This “Dean Baker piece”:http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=09&year=2007&base_name=nyt_libels_germany_on_unemploy from a few days ago on how the _New York Times_ misrepresents the German welfare state got some well deserved attention. While I wholeheartedly agree with Baker’s basic point, I think that he perhaps lets the economics profession off the hook a little too easily. [click to continue…]
From the category archives:
Work
I’ve just realised that as well as the new academic year for PhD programs, it’s also graduate intake season in the world of proper jobs, and thus a new generation of CT readers will be entering the workforce. And thus, my “Advice to a Young Person”. I only actually have one tip.
Basically it’s this. If you are a young man or woman of fair-to-middling ability, or even a borderline dullard, but you want to get a reputation as an uncommonly bright and perspicacious thinker, it’s really not that hard to do. The secret weapon is this: take an interest in what happens in other countries.
It’s really quite unusual to find an important issue on which international comparisons aren’t worth knowing about. Even in situations which look purely domestic, you can often get an entirely new perspective on things by looking at your fundamental assumptions in the light of what happens overseas. There are few sights sweeter than the look on someone’s face after they’ve confidently proclaimed something to be impossible, only to be informed that they’ve been doing things that way in Australia for the last twenty years.
It’s also a great way to generate ideas; it’s both easier than coming up with something yourself, and more likely to succeed, to plagiarise something that’s already worked well in a different time zone. So few people bother to keep up with the international news that one doesn’t even need to be an expert in these things; simply reading the relevant pages of your daily newspaper will probably do, whereas reading the superficially more “relevant” domestic or business pages will usually just tell you a load of crap you know already, and tell it wrong.
So my advice to a young businessperson is to save ten minutes a day by not reading the domestic news, and spend them on reading the international news properly. Within six months of the graduate program you’ll see I’m right, not least because at least once or twice you’ll quite likely be asked to prepared an analysis of international comparisons by a senior executive who got where he is by following my method.
PS: another great tip is never put question marks on your Powerpoint slides, it always looks really weak.
Judith Warner wrote a “column”:http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/opinion/24warner.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26thQ26emcQ3Dth&OP=5051bb3fQ2FdTYrdQ3F1affQ3FdkwwDdwDdkAdfQ7E.Q7D.fQ7DdkAT5aQ7DYa_Q3CQ3FQ5BP in yesterday’s NYT (unfortunately behind the pay-wall) on the need to make part-time work genuinely available for all American workers. She argues that study after study shows that up to 80% of mothers, both those holding jobs or caring at home, want to work part-time, but that currently only 24% do so because “part-time work doesn’t pay”:
Women on a reduced schedule earn almost 18 percent less than their full-time female peers with equivalent jobs and education levels, according to research by Janet Gornick, a professor of sociology and political science at City University of New York, and the labor economist Elena Bardasi. Part-time jobs rarely come with benefits. They tend to be clustered in low-paying fields like the retail and service industries. And in better-paid professions, a reduced work schedule very often can mean cutting down from 50-plus hours a week to 40-odd — hardly a “privilege” worth paying for with a big pay cut.
In the near future, CT will be hosting another book event. I thought it would be helpful to alert our readers ahead of time so people can read the book and thereby participate in the discussions more actively and in a more informed manner.
The book is “Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children” by Greg J. Duncan, Aletha C. Huston, and Thomas S. Weisner.
During the 1990s, growing demands to end chronic welfare dependency culminated in the 1996 federal “welfare-to-work” reforms. But regardless of welfare reform, the United States has always been home to a large population of working poor— people who remain poor even when they work and do not receive welfare. In a concentrated effort to address the problems of the working poor, a coalition of community activists and business leaders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, launched New Hope, an experimental program that boosted employment among the city’s poor while reducing poverty and improving children’s lives. [The authors] provide a compelling look at how New Hope can serve as a model for national anti-poverty policies. [source]
You can either buy the book directly from its publisher, the Russell Sage Foundation, or get it at Amazon
In addition to Timberite contributions, we’ll have comments by Nancy Folbre and Kimberly Morgan plus a response by Greg Duncan.
“Matt Yglesias”:http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/visas_for_grads.php agrees for once with Airmiles Friedman.
It’s really baffling that we would give someone a visa to pursue high-level education in the United States and then do anything other than automatically give them a visa to work here. If we’re going to be stingy with anything, it should be with spots at our universities (in practice, there tend not to be Americans clamoring to get graduate schooled in technical disciplines), not spots in our labor force. Unlike the immigration of unskilled workers, immigration of highly skilled people is a totally uncomplicated balance of considerations. It’s good for the immigrant, it boosts the American economy as a whole, and instead of putting mild downward pressure on the wages of the least-fortunate native born people, the costs are borne by better-off Americans. It’s a total no-brainer.
Not so. It may be a total no-brainer for US economic wellbeing. It isn’t a no-brainer for the home country of the workers in question. Cue Dani Rodrik, who thinks that a “guest worker”:http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/05/the_new_york_ti.html program would be ‘terrific,’ a point that he has developed at greater length in an earlier paper (PDF).
To ensure that labor mobility produces benefits for developing nations it is imperative that the regime be designed in a way that generates incentives for return to home countries.
While remittances can be an important source of income support for poor families, they are generally unable to spark and sustain long-term economic development. Designing contract labor schemes that are truly temporary is tricky, but it can be done.
This is the reason why, for example, people who come to the US to do advanced degrees with support from Fulbright scholarships (such as meself once upon a time) are obliged to return to their home countries (or, in the case of EU citizens, the EU) for a period of two years before they can apply for a proper work visa or permanent residency. Speaking from my personal experience, this can be a considerable pain in the ass, but it has an undeniable logic. The home country in question isn’t going to benefit very much from its most economically productive citizens (which category doesn’t include me; I was always likely to be a net drain on the Irish economy) going to the US to study, if they don’t ever come home. This point applies with _especial_ force to people coming over to study for advanced degrees in technical subjects. I think it’s possible to construct a slightly convoluted cosmopolitanish case against temporary worker programs (this would have to do with labour standards and the need for strong unions in the US to mitigate the global deregulatory impact of US preferences on the world economic regime; I may lay this out in a later post). But I don’t think it’s possible to construct one against the kinds of programs that Matt favors here. So if you are solely concerned with the economic benefit of the US, it’s indeed a no-brainer. If you’re worried about the rest of the world too (or instead), it’s anything but.
I teach my last class of the semester tomorrow, and what a semester it’s been. In the four months since I gave up full-time, long-form solo blogging, I have put my extra time to good use: freed from the demands of daily blog posting and comment-section maintenance, I found time to work out every day for 90 minutes, meditate for an hour, cook dinner nightly, and brush up on my French. As a result, I am fit and sane and centered, enjoying a balanced diet and the consolations of the <i>passé simple</i>.
Actually, that’s not true. And Bourdieu didn’t really appear in <i>Slap Shot</i>, either. This semester, neither did I: my Nittany Hockey League teams had 28 games scheduled this semester. I made it to <i>ten</i> of those. I worked out once, maybe twice a week. I last meditated in 1999. I last cooked in 1994. (Janet and I have taken to asking each other, “whom shall we dial tonight?”) And my French is just as abysmal as it ever was.
So what happened to all that time?
Via “Ezra Klein”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2007/04/post_3392.html#016205, I see that Jonah Goldberg has lapsed into what Ezra describes as a “weird revery over how the rugged individualism of Americans makes them totally unsuitable for social welfare programs.” In Goldberg’s own words:
I find interesting about the liberal defense of European welfare states (They really work! No Really!) is how they leave culture out of the equation almost entirely. … liberals are uncomfortable discussing the reality and constraints of culture for a host of reasons, from multiculturalism to vestigial hangups about seeing the world through prisms of class. … Maybe, just maybe, France and Denmark can handle the systems they have because they have long traditions of sucking-up to the state and throne? Marty Lipset wrote stacks of books on how Canadians and Americans have different forms of government because the Royalist, throne-kissing, swine left America for Canada during the Revolutionary War and that’s why they don’t mind big government, switched to the metric system when ordered and will wait on line like good little subjects…. If government systems are the only variable, or even the most important and decisive one, then how come it’s so damn hard bringing third world countries into the first world?
Now it’s a bit rich for a _National Review_ hack to be talking smack about “long traditions of sucking-up to to the state and throne.” But even if we were to pretend for a moment that Goldberg’s argument is serious, it’s terrible. First of all, it gets Lipset’s thesis badly wrong. While Lipset was keen on enduring American values, he didn’t pretend for a moment that they were the only force shaping US politics. Indeed, he explicitly documented how American values became more ‘European’ as a result of the institutional innovations of the New Deal (funnily enough, Goldberg seems to have missed that bit in his doubtless extensive reading on the topic). But more generally, sweeping claims about the all-determining-power of fixed national cultures have a godawful reputation in the social sciences these days. Values change, and sometimes change dramatically. Individuals are more than the passive bearers of cultural traits; they, like, make choices, and sometimes change their minds about things. The institutions that surround them change, and when these institutions change, so too, very often, do political beliefs, values etc.
There are respectable and serious scholars out there, who make more limited and specific contentions about how culture matters to politics (I tend not to agree with many of their arguments, but I obviously don’t have a monopoly on the truth). However, sweeping, half-assed claims that Culture is Destiny simply don’t feature in serious argument any more. Instead, they enjoy a sort of zombie-like half-life in some corners of the rightwing punditocracy, where their explanatory deficiencies are outweighed by their political usefulness in providing a higher justification for selfishness. Which is what seems to me to be happening here.
Ted Moran and Gary Hufbauer “contemplate the unthinkable”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b1835cdc-d0c0-11db-836a-000b5df10621.html in the _Financial Times_; a world in which the US actually had to live up to basic International Labour Organization standards. [click to continue…]
Tyler Cowen has a “new post”: which clarifies “why he objects”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/03/agreeing_on_uni.html to pro-union legislation.
Labor-run firms are common in law, book agency, real estate, landscaping, and many other sectors; we even see them in airlines. When labor in charge creates more value, labor starts its own firms or buys out the capitalist or buys greater control rights. Growing capital markets make these evolutions easier all the time. Cooperatives, which are governed by consumers, also are found. Mutuals, non-profits, and yes unionized firms are common too. I heart all of these organizational forms. Keep in mind that if both workers and customers will be better off, yes it probably can happen; it is naive to think that liquidity problems are the major issues preventing workers from enjoying greater control rights. In the short run, the mental model of the left-wing bloggers is a bunch of janitors trying to get better working conditions but opposed by employers. In the longer run what is striking is the competition across different organizational forms. It doesn’t always make sense to give labor residual control rights over capital goods, or the right to halt production.
I’ve a new “bloggingheads”:http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=215 with Will Wilkinson up. The first topic (and unsurprisingly the one we disagree about most vigorously) is unions and card check (Will is skeptical that employers either have asymmetrical bargaining power vis-a-vis workers, or are likely to abuse their position). I’d wanted to refer in our debate to a story that provides strongly suggestive evidence regarding the real reason why employers and their political allies are opposed to card check but couldn’t find it on the interwebs in time; Kris Raab (who, unlike me, has access to the _Daily Labor Report_ ) was able to find it for me later.
A legislative proposal that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers through a union authorization card process would allow them to bypass a formal election process and could prevent employers from making a case for why workers should not join a union, former Labor Department [deputy secretary] Steven Law told a wholesalers and distributors industry group Feb. 1. … Speaking at an executive summit of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) in Washington, Law advised the group’s members to focus their lobbying efforts against the labor-friendly Republicans who co-sponsored previous versions of the legislation. … Law told the NAW meeting that unions view the card-check process as key to building their membership. He said the bill would make it more economical for unions to organize smaller companies. “This is a holy grail solution to build themselves up and become a fighting force once more.” … At least one person in the audience did not seem have a problem with the legislation and complained during a question-and-answer period that Law’s comments portrayed union organizing as “heinous.” Law replied, “If you think that unionizing is a great thing, then this (legislation) is a great thing.” He later told BNA that his comments were not meant to portray unions as good or bad, but to emphasize that the card-check legislation could bypass the secret ballot process [HF-you can almost hear the reporter’s incredulity leaking through]. Also during the question-and-answer period, another audience member spoke out against EFCA, voicing disapproval of the legislation, and saying the bill is “very, very dangerous.” According to that audience member, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters sought to organize 30 of his company’s drivers in 2003, but obtained only 11 signed union authorization cards. Unless an employer learns of the organizing drive, “You have no chance to retaliate–I shouldn’t say retaliate,” he said to peals of nervous laughter from the audience. Rather, he corrected himself, “You have no chance to say [as an employer] what’s going on.”
Opposition to card check is all about stopping unionization, and providing opportunities for employers to retaliate against pro-union employees. Not that this is exactly news to anyone who follows this stuff (the National Association of Manufacturers have never been the most credible-sounding converts to the cause of democracy in the workplace), but it’s unusual to see it stated as bluntly as it’s stated here.
If you want to see the
One of the more annoying libertarian shticks to us lefties is the “increasing poverty and inequality don’t matter because consumer spending is going Up! Up! UP! ! !” three card monte routine. I think it must surely have reached its apotheosis in this “failed November hack job on Edwards”:http://www.reason.com/news/show/116797.html by Jeff Taylor in _Reason Online_ which I didn’t see until Nick Gillespie linked to it today.
However, the slapstick of the Edwards misstep should not obscure the really big picture, the fatal flaw in his “Two Americas” spiel. Many thousands of Americans evidently have $600 to spend on a video game machine. What’s more, this Christmas is expected to usher in the year of the flat-panel. With price points dropping below the $1000 mark, high-end TVs are moving down-market fast with Wal-Mart leading the way. Contrary to the Edwards’ pitch that labor-hostile companies are leaving American workers destitute, somebody is making some money out there in America. More importantly, they are making it in many, many cases without a union card. This reality will very hard [sic] for union-funded Democrats like Edwards to ignore as the 2008 presidential campaign unfolds. Hewing to the union rules, clear evidence of prosperity, like perhaps a shortage of $600 game machines, will have to be swept out of the campaign.
It isn’t hard for me to believe that someone would make the hilariously cackleheaded argument that because “many thousands” can afford a Playstation 3, economic inequality is a non-issue; I see this kind of guff in the comment sections of blogs all the time. But it is rather surprising that it’s being published by a sometimes quite interesting website as a purportedly serious contribution to political debate.
(As an aside, Taylor also introduces us to the interesting sounding concept of ‘Pythonseque depravation one-upsmanship;’ a spelling error trifecta unless depravation is a portmanteau term indicating Taylor’s opinion of the moral qualities of those wicked enough to be poor. Someone really needs to be proofreading the contributions to Reason’s website a little better).
Can you ask your siblings and friends how much they earn? Can you ask your co-workers? I guess in many or most places in the world, this is a taboo. This is regrettable, since there are many unjustified earnings inequalities, often related to factors such as gender, race and nepotism. Unjust earnings inequalities can only fade away if individuals demand equal wages for equal work, but therefore they first need to know how much those who are doing this ‘equal work’ are earning (and in many countries much more is needed, such as a shift in power between labour and capital, to put it in these grand terms).
In 17 countries, there exists an internet tool, called the “wage indicator”:http://www.wageindicator.org/main, that can tell us how much people in a certain profession (with the same age, seniority, etc. etc.) earn, which may be useful information if you need to negotiate your wage, or if you think you or your colleague should be earning more. For labour scholars, the information gathered by the tool can be used to investigate pay inequalities, and many other trends and facts related to earnings and the workforce. “The Dutch version”:http://www.loonwijzer.nl/main/ was launched in 2001, and at present the wage indicator is available in “many countries”:http://www.wageindicator.org/main/Partnersworldwide, such as “South Africa”:http://www.mywage.co.za/main/, “India”:http://www.paycheck.in/main/, “Finland”:http://www.palkkalaskuri.fi/, “the UK”:http://www.paywizard.co.uk/ and “the USA”:http://www.worklifewizard.org/main/.
Clearly the wage indicator has its limitations too. One limitation is inherent for almost all surveys: sometimes you feel that your experience does not fit the questions, and therefore that you can’t answer the question properly. For example, when I had to give the number of years I had been employed, I didn’t know whether I should count my years working on my PhD or not (in the Netherlands and Belgium doctoral students are – euh – not students but employees, whereas in England, where I got my PhD degree, they are students.) Another problem is that there needs to be a minimal number of respondents who have responded to the questionnaire before anything statistically representative can be said about the average earnings of people with your profile. Hence even if you have no personal interest in figuring out what the typical person with your profile earns, you can do labour scholars a favour by filling out this survey. And by reporting any oddities you come across, or your views about these tools, in the comments section. I don’t personally know the scholars who run them, but I’m sure they’ll find us.
The FT has two “great”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4cd813b2-8dff-11db-ae0e-0000779e2340.html “articles”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b77c5102-8ec1-11db-a7b2-0000779e2340.html (behind the paywall unfortunately) on how a deliberately fostered culture of corner-cutting at BP led to disaster. Some highlights below the cut. [click to continue…]
I’ve been away without ordered leave from the blogosphere for the last couple of weeks – the joys of end-of-semester committee crunch and grading. But two things that I’ve wanted to link to:
“Greg Bloom”:http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/12/3/231739/424 has another series of posts on the ways in which the Fund for Public Interest Research has resisted unionization efforts. The way in which many purportedly lefty organizations refuse to let their workers bargain for decent conditions is pretty shameful.
Alexander Mueller, fresh from porting over Susanna Clarke has translated the China Mieville seminar “into German too”:http://molochronik.antville.org/stories/1528809/. Great stuff.
Finally, I’ve been meaning for a while to link to this “Nir Rosen piece”:http://www.bostonreview.net/BR31.6/rosen.html, which is the best and most detailed on the ground discussion that I’ve seen of Iraq’s descent into civil war. I see via “TPM Muckraker”:http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002155.php that Rosen is venturing into the blogosphere.