What lies down this path? Here’s what I consider all too likely: Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable.I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but I don't entirely despise Nobel Paul. Having spent the better part of the roaring nineties pimping Clintonian neoliberal vassal economics before being "radicalized"--oh, ha!--by the depredations of Bush le jeune, I think he genuinely cares about working Joes and Janes, albeit in a rather abstracted way, since one doubts he actually knows many of them. He seems genuinely troubled by the prospect of a nation in which a full quarter of the adult population are consigned to living on suffrance and charity or else to eeking a more violent but less hungry existence in prison.
-Kruggo
But even so, his radicalism is rooted like a sidewalk weed, that is to say: shallowly. Even as he laments the Lethean passage of the great liberal-capitalist social compact, in which you can feel palpably that he wants to believe, he can't quite release his tenacious hold on the managerial vocabulary of a late-20th-century technocrat, thus the incessant talk of "skills." Friends--those of you currently engaged in regular wage-peonage, anyway--I axe you: what new skills have you acquired over the last few years on the job? Oh, I suppose the control units for the HVAC system have been updated, but their operations are fundamentally the same as they've been for fifteen years. Screws still tighten clockwise. Plaster is still cleaned from interior brick with a diluted wash of muriatic acid. Macros on Excel 2010 are hardly different from macros on Excel 2.0.
"Skills" applied to workers, whatever color the collar, are a gatekeeping scam, a device of the technocratic, managerial elite to maintain their workforce in a state of utter dependence, to tether workers to the will of the bosses just as surely as non-portable health insurance and the expiration of unemployment benefits. They are part of a strategy whereby employers can anytime deprive workers of their jobs, but workers can never bargain with their own labor. Quit your job, take six months off, and try to find another. Just try. "Well, your resmume is very good, but there does appear to be a substantial period of unaccounted-for unemployment here. We're just a little concerned that your skill sets may not be fully current with what we're looking for . . ." The idea of rapidly sunsetting skills, of a worker's obsolescence in the face of six months or a year or two of less-than-fulltime employment, is a fraud. It has nothing to do with ability and everything to do with compliance.
51 comments:
It's interesting that Kruggo has been talking about liquidity traps the past two years. And yet we have to wait two more years before he'll blame someone else?
Another way to look at it is that the focus on 'skills' is a way of moving the costs of training from the employer to the employee. No matter how fast-moving the field, successful past employment is a pretty good hint that you are fully capable of learning and applying whatever the current toolkit happens to be, assuming you have the chance to either get training or learn on the job. That costs the employer money, though. They'd rather either push it off on your previous employer (i.e. no time between jobs), or onto you via certifications.
And he also avoids the obvious solution - why create jobs? Why not just write unemployed people a big f'in check?
I'm certainly not in a hurry to bust my balls for some micro-managing asshole to ask me where my TPS cover sheet is six times a day, just to get a "meets expectations" on my performance review because we don't have the budget to give everyone what they deserve.
Look, Paul, you spent so much over the past two years trying to create shitty jobs for people that now we're running a $1.4 trillion deficit. That's including the hundreds of billions in loan guarantees and other handouts for the financial industry to create jobs...no...what did that do exactly? I know it wasn't to make them loan money out because they're certainly not doing that (and anyway, how can unemployed me borrow money other from Tommy "Teeth" Malloy...or MBNA?)
$1.4 trillion divided by 14 million unemployed is $100,000 a year - wow, just as much as my last job paid for doing nothing.
this is why I balk at the PE, rarely mention it and quite frankly get pissed off every time I hear it brought up in conversation. and this was why in my yearly review I laughed at my Direct Boss when he said, "well get the PE when you like. that's a personal thing." District Manager Boss conducting the review and I looked at each other. "did he really just say that?" DMB was like, "no, this is what we would want him to do." Direct Boss didn't realize it's not about what I want. it's about what they want. it's about what looks good for the company. it's why I spent an hour writing paragraph length answers in my annual review survey, because the bosses want it to look good, and to reflect well. even though the past year was like the past 4 years, just a job that I go to and deal with. but I don't have a choice, it's what they want. and I'm not going to take the PE for as long as I can.
In my job we recently went from having to essentially know how to write code in a programming language idiosyncratic to the company, thus making the skill non-transferrable, to...having to know how to use a particularly user-friendly Microsoft Office-like program. If that's not advancing my skill set, I don't know what is!
Quit your job, take six months off, and try to find another. Just try.
I did exactly that, and it took three years of temping to get back to even any kind of illusion of security.
Anyone need any more anecdotes?
MORE ANECDOTES LET'S GO!
Interesting definition of radicalized: thinking working people matter?
I would call that a good place to start getting radicalized, which to my mind involves looking for root causes. From there Krug could ask why the system treats working people like they don't matter.
The definition of radical that you use here is similar to my definition of liberal.
That who uses where?
That you use, IOZ, use in the post this comment thread originates from.
Perhaps I am reading it wrong and should focus a bit more on your scare quotes surrounding "radicalized"? And I suppose you do laugh.
But, what then do you mean when you talk about a shallowly rooted radicalism?
Sarcasm & irony work well, but they depend on readers getting the point of their use. Could Ted Stein perhaps see the point of using "radical" as equivalent to "liberal," a point other than literalism? Time will tell.
Anecdotes you say? I have an awesome one about someone who got out of graduate school and the only job he could get was delivering flowers. Then he got a part time gig at the front desk of a hotel so he could make only 200 dollars a month less than his student loan bills.
Wait...did I say awesome?
Try being a poly-degreed person of the sort the Merit Class seem to think superior. And try having lots of different kinds of work experience, all of which resulted in satisfied employers. Now try working for yourself for a bit, then deciding to go back to the employment of others.
And then try being happy with 2.5 years of unsuccessful multiple attempts at employment. And that, despite working intensively with a state Job Service office whose aim is to employ those looking for work.
When a $12/hr water-meter-reading job goes from a usual 60 applicants in the late 90s/early 00s, to over 1,000 applicants in 2008... well, I guess Krugman would find an externality to blame.
Yep, it's a great world and a great economy out there, Krugmeister!
there isn't a literal connection, Dude.
I think you're far too easy on the Krugster, IOZ.
His ilk pushed their whole theory of moral sentiments solely to land choice ownership of joint stock companies, at a time when the merchant class wasn't very highly regarded (think: DA JOOZ) in Western Europe.
Then when the time came for labor to give up ownership of their only asset and prostitute themselves to these same joint stock corporations, it was the job of these purveyors of political economy to patiently explain that this was the best of all possible worlds because, you see, we're maximizing our utility, don't you know.
Now, it's Paul's job to explain that it's not that nobody wants to bang an old whore, but really because unions make wages sticky. And the Chinese. Those inscrutable Chinese and their undervalued renminbi.
The whole point of the economics profession is to tell the rich what they want to hear and get a nice sinecure somewhere. And maybe some shares or Swiss Francs if you're lucky.
(And I say this as an economist with a nice sinecure.)
krugman is a democratic party establishment hack who still blames reagan for most of our economic woes as if reagan put a spell on the presidents that followed him that made them incapable of changing course. krugman is still a "free" trade believer. He is a clinton lover thru and thru. If he is "consulted" on any thing by a democratic administration, he will back it even if it is against what he purports to stand for. The health care bill is one of the most recent examples.
He backed ben bernanke getting reappointed at the fed claiming that bernanke did a fantastic job saving the economy after the housing crash. Why? Becoz bernanke hired krugman for his job at princeton. Yeah, great job, benny ... print up money until wall street makes you stop crying uncle and then hand it over to them until they're whole. ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. There are board games that require greater degree of skill to master ... children's board games. What about what he did to aid and abet the bubble that many other people foresaw? That don't matter when you are a hack that cares more about your friends than the american middle class.
His establishment prize was for coming up with some model that explained things that already happened. Is it applicable to future events? We don't know. The far less than noble nobel committee ought to just admit what they gave it to him for ... it's the same reason that tommy friedmann's mantle is littered with pulitzers: he helps carry the establishment's water on "free" trade.
Z
GCU Prosthetic Conscience's explanation rings true to my ear. it is what it is. is a feature not a bug. &tc.
he is a comfort for people who enjoy voting and looking for the next great solution. he's a mindless explainer-away-er of travesties and can be counted on to judge harshly whomever is the scapegoat du jour.
but he's kinda likable.
he is Brandt. and she is a wonderful woman. very free-spirited. we're all very fond of her.
That job skill really tied the room together.
It is a study in Krugman that he won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for work that showed that trade does not always lead to higher incomes and that there is a strong role for protectionism in high-capital high-employment industries like automobiles and aircraft.
He has gone to great pains since developing these Nobel-winning theories to state that he does not favor protectionism.
You too, can win a fake Nobel for the combination of stating the obvious and doublethink. It's really not that difficult if you take enough math classes.
That he's considered the "smart one" of the NY Times op-ed writers is solely because he doesn't trip over his untied shoelaces and fall in front of the subway line on the way to work. (He mails it in from his Princeton co-op. And he wears loafers).
Anonymous @ 12:14 pm has the goods.
You don't go out looking for a job dressed like that? On a weekday?
At my only recent interview, I actually had a guy ask me about two six month gaps in employment that I had twelve and nine years ago. One was while I struggled to find a job after college, the other was after that job laid me off. In both instances, I was working part-time at a pawn shop, but left it off as it wasn't relevant to anything and pawnbroker conjures up images of scumbag.
Anyway, you do have a love a system where relatively poor people incur huge debts to train themselves to be temporarily qualified to be employed, only to go right back to being unemployable (still with the huge debts)if they aren't hired in-field immediately.
O HAI HERE'S MY ANECDOTE
After working various temp jobs following graduation for a couple of years - the only "permanent" job was hellish and they mercifully let me go after a month - I joined in the volunteer effort to prevent the closure of my college (thus potentially saving dozens of jobs at the time, and more in the future.)
It was meaningful and fulfilling, required all kinds of interesting skills and intelligence. It was also generally unpaid, with no clear employer or proper relationship. This meant 1) I didn't qualify for unemployment benefits and 2) my resume looks really weird.
Two years later, the only thing even close to consistent work I've been able to find has been with the Census. They have a test! Which checks skills like "reading a map" and "not falling for total bullshit." Yeah, I got your skills right here.
You defeatists sicken me. Don't you want a nation of "creative" "self-starters" who can "handle multiple projects at once" with a "laid-back yet professional attitude"?
That's not enough, Prof. We also need people who can work both on their own and as part of a team.
You can't just be part of a team, Rowan. Every team member must also be able to lead it.
My resume is probably as weird as yours, and for similar reasons. Not having been on a conventional path means that most of my talents, such as they are, will continually prove a less suitable match than the resumes of other candidates, no matter what I apply to.
"Screws still tighten clockwise."
Anecdotes, eh? Our one X-ray diffraction generator has sever screws that tighten counterclockwise. Those of us who know that are therefore irreplaceable.
"We also need people who can work both on their own and as part of a team."
Simultaneously. Only those with multiple personality disorder need apply.
PowerPoint, bitches.
Not just the skill, but the WILL.
Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so
the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at
dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS
WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
I'm a tech worker and I went from less than 20K/year to well over 100K/year in about 10 years entirely because I acquired new skills.
Just saying. Even myth has roots in reality.
Hell, my income's quintupled in ten years too, but that's counting the tail end of college.
Laugh all you want, nihilists, but I learned new skills, and now I'm riding the gravy train in my exciting new position as monkey-annoyance expert.
Our one X-ray diffraction generator has sever screws that tighten counterclockwise.
Also true for the spool on a weed trimmer. Those day laborers got nothing on my mad skilz.
I graduated from college six weeks ago, have been searching for a job fairly steadily since October, and have yet to land one. The school is ranked in the top 15 nationally, and my degree is in a physical science. I probably could have gone to grad school in my major field but have gotten tired of the intellectual masturbation going on in academia. I have three internships under my belt.
The main problem (for new grads anyway) is that there is a huge glut of mostly econ majors that are taking all of the "real" jobs out from under the other majors, including the quantitative ones.
If you know anyone in college right now, advise them as strongly as possible to switch majors to finance, econ, math, computer science, or business. Graduates with BA's in these fields from top 25 schools are the only ones consistently getting top-flight entry-level jobs right now. If you're going to grad school, fine, but that's its own potential mistake.
I originally graduated in 1991 with a BA in Econ. Strangely, it was the better business students getting all the jobs at that time, particularly in accounting and finance. I applied to about a hundred places, and only landed one interview.
Spent two years delivering packages, substitute teaching, temping and grinding my teeth down to the nub until I finally gave it up, moved back in with the parents, and enrolled in my MA (State U has a kickass applied masters in econ that was nowhere as near as demanding as the usual PhD BS).
Went off the deep end and applied to PhD programs, thinking I'd teach. Got into several and went to Pitt for a year, which taught me that the actual economic theory is a pile of crap built on a foundation of nothing.
Fortunately, the recession was over by that time and I was able to land my first real job at the ripe old age of 27. I managed to pay my $25k of student loans (a large sum at the time, peanuts today) back about five years later, after I had gotten married.
"Laugh all you want, nihilists, but I learned new skills, and now I'm riding the gravy train in my exciting new position as monkey-annoyance expert."
Dear Penthouse: I never thought this would happen to me, but once I started spanking the monkey forty hours a week, my income quintupled.
La Rana is paid to decipher social rules that have been made deliberately obtuse in order to obscure their true function. These skills were acquired at a cost that necessitates at least a decade of laboring to maintain the obtuseness that makes La Rana useful in the first place.
So, no. Skills exist. But for what purpose?
Efficiency is a relative term.
Dang don't see many typos from Monsieur IOZ but I believe the verb "eke" comes out spelled "eking" in the (quasi) gerund, no?
"Quit your job, take six months off, and try to find another."
Did that throughout my 20's....best decade EVER.
"Did that throughout my 20's....best decade EVER."
second that. but then you hit your late 20s and wonder if you're just selecting yourself out of the species. not sure.
Top-flight entry-level jobs. Now that's some funny shit.
got me an associate degree at the technical colledge. graduated during the recession in '93. at the same time a large local company laid off 80 people in the very field i was trying to break into. even so, back then it took about 6 months to land a job. took me two years to pay off my grants. been working steady ever since. i'll encourage my kids to go in for training as opposed to "education."
Growing weed is deeply satisfying...and the hours are pretty good.
There was an interesting item in On The Inside -- whoops, I mean Inside Higher Education -- which supports IOZ' point very nicely.
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2010/08/secrets_of_the_workhouse_revea.html
I have three internships under my belt.
It's the internet, sweetheart. Better claim seven. Works on Manhunt, anyway.
I've had three interns under my belt. Gad, how I love our internship program.
Y'all gotta learn to mask the gaps in employment on your resume. Fuck with the chronology a little. At the interview, fabricate, elide. Narrate. I've spent many months bumming around this and other countries, and when asked directly, I can always make it seem like it's part of The Plan. "Gap year!" lulz.
Or you can just work hourly somewhere no one gives a shit. As of this summer I am a skilled and efficient griller of steaks. My excellent Russian? Highly useful when reading Nestor Makhno.
I'm enjoying my $393 a week government unemployment dole while making a half-hearted attempt to find a job. Every few weeks I get some great "lead" only to find out that I'm one of obviously hundreds of qualified applicants applying for one low paid position. When the government money runs out, however, I am screwed if I don't have some job.
Man, these anecdotes are great. I think maybe some of you guys have a problem with different things than you think you have a problem with.
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