Why is there this fascination around here with re-defining the unemployment metrics? There are professional people who have spent their lives doing this in organizations that don't have an axe to grind, for example, the U.N.; why not just use their methods? And there are so many complicating factors that these "deconstructions" either overlook completely or skew one way or the other to make the target look bad. I get a really strong conspiracy-theorist feeling when I read these diaries; just the same sort of stuff as at the Roswell "UFO museum," for example: Lining up a whole bunch of data points to demonstrate one position, while ignoring a bunch of others that are inconvenient.
For example you want to count military personnel as unemployed. Ok, what about the military contractors that work alongside them doing essentially identical jobs? And what about the other government employees whose paychecks come from the same place? What about the employees of companies that sell their products to the government? Aren't they ALL "unemployed" by your measure?
And don't forget to include my neighbor who is technically unemployed, but who owns three houses and is rebuilding them with hopes of selling them for a profit. No personal corporation or published business phone number, just a guy with loans on three houses and a big account at the lumber yard. Is he unemployed? He sure works his butt off.
I bet if you worked at it you could figure out how to show that everybody in the country is unemployed.
The bottom line is that I just don't understand why it's so critically important to "prove"--by adjustment of metrics, or by any other method--that America has a high unemployment rate (and, conversely, that other countries don't). Is there no validity to the idea that the people who generate the standard statistics have spent much, much more time thinking about this than any of us bloggers, no matter how well-intentioned?
The right is similarly pushing in the rest of the world. In Europe, the safety net, healthcare, and labor practices are all under assault. If people want to fight to keep these things, they damned well have a right to ascertain the real employment and living situation of the people living in the country whose model is being pushed.
Conversely, if here in the US it could be ascertained that the social programs work well in Europe, perhaps we could adopt the best aspects for our own people. THE big fear that has kept us from some of this is that it will "cost jobs." Finding out the truth about the employment situation is not bashing -- it's giving people a tool to make good decisions about public policy.
I don't know about you, but I'd really like everyone in the US to have healthcare coverage. I bet your neighbor would like it, too, next time he hammers his thumb or something. Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
Then you follow up with an extended appeal to authority and a burst of defensive economic nationalism. I'm impressed. And don't tempt me on the massive welfare programme that is known as the US military-industrial complex.
The point is that the basic unemployment statistic does not give a real picture of how many people don't have jobs but could or do want one. The FT and the MKI and everyone else agrees when it suits them.
However your repeated refrain regarding US choices on military spending
And don't tempt me on the massive welfare programme that is known as the US military-industrial complex.
as asdf said
I get a really strong conspiracy-theorist feeling when I read these diaries; just the same sort of stuff as at the Roswell "UFO museum," for example: Lining up a whole bunch of data points to demonstrate one position, while ignoring a bunch of others that are inconvenient.
The effect of the large US military, in the context of comparing unemployment rates, is to provide government subsided work to predominantly poorer people. Would you disagree that the training and the experience provided by the military have given many, many black and hispanic and poor white people a leg up that they would not have otherwise received? How many stories have you read about the military being the only way out of poor, deprived circumstances? I'm not questioning the right of the US to have a large military, or its right to spend half its tax income (or whatever it is) on over-priced military projects. I am however saying that if you want to start complaining about European choices you have to include the choices the US makes. There is a large sector of the US economy that depends on taking money from citizens and redistributing it to the military and to the various companies that supply them and carry out research for them.
I am of course, being nasty when I call it a welfare programme, but do you claim that there is no proportion of military spending that is essentially political in nature? Bases being kept open in sensitive constituencies and so on?
The US military is three times the size, proportionally, of European countries. It consists largely of the poorer sectors of society that would otherwise be at a high risk of unemployment. Do you really think that if the US had a normal sized military the unemployment figures would be unaffected?
But the original analysis did exactly the same thing
I am of course, being nasty when I call it a welfare programme,,,,,
Continuing on with the last half of that quote
but do you claim that there is no proportion of military spending that is essentially political in nature? Bases being kept open in sensitive constituencies and so on?
The effect of the large US military, in the context of comparing unemployment rates, is to provide government subsided work to predominantly poorer people. Would you disagree that the training and the experience provided by the military have given many, many black and hispanic and poor white people a leg up that they would not have otherwise received?
But second, some of our best and brightest go into the military. The competition for West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy is very high. Also many college graduates go through ROTC, serve time in the military, and choose to stay in. And, while I would not be shocked if your comment on economic level were true, I'd like to see the data. A black congressman a few years ago said that young blackman were being sent to fight 'whities'"war in Iraq. That data was available and blacks were represented in the military at a percentage equivalent to their portion in the population. Just as with fireman, where a family over generations chooses that career, the same is true of military families.
And why ask this question of the military only? If we got rid of the post office, would that put more people in the work force that are at high risk of unemployment? Or how about some of those highly clerical areas of the government--maybe the Internal Revenue Service?
If a democracy chooses to do activities, through the government, at certain levels spending levels to accomplish goals that they perceive as important, that should not be viewed as underemployment. It should be considered that IMHO if it is a welfare program, and likely if it is a "provide jobs" program, such as were created in the Great Depression. But that is not the US goals for the military, the Internal Revenue Service, the postal service, etc.
The other says that if you look at my remarks above (and possibly listen to the voices in my head that only I can hear, since I'm not sure how much of this I've said in detail or were I've said it) my view is that comparing unemployment figures in the way the laissez-faire propagandists do is nonsensical. Is my version half-assed? Yes, of course it is: I'm a blogger responding in his coffee breaks. It's no more half-assed than the crap from the FT. What do you want for a first try? I have lots of responses to take into account and perhaps I can come to a better way of making my point so as not to confuse USians who have an instant defence mechanism if you criticise their mighty warriors in any way or possibly suggest that spending more money on the military than the rest of the world is not a good idea.
I do agree that what we would really need to do (and I said this above I hope) to break out the population of working age into:
You also need to know the labour force participation, the demographic structure of the country and an idea of how these things are changing over time.
Once you know all that and take it into account you can start doing comparisons.
However, if people want to start publishing headlines like "15% jobless in Sweden" without that, then I don't feel all that guilty for putting together an analysis that could have been better. I'll even work up a better version next week. Want to bet the FT will do the same?
Huh? Of course the US has one. In fact US public sector spending on health care in dollars per capita is comparable to that of European countries. It's just that our health care system is utterly FUBAR, so private spending is also immense, and all that combined gives works out to give us worse results than that of the wealthy European countries.
Take a look at this graph It's part of a Paul Krugman NYRB article on the US health care system.
There are workers employed by the government - federal, state, and local (a quick google tells me that NYC owns 11 hospitals 6 diagnostic centers and 80 clinics, for example, there seems to also be a state owned hospital here and I believe there is a federally owned VA one as well). There are workers employed by the for profit private sector . There are workers employed by the non profit private sector. In most cases hospitals in all three of those categories treat both people covered by public provided insurance and those with private insurance, as well as those with no insurance at all (emergency rooms are required to provide urgent care regardless of the patient's ability to pay for it).
So there isn't a yes or no answer to your question - is a doctor in private practice whose patients mostly rely on Medicare 'employed' by the government? What about a doctor working in a public sector hospital whose patients are primarily those with private insurance?
As for sympathy with Sweden. While there is many aspect of the swedish model I disagree with. A equal free public health service is not one of them.
An Think Tank looked at Sweden and published a report arguing that unemployment there is not just over 5% (official, calculated by "people who know these things") but "really" 15%. Then they go and compare it with 4% (official) in the US. Sweden needs reform! The Financial Times thought this was an important insight.
So Colman goes and does the same to the US, and comes up with 13%.
And you call this America-bashing.
Get a grip. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
You don't seem to grasp, or to want to grasp, the power and influence America has in the world, and in particular the extent to which the US economy is held up as a shining example to follow -- to the point where it's conventional wisdom in the media and in common thinking that progress for the non-American world means conforming to the American model. It is a form of permanent aggressive propaganda of which you appear to have no idea.
When we deconstruct that propaganda (though, in all fairness to Colman, he clearly speaks above of applying it to other countries too), you call that America-bashing. I suggest the truth is that it is America that bashes the rest of the world. Try taking off your American-exceptionalist spectacles for a moment, and look at things from other people's points of view.
Applying this to "pros" vs "bloggers": The "pros" usually have the "free-market" agenda, which means they want to show that "less regulation" as defined as "the US model" is objectively "better". (They will have spent at least four years being taught nothing else.) -----sapere aude
