Things to Read at Night on January 7, 2015

January 7, 2015

Must- and Shall-Reads:

 

  1. Mary C. Daly and Bart Hobijn:
    Why Is Wage Growth So Slow?:
    “Despite considerable improvement in the labor market, growth in wages continues to be disappointing. One reason is that many firms were unable to reduce wages during the recession, and they must now work off a stockpile of pent-up wage cuts. This pattern is evident nationwide and explains the variation in wage growth across industries. Industries that were least able to cut wages during the downturn and therefore accrued the most pent-up cuts have experienced relatively slower wage growth during the recovery…”
  2. Larry Mishel:
    American Wages Have Stagnated:
    “If most people believe, as I think they do, that if they’d leave their current job, they’d get a worse job, then exit does not give you much leverage. So, the single most important policy response right now should be to get to a vigorous full employment. That makes the decisions of the Federal Reserve board over the next few years the most consequential economic policy decisions to be made on wages and income inequality.”
  3. Megan McArdle:
    Yes, You’re Rich, and It’s Time You Admit It:
    “Jack Lew made a lot of money working for Citibank. So why… did he say last week that ‘My own compensation was never in the stratosphere’? Jack Lew is not the only person who says this sort of thing. The media is routinely filled with people making six- and seven-figure incomes who modestly report that they are very middle class, struggling, really, to make it from paycheck to paycheck. And if you live in a big coastal city like New York, Washington, Boston or San Francisco, you… can go to any private-school parents night or Ivy League alumni reunion to hear a veritable chorus of people remarking that they really don’t know how they keep body and soul together on just $350,000 per annum. Be warned, however, that it is not polite to point and laugh the way that you would on Twitter…”

Should Be Aware of:

 

  1. Palo Alto Farmers’ Market:
    Spicy Sesame Yuba Noodle Stir Fry: “1 package of Hodo Soy Yuba sheets. 2 tbsp vegetable oil. 2 tsp toasted sesame oil. 4 tbsp soy sauce. 1 tbsp brown sugar. Japanese red chili powder. Green peppers & toasted sesame seeds (garnish). Instructions: Cut the yuba sheets into ½-inch slices. Gently separate to make the noodle strips. Heat vegetable oil in a large pan over medium heat. Drop the noodles into the pan and let cook for about 3 minutes – until warm and some edges are slightly crispy. Don’t let the noodles get too crispy. In a medium bowl, combine sesame oil, soy sauce, brown sugar and chili powder. When all the noodles are cooked, toss them in the sesame soy sauce to coat all the noodles. Plate while still warm and garnish with sesame seeds, green onions and a dash of chili powder if you desire.”

Comments:

  • Dan Nexon:
    Hard Power, Soft Power, Muscovy, Strategy:
    “Not your fault. The ‘soft power’ concept has become hopelessly confused since Nye introduced. It originally meant ‘attraction’ — think of it as combining Bourdieu’s objectified cultural capital (‘American blue jeans’) and symbolic capital, but has come to mean any non-kinetic or non-economic power resource. In this latter formulation, Dan D. is technically right that sanctions are non-kinetic hard power, but you’re right that putting them into place required diplomatic skill, legitimacy, and other soft-power-esque resources. And you’re doubly right about Russia’s position in the global balance of power.”
  • Maynard Handley:
    Hard Power, Soft Power, Muscovy, Strategy:
    “The guy who says this with the most detail and panache (the US has basically burned up all the massive soft power it once had in some sort of insane Bonfire of the Vanities) is Francis Fukuyama in his most recent book, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. Lots of very depressing stuff there about the current US political order, to complement Piketty’s economic take. “
  • Kansas Jack:
    Hard Power, Soft Power, Muscovy, Strategy:
    “Be careful M. Putin… ‘To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire population entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark, resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move by itself, and then the delusion is no longer possible. The ship follows its own enormous, independent course, the pole does not reach the moving ship, and the ruler suddenly, from his position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and feeble human being.’ ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace”
  • Claudius:
    Washington Describes Victory at Princeton:
    “Well, General Howe’s report noted 18 killed, 58 wounded, and 200 missing. So it is likely that Washington inflated the numbers. But the British were flanked, and they also fled, and the Americans had some horse and some of the Americans pursued the fleeing British until nightfall.”
  • derrida derider:
    John Cassidy’s Interview with James Heckman:
    “The trouble with the ‘all that is needed for the EMH to hold is proper regulation to ensure a fully informed market’ meme is that it is characteristic of booms and busts that the relevant animal spirits infect the regulators – and the economic theorists behind them too. It seems obvious that when the market is delivering the goodies to all involved that it must be perfectly efficient and therefore that dabbling with it can only do harm (especially obvious as we know any bust will immediately be blamed on the dabbler). It similarly seems obvious when the goodies disappear that market failures and rent seeking of all kinds are pervasive, so both efficiency and equity require the firm and visible hand of good government. Thus we get the classic pattern – the barn door is removed as the horse begins to get frisky ‘so as not to cramp its movements’. Then, after the horse is no longer anywhere in sight, the regulators solemnly close that door and reinforce it with armour plating, muttering ‘never again’.”
  • Bloix:
    John Cassidy’s Interview with James Heckman:
    “‘When Bob Lucas was writing that the Great Depression was people taking extended vacations—refusing to take available jobs at low wages…’ What an evil, evil man. This is from what is IMHO the greatest novel of the Depression, Waiting for Nothing, by Tom Kromer: ‘I am in this mission. I lie on top of this bunk… I turn my eyes to the stiff in the bunk next to mine … His face is pasty white. The bones almost stick out of his skin … I turn my head away but still I can hear him groan .. He does not breathe. He only rattles. ‘For Christ sake, what is the matter with that stiff?’ says this stiff in the next bunk. ‘He is croaking up here in his lousy bunk, that’s what’s the matter with him,’ I say. ‘Does he have to make that much racket to croak?’ he says. ‘I see plenty of stiffs croak, but nI ever see one make that much racket at it.’ … I lie up here and think … This stiff has not always been a stiff. Somewhere sometime, this stiff has had a home. Maybe he had a family … He is alone. The fritz has made him alone. He will die cooped up in a mission with a thousand stiffs who snore through the night, but he will die alone … I try think back over the years that I have lived. But I cannot think of years any more. I can only think of the drags I have rode, of the bulls that have sapped up on me, and the mission slop I have swilled. People I have known, I remember no more. They are gone… I lie up here on my three-decker bunk and shiver. I am not cold. I am afraid. What is a man to do? All he do is try to keep his belly full of enough slop so that he won’t rattle when he breathes. All he can do is try and find himself a lousy flop at night. Day after day, week after week, year after year, always the same – three hots and a flop.’ Tom Kromer, the son of a coal miner who had died of cancer, was 22 and had two years of college and had held several decent jobs – proofreader, elementary schoolteacher – when he ran out of money and work and began five years of vagrant life in 1929. In 1935 he managed to enroll in the CCC, but by that time he had contracted severe tuberculosis from sleeping in missions and flophouses. He spent several years in a sanatorium in New Mexico, but he remained an invalid, more or less bedridden, for the next 25 years, until he died. Waiting for Nothing has a dedication: ‘To Jolene, who turned off the gas.’ Bob Lucas – what an evil, evil man.”
  • Kaleberg:
    What Are the Experiences That MOOCs Need to Replicate?:
    “MOOCs have been attacking the wrong problem. The cost of teaching has not been increasing. Faculty salaries have been falling if anything. College level education costs are driven by increased investment in fixed plant, larger bureaucracies and higher management salaries. College level education prices are driven by decreased public subsidies. Both of these are driven ideologically as college level education is increasingly seen as a business rather than a vital government service. It might be possible to use computer and communications technology to drive down college management costs, shrink the size of the bureaucracy and cut the need for additional fixed plant. Instead of buildings, invest in intelligent leasing management to provide classrooms and other spaces as needed. Rely on computer software to manage student and faculty needs, ideally simplifying the software so that individuals can manage their own education. Of course, this has no room for high investor returns and inflated salaries and payrolls, so it is a non-starter. There is a move towards leaner financial products like self balancing index funds. Perhaps we need a move towards leaner educational products.”
  • Tracy Lightcap:
    What Are the Experiences That MOOCs Need to Replicate?:
    “‘This involves a completely unfounded assumption: that the present financial structure of higher education in the US is ‘unsustainable’.’ I run into this occasionally and it always bewilders me. It is true that US higher education is becoming more unaffordable. But that is the result of a variety of easily reversed public policy decisions: the withdrawal of public funds to support tuition costs from public post-secondary education, the intrusion of private businesses into areas where they compete with higher education, the egregious increases in administrative personnel and their salaries, and, finally, the attempt to reduce faculty costs through adjuncts and on-line courses as much as possible. All of these are connected, of course. Taxpayers complain about increased tuition costs because, like all Americans, they want Swedish-style social services for Mississippi-style taxes. They get the Feds to step in with subsidies. For-profit colleges see a tremendous opportunity for them arising from this and use the subsidies to provide cut-rate education that is generally good for less then nothing. Colleges and universities, caught between a rock and a hard place, hire hoards of administrators to intrigue private donors, ‘brand’ collegiate experiences, and cajole students by providing a ‘student experience’ that will keep them around long enough for one more subsidized tuition check. And they also short change their students education by increasing the number of impoverished, over-worked adjuncts and turning to on-line courses as a way out. The solution is not to be found in this policy mix. It is a simple one: replace the levels of funding once given to public post-secondary education. That would: increase pressure on faculties to reduce salary demands, drive for-profit post secondary education out of business, vastly reduce the number of extra administrators needed to make up the present deficits, end the need to replace educational functions with social ones to keep students, and re-establish the collegiate experience. And, as the reaction to the attempted firing of Teresa Sullivan at the University of Virginia and the recent funding increases for public education in California show, there is public support for putting funding for public universities back to a level that will insure a college education within the means of those students who can qualify and curbing the entrepreneurial model of higher education. MOOC’s and their ilk will continue to be around in some subjects; we still have correspondence courses too. But a wholesale restructuring of higher education (only called for in the US, UK, and Australia, for obvious reasons) is not and was never the answer.”

January 7, 2015

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