Dean Baker's Sold-Out "Cure" for Unemployment
Dean Baker is happy enough to rehash some old news, criticize a universally unpopular entity like Goldman Sachs, and shed crocodile tears about unemployment on TPMCafe, and...
He's also smart enough to keep his miserable suggestion for how to make things better away from TPMCafe, where it was sure to get bashed.
He saved that garbage for Truthout, where comments are carefully moderated, and establishment tools like Dean Baker can post crap without fear of attracting too much hostility.
However, to get large numbers of workers back to work quickly, the best route is a tax credit to shorten normal working time.The basic logic is very simple; the tax credit effectively pays employers to hire more workers, with each worker putting in fewer hours. If we used the tax credit to pay employers of 100 million workers to work 5 percent fewer hours, while keeping their take-home pay unchanged, then in principle they should want to hire 5 percent more workers, or five million workers.
So we give Big Business a huge tax-break, and "in principle they should want to hire 5 percent more workers,"
And why not? Tax-payers just gave them all the money they need!
This is exactly like the multi-trillion-dollar give-aways to criminal bankers, which "in principle" should have made them want to lend out more money... but it didn't.
The bankers just used the money to pay down their own debts and make bargain acquisitions, and what's to prevent Big Business from doing exactly the same thing with the huge tax-break Dean Baker wants to give them?
Nothing.
If tax-payers want to created millions of jobs, wouldn't directly hiring millions of unemployed workers for public-works projects be infinitely more reliable than trusting Big Business to "do the right thing?"
Yes.
But Dean Baker and all the other little economists who depend on banks and corporations don't want you to think those naughty thoughts!
Public-works programs are socialism!
More give-aways and tax-breaks are the American Way!
I suppose it's a compliment to TPMCafe that the sold-out clown Dean Baker didn't roll out his miserable plan here, where comments are not moderated..
So thanks for the respect, Dino, and shove your tax-breaks where the moon don't shine!
If tax-cuts cured unemployment, we would already be living in a paradise of full employment, after 8 long years of Bush/Cheney's stinking tax-cuts for billionaires, and you might think that this brute fact would be obvious even to a third-tier economist like Dean Baker, but...
"Whose bread I eat, his song I sing."
He's got a brief 3 pager on this idea, PDF here.
Agreed that I now retract my testicles when I hear of another tax credit, and my faith that business will do anything sensible is pretty much gone.
But. There's some possible pro-labour/worker aspects being snuck in here. e.g. It would - insofaras it worked - crack open some working hours, family leave and work relations practices. It would also ease the path for firms to hire in some new people, which some want to do and would probably use this credit for. And public works, capital investments, infrastructure and all that stuff that the Left went wild for... do have limits, aren't necessarily labour-intensive, etc.
BTW, do you HAVE to go nuclear on every single author, dude? You know... Baker's not just the author of garbage and crap, he's a sell-out? Like the other day I was a worthless, lying, thieving piece of shit. Whereas "piece of shit" alone would not only be more precise, but save valuable blog space for others to contribute their own insults.
October 5, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Boo hoo!
quinn got called out for careless thinking and writing, but now that DickDay has celebrated the wonderfulness of so much facile scribbling, quinn returns empowered to the fray.
And of course my actual criticism has to be reduced to a parody, because quinn couldn't answer the real thing right off the top of his head, and the top of his head is all there is.
Yeah, the 3-page PDF is incredibly impressive, unless you read my next comment, and realize that the sort of legislation Dean Baker proposed would immediately generate thousands of pages of interacting language, and thousands of pages of amendments, which nobody but the smartest guys in Washington would ever understand, and the smartest guys in Washington all sold out to the darkside a long time ago...
...or didn't you notice?
October 5, 2009 10:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Root, you shit on me on two blogs the other day, and then ran off in typical MALIBU CELEBUTARD PHOTOG style. But apparently you want to raise this issue for a third time, so... screw you, you're wrong, and you belong in a dumpster on this one.
You claimed that I distorted everything, lied, blah blah blah - in what amounted to a Ruta-shat on my blog and then someone else's. You particularly wanted to fight about some odd fact, the HEIGHT OF THE CLIFF - which you felt exemplified my lying ways. Here's your rant, my reply.
Now, I don't think you know anything about the height of the cliff at HSIBJ. You offered NO evidence, while I responded using a book... by the guy who excavated the site for 15 years. His whole e-book is available, free, here.
But since this cliff height issue seems to have taken on touchstone significance for you, how about you review our positions on it (you say 30 feet, I said 50), then turn to pages 17-18 of the book.
We'll use this as a test of whether you have any intellectual honesty or not. Any class, any grace. 'Cause right now, to me, you just sound like another Ugly American. You're loud. You shriek and rant about things you don't understand. You smear people. And if pressed, you justify your crap with self-justifying babble about being "acidic" - when what you are is wrong, graceless, and incapable of providing practical assistance or political insight.
Let's see how you do. 50 FEET OR 30 FEET. Whaddya got, Malibu?
October 6, 2009 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wikipedia, my usual online source, says...
What I said, based on that source, was that the cliff is "only slightly higher than 30 feet at it's highest point." That's the figure that Wikipedia gives twice.
The cliff is only 10 meters high at it's highest point now, and if it was ever 50 feet, as your source claims, it almost certainly wasn't 50 all along the length of it, or for its whole history, and your silly excursion into what you probably consider to be the nuts and bolts of archaeology isn't nearly as dispositive as you imagine.
For example, your claim that Head Smashed In was 50 feet high once upon a time is based on Jack Brink's observation that "the oldest bones and artifacts (are) buried some ten metres below the current ground surface."
So obviously, if obviously is as far as you go, the deposits must have gradually shortened the cliff to its current height.
But if you look at a fairly good photograph of the site, rather than the silly cartoon included in your silly diary...
You may observe that the slope of apron under the cliff is very steep indeed, and there's just about as much chance of such a slope being produced by buffalo remains at Head Smashed In as there is that buffalo remains produced identical slopes on the other aprons on the other cliffs which you can see in the background of the same image, which were never used for buffalo jumps.
If buffalo actually stampeded off the edge of the cliff, as Brink imagines, then most of them would have rolled and gone on rolling down the very steep slope of the apron, like every other apron along that divide, and wherever the carcasses may have finally accumulated, that accumulation could not have possibly occurred directly under the rockface.
So I used a usually reliable source for my figure of "slightly more than 30 feet," and that source is based upon actual measurement, rather than a hypothetical process described in a popularization of plains archaeology, which was intended to wow a mass audience, rather than convince more thoughtful readers.
It's also worth mentioning that you misquote me all over your silly replies, "...which you felt exemplified my lying ways...." although I never accused you of lying anywhere, or even here, with those ridiculous mischaracterizations of what I said.
You aren't a liar, quinn. You're just too lazy and full of yourself to get anything right.
October 6, 2009 1:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
A really poor performance, Rutabaga. You're staring the facts straight in the face, you know I've been to and over the site, talked to the people, read the books, and now I'm quoting the guy who ran the excavation itself - and you're still wanting to cling onto some shitty argument, which only has value because YOU made it, and attached some name-calling to it.
Doesn't it embarrass you to claim that JACK BRINK'S WORK is... "a hypothetical process described in a popularization of plains archaeology, which was intended to wow a mass audience."
When Jack Brink is the guy who EXCAVATED THE SITE FOR 25 YEARS. He's the head of the Royal Alberta Museum. Whereas YOU, rely on WIKIPEDIA? Which you call your "usually reliable source." And Wiki OFFERS NO CITE FOR ITS 30' NUMBER.
Because after making such a big noise about how I was wrong and deceptive and all - the facts fall against you, and you're fucked. So you start up some new noise about how the rock must've fallen and aprons and where the buffalo would have rolled. Tell me. Do you know what kind of rock the cliff is made of? No. You haven't been there, or researched it, or talked to people who worked there - hell, you got Wikipedia and ONE PHOTO. Do you know how charging buffalo fall down a cliff? What their air-speed is when they take flight? No. Of course you don't. But you seem happy to bark about how many would have died from broken legs and such.
Look. I've said it before, and it's why I keep wandering past your blogs. You're frigging brilliant, on all kinds of things. And all in all, probably an entirely good man. But the thing where you step over a line or make a mistake, and then pour acid on everyone and smear them? What's the point of that?
And in this case, I wasn't TRYING to tell a precise archaeological story. I thought that was fairly obvious. The main blog was just an attempt to paint an image, a metaphor, that might have some value when we think of political actors. But the real story I wanted out largely buried down in the comments. It was a dream that I kept having. Night, and during the day. About this fucking kid. Here.
Figure it out.
October 6, 2009 3:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only "fact" about the now infamous height of that infamous cliff is what can be measured now.
That's about 30 feet.
But if you really want to take this discussion seriously, instead of just blathering about your dreams and momentary inspirations, as usual, you might ask yourself...
What kind of evidence would really incline the probabilities one way or the other?
The first thing I looked for in your reference was a map and depth-charts of the actual digs. Is there a 10-meter dig directly under the rockface? Are the layers in that particular dig full of buffalo remains all the way down?
I couldn't find any such chart in your reference, although I didn't look at every page.
Meanwhile, about your silly dream, I'll say again...
The boy was the decoy, you moron!
As in...
"Whose body do you find at the bottom of a buffalo jump?
The fucking decoy!
October 6, 2009 4:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dude. The Interpretive Center at HSIBJ is... hard to find a way to say this... BUILT INTO THE CLIFFSIDE AND THE DIGS BENEATH. Get it? So while you're searching for maps of the digs and scrambling to see if there's a 10-meter dig directly under the rockface... the entire cliff plus the excavated digs is laid out and visible & MEASURABLE inside the building itself.
Oh yeah. The Interpretive Center is 7 storeys tall.
At each level as you go down through, they put on displays and such... but if you'd like to see how deep the excavations and bones ran, and the height of the cliff, LOOK AT THE BUILDING.
Like I said, you're clinging to a crappy argument, and for one reason only - because YOU first made it. Here's a tip, for the future. When you're being shown to be screamingly wrong, and all you have is Wiki and your own prior position to stand on, best to stand down. At a minimum, back off on the name-calling. Because otherwise, even a smart guy like yourself loses credibility. People lose any sense that you're discussing in good faith.
October 6, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
So the answer again is no, you haven't seen any real archaeological data, no charts or analysis of the digs except what you gleaned from a pop-archaeology bestseller and a visit to a tourist center.
"I toured the tourist center!" say quinn. "No more evidence is required!"
But you will be delighted to know that instead of arguing this senseless story piecemeal, I'm about devote a separate diary to the subject of buffalo jumps, without the ludicrous distraction of a ludicrous story of a boy so fucking stupid that he stood under a "buffalo jump" while a thundering, stampeding herd fell on his head, and...
The only aspect of this "tale told by an idiot" that I can absolutely endorse is quinn's identification with that idiot-boy, who probably never existed.
October 6, 2009 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come on everyone, let's help MALIBU IDIOT-BOY with his math! Cause he's getting upset, and thrashing about!
See, what's great about an argument like this is that both MALIBU and I know he's wrong. So it's really a question of who can get the best name-calling in before I announce - QUINN WIN! But just so's we draw out the tension, and make this seem like a fair fight, let's look at the facts on the ground!
QUINN'S GOT - TO SUPPORT HIS 50 FOOT CLAIM:
1. The 360 page book by the leading professional archaeologist in the area, the guy who has spent 25 years at the site, and who says on pages 17-18, "This means that the first animals to plunge over the cliff at Head-Smashed-In were falling nearly twenty metres."
2. The physical fact on the ground that the Interpretation Center itself is BUILT INTO THE CLIFFSIDE, AND EXTENDS DOWN INTO THE DIG ITSELF, and it stands... 7 storeys tall.
3. The fact that he toured the site, back before the Center, when it was just rock and grass and digs, and talked to the local experts as well as the Peigan who reside in the area...
THE MALIBU CELEBRITY PHOTOGRAPHER HAS, TO SUPPORT HIS 30 FOOT CLAIM:
1. WIKIPEDIA! With an unsourced claim of 30 feet! Plus a photo!
2. The maunderings of his own addled mind!!!
3. AND THE FEELING THAT SINCE HE, MALIBU BLOWHARD, WAS FROM... MALIBU... AND HE WANTS IT TO BE 30 FEET... THEN BY GOD, HE'LL TANTRUM TIL IT IS HIS HIS HIS WAY! HE'LL SHRIEK AND SCREECH LIKE ONLY THE MALIBU TURNIP CAN, CAUSE HE HAS WALKED THE MEAN STREETS (MAAAAAN), OR SEEN THEM IN A PICTURE ONCE, AND HE HAS SPENT SOME TIME ON COUCHES DAMMIT, (OHHHHHH THE HUMANITY), AND IN WASHINGTON DC NO LESS... AND SINCE THEN HE HAS REPEATEDLY CALLED OBAMA A MESSIAH, WHICH IS CLEVER.... AND POURED ACID ON OLD PEOPLE WHO VISITED HIS BLOG... (didn't you, asshole? and you were ever so smirkingly proud of it. tool? tool.) AND HE CAN WRITE BLOGS ON DEAN BAKER AND CALL HIM A SELL OUT FOR SUGGESTING A TAX CREDIT SO PEOPLE WORK FEWER HOURS...!
Hooooo wheeeeee! That's me! Rutabaga Redneck, New Age Ugly American! I screech and I shriek and I'm hateful to old people and anyone looking for a sensible conversation! No no, wait! It's RUTABAGA REDNECK, WIKIPEDIA-QUOTING, NEW AGE UGLY AMERICAN! Screech some more boy, make it sound like you do something real in life!
And I can fit 7 storeys into 30 feet! Because in MY MALIBU WORLD, OUR MINDS AND HEARTS AND MANNERS ARE SO GODDAMN SMALL THEY MIGHT JUST AS WELL NOT EXIST AT ALL!
And at this point, considering you've had 3 blogs and a good dozen back and forth's on this one stupid issue which you decided to get all warped about.... I hereby declare....
A QUINN WIN! BIG TIME!
MALIBU BARBIE'S ASS HAS GOTTA BE RAW AFTER BEING DRAGGED UP AND DOWN MAIN STREET LIKE THAT... WITH NUTHIN BUT WIKIPEDIA TO KEEP IT FROM GETTING SCRAPED!
P.S. Any chance you could throw in another POLL OF HISTORIANS to back up your next blog? HAR! Or maybe, some more WIKIPEDIA! That works so good! Or maybe, tell us how political assistants tend to be good, because YOU WERE ON A COUCH ONCE!
HARHARHARHARDYHARHAR!
October 6, 2009 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait wait. MALIBU BARBIE! Bet you never heard that one before, Ruta! Go Cat Go!
HARHAR!
October 6, 2009 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ten comments from quinn on this diary, and counting! And it's only to be expected...
Like all the other glamorous inhabitants of Malibu, Bel Air, and the Hollywood Hills, I constantly attract obsessed fans from among the little people, and wouldn't it be wonderful if all of them only ranted on blogs, instead of lurking outside Moonshadows or kidnapping our dogs!
October 6, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mmmmmm.... roast Malibu dog.
What does Moonshadow use on their dog? Some kinda mint sauce?
Mmmmmm.... Minty Mutt... from Moonshadow's of Malibu.
October 6, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
But thanks just the same for the compliment!
I feel the same way about you, you bum!
(And I owe it all to my mentor, Jacob Freeze, "the prophetic wonder-man of political blogging!")
October 6, 2009 4:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
OH ROTO ROOTER,I would certainly celebrate your star....hahahahhaah
JUST GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON. hhhahahahahah
Listen, listen just once...pretending of course that this virtual reality has an auditory component.
Just try to defend the powerless from the powerful.
JUST ONCE.
Oh you do once in awhile. Which is why I appear magically.
You are never, ever, going to shame Q. But you already know this. And you like him and me in the end anyway. ahahahhahahaahhaha
I mean, are you ever certain that you could possibly in your dreams, shame Q. I mean that is like you would shame Cheney. It is not given to humans to do so. hahahahahaha
Me? I dunno. I can be shamed I guess. but it is getting harder and harder to do so.
Besides, I like you. hahahahahaha.
So does Q, or he would never ever show up on your blogs. hahahahahah
October 6, 2009 2:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for stopping by, dickday!
But this is a strange venue for exhorting someone to "defend the powerless from the powerful," since in this diary I advocate "directly hiring millions of unemployed workers for public-works projects," instead of providing the powerful with still more inducements to hire than they have already received in the form of decades of tax breaks, and they still aren't hiring.
The powerful don't get more tax-breaks, and the powerless get jobs.
Insofar as the grand phrase "defending the powerless" is applicable on a blog, I think my proposition fits that description, insofar (again) as any mere proposition can fill it.
I'm pushing in their direction, even though that push may be measured in electron-volts, like everything else on the internet, instead of kilotons of dynamite.
October 6, 2009 3:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
oh lighten up. This blog is dead.
but go ahead. hire a hundred million people.
I would not for a minute, a second, not ask for this.
REALLY
HAHAHAHAHA
October 6, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
My criticism of "Honest Dean" Baker is open to the apparently justified criticism that tax credits would only apply when workers were hired, unlike tax cuts or other more transparent give-aways.
But in the real world, there are infinitely many ways for Big Business to diddle provisions about actual hiring, and the weasels who rule the world hire an army of lobbyists to write those provisions into every bill.
Representatives and Senators can occasionally whip up a little public outrage about bonuses at Goldman Sachs, for example, but when it comes to fighting through every comma in every line of legislation, they don't have enough high-quality staff for that monumental task, and if anyone demonstrates a knack for it, he or she can make ten times as much money as a lobbyist than a staffer.
Bloggers and old-media journalists are even less capable scrutinizing legislation line by line, and so instead of pretending to be shocked, shocked, every time yet another Congressional boondoggle accomplishes exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to accomplish, and the rich just get richer...
It makes more sense for bloggers and journalists to agitate for programs which are inherently transparent, like public works, where the bosses never get a chance to filter the money through their sticky little fingers.
And part of that sort of (at least) potentially effective public consciousness raising is...
Bashing establishment tools like Dean Baker, who pretend they don't foresee the inevitable boondoggles in programs like tax-credits, until it's too late to do anything about it.
October 5, 2009 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It makes more sense for bloggers and journalists to agitate for programs which are inherently transparent, like public works, where the bosses never get a chance to filter the money through their sticky little fingers."
When you say things like this, my eyes glisten. Because this combination of words is... JUST. THAT. DUMB.
This is why you need to run back over to Baker's place, and apologize, on bended knee. Yeah... building those highways and sewer/water works and transmission grids would be just ever so transparent. And the bosses? Why... they'd never get a chance to touch that money!
Yeah, HEAVY CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES, they tend to be lightweight political players!!!
Yeah, and those LAND DEVELOPERS (and the mob) would never look to influence road-building and water supply!!!
Yeah, and those BIG PRIVATE UTILITIES, good thing there's no "bosses" in there!!!
Who do you think builds these things? Designs them? Determines where they go? And have you even tried to imagine whether Baker's suggestion might create more jobs than some of these cement/gravel-heavy capital works? You're screeching at Baker, when you write stuff like this?
And I LOVE your bit about it's the COMPLEXITY of the tax credit legislation, and how big business would control the writing.... while the design, scale, type, location, contracting and construction of these fine public capital works would just be a BULWARK OF DEMOCRACY!!!!
And I'm talking off the top of my head? You're a Malibu photographer screeching out your blowhole, and smearing people on the basis of the SWEET F*CK ALL you know about this topic.
Maybe the world needs some more pics of talking dogs.
Get busy. Shoo.
October 6, 2009 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
quinn seems to assume that "public works" means hiring private contractors, and his silly reply is based partly on that mistaken assumption, and partly on his ignorance of prices typically paid for property condemned in the process of public works.
It's probably true that entities other than unemployed workers would also profit from massive hiring for public works, but that would still be a vast improvement over what we have now, when...
Those other entities are reaping enormous profits, and payrolls continue to shrink, although tax breaks in all conceivable disguises have been distributed to all the big players.
October 6, 2009 1:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ummm Rootie, i am weary of stepping into this weird pedantic battle of a cliff's height that you and Q seem to have going. You two seem to be enjoying yourself. So I might regret this but I am going to disagree with you here.
Q is right. Public works is typically understood as infrastructure projects, which in this country is largely done by private contractors. This isn't always the case, and historically their have been times when the government stepped into the game (e.g. WPA), but even in the 30's most projects, and all of the high profile ones used private companies.
Now I don't know Fuck all about cliff heights. However I do know a shit load about construction and Real Estate, and a little bit about econ (even if they aptly call it a B.S.). I completely agree with you that big businesses will game any legislation along the lines of Dean's proposal, but I still think it is a damn good suggestion.
I am all for ramping up construction spending, and I know that that spending has the highest multiplier effect on the local economies where it is spent, which will further increase the effectiveness of that spending. However, in the 30's you hired a few hundred dudes to dig a ditch, today you have one guy and his excavator. All our spending won't translate into the same sort of return that we received back then. Quite simply it won't put most of our people back to work, because they have experience and skills in jobs that are completely unrelated, (and that is most of our modern jobs).
So I am for Dean's proposal.
October 6, 2009 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for commenting, Saladin, you dizzy dervish!
But in this case your dizzy inner eye has soared so high above ordinary reality that it no longer discerns the simple expedient that I advocate, which is...
What I claim for this expedient, "hiring millions of unemployed workers," is that millions of unemployed workers will have jobs.
The problem which I address, likewise addressed by Dean Baker, is massive unemployment.
The meaning of "massive unemployment" is that millions of workers don't have jobs.
If millions of workers are hired by the government, then...
Those same millions of workers have jobs, and the original problem, that they didn't have jobs, is fixed.
This simple expedient avoids all middlemen, because the government directly hires those millions of workers.
Exactly what work those millions of previously unemployed workers may perform for the government is more or less beside the point, and according to Keynes, the more useless such work may be, the better.
Keep your eye on the ball, dervish!
The problem is unemployment!
You solve it by hiring the unemployed!
And haven't we had enough "magical thinking" already, about what kind of spell we can cast on the bosses and bankers, so that they may magnanimously lend or hire?
October 6, 2009 3:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
The question, as I perceive it, is how to hire those workers without instituting a massive giveaway to intermediaries, (read: federally approved contractors). We need new programs designed along the lines of the WPA.
October 6, 2009 3:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
But that would be socialism... Aw... fugedaboudit...
October 6, 2009 4:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
This entire discussion, from the top of the thread (almost) to the bottom, is a marvelous testimonial to the power and efficacy of the Republican noise machine.
Even the intelligent Miguelito is asking how "how to hire those workers without instituting a massive giveaway to intermediaries!"
You hire them by sending them a check now, and figuring out what to do with them later!
And even if what they do is the same as nothing, as Keynes suggests in the passage I quoted, so what?
The problem is unemployment.
You solve it by hiring workers.
Intermediaries only enter into the discussion because of mass fucking hypnosis by Republicans and corporatist weasels like Dean Baker.
October 6, 2009 4:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
That would be more or less what the WPA did, and yes, the R's noise machine, is what is portraying such programs, (sans giving the bidness guys their cut), as socialism. Guess we need to get hungrier before we try anything so radical.
October 6, 2009 4:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Did you ever read anything about Huey Long? I can't figure that guy out at all, but apparently he was a shining example of the revolutionary bogey-men whose ascendance the relatively mild-mannered reformer FDR was supposed to prevent.
Maybe what Obama and the other bosses really need is a charismatic bogey-man on the Left to scare them into something more useful than more tax-cuts for themselves.
But who would that be?
October 6, 2009 5:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Herein lies the telling difference between 1934 and the present, when the overthrow of the czar was not even a 20 year old memory in the dark corners of capitalists' hearts around the world. When every nation felt threatened from the closet and open Bolsheviks in their midst. Nowadays the shills can attend a few town halls, shout "SOCIALISM" a few times, and the potential reformers crawl back under whatever cover they have. 'Did you see a bogeyman? I didn't see no bogeyman.'
October 6, 2009 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, um, I hope it's not going to result in an angry har har har screed to elaborate that it isn't the case that a lot of able bodied unemployed have things like cranes and concrete mixers and the like sitting in their backyard ready to take to work with them, or like the ability to get large steel beams or sewer pipes from one place to another.
We don't build little red frame one room schoolhouses by hand any more (tho I am sure the right wing would like us to go back to that time,) and we don't need any more single family houses.
Now if the argument is that he wants the gumint to own most of the cranes and concrete mixers so they can put people to work on public works without getting private corporations involved, well, your are correct, that's a whole 'nother system, isn't it?
October 6, 2009 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was thinking of perhaps a less grand program than bridge and highway infrastructure. Perhaps a program funding small, medium, or large contractors to go out and insulate American homes in need of winterization. I know lots of small contractors who would be equipped to undertake such work. And perhaps an Arts program, redolent of the photography program of the previous era.
October 6, 2009 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay Rootie your not just talking public works- but also hiring people to bury money and then dig it out again. Fair enough. I don't disagree that would work.
However I would like to point you to this Keynes paper: Long Term Problem of Full employment"
Seems to me that Dean's proposal could be a start towards moving to less work for the rest of us. Those that work now, work too hard. The average american gets a little over 2 weeks of vacation a year. I like Zip's suggestion below.
October 6, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I looked the paper you linked, Saladin, but didn't read it all the way through, because it was written in 1943, when there was essentially no problem with unemployment in the United States.
The same paper would have been idiotic in 1933, when nobody wanted to hear about "the long-term problem of full employment," while millions of people were starving in the short term.
And right now, we're getting closer and closer to 1933, and farther and farther away from 1943.
October 7, 2009 3:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well thanks for the honesty.
We (and Britain) had a war on in 1943 so the paper was more theoretical then germane.
We increased consumption and discouraged savings through the expansion of debt, which is unsustainable. You are arguing for a transference from private debt to public debt to maintain employment. That seems fine to me, but it is also not sustainable.
Keynes argued that a shift to more employment but less work would be an effective tool. Like Q argues below Dean's proposal is a 'foot in the door' towards remaking our economy towards a more sustainable equilibrium.
October 7, 2009 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well put (and without the dispensation of disdain), which economist really knows what is going on anyway (and will open his mouth about it) other than that Stieglitz guy at Columbia (has Nobel Prize and tenure) who called the big Wall Street bank bailout 'outright robbery'. The taxcuts might even be cut and diced and sold as CDO's.
Of course, the Repugs would say it was an indoctrination program or socialist takeover camps, but the unemployed would line up around the block to get a job, and for the inevitable skill training that comes along with the work.
October 6, 2009 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for commenting, NCD.
I also like Stiglitz, although I think his independence is more a matter of innate honesty than tenure.
You have to give Goldman Sachs some credit for their really zany sense of humor! They are probably already selling derivatives based on future bailouts!
October 6, 2009 4:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see this as working either, Rootie. Having read Q's link, it seems that you'd need a system with really strict enforcement of labor rights for this not to get gamed by employers. Friends in France tell me horror stories about the shenanigans that ensued when they implemented the 35 hour work week ("Sure you can leave at 4 o'clock, as long as you've finished your workload..."). And that was frikking labor-lovin' FRANCE.
I can't see why they don't just give the 'tax credit' of $2'500 to every working age person directly. Or at least to the 50 million making less than 40'000 a year. Because they would spend it or pay down debt, thereby increasing monetary velocity (with its high multiplier effect) and reducing bankruptcies at the margin, creating jobs to meet the increased consumption, etc.
But no, you can't give money to the undeserving poor. That's against the rules, apparently. You have to give it to the rich, then close your eyes and pray some of it falls out of their pockets.
October 6, 2009 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I just read 'the height of the cliff' argument.
Pretty lame attack, there, 'baga. Who the fuck cares how tall the cliff was? It was an allegory; it was universal, and it was great.
Seems to me you were hooked one one basic premise.
And I have to ask you:
DOES SIZE REALLY MATTER?
October 6, 2009 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wendy, just fyi, men don't know the answer to that, and really don't want to know. But they'll fight about it just in case...
;0)
October 6, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is that Obey the HORSE COCKED WONK HERO! talking?
October 6, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup! That's who it sounds like to me! Well, with one small editing change. It's.... Obey the WANNABE Horse-Cocked Wonk Hero!
And Obey, I really really REALLY find it hard to believe, that after the treatment you receive in that thread, and having since fled to Switzerland, you'd wish to re-engage that particular discussion.
You got balls.
(Whoops.)
October 6, 2009 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The important question here, which I'm sure everyone is thinking, but no one has the balls to ask: If you exaggerated about the size of the cliff were you exaggerating when you claimed to have horse sized cock? What if its only 3/5 the size you claim. Perhaps even the size of a lowly mule's cock. I'm just not sure I can trust you anymore. My world is in turmoil.
October 6, 2009 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, in Defense of Quinn- It is Cold up north. So, uh, measurements can be deceiving.
October 6, 2009 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mine too. And with the metric, everything's gone to hell.
Think I'm gonna throw myself off a cliff.
October 6, 2009 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not if you're big.
October 6, 2009 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am sure you'll say that you're big for your size, right?
October 6, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
You mean for a chihuahua? Depends on your point of view.
October 6, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got a chihuahua down my pants?
Jeez. Don't tell Obey... he'll be wanting one too.
October 6, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Doesn't everybody?
October 6, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
ROTFLOL!
just fyi, I tried that -
1. it's painful
2. the ladies *don't* find it sexy when your pants start barking.
;0)
October 7, 2009 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
My idea would be to mandate a 30 hour work week with a mandatory time and a half for all hours in excess of 30 hours. Use law enforcement to investigate and penalize businesses employing "off the book" hirees, and sic the IRS on those with a history of this hiring practice.
Incentives don't work. What will happen (as I can personally attest to) is that there will be a hiring increase of temp workers to take advantage of the incentive, or the incentive will be ignored if the costs outweight the benefits. Or, they ignore everything and hire under the table to avoid the problem entirely.
So, without the stick, what in the hell is the point of the carrot?
Secondly, tax incentives are the DLC mantra... targeted tax relief as a kind of social engineering. Well, look at the consequences! No matter how many incentives you add to the soup, if the broth is made from deregulation, then the soup is rotten.
Therefore, in my opinion, mandating a 30 hour workweek and punishing businesses with overtime if they don't abide by the law will necessitate a hiring increase in order to maintain competitive productivity.
October 6, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will 30 hour work weeks be the new Full time with associated benefits?
October 6, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes.
October 6, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
And that would have most businesses BEGGING for single payer health care in order to reduce that cost.
I would also severely limit and regulate international outsourcing.
Of course, I can't wear the dictator hat. But I bet that someone with Obama's eloquence could sure go to bat for ideas along these lines. I bet that he would receive bipartisan public support because it attacks all of the major working class bugaboos.
October 6, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's this whole complex of American working practices that Baker's proposal aims to get at. I may not love the tax credit thing, but working hours/years are too long, holidays too few and too short, and leave arrangements pathetic. Tied into that, the health insurance burden - as presently structured - makes it worse. Part of Baker's aim is to get companies and employees used to living with these new practices, and adjusting their lives accordingly. Once that happens, you have much more room to adjust laws and policies later. So the point now is... since we have money we're going to use as a stimulus... why not use it to support the kinds of practices we want in the future? Same argument as investing in green industries.
Right now, there's a formal job-sharing and hours reduction program going on quietly up here, and the Government help with extra unemployment monies, and last I heard, I think they had 165,000 people in it. Multiply by 10 for US equivalent. And that's in 8 months. Try here.
I do think, in the longer-run, as we get people moving towards shorter workweeks, more holidays, longer leave, more sabbaticals, etc. - we'll need straight-up laws. But the point is to engage as many people and companies as possible, so experience grows, open out a whole menu of options (not just 30 hour weeks), and make the transition.
October 6, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
We do spend way to much time at work serving corporations when we could do more for self-sufficiency, like growing our own food. With a job taking 8 hours/day, how can anyone do that?
October 6, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Plus commute.
11 hours a day for me.
October 6, 2009 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink