Urban Myth: There Are No Job Openings

 

Complaints about there being no job openings are just whining.

Now, there are some caveats to that blue curve.

• We’re only up to the level of Fall 2008, and the economy wasn’t great then.
• The graph doesn’t go far enough back to show that we’re still off from, say, 2006.

But, if someone you know can’t pick up a job, chances are that they are sending out bad signals (or no signals at all) to potential employers.

Read the whole thing – in it, Casey Mulligan argues that this is because of the promotion of disincentives to work in public policy.

I prefer to think that what we’ve got here is a tailor-made excuse for collective laziness: I think there’s too many people complaining about the lack of programs to help them out … so they’re not even active enough to recognize the disincentive.

A Challenge for Those Who Want More Government

Don Boudreaux wonders why those who want more government don’t point to the successes of the U.S. economy with the government programs we already have:

But if I were a pro-regulation and high-tax kinda guy, why would I dispute the claim that America’s economy has performed remarkably well for everyone even since 1973?  Why would I not say “See, the government programs enacted from the New Deal forward are working!”  At no time during the past 35 years has Uncle Sam’s budget been severely reduced.  During those years, some welfare programs have been scaled back, while others have been expanded and even newly created.  Trade is freer today, but the post-WWII trend toward freer trade began in the 1940s, long before those allegedly blissful years of the early 1970s.  Since the early 1970s, some regulations have been repealed, while others have been created at both the state and national levels.

In short, despite what some pundits mysteriously assert, America during the past twenty-five to thirty-five years has emphatically not been a laissez-faire society.  Not even close.  So why do so many persons on the political left see in the economic data of the past three decades a compelling case for even greater government control over our lives and pocketbooks?  And why don’t more of these same persons on the left respond to those of us who advocate less government by pointing to the evidence of continued and widespread growth in prosperity by saying proudly “See!  We’re right and you’re wrong: government intervention does work well!”

We have a lot of government programs already – either times were good and we need more of them, or they weren’t and we need less. Which is it?

I think that’s a fair question.

Quote About Economic Eschatologism*

Via Don Boudreaux:

I pose today …  the same question that Thomas Babington Macaulay posed in 1830 to the irrational pessimist Robert Southey:

On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?

I think this is a worthwhile question for all economics students.

* Eschatologism is the belief that the study of the “end of days” of a particular religion is important for day to day decision-making in the here and now.

How’s Cuba Actually Done?

Matched pairs is a standard technique in statistics to reveal whether there are differences in behavior.

The key is, who to match. We probably shouldn’t match Cuba with Spain because the latter was its imperial owner for so long. So how about Cuba and Portugal – the latter was clearly worse off than Cuba when Castro took over, and had its own problems with dictators over the last 50 years.

Here’s a video  – move the slider to 1950 and click play.

It shows how life expectancy has gone up in both countries at about the same rate – that’s the vertical axis.

But, real GDP per capita – the variable most closely associated with quality of life – does not change at the same rate.

Via Cafe Hayek.

Evidence Against Price Stickiness

Alex Tabarrok points out that the there are far more unemployed houses than people, and that prices – while sticky for both – are less sticky for houses.

That’s an interesting idea to carry around for the next time sticky prices comes up in class.

There Are People Who Argue that Well-Being In the U.S. Has Not Improved In Their Lifetime

Take a look at this photo set from the early 1940’s – when the U.S. was by far the richest country in the world.

Respectfully, I think large fractions of people who voice the opinion in the title are either lying or mentally ill.

Video Showing the Unemployment Rate by County

A couple of years of monthly unemployment rate data, by county, shaded, and set to video.

What I really like is the way the recession starts out spotty, but then coalescences into two waves converging inwards from the coasts.