Continental European unemployment numbers are to some extent the result of people unwilling to work (or unwilling to work in conventional ways) preying on social system and higher unemployment is not a sign of systemic weakness (as John implies together with the current establishment consensus of job creation at all cost). Similar for pitkin, a worse safety net does lead to higher incarceration and better employment numbers & it is still worse despite being better at employment numbers.

Henri still had imho the most cogent position of the thread.

I’m saying the first and not the second (if I understand what you mean by “cause”), and I agree entirely with Western.

I’ve run out of patience on attempting to clarify my position. Perhaps if you could clearly state your own I would have some idea of what we are disagreeing about.

I’m a big fan of Bruce Western too. Absolutely. But where does he say that American labor institutions lead to higher crime, that higher crime is the reason for higher incarceration, or that high levels of incarceration reduce crime? Those are the three claims you’ve made in this thread. Western does not make any of them, at least in the article cited here.

It is true he calculates a modified unemployment rate counting the incarcerated as unemployed. He also calculates one doing what I and others here have suggested—adding some fraction of the prison population to the measured unemployment rate based on estimates of their employment prospects if not imprisoned. (The number he uses is 0.36 which obviously produces a number closer to Caplan’s preferred 0 than to your preferred 1.) But yes, he definitely suggests that our seemingly low unemployment rate is misleading because of our high incarceration rate.

But this post is making a much more specific claim—that the American labor model doesn’t just look misleadingly successful because of mass incarceration, but actually causes mass incarceration. And on that claim, Western’s position is close to the opposite of yours: he explicitly denies that mass incarceration is the result of higher crime rates and argues that it exacerbates the problems with the American labor model (by creating a class of ex-felons weakly attached to the labor market) rather than compensates for them.

So no, Western is not an authority for your arguments here. He is an authority for the broader view that there is some connection between unemployment and imprisonment, and that the US employment performance is not as good as it looks because of mass imprisonment.But the fact that there is some link between two things doesn’t mean that any particular link exists. And the particular link you’re making gets no support from Western.

@92 Yes, I had got that far at least. It just seemed somehow relevant to the question whether they should be added to the unemployment figures, but I suppose it’s a fairly separable issue, especially if you don’t include drugdealers, pimps, gangs that enforce rough justice in police no go areas, etc. in the employment figures. I don’t know. Just chucking in a few mutated ‘memes’.

This is an important point, and one I meant to make myself. Please substitute “reported crime” for “crime” anywhere I’ve written about it above.

LP, as regards authorities for my position, I’ll appeal to Bruce Western above. On your general point, nothing I’ve written excludes the conclusion that the gap between EU and US unemployment in the 1990s is more than fully explained by restrictive macro policy in Europe and unsustainably expansionary policy in the US. I’ve previously asserted that this is at least part of the explanation, which is why I’m willing to take the bet.

Tom,

Look again at the tile of this post. It’s “Incarceration as a labor market outcome“. Totally different claim.

I still don’t see why the exclusion of people from the workforce by putting them in prison (and not letting them get outside jobs) doesn’t count as a labour market restriction, especially when it’s effectively a policy decision how many are to be banged up.

If this tradeoff exists, it ought to be visible in the data, no?

I do accept it. I’ve said so repeatedly. One of the things that frustrates me here is that John is making a weak (well, false) argument in support of a correct & important overarching position. Those are the errors we have to be most vigilant for.