Comments on: Better than the Great Depression

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 06:58:40 +0000

For a more formal treatment of rich whinging about time stress (and the light it sheds on Steve’s comment about increased working time being in part a revealed preference) try this.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:42:03 +0000

“That’s why this site makes one think there actually is a point to comment threads.” Certainly, there is a point for me. I feel free to try ideas out on blogs without dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. If there’s a problem, it will be pointed out to me, pretty forcefully in some cases. But, to me, blogging is like a conversation and unlike, say, a journal article. It’s OK to be wrong from time to time.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:16:13 +0000

John, you’re honorable as always. That’s why this site makes one think there actually is a point to comment threads.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:23:30 +0000

Steve, you’re right. I obviously got too annoyed to read to the end of the column, which is a big mistake. I’ll post a correction.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:11:12 +0000

Actually, John, he chose to go exactly that way. The only mention of whining in the piece is in the last paragraph, which reads in full: “Life for these [low-income] workers is a tightrope act without a net, so the least that we lucky ones can do is stop whining. Better yet, we can honor their labor by adopting social policies, like national health insurance, a higher minimum wage and tougher limits on unskilled immigration, that will ease their struggle. It will cost us something, of course. But for the working poor, yoga won’t cut it.” I fail to see how that’s much different from: “Stop whining! What about the stress faced by minimum-wage workers who haven’t seen a real wage increase since the 1950s.” Actually, Akst’s is better, since it explicitly calls for policies to remedy the situation and says upper-middle-class workers should be willing to pay for them.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:01:43 +0000

As an aside, it’s well known that “executive stress” is a myth. All kinds of stress-related illnesses are more prevalent among blue-collar and low-pay, low-status workers than among bosses. Again, Akst could have made this point but chose not to.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:56:37 +0000

As several people have pointed out, Akst’s column was directed mainly at upper-income earners complaining about workplace stress. So in this case, he could have avoided the Depression comparison completely, by writing something like: “Stop whining! What about the stress faced by minimum-wage workers who haven’t seen a real wage increase since the 1950s” But oddly enough, he didn’t choose to go this way.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:40:13 +0000

Oh my god I can’t believe someone actually seriously wrote this… It’s 100% insanity. ‘OTOH, s/he is generally a ‘professional’ who doesn’t fall under the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, so overtime hours can be required of our cubicle dweller (if she wants to keep her job), but no overtime pay goes with it…Median household income was 32% higher in 2003 than in 1967 (in constant dollars), but that’s a pretty small payoff for having gone from stay-at-home moms to two-worker couples. And that’s a big source of stress right there: we’re all doing the chores on evenings and weekends that the wife would have done while her husband was at work, back in the day….So as a Democrat and a liberal, I don’t think stress is anything to laugh at…Many of their problems aren’t amenable to government solutions, but some are. For one, overtime pay should be a middle-class entitlement… Could do something like: everyone making $60K/yr or less gets time-and-a-half after 40 hours; everyone making more, gets paid the same overtime wage that someone making $60K gets.’ Now, I fall into the category of rich, capitalist pig – so many will dismiss this out of hand. But, this person is saying that a couple making $60K a year should be entitiled to time and a half overtime pay because they have to do chores on the weekend (and that causes stress). Please!! I have never seen anyone before cry ‘victim’ for someone making $60K/yr. But this person is not only crying victim, s/he is demanding that folks like me (who work 70-80 hours per week and are in the top 2-3% of national earners) fund an entitlement that compensates those people for having to do chores at night and on the weekend (thereby creating stress). Would a better answer be to have those people either choose to quit their ‘high pressure’ job and find a job that fits with their desired lifestyle? Why create a government entitlement? That doesn’t solve the problem, it just requires more of the tax paying base to compensate those folks for their own stupidity? I like CT, but sometimes you people make my head spin with your insanity!

By: JRoth

JRoth — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:24:19 +0000

Steve C- One word: daycare. Most couples I know where both work have run the numbers and discovered that daycare eats up a huge percentage of the second earner’s salary. Not quite enough to make it worth quitting, but not so little that people are actually enjoying much of that 1/3 increase. A second word would be healthcare. Obviously it’s gotten better, but that’s irrelevant if 40+ million Americans can’t afford any insurance at all, and so only see a doctor in the ER. Here’s a simple, objective equation for you: zero healthcare is less than outdated healthcare.

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:13:21 +0000

They want that cash the CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs and VPs of marketing are stealing from them every day. If they don’t they should.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:47:53 +0000

Yeah, things were so much better back when “the wife” was at home doing all the chores. Certainly that’s what Betty Friedan thought. The idea that increasing your income by a full third (and that number is understated in any case) is a small payoff seems to me decidedly improbable. It would be very easy to re-create a 1967 middle-class lifestyle—in terms of size of house, number of cars, amount of travel, number of televisions, quality of food, etc.—on a one-person, lower-middle-class salary. Even with all the problems with revealed preference, surely the fact that people aren’t interested in that, and instead spend money the way they do—and work in order to be able to spend money the way they do—has to tell us something about what they want.

By: RT

RT — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:30:58 +0000

I think workplace stress shouldn’t be so casually dismissed. No, I’m not gonna take pity on people with six-figure incomes; they can fend for themselves. Your typical middle-class cubicle-dweller has it better in many ways than his predecessor from 30-40 years ago, the middle-class factory worker: safer job, longer life expectancy, and better pay as well. OTOH, s/he is generally a ‘professional’ who doesn’t fall under the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, so overtime hours can be required of our cubicle dweller (if she wants to keep her job), but no overtime pay goes with it. He doesn’t have a defined-benefit pension plan – just a 401(k) which winds up getting dipped into during periods of unemployment. Health insurance is a confusing thicket to navigate. Median household income was 32% higher in 2003 than in 1967 (in constant dollars), but that’s a pretty small payoff for having gone from stay-at-home moms to two-worker couples. And that’s a big source of stress right there: we’re all doing the chores on evenings and weekends that the wife would have done while her husband was at work, back in the day. So as a Democrat and a liberal, I don’t think stress is anything to laugh at. I think that it’s one hell of an issue for us, and we’re ignoring it. By and large, we have failed to respond to what the typical workplace is today, and what the typical worker’s needs are today. Many of their problems aren’t amenable to government solutions, but some are. For one, overtime pay should be a middle-class entitlement. Could do something like: everyone making $60K/yr or less gets time-and-a-half after 40 hours; everyone making more, gets paid the same overtime wage that someone making $60K gets.

By: lynne

lynne — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:25:37 +0000

Steve Carr: Was supplanting instead of supplementing income a Freudian slip?

By: HP

HP — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:23:24 +0000

In other news, the average American today is less likely to die from infectious disease than he was during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Also, interstate commerce has picked up considerably since the Civil War. I’d further like to point out that America’s government representatives are more responsive to the needs of citizens than they were in 1768.

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:23:07 +0000

Nah, I think asg does have a point, albeit a weak one. Clearly 100% equality is neither desirable nor possible. There is no reason to complain about inequality as such. But if it’s true that 80% of the population have received no benefit (or almost none) of the productivity increase during the last 30 years, then something definitely is rotten. Someone has been stealing their share of the productivity increases.