapped the US for its skepticism, writing in a commentary yesterday that Washington "exhibited nothing but a childish paranoia towards China."

    "It seems that the US government needs to be reminded that bias and a deep-rooted strategic distrust towards China are by no means helpful in forging a healthy relationship with the country," Xinhua wrote.

    "It's imperative for Washington to change its mindset," it said.

    World Bank president Jim Yong Kim yesterday also welcomed the setting up of the China-backed bank.

    Llewelyn Moss, March 14, 2015 at 8:51 am

    If the US is at Full Employment and the Economy is at full steam ( as Obot lackeys keep telling us), then why is the Fed Funds rate still at 0%.

    Isn't 0% Fed rate an indicator of an Economy On Life Support. Tell me why I'm wrong.

    cassiodorus, March 14, 2015 at 5:02 pm

    Employment-population ratio: 59.3%, where it was in July of 2009

    Employment-population ratio, 25-54: 77.3%, about where it was at the beginning of 2009

    There has, then, been only a limited recovery.

    Being 'Laid Off' Leads to a Decade of Distrust

    On the costs of unemployment:

    Being 'laid off' leads to a decade of distrust, EurekAlert!: People who lose their jobs are less willing to trust others for up to a decade after being laid-off, according to new research from The University of Manchester.

    Being made redundant or forced into unemployment can scar trust to such an extent that even after finding new work this distrust persists, according to the new findings of social scientist Dr James Laurence. This means that the large-scale job losses of the recent recession could lead to a worrying level of long-term distrust among the British public and risks having a detrimental effect on the fabric of society.

    Dr Laurence ... finds that being made redundant from your job not only makes people less willing to trust others but that this increased distrust and cynicism lasts at least nine years after being forced out of work. It also finds that far from dissipating over time, an individual can remain distrustful of others even after they find a new job. ...

    gunste said...

    I was laid off many years ago, because my usually correct advice to management bugged them when I was proved right. Best thing that ever happened to me, because I found that I was able to use the projects that I managed and start my own business. It grew and became known world wide. I provided some QC, accelerated test equipment for my industry that was unique. Since the market was limited, no one else got into it. I thrived for 14 years, when the equipment became obsolescent and retired - very comfortably.

    The lesson is, if you have new areas to explore and start your own business based on something you know very, very well, you can make it as your own boss -- which is the best boss you will ever have.

    cm -> gunste...

    "you can make it as your own boss - which is the best boss you will ever have"

    That's only the case if you are in a line of work where somebody else doesn't specify the details of what you have to do (to some level), which is often the case if your work can be described as a "service". But you sound happy so you weren't in that place.

    reason...

    gunste

    you do realize what the probability of new business succeeding is? It is like winning the lottery, and saying look there is no problem, just go in a lottery.

    Because you succeeded, there is no guarantee that anybody else could. And as cm pointed out, you may not have a boss where you work, but your customer is your boss. You are still not fully self directed (and a good boss can give you some room for making you own decisions).

    [Feb 13, 2015] Why is It Hard to Land a Well-Paid Job After Losing One

    Quote: "Some landed on their feet, others were forced into an early and significantly more humble retirement than they'd planned. Another was unemployed and dismayed to find he was considered "too old" to even get some sort of janitorial work and others fared even worse."
    naked capitalism

    There is simply not enough acknowledgement of the structure of work, that highly paid roles almost without exception involve highly specialized skills.

    If you cannot find someone who wants those particular skills, you then are forced to look for work that draws on your more general skills (selling, managing people, being a data jockey, manual labor) where you are less differentiated from other candidates and where the prevailing pay levels are lower.

    Studies like this also fail to consider that demand for these higher-paid jobs can drop for protracted periods of time. For instance, being a derrickhand in the late 1970s oil boom was one of the highest paid jobs in the US. A colleague with a college degree made more than I did as a new associate (with an MBA) at Goldman. When the oil market went splat, many of those jobs did too. Similarly, in the late 1980s, when the LBO boom stopped, employment in M&A contracted by 75% and did not fully recover for a good 5+ years. I'm sure readers can cite similar examples from other fields.

    And this article fails to consider a new phenomenon: the vogue among employers for astonishingly narrow job specifications, as in a strong predisposition to hire only people who are doing virtually the same job at a highly similar company, and the usual bias towards stealing people who are currently employed from competitors rather than hiring the jobless.

    rusti, February 13, 2015 at 5:42 am

    Similarly, in the late 1980s, when the LBO boom stopped, employment in M&A contracted by 75% and did not fully recover for a good 5+ years. I'm sure readers can cite similar examples from other fields.

    My first position after finishing my master's degree was doing compact embedded antenna design for wireless devices. A lot of the guys I worked with had been there for 15-20 years and had developed an incredible sort of grandmaster's intuition for the design work. Less than a year after I'd started the company closed up shop and there were far fewer positions doing similar work in the greater geographical area than I'd had colleagues.

    Some landed on their feet, others were forced into an early and significantly more humble retirement than they'd planned. Another was unemployed and dismayed to find he was considered "too old" to even get some sort of janitorial work and others fared even worse.

    I was lucky to be young and flexible enough to find work in another city but took the lesson with me that building a broad base of skills is a necessary tradeoff versus the increased pay of intense specialization when you live in a neo-Feudalist society.

    Something that annoys me endlessly is the utterly absurd notion that increased automation will inevitably lead to high unemployment. There are enough intellectual and physical pursuits to keep 7 billion people occupied if we dedicate resources to it. Every unemployed person could be put to work in some capacity towards the goal of transitioning off of fossil fuel consumption, we just lack the political machinery to allocate people towards such ends.

    [Feb 12, 2015] Are We Becoming a Part-Time Economy?

    "... Why has the demand for full-time workers in general-service occupations been more subdued than for other jobs? As the following chart shows, wage growth for these occupations has been quite weak in the past few years, suggesting that employers have not been experiencing much tightness in the supply of workers to fill vacancies for these occupations. Presumably, then, the firms generally find it acceptable to have a greater share of part-time workers than in the past. ..."
    "... The overall share of the workforce employed in part-time jobs is declining and is likely to continue to decline. But the decline is not uniform across industries and occupations. Working part-time has become much more likely in general-service occupations than in the past-and a greater share of those workers are not happy about it. ..."
    "... Nah. It's a Paradigm Shift. The work-week is now twenty hours instead of forty. And those over-achievers who want to put in more time can just get another job. Or two. Haven't we been asking for a shorter work week for years? Now our fondest wish is coming true. ..."
    "... "Is this a Great Country or what?" Thanks to free lunch economics that ends the dismal economist demand that wages equal demand equal supply. With free lunch economics, wages can be cut to zero, profits increased to 100% of GDP and jobless consumers will buy all GDP using money for nothing. On a more serious side, there have always been the free riders who shortchange labor while collecting lots of money from all the other workers who spend most of their high wages. ..."
    February 12, 2015 | Economist's View

    John Robertson and Ellie Terry at the Atlanta Fed's Macroblog:

    Are We Becoming a Part-Time Economy?: Compared with 2007, the U.S. labor market now has about 2.5 million more people working part-time and about 2.2 million fewer people working full-time. In this sense, U.S. businesses are more reliant on part-time workers now than in the past.

    But that doesn't necessarily imply we are moving toward a permanently higher share of the workforce engaged in part-time employment. As our colleague Julie Hotchkiss pointed out, almost all jobs created on net from 2010 to 2014 have been full-time. As a result, from 2009 to 2014, the part-time share of employment has declined from 21 percent to 19 percent and is about halfway back to its prerecession level.

    But the decline in part-time utilization is not uniform across industries and occupations. In particular, the decline is much slower for occupations that tend to have an above-average share of people working part-time. This portion of the workforce includes general-service jobs such as food preparation, office and administrative support, janitorial services, personal care services, and sales.

    ... ... ...

    Why has the demand for full-time workers in general-service occupations been more subdued than for other jobs? As the following chart shows, wage growth for these occupations has been quite weak in the past few years, suggesting that employers have not been experiencing much tightness in the supply of workers to fill vacancies for these occupations. Presumably, then, the firms generally find it acceptable to have a greater share of part-time workers than in the past.

    The overall share of the workforce employed in part-time jobs is declining and is likely to continue to decline. But the decline is not uniform across industries and occupations. Working part-time has become much more likely in general-service occupations than in the past-and a greater share of those workers are not happy about it.

    JF said in reply to anne...

    I think is this just one more example of how labor markets have been distorted; managers have confirmed their control over hiring and the workforce and these markets do not work in a proper supply-demand mode. The other obvious example of distortion is the point about productivity rising in the period before but no gains were seen in wages.

    I use the term "distortion" to signal a difference from the period before where the data are fundamentally different and I take this to say the a market on labor supply and demand changed fundamentally. Since I believe people put on their clothes more or less the same we we did in the 1970s or 1950s, and humankind still works pretty hard, these markets became distorted (not natural), that is not appropriate economics, and we should look toward better economic policy to help return to normalization of markets.

    The distortion also effected a windfall in gains to managers of capital. Economic policy may wish to remediate, at least if you are on the side of EPOP ratios improving and you measure success in domestic-workforce terms.

    This can be seen as one of the divides between the national political parties. One may want to position on the side of normal markets and policies that support improved domestic workforce measures. The other may then need to defend whether its policies sponsored and induced a culture of distortion (of economics and unwise labor policy and results). The data are on the side of those who want to re-establish normal labor market economics, support domestic employment, and remediate and correct for the windfalls gained.

    If you believe that non-market economics led to distortion of the labor markets and windfall gains, perhaps this is also a reason to justify windfall taxation policies as well (since these gains were unfairly and uneconomically gathered, they were not earned by the people who actually got the money).

    It may also justify a modest increase in social security earnings checks too, as this is, at least, a modest way to correct for the inappropriate, distortionary wage results of that period.

    And as for the part-time labor market now, this also means we need to look at Fair Labor Standards policy and enforcement. The distortion of labor markets for a generation do not justify continuation of similarly thoughtless policies.

    Fred C. Dobbs said...

    Nah. It's a Paradigm Shift. The work-week is now twenty hours instead of forty. And those over-achievers who want to put in more time can just get another job. Or two. Haven't we been asking for a shorter work week for years? Now our fondest wish is coming true.

    So, employer-provided healthcare doesn't happen any more. Thanks to ObamaCare, that just doesn't matter any more.

    Is this a Great Country or what?

    Peter K. said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

    Dean Baker has been pushing the meme that Obamacare allows people to work part-time if they want because they can now get health insurance. He has data to back it up. Sounds reasonable.

    mulp said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

    "Is this a Great Country or what?" Thanks to free lunch economics that ends the dismal economist demand that wages equal demand equal supply. With free lunch economics, wages can be cut to zero, profits increased to 100% of GDP and jobless consumers will buy all GDP using money for nothing. On a more serious side, there have always been the free riders who shortchange labor while collecting lots of money from all the other workers who spend most of their high wages.

    But free lunch economists have severed worker pay from aggregate demand so they can argue that the highest GDP growth comes from cutting labor costs and thereby jacking up profits.

    The ideal would be for every corporation to be like Apple and parking 30%-50 of all revenue outside the US and selling ever more goods to Americans who must print their own money that gets laundered through Asia and tax havens with only half the cash spent by consumers cycling back into the USA.

    Just think about the $17 trillion in GDP generating $8 trillion in offshore profits blocked outside the USA by Obama insisting on taxing it. That would be a major success for free lunch economics.

    Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

    'Thanks to ObamaCare, that just doesn't matter any more.' Except for the high deductibles, of course. Deal with it. (Get an extra job!)

    [Jan 30, 2015] Advice Worth Taking

    "Assume the worst, hope for the best and be prepared for whatever happens. "
    "... You may feel secure now, but you never know when the pink slip is coming ..."
    "... Establish an emergency fund. Set aside enough money to cover your basic living expenses for three to six months. This should give you the ability to pay your rent or mortgage, buy food and repay debts. Consider socking this money away in an online-only, high-yield money market account or a short-term certificate of deposit. For more details about how to choose such an account and earn more interest on your dough, read this past "10 Tips" column on the subject. ..."
    "... Investigate your health insurance policy. Be clear on what your health plan covers, and figure out how much it would cost to extend your employer's group insurance coverage through the federal program COBRA. Be aware that you would have to pay both the employer and employee shares of the premiums – ouch – but at least you'd get to keep the same coverage. ..."
    March 07, 2008 | financialarmageddon.com

    There's an old saying: assume the worst, hope for the best and be prepared for whatever happens. Amid mounting evidence that the U.S. is headed into recession, that is advice worth taking, especially in regards to earning a living. In "With Recession Looming, Be Prepared for a Layoff" MSNBC's Laura T. Coffey details a 10-step plan for coping with what is likely to be a fast-growing threat.

    You may feel secure now, but you never know when the pink slip is coming

    The dreaded "R" word – recession – has been dominating business headlines for months now. More and more economists are predicting bleak economic conditions and weak job growth in the coming months.

    On Friday, it was reported that employers slashed 63,000 jobs in February, the most in five years. Do you need any more signs that we are teetering on the verge of recession?

    Even if you feel secure in your job at this moment in time, here's a sobering thought: Because of forces beyond your control, you could be hit with an unexpected layoff at almost any moment.

    For this reason, it's always a good idea to plan ahead for potential financial emergencies before they strike. The following tips can help.

    1. Establish an emergency fund. Set aside enough money to cover your basic living expenses for three to six months. This should give you the ability to pay your rent or mortgage, buy food and repay debts. Consider socking this money away in an online-only, high-yield money market account or a short-term certificate of deposit. For more details about how to choose such an account and earn more interest on your dough, read this past "10 Tips" column on the subject.

    2. Live within your means. Try hard not to spend excessively on items and services you don't truly need. This will make it even easier to build up that emergency fund once and for all. For additional ideas about how to establish an emergency fund, this past "10 Tips" column about how many middle-class families are being squeezed financially could be of help to you.

    ... ... ...

    6. Network, network, network. Always make a point of getting to know as many people as you can in your line of work. By having plenty of friends and contacts in your industry, you'll stand a better chance of finding work quickly if you lose your job.

    ... ... ...

    9. Pursue higher education while you can. Do you work for a large company that offers a "Corporate U," or for an employer that helps cover education costs at schools in your area? Tap into that resource so you can improve your skills and bolster your resume. Hundreds of corporate university classes have been accredited, meaning you could get college credit for them if you ever enroll in a degree program.

    10. Investigate your health insurance policy. Be clear on what your health plan covers, and figure out how much it would cost to extend your employer's group insurance coverage through the federal program COBRA. Be aware that you would have to pay both the employer and employee shares of the premiums – ouch – but at least you'd get to keep the same coverage.

    [Jan 06, 2015] Ignore this common -- and awful -- career advice

    "... "Going to grad school will make you more marketable." Grad school will make you more marketable if you're in a field that requires or rewards graduate degrees, but if you're in one of the many fields that doesn't, employers may find the degree irrelevant. ..."
    "... these days, persistent follow-up mostly shows you don't respect hiring managers' time and that you're not clear on how the hiring process works. ..."
    Not all career advice is created equal. In fact, some can actually hurt a job search or career. Here are seven pieces of terrible career advice that you should ignore:

    1. "Going to grad school will make you more marketable." Grad school will make you more marketable if you're in a field that requires or rewards graduate degrees, but if you're in one of the many fields that doesn't, employers may find the degree irrelevant.

    What's worse is that grad school can even make it harder for you to get hired in many cases, since if you're applying to jobs that don't require the degree, employers may think that their work isn't what you really want to do.

    2. "Treat your job search like a full-time job if you want to be successful." The amount of time a job search takes varies dramatically from field to field and from person to person. If you're junior in your career and applying to a wide range of positions, it's possible that writing cover letters, tailoring your résumé and networking could take up a significant portion of your time (although it still might not reach 40 hours a week, and that's fine).

    However, if you're more senior or simply in a field without a lot of openings, you're probably not going to need to spend (or be able to spend) 40 hours a week on your search. And besides, for most people, when it comes to applying to jobs, quality matters far more than quantity.

    3. "It no longer matters how long your résumé is." It's true that the old one-page résumé rule has relaxed for everyone but very recent graduates, but résumé length still matters. Résumés that are three pages or longer end up diluting the impact of their contents and will make you come across as someone who can't edit and doesn't understand what information matters most.

    Plus, the strongest candidates limit their résumés to two pages, so when an experienced hiring manager sees a long résumé, they're instantly primed to expect a weaker candidate.

    4. "Offer to work for a week for free to prove yourself to an employer." In most cases, this is illegal, because it violates minimum wage laws. With a few limited exceptions (like some nonprofits and government agencies), employers are required to pay people who work for them. But even if it weren't illegal, most employers wouldn't sign on for this anyway, because it takes an enormous amount of time to train new hires. The first week is nearly always a loss for the employer.

    5. "If an interviewer asks about your weaknesses, answer with something positive." If you've picked up any guide to job searching in the past decade, you've probably seen the advice to claim that your biggest weakness is that you work too hard or you're a perfectionist. But so have most interviewers, and at this point, those answers sound cliché and disingenuous. What's more, they make you sound like you either don't have much self-awareness or you're unwilling to have an honest discussion about your fit for the role you're applying for.

    Good interviewers don't want to talk about weaknesses so they can play "gotcha," but because they want to make sure they won't put in a job where you'll struggle.

    6. "Following up with an employer after you apply for a job shows persistence and enthusiasm." This advice is still a staple of many career centers, but these days, persistent follow-up mostly shows you don't respect hiring managers' time and that you're not clear on how the hiring process works. After all, the employer knows that you're interested; your application demonstrated that. Now the ball is in their court to decide whether they're interested in speaking further with you or not. Most employers aren't interested in fielding follow-up calls at this stage.

    7. "Track down the hiring manager's name so that you can address your cover letter to the right person." This is unnecessary, and most hiring managers don't even notice whether you did or not -- and far fewer care. If the hiring manager's name is easily available, of course it's fine to go ahead and use it. But you don't need to call to track it down or do other detective work to find it. Hiring managers care about the content of your application, not whether you spent 20 minutes trying to find out their names.

    Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. She's the author of "How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager," co-author of "Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results" and the former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.

    [Jan 05, 2015] FRBSF Economic Letter Why Is Wage Growth So Slow

    "... I think there is a strong correlation of wage growth and energy consumption per capita. http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/12/29/how-increased-inefficiency-explains-falling-oil-prices/. As the latter now is shrinking the wages are stagnant. Neoliberal transformation of society since 1970th also suppresses wages by dramatically increasing the share of owners. Those two tendencies work together. ..."
    January 05, 2015 | Economist's View

    anne:

    Despite considerable improvement in the labor market, growth in wages continues to be disappointing. One reason is that many firms were unable to reduce wages during the recession, and they must now work off a stockpile of pent-up wage cuts....

    -- Mary Daly and Bart Hobijn

    [ What offensive nonsense, as though real after-tax corporate profits per employee had exploded, simply exploded, since 2000. ]

    drb48 -> anne:

    Thank you Anne for introducing some sanity to what is the biggest bunch of hogwash I've read in a while.

    drb48 -> anne:

    Wage growth has been "disappointing" for decades. If employers have a problem reducing wages, it's because they're already so low. Lack of bargaining power due to de-unionization, off-shoring, automation and massive numbers of cheap - and frequently undocumented - immigrant labor has placed downward pressure on wages in many industries, including most of the ones with the greatest job growth. All the gains in productivity have been accruing to capital, almost none to labor. Trying to rationalize with some bullshit study this as anything other than the powerful exploiting the weak is - as you say - offensive nonsense.

    Roger Gathmann -> anne:

    Exactly. Since economists like to think of themselves as physicians, perhaps they should consider a powerful force pushing on a weak force - a gorilla, for instance, squeezing a marshmallow. The gorilla is corporate power, the marshmallow, labor. Now perhaps the gorilla is able to squeeze the marshmallow because that marshmallow was so damn sticky and refused to budge last time - or maybe the marshmallow has been squeezed low these past thirty years.

    Obviously, the economists will jump for the sticky solution, since politics, the relative power of capital and labor, is an offense against all the wonderful models based on equilibrium and god's own free market.

    anne:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=LcR
    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=LcS

    January 15, 2014

    Real After-Tax Corporate Profits Per Employee, 2000-2014

    2000 01 ( 5,938) *
    2000 04 ( 5,771)
    2000 07 ( 5,618)
    2000 10 ( 5,312)

    2001 01 ( 5,655) Bush
    2001 04 ( 5,930)
    2001 07 ( 5,430)
    2001 10 ( 5,289) (Low)

    2002 01 ( 5,851)
    2002 04 ( 6,475)
    2002 07 ( 7,092)
    2002 10 ( 7,898)

    2003 01 ( 7,775)
    2003 04 ( 7,827)
    2003 07 ( 7,229)
    2003 10 ( 8,776)

    2004 01 ( 9,933)
    2004 04 ( 10,207)
    2004 07 ( 10,534)
    2004 10 ( 10,319)

    2005 01 ( 12,460)
    2005 04 ( 12,510)
    2005 07 ( 12,713)
    2005 10 ( 13,228)

    2006 01 ( 13,395)
    2006 04 ( 13,600)
    2006 07 ( 13,600)
    2006 10 ( 13,133)

    2007 01 ( 12,112)
    2007 04 ( 12,613)
    2007 07 ( 12,002)
    2007 10 ( 12,105)

    2008 01 ( 10,975)
    2008 04 ( 11,121)
    2008 07 ( 10,661)
    2008 10 ( 6,249)

    2009 01 ( 9,989) Obama
    2009 04 ( 10,850)
    2009 07 ( 12,319)
    2009 10 ( 13,260)

    2010 01 ( 13,988)
    2010 04 ( 13,814)
    2010 07 ( 14,324)
    2010 10 ( 14,113)

    2011 01 ( 12,572)
    2011 04 ( 13,005)
    2011 07 ( 12,919)
    2011 10 ( 13,486)

    2012 01 ( 14,756)
    2012 04 ( 14,437)
    2012 07 ( 14,926)
    2012 10 ( 14,579)

    2013 01 ( 14,447)
    2013 04 ( 14,921)
    2013 07 ( 15,129)
    2013 10 ( 14,861)

    2014 01 ( 14,303)
    2014 04 ( 14,982)
    2014 07 ( 15,274) (High)

    * Without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments,
    seasonally adjusted, 1982 - 1984 dollars

    likbez
    I think there is a strong correlation of wage growth and energy consumption per capita. http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/12/29/how-increased-inefficiency-explains-falling-oil-prices/. As the latter now is shrinking the wages are stagnant. Neoliberal transformation of society since 1970th also suppresses wages by dramatically increasing the share of owners. Those two tendencies work together.

    [Dec 07, 2014] Temporary Work is Bad for Your Cognitive Health by Yves Smith

    "... The evidence presented above is not, strictly speaking, a 'smoking gun' of a harmful effect of temporary contracts. Due to the nature of our data (a cross section), we cannot credibly establish unambiguous causality for the statistical relation that we find. However, the evidence is quite suggestive. We hope that future analysis will allow for a clearer causal inference, but given all the evidence (not just ours) accumulated so far on the detrimental effects of dualism, we should keep the suspect under house arrest and heavy police surveillance. If it really is a social danger, we should at least try not to do more damage. ..."
    "... Take the issue of training. Temps are not trained because often they are hired to provide skills unavailable from the permanent employees, call them directs. Without some investment in training, both time and money, directs generally lack the skills hired in with a temp. We were always called "hired-guns", recalling the gun-fighters hired for their speed, shooting accuracy, and willingness to shoot anyone identified as a target. ..."
    "... The management at every job I was on went to lengths to create an enmity between directs and temps. It was common practice to lay-off directs whenever opportunity presented, while keeping the temps because they could be laid-off on a whim. ..."
    "... Temps give employers a tool to tell their employees how very fungible and unimportant they are. In the days of unions, what are called temps now might have been called "scabs" in some cases. I work in an amalgam of engineering and programming. I feel little guilt about having worked as a job-shopper in the past and as a "consultant" in the very recent past - soon to be unemployed. Engineers and programmers are too stupid and arrogant to ever form a union. They are "Mexican-crabs" of the workplace (please forgive my use of a term sounding racist. I am not racist, the term is, and the image fits too well not to use it). ..."
    "... To hell with that Stakhanovite rubbish. We need livelihoods, not work. Work presents itself well enough as it is. ..."
    "... Meaningful work … almost oxymoronic. "what kind of job do you want with that degree in sociology?" asked the older halfbrother. The younger halfbrother (born post WWII) replied, "I don't know, but I want to get a job I like." "Good god!" exclaimed the older halfbrother, born preDepression era. "I worked for 40 years and not once, not one goddamned time, did I have a job I liked." ..."
    "... Your comment is far more insightful than the article.I observed highly skilled PEs of my fathers generation offed in perpetual fear of being offed in the 1970s when they were in their late 40s-early 50s. Ugly. Observing them focused my personal strategy. The only real difference between permanent employees and temps is that the permanent employees don't realize they are also temps. The bottom line is skillset, the one thing a former employer cant do is take away what you know. ..."
    | nakedcapitalism.com

    ...The negative consequences of dual labour markets have been extensively documented, but so far little attention has been paid to their effects on workers' on-the-job training and cognitive skills. This column discusses evidence from PIAAC – an exam for adults designed by the OECD in 2013. Temporary contracts are associated with a reduction of 8–16 percentage points in the probability of receiving on-the-job training, and this training gap can explain up to half of the gap in numeracy scores between permanent and temporary workers.

    Starting with the seminal work by Saint-Paul (1996), there has been a large literature documenting the negative consequences of dual labour markets in several EU countries.1 Among them, Spain is often cited as the most extreme example, since its labour market is characterised by a large gap between the firing costs of workers with permanent and temporary contracts, and by lax regulation of the use of temporary contracts.

    Yet, so far not much attention has been paid to the effects of dual labour markets on workers' on-the-job training (OJT) and the subsequent effect of the latter on cognitive skills.2 A new element to add to the ample evidence of the negative effects of duality on other dimensions of worker's performance is provided by the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the exam for adults designed by the OECD in 2013, in the spirit of the PISA exams but for the working-age population.

    ... ... ...

    Concluding Remarks

    The evidence presented above is not, strictly speaking, a 'smoking gun' of a harmful effect of temporary contracts. Due to the nature of our data (a cross section), we cannot credibly establish unambiguous causality for the statistical relation that we find. However, the evidence is quite suggestive. We hope that future analysis will allow for a clearer causal inference, but given all the evidence (not just ours) accumulated so far on the detrimental effects of dualism, we should keep the suspect under house arrest and heavy police surveillance. If it really is a social danger, we should at least try not to do more damage.

    See original post for references

    Jeremy Grimm, December 6, 2014

    What an annoying piece of writing! I do not believe the authors have ever worked as temps.

    [I worked many years as a job-shopper to the Military-Industrial complex, a temporary engineer-programmer, also called a contractor. No! I am not proud about it. I saw when I first started engineering school how engineering was turning into a well-paid, but for other reasons crappy job. When I was a kid, I saw an entire generation of the best engineers laid-off after man walked on the moon. We all make the "best" choices open to us.]

    Take the issue of training. Temps are not trained because often they are hired to provide skills unavailable from the permanent employees, call them directs. Without some investment in training, both time and money, directs generally lack the skills hired in with a temp. We were always called "hired-guns", recalling the gun-fighters hired for their speed, shooting accuracy, and willingness to shoot anyone identified as a target.

    In other cases temps are hired with the needed skills, usually no different from the skills of permanent employees doing the same job. The temps fill out temporary and long term increases in demand for a good or service but ever remain expendable. One or two decades ago, temps earned a pay differential for their mobility and easy expendability. In any case they help put fear into directs.

    The management at every job I was on went to lengths to create an enmity between directs and temps. It was common practice to lay-off directs whenever opportunity presented, while keeping the temps because they could be laid-off on a whim. Temps were often used as a prod to push directs. As a temp I was expected to perform without training and without more than a cursory description of the work required. Temps must read their clients desires and produce accordingly. This is a skill lacking in many directs who require some efforts expended to explain what was required of them.

    My experiences as a temp worker clash greatly with the conclusions of this piece. Temps have to come in already knowing the job. They have to perform or they will be laid-off, sometimes within hours. In many cases they are expected to outperform directs and supplement skills directs never developed. Of course, they are not trained. They are expected to bring the skills with them. What is unmentioned in the article - often directs are not trained either.

    I do not know what kind of temps and what kinds of employment the authors of this paper studied. As I indicated above, temps are a way to steal the skills trained by other employers or to take advantage of those who are "Smarter than the average bear" to get jobs done. Temps also give employers a tool for increasing the anxiety of directs and forcing speedups with the stick - "If you cannot perform as quickly and as well as the temps we keep, you too will be cast off. Do you want to join this band of hired-gun gypsies?"

    Temps give employers a tool to tell their employees how very fungible and unimportant they are. In the days of unions, what are called temps now might have been called "scabs" in some cases. I work in an amalgam of engineering and programming. I feel little guilt about having worked as a job-shopper in the past and as a "consultant" in the very recent past - soon to be unemployed. Engineers and programmers are too stupid and arrogant to ever form a union. They are "Mexican-crabs" of the workplace (please forgive my use of a term sounding racist. I am not racist, the term is, and the image fits too well not to use it).

    Any engineers or programmers reading my comment may be my guest at feeling insulted. As a group we deserve it, and I will go so far as to include myself if it pleases you! Lawyers are already a casualty, but medical doctors remain as one of the last of the professions. For all but medical doctors, profession only means that employers can legally not pay for overtime, they neither pay time-and-a-half nor pay straight-time for hours worked. Though elliptical to this discussion, we will all be professionals soon. It pains me to watch the demise of the medical profession as they become subsumed into the Medical Industrial Complex.

    Moneta , December 6, 2014

    Unless it's for a very particular kind of job…
    • -Lack of commitment on both sides
    • -Lack of trust on both sides

    Probably the 2 most important elements for mid to long-term business success.

    craazyman, December 6, 2014

    they certainly have less job security but I don't know about less cognitive skills.

    if sucking up, ass kissing, looking busy, paper pushing, going to meetings and generally unctuous bloviating are part of the family of cognitive skills then yes, temporary workers are at a decided disadvantage. No doubt. They usually actually have to work!

    to be fair, I tried to look up the original article to see what kind of inane madness was on that test for cognitive skills but the link didn't seem to load. I admit, maybe I'm being too cynical. (but I doubt it hahahahahhaha) sorry

    Paul Lafargue, December 6, 2014

    Can it be that the prime force behind devaluing labor – as in the dignity of work – are the capitalists, freed from countervailing forces (a labor movement, government regulation, ethical guidelines promulgated by esteemed religious figures), who gut whatever meaning remains in the concept? Historically, can we say that the inherent value of labor (dignity) in great part motivated the outrage of the proles of a previous era and was an impetus to fight back in order to achieve what shreds of dignity could be achieved through solidarity? Let's assume these premises, then is it logical to conclude that a large component of the current labor force is devoid of the notion that there is Dignity in Labor? Further, again adopting all these assumptions, is it important to revive that notion, by for example advocating a JG? Or, as I believe, is it better to re-think the concept of Labor in such a way that it is divorced from the notion of a job and squarely embedded in the tasks that promote social and individual well-being. These musings may be criticized as an ahistorical quest for an age long gone when Labor was coterminous with Skill, but I think we can imagine (and that may be the first step to realization) Labor more as a ludic enterprise that may encompass skill as one aspect, but not a determining one. Those who know the work of Johan Huizinga will recognize the drift of these remarks.

    diptherio, December 6, 2014

    Two words: worker co-ops

    jrs, December 6, 2014

    Has anyone here ever received on the job training even in jobs that lasted years? Oh probably a boomer back in the days then? Because training is rare these days.

    Management and so on are sometimes sent to training – it's a function of hierarchy of course. Of course things might be different in the EU.

    Alcofribas, December 7, 2014

    Not at all. Inequalities of training curves follow exactly inequalities of salary and robustness/precarity of jobs.

    One only grants rich ones. It's a systemic faithful rule of [neo]liberalism, and so worldwide applying.

    not_me, December 6, 2014

    Again we have the conflation of work with jobs; neither requires the other; one can work without a job (ie. be self-employed) and one can have a job that does no or even negative work (destruction) such as the military often does.

    And it's a losing conflation too, from an equality standpoint, since eventually capital will eliminate the need for almost all human workers. From whence jobs then? Pathetic and patronizing make-work from the government?

    Rather, we should aim for justice and let jobs take care of themselves since justice can never become obsolete or be outflanked.

    hunkerdown, December 6, 2014

    Why would we want to *maximize* work? Trying to accelerate the heat death of the universe, are we, or just the death of the underclass?

    To hell with that Stakhanovite rubbish. We need livelihoods, not work. Work presents itself well enough as it is.

    rur42, December 7, 2014

    Meaningful work … almost oxymoronic. "what kind of job do you want with that degree in sociology?" asked the older halfbrother. The younger halfbrother (born post WWII) replied, "I don't know, but I want to get a job I like." "Good god!" exclaimed the older halfbrother, born preDepression era. "I worked for 40 years and not once, not one goddamned time, did I have a job I liked."

    Times change.

    rur42, December 7, 2014

    Should add: Younger halfbrother eventually became a tenured professor of sociology in a job he came to loath, except for its benefits, salary, and free time.

    washunate, December 7, 2014

    I didn't intend to get into a detailed exchange on this. But you do raise an important clarification.

    In a nutshell, especially the American context, I would describe temp work as when the employee knows they need to be looking for another job. This could be for a number of reasons – the job will move and the employee doesn't want to, the job will disappear, the job pays less than other jobs, the boss is terrible, the next assignment is terrible, there's no room for growth, etc.

    But the common principle in MMT is that JG is not designed for long-term mass employment. It's supposed to transfer workers to the private sector. That's temp work.

    Or are you suggesting that 100 million workers should be on the public payroll indefinitely? Maybe more than that?

    Just to put some numbers to things:

    99 million workers made less than $40K last year (SSA #s –> totally random number since MMTers can't agree on even a rough figure for the JG wage to be)
    2 million people in prison who obviously don't want to be there, including 1 million who are working as modern day slaves
    92 million people not in labor force (BLS #s)
    13 million full-time students in higher ed (NCES #s)

    So that's about 200 million people (some overlap between full time students and workers, of course - hmm, I wonder how the cost of college keeps going up despite massive unemployment if buffer stocks are supposed to act as price anchors?). And of course some people are quite happily retired, almost as if not going to work is more fulfilling than going to work…

    To suggest that even a small portion of those who would benefit from a JG would have a job as long as they want it is to say that the government will expand public sector staffing on a massive scale. I'm not saying that can't happen. Quite the opposite, I'm taking seriously what it would mean to offer an actually decent term of employment.

    Rather, what I have run into is that when I suggest a JG that provides good working conditions, meaningful work, and decent pay would attract tens of millions of workers, I'm usually ridiculed for such absurdly high numbers.

    But it can't go both ways. Either the JG is low-wage temp work that gets people back into the private sector, with all the attendant problems of inequality and poor job performance inherent in crap jobs, or it's a career opportunity that will massively expand the scope of government permanently.

    Now I'm not instinctively opposed to the latter; many Americans, especially younger ones, are openly socialist, and it's a position that should be taken seriously. But it's not what MMT is talking about. MMT is still fundamentally rooted in the idea of private sector decision-making, right down to valuing increases in net private sector savings.

    Moneta, December 7, 2014

    The word stupid crossed your mind, not mine!

    Cognitive refers to how the brain processes data. Without the temp work, he most probably would not have had the same thoughts which made him structure his life around fear. Therefore the temp work had a cognitive impact.

    Jeremy Grimm, December 7, 2014

    Fear? Others may speak for themselves – yes fear.

    I became an engineer through fear. I have other gifts I might have tried. I working as an engineer for DoD out of fear, as I watched non-DoD engineering jobs disappear and turn to shit. Fear and anger against my employers kept me working as a job-shopper.

    I quit job-shopping when I married - very late in life. It took me too long to learn my greatest desire was to have children and a family. I greatly feared losing the mobility which kept me employed.

    Fear kept me working for the same consulting company as the market for engineers grew grimmer than when I started work in the middle 70s. I had my two children and not too long thereafter, I was divorced for reasons I still neither know nor fathom. Fear kept me working in engineering as I grew older. Did you know once the state of New Jersey sets your child support payment, based on your employment at the time of your divorce, changing it, whether you lose your job or not, is nearly impossible - and not paying the set amount could place you in jail? Yes, fear!

    As I grow old, the costs of college for my children, medical care, housing, and food grow - some like college and medical care growing at rates I could never have anticipated and never properly saved for. I am very afraid for the future. I am afraid for my children and the kind of life they may have as the world I knew, and watched collapse, grows worse by the month. So, yes I fear.

    As I face unemployment, two years before retirement age, I cannot share your optimism that I can probably land another job - unless you mean I could leverage my past experience working graveyard cleanup crew and hamburger flipper for Foodmaker Corporation. So I fear losing my job, such as it was. Where we might disagree though is whether fear is a part of just middle class culture. I know and have lived with those I considered poor, certainly not middle class in their values. They too know fear - fear as well as they know hunger - a feeling I have so far avoided. Remember the wisdom from "The Prince", whether it is better for retaining control to be loved or feared?

    What of the rationality of my fears? Fear is not a rational emotion. I believe a rational thinker coldly examining my situation would feel fear. Middle class culture inculcates fear - fear of slipping from the middle class. Is that fear so irrational - just a part of middle class culture? I believe it is an ancient fear lived out lifetime-by-lifetime as those few who rose up from poverty saw how many slipped back into poverty. I do not believe the wheel of fortune spoke to kings and lords.

    I remain fearful. My theme for many years comes from an old folk song, Joan Baez sang, which admonishes "whoever treasures freedom, like the swallow, will learn to fly." I would fly - but I do not know where to fly to. I am too old to be a revolutionary.

    I fear too many of those younger than I am, facing situations more dire than any I faced, will also not know where to fly to. Given how little it would cost to avoid this growing desperation I believe those who own our fates have lost their way. I fear the consequences and long to get far away from any large cities. When there is no hope left and nothing left to lose - nothing will hold back the anger and blood lust of the disposed. I fear our lords and ladies are too confident in their trust to militarized police, NSA, Blackwater and their like for defense of their privileges. I fear becoming part of the collateral damage.

    So yes, scared, and whether rational or not fear.

    More directly referencing your comment - do you really believe engineers "can probably land another job etc.?" and hence their fears are irrational or middle class? Most of the jobs for engineers, to replace the job I will lose, are a thousand miles away and a thousand figurative miles from the work I have done in the past. Employers started hiring people only to work at jobs they have already done for years. That is why there are so few "quailed" STEM workers. Except for the few scattered duplicates of my present job, my prospects are not bright. Fear is not irrational. What makes my fear grow is how much my prospects are better than those of the large part of our population seeking employment. Projecting my fears upon them and transforming them through the options of this other population I grow extremely fearful of what may come. Like the swallow, I would fly away - but to where?

    Alcofribas, December 7, 2014

    Thank you for your contribution, you nail the undergrounded reason why not only individuals but entire societies become hopeless. Fear.Remember the wisdom from "The Prince", whether it is better for retaining control to be loved or feared?

    Wisdom ? In the old days, power was conquered by arms, and retained with dogmas and affective common events, celebrating the nations' self confidences. 1% of populations was educated. Now, in themselves called democracies, only the way to reach the power level is apparently democratical. The use of institutions is not. What to think about the 1787 Constitution of USA ? The best religion to keep people fear and obey is neoliberal economy, dedicated to educated but frightened and individually exploded populations. In the name of individual freedom, of course.

    What is equal freedom when some play with good cards and the largest part of humanity with bad ones ? When few rule the rules and others don't know obscene rules (out of the public scene) ? A mechanism to enlarge inequalities and a common suicide. The best ideas, as freedom, when led to extreme, drive to the worst. Running fair institutions, fair rules, cannot be done with faith of many in few representatives. Of course, families and frienships are broken by enforced job mobility. Lost in translation…
    "Democratical" powers are lost too or become schizophrenic. Huge promises to common citizens during campaigns followed by crucial choices when elected : to have or not to have the courage to change rules, reform institutions when they appear to be structurally unefficient ? PRC hasn't this problem, runs a safer and cleverer capitalism…but treats people as unbrained chess pieces.

    Can Dollar remain the widespread exchange money ? If for common american citizens, the interested answer is NO (US public debts can only increase), for TBTF bankers and many congressmen, the answer is YES : they don't sincerely regulate finance markets to protect citizens and real economy enterprises. Financial markets rules the politician agendas. An instable world is good for speculators, their greatest fear is to loose the power to evaluate the wealths of States's public finances, firms values, labor's retribution. Going back to the 1936-1971 conception of banking ? Was the american people happy with bankers during those days ? Is financial globalization a huge private card for keeping UNO and democracies powers stupids ?

    Like the swallow, I would fly away - but to where?

    Can you escape from earth ? No and neither me. So the answer to feel secure for ourselves and future generations stands on two points imho : 1- what I can do alone (effectively to be poor in open country is not a life without beauty, even if rude), 2- what I can do as a social being (to find out with others how to make democracy evoluate).

    First solution is the hermit choice, or hermit community, that can be a solution for an existing person, but not for his descendants. You can do that inside the local national you're living in. Second is to recognize we are not what the liberal dogma says, simply individual living objects that product and consume, born with good or bad cards in our hands. The difficulty is just that 200 states organizations are unable to fit the problem of global challenges, climate changes or finance regulation or inequal capitalism, for examples. You first need in that case to understand what your citizenship has become, on 7 December 2014. Is it only New Jersey and America based ? Or should it be World based too, but isn't ?

    So my answer stands here : I wish you not to fear or dream for a fly to nowhere, not to dream to a sudden and perfect and unalterable divine change of rules and powers structure, but to be convinced that billions of citizens worldwide share with you the will of stability rather than profit. From purely ideological solutions, communism and liberalism, teached on different territories to be both the best/the worst things, we have to convince ourselves none was pure and true, but a part of truth stood in both, and that the planet will be a very safe and beautiful place to leave on if we manage to bring up new politicians, more balance managers than heroes. Democracies are sick, shooted with liberal drugs that benefit to few and destroy many lifes. Fascimus trends go up, but the worst has not come yet and can still be avoided. We have to keep lucid peoples for that.

    optimader, December 7, 2014

    Your comment is far more insightful than the article.I observed highly skilled PEs of my fathers generation offed in perpetual fear of being offed in the 1970s when they were in their late 40s-early 50s. Ugly. Observing them focused my personal strategy. The only real difference between permanent employees and temps is that the permanent employees don't realize they are also temps. The bottom line is skillset, the one thing a former employer can't do is take away what you know.

    Lambert Strether, December 7, 2014

    "The only real difference between permanent employees and temps is that the permanent employees don't realize they are also temps."

    Reminds me of the time I pointed out to a supervisor that there was no yarn on the floor for the morning shift. Because of the layoff to come in a few hours, stupid me.

    hunkerdown, December 6, 2014

    I think Massinissa is correct. There is a class that feels itself entitled as a matter of identity and tradition to exclude others from control over the means of production, and one suspects they would sooner not live than live without their tradition of uselessness.

    NotTimothyGeithner, December 6, 2014

    Anecdotally, my next door neighbor had to be separated from his family for contracting work. His wife wanted to stay with the kids*. Eventually, they moved, but the kids had to leave their friends. The woman across the street divorced her husband over a similar situation. It's not just the mental health of the worker but the family.

    *The wife didn't take care of their hydrangeas, and the kids are ruining a hedge in Colorado now and not leaving my gate open. All in all, my mental health has improved considerably since they left.

    Pepsi, December 6, 2014

    Being stressed, exhausted, and poor is bad for the mind. Good to see some empirical evidence.

    Noni Mausa, December 6, 2014

    Controlling for motivation seems to me to consist of controlling for naïveté, or its opposite.

    My current, half time job is a case in point. I get very little explicit training (the corporation doesn't even have a training manual, for instance.) Yet, I am expected to know our point of sale system, ship and receive, care for customers, understand and demonstrate our hundreds of tools and paints and finishes, accurately recommend materials and tools for specific projects, open and close the store, cash out and take in the deposit at the end of the day, create signage and displays, clean the building, including the lunchroom and washrooms, and more. Any upgrading of my knowledge of using our tools and supplies, I am expected to do on my own time at my own expense. I am also expected to keep abreast of our many rotating sales and, I was told a number of times, to memorize all the SKU numbers of our thousands of stock items. (Yeah, like that's going to happen.) I am a keyholder, have been there 18 months, and am not in line for any bonuses, raises, or other benefits. I make $11.25 an hour, about 75 cents above our minimum wage.

    Why am I still there? Only because I am retired and find the job an interesting pastime, which I can leave at any time without a backward glance. There is zero loyalty on either side, and I could easily put down my clipboard any time and say, "You know what? I don't need this."

    My fellow staff members, including our young, overworked manager, do need the money, but their stress levels from overwork and unrealistic demands cannot be good for their health.

    Alcofribas, December 7, 2014

    Some things to be explained to US contributors :

    1- Till the 70's, Spain was not a democracy but run by a fascist regime. It hardly makes 2 generations. Not enough to change minds and turn them into respect of workers as doubtless Know-how wealth of the firms. Quite the opposite of German situation, in which Kurzarbeit (time reduction of work/incomes for everybody inside the firm when orders slow down, but no difficulty for restart after the bad period, at no training cost and no research time loss).

    2- There stands a main difficulty inside Europe, while inside the euro zone two employment markets, supported by two different layers of cultural skills interfere. The study nails rightly that in South European countries, a post feudal scheme of societies separates the population in two parts : strong rights granted one, middle and upper class, and large far less granted one.

    A kind of two levels of citizenships system that underlay all relationships, very evident in terms of temp or permanent jobs, without any consciousness that quality is everywhere in the firm (from the boss to the few considered worker) or isn't. Management is there a purely hierarchical organization, some taking all decisions, others executing them. Mix that with the old taylorist division of tasks and you get it. In the north countries, despite of recent neoliberal taste for financial profit even in manufacuring firms, the project culture and importance of many small self-governing firms make for long a true concern for everyone in the firm's life. This of course relies on very strong attachment to local social life, and technical improvements are seen as survey conditions. Of course too, there only can be found two colleges co operating together the strategical management of firms, one with employees, one with managers and shareolders. Both being responsible of good or bad decisions, what Germans call Mitbestimmung. Not only the single labor market is largely dominant, but unemployment increases slowly in that case, without considering state's sectorial implications to enforce specific policies. And don't forget that the cohesive action of Landern (micro economy) and federal german (macro economy) powers is a real success.

    3- Mobility for jobs inside Europe is strictly reserved to high educated people, because of the creation of a continental multicultural country by union of many micro states. When nothing has been done seriously to give all european citizens multilinguistic skills, engineers (speaking 3-4 langages) can easily find jobs where they are, and masons and carpenters are captive of local employment situations.

    4- Applying the selective dogma of comparative specialized competences, most european governments have made of Europe a catastrophical continental area with well and bad diversified zones. Spanish growth depending massively of building sector, spanish economy was brillant when financial risks were taken by the government, local powers, banks and the citizens. Miracles don't exist. Never.

    5- Inside a common money zone, you need a central state. Both to stop divergent local economical policies, and to protect people when a great crisis occurs. Without this, some zones hardly impressed severly fall down and no help is to be expected to restart economy and prevent deep social consequences.

    6- Potential Europe's GDP is being injured. Young generation of Europeans is now paying for the unresponsible acts of their parents : maintaining local sovereignties in the macro economical competence is a major political fault.

    [Nov 28, 2014] Being homeless is better than working for Amazon By Nichole Gracely

    Nov 28, 2014 | theguardian.com

    wa8dzp:

    'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon'
    Nichole Gracely has a master's degree and was one of Amazon's best order pickers. Now, after protesting the company, she's homeless.

    I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon.

    According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers - I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion.

    During peak season, I trained incoming temps regularly. When that was over, I'd be an ordinary order picker once again, toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen.

    Superb performance did not guarantee job security. ISS is the temp agency that provides warehouse labor for Amazon and they are at the center of the SCOTUS case Integrity Staffing Solutions vs. Busk. ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later, all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring.

    I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance. Amazon could mandate overtime and I would have to comply with any schedule change they deemed necessary, and if there was not any work, they would send us home early without pay. I started to fall behind on my bills.

    At some point, I lost all fear. I had already been through hell. I protested Amazon. The gag order was lifted and I was free to speak. I spent my last days in a lovely apartment constructing arguments on discussion boards, writing articles and talking to reporters. That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. I walked away from Amazon's warehouse and didn't have any other source of income lined up.

    I cashed in on my excellent credit, took out cards, and used them to pay rent and buy food because it would be six months before I could receive my first unemployment compensation check.

    I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for food stamps.

    I furthered my Amazon protest while homeless in Seattle. When the Hachette dispute flared up I "flew a sign," street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: "I was an order picker at amazon.com. Earned degrees. Been published. Now, I'm homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps."

    I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and I make more money per hour than I will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.

    I flew my protest sign outside Whole Foods while Amazon corporate employees were on lunch break, and they gawked. I went to my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with them. And that was in Seattle. One woman asked, "What are you writing?" I told her about the descent from working poor to homeless, income inequality, my personal experience. She mentioned Thomas Piketty's book, we chatted a little, she handed me $10 and wished me luck. Another guy said, "Damn, that's a great story! I'd read it," and handed me a few bucks.

    [snip]

    [Nov 16, 2014] More on Stigmatization of the Unemployed

    March 20, 2011 | naked capitalism

    psychohistorian:

    I am one of those long term unemployed.

    I suppose my biggest employment claim would be as some sort of IT techie, with numerous supply chain systems and component design, development, implementation, interfaces with other systems and ongoing support. CCNP certification and a history of techiedom going back to WEYCOS.

    I have a patent (6,209,954) in my name and 12+ years of beating my head against the wall in an industry that buys compliance with the "there is no problem here, move on now" approach.

    Hell, I was a junior woodchuck program administrator back in the early 70's working for the Office of the Governor of the state of Washington on CETA PSE or Public Service Employment. The office of the Governor ran the PSE program for 32 of the 39 counties in the state that were not big enough to run their own. I helped organize the project approval process in all those counties to hire folk at ( if memory serves me max of $833/mo.) to fix and expand parks and provide social and other government services as defined projects with end dates. If we didn't have the anti-public congress and other government leadership we have this could be a current component in a rational labor policy…but I digress.

    I have experience in the construction trades mostly as carpenter but some electrical, plumbing, HVAC, etc. also.

    So, of course there is some sort of character flaw that is keeping me and all those others from employment…..right. I may have more of an excuse than others, have paid into SS for 45 years but still would work if it was available…..taking work away from other who may need it more….why set up a society where we have to compete as such for mere existence???????

    One more face to this rant. We need government by the people and for the people which we do not have now. Good, public focused, not corporate focused government is bigger than any entities that exist under its jurisdiction and is kept updated by required public participation in elections and potentially other things like military, peace corps, etc. in exchange for advanced education. I say this as someone who has worked at various levels in both the public and private sectors…there are ignorant and misguided folks everywhere. At least with ongoing active participation there is a chance that government would, once constructed, be able to evolve as needed within public focus….IMO.

    Lidia:

    Ishmael, you're quite right. When I showed my Italian husband's resume to try and "network" in the US, my IT friends assumed he was lying about his skills and work history.

    Contemporaneously, in Italy it is impossible to get a job because of incentives to hire "youth". Age discrimination is not illegal, so it's quite common to see ads that ask for a programmer under 30 with 5 years of experience in COBOL (the purple squirrel).

    Hosswire

    Some good points about the foolishness of recruiters, but a great deal of that foolishness is forced by the clients themselves. I used to be a recruiter myself, including at Korn Ferry in Southern California. I described the recruiting industry as "yet more proof that God hates poor people" because my job was to ignore resumes from people seeking jobs and instead "source" aka "poach" people who already had good jobs by dangling a higher salary in front of them. I didn't do it because I disparaged the unemployed, or because I could not do the basic analysis to show that a candidate had analogous or transferrable skills to the opening.

    I did it because the client, as Yves said, wanted people who were literally in the same job description already. My theory is that the client wanted to have their ass covered in case the hire didn't work out, by being able to say that they looked perfect "on paper." The lesson I learned for myself and my friends looking for jobs was simple, if morally dubious. Basically, that if prospective employers are going to judge you based on a single piece of paper take full advantage of the fact that you get to write that piece of paper yourself.

    Ishmael:

    Hosswire - I agree with your comment. There are poor recruiters like the one I sited but in general it is the clients fault. Fear of failure. All hires have at least a 50% chance of going sideways on you. Most companies do not even have the ability to look at a resume nor to interview. I did not mean to same nasty things about recruiters, and I even do it sometimes but mine.

    I look at failure in a different light than most companies. You need to be continually experimenting and changing to survive as a company and there will be some failures. The goal is to control the cost of failures while looking for the big pay off on a winner.

    Mannwich:

    As a former recruiter and HR "professional" (I use that term very loosely for obvious reasons), I can honestly say that you nailed it. Most big companies looking for mid to high level white collar "talent" will almost always take the perceived safest route by hiring those who look the best ON PAPER and in a suit and lack any real interviewing skills to find the real stars. What's almost comical is that companies almost always want to see the most linear resume possible because they want to see "job stability" (e.g. a CYA document in case the person fails in that job) when in many cases nobody cares about the long range view of the company anyway. My question was why should the candidate or employee care about the long range view if the employer clearly doesn't?

    [Sep 22, 2014] Michael Parenti on Globalisation, Terrorism, and Conspiracy

    "... The goal has been the 'Third Worldization' of the United States:
    -- an increasingly underemployed, lower-wage work-force;
    -- a small but growing moneyed class that pays almost no taxes;
    -- the privatization or elimination of human services;
    -- the elimination of public education for low-income people;
    -- the easing of restrictions against child labor;
    -- the exporting of industries and jobs to low-wage, free-trade countries;
    -- the breaking of labor unions;
    -- and the elimination of occupational safety and environmental controls and regulations...."
    "In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.

    "In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.

    No system in history has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.

    Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.

    The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.

    The guiding principle of ruling elites was--and still is: when change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed."

    Michael Parenti

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YE5Ha52PBVg

    "The goal has been the 'Third Worldization' of the United States:

    • an increasingly underemployed, lower-wage work-force;
    • a small but growing moneyed class that pays almost no taxes;
    • the privatization or elimination of human services;
    • the elimination of public education for low-income people;
    • the easing of restrictions against child labor;
    • the exporting of industries and jobs to low-wage, free-trade countries;
    • the breaking of labor unions;
    • and the elimination of occupational safety and environmental controls and regulations."

    Michael Parenti, Land of Idols, 1993

    [Sep 22, 2014] Upton Sinclair: The Brass Check

    These quotes are from The Brass Check which was written by Upton Sinclair in 1919.

    A brass check was a token purchased by a customer in a brothel and given to the woman of his choice. Sinclair saw the moneyed interests of his day holding brass checks with which to purchase politicians, journalists and their editors, and other thought leaders of the day.

    For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes, pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might choose our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new industrial order. I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence destroyed, and now I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice of our money-masters driving us straight to the precipice of revolution.

    What shall I do ? What can I do - save to cry out one last warning in this last fateful hour? The time is almost here - and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of America today.

    Imagine, if you can, the feelings of a workingman on strike who picks up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and reads:

    'We have a flabby public opinion which would wring its hands in anguish if we took the labor leader by the scruff of his neck, backed him up against a wall, and filled him with lead. Countries which consider themselves every bit as civilized as we do not hesitate about such matters for a moment.'
    Year by year the cost of living increases, and wages, if they move at all, move laggingly, and after desperate and embittered strife. In the midst of this strife the proletariat learns its lessons ; it learns to know the clubs of policemen and the bayonets and machine-guns of soldiers.

    Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. The [first world] war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda ; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.

    American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy.

    By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery ; but that misery has its purpose in the scheme of nature. Something more than a century ago we saw the people driven by just such misery to grope their way into a new order of society; they threw off the chains of hereditary monarchy, and made themselves citizens of free republics.

    And now again we face such a crisis only this time it is in the world of industry that we have to abolish hereditary rule, and to build an industrial commonwealth in which the equal rights of all men are recognized by law.

    [Sep 22, 2014] Work's New Age The End of Full Employment and What It Means to You by James B. Huntington

    Amazon.com

    Jayne, January 2 2012

    An Important Conversation, Poorly Executed

    The author has engaged an important topic, one about which remarkably few books are presently available. For recognizing the importance of the issue and doing the work to publish a book, I give it two stars. Unfortunately, this book suffers from some serious flaws - so serious, in fact, that Work's New Age has the distinction of being the only book I have ever returned for a refund.

    First, it is obviously entirely unedited for grammer, syntax, and style. Strangely constructed sentences, run-on paragraphs, an excess of direct quotes from other sources, poorly formatted charts and tables (at least on the Kindle version) and awkward or missing transitions hinder an understanding of what is being presented. The worst of it is that in several places, the author makes guesses about what might happen that sound weak and unsupported, and this undermines his authority on the topic. Clearly he has done a lot of study, reading, and research, but it's wasted when he uses all that he has learned to generate thought experiments for which there is no scaffolding.

    Second, the book assumes that past trends will necessarily continue. For example, it presupposes that automation will always reduce the number of jobs, and globalization will always result in brain drain and downward pressure on wages. All of the research and all of the solutions discussed in the book revolve around these assumptions, and the resulting picture is indeed scary. However, there's a fundamentally circular argument buried in the book. It's this: prices must be kept low, or an underemployed population will be unable to support its basic needs; and low prices can only be achieved and maintained with low overhead, principally low employment costs. Only big business can create the conditions for low overhead that lead to low prices. Thus, we have a marketplace dominated by big business that drives prices and wages down, which results in underemployment and no growth. Bleak, indeed.

    I am unpersuaded (to say the least) that this circular argument defines the sum total of our options as an economy. I wish the author had explored more productive options, as well as the darker ones he did explore. For instance, what if we as a culture fully grasped the import of always shopping for lowest price? The other day, for example, I bought socks at Target because they were less expensive than the socks in my locally owned shoe store. Target had them packaged three pairs for $8. But when I opened the package, I discovered that two pair were thin stockings sure to fail after just a wearing or two. This is how Target keeps its sock pricing down: by giving the illusion of quantity, but delivering poor quality so that I'll need more socks in weeks rather than months. I'd have been better off buying the more expensive socks from my local store, and the obvious personal reasons are just the start of it. What if we could learn the value of paying more for locally produced goods that are part of a true marketplace that engages not just in commerce, but in community? Perhaps we would make different choices that would naturally temper the tendency of big businesses to produce more with less.

    The book contains a few glimmers of ideas that should be part of our public discourse. Should we aspire to be a nation of 1 percenters, when it's the 99 percent that support the economy? What do we human beings do with our time and energy when work does not demand everything of us? Are we risking breeding a culture that cannot join the workforce even if jobs are available? What is the definition of value, and is there a way to compensate people for value they add, other than giving them jobs in profit-centered businesses? Unfortunately, these engaging ideas get short shrift and little deep thinking.

    All in all, an important topic gets a well-meaning effort, and a few glimmers of interesting possibilities, but suffers from a lack of editing and a straitjacket of assumptions that don't have to be true. I'm looking forward to some other book on this subject that does a better job of engaging me with clear thinking and broader possibilities.

    [Sep 21, 2014] Over 50 & Unemployed Sizing Up the Problem Life Reimagined for Work by Eilene Zimmerman

    Oct 21, 2013 | aarp.org

    Although prolonged unemployment is tough for any worker, it's especially hard on people at midlife who are often forced to dip into retirement savings and change their lifestyles in order to make ends meet. And it's much more difficult to become employed again. Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, says the situation for those unemployed and over 55 "is very severe. That group has the longest duration of unemployment."

    Although the number fluctuates, Van Horn says there are "at least a couple of million people" over age 55 in the category of long-term unemployed-defined as more than six months–and at least half of those have been unemployed for over a year. "From a national perspective it's a small number-the labor market is 150 million people-but it's a small number experiencing a severe problem," says Van Horn. "In the research we did between 2009-2011 only 15 percent of those we surveyed were able to find a full-time job within a year."

    See also: Over 40? 7 Things Never To Say in a Job Interview

    "Even though it's illegal, this group faces age discrimination, a sense by employers that a younger worker can work harder and will have had more recent training and more technical skills," says David Blustein, a professor of counseling psychology and an expert in unemployment and career development at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. And if they do find work, older workers will likely be earning less than they did before losing their job.

    Still, the news isn't all doom-and-gloom. Those over 50 often worked in leadership roles before becoming unemployed and have skills and industry knowledge that can't be replaced. That gives them unique options, says executive recruiter Sharon Hulce, president of Employment Resource Group in Appleton, Wisconsin and author of the forthcoming book, A Well-Done Professional Midlife Crisis.

    [Sep 21, 2014] Number Of Aging Americans Paying Student Loans Soars U.S. Report

    Business Insider

    While the Government Accountability Office report noted that relatively few U.S. households headed by people 65 or over are carrying student loans, the value of the unpaid debt had spiked from $2.8 billion in 2005, before the financial crisis.

    That debt is concentrated in a small number of homes. Just 4 percent of households headed by someone 65 or older carried student loan debt as of 2010, up from 1 percent in 2004.

    "Some may think of student loan debt as a just a young person's problem," said U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, who heads a Senate committee on aging and held a hearing on the findings on Wednesday. "As it turns out, that's increasingly not the case."

    The $18.2 billion figure includes loans related to both the holders' education, often for those who have returned to school later in life, and their children's education, the report found.

    Across the United States, about 40 million Americans are paying back some $1.1 trillion in student loan debt.

    [Sep 20, 2014] Over Fifty and Out of Work

    facebook.com

    Carol Ann, September 16 at 5:36am

    I would add to that question - a career that pays a living wage. Many of us have created "hobby" jobs for ourselves to keep active or have pieced together contract or part-time gigs.

    Others have jumped into multi-level-marketing schemes they are calling their "jobs". But who has successfully obtained a job on par with their former career that is full time with benefits and supports their family? THAT is the bigger question.

    Over Fifty and Out of Work, September 14, 2014
    I can see that I'm still not alone. Finding a job that is 'reasonable' has been very difficult. I left a very stressful nonprofit job that was leaving me in knots, hoping to find another job that I could do. I have a chronic pain condition and have to be careful. I may have done myself in and have been doing project and temporary work for months. I originally lost a job I enjoyed and it took me 2 years to find another one. It seemed that the job market in my area was getting better but it has seemed to go up and down.

    I'm temping and am proving to be valuable. However, if anything ever happened to my husband, I would be sunk. I have thought about the business route…at least to do some grant writing. Even non-profits are getting volunteers to do grant writing. The killer is that I have gotten appeal letters from non-profit organizations to which I have applied. Some of wanted me to do free grant writing. I'm obviously good enough to volunteer but not good enough to hire?

    Recently, over a two month period, I went through three phone interviews with an employer and waited two weeks. Finally, after I contacted them to check in, I got an in person interview. That interview was two weeks ago and I'm losing steam. I met the HR person at GE and she didn't ask much…as if to say, you're older and we don't want you. Other interviewers have been rude, condescending on a few occasions and that made me not want to get out of bed! I have even asked if I wanted to continue to live at times.

    It's the elephant in the room that we can't talk about publicly because we could be 'whistleblowers' but the injustice and psychological effects are real and damaging. Employers want to work on the cheap but the reality is that if we don't have money, we won't buy more goods and that will keep the economy in a standstill. That seems to be the case overall. The job numbers don't say much about the low-paying jobs that people are taking to just get by.

    Anyway, I'm on State lists and hope to eventually get a job with the State.
    - posted on our website last night

    [Sep 19, 2014] How to Get the Long-Term Unemployed Back to Work

    "... "Most of the 100 unemployed Americans over 50 we initially interviewed have been able to find jobs over the past year or so," she says, "but they're part-time or for much less money than they earned prior to the Great Recession." ..."

    Although things seem to be looking up on the job front (claims for state unemployment benefits just fell to their lowest level since January 2008), the same can't be said for America's long-term unemployed, especially those over 50.

    Consider:

    • Nearly 40 percent of unemployed Americans - roughly 4.8 million people - have been jobless for six months or longer. About half of them are over age 50.
    • Some 3.25 million Americans, CNN says, are "hopelessly unemployed." They haven't looked for work in more than a year because they've simply given up the search. They're not even counted for the official unemployment rate.
    • Roughly 1.5 million of the unemployed are "99ers," out of work for 99 weeks or longer.
    • The average time someone stays un>emplyed is now about 10 months, twice as long as six years ago, according to NPR.
    • The Facebook page for the multimedia project, Over Fifty and Out of Work, is filled with postings like this one: "I am a 60-year-old male, I have been in the construction industry since I was 20, the last 16 as a superintendent or project manager. I was laid off August 1, 2010. I have not found but 3 months work since then. I have sent over 300 resumes to advertised jobs. I am in financial ruin."

    ... ... ...

    Susan Sipprelle, creator of the Over 50 and Out of Work multimedia project and writer/producer of the award-winning unemployment documentary, Set for Life, echoes Carbone.

    "Most of the 100 unemployed Americans over 50 we initially interviewed have been able to find jobs over the past year or so," she says, "but they're part-time or for much less money than they earned prior to the Great Recession."

    [Jul 13, 2014] Even Harvard couldn't protect me

    "We live in a society where it's hard to maintain self-respect if you don't have a job," Kwame Anthony Appiah, philosopher at Princeton, said in a recent radio interview, and I can certainly identify. All of my life I've been an achievement junkie. I have two Harvard degrees, practiced law at elite Manhattan firms, and wrote and published two novels, among other things. But of all my accomplishments, by far the most impressive is absent from my résumé: It's my more than two-year stint of job searching and unemployment.

    If you've been unemployed you already know this, but if you haven't, here's a news flash: Coping with prolonged joblessness is hugely demanding. It requires deep reservoirs of fortitude, faith, patience, courage and self-control, traditional virtues generally accorded high regard in our nation's pantheon of values. Of course, we're a country that values hard work, and that's as it should be. But don't our values also dictate respect for the efforts of the struggling unemployed?

    Two years of job hunting has required infinitely more of me than any of my lauded past achievements. And I, of course, am among the relatively fortunate, with a cushion of savings and a supportive group of friends. And here is what I think: If the experience is still this hard for me, how much harder must it be for the millions who lack these things?

    There is a distinct Groundhog Day quality to days spent looking for work: Write letters. Prepare résumés. Search job boards. Make phone calls and brainstorm over coffee. Sleep. Get up. Repeat. After sending off my materials, I often hear nothing back. I've long since lost count of the number of jobs I've applied for.

    As an "older worker" -- When did that happen? -- I try to ignore a drumbeat of statistics telling me I face an uphill battle. It's hard not to feel worn down, to succumb to "learned helplessness," our innate tendency to give up when our efforts fail to yield results. Still, like millions of others, day by day I keep going.

    My exertions often seem strangely invisible, not only to my family and friends but increasingly to me -- an experience that turns out to be widely shared in job-loss land. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. As Atlantic journalist Don Peck recounts in "Pinched," his sobering account of the changes wrought by the Great Recession, studies show "a growing isolation, a warping of family dynamics, and a slow separation from mainstream society" among the long-term unemployed. Strikingly, no other circumstance triggers a larger decline in well-being and mental health than involuntary joblessness. Only the death of a spouse compares.

    ...At the start of this year, the average unemployment duration of more than nine months was longer than it's been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the figure in 1948, according to Peck.

    And yet, daunting as these numbers may be, they only hint at the human suffering that they reflect. In his 2010 book "The Honor Code," Appiah places honor at the heart of what it takes to lead a successful life, noting that throughout history, societies have adopted guidelines for how people "can gain the right to respect, how they can lose it, and how having and losing honor changes the way they should be treated." The result: "[P]eople in an honor world automatically regard those who meet its codes with respect and those who breach them with contempt."

    This stark dichotomy -- between respect and contempt -- got me to thinking. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to see that when there are six job seekers for every job, it's simply not possible for everyone to find work. And in fact, as others have noted, the reality is even tougher on the unemployed than these numbers suggest. For one, they (we) are competing for positions not only with other unemployed workers but also with applicants already in the workforce who are looking to move on. They (we) are also contending with subtle -- and not so subtle -- biases against the unemployed, including the proliferation of "unemployed need not apply" caveats on job ads for positions ranging from electrical engineers to restaurant managers. Thanks to my legal background, this shocked me less than it did some of my friends. I knew that current laws don't prohibit discrimination against the jobless.

    So how is it that so many have come to disdain the unemployed? To equate unemployment with failure and shiftlessness? If the barometer of popular culture is any indication, this wasn't always so. In the 1962 film classic "A Touch of Mink," plucky all-American Cathy Timberlake (aka Doris Day) is on the way to collect her unemployment check, when a chauffeured limousine splashes her with mud. It's Cathy Timberlake -- not the feckless industry titan played by Cary Grant -- who represents the traditional American values that in the end carry the day. Firmly planted at the dark pole of the film's moral compass is the creepy unemployment office bureaucrat who alternately taunts Timberlake for taking government money and hits on her. The film has plenty of disdain for the titan and the bureaucrat and plenty of sympathy for Timberlake.

    [Jul 12, 2014] Unemployed and Older, and Facing a Jobless Future by ALINA TUGEND

    See interesting and educational case stories in comments
    "... It is refreshing to read an article on older unemployed workers in the NYT that is free of Friedman's nonsense about everyone needing to reinvent themselves. ..."
    July 26, 2013 | NYTimes.com

    I WAS recently talking to a friend at a party whose husband - in his 60s - has been unemployed for more than two years. While there are many challenges, she said, one of the hardest things is trying to balance hope with reality.

    Is there a moment when people over 50 who don't have jobs should give up looking, accept their fate and find other ways to make life meaningful?

    She wonders how to support him in his continued quest to find a job in his field of marketing and financial services while at the same time encouraging him to think about what his life would be like if he never worked in that field or had a full-time job again.

    "I wanted to move to what I thought was a healthier place. I wanted to turn the page," said my friend, who asked to be identified by her middle name, Shelley, since she didn't want to publicize her family's situation. "He saw it as vote of no confidence."

    For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year, according to the Labor Department, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers.

    There are numerous reasons - older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization. They're more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they're attractive targets if layoffs are needed.

    Even as they do all the things they're told to do - network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and turn it into a job - many struggle with the question of whether their working life as they once knew it is essentially over.

    This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

    Psychologists and others who counsel this cohort need to help them face the grief of losing a job, and also to understand that jobs and job-hunting are far different now from how they used to be.

    "The contract used to be, 'I am a loyal employee and you are a loyal employer. I promise to work for you my entire career and you train, promote, give benefits and a pension when I retire.' Now you can't count on any of that," she said. "The onus is all on the employee to have a portfolio of skills that can be transferable."

    People in their 20s and 30s know that they need to market themselves and always be on the lookout for better opportunities, she said, something that may seem foreign to those in their 50s and 60s.

    If a counselor or psychologist "doesn't understand how the world of work has changed, they're not helping at all," she said. "You can't just talk about how it feels."

    In response to this concern, Professor Fouad and her colleagues have drawn up guidelines for the American Psychological Association to help psychotherapists better assist their clients with workplace issues and unemployment. It is wending its way through the association's committees.

    Of course, not everyone who is unemployed and over 50 is equal. For some, the reality is that they need to find another job - any job - to survive. Others have resources that can allow them to spend more time looking for a job that might have the salary or status of their former position.

    In the first case, Professor Fouad said, "You need to decide what is the minimum amount of money you can make and how to go about finding it." In the second case, she said, it's necessary to examine what work means to you and how that may have to change.

    Is it the high social status? The identity? The relationship with co-workers? It is important to examine these areas, perhaps with the help of a professional counselor, Professor Fouad said, to discover how to find such meaning or relationships in other areas of life.

    Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help. My friend Shelley's husband, Neal, who also asked that I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a friend was "don't tell people you're unemployed. Tell them you're semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself."

    He also has friends facing the same issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups, whether formal or informal, are very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president of the American Counseling Association and professor emerita of counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.

    "Legitimizing the fact that this stinks also helps," she said. "I find that when I say this, clients are so relieved. They thought I was going to say, 'buck up.' "

    And even more, "they should know the problem is not with them but with a system that has treated them like a commodity that can be discarded," said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who works with the older unemployed in suburb of Boston. "I try to help clients get in touch with their anger about that. They shouldn't blame themselves."

    Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do.

    "I know not to take it personally," Neal said, "but sure, I wonder at times, what's wrong with me? Is there something I should be doing differently?"

    It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to wonder if he is somehow standing in his own way, like a cancer patient who is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.

    Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary "Set for Life" about the older jobless, said she stopped posting articles like "Five Easy Steps to get a New Job."

    "People are so frustrated," she said. "They don't want to hear, 'Get a new wardrobe, get on LinkedIn.' "

    As one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said, "I've been told to redo my résumé twice now. The first 'expert' tells me to do it one way, the next 'expert' tells me to put it back the way I had it."

    Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although he believes he'll never make as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic about some consulting jobs.

    But the reality is that the problem of the older unemployed "was acute during the Great Recession, and is now chronic," Ms. Sipprelle said. "People's lives have been upended by the great forces of history in a way that's never happened before, and there's no other example for older workers to look at. Some can't recoup, though not through their own fault. They're the wrong age at the wrong time. It's cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you just dye your hair, you'll get that job."

    Flatlander, LA, CA

    Age discrimination is a sad reality today and always has been. It is also very difficult to prove in a legal action.

    From what I have heard, if you are in your 60's you can basically forget about getting hired for a full time career track type job (I turned 60 last June).

    I guess the best advice I can give people in their mid 40's is to try and save as much as you possibly can just in case when you are in your mid to late 50's and you unexpectedly lose your job. You will need something to fall back on if you will be facing a prolonged period of unemployment.

    I stopped working full time at age 58 which was sooner than I planned. Fortunately my wife and I had prepared ourselves for just such an occurrence and we are getting along OK. That plus the fact that I enjoy not working and all the stress that goes along with it.

    Walter, Bronx, NY

    This is a great article. I'm in this situation but worse. Trying to entice myself to nowadays corporations I went and enrolled in a MBA program and got myself into a $40K student loan debt. I had already paid my previous loans long time ago so I figure, if I update myself educational-wise and prove these people that my mind is still fresh and sharp at a high level that I could raise my chances.

    Now, I am 56 and I still cant get a job. Taking a minimum wage position is out of the question for me since all my salary would actually go to pay my debt and I would not have money even for transportation back and forth to work.

    What I find amazing is that employer are failing to understand that old folks like us would really appreciate the opportunity and work harder to try to excel than probably any of nowadays young kids, that, like the article mentioned, are more prone to leave the company to get promotions. I keep telling my friends that I would even sign a contract guaranteeing that I would work for them until the day I die or retire. I like the idea presented by one of the readers here that the government should provide some kind of economic incentive in the way of lower taxation for businesses that hire people over 50. They do it for career criminals.

    Why not for qualified and educated/trained people. This is totally age discrimination and it is a federal offense. However, I try that channel also and I got no response from the Labor Dept. I thank the NYT for bringing this up.

    Jovality, Las Vegas, NV.

    I'm 57 and have or had been employed in the high tech industry for over 25 years with never a period of more than two weeks unemployment until now. During that time I rose from a software developer to product manager, to VP of Sales and Marketing. I was laid off from that position at the end of 2012, but luckily I was able to reach out to an old colleague who was able to sneak me into a marketing position in his company at less than half my previous salary.

    I was surprised by the younger people's reaction to me. They said things to me I had to take as compliments such as, "You're really cool for an older guy." "I would never expect someone your age would know so much or be so talented".

    Unfortunately the company had a major layoff which I was caught in. Now I am like many of the others who have posted her, "A ghost with a resume". Since being laid off in June of 2013 I have sent out 100's of resumes with only a very limited response.

    More and more I have to accept this is the "Third Act in Life" and working for a traditional company in a traditional job is no longer a reality. It's time to take the vast experience and talents I've built up or an entire career and use them to open my own business. It's a frighten challenge to be sure. But as someone once told me there is only one real form of security in life, when life knocks you down you must have the drive and self-confidence to get up handle the situation and both survive and succeed.

    kfahern, San Francisco, Ca

    I too, am a over 50 person who has been in sales from VP to National sales for over 25 years. I was unemployed for 11 months, took a job which paid much less, gave the company all of my current book of business, set up their sales team, designed a sales training course and 5 months later was let go. Reason, I was not the right type of person for the job. Again, I was unemployed for over a year, finally a company approached me and after they had all of my expertise (asked to train the younger sales people and a few other things, such as my contacts) they let me go after only 90 days, saying I was clearly not keeping up. So again for the 3rd time in 4 years, I find myself unemployed.

    Companies, do not want to pay for the older generation. But do want and have found a way to get all of that experience an connections from us, then hire recent college graduates and they benefit from everything it took all of us over 30 years to learn.

    So all those people who cheated and assisted in the clasp of our economy, have taught the new young executives one thing, use people to advance yourself and then throw them away. No consequences to these actions. Just benefits for the "me" generation. The only plus to all of this, is the "me" generation will be in their 50s soon and will hopefully experience the same horrible treatment.

    Jon K. Polis, East Greenwich, Rhode Island

    Bohemienne: In answer to your question; look up the movie " Soylent Green " from 1973, that starred Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson....and see what fate be-fell Mr. Robinson's character....if our government today offered me the same options/opportunities to me that they offered to him; I would take advantage of them in a heartbeat...

    Rhea Goldman, Sylmar, CA

    I find it strange, very strange indeed, that all of us have so easily accepted our plight of hardship. Have we been so cowed that collectively we take no action to put a stop to this harsh treatment from employers? Re-read Dickens' Christmas Carol.....we are allowing the economics of the United States to make Bob Cratchets of us all.

    J. Campbell, Chicago, IL

    I'm amazed that an article from the NYT (to which I subscribe) actually suggests that people in their 50's who are unemployed can somehow just "accept that they may *never* work again". How could we live? What legal source of income could we obtain that would bridge us to Social Security (even for those of us eventually eligible for SS retirement)? What are the people responsible for this article (including the NYT editors who released it) thinking? What if someone suggested that *they* accept a future where they never worked again, and had no income?

    If there were several major American riots, that involved hundreds of thousands of unemployed people (a fraction of the millions of current long-term unemployed in the US), the NYT would be out front in demanding that order be restored *at any cost*. Where is the mainstream press demand that *economic stability for the working class* be restored at any cost?

    Or do you think, because of our current corporate/NSA state, such riots are impossible? If so, look at Europe--right now.

    Sam, Florida

    My husband was just laid off due to company merger. His entire department was eliminated. The only good news, is that we've been expecting the lay off for about a year or so, as such we had time to prepare. We also, have worked very hard to get our finances in order since we got married. We killed all our unsecured debt in 2007, $55,000+, and we have saved a good chunk every year since then. I'm still working on our lay off budget, but I hope that we will be able to cover our regular monthly expenses on my salary.

    http://adventures-of-sam.blogspot.com/

    Glenn, Cary, NC

    Been there. Done that. It didn't work. The money disappeared - slowly but surely. Without real income, you eventually become another victim of our perverse, experience-averse corporate economy.

    Melanie Dukas, Saugus, mass

    I am 59 years old, and I lost my job during the high tech bust in 2002 as marketing communications manager at a fiber optic start-up. In Massachusetts, this was for many of us worse than the Great Recession. At the height of my career at 48 years old, I was determined to get a job and interviewed for 5 years. I drove a taxi and limo 6 days a week, but still couldn't make ends meet, so I moved in with my parents 5 years ago and started my own business developing websites and marketing. I just couldn't take interviewing anymore! It was like heartbreaking, kind of like dating - I would go on the interview and get so excited and they never called.

    It's been a long road, but at I am happy to be working in my field and making a living. Luckily, I had done this before and although I would have preferred to work at a company full time, at my age in marketing the jobs are few are far between and I need to work for the rest of my life because I have no retirement. Even if I get a job, it is unlikely to last and then I would be back in the same boat. Now I am in control and my business is growing. Many people my age are not so lucky.

    Wayne Johnson, Brooklyn

    Boomerexpat makes some excellent points about the real world crisis that most aging unemployed deal with every day. The American Psychological Association demonstrates how out of touch they are with that world by "road testing" new counseling approaches after more than ten years of this crisis. Those of us who have actually been doing this work know how devastating the layoffs are to individuals and families. Is it a news bulletin to the APA that compassion is essential or that the world of the job search has changed?

    Although the recession has hit men and women alike, it is males who have overwhelmingly faced the brunt of this economic disaster. This not only means stress to the individual, but to his family and invariably creates an identity crisis of major proportions since men so closely identify themselves with their ability to secure and perform meaningful work.

    webdiva, Chicago

    Yeah, doing that at 49 isn't doing it at 59. You turn 60 and see how many employers want to be responsible for your pension benefits. At 59, I have absolutely NO money for grad school or any other remake (and I already have an advanced degree, thanks; my profession is simply imploding because of the Internet, that's all, despite all my efforts to keep up with technology) and, thanks to the recession, I also have no credit rating or assets that would make anyone want to loan me money for grad school.

    Surviving a week at a time doesn't allow you to go back to school. And those retail jobs are vanishing, too, as are many other minimum-wage jobs -- I did those until several of them vanished on me, in succession (I wasn't the only one laid off in each case, and no, I don't think anyone's going to teach me to change oil, either).

    There will never be retirement for me. I continue to do whatever I can, but it may never be enough because I can only dodge my age for so long. And I don't expect there will be any bloody cruises in my future, either.

    Tbird57, Phoenix, AZ

    I am 56 and the oldest staff person in my nonprofit organization which employs 30 people. Every day I see the effects of valuing youth over experience; for example: younger people don't think it's fun to work with you since you're so old; I must dumb down my expectations regarding performance related to the most simple things like basic grammar, spelling, punctuation and accuracy; my boss is 8 years younger than me and plots to make me dissatisfied in my position so I will just quit and they can hire a younger person who is more homogeneous; my experience is demeaned by a 30 year old as no longer relevant...and the list goes on. I'm working on finding something I can do from home remotely so age won't be such an obvious factor but the clock is ticking and I feel the writing is on the wall.

    LeoK, San Dimas, CA

    I believe what you've described is a huge elephant in the room in these discussions: It's awkward for younger supervisors with older workers under them, and the pro-active solution is to simply not hire any older workers.

    In many various ways we know more than they do (if only about life in general) and that generates some discomfort if not outright resentment. I've seen this play out even when the older worker is trying not to be a know-it-all.

    Kerry Pechter, Emmaus, PA

    Boomers think we invented music, sex, and everything else that we encountered as we got older. Now we're experiencing age discrimination and think that we invented that too. We didn't. Willie Loman was shocked when they let him go. "Old and in the way" isn't a new expression. There was never a golden age where people at the top of the wage scale and coasting toward retirement weren't either nudged or shoved out the door. The moment someone else is willing and able to do your job for less (and more compliantly), your employer is thinking of ways to replace you. "Up and out" isn't a new expression either. Reinventing oneself is mandatory, not optional. The good news today: On the Internet, no one knows you're a geezer.

    greenie, Vermont

    True- although if someone were determined to find your age there are so many places on the net where your age and date of birth are listed. And then there's your Linked In Photo- and if you do Facebook those photos of your grandkids might tip them off!

    webdiva, Chicago

    I've been reinventing myself and repositioning my skills every 5 or 10 years for most of my life ... and it doesn't always work. Especially at a live interview. Perhaps the question should be: at what point do comments like 'keep trying and stay positive' or 'give up looking and see how little you can get by on' become trite, useless and really irritating? Because both kinds of advice sound really annoying and pointless to me. I will keep doing what I must because I have no choice if I want to survive -- but meanwhile, I want our leaders to tell me why I've worked hard all my life only to end up still working hard with not much to show for it, and why those bozos who caused the recession that devalued most of what I had (it's still a recession where I live) won't be paying for it for the rest of *their* lives.

    BTW, saying that boomers didn't invent obsolescence is also useless. The point is: we have an uncomfortably large group of unemployed people over age 50 who have few prospects but a lot of experience -- what are we, as a nation, going to do about putting them to work??? They have skills, experience and institutional memory; to let them rot unemployed is a huge waste of economic resources exactly when we need to be more competitive as an economic power.

    Competitiveness comes from more than just laying off more people and pushing those who remain harder, until they quit. Haven't idiot CEOs figure this out yet???

    Chris Kox, San Francisco

    On the internet you are still unemployed.

    Ohio Doc, Ohio

    A masters, a doctorate and three-and-a-half decades of a stellar career in direct service, teaching and executive positions within the behavioral healthcare industry, and here I am in my 60s, a few short-term jobs over the past six years, unemployed continuously for almost a year now and finding myself forced into "semi-retirement."

    After submitting countless applications into HR "black holes" with rarely a response, networking with thousands of others and carefully grooming my resume and social media presence, it's beginning to feel like I have been permanently banished from the world of full-time employment.

    I could blame downsizing, budget cuts, wishful thinking that psychiatric drugs can solve all human problems, preference for cheaper, lesser-trained hires and growing dominance of unions in many types of healthcare jobs. But the main reason folks my age are un- and under-employed is the one that no one wants to talk about: Ageism. It's hard to prove on a case-by-case basis, but look at trends in suicide rates over the past decade: They're rising fastest for people 45 and older, especially for white males. I would never support suicide as a solution, but my heart goes out to those whose pain of rejection is so great that they would see death as the only answer.

    Even in a society that devalues the wisdom that comes with experience, there must be a better way. It's time to name the elephant in the room and to reintegrate those who are being prematurely discarded.

    vulcanalex, Tennessee

    Well if you are really good at what you do and there is a market for it, you need to consider going directly to the customers and cut out the middle man. I bet that there is not that much demand and plenty of cheaper supply. Sort of like my case where I believe I am way better than a recent graduate, but few if any believe this.

    Fortunately good luck and good planing keeps me in food, shelter and other necessities.

    Joseph, Chicago

    I have been unemployed or "under-employed" since Aug 2009. It's been quite the challenge--to find new work and to keep going forward. Yes, I took my skills and turned myself into a business but it was not by choice, nor, frankly, am I very good at being a business.

    I'm an excellent worker, but I never wanted to be an entrepreneur or "business owner". I don't understand all the business requirements, I have no idea how to benefit from the tax codes (actually I don't think there are any benefits in the tax code), I go months and months without insurance and everyday is filled with uncertainty--I never know if I'll have another "client", another opportunity to put another dollar into my account.

    I've been lucky thus far but I recognize that it could all crash down at any moment, and the once small safety net is completely gone. Somehow though, I face each day with a positive attitude and a resignation that this too shall pass.

    vulcanalex, Tennessee

    Good for you perhaps you need a partner or a service to help you in the "business" portion. Taxes are just something to pay, no real benefit. Keep moving and I hope for your success.

    Hello World, Pasadena, CA

    There is very little room at the top - for anyone - old timers or the young ones. So it is statistically inevitable that a majority of the older traditional ladder climbers will be disappointed - they will continue to get cost of living raises - until they are simply too unaffordable and unmanageable.

    Almost 50 here, and been unemployed, partially employed for a couple of years already. But, hey, seem like no shortage of people willing to hire me as consultant. They just do not want to want pay and/or give me enough time to do a good job. So famine or feast is what to expect, no steady paycheck. For the younger folks, if you are going to end up 50 plus and cannot hustle up a few paying gigs, or set up your own full-time racket of some sort, that is anchored in US of A (and cannot be outsourced), the American dream will just be that.

    LaBelleRebelle, Nice, France

    Oh snap out of it. There's a solution to this problem: triple Social Security benefits and allow people to collect in full from age 60 and partial benefits from age 55. What's that? No money you say? America is the richest country in human history. The only reason boomers are condemned to spend their golden years in penury is because we've let the super-rich loot the Treasury. Let's bring back the top tax rate in effect during Eisenhower years which was 90% and apply it to investment income which is where the rich are scamming the middle class.

    The Walton family is worth $115 billion, more than the bottom third of the country. I bet they could scrape by on a measly billion. How about making Apple pay some taxes for a change?

    How much money would that add to a retirement fund? Let's siphon off some money from other mega-corporations which would also drain the funds they use to buy off our elected representatives. How much money is the NSA using to vacuum up every single communication we have? Leaving aside the trillion-dollar wars, how much money does the military use to drone around the world making enemies everywhere they touch?

    Maybe there simply aren't enough jobs for people over 50 (or under 50 for that matter). Whether because of policy decisions, technological changes or whatever, a lack of jobs should not condemn a generation to misery. We worked, we played by the rules and we built this country. Now it's time for the country to give back.

    TH Williams, Washington, DC

    Apply to large firms, well-known names, but indicate a willingness to take an entry level position. They typically do not practice age discrimination like smaller outfits. Once inside the doors just prove your worth to all the young people all around you, every day. I'm also in my 50s but have used this approach since my early 40s.

    Yes, it is humiliating spending a year or so as a grunt, though only one firm has kept me at entry-level for even that long.

    Initially they do steal your knowledge but as time passes they realize all you have to offer and reward you. I also still work at 2nd and 3rd jobs when I don't even need to. Those build my network.

    TW, Greenwich, CT

    For some people, perhaps many, there may come a time when they rightly understand that finding a traditional "job" is unattainable and see that continuing along that road would be wasteful and maybe harmful. But, I would say that's adapting, giving in, but not necessarily giving up.

    Productive, creative people, I believe, get more out of life, interact with others more frequently, and contribute to communities' well-being. Respectfully, I would say that we live our fate, sometimes we make things happen, other times stuff and people happen to us. I accepted the fate of being 59 when my "job" was eliminated, and when my savings were almost gone, and our house had to be sold, and when family health suffered and college tuitions had to be paid.

    Sometimes that wasn't pretty, but I didn't ever see that as a kind of "prison sentence" or unalterable condition, since fate is a constant, perhaps even after we die.

    However unfair, the government wasn't going to help me; in fact they slaughtered my 401K with taxes. HR departments are professional with in the context of what they know, same for consultants. they mean well. In the end, family support, physical and emotional health, even prayer, help more.

    Only the individual knows when it's time and if she/he can afford to really retire. I'm not ready or able, and that's okay.

    Carol Murchie, New England

    Hear! Hear! I launched my own freelance business in virtual assistance about a year ago, after the first anniversary of my latest layoff. I'm 55, and struggling (just figuring out how to survive day to day when no money is coming in is exhausting, so no, I probably don't look like a perky 20 something.) Friends, well-meaning though they are, are convinced that I should dumb down my resume to get a burger-flipping job, as if I will suddenly have no more troubles at all. With a Master's Degree, good grammar and vocabulary, critical thinking and problem solving and tons of computer skills (self taught in things like Quickbooks, Wordpress, and able to pick up most technological tools), why should I trash it all to get a lousy job that won't even pay all the basic bills like food, shelter, and heat? I have had some people exclaim that they don't understand how a person as bright and adaptable as myself isn't snapped up by local employers ("You're so smart!" is the usual). That's just the problem, I sigh, that and appearing to be older than dirt with my graying hair. Maybe when I make my first million at McDonald's, I can afford to get it dyed nicely?

    albert, nyc

    I would argue the bar is even lower as I am 41 years old, unemployed and have been told dozens of times even though I have all the qualifications to meet the job but they are looking for someone with "less experience." Translation Im too old and they want someone younger and cheaper.

    Personally I think this is a mistake as older employees generally dont require training or supervision, which definitely comes with a cost, while young employees do, so on a net net basis older may even be cheaper.

    J. New York, NY

    In the good old days, friends were willing to put themselves literally on the line by picking up the phone and calling their colleagues saying that you have to hire my talented friend and they did. Nowadays, friends tell friends to apply online, wishing them all the best…

    Angela, Sacramento CA

    Perhaps it is time to think the unthinkable. Perhaps it is time to consider population control due to the lack of available jobs for the growing number of people who need to support themselves. Not only have many jobs been outsourced to other countries or insourced due to H1B Visas, they have also been eliminated due to technology. Think elevator or phone operators, gas station attendants that used to pump gas and wash your windshields to name a few. In the future technology will do much of the work and will only need a few human over-seers to make sure things go smoothly. What will the rest of us do? Our government does not seem much inclined to create a greater welfare state at this time. So how do we support ourselves in the meantime? They want to raise the retirement age but don't say how one is to earn a living if they have to spend the next 20 years (50-70) either unemployed or under employed.

    The 1%'ers will not be willing to give up their wealth in order to share it with the 99% without a great fight.

    I understand that this does not help the plight of those over 50 who are currently looking for work, but the economic and jobs landscape has already drastically changed and will most likely continue to change for many years to come. It may no longer be enough to have as many children as one can comfortably afford, it may require a more extreme solution such as limiting the size of one's family.

    GY, New York, NY

    Please note that it takes money to go back to school, people mention that option as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Assessing the option of making a sizatble investment with an uncertain outcome, and shifting priorities is very much part of what the older unemployed have to deal with.

    Dennis Fox, Miami, FL

    In these economic times age is definitely a factor, however, the job market has changed so drastically. Cooperations aren't hiring because they're making more with fewer people, globalization means more people competing for the same positions and technology has created opportunities which few are qualified for.

    Headhunters attempt to help place their clients only to justify keeping themselves employed.

    People with "lifetime positions" completely oblivious to the job situation around them.

    Reality is that in times of full employment every age would be able to get good jobs and people could be picking and choosing best offers.

    LadyProf, Brooklyn

    Interesting story, troubling presentation. I can't blame Alina Tugend and her editors for writing to and about the prosperous older unemployed--people who can call themselves "semiretired" with a straight face--because that's who buys this newspaper. But I have to protest the lede, opening with Shelley rather than Neal. The problem is presented as first hers and only secondarily his.

    Yet another command to wives that it's their job to carry the emotional load of their marriage. As always, the wife is probably doing it wrong. Can anyone even imagine a story about a husband's struggle to give his wife the right psychological support to cope with two years of unemployment that distresses her?

    JC, NJ

    Try having to carry the full financial load, the full emotional load, AND deal with a spouse's serious illness, all at the same time, in your late fifties. So far I am fortunate in that I have been a "high performer" at my job for five years. But I am rapidly approaching burnout and exhaustion, and we all know how long they'll keep me around once that sets in. Meanwhile, I wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks about what happens if I lose our health insurance.

    KL, California

    My mom was in her mid-50s when she was laid off from a company where she had worked for 20 years. After searching unsuccessfully for work for half a year, she went back to school to get her master's degree in a different field, from a good university with an online degree program. She worked unpaid as an intern for six months at the end of her degree before getting a full time job. It takes courage, but it is possible to do.

    hen3ry, New York

    Yes but she might have had savings, a husband, or some support that many of us don't have. I too changed fields in my late 30s. I was unemployed for over a year, ran through half my savings (at least I had that), wasn't told about a retraining program by the NYS Department of Labor until all my unemployment benefits were gone, and received no help from anyone when it came to keeping body and soul together. I lucked into a temp job, worked like crazy to pass the course but was hardly swamped with offers.

    I started at the bottom of the pay scale where you can barely make it. Thank heaven I didn't have anyone but myself to support. But I will say this: being unemployed for over a year with little to no help left me very cynical. I was always a hard worker, willing to learn, and willing to extend myself. That's what we told to do. And courage doesn't matter. All that matters is making money to pay the bills because not paying is what will kill you.

    Tom Shandy, Denver, CO

    Professionals in their fifties and sixties may well attain a heightened level of earning power, but why is it suddenly an emergency when they have to take a lower-paying job? Oh, I get it, they didn't save enough money when the times were good, and more to the point, they structured their financial lives such that their fixed costs rose to the level of their earnings, which were once much higher. This used be called behaving foolishly. I guess it's called fodder for sympathy now.

    Anne, East Lansing, MI

    Don't know how old you are, Tom, but maybe some of these folks made more modest incomes, did their best to provide for their families and help finance their kids' college educations. They invested in their 401ks because no one was offering pensions any more and then saw those investments halved during the 2008 recession.

    Got laid off or reduced in force and had to dip into what savings they had just to survive while they were looking for new jobs. Don't be so quick to judge.

    spintreebob, Illinoios

    Many factors. Employers want workers who will fit-in. The older worker is challenged with figuring out what a particular resume reader or interviewer sees as fitting-in.

    Economic climate is another factor. Many hiring managers had money in the budget to bring me in. They wanted to bring me in. But some Asst VP above them put in a freeze due to fear of what anti-employment thing the government might do next. The Asst VP won't be penalized for keeping the status quo. But making a change is risky to his career.

    jzzy55, undefined

    I'm 58 and if they ask, I now tell people I'm retired. I suppose that I am, but not voluntarily. The white collar trade in which I thrived in for 25 years no longer exists. So I switched to education, but after obtaining two degrees and state teacher certification it became clear that I am a poor fit for the public school culture. I like kids but not schools. I then did tutoring and after school teaching -- better, but that's not a career. It's temp work.

    I'm one of the lucky ones with a well-paid, benefitted spouse in a tenured faculty job. So I just gave up on working. I do a bit of substitute teaching, a bit of craft selling and occasionally sell other items I develop.

    It's often wonderful to be retired young, sometimes boring. It is what it is. Having a Plan B seemed like the way to go, but it turned out I needed a Plan C (or even Plan D) as well.

    Although I am one of the 30% of Americans with a college degree (from a prestigious school), at my age it is worthless.

    boomerexpat, Bangkok, Thailand

    It is refreshing to read an article on older unemployed workers in the NYT that is free of Friedman's nonsense about everyone needing to reinvent themselves.

    In the real world (on planet Earth not the one Friedman lives on) most people are not going to become successful entrepreneurs. Few older people will successfully turn a passion into a livelihood unless that passion is to greet shoppers at Walmart. And, to make matters worse, it doesn't make financial sense for most late-50-something year olds and older to go back and get an expensive degree for a job few companies will hire them for anyway.

    At the very least, it would be nice if people were able to show some compassion towards unemployed people who made the the lifestyle mistake of aging. Alas, the norm now, especially in Silicon Valley where I toiled for years, is to blame us geezers.

    Deus02, Toronto

    Realistically, and especially for a male, once that individual hits 50 and loses his job unless he has very specific "in demand" skills then all bets are off and that is regardless of the economic circumstances in place at the time of the job loss. Not only is age discrimination alive and well but in applying for a new position and even if he is successful in getting an interview, the odds are the person conducting the interview is more than likely going to be considerably younger than the interviewee.

    There is, of course, an intimidation factor involved plus the potential employer assumes the job is a "stopgap" for the individual who more than likely at the time of his termination was earning considerably more money. I am talking here, of course, an older worker with a college education. Older workers that spent their working years in a manufacturing job are another matter altogether. Their circumstances are generally even more dire. Nowadays, it is not much better for older female workers either.

    The ironic part of all this is while employers continually whine about the lack of skilled workers to fill their specific positions, they are generally downsizing primarily the older employee out of a job, many of whom I suspect have the necessary skills to deal with this employment shortfall. When employers downsize, they generally make across the board "head count" cuts with little thought given to the skills that will be lost in the process.

    mrsfenwick, florida

    Uh, no thanks. During the Cold War big business had a deal with workers. We provide you with job security and a middle class life, including pension and health care, and you support capitalism. Once the Cold War ended, big business decided it no longer needed to honor that bargain and it has gradually stopped holding up its end of the bargain. Time for American workers to stop holding up their end. Since workers no longer get anything in return for supporting capitalism, there is no reason for them to do so. Vote for candidates who want to raise business and inheritance taxes. Why not? You have nothing to lose.

    Art Koff, Chicago, IL

    Surveys at RetiedBrains.com show the best ways for older jib seekers to find employment is look for temporary jobs and project assignments. These kinds of jobs are easier to find and age is less likely to be a factor in hiring.

    We have also found that when applying for a full time job if you ask to start on a temporary or project basis it gives you a leg up on younger applicants who are unable to work without benefits.

    Temporary jobs and project assignments often turn into full time jobs after you demonstrate your abilities and work ethic.

    Betsy B, Dallas TX

    Why are older workers "able" to work without benefits? I buy my own insurance through the Affordable Care Act's Pre-Existing Condition insurance program, and at 61, I certainly don't get some other special stipend to make me able to get by more easily without benefits. Is it because my mature philosophical outlook allows me to see benefits as an illusion?
    Heck, most of my 401K dissolved during the recession/depression. Benefits haven't been part of my life for a very long time. I work hard because I must and because I'm proud of my abilities.
    I don't think that my employers care much about my work ethic in a way that will make them hire me full time.

    Don't get me wrong. I've been working 3 or 4 part time jobs since I lost a 20-year job. All my employers tell me they appreciate my effort. These jobs are not going full time.

    Polly, Maryland

    You wrote: Temporary jobs and project assignments often turn into full time jobs after you demonstrate your abilities and work ethic.

    I don't think that "often" means what you think it does.

    hen3ry, New York

    You are wrong. I worked several temp jobs in the 90s. Not one of them turned into a permanent position. In one of them however, even though it was against company rules about temps, I was expected to train permanent employees in a procedure that I did. I was rewarded with, you guessed it, nothing. In another position I was treated like a slave. The permanent employees never learned my name, never did the prep work before experiments, and lied about me behind my back. I had the skills, the interest, and the qualifications for those jobs and others. The reason for not hiring me, as I was told, was that I wasn't proficient in one or another procedure and couldn't start the job on day one by doing that one particular procedure and was unhireable. No one "hits the ground running" on day one at any job. It can take 3-6 months before one is productive. That's because a person has to learn how the job works, the routines, etc.

    The real reason employers don't want to hire anyone with experience is because they have to pay them. Anyone who has more than a few years experience, or who is in their mid 30s or older is going to have problems finding a job unless they have the right connections. And no one should be working without benefits. I've seen too many people come in sick, burn out, or become so cynical from being taken advantage of that temping should be stopped, period.

    CR, Seattle

    After looking for work for more than two years my advice is:

    1. Don't bother with recruiters; they are no more than craven "body snatchers" and have no interest in even communicating with anyone over 50.

    2. Use LinkedIn to research the approximate ages of the people in charge at potential employers. If the "HR" person is older than 50 you might have a better chance.

    3. Find out the location of the local food bank and don't be too proud to use it.

    4. If you have life insurance check if your policy covers "self inflicted termination" (just in case one can not bear it any longer).

    Smoke11, Washington DC

    This is why Obamacare is critical. I am in my late 50s. I have prexisting conditions. If lose company benefits, I will be in serious trouble. I can support myself if I have healthcare.

    Rocky, California

    I was laid off at age 57 and never wanted full time employment after that. I would have been willing to work a couple of days a week in a low stress job but nothing turned up. Fortunately, I am more familiar with financial matters than most Americans, I saved a lot during my peak income years and I have not had to worry about where my next meal was coming from.

    Most Americans are going to have to get used to a lower standard of living than they might have predicted for themselves when they were younger. But someone has to pay the price for the bad political choices we the people made in recent years.

    I have very low expectations from our government, especially at the state and Federal level, so I won't be especially surprised or disappointed if government programs are cut back. We keep spending money we don't have being policeman to the world and subsidizing foreign governments while millions of Americans are struggling just to get by. It sounds like France in the 1780's.

    swp, Poughkeepsie, NY

    I got out by the skin of my teeth and could afford to retire when I got laid off. I worry about setting aside enough money so my children can retire one day. They aren't prepared and don't believe they will become outdated. It isn't something they learn about in school and no one seems sure about they moving grey line between personal and social responsibility.

    I don't know how anyone prepare for a poor economy, high taxes and unaffordable health care. When the basic family is struggling for better wages, I don't expect seniors to be first. So many people older than me struggle with inept home care, social predators and poor oversight.

    J R, Poughkeepsie, NY

    I was laid off at age 52 and took over 2 years to find another job.
    My 2 insights:
    1.Always live below your means. I have, and it allowed me to never panic while out of work.

    2.I wish companies would see the other side of the coin when it comes to a "flexible" workforce: 3 years is forever in today's business. It doesn't matter what the 10 year potential is, hire the person who can start up the fastest and get the most done NOW.

    Jim Mc, punta gorda fl

    "Always live below your means."

    This is the best piece of advice anyone can get.

    My wife and I have always done that, so we were able to weather the storm when the stuff hit the fan a few years ago.

    Tony, Silicon Valley

    It's the old managers, HR, marketing, etc. who are making decisions about getting rid of their age group. Firms like Google, GE, Goldman Sachs, etc. deliberately won't hire over 35 for entry-to-mid levels. Then, there are 35 year olds interviewing candidates as old as their parents.
    Besides age, there is acute competition -- age & skill appropriate candidates competing among themselves, and the younger "leapers" from the level below and some older "down marketers" who just want a job.

    All of this is under the aegis of the 50-62 old CEO, assisted by 45-55 year old head of HR (with 35-year old recruiters as their proxies), and implemented by 45-55 middle managers directing 35-45 year old hiring managers.

    Then there's a % of laid off older workers who were promoted above their skill & results level, and need to recognize their luck ran out or the last mistake wasn't forgiven.

    ACW, New Jersey

    Ever seen 'Death of a Salesman'? There's a great scene between Willy Loman and the son of his old boss.

    Patrick, Pittsburgh, PA

    Hi,

    It's NOT easy living with LITTLE money and without a decent means of employment! I've been without work, now, for a little over one year. For a period of time, however, I just "relaxed" and acted as if I was already retired. I'm a 58 year old, single, male. But, for the past many months, I've been hitting the internet in hopes of securing at least interviews aimed towards employment! It's a chore...

    I've been trained, via multiple degrees, to work in either accounting, nursing, or college teaching. I've searched thru various employment web sites trying to find work! I've had some positive hits. I've only had a couple of interviews, though! I'm also an honorably-discharged U.S. Army officer. When I'm cleaned up, I can still pass for my late 40's or early 50's. I DON'T know what the "secrets" are, these days, in actually garnishing a good job. I'm NOT asking for huge salaries, either!

    DON'T give up!!! Pray!!! Ask God for a "miracle"!

    God-Bless all peoples searching for employment, I remain

    Cordially yours,

    P.J. Neary

    Inspired, Sunnyvale, California

    As a witness of a friend who obtains employment, I have discovered that he literally is glued to his computer almost the entire day and it is as if he is playing an intense game of tennis, writing back and forth, answering questions on the phone, writing, composing seeking. He is worn out.

    He is hired by major companies and often misled about the exact nature of the work, the duration, the actual plans for the position by corporate, and worst of all - when he has reported overtime - he gets nixed by the biggest of companies.

    You have to understand NOW is an adversarial time - and the job environment is WAR.

    Bending, flexing,conforming, and repeating all the assertions you used to get the attention of a hiring agent, and then you must tolerate and get beaten down a bit to earn a decent wage. Don't expect a job - they don't exist anymore.

    OSS Architect, San Franciso

    The latest trend in Silicon Valley is the "web cam interview". Your resume looks good, and this is the follow-up. The interviewer is pre-recorded. Your interview session is recorded.

    Somebody watches the recording. It take less than five seconds to assess a persons age. Game over.

    Brilliant. Age discrimination with absolutely zero finger prints.

    Ken, Smith

    "Age discrimination laws really can't be enforced unless the potential employer is foolish enough to let it slip that it's a factor in their decision."

    This isn't really true if the government agencies are motivated -- they can find "de facto" discrimination. They could, for instance, send equally qualified resumes, with only differing ages, to high-flying tech and finance companies and see which candidates get calls. I am pretty sure some of our marquee US companies would be unmasked as gross age-discriminators that should be at least publicly shamed, if not prosecuted.

    As things stand now, you could complete your M.S. in computer science at age 26 with $75k - $100k in student debt and find yourself out on your butt after 10 or 15 years of grinding work hours with no pension and no health care (if the Republicans get their way).

    Is it any wonder that U.S. college students are not flocking to this STEM-major life?

    [Jul 07, 2013] 7 Tips for Finding a Job After 50

    Jan 22, 2009 | US News and World Report

    If you suddenly find yourself back in the job market after age 50, you might need to dust off your résumé and spruce it up for today's changing job market. Here are seven strategies older workers can use to get their résumé to the top of the stack, score an interview, and-yes-land a new job:

    1. Play down your age. Age often brings wisdom, but wisdom can seem awfully expensive to a hiring manager. You don't have to include all of your achievements on your résumé. "You should consider not putting dates like graduation dates on your résumé," says Tom Musbach, senior editor of Yahoo! HotJobs. "You don't want to lie if asked, but on your résumé, you don't want to broadcast that you graduated in 1960." According to an October survey by Gray Hair Management, a career coaching and networking firm, 65 percent of senior-level executives age 40 or older say they've adjusted their résumé to downplay their age. Older workers need to appear up-to-date with the modern workforce. Be sure to list the work experiences most relevant to the description of the job you're applying for so that your résumé will turn up in job bank searches.
    2. Use examples. Don't just say you have good communications skills: Give concrete examples of how your abilities boosted a former employer's bottom line. "If you're applying for a financial position, you can find out what system of accounting the company uses and tell them about your experiences using [that system] at your last three jobs," says Steven Greenberg, CEO and founder of Jobs4Point0.com, a job-search website for those 40 and older. It helps if you can also describe how much money your skills made or saved the company. You might be expected to show as well as tell. "In a sales or marketing-related position, your follow-up has to be excellent because that's part of the job and you're showing me what kind of salesperson you are," Greenberg says. That goes for other industries too.
    3. Emphasize your flexibility. A common misconception is that older workers are unfamiliar with new technologies and are resistant to change. "You have to demonstrate your flexibility and adaptability and comfort with technology," says Mark Anderson, president of ExecuNet, a networking firm for senior-level executives. So play up any computer experience you have: Include a link on your résumé to a website you designed, or describe a program you implemented that improved work flow.
    4. Offer new info. Most people know that following up is the best way to make sure your résumé gets a reading. But don't pick up the phone without a plan. Offer a new piece of information about yourself that's not included in your résumé or cover letter that applies to the job. "You want to call out something to your experience each time you follow up," says Greenberg. "You're creating more data points for the employer to have about you and make a decision about you."
    5. Be a problem solver. Companies are looking for employees who can improve their bottom line. "Finding out what problems a company may have and then positioning yourself as a solution to that problem is a really important way to set yourself apart from a person who comes to the interview and just answers questions," Anderson says. "You have to demonstrate what you can do that is better than what others can do."
    6. Apply to companies that aren't hiring. Many positions are never publicly posted. "With so many people seemingly out of work, employers don't want to be bombarded with a lot of unqualified candidates that they have to weed through to find the jewels," says Renee Ward, founder and publisher of Seniors4Hire.org. "The recruiter will network and/or search résumé databases to select candidates." Sometimes it's better to look for jobs that aren't posted by sending your résumé to companies that don't have open positions listed on their websites. Also, let your network of friends and colleagues know you're looking for a new job. "The way you are going to find your next opportunity is through a network of people who know what you can do," says Anderson.
    7. Focus on fields that welcome older workers. After age 50, you probably don't want a strenuous job that requires standing or repetitive motion all day. There are plenty of industries that welcome older workers, such as healthcare, higher education, and government positions-all industries that are also proving to be relatively recession resistant. Check out the 20 fastest-growing jobs for aging boomers.

    Related News

    [Jul 07, 2013] America's techiest cities Silicon Valley No. 1, but who's No. 2

    October 02, 2007 | Computerworld

    The highest concentration of IT professionals in the U.S. is -- you guessed it -- in Silicon Valley. But naming the No. 2 spot isn't as easy, and the answer might surprise you.

    The runner-up isn't a well-known tech center like Boston or Seattle/Redmond; it's the Washington metro area.

    "It kind of belies some of the perceptions of where the hiring is, where people work in this field," said John Challenger, president of Chicago-based outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. "[Many typically] think that most people in IT work in Silicon Valley, and they might add in Washington state, Seattle and maybe Austin," he said.

    Data for 2006 from the U.S. Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey (ACS), released just last month, reveal what could be called a metropolitan area's "TQ" (technology quotient) -- how "techie" a region's overall workforce is, based on the number of self-reported computer professionals. And some of the results turn stereotypes upside down. (See our interactive national map, or query the database for a specific metro area.)

    Roughly 6% of the D.C. metro area workforce is made up of "computer specialists," compared with 8.3% in Silicon Valley.

    The third-highest concentration of IT workers is in Raleigh/Cary, N.C., at 5.3% of the workforce, followed closely by Boulder, Colo., and Huntsville, Ala., each at 5.2%.

    The remainder of the top 10 technology worker areas is rounded out, in order, by Bloomington/Normal, Ill.; Trenton-Ewing, N.J.; Austin-Round Rock, Texas; Manchester-Nashua, N.H.; and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.

    America's Techiest Metro Areas

    Metro Area Total IT Workers % of Workforce
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. 71,426 8.3%
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md.-W.Va. 170,429 6.1%
    Raleigh-Cary, N.C. 27,020 5.3%
    Boulder, Colo. 7,925 5.2%
    Huntsville, Ala. 9,390 5.2%
    Bloomington-Normal, Ill. 4,216 5.0%
    Trenton-Ewing, N.J. 8,519 4.8%
    Austin-Round Rock, Texas 37,206 4.8%
    Manchester-Nashua, N.H. 9,814 4.5%
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash. 75,557 4.5%
    Colorado Springs, Colo. 12,511 4.3%
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif. 89,989 4.3%

    [Jul 06, 2013] Is a Job Move Worth It? How to Weigh Your Options By Diana Ransom

    March 7, 2007

    Moving for a job, especially when you're just starting out, can be the springboard that launches your career. But weigh your options carefully. Where you move is just as important for your happiness as the job you move for, many career managers and recruitment professionals say.

    From The Wall Street Journal Online

    Full Story: http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunt ... ontent=mail

    [Jul 06, 2013] Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young) By QUENTIN HARDY

    Are large techno companies not only cemeteries for talent, but specialized cemeteries for young talent ;-)
    July 5, 2013 | NYTimes.com

    It's well known that technology is a young man's game. Still, it is surprising to see just how young (and how male).

    PayScale, a company based in Seattle, has determined that the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies in the technology industry, along with information on gender and years of experience.

    Just six of the 32 companies it looked at had a median age greater than 35 years old. Eight of the companies, the study said, had median employee age of 30 or younger. Women were generally less than 30 percent of the work force, and in fields like semiconductors, represented much less than that.

    While the results may affirm a widely held hunch, they are nonetheless striking: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall median age of American workers is 42.3 years old. The company with the oldest workers on the PayScale list, Hewlett – Packard, came in at 41 years.

    The other five companies with older workers, in descending order of median age, were I.B.M. Global Services (38 years old), Oracle (38), Nokia (36), Dell (37) and Sony (36).

    The seven companies with the youngest workers, ranked from youngest to highest in median age, were Epic Games (26); Facebook (28); Zynga (28); Google (29); and AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com (all 30). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only shoe stores and restaurants have workers with a median age less than 30.

    Median age means that an equal number of workers are above and below the figure. In large populations, the number is considered representative. PayScale, which surveys many industries, says it covers 3 percent of the American work force, an amount that could yield meaningful results. In this survey, some 21,700 company employees submitted information.

    Not surprisingly, the companies with older workers tend to be older companies, because some people still stay with one employer for many years, and over time a company may accumulate more of these people. Cisco Systems has a median worker age of 35, and both Samsung and Microsoft come in at 34. These companies also tend to have workers with a lot more experience.

    Younger companies tend to have workers with less time at the firm, which is partly an effect of being new and hiring intensively in recent years. Facebook's median worker has been with the company just 1.1 years, while Intel, I.B.M., Oracle and others come in around six years.

    Other factors are also in play, however. "The firms that are growing or innovating around new areas tend to have younger workers," said Katie Bardaro, the lead economist at PayScale. "Older companies that aren't changing with the times get older workers."

    One reason for this, she said, was a function of skills. "Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL," she said. C# is a software language, while SQL is a database technology. She added, "Gen Y knows Python, social media, and Hadoop," which are newer versions of those things.

    Amazon.com, notably, has a median stay with the company of just one year, a figure Ms. Bardaro ascribed to the intense pace of work there. (The study did not include workers in Amazon's warehouses, where skills and turnover are different.) "We're based in Seattle, and know a lot of people at Amazon," she said. "The consensus is that you are run through a gamut there, make money, burn out and leave."

    The survey was derived from information PayScale gets from individuals who come to PayScale seeking employment information, and volunteer their data to share information from others. PayScale, which works with LinkedIn, sells its data to human resources departments. Ms. Bardaro said her company had also backed up the information with third-party data, to confirm the numbers.

    [Jan 16, 2013 ] I am an unemployed computer programmer

    Yahoo! Answers
    H1-B's have killed your occupation. That being said-- It won't help you moving and then searching for a job. You need to have good, solid job opportunities set up in advance before you even consider moving -- that's a majorly huge risk moving before you have a job.

    You can post your resume around on the internet--such as on Monster.com--or read all of the cities you mentioned classifieds each and every day until something matches your experience level and expertise.
    Have you thought about going back to school? They offer a lot of extra help for students.

    ... ... ...

    • CA is questionable - a lot of the IT jobs there went away when the Silicon Valley market crashed. It's also crazy expensive to live there both in terms of housing and taxes.
    • In TX, the hot area right now seems to be Houston. There's also no state income tax there still (afaik.)
    • FL definitely has no state income tax still...Tampa seems to be the hot spot for jobs at the moment.
    • GA does have a state income tax. Not surprisingly, Atlanta is the heavy employer.
    • One place you might've overlooked is NC - the Research Triangle area between Raleigh and Durham is usually pretty active in IT jobs.

    ... ... ...

    Dice is where most IT types go to look for work. Just type in your job name/title, or skill set & see what states or cities have the most jobs you are looking for. Having said that, finding a job in this recession is very, very tough. I think your best shot for finding work, would be Texas or the DC area.

    California is going thru severe budgetary problems & many job cuts. I just don't see many jobs there.

    For every job advertised, there are dozens of applicants. Good luck, you will need it.

    [Nov 08, 2012] Finding Work Over 60

    November 2012 | Slashdot

    Hatfield56 writes

    "I've been in IT since the mid-1980s, mainly working for financial institutions. After 16 years at a company, as a programmer (Java, C#, PL/SQL, some Unix scripting) and technical lead, my job was outsourced.

    That was in 2009 when the job market was basically dead. After many false starts, here I am 3 years later wondering what to do.

    I'm sure if I were 40 I'd be working already but over 60 you might as well be dead. SO, I'm wondering about A+. Does anyone think that this will make me more employable? Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?"

    dhermann

    Consulting (Score:5, Insightful)

    Rather than applying for a full-time position, have you considered forming your own independent consulting business? You would have to leverage your contacts in the industry, but there is a massive difference in the culture between hiring a 60-year-old technical lead and hiring a 60-year-old's consulting business.

    Vendor management contacts just won't care, in my opinion, if you're professional and can get results.

    mcrbids

    Cut your own trail (Score:5, Insightful)

    The problem you face is one that I faced long ago in a completely different vein. I was unemployable, because although I had developed programming skills, they were self-taught by reading books and websites rather than school. Without significant experience, I was unemployable as all the jobs had requirements like Bachelor's requirements.

    So I did what seemed to be the only thing left -- started my own company! I chatted it up with anybody I could find who ran a business and needed something done, found some people willing to pay for a solution, and worked long hours for a while until my revenue stream was sufficient to live on. Now 15 years later, I have ownership of a valuable company that has grown successfully every single year since starting, employees working a job they like with decent pay and a work environment set up the way I like it. Sure, it has its stresses, but they are stresses I choose to assume or ignore, and I like the control that offers me.

    It's not for everyone, but I will probably never have a "job" ever again.

    eln

    Re:IT jobs at 60. (Score:5, Informative)

    by writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:08PM (#41922329) Homepage

    Just so you know, asking an older person for their retirement plans in an interview or at any point during the hiring process can open you up to a very costly age discrimination lawsuit.

    Not hiring people over 40 because you think they'll ask for too much money will do the same.

    If you're simply reporting that people that age tend to ask for too much money that's one thing, but if you're proactively screening out older applicants because you think they might ask for too much money, that's against the law.

    Niris

    A+ (Score:3, Informative)

    Having taken the A+, Network+ and Security+ as a requirement for my current job, I can tell you that they're not worth a damn thing. The tests are simple and they just check basic knowledge that you probably already have as a programmer.

    You could always go the route a lot of fresh grads who are also not working do: start writing apps.

    Games are fun, easy and profitable enough if done well.

    Plus there's a slew of tools to make them quickly producible. Lately I've been playing with the AppGameKit (AGK) from the Game Creators, and I like it. They have a free version that you could try out and see if it's something you'd be interested in.

    cayenne8

    Contracting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    Get into contracting. If you've not done it before...look around and get with a contracting company....preferrably one that does Federal Govt Contracting.

    Can you survive a clearance check?

    If so, you should have no problem getting on with a company doing DoD contracting....they OFTEN look for years of experience. If you're good, have a decent resume, they will submit you in....they want you to get the jobs so they can get $$ off you.

    The market is often dying to hire people with lots of resume experience.

    You definitely have a leg up on younger programmers.

    Try Urbana, Maryland (Score:3)
    by i_want_you_to_throw_ (559379) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:46PM (#41921889) Journal

    If you spent that much time in financial institutions, the think about Urbana, Maryland. Banner Life has a data center there, as well as Fannie Mae, and the Social Security Administration is moving a data center there.

    It's pretty good bucks, but far enough outside the DC metro area to be at least reasonable. Just an idea.

    Freelance (Score:3)
    by M0j0_j0j0 (1250800) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:47PM (#41921911)

    Try to get some work on the several freelance boards over the internet, start with small jobs and build a reputation. Try to master one specific subject, don't go jack of all trades.

    Specialize in area. (Score:3)
    by jellomizer (103300) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:48PM (#41921943)

    IT skills is a dime a dozen. You need to sell yourself in IT in your particular skillset. Health Care, Manufacturing, Legal, Finance, Government... People don't want experienced IT workers. They want IT workers with experience with their business.

    Zarjazz

    Expectations (Score:4, Interesting)

    by (36278) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:50PM (#41921973)

    I have to ask what your expectations are and be realistic.

    As an employer actively recruiting IT staff at the moment, rare in the current job market I know, and I have a choice between a recent uni-graduate and someone with 15 yrs experience who I can hire for almost the same wages because so many skilled IT staff have been laid off and need to pay their mortgage. For me the choice is obvious, I don't care about the age factor.

    However I also interview many many people who think they deserve to get the same remuneration they got from their high-flying finance job and wonder why they are still jobless after two years.

    Greeter at walmart... (Score:3)
    by Lumpy (12016) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:51PM (#41921985) Homepage

    If you get your A+ then you will work at Best Buy for the geek Squad... And from What I have seen there, walmart greeter is a better job.

    With your experience why in the world would you even look at the gutter that is the world of A+? with your background in programming there is a lot of freelance stuff you could do. hell start trolling the freelancing boards and pick up jobs you can do from home. Although a lot of those are incredibly low pay. I know of several flash designers with 15 years experience that refuse to look at the freelancer boards...

    "wanted an entire website designed in flash with a SQL backend and capable of scalability. Expectedt o take 3-6 months. Willing to pay $250.00 total for the project."

    That kind of crap is rampant on the freelancing sites.

    Or find a small business that needs a senior programmer. You know more than the 20 somethings, so use your age and experience as a positive!

    iOS is an option (Score:3, Interesting)
    by Nebulo (29412) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:56PM (#41922109)

    A 62-year old friend of mine took an iOS certification course at the University of Washington (Seattle) and promptly found a full-time position at one of the Big Four professional services firms, developing mobile applications for their clients. Prior to this job, he was a self-employed specialty developer, until his wife fell ill and he needed to procure full-time employment.

    So hope springs eternal - it's at least possible to get a job after being Of A Certain Age, if you have the right skills for the right field.

    Be Up-To-Date, Hide Your Age (Score:4, Interesting)
    by Anonymous Codger (96717) writes: on Thursday November 08, @01:58PM (#41922141)

    Make sure your skills are up-to-date, and structure your resume in such a way as to not reveal how old you really are. For example, no dates on your education and/or military service, leave off early jobs, etc. You might want to dye your hair if you're gray, although I wouldn't go that far.

    It's illegal to not hire you due to your age, but of course it's hard to win an age discrimination suit. So don't let it go there.

    Other people have mentioned govt. contracting. Some contracting firms like to hire older techies because they fit in well with the aging population of government workers.

    You're better off on your own.. (Score:4, Insightful)
    by tekrat (242117) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:00PM (#41922171) Homepage Journal

    The problem you're going to experience is that; unless the headhunter knows you're brilliant with tons of experience and willing to do the job for the same pay as some wet-behind-the-ears kid who'll never cut the mustard, when you get to HR, the clueless twit who works there will look at you and show you the door because you're 60.

    Start making Android or iPhone apps. Make a name for yourself by consulting; get yourself going with a IT temp shop. Having A+ is like having a driver's license, it's not a path to anything.

    If you were with the financial industry and really understand the ins and outs of that, you should be able to get a job in the investment banking sector, as HFT is always looking for guys who are good, and don't make mistakes -- because as we've seen, mistakes can cost millions or even billions in HFT -- so they want really good people, not cheap people who will ultimately cost them even more.

    Consulting? (Score:3)
    by gstoddart (321705) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:01PM (#41922199) Homepage

    Have you looked into consulting? Presumably, you have a rather large amount of industry experience and breadth of knowledge.

    Being a PM, working with companies on IT initiatives, that kind of thing?

    After I 'graduated' from my last programming job, I've been in consulting and not writing code. I've actually found it quite rewarding, and companies are looking for people with "big picture" kinds of skillsets and not just people who can work on the technical nuts and bolts.

    All of those soft-skills you've likely picked up, like being able to work in meetings, work to build consensus, scheduling and planning, estimating, overseeing .. these are all skillsets people will still be willing to pay for.

    There is life after code, and I definitely know people in their 50's and 60's who are still consultants and in demand.

    For some tasks, a little age and perspective is actually what is most needed -- it's like the old joke about the young bull wanting to run down and fuck one of the cows, and the old bull wanting to walk down and fuck them all. The stuff you've already done can be really valuable in helping organizations do new things. Sometimes, just having been there and done that gives you the perspective to see similarities in what's going on and understand where to go from there.

    But organizations probably aren't looking to hire you as a coder, but as someone who works at a slightly higher level. (And I'm not saying give up on your tech skills, just recognize the your experience might be more valuable than your ability to write code. If you can still wow the young punks with some coding wizardry, all the better.)

    Call me new-fashioned (Score:4, Informative)
    by Xacid (560407) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:03PM (#41922241) Journal

    But when I interview I look for a few things: technical merit, reliable, personality, enthusiasm.

    It doesn't even cross my mind that an older candidate wouldn't be qualified. Often, I expect them to have a mountain of experience that could get absorbed into the company. What I've run into though is the older folks often don't have that "nerd enthusiasm", haven't kept their skills current, or are just stuffy with no sense of humor. Maybe it's a generational thing? But a young person with the same ailments wouldn't have a shot here either.

    Re:Call me new-fashioned (Score:4, Informative)
    by miltonw (892065) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:18PM (#41922529)

    Having just gone through a job change and being ... older ... I'd say this is perhaps the best advice so far.

    Be enthusiastic about the work you will be doing. Be up to date, or close to it, on the skills that the work will require. Don't just talk about what you've done but talk about what you will do when you are hired.

    And remember that a smile takes years off of your face.

    Don't get it (Score:3)
    by Murdoch5 (1563847) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:04PM (#41922259)

    A+ means absolutely nothing. I took my A+ certification out of high school, got something like 99.9% on it with ever actually studying. The only real suggestion I have is to get it so you can take the second level certification test, MSCE, Linux+ etc.... Just load up with papers and then if nothing else you'll get hired to look good for the company. All of those certifications with the exception of CCNA, CCNP, CCIE and MSCE are all just laughable papers. They basically mean you found the power button and plugged the computer in. If your going to focus your time into a real certification CCNA is a good one which is a HARD path or your MSCE. Of course any of the computer networking certifications will at least help.

    Going to be tough, especially in that field (Score:3, Insightful)
    by A bsd fool (2667567) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:07PM (#41922301)

    There are a few things that may work in your favor though.

    - Certifications. Cross A+ off that list, and give a look at brainbench and some others. Most certs are not worth anything, but with your experience, you should be able to pull off quite a few of them at 'Master' level, which will demonstrate skills empirically. If those skills are in line with your experience, they will act as a "force multiplier" for that experience.

    - Experience. Did I mention this already? If you have kept current, this goes a looooooooong ways.

    - Stability. 16 years is a long time at one company, especially by the standards of the last decade or so. I started my IT career in the mid 90s and since then I have only had two jobs for longer than a year. It's similar for many people in the field. No hiring manager likes it, but they live with it.

    - Age discrimination...? They aren't even allowed to *ask* you how old you are, so don't give them many hints. If the experience/history on your resume goes back to the 1970s, scrub out the oldest stuff. Drop the years off your education, if you have it listed. Impress them with what you know to get you the interview before you drop any hints that may bias them.

    The toughest thing you have going against you is that every potential employer is going to be worried that they will spend time training you and bringing you up to speed on their systems and procedures just in time for you to retire when you were about to start really making (instead of costing) them money. It's not your age itself that is the problem, it's the fact that you will probably be retiring sooner than they would like. This means a lot of time and resources will be invested in you that they won't recoup when it comes to training "the next generation" of replacements and so on.

    You can mitigate a lot of that by sticking to your niche, even if that means moving where the work is. It'll be a lot easier for you to stick to the financial industry, where experience not directly skill related makes you more valuable. Of course you need to double-down on your pre-interview research too. Make sure that you tailor every resume you send out to the specific employer you are going to send it to, highlight the skills and experience that relate directly to their business.

    Also, get into machine learning! (Score:2)
    by phrackwulf (589741) writes:

    Huge important place to be for the next ten years. If you can do any sort of database at all you can get a great job at Orbitz or any other type of shop that uses Hadoop.

    Go to machine learning meetups in your area, super smart people are in the data science community and they will help you get a job. Our Chicago Machine Learning group is super good for this!

    forget silly certificates (Score:2)
    by thetoadwarrior (1268702) writes:

    Do contract work, move, consider lower paid jobs or whatever you can accept. But an A+ cert will make little to no difference.

    What job are you looking for? (Score:3)
    by shdowhawk (940841) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:16PM (#41922501)

    Are you willing to move somewhere new? If not, consulting is the best route to go.

    Do you have your heart set on continuing to program? You mention PL/SQL - PostgreSQL experts are in great demand now and are replacing oracle jobs all over the place. Few people have a LOT of experience, so being able to just claim that you've installed it locally (hint: install it locally on a unix server), and being able to do PL/SQL, you have a good chance of getting SOMETHING in that field.

    Do you plan on working more of a "corporate" job - aka: Big company to move up in? In that sense, i can see why your age would be a problem. Instead, take up android development. If you can get ANYTHING published, you will be in extremely high demand all over the country for java based android developers. You would also have a much higher chance of being able to telecommute or work from home full time. Either way, having long time java skills will still give you a shoe in to many android shops.

    Final recommendation - if you want to continue writing code and can't find anything, I would recommend taking up javascript and HTML. You can always work from home, PHP/Python/Ruby are pretty easy to learn, BUT you can keep using c# and java as well. There are a LOT of web jobs available all over.

    As for a+ / network+ ... both are pretty useless in my opinion. Security+ i've seen a few people give a nod of acknowledgement, but that's pretty much it.

    As for WHERE to get jobs: www.dice.com and www.craigslist.com are my two recommendations for finding something. Otherwise register yourself with a tech recruiter like teksystems or accenture. They make money by finding you jobs, AND they will sometimes bypass the interview portion with the official company they are trying to place you in, or they might only do phone interviews - that should help keep your age a little more hush hush while going through the interview portion.

    Real problem often not age but LOCATION (Score:2)
    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve (949321) writes:

    I'm not at all suggesting that the OP's contention that age may be working against him isn't true. However, I have often found that when people over 50 in IT "can't get hired" that what they are conveniently leaving out is the following -- they live in some small town of 50,000 or fewer people and there simply aren't any more jobs available in that small town like what they used to do. They aren't willing to move because they have paid off a house or are close to paying it off, have kids in school and don'

    Failure to launch (Score:3)
    by holophrastic (221104) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:29PM (#41922683)

    If you haven't noticed, programming has changed since the '90s. It's now pretty well a blue-collar job -- under three levels of management. Even in small companies, it's heavily controlled, especially where version control comes into play.

    It's the perfect job for any 20-something.

    By the time 30 roles around, you'd better be the one determining what gets programmed. Whether or not you also do the programming is irrelevant.

    By 60, your value comes as proper experience. You shouldn't be looking for a programming job. You should be looking to manage a programming company, consult for a programming company, assess a programming company, or start your own programming company. Otherwise, you're a) not bringing any more skill than a 20-something and b) wasting a lot of the skill that you certainly have.

    I'm 35, have my own software company that's varied in size between 1 and 5 programmers -- including myself. And that's just the way I love it.

    Something is wrong, here (Score:5, Insightful)
    by evilviper (135110) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:42PM (#41922887) Journal

    At least in the California job market, there is a dearth of qualified applicants. I've been on both sides of the hiring equation for years. The idea that you can't get a job, with over a decade of PL/SQL, Java and other programming, is just laughable, and tells me we must be missing something, here.

    Are you missing all your teeth and refuse to get dentures? Are you only looking for jobs in a 10 mile radius of your house? Are you demanding an astronomical salary? Do you have obvious medical problems that make you incredibly unreliable from day-to-day? Are you just a mediocre programmer?

    Your age certainly isn't preventing you from landing a new job. That said, it's certainly possible whatever those issues are, they could be age-related or age-compounded.

    Re: (Score:2)
    by DoofusOfDeath (636671) writes:

    Or it could just be an inefficient job market with too much friction in matching seekers with employers.

    Heck, just give the OP your company's contact info, and let him apply. That might not be a good general solution, but it could help fix this one particular situation.

    What do you have to offer an employer? (Score:3)
    by twasserman (878174) writes: on Thursday November 08, @02:44PM (#41922923)

    I suggest that you think about how you could market yourself. What are your top three features that would make you particularly attractive to an employer? Are there specific application domains where your experience would make you more valuable than less chronologically advanced people? Make sure that you have taken all of the modern steps to create an online presence, e.g., LinkedIn. Unfortunately, for many people who have been out of work for a few years, and especially for older people, it's hard to build a strong case for yourself over someone who is willing to work > 60 hours/week and who is more current in terms of technical skills and job history.

    It's much easier to find a tech job with a government agency (local, state, or federal) than it is to find a job in industry. Government jobs are publicly posted, and governments are especially sensitive to various laws regarding equal employment opportunity; there's also a higher percentage of older employees in governments than you will find in most companies. There's something positive to be said for a steady 40-hour/week job. While I don't think much of certifications, some government job postings include them, in which case it would be worth pursuing that certification for a specific position.

    If you enjoy teaching, you should consider finding a way to teach at the college level. Community colleges and university extension programs often need instructors, and there are numerous for-profit institutions that don't require advanced degrees of their faculty. While teaching itself can be personally rewarding (not so much financially, though), many of your students will be working for companies that might be willing to hire you as a contractor or perhaps even as an instructor for the company's internal education programs.

    In summary, be realistic about what you can bring to the party, recognize that many companies simply find legal ways not to hire people over 40, and focus on those opportunities where you are on a relatively even playing field in seeking a job. Good luck.

    recheck your resume, just in case (Score:2)
    by frovingslosh (582462) writes:

    Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?

    Get a job as an English teacher.

    You're EXTREMELY hireable to some companies (Score:4, Insightful)
    by davecb (6526) writes: <[email protected]> on Thursday November 08, @03:20PM (#41923473) Homepage Journal

    I know of at least two companies who have gone looking for people who are either retired or semi-retired for full-time positions. The companies aren't rich, and so can only pay normal wages, and so get turned down a lot and/or have terrible turnover as people in mid-career go looking for more money elsewhere.

    They find that older engineers more reliable, and that their depth of experience makes them as effective as more junior people, even where the juniors try to work too many hours. Sometimes because the juniors are working too many hours (:-))

    It's hard to find semi-retired people, though. The people I know about were found by the employer via word of mouth, but I suspect one can ask for 'enough experience that age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm' in an ad without actually getting arrested...

    --dave

    Dichotomy (Score:2)
    by Smerta (1855348) writes:

    This clearly delineates the dichotomy that aging developers reach at some point. (I'm not even close to 50 yet, let alone 60, but I'm not 25 any more either...)

    When you're young, and not really at the top of your game, you can still fill a role. Some kinds of testing, lab rat, meeting coordinator, etc. (I'm kind of saying this tongue-in-cheek, but the bottom line is that when you're young and cheap, and perhaps a bit underpowered, well we always need someone to fill the snack room and keep the copier

    Been there, done that (Score:4, Insightful)
    by whitroth (9367) writes: <whitroth@@@5-cent...us> on Thursday November 08, @03:24PM (#41923519) Homepage

    Ignore the kiddies and libertarian suckers' comments (I mean, if they were making that much, they wouldn't be wasting time posting here during the work day).

    The real question is how long you have on your resume of you being out of work. The longer you're out, the less HR assholes want to talk to you. Back around '04 or '05, when I was *very* long "between positions", I applied for one that looked like it was written for me. Never heard anything, so I got annoyed enough to call the recruiter. She told me I "wasn't fresh".

    That *really* pissed me off, so I asked her that if she took a year off to have a kid, would she never be employable again, because *she* "wasn't fresh"? That took her back. She said she'd never thought of it that way, and actually put me in. Didn't get it, presumably because her opposite number thought the same way.

    I also wrote a couple of articles I managed to get published in a mag. More on the resume. Did some F/OSS software, set it up as a project on sourceforge, and *that* went on the resume... and it also gave prospective employers examples of what I could do.

    Anyway, one thing I did was to use some hair dye. Another thing was that a friend looked me up, told me he was starting a co, and had me do his co. website. I never got paid for that... but with his ok, the instant I made that website live, I had, on my resume, that I was "working" and the website as a bullet point. He was willing to answer calls that yes, I was working for him. Not that many months later, I finally started working again. Warning: you might have to work outside where you live, at least for a while (till you find something local), just so

    a) you can pay the bills, and

    b) have another point on the "yes, he's working now" check box.

    A+ is useless. My son got it six or eight years ago, and no one would hire him, anyway. He went back for his 4-yr.

    Best of luck.

    mark

    [Oct 30, 2011] I'm aged 61. I've been a computer programmer (BIG computers) for many years

    Yahoo! Answers
    • Q: I'm aged 61. I've been a computer programmer (BIG computers) for many years.?

      What causes me to be flummoxed is the new technology. I would enjoy starting my own wedsite/url, but I'm lost. Is there anywhere on the Internet that offers a step-by-step walk through for doing this?

    • A: Join the club! I am 60+ too, and I worked on mainframes as well! You must have some serious experience in programming, so learning a new language should not be a problem.

      I would assume that you have at least some knowledge of C. (Cobol is a bit out of date!) This will give you a good start for Php and mySQL.

      Don't bother with free web hosts: you'll be more frustrated than happy.

      By a domain, rent a LAMP server (less than 100$/year: you can afford that, even on your pension).
      Then, you have two options:

      • You use a WYSIWYG software, like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, and design a small website (Warning: this will inevitably lead to a dead end when you will want to do something clever)
      • You use a classic Notepad++ (free download) to write your codes: the world is your oyster!
        You need two serious helpers: www.w3schools.com and www.php.net.

      Start with w3s: a lot of examples there, and good guidance. Go for "learning HTML" first. Experiment.
      Add javascript. Experiment. Soon, you will be ready for more! Good luck and remember: a lot of us here are here to help.

    [Oct 30, 2011] I'm so jealous of middle-aged developers. Are we unlucky

    programmers.stackexchange.com
    First of all, I couldn't decide the right words for title after reading How old is "too old"? question. I still can't decide with old, middle-aged, expert or professional.

    As you know, there are a lot of developers over 35-40 years old in StackExchange. They are helping to beginners and having less experience people. They are so valuable users. And mostly, their some answers are awesome because of good analyzing and adding their experience to answers.

    When I see this kind of users, they all started programming with kind of Lisp, Pascal, Cobol or Basic type programming language. These are the first modern programming languages. And I think these people are so lucky learning programming with them first because of they are close to machine language. Maybe they learn the basics of programming better. Now it looks they are working easily with object oriented programming.

    I'm graduated from computer engineering a year ago. First year, we superficially learned C programming language. Second year, there are C# and Java course. But when I try to learn those languages in college, I always feel like I missed something. Learning languages, structures, libraries.. if fine but teachers never teach us "How the codes working in machine?".

    They teach us the programming language which is popular in software market. So kind of they prepare us for companies. They think if we learn assembly or fortran, we can't easily find a job according to Java or C#. Unfortunately, at these days, this is kind of true.

    Could be better learning first Assembly, Fortran, Cobol instead of Java and C#? Are we unlucky?

    Michael Borgwardt Oct 29 '11 at 23:43

    Dude, C is much, much closer to machine language than Lisp, Pascal, Cobol or Basic. Lisp is about as far from machine language as it's possible to be (well, except for Lisp machines, but those didn't work out so well).

    Jeff Ferland

    Grab a copy of The Art of Computer Programming. It's a favorite collection of books to sit on the bookshelf so people can feel like they're smart. If you actually open and read them in sections, however, it's the Rabbit Hole. First off, this work was started over 40 years ago, so you'll see some old stuff that has passed in time (MIX processor language has 6-bit bytes).

    Aside from that, the nature of the book is that it's comprehensive in language, math, understanding, and approach. If you want to look at things at a lower level and understand how your modern languages relate to the processor, I feel like this is one of the best ways beyond what you get out of your degree program.

    Now, for the order of learning things, I think that any functional modern language is a great start (functional as in useful, so Java & OO languages are in). When you really look at data structures, learning C is the next thing I think matters. Understanding the power of simple arrays, pointers, and the stack are there. Writing assembly is something you do because you must, because you think it's fun to be MEL, or if you're doing reverse-engineering / hacking.

    [Jun 26, 2011] The Social Cost of the Loss of Job Stability and Careers by Yves Smith

    "... Another aspect of this way of doing business is that as projects near their end it is very difficult to keep people around to finish the job. Most people with any sense start looking for a new contract about 4-6 months before the end of the one they are on. Often we reach a point where we have to offer bonuses to those who are left to keep them around. ..."
    June 26, 2011 | nakedcapitalism.com

    As much as the rest of the world has chosen to look down on Japan in its post bubble era for its failure to clean up its banking mess and resultant stagnant economy, it has managed its relative decline in status with considerable aplomb. It still has the longest life expectancy in the world, universal health care, not bad unemployment (3% to 5%) and ranks well on other social indicators And now that the US is going down the Japan path, it might behoove us to take heed of their example.

    One of the striking difference between the cultures is importance ascribed to job creation. The Japanese understand full well that the workplace for many people is a far more important community to them than where they live, and so in contrast to the US, generating and preserving employment is a high priority. For example, Japanese entrepreneurs are revered for generating jobs, while in the US, personal wealth is proof of success.

    McKinsey had Yankelovich survey the attitudes of young people a decade ago, and even then, the results were pretty disturbing. Yankelovich projected that college graduates would average 11 jobs by the time they were 38 (!), yet found they were demanding of their employers, wanting frequent feedback (as in lots of attention) and quick advancement. But if you are not likely to be around for very long, no one is likely to want to invest in you all that much (McKinsey, which was competing for a narrow slice of supposed "top" talent and not offering Wall Street sized pay opportunities, might have been more inclined to indulge this sort of thing than other employers).

    But these rapid moves from job to job, and now a much weaker job market, are producing behaviors that old farts like me find troubling. One is rampant careerism. I've run into too many polished people under the age of 35 where the veneer is very thin. It isn't hard to see the opportunism, the shameless currying of favor, and ruthless calculations of whom to help and whom to kick, including throwing former patrons under the bus when they are no longer useful (I can cite specific examples of the last behavior). The world has always had its Sammy Glicks, but now we seem to be setting out to create them on a mass basis.

    The economic effects are also not pretty. A 30 year mortgage made sense when people would spend a decade or more with a single employer. And more frequent job changes means not only more total time unemployed over one's working years, but also the very high odds of falling out of a highly or even moderately paid career path to a much lower one as the work place continues to be restructured.

    A New York Times piece tonight describes the latest stage of this sorry devolution: "job jugglers" who hold down multiple part time jobs to make a living. This sort of thing used to happen only to lower income people, artists, or people who live in resort areas. The article makes clear that this is often a hand-to-mouth, high stress existence, although the interviewees put a brave face on it. And we aren't necessarily talking having one income source in the days and another in the evenings: three of the individuals featured had four jobs. Even then, they barely cover their expenses.

    Yet it could indeed be worse:

    Still, Ms. [Mia] Branco, who graduated magna cum laude with a degree in musical theater from American University in 2009, says she feels lucky to be employed at all. "The majority of the jobs I have right now are because people were laid off and they didn't want to hire back full-time employees," she said. "My willingness to have a hodgepodge schedule makes me more
    marketable."

    But the "marketable" benefits are only short term.

    A national study by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies found that young women who worked primarily in part-time jobs did not make higher wages in their 30s than in their 20s…The reason is that part-time jobs generally provide fewer training opportunities and often don't put workers on a track for advancement.

    And many of these jobs are clearly stopgaps:

    More college graduates are working in second jobs that don't require college degrees, part of a phenomenon called "mal-employment." In short, many baby-sitters, sales clerks, telemarketers and bartenders are overqualified for their jobs.

    Last year, 1.9 million college graduates were mal-employed and had multiple jobs, up 17 percent from 2007, according to federal data. Almost half of all college graduates have a job that doesn't require a bachelor's degree.

    I see this in my own building. One of the new doormen, a clean cut, high energy fellow, is a college graduate who is going to work on his graduate degree at night. One who has been here about a year also went to college. That was unheard of until recently.

    Even though the evidence is that these jugglers would do better financially and probably in terms of lifestyle if they got on a career path, some seemed to have been imprinted by their multi-job routine and seemed loath to give it up, even though they recognized that it is not conducive to having a family.

    These part-time jobs may just be another feature of this recession, but the odds are that it will become yet another aspect of the "new normal".

    ambrit

    Mz Smith;

    This 'multi-job' paradigm is also creeping upwards in the over 50 age group.

    Lots of potential employers pass on by over 50s, as I have experienced. When cornered and taken to task, one mid 30s Human Resource Manager for a big box store I had applied to, (for a job I actually qualified for,) said plainly that "older people are too much trouble."

    When pressed on that statement, she continued, "You older folks know too much. You call us out on the B- S- that every big outfit uses to keep the kids in line. Face it, you're a threat to the system." Evidently, overqualified also means having a social conscience today.

    I do pity the young folks today though. They're growing up in a new Dickensian Age.

    Daniel Pennell

    I suspect that that apart from the reasons already given, that there is one more to consider. Work, in a broad swath of the economy, is becoming increasingly project based and the work ends with the end of the project.

    For example, if McDonalds wants to put up a half dozen new stores in a region, they will hire the resources they need to acquire and build the stores in that region. Once the stores are built there is no more need for those skill sets in that region until they need to build again. So..lay off the staff that located and constructed the store.

    In my work as a program manager for Federal IT projects the work is inherently based the duration of the project and the contract and when the project ends you usually receive whatever back PTO you have and 2-4 weeks salary. You will likely also get about a month from the end of the project until you get laid off to find something internally or another job.

    Another aspect of this way of doing business is that as projects near their end it is very difficult to keep people around to finish the job. Most people with any sense start looking for a new contract about 4-6 months before the end of the one they are on. Often we reach a point where we have to offer bonuses to those who are left to keep them around.

    It used to be that if you worked for a consultancy or a contractor that you would simply work very very hard for a period of time and then either take a vacation and move to the next project or you had a couple of months of very slow downtime to do training or catchup on other tasks and then move to the next project. Now…you are billable or you are gone. Nothing to do with skill (though it may have to do with salary), the business just needs to get you off the books.

    It was not that long ago that the people in a position to function this way was limited to people like myself, senior analysts with very specific knowledge, or to project managers. Now, a company that shall remain unnamed, just hired a dozen college grads and people with years of experience, to do a bunch of proposals, technical writing and graphics work. They are all on 1099s and they are all gone after about 4 months. Pay your share and that of the employers share of the employment taxes. No benefits. No disability. No retirement contribution.

    It is unfortunate, but this is the way we are heading. It is beomeing every man or woman for themselves. But then..that has been the plan of corporate America for 25 years at least.

    NOW…all these companies gotta figure out how to deal with consumer that has a variable and insecure income.

    How does a 30 year mortgage work in this environment?

    DownSouth

    Daniel Pennell said: "Work, in a broad swath of the economy, is becoming increasingly project based and the work ends with the end of the project."

    One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal people is that it is superior to the new [pathocratic] rulers in intelligence and practical skills, no matter what geniuses they seek to appear to be. The knots stultifying reason are gradually loosened, and fascination with the new rulership's non-existent secret knowledge and plan of action begins to diminish, followed by familiarization with the accurate knowledge about this new deviant reality.

    The world of normal people is always superior to the deviant one whenever constructive activity is needed, whether it be the reconstruction of a devastated country, the area of technology, the organization of economic life, or scientific and medical work. "They want to build things, but they can't get much done without us." Qualified experts are frequently able to make certain demands, unfortunately, they are just as often only considered qualified until the job has been done, at which point they can be eliminated. Once the factory has started up, the experts can leave; management will be taken over by someone else, incapable of further progress, under whose leadership much of the effort expended will be wasted.

    …The psychopathologist was thus not surprised by the fact that the world of normal people is dominant regarding skill and talent. For that society, however, this represented a discovery which engendered hope and psychological relaxation.

    Since our intelligence is superior to theirs, we can recognize them and understand how they think and act. This is what a person learns in such a system on his own initiative, forced by everyday needs. He learns it while working in his office, school, or factory, when he needs to deal with the authorities, and when he is arrested, something only a few people manage to avoid. The author and many others learned a good deal about the psychology of this macrosocial phenomenon during compulsory indoctrinational schooling. The organizers and lecturers cannot have intended such a result. Practical knowledge of this new reality thus grows…
    ▬Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology

    Philip Finn

    "One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal people is that it is superior to the new [pathocratic] rulers in intelligence and practical skills, no matter what geniuses they seek to appear to be."

    yeah, that's what we now have reason to believe brought down the Pharaohs, caused the Reformation, gave birth to the Enlightenment, pulled us out of the Black Death into a Middle Class…so what's your point? How many will have to suffer and die under the New Gilded Age before something is done?

    tyaresun

    Is it called just in time hiring by the Ivy League MBAs?

    Francois T

    "How does a 30 year mortgage work in this environment?"

    It does not, as well as tons of other features of a normal and civilized society.

    The fundamental drama of this situation you so eloquently describes is simple: Efficiency comes at the cost of robustness.

    The quest for ever higher degree of efficiency makes society AND the economy extraordinarily brittle. One speed bump at the wrong place and the wrong time and oooops! there is a mega hosing of doodoo all over the place, it stinks and everyone is splashed thank you very much!

    And that is under the best scenario; a system that is geared for peak efficiency, without robustness and redundancy will ineluctably get obliterated much faster and more completely than a system with built-in redundancy and robustness.

    So, why do we burden ourselves with such systems?

    The short of it is: greed, short-termism and hyper-individualism, this Après moi, le Déluge! attitude of those who reach the top. Each of their decisions is "rational", yet, makes no place for anything else than the immediate task at hand. Their workers, children, descendants, their community…none of this matters enough to modify their thinking.

    I have always wondered how can men like the CEO of Exxon or the Koch brothers can look at themselves in the mirror and think with a straight face that the climate denial machine they've set up won't profoundly affect their progeny. Maybe they hate them that much, who knows?

    But I digress! What is obvious that such a way to operate is condemned to fail. My only hop is that it does os before it becomes the modus operandi of the greatest number of corporations. Because if it does, in case of financial or ecologic collapse, it is the very foundations of our society who would collapse too.

    Skippy

    F1 motors last one race but, wow look at them go….gosh.

    doom

    That 'threat to the system' business is also a factor in attacks on liberal education. People who are educated and not just trained are more resistant to the sillier kinds of workplace indoctrination. We're going to wind up with an education system that gives critical thinking skills only to the people with enough cultural capital to compensate for their subversive education – and that's people who were born in the dominant class. Mumpsy and Throckmorton can get away with immersing themselves in the trivium and quadrivium. Then they take their finely-honed bullshit detectors to work, and blow off a lot of the nonsense, and thrive. So people who can objectively view the system, and work it or change it, are going to be a different group than the victims of the system. Maybe that's the point.

    nobody

    After a few unpleasant years in temp and permatemp positions in the corporate world, I'm now in the social sciences, and I'd have to say that the indoctrination levels and other defects in contemporary "liberal education" make it look, to my eye, more like than unlike the corporate workplace. I'm really not seeing a whole lot more critical thought than I did in corporate America, and the continuities and similarities between the two domains are striking.

    Jojo

    "This 'multi-job' paradigm is also creeping upwards in the over 50 age group. Lots of potential employers pass on by over 50s, as I have experienced."
    ---
    Agreed! And tricking up your resume to reduce your displayed experience (as is often recommended by career consultants) in hopes of snagging an interview is no longer a viable strategy when your age is easy to obtain from public info databases like http://www.spokeo.com, http://www.zoominfo.com, http://www.pipl.com and many others.

    DOB and age should be considered non-public info, just as your SS# is!

    xxx, June 26, 2011 at 5:46 am

    "My willingness to have a hodgepodge schedule makes me more marketable."

    Talk about identifying with one's oppressor and internalizing his ideology and propaganda.

    More college graduates are working in second jobs that don't require college degrees, part of a phenomenon called "mal-employment."

    One the few good signs is the way the system seems determined to produce an unemployable, debt-indentured cohort of educated intellectuals. As a rule this type will happily serve as system lackeys as long as the system takes care of them, but becomes a revolutionary talent pool where the system neglects or in our case swindles and then assaults them.

    This is one example of how the kleptocracy is so psychopathic and short-term obsessed by now that it's incapable of any kind of rational, self-interest-based retrenchment at all.

    ambrit

    Good morning sunshine;
    Who ever said that 'educated' and intellectual necessarily go together? Also, it depends on what your 'rational self-interest' really is. If what you're after is to loot and plunder, both the essence of non-productive enterprises, then the present system is just right for you.

    I have to agree with you about the root of the problem: The abandonment of the social contract that had established the hybrid capitalist welfare state. But no, someone had to get greedy. I'm beginning to buy into your narrative. Gordon Gekko is going to meet Leon Trotsky, and it will not be pleasant to watch.

    attempter,

    Who ever said that 'educated' and intellectual necessarily go together?

    Not me. But the post is about college grads, so that's what we're discussing.

    Also, it depends on what your 'rational self-interest' really is. If what you're after is to loot and plunder, both the essence of non-productive enterprises, then the present system is just right for you.

    The criminals' rational self-interest arguably would involve some retrenchment, some kind of plan other than every looter for himself, and for the maximum for himself. (Not to mention a more rational plan for the remaining fossil fuels.) But they've bet it all on infinite greed and violence (and the self-brainwashing of ideology), that they'll be able, without taking even the slightest precaution, to forestall the inevitable political (revolution) and natural (e.g. pandemics from their CAFOs, crop failure from their zombified soil and GMO monoculture) counteractions reality imposes on such berserkers.

    Mark P.

    ambrit wrote:

    'Gordon Gekko is going to meet Leon Trotsky, and it will not be pleasant to watch.'

    Oh, here in the 21st century it could be worse than that – Gordon Gekko may meet Ted Kaczynski.

    For example, there's second-hand stuff on eBay nowadays that can enable one or two people with skills to do in a garage what required fifty-some scientists in a fancy lab in Novosibirsk twenty years ago.
    http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=dna+synthesizer

    DownSouth

    attempter said:

    "…the system seems determined to produce an unemployable, debt-indentured cohort of educated intellectuals."

    "Debt-indentured," that's the other side of the neoliberal coin. So there's not only the factor of diminishing job and pay prospects, but also a mountain of debt.

    CNN has a great click-through this morning showing 10 young people struggling with the debts they incurred to get their university education, My degree isn't worth the debt!. It helps put a human face on neoliberalism, even though it is benign in comparison to the violence neoliberalism has unleashed on countries like Mexico.

    attempter said:

    "This is one example of how the kleptocracy is so psychopathic and short-term obsessed by now that it's incapable of any kind of rational, self-interest-based retrenchment at all."

    That's why I think it's helpful, in addition to looking at the world through the lens of morality, religion/ideology, politics, history and economics, to also look at it through the lens of psychology. Many of the people with their hands on the levers of world power are psychological deviants, driven by a plethora of other motivations besides rational self-interest. Self-interest does not explain it all, as the simplistic constructs of neoclassical economics would have us believe. Our current economic and political leadership in the United States is not only a danger to others, but also a danger to itself.

    As Andrew M. Lobaczewski puts it in Political Ponerology:

    The pathocratic world, the world of pathological egotism and terror, is so difficult to understand for people raised outside the scope of this phenomenon that they often manifest childlike naiveté…

    One of the things I took away from Political Ponerology is that the takeover by pathocrats is not an event, but a slow decades-long process. As Lobaczewski explains: "Ever-increasing control is thus necessary until full pathocracy can be achieved. Those leaders whom the central authorities consider to be effectively transitional can be eliminated…"

    As I was reading Political Ponerology, I couldn't help but thinking that the West currently finds itself in conditions not unlike the late 19th century which caused Nietzsche such great consternation. I can't help but believe that dark clouds are gathering, just like they were then.

    DownSouth

    In regards to the decades-long process in which psychological deviants slowly infiltrate and eventually come to dominate a society, I found the following from Ponerology to be quite realistic:

    The traditional interpretation of these great historical diseases has already taught historians to distinguish two phases. The first is represented by a period of spiritual crisis in a society, which historiography associates with exhausting of the ideational, moral, and religious values heretofore nourishing the society in question. Egoism among individuals and social groups increases, and the links of moral duty and social networks are felt to be loosening. Trifling matters thereupon dominate human minds to such an extent that there is no room left for thinking about public matters or a feeling of commitment to the future. An atrophy of the hierarchy of values within the thinking of individuals and societies is an indication thereof; it has been described both in historiographic monographs and in psychiatric papers. The country's government is finally paralyzed, helpless in the face of problems which could be solved without great difficulty under other circumstances. Let us associate such periods of crisis with the familiar phrases in social hysterization.

    The next phase has been marked by bloody tragedies, revolutions, wars, and the fall of empires.

    Moneta

    Everyone seems to focus on the disaffected who are stuck going down that route but that's not always the case. Many highly marketable workers are also choosing the contractual route even if it penalizes them financially.

    I'm 42, with a skill set that can get me a full-time permanent well paying job offering career advancement but every time I have done it, after 6-9 months, it has been like walking around with a ball and chain.

    They hire me for my experience and skill set but once in there all they want me to do is mindlessly execute. Decisions are made at the top with barely any imput from the lower levels. They are all based on maximizing value ASAP so those at the top can exercise their options, IPO or profit from some other form of financial engineering.

    The work environments have been short-term results oriented, stifling, unethical. After a few months I start having trouble getting out of bed or tolerating the people around me. After quitting my last 3 jobs which offered only more of the same, I have given up on the permcnecy aspect and have decided to go the contract route and get to leave when the honeymoon period is over. Debt is not an issue in my case so this gives me great flexibility.

    What I have noticed is that my peers are swamped with debt so they are ready to sacrifice all ethics to keep their overindebted materialistic lifestyles.

    I don't know if my case is rare but something tell me I'm not the only one who is doing whatever it takes to stay sane.

    ambrit

    Dear Moneta;
    You have described one of the 'less felicitous' aspects of the "New Normal." Believe me and, I would bet, most of the older cohort here, when I tell you, it was different 'back in the day.'

    The short term thinking you describe slowly infiltrated and took over the corporate elite. The same phenomenon occurred in all aspects of life.

    An instance: Back in the days when buffalo roamed the plains, television had strict limits as to how much commercial time was allowed per hour. (I believe it was seven minutes per hour.) This was a function of the concept of regulation of the airways as a public good. Then Ronnie Reagan, (whom I hope is presently toasting marshmallows in the Infernal Regions,) did away with those regulations. In the interests of 'market reform,' such appropriation of time for commercial purposes was given over to the 'invisible hand' that everyone "knew" would more efficiently regulate the airways. A "Bonanza" of sorts ensued, and everyones life became just a little more hectic and aggravating.

    As the people commenting on this and some other blogs will tell you, IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. Yes Moneta, there was a "Golden Age." Some of us can remember it, and strive for its return. Don't despair, history shows that sooner or later the process brings about radical change, springing from internal forces.

    As for contract based employment, in my field, construction, it has always been so. The secret is to try and find those jobs that pay just enough more to tide you over the slack periods. I've reached the point where my skill set is no longer considered usefull enough to offer that extra bit more. H-! The whole field is constricting due to overproduction and a general fall in quality standards. (Your short term thinking again.) So, as we used to say, 'The squeeze is on.' On the bright side, after all the rioting and civil insurrections are over, someone will have to rebuild the country.

    DownSouth

    Moneta said: "Everyone seems to focus on the disaffected who are stuck going down that route but that's not always the case."

    I don't think that's true.

    Any legitimate study would have to take persons like you into account, such as the study I linked below, General Aspects of the Informal Economy. To wit:

    1.3 Clasificación de la economía informal de acuerdo a las utilidades que genera

    Aunque en este punto se divide a la economía informal, la situación es mucho más compleja que la descripción de una división de individuos o empresas en dos segmentos,20 pero para efectos de este estudio se utilizará una clasificación basada en las utilidades que se obtienen de las actividades comerciales, profesionales y de servicios, debido a que básicamente en ello radica la posibilidad de pagar impuestos.

    1.3.1 Comercio informal de subsistencia.
    En el sector informal existe una gran proporción de personas con bajos recursos, con bajo capital humano, bajos niveles de escolaridad, sin acceso al crédito, que encuentran en la economía informal su única alternativa de empleo. Este tipo de empleo puede considerarse como de "sobrevivencia". Este sector de la población en la economía informal está estrechamente ligado a la pobreza.21

    [….]

    1.3.2 Comercio informal de rentabilidad.
    En esta tendencia, los empleados informales se encuentran en esta condición por su propia voluntad y con un sentido de empresarialidad, dado que en dichas actividades obtienen mejores ingresos y condiciones de autonomía laboral, frente a los empleos formales disponibles.24 Estas personas tienen la posibilidad de trabajar formalmente, pero deciden hacerlo dentro de la informalidad porque consideran que maximizan su utilidad al no pagar los impuestos que les corresponden.

    DownSouth

    Let me try to translate that:

    1.3 Classification of the informal economy according to the benefits that it provides

    Although at this point we divide the informal economy into two parts, the actual situation is much more complex than a description with a division of individuals and business into two segments. But for the purposes of this study we will utilize a classification based on the benefits provided by businesses, professionals and service companies…

    1.3.1 Informal subsistence enterprise
    In the informal sector there exists the grand proportion of persons with few resources, with low human capital, low levels of schooling, without access to credit, who find themselves in the informal economy as their only alternative for employment. This type of employment can be considered as "survival." This sector of the population in the informal sector is closely linked to poverty.

    1.3.2 Informal profitable enterprise
    In this trend, the informal employees find themselves in this condition of their own volition and with a feeling of entrepreneurship, given that in these activities they obtain greater incomes and conditions of autonomy, in comparison to employment in the formal sector. These people have the possibility to work formally, but opt for informal employment because it maximizes their benefits and they don't pay corresponding taxes.

    Valissa

    Moneta, I think there are many people who think as you. At the risk of saying something terribly trite… people are different, have different needs, and different values. Many people are quite happy with a well defined and secure career track, and actively seek that… and I say bully for them! Others feel that "ball & chain" and prefer the thrill of the unknown and seek out new and unfamiliar situations. Some people are more motivated by Money (and it's cousin Security) than others… and so on.

    As of my late 20′s, and having an excellent resume, I was well positioned to have a big career in the defense industry (there are many interesting jobs there). Last year, when I was reading the big WP expose on how all the folks with Top Secret clearances could easily get well paid jobs, I thought… but for the grace of the goddess I could have been one of those. But I chose freedom over career and money, and I have NEVER regretted that choice. With a career, your mind gets full of your career related issues… when you just have a job, your mind is freer to go where it will.

    For many years I did temp work, contract work, odd jobs, etc. and was content enough with that approach because it freed me up to experience life more fully. Fellow employees who made way more $$ than I did seemed to envy my freedom. I had time to read, think and study and to do some low budget travel. One can live pretty decently on a low income if one has low overhead, even in today's harsher work environment.

    However now that I am over 50, I confess I am rather glad my husband (I finally married in my late '40s) makes a good enough income for the both of us so I don't have to go out and hunt for some type of side jobs for survival. I have the luxury of doing part-time work I enjoy and plenty of time for reading & thinking (and gardening!). It does get harder to get hired into more 'traditional' corporate jobs (retail is pretty corporate too) when you are older, but many people manage to find/create interesting solutions for themselves.

    A friend and I have both observed that some people are able to figure out what jobs or careers are more valuable at this time in history and then 'just do it'. It's surprising how many well educated coporate type people don't know how to do anything other than work in a corproate environment and therefore are clueless when they get laid off. We observed that some people seem to very slow to realize changing job and business trends whereas others looked around them, paid attention and then took appropriate action. And between us, our examples of acquaintance's stories spanned socio-economic, racial, degree-of-education and age-based groups

    kievite

    The 6% group [of full-bore psychopaths] constitute the new mobility; the 12% group [of less extreme psychopaths and other psychological deviants] forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous.

    I think that this 12% group is by-and-large consists of RWA(right wing authoritarians) types

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

    RWA or in common language "kiss up, kick down" personalities tend to dominate as they hire/promote strictly with thier own group.

    According to Wikipedia this personality type

    "is defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of psychodynamic, childhood experiences. These traits are conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness," destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sexuality (sexual repression).[1] In brief, the authoritarian is predisposed to follow the dictates of a strong leader and traditional, conventional values."

    See http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/authoritarians.shtml

    attempter,

    Another example is how, whereas previous totalitarian systems tried to provide the atomized individual (a potential rebel, if he can latch onto a new idea/movement) with at least a sham way of belonging (e.g. the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, "Community of the People"), neoliberal capitalism relentlessly strives to destroy all possible bases of social cohesion.

    Those leaders whom the central authorities consider to be effectively transitional can be eliminated.

    Corporate liberals are the obvious example. Also the way the system is now starting to liquidate its own flunkey professional class.

    fifi

    Yup. A systemic collapse is only one disaffected, alienated engineer or IT guy saying "screw it" and working to destroy it all. What stake does he have in the system if he if unable to afford to get married or have children?

    nonclassical

    "Contracted workers" are to be the new reality..no benefits, no pay, even, without generating profit..and no messy unemployment benefits..

    vlade

    From what I know of the current Japan, the tempization of jobs is a huge problem there, and it did start in the lost decade. So US (and UK, I can see it here too, although to a lesser extent) is on that path, and given the previous attitude to work, moving considerably faster.

    One thing I wish we would stop saying is assuming over qualification because someone has a degree. I'd say it's more overpromising – the system (for various reasons, including dealing with youth unemployment) promised young people that they will have better jobs if they get a degree.

    That is manifestly not true, as if you imagine that 100% of the population got a degree, the number of jobs that require a degree is more or less the same.

    jimS

    I agree with vlade. I noticed the article was in danger of mixing up a problem (insecurity of employment and exploitation of workers) with a non-problem (being a graduate doesn't get me special privileges anymore!).

    I think 100% graduation is a good thing to aim for, and if that means your plumber has a degree in English, well, what's wrong with that? It does leave us with the moral requirement that that plumber should have a long and satisfying career, with appreciative clients, and be able to afford a home fit for him and his family. But I believe we already owed the plumber that when he didn't have an English degree.

    Dan Duncan

    What a joke this JimS comment is…

    "…(we have)the moral requirement that that plumber should have a long and satisfying career, with appreciative clients, and be able to afford a home fit for him and his family. is one of the most ridiculous comments ever made in the English language.

    The only positive to this statement is that the dumbass, plumber who took on $50,000 in student-loan-debt to get a useless English degree might just get his money's worth analyzing this tripe.

    "We have a moral requirement that plumber's have appreciative clients"

    That is freaking hilarious.

    I can see JimS in the confessional at this moment:

    "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned: My plumber does not have appreciative clients."

    ambrit

    Dear Mr Duncan;
    Oh my, you seem to have misunderstood jimSs' comment. He ends with: "..but I believe we already owed the plumber that.."

    I myself am an overeducated plumber. I don't have a degree, but I have been told, "You read too D- much!" by an otherwise reasonable employer. Consider the underlying assumption behind the 'categorization' of people into 'classes.' It is implied that 'working people' are incapable of reasoning and analysis. This dog wont hunt my friend. A great deal of a persons world view is based upon their adaptation to the expectations of the society around them. If you are told that "plumbers are too dumb to analyze english," literature or functional communication, most people, if they find themselves in the Plumber "Box" will not even try. This does not even require any "higher education." Just an unfettered curiosity, and some resources. It is the question of resources that brings in the matter of 'leisure time' and financial security. Some form of each is needed to ease the process of personal improvement. It's no accident that the Victorian concept of "Individual Improvement" rose alongside the rising standards of living for the emerging "Middle Class."

    The present assault on the Middle Class betokens a yearning for the good old days of Feudal social arraingments.
    So, yes, depending on your world view, we do owe that plumber, and ofice worker, and even burger flipper a better life, in all respects. That's what all the shouting is all about.

    Valissa

    "It's no accident that the Victorian concept of "Individual Improvement" rose alongside the rising standards of living for the emerging "Middle Class.""

    That is a popular misconception. According to a fascinating book* I read recently, Americans have been interested in self-improvement and character building from colonial times onward (as seen in diaries), and this interest became more popular after the Revolutionary War.

    *Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character, by Claude S. Fischer (highly recommended!)

    jcrit

    Laser true! Anyone who has had to fight with getting cheap Chinese brass fixtures to not leak definitely deserves our fullest consideration.

    nonclassical

    Vlade,

    It may NOW be "manifestly untrue" in the states, however, having taught (secondary) in states and Europe, it is not true there (Germany). Actually, one must recognize, it was never "true" in states, as only 20% of Americans graduate from 4 year university or vocational equivalent..as opposed to 70%+ of Euros. Of course Euro goals involve making certain all are paying into expensive social systems through
    taxes, while U.S. goals involve cheap labor force.

    While Americans are encouraged by mainstream media to castigate U.S. education as "provider of opportunity", it was never educational opportunity people sought.

    In states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, circa 2005, study shows average wage necessary for family of 4=$45,000.00 per year. Agricultural, rural areas less, urban cities, more.

    But TOTAL number of jobs PAYING that $45,000.00 per year, was only 20% of jobs.

    I suggested to our Superintendent of Kitsap Schools, Washington State, that she work to DOUBLE the 20% currently
    graduating, heading off to 4 year university. She replied,
    "But then there would be no jobs for them"…I stated, "Yes,
    and then it's no longer an "educational problem"…

    The U.S. may begin to look like Egypt-where so many youth are university educated, with no possibility of gainful employ.

    But of course we have the "Tea Party" anti-intellectuals to marginalize them…let's remember, intellectuals historically appear to either lead change, or be exterminated by it…

    H. Alexander Ivey

    vlade

    Over promising, not over qualified! An excellent comment and one I will most happily steal, as I have lived large chunks of my life in that pursuit of the perfect college degree. Fortunately I did that when college was cheaper so I lived financially to tell the tale.

    Abusive Workplaces

    Corporate 'Murica hires and fires like the use of tissue paper. For some reason, we've accepted this as normal, or beneficial.

    Richard

    It's interesting how this perspective changes when one moves between labour and management. A salaried worker has different incentives than a partner. A recent article showed that doctors in Maine are gradually moving to salaried hospital positions, causing their politics to shift.

    This reminds me of the genius that was the Bush Ownership Society. While it failed to come to fruition, I can only envision how different society would look like if more people have a (paid off) personal

    [Apr 17, 2011] Sorry, He's Toast

    Apr 17, 2011 | Newsweek

    An exclusive NEWSWEEK Poll proves what every wife intuitively knows: unemployed middle-aged men are sad, tired, and defeated.

    But here's the rub: they're also in denial.

    ...

    [Sep 19, 2010] Older Unemployed Struggle to Rejoin the Work Force by MOTOKO RICH

    Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those from younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills - as well as some technical skills sought by employers - are rusty after years of working for the same company.
    Sep 19, 2010 | NYTimes.com

    ... ... ...

    "There are these fears in the background, and they are suppressed," said Ms. Reid, who is now selling some of her jewelry and clothes online and is late on some credit card payments. "I have had nightmares about becoming a bag lady," she said. "It could happen to anyone. So many people are so close to it, and they don't even realize it."

    Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those from younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills - as well as some technical skills sought by employers - are rusty after years of working for the same company.

    Many had in fact anticipated working past conventional retirement ages to gird themselves financially for longer life spans, expensive health care and reduced pension guarantees.

    The most recent recession has increased the need to extend working life. Home values, often a family's most important asset, have been battered. Stock portfolios are only now starting to recover. According to a Gallup poll in April, more than a third of people not yet retired plan to work beyond age 65, compared with just 12 percent in 1995.

    Older workers who lose their jobs could pose a policy problem if they lose their ability to be self-sufficient. "That's what we should be worrying about," said Carl E. Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, "what it means to this class of the new unemployables, people who have been cast adrift at a very vulnerable part of their career and their life."

    Forced early retirement imposes an intense financial strain, particularly for those at lower incomes. The recession and its aftermath have already pushed down some older workers. In figures released last week by the Census Bureau, the poverty rate among those 55 to 64 increased to 9.4 percent in 2009, from 8.6 percent in 2007.

    But even middle-class people who might skate by on savings or a spouse's income are jarred by an abrupt end to working life and to a secure retirement.

    "That's what I spent my whole life in pursuit of, was security," Ms. Reid said. "Until the last few years, I felt very secure in my job."

    As an auditor, Ms. Reid loved figuring out the kinks in a manufacturing or parts delivery process. But after more than 20 years of commuting across Puget Sound to Boeing, Ms. Reid was exhausted when she was let go from her $80,000-a-year job.

    Stunned and depressed, she sent out résumés, but figured she had a little time to recover. So she took vacations to Turkey and Thailand with her husband, who is a home repairman. She sought chiropractic treatments for a neck injury and helped nurse a priest dying of cancer.

    ... ... ....

    "A job is more than a job, you know," Mr. Mielock said. "It's where you fit in society."

    Here in the greater Seattle area, a fifth of those claiming extended unemployment benefits are 55 and older.

    To help seniors polish their job-seeking skills, WorkSource, a local consortium of government and nonprofit groups, recently began offering seminars. On a recent morning, 14 people gathered in a windowless conference room at a local community college to get tips on how to age-proof their résumés and deflect questions about being overqualified.

    Motivational posters hung on one wall, bearing slogans like "Failure is the path of least persistence."

    ... ... ...

    Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. In August, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly more than 39 weeks, according to the Labor Department, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.

    At this year's pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth.

    [May 16, 2005] 50 and Fired By John Helyar

    May 16, 2005 | Fortune

    For millions of people, it already is serious. Bruce Tulgan, a consultant on generational workplace issues, estimates that 3.5 million people between the ages of 40 and 58 vanished from the American workforce from 2001 to 2004. That's about 5% of all baby-boomers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of "displaced workers" (people who lost their jobs for any reason other than for cause) offers a concise litany of the ways middle-aged people get screwed. In the most recent survey, which covers 2001 through 2003, 55- to 64-year-old displaced workers were less likely to find new jobs than 25- to 54-year-olds (57% vs. 69%), and more likely to drop out of the workforce altogether (20% vs. 11%). Of the lucky castoffs who get rehired, older folks take a much bigger pay cut than the young'uns. A 2003 survey by DBM, an outplacement firm, found that only 32% of workers over 57 earned the same or higher pay at their new employer, versus 42% of 38-to-56-year-olds (and 60% of 21-to-37-year-olds). Those data are all a year or two old, but the trends are continuing. "Older white-collar workers quickly become disenfranchised," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Economy. com. "They have difficulty getting back into the job market, and when they do, their compensation is often significantly reduced."

    How did life get so bad for pentagenarians? Age discrimination is part of the problem. Some employers assume that people north of 50 are marking time, or lacking in energy and up-to-date skills. In a survey of 428 HR managers by the Society for Human Resource Management, 53% said older workers "didn't keep up with technology," and 28% characterized them as "less flexible." That certainly rings true for Sam Horgan, 57, a veteran CFO who's spent a lot of time between jobs. A 30-ish job interviewer asked him, "Would you have trouble working with young bright people?" One job interviewer pointedly said to 58-year-old Russ Rakestraw, "You've got a lot of maturity." The former Louisville public administrator didn't take it as a compliment. "Why don't you come out and tell me I'm old?" he silently fumed. "Who's kidding who?"

    But another reason is a profound, age-neutral economic transformation. These people had the bad luck to reach their peak earning years during an economic perfect storm. There was the recent recession and its aftermath, of course. Beyond that, there are some forces that have been building for a while, such as the bottom-line demands of Wall Street and the steady rise in health costs. Other pressures have developed more recently--for example, the proliferation of excellent, inexpensive engineers and systems analysts and whatnot in China and India. All those factors have hastened the demise of the safe, secure white-collar job.

    "It's a true paradigm shift," says Karen Hochman, chair of the New York City chapter of MENG, all of whose 550 members have held top corporate jobs and half of whom are out of work. "You've got hundreds of thousands of obsolete professionals who can't find employment in positions where they've been successful. These are people living off retirement savings 15 years before they were supposed to retire. They don't know what they're going to do."

    You don't see many overt signs of panic at gatherings of involuntary retirees. What's most noticeable at support groups and networking meetings is a kind of sustenance through euphemism. No one is unemployed; they're "in transition." But at a recent meeting of the Atlanta chapter of FENG (Financial Executives Networking Group), anxiety surfaces when a facilitator asks each of the dozen middle-aged men in the room to review their past week's job-hunting tactics and confess shortcomings. "Making the phone calls," says the first man on the hot seat. "I hate it." It's just not like middle-aged bean counters to hustle and cold-call. "I remember trying to make calls without standing on my tongue," says chapter vice president Grant Anderson, who landed a new CFO job in March after a year's hiatus. "But you have to get over it, because that's how you network and that's how I got my job. It was an unadvertised blue-plate special." And when you do finally get a job, Anderson advises, keep networking. Today, he says, "being employed is an illusion."

    "Seasoned" hasn't always been a code word for "untouchable." When America was an agrarian society, elders were honored for their knowledge of the earth and kept involved in the family farm long into old age. But with the Industrial Revolution, far greater value was placed on speed and productivity. That was the province of younger people. The creation of Social Security in 1935 wasn't just a beneficent gesture to seniors. "From then on we had the cult of youth, the belief that each generation brought more and better and smarter young people than ever," says Ken Dychtwald, president of AgeWave, a demographic consulting firm in San Francisco. "We had to move the old people out."

    By the 1990s the demand for speed and productivity dwarfed anything the industrialists of the 1890s could have imagined. The most devout adherents of the cult of youth are arguably in Silicon Valley, where older workers can be forgiven for feeling blacklisted. "When the [Internet] explosion happened, all these young people were drawn in who were willing to work for six or seven days a week for little pay and a lot of stock options," says Paul Kostek of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA. "A lot of people who were older and had families said, 'Do I want to take this risk?'" Tech veterans who sat out the bubble bacchanalia couldn't regain positions even after sobriety returned, according to Kostek, a former president of the trade group and an engineer at Boeing. The bubble may have burst, but the industry's belief in the virtues of inexperienced, inexhaustible, inexpensive youth remained. "Technology has taken the position that if you've got gray hair, you're not up to speed," Kostek says. Think he's exaggerating? A November survey of 983 IEEE-USA members, median age 49, found that 42% were unemployed.

    Old-economy stalwarts embraced youth almost as zealously in the 1990s. (They almost had to, lest they lose newly recruited MBAs to dot-coms.) General Electric made an obsession of identifying its hottest up-and-comers at tender ages. They were called "high pots," for high potential, and fast-tracked up the corporate ladder. Pity the middle-aged managers who occupied rungs along their route. They were called "blockers," and they had to be removed.

    [Nov 25, 2003] NAEA BLS does not dispute that 20% or more US programmers displaced

    From: Kim Berry
    Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 10:31 AM
    To: [email protected]
    Subject: RE: BLS: Where are the 150,000 programmers who "left the workforce"?

    Followup:

    Randy (202 691-5456) from BLS phoned me.

    1. He explained that this current population survey does not track individuals longitudally (the same person over time) so it does not reveal the impact on the 150,000+ displaced programmers who now are working doing something.
    2. He stated that, even without my interpolation to a 20% or greater unemployment among programmers, the 7.1% that this data reveals is still "very high" - exceeding the national average for all occupations.
    3. He clarified that my last paragraph is incorrect - the survey is independent of whether individuals are receiving unemployment benefits. (Maybe the State has data based on benefits? http://www.calmis.ca.gov/htmlfile/subject/lftable.htm)
    4. He did not dispute that my inference that 20% of computer programmers in the U.S. are either unemployed or working in another profession - likely lower-paid - is reasonable.
    Nonetheless, Congress continues to admit up to 65,000 foreign tech workers per year on the premise of a labor shortage, and DOL continues to grant petitions for both nonimmigrant and permanent immigrants into this labor pool with no requirement of a showing that no qualified U.S. workers are available.

    Shouldn't these visas be immediately suspended until the number of employed programmers approaches the 2000 level? Shouldn't some nonimmigrant visas be revoked to provide needed employment for U.S. tech workers?

    Sincerely,

    Kim Berry

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Kim Berry
    Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 12:39 PM
    To: '[email protected]'
    Subject: BLS: Where are the 150,000 programmers who "left the workforce"?

    BLS, (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_cont.htm)

    Please refer to the chart in this article, which is based on BLS statistics:

    http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16100697

    It concludes that programmer unemployment is "only" about 7% because the number of programmers in the workforce has dropped by about 150,000 workers in the last three years.

    This is an odd presumption since a record number of foreign programmers entered the U.S. on nonimmigrant visas during this period - roughly another 100,000 in this workforce category.

    Unless BLS expects us to believe that the bulk of these workers have been promoted to managers - or retired to the south of France on dot-com stock options - then there should be 800.000 programmers in the U.S. workforce - with only 550,000 currently employed.

    This suggests that unemployment among computer programmers is (250/800) = 31% UNEMPLOYMENT

    Can you please explain why my reasoning is flawed, and why BLS excludes programmers whose benefits have expired as no longer part of the workforce?

    Sincerely,

    Mr. Kim Berry

    Sacramento, CA

    www.naea.us - board, www.programmersguild.org - president

    cell: 916 213-0492

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