Category Archives: Labor

UPDATED: Tiny Employment Uptick (& Tricky Statistics)

According to the government’s say-so, “the economy added 200,000 jobs in December, double November’s pace and all of it coming from the private sector.” Given that “the sectors that added the most jobs was transportation and warehousing” and “courier services such as UPS,” the employment uptick is realistically a “seasonal swing.” Either way, it’s safe to say that if not for the Obama administration’s heavy handed interventions, the growth in private-sector employment would have been greater.

Better news is that “governments have continued to shed workers. Public agencies cut 12,000 workers in December, with most of those cuts at the local level.” This is a drop in the bucket, given the size of the US oink sector, and the degree to which it impinges on the private economy. (By way of an example, here’s an ad for a parasite for hire: and “Invitations Coordinator” paid for by taxpayers.)

In Francis Wilkinson’s optimistic assessment—he’s a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board—“The jobs gap is still 12.1 million jobs. At a rate of 208,000 new jobs per month, it will take slightly more than 12 years to close that gap, according to the Hamilton Project, a public policy group started in 2006 by the Brookings Institution. For the unemployed, the U.S. labor market remains the worst since the Great Depression.”

UPDATE: Tricky Statistical Tactics, via Paul Craig Roberts (and BAB contributor below):

The official unemployment rates (U3 and U6) no longer measure all of the unemployed. The Clinton administration ceased counting as unemployed workers who had given up looking for a job for one year or longer. No discouraged workers are included in the widely reported U3 measure. The U6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.
In other words, the longer an economy is in the doldrums, the less the official unemployment rates are reliable measures of the extent of unemployment. The unemployment rate in December as measured by U3 is 8.5%; as measured by U6 which includes short-term discouraged workers (less than one year) is 15.2%. John Williams’ measure which includes the long-term unemployed is 22.4%.
In other words, the real unemployment rate is 2.6 times the widely reported U3 rate, which is the rate emphasized by policymakers and the financial press.

UPDATED: Workers Vs. Voters (Parasites Looking for a Host)

Democracy, Elections, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Taxation, The State, Welfare

About the New Deal, H.L. Mencken quipped that it divided America into “those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.”

TIME magazine has chosen its archetype hero. He is the voter, not the worker, also known as that habitual “Protester.” The Protester sticks around for lack of anything else to do.

No wonder Tea Party America failed to make it into TIME’s pantheon of protesters. These middle-class, upstanding folks returned to “petty” duties like jobs, families and other such unworldly, provincial preoccupations.

Or in Barack Obama speak: Back they went to their guns, bibles, and bigotries.

Workers unite! You who bear the burden of taxes, unshakable yourselves. Break free from the chains with which the moochers and looters seek to imprison you (using the power of the state, naturally).

UPDATE (Dec. 25): The professional voters cost the professional workers a whole lot:

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is considering a lawsuit against Occupy L.A. protesters to reimburse the city for damage caused during the occupation of the City Hall lawn. The two-month encampment cost the city at least $2.35 million, not counting repairs to the lawn and fountain outside City Hall, according to a report issued Friday.
Much of that cost — more than $1.7 million — will be added to the growing pool of red ink in this year’s city budget. The Occupy bills will increase an anticipated $72-million shortfall over the next six months, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said.

(LA Times)

The AG doesn’t say who she will sue and how. Parasites are like a big amorphous amoeba. This single-celled organism acts in unison because it’s so unevolved. Occupy L.A. is flopping about looking for a viable host.

Merry Xmas.
ilana

UPDATED: Importing Monstrous Morals (The Utouchables)

Business, Ethics, Family, Government, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Labor, Media, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, The West

The excerpt is from “Importing Monstrous Morals,” now on WND.COM:

“In its contempt for women, India, our democratic ally, has advanced little since the time it practiced Sati, ‘the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband.’

Then, Western values had valiant defenders like General Sir Charles James Napier. When ‘Hindu priests complained to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities,’ Napier replied:

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.” (Via Wikipedia. )

Nowadays, our ‘national customs’ are exemplified by ‘enlightened’ observers—ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, for example—who gather and disseminate spotty, decontextualized data, in this case, about “the systematic, widespread elimination of India’s baby girls.” Vargas traveled to India for the current affairs program ’20/20.’

Back in the 1800s, Napier understood “Sati” as a cultural barbarity.

In 2011, Vargas is somewhat vague. Critical faculties dulled by the belief in the equal worth of all cultures and peoples, Vargas failed to firmly finger the sacred cultural cow to which Indians sacrifice a million girls every year. (The Economist is more optimistic, putting the number of girls who go missing as a result of a gender preference for boys at 600,000.)

… poverty and lack of education play almost no role in this morally monstrous practice. …

In utero and outside of it, the elimination of women in India is not about what we here in the US call “reproductive rights.” This is about the right to life. In India, a woman’s life, fetus or fully formed, is worthless.

… Empirical proof of these impregnable positions was provided by the University of California, San Francisco. UCSF conducted a “qualitative study of son preference and fetal sex selection among Indian immigrants in the United States,” showing that “Indian immigrant women are using reproductive technologies and liberal abortion policies in the United States to abort female fetuses.” The study was published in Social Science & Medicine. Therein, the objects of observation are quoted as saying that, “There is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many sons.”

The complete column is, “Importing Monstrous Morals.” Read it now on WND.COM.

********
STAIRWAY PRESS HAS LAUNCHED A HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY AND FACEBOOK EVENT FOR MY BOOK, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Invitation have gone out from The Cannibal’s Facebook Fan page. (“Like” The Cannibal when you pop by.) On offer is Mercer merchandise galore. Every fifth buyer of Into the Cannibal’s Pot will receive a free copy of my libertarian manifesto Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, together with a CD of the progressive rock guitar virtuoso and composer Sean Mercer.

Order NOW and The Publisher will endeavor to deliver in time for Christmas.

And do please “Like” Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s Fan Page.

UPDATE (Dec. 16): Pam Maltzman: About the US getting India’s best and brightest: It’s probably the opposite, as those who come here are likely untouchables fleeing the cast-system in India and seeking a better station in life. It is well known, if not documented—for who would have the courage?—that Indians working in our massive high-tech conglomerates, as I stated in the column, are often very average in technical skills. They do, however, excel in exercising bureaucratic power; are quarrelsome, arrogant, and can talk up a storm. As soon as they are in positions of power, they are in the habit of hiring their own kind, often irrespective of merit, and to the detriment of The Other Kind. Massive companies, flush with billions, work much like government, within which fiefdoms with power structures develop. In these chieftainships, the relationship between productivity and profit is loose, at best. So long as the Chief has a good connection to the next top dog, he can chug along for years, before his little nexus collapses. Looking diverse is one of the main goals of the multinational with billions to blow. If a project collapses with a female at the helm, for example, a lot of musical chairs and cover-up action will ensue, as females are a prized minority too.

Jobs: Create Them at Your Peril

Business, Debt, Economy, Labor, Regulation

I meant to give you the rundown about the last jobs report, but did not get around to it. Economist Diane Swonk has parsed parts of it.

• Almost half of the 600,000 strong drop in the unemployment rate can be attributed to people either retiring or giving up looking for work entirely.

In general:

• Labor force participation rate is down.
• The 140,000 “gains in private sector employment” are largely due to “retailers hiring more than expected for the holiday season.”
• “Manufacturing remained essentially flat. Manufacturers are also complaining of a shortage of skilled machinists and electricians; many of the most skilled of United Auto Workers (UAW) ranks have now retired.”

The oink-sector did not shed nearly enough jobs:

• 20,000 loss total in public sector jobs.
• Some 5,000 of them are U.S. postal workers. (Alas, the monster describer here is still gainfully employed.)

The United States Secretary of the Treasury in-waiting (if only) has already explained what’s going on in the labor market.