Optimistic About Jobs in 2014?

This month's unemployment report looked surprisingly rosy for once. The official U3 Unemployment Rate finally slipped below 7%, for the first time in about half a decade. It's true we're understating that number by a lot, but, but, BUT at least the direction is holding for once!

There's a lot of hires, but as you can see from Calculated Risk, we actually have a lot of quits. Sounds bad, but that is a positive thing. Taking a look at the graph, you can see quits bottomed out in the depth of recession: if you think there are no other jobs out there, you aren't going to leave your current one, even if your boss sexually harasses you, snorts coke, or keeps you at an entry level job for a decade.

It's still way, way, way low. The quits are at the same level as "jobless recovery" levels back in 2003, but, again, it's a solid trend upwards. We are still about a sixth below peak quit levels.

I wouldn't be surprised to see this trend continue. Unemployment benefits have expired, and though Congress might make some progress on that front (especially with the Republicans more conciliatory this year), I would expect to see some marginal improvement in the employment situation of the Long-Term unemployed.

We're still showing some positive business growth. Industrial production is trending up. And while companies might LIKE workers to work more hours, they can't really get them to do that: the hours worked holds steady.

So companies will increase production, hire more workers, and some more people will try finding work this year. Not to mention a lot of people quitting their jobs and trying to find new ones. Might actually be good for wages, too!

It's not all roses, though. We have a huge long-term unemployed group, about 39% of the total unemployed. Going off Japan, it looks like there will be a permanent shift towards more part-time workers. We can't be sure about that, though. The United States has been a more flexible work-place for quite some time. Indeed, while temp jobs HAVE gone up, they have only gone up to the proportion they were BEFORE the recession...a lot of people who lost jobs in the first place were the so-called temp workers.

Most importantly, they are not spiraling out of control, but peaking out. This to me suggests that you might want to view temp jobs as a leading indicator, which will lead to more aggressive full-time hiring this year and next year.

But 2014 will be an interesting test of that.

In the mean-time....cautiously optimistic.


-Robert

Some trippy stuff, by Nicholas Kaldor

So, for awhile now, Nicholas Kaldor has probably been among my favorite economist as far as originality of thought and brilliance goes, and this passage right here blew my mind, written in 1971.

"… Some day the nations of Europe may be ready to merge their national identities and create a new European Union – the United States of Europe. If and when they do, a European Government will take over all the functions which the Federal government now provides in the U.S., or in Canada or Australia. This will involve the creation of a “full economic and monetary union”. But it is a dangerous error to believe that monetary and economic union can precede a political union or that it will act (in the words of the Werner report) “as a leaven for the evolvement of a political union which in the long run it will in any case be unable to do without”. For if the creation of a monetary union and Community control over national budgets generates pressures which lead to a breakdown of the whole system it will prevent the development of a political union, not promote it."

Wow. Predicting the formation of the EU (which happened 20 years later) and warning that IF this formation was only monetary and not fiscal+political, it could fall apart and lead to a breakdown of the European project. Amazing. And I thought Wynne Godley was pretty prescient.

'Tis unfortunate that Friedman, and not Kaldor, had the larger microphone.

Anyhow GV, Remi, you still there and you feel like restarting up this blog? I'm pretty sick myself of the BR and GV just got banned there, so.. yeah.

So are you guys still alive

You heard me

Clausewitzian theory, and its potential in turning Critical Theory to Critical Policy

An idea I've been tossing around in my head

I'll probably eventually do an academic write up of this, but FIRST (IF YOU JUST LIKED THIS OR WHATEVER THIS IS AN EDIT) here is the problem: 

Theory gets turned, somehow, in to policy.  Critical Theory is a fantastical school of thought (and IMO is the only 'Big Idea' that the Social Sciences have had in at least a decade), but it hasn't yet addressed the implementation of policy so much as tried to change the theory which turns into policy.  Part of the problem is that even Critical students are taught in highly positivistic ways and these methods of thinking stay with us, so there is no real 'tradition' of thought within the social sciences which is able to completely part with the problems of positivistic/rationalistic reasoning.

UNTIL NOW (except it's more like UNTIL 1830)

Clausewitz understood, as a general, that it is impossible to recreate some event to the degree that one can use it as an example in an attempt to create some universal 'truth'.  Too many variables exist in any equation which aren't recorded, and even in modern examples where we know precisely the situation that a general or a policymaker was in, two massive blocks make it impossible to truly understand why a decision maker made a decision:

• It is impossible to fully understand the baggage that a human takes with them
• Language is private and personal experience, as well as a contextual one, and thus even if I were to write about what frame of mind I was in years ago the words I use now have a different meaning than the same words I would use then (a very critical idea for a soldier from the early 19th century!)

Thus, Clausewitz created an alternative method of teaching warfare, based on mental reenactment (note: this is similar to Collingwood's idea of mental reenactment of history.  I need to read Collingwood's The Idea of History but they're very similar ideas I've been told).  He understood that experience was the most important thing when it came to one's efficacy on the battlefield, so he endeavored to create a method of teaching which simulated experience.  Essentially, Clausewitz saw theory not as a way to create some version of absolute truth that can judge a right decision from a wrong one, but rather as a method by which individuals can understand why a decision can be difficult.

This could help transform critical theory into critical policy in several important ways: firstly it avoids the positivistic/teleological/antidemocratic methodology of the mainstream social sciences and offers an actual alternative at the root of the problem (ie the method of teaching).  Secondly it does away with the positivist notion that if we think hard enough we'll find some teleological policy/ideology/thought which will be so perfect.  Thirdly it incorporates personality into the problem of policymaking in a sincere and realistic way; rather than seeing emotion (or democracy for that matter) as an impediment to real Truth (/ideal Policy), we accept our human flaws in order to create better understanding.

Woah this turned into an academic write up

ANY IDEAS DUDES AND LADIES AND THEYSIES

Human Rights as postmodern authority

This is just a selection from an essay I'm doing, apologies if it's not 100% done seeming

The catastrophic failure of the League of Nations taught European policymakers a series of specific lessons: the need to keep the United States involved in European security, the need for positive Franco-Germanic relations, and more widely to disparage, avoid, and attack nationalism.  But the League offers yet another parable about the legitimacy of law.  From the start, the League was associated in the German, Soviet, and Fascist mind with the order of the Versailles treaty, that is, as something which was keeping Germans/the proletariat/etc down.  Because of this, the League would never be seen as legitimate by the revisionist powers, and her dictates would be followed or disobeyed strictly according to power politics.

On the other hand, in associating the United Nations with a concept of Universal Human Rights, the makers of the new world order had performed an act of legal salvation.  The late 19th century saw the creation of a school of Legal realism, that is, the realization that law is made rather than found (O’Brien 2011 pg69).  Although this realization did much to end judicial legislation, it also tremendously limited the importance of law: it brought with it the cynical, Austinian view of law, that a law is merely a rule plus coercion (Franck 1990 pg28).  This only gets at half of law: laws isn’t only enforced, but has moral authority as well, and a good law will possess both: without authority a law will never be followed, without enforcement a law will be casually broken.

So even though the League was imbued with the coercive power of two of the largest empires that the world has ever seen, it found its dictates rarely followed, not only because they were seen as products of a liberal order which benefited only the Western European nations (Armstrong 1996 pg35) (Perlmutter 1997 pgs58-59), but also because they were seen as mere legislation, representing principles which were not “made generally applicable but [were] confined almost entirely to the territories of the defeated powers.” (Franck 1990 pg159).

What changed after the Second World War was that none of the actors involved wanted another war to happen.  Furthermore, the language of human rights created the new ‘myth’ which the post-War and (increasingly so) the post-Cold War order has oriented itself around.  Rather than the Catholic hierarchy of Medievalism or the scientism of the Enlightenment and Industrial eras, the 20th and 21st century in Europe has been driven by differing perspectives towards emancipation and human rights.  Human rights and anti-war norms gave international laws their authority in the postwar period, to the degree that the rules of the current international system “display authority in themselves, which is to say that they are obeyed despite the fact that the system has no sovereign” (ibid pg27).

Legal Realism was a correct assertion which ended with desolate horror: the discovery that laws re constructed led to a view of might makes right which terminated in the horrifying policies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  Emancipation, and human rights, have an authority which acknowledges its own construction.  While emancipation may not have the solid existential authority of God behind it, emancipation is a form of authority which can survive secularism or modernism: it is a post modern authority. 

The Way that International Relations is taught at an undergraduate level

Is a joke.  This isn't a knock against students of international relations in any sense, in fact with hindsight it's an amazing display of fortitude that any of us end up graduating.

Why do I make this claim, and with what information do I make this claim?  Certainly I'm not saying this after some massive study of the way that international relations is studied.  However I have a large number of friends who study international relations from places as disparate as Grinell, American, SIS, Tulane, and the SUNY system, and this criticism is a product out of conversations I've had with those students and my experience in SUNY Purchase and looking through the International Relations tag on tumblr.

The first problem with the way that IR is taught comes at introductory classes, and these introductory classes introduce an endemic problem with IR teaching: read any tumblr post on an IR intro class and you will be confronted with a dichotomy: the dichotomy between Realism and Idealism.

Anyone familiar with modern international relations theory would recognize that this dichotomy is ridiculous and decades old.  For one, no one calls themselves 'idealists' anymore.  The modern counterparts to political realism, going from liberal institutionalism to the English School to Critical International Relations, all have deeply developed methodologies and ontologies far beyond the blind faith that the moniker 'idealism' suggests, and many of these schools are so different from the methodology of idealism that to suggest that they are 'growths' from the school is to grossly oversimplify modern theory.

While I realize that introductory level classes must oversimplify by their very nature, but we need to ask if IR classes are oversimplifying why are they giving us a simplistic depiction of 40 year old theory rather than modern theory?

Part of this is simply due to the tenure system.  Professors who graduated 40 years ago are far more likely to be teaching with tenure than an international relations student who just got their PhD, even if the tenured professor hasn't read a single book on theory since they graduated.

But there is another, more problematic reason for teaching theory in a realist-idealist dialectic: IR is taught this way to the benefit of realism.  In fact the dichotomy was made by realist theorists as a way to disparage anti-realist theories.  There's nothing wrong with teaching realism to students, in say a class that deals explicitly with realist theory, but when a professor is teaching a supposedly inclusive theory class and is using a dialectic that benefits realism, then we get into the realm of indoctrination.

How many Freshmen students have I spoken to who have said "well I don't want to be a realist, but it make so much more sense than anything else"?  How many students have I met who have left international relations because they are sick of being taught a stale dichotomy that isn't relevant to our generation or our century?  The problem I've seen, of students (especially female students) leaving IR or polisci programs for another program that offers interesting methods of analysis?

In my experience, this phenomena actually gets worse the better the school you go to is.  The higher up schools, especially the prestigious universities in Washington DC, have even more incentive to teach in an overly scientific way because it makes the ridiculous amounts of money that they charge seem worth it. Furthermore, the fact that you're going to an insanely prestigious college with authoritative professors has in my experience discouraged individual study in all but  the most studious.  At Purchase, all of the students who survived the polisci program to senior year are writing their senior projects based on theory that they were not taught in class.  I thought that this was a problem specific to Purchase until I started talking to my friends from Geneseo and Binghampton.

Self-teaching isn't wrong.  It is an important part of anyone's learning and is necessary regardless of how you're being taught and how good the teacher is. But self teaching shouldn't be the majority of one's education, especially when you are going tens of thousands of dollars into debt in order to fund your education.  

With all of this said, we need to ask ourselves a question

Is the purpose of international relations to teach the next generation of international relations analysts, or is it to teach the next generation of political realists?

How much do Americans get paid?

Seems like a simple enough question. Just look at your paycheck. Add
them all up and that’s how much you are getting paid in a year. Make
sure to account for your spouse’s salary, and that’s how much an
American household makes.
The reality is murkier and more complicated. Most employed Americans
also receive a substantial benefits package, and that definitely
matters when we determine how Americans are getting compensated. After
all, a company that’s paying a worker $80,000 and a huge healthcare
plan plus dental is giving more for that worker than one who’s paying
$85,000 and doesn’t even let the employee take a vacation.

It especially matters when we’re considering income inequality, and
growth in wages for Average Americans. One of the critiques of the
rising income inequality theory (usually from the right?) is that our
usual income stats don’t account for the huge advances in health care
that workers are getting, which will close the income gap. And show
that American workers aren’t getting exploited by companies.

Is it true? Well, a recent study shows…partially? Judge for yourself.
The graph is shown below. The red line apparently includes fringe
benefits.







What strikes me about this graph:

-The 2000s really did show some increase in compensation. Not as much
as the 90s, but some. Apparently it was all sucked up by health care,
though. So, if you want to improve incomes, you have to tackle the
health care cost problem

-The late 1980s were not a good time economically at all. Median
incomes were stagnant, and productivity growth wasn’t very strong
either. Why was this? It’s a big disconnect from the general trend of
the post-1970s. Maybe those big deficits do matter after all…

-The 1990s retain their standout performance, relative to the 2000s
and the 1980s. However, they don’t look QUITE as good compared to the
2000s anymore.

-For the most part, compensation really does track productivity graph,
which is different from the theory that they are totally disjointed
now. The only big change is in the late 1970s, which opened up a huge
difference that was never closed. What does this say about the 1970s?