Re: Re: employment
I think people generally identify less and less with the companies they work for and tend to define themselves more and more outside of the context of work. This is noted in Richard Florida's book The Rise of the Creative Class, which I have mostly read and can't seem to finish. He makes a bunch of good points but ultimately seem to be tooting the horn for a technocratic bourgeois. So how are people identifying themselves? I know there are a bunch of young people identifying themselves as anti-capitalists. This is their most important work. I have not followed this thread but I just thought I would throw that in there. Sorry if I am out of context. Lisa on 10/11/2002 2:57 AM, Charles Jannuzi at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose that what interests me in this discussion is not the question of the political significance of the third digit right of the point, but rather that of the social role of different kinds of unemployment and near-unemployment. Correct! But that is determined through political struggle, not by academic spats over (as you say) the third digit to the right of the point. I'm concerned that too many maillist denizens come to think that winning an argument on a maillist has anything to do with winning political struggles. Carrol The problem as I see it is this academic tendency to reify the concept over the social reality that it is supposed to model or represent in political discourse. If I have to take a calculation on unemployment out to the third digit to satisfy the statistician down the hall, so be it. If I have to multiply a simple total (of unemployed) by two to three because my collection methods are so inadequate, I might as well be wanking myself with all ten digits. I think the whole concept of employment is equally absurd. I'm absolutely sure that the work I do of most social--and economic--value is my volunteer editing duties--totally unremunerated. Quite a bit more satisfying, though, if you think about it, than taking one hour of part-time work a week at an employment security office for 8 dollars just so some government stats person can say I'm no longer unemployed. C. Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: employment
Oh, I have followed this thread a bit, sorry, there is so much email. Melvin makes a fabulous analysis because he points out the opening of a positive space in which opposition to capital can occupy, both in theory and in reality. He has identified fertile ground on which an alternative economy can be built. But that is not what you are talking about here. Statistics are marginally useful at best. I think we are all saying some version of that. You are absolutely right, academics need to 'step outside (y)our lives to where the neighborhood changes.' Lisa on 10/10/2002 11:36 PM, Carrol Cox at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: lisa stolarski wrote: Actually Carrol, I think in Melvin's theory the technically unemployed and under employed play a significant role in revolution. It was really fascinating, you should read it if you have not already. Many sectors of the working class play (will play) a significant role in revolutionary struggle. But (a) it can't be predicted in advance _what_ sectors at a given time and place and (b) the quarrel over _statistics_ is a purely academic matter, and making a fuss over it on a left maillist is mere distraction. Unemployment counts _politically_ on the spot where it occurs, and counts only as local political activity can involve the unemployed in political struggle. What the hell relevance to _that_ is whether government staticians are honest or not? Too often I get the feeling that marxists who, whether through their own choices or through external forces beyond their control, have been isolated from political struggle get to playing mind games: merely trying to prove that capitalism is bad. Of course it is. That is our point of departure. Now what? Carrol
Re: employment
--- Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose that what interests me in this discussion is not the question of the political significance of the third digit right of the point, but rather that of the social role of different kinds of unemployment and near-unemployment. Correct! But that is determined through political struggle, not by academic spats over (as you say) the third digit to the right of the point. I'm concerned that too many maillist denizens come to think that winning an argument on a maillist has anything to do with winning political struggles. Carrol The problem as I see it is this academic tendency to reify the concept over the social reality that it is supposed to model or represent in political discourse. If I have to take a calculation on unemployment out to the third digit to satisfy the statistician down the hall, so be it. If I have to multiply a simple total (of unemployed) by two to three because my collection methods are so inadequate, I might as well be wanking myself with all ten digits. I think the whole concept of employment is equally absurd. I'm absolutely sure that the work I do of most social--and economic--value is my volunteer editing duties--totally unremunerated. Quite a bit more satisfying, though, if you think about it, than taking one hour of part-time work a week at an employment security office for 8 dollars just so some government stats person can say I'm no longer unemployed. C. Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: employment
On 10/10/2002 1:54 AM, Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thiago Oppermann: Wouldn't the quality of unemployment also be relevant? A rate of 1% where the unemployed end up indentured to credit companies might be a lot worse than 5% if they are free to enjoy productive unemployment. ... there's another, related, issue: any given unemployment rate tends to have more oomph these days in the U.S. than it used to, in terms of protecting profits and detering inflation. This fact might be captured by noting that unemployment is only one part of the cost of job loss (a concept developed by Julie Schor and Sam Bowles). For example, the cost of job loss is larger for any given unemployment rate if the availability of unemployment insurance is lower. (cf. Schor, Juliet. 1987. Class Struggle and the Macroeconomy: The Cost of Job Loss. In Robert Cherry et al., eds. The Imperiled Economy, Book I: Macroeconomics from a Left Perspective. New York: URPE.) JD Thank you for the reference, I'll be sure to read it. This is a rather out of my school (that being Melanesian anthropology), but to me it seems that there also is an issue here about what it means to be unemployed these days. It doesn't necessarily mean one is not working: here in Oz we have these hare- brained and politically expedient work-for-the-dole schemes; there are also whole communities which are pulled together by pensioned activists. From a fairly totalising social perspective, are these people's labours so different from those of someone on a state payroll? As unemployment controls become ever more draconian and people are forced to 'volunteer' in ever larger numbers, unemployment could become the labour relations version of parole, although at some point, I suppose, it must all go a wee bit Speenhamland... Thiago - This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au
RE: employment
Title: RE: employment Thiago writes: there also is an issue here about what it means to be unemployed these days. It doesn't necessarily mean one is not working: here in Oz we have these hare- brained and politically expedient work-for-the-dole schemes; there are also whole communities which are pulled together by pensioned activists. From a fairly totalising social perspective, are these people's labours so different from those of someone on a state payroll? As unemployment controls become ever more draconian and people are forced to 'volunteer' in ever larger numbers, unemployment could become the labour relations version of parole, although at some point, I suppose, it must all go a wee bit Speenhamland... I think it's useful to keep unemployment _per se_ (as with the official definitions) separate from these near-unemployments. Monetary economists do something similar, talking about different measures of the money supply and distinguishing them from near-moneyes. Or perhaps we could talk about there being three different reserve armies of the unemployed: 1) the floating surplus population refers to those laid off by downsizing capitalists; they float off to eventually get new jobs. 2) the latent surplus population refers to those expelled from (or held in reserve in) non-capitalist organizations (including the patriarchal family) that are conquered by capital. 3) the stagnant surplus population refers to those in sectors that have been abandoned and destroyed by capital. This distinction -- made by guess who? -- doesn't seem to capture the full experience of unemployemtn, however. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: employment
Devine, James wrote: Thiago writes: there also is an issue here about what it means to be unemployed these days. It doesn't necessarily mean one is not working: [clip] I think it's useful to keep unemployment _per se_ (as with the official definitions) separate from these near-unemployments. I haven't followed this thread at all yet but have merely shuffled the posts off into a separate Netscape folder for reading some other day. But the fact that it has aroused passions is, in itself, an exhibition of either bad political thinking or simply apolitical thinking. (As almost every single post I have read on energy or ecology for the past three years has been apolitical -- i.e., utterly detached from any conception whatever of how the information provided could be embodied in an actual mass working-class movement.) Unemployment figures prove nothing politically whatsoever, nor can it make any political difference if those figures are correct or incorrect. Endless agonizing and polemics over the correctness or incorrectness of unemployment figures could only come (as Michael Hoover suggested) from those who have been cut off (or never connected to) concrete political practice. The result is that politics shrinks to the petty proportions of winning or losing a rhetorical battle on a maillist. Carrol
Re: Re: RE: employment
I suppose that what interests me in this discussion is not the question of the political significance of the third digit right of the point, but rather that of the social role of different kinds of unemployment and near-unemployment. This fine-grain sociological picture is, in my decidedly amateurish opinion, a pretty important background against which to read the unemployment rate. Some time ago I worked as an R.A. in a 'social capital' project in a western Sydney suburb that had a 30% unemployment rate. It was an isolated area, removed from nearby suburbs and composed almost exclusively of Radburn-design public housing. In the early 90s the place was one of the most unpleasant suburbs in Australia, with extreme rates of crime and suicide, but though it is no picnic now, it has seen a marked improvement since. There are a host of community activities, a health centre, a vibrant social centre, and when I last went there last year, they were throwing about the idea of forming a coop and buying the shopping centre (which is currently run from the rich suburbs of North Sydney, and is dismal.) Much of the improvement is due to the tireless work of pensioned activists, retirees, long-term unemployed and disabled. It may be said that this only shows that people will make do when they must make do, but the point is that that observation is also made by the government and major charities, including our backers in the research project. They are very keen to work out just how people make do, partly in the hope that it can be induced in other areas, presumably offering a cheaper and more humane way of dealing with surplus people. In interviews with local business people, they mentioned the importance of supporting such efforts, knowing fully well that the costs of running a shop would be higher with greater crime rates. Hmm... now that I have written this I am not all that sure if it makes my point, but it's a nice story anyway... Thiago On 11/10/2002 9:34 AM, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Devine, James wrote: Thiago writes: there also is an issue here about what it means to be unemployed these days. It doesn't necessarily mean one is not working: [clip] I think it's useful to keep unemployment _per se_ (as with the official definitions) separate from these near-unemployments. I haven't followed this thread at all yet but have merely shuffled the posts off into a separate Netscape folder for reading some other day. But the fact that it has aroused passions is, in itself, an exhibition of either bad political thinking or simply apolitical thinking. (As almost every single post I have read on energy or ecology for the past three years has been apolitical -- i.e., utterly detached from any conception whatever of how the information provided could be embodied in an actual mass working-class movement.) Unemployment figures prove nothing politically whatsoever, nor can it make any political difference if those figures are correct or incorrect. Endless agonizing and polemics over the correctness or incorrectness of unemployment figures could only come (as Michael Hoover suggested) from those who have been cut off (or never connected to) concrete political practice. The result is that politics shrinks to the petty proportions of winning or losing a rhetorical battle on a maillist. Carrol - This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au
Re: Re: RE: employment
Actually Carrol, I think in Melvin's theory the technically unemployed and under employed play a significant role in revolution. It was really fascinating, you should read it if you have not already. LS on 10/10/2002 7:34 PM, Carrol Cox at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Devine, James wrote: Thiago writes: there also is an issue here about what it means to be unemployed these days. It doesn't necessarily mean one is not working: [clip] I think it's useful to keep unemployment _per se_ (as with the official definitions) separate from these near-unemployments. I haven't followed this thread at all yet but have merely shuffled the posts off into a separate Netscape folder for reading some other day. But the fact that it has aroused passions is, in itself, an exhibition of either bad political thinking or simply apolitical thinking. (As almost every single post I have read on energy or ecology for the past three years has been apolitical -- i.e., utterly detached from any conception whatever of how the information provided could be embodied in an actual mass working-class movement.) Unemployment figures prove nothing politically whatsoever, nor can it make any political difference if those figures are correct or incorrect. Endless agonizing and polemics over the correctness or incorrectness of unemployment figures could only come (as Michael Hoover suggested) from those who have been cut off (or never connected to) concrete political practice. The result is that politics shrinks to the petty proportions of winning or losing a rhetorical battle on a maillist. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: RE: employment
lisa stolarski wrote: Actually Carrol, I think in Melvin's theory the technically unemployed and under employed play a significant role in revolution. It was really fascinating, you should read it if you have not already. Many sectors of the working class play (will play) a significant role in revolutionary struggle. But (a) it can't be predicted in advance _what_ sectors at a given time and place and (b) the quarrel over _statistics_ is a purely academic matter, and making a fuss over it on a left maillist is mere distraction. Unemployment counts _politically_ on the spot where it occurs, and counts only as local political activity can involve the unemployed in political struggle. What the hell relevance to _that_ is whether government staticians are honest or not? Too often I get the feeling that marxists who, whether through their own choices or through external forces beyond their control, have been isolated from political struggle get to playing mind games: merely trying to prove that capitalism is bad. Of course it is. That is our point of departure. Now what? Carrol
Re: Re: Re: RE: employment
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose that what interests me in this discussion is not the question of the political significance of the third digit right of the point, but rather that of the social role of different kinds of unemployment and near-unemployment. Correct! But that is determined through political struggle, not by academic spats over (as you say) the third digit to the right of the point. I'm concerned that too many maillist denizens come to think that winning an argument on a maillist has anything to do with winning political struggles. Carrol
Re: employment
I know some people are probably sick of the topic, but reading through all those posts, I can't help but think at least two individuals mucked it up more than added to it (not Daniel's recent post, which did add considerably). We discussed this on another list, I've forgotten the name, and this is more or less what I said then: US statistics were often not in conformity with other OECD countries. I thought the US sample too small, and the statistical 'adjustments' made to the data were not clearly explained. Also, the federal government seems to rely on states for a lot of this data, and they can be extremely unreliable and not uniform. Some of these states are about as good at managing their 'employment security offices' where 'active job searches' take place as they are their voting rolls, o.k.? I'm fairly convinced that in order to understand the unemployment issue in the US you have to take the official figures and multiply by at least two to see a more realistic figure, reflective and representative of the social reality. Nothing I've read here has convinced me otherwise. Two million plus and rising in jail also takes an awful lot of people (mostly men) out of the unemployment picture, if they were ever in it in the first place. C. Jannuzi various pieces from around the net below, with links -- http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/qa-1.htm 9 The actual unemployment rate [in Japan] is said to exceed 10%. Is it true? The unemployment rate is calculated using the number of the fully unemployed and the total labor force. Like other major advanced countries, the definitions of these terms used for Japan's Labor Force Survey conform to the international standards stipulated by the ILO to grasp the employment and unemployment status objectively. Therefore, like other nations that create statistics in accordance with ILO international standards, those who gave up job-seeking activities because of their severe economic situation, that is, who lost a will to find a job, are not regarded as unemployed. However, it is said to be important to grasp the real situation of such people. To achieve that, the Special Labor Force Survey is undertaken. Note: According to Special Survey of the Labor Force Survey (August 2001), of all persons not in the labor force who want to find a job, 2,160,000 people do not seek work because no suitable work is likely to be available. Of them, 880,000 are currently available for work. Of them, 580,000 actually sought work during the past one year. - http://business.baylor.edu/Steve_Gardner/LECOUT02C.DOC Comparative Economic Statistics: Unemployment A. Despite International Labour Office conventions, differences continue. See this article and this one by Constance Sorrentino of the U.S. Department of Labor. Also, see OECD Standardized Rates . 1. Without work? Contractually (Europe, Japan) or physically (U.S.). 2. Available? During survey (N. America, Japan) or within 2 weeks (E.C.). 3. Seeking work? During past 4 weeks (N. America), 4 weeks with exceptions (most E.C.), 60 days (Italy), or unspecified (Japan). Thus, Italian unemployment was 11.1% in 1989 by Italian definition or 7.8% by U.S. definition. Passive jobseekers who conduct their research for work strictly by reading newspaper ads are included in the labor force (and among the unemployed) in Canada, but not in the United States (reduces Canadian rate 1% point by U.S. definition or raises U.S. rate 0.15% point (in 1998) by Canadian definition). Will the former planned economies consider a person unemployed if they reject a job offer? B. Standard definition can be adjusted for: 1. Duration (U-1) E.C. countries have high rates of long-term unemployment 2. Underemployment - improper use of skills (unmeasured) or involuntary part-time work (U-6). Latter problem was largest, as % of labor force, in Netherlands and U.S. and smallest in Germany. Underemployment may also mean overstaffing, as in former planned economies. 3. Discouraged workers (U-4, U-5) Defined culturally. Biggest increases for Japan and Italy, especially Japanese women with temporary jobs. C. Methods of Data Collection 1. Sample surveys - Considered the best method. Conducted monthly in U.S., annally in E.C. Still are sensitive to wording of questions. Still may miss underground employment. 2. Registrations at unemployment or social security offices - most developing countries. U.S. Unemployment Rates in 1999 by Alternative Definitions Percent U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force 1.1 U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force 1.9 U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate) 4.2 U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus
Re: RE: Re: employment
DD writes: CJ: I know some people are probably sick of the topic, but reading through all those posts, I can't help but think at least two individuals mucked it up more than added to it (not Daniel's recent post, which did add considerably). DD: Thanks, but hang on a minute. If by two individuals you mean Jim and Doug, then it is important that we be absolutely clear that on the purely factual aspects of the argument, they are *right* and their interlocutors are wrong. I have never, ever, in any series at all, been aware of a single area of macroeconomic statistics in which the USA is not head and shoulders above the rest of the world in terms of timeliness, comprehensiveness and accuracy. That wasn't the issue, but rather the whole concept the US government uses to determine unemployment. Did you read most of what was written? The thing you are talking about was more an issue to two people, one of whom stormed out of the discussion. Whether or not I learned anything, it was certainly a good discussion. Any topic that gets that many people to participate has to be good overall. This is really quite important to understand; the BLS has a much bigger budget than any other statistics agency anywhere in the world, spends it well, and is admirable in its independence of mind. What is that budget, by the way? I mean, they don't actually generate the real data, you know. Doug was absolutely right to praise the staff of the BLS. The UK's statistics used to be as good (they're still not bad), but the guts were ripped out of them in the Thatcher years. The US's were gutless from the start if you ask me. Therefore, any debate on the statistics has to take place from the starting point that the USA's stats are best, and other countries' are worst. That's a rather unfair place to start a debate. I mean, it sounds like a good argument to argue, but it's tendentiousness and completely unsupported here. Four out of five people who play with the stats love the guys who peddle them. In particular, I've never had to deal directly with Japanese employment numbers, but I've found all the Japanese statistics I've had to deal with in other areas (mainly money supply) to be of abominable quality, out of date and subject to massive revisions. Probably because you are waiting for the English language version of everything, which takes time. It is really quite difficult to take seriously any position which relies on the USA not having the best-collected statistics. Try, you'll feel better, I think. Furthermore, I'd go out on a limb and argue that it is very likely that, on any question of definitions of labour force participation and similar matters, the BLS will have devoted more time and effort to the question of which definition most accurately reflects slack and tightness in the labour market, and will be right. This should certainly be the presumption. Yes, but the conception is too limited, as I have explained before. Second, playing around with international comparison numbers in an attempt to find something interesting to say which makes it look as if the USA's unemployment record is much worse than it looks is probably a waste of time. Not at all. As my post showed. I'm fairly sure it's twice what the official read says. You haven't said anything to impress me otherwise other than than you are impressed with US stats. The GDP per capita numbers and the employment rate all, until very recently, were telling exactly the same story; the USA in the 1990s did very well at putting people into jobs, including good jobs, and for much of that time, most other economies which followed policies different from the USA did not (not necessarily for that reason, and solely against that specific performance criterion). Yeah, we also re-invented the terms 'profit' and 'earning', too. Up until about the beginning of last year, this statement would not have been remotely controversial; the whole interesting point in my view is that since that point, the picture painted by the unemployment numbers has been sharply at variance with anecdotal evidence, and (in my view), we should not necessarily jump from this to the conclusion that the anecdotal evidence is wrong. If you were unemployed and lived in an area where there was only one way to get counted as unemployed, you might think differently. I'm probably shaped in this view by my own background at the Bank of England; the BoE famously missed the early 1990s recession by putting too much reliance on official statistics and not enough on the reports from its Agents. What a surprise! Then we have the more metaphysical debate, which should not be confused with either of the other two, except to say that it is highly unlikely that anyone will be able to make a case that the statistical agency of any country other than the USA has a really
Re: Re: employment
I thought Daniel did an excellent job of responding to this note. I don't think any one or two people mucked anything up but the discussion just got ugly step by step. On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 04:07:47AM -0700, Charles Jannuzi wrote: I know some people are probably sick of the topic, but reading through all those posts, I can't help but think at least two individuals mucked it up more than added to it (not Daniel's recent post, which did add considerably). -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
--- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thought Daniel did an excellent job of responding to this note. I don't think any one or two people mucked anything up but the discussion just got ugly step by step. I don't think Daniel responded at all well to my note because he ostensibly acted like he was responding to my note, but failed to respond to anything said in my note. His argument was basically he believed US stats to be superior to the rest of the world because he believed US stats to be superior to the rest of the world. At best you could say it was an argument from previously established authority, but most profs would throw it out of discussion 101. The substance of my note was not the said quality of US stats, but the concepts that underlie them. And I think that is an issue that a lot of people have with them. And now you are yourself mucking things up by not moderating to substance yourself, Michael. CJ __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: employment
JD I don't agree with that theory. I have no doubt that the US's extremely large jail populations and active duty military help keep unemployment quite a bit lower than if the US fit the OECD pattern in these areas. It doesn't, not by a long shot. Especially in the prison pop. But the main point is that this comment pointed out a strange combination of opinions floating on the list. On the one hand, some people criticized the official U rate because it doesn't capture the full experience of unemployed workers. I said it wasn't designed to do so (and shouldn't be interpreted as doing so). It was suggested that this view implied reductionism. On the other hand, other people _want_ to create a single index number that captures all of the experience of unemployed workers. I don't think this is possible. Having a few numbers might help, but even those would miss the whole picture. Statistics can help, but they're not the whole story. JD You have to understand no one person controls what gets said in a conversation or discussion. So to hold the whole list responsible for what one person thinks at one point in time is ridiculous. True, I have myself been ridiculous on more than one occasion. I think also you have to understand the basic mistrust of gov't stats. If the gov't compiles these to lie and mislead on so many other things, why then should we trust their approach to unemployment. Again, how rational is it to say, Here is our unemployment figure, multiply by two and you are getting close to the real number of people kept out of full-time employment? Just what were the stats designed for? They certainly haven't evolved in some organic relationship to the actual employment/unemployment picture of the current US. C.J. __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31147] Re: Re: employment Michael Perelman wrote: I thought Daniel did an excellent job of responding to this note. I don't think any one or two people mucked anything up but the discussion just got ugly step by step. Hey, just yesterday a Zionist professor told me to go muck myself because I criticized Ariel Sharon. Or maybe I didn't hear what he said exactly... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31150] Re: employment I don't agree with that theory. Charles J writes: I have no doubt that the US's extremely large jail populations and active duty military help keep unemployment quite a bit lower than if the US fit the OECD pattern in these areas. It doesn't, not by a long shot. Especially in the prison pop. imprisonment and the draft, among other things, lower the U rate. However, I was rejecting the natural rate hypothesis, not the idea that imprisonment lowers U. But the main point is that this comment pointed out a strange combination of opinions floating on the list. On the one hand, some people criticized the official U rate because it doesn't capture the full experience of unemployed workers. I said it wasn't designed to do so (and shouldn't be interpreted as doing so). It was suggested that this view implied reductionism. On the other hand, other people _want_ to create a single index number that captures all of the experience of unemployed workers. I don't think this is possible. Having a few numbers might help, but even those would miss the whole picture. Statistics can help, but they're not the whole story. Charles: You have to understand no one person controls what gets said in a conversation or discussion. So to hold the whole list responsible for what one person thinks at one point in time is ridiculous. heck, I wasn't holding the list responsible. Rather, by pointing out an inconsistency, I was saying lets you and him fight. True, I have myself been ridiculous on more than one occasion. say it ain't so! I think also you have to understand the basic mistrust of gov't stats. If the gov't compiles these to lie and mislead on so many other things, why then should we trust their approach to unemployment. Again, how rational is it to say, Here is our unemployment figure, multiply by two and you are getting close to the real number of people kept out of full-time employment? Just what were the stats designed for? They certainly haven't evolved in some organic relationship to the actual employment/unemployment picture of the current US. you're right to suspect the gov't, but the powers that be find a value in having some sort of measure of unemployment. As unemployment falls, ceteris paribus, the profit rate rises, because falling U is associated with higher rates of capacity utilization (greater profit realization). Many capitalists like this, among other things because they want to avoid being purged from the market. But if U falls _too far_, suddenly, the motivation to work is undermined, worker bargaining power rises, etc., so that either profitability is squeezed or inflation results. The policy elite wants to avoid the too far part. One way to do this is to have reasonable measures of U. (This is less important to the elites of countries of economies in which foreign trade is much more important than in the U.S. or can't afford decent statistics, etc.) I have likely attributed too much consciousness to the power elite, but they act as if the above were so. In any event, examinations of the minutes of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee by Tom Dickens indicate that they are quite conscious of the class dimension. Jim
RE: Re: employment (apologies: long)
-Original Message- From: Charles Jannuzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 09 October 2002 15:13 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:31148] Re: employment best you could say it was an argument from previously established authority Absolutely, because I have no real specialist knowledge of the subject of unemployment statistics and no real prospect of having the time to get any. But look at it this way: What's the knock-down argument to say that people who only skim want ads *should* be counted as actively looking for work? I haven't heard it. Same with the long term sick. I don't even understand the argument about the unemployment rate which seems to be arguing that people who have jobs in the armed services ought to be counted as unemployed. What I do know is that there are a lot of people doing good, honest work on this subject, trying to measure what effect various kinds of non-worker populations have on the operations of the labour market, and that the most and the best of them work for the BLS. So in the absence of anyone making a contrary argument to me, I'm going to assume that the inclusion of these groups makes the BLS number worse, rather than better, as a measurement of what it's meant to measure. My understanding of what the BLS unemployment rate is meant to measure is this: it's meant to measure the number of people who would be employed if the labour market were to clear at the current prevailing wage rate, but who are not employed. It's a measure of labour market disequilibrium. There are, I think, two further important questions which arise from this, and part of the reason why we're all talking past each other is that we're taking these two questions out of order. The questions are: 1) Assuming that unemployment is used by the official statisticians to measure the extent to which the labour market has failed to clear, should it be measuring something else? and -- and this can most likely only be answered conditionally on a specific answer to 1) above -- 2) Can adjustments be made to the official statistics in order to transform the BLS number into something which works well as a measure of whatever it is that the unemployment rate ought to be naming? Taking these questions in order, I'm much less sure of my ground than I was when I decided to stick my oar in. There's a whole menu of different things which could be reasonably regarded as being named by the words the unemployment rate: a) the number of people not employed due to the labour market not clearing at the current wage rate and rate of profit b) the number of people who would be unemployed due to the labour market not clearing at some other level of the wage rate and rate of profit (presumably, one which we would regard as fairer c) the entire population of those who could conceivably be press-ganged into the labour force, minus the employed d) c) , but minus people who would genuinely choose leisure rather than work given the current level of social benefits e) c), but also minus the people who would choose leisure rather than work given some other (lower or higher) level of social benefits f) d) or e), but assuming people who would choose leisure rather than work if they were in some Rawlsian state of maximally rational reflective equilibrium, rather than the choices they might contingently happen to make -- I think that this is what we're thinking about when we start adding back disenchanted workers. g) any of the above, but adding back in people who have enough non-labour income not to need to work -- the above six are all more or less quantifiable people; I would guess that you could twitch the BLS numbers to give you any of these, albeit that b), e) and f) would require the making of some fairly tendentious adjustments and would give you a number useless for discussion with anyone not already disposed to agree with you. But there is also h) the number of people who regard their lack of a job as being a bad thing for them i) the number of people who regard their lack of a job as being a harm caused to them by outside agency j) the number of people who would be better off if they were given a(ny) job tomorrow k) the number of people for whom there is some specific job which they could do, and which it would make them better off if they were given it tomorrow l) k), but with the constraint that the job must be one which could be offered to them under some organisation of the economy which meets some criterion of fairness relative to the currently prevailing organisation m) variants of all of the above, but defining job in a way which does not necessarily imply participation in the wage economy. --- it's probably one of the above that one would want to be thinking of in order to support intuitively attractive propositions like even one person unemployed is too much; it's also what I was twittering on about when I was talking about the misery of unemployment. I would guess that you
Re: Re: employment
Finally, think about how so many of these concepts are culturally determined. If 'unemployment' in the US were determined the way it is in Japan, the figure would jump about 1% with one calculation. I'm not sure I follow the argument that, b/c Japanese statisticians define employment differently, that is due to cultural difference. That seems more like an institutional choice. Also, do you know what the Japanese count that the US doesn't? In the US, if you count marginally attached and discouraged workers, the rate is 6.4%. But no one seems shocked and that is publicly available. Christian
RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31127] Re: Re: employment Michael: Several times in the past, I mentioned that the unemployment rate should include something to adjust for the quality of available jobs. My idea never resonated. I am sure that it could not be calculated with any exactitude, but I agree that an unemployment rate of 1% with everyone flipping burgers might not be better than a rate of 5% with better jobs. I think that it's a mistake to try to shove too much information into the various U rates, to try to get it to be some measure of social illth. The quality-of-jobs issue can and should be measured in some other way. Both sets of numbers deserve our attention. Hey, I said I was going to stop discussing this stuff, but it's one of my fields. JD
re: employment
Daniel Davies wrote, I have never, ever, in any series at all, been aware of a single area of macroeconomic statistics in which the USA is not head and shoulders above the rest of the world in terms of timeliness, My understanding was that Statistics Canada is the best in the world, overall. I don't know if this holds for macroeconomics specifically. Sometimes I've found BLS series more useful; other times not. Speaking of statistics, I would like to mention two books that I use frequently. One is _Statistics for Social Change_ by Lucy Horwitz and Lou Ferleger, published by South End Press, 1980. It gives a good popular account of how statistics are used in argument and what are the pitfalls. The other book is _The Taming of Chance_ by Ian Hacking, Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hacking traces the historical development of the concept of probability and how that interacted with state institutions. I find it frustrating to be always arguing the honesty and accuracy questions, which in my view are beside the point(s). One of the points (Hacking) is that the things statististics measures have been shaped historically by their position vis-a-vis the state and its statistical apparatus. It becomes a cycle -- this is important because it is measured and it is measured because it is important. It also changes and those changes are a function of its importance and measurability. The other point is that statistics are inevitably part of arguments and the misuse of statistics in arguments is so pervasive it was already a truism in the 19th century -- there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Good statistics -- in the sense of accuracy, timeliness and comprehensiveness -- in themselves do not innoculate us from bad arguments that use those good statistics. And by bad arguments, I don't mean only other people's bad arguments. If one assumes that phenomena gauged by state statistics are simply facts that are out there independent of the role of the agency that gathers them, then one eventually becomes swept into the discussion about how to fine tune (and only fine tune) this marvelous machine -- the best of all possible machines. As an after thought, another book I would suggest is _Labor Statistics and Class Struggle_ by Marc Linder, International Publishers, 1994. Linder takes a closer look at the institutional politics and history regarding specific BLS series and class issues. Linder shows that the class struggle inherent in labor statistics not a matter of top-hatted capitalist meanies rubbing their hands together and cackling as they think up clever accounting tricks to deceive and enslave the workers. Nor is it a matter of noble, slightly to the left of centre civil servants stoically cranking out an objective, politically neutral account of the facts for the edification of all. We hear so much about preemptive self-defence these days, it may be seeping into the rhetorical strategies on this list. Either that or I missed the message where someone recklessly attacked the intelligent, scrupulous use of statistics by other people on the list. By the way, notwithstanding Michael's not seeing any reason for the nastiness, there may indeed be a reason. And that reason may also help explain the we're having big fun over here on the right phenomena (http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/41/on-powers.php). I did a quick scan of the fun guys on the right and spent a little more time looking at one particular fun guy on the right and noticed one distinctive feature that contrasted with left discourse. There was a lot of jocular kill talk. Not all of it was graphic. Some was euphemistic, like take out Saddam. But the kill talk seemed to me to be playing a crucial role in bonding between the righties. There are obstacles to a comparable kill talk on the left. For one thing, many of us hold the opinion that killing is not sport and that talking about killing doesn't advance progressive politics. There are also possible legal complications if people on the left routinely made jokes about killing people _we_ don't like. We're not on a level playing field with the right in regard to kill talk. They can rhetorically murder with impunity. Before anybody concludes that I'm calling righties a bunch of blood-thirsty cretins, I want to clarify that I don't take the kill talk literally. There is, of course, always the danger it may get played-out literally in some psychopathic spectacle of preemtive self-defence but I don't see that as an integral part or inevitable consequence of the rhetoric. What I do see as an integral part is the bonding that takes place around the kill talk. Nietzsche wrote that all instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward. And it may be worth asking whether the internal rancor of the left may have something to do with the self-imposed and societal constraints that the left feels about rhetorical violence. Remember I am talking about *rhetorical*
RE: Re: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31131] Re: Re: Re: employment Thiago Oppermann: Wouldn't the quality of unemployment also be relevant? A rate of 1% where the unemployed end up indentured to credit companies might be a lot worse than 5% if they are free to enjoy productive unemployment. ... there's another, related, issue: any given unemployment rate tends to have more oomph these days in the U.S. than it used to, in terms of protecting profits and detering inflation. This fact might be captured by noting that unemployment is only one part of the cost of job loss (a concept developed by Julie Schor and Sam Bowles). For example, the cost of job loss is larger for any given unemployment rate if the availability of unemployment insurance is lower. (cf. Schor, Juliet. 1987. Class Struggle and the Macroeconomy: The Cost of Job Loss. In Robert Cherry et al., eds. The Imperiled Economy, Book I: Macroeconomics from a Left Perspective. New York: URPE.) JD
Re: employment
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/08/02 05:33PM How the hell does a simple discussion about data evoke such nastiness? Michael Perelman i'll try to avoid making an analogy here for reasons that should be obvious... i can't help but recall fanon's assertion that violence is turned inward in colonial society; people kill each other rather than their subjugators... so while most pen-lers are probably comfortable (relatively speaking), i've a hunch that many have been rendered politically impotent... michael hoover
RE: Re: employment
Michael Hoover wrote: i'll try to avoid making an analogy here for reasons that should be obvious... i can't help but recall fanon's assertion that violence is turned inward in colonial society; people kill each other rather than their subjugators... Yes, as Marx used to say, it's the violins in the cistern that make the plumbing rattle. Mark PS I admit that a 98kb posting of a badly-translated, seemingly-obscure debate among Russian commentators may be a bit daunting, but if anyone wants to understand why Russian president Putin is Just Saying No to Bush right now (over Iraq)--and what are the momentous implications thereof--this was required reading.
Re: RE: Re: employment (apologies: long)
On 9 Oct 02, at 16:14, Davies, Daniel wrote: -Original Message- From: Charles Jannuzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 09 October 2002 15:13 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:31148] Re: employment best you could say it was an argument from previously established authority Absolutely, because I have no real specialist knowledge of the subject of unemployment statistics and no real prospect of having the time to get any. But look at it this way: What's the knock-down argument to say that people who only skim want ads *should* be counted as actively looking for work? I haven't heard it. Same with the long term sick. I don't even understand the argument about the unemployment rate which seems to be arguing that people who have jobs in the armed services ought to be counted as unemployed. What I do know is that there are a lot of people doing good, honest work on this subject, trying to measure what effect various kinds of non-worker populations have on the operations of the labour market, and that the most and the best of them work for the BLS. So in the absence of anyone making a contrary argument to me, I'm going to assume that the inclusion of these groups makes the BLS number worse, rather than better, as a measurement of what it's meant to measure. My understanding of what the BLS unemployment rate is meant to measure is this: it's meant to measure the number of people who would be employed if the labour market were to clear at the current prevailing wage rate, but who are not employed. It's a measure of labour market disequilibrium. There are, I think, two further important questions which arise from this, and part of the reason why we're all talking past each other is that we're taking these two questions out of order. The questions are: 1) Assuming that unemployment is used by the official statisticians to measure the extent to which the labour market has failed to clear, should it be measuring something else? and -- and this can most likely only be answered conditionally on a specific answer to 1) above -- 2) Can adjustments be made to the official statistics in order to transform the BLS number into something which works well as a measure of whatever it is that the unemployment rate ought to be naming? I am a little curious of how dd comes to the conclusion that BLS statistics are the best in the world and on what basis. They are perhaps the quickest to be published and perhaps the most voluminous but, if I remember correctly, there have been quite huge changes in recent months to growth and productivity measures due to statistical revisions and the reason given was the rush to get the data out means that the input figures to the statistics are themselves preliminary and subject to adjustment. One result of such a revision was a drastic fall in the rate of productivity growth in the latter 1990s which contradicted the assertion of a 'new economy.' In any case, a little nationalism here, I believe the UN system of national accounting was adopted from that developed by Statistics Canada at the end of the 2nd WW, because of the quality of the Canadian statistical services. Indeed, I use Stats Canada statistics a lot and though I often curse them because of changes in definitions etc. their quality is excellent and they always give full details of how each are collected and the margins of error etc. I am not sure that the US stats are any better and, given their speed of release, unrevised US data may be less reliable than that available from stodgy Statscan. They also publish quarterly a journal Perspectives on Labour and Income which does in depth studies of such things as unemployment exploring all the variables that we have discussed on this thread and incorporating a lot of statistics that are otherwise not reported -- including stuff on the quality of jobs and what people do with their 'leisure;' also on the grey economy and so on. This raises a second point. Some economists measure macroeconomic unemployment not by the unemployment rate, but by the employment rate and its divergence from the potential employment rate. Just recently I saw graphs (I don't remember where) showing the divergence of US employment rates over the last ten years from the long term trend. What they showed was not a large rise in unemployment, but rather a sharp drop in the employment rate coinciding with the recession. Thirdly, and this has only been hinted at on this thread as I recall, (I could be wrong), one problem is that the unemployment rate (strict definition or otherwise) does not take into account institutional changes. But to be a real measure of the welfare cost one has to consider the institutional context. In 1911, the definition of potential labour force included those 10 years of age and over. This was revised to 14+ and then 15+ somewhere around 1951 I think
RE: RE: Re: employment (apologies: long)
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31157] RE: Re: employment (apologies: long) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- Daniel Davies writes: ... My understanding of what the BLS unemployment rate is meant to measure is this: it's meant to measure the number of people who would be employed if the labour market were to clear at the current prevailing wage rate, but who are not employed. It's a measure of labour market disequilibrium. The BLS isn't thinking of the idea of market-clearing when they do surveys to figure out the unemployment rate. In theory, the labor-power markets are in macro-equilibrium (macro market clearing) when the number of unemployed workers equals the number of vacancies. The BLS doesn't measure the latter (so that economists have to use help-wanted ads and the like). This macro equilibrium coexists with micro-disequilibrium (non-clearing of markets), where there are unemployed workers and vacancies but the two can't get together. JD
Re: Re: employment
As usual, Michael H. is correct. I tried to say something similar a couple days ago when Doug suggested that the left had a tendency to root out heretics. I cryptically suggested that it was not some political tendency but rather it reflected powerlessness. On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 01:38:55PM -0400, Michael Hoover wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/08/02 05:33PM How the hell does a simple discussion about data evoke such nastiness? Michael Perelman i'll try to avoid making an analogy here for reasons that should be obvious... i can't help but recall fanon's assertion that violence is turned inward in colonial society; people kill each other rather than their subjugators... so while most pen-lers are probably comfortable (relatively speaking), i've a hunch that many have been rendered politically impotent... michael hoover -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: As usual, Michael H. is correct. I tried to say something similar a couple days ago when Doug suggested that the left had a tendency to root out heretics. I cryptically suggested that it was not some political tendency but rather it reflected powerlessness. I guess that a different kind of left is being described here than the one that existed in historical reality. I am working my way through an extended study of the life and writings of John Reed. If you look at the period after 1917, the amount of bickering that goes on in these email lists is pale by comparison. In Reds, the battles between the SP, and rival CP's led by John Reed (Warren Beatty) and Louis Fraina (Paul Sorvino) routinely ended in fisticuffs. And these were parties that had relatively mass working class followings. I think the complaints heard here frequently to the effect of why can't we all get along presumes that we are equal partners in the disputes taking place. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Nation Magazine, the Boston Globe, the LA Weekly, etc., where all the attacks on the radical wing of the left are taking place, are *mass* circulation print publications. I suppose that some people would be happy if I ignored these attacks, but that is! not in my nature. As Ravi pointed out, he never had an ill thought about Marc Cooper until he lashed out at Amy Goodman. Same thing is true for me. I used to donate hundreds of dollars to the Nation in the 1980s when the magazine was publishing strong articles against intervention in Central America. Marc Cooper was one of my favorite Nation Magazine writers. I still remember his penetrating analysis of post-Pinochet Chile. Same is true of Hitchens. But things have changed. Since the mid 1990s at least, the magazine has shifted to the right. Unfortunately, there is no opportunity to answer it adequately in the letters section. Even Edward Herman had an article trimmed. So, too bad, folks. If you want me to stop answering items that hammer the radical movement, use your powers of persuasion on Doug Henwood to convince him to tell his colleagues at the Nation to stop lacerating people who think like me. This is a case of self-defense and nothing less. -- Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: employment
Nice post, Lou, except for the personal dig at the end. I remember when the New Republic was my fave. Kopkind and Ridgeway were great. On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 06:26:18PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: I guess that a different kind of left is being described here than the one that existed in historical reality. I am working my way through an extended study of the life and writings of John Reed. If you look at the period after 1917, the amount of bickering that goes on in these email lists is pale by comparison. In Reds, the battles between the SP, and rival CP's led by John Reed (Warren Beatty) and Louis Fraina (Paul Sorvino) routinely ended in fisticuffs. And these were parties that had relatively mass working class followings. I think the complaints heard here frequently to the effect of why can't we all get along presumes that we are equal partners in the disputes taking place. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Nation Magazine, the Boston Globe, the LA Weekly, etc., where all the attacks on the radical wing of the left are taking place, are *mass* circulation print publications. I suppose that some people would be happy if I ignored these attacks, but that ! is! not in my nature. As Ravi pointed out, he never had an ill thought about Marc Cooper until he lashed out at Amy Goodman. Same thing is true for me. I used to donate hundreds of dollars to the Nation in the 1980s when the magazine was publishing strong articles against intervention in Central America. Marc Cooper was one of my favorite Nation Magazine writers. I still remember his penetrating analysis of post-Pinochet Chile. Same is true of Hitchens. But things have changed. Since the mid 1990s at least, the magazine has shifted to the right. Unfortunately, there is no opportunity to answer it adequately in the letters section. Even Edward Herman had an article trimmed. So, too bad, folks. If you want me to stop answering items that hammer the radical movement, use your powers of persuasion on Doug Henwood to convince him to tell his colleagues at the Nation to stop lacerating people who think like me. This is a case of self-defense and nothing less. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote, As usual, Michael H. is correct. I tried to say something similar a couple days ago when Doug suggested that the left had a tendency to root out heretics. I cryptically suggested that it was not some political tendency but rather it reflected powerlessness. I mentioned Nietzsche's all instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward from Genealogy of Morals. I'm re-posting the comment, below, because I originally sent it at the bottom of a longer message so it may have gotten overlooked. By the way, notwithstanding Michael's not seeing any reason for the nastiness, there may indeed be a reason. And that reason may also help explain the we're having big fun over here on the right phenomena (http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/41/on-powers.php). I did a quick scan of the fun guys on the right and spent a little more time looking at one particular fun guy on the right and noticed one distinctive feature that contrasted with left discourse. There was a lot of jocular kill talk. Not all of it was graphic. Some was euphemistic, like take out Saddam. But the kill talk seemed to me to be playing a crucial role in bonding between the righties. There are obstacles to a comparable kill talk on the left. For one thing, many of us hold the opinion that killing is not sport and that talking about killing doesn't advance progressive politics. There are also possible legal complications if people on the left routinely made jokes about killing people _we_ don't like. We're not on a level playing field with the right in regard to kill talk. They can rhetorically murder with impunity. Before anybody concludes that I'm calling righties a bunch of blood-thirsty cretins, I want to clarify that I don't take the kill talk literally. There is, of course, always the danger it may get played-out literally in some psychopathic spectacle of preemtive self-defence but I don't see that as an integral part or inevitable consequence of the rhetoric. What I do see as an integral part is the bonding that takes place around the kill talk. Nietzsche wrote that all instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward. And it may be worth asking whether the internal rancor of the left may have something to do with the self-imposed and societal constraints that the left feels about rhetorical violence. Remember I am talking about *rhetorical* violence. In his _Rhetoric of Motives_, Kenneth Burke questioned what the literary function of suicide and murder was in a number of texts, among them Milton's Samson Agonistes. To make a long story short, Burke saw these themes as figuring change. I don't know if my short story does justice to Burke's long one, but the point is that kill talk projects a metaphor for profound change that people can identify with (can, not necessarily will). Sorel was saying something similar (although not identical) with his theory of social myths. Rhetorical violence, taken literally, may well be the mother of all weapons of mass destruction. Let's ignore it and hope it goes away. On second thought, haven't we tried that? On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 01:38:55PM -0400, Michael Hoover wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/08/02 05:33PM How the hell does a simple discussion about data evoke such nastiness? Michael Perelman i'll try to avoid making an analogy here for reasons that should be obvious... i can't help but recall fanon's assertion that violence is turned inward in colonial society; people kill each other rather than their subjugators... so while most pen-lers are probably comfortable (relatively speaking), i've a hunch that many have been rendered politically impotent... michael hoover
Re: employment
--- Christian Gregory [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Finally, think about how so many of these concepts are culturally determined. If 'unemployment' in the US were determined the way it is in Japan, the figure would jump about 1% with one calculation. I'm not sure I follow the argument that, b/c Japanese statisticians define employment differently, that is due to cultural difference. That seems more like an institutional choice. Also, do you know what the Japanese count that the US doesn't? In the US, if you count marginally attached and discouraged workers, the rate is 6.4%. But no one seems shocked and that is publicly available. Christian It's a good point. In this case I stated it sloppily and really meant 'specific to a country', and implying that these differences might actually be quite arbitrary (a lot of what the BLS does in the US just seems to go back to traditions started under FDR). However, attitudes about unemployment do differ and they might follow cultural patterns (though every time I try to find one I'm hanged for sure that there is nothing sure). One possibility is that people avoid being counted officially as unemployed because they are too ashamed to admit it. I mean, if you can't qualify for 'unemployment compensation payments' (and to get these the requirements are quite strict in the US), then you might not have any reason whatsoever to go into an 'employment security office' in the first place and find the whole bureaucratic rigamarole a pain. Consider, you only have ten offices for the whole of Chicago and might be inclined to say, Oh, f- that sh-, I'm out of here. The employment security offices do not take in the entire population. In Japan, many middle aged men just retire early rather than accept part-time jobs or admit they are unemployed. But I am not saying these are culturally specific. As for what the Japanese count and the US doesn't, the Japanese site explains in detail how Japan differs from ILO and OECD patterns and that was in the links I sent earlier. I do know if Japan had male incarceration like the US, it would have 1 million men in jail and 500,000 in direct court supervision , but it doesn't even have 50,000 men in jail. And it's armed forces would be 5 times the size they are to match the US. On the other hand, I also know that Japanese cultural practice still keeps a lot of working age women out of the full time job market, though this is changing and will have to change further with the 'greying' of society. This is a complex trend, because it is in part due to the fact that so many women now work that so many are delaying having children or not having children at all. Finally, I think the Japanese unemployment count is too low too. C Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: employment
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't agree with that theory. Charles J writes: I have no doubt that the US's extremely large jail populations and active duty military help keep unemployment quite a bit lower than if the US fit the OECD pattern in these areas. It doesn't, not by a long shot. Especially in the prison pop. imprisonment and the draft, among other things, lower the U rate. However, I was rejecting the natural rate hypothesis, not the idea that imprisonment lowers U. Sorry, JD, my quote of you got cut off. I reject the hypothesis, too, btw. But the main point is that this comment pointed out a strange combination of opinions floating on the list. On the one hand, some people criticized the official U rate because it doesn't capture the full experience of unemployed workers. I said it wasn't designed to do so (and shouldn't be interpreted as doing so). But at a popular level, that is how it is often used. I and some others objected that it isn't just misused statistics but misused concepts. It was suggested that this view implied reductionism. On the other hand, other people _want_ to create a single index number that captures all of the experience of unemployed workers. I don't think this is possible. I don't think so either. But as Michael and others have offered, it could certainly be done better. Having a few numbers might help, but even those would miss the whole picture. Statistics can help, but they're not the whole story. Statistics are often the whole story gone wrong. First, the data are not always as CLEAN as people think. I see this in education all the time, where this or that number are excluded so the researchers can say their distribution is normal. But the fact is, teachers don't get to exclude individuals just because they would skew a population. Moreover, not only do stats get misused, but quite often they are used to disguise incoherent conceptualizations underlying the research. Such as the example I brought up about 'phonemic awareness' research and how it has been translated into billions being spent on phonemic awareness training for kids who don't need it. For one thing, if the concept of the 'phoneme' is just a structuralist abstraction, who has ever convincingly shown it has any psychological reality whatsoever? No one has. Many linguists have just dropped any discussion of the topic as nonsense. Charles: You have to understand no one person controls what gets said in a conversation or discussion. So to hold the whole list responsible for what one person thinks at one point in time is ridiculous. heck, I wasn't holding the list responsible. Rather, by pointing out an inconsistency, I was saying lets you and him fight. I don't think it was an inconsistency in any one mind, nor do I think it a rationale for an argument--though maybe some do. True, I have myself been ridiculous on more than one occasion. say it ain't so! O.K., I just said that to sound humble. I think also you have to understand the basic mistrust of gov't stats. If the gov't compiles these to lie and mislead on so many other things, why then should we trust their approach to unemployment. Again, how rational is it to say, Here is our unemployment figure, multiply by two and you are getting close to the real number of people kept out of full-time employment? Just what were the stats designed for? They certainly haven't evolved in some organic relationship to the actual employment/unemployment picture of the current US. you're right to suspect the gov't, but the powers that be find a value in having some sort of measure of unemployment. As unemployment falls, ceteris paribus, the profit rate rises, because falling U is associated with higher rates of capacity utilization (greater profit realization). Many capitalists like this, among other things because they want to avoid being purged from the market. But if U falls _too far_, suddenly, the motivation to work is undermined, worker bargaining power rises, etc., so that either profitability is squeezed or inflation results. You make it sound like data on unemployment are kept for a theory about employment and profits and inflation. This is why economists are interested in it, but it is not the social cause of the phenomena supposedly being measured. At a microeconomic level, the best way to boost productivity is simply to fire a bunch of people and tell the fewer who remain they will meet deadlines and quotas. At least short term, this often does boost productivity. There is bundles to be saved in health care alone. I think a lot of this happened at the telecoms. They might have gone belly up because they took on too much debt and overinvested and bought out too many other companies. But it would seem a lot of companies remade
Re: employment
Also, I don't see why the sins of modernism (a.k.a., capitalist rationality) should encourage rejection of logic, scientific thinking, the use of evidence, etc. I doubt this is what you advocate. Jim Well what sort of 'rationality' is it that says, Here, this is our 'unemployment figure' (but by the way, it doesn't really measure the numbers of people who are unemployed)? C. Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31033] Re: Re: employment OK fellas, I am going to imagine what Sabri could have meant. JD's are not the the only perspectives on how we can treat statistics, government or otherwise. Yes, even statistics are subject to perspective, numbers may be objective but their presentation has its purposes. Here are some alternative attitudes about statistics which arise from my own experiences: * we can recognize that statistics can be manipulated in order to shape public opinion... * we can realize that the government has its own agenda and that the statistics the government releases and the way those statistics are handled will reflect that agenda. * we can realize that statistics don't mean much when the point is to build a better world beginning with your own here and now. ... --- you're saying that I didn't recognize all of this? Please don't tell me what I think. JD
Re: Re: employment
Sabri Oncu wrote: Jim said: Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. I don't know how to describe it, although I am sure I would sound racist if I say this but I think you don't get this because you are Americans. You don't know the difference because you have never experienced it. As I said I don't know how to describe it. It is just a matter of tasting it, at least, for once. Life is not as rational as you think it is. This borders on the insulting. The statistical apparatus of the U.S. gives us a pretty good idea of inequality, forced idleness, under-employment, poverty, ill-health, and deprivation. And that's the big picture. I live in New York City, and see poverty and suffering every day. I don't have to cross a street to see people picking for lunch in a wastebasket. So dismount your high moral horse, unless it makes you feel good to sit way up there. Doug
Re: Re: Re: employment
The US unemployment rate appeared steady earlier this year, despite the slowing economy and mounting job cuts, but it eventually climbed well above last October's 30-year low of 3.9 per cent. Many economists expect the rate to rise to more than 6 per cent next year. The Labor Department conceded it might have understated September's losses since it counts payrolls that were active and includes workers who were employed only part of the month. (FT, Oct. 6, 2002) --- A new stimulus package in the neighborhood of $100 billion, or 1 percent of G.D.P., is needed now. The Federal Reserve will probably cut rates at its next meeting, but interest rates are already so low that further cuts may not help much. Much of the federal money should go to workers, who need it and will spend it. The rising jobless rate has understated the jobs weakness. Discouraged workers are leaving the work force in droves and are not counted as unemployed. (NYT, Oct. 3, 2002) --- In the case of unemployment, analysts fear the new jobless numbers will convince ordinary Americans that what most have treated as little more than a pause in economic growth may be something more durable and dangerous. The psychology is beginning to change, said Mark A. Zandi, chief economist of the West Chester, Pa., research firm Economy.com. People have been acting like the slowdown was a blip. Now, they're starting to think this could last for a while and they had better prepare by reducing their spending. To the extent that people treat the unemployment rate as a barometer of economic uncertainty, there is some reason to think they should have begun to trim their spending earlier. That is because up until now it's likely the rate has understated the true dimensions of job loss, analysts said. In contrast to some other periods of economic slowdown, a substantial fraction of workers has been reacting to the economy's weakness by dropping out of the labor force when they are laid off and can't find a new job. Their departure reduced the number of people working, but it also removed them from the unemployment calculations. Analysts said the trend helps explain how the jobless rate managed to stay so stable and low in the face of layoffs. But it may also have helped lull people into a false sense of security, a conviction that whatever cutbacks companies were announcing were not translating into an overall economic decline. It's meant the unemployment rate is not as good an indicator of economic pain as it used to be, said Manpower's Hueneke. He said that, had workers not dropped out of the work force at a faster-than-usual pace, the official jobless rate would be about 6%, rather than about 5%. Others have estimated the number of people counted as unemployed would be more than 8 million, rather than 6.96 million, the official number. (LA Times, Sept. 9, 2001) --- et cetera, et cetera, et cetera Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
re: employment
Title: re: employment No one said that the US BLS main official measure of unemployment was perfect. Instead, Doug and I pointed to the various other data that the BLS collects -- and not as a perfect measure. In fact, all of the articles below rely on BLS data to indicate the shortcomings of the main offical measure. JD -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 10/8/2002 7:52 AM Subject: [PEN-L:31046] Re: Re: Re: employment The US unemployment rate appeared steady earlier this year, despite the slowing economy and mounting job cuts, but it eventually climbed well above last October's 30-year low of 3.9 per cent. Many economists expect the rate to rise to more than 6 per cent next year. The Labor Department conceded it might have understated September's losses since it counts payrolls that were active and includes workers who were employed only part of the month. (FT, Oct. 6, 2002) --- A new stimulus package in the neighborhood of $100 billion, or 1 percent of G.D.P., is needed now. The Federal Reserve will probably cut rates at its next meeting, but interest rates are already so low that further cuts may not help much. Much of the federal money should go to workers, who need it and will spend it. The rising jobless rate has understated the jobs weakness. Discouraged workers are leaving the work force in droves and are not counted as unemployed. (NYT, Oct. 3, 2002) --- In the case of unemployment, analysts fear the new jobless numbers will convince ordinary Americans that what most have treated as little more than a pause in economic growth may be something more durable and dangerous. The psychology is beginning to change, said Mark A. Zandi, chief economist of the West Chester, Pa., research firm Economy.com. People have been acting like the slowdown was a blip. Now, they're starting to think this could last for a while and they had better prepare by reducing their spending. To the extent that people treat the unemployment rate as a barometer of economic uncertainty, there is some reason to think they should have begun to trim their spending earlier. That is because up until now it's likely the rate has understated the true dimensions of job loss, analysts said. In contrast to some other periods of economic slowdown, a substantial fraction of workers has been reacting to the economy's weakness by dropping out of the labor force when they are laid off and can't find a new job. Their departure reduced the number of people working, but it also removed them from the unemployment calculations. Analysts said the trend helps explain how the jobless rate managed to stay so stable and low in the face of layoffs. But it may also have helped lull people into a false sense of security, a conviction that whatever cutbacks companies were announcing were not translating into an overall economic decline. It's meant the unemployment rate is not as good an indicator of economic pain as it used to be, said Manpower's Hueneke. He said that, had workers not dropped out of the work force at a faster-than-usual pace, the official jobless rate would be about 6%, rather than about 5%. Others have estimated the number of people counted as unemployed would be more than 8 million, rather than 6.96 million, the official number. (LA Times, Sept. 9, 2001) --- et cetera, et cetera, et cetera Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
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Devine, James wrote: Please don't tell me what I think. did you hear the one about the two behaviourists who were having sex? at the end of the steamy session, one of them said to the other it was good for you. was it good for me?. most of the time i couldn't even tell what you write, thanks to that tiny font ;-). but thanks to a new feature in mozilla, which strips away htmlization from email, i can read your messages again! as for employment, i am glad the money from aol/tw is able to sustain the good programmers at netscape/mozilla! (there, i made the post on-topic). --ravi
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31041] Re: employment I wrote: Also, I don't see why the sins of modernism (a.k.a., capitalist rationality) should encourage rejection of logic, scientific thinking, the use of evidence, etc. I doubt this is what you advocate. Jim C. Jannuzi: Well what sort of 'rationality' is it that says, Here, this is our 'unemployment figure' (but by the way, it doesn't really measure the numbers of people who are unemployed)? But the BLS doesn't say this is our 'unemployment figure,' unless you read them superficially. They present several unemployment statistics, including ones that include the discouraged workers. In what way do the various measures of unemployment that the BLS presents mis-measure the number of people who are unemployed? what are the systematic biases in their measures? JD
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31048] Re: RE: Re: Re: employment ravi: did you hear the one about the two behaviourists who were having sex? at the end of the steamy session, one of them said to the other it was good for you. was it good for me?. -- no, one would say: my behavior clearly reinforced your behavior, because you did it again and again. Did your behavior reinforce mine? most of the time i couldn't even tell what you write, thanks to that tiny font ;-). but thanks to a new feature in mozilla, which strips away htmlization from email, i can read your messages again! as for employment, i am glad the money from aol/tw is able to sustain the good programmers at netscape/mozilla! (there, i made the post on-topic). I wish I could fix the damn font. The IS people are useless. JD
Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Devine, James wrote: OK fellas, I am going to imagine what Sabri could have meant. JD's are not the the only perspectives on how we can treat statistics, government or otherwise. Yes, even statistics are subject to perspective, numbers may be objective but their presentation has its purposes. Here are some alternative attitudes about statistics which arise from my own experiences: * we can recognize that statistics can be manipulated in order to shape public opinion... * we can realize that the government has its own agenda and that the statistics the government releases and the way those statistics are handled will reflect that agenda. * we can realize that statistics don't mean much when the point is to build a better world beginning with your own here and now. ... --- you're saying that I didn't recognize all of this? Please don't tell me what I think. Yeah, me either. There's this extremely annoying habit in left discourse (cue to Carrol Cox to say that the left doesn't exist) that requires you to invoke a whole set of positions and pieties, and failure to include them in every statement is a sign that you're ignorant, insensitive, or straying from the fold. The hell with that. Doug
Re: Re: employment
I think I understand a little of what Sabri is getting at -- the intellectual and accepting way we look at the statistics -- seeing them as economic factorum and not as poor, suffering people. What I think he is saying, certainly what I am saying, is ONE is too many. When we remember that in the 1960s we were outraged when unemployment went above the four per cent mark and now we are blythely talking about standard rates in the US of (counting discouraged workers and involuntary part-time plus the 1% Richard Freeman estimates should be added to count for the million or so in gaols etc.) of 8-10 %, I am deeply saddened. Particularly so because this increase in the researve army has contributed to the growth of contingency work, low wages, job insecurity, decline in unions, income inequality, illness, crime, etc. affecting a majority of the population. In other words, a fixation on a single measure of unemployment, the unemployed statistic, serves to distract attention from the human tragedy of which the unemployment statistic is just the tip of the iceberg. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 20:46:30 -0700 From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:31029] Re: employment To: PEN-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim said: I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. Not at all. It is about that Western Rationality thing that I personally object. But I took the risk of being misunderstood nevertheless. At least, I took the risk with you and Doug, which made me barve enough to take it. Otherwise, I am not as brave as I may have sounded. Best, Sabri
RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31054] Re: Re: employment Paul, can you name a participant of pen-l who is fixated on a single number measuring the reserve army of the unemployed? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 5:08 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:31054] Re: Re: employment I think I understand a little of what Sabri is getting at -- the intellectual and accepting way we look at the statistics -- seeing them as economic factorum and not as poor, suffering people. What I think he is saying, certainly what I am saying, is ONE is too many. When we remember that in the 1960s we were outraged when unemployment went above the four per cent mark and now we are blythely talking about standard rates in the US of (counting discouraged workers and involuntary part-time plus the 1% Richard Freeman estimates should be added to count for the million or so in gaols etc.) of 8-10 %, I am deeply saddened. Particularly so because this increase in the researve army has contributed to the growth of contingency work, low wages, job insecurity, decline in unions, income inequality, illness, crime, etc. affecting a majority of the population. In other words, a fixation on a single measure of unemployment, the unemployed statistic, serves to distract attention from the human tragedy of which the unemployment statistic is just the tip of the iceberg. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 20:46:30 -0700 From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:31029] Re: employment To: PEN-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim said: I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. Not at all. It is about that Western Rationality thing that I personally object. But I took the risk of being misunderstood nevertheless. At least, I took the risk with you and Doug, which made me barve enough to take it. Otherwise, I am not as brave as I may have sounded. Best, Sabri
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Don't we see the same thing in every anti-war statement? X is a very bad person. I don't support X, but . On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 11:23:05AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: There's this extremely annoying habit in left discourse (cue to Carrol Cox to say that the left doesn't exist) that requires you to invoke a whole set of positions and pieties, and failure to include them in every statement is a sign that you're ignorant, insensitive, or straying from the fold. The hell with that. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
Jim Devine wrote, What is the problem with using some (but not all) government statistics as a half-bad/half good way of understanding what's going on, in conjunction with other information and reasoning? Sabri Oncu wrote, Life is not as rational as you think it is. For that matter, the rate's rationality may not be all its cracked up to be. My answer to Jim's question is: nothing is wrong if we fully acknowledge the limitations of the government statistics -- or any statistics -- to measure the phenomena they purport to measure. The problem is that we _do not_ acknowledge those limits but become indignant or uncomprehending when someone once again raises the usual objections, let alone unusual ones. The basis of rationality is non-contradiction: the same person cannot at the same time hold the same to be and not to be. By the same token, presumably, the same person cannot be employed and unemployed at the same time. Voila, we have a statistic! However the same person *can* be employed and unemployed at successive moments. The definition of unemployed includes that the person is actively looking for work and therefore, implicitly at least, will be employed at some time in the future. To qualify for unemployment benefits, one must have worked a minimum number of weeks in the recent past. Thus unemployment is only unemployment in relation to a past and/or future employment, usually both but not certainly either. In other words, the state of unemployment implies a movement toward or away from itself. Dynamically, the concept relies on contradiction. Only statically does it appear to be non-contradictory. The statistic necessarily treats unemployment at rest, so to speak. A statistic gives a static picture. It is no coincidence that both words begin with the same four letters. Zeno's paradox shows the problems inherent in treating a moving object as if it occupies successive positions of rest. I won't go into the details. Contradiction isn't necessarily a bad thing, it simply points to the limits about what we can say about dynamic phenomena. The illusion of a dynamic picture of unemployment is created by placing last month's or last year's static picture beside this month's. We say unemployment is up or unemployment is down when we really have no idea of how many employed people are moving toward unemployment, and how fast they are moving in that direction or conversely how many unemployed people are moving how rapidly toward employment. I'll just mention in passing that gross movement into and out of the labour force typically swamps net change in the ratio between employed and unemployed labour force participants. In fact, people in the U.K. who have studied this have found that much of the movement occurs directly from non-participation to employment or from employment to non-participation and not incrementally between non-participation, unemployment and employment. The U rate thus refers to something quite different than what is happening. (The expected response here is that we know this but it is useful as an indicator of what is happening. The caveats on an indicator have worn smooth, plus or minus 3%, 19 times out of 20, before that indicator enters into general circulation.) Also according to the principle of non-contradiction, a person cannot be an unemployed certified aircraft mechanic at the same time he or she is an employed telephone salesperson, for as little as one hour a week. Perhaps Jim or Doug would like to point out that we can tease out the extent of underemployment or discouragement from various supplementary sources. Indeed we can tease out, somewhat, the extent of these but not their intensity. Subjectively, it is the intensity of unemployment or underemployment that matters (e.g., did I make enough this month to pay the rent) and here you have a phenomenon that is utterly absent from the numbers. Don't ask me what data would describe this intensity of un/underemployment. It is a qualitative fact and not a quantitative one. One might say, given the bounds of rationality, that the government statistics are not all that far from the best we can do quantitatively, especially if we are hoping for a single number that summarizes the whole damn thing. Admittedly 5.6% tells me a whole lot more than some number pulled out of the air, say 1068 or six of one, half a dozen of the other. A large part of what that 5.6% means to me, though, is constituted by what I know the number doesn't tell me. Namely, it doesn't tell me that unemployment is down this month (or up this month). Unfortunately that is *precisely* how it is talked about in the media, by government officials etc. and thus that is the discursive frame imposed on it. Remember the definition of rationality: not believing something to be and not to be at the same time. If the discourse about unemployment rate were rational, it wouldn't be about ups and downs. Even when we are talking about the measurable equivocations of
Re: Re: employment
Tom Walker wrote: My answer to Jim's question is: nothing is wrong if we fully acknowledge the limitations of the government statistics -- or any statistics -- to measure the phenomena they purport to measure. The problem is that we _do not_ acknowledge those limits but become indignant or uncomprehending when someone once again raises the usual objections, let alone unusual ones. I would agree with this with a qualification. I don't know how to express it abstractly so I'll try a hypothetical example. 1) A cites a given set of statistics -- S(X) 2) B objects to those statistics. So far, so good, UNLESS, 3) B is not criticizing the _usefulness_ of S(X) to a given question, but merely asserting that he/she prefers or believes in S(Y) It's a wash, and both parties ought to go home and read a little Homer. Carrol
Re: re: employment
The articles, if anything, say more about the precision of the BLS measure than anything else. If the unemployment numbers missed people who only worked part of the month for September, it stands to reason that they will be counted as unemployed for October. (Note that the article says that the BLS might understate the losses in September, not that it will miss them entirely forever.) The errors are by definition, not intentional omission. But, just in case: total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers: Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1996 6.6 6.3 6.1 5.7 5.6 5.7 5.9 5.4 5.3 5.1 5.3 5.2 5.7 1999 5.0 4.9 4.6 4.3 4.1 4.6 4.7 4.3 4.3 4.0 4.0 3.9 4.4 2000 4.6 4.6 4.5 3.9 4.1 4.4 4.4 4.3 4.0 3.8 3.9 3.9 4.2 2001 4.9 4.8 4.8 4.5 4.4 4.9 5.0 5.1 4.9 5.2 5.5 5.6 5.0 2002 6.5 6.4 6.3 6.0 5.8 6.3 6.2 5.9 5.6 You don't really start getting numbers substantially higher than this until you add workers on part-time basis for economic reasons, which suggests that the marginally employed, as a fraction of the labor force, is pretty small. Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers: Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual 1996 10.8 10.7 10.3 9.7 9.5 10.0 10.0 9.3 9.0 8.8 8.9 9.2 9.7 1999 8.5 8.2 7.9 7.4 7.1 7.9 7.7 7.2 7.0 6.7 6.8 6.9 7.4 2000 7.8 7.6 7.4 6.7 6.8 7.3 7.3 7.0 6.6 6.3 6.8 6.7 7.0 2001 8.1 7.9 7.6 7.2 7.2 8.2 8.1 8.1 8.3 8.7 9.0 9.3 8.2 2002 10.5 10.1 9.8 9.4 9.2 9.8 9.9 9.5 9.0 (BLS Note: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.) Christian -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 10/8/2002 7:52 AM Subject: [PEN-L:31046] Re: Re: Re: employment The US unemployment rate appeared steady earlier this year, despite the slowing economy and mounting job cuts, but it eventually climbed well above last October's 30-year low of 3.9 per cent. Many economists expect the rate to rise to more than 6 per cent next year. The Labor Department conceded it might have understated September's losses since it counts payrolls that were active and includes workers who were employed only part of the month. (FT, Oct. 6, 2002) --- A new stimulus package in the neighborhood of $100 billion, or 1 percent of G.D.P., is needed now. The Federal Reserve will probably cut rates at its next meeting, but interest rates are already so low that further cuts may not help much. Much of the federal money should go to workers, who need it and will spend it. The rising jobless rate has understated the jobs weakness. Discouraged workers are leaving the work force in droves and are not counted as unemployed. (NYT, Oct. 3, 2002) --- In the case of unemployment, analysts fear the new jobless numbers will convince ordinary Americans that what most have treated as little more than a pause in economic growth may be something more durable and dangerous. The psychology is beginning to change, said Mark A. Zandi, chief economist of the West Chester, Pa., research firm Economy.com. People have been acting like the slowdown was a blip. Now, they're starting to think this could last for a while and they had better prepare by reducing their spending. To the extent that people treat the unemployment rate as a barometer of economic uncertainty, there is some reason to think they should have begun to trim their spending earlier. That is because up until now it's likely the rate has understated the true dimensions of job loss, analysts said. In contrast to some other periods of economic slowdown, a substantial fraction of workers has been reacting to the economy's weakness by dropping out of the labor force when they are laid off and can't find a new job. Their departure reduced the number of people working, but it also removed them from the unemployment calculations. Analysts said the trend helps explain how the jobless rate managed to stay so stable and low in the face of layoffs. But it may also have helped lull people into a false sense of security, a conviction that whatever cutbacks companies were announcing were not translating into an overall economic decline. It's meant the unemployment rate is not as good an indicator
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: Don't we see the same thing in every anti-war statement? X is a very bad person. I don't support X, but . No, it's not the same. X (= Saddam, Slobo, etc.) generally is a very bad person. I was at an antiwar demo - a very good, inspiring one - in NYC just the other day where you heard very little of that in fact. Look at the shit Marc Cooper takes from people busily policing left ideological boundaries. There are American leftists - I won't name names, for the sake of amity - who spend more time denouncing him and The Nation magazine than they do actually engaging with American politics. It's self-marginalizing and stupid. Doug
Re: Re: re: employment
Christian Gregory wrote: You don't really start getting numbers substantially higher than this until you add workers on part-time basis for economic reasons, which suggests that the marginally employed, as a fraction of the labor force, is pretty small. Don't forget forced overtime and multiple jobholders. There's at least as much overwork in the U.S. economy as there is underwork. But since that wasn't the case in the 1930s, most American leftists can't think about it. Doug
marc cooper part n+1 (was Re: Re: employment)
Doug Henwood wrote: Look at the shit Marc Cooper takes from people busily policing left ideological boundaries. There are American leftists - I won't name names, for the sake of amity - who spend more time denouncing him and The Nation magazine than they do actually engaging with American politics. It's self-marginalizing and stupid. one could argue that its marc cooper who is policing the left in a stupid way. i would not say he is self-marginalizing, for his intent seems to be to stay as close to the mainstream as possible while sporting a leftist philosophy. i am not american, and i am not a leftist of any consequence, but i had no quarrel with marc cooper until his ill-reasoned ad hominem attack on amy goodman. --ravi
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Look at the shit Marc Cooper takes from people busily policing left ideological boundaries. There are American leftists - I won't name names, for the sake of amity - who spend more time denouncing him and The Nation magazine than they do actually engaging with American politics. It's self-marginalizing and stupid. Doug This is topsy-turvy. Most of the policing of left ideological boundaries have in fact come from Nation Magazine contributors like Doug, Liza Featherstone, Eric Alterman and Marc Cooper. (And Christopher Hitchens before his mutation was complete, like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Has anybody seen Hitch walking across the ceiling yet? Wouldn't surprise me at all.) In a series of articles in the Nation and other venues like LA Weekly, these folks have attacked elements of the anti-war movement over and over again. They don't like the ISO. They don't like Ramsey Clark. They don't like apologists for all those icky people who end up in the gunsights of US imperialism. Meanwhile, the WWP, the ISO and other groups out there organizing people scarcely pay attention to this kind of attack. However, I do pay attention and plan to continue to answer the Marc Coopers of the world on the Internet, as is my democratic right. Michael Perelman might be uncomfortable when I express myself democratically, but I don't plan to ease up any time soon. This is an ongoing debate on the left and since giving an adequate answer to Cooper in the pages of the letters section of the LA Weekly or Alterman in the Nation is about as likely as winning the lottery, I intend to continue speaking my mind through email where I won't be censored. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Devine, James wrote: Paul, can you name a participant of pen-l who is fixated on a single number measuring the reserve army of the unemployed? See - we didn't invoke the standard litany, therefore we're either ignorant, insensitive, or on the verge of heresy. I'd laugh, but I care about this stuff, though sometimes I wonder why. Doug
Re: Re: Re: employment
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think I understand a little of what Sabri is getting at -- the intellectual and accepting way we look at the statistics -- seeing them as economic factorum and not as poor, suffering people. And who the hell isn't saying that? Is this is the best progressive economists can do? Doug
Re: RE: Re: employment
Devine, James wrote: I _do_ acknowledge these limits, as does Doug (in my experience). Who is this we you refer to? I really hate being a straw man. Using statistics intelligently (or scientifically) always involves two different things: (1) actually using them and (2) being aware of the limitations of the statistics. This is a key point that critics of Doug and myself on this issue miss. I think our interlocutors are more interested in proving their greater sensitivity and moral superiority than they are in making an argument. Doug
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31067] Re: employment I wrote What is the problem with using some (but not all) government statistics as a half-bad/half good way of understanding what's going on, in conjunction with other information and reasoning? Sabri Oncu wrote, Life is not as rational as you think it is. Who said that life was rational? One of things we should strive for is for life to be more rational. (I'll beg off on the definition of rational for now -- who has the time? Put it this way, it's not the instrumental rationality of Western enlightenment thinking. There's more than one kind of rationality.) Tom Walker: For that matter, the rate's rationality may not be all its cracked up to be. My answer to Jim's question is: nothing is wrong if we fully acknowledge the limitations of the government statistics -- or any statistics -- to measure the phenomena they purport to measure. The problem is that we _do not_ acknowledge those limits but become indignant or uncomprehending when someone once again raises the usual objections, let alone unusual ones. I _do_ acknowledge these limits, as does Doug (in my experience). Who is this we you refer to? I really hate being a straw man. Using statistics intelligently (or scientifically) always involves two different things: (1) actually using them and (2) being aware of the limitations of the statistics. This is a key point that critics of Doug and myself on this issue miss. The basis of [one version of] rationality is non-contradiction: the same person cannot at the same time hold the same to be and not to be. By the same token, presumably, the same person cannot be employed and unemployed at the same time. Voila, we have a statistic! This ignores the fact that there are statistics on involuntary part-time workers, who can be seen as both unemployed and employed at the same time. However the same person *can* be employed and unemployed at successive moments. The definition of unemployed includes that the person is actively looking for work and therefore, implicitly at least, will be employed at some time in the future. If you look, you can find some stats on people's experience over time with unemployment, and I presume, employment. You can also find estimates of hours worked per week, too. To qualify for unemployment benefits, one must have worked a minimum number of weeks in the recent past. In the U.S., at least, there is no connection between such eligibility and officially being counted as unemployed. Thus unemployment is only unemployment in relation to a past and/or future employment, usually both but not certainly either. In other words, the state of unemployment implies a movement toward or away from itself. this last sentence doesn't make any sense. But it's quite easy to get a time series of unemployment data (measured in different ways). In fact, the time series makes more sense, as long as one doesn't focus on month-to-month changes: a year-to-year increase in the official unemployment rate has a very simple meaning: all else constant, workers are being screwed. Of course, all else isn't always constant, so that workers can be screwed without unemployment rates rising. Dynamically, the concept relies on contradiction. Only statically does it appear to be non-contradictory. The statistic necessarily treats unemployment at rest, so to speak. A statistic gives a static picture. It is no coincidence that both words begin with the same four letters. how about statistics? if you take a time series of statistics, it doesn't provide a static picture, even though it it begin[s] with the same four letters as that word. The monthly unemployment rate does represent a snap-shot. But put enough of them together, you get a movie, or at least a slide-show. Zeno's paradox shows the problems inherent in treating a moving object as if it occupies successive positions of rest. I won't go into the details. Contradiction isn't necessarily a bad thing, it simply points to the limits about what we can say about dynamic phenomena. the contradiction disappears if you realize that changes in unemployment rates are more important than the level. The illusion of a dynamic picture of unemployment is created by placing last month's or last year's static picture beside this month's. We say unemployment is up or unemployment is down when we really have no idea of how many employed people are moving toward unemployment, and how fast they are moving in that direction or conversely how many unemployed people are moving how rapidly toward employment. we don't really know many employed people are moving toward unemployment, and how fast they are moving in that direction or conversely how many unemployed people are moving how rapidly toward employment from the unemployment rate, but that doesn't mean we can't find out -- or at least get some idea -- from other statistics that are available. Absolutely
Re: Re: employment
Dynamically, the concept relies on contradiction. Only statically does it appear to be non-contradictory. The statistic necessarily treats unemployment at rest, so to speak. A statistic gives a static picture. It is no coincidence that both words begin with the same four letters. So what if you don't get existential intimacy or subjective versimiltitude from a BLS statistic? Do you keep shoving bread into your VCR and complain when it doesn't come out toasted? Christian
Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:31057] RE: Re: Re: employment Date sent: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 09:06:30 -0700 Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Paul, can you name a participant of pen-l who is fixated on a single number measuring the reserve army of the unemployed? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Well, I sure read a lot this past day on the list about THE unemployment rate and its defects and adjustments. Kind of looked like fixation to me. Paul
Re: employment
Doug Henwood wrote, Don't forget forced overtime and multiple jobholders. There's at least as much overwork in the U.S. economy as there is underwork. But since that wasn't the case in the 1930s, most American leftists can't think about it. ...and another thing I was going to mention was overtime and multiple jobholders. Oh but wait, Doug just mentioned it. I'm glad you mentioned it, Doug. And yes, I find it rather peculiar that most American leftists can't think about that. I'm not sure if the generalization is accurate, but it feels as though it is. I view multiple jobholding and forced overtime as pathological symptoms, not as signs of vibrant labour demand. With regard to the unemployment rate, there is no category for full-time composite from two or more part-time jobs. Nor is it regarded as overemployment when somebody who works overtime would prefer not to. Besides what would the statisticians do if there was such a thing as overemployment? Would the overemployment cancel out the underemployment or would the two add together as undesired hours employment? My preference would be for the latter, but nobody's asking me. With regard to the whole schmozzola of under-, over-, un-, and just plain unpleasantly employed, later today I'll post to Pen-l a piece on the work ethic and its discontents I started writing for the shorter work time list. Those of you who may have encountered difficulties following my last re: employment message will be happy to know that in the forthcoming message I clear up any possible confusion. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31084] Re: RE: Re: Re: employment I wrote: Paul, can you name a participant of pen-l who is fixated on a single number measuring the reserve army of the unemployed? Paul responded: Well, I sure read a lot this past day on the list about THE unemployment rate and its defects and adjustments. Kind of looked like fixation to me. the number I cited included discouraged workers, which is not THE official unemployment rate. I prefer the kind of treatment that Dean Baker employs: he goes through all of the official stats in the BLS press releases and tries to draw out the implications. This discussion is pretty useless, not to mention involving too many messages. On the one hand, Doug and I think that official statistics such as the BLS-calculated unemployment rate --or the equivalent in Canada -- conveys some information that is useful to leftist economists; despite its obvious limitations, the official U rate isn't like Enron accounting. (Christian Gregory has lept on our mini-bandwagon, it seems.) On the other, people incorrectly believe that just because we use the U rate, (1) we think that this is the _only_ statistic we think is relevant to understanding labor-power markets or (2) that we aren't familiar with the limitations of the statistic. Maybe there are people who think bourgeois statistics are nothing but propaganda, and thus should be avoided, though no-one has said so. I think Ian said the right thing in an off-list discussion: The BLS stats are solid as far as they go; it's the norms and behaviors that lead to unemployment that concern us far more than the stats. regarding unemployment, no? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Did I say that you were insensitive and did not concern yourself with the context of the unemployment rate? -- a rate which I use every day in my labour and economic problems classes, btw. Nor was I responding to either Doug or Jim's posts but to Sabri's lament. Every month when the U rate is published the local newspapers and media stations phone me up to ask what is the significance and what does the most recent .1 change in the rate mean for the future of mankind. I spend half an hour every time explaining the measurement and meaning of the rate and what other data one needs (discouraged workers, participation rates, part-time and contingent employment, age/sex structure of jobs, etc.) without which one can not make any sense out of even fairly large changes in the U rate. I know Doug and Jim are not fixated by the single rate -- but the public and the media tend to be, as do an unfortunately large number of mainstream economists. I wish Doug and Jim wouldn't take any criticism of othodox statistics and the way that they are defined or the way they are perceived in the media, the political arena and by the media as a personal attack on themselves. This was neither in the post nor intended and I don't appreciate being damned as a dissident leftist because others don't read carefully the posts to see what is really being said. Paul Phillips Date sent: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 14:04:06 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:31077] Re: RE: Re: Re: employment Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Devine, James wrote: Paul, can you name a participant of pen-l who is fixated on a single number measuring the reserve army of the unemployed? See - we didn't invoke the standard litany, therefore we're either ignorant, insensitive, or on the verge of heresy. I'd laugh, but I care about this stuff, though sometimes I wonder why. Doug
Re: employment
Christian Gregory wrote, So what if you don't get existential intimacy or subjective versimiltitude from a BLS statistic? Do you keep shoving bread into your VCR and complain when it doesn't come out toasted? BLS? VCR? FYAH. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
But Jim, As my last post pointed out, when I responded to Sabri's original post your whole discussion about the problems and additions to the U rate was not being considered. My original post was in response to someone (not you) suggesting that because the figures on registered unemployment were much higher than for survey unemployment, the figures for survey unemployment were deliberately meant to undermeasure unemployment. My point was that they were not measuring the same thing and there is good reason for the difference. I know you and Doug know the meaning and limitations of the unemployment rate and are concerned with the income distribution issues that are affected by unemployment and nowhere have I every said or suggested you don't. I was saying that I understand Sabri's sadness if it is because he believes that most public discussion about unemployment abstracts from the reality and fixates upon the number -- and that makes me equally sad, eh! And that is the last I am going to say on this issue. Paul From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' pen- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:31088] RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment Date sent: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 12:05:55 -0700 Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wrote: Paul, can you name a participant of pen-l who is fixated on a single number measuring the reserve army of the unemployed? Paul responded: Well, I sure read a lot this past day on the list about THE unemployment rate and its defects and adjustments. Kind of looked like fixation to me. the number I cited included discouraged workers, which is not THE official unemployment rate. I prefer the kind of treatment that Dean Baker employs: he goes through all of the official stats in the BLS press releases and tries to draw out the implications. This discussion is pretty useless, not to mention involving too many messages. On the one hand, Doug and I think that official statistics such as the BLS-calculated unemployment rate --or the equivalent in Canada -- conveys some information that is useful to leftist economists; despite its obvious limitations, the official U rate isn't like Enron accounting. (Christian Gregory has lept on our mini-bandwagon, it seems.) On the other, people incorrectly believe that just because we use the U rate, (1) we think that this is the _only_ statistic we think is relevant to understanding labor-power markets or (2) that we aren't familiar with the limitations of the statistic. Maybe there are people who think bourgeois statistics are nothing but propaganda, and thus should be avoided, though no-one has said so. I think Ian said the right thing in an off-list discussion: The BLS stats are solid as far as they go; it's the norms and behaviors that lead to unemployment that concern us far more than the stats. regarding unemployment, no? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: employment
Doug, don't be mad, just say yes, yes, perhaps I took that point for granted when I made this other point. Sometime people just want to point the qualitative stuff out. We are all on the same side here, there is so much work to do. I hope the list won't crumble over this. Lisa S on 10/08/2002 1:59 PM, Doug Henwood at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think I understand a little of what Sabri is getting at -- the intellectual and accepting way we look at the statistics -- seeing them as economic factorum and not as poor, suffering people. And who the hell isn't saying that? Is this is the best progressive economists can do? Doug
re: employment
Title: re: employment Paul Phillips writes: But Jim, As my last post pointed out, when I responded to Sabri's original post your whole discussion about the problems and additions to the U rate was not being considered. My original post was in response to someone (not you) suggesting that because the figures on registered unemployment were much higher than for survey unemployment, the figures for survey unemployment were deliberately meant to undermeasure unemployment. My point was that they were not measuring the same thing and there is good reason for the difference. I know you and Doug know the meaning and limitations of the unemployment rate and are concerned with the income distribution issues that are affected by unemployment and nowhere have I every said or suggested you don't. I was saying that I understand Sabri's sadness if it is because he believes that most public discussion about unemployment abstracts from the reality and fixates upon the number -- and that makes me equally sad, eh! And that is the last I am going to say on this issue. Paul me too. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: employment
Jim, It looks to me like you reacted to my message paragraph by paragraph without treating the message as an unfolding whole. This in itself should be a warning against the cinematographic method you uphold. What I have to say is even more objectionable if you take it sentence by sentence. Word by word, it's incomprehensible. Letter by letter, it is a totally meaningless sequence. Jim Devine wrote: Using statistics intelligently (or scientifically) always involves two different things: (1) actually using them and (2) being aware of the limitations of the statistics. This is a key point that critics of Doug and myself on this issue miss. but elsewhere Jim writes: The monthly unemployment rate does represent a snap-shot. But put enough of them together, you get a movie, or at least a slide-show. I was trying to point out the methodological limitations that arise precisely from the cinematographic illusion. You seem to think the illusion, far from being a limitation, is a redeeming feature. This would suggest to me that you are not aware of the limitations. Later on, Jim wrote, this tells us we should ignore rising measures of unemployment produced by the BLS? For someone who doesn't appreciate being told what you think, you sure are free and easy with the non sequitur reductio ad absurdums, if you'll pardon my French. brevity is the soul of wit. Shit. Shinola. Remember that, Jim, and you'll be alright. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Re: employment
BLS? VCR? FYAH. Tom Walker 604 255 4812 FYAH? Fuck you ass hole? Inquisitively, Christian
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31098] Re: employment Tom W writes: Jim, It looks to me like you reacted to my message paragraph by paragraph without treating the message as an unfolding whole. This in itself should be a warning against the cinematographic method you uphold. What I have to say is even more objectionable if you take it sentence by sentence. Word by word, it's incomprehensible. Letter by letter, it is a totally meaningless sequence. Jim Devine wrote: Using statistics intelligently (or scientifically) always involves two different things: (1) actually using them and (2) being aware of the limitations of the statistics. This is a key point that critics of Doug and myself on this issue miss. but elsewhere Jim writes: The monthly unemployment rate does represent a snap-shot. But put enough of them together, you get a movie, or at least a slide-show. Tom replies: I was trying to point out the methodological limitations that arise precisely from the cinematographic illusion. You seem to think the illusion, far from being a limitation, is a redeeming feature. This would suggest to me that you are not aware of the limitations. that is not true. JD
Re: Re: employment
BLS? VCR? FYAH. Tom Walker 604 255 4812 Seriously, the critique of representation only gets you so far. Then, if you can't come up with something else, you're left muttering that it's all representations and so can't be trusted, etc. So, sure there should be some index of job holders who have two temp (or full-time) jobs as a composite of one. But pointing out that this statistical measurement is missing from a statistical data set is different (and more germane) than saying that statistics don't capture suffering and therefore can't be trusted or are incomplete. The latter amounts to beating your head against the wall. Christian
Re: Re: Re: employment
I have been teaching all day and I am bit groggy. How the hell does a simple discussion about data evoke such nastiness? I see that Doug has already left. Why can't we just communicate? If you want to get angry, direct it towad the war mongers. On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 04:27:44PM -0400, Christian Gregory wrote: BLS? VCR? FYAH. Tom Walker 604 255 4812 FYAH? Fuck you ass hole? Inquisitively, Christian -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: employment
We are going to war and you guys are getting nasty over BLS data. Give me a break! Cut the crap. This is not directed at any single individual, but the entire thread. On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 12:45:30PM -0700, Tom Walker wrote: Christian Gregory wrote, So what if you don't get existential intimacy or subjective versimiltitude from a BLS statistic? Do you keep shoving bread into your VCR and complain when it doesn't come out toasted? BLS? VCR? FYAH. Tom Walker 604 255 4812 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Doug is only gone temoporarily.I don't think attacking him or Liza is appropriate here. I wish that Doug had not brought up Cooper. I agree with Lou that the policing does no good. On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 01:58:02PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Look at the shit Marc Cooper takes from people busily policing left ideological boundaries. There are American leftists - I won't name names, for the sake of amity - who spend more time denouncing him and The Nation magazine than they do actually engaging with American politics. It's self-marginalizing and stupid. Doug This is topsy-turvy. Most of the policing of left ideological boundaries have in fact come from Nation Magazine contributors like Doug, Liza Featherstone, Eric Alterman and Marc Cooper. (And Christopher Hitchens before his mutation was complete, like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Has anybody seen Hitch walking across the ceiling yet? Wouldn't surprise me at all.) In a series of articles in the Nation and other venues like LA Weekly, these folks have attacked elements of the anti-war movement over and over again. They don't like the ISO. They don't like Ramsey Clark. They don't like apologists for all those icky people who end up in the gunsights of US imperialism. Meanwhile, the WWP, the ISO and other groups out there organizing people scarcely pay attention to this kind of attack. However, I do pay attention and plan to continue to answer the Marc Coopers of the world on the Internet, as is my democratic right. Michael Perelman might be uncomfortable when I express myself democratically, but I don't plan to ease up any time soon. This is an ongoing debate on the left and since giving an adequate answer to Cooper in the pages of the letters section of the LA Weekly or Alterman in the Nation is about as likely as winning the lottery, I intend to continue speaking my mind through email where I won't be censored. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
That's more like it. You're right, the critique only gets you so far. The rest of the journey is grounded in experience, which can be narrated but not reduced to a set of statistics -- even a fairly comprehensive set. I use official statistics all the time. I charge clients real money to dig up and describe the most meaningful statistics to support their case. I even compile statistics from raw data. Good numbers support a well-constructed argument, but even the best numbers can't construct the argument for you. From my perspective the biggest political defect of statistics is that they necessarily refer to something that has happened in the past. Doug H. referred to the rather dire state of the world. Michael P. wrote, we are going to war. Would it be too coy of me to ask where is the statistical evidence for either of those statements? But that is precisely the kind of question that gets thrown at us when we raise questions about, say, precarious employment or the polarization of working hours. The first question is about the numbers (which, unlike the unemployment data are often between two and five years old). The second question is what makes you think it is anything other than peoples' preferences being revealed? The classic way to not take action is to refer a matter for further study. In that respect, representation can't get you any further than can critique. Whatever you come up with can always be referred for even more study. Do I sound like someone who's been there and done that? Christian Gregory wrote, Seriously, the critique of representation only gets you so far. Then, if you can't come up with something else, you're left muttering that it's all representations and so can't be trusted, etc. So, sure there should be some index of job holders who have two temp (or full-time) jobs as a composite of one. But pointing out that this statistical measurement is missing from a statistical data set is different (and more germane) than saying that statistics don't capture suffering and therefore can't be trusted or are incomplete. The latter amounts to beating your head against the wall. For your arcane hermeneutics... Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: Doug is only gone temoporarily.I don't think attacking him or Liza is appropriate here. I wish that Doug had not brought up Cooper. I agree with Lou that the policing does no good. i hope doug does not find me in the list of those he finds unreasonable. whether it be my general responses to his posts, or to the particular issue of marc cooper (and i agree that we should avoid discussing personalities), i have tried to be honest and friendly. if that impression is untrue, i apologize. --ravi
RE: Re: Re: employment
ravi wrote: i hope doug does not find me in the list of those he finds unreasonable. whether it be my general responses to his posts, or to the particular issue of marc cooper (and i agree that we should avoid discussing personalities), i have tried to be honest and friendly. if that impression is untrue, i apologize. Doug Henwood's emails are full of words about his extreme annoyance, anger, frustration, irritation etc; all of that is humiliating and insulting to his possible interlocutors. It also looks like a cry for help, it's not even repressed rage any more, but open and in-your-face anger and capriciousness. There is no need to apologise. Doug is or was a psychoanalyst, wasn't he? He ought to recognise some warning signs. Probably his Oedipal struggle with the patriarchal Gods of socialism will soon be over, he will slough off that skin and re-emerge as the rock-ribbed repug he really is. Will they still have him though? That's the problem. After all, he already was a repug, long ago before imagining that he was of the left after all. Maybe he upset a few people during his commute up and down the Damascus road and now they don't want him either. Mark
Re: RE: Re: Re: employment
Come on, let's cool it with the personalities. On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 12:37:06AM +0100, Mark Jones wrote: ravi wrote: i hope doug does not find me in the list of those he finds unreasonable. whether it be my general responses to his posts, or to the particular issue of marc cooper (and i agree that we should avoid discussing personalities), i have tried to be honest and friendly. if that impression is untrue, i apologize. Doug Henwood's emails are full of words about his extreme annoyance, anger, frustration, irritation etc; all of that is humiliating and insulting to his possible interlocutors. It also looks like a cry for help, it's not even repressed rage any more, but open and in-your-face anger and capriciousness. There is no need to apologise. Doug is or was a psychoanalyst, wasn't he? He ought to recognise some warning signs. Probably his Oedipal struggle with the patriarchal Gods of socialism will soon be over, he will slough off that skin and re-emerge as the rock-ribbed repug he really is. Will they still have him though? That's the problem. After all, he already was a repug, long ago before imagining that he was of the left after all. Maybe he upset a few people during his commute up and down the Damascus road and now they don't want him either. Mark -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
I hope this topic is not completely verboten. Any thread that gets that many responses can't be all that bad, even if the exchange got heated. I'd like to point out--without inflaming anything I hope--that 'employment' and 'unemployment' figures are kept and analyzed as economic indicators. Also, unemployment statistics really are the result of bureaucratic activities in regards to official job searches and unemployment payments (which is a type of job insurance). The real issue in the US is just how ungenerous that insurance actually is. Finally, think about how so many of these concepts are culturally determined. If 'unemployment' in the US were determined the way it is in Japan, the figure would jump about 1% with one calculation. This would probably cause the markets to peel off a thousand points as fast as their little 'circuit breakers' would allow. Also, some in the US would be relieved to have levels of unemployment at the level reported in Japan while many Japanese talk ominously of post-war highs in such a troubling economic indicator. But then again, the Japanese full-time job market is now very much against working women, more so than the US, I think. C Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: Re: employment
Several times in the past, I mentioned that the unemployment rate should include something to adjust for the quality of available jobs. My idea never resonated. I am sure that it could not be calculated with any exactitude, but I agree that an unemployment rate of 1% with everyone flipping burgers might not be better than a rate of 5% with better jobs. On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 11:55:15AM -0700, Tom Walker wrote: Doug Henwood wrote, Don't forget forced overtime and multiple jobholders. There's at least as much overwork in the U.S. economy as there is underwork. But since that wasn't the case in the 1930s, most American leftists can't think about it. ...and another thing I was going to mention was overtime and multiple jobholders. Oh but wait, Doug just mentioned it. I'm glad you mentioned it, Doug. And yes, I find it rather peculiar that most American leftists can't think about that. I'm not sure if the generalization is accurate, but it feels as though it is. I view multiple jobholding and forced overtime as pathological symptoms, not as signs of vibrant labour demand. With regard to the unemployment rate, there is no category for full-time composite from two or more part-time jobs. Nor is it regarded as overemployment when somebody who works overtime would prefer not to. Besides what would the statisticians do if there was such a thing as overemployment? Would the overemployment cancel out the underemployment or would the two add together as undesired hours employment? My preference would be for the latter, but nobody's asking me. With regard to the whole schmozzola of under-, over-, un-, and just plain unpleasantly employed, later today I'll post to Pen-l a piece on the work ethic and its discontents I started writing for the shorter work time list. Those of you who may have encountered difficulties following my last re: employment message will be happy to know that in the forthcoming message I clear up any possible confusion. Tom Walker 604 255 4812 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: employment
On 9/10/2002 12:49 PM, Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several times in the past, I mentioned that the unemployment rate should include something to adjust for the quality of available jobs. My idea never resonated. I am sure that it could not be calculated with any exactitude, but I agree that an unemployment rate of 1% with everyone flipping burgers might not be better than a rate of 5% with better jobs. Wouldn't the quality of unemployment also be relevant? A rate of 1% where the unemployed end up indentured to credit companies might be a lot worse than 5% if they are free to enjoy productive unemployment. As the anarchists around here put it, unemployment for all, not just the rich! Thiago Oppermann - This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au
Re: Re: Re: Re: employment
makes sense to me. On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 01:41:25PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/10/2002 12:49 PM, Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several times in the past, I mentioned that the unemployment rate should include something to adjust for the quality of available jobs. My idea never resonated. I am sure that it could not be calculated with any exactitude, but I agree that an unemployment rate of 1% with everyone flipping burgers might not be better than a rate of 5% with better jobs. Wouldn't the quality of unemployment also be relevant? A rate of 1% where the unemployed end up indentured to credit companies might be a lot worse than 5% if they are free to enjoy productive unemployment. As the anarchists around here put it, unemployment for all, not just the rich! Thiago Oppermann - This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? -- Michael Perelman Frankly, I would be skeptical about labor statistics at this point considering all of the garbage that came down the pike about corporate profitability in the 1990s. We have a tendency to put a halo around data coming from impartial government sources, but when you really get down to it, the top directors of such agencies come from the same class that made Enron possible. From Bureau of Labor Statistics website: Kathleen P. Utgoff Commissioner* --- The Houston Chronicle, June 29, 1995 Firms must disclose underfunded pensions Large companies that do not have enough money in their pension plans to pay promised benefits must send their workers letters this year disclosing the shortfall and the potential consequences under a new federal rule. (clip) The need for many of the letters was questioned by Kathleen P. Utgoff*, who was the agency's executive director during President Ronald Reagan's second term. Most pension plans are very healthy, but that was true a year ago,'' said Utgoff, an economist who represents some of the large companies on the list. She said many healthy pension plans appear underfunded because the agency uses the wrong interest rate and the wrong mortality table. '' Utgoff contends that tables used by other government agencies are more reliable. Such tables would produce more favorable results for many large companies in projecting their pension liabilities. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30994] Re: employment Even though pension numbers are iffy, the employment numbers are calculated using a relatively simple sample survey. One of the things that they indicate is that even though (in recent months) the over-all unemployment rate has fallen, so has employment. A lot of people have left the labor force (those with jobs + those actively seeking employment). In fact, some have gone back to college. Others are discouraged workers. For example, employment by businesses has fallen from 132,135 thousand in Sept. 2001 to 131,151 thousand in Sept. 2002 (not seasonally adjusted). (This is from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t11.htm.) Over the same period, the unemployment rate including discouraged workers rose from 4.9 to 5.6 percent (n.s.a.) (From: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm.) The most common view I've seen is that the stats indicate that even if we avoid the second dip of the Dubya recession, the economy is growing too slowly to provide enough jobs to avoid rising unemployment -- or constant high unemployment. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? -- Michael Perelman Frankly, I would be skeptical about labor statistics at this point considering all of the garbage that came down the pike about corporate profitability in the 1990s. We have a tendency to put a halo around data coming from impartial government sources, but when you really get down to it, the top directors of such agencies come from the same class that made Enron possible. From Bureau of Labor Statistics website: Kathleen P. Utgoff Commissioner* --- The Houston Chronicle, June 29, 1995 Firms must disclose underfunded pensions Large companies that do not have enough money in their pension plans to pay promised benefits must send their workers letters this year disclosing the shortfall and the potential consequences under a new federal rule. (clip) The need for many of the letters was questioned by Kathleen P. Utgoff*, who was the agency's executive director during President Ronald Reagan's second term. Most pension plans are very healthy, but that was true a year ago,'' said Utgoff, an economist who represents some of the large companies on the list. She said many healthy pension plans appear underfunded because the agency uses the wrong interest rate and the wrong mortality table. '' Utgoff contends that tables used by other government agencies are more reliable. Such tables would produce more favorable results for many large companies in projecting their pension liabilities. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: RE: Re: employment
Devine, James wrote: Even though pension numbers are iffy, the employment numbers are calculated using a relatively simple sample survey. And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. One of the things that they indicate is that even though (in recent months) the over-all unemployment rate has fallen, so has employment. There are some strange seasonal adjustment quirks that may be affecting the unemployment figure - for example, all the drop in unemployment for September was the result of a fall in teen unemployment, a calculation that's highly complicated by back-to-school adjustments. Employment - as measured by the survey of employers, not households - is basically flat. Were this a normal recovery, employment would be rising by around 300-400k/mo; instead, it's virtually unchanged from December 2001. Doug
Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? If you're talking about layoff announcements from large public corps of the sort collected by Challenger, Gray, Christmas in their monthly tally - well, they're fairly meaningless. They don't correlate with employment numbers or the BLS's count of mass layoffs. The reason is that lots of them are PR intended to please stockholders and scare workers into productive submission. Or they're a cover for replacing older, expensive workers with younger, cheaper ones. Doug
Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. Doug I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: The Gazette (Montreal), September 15, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION U.S. jobless rate is much higher than commonly thought In his column, Main problem in Quebec is the government itself, (Gazette, Sept. 8), Jay Bryan states that there isn't any excuse for our unemployment rate, 10.2 per cent in July 1994, to be nearly twice as high as that of the United States. Like so many others, Bryan appears to have been misled by the official U.S. employment figures, which commonly peg the American unemployment rate at somewhere around 6.4 per cent. U.S. unemployment figures are determined by polls, whereas most other nations use the number of persons actually registered as unemployed. The American means of determining unemployment levels is so inaccurate that both the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consider the official figures to be grossly inexact; in fact, their calculations led them to conclude that the real unemployment rate in the U.S., as of the end of 1993, is 12.47 per cent. Even the American Express Bank considers the official figures inaccurate and itself calculated a U.S. rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the discouraged workers being excluded. But such matters are transparent, not the result of skulduggery. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. Doug I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: The Gazette (Montreal), September 15, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION U.S. jobless rate is much higher than commonly thought In his column, Main problem in Quebec is the government itself, (Gazette, Sept. 8), Jay Bryan states that there isn't any excuse for our unemployment rate, 10.2 per cent in July 1994, to be nearly twice as high as that of the United States. Like so many others, Bryan appears to have been misled by the official U.S. employment figures, which commonly peg the American unemployment rate at somewhere around 6.4 per cent. U.S. unemployment figures are determined by polls, whereas most other nations use the number of persons actually registered as unemployed. The American means of determining unemployment levels is so inaccurate that both the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consider the official figures to be grossly inexact; in fact, their calculations led them to conclude that the real unemployment rate in the U.S., as of the end of 1993, is 12.47 per cent. Even the American Express Bank considers the official figures inaccurate and itself calculated a U.S. rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the discouraged workers being excluded. But such matters are transparent, not the result of skulduggery. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. Doug I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: Well, damn, I only spend my life with this stuff, so I guess I'm at a disadvantage not having just done a five minute Lexis search. The reason we know how many discouraged workers there are - and how many people are classified as not in labor force - want job now (BLS series ID LFS7300) - is because the BLS counts them and publishes the data regularly. Ditto part time for economic reasons, other measures of marginal labor force attachment, and the employment/population ratio. Doug
RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31008] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment Michael Perelman: I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the discouraged workers being excluded. The BLS currently calculates an unemployment rate that includes discouraged workers. In fact, I cited it in my previous missive on this subject. But such matters are transparent, not the result of skulduggery. Even if the estimates are totally wrong, there is no way that the BLS could hide the rise of unemployment. Unless, that is, they changed the definition of unemployment. This is something the Thatcherites did again and again, but in the US, it's only been done once: the Reaganauts decided that domestically-stationed U.S. military personnel should be counted as employed to lower the unemployment rate. This didn't have much effect and the attempt was eventually abandoned. This doesn't say that it won't be tried again, though. I guess an alternative method would be to tell the BLS samplers to be sloppy. But if that happened, it would come out pretty quickly. It's not like corporate finance, where it's easy to fudge if one has a captive board of directors and auditors. JD
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
There are some minor differences in the definition/determination of the rate of unemployment in the various western, industrial countries. Canada's definition (I'm not sure exactly what the difference is) results in a rate that is slightly higher than the US definition, but most conform to the ILO definition which does not include the registered unemployed which greatly inflates the unemployment rate -- I think because it includes all those who register who want to change jobs and for other reasons. For instance, the Slovenian rate using the ILO method (similar to the US and Canadian method) is in the low 7% range, but using the registered method is in the 13-14% range. The ILO method is done by a labour force survey -- a sample survey of x number of households over a sample week. There is one problem in that workers are considered 'employed' if they work one hour per week. However, at least in Canada, we have statistics on the number of 'involuntary part-time' which allows for a truer estimate of unemployment and underemployment. (My estimates, for instance, show that in the late 90s, female unemployment was slightly higher than male unemployment due to involuntary part- time employment, whereas the basic statistic shows female unemployment slightly lower than male unemployment.) Also, the labour force survey also gives the numbers for discouraged workers so it is possible to correct the figures. Nevertheless, it should be noted that these corrections don't make *huge* changes in the reported rates, nothing comparable to the differences between the survey method and the 'registered' method. i.e. if the survey unemployment is 7%, the 'corrected' (for discouraged and involuntary part-time) rate will be ~ 10% compared with a registered rate of 14%. In any case, all countries adjusted rates tend to move together. Nevertheless, there are some differences in definition that make the published US rates lower than in other countries. My understanding is, however, that this is only a fraction of a per cent. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 14:39:46 -0700 From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:31008] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There > are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the > discouraged workers being excluded. But such matters are transparent, not > the result of skulduggery. > > On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: > > > > >And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style > > >accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are > > >honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of > > >BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. > > > > > >Doug > > > > I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five > > minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: > > > > The Gazette (Montreal), September 15, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION > > > > U.S. jobless rate is much higher than commonly thought > > > > In his column, "Main problem in Quebec is the government itself," (Gazette, > > Sept. 8), Jay Bryan states that there isn't any excuse for our unemployment > > rate, 10.2 per cent in July 1994, to be nearly twice as high as that of the > > United States. > > > > Like so many others, Bryan appears to have been misled by the official U.S. > > employment figures, which commonly peg the American unemployment rate at > > somewhere around 6.4 per cent. U.S. unemployment figures are determined by > > polls, whereas most other nations use the number of persons actually > > registered as unemployed. > > > > The American means of determining unemployment levels is so inaccurate that > > both the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and the U.S. Bureau of > > Labor Statistics consider the official figures to be grossly inexact; in > > fact, their calculations led them to conclude that the real unemployment > > rate in the U.S., as of the end of 1993, is 12.47 per cent. > > > > Even the American Express Bank considers the official figures inaccurate > > and itself calculated a U.S. rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent. > > > > > > > > > > Louis Proyect > > www.marxmail.org > > > > -- > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > Chico, CA 95929 > > Tel. 530-898-5321 > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Re: employment
Well, gosh, I spend my life with this stuff, too as do the follks on the unemployment statistics list. Michael Perelman is right. There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. Doug Henwood wrote, Well, damn, I only spend my life with this stuff, so I guess I'm at a disadvantage not having just done a five minute Lexis search. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: employment
Tom wrote: Well, gosh, I spend my life with this stuff, too as do the follks on the unemployment statistics list. Michael Perelman is right. There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. Thank you Tom!.. There is a saying in Turkish that goes like this: Hislerime tercuman oldun. Which would literally translate as: You became a translator to my emotions. I know it sounds awkward in English but hey! Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! I hope, Sabri
Re: Re: employment
Tom Walker wrote: Well, gosh, I spend my life with this stuff, too as do the follks on the unemployment statistics list. Michael Perelman is right. There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. But I also said that the agency produces additional numbers that give you a more accurate idea of what's going on under a better definition of unemployment. The unemployment rate is a measure of labor market slack, which is what employers care about. They want to know the state of the labor market and the limits on militancy. The reserve army is important but it doesn't enter immediately into the wage equation. That's why bourgeois governments define unemployment the way they do. But bourgeois governments are kind enough to produce enough additional statistics that tell you a lot of the rest of the story. It's silly to say they're Enronish, too. Doug
RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31015] Re: Re: employment Tom Walker writes: There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. Tom, could you explain, specifically, what's methodologically flawed with the various U.S. BLS measures of the amount of labor market slack (unemployment, the size of the reserve army)? What phenomenon or phenomena would you like to have measured? how do the various BLS measures fail to gauge these phenomena? what systematic biases do you find? or do you reject measurement _per se_? JD
Re: employment
I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri
Re: Re: employment
Sabri Oncu wrote: I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. About what? We're talking about life under capitalism. The conditions of the labor market matter to working people. The limits to our social imaginations aren't defined by BLS categories. Could you parse your sadness? Doug
Re: Re: employment
I am not reading anyone saying anything terribly different from what Tom and I said. I believe that the BLS people do a good job with the parameters that they are given. Doug is correct that they collect much of the information necessary to give a better picture of unemployent -- except for the general problem of counting the people who live at the very margin of the economy or even beyond. The common unemployment rate gives a reassuring picture of the economy relative to the actual number of unmployed, but we can dig out better indicators from the data they supply. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 06:12:02PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
Title: Re: employment Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. What is the problem with using some (but not all) government statistics as a half-bad/half good way of understanding what's going on, in conjunction with other information and reasoning? There seems to be a spectrum of positions on this debate. Which do you fit? (1) we can reject all statistics, even as a part of a more complete analysis; (2) we can reject all government statistics; (3) we can accept some government statistics, suitably massaged; (4) we can accept some government statistics, but treat them critically; (5) we can accept most government statistics, as a good estimate of what's going on in the phenomenal world; (6) we can accept all government statistics as a good estimate of what's going on in the phenomenal world. Perhaps there's a 7th position: we can accept all those statistics (government-produced or otherwise) that reinforce our pre-determined political position and rect all those which conflict with that position. BTW, I fit under #3 or #4. JD -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 6:12 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31020] Re: employment I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri
Re: employment
Jim said: Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. I don't know how to describe it, although I am sure I would sound racist if I say this but I think you don't get this because you are Americans. You don't know the difference because you have never experienced it. As I said I don't know how to describe it. It is just a matter of tasting it, at least, for once. Life is not as rational as you think it is. Best, Sabri
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31027] Re: employment I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. JD -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 7:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31027] Re: employment Jim said: Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. I don't know how to describe it, although I am sure I would sound racist if I say this but I think you don't get this because you are Americans. You don't know the difference because you have never experienced it. As I said I don't know how to describe it. It is just a matter of tasting it, at least, for once. Life is not as rational as you think it is. Best, Sabri
Re: employment
Jim said: I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. Not at all. It is about that Western Rationality thing that I personally object. But I took the risk of being misunderstood nevertheless. At least, I took the risk with you and Doug, which made me barve enough to take it. Otherwise, I am not as brave as I may have sounded. Best, Sabri
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31029] Re: employment There's Western rationality and there's Western rationality. The main -- hegemonic -- form is the capitalist rationality that wants to reduce everything -- and all people -- to things that can be manipulated to attain the predetermined goal (primarily, profit). the counterhegemonic form includes that of Marx, which involves the struggle to liberate people from this nonsense (and from exploitation, domination, and alienation), or rather to help people liberate themselves. I don't see why the use of statistics in any way leads to me agreeing with capitalist rationality (or encourages anyone to think that I agree with that so-called rationality). After all, Marx used them. Also, I don't see why the sins of modernism (a.k.a., capitalist rationality) should encourage rejection of logic, scientific thinking, the use of evidence, etc. I doubt this is what you advocate. Jim -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 8:46 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31029] Re: employment Jim said: I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. Not at all. It is about that Western Rationality thing that I personally object. But I took the risk of being misunderstood nevertheless. At least, I took the risk with you and Doug, which made me barve enough to take it. Otherwise, I am not as brave as I may have sounded. Best, Sabri