Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Today's Date
I'm paying a couple of bills online today, routine stuff, but I'm tempted to pay them by snail mail just for the fun of writing the date 12/12/12 on the check. It doesn't take much to excite me these days.
It Is The Season
My thanks to CBS Evening News for introducing me to this on their program segment last night. I had not seen it before. It's a pretty picture in itself, and there's something about the concept of including our fallen warriors in the festivities of a season of joy that I find very heartwarming.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Paul Krugman is a Luddite
Paul Krugman (oh, God, him again) has an op-ed in the New York Times which bewails a war between robots and robber barons and which is, as far as I can tell, pretty much a rehash of the Luddite argument of the 19th century, only against lower taxes on corporations. If that sounds a bit incoherent, well, it’s Paul Krugman who is pretty much always incoherent.
He starts out by observing that corporate profits are high while wages are low, which he hints at being caused by underpaying workers. He doesn’t come right out and say it because he knows it isn’t true, that mostly it’s caused by downturn in corporate investment and offshoring of jobs, but it gives him a chance to start using the term “robber barons.”
He then gets to talk about the wage gap between those with and without college educations, which he admits isn’t relevant because it had begun to stagnate before the “financial crisis.” One has to wonder, then, why he brought it up, especially since he does not use it in any further argument.
He then introduces the theme of his op-ed, that being that “profits have been rising at the expense of workers in general,” and goes on to say that “as best as I can tell,” which means he doesn’t really know and is purely guessing, that “there are two plausible explanations.” Plausible to him, anyway. We’ll see if they’re plausible to anyone else.
The first reason he offers is “technology has taken a turn that places labor at a disadvantage,” and the other is “the effects of a sharp increase in monopoly power.” These combine, he says, to place “robots on one side, robber barons on the other.” No hint at where the workers stand in that picture, so presumably the robots are attacking the workers from one direction while robots are attacking from the other. That's pretty complex, though, so I suspect that's not what he meant to say, and that he sort of got lost in his metaphor.
I’m not sure how the “sharp increase in monopoly power” plays into that. We all know how monopolies force consumer prices upward, but I’ve never heard how they drive wages down or what they have to do with robots. A near neighbor worked for San Diego Gas and Electric, which was at the time a monopoly. She retired at age 55 and paid cash for a $450,000 house. It does not look to me like her wage was suppressed very much.
He goes on to discuss the history of innovation at some length, citing several authorities from the 19th century no less, and argues that innovation can harm workers and has done so for centuries. He never mentions the Luddites, but he sounds like one of them.
He then makes his pitch, because it is on op-ed not just an editorial and therefor it has to call for some specific action.
I happen to agree that corporate taxes should not be reduced, but this is gibberish. Wages are down because robots are replacing workers and therefor we need not to lower taxes on corporations and personal inheritances. The corporate tax argument at least has a slim thread of connection, but personal inheritance?
Krugman has an almost unique ability to state a valid point and then make myriad utterly absurd and nonsensical arguments in support of it.
“This is,” he says, “a discussion that has barely begun.” Seriously? Where has he been? This argument has been raging for more than a year. I know that his little ivory tower at Princeton is isolated, but it can’t possibly be that remote. Has he not been paying attention, or is he just that oblivious?
“But we need,” he says, “to get started before the robots and the robber barons turn our society into something unrecognizable.” News flash, Paul, the politicians and pundits have already done that.
He starts out by observing that corporate profits are high while wages are low, which he hints at being caused by underpaying workers. He doesn’t come right out and say it because he knows it isn’t true, that mostly it’s caused by downturn in corporate investment and offshoring of jobs, but it gives him a chance to start using the term “robber barons.”
He then gets to talk about the wage gap between those with and without college educations, which he admits isn’t relevant because it had begun to stagnate before the “financial crisis.” One has to wonder, then, why he brought it up, especially since he does not use it in any further argument.
He then introduces the theme of his op-ed, that being that “profits have been rising at the expense of workers in general,” and goes on to say that “as best as I can tell,” which means he doesn’t really know and is purely guessing, that “there are two plausible explanations.” Plausible to him, anyway. We’ll see if they’re plausible to anyone else.
The first reason he offers is “technology has taken a turn that places labor at a disadvantage,” and the other is “the effects of a sharp increase in monopoly power.” These combine, he says, to place “robots on one side, robber barons on the other.” No hint at where the workers stand in that picture, so presumably the robots are attacking the workers from one direction while robots are attacking from the other. That's pretty complex, though, so I suspect that's not what he meant to say, and that he sort of got lost in his metaphor.
I’m not sure how the “sharp increase in monopoly power” plays into that. We all know how monopolies force consumer prices upward, but I’ve never heard how they drive wages down or what they have to do with robots. A near neighbor worked for San Diego Gas and Electric, which was at the time a monopoly. She retired at age 55 and paid cash for a $450,000 house. It does not look to me like her wage was suppressed very much.
He goes on to discuss the history of innovation at some length, citing several authorities from the 19th century no less, and argues that innovation can harm workers and has done so for centuries. He never mentions the Luddites, but he sounds like one of them.
He then makes his pitch, because it is on op-ed not just an editorial and therefor it has to call for some specific action.
…there is a big, lavishly financed push to reduce corporate tax rates; is this really what we want to be doing at a time when profits are surging at workers’ expense? Or what about the push to reduce or eliminate inheritance taxes; if we’re moving back to a world in which financial capital, not skill or education, determines income, do we really want to make it even easier to inherit wealth?
I happen to agree that corporate taxes should not be reduced, but this is gibberish. Wages are down because robots are replacing workers and therefor we need not to lower taxes on corporations and personal inheritances. The corporate tax argument at least has a slim thread of connection, but personal inheritance?
Krugman has an almost unique ability to state a valid point and then make myriad utterly absurd and nonsensical arguments in support of it.
“This is,” he says, “a discussion that has barely begun.” Seriously? Where has he been? This argument has been raging for more than a year. I know that his little ivory tower at Princeton is isolated, but it can’t possibly be that remote. Has he not been paying attention, or is he just that oblivious?
“But we need,” he says, “to get started before the robots and the robber barons turn our society into something unrecognizable.” News flash, Paul, the politicians and pundits have already done that.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
CINC Trophy Game
I don’t take the Army-Navy game as seriously as former officers do. When I was in the service that game was always something that officers got all hyped up about; us whitehats never really cared all that much. That being said, eleven in a row is fairly impressive. A couple of things stood out to me that did not reflect well on either service.
The Navy quarterback made a point of thanking God for allowing him to “reach this point” and for sustaining him during the game. Sort of as an afterthought he mentioned that his teammates had also been supportive. That struck me as unseemly coming from a military officer and a representative of a government military academy.
The Army quarterback was shown weeping uncontrollably after the game, head hanging and literally sobbing, and continued to do so for almost fifteen minutes throughout the ceremonial exchange of singing by the two academies. He is a senior, and certainly losing for a fourth time to Navy has to be difficult but, dude, you are an Army officer and a leader of men. Get a grip. This is not what Army officers are supposed to be made of.
Update, Sunday, 11:00am: The more I think about it, the more I realize than my opinion of both academies was significantly diminished by the aftermath of that game, and if our military is being led by crybabies and Jesus freaks I am profoundly grateful that my service is long behind me.
The Navy quarterback made a point of thanking God for allowing him to “reach this point” and for sustaining him during the game. Sort of as an afterthought he mentioned that his teammates had also been supportive. That struck me as unseemly coming from a military officer and a representative of a government military academy.
The Army quarterback was shown weeping uncontrollably after the game, head hanging and literally sobbing, and continued to do so for almost fifteen minutes throughout the ceremonial exchange of singing by the two academies. He is a senior, and certainly losing for a fourth time to Navy has to be difficult but, dude, you are an Army officer and a leader of men. Get a grip. This is not what Army officers are supposed to be made of.
Update, Sunday, 11:00am: The more I think about it, the more I realize than my opinion of both academies was significantly diminished by the aftermath of that game, and if our military is being led by crybabies and Jesus freaks I am profoundly grateful that my service is long behind me.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Manufacturing Genius
I read an article about “inshoring of manufacturing jobs” by General Electric, in which the company discovered that their water heaters that were being manufactured overseas were horribly designed in terms of ease of manufacture. By redesigning it, and having the production staff participate in that design process, they could save enormously on the cost of building the water heater, build in this country and actually sell it for less.
Oh. My. God. That thudding noise is me pounding my head on the desk.
IBM made a similar discovery twenty years ago, and they also were regaled as being brilliant for making the discovery. A panel on one of their printers was held together with no less than eleven different sizes of fasteners, requiring five different tools to install. In assembling the panel, the worker had to lay down one tool and pick up a different one no fewer than eight times. By making all of the fasteners the same, they discovered, they eliminated all of that and reduced assembly time by half.
My reaction to IBM at the time was, as it is to GE now, not that they are so brilliant as to have discovered new economy in manufacturing, but to wonder how their design got so stupid and fubar in the first place, and why it took them so long to discover how badly botched their product was.
There’s nothing all that new about that sort of thing, though. I was working for Allis Chalmers when the transformers for the TVA were being built. Great big things the size of apartment buildings. I was a maintenance electrician, but the transformers were behind schedule and I got assigned to their construction for a few weeks. We cut some 3” copper cables to go inside them, discovered that none of them were the right length, and called the engineers. One of them came down to the floor, looked things over, studied his drawings for a while and then told us to just cut new ones based on measurements. “Let me know how long they turn out to be,” he told us, “and I’ll change the drawings.” Cart, horse, whatever.
As Paul Harvey would say, the rest of that story is that the first transformer, when finished, was filled with oil, moved to a test position, powered up and exploded like a massive bomb. Happily, no one was hurt. I was at the other end of the plant and almost fell out of the crane I was working on.
I’ve always wondered if it was one of my cables. Nah. Actually, the one I worked on was number three, which I assume is still in service.
Oh. My. God. That thudding noise is me pounding my head on the desk.
IBM made a similar discovery twenty years ago, and they also were regaled as being brilliant for making the discovery. A panel on one of their printers was held together with no less than eleven different sizes of fasteners, requiring five different tools to install. In assembling the panel, the worker had to lay down one tool and pick up a different one no fewer than eight times. By making all of the fasteners the same, they discovered, they eliminated all of that and reduced assembly time by half.
My reaction to IBM at the time was, as it is to GE now, not that they are so brilliant as to have discovered new economy in manufacturing, but to wonder how their design got so stupid and fubar in the first place, and why it took them so long to discover how badly botched their product was.
There’s nothing all that new about that sort of thing, though. I was working for Allis Chalmers when the transformers for the TVA were being built. Great big things the size of apartment buildings. I was a maintenance electrician, but the transformers were behind schedule and I got assigned to their construction for a few weeks. We cut some 3” copper cables to go inside them, discovered that none of them were the right length, and called the engineers. One of them came down to the floor, looked things over, studied his drawings for a while and then told us to just cut new ones based on measurements. “Let me know how long they turn out to be,” he told us, “and I’ll change the drawings.” Cart, horse, whatever.
As Paul Harvey would say, the rest of that story is that the first transformer, when finished, was filled with oil, moved to a test position, powered up and exploded like a massive bomb. Happily, no one was hurt. I was at the other end of the plant and almost fell out of the crane I was working on.
I’ve always wondered if it was one of my cables. Nah. Actually, the one I worked on was number three, which I assume is still in service.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Christmas Cheer
My neighboor was somewhat taken aback when I said to him this morning that, "I like your balls." I was referring to the Christmas decorations he had hung on the Agonis tree in his front yard. Perhaps I could usefully have given a little more thought to how I phrased that.
Employment Weirdness
The stock market is ecstatic because the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the economy added no fewer than 146,000 new jobs last month, and that unemployment dropped to 7.7% in the same period. Handstands and tickertape parades all around.
Further down it does note that construction lost 20,000 jobs and that manufacturing “changed little,” losing 8000 jobs, but we are not going to sweat the details, you know. Gains were in retail trade, professional and business services, and health care. So we are selling each other televisions and clothing, handling each others’ money, and taking each others’ temperature. Some economy.
Why this increase of 146,000 is so exciting is sort of odd, because the increase in September was 148,000, and for October it was 171,000. Oh wait, the September number was revised downward to 132,000, and the October number was revised down to 138,000. So look for this 146,000 to be reduced in the future.
It gets worse, because further down are even more details, and maybe we should sweat the details. A lot of people must have lost jobs, because despite adding 146,000 new jobs the number of people who are employed decreased by 122,000 last month, and the number who were unemployed rose by 229,000.
The population increased by 191,000 in that period, but somehow the labor force declined by 350,000 at the same time. If you are noticing that some of these numbers are not adding up, well, yes, so am I.
The decline of the number of people in the labor force is the entire reason for the reduction in the unemployment; not most of it, or any part of it, all of it, because the number of people employed decreased and the number of people unemployed increased. And the decline in the labor force was almost two times larger than the increase in the population.
Further down it does note that construction lost 20,000 jobs and that manufacturing “changed little,” losing 8000 jobs, but we are not going to sweat the details, you know. Gains were in retail trade, professional and business services, and health care. So we are selling each other televisions and clothing, handling each others’ money, and taking each others’ temperature. Some economy.
Why this increase of 146,000 is so exciting is sort of odd, because the increase in September was 148,000, and for October it was 171,000. Oh wait, the September number was revised downward to 132,000, and the October number was revised down to 138,000. So look for this 146,000 to be reduced in the future.
It gets worse, because further down are even more details, and maybe we should sweat the details. A lot of people must have lost jobs, because despite adding 146,000 new jobs the number of people who are employed decreased by 122,000 last month, and the number who were unemployed rose by 229,000.
The population increased by 191,000 in that period, but somehow the labor force declined by 350,000 at the same time. If you are noticing that some of these numbers are not adding up, well, yes, so am I.
The decline of the number of people in the labor force is the entire reason for the reduction in the unemployment; not most of it, or any part of it, all of it, because the number of people employed decreased and the number of people unemployed increased. And the decline in the labor force was almost two times larger than the increase in the population.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)