Sally Pipes at Forbes is spewing fear, uncertainty and doubt at Forbes magazine on Obamacare again. Her ‘argument’ this time is that Obamacare is bad for wage earners and she commits the usual sins of trusting Avik Roy and his ilk to be good faith brokers of non-bullshit, but then she tries to slide one hell of a doozy by that flies in the face of any economic modeling or theory that I can think of:
Killing jobs and reducing pay is bad enough. But another report, from the American Health Policy Institute, finds that Obamacare will also shrink the labor force by reducing incentives to work.
In other words, workers are going to get squeezed from both sides. There will be less demand for them even as Obamacare makes it less financially appealing to have a job.
This is a reprisal of the CBO report from last winter that wingnuts used to claim that Obamacare would cause 2 million job losses. In actuality, what the CBO reported was that people would voluntarily remove themselves from the labor force because they did not need to work just for healthcare, and if healthcare was disconnected from employment, they had much better things to do with their time.
These are the types of decisions the CBO project will occur for millions of Americans over the next decade. Some people will opt out of the labor force because they are not tied to their health insurance any more and they have better things to do with their time and money then work. Some people will not enter the labor force because they no longer have to work for insurance. Some people will voluntarily work part time because insurance is no longer just available to full timers. The summations of all of these projected decisions is two million or more people deciding to get ouf of the labor pool over the next decade.
More importantly, let’s go back to simple supply and demand for labor. If in the base case the labor pool is at a certain level, then the labor market (assuming non-zero-bound conditions) clears at a certain set of wages. If two million people leave the labor pool because they have better things to with their time than hang onto health insurance, what happens to the labor market, all else being equal?
The labor pool gets smaller, the competition for fewer workers gets slightly more intense and better offers have to be made to keep and get good workers. The really simple story is that total employment compensation package will rise. Most likely this means more cash in my pocket every two weeks. If we make it a more complex story and project that Obamacare does a decent job of holding down the rate of medical cost inflation, the story gets even better as the proportion of compensation that goes to health insurance stabilizes or declines which means more people start seeing cash raises. But even with the simpler story, a smaller workforce, all else being equal, is a good thing for the remaining workers.
Now, it is not as good of thing for business owners and Forbes magazine readers but fuck them, as Ms. Pipes is the asshole of the week for spreading illogical FUD.
Yatsuno
It is now The Narrative that Obummercare kills jobs. As we all know, anything that contradicts The Narrative is to be shunned & ignored. Naturally Mrs Pipes will spread The Narrative as she wants to be The Other Sally at Quinn’s cocktail parties & suck down those sweet sweet weenies.
Honestly I’m waiting for more folks to jump off the cliff. And for the divorce proceedings to accelerate.
OzarkHillbilly
The serfs will get uppity. That is the real downside of higher wages.
Belafon
@OzarkHillbilly: A few of them might even try to start their own businesses.
steve
Was it 2 million less people in the workforce? Or was it 2 million full-time equivalents in terms of hours? Because I vaguely recall that most of the anticipated impact was in reduced hours across a much larger set of workers not large numbers of people not entering/leaving completely the workforce.
If for some magical reason, “there will be less demand,” translates into a perfectly balanced decrease in the demand for the very workers that are expected to cut back on hours worked, you might get a wash when it comes to wages. Or if it is greater, reduced wages. Or if smaller, increased wages like you said. But I really doubt it is a huge effect.
“There will be reduced demand,” is the standard garbage statistic trotted out by right wingers with a basic understanding of incentives on the margin. They never bother to quantify the magnitude since a. it is meant to scare people and b. the magnitude is often laughably small when empirically tested (see for example any study on the impacts of increasing marginal tax rates on the rich).
Yatsuno
@Belafon: COMPETITION??? We can’t have that! Why, they might ACTUALLY make a better product at a cheaper price & treat their employees better! Best to just quash this in the bud now before it gets out of hand!
Richard Mayhew
@steve: 2 million FTE, so probably 5 to 10 million people make marginal decisions.
Belafon
@Yatsuno: Vague memory: Weren’t you supposed to be in the Dallas area sometime this month?
Frankensteinbeck
The reason you don’t see this as a bad thing is that these words don’t mean ‘lazy black people being treated like whites’ to you. I listened to FOX when the 2 million jobs report came out. Black People Are Lazy is EXACTLY what those words mean to FOX viewers, and they were barely edging around the word ‘black’.
MattF
Forbes is speaking for the 0.1 percent, as usual. Yes, if the labor market is smaller you’re going to have to pay people better. The horror.
NorthLeft12
Yes, our mighty capitalist overlords are making sure that any of the good that could fall towards the 95% as a result of regular market forces, does not…because that would be bad for them, right?
Up here in Canada we have had a brouhaha over Temporary Foreign Workers, where particularly sleazy/greedy/lazy business owners have used this program to avoid paying higher wages to Canadians by claiming that no one will take their critical jobs [food servers, bank tellers, etc.] and the economy will implode unless they can import some workers who will be happy with low wages, be unable to leave the job or get deported, and in general be the next closest thing to slave labour. The TFW program was designed many years ago to allow businesses to bring in skilled workers on time sensitive projects that were not available in Canada. It was understood that the businesses would train Canadians to eventually take over that job in the long run.
Now it is a part of the business model to bring in TFWs every three years or so to replace those that are due to go home. No training and no effort to find and entice Canadians to take those jobs.
And don’t even ask them about raising the wages or actually recruiting out of province. Not happening. The Conservative government here is scrambling to do damage control on this issue and not inconvenience their masters at the same time. Shameful.
danielx
Hey, it’s what Ms. Pipes and others of her ilk are paid to do. Whatever the economic issue may be, whether increasing the minimum wage, saying a rude NO to more free trade agreements, curbing the use of fossil fuels and so on, their role is to screech about how the sky is falling if rogering of wage earners decreases in any way or if the wallets of the 1% are harvested in any way whatsoever.
low-tech cyclist
This is the total and complete truth, and people like Sally Pipes aren’t even making an argument to the contrary. They’re just eliding “job loss” with “people leaving the workforce” and hoping nobody will notice that these things are effectively opposites of each other.
This bullshit non-argument keeps on rearing its head in mainstream publications, and every time it amazes me that anyone’s giving it the time of day. All I can assume is that some editors have poor reading comprehension, and others are sufficiently eager to run Obamascare stories that they don’t care if the story being peddled is bullshit.
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: I was going to rant for a couple paragraphs, but I see you summed up everything I would have said in far fewer words.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is what they understand “ObamaCare” to be. It’s why they oppose it: it’s super-cushy Negro welfare. Everything else that gets said about it, death panels and so forth, is noise. “ObamaCare is Welfare” is the signal. This is why if you poll people about what journos understand to be the features of ObamaCare, they’ll say they like those features. It’s just that they’re sure there’s this other feature that journos never ask about, which they think is the whole point: free goodies for people who haven’t earned them and don’t work hard. Which is also what The Stimulus was. And what animates the so-called Tea Party. White resentment at “welfare.” It’s what drives all of American politics.
piratedan
that narrative is prevalent in the usual crap that is being thrown in the 30 second hit jobs that are paid for by the faceless entities looking to turn marginal seats over to the GOP. All about how Obamacare screws over working women, when in reality the GOP plan pretty much consist of hiring women as secretaries and screwing them during lunch and on business trips. The GOP is leaning hard on the idea that now because your insurance rates may have increased after Obamacare, that is the very reason we need to gut the entire thing and start over, in like a generation or two. All filmed with concerned looking folks in their early 30’s, single mom’s in the ads marked for women and hispanic for those aimed at that demographic here in AZ. The money buys here are incredible, with even the local rags being outraged that the Dems have dared to fight back by stating that the GOP are a bunch of crazed loons and if you vote for any of them, then you’re simply enabling the crazee.
We know that the ACA isn’t the best thing since sliced bread (ty toast), but watching your pay increase getting swallowed by increasing insurance costs the previous ten years wasn’t a boatload of fun either, but the GOP does enjoy playing their cards with folks that are too busy to pay attention to the shit that they pulled before. Nevermind that they have jack shit as a game plan, there are flaws in the Dems game plan and damned if they’re gonna give any credit or credence to a policy that makes life better for anyone.
hoodie
That’s like Yogi Berra on Ruggeri’s without the countervailing charm.
FlipYrWhig
@low-tech cyclist: The important part is that someone who is An Expert, affiliated with An Institute, said something coherent. They don’t interpret it, they just repeat it. You know, reporting.
Matt McIrvin
This kind of argument doesn’t make any sense in any other context. “Not only will we have fewer pancakes, potential pancake-eaters will also be confronted with waffles, reducing the incentive to eat a pancake! They’ll be squeezed from both sides if we don’t take the dreaded waffles away!”
CONGRATULATIONS!
When I look for worker and/or union bashing articles, Forbes has always been my go-to stroke mag. Same with hating on Obama. They are nothing if not consistent.
@NorthLeft12: Here in America we call it the H1-B program, and the main difference between ours and Canada’s is that the high-tech workers whose jobs are taken by the H1-B visa holders vociferously cheer the very policies and policymakers that replace them with foreigners who make about 25-35% of what they used to.
kindness
I knew Forbes was not my friend but I didn’t expect it to be so nakedly stupid. I am offended. They think we don’t understand how over the top they are being.
Redshift
You would think the bare minimum qualification to write for a business magazine would be to know the difference between supply and demand…
jl
Economics dictates that June Cleaver should be holding two minimum wage jobs and staying home to take care of the kids, cooking for the menfolk and vacuuming in pearls and high heels all at the same time. If it takes a crummy health care system that creates stress misery and premature death through massive market failures, so be it. We need the miracle of free market crony capitalism.
That is all this Pipes persom is trying to say.
The Donner Party All the Time Everywhere philosophy of the new GOP is just outreach, trying to explain how simple economic logic can easily show that you are better off even though you feel much worse. Because, if you are so smart, and deserve to not DIAF, why aren’t you rich, fella?
Corner Stone
It seems ridiculous to me that a company that makes widgets also actively wants to be in the health insurance business.
It’s just another form of wage theft, of stealing from the commonweal (on the whole) and repatriating the monies up the ladder to the top.
The ACA makes this more difficult to enforce, at some level, so businesses that relied on cheap wages and enforced slavery due to health insurance lockup are probably sweating it out pretty good about now.
Companies that actually relied on producing a quality good or service should be embracing the ACA. This is so much the better scenario for them in recruiting and retaining talent.
Too bad we don’t seem to have very many of the latter, and way too mucho of the former.
Belafon
@Redshift: They do: The wealthy are supplying the crumbs that they demand the rabble take with gratitude.
Botsplainer
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
They all might get rich someday and need to hire H1-B holders in order to freedom. And Liberty, also, too.
Botsplainer
@Belafon:
You are supposed to thank them at every turn.
Corner Stone
This hasn’t been entirely true though. Take welders, for example. It’s still a job that needs to be done and can’t be outsourced/offshored. However, you see these snippets all the time about the guy trying to hire welders and can’t. He’s complaining he has these jobs but lazy nogoods don’t want them! Well, try paying more than $13 an hour.
Corner Stone
The fact that U3 went to 5.9% but there was no evidence of wage inflation should scare the absolute shit outta people.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
Forbes isn’t really a business magazine. It’s a magazine about stroking the egos of the 1% and pandering to the fantasies of the people who think they’ll one day be part of it.
Corner Stone
@Belafon:
Ebama!
Mike in NC
Forbes magazine and bullshit go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Anoniminous
@Redshift:
In the wondrous world of Conservadumb economics Demand and Supply are the same thing. (See Economics in One Lesson)
steve
@Redshift:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/173743/what-the-forbes-model-of-contributed-content-means-for-journalism/
Most of the writers on forbes are actually independent bloggers not Forbes staff. Forbes switched its business model such that it is now essentially a wing-nut livejournal. They give the imprimatur of the Forbes name and the bloggers provide all the pro-business content the readers want.
Sally Pipes is a “contributor,” not “Forbes staff.” That is the tell.
Mike J
@Corner Stone:
These same people understand very well the problem with an investment with a very low rate of return. Sure, the low rate is better than earning nothing, but your money is tied up and you might miss an opportunity to make more.
It’s a pity they can’t transfer that knowledge to understanding people.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Corner Stone: Glad someone else is paying attention. Yeah, I’m seeing openings for low-wage service jobs – and we need those as well, I am not ungrateful – but salaries are not budging and with unemployment this low, they should be skyrocketing.
Corner Stone
I also propose we lower the hourly work week, have a 90% graduated tax rate at the top, remove the tax limit on social security, and expand eligibility for social security.
There. Problem solved.
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC: Ummm, I actually enjoy the combo of PB&J. The other combo…not so much.
Corner Stone
@steve:
The tell wasn’t when they hired EDK as their “Education Blogger” ? Who has somehow since moved on to gameblogging, or something something.
Belafon
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I think the answer to that is confidence: Wages will not go up until people feel safe looking for another job. There’s still a fear that if you go to a new job, and they need to cut workers, they are going to go after the new employees first.
Matt McIrvin
@Corner Stone: Not so much scare them, I think, as make them angry.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Corner/Stone ’16!
pseudonymous in nc
Shorter Sally Pipes: “treat ’em mean and keep ’em keen.”
I have a counter-proposal: remove wingnut welfare operations’ privileged tax status to force people like Sally Pipes to get proper jobs.
mai naem mobile
Sally pipes is on the twitter machine where shes busy thanking everybody for retweeting her article. Shes also the president and ceo of the Pacific Research Institute – the California version of Heritage or Manhattan Institute. They have Arthur Laffer of the Laffer Curve coming for a dinner event and like spreading the darwinian economics of Hayek and Milton Friedman.
Anoniminous
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
U6 is a little below 12%. So there is a large pool of long term unemployed willing to take lousy jobs with shit wages.
steve
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The workforce participation rate is still quite low and that accounts for a good chunk of the drop in the unemployment rate (they dropped out of the equation). So I think there is probably still a lot of slack in the economy and wages aren’t going to improve until the WPR recovers (if ever…).
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I don’t think it should scare people too much. Standard economic theory is that wage pressure won’t really start until unemployment gets down to around its “natural” level. Since U3 is still running around 1% above that, and broader measures of unemployment are even further above their “natural” rates, there’s still a lot of slack in the economy. It’s depressing how much slack there is and how much longer that means it will take before ordinary workers will start seeing their real incomes increase, but it’s not scary in terms of portending some kind of disaster on its way.
Corner Stone
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Consider the “Texas Miracle” under the stewardship of Supah Smaht Gov Rick Perry.
A number of skill positions actually did see wage gains during the “recovery”, but the overwhelming bulk of jobs added were low wage service sector positions. The McJob, if you will.
Villago Delenda Est
The only real solution to this problem is to send vile sacks of lying shit like Pipes for long walks off short piers in Florida, the shark attack capital of the world, according to the dipshits of the Disney News Network.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: I disagree in that IMO wage pressure should already be participating in an economy that’s “recovering”.
I’m also not sure we’re going to see a “normal” U3 of 5% any time soon. I think, again IMO, that we have reset that new normal to 6% and that’s why I am a little unnerved by the complete absence of wage inflation in the numbers.
We should be happy to see the number below 6%, but the context doesn’t provide a lot of good things to come for average people in the near future.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone: Well, the “Texas Miracle” was an explosion of a totally unregulated or monitored fertilzer plant in a residential neighborhood.
Villago Delenda Est
@mai naem mobile: Please, don’t conflate Darwin with these vile Ferengi pricks.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
It makes one wonder. If another white person is infected with Ebola at the same time either a white girl goes missing, or is bitten by a shark near a popular beach, would we see spontaneous head splattering ala Scanners at CNN HQ?
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: Nah, that’s what we call a “Tuesday”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike J:
People are not people, my friend.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I’m pretty sure Ebola is transmitted by shark bite now, and we have some celebrities tweeting about it at the top of the hour.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: That high pitched whirring sound you’re hearing? Adam Smith revolving at near-relativistic speeds in his grave.
FlipYrWhig
@Villago Delenda Est: I think that’s how Faraday invented the dynamo.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone: Same problem the trucking industry has. They have a driver shortage, but refuse to obey basic economic principles that say “offer more money to hire people”.
Supply and Demand for me, but not for thee, serf.
Villago Delenda Est
@CONGRATULATIONS!: IT glibertarians are absolutely the most stupid and gullible of the lot.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: If you have that qualification, no one who votes Rethuglican can be hired, and this conflicts with the Prime Directive.
Corner Stone
Geno Smith says he missed a team meeting due to a confusion on time zones. Either 1)he really is that dumb and should never start again or 2)he really is that childishly passive/aggressive and should never start again.
Tone In DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
That high pitched whirring sound you’re hearing? Adam Smith revolving at near-relativistic speeds in his grave.
LULz.
More g00pers lying thru their damn teeth. It must be Tuesday.
Basic knowledge of economics, how does it fucking work?
dave
@Villago Delenda Est: Yup there is definitely an ideological component to this. The idea that certain groups, the wealthy and near wealthy (managers etc) are the only ones that really deserve wages. Everyone else being paid is a form of charity. I’m starting to see more awareness of how sick an idea this is and obviously an improving job situation will help but until it does likely mean that wages will move more slowly than they should. As much as economics likes to pretend it isn’t it’s impacted by belief and ideologies. It’s pretty a disgusting belief and disturbing how many workers actually bought into the grateful to have a job BS but it is starting to generate backlash I just hope that backlash will be able to gain sufficient traction to overcome. I’m at best semi hopeful though.
SatanicPanic
damn that is fucking dumb. what an idiot.
MomSense
I was talking to an acquaintance last week who was complaining that she has a college degree, experience in her field, and works hard for her $18/hour. She resents the idea that unskilled laborers at fast food places or retail stores would earn 10 or 13 or 15 an hour. She said it was really unfair.
When I explained that having so many low wage jobs depresses wages for everyone, she sort of perked up. Then I talked about the fact that people would have more money in their pockets, spend more money, require fewer tax payer subsidies and she really perked up. Finally, I explained that her employer would have to pay more money to stay competitive and keep people with more skills and experience in a higher wage market.
It was like she hadn’t even entertained the idea that lots of low wage employees were keeping all wages down. It was completely a fear response until we talked through it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Villago Delenda Est: Been in the field now for 15 years and I cannot find one piece of evidence to even start an argument about the merits of your statement. They think they are masters of the universe and, outside of their coding specialty, tend to be complete morons. Willfully stupid and belligerently defensive about their right to maintain their stupidity.
Sure makes ’em easy to manage, though. Sigh. My life is good.
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
It’s the same thing that happened to my dad every time he talked about wages with someone who wasn’t in a union. They always refused to entertain the idea that for every gain a union negotiated, it also helped them out as well.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est:
” Adam Smith revolving at near-relativistic speeds in his grave. ”
But… the Master of the Universe all wear Adam Smith ties, he must have believed everything they tell us!
Edit: certainly Adam Smith loved loved loved him some joint stock company, always and everywhere. It is right there in the book on econ he wrote.
Corner Stone
Can someone please make Leon Panetta shut the fuck up?
Calouste
@Yatsuno:
You only rarely see an argument from the business owner’s point of view that doesn’t boil down to: “You expect us to do work? Make an effort? And, like, think, and improve?!?”
Corner Stone
@OzarkHillbilly:
Being able to feed your kids and sleep under clean sheets does tend to lead one to get uppity.
agorabum
@Yatsuno: The Narrative says that anything a Democrat (or Krugman) suggests will hurt jobs. You are dealing with people who still won’t admit that government spending in a depression helps create jobs. Who refuse to believe that any job related to the government (other than military contracting) can’t help the economy. The Narrative is always BS.
Corner Stone
Do we even have a prominent Democratic person who is not a freakin warmongering hawk?
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone: Next the ingrates will be asking to be treated with dignity and respect.
The nerve of the rabble…
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: His writings on banking indicate that he would not approve of Jamie Dimon.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: He definitely did not care for crown sanctioned monopoly outfits, I don’t think he was down on the concept of joint stock companies, as long as they were closely monitored and not allowed to be short term oriented leeches on the Wealth of the Nation.
Shakezula
The Piper at the Gates of Yawn.
Matt
Honestly, at this point I wonder if the real impact to the target audience of Forbes isn’t going to be “there aren’t people around the office who’ll do ANYTHING to stay insured”. Nothing deflates a plutocrat boner quite like employees who are insufficiently desperate.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Relativity is a liberal lie.
Patrick
And what is wrong with the labor force shrinking? If it shrinks, it would mean less unemployment and thus less unemployment benefits for the evil government to pay out. I thought people like Ms Pipes would like that. And speaking of reducing pay; that’s EXACTLY what happened prior to the ACA. Every fricking year the premiums kept going up as did the amount of the deductible.
By the way, Ms Pipes, how about those death panels that people of your ilk were spouting a few years ago. What happened to those?
Someguy
Well, if the labor pool is getting tight and wages are going up, let’s open the border up. That’ll fix the labor pool’s wagon in a hurry.
Corner Stone
Ok MSNBC, we get it. This whole Ronan Farrow thing was just performance art to see if anyone was actually watching your channel at all.
Yes, we’re all in on the gag so now’s a good time to just end it.
FlipYrWhig
@Patrick: It’s as Frankensteinbeck said above: these are codewords meaning lazy brown people and, to a lesser degree, white slackers and hipsters. It’s not an economic argument, it’s a moral argument about laziness and deservingness that they’re reading out of economic data because they like the morality play better than all other forms of entertainment.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: That dude has smaller hands than Kristen Wiig’s Lawrence Welk Show character.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I don’t know if we’ve “reset” the natural level of unemployment- I’d definitely like to see evidence before believing that- but I also think a narrow focus on U3 is a mistake. As people around here repeatedly point out, broader measures of unemployment like U6 remain very high by historical standards. That’s probably a better measure of the real slack in the economy than how close U3 is to its long-term level. Eyeballing historical trends makes me think wage pressures won’t start until U6 gets well below 10%, and probably won’t get serious until it’s closer to 8%.
Villago Delenda Est
In answer to the musical question, “Who doesn’t like higher wages?” the answer is, of course the parasites called “employers”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Followed the link, and killed a bunch of brain cells just looking at the page, let alone reading it.
Mike J
@Roger Moore: The good news is U-6 is dropping too. Too often the U-3 drops and U-6 goes up. Not lately:
http://proudtobeafilthyliberalscum.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/u6-2014.png
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: I don’t argue for a natural level, my contention is a new normal. IOW, a level that’s accepted by those with the ability to make decisions that could change that number.
I think there’s a difference between the two ideas.
By some numbers, during the recession U6 was above 16%, IIRC. If that number is now really down to around 12% and we haven’t seen any sign of wage pressure, my opinion is we’re going to have one hell of a time ever getting to 8% U6.
People have to have money in their pockets at the end of the day. Being employed is preferable to unemployed but if neither group has any hint of disposable income to show then we’re not going anywhere for some time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Adam Smith figured this out over two centuries ago. Even Henry Ford knew it.
Our contemporary “Masters of the Universe” don’t have a clue about it.
This is why tumbrels are needed to cull the willfully stupid.
Patrick
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes, I don’t quite agree with that. Most people still need to work to afford the premiums and the deductibles. But what the ASA did do was to enable people prior to Medicare age to quit their jobs if they could afford it. They, thanks to the ACA, now were allowed to buy insurance in spite of pre-existing conditions.
I don’t think FoxNews necessarily care whether they are black/green or whatever. Instead, they are grasping for anything to hammer Obama and Obamacare with, whether it makes sense or not. And so far, nothing has made sense.
Mnemosyne
@Patrick:
IIRC, there’s going to be a natural shrinkage of the labor force over the next 20 years or so as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age. The oldest Boomers are already there. So we really need to be looking at labor force participation rates by demographic, not just the overall rate, since the retired Boomers will be skewing those numbers.
catclub
@danielx: Why do I suspect that she is related to Daniel Pipes of Iran paranoia fame?
Your nym reminded me.
Another Holocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Bull. Shit. First of all it’s all STEM jobs except for jobs that require a local license like a PE or MD. (If a foreigner did want those jobs they would have to emigrate and it requires a completely different kind of visa.) Or if requires security clearance. Secondly, it’s the lords of tech, people like Bill Gates, who have lobbied over and over again for more H1B’s, certainly not American STEM workers, who were stupid enough to get a degree in something Henry Ford thought was below his contempt, laid off in every recession, hired late into every recovery, and who would have gladly taken the H1B jobs at H1B wages but you see employers like H1B’s not just because of the pay and not just because of the shareholder game but because these are employees you can control in a way you control little other labor. You can’t even control a Mexican guest worker this way. Legally, you get in a tiff with a guest worker and kick him off the job he can mosey on down to the next farm. Or just go home and come back next season. Not good enough. You get in an argument with an H1B, you can be making a phone call this afternoon to yoink her visa. Then the clock is ticking for her to flee the US OR ELSE.
I had a friend who entered an abusive marriage just to get a green card … long story, she thought it was going to be a happy marriage but then things turned scary … anyway prior to that the only jobs she could get were H1B despite having an American education. Several profs wanted to hire her but had never gone through H1B process and didn’t know what to do. But the ones at the same school advertising for H1B?
Freaks. Sadistic freaks.
Right before she got married to crazy dude: I have a Master’s degree. I can’t even walk in and get a job at Walmart.
Immigrants are real people. Our visa system was written for plutocrats like Gates while he was crushing everyone in his path. It’s inhumane and cruel and unjust. It doesn’t do anything to “protect American jobs”. Americans can’t get jobs if what the owner wants is control. The ability to call INS as soon as workers whisper “union”. If you fire citizens for that they can call the Labor Dept and tie you up for months or years. The ability to steal your research assistants’ work and keep them in a state of fear. One guy at UF was stealing money out of gov’t grants, had assistants on visas, probably student visa not H1B. For years they were all too scared to tell anybody, but finally he got that one. Reported him to DC. He’s going to big-boy prison now.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Someguy: This is why we shoot kids crossing on sight but never has one employer been fined for using illegal labor.
Oh wait, we don’t shoot anyone coming in, either. American jobs, it’s open season on YOU!
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: Andrew Tobias is always happy, so I read him as an antidote to the rest of the blog world. He is also the Treasurer of the Democratic Party, which makes his optimism even more amazing.
http://www.andrewtobias.com/
Anyway, he sees a very bright technologically based future with far fewer actual crappy jobs.
Figuring that out, and figuring out how not to have all the wealth be owned by the few who own the robots, is his goal.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Another Holocene Human: I fail to see how what you wrote and what I wrote is different.
Save that your assertion that American STEM workers don’t repeatedly vote for the people who write the laws that allow their owners to put them out of work and replace them with de facto slaves. That they do is a provable fact. Sorry.
Another Holocene Human
@Redshift:
Lol, no shit.
Also kills me that Smith basically starts the Wealth of Nations saying what does it say when more people are idle … it means you have a more productive, advanced, specialized economy and the country is wealthier, that “everyone works” is the practice of a sustenance economy.
Elite-boot-licker economists have been ignoring/dismissing this and many other points that Adam Smith made, like, forever.
Non-pdf-Smith: http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Crony capitalism used to mean something, but in 2008/2009 Michelle Malkin appropriated the term as a new way to point your finger and shout “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” So I cringe every time I hear it now.
(I mean, what could be more cronied up than Dick Cheney and no-bid Halliburton contracts back in the aughts? Sigh. ARRA was soooo crony with those open bids, buy American and prevailing wage clauses.)
Chris T.
@Roger Moore: If it were really a business magazine, it would not be eponymous.
Another Holocene Human
@steve: Clown Hall with a better server? Ugh!
NorthLeft12
@MomSense: I don’t mean to be snarky, but what kind of college degree does she have and where did she get it from?
I have been hearing something like this from my own wife who will complain every once and awhile about some such employement group and how they are paid far too much for what they do. I wish she would point those complaints to those who actually deserve it; ie. Upper upper management and financial system parasites.
This kind of attitude against regular working people by regular working people really gets my goat. Just effing maddening!
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est:
For the last few years they’ve steadfastly believed that another downturn was a Friedman Unit away.
Why do you think they’ve been fighting so hard to get the GOP in power? It’s 1936 all over again, bay-bee.
NorthLeft12
@dave: Thanks, you put this in exactly the terms that I would if I weren’t frothing at the mouth and beating my head against my desk against that kind of ignorance.
Another Holocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
White anglo cis male supremacists, drove everyone else out of the field. Forget liking computers. With appropriately like-minded bosses, they’ve been sheltered from the economy the rest of us experience, making good money, being able to pay for shit, wondering why anyone who isn’t working in tech support/coding/server ICU doesn’t love them.
It’s amazing, I talked to this guy once, found out what he was making, compared his skillz to mine, but realized I liked the self respect of actually working for what I made instead of bragging about sending customers to voice mail hell and working in a dept where the managers on down were scamming the time clock and everything else. I’m not a fucking liar, C U Next Never.
Another Holocene Human
@agorabum:
Reality is all the tantrums and freakouts they throw every time Yellen speaks, the fact that the Fed head is worrying about employment and won’t give them the tight money regime they crave is a source of great angst.
Another Holocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Not so, unless everyone is lying on those poll surveys.
RaflW
Lets be clear, as in the OP, that what she’s misunderstanding (stupidly, or on purpose) is that a chunk of people who’ve been terrified to retire before Medicare age are now able to retire. Joy!
That opens, too, an opportunity for younger people to enter or move up in the workforce. Joy, pt. 2!
These folks are killjoys. And the reason she and Avik Roy and others hate this (and why I think she’s “misunderstanding” on purpose) is because worker freedom = less ability to suppress wage growth.
As always, follow the money.
Matt McIrvin
@Anoniminous:
Right, though I guess to be more precise they’re long-term underemployed, people who already took the lousy jobs to stay afloat: most of the difference between U6 and U3 is workers who are “part-time for economic reasons”.
Another Holocene Human
Democratic affiliation goes up with more post-grad education and more income above 100,000USD/annum.
So if you are just talking to jumped up overpaid coders, you are not seeing the entire STEM picture, which includes people with, ya know, science degrees.
My theory right now is that most STEM fields have some serious academic or professional barriers to entry (that, however, the plutocrats can usually get around or extract giant rents out of, see Med School).
But coding is something you can learn at home as a teenager, learn anywhere in the world, do anywhere … and doesn’t really have much in the way of serious professional licensure, I mean the code companies have their own certificates but these are easy to get, kids pass these tests.
So they know they have no barrier to entry SO THEIR ONLY HOPE IS WHITE SUPREMACY. Only through white supremacy can they maintain their lock on their easy, charmed life. They’ve got nothing else. They know full well that girls, gays, and Ghanaians can do their jobs and better with a better work ethic and better interpersonal skills.
“Libertarian techies” are white supremacists who think the only way to keep what they haven’t “earned” is white supremacy.
That’s all it is.
And many of them would NEVER support schemes to give all American workers the same happy life because they believe that the only way to get a woman is to buy one and that if women anywhere can get a decent living without them then they will be womanless failures–>MRA boards thataway. See: all of Reddit. No, seriously, apparently the mods shadowban anyone who tries to make part of Reddit not MRA hell.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: Those assholes who wear Adam Smith ties have never read Smith.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a hoot to quote a passage from Marx on a glibertarian board, then when the outraged howls start rolling in from the twits, you do the reveal and point out that Marx is quoting directly from Smith.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I’d still like to see some evidence before getting too worried. The most recent evidence is that U3 is at 5.9% and still dropping, albeit slower than we’d prefer. There are certainly some noisy people arguing that it’s time to raise interest rates before inflation takes over, but they don’t seem to be the ones in charge at the Fed.
According to the graphs I’ve seen, U6 topped out at 17.1%, and it’s now down to 11.8%. As a basis for comparison, 11.8% is where it was in January 1994, toward the beginning of the Clinton boom, though U3 was around a point higher in 1994 than it is today. If it’s really the broader unemployment rate that leads to wage growth, we have several more years of stagnating wages before there’s any hope of things getting better.
I think the thing that has the potential to be a real game changer is the pro-cyclical effect of state and local spending. One of the things that’s made this recession so awful is the decline in state and local governments, which have been forced by state balanced budget acts to cut back just when we needed them to spend. Even though there hasn’t been a lot of wage growth to help out the state budgets, increased employment and a growing stock market ought to help, and there’s going to be a lot of pressure even in Red States to restore some of the funding that was slashed since 2008. If state governments start to hire again, that could provide the boost we need to get the economy really rolling.
Waynski
@Corner Stone:
Agreed. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a greater act of disloyalty and betrayal as his book tour. I watched him on Andrea Mitchell’s show on MSNBC and could not believe the things he was saying. Even if true, you wait for your old boss to finish his term before you take out the long knife. What a preening d-bag.
Matt McIrvin
Maybe part of the reason these stupid arguments don’t get immediately dismissed is the word “unemployment”, which, on the face of it, seems to mean “not having a job” regardless of how that situation came to be, though of course in practice it actually means “willing labor supply is in excess of demand”.
Not-having-a-job, considered in a vacuum, could be up either because of slack demand for labor, or because people for some reason aren’t motivated to work. And if you’ve accepted in a vacuum that not-having-a-job is in itself a problem, then either situation could be something bad that we have to eradicate. And if you’re the kind of conservative who has faith that all of our problems are because poor and middle-income people are too lazy, you might well leap to the second conclusion even if all evidence points the other way.
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human: yeah, I don’t get this. More educated workers entering the country = bad thing? Why? Makes no sense.
I mean, even if we’re thinking totally in selfish terms, having a country with lots of employable people is better than not having one.
Patrick
@RaflW:
Not sure why even people that regularly vote against their own economic interest would be against this. I recall when this news first came out, Dana Millbank wrote a column saying it was a game-changer and grim news for Obamacare. Yes, Mr Millbank, it sure is bad when folks can retire early now that they are allowed to have health insurance…
Matt McIrvin
@SatanicPanic: Educated workers immigrating is a great thing. What’s not so great is letting them in, not as immigrants, but on H-1B guest worker visas that send them home if their job goes away. That just holds down wages and leaves the US with nothing to show for it at the end.
SatanicPanic
@Matt McIrvin: Let’s just let them in then. Why aren’t we doing that?
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt McIrvin: The parasites have extracted wealth from the guest workers, which is all that matters.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
The charts of government employment during the Obama administration versus the last 5 other presidents is amazing. With all the others, it goes up. Under Obama it has gone down. Unprecedented.
If it had even stayed the same, unemployment today would be 1% lower.
I, Floridian
@Belafon: The wealthy wouldn’t have those crumbs to distribute if someone else’s labor hadn’t supplied them.
Matt McIrvin
@SatanicPanic: Ugly reasons, of course. The employers lobbying for the H-1Bs would greatly prefer them to have a threat of deportation hanging over them. And from the perspective of nativist politicians, guest-worker status is better than immigration, though for the workers squeezed by overseas competition it’s actually much worse.
Whenever you hear anyone complaining that they can’t find anyone to do a job, always read “for the wage I’m offering.”
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
It makes perfect sense if you’re an educated worker who sees them as competition, especially when employers are allowed to flout laws that theoretically require immigrants to be paid the same as natives and have an easier time exploiting them in other ways. Basically, lots of people are willing to accept that immigrants are theoretically helpful to the economy but would prefer to see them concentrated in some other sector of the economy.
Belafon
@I, Floridian: You know that, I know that, and everyone here knows that, but they absolutely believe the bs that they’re the most important piece of this whole system.
Mike in NC
@Waynski: Panetta is who he is — a guy who’s spent most of his career courting the Village Idiots in Washington. No matter where he worked (CIA, DID, etc.) he was always complaining that he didn’t have enough money in the budget, not enough resources to do the job. The stenographers would then uncritically print everything he said. Just a supreme egomaniac and bureaucrat.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: Is there an acronym for that? I propose NIMI- Not in my industry!
Yatsuno
@Belafon: Flying in the morning of the 23rd leaving the evening of the 27th. Kind of busy but MIGHT be able to squeeze some things in. Plus there’s a Greek place down there I’m DYING to try.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
Also read, “and with the exact qualifications I’m after”. A lot of employers expect employees to come in ready to be productive on their first day, rather than needing some time to polish their skills a bit to match what the employer wants. It gets back to the “human resources” approach to hiring. Employees are supposed to be another kind of interchangeable part that can be swapped out at will. If they take some training to become productive, it interferes with the company’s ability to hire and fire them willy-nilly.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin:
They’re not using evidence. They’re using the axiom that work = virtue like a hammer. Anything that suggests the possibility of nonzero rewards for less work makes them start swinging wildly. They can’t have that. Their self-image is that they’re the ones who work, and they’re surrounded by too many people who don’t, and the Republican Party will humiliate those moochers, while the Democratic Party will kiss a lot of Moocher Butt to get elected. That’s the core of their ideology. That’s what one half of the voting public absolutely believes as a creed. Pretty scary thought.
danielx
@catclub:
Nepotism is a fine old tradition on the wingnut welfare gravy train, so I wouldn’t be it surprised. Could be just a coinky-dink…
catclub
@Mike in NC: The NPR interview was sickening. When the interviewer has leading questions along the lines of: “Will we need torture in the future so that we will have no risk of terrorism?” I want to scream.
What about the risk of committing and condoning torture? Where does that lead?
Also, back to ‘enhanced techniques’. Yeah, right.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: People are supposed to be widgets that you plug into a labor slot and instantly perform at 100% of anticipated production.
This is not television or the movies. The real world is not like that, but these dipshits operate, in all sincerity, like it is.
People are not managed. They’re led. Most “managers” are shitty leaders. This includes nearly every last CEO in existence.
Corner Stone
@catclub:
Everything I’ve seen coming out Panetta’s stupid mouth has been sickening. He trotted out the “ticking time bomb/imminent threat” so torture is in the toolbag if needed BS. AHHH!!
This is what happens when you let it go.
lou
@Villago Delenda Est: Really see heads explode when you quote Marx and then reveal that the quote is originally from the Bible.
“From each according to his ability to each according to need” comes straight from the Acts of the Apostles. Conservatives always forget that part.
Patrick
@catclub:
We, the Allies, prosecuted Japanese soldiers for torture in WWII. Couldn’t the Japanese have made the same stupid argument as the NPR interviewer did?
MattR
@Corner Stone:
Actually, the problem is that Rex Ryan insists that the team schedule remains on east coast time when they travel to the west coast. It is a decent idea to try to keep the team on the same circadian rhythms, but every year there is at least one player who is late for a meeting because of that (ex. they look at their phone,which has automatically adjusted to pacific time, see it says 1:40 pm and think they have plenty of time before their 5 pm meeting, forgetting that it actually in 20 minutes)
Corner Stone
@Patrick:
Sure. If they had won.
Corner Stone
@MattR: I’m sure it gets somebody each year. But if you’re the QB and want to be a team leader IMO this is something you’d make sure you have down and be there ahead of time.
I just think it’s a little convenient, but meh. I don’t particularly think Geno is much of an NFL QB so these kinds of little things don’t do him any favors.
boatboy_srq
@Patrick:
They’re hammering Obama precisely because black black blackity black PRESIDENT black. They care – they just can’t SAY so outright, and now that one of Those People is in the WH they’re running out of dogwhistles.
MattR
@Corner Stone: I agree that anyone wanting to be a team leader should make sure they are on top of something like that, but failure to do so doesn’t make him dumb or childishly passive aggressive.
boatboy_srq
@Matt McIrvin: If? Try when. And in the meantime “I can put you back on the boat that brought you here” is enough to keep H1-B holders toeing the line and accepting the pittances they’re paid. Getting an H1-B is hard work: RENEWING an H1-B is insanely difficult, and requires returning home to deal with the paperwork, with absolutely no guarantee that an employer wouldn’t replace you the moment you’re on first plane.
@Roger Moore: True. Artificially suppressed compensation, crazy (and crazy-making) work schedules, and a host of other things can be laid squarely at the feet of H1-B. Same in agro. One look at Deal’s no-deal for GA makes it clear: scare the illeeeeeeyguls so they run, and suddenly you don’t have a workforce – so you lose a season’s profit in the field because you’re too cheap to hire local labor and you work the ones you can hire too hard for local labor to keep up your schedule.
Corner Stone
@MattR: Agree to disagree. I think it’s one or the other, so meh.
Patrick
@boatboy_srq:
Just like they would if any person with a D behind it had been in office. I remember the Clinton years…
Mnemosyne
@boatboy_srq:
I knew a friend who was hired on a work visa at a newspaper back in the mid-1990s. They did not renew her visa because they didn’t want to post her salary in a public place as required by law, which made her realize that she was seriously underpaid compared to her US citizen colleagues. She ended up returning to Singapore and getting into journalism on that side of the world.
(I’m not sure it was an H1-B, but IIRC it was somewhat similar.)
Another Holocene Human
@boatboy_srq: Late to this party but fruit picking is actually a skilled profession. Farmers hate to accept that and fruit pickers have unionized repeatedly in order to get a decent wage and working condition and a compliant US gov through USDA (and other arms) has helped farmers break those unions when they arise. The whole point of the guest worker program is no union but they’ve popped up in one form or another over and over again.
Even in the South, the last generation of fruit pickers is in their 40s at youngest and their children never did it. There were Central American children out there picking. Picking is a skilled profession. It is paid by piece work, not by the hour, so, yeah, someone cold off the street is not going to be able to do the work quick enough and accurate enough to make a decent wage.
If any of the farmers actually did get fucked financially instead of bailed out yet again, they got what they damn well deserved.
Btw, to understand contempt for farm labor (the “hired hand”) see like every musical ever. Shakespeare had his clown characters to tell all the best jokes; Rogers and Hammerstein had the hired hand/rapist character to be the macguffin and the foil that makes the hero shine.
AnonPhenom
@Patrick:
“And what is wrong with the labor force shrinking?”
It’s just a very silly argument.
If someone is working only for the health insurance it implies that the person is otherwise finacially secure. How is the “demand” generated by that person any less?
Also, too.
Particularly since we have a historical precedence with Social Security. Part of the logic behind the program was getting older, less productive workers out of the industrial workforce so that younger more productive workers could take their place.
This would be different? How?