Last night, the president said there are 94 million people "out of the labor force" needing a job. No.
The number of people wanting a job is about 14 million people.
Let us do the math:
US Population = 330 million
Population age 16 and older = 254 million (non-institutionalized)
Adult population in the labor force = 160 million (7.6 million unemployed)
Adult population not in the labor force = 94 million (254-160=94)
Adult population wanting a job but not looking = 6 million (aprox.)
Adult population not wanting and not looking for a job = 88 million
Adult population wanting a job, looking or not = 14 million (aprox.)
Who are the 88 million adults not wanting and not looking for a job? Some examples:
High school students ages 16-18
College students
Stay at home parents
Adult caregivers
Retired people
Disabled people
The president said 1 in 5 working prime working age adults (25-54) are not working. Well, yes. This includes:
Stay at home parents
Adult caregivers
Disabled persons
People who retired early
Older adults who have gone back to school
The unemployment rate for this age segment is 4.1%, which means 1 in 25 people who want a job and are actively looking for one are "not working."
The number of people without a job and wanting one, whether they are looking or not, is about 14 million people. Trump overstates the problem by nearly seven-fold. (94/14=6.7) He has been called on this repeatedly, yet he continues to repeat an incorrect number that would flunk a high school economics student. One of two things is true. A) He is incredibly ignorant of the most basic of economic concepts and is unwilling to listen to correction or B) he is being willfully and cynically deceitful. (Some of his mistakes can likely be attributed to off-the-cuff remarks that, while inaccurate and unwise, may just be mistakes. This issue has been raised multiple times.) Neither bodes well for becoming a swap-draining renewal president.
The world's poorest regions have been growing the fastest for at least twenty years. The Economist forecasts world GDP to be 2.9%, Asia and Australasia (less Australia) at 5.7%, and Sub-Saharan Africa at 4.5%. These rates indicate a considerable slowing of growth from recent years. The US forecast is 3.2%. This is more evidence that global inequality is shrinking, even though inequality within many nations is increasing. As the bottom of the economic ladder rises, so does the distance between the bottom and the top. A recent article forecasted that there would be no poor nations by 2050. I think that is likely. See: Gauging growth in 2015
... Globalization has winners and losers. The winners—particularly the upwardly mobile middle classes of China, India, Indonesia,Brazil, and Egypt—occupy the long hump of this elephant-like line. They have seen their inflation-adjusted incomes grow by 70 percent or more. The world's "1%" (which works out to the top 12 percent of the U.S., or households making more than $130,000) is also racing away with income, particularly at the tippy-top.
But the story for world's poorest percentiles has been the same as for the developed world's lower-middle class: No growth or worse. ...
Copenhagen (AFP) - The Nordic model, known for high taxes and its cradle-to-grave welfare system, is getting a radical makeover as nations find themselves cash-strapped.
During the post-war period, the Scandinavian economies became famous for a "softer" version of capitalism that placed more importance on social equality than other western nations, such as Britain and the United States, did.
But globalisation, economic necessity and an ideological shift to the right has led to a scaling back of the public sector.
In Sweden, visitors are sometimes surprised to learn about year-long waiting times for cancer patients, rioting in low-income suburbs and train derailments amid lagging infrastructure investment.
"The generosity of the system has declined," said Jonas Hinnfors, a professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg.
"Much of this already started changing in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s," he added. ...
Gas prices are at the lowest they've been since late January despite continued unease across the Middle East. Much of the decline in gas prices is part of the seasonal change in supply and demand, but it also reflects a shifting global oil market.
... If technology enables the same amount of work to be done with fewer people, the argument goes, then it must be bad for employment. More sophisticated variants of this thesis further claim that accelerating technological change has created too much churn in labor markets, and robots are now storming the last few bastions of scarce human abilities.
This tale is not new. The original British Luddites rose up in the early 1800s to oppose mechanization of the textile industry and went so far as to destroy looms that were replacing workers. In the two centuries since, whenever unemployment rates have risen there have been some who blamed the machines. Many even argued that we were heading toward mass permanent unemployment. ...
... Fortunately for workers and for those who understand the potential of new technologies, these ideas are essentially misguided speculation. They fly in the face of years of economic data as well as current trends.
They all fall into what economists call the "Lump of Labor" fallacy, the idea that there's a limited amount of labor to be done. In reality, labor markets aren't fixed. If jobs in one firm or industry are reduced, they're replaced by jobs in other areas of the economy. This is why we did not see massive unemployment as agriculture mechanized in the early 20th century -- the workforce shifted to other professions. ...
... So-called intelligent machines increasingly communicate among themselves and with people. Mobile devices allow round-the-clock interconnectivity. Computers crunch terabytes of data. Such innovations have convinced some economists that the stage is set for a wave of productivity gains to rival the one spawned by the 10-year Internet boom that began in 1995. "I'm quite optimistic," says Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. Leaps in productivity would allow faster growth without generating higher inflation. Companies could pay their workers more while still enjoying healthier earnings. Rising tax revenue would make it easier for the U.S. to cut its budget deficit. ...
The Financial States Of America by Money Choice has some interesting data about America. The link contains multiple captures from their interactive graphic.
BCG found that global private financial wealth grew at the impressive clip of 7.8% in 2012, besting the 7.3% and 3.6% expansion logged in 2010 and 2011, respectively.
And which countries are driving global growth? Tyler Cowen reports that China and India for half of the growth. He also lists these nations as the fastest growing:
The United States labor market has been undergoing a substantial shift toward small-scale entrepreneurship. The number of proprietors – owners of businesses who are not wage and salary employees, has skyrocketed, especially in the last decade. Proprietors are self employed business owners who use Internal Revenue Service Schedule C to file their federal income tax. Wage and salary workers are all employees of any establishment (private or government), from executives to non-supervisory workers.
From 2000 to 2011, the number of non-farm proprietors grew by 10.7 million. Total wage and salary employment grew by only 105,000 between 2000 and 2011. Government employment, including federal, state and local, grew 1.36 million, while private employment declined by 1.26 million (Figure 1).
For her award-winning book Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty, Susan Crawford Sullivan interviewed a diverse group of women who were living in poverty. She asked them about the challenges of parenting, working and surviving on little income. She discovered that many drew on strong religious beliefs as they struggled with everyday problems. Sullivan teaches sociology at the College of the Holy Cross.
12. RJS at Jesus Creed with another great post about the historicity of Adam and Eve: Jesus on Adam and Eve (RJS)
... There are ways to reconcile a literal Adam and Eve with the scientific data. I have posted on the question of Adam many times. See for example the last part of Evolution, Entropy, and Human Beings 2 or other posts on the question of Adam listed about 3/4 of the way down the Science and Faith index. Reconciling a literal Adam and Eve with the scientific data requires something of a stretch, but is not impossible if one feels that the theological teaching of the sweep of scripture requires Adam, Eve, and the Fall.
There are also ways to understand the sweep of scripture and the fallen nature of mankind without reference to a historical Adam and Eve. These do not necessarily diminish the inspiration and authority of scripture as witness to the work of God in the world.
This shouldn’t be a make or break issue. Rather, it is an issue where we need to spend more time and thought.
... One way of analyzing the changing nature of the US economy is by looking at how much GDP physically weighs. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once remarked that the value of US GDP is five times as great as it was 50 years ago. Yet “the physical weight of our gross domestic product is evidently only modestly higher today than it was 50 or 100 years ago.” Very little of the nation’s economic growth ”represents growth in the tonnage of physical materials — oil, coal, ores, wood, raw chemicals. The remainder represents new insights into how to rearrange those physical materials to better serve human needs.”
In other words, to paraphrase economist Paul Romer, more and more we create value by coming up with different “recipes” to rearrange the physical world. Ideas and innovation are what truly drive growth. So even though America becomes more productive and the size of the economy bigger, it doesn’t gain any weight — just wealth.
Interesting way of illustrating how advanced economies are changing.
Business Insider has these three interesting graphs from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Personal taxes are a little below the forty-year average, but federal spending including transfers, is near all-time highs, mostly due to an explosion in transfer payments. There is some good news from the New York Times: The Incredible Shrinking Budget Deficit
... The number crunchers at Goldman Sachs have lowered their estimates of the deficit both this year and next, on the back of higher-than-expected revenues and lower-than-projected spending. Analysts started the year projecting that the deficit in the current fiscal year would be about $900 billion. Earlier this year, they lowered the estimate to $850 billion. Now they have lowered it again, to $775 billion, or about 4.8 percent of economic output.
“Spending in the fiscal year to date is lower than a year ago and the nominal growth rate is lower than it has been in decades,” the Goldman economists wrote in a note to clients. “Revenues have also exceeded expectations, with a 12 percent gain fiscal year to date. What is more notable is that the strength in revenues preceded the payroll tax hike at the start of the year, and the spending decline does not seem to reflect sequestration, which has just started to take effect.” To translate: the deficit could come in even smaller than currently anticipated because of spending cuts and higher tax rates. ...
Not everyone is as positive about the growth projections. See the NYT piece for more details
(Reuters) - The percentage of workers belonging to unions tumbled to 11.3 percent in 2012, the lowest percentage in 76 years, led by dramatic declines in states where lawmakers have put organized labor in the political crosshairs, government figures showed on Wednesday.
The total number of union members fell by nearly 400,000, from 11.8 percent of the workforce in 2011, the Labor Department report on union membership said. The rate of 11.3 percent of the workforce was the lowest since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt was president. ...
... Some analysts blame unions for the drop. Membership has been falling since 2008, when it was 16.1 million, or 12.4 percent of the workforce, federal data shows. It peaked in 1954, when 28.3 percent of workers were represented by organized labor.
"They must now admit that they are not investing enough staff and funds in organizing and not embarking on an imaginative journey to rediscover the relevancy of unions," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University. "Essentially, workers are feeling tremendous job insecurity ... Yet as today's figures suggest, workers are not turning to unions to act as their voice." ...
1. Too often, Westerners perceive the African economy as a monolithic basket case. There are actually many very hopeful regions. Ozwald Boateng explains Why entrepreneurs are back in Africa
3. Lots of recent talk about whether or not e-books will ever actually totally supplant hard copy books. This week Mashable explores Why Are People Still Buying CDs? (And people are still buying them.)
7. I almost didn't link this article because I could swear I've linked it before. Why Does Deja Vu Happen?
8. Several months ago, I saw a speech expert interviewed has offered voice training to several famous figures. One was Margaret Thatcher. They showed her speaking in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, after receiving voice training. A big piece of the change was lessening the modulation in tone and pitch, which tends to vary more widely with female voices. The changes were intended to make her sound more authoritative, which both men and women, unjustified as it may be, more often associate with male vocal traits. But apparently, the thing that really triggers gender detection in our language is the way we use S's. Change Your Perceived Gender by Pronouncing S's Differently
"... The first kind of Christianity avoids reactionary authoritarianism but is often a therapeutic or vanilla mush that fails to ask anything of anybody out of fear of giving offense. The second kind of Christianity offers stern, clear moral directives that attract people seeking the "specific instruction, even confrontation that calls us to grow in discipleship" (p. 6), but disastrously embraces right-wing ideology and baptizes that as the content of Christianity.
Both of these versions of Christianity are so deeply flawed, says Stassen, that both are contributing to the alarming spread of secularism in the U.S. The first version of Christianity is so thin as to lack any particular reason why one would want to get out of bed on Sunday and go to church; the second is so reactionary as to drive thoughtful people into an anti-religious posture if they conclude that religion equals right-wing authoritarianism.
I believe this is a stark but actually quite accurate depiction of the primary problems afflicting the Protestantisms of the left and of the right in the current U.S. setting. ..."
"While not exclusive to Latin America, the culture of family, support, and living a life to spend time with your family, I think, is an important part of Latin American culture that keeps people positive. Being with those close to you and finding other friends and partners that value that way of life is a key part of Latin American culture. That might be the main reason why people remain positive: they are never truly alone. Interestingly, many discussions and documentaries about immigrant groups in the United States show an internal conflict among many who move to the US and who do not wish to lose their support systems in a new culture rooted in individualism. While being motivated and entrepreneurial is valued, a life being with your family, where you are never truly alone, is the basis for many cultures in many parts of the world. Many new Americans frown on the thought that children can detach themselves from their family at 18 years of age. They believe people can only truly thrive as a family."
"A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called statistically insignificant."
Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Rhode Island are the only states (and territory) that saw a net decrease in population over the year.
The fastest growing region was the South (1.06% population growth) followed by the West (1.03% population growth).
North Dakota and the District of Columbia had the highest population growth, with 2.5% and 2.3% population growth, respectively. Texas, Wyoming, and Utah also saw major growth.
West Virginia and Maine are the only two states where people are dying faster than they are being born, with 0.93 and 0.99 births for each death.
Utah (3.44) and Alaska (3.33) had the highest birth to death ratio in 2012. That means 3.44 babies were born for each death in Utah.
Domestic migration determines the rate that people leave and enter states to and from other states. Per capita, more natives left New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island to move somewhere else than any other states.
On the other hand, people flocked to North Dakota, D.C., Wyoming and South Carolina.
The states that had the highest rates of international migration — that is, the rate of immigrants coming in — were Hawaii, New Jersey, Florida, New York and D.C.
Puerto Rico is seeing a massive exodus — 1% of their population left last year.
15. When we think of transportation in the United States, few of us think about river and coastal water transportation. Yet a great many goods and commodities are shipped on our rivers. The Midwest drought is having an impact on a major artery of that transportation network. The Mississippi River's Water Levels Are Dropping, And Could Shut Down Trade Next Week
"In other words, Americans are increasingly likely to have to purchase and replace these goods some time soon as they get more and more worn out. That's bullish for spending, jobs, and the economy as a whole."
19. Why are men, in the aggregate, better navigators than women? National Geographic: Of Men, Navigation, and Zits
"... Yet a few differences between the sexes do seem to hold up to scrutiny. One is spatial abilities. If men look at an object, for example, they are slightly faster at guessing what it would look like if it were rotated 180 degrees. There are plenty of women who do better than individual men. But overall there's a stasticially significant difference in their average performance. This kind of difference carries over from one culture to another. It's even detectable in babies. ...
... Whenever we reflect on human evolution, it pays to compare our species to other animals. And in the case of spatial abilities, the comparison is fascinating. Almost a century ago, the psychologist Helen Hubbet found that male rats could get through a maze faster than females. The difference can also be found in a number of other species. ...
... Clint and his colleagues propose a different explanation: male spatial ability is not an adaptation so much as a side effect. Males produce testosterone as they develop, and the hormone has a clear benefit in terms of reproduction, increasing male fertility. But testosterone also happens to produce a lot of side effects, including male pattern baldness and an increased chance of developing acne. It would be absurd to say acne was an adaptation favored by natural selection. The same goes for the male edge in spatial ability, Clint and his colleagues argue. They note that when male rats are castrated, they do worse at navigating a maze; when they are given shots of testosterone, they regain their skill. ..."
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1. Pray for Egypt Today!
More than 50 million Egyptians are voting today on a constitution that would be a giant step backward for Egypt and much of the Middle East, marginalizing women and religious minorities. A nation that has historically been a voice of moderation, the largest Muslim nation in the region, will likely move toward becoming an Islamist state. Remember to pray for Egypt. (See the Economist'sThe Founding Brothers)
2. Our prayers are with the victims' families at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.
Traffic deaths in the USA continued their historic decline last year, falling to the lowest level since 1949, the government announced Monday.
A total of 32,367 motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians died in 2011, a 1.9% decrease from 2010. Last year’s toll represents a 26% decline from 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said. ...
... The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.
“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011....
....The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. ...
... The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain. The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells. ...
....In 2011, 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported to the CDC. The rate of cases per 100,000 people increased 8%, to 457.6 in 2011 from 423.6 in 2010.
The CDC reported 321,849 gonorrhea infections. The rate increased 4% to 104.2 cases per 100,000 in 2011 from 100.2 in 2010. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, a major cause of infertility in women.
Last year, 13,970 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported. The rate of 4.5 cases per 100,000 was unchanged from 2010. ...
7. You may be bilingual, but can you write in two languages, one with each hand, at the same time?!
10. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones speculates on why liberals have more exaggerated perceptions of political differences. We Are More Alike Than We Think
11. A surprising "right to work" bill was signed into law in Michigan. That has spurred much debate about unions and the right to work. Michael Kinsley wrote a thoughtful piece opposing RTW, The Liberal Case Against Right-to-Work Laws. David Henderson has a piece in support of RTW, The Economics of "Right to Work".
12. Slate has a piece about The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement. Keith Kloor opines on the division between modernist environmentalists (or eco-pragmatists) and conservation traditionalists.
... Modernist greens don't dispute the ecological tumult associated with the Anthropocene. But this is the world as it is, they say, so we might as well reconcile the needs of people with the needs of nature. To this end, Kareiva advises conservationists to craft "a new vision of a planet in which nature—forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient ecosystems—exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes."
This shift in thinking is already under way. For example, ecologists increasingly appreciate (and study) the diversity of species and importance of ecosystem services in cities, giving rise to the discipline of urban ecology. That was unthinkable at the dawn of the modern environmental movement 50 years ago, when greens loathed cities as the antithesis of wilderness. ...
13. One of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I remember from childhood was when this woman ends up trapped in a department store at night. The mannequins begin calling to her. She discovers she is actually a mannequin who has overstayed her time out in the world, and it is time for the next mannequin to spend some time outside the store. This story confirms my worst nightmares: In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You
15. One of the biggest concerns about fracking technology is the enormous amount of water it uses. A company has figured out how to recycle water so that far less water is used in fracking. Solving fracking's biggest problem
... 3D printing represents the latest version of what industry experts call "additive manufacturing" — a way to turn practically any computer designs into real objects by building them up layer-by-layer using plastics, metals or other materials. The technology could end up affecting every major industry — aerospace, defense, medicine, transportation, food, fashion — and have an even bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing than the robot revolution. ...
20. Michael Cheshire has a great piece in Leadership Journal on "What I learned about grace and redemption through my friendship with a Christian pariah." Going To Hell with Ted Haggard
".... A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the Denver area with a close atheist friend. He's a great guy and a very deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted's fall. He pointed his finger at the HD and said, "That is the reason I will not become a Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that's what keeps me away."
It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to Ted's hypocrisy. "Hey man, not all of us do things like that," I responded. He laughed and said, "Michael, you just proved my point. See, that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys can't forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to him." Then he uttered words that left me reeling: "You Christians eat your own. Always have. Always will."
He was running late for a meeting and had to take off. I, however, could barely move. I studied the TV and read the caption as a well-known religious leader kept shoveling dirt on a man who had admitted he was unclean. And at that moment, my heart started to change. I began to distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very mention of Haggard's name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions were visceral."
21. Leonardo Bonucci got a yellow card for faking a collision during a soccer game. It should have been a red card. No one deserves to be a professional soccer player with acting skills this bad!
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the lower left corner. ..."
4. a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as I grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle age. It turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing, and many people falsely believe this is a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates, and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was the highest, and December was the lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions — they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit. The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr. Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them, but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch Empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology, industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology. There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and— that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks. Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook, with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
Jobs going to other countries in China's 'great industry transfer'
Rising wages and shrinking export demand are forcing manufacturers to relocate to neighboring Southeast Asian nations and many that remain are seriously considering moving, a foreign trade official from the Ministry of Commerce said.
The official, who declined to be named, said that "nearly one-third of Chinese manufacturers of textiles, garments, shoes and hats" are now working "under growing pressure" and have moved all, or part, of their production outside China in what he called the great industry transfer.
Favored destinations are usually members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, especially Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
And in all likelihood, "the trend will continue" with more traditional labor-intensive manufacturers transferring production, he told China Daily. ...
... China's labor costs have surged recently by 15 to 20 percent annually, squeezing margins and driving some companies to bankruptcy.
According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, from January to June the minimum wage was raised, on average, by 20 percent in 16 provinces.
The minimum wage in Shenzhen now stands at 1,500 yuan ($238) per month, setting the highest standard for the whole Chinese mainland.
Many developing countries in Southeast Asia have lower labor costs.
The monthly wage for manufacturing jobs in Vietnam was, on average, 600 yuan in 2011, equivalent to the level of 10 years ago in Dongguan, an industrial town in South China's Pearl River Delta....
...But lower costs in other countries could soon change, some said.
"The advantage (of labor and production costs) in Southeast Asian countries will only last for a few years," said Chen Jian, a general manager of a garment company headquartered in Foshan, on the Pearl River Delta.
"The trend is just like what happened some 10 years ago when many manufacturing industries in Hong Kong and Taiwan moved to the Pearl River Delta to chase cheap labor. But now you can see how much our labor costs have gone up."
... Companies such as Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) are looking for workers like Brennan. Even with trades offering competitive pay, skilled factory vacancies may soar fivefold to 3 million by 2015 amid a U.S. industry rebound and baby boomer retirements, according to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. That shortfall threatens to jeopardize both the U.S. recovery and corporate growth plans.
The manufacturing mismatch is part of a broader skills gap in an economy that has more than 3 million jobs open, even with an unemployment rate that ran at 8 percent or more for 43 straight months until the decline in September to 7.8 percent.
Economics and history are combining to drive the skilled-worker shortage. High-school graduates are opting in increasing numbers for four-year schools that can lead to jobs with higher pay and more prestige, and shying away from manufacturing after it shed jobs for more than a decade....
... Schools that provide training for trades and fields such as nursing aren't producing students in great-enough numbers. Enrollment in two-year colleges that award degrees totaled 7.68 million in 2010, 18 percent more than in 2005. In the same period, four-year university enrollment climbed 21 percent to 13.3 million, according to the U.S. Education Department. ...
... The average annual salary in the field [welding] is $47,900, more than a bank teller supervisor, according to jobs website CareerBuilder. Welders with their own equipment can make $70 an hour, Roy said. Billing 40 weekly hours at that rate and working 50 weeks a year would produce gross pay of $140,000. ...
... Government figures understate the factory shortage, according to a September 2011 report by Deloitte LLP for the National Association of Manufacturers trade group. The report, based on a survey of 1,123 executives, estimated that there were 600,000 unfilled U.S. jobs in manufacturing.
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers used that data as the basis for its projection of 3 million manufacturing vacancies in three years. ...
... "We're at the edge of a significant problem turning into a critical problem," Giffi said. "The only reason it's staying out of critical is because growth is stalled."
Industrial companies in search of skilled workers cite a common refrain: reluctance by parents and teachers to steer young people to factory jobs. ...
... The Irving, Texas-based company [Fluor Corp] is visiting high schools and recruiting military veterans to hire about 8,000 skilled workers, he said. ...
And I can't help but wonder how many twentysomethings there are out there with a mountain load of debt for a college education they will not use, who would have been better served with a trade education.
Global grain production is expected to reach a record high of 2.4 billion tons in 2012, an increase of 1 percent from 2011 levels, according to new research conducted by the Nourishing the Planet project for our Vital Signs Online service. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the production of grain for animal feed is growing the fastest—a 2.1 percent increase from 2011. Grain for direct human consumption grew 1.1 percent from 2011. ...
... Further highlights from the report:
The FAO expects global maize production to increase 4.1 percent from 2011, reaching an estimated 916 million tons in 2012.
Global rice production achieved an all-time high of 480 million tons in 2011, a 2.6 percent increase from 2010.
World wheat production is projected to drop to 675.1 million tons in 2012, down 3.6 percent from 2011, with the largest declines in feed and biofuel utilization.
Since 1961, grain production has increased 269 percent and grain yield has increased 157 percent, while the grain harvest area has increased only 25 percent. This is due largely to the Green Revolution and the introduction of high-yielding grain varieties.
To purchase your own copy of State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, please click HERE.
A few themes jump out from looking at the data in this way:
1) If the Great Recession is measured according to how far the economy had fallen below potential GDP, it is actually quite similar to the effects of the double-dip recession in the early 1980s.
2) If the Great Recession is measured by the size of the drop, relative to potential GDP, it is about 9 percentage points of GDP (from an actual GDP 1 percent above potential GDP to an actual GDP that is 8 percent below potential GDP). The total size of this drop isn't all that different--although the timing is different--from the years around the double-dip recession of the 1980s, the years around the recession of 1973-75, and the recession of 1969-1970.
3) The recovery from the early 1980s recessions was V-shaped, while the recovery from the Great Recession is more gradual. But this change isn't new. The recoveries from all the recessions before the early 1980s were reasonably V-shapes, and the recoveries after the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions were more U-shaped, as well.
Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing "trillions of carats," enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years.
The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s beneath a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem.
They decided to keep it secret, and not to exploit it, apparently because the USSR's huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market.
The Soviets were also producing a range of artificial diamonds for industry, into which they had invested heavily.
The veil of secrecy was finally lifted over the weekend, and Moscow permitted scientists from the nearby Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy to talk about it with Russian journalists.
According to the official news agency, ITAR-Tass, the diamonds at Popigai are "twice as hard" as the usual gemstones, making them ideal for industrial and scientific uses.
The institute's director, Nikolai Pokhilenko, told the agency that news of what's in the new field could be enough to "overturn" global diamond markets. ...
A Census report signals that for much of America, the economic downturn has produced not one lost decade but two. But the data also show that federal safety-net programs helped keep people out of poverty. ...
... Economists haven't reached a consensus about what forces have caused the middle-class stagnation, but they have pointed to some that may be involved to varying degrees:
Globalization: The rest of the world is playing catchup to the nation that came to dominate in technology and sheer productive muscle during the 20th century. In theory, the US can still prosper as emerging nations from China to Brazil rise, but recent years have seen fierce global competition. America needs to boost its skills faster to stay in the game.
Technology: As with globalization, in theory this isn't a job-destroying force, just one that causes the nature of jobs to change. But some argue that rapid technological advances are having an especially hard impact on many middle-wage jobs that can be largely automated.
Inequality: A wage premium for the educated, the decline of labor unions, and the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation have been among the factors widening the income gap between the rich and the middle class or poor. Some economists say that gap makes for a less vibrant nation. "Lack of opportunity means that its most valuable asset -- its people -- is not being fully used," Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University has argued. When the rich are able to win big tax cuts it "leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education and technology, impeding the engines of growth."
Debt and government: Another line of reasoning, taken by some conservative economists, is that economic growth is slowing as America becomes more of a European-style welfare state, with more people receiving public services and government spending accounting for a larger share of the economy. Some say the rising level of public debt, in particular, is emerging as an obstacle to be reckoned with. Others cite high levels of regulation and "crony capitalism," in which government policies favor some industries or companies at the expense of others.
Two other factors, mentioned by Census officials as affecting the recent data, are demographic aging of the population (income typically goes down as people hit retirement age) and a skewing of new jobs in 2011 toward the lower end of the wage spectrum.
The prescriptions for the road ahead depend on the diagnoses of causes, but many economists agree on the need for stronger education, better matching of skills with job opportunities, and an effort to overhaul the nation's fiscal policy, including taxes.
Some economists also argue for policies targeted to boost the level of innovation and entrepreneurship. ...
Well, why are Americans so gloomy, fearful and even panicked about the current economic slump? U.S. consumers seem suddenly disillusioned with the American Dream of rising prosperity. Hard times are forcing some people to turn their back on the American Dream.
"Whining" hardly captures the extent of the gloom Americans feel as the current downturn. The slump is the longest, if not the deepest, since the Great Depression. Traumatized by layoffs that have cost million of jobs during the slump, U.S. consumers have fallen into their deepest funk in years.
While some economists have described the current slump as a near depression, that phrase overstates the case if it is taken as a comparison with the period 1929-33, when the U.S. economy contracted by nearly a third. The D word becomes more valid, especially with a small d, when it is used to compare the growth rate of the 1930s, which averaged 0.5% a year, with the expected sluggishness of the next decade, which some economists predict will see an average growth rate of 2%.
"I'm worried if my kids can earn a decent living and buy a house," says Tony Lentini, vice president of Mitchell Energy in Houston. "I wonder if this will be the first generation that didn't do better than their parents. There's a genuine feeling that the country has gotten way off track, and neither political party has any answers. Americans don't see any solutions."
The deeper tremors emanate from the kind of change that occurs only once every few decades. America is going through a historic transition from a heedless borrow-and-spend society to one that stresses savings and investment. When this recession is over, America will not simply go back to business as usual.
The underlying change in the way American consumers and business leaders think about saving and spending will make the recovery one of the slowest in history and the next decade one of lowered expectations. Many economists agree that the U.S. will face at least several years of very modest growth as consumers and companies work off the vast debt they assumed in the last decade. ...
By the way, the date of this article? January 13, 1992! ;-)
... The Times of India reports that rural spending growth is outpacing urban spending for the first time since economic reforms took place two decades ago. Between 2009 and 2012, spending by the 69 percent of the Indian population living in rural areas increased by about $67 billion. For the 31 percent who are urban dwellers, spending increased by only about $54 billion.
Overall, the rural majority has been spending more than its urban counterparts for years. From 2004 to 2005, rural dwellers spent $52.2 trillion, about 57 percent of the $91.5 trillion spent nationally. Rural spending has been the majority every year since. But now, rural spending growth has outpaced urban growth as well. ...
... While we might associate rural areas with poor farmers and dusty fields, the rural economy in India is also shifting. Non-farm work is on the rise, especially in the form of construction jobs. Between 2005 and 2010, there was an 88 percent increase in rural construction jobs, many through government sponsored employment generation schemes. At the same time, farm jobs fell from 249 million to 229 million.
The other reason is that all those people who've moved to cities to make more money are actually sending a lot of that money back to the rural areas from which they've migrated. Rural family members back home suddenly find themselves with much greater discretionary incomes than ever before, and they're very happy to spend it. ...
Economist Andrew Gelman looked at this and explored alternative presentations of the data and here is what he produced:
Then I thought of plotting the incomes over time (all these income values are inflation-adjusted, of course):
I like this one a lot. In particular, it shows that the drop from 2000-2010 is really a drop since 2007. (Although I suppose Cowen would argue that the drop was happening earlier, and it was just that the economy was doing a Wiley E. Coyote, standing in midair and not going into freefall until people realized they had gone off the cliff's edge).
Still, even the time-trends graph does not quite replace the original bar plot, which shows so much drama. My recommended solution is to give the bar plot for the initial impression and follow up immediately with the time-trends graph, which shows the big picture much more clearly.
GUANGZHOU, China — After three decades of torrid growth, China is encountering an unfamiliar problem with its newly struggling economy: a huge buildup of unsold goods that is cluttering shop floors, clogging car dealerships and filling factory warehouses.
The glut of everything from steel and household appliances to cars and apartments is hampering China’s efforts to emerge from a sharp economic slowdown. It has also produced a series of price wars and has led manufacturers to redouble efforts to export what they cannot sell at home.
The severity of China’s inventory overhang has been carefully masked by the blocking or adjusting of economic data by the Chinese government — all part of an effort to prop up confidence in the economy among business managers and investors. ...
... China is the world’s second-largest economy and has been the largest engine of economic growth since the global financial crisis began in 2008. Economic weakness means that China is likely to buy fewer goods and services from abroad when the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is already hurting demand, raising the prospect of a global glut of goods and falling prices and weak production around the world.
Corporate hiring has slowed, and jobs are becoming less plentiful. Chinese exports, a mainstay of the economy for the last three decades, have almost stopped growing. Imports have also stalled, particularly for raw materials like iron ore for steel making, as industrialists have lost confidence that they will be able to sell if they keep factories running. Real estate prices have slid, although there have been hints that they might have bottomed out in July, and money has been leaving the country through legal and illegal channels. ...
But these are fairly predictable answers. So here's something weirder and more colorful: As economics went global, job creation went local. That sounds totally backward. But it's true. ...
Here is his graph showing job creation by year:
Here is his conclusion:
About half of the jobs created between 1990 and 2008 (before our current downturn) were created in education, health care, and government. What do those sectors have in common? They're all local. You can't send them to Korea. As Michael Spence has explained, corporations have gotten so good at "creating and managing global supply chains" that large companies no longer grow much in the United States. They expand abroad. As a result, the vast majority (more than 97 percent, Spence says!) of job creation now happens in so-called non-tradable sectors -- those that exist outside of the global supply chain -- that are often low-profit-margin businesses, like a hospital, or else not even businesses at all, like a school or mayor's office.
It is both ironic and unavoidably true that the era of globalized profits has dovetailed with the era of localized job creation in low value-added industries, and that the upshot of this has been massive gains at the top and slow overall income growth for the rest of us.
How new technology is driving a U.S. industrial comeback.
... But Ralph Lauren berets aside, the larger trends show that the tide has turned, and it is China's turn to worry. Many CEOs, including Dow Chemicals' Andrew Liveris, have declared their intentions to bring manufacturing back to the United States. What is going to accelerate the trend isn't, as people believe, the rising cost of Chinese labor or a rising yuan. The real threat to China comes from technology. Technical advances will soon lead to the same hollowing out of China's manufacturing industry that they have to U.S industry over the past two decades.
Several technologies advancing and converging will cause this.
First, robotics. The robots of today aren't the androids or Cylons that we are used to seeing in science fiction movies, but specialized electromechanical devices run by software and remote control. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. Several companies, such Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9th Sense, sell robot-development kits for which university students and open-source communities are developing ever more sophisticated applications.
The factory assembly that China is currently performing is child's play compared to the next generation of robots -- which will soon become cheaper than human labor. ...
... A type of manufacturing called "additive manufacturing" is now making it possible to cost-effectively "print" products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material until you're left with the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.
In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on three-dimensional models -- adding materials rather than subtracting them. The "3D printers" that produce these parts use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials -- much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn't produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, thanks to laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn't cost much more than one with text (other than the cost of toner), with 3D printers we can print a sophisticated 3D structure for what it would cost to print something simple.
Three-D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1,000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that, in the next decade, manufacturing will again become a local industry and it will be possible to 3D print electronics and use giant 3D printing scaffolds to print entire buildings. Why would we ship raw materials all the way to China and then ship completed products back to the United States when they can be manufactured more cheaply locally, on demand? ...
Remember that the above does not mean there will be more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. We will still see a decline in manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing as a percentage of GDP has remained very constant since World War II, but technological innovation has eliminated the need for much human labor. About 32% of the labor force was in manufacturing in 1947, but it is about 12% (and declining) today. The loss of manufacturing jobs has much less to do with China and more with ongoing technological innovation.
There’s a chart flying around the blogosphere that seems to show that American families were wealthier in 1983 than in 2010, and the figures in it are attributed to me. I never made that claim, because I have no idea whether or not it’s accurate. What I can say is that American families were wealthier in 1989 than in 2010. There is no solid information for years before that, at least from the Federal Reserve.
The story of the chart that took on a life of its own gives some insight into how memes are created and circulated on the Internet. It started life at Reuters with a sensible disclaimer, but as it circulated those disclaimers have been sandpapered off. It has popped up on the Washington Post website, the PBS NewsHour’s Rundown blog, Brad DeLong’s tumblr feed, and probably some other places I haven’t seen yet.
... 1. An important point of clarification: The civilian labor force participation rate (LFPR) is calculated by the BLS as the Civilian Labor Force (employed + unemployed) divided by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (16 years and over), and not by the working age population as both the WSJ and IBD report. This can be verified by the current BLS employment report, which calculates the April Labor Force Participation Rate of 63.6% as 154,365 (labor force) DIVIDED BY 242,784,000 (TOTAL POPULATION, not divided by working-age population). ...
... Bottom Line: The overall LFPR was in decline after peaking in 2000 reflecting long-term demographic trends even during the expansion of 2002-2007, and probably would have continued to decline even without the Great Recession. Although it's certainly likely that the Great Recession accelerated the decline since 2007, it's important to realize with increased life expectancy, we can expect continued increases over time in those counted as "not in the labor force" and a continuation of the decline in the LFPR that started in 2000.
... In other words, the average American factory worker today produces more output in an hour than his or her counterpart produced working almost a ten hour day in 1947 - and that's why we're producing record levels of output with fewer workers. ...
Investors who have favored emerging markets like China in recent years should pay attention to another growing manufacturing center. It boasts plenty of skilled workers; cheap and abundant energy; stable institutions; and a large middle class that likes to shop.
It is the U.S., where a long industrial decline might be in reverse.
In March, manufacturing expanded for the 32nd straight month, and contributed 37,000 of the 120,000 U.S. jobs added, the government reported. That's partly because of the ongoing recovery from the Great Recession. But the economy is also changing.
Manufacturing's share of gross domestic product plunged to 11% in 2009 from 26% in 1947, according to the Commerce Department. In 2010, it rose to 11.7%—the biggest yearly gain in more than 50 years. The 2011 numbers will be released on April 26, and the anecdotal evidence is promising; companies like Caterpillar, CAT -2.17%Ford MotorF -2.00% and NCR say they are moving some operations back to the U.S.
Three trends suggest America's "manufacturing renaissance" is just getting started, says Neil Dutta, U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. First, the cost advantages of outsourcing factory work are narrowing. Emerging market wages, while still much lower than U.S. wages, are rising, and high oil prices have made shipping more expensive. That is expanding the range of goods U.S. factories can produce at competitive prices (think sophisticated machines, not toys).
Second, a weakening dollar makes U.S. goods more attractive to foreign buyers. The dollar has fallen by nearly one-third over the past decade against a basket of currencies including the euro, British pound and yen.
Third, energy production is booming in the U.S., and domestic natural-gas prices have recently plunged. That gives an edge to U.S. producers of fabricated steel, transportation equipment, machinery and chemicals, which use natural gas extensively, according to a recent report from CitigroupC -2.36% . ...
... Actually, that's not really accurate. The chart above shows the manufacturing shares of GDP for the U.S., the entire world economy and four of the countries cited in the study (Japan, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands) as having a "stable or growing" shares of GDP using United Nations data here for the years 1970 to 2010. For all five countries and for the world economy, the manufacturing shares of GDP fell to historic all-time lows in 2009, before increasing slightly in all cases in 2010. Like the U.S., manufacturing's share of GDP has fallen in Germany, Japan, Finland and the Netherlands.
It’s also interesting to note that the decline in manufacturing’s share of U.S. GDP over the last forty years (from 24% to 13%) is nearly identical to the decline in world manufacturing as a share of world GDP, which fell from 27% in 1970 to 16% in 2010. Therefore, we can conclude that the declining share of manufacturing’s contribution to GDP is not unique to America, but reflects a global trend as the world moves from a traditional manufacturing-intensive Machine Age economy to more a services-intensive Information Age economy. ...
... Manufacturing’s declining share of output isn’t a sign of economic weakness - it’s just the opposite. It’s a sign that advances in manufacturing productivity and efficiency translate into lower prices for consumers when they purchase goods like cars, food, clothing, appliances, furniture, and electronic goods. In the U.S., the price of goods relative to services fell by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010, so it’s not surprising that manufacturing’s importance in the economy has fallen significantly.
As spending on manufactured goods as a share of household income declines, it raises our standard of living, and for that “decline in manufacturing” we should celebrate, not complain.
... He says gasoline demand peaked in 2007 and has fallen each year since, even though the economy has begun to recover.
"The U.S. has already reached what we can call 'peak demand.' Because of increased efficiency, because of biofuels, we're not going to see growth in our oil consumption," Yergin says.
That view is shared by the government's official source of energy data, the Energy Information Administration. Its long-term projection is that gasoline consumption will steadily decline by around 7 percent over the next 25 years.
Howard Gruenspecht, the EIA's acting administrator, says the projection does not take into account the latest proposal on automotive fuel efficiency, likely to be approved later this year. It requires fleet averages of 54.5 miles per gallon.
"If you put those into the mix, we would expect a somewhat steeper decline in overall liquid fuels demand, and gasoline demand in particular," Gruenspecht says. ...
Making the United States an even more attractive location for factories and investments is critical for the health of our nation. More domestic factories would help create more balanced trade flows and a more stable global economy. But company decisions on what and where to place production facilities, while influenced by many factors, ultimately depend on the math.
Thankfully, the math these days is starting to work in America's favor again.
Our research last year suggested to us that changing conditions in China would bring home some of the manufacturing work that migrated overseas during the past decade. We originally saw this "insourcing" phenomenon, as the White House now refers to it, starting around 2015.
We were deliberately conservative in our estimates and made clear that the coming manufacturing renaissance would benefit some industries more than others, with seven sectors benefitting the most: vehicles and auto parts, appliances and electrical equipment, furniture, plastic and rubber products, machinery, fabricated metal products, and computers and electronics. These seven sectors currently account for nearly two-thirds of the more than $325 billion the U.S. imports from China.
We noted that several factors had combined to push these sectors toward a tipping point, when U.S. manufacturing becomes an attractive alternative to China. These factors include China's rapidly rising labor costs, which we discussed in an earlier HBR blog; the increased value of the yuan; the challenge of managing long-distance supply chains; the quality control concerns that continue to haunt many manufacturers that have offshored production; and the significantly higher productivity of U.S. workers. ...
What percentage of American wives outearn their husbands? The number just might astonish you.
If you've been hanging around the United States over the past 20 years or so, you've bumped up against the notion, in the media and maybe in real life, that wives are increasingly earning more than their husbands-and what a fiasco it is! Men feel emasculated and resent their wives' incessant harangues about helping more around the house; women seethe as they continue to take on more than their fair share of the domestic duties and find themselves losing sexual desire for the unambitious lummoxes in their midst. Certainly you can think of a few couples in which this is not the case, in which he and she seem to have reached some graceful accommodation or are even, by all appearances, thriving: The guy is happily pushing the kids on the swings, while the gal is digging her high-powered job (and/or paycheck). But regardless of all the cultural noise, the overall proportion of wives whose salaries eclipse their husband's is, while not insignificant, nothing like the norm-right?
Wrong. Reading Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy's book, The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family, out this March, was a genuine shock. Based on 2009 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures hot off the press (a government economist slipped Mundy the stats before they were published, in fact), "almost 40 percent of U.S. working wives now out-earn their husbands." While that's not the majority-grandiose subtitles definitely are the norm-it's darn close to it. (For the record, my guess was 25 percent, the figure in the early '90s.) ...
THE past four years have seen an economic crisis coincide with a food-price spike. That must surely have boosted the number of the world’s poor (especially since food inflation hits the poor hardest)—right? Wrong. New estimates of the numbers of the world’s poor by the World Bank’s Development Research Group show that for the first time ever, poverty—defined as the number and share of people living below $1.25 a day (at 2005 prices)—fell in every region of the world in 2005-08. Half the long-term decline is attributable to China, which has taken 660m people out of poverty since the early 1980s. But the main contribution to the recent turnaround is Africa. Its poverty headcount rose at every three-year interval between 1981 and 2005, the only continent where this happened. But in 2008, it fell by 12m, or five percentage points to 47%—the first time less than half of Africans have been below the poverty line. The bank also has partial estimates for 2010. These show global poverty that year was half its 1990 level, implying the long-term rate of poverty reduction—slightly over one percentage point a year—continued unabated in 2008-10, despite the dual crisis.
1. "Globalization has come full circle atOtis Elevator. The U.S. manufacturer, whose elevators zip up and down structures as diverse as the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower, is moving production from Nogales, Mexico, to a new plant in South Carolina. More startling: Otis says the move will save it money."
2. "After having their products manufactured in China the past seven years, The Outdoor GreatRoom Company is bringing production back home to Minnesota."
3. "Not long ago, overseas plants produced half ofIdaho-based Buck Knives’ output. Today they produce 25 percent. Buck Knives wants to keep moving production from China to Post Falls, Idaho over the next few years, company chairman Chuck Buck said. “I want to get out of China as quickly as I can,” he said. ...
Hunger and poverty are increasing, people are working longer hours, crime is worsening, and violence worldwide is rising. In short, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. So goes the common wisdom. But the common wisdom is wrong. Long-time readers of the Kruse Kronicle who have read my series on American Social Indicators and World Social Indicators know that most social indicators show an improving world … in some facets, the improvements are nothing short of astonishing. Now comes an excellent book by sociologist Brad Wright, Upside: Surprising GOOD NEWS About the State of Our World. Wright covers most of the issues I’ve raised on my blog, plus many more. It is full of wonderful stats and charts, but the narrative is in Wright’s characteristically engaging, witty style.
Wright is not saying that everything in the world is improving (think things like obesity and environmental challenges), but it is hardly a planet on the verge of disaster. In fact, there are reasons for considerable optimism. Following Matt Ridley’s lead, he sees the coming to fruition of specialization and exchange as a key to the recent rise in human welfare. One area where I would like to have heard more is why pessimism is so pervasive. He offers some insights. For one, our modern society is highly adaptive due to the rise of specialization and exchange. But it is incomprehensibly complex. Because of our inability to grasp complexity, we are prone to extrapolate present trends … particularly negative ones … indefinitely into the future. There is a radical underestimation of our adaptive ability. Furthermore, we seem programmed not to see incremental life improvements. Once an improvement arrives, it quickly becomes the new normal. But we easily fixate on negative news and trends we experience as threats. And, of course, news sources are aware of the fixation and highlight such news to attract readers. That is how we create a society where the majority think their life is good or getting better but also think other people’s lives are going downhill.
The book is a gem. His data is documented in endnotes, mostly available through websites or readily available sources. I will keep this book on my reference shelf, and you will undoubtedly see it referenced in future Kronicle posts. Pick up a copy today.
The U.S. Geological Survey on Tuesday dramatically increased its estimate of the natural gas contained in the Marcellus Shale, the deep deposit that has triggered a drilling frenzy in Pennsylvania.
The USGS now estimates that the shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids.
The agency's latest numbers are 42 times greater than its 2002 assessment, which said the shale contained about two trillion cubic feet of gas. The Marcellus lies under Pennsylvania and seven other Appalachian states. ...
