Quotulatiousness

July 4, 2012

US military pay has more than kept up with civilian payscales

Filed under: Economics, Government, Military — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:07

Mike Riggs has the details:

In other words, it’s not *just* teachers, cops, firefighters, and the bulk of civil federal employees who are riding high on the hog. Tom Philpott at Military.com reports:

    As private sector salaries flattened over the last decade, military pay climbed steadily, enough so that by 2009 pay and allowances for enlisted members exceeded the pay of 90 percent of private sector workers of similar age and education level.

    That’s one of the more significant findings of the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation report released last week, given its potential to impact compensation decisions by the Department of Defense and Congress as they struggle to control military personnel costs.

Unlike previous generations, for whom military pay was almost a joke compared to civilian payroll, modern western military pay has been catching up to (or even exceeding) equivalent civilian jobs. When I joined the reserves in the mid-1970’s, the pay was actually quite good: better than minimum wage — the drawback was that the Canadian Forces’ budget was so tight that we were strictly limited to the number of paid training days. While that was a drawback for enlisted troops, it was worse for our senior NCOs and officers: they were working without pay for months at a time.

June 26, 2012

Railway engineering, 1947 style

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

London, Midland & Scottish Railway documentary that shows the relaying of St. Pancras Junction with prefabricated trackwork, along with the associated changes to the signalling system.

What struck me while watching this was the ages of most of the track crew: I’d have expected them to be a bunch of teens-to-early 20’s guys, but there are a lot of old gaffers still doing the heavy lifting here. Oh, and of course the work clothes: caps, hats, jackets, and braces. Not a hard hat or much in the way of obvious safety gear in sight. They may or may not have been better men in those days, but they earned their aches and pains honestly.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link, who pointed out “This will get your pulses racing. Also makes you realize that working on the railroad was for real men. Mechanisation has come a looong way since then.”.

June 5, 2012

That problematic statistic: the gender wage gap

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:57

The Washington Post on President Obama’s claim that women only earn 70 cents to each dollar earned by men (later “corrected” to 77 cents):

We were struck by the disparities in the data when we noticed that a news release by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) trumpeted the 77 cent figure, but it included a link to a state-by-state breakdown that gave a different overall figure: 81 cents.

What’s the difference? The 77 cent figure comes from a Census Bureau report, which is based on annual wages. The BLS numbers draw on data that are based on weekly wages. Annual wages is a broader measure — it can include bonuses, retirement pensions, investment income and the like — but it also means that school teachers, who may not work over the summer, would end up with a lower annual wage.

In other words, since women in general work fewer hours than men in a year, the statistics may be less reliable for examining the key focus of the legislation — wage discrimination. Weekly wages is more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but as mentioned, it does not include as many income categories,

The gap is even smaller when you look at hourly wages — it is 86 cents vs. 100 (see Table 9) — but then not every wage earner is paid on an hourly basis, so that statistic excludes salaried workers. But, under this metric for people with a college degree, there is virtually no pay gap at all.

There are so many different ways of slicing the data that you can “prove” almost any proposition. President Obama also claimed that African American women and Hispanic women’s wages are even worse: “64 cents on the dollar for African American women and 56 cents for Hispanic women.”

Not only did the White House pick the statistic that makes the wage gap look the worst, but then officials further tweaked the numbers to make the situation for African Americans and Hispanics look even more dire.

The BLS, for instance, says the pay gap is relatively small for black and Hispanic women (94 cents and 91 cents, respectively) but the numbers used by the White House compare their wages against the wages of white men. Black and Hispanic men generally earn less than white men, so the White House comparison makes the pay gap even larger, even though the factors for that gap between minority women and white men may have little to do with gender.

May 9, 2012

Stephen Gordon explains that Dutch Disease is merely “economic hypochondria”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Politicians and newspaper columnists have a fetish about manufacturing. In the Globe and Mail Economy Lab, Stephen Gordon explains why it’s not the crisis we’re constantly being told it is:

The appreciating Canadian dollar has little to do with the decline in manufacturing; employment has been declining worldwide for decades. Changes in relative prices are more important. Producer prices for manufactured goods have increased by about 15 per cent since 2002, while the Bank of Canada’s commodity price index has more than doubled. Any attempt to promote manufacturing exports by depreciating the dollar is doomed to fail, since a lower Canadian dollar will also benefit resource exporters. Capital and labour will always move from sectors where prices are soft to sectors where demand is strong, regardless of what the exchange rate is doing.

But what about those 500,000 lost jobs? An underappreciated fact of the Canadian labour market is the size of the flows in and out of employment. More than 100,000 workers are laid off every month, and even more are hired. Before the recession, the fall in employment manufacturing was largely the result of attrition — workers who quit were not replaced. The loss of 500,000 manufacturing jobs since 2002 has been more than offset by the creation of 2.5 million jobs in other sectors.

[. . .]

Penalizing exports of raw resources could create processing jobs, but those gains will be more than offset by losses elsewhere. If processing in Canada were profitable under world prices, no government intervention would be necessary. The only way policy can generate significantly more processing jobs is by forcing producers of raw materials to accept lower prices or by forcing provincial governments to accept lower royalties. This would be a simple redistribution of income if production is held constant. But it is much more likely that producers would respond to these lower prices by reducing output. Total output and income would fall.

[. . .]

The shift away from manufacturing is part of a process that has increased incomes across Canada. “Dutch disease” is not a problem that needs solving.

May 8, 2012

Now available for download: License to Work

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

The Institute for Justice has released a new study, License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing, which shows the negative effects imposed on (especially) poor and minority workers across the United States:

The report documents the license requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations — such as barber, massage therapist and preschool teacher — across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It finds that occupational licensing is not only widespread, but also overly burdensome and frequently irrational.

On average, these licenses force aspiring workers to spend nine months in education or training, pass one exam and pay more than $200 in fees. One third of the licenses take more than a year to earn. At least one exam is required for 79 of the occupations.

Barriers like these make it harder for people to find jobs and build new businesses that create jobs, particularly minorities, those of lesser means and those with less education.

May 5, 2012

Rick Santelli goes to the white board

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:59

H/T to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

April 29, 2012

QotD: Bankers, Marx’s dream workers

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

In a way bankers are Marx’s dream, it’s the workers getting the fruits of their labours. It’s funny that the left is usually angry at shareholders, for taking money out of companies and thereby bringing down workers’ salaries. Yet with the banks they want shareholders to press the banks to do exactly that, and curb pay.

Joris Luyendijk, “External auditor: ‘Nobody at a bank can have a complete overview any more'”, The Guardian, 2012-04-28

April 11, 2012

QotD: The silly claims about “capitalism in crisis”

Filed under: Economics, History, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Yes, times are tougher than they otherwise could be; however, to claim that the bumps in the road over the last few years show that “capitalism is in crisis” is absurd.

[. . .]

Even with the a few recessions, Real per-capita Gross Domestic Product is a lot higher than it was in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000. The truly unique fact about the world as it has changed in the last few centuries is that, as a number of economic historians have emphasized, we live in a world where economic growth is taken to be the norm. […]

Indeed, as the economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out long ago, capitalism has given us the time and energy to criticize capitalism. People content themselves by being outraged at working conditions in Foxconn plants in China. However, it is the economic growth we have achieved in the western world that allows us the comfortable working conditions from which we express horror at working conditions elsewhere in the world. Further, not all the workers are greeting the reformers as saviors (HT: Doug Stuart). If people are willing to trade off longer working hours for higher incomes, I don’t see how it’s my right to stop them.

[. . .] Donald J. Boudreaux points out how we have to be very careful with income data if we are going to get an accurate picture of trends in standards of living.

If we’re going to talk about “stagnation” we also have to be very clear about precisely what we mean. Consider the near-ubiquity of the iconic gizmo of the early 21st century and its technological cousin: the smart phone and social media. My Forbes.com colleague Erik Kain reported in February that “472 million smartphones were sold worldwide in 2011.” In a world of 7 billion people, the top 1% would be 70 million people. If all the gains really went to them, that would be about six and a half smartphones each for the members of the world’s Top 1%. I’m pretty sure that isn’t what’s happening.

Art Carden, “It’s the Final Crisis of Capitalism, Charlie Brown!”, Forbes, 2012-04-10

April 8, 2012

The Military-Industrial Complex lives

Filed under: Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

From Strategy Page, where the US Army doesn’t want any more tanks right now, but the politicians (and their crony capitalist “friends”) want the tanks to continue to be built and upgraded:

The U.S. Army is fighting the politicians to avoid having to buy more M-1 tanks, or upgrade some older ones that do not need upgrades. What it comes down to is that the politicians want to keep the only American tank manufacturing plant open. It’s all about political posturing, votes and getting reelected. But the army wants to spend its shrinking budgets on things that will save lives in the next battle. At stake is several billion dollars. The generals cannot openly say that this is about buying votes versus buying lives, but that’s what it comes down to.

So far, over 9,000 American M-1 tanks have been produced and most of them subsequently updated at least once. But the army, seeking to save a billion dollars, wants to close the plant that builds and modifies the M-1. The closure would be for three years, and when it was reopened there would be a backlog of upgrades and parts orders to fill to keep the plant open until, perhaps, an M-1 replacement comes along. At the moment the generals do not have any firm plans for an M-1 replacement.

Politicians and the operators of the plant want to keep the plant open in order to save jobs, votes, and operating profits. This is basically a largely political decision that involves getting the money (from the taxpayers) to stay open by pretending that the army wants this. But the army leadership has not cooperated and has openly opposed this plan. How long the plant will remain in business is uncertain, as is the future of the M-1 tank.

March 8, 2012

Sweatshops and Apple

Filed under: China, Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:15

Sam Bowman points out the economic factors which many western critics miss when they slag Apple for working conditions in the factories where iPhones and iPads are assembled:

Like sweatshop workers in China and elsewhere, Foxconn employees endure long hours, low pay and dangerous working environments, but do so because there is no better alternative. In fact, jobs in sweatshops (and Foxconn factories) tend to be massively in demand, because the alternative is worse. It’s not uncommon for a new employee’s first action being to sign up their relatives to the waiting list for new job openings.

It’s easy to recoil from seen evils, while ignoring unseen alternatives that are even worse. No one in the West will ever have to put up with such bad conditions.

If wages and conditions in Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, CA, were as bad, nobody would work there. That people do so in China is because they have no better alternative. China’s economy is growing quickly, but much of it is still grindingly poor, and difficult to do business in. It’s poverty that makes China’s factories such unpleasant places to work in.

[. . .]

It’s no surprise that China is still very poor compared to neighbouring countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Forty years of brutal socialism under Mao’s Communist state halted China’s development, and decimated institutions crucial for wealth creation, like strong civil society and the rule of law.

The exception, of course, is Hong Kong, where conditions and wages are much better than on mainland China — not because of a bigger government, but because of greater wealth caused by freer markets.

February 25, 2012

Burger King latest corporation to pull out of UK work experience program

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

The British government’s work experience program for unemployed would-be workers loses another employer:

The fast food giant said it had decided to cease its involvement in the Get Britain Working programme because of recent concerns expressed by the public.

The scheme has attracted growing criticism in recent weeks with opponents describing it as a form of slave labour because young people worked for nothing, while keeping their benefits.

Burger King said it had registered for the programme six weeks ago intending to take on young people for work experience at its Slough headquarters, but had not recruited anyone.

It sounds like the program was well intended — allowing people without work experience to at least have something to put down on a resumé — but fails the PR test because the corporation is seen as “getting work for nothing”. And, without a doubt, some corporations will use the program in exactly that way. Despite that, on balance it seems that the potential benefit to young entrants to the work force is greater than the actual benefit to the companies that get that “free labour”.

The value of that “free labour” may well be lower than the costs to the employer for training them: new employees with no marketable skills are not the bonanza of profit that some seem to think that they are. Some people I worked with early in my working life could be proven to be a net loss for months after hiring …

February 21, 2012

First it was the “he-cession”: now it’s the “she-cession” in Ontario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:47

Frances Woolley in the Globe & Mail Economy Lab says that the next phase of Ontario’s recovery from the 2008 recession will disproportionally fall on women:

Men were hit hard by the 2008-9 economic downturn, with losses of construction jobs (98 per cent male), transport jobs (90 per cent male), and manufacturing jobs (70 per cent male). Male unemployment rose so quickly that people began to talk about a “he-cession.”

Three years on, a tenuous “he-covery” seems to be under way – male unemployment rates fell last year, and the percentage of men with jobs rose.

Now it’s the ladies’ turn. Ontario’s Drummond Report calls for deep cuts to financial, administrative and secretarial jobs throughout the public service. Strictly speaking, the report recommends cutting costs; automating, streamlining and consolidating the delivery of services. Yet administrative costs equal administrative jobs — jobs that are, 8 times out of 10, held by women.

The bulk of Ontario government spending goes to MUSH — Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals. Overall spending cannot be reduced substantially without making cuts in these areas. There are about 280,000 teachers and professors in Ontario, and 65 per cent of them are female. The Drummond report recommends larger class sizes for elementary and secondary school teachers, and “flexible” teaching loads for university professors. Yet more students per teacher mean fewer teaching jobs. Just as a downturn in the construction sector leads to male unemployment, a downturn in the teaching sector leads to female unemployment.

February 15, 2012

Italy faces the end of “a job for life”

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Italy, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

You could say that they’re not happy about the possibility:

It was just an off-the-cuff quip during a television interview this month. But when Prime Minister Mario Monti remarked that having a job for life in today’s economy was no longer feasible for young people — indeed, it was “monotonous” — he set off a barrage of protests, laying bare one of the sacrosanct tenets of Italian society that the euro zone crisis has placed at risk.

Reaction was fast, furious, bipartisan and intergenerational. “I think the prime minister has to be careful with the words he uses because people are a little angry,” Claudia Vori, a 31-year-old Rome native who has had 18 different jobs since graduating from high school in 1999, said of Mr. Monti’s “monotonous” moment.

[. . .]

In Italy in particular, every major political force after World War II subscribed to the idea of guaranteeing the work of the male breadwinner to preserve the traditional family structure, said Elisabetta Gualmini, a labor expert who teaches at the University of Bologna. This social doctrine was also blessed by the Roman Catholic Church, which still holds much sway in Italy.

“The problem is that this model is myopic” in a global marketplace, Professor Gualmini said. “But Italy has entrenched itself on this model, which became a strong ideology and so rooted in beliefs that it cannot be challenged.”

February 10, 2012

This is why the “patriarchy” is an unlikely culprit

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Henry Hill explains the key market mechanism that would undermine “the patriarchy”:

Let’s imagine we have ten businesses competing for the same market. If we are spectacularly ungenerous to the male sex (as to get into Harriet Harman’s brain we must surely be) let’s assume that nine of those businesses are run by real, conviction sexists who consciously exclude capable women on the grounds that they’re women. This leaves a vast talent pool available to the tenth business, which presumably can lap up these highly capable workers. If sexism was depressing their wages as well, then this business would have a significant competitive advantage over the competition.

How long would rival businesses really keep deliberately hiring inferior labour at inflated prices out of allegiance to the principle of sexism? It would only take one company in a competitive market to break the ranks of chauvinist solidarity for such arbitrary and costly employment practises to be rendered totally unaffordable.

There are all kinds of reasons for differing employment patterns between men and women, including different priorities, working hours, child-rearing and so forth that have firm bases in business sense. To ascribe these differences to an omnipresent, more-important-that-profit sexist conspiracy, one must believe the entire spectrum of business subscribes to the exclusion of women at the expense of their own industrial and economic interests. That they literally looked at the ‘profits’ David Cameron is waving in front of them and decided that, if the cost was employing women, £40bn wasn’t for them.

Lorne Gunter: Toronto Star imagines oil just “bubbles up out of the ground and we Westerners just run out with buckets to collect it?”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Lorne Gunter in the National Post:

As I read the Toronto Star’s editorial about Statistics Canada’s recently released 2011 census population data, it was hard for me not to imagine a plump, aging diva reclining on a brocade-covered chaise wailing, “I’m still beautiful! Really, I am.”

Entitled, “Census shows a fading Ontario? Don’t count on it,” the editorial makes the argument that it is “too simplistic” to claim “Ontario’s day is over.”

No one is making the case that Ontario can be dismissed as an afterthought. That is a concern without a cause.

[. . .]

But before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I, an Albertan, am pleased by Ontario’s decline, I’ll add that any trend that bodes ill for Ontario, eventually bodes ill for the country as a whole.

Canada needs a strong, prosperous, confident heartland. The West may be the new engine of the national economy, but that doesn’t mean the country can afford to have the old engine — Ontario — be idle.

The Star insults the West’s ingenuity and determination when it scoffs that “it’s relatively easy to grow based on resource extraction. Ontario does not have the luxury of sitting on gas and oil fields, so the task here is much harder.” Really? Have the paper’s editorial writers ever tried to find, extract, transport and refine oil and natural gas? Do they imagine the stuff bubbles up out of the ground and we Westerners just run out with buckets to collect it?

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress