Nation of Slackers

So I was reading an article in Foreign Policy that talks about the current high levels of unemployment. The culprit, it says, is that there were unproductive workers in the economy - which is why even with a high unemployment rate, "real GDP is now higher than it has been in the entirety of U.S. history," excepting the housing boom of 2007 and 2008.

The fact that the United States has pre-crisis levels of output with fewer workers raises doubts as to whether those additional workers were producing very much in the first place.
10 Percent Unemployment Forever?

This conspicuously leaves out productivity growth as a factor. Not so much in the idea that productivity has gone up, but in the idea that productivity never reaches a maximum at any point in time, and that said maximum increases over time - it seems to me that assuming that just because one only needs 10 people to reach a certain level of production now can be taken to mean that you only needed those same 10 people 3 years ago - or ever - requires some backing up. (Especially when the Bureau of Labor Statistics seems to be constantly reporting increases in productivity.) But I guess it's easier to cast people as slackers than to deal with the idea that one of the things that technology does is make labor less valuable - specifically because you need less of it.

Econ 101 is that you have some assets, some resources, and you use them to get things you want. One of the assets you have is your ability to work. But you work in part because that's a way to get other stuff. If there was a way to get other stuff, you wouldn't work so much. You might work, but you'd call it volunteering, leisure; you'd fill your time. Some of that time-filling might be productive, but you wouldn't be doing it because you need the money. This requires that you have other assets, of course. If your only asset is your ability to work, and that asset becomes less valuable, then your portfolio becomes less valuable.
Hanson on the Technological Singularity

Now, What Robin Hanson was talking about is pretty much the doomsday scenario for the working person, the point where technology and artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that you can pretty much replace people with machines in a wide variety of jobs that can't be done by machines now - "We're talking about machines that would do things like give you a haircut--some of the services. Revise your will, sue for you in court, write a script for a movie. Teach economics. You'd put your head in a box and you'd know economics!"

The Hanson podcast is long - while most EconTalk podcasts about an hour, this one is an hour and a half, and I haven't finished it yet. From the partial transcript posted, it seems that they do eventually circle around to this idea of what do people do, when machines can replace them. The answer seems to be find something scarce and control it.

Right now, labor is not scarce. And advances in productivity make it less so every day. And it doesn't take technology to boost productivity - economies of scale do the same thing. If I merge two companies, a certain level of redundancy will be created. The fact that I let go of workers that are no longer needed in the merged company doesn't mean that they were never needed in the separate firms.

An unsaid part of the Foreign Policy analysis is that if all workers were productive, they would create enough goods and services to make employing them worthwhile, because people would purchase all of those goods and services - "If weak demand was the main problem, profits should be collapsing too, but they are not." But I don't know that you can make the assumption that no society will ever reach the point where it can satisfy native demand without the need to employ its entire workforce - that is, that efficiency can never outstrip desire. After all, even during the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate rose as high as 25%, we don't hear anything about shortages - there was enough stuff - just not enough free wealth to purchase it. I think that our confidence in materialism - that we'll always want so much stuff that we'll all always need to be engaged in making it - is misplaced. If we don't plan for a future where production is efficient enough that we don't need all of the eligible workforce, we're going to be in real trouble when it arrives.

Random Thoughts

While I'd rather not think of myself as being a partisan, the fact of the matter is that I'm not a Republican. There are moderate Republicans that I think would be good in office, but they don't live near me, so I can't vote for them. Instead, I'm stuck with the die-hards who want to pander to the base, and cast me as villain for not being a part of said base. Don't get me wrong - I don't care for the common Democratic vintage of Whine... but if I have to chose, I find it a shade less disgusting than Republican-bottled Haterade.

The newly Republican-majority House of Representatives is launching into an effort to repeal the Democratic health care reform bill. I have some thoughts about this, in no particular order.

• One of the big Republican complaints about the bill, outside of feeling shut out of the process was that the public would rather that the President and Congressional Democrats dealt with the economy first. So why is this such a huge priority?
  
• If one is charitable, you could make the point that the President had enough faith that his economic team would turn things around that he didn't have to worry about it himself. If you're less charitable, you could assume that the focus on health care was an admission that he couldn't fix the problem. I, for the record, am less charitable.
  
• I think that we can also take the focus of Republicans on repealing health care reform and retaking the White House in 2012 as an admission that when it comes to the economy, they've got nothing, either.
• Those people who back them on this either aren't feeling much in the way of economic pain, or have given up on any sort of political fix, so the Republicans aren't really under any pressure. I think the only thing that stops them from just coming out an admitting that they can't fix things is that one never rocks the boat on denial.
  
• The Republican leadership's willingness to publicly refer to the Congressional Budget Office's reports on things as "opinions" when they don't jive with the party line is telling. They're encouraging people to buy into the notion that "accurate/factual" and "in line with what you already think" are one in the same. I wish I could be disappointed and/or bothered by that.
  
• The common idea that "Waste, Fraud and Abuse" are code for "Government Programs that benefit Someone Else," is likely false. I suspect that "Waste Fraud and Abuse" are actually code for the idea that the Government doesn't need to borrow and spend to prop up the American standard of living - so spending can be drastically cut to balance the budget, and we'll never notice the change. This is how the CATO institute can refer to tax increases as "damaging," while working under the assumption that lowering spending while leaning taxes where they are - so that one receives less for one's tax dollars doesn't also represent an effective tax increase, and therefore, is not damaging to standard of living.
  
• Despite the fact that we have poor health outcomes considering the per-capita amounts that we spend, and American children don't come off as being that well educated when compared to nations with higher taxes, it's common for Americans to think of themselves as "overtaxed," rather than simply receiving poor value for money.
• Why do Middle-class Americans think of themselves as being one step away from the poorhouse? You'd think that they were completely unfamiliar with grinding poverty, which we know to be false, given their willingness to send millions of dollars overseas after any appropriately photogenic disaster.
• Oh... that's right, I was talking about health care. Since when does anyone repeal a law when their intent is to replace it with a different law?
• If you take the Republicans at their word that they aren't being symbolic with their attempts at repeal, the only other intelligent option is basically blackmail - if they were confident that their proposal, whatever it turns out to be, would be objectively better than what we already have, simply replacing the old law would be a no-brainer, right? But if it's only an improvement when compared to the old status quo, then the old status quo would need to be in place for it to pass, correct?
• Back to the economy for a second. I wonder if we've heard the last of the idea that you can combat deficits through economic growth.
• "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act?" Really? And we're supposed to think that this isn't pandering, fear-mongering or both?

I don't know. It all seems ludicrous to me. It's been said by people more politically astute than myself that the primary function of both parties is to keep the other party from being able to claim credit for anything good that might happen. But that's not the parties' doing. After all, they don't elect themselves. I'd like to say that I can't believe that we, as the public, buy into this idea that the best thing one can do in office is shaft the other guy, but I was told that this was basically human nature from a pretty young age. Still, it sucks to learn that I wasn't misinformed on that count.

Fear and Loathing

Last night, I was watching a re-run of Frontline from this past October. It dealt with the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of setting a fire in his home that resulted in the deaths of his three small children, and was executed for it.

If the name means anything to you at this point, then you don't need me to tell you about the case. Not long after the execution, the story gained legs, and pretty much every media outlet in the nation. Besides, if you've been reading me here, you're likely at least somewhat familiar with the facts and the controversy - this is, after all, my fourth post on the topic.

Despite the fact that my last post on the Willingham case was occasioned by the Frontline installment that I mentioned above, I didn't actually catch it when it was first on, so last night was the first time I actually watched it. One thing struck me. One of the people that was interviewed was a local bar owner, and she made an interesting point - to paraphrase, she pointed out that Willingham treated his family poorly, and wasn't given the benefit of the doubt - other people who had treated their families well were given the benefit of the doubt. In short, part of the reason that Willingham was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers was that he'd made himself unpopular with his peers. And that made it easier for them to label Willingham as Evil and believe the negative things that prosecutors and a jailhouse snitch said about him. (Why anyone still thinks that people who loudly proclaim their innocence to anyone who will listen would suddenly spill the beans to a random fellow prisoner, who is likely to attempt to parley that into a break for himself, is beyond me.)

On the one hand, we understand that we seek to punish people and frighten us, that we don't like or don't have anything to offer. On the other hand, we like to think that we can create a system that somehow removes that from the equation, so that simply being scary isn't effectively a felony. But the simple facts on the ground would tell us that this isn't true. It doesn't take an exhaustive reading of the news to understand that we don't treat all people equally. If nothing else, celebrity is often a defense against charges that would land lesser mortal behind bars for long periods. While Tucker Carlson might think that Michael Vick should have been executed for the deaths of dogs during Vick's dogfighting days, the very fact that Vick is playing football again professionally demonstrates that most of the rest of us are okay with him now. "Normal" people would be effectively unemployable for life after a major felony conviction.

Of course, I'm not the first person to make this connection. People have been talking about it for decades, if not longer. Perhaps we should stop talking about it, and simply own up to it. Even if we don't do anything about it - and I suspect we won't, at least being okay with it will let us stop being hypocritical about it.

Winter Wonderland

The shallow depth-of-field on my 105mm Macro lens means that as many, of not more, ice crystals are out of focus as in. But hopefully, this shot conveys a sense of time, and season.

And A Year Begins Again

Hello, everyone.

Happy New Year!

I'm still working on whether or not I should have a New Year's Resolution this time around. The last time I had one, and I carried it out, was in 2004. I resolved to be less of a bystander in politics - I was going to go out there and become involved. It ended badly. (Although I did have the chance to speak, face to face, with both of our Senators, for the low, low, price of $250. Which was, really, a bargain.) It turns out that there is a reason why so few people are active in one party or the other. One is drunk on a constant stream of whine, and the other throws back Haterade like it was water. And no matter which side you happen to be on, it's hard to escape the idea that they're trying to convince you to drink the Kool-aid*.

Of course, maybe I'm better off simply not playing the New Year's Resolution game. It's hardly been shown to be a good model for improving one's life. But I can see the appeal. If we're going to make an arbitrary date in the beginning of Winter the start of a new year (had it been left up to me, I would have chosen the Spring Equinox), it makes as good a marker as any from which to measure progress. And there is a part of me that wants to do something different this year. I've been doing too many things that haven't been working in the way that I want them to. Time to give it a rest, and find a different path.

Although one thing I want to do this year, which I know is going to get me into trouble (because I never learn), is find a Cause. I've added a link to my list of weblogs for Photography is Not A Crime, over on Pixiq. But I like to take pictures, so it makes a certain amount of sense that I'd be in favor of not having Big Brother looking to have me re-educated every time I haul out my Nikon. So I've been feeling an itch to find a cause to support that has nothing to do with me. And I mean really support - as in actively do something to advance, and not just pretend that Awareness equals Action - slacktivism won't get anything done. Something that doesn't directly benefit me, my friends or my family. This one, I know, is going to be tricky - activists give me a pain. Which, perhaps, is the single best reason for doing it. The fact that someone gets on your last nerve doesn't mean that what they're doing isn't important. I've also never really been much of an activist; passion and I aren't exactly tight. Maybe it's time I worked to change that.

Or maybe I'll just work to make it though another year with my sanity intact and my cynicism in check. That always turns out to be more work than it has any right to be.

As for you, enjoy it. Years are never as long as they're supposed to be. If you're going to cram in all the good times, good works and just plain good life that you're entitled to before the end of 2011, you'd better get started.

* Yes, I know it wasn't actually Kool-aid specifically that Jim Jones and his followers used to poison themselves and each other.