Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

Average Duration of Unemployment

Here’s another good one:

Wait wait, don’t tell me guys: This is actually a sign of progress, because when people got laid off in the late 2000s, they could amuse themselves quite cheaply by playing the free version of Angry Birds.

(In case you are baffled by my comment: People in the comments of my previous posts have been telling me I’m crazy for thinking anything is wrong with the labor market.)

Is the Male Labor Force Half Working or Half Unemployed?

(That’s an optimist vs. pessimist joke.)

In the comments of this previous post, several of you were encouraging me to set aside issues about an aging population and women entering the work force, by looking at prime-age working males. OK I’m happy to do that:

So, we can say that 7 years after bottoming out, the percentage of prime-age males who hold a job is just about where it was in at the depths of the awful recession in the early 1980s, which at the time was the worst economy since the Great Depression.

And this somehow proves that I was grasping at straws, and Krugman is correct in saying we’re pretty much back at full employment?

Assessing the Labor Market

Check out the chart below. I am forming my own views but I’m curious to get reactions from you folks. I think it is extremely misleading to simply use the unemployment rate as an indicator for the health of the labor market. Note that the civilian-employment ratio is (obviously) not the same thing as the civilian labor force participation rate. What do you make of the US labor market since 2000, compared to the earlier pattern?

The Superlative Jesus, Part 1

Frequent commenter Keshav left this interesting remark on a previous post:

Dan, what do you think about this quote by Robert Ingersoll?

“Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s? Was he grander in death – a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race?”

This seems like a fun challenge. I’ll work through these in a series of posts. To help with the comparisons, I encourage you to flesh out Ingersoll’s challenge in the comments, by telling me exactly what he has in mind for each of these traits.

: “Was [Jesus] kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha?”

Jesus showed kindness to children, women, and lepers. He associated with prostitutes and tax collectors. When a woman was caught in adultery–a capital crime in the Mosaic law–Jesus said that he who was without sin should cast the first stone, then told her He didn’t condemn her (yet instructed her to sin no more). At the Last Supper (shortly before He is arrested). Jesus told His followers, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus let Himself be taken into custody, knowing He would be tortured severely before being nailed to a cross, where He would hang for hours before suffocating. Even though He was sinless, He did this in order to reconcile a sinful man with a perfect God, providing a free gift of our salvation.

After these evil fools had beaten Him and nailed Him to the cross, Jesus hung there as they continued to mock Him. In the midst of that agony, Jesus still prayed, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”

I confess I’m not very familiar with Buddha’s life. I skimmed two online accounts of his life and didn’t see anything even in the same ZIP code as the above. (Indeed, I have a hard time even imagining how it would be possible to be more forgiving and self-sacrificing than Jesus.)

On this criterion, I think we easily say Jesus is the winner. It’s not even close.

Be Like Aaron

Aaron Malek writes (and gives permission to reproduce):

Message: Hi Bob,

I enjoyed your talk today in Orlando. It was a great event. I didn’t get a chance to tell you in person, but I am really enjoying your book, Choice. I bought it at the Mises 35th event in NYC and didn’t pick it up right away because I am making my way through Man, Economy, and State. Recently, however, I picked it up and just started reading it to check out the beginning, and I didn’t want to put it down. It’s so interesting and well-written. You have a real talent for precision in your writing and lectures. My wife and I told you in NYC how much we’ve learned from your History of Economic Thought course. I’m about halfway through Choice right now and just wanted to tell you how much I like it. I think it will be a book that people will be reading for many years to come.

Best regards,

Aaron

I think you should see if this guy has good taste. Here’s my book and here’s where you sign up for my History of Economic Thought courses.

Video of Daniel Shaver Shooting

I had resisted watching this at first, because I just couldn’t handle it. I will say that this isn’t “gory” but you do see the guy get shot, FYI.

I think the thing about this that outrages people is the buildup.

Some additional facts (please correct me if any of this is wrong):

==> The hotel desk had called 911 and said someone in Shaver’s room was pointing a gun at people out the window. This is what the police were responding to.

==> Shaver is an exterminator and apparently he had two pellet rifles (used for his job) in his hotel room, and had been playing with them around the window.

==> The cop who shot Shaver (Philip Brailsford) was not the one barking orders in this footage.

==> However, the cop who shot him *did* apparently have “You’re f*cked” carved into the dust cover of his AR-15, the weapon with which he shot Shaver. This fact was ruled as inadmissible evidence and the jury didn’t know it.

==> Apparently the reason the cops have the woman and then (unsuccessfully) Shaver crawl towards them, rather than just lying facedown, is that for all the cops knew, there were still armed person/people in the hotel room, and so it would have placed them in a more vulnerable position to advance and try to cuff the people in the open hallway.

Come Hear Us in Orlando

Final plug: On Saturday December 9, I’ll be in Orlando with Jeff Deist talking about the future of liberty. Details here, and students you can get a scholarship at the link near the top of that blurb. (I *think* there are still open slots but I apologize if they tell you it’s full.)

“Total Spending” Is Not the Same Thing as NGDP

Amongst my other problems with the market monetarist approach, is the frequent claim that they just want to maintain “total spending” or the “volume of the spending stream.”

No, that’s not correct. Nominal GDP is smaller than total expenditures each year.

I was reminded of this when I listened to Mark Skousen explain to Tom Woods why he (Skousen) thought economists needed to consider his alternative output measure, GO–Gross [Domestic] Output, which the BEA started tracking in 2014.

Incidentally, even Gross Output is a sliver of “total spending,” when we consider how much spending occurs each day in the financial markets.

I’m bringing this up (I think I’ve done it before) mostly just to remind ourselves of some basic facts about the real world, rather than parsing it according to our models. But I also think it cuts against one of Sumner’s ostensible virtues, since I think–though I admit I can’t find a good example* right now with just a little bit of Googling–that he is proud of NGDP being an objective, measurable thing “out there” versus real GDP which is an idea in our minds (since we need to deflate nominal spending by a price index to compute real GDP–it’s not directly observable).

* It’s not merely that I can’t find a good example, but I found this post where Sumner sounds like he’s saying almost the opposite. But I am 96% sure that Sumner has said that NGDP is something we can all observe, as opposed to real GDP which is more subjective by its very nature.