Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

happier playing video games than working. some invaluable research there.

It's like everyone is so acclimated to this "counterintuitive" freakonomics way of thinking about things now that they analyze obvious things backwards. The economy is not providing good employment opportunities to people in a certain category is like 95% of what's important here, the video games are peripheral. Plus you get the classic Chicago school ruling-class-pseudomorality-disguised-as-economics in statements like "The rich were meant to have the most leisure time. The working poor were meant to have the least. The opposite is happening," and "It is a relief to know that one can be poor, young, and unemployed, and yet fairly content with life; indeed, one of the hallmarks of a decent society is that it can make even poverty bearable," and "Elite men in the U.S. are the world’s chief workaholics. They work longer hours than poorer men in the U.S. and rich men in other advanced countries. In the last generation, they have reduced their leisure time by more than any other demographic. As the economist Robert Frank wrote, “building wealth to them is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”

I'd love to see a study like this that looks at shut-ins who spend all their time posting on internet forums

didn't read the rest of the article there's nothing freakonomics about that quote, the guy is just reporting stats from time-use surveys, interpret them how you wish

"The rich were meant to have the most leisure time. The working poor were meant to have the least. The opposite is happening," and "It is a relief to know that one can be poor, young, and unemployed, and yet fairly content with life; indeed, one of the hallmarks of a decent society is that it can make even poverty bearable," and "Elite men in the U.S. are the world’s chief workaholics. They work longer hours than poorer men in the U.S. and rich men in other advanced countries. In the last generation, they have reduced their leisure time by more than any other demographic. As the economist Robert Frank wrote, “building wealth to them is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”

lmao i thought u made these quotes up until i read this stupid article

"The rich were meant to have the most leisure time. The working poor were meant to have the least. The opposite is happening,"

when the author says 'meant to have', they mean according to "Chicago-school" assumptions about how people choose their leisure. How is the opposite of the chicago school models' prediction also chicago school?

Yes, and Chicago school always has an implicit and unacknowledged moral dimension, so the word choice was at least amusing.

the atlantic is awful now

"We thought the rich would get the most leisure time and the poor would get the least. But that's not happening, because shiftless poors, especially blacks, would rather live in their parents' basements and play video games, while elite MEN take pride in working long, grueling hours to power the economy that pulls everyone else along. One partial reason might be the incentive structure of jobs that aren't as much fun as video games while not providing enough financial incentive to make up the fun differential. But that's not the whole story."

i say if the Elite men can only have fun through "building wealth", that counts as leisure time.

That's part of the point and the author makes it explicitly in the piece; skilled work is becoming more 'rewarding' and also has more leisure leaking into it (fairly certain that at the very least Hurting, marcos and I all reading this thread from work) while unskilled work has stayed as grueling and repetitive or gotten even moreso. also Hurting he explicitly says black men are discriminated against by retail employers, it's unclear that just having less Keynesian unemployment would fix this

unrelated but interesting that this of all threads was bumped the day after that census report

i can't speak about an entire demographic, but i know a few men who work in chicago, are well-off, they really are workaholics, and, i swear to you, they actually love working and think it is so creative. the problem with these dudes is that this is all they want and can talk about. i go to dinner with them and they love talking business and most of their knowledge/expertise is in that area they work in

That's most of DC. "What do you do?" isn't so much because it's how we size each other up, in my experience. It's a significant part of our identity. In that sense, it also effectively substitutes for "what things do you care about?" in a lot of ways.

Flopson otm btw that is kinda funny

That's most of DC. "What do you do?"

Hasn't this cliché about a certain class of people in DC existed for a long time now.

Meanwhile is Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago reference above, sure that the unemployed black men of DC are asking one another what video games they are playing? I hope someone is giving Hurst grief to his face

unrelated but interesting that this of all threads was bumped the day after that census report

I don't know, maybe it's not so weird. As Morbs (Morbs!) quipped:

@JimPethokoukis
"This is the first statistically significant annual increase [in real median household income] since 2007" - IHS Global

and man, that one sure led to memorable things

I've come to have this cynical, knee-jerk reaction to news like this that if things are actually improving for the little guy, the shit must be ready to hit the fan.

I think you guys are reading some malicious intent into Erik Hurst that's not there, imo. also Chicago booth is not Chicago Econ, and Chicago econ is not what it was in the 70's and 80's. also this is pretty atheoretical statistical research, you can disagree with his hypothesis but the basic facts are just like averages from surveys

"We thought the rich would get the most leisure time and the poor would get the least. But that's not happening, because shiftless poors, especially blacks, would rather live in their parents' basements and play video games, while elite MEN take pride in working long, grueling hours to power the economy that pulls everyone else along. One partial reason might be the incentive structure of jobs that aren't as much fun as video games while not providing enough financial incentive to make up the fun differential. But that's not the whole story."

This seems to read an absurd amount of malice into the text

let's say the Atlantic article was just the following bullet points

- long term unemployment among low-skilled men has increased from almost zero to 20%
- long-term unemployed report surprisingly high subjective well being in surveys, and in time use surveys report spending a lot of time playing videogames
- high-skilled men reduced leisure more than any other demographic in the last 20 years

would you be mad at that? I think you're reading a malicious interpretation into the stats that's I don't see

Like i don't think there is an implied moral judgment on the long-term unemployed (even if some right wing economists have m/l explicitly made such a judgment: Tyler Cowen this week said that "Maybe employers just aren't that keen to hire those males who prefer to live at home, watch porn and not get married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of the worker than a market failure?" and got swiftly and justly roasted for it), imo it's completely a failure of government and society that they are unemployed in the first place. but it seems paradoxical from a social science perspective that they report high life satisfaction; we all imagine the stigma related to unemployment, stuff about 'work gives you purpose' would all weigh in the other direction. it's a statistic so obvs there are a lot of miserable unemployed in there, but it's interesting the average would go in the direction counter to our inuition, no?

isnt this a positive development for the 'end of work'? keep these unemployed young men sedated with their video games since the robots took all their jerbs!

I've come to have this cynical, knee-jerk reaction to news like this that if things are actually improving for the little guy, the shit must be ready to hit the fan.

I can't help but feel the same way. I think it's the imperative of pattern recognition based on generalizing from the known to the unknown, even when the thing I'm observing is complex far beyond my ability to know or understand its patterns.

I can't exactly come up with a logical justification of that reaction, but it just feels like our economy is so stacked to send all the benefits to the top that it's only at the peak of the bubble that you get a bit of trickle-down, and then the whole thing collapses.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=79q6

median income increased for 6 years from the trough of 1993 to peak in 1999, then increased for four years from 2004 to 2007, and increased for at least 5 years from 1984 to 1989. we probably have a couple years of growth ahead of us (fingers crossed)

As far as the pattern of 'things getting good just presage things being about to get bad', that's a tautology in any cyclical thing. You may as well say, the sun rising is just a sign that it's about to get dark soon

Honestly before Monday I had begun to suspect we would never see median income increase again

Are there any sector by sector stats (people in retail earning X% more, people in manual occupations earning Y% more) or is it bare household income across salary bands? I'm slightly suspicious of median household income as an indicator on its own, particularly in the lower bands, in the context of the current shift towards supplementing core income with casualised labour (driving for Uber in evenings and at weekends, etc).

had a quick look and couldn't find anything but here is the actual report: http://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.html

isnt this a positive development for the 'end of work'? keep these unemployed young men sedated with their video games since the robots took all their jerbs!

www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=67&threadid=104035

how do I shot web

Everybody on ILG complains about Twitch

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/book-review/locked-up-and-locked-out-of-the-u-s-labor-market.htm

Didn't read the Atlantic article, but does it mention mass incarceration issues and how that now influences getting a job?

'eight' rhymes with 'great'!

OK give me the bad news, how much has my wife's retirement fund already lost?

S+P 500 is actually up 0.8% perhaps reflecting that if nothing else the outcome was at least decisive

huh. thanks, i think.

God, fuck the Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/business/economy/donald-trump-economy-confidence-booming.html

Booming along before the election, too, iirc. The Fed Board was already talking up the idea of a December rate hike last November.

sucks that Trump gets to ride a boom that he will get credit for, but otoh it's better to have Trump in good times and to have had Obama during bad times. 20th century fascists all took advantage of economic crises

The Trump economy is going to be a total capitalism eats itself economy.

Not even a little convinced Trump is going to ride any sort of boom.

That's the problem with that article - almost no real people actually feel "economically confident" now, as a society we're all in a constant state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Republicans say they do because their guy won but still doesn't have any power to do anything and the ultra-wealthy do, but there's no rational reason to believe that the economy is going to improve for the lower 3/4 of the economic spectrum (and plenty of Trump voters and Republicans would admit that, particularly after 6 months or a year of their reign). Maaaaaaybe those ultra-wealthy can convince themselves to keep the stock market high to prop up GOP policies but even that's questionable - global capital is even more effected by a trade war with China or declining world influence than the average person.

if he doesn't fuck it up by starting a trade war (or literal war) with China he can ride a decent post-recovery boom (with help from deficit spending) for at least 2 years, just by sheer momentum

There might be some initial stimulus effect from his tax plan I guess, but isn't the agenda otherwise to slash government spending?

Nah they're gonna let him do a big deficit-spending infrastructure bonanza. everyone is keynesian when their party is in power

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-free-market-republicans-stimulus-232387

That assumes the infrastructure spending doesn't get funneled directly to people who are going to stash it. Even more than under Reagan or Dubya, this round of trickle-down spending is going to go directly into the pockets of the billionaire class - Keynesianism only works if that money is actually being spent.

ya Trump stimulus is gonna suck as hard as possible ito regressivity and ineffiency, but still might work demand-wise at least short- to medium-term

Yeah, I guess I need to read the details but it sounded to me like maybe it was just gonna be some tax credit giveaways to people who were already going to do the same shit anyway and aren't going to, like, go spend the extra money on new jeans and restaurant dinners.

relevant: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.ca/2016/12/reactionary-keynesianism.html

Well, when GDP hits 7-8% you'll all have egg on your faces.