get along, get along.*
The next two weeks, the fifth round of a scheduled ten-rounder, will be the test of courage of John Boehner in his leadership of the House of Orange. He's going into the fray with his chin sticking out, suggesting that he can take a punch and then get in his licks, but there's a good chance for a knockout.
A better analogy to a boxing match, single combat with well-defined rules, would be a steel cage match (all against all, no way out) or a gang streetfight. He only gets to lead the Jets if he's willing to stand up front, his bully boys behind, and bear the brunt of the counter-attack. His gang will put up a fight, regardless of whether his profile shows the false courage of a punk in a game of chicken, or whether he takes the truly courageous act and goes against his bloodthirsty backers' taste for "action". But if he makes a deal, they will turn on him afterward.
In this opening encounter, expect Boehner to stand his ground. No one is really afraid of the clock running out on the continuing resolution funding the government for a day or two or six. In that sense, it will not prove to be the decisive proof of the Republicans' inability to be anywhere near the government that President Obama might hope for, going into the 2014 Congressional elections in which he will need a big win.
A few days of government furloughs will not cause too much pain to the public--fortunately, the peak season for the national parks, which will be closed, has passed. If there is an agreement of some sort by the end of the round, even if only a temporary one that allows the sixth round to be scheduled for late this year, a few days of shutdown will be just another bump in the road.
The real crisis, the one that would do permanent damage, is the deadline of the debt ceiling, which Treasury Secretary Lew has indicated would occur around the middle of October. I suspect that the resolution of the shutdown will be folded into the negotiation around the raising of the debt limit, something which absolutely must be approved in some form. Treasury will come up with a formula to save the government a couple more days to work with, possibly using a "payday loan" to convert some of the shutdown/sequester savings into a temporary debt payment.
It is impossible to think that the Republicans can permit a default on Federal government debt and preserve intact anything like a semblance of a reputation as fiscal conservatives. There would be one immediate, permanent result: an increase in the cost of our national debt, as our bonds and T-bills would no longer be the safe instrument the markets crave. Figure another $100 billion in the cost of our debts, every year, for the next generation or so (until all this crew are permanently gone from the scene and a more responsible elite emerges to run our government). Compared to that, anything the Republicans could hope to achieve in entitlement reform or discretionary spending would be chicken feed (feeding a giant beast).
Boehner knows this, so his challenge is to get a deal which will not rupture the full faith and credit of the US, while not appearing to give up too easily to President Obama and getting something in return. A lot of the more reasonable, establishment Republicans, like McCain and Romney, realize this, and are not signing on for the suicide pact. McConnell knows this--and he has a possibly difficult re-election campaign next year--so he will keep his head and wattle down as much as possible. Obama knows this, so he will look to find some bone to offer the hungry dogs, something that is clearly a one-time, not to be repeated, concession of some kind.
I predict the concession will have two components, and that it will come in two parts on Oct. 18 (after a huge drop on Friday, and before the Monday trading session of the week when the limit would be breached): 1) agreement to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and to allow some additional fossil fuel development (offshore, underground, or near but outside the Arctic preserves); and 2) when that is not enough, agreement to change the formula for the cost-of-living index for Social Security, beginning in 2017 or so. As I've suggested before, 2) is not unthinkable, really, and is a reasonable trade-off to preserve the program's funding for the younger generation without much cost to today's retirees. 1) is a really bad idea that will cause him to be hated by the Left, which is beginning to rise up against him, but I feel that he is leaning that way anyway, and preserving the current low cost of gasoline will net him gains in popular support in 2014. It's not exactly a Profile in Courage, but the rules of Chicken apply to him, too, and a head-on collision is the courage of a fool.
There is one other way for Obama to go, and I encourage him to threaten it, even to use it if these bids for compromise are spurned. In the final days before the breach, he can announce that he simply will not allow the US to default on its obligations. Whether it's by issuing platinum coins, or posting a challenge to the constitutionality of the debt ceiling (it can be argued that it is contrary to the 14th Amendment, which states that the debts of the US will not be questioned), or simply violating the statutory debt limit and daring Congress to take action. This could be the "impeachable offense" the most rabid Tea Partiers have sought; I'd say bring on the challenge, as this is a battle Obama is sure to win, either in the courts or in the Senate (after a partisan Republican majority once again sinks to the level of a dubious impeachment vote).
*Cf. The Clash, "Clampdown", from "London Calling"
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Fall Preview - Pt. 1 (The Arts)
The weather this week has convinced me: Fall is here. For some reason, most of the significant efforts in this country's art scenes on the large scale occur in the next three months. So, let's take a very opinionated view of what's coming down the pike.
First among all, I mention "Bleeding Edge", the new novel from Thomas Pynchon, which just became available this week. ( I got my copy yesterday.) I'm planning to savor it, not devour it, and at 500 pages, it should be a good part-time read for the fall. A second successive detective novel, this one features a female New Yorker fraud investigator operating in the period between the burst of the dotcom bubble and 9/11. To me it screams "Crying of Lot 49", more than "Inherent Vice".
Television
Next we move to "the tube", though of course there's no tubes involved anymore. For me, television is programming transmitted over a specific channel at a specific time--the other stuff is "video", which is a form of entertainment but, because there is no shared simultaneous experience, not the same thing from the point of view of impact on popular culture.
The critics seem all convinced that this is a (Second?) Golden Age of Television, that it has surpassed the movies, not only in social importance or entertainment value, but in artistic quality. This is an opinion to which I do not subscribe at all--there is more good TV out there than there used to be, but it is a function of quantity: the number of channels has multiplied exponentially, and so have most forms of programming. A few categories have multiplied disproportionately--I would name college football games both major and minor, programs in which people cook and other people rave convincingly about the delicious flavors (too far ahead of the inevitable development of "Smellovision Channel"), programs about obscure groups with unusual behavior patterns and other exhibitionists (e.g., "Duck Dynasty", "Wife Swap", "America's Got Talent", etc.), and programs about violent crime and the justice system. Particularly the latter--I am so sick of programs about cops, about forensic crime research, prison drama, courtroom drama, criminal capers, legal hijinks, that I can no longer stand to watch even the better ones ("The Wire"?--I couldn't take it).
Anyway, to focus on the good side of TV, I guess a good place to start is with the Emmy awards tonight (Sunday, Sept. 22). The Emmys do not have the same cachet or dramatic intensity of the Oscars, there are a whole lot of awards for things that are not very interesting, and they have had a historic tendency to give the same award to the same show or performer year after year (John Larroquette won how many times for "Night Court"?), but I think the profile of the awards has begun to rise. I will be rooting for Tina Fey and "30 Rock" in their final Emmy appearances, and for her SNL compadre Amy Poehler of "Parks and Recreation", though "Modern Family" and its cast will be the huge favorites to repeat in the comedic categories. (Fey and Poehler's performance in the combined TV/Movie Golden Globes, itself nominated for an Emmy is an example of what the Emmy program should strive to achieve.). In terms of drama, I guess it's "Breaking Bad"--gritty meth crime isn't overdone so much yet-- over "Mad Men", "Downton Abbey", and "Homeland" (counterterrorism surely is), though I would've loved to see "Boss" (also outgoing) or "Newsroom" (based on its last episode, also halfway out the door).
In terms of the fall season, it's going to come fast and furious after this weekend. I think it's Monday that we will finally meet Ya Mutha, as in "How I Met Your Mother", after years of tease. Most of the major networks' regular weekly series will begin this week. In terms of new programs, I will give a look to 'The Goldbergs" (NBC, Tuesday) and an eponymous Michael J. Fox show (Thursday). The most successful program in TV history, "The Simpsons", returns next Sunday for what I believe is its 25th full season, and the second-most successful, "Saturday Night Live", will begin its new season next Saturday with Tina Fey as host, a bunch of replacement cast members, and SNL fave Arcade Fire as musical guest--will it be another slack period, and can it survive another? Tune in next spring.
What else? I'm going to try to watch "Scandal" more; "Mad Men" should be interesting as it heads to its final episodes, "Dr. Who" is supposed to debut a new Doctor (so my daughter tells me; she's only OK with the selected new hero of time and space), and the BBC series of "Sherlock", starring the ubiquitous and ludicrously-named Benedict Cumberbatch (note: in the future I will refer to him as simply BdCb), is supposed to return for a few teasing episodes sometime around the holidays.
Mostly, though, I watch news programs and sports--the first can have no preview, and the latter will be considered in a separate post, as I still believe it qualifies as something other than just TV.
Music
The big, built-up album of this fall is the two-disc follow-up to "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire. One song, "Reflektor" (also the title of the album), has been released so far: it sounds like the band, but disco. I certainly sympathize with the challenges of maintaining the momentum from a superior release and sudden, massive fame, but "going disco" is not the correct response--not in this century, or any other one for that matter. We will see if the song is the exception or the rule.
Two major artists who have promised to go back to their roots in their new releases are Paul McCartney, with "New", and Elton John, with "The Diving Board". Meanwhile, Elvis Costello literally has gone to The Roots for his, joining the band from Jimmy Fallon's late-night show for a funky new one, "Wise Up Ghost". I've heard one song, and it sounds like something good, not the lounge lizard act I heard on Elvis' last two albums.
Anything else? I'm hopeful about Katy Perry and her maturation process--she has an album coming out called "Prism" (slightly different light-bending effect than Arcade Fire's), which suggests she is trying to turn the excessive light constantly upon her into something colorful and beautiful. Good idea, if you can pull it off. And U2 is working on a new album, though it's unclear whether it will make it into the market before the end of the year.
Film
The best trailer of the summer--the one that piqued my curiosity, not that showed off the best effects or jokes--was for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's "Don Jon". The memorable line--repeated for effect--is that he just cares about a few things in his life: "his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, and...his porn." Gordon-Levitt is a young talent; he's taking it to a new level as a first-time director. The story of Don Juan, the mind of the seducer and his undoing with the right woman, is a worthy challenge that has drawn the talents of many of the greatest over the centuries, including Byron, Mozart, Kierkegaard, and Shaw. He's got Scarlett Johansson as his foil, that foxy mix of naivete and worldly that she can do so well. It starts next weekend, and I think this combination of old and new values, sex play both subliminal and overtly indiscreet, just might find the right moment in the key movie-going demographic, teens and young adults.
As always, there is a flood of the best movies this time of year. The timing seems slightly different this year, as some of them are already out there in the film festivals, so the season will not be such a tease, with the real film powerhouses only hitting your neighborhood multiplex next year. This is a definite improvement--I may be missing something, but none of these have phony openings in the last week of the year.
I think the glum political outlook, which is likely to turn soon into bad economic feeling, will translate into movie viewers looking for solace, escape, and ways to express their suppressed anger. I've ordered the major studio releases for the fall based roughly in my level of skepticism about the projects' artistic and commercial success, from "Highly Doubtful" to "Little Doubt", but what do I really know about them at this point?
"Fifth Estate" - Looks like a whitewash of Julian Assange's story (with BdCb). Data doesn't want to be free, it lies there waiting to be manipulated. Are moviegoers any different? This one says "yes".
"Winnie Mandela" - see "The Fifth Estate". Taking advantage of Nelson Mandela's name, when he will be too weak to say anything to the contrary.
"Great Expectations" - I never even liked the book, and the story seems ripe for political posturing: the poor just need rich patrons and all will be fine.
"Enough Said" - I think it will be creepy to see the late James Gandolfini in a hopeful love story. Enough said, indeed.
"Prisoners" - Teen-age abduction drama, with Hugh Jackman in the Liam Neeson "Taken" role as the Angry Dad. Looks ugly, feels unnecessary.
"Carrie" - Didn't like it the first time; don't need it again.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" - The Scorsese/DiCaprio combo is fine by me, but I think I've seen too many of these Wall Street dramas where the big jerk gets his comeuppance at the end.
"August: Osage County" - All-star cast (including BdCb), Broadway stage play, but it looks too stagey for the big screen. I'm sure it's no fun, but will it provide the uplift we want?
"Diana" - Naomi Watts looks dead-on as the martyred Princess, but it's either a phony conspiracy play or boring.
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" - There are a couple of items I'm looking forward to seeing (Smaug's dwarf-built cavern, the Wood-elves, BdCb as the Voice of Smaug), but mostly I think a relatively short novel is being dragged out into four full-length parts for bad reasons.
"Rush" - I would never underestimate Ron Howard's ability to produce a popular spectacle, but I think the heyday of Formula One auto racing is over for most people.
"Catching Fire" - Will people connect the dots between this dystopian society and ours, or is it just a good flick with Jennifer Lawrence? Either way, it should be reasonably successful.
"All Is Lost" - Just Robert Redford and a sinking boat. Somehow I think it will be OK.
"All is Bright" - Looks like a holiday charmer with Pauls Rudd and Giamatti.
"Gravity" - Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Space travel drama is the best possible genre for 3-D (slight edge over aviation), and Cuaron makes powerful film. It could be awful, but I'm thinking 70% probability of magic.
"12 Years a Slave" - This story of a freed black man captured back into slavery could break hearts, if it manages to tell its story in a way that's not too familiar.
"Nebraska" - Alexander Payne has the strong track record of drawing great performances, not overplaying his hand.
"Captain Phillips" - Not a sure thing, and we do know how this Somali pirates vs. US merchant ship drama will turn out, but Tom Hanks will deliver the goods, as always.
"The Counselor" - Very little substantial information available, but it looks like it could be a powerhouse (Ridley Scott directing, Cormac McCarthy story, with Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz).
"Ender's Game" - The sci-fi special of the season, a genre classic finally adapted for the big screen, with a teenage boy hero. Should be a commercial success, even if not Oscar material.
"Inside Llewyn Davis" - The Coen Bros. are a sure thing, as far as I'm concerned. Their popular success correlates negatively with my appreciation, but the latter is never too low. I like this one, so it may be only a moderate public success.
My summary is a lot of ambitious, expensive failures, a few small-scale successes, few if any certain winners. Maybe they are right about TV?--I hope not.
First among all, I mention "Bleeding Edge", the new novel from Thomas Pynchon, which just became available this week. ( I got my copy yesterday.) I'm planning to savor it, not devour it, and at 500 pages, it should be a good part-time read for the fall. A second successive detective novel, this one features a female New Yorker fraud investigator operating in the period between the burst of the dotcom bubble and 9/11. To me it screams "Crying of Lot 49", more than "Inherent Vice".
Television
Next we move to "the tube", though of course there's no tubes involved anymore. For me, television is programming transmitted over a specific channel at a specific time--the other stuff is "video", which is a form of entertainment but, because there is no shared simultaneous experience, not the same thing from the point of view of impact on popular culture.
The critics seem all convinced that this is a (Second?) Golden Age of Television, that it has surpassed the movies, not only in social importance or entertainment value, but in artistic quality. This is an opinion to which I do not subscribe at all--there is more good TV out there than there used to be, but it is a function of quantity: the number of channels has multiplied exponentially, and so have most forms of programming. A few categories have multiplied disproportionately--I would name college football games both major and minor, programs in which people cook and other people rave convincingly about the delicious flavors (too far ahead of the inevitable development of "Smellovision Channel"), programs about obscure groups with unusual behavior patterns and other exhibitionists (e.g., "Duck Dynasty", "Wife Swap", "America's Got Talent", etc.), and programs about violent crime and the justice system. Particularly the latter--I am so sick of programs about cops, about forensic crime research, prison drama, courtroom drama, criminal capers, legal hijinks, that I can no longer stand to watch even the better ones ("The Wire"?--I couldn't take it).
Anyway, to focus on the good side of TV, I guess a good place to start is with the Emmy awards tonight (Sunday, Sept. 22). The Emmys do not have the same cachet or dramatic intensity of the Oscars, there are a whole lot of awards for things that are not very interesting, and they have had a historic tendency to give the same award to the same show or performer year after year (John Larroquette won how many times for "Night Court"?), but I think the profile of the awards has begun to rise. I will be rooting for Tina Fey and "30 Rock" in their final Emmy appearances, and for her SNL compadre Amy Poehler of "Parks and Recreation", though "Modern Family" and its cast will be the huge favorites to repeat in the comedic categories. (Fey and Poehler's performance in the combined TV/Movie Golden Globes, itself nominated for an Emmy is an example of what the Emmy program should strive to achieve.). In terms of drama, I guess it's "Breaking Bad"--gritty meth crime isn't overdone so much yet-- over "Mad Men", "Downton Abbey", and "Homeland" (counterterrorism surely is), though I would've loved to see "Boss" (also outgoing) or "Newsroom" (based on its last episode, also halfway out the door).
In terms of the fall season, it's going to come fast and furious after this weekend. I think it's Monday that we will finally meet Ya Mutha, as in "How I Met Your Mother", after years of tease. Most of the major networks' regular weekly series will begin this week. In terms of new programs, I will give a look to 'The Goldbergs" (NBC, Tuesday) and an eponymous Michael J. Fox show (Thursday). The most successful program in TV history, "The Simpsons", returns next Sunday for what I believe is its 25th full season, and the second-most successful, "Saturday Night Live", will begin its new season next Saturday with Tina Fey as host, a bunch of replacement cast members, and SNL fave Arcade Fire as musical guest--will it be another slack period, and can it survive another? Tune in next spring.
What else? I'm going to try to watch "Scandal" more; "Mad Men" should be interesting as it heads to its final episodes, "Dr. Who" is supposed to debut a new Doctor (so my daughter tells me; she's only OK with the selected new hero of time and space), and the BBC series of "Sherlock", starring the ubiquitous and ludicrously-named Benedict Cumberbatch (note: in the future I will refer to him as simply BdCb), is supposed to return for a few teasing episodes sometime around the holidays.
Mostly, though, I watch news programs and sports--the first can have no preview, and the latter will be considered in a separate post, as I still believe it qualifies as something other than just TV.
Music
The big, built-up album of this fall is the two-disc follow-up to "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire. One song, "Reflektor" (also the title of the album), has been released so far: it sounds like the band, but disco. I certainly sympathize with the challenges of maintaining the momentum from a superior release and sudden, massive fame, but "going disco" is not the correct response--not in this century, or any other one for that matter. We will see if the song is the exception or the rule.
Two major artists who have promised to go back to their roots in their new releases are Paul McCartney, with "New", and Elton John, with "The Diving Board". Meanwhile, Elvis Costello literally has gone to The Roots for his, joining the band from Jimmy Fallon's late-night show for a funky new one, "Wise Up Ghost". I've heard one song, and it sounds like something good, not the lounge lizard act I heard on Elvis' last two albums.
Anything else? I'm hopeful about Katy Perry and her maturation process--she has an album coming out called "Prism" (slightly different light-bending effect than Arcade Fire's), which suggests she is trying to turn the excessive light constantly upon her into something colorful and beautiful. Good idea, if you can pull it off. And U2 is working on a new album, though it's unclear whether it will make it into the market before the end of the year.
Film
The best trailer of the summer--the one that piqued my curiosity, not that showed off the best effects or jokes--was for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's "Don Jon". The memorable line--repeated for effect--is that he just cares about a few things in his life: "his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, and...his porn." Gordon-Levitt is a young talent; he's taking it to a new level as a first-time director. The story of Don Juan, the mind of the seducer and his undoing with the right woman, is a worthy challenge that has drawn the talents of many of the greatest over the centuries, including Byron, Mozart, Kierkegaard, and Shaw. He's got Scarlett Johansson as his foil, that foxy mix of naivete and worldly that she can do so well. It starts next weekend, and I think this combination of old and new values, sex play both subliminal and overtly indiscreet, just might find the right moment in the key movie-going demographic, teens and young adults.
As always, there is a flood of the best movies this time of year. The timing seems slightly different this year, as some of them are already out there in the film festivals, so the season will not be such a tease, with the real film powerhouses only hitting your neighborhood multiplex next year. This is a definite improvement--I may be missing something, but none of these have phony openings in the last week of the year.
I think the glum political outlook, which is likely to turn soon into bad economic feeling, will translate into movie viewers looking for solace, escape, and ways to express their suppressed anger. I've ordered the major studio releases for the fall based roughly in my level of skepticism about the projects' artistic and commercial success, from "Highly Doubtful" to "Little Doubt", but what do I really know about them at this point?
"Fifth Estate" - Looks like a whitewash of Julian Assange's story (with BdCb). Data doesn't want to be free, it lies there waiting to be manipulated. Are moviegoers any different? This one says "yes".
"Winnie Mandela" - see "The Fifth Estate". Taking advantage of Nelson Mandela's name, when he will be too weak to say anything to the contrary.
"Great Expectations" - I never even liked the book, and the story seems ripe for political posturing: the poor just need rich patrons and all will be fine.
"Enough Said" - I think it will be creepy to see the late James Gandolfini in a hopeful love story. Enough said, indeed.
"Prisoners" - Teen-age abduction drama, with Hugh Jackman in the Liam Neeson "Taken" role as the Angry Dad. Looks ugly, feels unnecessary.
"Carrie" - Didn't like it the first time; don't need it again.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" - The Scorsese/DiCaprio combo is fine by me, but I think I've seen too many of these Wall Street dramas where the big jerk gets his comeuppance at the end.
"August: Osage County" - All-star cast (including BdCb), Broadway stage play, but it looks too stagey for the big screen. I'm sure it's no fun, but will it provide the uplift we want?
"Diana" - Naomi Watts looks dead-on as the martyred Princess, but it's either a phony conspiracy play or boring.
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" - There are a couple of items I'm looking forward to seeing (Smaug's dwarf-built cavern, the Wood-elves, BdCb as the Voice of Smaug), but mostly I think a relatively short novel is being dragged out into four full-length parts for bad reasons.
"Rush" - I would never underestimate Ron Howard's ability to produce a popular spectacle, but I think the heyday of Formula One auto racing is over for most people.
"Catching Fire" - Will people connect the dots between this dystopian society and ours, or is it just a good flick with Jennifer Lawrence? Either way, it should be reasonably successful.
"All Is Lost" - Just Robert Redford and a sinking boat. Somehow I think it will be OK.
"All is Bright" - Looks like a holiday charmer with Pauls Rudd and Giamatti.
"Gravity" - Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Space travel drama is the best possible genre for 3-D (slight edge over aviation), and Cuaron makes powerful film. It could be awful, but I'm thinking 70% probability of magic.
"12 Years a Slave" - This story of a freed black man captured back into slavery could break hearts, if it manages to tell its story in a way that's not too familiar.
"Nebraska" - Alexander Payne has the strong track record of drawing great performances, not overplaying his hand.
"Captain Phillips" - Not a sure thing, and we do know how this Somali pirates vs. US merchant ship drama will turn out, but Tom Hanks will deliver the goods, as always.
"The Counselor" - Very little substantial information available, but it looks like it could be a powerhouse (Ridley Scott directing, Cormac McCarthy story, with Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz).
"Ender's Game" - The sci-fi special of the season, a genre classic finally adapted for the big screen, with a teenage boy hero. Should be a commercial success, even if not Oscar material.
"Inside Llewyn Davis" - The Coen Bros. are a sure thing, as far as I'm concerned. Their popular success correlates negatively with my appreciation, but the latter is never too low. I like this one, so it may be only a moderate public success.
My summary is a lot of ambitious, expensive failures, a few small-scale successes, few if any certain winners. Maybe they are right about TV?--I hope not.
Saturday, September 07, 2013
America Goes Part-time
One of my favorite topics is the decline in jobs in the US; my contention is that this is a secular trend that will continue (at least until a possible labor shortage in about 20 years), that this trend can and should be used to improve quality of life, and that politicians who pretend that more jobs are always needed are wrong, though no one ever criticizes them for that stance. (I will grant that the US economy needed the fabrication of employment in the depths of the Great Crater, but we are now mostly out of that depression).
Obamacare and the Rise in Part-time Jobs
So now I am reading that some employers are converting some jobs to part-time in order to avoid a requirement of the Affordable Care Act that those who have more than 50 full-time employees (which has been defined, for purposes of this law's enforcement, as 30 or more hours per week) must offer health insurance or pay penalties. This requirement's deadline has been postponed by the Obama administration because it does not want to be accused of reducing employment at this time (or any other time, probably); they are either stalling for time or looking for another approach.
I would like to suggest something. Although I see this trend (to cut employees' hours so to dodge the requirement to provide health insurance) as a temporary phenomenon--eventually employers will decide if they want to stay small or go big, and those that choose the latter will inevitably need to pass that threshold and offer health insurance to their employees--the current trend is the right one, occurring for the wrong reason. The problem is that all-or-nothing nature of the requirement; instead, all employers should derive a benefit from offering health insurance to their employees, and they should benefit whether the employers are full-time or part-time. A simple suggestion, and an unequivocal one, but of course the devil would be in the details. Something both Obamacare's supporters and its critics should be suggesting.
The fact that more employees are working less than full-time hours is not necessarily a problem, except to the extent that the reduction in hours causes deprivation, and for this problem of health insurance. Gaining more people access to group health insurance plans is the best answer to the current uninsured dilemma (short of Medicare/Medicaid providing health insurance for all, and I'm afraid this country does not, and will not, have the dedication to do that).
For more of my posts on this topic from past years (I know you want them!), please see here, here, and my original essay on the topic, reprinted here.
Your Job is B.S.--No, You!
I ran across a related web dialogue the other day; I saw it on a blog sponsored by The Economist, and it derived from a posting on a site called "Strike" * by a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics named David Graeber. Essentially what Graeber has provocatively charged is that most of the jobs that have been created in recent decades are service and administrative jobs that have no substance or creative/productive value. Further, that most of the people in those jobs know their jobs are "bullshit", as he puts it, and that the corrosive impact of that on society is significant.
Now, Graeber is sufficiently self-aware to realize that he, as a professor of anthropology, is not superior to others in having a job that is indispensable to society, but still he is willing to downgrade most everone else's value--he makes exceptions for teachers, fire-fighters, and the disappearing classes of servants, farmers, and manufacturing jobs. With the last one, though, I would dispute the essential nature: it is exactly the production of mass-produced objects of planned obsolescence (and I include guns, missiles, jet fighters among those) which are the most useless jobs, and the ones that I expect to be replaced rapidly by robotic means of production. It is instead the providers of services, human services, whose work will be needed, and valued, into the future.
"R.A.", in The Economist jobs market forum, examines Graeber's arguments and points out that those manufacturing jobs were unpleasant, and that was why they needed to be paid higher in the earlier industrial ages. I think Graeber is missing the real point, to which R.A. comes very close in the following:
*"Strike" magazine is an English publication--online and print, it seems--which describes itself as "anti-profit, radical" and lists its subjects in the top right of its home page as "Politics/Philosophy/Art/Subversion/Sedition". I'd never heard of it before now.
Obamacare and the Rise in Part-time Jobs
So now I am reading that some employers are converting some jobs to part-time in order to avoid a requirement of the Affordable Care Act that those who have more than 50 full-time employees (which has been defined, for purposes of this law's enforcement, as 30 or more hours per week) must offer health insurance or pay penalties. This requirement's deadline has been postponed by the Obama administration because it does not want to be accused of reducing employment at this time (or any other time, probably); they are either stalling for time or looking for another approach.
I would like to suggest something. Although I see this trend (to cut employees' hours so to dodge the requirement to provide health insurance) as a temporary phenomenon--eventually employers will decide if they want to stay small or go big, and those that choose the latter will inevitably need to pass that threshold and offer health insurance to their employees--the current trend is the right one, occurring for the wrong reason. The problem is that all-or-nothing nature of the requirement; instead, all employers should derive a benefit from offering health insurance to their employees, and they should benefit whether the employers are full-time or part-time. A simple suggestion, and an unequivocal one, but of course the devil would be in the details. Something both Obamacare's supporters and its critics should be suggesting.
The fact that more employees are working less than full-time hours is not necessarily a problem, except to the extent that the reduction in hours causes deprivation, and for this problem of health insurance. Gaining more people access to group health insurance plans is the best answer to the current uninsured dilemma (short of Medicare/Medicaid providing health insurance for all, and I'm afraid this country does not, and will not, have the dedication to do that).
For more of my posts on this topic from past years (I know you want them!), please see here, here, and my original essay on the topic, reprinted here.
Your Job is B.S.--No, You!
I ran across a related web dialogue the other day; I saw it on a blog sponsored by The Economist, and it derived from a posting on a site called "Strike" * by a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics named David Graeber. Essentially what Graeber has provocatively charged is that most of the jobs that have been created in recent decades are service and administrative jobs that have no substance or creative/productive value. Further, that most of the people in those jobs know their jobs are "bullshit", as he puts it, and that the corrosive impact of that on society is significant.
Now, Graeber is sufficiently self-aware to realize that he, as a professor of anthropology, is not superior to others in having a job that is indispensable to society, but still he is willing to downgrade most everone else's value--he makes exceptions for teachers, fire-fighters, and the disappearing classes of servants, farmers, and manufacturing jobs. With the last one, though, I would dispute the essential nature: it is exactly the production of mass-produced objects of planned obsolescence (and I include guns, missiles, jet fighters among those) which are the most useless jobs, and the ones that I expect to be replaced rapidly by robotic means of production. It is instead the providers of services, human services, whose work will be needed, and valued, into the future.
"R.A.", in The Economist jobs market forum, examines Graeber's arguments and points out that those manufacturing jobs were unpleasant, and that was why they needed to be paid higher in the earlier industrial ages. I think Graeber is missing the real point, to which R.A. comes very close in the following:
What R.A. has hit upon is that the current trends are to pay less for overworked labor and to use less of it, with the result that society is being separated into the overworked and the underemployed. We need to push toward an economic system in which less hours of work are required to meet the standard of living which should be available for most or all--everywhere. This is something within our power, but it is not something for which power is being applied to achieve.The issue is that too little of the recent gains from technological advance and economic growth have gone toward giving people the time and resources to enjoy their lives outside work. Early in the industrial era real wages soared and hours worked declined. In the past generation, by contrast, real wages have grown slowly and workweeks haven't grown shorter.
*"Strike" magazine is an English publication--online and print, it seems--which describes itself as "anti-profit, radical" and lists its subjects in the top right of its home page as "Politics/Philosophy/Art/Subversion/Sedition". I'd never heard of it before now.
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