The Great American Job Machine (destroying US jobs is a good thing)

NRO ^ | December 09, 2003, 8:38 a.m. | Rich Lowry

[dead]

The American economy is destroying jobs, and that's a good thing.

It is in destroying jobs that the economy improves and makes it possible for the standard of living of all Americans to increase. This constant churning means that even a "stagnant" American job market is extremely dynamic, and that the ranks of the unemployed are not necessarily the dispossessed of the earth, as Democrats tend to portray them.

Keep this in mind as Congress gears up for a debate on whether unemployment benefits should be extended beyond their normal six-month term for the fourth time in the past two years. Democrats will attack anyone opposing this extension as a heartless extremist attempting to trample on the poor. But an extension of benefits might, perversely, prolong unemployment, and it will serve to dampen the dynamism of the American economy, which is its greatest asset.

In any given year, roughly 10 percent of all jobs in the American economy are destroyed, while an equal number rises up to take their place, according to the latest Economic Report of the President. The trick, of course, is to create more jobs than are lost. Since 1980, according to Michael Cox of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, "Americans have filed 106 million initial claims for unemployment benefits, each representing a lost job." But during the past decade, the economy has still added a net 40 million new jobs.

Even when the economy isn't creating net new jobs, as has been the case recently, it's creating new jobs. Payroll employment was stagnant last year. But between 3.5 million and 5 million workers entered new jobs each month in 2002. Even during a "jobless recovery," the majority of workers looking for jobs in any given month is different from those workers seeking jobs the next month.

Since 1970, the median duration of unemployment has been 6.6 weeks when the economy is growing, and 8.2 weeks immediately following a recession. In roughly 40 percent of cases, the period of unemployment is five weeks or less. So the unemployed aren't a single class of people, but a group constantly changing as people cycle in and out.

In many cases, job turnover — although painful — is a very good thing. It is by switching jobs that people learn new skills and find a better match for the skills they already have, thus earning higher wages. A typical young worker has seven jobs during his first ten years in the job market. A third of that worker's wage growth will occur when leaving one job for another.

Public policy should be leery of anything that discourages this churning in the job market. (Otherwise, four out of 10 of all Americans would still be working on a farm, as we were a century ago.) Because unemployment benefits essentially subsidize unemployment, they can have this effect, encouraging people to stay unemployed instead of jumping back into the job market.

One study shows that each additional week of unemployment benefits increases the time a person spends unemployed by a day. Indeed, the unemployed are twice as likely to find a job in the week before their benefits expire than in the weeks prior. Makes you go, "huh," doesn't it?

People respond to incentives. Experiments in a few states have shown that giving a re-employment bonus to the unemployed speeds up the time it takes them to find a new job by roughly a week. Europe has longer and more generous unemployment benefits than the United States — and also chronically higher rates of unemployment.

So, as the economy begins to purr and the unemployment rate dips, the last thing the government should do is give people a disincentive to join in the great roiling American job market. Opposing an extension of unemployment benefits isn't heartless, but an act of well-placed faith — in the dynamism of the American economy and in the resourcefulness of its workers.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

[CobaltBlue]

Not worried about America at all. Here's why:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1037150/posts

[technochick99]

no longer base its call center in India.

Actually, this is only for call centers catering to their business clients. Consumers will still be routed to India.

[sixmil]

I am told that Indians have special talents at IT. If so, it makes as much sense to hire Indians to do IT as it does to hire black men to play basketball.

That's about the most ignorant post I have seen on FR.

[CobaltBlue]

Oh, right, and Asians aren't better at math, either.

"For example, among the Westinghouse Science Talent Search Award recipients each year is about 30 to 40% Asian Americans, though as an ethnic group they comprise only of 4% of the U.S. population. Similar disproportionately high representations are found among the other science awards such as the Tandy?s and Intel?s as well. Asian Americans are over-represented among the top performers in SAT, G.M.A.T, and G.R.E. Further, in these tests Asian American students typically score higher than all other groups, including Caucasian Americans.
 
Asian Americans had the highest graduation rate among all ethnic groups in 1995, the most recent year for which data were available. Graduation rate for Asian Americans was 65 percent, followed by white students (59 percent). The number of Asian Americans in higher education has more than doubled between 1984 and 1995, from 390,000 to 797,000 (Thatchenkery & Cheng, 1997). Similarly, Asian- American women have doubled the number of degrees they have earned in each category since 1985 (Tang, 1997). Asian Americans also earned 19.9 percent more doctoral degrees in 1995 than in 1994, the largest one-year increase among the four major ethnic minority groups. The number of Asian Americans earning doctorates has more than doubled since 1985 (Tang, 1997)."
http://modelminority.com/article187.html

[GingisK]

Poor spelling makes it a lot harder to get your code to compile...

Aha!! Not a programmer, are you? The program will compile if all of the symbols are equally misspelled.

I pointed out in previous posts that spelling for postings is not important. Spelling for work-related tasks is. I also pointed out that my software is nearly flawless, with few bugs even with a short development cycle. I even pointed out that I produce about as much code as six people. I've been doing software for a living for over thirty years. I am currently employed.

Take the time to read everything that was posted. Miss snippy equated spelling mistakes in postings as a general case of reduced intellect. You folks are due for a paradigm shift.

[GingisK]

Oh yeah. I forgot that Wal-Mart was a major supplier of communications and defense infrastructure.

[discostu]

QA, I get paid to point out your flaws. The program won't compile if you misspell keywords or misspell variables or functions differently (and most folks with spelling problems tend to be pretty random in their spelling).

Spelling is important, at all times. If a communication is important enough for you to make it's important enough for you to make correctly. If your posts are so insignificant that they don't deserve to be spelled correctly you should probably save JimRobs bandwidth and our time and keep them to yourself.

I have a job because of "flawless" coders like yourself. I've worked with many coders that are boastful like you, and their code always sucks and usually doesn't even run the first time it's submitted to QA. The bigger the ego the crappier the work, never seen an exception.

"Miss Snippy" was right, poor spelling is a sign of a lazy mind, you very well might be smart but you don't care enough to utilize it... or even utilize the Spell button FR has provided you. Can't be that good an engineer if you can't even use the tools provided.

[GeekDejure]

When I got laid off I took a 30% pay cut to get another job where I could learn new skills.

Hmmm . . . I kinda sorta figure you got laid off because you sign off with "LQ" . . . instead of "Elk You"!!! ;-))

.

[GingisK]

The program won't compile if you misspell keywords or misspell variables or functions differently...

After thirty years of writing software, you presume to be informing me of something?

If you were so good at QA, you would have noted that I have continuously stated that my proofing level for these posts does not even come close to that which I use for work products. I am sometimes posting from work, where time is not well spent on proofing posts. Do you have some problem parsing the English grammar? Do you actually think I should proof these posts in some rash attempt to win the Pulitzer?

[discostu]

BWAHAAHAHA, you're exactly the type of programmer that makes me add a month to the schedule. All ego and afraid of even the slightest criticism. You're the kind of guy that will argue for an hour about a bug and will in the end dismiss it as a minor issue requiring only 5 minutes to fix (never explaining why you didn't just fix the damn thing and 11 others just like it instead of arguing about it). I love engineers like you, if it wasn't for you guys no one would ever need QA.

It's really hard to parse "English grammar" when the writer didn't actually use English grammar, when in fact there's so many misspelled words it's arguable they didn't use English at all. If your point is worth making it's worth making CORRECTLY, with properly spelled words and everything. If you were a man and not an ego you could take your hit for misspelling without going into a tizzy and trying to blame everybody else for YOUR MISTAKE.

[GingisK]

Boy, if you and Miss Spelling Bee would consult the posting rules for this forum, you would find that criticism for spelling in not considered good manners. It is not prudent to be overzealous in proofing these posts.

You haven't seen my work, nor worked with me. You are simply in no position to judge my work. I keep good records related to software changes, even when management doesn't require this. I also keep time records on each task, and feed that back to my own original estimates. Management has never required that. That feedback loop allows me to estimate my work to within 5% unless the requirements are a moving target. I do write excellent software and documentation. Don't jump to conclusions related to postings.

BTW, you match my stereotype for QA personnel. If you could code, you would be employed writing software. I'm still employed. Our entire QA department is out looking for work. Your job is very useful in ensuring delivery of a quality product, but it does not produce the product.

[discostu]

BWAHAHAHA. Still dodging. Can't take even the slightest criticism.

I'm in an excellent position to judge your work. I've seen that you can't spell and any criticism gets your back up and puts you in a defensive mode where you immediately try to blame everyone but yourself. Those are the personality traits of a bad engineer. You could have walked away from all of this yesterday by simply aknowledging the mistake and moving on, but you're incapable of doing that you must FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. Blaming the people who noticed you can't spell instead of simply taking the hit. I'm not jumping to any conclussions, I've had similar conversations with many developers in my career, and in each case that developer was a drag on the company and his work blew chunks.

I can code, I just never liked it. Your work might produce a product but given how poor you are at self checking the product would get somebody killed out in the field if nobody was there to make you do it right. the fact that you think it's a good thing that your company got rid of QA shows what a stereotypical bad developer you are, employing engineers with your attitude and getting rid of the safety net that keeps you from releasing garbage in the field proves your company is run by idiots and doomed to failure. Better spellcheck your resume because you're destined to be on the street soon.

Walk away from it. Every time you comeback to whine about being mistreated and boost your own ego with pointless red herrings I'm not dumb enough to believe you simply prove me right. You're a bad speller, a bad engineer, and not a very impressive person. That's the badge you more firmly affix to yourself with every reply in this thread.

[GingisK]

BWAHAHAHA. Still dodging.

Heh heh. I just had to fix one of my typos in the build. ;-D

[PuNcH]

I'm not jumping to any conclussions,

Oh my, now you look awfully stupid dont you. Poor pathetic nazi spell checker made a boo boo.

What a moron.

[PuNcH]

u teh suk

[discostu]

Oops a misspelling. Happens, but I'm not going to blame you. See that's the difference. I made the mistake and I take the blame, Gingis makes a mistake and blames to person who found it.

You really should cut down on the insults, they're bad for your complexion.

[PuNcH]

I didnt insult you. You insulted yourself. I was just pointing things out to you as I am in an excellent position to judge you. How foolish and pathetic you are blaming the messanger for your own stupidity.

[discostu]

You called me a moron, that's an insult. I didn't blame the messEnger (oops you sinned too), I just told you that insulting people is bad for your complexion. Get over it dude. I never hit Gingis for making the mistake I hit him for trying to write off the mistake and blame the person who pointed it out. Misspellings happen but the smart people of the world know how to take criticism and don't go banzai because somebody points out a long series of atrocious spelling errors.

[PuNcH]

Actually I didnt sin because I dont take the position of a spell checking nazi. Besides, I only type too quickly.

[discostu]

But you still misspelled a word, at least you take the blame though and don't try some lame dodge that spelling isn't important in your job so you don't care. Which is what I was objecting to. I'm far too bad a speller (and typist) to hit someone for their spelling, but I'm honest about taking the blame for my own short comings. And given that my line of work is forcing people in his line of work to correct their mistakes I know full well that spelling IS important in Gingis' job whether he'll admit it or not.