[PEN-L:10329] RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Abortion stops Crime- from thehorse's mouth
I think you completely missed my point. -Original Message- From: Nathan Newman [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 6:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:10322] RE: RE: RE: RE: Abortion stops Crime- from the horse's mouth -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [] Child abuse is related to low socio-economic status. The point that I made was not that this wasn't the case, but that the elevated risks are not up to the task in terms of explaining a sizable portion of the criminal statistics. Other confounders, like alcohol, weapon availability, current (not past) socioeconomic status indicators such as income, occupation, and education, and a variety of situational variables that involve the victim, dilute the potential effect of unwantedness. Well, that is your empirical claim. What this study seems to claim is that your empirical claim is wrong, and that unwantedness and associated abuse - rather than economic status or other variables - is far more important to creating criminal acts later in life. What I find interesting is that in the more limited claims of the authors, this study is much more interesting as support for the arguments of those activists who highlight the dangers of child abuse. Rather than being a study supporting eugenics - since race and economic status are seemingly small factors in crime statistic variation - it is a study supporting some of the more (for-lack-of-a-better-word) New Age feminist arguments stressing love for the child as of key importance over the more materialist causes stressed by the traditional workerist Left. Since I place myself generally in the later category, I do find the results of the study provocative. All the doubts on statistics collection and regression still hold of course, but that is no different from every economic and social study published - whether we like them or not. --Nathan Newman
[PEN-L:10320] RE: RE: RE: Abortion stops Crime- from the horse'smouth
[] Nathan wrote: Now, the big theoretical point is whether unwanted children (from any social class) are treated worse by their parents and are thus more likely to be involved in crime. I don't know the literature on this one well, but a lot of folks who fight child abuse have argued precisely this, and again, this does seem like a more reasonable limited claim. [] Child abuse is related to low socio-economic status. The point that I made was not that this wasn't the case, but that the elevated risks are not up to the task in terms of explaining a sizable portion of the criminal statistics. Other confounders, like alcohol, weapon availability, current (not past) socioeconomic status indicators such as income, occupation, and education, and a variety of situational variables that involve the victim, dilute the potential effect of unwantedness. There is also a problem with the definition of child abuse, which typically includes child neglect. Most poor parents cannot avoid the latter, since it is defined largely in terms available resources or living conditions. Another important issue is that (indexed, interpersonal non-economic) criminal acts are relatively rare. That's why statistical analyses using the national crime statistics (like the national crime victimization survey) will typically depend on several years' data to conduct statistical analyses. When we get down to the nitty-gritty in terms of counting and analyzing the numbers of reported criminal acts, there aren't a lot of data points to begin with. When crimes are examined by perpetrator characteristics, particularly one so narrow in scope, the ability to draw conclusions simply evaporates. In my opinion, instead of studying a very narrow and minor question because a dataset presented itself, or because of a desire to show that some social policy has unintended benefits (a policy that I agree with, by the way), it would have been nice if the authors had done some prior assessment of the real impact such knowledge would have. In actuality, their results really do nothing to improve social conditions. Instead, it seems to give more weight to the arguments of the Social Darwinists. Jeff
[PEN-L:10314] RE: Abortion stops Crime- from the horse's mouth
I guess the major run up in crime rates that occurred in the mid-1960s must have been caused by the outlawing of legalized abortion in the 1940s! In the medical literature there is a notion of biologic plausibility that must be satisfied. How does the study connect criminal acts and perpetrators, and lack thereof, with the mothers' condition prior to birth? Overall, I find the authors' rationale to be of little practical importance. There are so many leaps that this study relies on. For instance, this study assumes poor women have children at substantially higher rates and numbers than middle class women, that poor women were the principal beneficiaries of the legal change, that people do not move in and out of poverty, that single poor women are significantly less able than married women or single fathers at raising their children, that the number of abortions in a year is high enough to produce such an effect, and that having an unplanned child is related to greater risks of child abuse and in sufficient numbers to effect crime statistics. The literature connecting childhood poverty and maltreatment to adult crime has many gaps. In addition, a recent study (which I can't remember the name of the author) indicated that the most common group who get abortions are middle-class married women who have experienced some sort of contraception failure. Obviously, this is current experience, but the implication is that by the time you figure out just how many future criminals we are talking about the more this study sounds like a sun spot theory. There has to be a better way to advocate for strengthening abortion rights. Studies like this make advocates and the researchers supporting them look like fools. Jeff -Original Message- From: Nathan Newman [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 3:14 PM To: Lbo-Talk; pen-l Subject: [PEN-L:10313] Abortion stops Crime- from the horse's mouth This week Slate's has a dialogue on the abortion-crime connection including one of the authors of the study. The dialogue starts at http://www.slate.com/dialogues/99-08-23/dialogues.asp Here is the author's summary of his own research. Does Abortion Prevent Crime? From: Steven Levitt To: Steve Sailer Posted: Monday, August 23, 1999, at 9:32 a.m. PT Sign Up for E-mail Auto-Delivery In recent weeks there has been a lot of media coverage of a paper John Donohue and I recently wrote connecting the legalization of abortion in the 1970s to reduced crime in the 1990s. The purpose of the study is to better understand the reasons for the sharp decline in crime during this decade, which, prior to our research, had largely eluded explanation. While there are many other theories as to why crime declined (more prisoners, better policing, the strong economy, the decline of crack, etc.), most experts agree that none of these very convincingly explains the 30 percent to 40 percent fall in crime since 1991. The theoretical justification for our argument rests on two simple assumptions: 1) Legalized abortion leads to fewer "unwanted" babies being born, and 2) unwanted babies are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are therefore at an increased risk for criminal involvement later in life. The first assumption, that abortion reduces the number of unwanted children, is true virtually by definition. The second assumption, that unwanted children are at increased risk for criminal involvement, is supported by three decades of academic research. If one accepts these two assumptions, then a direct mechanism by which the legalization of abortion can reduce crime has been established. At that point, the question merely becomes: Is the magnitude of the impact large or small? Our preliminary research suggests that the effect of abortion legalization is large. According to our estimates, as much as one-half of the remarkable decline in crime in the 1990s may be attributable to the legalization of abortion. We base our conclusions on four separate data analyses. First, we demonstrate that crime rates began to fall 18 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across the nation, just the point at which babies born under legalized abortion would be reaching the peak adolescent crime years. In my opinion, this is the weakest of our four data analyses. In a simple time series, many factors are negatively correlated with crime. Furthermore, the world is a complicated place and it would be simplistic to believe that legalized abortion could overpower all other social determinants of crime. Second, we show that the five states that legalized abortion in 1970--three years before Roe vs. Wade--saw crime begin to decrease roughly three years earlier than the rest of the nation. This is a bit more convincing to me but still far from conclusive. Third, we demonstrate that
[PEN-L:9631] RE: Information about the American Economic Group
Has anyone ever heard of the American Economic Group? Apparently, they conduct tobacco-friendly research for the Tobacco Institute, and recently may have published a report suggesting that the tobacco industry generated $54.3 billion in wages and other compensation in 1994. I would greatly appreciate any information you may have on this group. Jeffrey L. Fellows, Ph.D. Office on Smoking and Health National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 4770 Buford Highway, N.E. (MS-K50) Atlanta, GA 30341-3724 Tel: (770) 488-5066 Fax: (770) 488-5848 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8902] RE: OECD data
I would also like to hear others' opinions on this data source. Jeff -Original Message- Sent: Friday, July 02, 1999 11:13 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8814] OECD data Apologies to those who are not interested, but I am about to compare industry structure in OECD countries using the OECD's Structural Analysis Database (STAN), which takes national data and adjusts it for greater consistency. If there are any opinions on the methods, accuracy, etc. of this source I would greatly appreciate it if you would send them to me directly. Bill Burgess
[PEN-L:8599] re: interpersonal utility comparisons (was Thomas Friedman an economist?)
Doesn't the process of comparing differences in ordinal rankings bring
cardinal rankings back into the function, thereby violating the
noncardinality condition?
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 1999 10:34 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:8596] re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
Ken Hanly wrote:
COMMENT: But this confirms my point doesn't it? Isn't it a core
assumption of neoclassical economists that it is impossible to make
interpersonal comparisons of utility? Am I wrong in thinking that? Isn't
it standard that among most that only cardinal rankings of utility by
individuals is possible?
Correction: only ordinal rankings are admissible.
The injunction against interpersonal comparisons of utility became SOP in
the 1930s after Lionel Robbins brought Frederich Hayek to the LSE. Tibor
Scitovsky's (1950?) essay on the 'old' welfare economics versus the 'new'
welfare economics raises the appropriate objections about this "no
interpersonal comparisons" line.
While it may be impossible to make interpersonal comparisons, it's
impossible NOT to make them (since interpersonal comparisons are embedded
within every individual's utility function). So just maybe it would be
better to make them modestly while acknowledging their impossibility
rather
than to LOUDLY PRETEND to not make them and then covertly introduce them
behind one's own back.
"Pareto optimality" is obfuscatory hogwash. The the big covert
interpersonal
comparison of utility of the post 1930s welfare economics was introduced
by
Enrico Barone in 1908 and carried forward without objection or
qualification
by Abram Bergson in 1938. The spell cast by the Pareto-Barone-von
Mises-Hayek-Robbins-Bergson mystification is marvelously convoluted.
What it comes down to is a pseudo-mathematical proof that to optimize
social
welfare a collectivist state would have to perfectly simulate the workings
of the free competitive market. The covert interpersonal comparison is
introduced in a false identity equating output with welfare.
In plain words, here's the interpersonal comparison: more stuff = better
living ("as if the power of compelling or inducing men to labour twice as
much at the mills of Gaza for the enjoyment of the Philistines, were proof
of any thing but a tyranny or an ignorance twice as powerful.") It's as
simple as that. Read the Barone.
What's doubly shameful is how "Marxism" bought into this incredible
regression. Oskar Lange thought the argument was just dandy and proposed
placing a marble statue of von Mises in the hall of the socialist ministry
of production. I guess marble statues were in vogue in the 1930s.
The difference between shit and shinola: if you assume that maximum output
equals maximum welfare, you're making an interpersonal comparison of
utility
between those who have a preference for consumption goods and those who
have
a preference for disposable time. The "no interpersonal comparison" crowd
relies on that assumption.
regards,
Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
[PEN-L:8009] RE: Good critiques of MAI, Tobin tax/alternatives
I am examing provisions of the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) for their potential impact on the ability of governments to conduct tobacco control activities. I have been away from the Intl trade and finance arena for about three years, and would like to get any input from the list on good critical assessments of MAI (and trade-investment agreements like NAFTA), the Tobin tax, and any alternatives to the Tobin tax. Any suggestions? Jeff
[PEN-L:7049] RE: Re: Re: punitive damages
Peter, I would like the list of references you mention. Jeff -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 4:28 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:7047] Re: Re: punitive damages The mainstream position (which goes back several decades) is that, for economic efficiency, the punitive multiple should be inverse to the probability that the tort will be relieved. So if there is a one in three chance that polluters get caught, damages assessed should be multiplied by three. Very standard Pigovian stuff. The deeper question is whether the cost internalization paradigm is adequate. I've got a bunch of articles saying it's not, at least in the context of occ safety and health. I'll be happy to share with anyone interested. Peter Jim Devine wrote: I'm not going to side with the following, but I think that some reform of the tort system is in order. It seems that there are frivolous lawsuits launched in order not just to get compensatory damages but also to win big punitive damages. I see nothing wrong with compensatory damages (if the plaintiff is right about liability) but it makes sense to me that the plaintiff shouldn't get the punitive damages. Instead, they should be put in some general government fund to finance needed stuff like day-care centers. Under this system, (1) the defendant would be punished, (2) the plaintiff would be compensated for damage done to him or her, (3) there would be less arbitrariness and unpredictability of punitive damage awards because fewer plaintiffs and attorneys would "go for the gold," and (4) the punitive damages might pay for something useful. Vicusi argues: Legal scholars and judges have long expressed concerns over the unpredictability and arbitrariness of punitive damages awards. Proposed remedies, such as restricting punitive damages to narrowly defined circumstances, have not yet met with success. This paper addresses the threshold issue of whether, on balance, punitive damages have benefits in excess of their costs. There is no evidence of a significant deterrent effect based on an original empirical analysis of a wide range of risk measures for the states with and without punitive damages. These measures included accident rates, chemical spills, medical malpractice injuries, insurance performance, and other outcomes that should be affected by punitive damages, but which are not. Punitive damages can and do cause substantial economic harm through their random infliction of economic penalties. I am not a lawyer and do not play one on TV. I would appreciate your comments on this idea. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
[PEN-L:6675] RE: Re: Re: Re: Econometrics
IMHO the fascination with genetics and disease causation seems very ideological. Perhaps once the human genome mapping is complete, and widespread evaluation research shows genetic predispositions don't mean much (statistically) for most adverse health conditions, we might be able to move away from efforts to provide genetic causes for largely social problems. -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 1999 1:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:6663] Re: Re: Re: Econometrics Natural science may be corrupt - a servant of power, money, and orthodoxy - but I don't think you could sustain this kind of untruth for 30 years in physics or biology, could you? Economics is a more ideological subject than biology or physics, partly because economics is so much more crucial to legitimating the system. That is, economics' corruption is more systematic: individual biologists sell out to drug industry, but the dominant school of economics as a whole has sold out. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
[PEN-L:6592] RE: on econometrics
Without econometrics, I doubt if I could argue that homicide was related to poverty and income inequality instead of race and "southern culture." Getting past the latter two myths is difficult enough as it is. Thankfully, there is decent theory behind the empirical relationships, including how one gets from income inequality to diffused interpersonal violence. I am not a skilled econometrician, and I would love to get any suggestions others have for empirical methods that will be taken seriously by applied scientists. Please send references. Jeff -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 11:42 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:6580] on econometrics Can an econometric exercise ever produce anything more than a hint of an interesting idea? I suspect that a skillful econometrician can find a relationship between any two arbitrary data sets. As econometric techniques become more sophisticated, become more brittle. How is a sophisticated econometric model more convincing than a simple scatter diagram? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:4505] RE: Re: Taylor Taylorism
I found the sections on Taylor and taylorism and Babbagism in Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital to be very well done. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 1999 9:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:4498] Re: Taylor Taylorism Thomas Kruse [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/24/99 06:35AM Dear PEN-L: Any suggestions on a good introduction to Taylor and Taylorism? ((( " A "Scientific System of Sweating" by W. U.S. capitalism is ahead of all. The greatest development of technology and the most rapid progress are facts which make old Europe emulate the Yankees. But it is not the democratic institutions that the European bourgeoisie is borrowing from America, nor political liberty, nor, yet the republican political system, but the latest methods of exploiting workers. The most widely discussed topic today in Europe, and to some extent in Russia, is the "system of the American engineer, Frederick Taylor. Not so long ago Mr. Semyonov read a paper on this system in the assembly hall of the Railway Engineering Institute in St. Petersburg. Taylor himself has described his system under the title of "scientific", and his book is being eagerly translated and promoted in Europe. What is this "scientific system" ? Its purpose is to squeeze out of the worker three times more labour during a working day of the same length as before. The sturdiest and most skilful worker is put to work: a special clock registers - in seconds and fractions of a second - the amount of time spent on each operation and each motion; the most economical and most efficient working methods are developed; the work of the best worker is recorded on cinematographic film, etc. The result is that, within the same nine or ten working hours as before, they squeeze out of the worker three times more labour, mercilessly drain him of all his strength, and are three times faster sucking out every drop of the wage-slave's nervous and physical energy. What if he dies earlier than he did before ? Well, there are many others waiting at the gate ! In capitalist society, progress in science and technology means progress in the art of sweating. Here is an example from Taylor's book. Speaking of the operation of loading cast iron on the handcarts for further processing, the author compares the old and the new, "scientific", system: Old New system Number of workers engaged in loading 500140 Average number of tons loaded by one worker ( a ton equals 61 poods) .. 16 39 Average earnings of worker (rubles)..2.30 3.75 Expenditure incurred by factory owner per ton of load (kopeks)14.4 6.4 The capitalist cuts his expenditure by _half_ or more. His profits grow. The bourgeoisie is delighted and cannot praise the Taylors enough ! The workers get a wage increase at first. But hundreds of workers get the sack. Those who are left have to work four times more intensively, doing a back-breaking job. When he has been drained of all his strength, the worker will be kicked out. Only young and sturdy workers are taken on. It is sweating in strict accordance with all the precepts of science. Pravada No. 60, March 13, 1913 W. (V. I. Lenin) Collected Works Vol. 18, pp 594-95
[PEN-L:3820] RE: Age discrimination in employment and earnings
Does anyone know of any recent empirical work on this subject? Jeffrey L. Fellows, Ph.D. Division of Violence Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 4770 Buford Highway NE (mailstop K60) Atlanta, GA 30341-3724 tele: (770) 488-1529 fax: (770) 488-4349 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2773] RE: Re: Chimpanzees, AIDS and ecology
Why should the relation between socioeconomic status and HIV/AIDS be any different than it is for another other illness and injury? -Original Message- From: Sam Pawlett [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 4:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:2771] Re: Chimpanzees, AIDS and ecology Does anyone know of any reliable information on the genesis and epidemiology of HIV? The fact that it disproportionately attacks blacks, gays, drug addicts and the poor is just a little too convenient for me. I know there is lot of conspiracy theory around HIV _AIDS and the Doctors of Death_ by Alan Cantwell( not a good name for a doctor) etc.One of the more plausible c-theories was that it was spread through hepatitus B vaccines. The first reported case of HIV was in the early 80's, no? Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:2389] RE: Email address of Peter Arno
Does anyone have Peter Arno's e-mail address or phone number? Jeffrey L. Fellows, Ph.D. Economist Division of Violence Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 4770 Buford Highway NE (mailstop K60) Atlanta, GA 30341-3724 tele: (770) 488-1529 fax: (770) 488-4349 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1827] RE: Jim Craven vs. Clark College
Valis, did you even read the article? -- From: valis -- Vancouver (Washington State) Columbian, Sunday Dec. 20, 1998 Clark College restricts professor's computer use E-mail feud with Canadian student triggers hints of defamation lawsuit against college By Richard S. Clayton, Columbia staff writer Yup, it can only be another day or two before the networks are obliged to pick this one up. Poor Clark! It'll be toasted worse than Clinton. valis
[PEN-L:1005] RE: unemployed Ph.D.'s
I agree with Barkley that the whole line about tenured faculty hiring twits as a way of protecting their own positions is unreasonable. I have participated in the hiring processes of two econ departments, from the employer's perspective, and I have never seen good candidates overlooked regardless of their theoretical stance. In fact, most of the persons actually interviewed were rejected because they would not have been able to communicate or relate to their students. In this regard, I think heterodox economists are overall more qualified than most neoclassicals. But, I also think that heterodox economists have to know neoclassical theory much more keenly than neoclassicals since we are asked to prove our knowledge more often. We also suffer in the hiring/tenure process because of our theoretical perspective, but this is something I am willing to accept if it means independence from the 'Borg collective' (a Star Trek reference). However, Lou's post is relevant to Pen-l since it does have meaning for many current grad students and new PhDs in economics. I am a recently minted PhD from the U of Utah, which is pretty well known for its marxist focus, even though there are institutionalists, post-keynesians, and neoclassicals at Utah as well. There has a heavy emphasis on history of thought, philosophy of science, and little emphasis on empirical analysis and econometrics. I liked these features and was helped a great deal by them (in terms of my teaching and theoretical research). However, you can get lost in abstract theoretical fields and dissertation work that may make you virtually unemployable. A friend of mine at Utah suffered this fate, partially because of his own delusions of the academic market's desire for heterodox economists with backgrounds limited to "high theory," and partly from poor advice (or ambivalence) from his PhD committee. He ended up hating much of economics and the academe, and after a year or so was finally hired at a community college. Another friend is wasting away as an adjunct for a handful of LA-area schools. Most of the others from Utah I know have shit jobs even by historical Uof U standards. To be competitive it seems one has to have at least one applied field, or show that you can and want to do some applied work. This is especially important for non-maintream economists. I think econ departments can do more for their grad students. I was very lucky in this regard. My committee chair was young, empirically oriented, and gave guidance that turned out to be right on. I deliberately chose a dissertation topic that was in a field I liked, yet was in demand (health), and he helped me construct a dissertation that both exhibited marketable skills (multiple regression analysis of a large dataset) and embodied a marxian framework (proletarianization of physicians). So far the drift into neo-marxian analysis has been temporary. I accepted it for expedience and a wider range of future employment. Thankfully, I'm in a position where I can do more classical marxian theoretical work alongside more mainstream empirical work- schizophrenia being better than a neoclassical in drag ;-). Even so, I am in a post-doctoral position that gives my employer two years to test drive me at cut-rate prices (I do make more than most new assistant professors). The higher-ups here (CDC) don't care about my theoretical perspective, and I'm smart enough to not cram it in their faces either, so things are looking okay. I worry a great deal that by the time I get back into academia there won't be anything left worth going to. Jeff -- From: Rosser Jr, John Barkley What did seem to be her practical bottom line was that English grad students should be taught skills allowing them to get non-academic jobs. That may well be, but I see no relevance of that to economists. Hence, I did not see the relevance of Lou's posting of this article to this list. Barkley Rosser nha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[PEN-L:630] RE: teaching in prison
Thanks for the post Mike. I would also like to here from anyone involved with teaching in prison and about teaching programs. I think the potential for reducing recidivism (along with other benefits to the incarcerated) makes these appealing programs. Jeff -- From: Mike Yates To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:615] teaching in prison Date: Wednesday, October 21, 1998 9:48PM Friends, Last night I taught my first class in prison. A friend of mine has been teaching classes in Western Penitentiary, located along the Ohio river in Pittsburgh, for some time and she talked me into giving a class in economics next fall. She wanted me to get acclimated so I agreed to do a class on the economy last night. It was a great experience. About 10 guys, all black but one, attended and the discussion was very lively. I could have cried thinking about how interested and engaged these people were compared to so many of my college students. The state has cancelled all money for these guys to get college credits and degrees, despite the fact that such programs seem to work really well in reducing recidivism. My friend was so upset by this that she organized an informal certificate program which is going well so far. I was a little nervous berfore the class, not so much about going into a prison but worried that I might be asked questions I could not answer. The students were challenging but very respectful. I'm sure I'll go back. One thing I did get nervous about was the drug "frisk". A guard runs this machine over you and then takes a sort of film out of the machine and puts it into another machine and this machine is supposed to be able to detect over a hundred different drugs. I do not use drugs (I quit so as not to be a bad influence on my sons, but this did not do much good as it turned out!), but I brought this really old brief case with me, and god knows what was once in it. Anyway I passed the test! Have people on the list taught in prisons? If so, I'd be interested to know about any materials you found useful. in solidarity, michael yates
[PEN-L:379] RE: right wing decline?
Maybe most people are not as historically naive as we might otherwise think. Perhaps the educational system, the media, folks who were around 50 years ago, etc. have driven home the idea that economic chaos breeds fascism and so folks wary of slippery slopes wish to avoid sending supportive messages to fascist candidates. Just a hopeful thought. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:378] right wing decline? Date: Saturday, October 03, 1998 8:36PM I see that Pauline Hansen did poorly in Australia. The extreme right fell back in Germany. What is happening? Are the conventional right parties just coopting their program or is something else afoot? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:348] Query: PolEcon studies of tobacco trade
Hi folks: Does anyone know of good articles on the political economy of the tobacco and cigarette trade, particularly as it relates trade/investment liberalization? Jeff
[PEN-L:89] RE: Starr's report and Willy Freed on the same day
The sports media has mentioned that Mark McGuire hit homer number 61 on his dad's 61st birthday. I was wondering if anyone had seen anything yet about how Kieko the whale (of 'Free Willy' fame) was flown to Iceland on the same day that Starr's report was delivered to Congress? My guess is there are some good grins to be had. Jeff
[PEN-L:1465] RE: Health care question
-- From: michael perelman: Dave Richardson continues to supply us with the excellent reports. This one struck me as curious: Rising health care costs over the past 20 years have hit employers harder than employees, the Employee Benefit Research Institute says. Despite rising health costs in the last two decades and despite the increased use of cost sharing by employers, individuals are paying a smaller percentage of total health care costs today than in the past. In recent years, employers have controlled cost increases by moving workers into managed care health plans, expanding utilization review for active workers, increasing premium cost-sharing with workers, and scaling back retiree health care plans. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-10). Does this suggest that the companies just dropped health care for the less favored workers and have been eating a larger share of the cost for the more favored employees? Yes and no. The proportion of workers without company health care workers is rising. However, the proportion that employers pay their remaining employees is also decreasing. The unmentionable part of this is that the proportion paid by the state is rising (Medicaid and Medicare). There may also be a larger portion of free health care, since the percentage of persons unable to pay, but not covered by Medicaid, is getting larger. Jeff
[PEN-L:937] query: Men/women earnings studies
Pen-lers: Does anyone know of a good and recent study of earnings differences between men and women related to both occupational tracking and pay descrimination (comparable worth)? Jeff
[PEN-L:408] RE: Naive question on Japanese Debt
I find it hard to believe that only Chrysler stockholdes would have been hurt, even forgetting about union contracts which was a bigger pill to swallow back then than it is now. Consider: Chrysler bankruptcy -- collapse in stock values -- collapse of asset values used as collateral on other loans (by firms, banks, and wealthy stockholders)--- banks owed money call-in loans, former stockholders (firms, banks, etc.) sell assets, trim production costs, call-in other loans--further bankruptcies-- return to step two. Anyone associated with this chain will be adversely affected. But, New owner(s) [one of the remaining big two?] gets Chrysler cheap---immediately halts production and investment on current and potential money losers (and maybe future money earners: if I remember correctly Iacocca (sp?) came to Chrysler with the K-car and minivan ideas Ford higherups had vetoed, so no minivan craze and maybe proportionally more jobs go to Mexico)--- lots of high-paying low-skill jobs are cut and these folks are turned lose on other sectors, lowering wages; supplier connections are altered and maybe employment is churned as well, some win some lose; and let's not forget the absolute and redistributive impacts of the increased degree of monopolization in the auto industry. If such scenarios are reasonable, it seems both lead to net negative impacts on workers. But then again, who can say what might have happened. If Chrysler goes banko, how would investors and corporate managers have behaved after that? This is largely speculative mumbo-jumbo in its own right, who knows what might have been. Who loses and who wins is important. If some capitalists lose, do all capitalists lose? Marxian analysis would say that the remainder will win. If some workers lose, do all workers lose on the whole (even if an equal proportion of workers also win)? Jeff -- From: Michael Perelman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:404] Re: Re: Naive question on Japanese Debt Date: Friday, July 31, 1998 1:33PM I wholly agreee with Randy. Maybe we are are crazy but this talk of a financial crisis seems to be constructed out of device to protect what Marx called fictititous capital. Forgetting about union contracts for the moment, what would have happened if Chrysler had gone bankrupt and somebody picked up the company for a fraction of what it had been worth previously. The new owner would have earned a healthy profit because the investment would be low. He could afford to pay good wages. Only the investors in Chrysler stock would have been hurt, along with a few Mercedes dealers. A minor shock at best. We call it rational when firms downsize; why can't the stock market be allowed to downsize and let the economy go on as before. Maybe I am wrong/crazy Nobody else on pen-l except Gene/Mat/and Randy from afar seems to be interested in this. So maybe I should drop it. Randy Wray wrote: 1. someone recently told me a story of a financial official (i can't remember if it was a banker or a regulator) who had visited a mom and pop grocery store in denver to look over the books. her/his assessment was that the store was hopelessly bankrupt, and mom and pop didn't even know it. indeed, they had probably been bankrupt for years, and probably would remain so for years to come. so long as no one looked closely at the books and inventory (there had been stuff on the shelves for yrs, carried at purchase price but no longer of any value whatsoever), this store could remain in business for yrs to come. but any close analysis would cut off all bank credit and the store would close down. whaddyado? 2. another story. a regulator at the occ assured me that he could take any bank, no matter how insolvent, and cook the books to keep it open for 5 years. and hey, things might turn around. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:139] Re: Re: The Left and Inequality
-- From: Gar W. Lipow: I appreciate the correction. It reinforces my point -- if income was divided up more or less equally a more than 80% would be better off in immmediate material terms (not mention the benefits of reduced insecurity, lower crime rates ) Two questons 1). To get a feel for how more or less equal incomes would compare to the way people live now now, don't you have to substract capital spending, ? Thus the revelevent figure would not be either real GDP or direct wages, but real GDP less capital investment. When I say revelevent, I mean to this particular aspect -- the material advantages of equality. My response: Capital spending by one firm is revenue to another firm, so subtracting capital spending on investment goods would be inappropriate. Capital depreciation may be an issue, but accurately measuring it is very difficult. I also left the issue of unutilized capacity out of the analysis. Certainly, the GDP/labor year figures have relevance only insofar as we think GDP reflects the realization of new value. GDP doesn't do a thing for nonmarket productive activities, particularly those that do have use value but remain outside the scope of the market (household production or reproduction). My purpose in developing these estimates is to include future production losses in calculating the cost-effectiveness of public health prevention strategies (an emportant concern for my employer). I wanted to use output per labor hour, instead of market earnings, as a basis for the calculation. I assumed commodity market prices were the technical measure of productivity, not earnings, and that a nonsubstitution principle held, i.e., that a lost life represented a loss of a technical potential to produce social wealth. In this way, I tried to avoid the problems of marginalist theory vis-a-vis measuring technical productivity, including the incompatability between wage rates and productivity levels at the micro level, causal direction at the macro-level, race/gender biases in wages and occupation, and the inability of employers to redistribute capital among workers (related to the first two issues). By using GDP/capita (age-weighted by relative productivity [used median earnings of FTEs for each age group] and average annual hours), researchers can make (I think) a more complete case for health promotion and disease/injury prevention, at least in the terms that most public health policy folks are used to considering. In mainstream circles, it can be used to say "look, employers are losing out too, and once they do substitute for a lost worker the remaining loss, dare I say deadweight loss, is absorbed by society at large." In left circles, with a nod given to my nondifferentiation between productive and unproductive labor, I hope these estimates will be useful for progressive research and purposes. One issue I am still wrestling with is determining the best estimate for future productivity growth. The post-WWII data says roughly 2 percent. All of the middle-road future estimates say 1 percent. However, it seems the 1 percent is too low. Has anyone seen anything that considers this issue in a way that could support choosing one rate over the other? It is not trivial, since it may mean a $200,000 difference in potential lifetime output per capita. It is also important since my guess is that about .4 percent of the increase will be necessary just to overcome the potential demand problems associated with population aging. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I would also send anyone a draft of the paper for prepublication comments. 2) I'd be curious to get a similar feel for what would happen if income was redistributed among the worlds population. The world GDP figures I've heard are about $5,000-$6,000 per person -- which might not be advantagous in the industrialized world but would be a heck of an improvement for 80% or 90% of humanity. Jeff: Such comparisons depend largely on using purchasing power parities, or similar method, to translate wealth in one currency to wealth in another (like rupies to dollars). These methods don't work well at all, so any comparison is fruitless. PPP-based comparisons may work pretty well for USA-to-rich European country analyses.
[PEN-L:127] Re: The Left and Inequality
By my estimates, which will be published soon: Real GDP/labor year [40hours a week x 52 weeks] in 1995 was $54,985 for workers 16 and over. Real GDP/person with work experience was $48,093, and per capita was $32,955. Of course, these figures do not include accumulated wealth, which is what others have mentioned. According to industry breakdowns in Gross Product Originating, actual employee compensation accounted for about 57.9% of the total. Jeff -- From: Gar W. Lipow To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:125] Re: Re: Re: The Left and Inequality Date: Monday, July 06, 1998 2:57PM Actually I think that even in terms of income that this is plain wrong. I recently saw the figure cited on the LBO list that if the U.S.GDP were distributed equally per hour worked (after substacting capital investment) then pre-tax earnings would be $22 an hour. This means a single earner family would earn $44,000 a year for a forty hour work week. A dual earner family would earn $88,000 a year.
[PEN-L:107] RE: Poverty and illness
The Wilkenson is excellent, and represents a growing body of research on the negative association between income inequality and morbidity and mortality. Wilkenson makes a nice connection between the social stresses created by poverty and low social status and biological disfunction. It is a good complement to the largely population-based research on the subject. The income inequality research is a subset of a much larger, and growing, body of work on the negative relationship between socioeconomic status and morbidity and mortality, including personal violence. The American Journal of Public Health devoted its September, 1997 issue to social class and health, and the August 15, 1997 issue of Science has an interesting piece by Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, on neighborhood violence, SES, and social protective factors for homicide. Marxists are probably most aware of the role of poverty in fostering social forms of violence. For personal violence, low SES has a well-established impact on the incidences and severity of intimate partner violence, child abuse and neglect, and youth violence. Increasing income has also been shown to be protective for future (personal) violence for persons at risk, such as children witnessing parental violence who may or may not have violence intimate relationships in the future. A note of caution, the role of economics in intimate partner violence must be examined in a way that addresses the way in which market work roles impact the relative power of abuser and abused. Some earlier work posited that which ever spouse earned the most income would use their higher status to wield control over their partner. In other words, if a married woman earned twice as much as her husband, she would have the decisive decision-making authority in the family. This is certainly not the case, women who earn more than their working-class husbands are generally at greater risk for IPV than women who do not earn as much as their husbands. A good example of work in this area is Karen Pyke, "Women's Employment As a Gift or Burden?: Marital Power Across Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage," in Gender Society, v8(1), March 1994, pp. 73-91. I am currently working on a review paper of the SES and personal violence literature. I will share it with others when it is done. Jeff -- From: Louis Proyect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:106] Poverty and illness Date: Thursday, July 02, 1998 1:35PM Life Death on the Social Ladder HELEN EPSTEIN July 16, 1998 BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality by Richard G. Wilkinson 255 pages, $75.00 (hardcover), $20.99 (paperback) published by Routledge Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity, and the Reconstruction of Working Life by Robert Karasek and Töres Theorell 381 pages, $16.00 (paperback) published by Basic Books Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping by Robert M. Sapolsky 368 pages, $14.95 (paperback) published by W.H. Freeman The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart Disease by Stewart Wolf and John G. Bruhn 192 pages, $21.95 (paperback) published by Transaction
[PEN-L:427] Re: The Economic Meaning of Violence/2
It is important how you specify "decades." Clearly, over the last decade crime rates have been going down, at the same time incarcerations have dramatically risen. This does not mean that incarceration prevents crimes, although many criminal justice researchers, and social conservatives, are quick to make this link. I do not have the article on hand, so I can't comment on the source of his crime data. If he is using the national crime victimization survey, instead of police reports (uniform crime reports), then the numbers will be higher. However, the 1994 NCVS was redesigned to better estimate crimes like rape and sexual assault. This resulted in higher numbers in 1994, vs 1992, data. If, however, the author includes the rapid rate increases in the 1960s mid-1980s, but does not separate out the leveling and declines during the 1990s, then his analysis is flawed. In the data I have seen, and worked with, nothing leads me to believe that criminal behavior, or crimes, are on the rise, let alone outpaced the imprisonment growth rate (itself greatly constrained by limited capacity). In fact, this is a relationship progressives need to communicate, i.e., that crime is falling. So let's redirect public resources toward equitable health, housing and education. To be fair, I will read the article before offering further criticism. Jeff -- From: Thomas Kruse To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:420] Re: The Economic Meaning of Violence/2 Date: Thursday, June 04, 1998 8:52AM I'm wondering if anyone knows of any writing on the economic meaning of violence My, what a post; really got the old brain clunking. I just read Isaach Ehrlich's "Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses" in the Journal of Econ Perspective, v10, n1, winter 1996. One intersting note, perhaps relevant to your prupose. Ehrlich notes: - "crime has been a growth industry in the US over the last decades" (he looks at murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assualt, burglary, larceny, auto theft) - "the probabalility and severity of punishment has been falling over the last three decades. A lower percentage of offenses known to police is resulting in arrest; the probability of imprisonment is smaller; and the time served in prison is shorter" - "the growth in prison population, substantial as it is, has not kept up with the even larger growth in criminal behavior." Ehrlich notes, from his peculiar neo-classical view, the state can't keep up with crime (dole out "negative incentives" fast enough). Now, does violence (in this case "crime") -- might be that "whole vast arena of action that laws have not prohibited that violence by individuals and groups has policed" -- serve the functioning of the capitalist economy? Does that violence add up to policing, that is, help in the process of producing a docile body politic, manageble laboring classes, and a neutralized reserve army? You post suggests two kinds of violence (many more are possible): state sanctioned, and not. Not would presumably be other kinds of violence in society (abusive coercion at work, rape, gay bashing, domestic abuse, "hate crimes", etc.). Both state sanctioned or not, however, require a great deal more specification. Once specified, I imagine in some instance we'd have to back off simple functionalist depictions of violence (implied in my questions above). Some forms are very ambiguous (though admitted some are definitely not). . Changing tack abruptly (it's late), an observation from anthropology: there are numerous examples of cultures and civilizations not forced to "choose" between legally enforceable property rights (contracts backed by police) and generalized violence, be it state sanctioned or in "vast arenas" not yet criminalized/regulated, and carried out by individuals and groups. Numerous other mechanisms for assuring mutual accountability and control over the social distribution of property without such violence are evident -- not equitable, but evident. I would recommend Penelope Harvey and Peter Gow's volume _Sex and Violence: Issues in Representation and Experience_. See especially Olivia Harris' article "Condor and Bull" on masculity, social order and violence in rural Bolivia. Very suggestive on where kinds of violence come from; how they are played out; how they become "meaningfull". She notes, for example, four contexts of violence: "1. feuds between ayllus (communities) over territorial borders which are known in the Aymara and Quechua of the region as ch'axwa; 2. the battles genearlly known as as tinku which are highly insitutionalized and closely associatec with the ritual calendar; 3. the fights between individual or groups which break out during fiestas as a result of interpersonal tensions; 4. the common place violence of men against their wives" In each context she distinguishes who attacks who, relative balance in the confrontation, etc. In her account she departs from functionalism; violence is not simply a
[PEN-L:188] RE: pen-l format: removing the prefix from the subject line
I think the PEN-L prefix enables me to easily distinguish between this list and the much less useful PKT. But then again, I would rather suffer through PKT posts to get to pen-l posts if it meant losing people. Jeff -- From: Barnet Wagman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:186] pen-l format: removing the prefix from the subject line Date: Friday, May 22, 1998 12:59PM Is it possible - without a lot of work - to remove the [PEN-L:xxx] prefix from the subject line? The prefix (actually just the message number) screws up Netscape's threading, which makes reading a series of related comments much less convenient. Does anyone else feel this way? Thanks, Barnet Wagman __ Barnet Wagman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 773-645-8369 2118 W. Le Moyne St., 1st floor Chicago, IL 60622 __
Re: What makes a progressive student (was David Harvey's anomie)
Maggie's post about students not appreciating having their preconceptions challenged struck a familiar chord. It brings up an issue I think all progressive academics are concerned with, namely can and do professors substantially transform students' attitudes about society, or do they largely provide a framework that makes sense to students' established world view? Also, is there any sense that exposure to progressive ideas leads to attitude changes that are sustained over long periods, with or without what I could call ideological booster shots? Jeff -- From: MScoleman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: David Harvey's anomie Date: Thursday, April 30, 1998 10:06PM In a message dated 98-04-29 21:32:47 EDT, you write: Hmm, really? My own recent tours of campuses, and conversations with academics, combine to present a less pretty picture of the U.S. college population. They seem, for the most part, poorly educated and don't seem to give a fuck about much of anything. Am I just being too gloomy once again? Doug I recently had my classes read pieces of Edin and Lein's "Making Ends Meet" which is a comparison of the lives of welfare women and low wage women, and how they feed their kids with not enough money. The reactions of all my students, save one, before they read the material was that welfare women are all lazy and promiscuous. AFter my lecture and reading the material, most of them were not particularly happy with having their perceptions blurred -- but that's about as progressive as most of them are (at least in my classes). maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Good news: Welfare gains made in the last six years
AFDC has been renamed. It is now Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), or some such phrasing. I understand that federal block grant payments to states for TANF are larger than the former federal AFDC funding. However, I believe that the actual distribution of money payments to families and individuals is lower under TANF than AFDC. Is there anyone on the list who can confirm my understanding? Jeff -- From: Louis Proyect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Good news: Welfare gains made in the last six years Date: Wednesday, April 08, 1998 10:33AM At 07:01 AM 4/8/98 -0700, you wrote: GOOD NEWS: THE WELFARE GAINS MADE IN THE LAST SIX YEARS - Nathan Newman Even as many of us organize against the punitive effects of welfare "deform" and other social attacks, we should not ignore the successes and gains we have made in the last decade. Too much focus on losses can lead not to action but to disempowerment, so this post will lay out some good news on our successes embodied in the federal budget. This is obscene spin-doctoring on behalf of the reactionary Clinton. The problem we are facing is cutbacks in state aid to needy families. It is state funding not federal funding that goes into the AFDC program, which has been overthrown. Any increase in federal funding is more than offset by state cuts. The reason that these state cuts have been made is because the Democratic White House functions as an extension of the Reaganite attack on the safety net. Clinton offered no effective oppositon to the assault on AFDC for the same reason that he pushed so hard for NAFTA. He is a tool of big business. Louis Proyect
Query: NC theory leads to extinction
Pen-lers: Can someone provide a good source for the above statement? Preferably an admission by a well-known NC economist. Also, does anyone know if a similar (and well done) argument has been made wrt humans, in the context of CBA of environmental and public health policies? Let me know if my request is unclear. Jeff
RE: [Fwd: Crime and Punishment 1999 (fwd)]
Thank you for the reference Michael. I am organizing a long-term project roughly called "the economic causes and consequences of violence: a public health approach." The book will examine the public health issues of family and intimate partner violence, youth violence, and suicide, from a similar point of view. It will include sections on the economic causes (influences) of violence, the economic costs of violence, and the potential impact of violence prevention programs. I am currently working on narrower aspects of this subject, i.e., filling in the pieces. The criminal justice approach focuses on legally-defined crimal acts. The public health approach uses more of an episode-of-illness (or injury) classification. This can be a very important distinction (especially to Marxists) when you have categories of violence not defined as a crime. Jeff -- From: Michael Perelman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Fwd: Crime and Punishment 1999 (fwd)] Date: Friday, March 20, 1998 12:02PM Sid Shniad wrote: H. Bruce Franklin review in the Guardian Weekly: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN AMERICA By Elliott Currie Holt/Metropolitan. 230pp. US$23 THIS IS a very unfashionable book. Elliott Currie does not believe that we need to build more and more prisons, impose longer sentences, make prisons as harsh as possible, eliminate educational opportunities for prisoners, reinstitute chain gangs, treat juvenile offenders as adults, and divert still more funds from social services to penal institutions. He clings to the old-fashioned notion that we should concentrate more on the prevention of crime. He even goes so far as to accept the hopelessly outdated idea that widespread poverty is the main cause of violent crime. If all this were not antiquated enough, Currie also evidently assumes that rational argument based on scientific knowledge -- i.e. reason and facts -- can change social policy. Even his prose style is anachronistic: earnest, free of jargon, lucid. When Currie, who has taught sociology and criminology at Yale and Berkeley, advanced similar arguments in his 1985 volume Confronting Crime, the New York Times reviewer noted that the "biggest incarceration binge in merican history" had increased the nation's prison population from fewer than 200,000 in 1970 to 454,000 by 1984. What may have seemed an astonishing number of inmates back in 1984 is dwarfed by the current prison population of 1.2 million, plus an additional half-a-million people in local jails. The United States now has by far the largest prison system on the planet. There are more prisoners in California alone than in any other country in the world except China and Russia. The present U.S. rate of incarceration is six times the global average, seven times that of Europe, 14 times that of Japan, 23 times that of India. European rates of incarceration are consistently well below 100 per 100,000 population; the rate of incarceration of African-American males is close to 4,000 per 100,000. As Currie puts it in the present volume, "mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time," and we have thus been conducting a gigantic social "experiment," "testing the degree to which a modern industrial society can maintain public order through the threat of punishment." Has this experiment worked? Media attention has recently highlighted the falling rate of crime for the past four years. As Currie demonstrates, this decline has come during a period of unusually low unemployment and relative prosperity, actually bolstering his thesis that extreme poverty is the main cause of crime. Moreover, he notes that the crime rate has been falling only in relation to the extremely high levels of 1990-93. If we compare 1996 with 1984, the year cited in the review of Currie's earlier volume, we discover that the crime rate (according to the FBI's annual Crime Index) has actually risen 13 percent. The costs of this social experiment are immense. As Currie points out, the money spent on prisons has been "taken from the parts of the public sector that educate, train, socialize, treat, nurture, and house the population -- particularly the children of the poor." Currie if anything understates the consequences elsewhere in the public sector. For example, California now spends more on prisons than on higher education. Crime And Punishment In America cogently debunks what Currie labels the "myths" that rationalize and legitimize the prison craze. The "myth of leniency" (the prevailing notion that criminals are being let off too easily or let out too soon) is shown to be based on phony statistics, "unless we believe that . . . everyone convicted of an offense -- no matter how minor -- should be sent to jail or prison, and that all of those sent to prison should stay there for the rest
RE: funny story about AER (was ASSA session cuts)
A few years back, the University of Utah library tried to use journal usage as a method of deciding which journal subscriptions to maintain. They told patrons to leave the journals on the tables after examination, instead of reshelving them. After a period of time, the library began labelling the journals which were to have their subscriptions cancelled. The AER was on the list! As a qualifier, I think many of the few mainstream faculty (and the department) had the AER in their offices. I do doubt the AER was allowed to be cancelled, external program review problems and such, but it was a hoot to see the cancellation notice. I bet similar use studies (crude as it was) would produce the same results at many mainstream schools. Jeff -- From: Colin Danby To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ASSA session cuts Date: Thursday, March 19, 1998 9:11PM Barkley: Great letter. Is there any value in having more of us unwashed types write in support? If so can you post a name and address to write to? Thanks, Colin PS If AEA is busily stifling us hets is there any good reason to remain a member? I could easily manage without my own copies of its ubiquitous ( iniquitous) journals.
RE: What went right -- once again
IMHO, it seems that declining living standards, or at least stagnating relative to productivity, represents the redefinition of what Marx referred to as the culturally-specific subsistence wage (CSSW). In Marx, the subsistence wage is defined socially. So here in the US, access to a car or health insurance would be considered part of the cultural subsistence wage. This would necessarily change over time as part of the development process. As this cultural subsistence wage is pushed down toward actual subsistence, or actual growth in cultural subsistence wage is less than its expected growth, the rate of surplus value (or, more narrowly, the profit rate) increases. With increasing profits come increased investment, lower unemployment, increased output, and etc All appear good. But why doesn't the population stand up against the relative reduction in the CSSW? A safety valve, perhaps, has been the growth of indebtedness. But indebtedness is not the only part of this. With the widening use of consumer debt and leasing, mainly autos (I think auto leases are not included in consumer debt?), broad consumption patterns have changed. I think the change over the years from a save-till-you-buy to a buy-now-pay(w/ interest)-later pattern has mediated the deleterious impacts of a lower (or stagnating) CSSW. This brings up a question, what is the impact on aggregate demand associated with a shift over time from savings-based consumption to debt-based consumption? In addition, if the capacity to add debt at an individual level can stabilize demand (assuming of course that the supply of debt is forthcoming), what happens when this option has been expended (or retracted all together)? I may be wrong, pointing to the smallest tree in the forest, or beating a dead horse. But that is not new. Jeff -- From: Michael Perelman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: What went right -- once again Date: Thursday, March 19, 1998 12:25PM Louis Proyect said that he thought that I was being ironic with my original question. I was, but only to an extent. The economy looks so good from the top. The stock market is soaring. Business is in command. Even labor is doing a bit better in some ways. I don't think that this situation will last, but I never would have predicted that the economy would have been doing this well, this long [from the perspective of those on top]. We Marxists [even Chico Marxists] tend to see impending crises everywhere all the time. Maybe as Rob S. said, E. Asia is the thin wedge. Maybe not. Why have the capitalists succeeded? Some answered the redistribution of income and the defeat of labor [which I suspect is not unrelated to the fall of the USSR]. I also think of the opening of E. Europe, China, etc. to capitalism. I suspect that more is involved. I don't think that it will take much to prick the bubble, but still the economy has been more resiliant than I had expected. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: What went right
Part of the answer may lie in the correlation between the Fed and the Canadian Central Bank. I remember a study by a former professor of mine at Utah indicating the CCB acted like the 13th District in the U.S. Federal Reserve System. How this may relate to wider economic experiences between Canada and the US I cannot say. Jeff -- From: Michael Perelman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: What went right Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 10:44AM Interesting data. Why would the Canadian and U.S. banks be so much more successful in increasing their profitability? Mark Jones wrote: Here are the figures on commercial bank profitability, from the IMF 1997 report, International Capital Markets Developments, Prospects, and Key Policy Issues (supplementary tables), which demonstrates the adverse turn in the fortunes of Germany and Japan v. the Anglo-Saxon world. Not much signs of hyperaccumulation here (and the opaque German and Japanese figures are probably over-optimistic). In the later period it would appear to be the case that the major purchaser of US govt. and commercial bonds was not Germany or Japan - but the United Kingdom. Major Industrial Countries: Commercial Bank Profitability Real Return on Equity 1(In percent of total assets) 1985-89 1990-94 Canada7.9 12.1 France . . . -3.3 Germany 6.5 2.7 Italy. . .-1.2 Japan 10.4 1.5 United Kingdom 6.1 4.9 United States 5.0 8.5 Sources: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook database; OECD (1996); and IMF staff estimates. 1. Calculated as net income after taxes divided by capital and reserves at the end of the previous year, minus consumer price index for the year. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: Violence Prevention Research : Program Announcement # 98029charset=iso-8859-1
Please forward to anyone who might be interested... ___ Now Available via the Federal Register (access via the Internet is overdue and may happen today) . Applications for program announcement,"Grants for Violence-Related Injury Prevention Research" are due April 27, 1998. Approximately $2.0 million is expected to be available for injury research grants in the areas of suicidal behavior, firearm-related injury, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence. Specific priorities in these areas are as follows: 1. Injury prevention research addressing emerging issues in suicidal behavior ¦ Conduct research to develop and improve measurement instruments for the identification and study of suicides and suicide attempts in surveys, research studies, and surveillance systems. ¦ Conduct research designed to improve understanding of the nature of suicide risk among emerging high-risk populations such as young African American males. ¦ Conduct research that further illuminates understanding of the contribution of potential risk factors for suicide such as impulsivity, sexual orientation, and hopelessness. 2. Injury prevention research addressing firearm-related injuries among children and adolescents ¦ Conduct research to improve understanding of the motivations and deterrents for weapon carrying behavior among adolescents at high risk for firearm-related injuries. ¦ Conduct research that estimates injury risk associated with firearm storage or carriage practices. ¦ Conduct research that addresses the effects of firearm safety training and education programs on firearm storage and carriage practices. 3. Injury prevention research addressing sexual violence or intimate partner violence ¦ Conduct research to address the impact of welfare and welfare-to-work programs on women (and their children) who experience intimate partner violence. ¦ Conduct research to determine the effectiveness of prevention programs for adolescent males at risk for perpetration of sexual violence or intimate partner violence or intervention programs for perpetrators of sexual violence or intimate partner violence. ¦ Conduct research on risk factors for perpetration of sexual violence. Eligible applicants include all nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Thus, State and local health departments and State and local governmental agencies, universities, colleges, research institutions, and other public and private organizations, including small, minority and/or woman-owned businesses are eligible for these research grants. Current holders of CDC injury control research projects are eligible to apply. The fastest means to receive the program announcement, application and other relevant information is via the internet. The address is http://www.cdc.gov/funding.htm Individuals should then look under the topic heading "Injury" for program announcement #98029. Contact me at 770/488-4824, if you have additional questions. Ted Jones, Program Manager Research Grants Program Office of Research Grants National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
Re: the Titanic
Sisyphus. Jeff Fellows -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: the Titanic Date: Monday, February 23, 1998 5:47PM In a message dated 98-02-23 15:57:51 EST, you write: Can anyone think of a better metaphor than the Titanic one? Well, Jim, since you asked, how about Dante's Inferno. An eternity of crises. maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: query: bio chem weapons
I went to graduate school (econ) at the U of Utah between 1990 and 1994. I remembered the pronunciation but not the spelling. The stats came from a report I saw in 1993 or 1994, it gave tonnage figures for each state, along with the corporate culprits. It may have been from the EPA, but I cannot remember. Around that time I was also doing a wage survey for the State of Utah, so my access to the report may have come from there. Perhaps someone working on environmental issues would be able to help on this. I have never forgotten those numbers though. Of course, I also remember every phone number I have had since I was literally six years old. The cognitive clutter of life. The GSL has been receding over the last decade. In general, it's not a place many Utahns find appealing. It is the region's clogged bathtub. So along with its exceedingly high salt content (17% or some such figure), which gives it an oppressive smell, it is the final resting place for any industrial and sewage waste that gets past the water treatment systems. Jeff -- From: john gulick To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: query: bio chem weapons Date: Thursday, February 12, 1998 10:55AM At 03:43 PM 2/12/98 -0500, Jeff Fellows wrote: The Tooella incinerator is 40 miles west of Salt Lake City. Just west of the city is a magnesium plant that puts out more tons of particulate material each year than all the industries in California (130 million tons to 99 million tons). It's "Tooele" (but pronounced too-ELL-uh). Where did you get those stats on that magnesium plant? Hard to believe. About ten years ago I remember that SLC was on the verge of being swamped by a rising Great Salt Lake. That magnesium plant is within a stone's throw of the lake's shoreline, with a huge pile of slag and tailings beside it. Also hard for me to believe that the GSL isn't contaminated by that pile. John Gulick
RE: query: bio chem weapons
Chemical weapons are held in Umatilla, Oregon and Tooella (sp?), Utah. In both places the US Army are going to use incinerators to "dispose" of them. I believe the Utah incinerator is on-line, and exposing about 600,000 Utahns to risk. The Tooella incinerator is 40 miles west of Salt Lake City. Just west of the city is a magnesium plant that puts out more tons of particulate material each year than all the industries in California (130 million tons to 99 million tons). The Umatilla incinerator is still in the planning stages (I am not up to date on the political discussion there). The Umatilla depot is about 30 miles west of Pendleton (60-70K population) and 100 miles east of Portland, Oregon. Both incinerators are based on a Philippines plant design that has been questioned. Jeff Fellows -- From: James Devine To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: query: bio chem weapons Date: Thursday, February 12, 1998 2:35PM Does the US currently have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, as far as anyone knows? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html "A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and human beings dear." -- R.H. Tawney.
Re: Economic prose
Michael Perelman wrote: Marshall once said -- I think Paul Davidson might have mentioned this on the list before -- that once you have used your math to clear up your ideas, you should throw away the math and communicate in words. He was right. I agree with this statement. However, after reading D. McCloskey's article on Rhetoric in graduate school, I was taken by the peculiarity of its placement within the historical development of neoclassical economic theory. Over the course of NC econ development, the standard bearers have tried to respond to methodological and empirical criticisms from the left. For example, questions about the validity of neoclassical assumptions prompted Freidman to propose that realistic assumptions meant nothing, so long as they led to correct predictions; the predictions were later challenged; and so on. IMHO, just as it seems the list of possible defenses is exhausted, the McCloskey article appears and announces that the one (theoretician) with the best story will win the day. The implication seemed to be that even though the orthodoxy is incapable of reproducing itself on "scientific" grounds, it sure does tell a good (liberal) story. Although I found the McCloskey article appealing, it did seem (at the time) to be a rather thinly veiled defense of orthodoxy. But can you defend faulty science with good prose? Only if you are part of the orthodoxy. Jeff Fellows
RE: Raped environment led polluters on, attorneys argue
Sid: I love good satire. But I must object to posting unlabeled satirical pieces on pen-l. I do not have the time to worry about the authenticity of each item you present on pen-l. The more you post these pieces, the more skeptical I become of the other interesting articles you provide. The artistic value of "good" satire stands on its own, so please remove the braces. Jeff -- From: Sid Shniad To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Raped environment led polluters on, attorneys argue Date: Friday, January 23, 1998 6:11PM http://www.theonion.com January 21, 1998 RAPED ENVIRONMENT LED POLLUTERS ON, DEFENSE ATTORNEYS ARGUE OLYMPIA, WA--In their opening statement before jurors Monday, defense attorneys representing Pacific North Construction Lumber Corp. argued that their client was not at fault for the July 1997 rape of 30,000 acres of virgin forest, claiming that the forest led the development company on with "an eager and blatant display of its rich, fertile bounty." "While, obviously, it is extremely unfortunate that this forest was raped, it should have known better than to show off its lush greenery and tall, strong trees in the presence of my client if it didn't want anything to happen," said lead defense attorney Dennis Schickle, speaking before a courtroom packed with members of the media. "It's only natural for any red-blooded American developer to get ideas in its head when it's presented with that kind of untouched beauty." "The bottom line is," Schickle continued, "if you're going to tease and encourage like that, openly flaunting your abundant natural resources, don't be surprised by the consequences." Public opinion regarding the high-profile case, which is being closely watched by timber-industry lobbyists and victims' rights groups across the U.S., is deeply divided. While some contend that the forced ravaging of a piece of land until it is stripped bare is never justifiable under any circumstances, others say that such an action is understandable if the wooded area gives off mixed signals. "The Pacific North Construction Lumber Corp. had every reason to believe that that forest wanted it bad," said logger Victor Duffy of Chelan, WA. "Just look at where it was at the time of the incident: It was in a secluded, far-off place, nearly 25 miles from the nearest road. What were those trees doing in that kind of remote spot if they weren't looking for trouble?" Those siding with the timber company also cite the forest's history, claiming that it has a reputation for being easily exploited. "Believe me, this is no virgin forest," said Frank Abbate, owner of the Bellingham-based GH Consolidated Timber. "It may try to pass itself off as pristine and untouched, but I know for a fact that it has a long history of allowing itself to be used by developers." In his opening statement, defense attorney Schickle also pointed out that when Pacific North loggers arrived at the forest on the day in question, its floor was covered in alluring, fragrant flowers that were "clearly meant to attract." "When a forest drapes itself in flora of every color and scent imaginable, it's obviously asking for it," Schickle said. "I'm sure the plaintiff will argue that these radiant flowers were meant to lure pollen-hungry bees, not pulp-hungry loggers. But how was my client supposed to know this? When was it made clear that this colorful display was meant to attract one particular species of fauna but no other? When was it made clear that this forest was looking to satisfy the needs of bees and bees only?" Russell Belanger, president of the National Timber And Logging Association, agreed. "This forest made it seem like it wanted it, then cried environmental rape when it got it," he said. "At some point, we've got to start asking ourselves who the real victim is in these cases: our nation's promiscuous, manipulative forests, or the good, decent developers out there who are just trying to make an honest living razing the land."
RE: Critiques of NC risk analysis
Pen-l'ers: Does anyone know of a good radical critique of NC risk analysis? I am particularly interested in applications to health care, including questions related to estimating risks of illness and injury. Jeff Fellows Nat Center for Injury Prevention and Control Atlanta, Georgia (770) 488-1529 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
re: Doug's question
Jim: It is my experience that HMOs use a rather long list of intermediate outcomes to measure output. Health and illness are social constructs, and their quantification and measurement at the individual level is very difficult. So HMOs typically count services, such as the number of mammograms or flu shots, as an output. Insofar as the output (health, functional status, patient satisfaction, etc.) in health care is difficult to quantify, standardizing intermediate outcomes and health care production processes have been the primary focus in the emerging capitalist health care delivery system. One "outcomes" measurement method, called HEDIS, has only one actual health outcome (low birth weight, which can also be thought of as intermediate) among a list of 20 or so intermediate outcomes. The system is becoming capitalist in the sense that health care providers are increasingly becoming separated from both the means of production and the markets for their products. In the former structure, docs were able to utilize their control over markets, i.e. direct access to patients, to wield considerable control over hospitals, insurers, et al. (V. Navarro properly characterized this control as one being granted by capital interests as a means of veiling the social causes of illness from the population). The past and present systems currently coexist and the constantly changing features of health care delivery and policy reflect an intense power struggle between managed care firms and physicians over control of the industry. For anyone interested in studying the capitalist transformation of an industry in real time, the U.S. health care system is a very rich area. The difficulty in measuring and quantifying health outcomes has been an important factor leading to practice protocols' primary focus on cost minimization. HMOs that directly employ physicians have been particularly active in developing and rigidly implementing standardized practice protocols, utilizing cheaper nonphysician substitutes in the production of health care, and using the former as a means of increasing the use of the latter (i.e., standardization, fragmentation, and substitution - sound familiar?). This relationship is based on my micro-level empirical examination of young physicians' practice patterns and employment/managed care relations. Jeff Fellows -- From: James Devine To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: re: Doug's question Date: Sunday, December 07, 1997 8:53PM Jason says: While I concur, the medical industry is in shambles w.r.t. "productivity." Have you had a good experience with your HMO lately? You aren't responding to a quote from me, but I'll answer anyway: I have a hard time understanding what "productivity" means for HMOs. Number of sick people cured divided by the number of employee-hours hired? Service industries are notorious for making the measurement of output -- and thus produtivity -- difficult if not impossible. That's why I would focus on goods-producing industries, assuming that if prod. takes off there it probably does so with services, too, but to a lesser extent because service labor is harder to supervise in many cases. I'm agnostic about whether or not productivity is really coming back in the manufacturing industries. Like Doug, I don't have enough info... It's possible, though, that all this high-tech stuff is finally paying off. But who knows? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html Academic version of a Bette Midler song: "you are the hot air beneath my wings."
RE: HMOs (was re: Doug's question)
I agree wholeheartedly with Jim's statement that even if health outcomes could be quantified accurately, the focus would still be on cost minimization, and hence profit maximization. Jeff -- From: James Devine To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Fellows, Jeffrey Subject: HMOs (was re: Doug's question) Date: Monday, December 08, 1997 11:27AM thanks, Jeffrey, for the useful analysis of HMOs and productivity! The difficulty in measuring and quantifying health outcomes has been an important factor leading to practice protocols' primary focus on cost minimization. I think that even if they could measure output, they wouldn't care about it. What they care about is total revenue minus total cost (or stated as a rate of return). Because HMO revenues are largely fixed per patient once the deal has been struck, they try to profit by cutting costs. BTW, in case anyone cares, I agree with Anders' comment on "Doug's question" and Harry's comment on "dialectics, etc." in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html "The only cause of depression is prosperity." -- Clement Juglar.
RE: LITTLE JESSICA
Hoax, hoax, hoax. -- From: Ajit Sinha To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FW: LITTLE JESSICA Date: Monday, December 01, 1997 12:26AM Hi ! Everybody, LITTLE JESSICA MYDEK IS SEVEN YEARS OLD AND IS SUFFERING FROM AN ACUTE AND VERY RARE CASE OF CEREBRAL CARCINOMA. THIS CONDITION CAUSES SEVERE MALIGNANT BRAIN TUMORS AND IS A TERMINAL ILLNESS. THE DOCTORS HAVE GIVEN HER SIX MONTHS TO LIVE. AS PART OF HER DYING WISH, SHE WANTED TO START A CHAIN LETTER TO INFORM PEOPLE OF THIS CONDITION AND TO SEND PEOPLE THE MESSAGE TO LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST AND ENJOY EVERY MOMENT, A CHANCE THAT SHE WILL NEVER HAVE. FURTHERMORE, THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY AND SEVERAL CORPORATE SPONSORS HAVE AGREED TO DONATE THREE CENTS TOWARD CONTINUING CANCER RESEARCH FOR EVERY NEW PERSON THAT GETS FORWARDED THIS MESSAGE. PLEASE GIVE JESSICA AND ALL CANCER VICTIMS A CHANCE. IF THERE ARE ANY QUESTIONS, SEND THEM TO THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY AT [EMAIL PROTECTED] For every new person you forward this to, the American Cancer Society will donate three cents toward cancer research. Just make the first address [EMAIL PROTECTED], and then list as many friends and colleagues as you can. It's for a good cause, so please don't just delete it. Thank you. JSR
RE: BLS Daily Reportcharset=iso-8859-1
Dave: First, thank you for posting these reports. Second, do you know if the CPI is also used as a basis for the IRS' annual income tax schedule adjustments? If so, it would seem that the new CPI calculations could have the added impact of increasing the tax burden on wage earners. Jeff Fellows -- From: Richardson_D To: Jorgensen_Helene; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FW: BLS Daily Report Date: Friday, November 28, 1997 10:17AM BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1997 Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits rose 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 333,000 in the week ended Nov. 15, the Employment and Training Administration says. The new claims figure reached its highest level since Aug. 16 (Daily Labor Report, page D-1)_The Wall Street Journal (page A2) says analysts discounted the jump since it came during a week that included Veterans Day. The government has trouble seasonally adjusting for weeks that include holidays A new survey shows that more than half of major companies are coping with workforce reductions by using work/family programs to help remaining employees, the Conference Board reports. As rounds of layoffs reduce morale and increase employee stress, officials at the 41 firms polled said they are looking for new ways to address employee anxiety and uncertainty over the prospects of continued employment, the board says. Flextime schedules, including part-time work, are sometimes used as an alternative to layoffs (Daily Labor Report, page A-1). A survey finds that 81 percent of small and medium-sized employers are having difficulty attracting and retaining qualified employees. Sixty-nine percent of the 245 employers participating in the survey released by NovaCare Employee Services, a national employee services company, said attracting qualified employees was their number one human resource problem, while 39 percent ranked retaining employees second .(Daily Labor Report, page A-10). Employers have, on average, cut staff by 12 percent through various workforce reduction measures since 1992, according to a survey conducted by Hewitt Associates. Workforce reductions are not as common as they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and employers who make reductions are focusing more on the needs of the surviving workforce and providing increased levels of support to displaced employees. Early retirement windows are typically the first approach employers use in workforce reduction situations, Hewitt said (Daily Report, page A-9). Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan says that Social Security retirement age should again be raised and the annual cost-of-living adjustment should be trimmed to ensure the future solvency of the hugh retirement system .Greenspan made his comments at a meeting of a special Senate Budget Committee task force on Social Security Many experts have suggested 70 as a retirement age that would accurately reflect the changes in health and longevity since Social Security was adopted by Congress in 1935. The annual increase in Social Security benefits is linked to changes in the federal CPI, which overstates the "true cost of living," Greenspan said (Washington Post, page C1; New York Times, page A24). Manufacturing executives expect growth will moderate somewhat through January, while constructions executives foresee little change, according to Dun Bradstreet's latest monthly survey (Wall Street Journal, page B11A). The nation's trade deficit jumped to an 8-month high September, as exports declined while imports continued to rise strongly, the Commerce Department reported. Analysts attributed the growing trade deficit to the combination of rapid U.S. economic growth, slower growth in Japan and several other countries, and the rising value of the dollar. A number of analysts said that the financial crises in several Asian nations is too recent to have had much of an impact on U.S. trade. However, those nations' troubles are expected to widen the deficit in coming months as they export more to the United States while buying fewer imports (Washington Post, page A37; New York Times, page C1; Wall Street Journal, page A2). European Union leaders met in Luxembourg to confront the continent's high jobless rates. Europe has 18 million unemployed. The unemployment rate is more than double that of the United States and triple Japan's .(Wall Street Journal, page A19).
RE: Digital Diploma Millscharset=iso-8859-1
I am reminded of a letter that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education from a former professor at Washington State University. In the letter he recounted having had a course videotaped, which was subsequently replayed by the administration after he had left the university. Along with the obvious problems of the school replaying his tele-course, the instructor found it odd that students were using him as a reference for jobs and law school applications. The same sort of drive toward the standardization, fragmentation, and redistribution of production activities is occurring in medical practice, driven largely by HMOs that directly employ physicians. I will talk about this at the ASSA meetings in Chicago (sorry, the talk is scheduled for the afternoon of the last day). I will send a copy of the paper (after the conference) to anyone who wishes. In the story Sid presented on the transformation of education production, an issue arises that is similar to the drive to transform health care production. That is how to standardize a commodity that, upon its realization, is contained wholly within the individual consumer? This problem, in turn leads to a much more interesting question regarding the ability of capitalist commodity markets to maintain the veil between commodity purchasers and the social relations of a commodity's production. Standardizing a table and its production seems a relatively easy task. The outcomes are there for all to see and compare against other tables and table making processes. Since the commodity education is largely inseparable, and possibly indistinguishable, from its purchaser, the commodity or commodity comparisons must be made on the basis of something else, something that is hopefully observable. [An aside: I don't subscribe to the view that health care or education are services, and as such cannot be analyzed in the same way commodities are. In either case, both produce real changes that exist after the production process is complete. You just can readily see it. ] What is of most interest to me is that in education, like it is in medicine, much of the commodity being produced (education or health care) is done so with the direct participation of the commodity's consumers. The commodity market becomes inseparable from the process of production through the direct experience of the relations of production of the purchasers. So instead of a consumer going to the store and comparing cars or shoes largely on the basis of their visible qualities and relative prices, the consumer of education or health fully experiences the production process, and in fact is part of the creation of value and not just its realization in exchange. In the former, we are unlikely to know the conditions under which the car or shoes were produced, and we are not supposed to know. The market acts as a veil to these relations. In education or health care, the market cannot act as a veil. In the cases of education and medical care, the standardization of production processes may enable a continuing fragmentation and distribution of tasks to less-skilled workers, less-expensive workers (with the proviso that standardization is exceedingly difficult). Furthermore, the process (at least in medicine) appears to be proceeding without reference to quality, since defining quality seems to be like determining the shape of the wind. However, in capitalists' hands I believe the march toward standardization will continue without concern over quality, or more importantly "perceived" quality. But this objectification of production will necessarily objectify the consumers of education and medicine as well. It seems to me that the objectification of consumers, as factors of production wedded to a standardized production process, is the key to the limit of capitalist development in education and health care, possibly even its transformation. It is likely, in my belief, that students and patients will delegitimize routinized education and health care commodities, and hence stop paying for them (at least willingly), because they will cease to contain use values. I do not have time right now to discuss how use values are created in these types of production, but I will say that they are heavily influenced by consumers' perceptions of the emotional, or the "humaneness," of the production process. As standardization progresses, the emotional component of the process is increasingly pushed aside, at least that part which is instrumental in creating value. For instance, in health care production patients' perceptions of their provider significantly influence health outcomes; trust and good feeling increase health outcomes (including functional status), and lack of trust and poor feelings have negative impacts of outcomes. If the emotional component is crucial to the perception of usefulness, its disappearance will lead to a rejection of the commodity. Perhaps, if such a time comes, consumers of education and health
Query: Parents-children income relationship
Anyone have good references on the relationship between the incomes of children and their parents. Said differently, are their any good empirical pieces on intergenerational class mobility? Jeff Fellows Prevention Effectiveness Fellow Division of Violence Prevention NCIPC, CDC Atlanta, GA
RE: [PEN-L] Re: income racecharset=iso-8859-1
After further examination of aanz's comments, I put forth the following elaborations. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] If memory serves me correctly, IF current felony conviction rates are extended into the future, a whoppingly big IF, we could end up with between 20 and 25 percent of A-A males who have had a felony conviction by the year 2010 or so. The trend may be subsiding. First, because of an aging population. Second, the cost of incarceration is become ever more unsustainable. From your lips to God's ear. **Don't take my word for it. The state of California will not be able to fully implement the 3 strikes law because of the expense ($5.5 billion), or so says Peter Greenwood of RAND. I don't think Pete Wilson himself is interested in forking over that much cash. Oregon is in a similar boat in their prison spending, particularly in its relation to other social spending, or increasing lack thereof. The Mayors of NYC and Boston have implied that the recent declines in homicides have been the result of greater imprisonments and other "get tough" policies. Unfortunately, data and logic suggest otherwise. First, a presupposition to incarceration is the perpetration of at least one crime (excluding any mistakes, railroading, etc.). So saving future crime through past crime makes little policy sense. The household income connection is overblown for a number of reasons. First, A-A males have always been incarcerated several times more, proportionally, than whites. Again it is higher now than ever. I may be wrong, I only suggest you research the data, not make it up. **It may be higher, that's not the point. The point is how much higher must it go before it impacts employment. By the way, IT IS MY JOB TO RESEARCH AND GENERATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTENT OF IMPRISONMENT AND ITS IMPACTS ON SOCIETY. My "if memory serves" statement reflects my desire not to spend a great deal of time, in an already time constrained schedule, going through the articles in my files and copies of the _Uniform Crime Statistics_ and _U.S. Correctional Populations_ (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Here's the deal, the current prison population is just over 1 million (1995 data), of which almost half are African American. These are appalling numbers any way you look at it, so please spare me and the readers on this list from a recital of the radical economists' litmus test. Unless, by virtue of being connected to the CDC means must be a bourgeois mole. Of the 1 million, about 225,000 are in state prisons for drug offenses and about another 51,737 are in federal prisons. These are based on most serious offenses. I considered drug offenses because only because that is the offense that is responsible for most of the prison population increase. Suppose, as even radical economists are allowed to do once in a while, all drug offenders are black and we double the number of drug offense imprisonments. Explain to me how a reduction of approximately 277,000 people from consideration of any national population-based analysis makes any observable differences? It seems to me that in a relatively good week, vis-a-vis unemployment announcements, we get more new unemployed workers than there are prisoners in jail on drug charges. If we are more accurate, the number of state prisoners in jail on drug offenses has risen from 38,900 in 1985 to 225,000 in 1995. Federal drug-related prisoners in 1985 numbered about 9,500. Now, if we are talking only African American males, the figures are much less. Let's look at it in another way. If we examine correctional data between 1985 and 1995, it indicates the male incarceration rate, per 100,000 population, grew from 246 for whites and 1,559 for blacks, to 461 for whites and 3,250 for blacks. [insert appropriate radical economist statements here.] So, it appears that the incarceration rate almost doubled for white men and slightly more than doubled for black men. While it is true that a rate growth in one sector may not be uniquely relevant to a rate or number in another sector, the incarceration rate growth means that the black male prison population grew from about 210,500 in 1985 to about 510,900 in 1995. So we end up with about 300,000 difference, which we have to then use to explain the growth in black household incomes. I think Chrysler has laid off more workers than this since 1985. For those of you who may not have had the included object, i.e., my prewritten address, come through, it is: Jeffrey L. Fellows, Ph.D. Economist/Prevention Effectiveness Fellow Division of Violence Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC Atlanta, GA 30341 (770) 488-1529 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The above statements are not necessarily those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. - So, any change in income must be explained examined in the context of the incremental growth in A-A incarceration rates. Second, imprisonment also impoverishes perpetrators' families (appr. 60
RE: [PEN-L] Re: income racecharset=iso-8859-1
Thanks for the clarification. I am relieved to know that this is not one of the consequences. Jeff -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PEN-L] Re: income race Date: Tuesday, November 04, 1997 7:20PM Whereas African American males have born the brunt of the trend toward greater incarceration rates in the US, the correlation between rising incarceration and rising incomes among those "participating" in the labor market is becoming fantastically overblown. The concern about the high proportion of the A-A population having experience with the criminal justice system is important for many reasons. After all, convicted felons, however trivial (i.e., marihuana possession) the felony classification, are unable to vote. That's actually no longer true. After finishing parole a felon can vote. I was convicted of felonous tresspassing for the Diablo Canyon power plant occupation by those opposed to glowing in the dark and felonous misconduct on the picket line during the Greyhound strike and I can still vote in California and the Federal elections. Historically felons were required to register to vote only at the courthouse (making it more unlikely) but now we get to register just like everybody else. If memory serves me correctly, IF current felony conviction rates are extended into the future, a whoppingly big IF, we could end up with between 20 and 25 percent of A-A males who have had a felony conviction by the year 2010 or so. The trend may be subsiding. First, because of an aging population. Second, the cost of incarceration is become ever more unsustainable. From your lips to God's ear. The household income connection is overblown for a number of reasons. First, A-A males have always been incarcerated several times more, proportionally, than whites. Again it is higher now than ever. I may be wrong, I only suggest you research the data, not make it up. So, any change in income must be explained examined in the context of the incremental growth in A-A incarceration rates. Second, imprisonment also impoverishes perpetrators' families (appr. 60 percent have jobs immediately prior to imprisonment). The gender bias in relative wages is also found in the African American community. Third, the average prison term, excluding life or more sentences, is 2.6 years. Although A-A males may serve longer terms on average, the difference is not great enough to significantly impact employment and earnings data. In addition, since A-A males have always been subject to some sentencing bias, we would have to analyze the effects of any incremental changes in average time served on earnings and employment. Incarceration may have some effects on earnings, but my guess that any positive impact (through reduced measured participation(?) is trivial and is likely dwarfed by the adverse effects of income losses during the incarceration period. Fourth, if segmented labor markets are more reflective of reality, convicted felons would likely be further relegated to any peripheral, outsider, secondary, informal, etc.,etc. , job categories than their nonfelon counterparts. I could probably come up with more, but lack the time. I would suggest that we look toward sectoral changes in employment and hiring that correspond to preexisting race/gender employment biases, social spending cuts that force proportionally more African Americans into the labor market (earnings go up but so do household expenses like child care), or something else. Why are high income A-A families' earnings rising too? It could be that this segment of the community is taking advantage of the current national trend toward greater income inequality. So, whereas, the highest earnings quintile of the A-A community is gaining in comparison to all workers, just like high income earners overall, the lower four quintiles are also gaining (at least in appearances) because of increasing hiring trends toward occupational categories that are proportionally more represented by African Americans. However, the gains in the lower quintiles are likely to be over-shadowed by greater costs associated with work-related expenditures. Regards, The opinions expressed may not be those of the CDC. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PEN-L] Re: income race Date: Monday, November 03, 1997 6:31PM But has it not gotten dramatically worse in the last ten years due to so called drug crimes? My last read on the situation was an incredible 1 out of 3 Afro American men are incarcerated, on parole or on probation. 33% is a significant chunk of any population. I don't claim that I've researched this, we are all just spitting in the wind here, but the sentencing has gone up during the same time frame of Doug's inquiry and no other intervening factor of such breadth came to my mind. Industrial work is leaving the country, the last hired first fired rule of senority would not increase employment in a shrinking sector for
RE: [PEN-L] Re: income racecharset=iso-8859-1
Whereas African American males have born the brunt of the trend toward greater incarceration rates in the US, the correlation between rising incarceration and rising incomes among those "participating" in the labor market is becoming fantastically overblown. The concern about the high proportion of the A-A population having experience with the criminal justice system is important for many reasons. After all, convicted felons, however trivial (i.e., marihuana possession) the felony classification, are unable to vote. If memory serves me correctly, IF current felony conviction rates are extended into the future, a whoppingly big IF, we could end up with between 20 and 25 percent of A-A males who have had a felony conviction by the year 2010 or so. The trend may be subsiding. First, because of an aging population. Second, the cost of incarceration is become ever more unsustainable. The household income connection is overblown for a number of reasons. First, A-A males have always been incarcerated several times more, proportionally, than whites. So, any change in income must be explained examined in the context of the incremental growth in A-A incarceration rates. Second, imprisonment also impoverishes perpetrators' families (appr. 60 percent have jobs immediately prior to imprisonment). The gender bias in relative wages is also found in the African American community. Third, the average prison term, excluding life or more sentences, is 2.6 years. Although A-A males may serve longer terms on average, the difference is not great enough to significantly impact employment and earnings data. In addition, since A-A males have always been subject to some sentencing bias, we would have to analyze the effects of any incremental changes in average time served on earnings and employment. Incarceration may have some effects on earnings, but my guess that any positive impact (through reduced measured participation(?) is trivial and is likely dwarfed by the adverse effects of income losses during the incarceration period. Fourth, if segmented labor markets are more reflective of reality, convicted felons would likely be further relegated to any peripheral, outsider, secondary, informal, etc.,etc. , job categories than their nonfelon counterparts. I could probably come up with more, but lack the time. I would suggest that we look toward sectoral changes in employment and hiring that correspond to preexisting race/gender employment biases, social spending cuts that force proportionally more African Americans into the labor market (earnings go up but so do household expenses like child care), or something else. Why are high income A-A families' earnings rising too? It could be that this segment of the community is taking advantage of the current national trend toward greater income inequality. So, whereas, the highest earnings quintile of the A-A community is gaining in comparison to all workers, just like high income earners overall, the lower four quintiles are also gaining (at least in appearances) because of increasing hiring trends toward occupational categories that are proportionally more represented by African Americans. However, the gains in the lower quintiles are likely to be over-shadowed by greater costs associated with work-related expenditures. Regards, The opinions expressed may not be those of the CDC. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PEN-L] Re: income race Date: Monday, November 03, 1997 6:31PM But has it not gotten dramatically worse in the last ten years due to so called drug crimes? My last read on the situation was an incredible 1 out of 3 Afro American men are incarcerated, on parole or on probation. 33% is a significant chunk of any population. I don't claim that I've researched this, we are all just spitting in the wind here, but the sentencing has gone up during the same time frame of Doug's inquiry and no other intervening factor of such breadth came to my mind. Industrial work is leaving the country, the last hired first fired rule of senority would not increase employment in a shrinking sector for the bottom of the senority list. I can't for the life of me believe that industrial jobs could be accountable for such a shift. If as I suggest these are the gents most likely to be unemployed clearing them from you stats would indeed paint a rosier picture of those who are left in your pool of consideration. Yes, black males are imprisoned in much greater proportions than whites. But this has always been the case. So, while imprisonment rates have increased for both blacks and whites, and for blacks relative to whites, I don't think the portion of the increase in the black incarceration rate is large enough to make the labor scarcity argument work. In addition, the average time served over all crimes, excluding life or more sentences) is about 2.6 years. What is the date on that 2.6 year statistic? Mandatory sentencing is far longer than 2.6 for
RE: income and racecharset=iso-8859-1
After reading Rakesh's post, I may have sent a post that I hadn't intended to send (because it was incomplete and I needed time to edit it)? Thus, my post a few minutes ago must be somewhat repetitive. Rakesh made points that I agree with. There are race biases in the way crimes are determined, how people are charged, sentenced, and paroled, as well as the public perceptions of who criminals are. The list goes on. Further, I am not claiming any particular knowledge about sectoral employment or earnings and any race/gender bias in hiring. I only suggest that these areas are so much more likely to provide that sort of empirical bang for the theoretical buck than recent changes in incarceration rates. A further point that may be of interest. Insofar as crimes are predominantly white-white and black-black, i.e., whites tend to perpetrate crimes against other whites, and blacks predominantly perpetrate against other blacks, any earnings losses associated with crime-related injuries would likely express themselves in the household income data. This would be a trivial amount, but nonetheless a triviality in the wrong direction. The labor scarcity connection cannot be substantiated, and sounds too much like neoclassical labor market theory for my comfort. Jeff -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: income and race Date: Tuesday, November 04, 1997 12:46AM Jeffrey Fellows suggested: "the lower [black] quintiles may also be rising because of sectoral shifts toward industries and occupations that are more highly represented by blacks." While it seems to me absurd to attempt to infer structural changes in the economy based on comparative data on black/white income quintile groups (esp. since the black absolute and relative increases seem too insignificant to have justified this much theorising--to say nothing of the questionable value of any racialised data), I think JF's hypothesis is quite provocative--though I don't think the focus is usefully put on sectors defined by their overrepresentation of blacks as this says nothing about what it is about those sectors explains their relatively faster growth. One wonders whether the US is going through a similar process as Britain a century ago as there is slow growth, if not outright, decline, of the industries which once formed the basis of economic domination (steel, autos, shipbuilding, machine tools); perhaps too much capital remained tied up in antiquated fixed capital and too little surplus value was produced to keep up with continuously growing minimum amount of capital required for business in spheres with a high organic composition. Meanwhile the few newer high technology industries in which there is a high organic composition such as semiconductors and computer hardware employ too few of the workers released or unabsorbed by the once dominant traditional industry. There is then growth in industries which a much lower organic composition of capital. Not only may these firms may be labor intensive, they may be unskilled labor-intensive, which may create relative opportunity for African-American workers whose skills have remained underdeveloped in a racist country. Perhaps then the tight labor market is a better indicator than this comparative black/white data of this structural devolution from an economy of advanced industries in which there was a high organic composition of capital to one in which the most rapid growth--despite a few advanced high technology industries-- is in labor intensive, low skill sectors. I would also like to make a point I made earlier again: the overrepresentation of blacks among the incarcerated is indeed alarming, but this does not mean that race explains why the US has relatively higher incarcertation rates or how crime is defined or what punishments are meted out for which crimes. There may be an interesting class-based critique of the nature of the criminal justice system, which can easily be ignored if we are simply criticising the system because the sentences received by black working class or lumpen criminals are harsher than those received by their white counterparts. This would be a perfect example of how slaves jockeying for position in their servitude miss the big picture, but I haven't read David Garland's Punishment and Modern Society or Jeffrey Reiman's The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison. Rakesh Grad Student UC Berkeley
RE: [PEN-L] Re: income race
Yes, black males are imprisoned in much greater proportions than whites. But this has always been the case. So, while imprisonment rates have increased for both blacks and whites, and for blacks relative to whites, I don't think the portion of the increase in the black incarceration rate is large enough to make the labor scarcity argument work. In addition, the average time served over all crimes, excluding life or more sentences) is about 2.6 years. Not the type of statistics population trends are built upon. Sectoral shifts in hiring, firing, and wage payments, and social spending cutbacks, may express themselves through changes in relative household incomes between and within racial/ethnic categories much like an aging population would tend to shift the homicide rate downward. Why all income quintiles are growing among black households, as Doug noted, implies that blacks at the high end of the income distribution may be benefitting from the larger trends in the widening of income distribution (excluding existing wealth), and the lower quintiles may also be rising because of sectoral shifts toward industries and occupations that are more highly represented by blacks. The declingin social safety nets may be pushing proportionally more minorities into the paid labor market. Of course, increasing earnings among former social support recipients doesn't mean they are monetarily better off. Jeff Fellows -- From: Gerald Levy To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Re: income race Date: Sunday, November 02, 1997 4:52PM Ellen (anzalone/starbird) wrote: Is it true that inmates incarcerated in prison are NOT counted as households in your data? To be counted as being employed or unemployed in the US data, one must first be counted as being part of the labor force. But, the labor force is defined in such a way that if you are not "working for pay", then you must be "actively seeking paid employment." Since prisoners are not "actively seeking paid employment", they are not counted as being part of the labor force or the unemployed. Aren't bourgeois statistics beautiful? The white poor are still with us, but the Black poor are in the slammer. Huh? You don't actually believe that a majority of "Black poor are in the slammer", do you? , the (free) Blacks are (statistically) thriving economically under the Reagan-Bush-Clinton administrations. Huh? In what sense did "(free) Blacks" thrive since 1980? Jerry
RE: URPE Web page
Can anyone give me URPE's web page. I have seen it before, but I am having difficulty finding it again. Since it is also referenced by the UC-Riverside Econ department's home page, UCR's web address will suffice. Thanks. Jeff Fellows
Re: [PEN-L] Re: everything's groovy
A ponzi scheme, as Tom wrote, might be an accurate conception of the political drive to privatize social security. Assuming the money stays in the US, wouldn't a large redirection of SS trust funds away from the bond market and into the stock market likely reduce bond prices (by eliminating the decifit-reducing bias of SSTF T-bill absorption) and increase stock prices, thereby increasing short-term returns in both financial markets? Jeff Fellows -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Re: everything's groovy Date: Wednesday, October 29, 1997 6:46PM Jerry wrote, Whether the losses are recovered or not by the mutual funds "investors", before you consider whether these people are going to pull their $ out of the market, you have to consider their alternatives. Given the rates of interest on savings accounts, what choices do most of these small-timers (including many retired working people) have? Some of those other choices (like municipal bonds) might be undesirable for other reasons. I agree. But the issue isn't just whether "these people pull their money out of the market", it's whether these people and others borrow *more* money to put it *into* the market. There is considerable choice on that one. A Ponzi scheme that doesn't attract new investors is a sad thing to behold. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
RE: URPE Web sight
Can anyone tell me URPE's web sight? Jeff Fellows
