Emigrate young men and women

11.16.2012 Leave a comment

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism points out that a better personal future for some Americans can be found elsewhere. Her conclusion:

In other words, America’s continuing push to treat workers as disposable [commodities] puts US companies at a disadvantage relative to employers in economies where for legal and cultural reasons, employees are treated better than in US. Now admittedly, this trend is taking place only in certain job categories, but twenty years ago, you would have been laughed out of the room if you had suggested that laborers like electricians and plumbers would have a better financial future if they left the US. And with college costs skyrocketing, you can expect to see more American students get their degrees overseas and that will increase the odds that some of them will wind up working abroad. American exceptionalism allows America’s leaders to keep pretending we are number one and use that as an excuse for inaction, when the evidence on the ground calls that into question.

Well, there is another explanation for the lack of concern on this matter by the leaders of the free and prosperous world: They don’t care about the ‘lesser people’ (Alan Simpson).

Filed under Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Go to school, young man….

3.23.2012 Leave a comment

While discussing the economic value of a college education in the labor market and for those who possess a college education, Jack Metzgar wrote:

Most people are surprised when I tell them that only about 30% of Americans over the age of 25 have bachelor’s degrees. This is especially true of professional middle-class folks who went to high schools where almost everybody went to college immediately after graduation and whose friends now are almost all college graduates. But it’s also true of people from working-class and poor backgrounds, who seem to think they are “abnormal” or “below average” because they haven’t graduated from college. They’re not. They are, in fact, the ones who are “typical.”

It’s even more surprising, however, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that in 2010 only 20% of jobs required a bachelor’s degree, whereas 26% of jobs did not even require a high school diploma, and another 43% required only a high school diploma or equivalent. And according to the BLS, this isn’t going to change much by 2020, since the overwhelming majority of jobs by then will still require only a high school diploma or less. What’s more, nearly ¾ths of “job openings due to growth and replacement needs” over the next 10 years will pay a median wage of less than $35,000 a year, with nearly 30% paying a median of about $20,000 a year (in 2010 dollars).

Put these two sets of numbers together, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Americans are over educated for the jobs that we have and are going to have.

In other words, supply does not create demand. It has not in the past and will not in the future. Unemployment and low wages are not due to an education deficit in the United States. American college graduates will not confront structural unemployment in the labor market [see this (pdf)], although the demand for labor today does express the structural problems which defines America’s chronically stagnant economy. Therefore, it follows that, while gaining an advanced education is worthy in principle and often proves to be so in practice, it is not always an economically sound decision for the prospective student to make. By opting for a post-secondary education, the student could spend his or her life burdened with a debt he or she must repay for an education he or she will never use.

Metzgar concludes his article by stating the obvious:

If we were serious about eliminating poverty or restoring the credibility of the American Dream or simply respecting lifetimes of hard work, we would be debating how to raise wages directly — how to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions, how to get the federal minimum wage higher and on a steady inflation-adjusted escalator, whether to require some kind of workers council for all employers, and then legally require that the benefits of productivity growth be shared with workers. We’d also be discussing how to use a more steeply progressive system of taxation to build a social wage that makes the basics of life — food, housing, mass transit, child care, education, and health care — cheaper for everyone, but most crucially for lower wage workers.

Those of us who have benefitted, financially and otherwise, from getting good educations should tell our stories and try to inspire others with the value of education in all its forms. But we need to stop fostering illusions that good educations can ever substitute for the organized collective action — in politics, in the workplace, and in the streets — that will be required to reverse the increasingly miserable wages and conditions most people are facing now and in the future.

 

Related articles

Filed under Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sha na na na, sha na na na na….

1.20.2012 Leave a comment

Mark Weisbrot shows that the America’s recovery from the Great Depression was hardly a recovery at all:

The U.S. recession officially ended in June of 2009, but most Americans don’t feel like we are in a recovery. That’s because it’s been a weak recovery, with the size of the economy barely bigger today than it was four years ago, when the recession started.

Since America is a rich country, it is not growth itself that matters most but employment and, of course, the distribution of income. And the employment numbers are just terrible.

The simplest measure is the percentage of the working-age population that is employed. That peaked at 63.4 percent in December 2006. It plummeted to a low of 58.2 percent last July and is hardly different now — 58.5 percent in the latest figures.

What this means is that we need about 10 million jobs to get back to full employment. There was a lot of happy talk earlier this month when the December job numbers were released. They showed 200,000 payroll jobs added in December, and the unemployment rate falling to 8.5 percent. Adding even 200,000 jobs a month is not very good for an economy that needs at least 90,000-100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the working-age population.

And as my colleague Dean Baker pointed out, the latest jobs numbers have probably been over-optimistic. Realistically, he notes, at present trends of job growth we will not hit full employment until 2028. This would be an economic failure of disastrous proportions.

Related articles

Filed under Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Believing in a promise land

12.7.2011 2 Comments

I recently managed to gain full-time employment, thereby leaving behind a life given over mostly to study and political writing, but also a life punctuated by bouts of paid labor and a durable fear of becoming destitute. Despite my fear, which was realistic, I preferred the mode of living I have just left behind. It’s what I would do if I were wholly free to choose. But I’m not that free or, when better put, I’m not free in that abstract and unlimited way.

I should feel grateful for my new job. After all, the real unemployment rate easily exceeds 20%. I do need the money. But I’m ungrateful. Why, I ask myself, should I feel grateful for having an opportunity to submit to a kind of social necessity? How might I appreciate my lack of autonomy while on the job? My subordination to others? My fatigue? My numb leg and aching back? My elemental need for money? I do feel grateful for being alive but I won’t live just to perform labor for pay. I sell my labor only because others depend upon me, upon my ability to earn a wage and my actually earning a wage. Heteronomy, as we know, passes into autonomy whenever one chooses for sound reasons to carry burdens which compromise one’s freedoms.

It’s a privilege to have the time and means to read and write. That is, only a few have the opportunity to devote their lives to this kind of work. It’s rewarding to those individuals who care about such things. The typical path to making good use of this opportunity requires years of study and a mastery of the relevant puberty rituals. One might, if one is lucky, find a job teaching at a university, as a holder of a tenured position with the time needed to do original research. Some, on the other hand, can live from their writing. But this is difficult. It too requires one to submit to social necessity. And making a living as a writer is especially improbable if one is a left critic. Even self-avowed liberals work at the margin. Leftwingers are mostly outcastes.

I am writing this short essay in order to remind whoever reads it that it takes considerable time and effort to develop a defensible position on matters of public importance. Most lack that time. They also are unaware that they need to make the effort to learn about the world. They have friends and family, jobs and homes. These are, for most, decisive constraints. They occupy time and often occlude the larger issues which make life what it is. It is easy to denigrate the many for their comparative lack of political sophistication, for voting Republican (or Democrat), for falling prey to authoritarian and fascist rhetoric, for believing nonsense economics, for devoting their lives to sectarian religions, etc. But, many of these acts and beliefs are just “havens in a heartless world,” to paraphrase and expand Marx’s critique of religion and everyday life. They give meaning to the various ways in which people suffer, meanings that are also ephemeral and even deadly in their effects. It is good to remember how difficult it is to live a fully human life.

But I’ll not think about these matters tomorrow, for I’ll be at work, earning a non-living wage, performing tasks which just about anyone can do, directly participating in a system which I would change if I could.

First posted at Fire Dog Lake

Filed under Essay Tagged with , , , , ,

Quote of the day

6.14.2011 Leave a comment

Mike Whitney wrote:

When the recovery began 2 years ago, the rate of unemployment was 9.5 percent. Today it’s 9.1 percent. Think about that for a minute. Doesn’t that prove that the market isn’t really self-correcting after all? I mean, if the market was self-correcting then unemployment would have gone down by now, right? But, it hasn’t. Why?

There’s a long answer for that, and a short answer. The short answer is that unemployment can stay high forever if the wrong policies are in place. If you don’t believe that, then vote Republican in 2012 and watch what happens when they start hacking away at public spending. Unemployment will soar to 15 or 20 percent in the blink of an eye.

Whitney’s preferred solution to the high-unemployment of the day: Revive the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment bill!

Related articles

Filed under Quote of the Day Tagged with , , , , , ,

Bankers running amok

4.20.2011 Leave a comment

Economist Dean Baker points to the world-befouling relationship between a modern and minimalist democracy and a modern central banking system:

The worst part of this story is that these fundamental decisions about economic policy are made by a small, secretive clique operating largely outside of the public’s purview. Central bank decisions on interest rates are likely to have far more impact on jobs and growth than any of the policies that are debated endlessly be [sic] elected parliaments. Yet, these decisions are made largely without democratic input.

In fairness, politicians bear much of the blame for this situation. They established institutional structures that largely place central banks beyond democratic control. There is probably no bank that is as insulated from the democratic process as the ECB, in large part because of its multinational structure, but all the central banks in wealthy countries now enjoy an extraordinary degree of independence from elected governments. In many countries they are even more independent than the judicial system.

Even worse, the politicians have actually mandated many central banks, like the ECB, to pursue an inflation target to the exclusion of other considerations. This gives the central bankers a license to throw millions of people out of work in order to chase their obsession with inflation.

Giving the central bankers free rein to chase inflation targets could perhaps be justified if they had a track record of success, but they don’t. The world economy stands to lose more than $10 trillion in output because of the central banks’ failure to stem the growth of the dangerous housing bubbles.

Baker’s story identifies more than a democracy deficit. It also points to a multifarious accountability deficit. Who, after all, policies the world’s central bankers? Anyone? They are not even constrained by the markets they would govern, at least they ignore the market system in the short-term. Over the longer-term….

Related Articles

Filed under Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , ,