Dust off your old copies of the Times, folks. Bob Herbert's dredging up artificial outrage over the abysmal conditions for the middle class from all the way back in 2003. Fun stuff.
The Data and the Reality
So you don’t fall into the same trap as Herbert, data is a reflection of reality. Similarly, projections are pure fiction. There are important distinctions that come with losing degree of freedom.
By BOB HERBERT
Published: December 27, 2010
I keep hearing from the data zealots
Is this the new pejorative for “number crunchers?” What, are they knocking down his door? You’re not that important, Bob.
that holiday sales were impressive and the outlook for the economy in 2011 is not bad.
True and true, just as the economy in 2010 was not bad. It’s been like a great deal in poker where you only manage to pocket the ante. You still won the hand, but you should have garnered a much bigger pay day. The gains in 2010 have resolved many of the outstanding risk contingencies that had been priced into the market. There is no longer a good chance that the economy will plunge into a double-dip. There is no longer reason to believe that the entire EU will collapse in the coming months. There is no longer reason to believe that California and Illinois will descend state-wide versions of Detroit
Maybe they’ve stumbled onto something in their windowless rooms.
Can’t you feel the disdain for private industry already? Quantitatively focused analysts may as well be a new breed of troll, scurrying in and out of break rooms, using z-scores and pivot tables as postmodern mysticism.
Maybe the economy really is gathering steam.
Somewhat fittingly, the allusion is to rickety hundred year-old technology.
But in the rough and tumble of the real world,
How is this type of pandering populism any more appealing than Sarah Palin’s caribou-shooting folksiness? Yes, Bob Herbert—your spewed ink is a less effective, ideologically opposing version of “how’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?”
where families have to feed themselves and pay their bills,
Woe is capitalism. Capitalism is the source of all bills. Money is the root of all evil.
there are an awful lot of Americans being left behind.
Why? They can’t catch up with the steam-powered train/riverboat? Are they old? Or gimpy?
A continuing national survey of workers who lost their jobs during the Great Recession,
Can we come up with something better to call the crash of ’08, please? How about the Mortgage Meltdown of ’08? Housing Bubble Crash? Residual rage from the Phillies winning the World Series?
conducted by two professors at Rutgers University
Fearmonger levelup! Don’t forget to allocate your experience points to ‘frantic non-sequiturs,’ ‘distended similes,’ and ‘misinterpretation of data.’
More than 15 million Americans are officially classified as jobless.
At least, so says the quantitative troll in the windowless room.
The professors, at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers , have been following their representative sample of workers since the summer of 2009.
Statistical ear-perk: “their representative sample”
The report on their latest survey, just out this month, is titled: “The Shattered American Dream: Unemployed Workers Lose Ground, Hope, and Faith in Their Futures.”
Doesn’t that title make you want to punch a hippie? It’s hard for me to gauge, because wanting to punch a hippie is pretty much my default setting.
Over the 15 months that the surveys have been conducted, just one-quarter of the workers have found full-time jobs, nearly all of them for less pay and with fewer or no benefits.
That’s what happens in recessions. You take worse jobs. Restructuring is why firms swing to profitability, re-invest those profits, and emerge with an eye towards growth.
“For those who remain unemployed,” the report says, “the cupboard has long been bare.”
Except for the 99 (now more) weeks of unemployment benefits they have been suckling,
These were not the folks being coldly and precisely monitored, classified and quantified as they made their way to the malls to kick-start the economy. These were among the many millions of Americans who spent the holidays hurting.
What the fuck are you talking about? Yes, they are being coldly and precisely monitored. That’s why you have this bullshit study by a couple of pointy-heads out of Rutgers .
As the report states: “The recession has been a cataclysm that will have an enduring effect. It is hard to overstate the dire shape of the unemployed.”
And if that verbiage doesn’t scream “objective scientific integrity” to you, well… you’re sane.
Nearly two-thirds of the unemployed workers who were surveyed have been out of work for a year or more. More than a third have been jobless for two years. With their savings exhausted, many have borrowed money from relatives or friends, sold possessions to make ends meet and decided against medical examinations or treatments they previously would have considered essential.
Unemployed people, meet the saving best friend of every horse-faced trollop and beer-bellied Limp Bizkit devotee at last call: lowered standards.
Older workers who are jobless are caught in a particularly precarious state of affairs. As the report put it:
“We are witnessing the birth of a new class —
I feel compelled to let Bob know that he doesn’t actually get to cut the umbilical cord or bury the placenta in the back yard.
the involuntarily retired. Many of those over age 50 believe they will not work again at a full-time ‘real’ job commensurate with their education and training.
Does an extensive background in mimeography? Blacksmithing? How about typewriter maintenance?
More than one-quarter say they expect to retire earlier than they want, which has long-term consequences for themselves and society. Many will file for Social Security as soon as they are eligible, despite the fact that they would receive greater benefits if they were able to delay retiring for a few years.”
Brilliant analysis: jobs are good!
There is a fundamental disconnect between economic indicators pointing in a positive direction and the experience of millions of American families fighting desperately to fend off destitution.
No, there is no fundamental disconnect. This is simply a journalist that doesn’t understand the difference between leading and trailing indicators. As evidence, here’s a small sampling (August 2003-December 2003) of Herbert’s economic ramblings:
Remember the recession in 2003? Yeah, neither do I. This is the same article with more cooperative statistics.
Some three out of every four Americans have been personally touched by the recession — either they’ve lost a job or a relative or close friend has.
Can we play six degrees of Recession? You have six moves to connect to someone who’s lost a job and/or Kevin Bacon.
And the outlook, despite the spin being put on the latest data, is not promising.
No one is forecasting a substantial reduction in unemployment rates next year.
There are two reasons for that: 1) employment is a trailing indicator. It improves after the economy in general has already turned around. 2) The economy is growing far too slowly as the result of poor fiscal policy from Washington
And, as Motoko Rich reported in The Times this month, temporary workers accounted for 80 percent of the 50,000 jobs added by private sector employers in November.
And, because of the Census, virtually every month since April. Nevermind.
Carl Van Horn, the director of the Heldrich Center and one of the two professors (the other is Cliff Zukin) conducting the survey, said he was struck by how pessimistic some of the respondents have become — not just about their own situation but about the nation’s future. The survey found that workers in general are increasingly accepting the notion that the effects of the recession will be permanent,
Probably true. This is mostly because the government did not allow the companies that caused the recession to fail. If they had, smaller companies would be clamoring for the market voids left by GM, Citi, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and small businesses all over the country. Instead we have buttressed failed leadership and enshrined failed business models.
that they are the result of fundamental changes in the national economy.
“They’re losing the idea that if you are determined and work hard, you can get ahead,”
Because, for years we’ve been beating back the entrepreneurial spirit that makes America
said Dr. Van Horn. “They’re losing that sense of optimism. They don’t think that they or their children are going to fare particularly well.”
The fact that so many Americans are out of work, or working at jobs that don’t pay well, undermines the prospects for a robust recovery. Jobless people don’t buy a lot of flat-screen TVs.
Yes, but jobless people don’t produce a lot of flat-screen TVs either.
What we’re really seeing is an erosion of standards of living for an enormous portion of the population, including a substantial segment of the once solid middle class.
Does anyone else despise the middle class as much as me? Stop demanding your politicians pander to you. Stop allowing upper and lower class people alike to fly your banner. Stop embracing the vocabulary of Marx to pursue the ideals of Smith. America
Not only is this not being addressed, but the self-serving, rightward lurch in Washington
This is where the sharp jerk of the wheel to the left differentiates Herbert from a traditional bleeding heart. He is a pure poverty pimp, exploiting hardships for political gain.
is all but guaranteed to make matters worse for working people. The zealots reading the economic tea leaves see brighter days ahead.
Did I or did I not say that Herbert would compare quantitative analysis to mysticism? Do I know these jackasses or what? **Victory dance, Final Fantasy music plays somewhere in the background**
They can afford to be sanguine. They’re working.
Mostly because they have a skill set that is so far beyond your comprehension that you consider it with disdainful reverence.
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