Crooked Timber

Gareth Wilson brings something up in comments to this post. What do the parents among you say when your children ask you if your family is rich? I say, yes, we’re rich. Living in Asia as we do, our family has lots of chances to see really poor people in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. We see these people because we’re going on family vacations to stay in villas in Bali. There doesn’t seem to be much to say about that except, being rich sure is great, eh? I tend to say, well, that doesn’t mean we can buy just anything we want, and we’ll often see other people we know having great things we can’t afford, but on the whole, we’re rich. This is ideally meant to inspire charitable thoughts rather than mercenary self-satisfaction. Am I going to deprive my children of their God-given American right to insist they are middle-class? And when is Richie Rich Euros going to come out and serve as the grave monument for the mighty US dollar?

This NYT article, The Decline of the $20 Wage”, on the vanishing blue-collar worker with a middle-class income is both depressing and…confusing. Adjusting the numbers for inflation is at least alluded to initially:

Leaving aside for a moment those who have lost their jobs, what of those who still have them? Once upon a time, a large number earned at least $20 an hour, or its inflation-adjusted equivalent, and now so many of them don’t.

However, from this point on the article seems to talk about wages which were $20-an-hour or above in the past—even as far back as the 70s—and are now less than $20 in nominal terms.

The $20 hourly wage, introduced on a huge scale in the middle of the last century, allowed masses of Americans with no more than a high school education to rise to the middle class. It was a marker, of sorts. And it is on its way to extinction….

Hourly workers had come a long way from the days when employers and unions negotiated a way for them to earn the prizes of the middle class — houses, cars, college educations for their children, comfortable retirements. Even now a residual of that golden age remains, notably in the auto industry. But here, too, wages are falling below the $20-an-hour threshold — $41,600 annually — that many experts consider the minimum income necessary to put a family of four into the middle class….

Since [the 1970s] the percentage of people earning at least $20 an hour has eroded in every sector of the economy, falling last year to 18 percent of all hourly workers from 23 percent in 1979 — a gradual unwinding of the post-World War II gains.

The decline is greatest in manufacturing, where only 1.9 million hourly workers still earn that much. That’s down nearly 60 percent since 1979, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

The shrinkage is sometimes quite open. The Big Three automakers are currently buying out more than 25,000 employees who earn above $20 an hour, replacing many with new hires tied to a “second tier” wage scale that never quite reaches $20. A similar buyout last year removed 80,000 auto workers. Many were not replaced, but many were, with the new hires paid today at the non-middle-class scale, and with fewer benefits.

Surely $20 an hour in the 70s would be $60 or so an hour now, adjusted for inflation? It makes a big difference to this article and the author has totally failed to explain the issue. ‘Fewer people of this class make even 1/3 as much per hour as they did 30 years ago’ is a very different message from ‘fewer people of this class make this inflation-adjusted wage.’ It seems clear the article implies the former but muddies the waters with the nominal wage, ironically further masking the dramatic decline of the blue-collar middle class.

Would you like to see a bunch of people argue that calling a black man in his 40s “boy” isn’t racist, and it’s cynical playing of the mythical “race card” to say that it is? Hie thee to the commenters at Matthew Yglesias’. I considered excerpting, but it was like cool-ranch-race-flavored Pringles: once I popped, I couldn’t stop. Just go scroll down in slack-jawed amazement. I used to think he and Ezra Klein were neck-and-neck in the competition for “liberal blogger whose comment section was made most useless by Al-bots and such,” but the tireless efforts of Steve Sailer and “Fred” have put Yggles over the top. Kudos!

UPDATE: Ezra Klein’s commenters have objected that they don’t actually suck. This objection has merit; those guys have reasonably substantive conversations about health policy nowadays. I was really thinking of Ezra’s pre-Prospect blog, which had an Al, the Fred who I think is now Yglesias’, and Captain Toke—it was horrible. So Ygelsias’ blog is more properly considered as being in the running with Kevin Drum’s site, but he nonetheless retains the olive branch.
ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ
ἅτε διαπρέπει νυκτὶ μεγάνορος ἔξοχα πλούτου:
εἰ δ’ ἄεθλα γαρύεν
ἔλδεαι, φίλον ἦτορ,
μηκέθ’ ἁλίου σκόπει
ἄλλο θαλπνότερον ἐν ἁμέρᾳ φαεννὸν ἄστρον ἐρήμας δι’ αἰθέρος,
μηδ’ Ὀλυμπίας ἀγῶνα φέρτερον αὐδάσομεν…
(Translation here.)

Gary Farber has been scraping by for a while on your previous generous donations, CT readers, but he’s in a world of hurt at the moment, so show some love.

In perhaps related news, some people just don’t know anything about being broke:

“The risk is that you could be modifying loans for people who don’t need it,” said Sharon Greenberg, director of mortgage strategy at Barclay’s. “There’s only so much you can do without talking to the borrower. You’re spending $60 a month on cable TV; can you get by with less? You’re spending $200 a month on food for two people, but food costs in your area show that you should be able to get by with $100 a month. These are the kinds of conversations that loan-servicing companies have to have with borrowers.”

Food costs in your area show that when there are no crawdads, you should be able to eat sand. No refinancing for you, Mr. Moneypants McRichington!!

I was going to respond at length to commenter sg in the thread to John Quiggin’s post, but decided I would just bump it up to a post. I think I may fairly summarize sg as saying that some drugs are so intrinsically harmful that they must be illegal. Further, that the US wouldn’t be awash in guns and drugs “if the US would actually try and police the drug trade.” This last is just madness, on my view, and anyone who thinks different should just go peruse Radley Balko’s archives. [In fairness, it seems sg is referring to more competent policing rather than more overwhelming force and aggressive raids, but I’m unclear on how this is meant to work.]

I wanted to talk about something that would-be legalizers often hear, namely, “you’re not willing to admit that under your system there would be lots more drug addicts, and being addicted to drugs is, in itself, a bad thing.” In my experience this isn’t right at all, and everyone who advocates decriminalization will admit that more people will use drugs if they are more widely available and there are no legal penalties. This means more people would become addicted to drugs. How could it be otherwise? This doesn’t mean that I think it’s good thing for people to abuse IV drugs—it’s obviously a bad thing. But the costs our own nation incurs in the War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs are crushing: citizens jailed for drug possession and minor sales; the wholesale violation of civil rights that attends aggressive enforcement of anti-drug laws; the fundamental unfairness of denying sick people access to drugs give them relief. With decriminalization we would need fewer police officers, and those we had could focus on violent crimes. We could reverse pernicious trends in which more and more African-American men are shoveled into the maw of the prison system. That’s not even considering the violence and misery spawned around the world by our insatiable appetite for drugs. You’ll pretty much have to convince me that decriminalization will mean free samples of heroin-enriched enfamil before I even bother to reconsider my cost-benefit analysis. Continue reading “Yes, Even Heroin”

Via the Instapundit, I recently read this Michael Yon piece in which he proposes to offer his articles for free to US newspapers so that they can serve as a corrective to the misleading, negative reports on Iraq one reads today. I also read all the comments, because I am a peculiar person. My loss is your gain, however, since I am able to promote this moving, yet mysterious comment from its lowly position at 129 in the thread:

Carol Says:
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who read Michael Yon, and therefore know the truth and those who do not.

It’s easy to figure it out, I just ask. I’ve stopped tipping black cab drivers who don’t know about you Michael, the smart ones do, they deserve the tip.

I will definitely send you a tip and will spread the word in deepest darkest Kensington.

I’m afraid I can’t muster any response to this more eloquent than, “wha—?” I briefly considered instituting a new practice of tipping Singaporean Tamil taxi drivers only when they had heard of dsquared, but it seems comparatively lackluster. Chinese taxi drivers only when they are willing to spit on a wallet-sized photo of Tom Friedman?

UPDATE: helpful readers point out that the commenter is talking about “black-cab” drivers, rather than cab drivers who are black. I didn’t know that. So, 100% less racist, but still crazy.

You are really not helping your case for massively preferential taxation here, hedge fund guy:

Private-equity executives say they never dreamed that the tax status of their payouts would be questioned. “I don’t think that anybody felt it would ever be challenged,” said Scott M. Sperling, managing director of Thomas H. Lee Partners, a private-equity firm. Managers’ earnings are “capital gains in every technical and spiritual sense.”

That guy is so far at the front of the line that he may be up against the wall right this minute, absent any revolution whatsoever.

Pejman Yousefzadeh isn’t taking the internet mockery of his anti-FDR agitation well.

Apparently—and this is the latest pronouncement from the Reality-Based Community—we are not supposed to study things that happened 74 years ago, or perhaps longer.

That seems like a reasonable way to characterize the point that one wouldn’t usually get worked up reading a squib entitled “70 years ago this week in monetary policy.” Anyhoo, Continue reading “The Drop of A Hat”

Why are people trying to convince me that Fred Thompson is sexy? A lock for the Republican nomination, OK—I feel that since all the other candidates have some truly fatal flaw, and since ol’Fred has been conveniently out of office during the late unpleasantness of the Bush II era he’ll get the nomination by default. I even think he could make a decent candidate in the general election, but sexy ladies man who’s going to Smoove B my vote by freaking me gently all election cycle long? I think not.

“Fred is a perfect example of chivalry. He’s the kind of man little girls dream about marrying, who opens doors for you, lights your cigarettes, helps you on with your coat, buys wonderful gifts. It’s every woman’s fantasy.” Thompson, who wooed Baroness Thatcher [?!—Belle] during a visit to London last week, is expected to announce officially next month that he is running for president. He is already challenging Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, for first place in polls of likely Republican voters.

Morgan remembers encouraging Thompson to run for president when they were together. “I think he has a great chance of capturing the women’s vote. He’s majestic. He’s a soft, safe place to be and that could be Fred’s ticket. Women love a soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold us,” she said.

First of all, are women voters, taken as a whole, really so much like retarded kittens in our motivations? And secondly, doesn’t Fred Thompson pretty much look like a basset hound who’s just taken a really satisfying shit in your hall closet? Finally, even if we restrict our field of play to Republicans who have played prosecutors in the later seasons of Law and Order, I would much, much rather have sex with Angie Harmon, even though I’m not gay. Think about it. So, no sale. Via RedState

My little daughter Violet was playing that she had a loose tooth the other day. “let’s pretend you put it under the pillow and the Tooth Fairy brings you money”, I suggested. “Don’t be silly, mommy. The Tooth Fairy can’t bring you money.” “What does she bring you, then.” She looked at me, exasperated at my tomfoolery: “she brings you adult teeth!” Hmm, that is more plausible.

This afternoon Zoë asked me in the elevator why most Barbies have blonde hair, and I said it’s the most popular sort of Barbie, but they do come in other colors. “I think that’s not good,” she said. “Because most people have brown or black hair, and brown eyes, and different colors of skin. If somebody wasn’t very smart and they played with those blonde Barbies they might think that they can’t be pretty. That makes me feel weird. Next time if we get a Barbie I want her to have brown skin and black hair like LeAnn, or dark skin like Fope.” Yay Zoë! This was music to my ears compared to the time I overheard her playing that the biggest Russian nesting doll was so fat that she couldn’t wear any nice clothes, and then she went away and lost weight and came back as Barbie. Great, let’s just get the eating disorder started now!

Commenting on this Instapundit post: “I have no idea if it’s actually true, but sounds pretty plausible.” And that, my friends, is how the pros blog.

I have been meaning to write an update to my post of last month. When I skimmed the first accounts of the captured British sailors’ time in Iran I was under the impression they had been subjected to full-on mock execution, of the Dostoyevsky type. That is, told they were going to be executed, lined up and blindfolded, etc. Reading more I learned that it was more of a confused situation (still very alarming, no doubt), in which they were blindfolded and cuffed and could hear weapons being cocked. So, not actually torture (and some people pointed this out in the thread at the time.) It was scary as hell, no doubt, and I hope I’m never in that situation, or at least that, if I am, John Derbyshire is there to rush the armed soldiers and bite their throats out. I’m still ready to go nuclear, though, and I actually learned a lot reading that not-flamewar comments thread.

On the other hand, I thought that the comments to Kieran’s post on Megan’s difficult situation were unusually useless for the most part. This from John Quiggin was good, though:
Continue reading “Corrections”