Politics: A new beginning

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
The only unemployment number you quoted related to Krugman's claim -- the one about the mid-1990s. What we're all talking about is numbers from the last few months. You're debunking a claim that Krugman made and that no one here -- not S_A_M, not skeks, not me -- has repeated. So, debunk away, but don't pretend that you're talking about what the rest of us are. Meanwhile, S_A_M responded to your post about discouraged workers with some nice math, and I gave you statistics about the proportion of people in the work force, but you are ignoring both of us.

Actually, I thought his point was that the 9.7% number in your cite was the same 9.7% number incorrectly described by Krugman as showing the worst job market in 20 years (other than during the prior administration), and there was some discussion of how that 9.7% number was actually generated (which discussion was completely inadequate in both of your quotes). Though the "compare apples and apples" comment should apply, strictly on the basis of the quotes provided, to the Krugman statement only (your article's comparison to the 1990s sounds possibly/probably correct).

Suffice it to say: I hate economic journalism, they think they can get away with these vague, sloppy descriptions of what they are calculating because they think, sadly often rightly, that most americans can't do math and have no concept of statistically valid sampling or calculation methods. Statistics can only "lie" if you conceal the math and/or play fast-ones with your sampling data - case in point: why, exactly, should anyone be alarmed that the "looking for work 15 wks +" number is higher at the end of a recession than at the end of a huge job boom, and why wasn't THAT number compared to the early 1990s (end of recession) data, too? 95% of this stuff is mushy bullshit, and trying to engage it at all is like discussing Proust with a toddler.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
Suffice it to say: I hate economic journalism, they think they can get away with these vague, sloppy descriptions of what they are calculating because they think, sadly often rightly, that most americans can't do math and have no concept of statistically valid sampling or calculation methods. Statistics can only "lie" if you conceal the math and/or play fast-ones with your sampling data - case in point: why, exactly, should anyone be alarmed that the "looking for work 15 wks +" number is higher at the end of a recession than at the end of a huge job boom, and why wasn't THAT number compared to the early 1990s (end of recession) data, too? 95% of this stuff is mushy bullshit, and trying to engage it at all is like discussing Proust with a toddler.

Which is a non-performance art way of saying what I was saying.
the argument was made that since a guess at new jobs was too low to justify the guess at the drop in unemployment, that it made sense to guess that tons of people got discouraged. It is all guess work- not a science justifying the strength you are bringing to this argument.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
95% of this stuff is mushy bullshit, and trying to engage it at all is like discussing Proust with a toddler.

Say what you will; my toddler is quite capable of enjoying the aesthetic experience of a good madeleine.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
Actually, I thought his point was that the 9.7% number in your cite was the same 9.7% number incorrectly described by Krugman as showing the worst job market in 20 years (other than during the prior administration), and there was some discussion of how that 9.7% number was actually generated (which discussion was completely inadequate in both of your quotes). Though the "compare apples and apples" comment should apply, strictly on the basis of the quotes provided, to the Krugman statement only (your article's comparison to the 1990s sounds possibly/probably correct).

I quoted the LA Times for its assessment of the 9.7% figure, not because I have some independent sense that that figure is high or low. Bilmore had quoted Luskin, who says that the number of "discouraged" workers is quite small, and I think the LA Times paragraph suggests that -- no matter how the federal government uses the term in a narrow sense -- the overall concern is valid. Bilmore chose not to respond to that point, but instead refuted a claim made by Krugman -- made elsewhere, and not repeated here by anyone but him. So, to mix metaphors egregiously, he has his own little kabuki performance going, and is playing all the roles since no one is holding up the Krugman straw man for him. The main point: Markets are recovering nicely, the employment situation less so.

Suffice it to say: I hate economic journalism, they think they can get away with these vague, sloppy descriptions of what they are calculating because they think, sadly often rightly, that most americans can't do math and have no concept of statistically valid sampling or calculation methods. Statistics can only "lie" if you conceal the math and/or play fast-ones with your sampling data - case in point: why, exactly, should anyone be alarmed that the "looking for work 15 wks +" number is higher at the end of a recession than at the end of a huge job boom, and why wasn't THAT number compared to the early 1990s (end of recession) data, too? 95% of this stuff is mushy bullshit, and trying to engage it at all is like discussing Proust with a toddler.

The problem also is that the reporters do not bother to understand what they are writing about, since that takes effort and will not be appreciated by most of their audience. Brad DeLong is fond of complaining about this.

DeLong defends Krugman today from an attack very similar to the one by Luskin. It's a long post, but I'm going to copy it here because so much of it is relevant to the conversation we've been having.

• The Slime Machine at Work Again
  
  Daniel Drezner screams and leaps, fangs bared, for Paul Krugman's jugular. However, he trips over a tree root and falls off a cliff:
  
  Daniel Drezner: CORRECTING KRUGMAN.... Krugman's assertion here is that the number of discouraged workers ("those who have given up looking for work") plus the number of part-time workers who wish they were full-time ("only marginally employed") are unusually high by historical standards.... [But] the percentage of discouraged workers... was much higher a decade ago.... [T]he percentage of Americans who are part-time workers but would prefer full-time... was higher a decade ago.... Krugman is either wrong or has a different definition of "unusual" than the rest of the English-speaking world. Distortions like this one...
  
  There are, of course, two big problems with Drezner's "argument." When Krugman writes "an unusually large number of people have given up looking for work" he is tracking the flow of people who used to be employed into out-of-the-labor force status, and is referring to a much larger category of people who have dropped out of the labor force over the past three years than just the Bureau of Labor Statistics's "Discouraged Workers" category. When Krugman writes "many of those who say they have jobs seem to be only marginally employed" he is referring to a large group that has nothing at all to do with those who are working part-time for economic reasons. He is referring to those who tell the BLS household survey interviewers that they are working but for whom there is no corresponding employer telling the BLS payroll survey that they have somebody working for them
  
  Does Krugman say that those who have "given up looking for work" are in the BLS "discouraged worker" category? No. Does Krugman say the words "discouraged workers" at all? No. Does Krugman say that those "marginally attached" are in the BLS "part-time for economic reasons" category? No. Does Krugman say the words "part-time for economic reasons" at all? No.
  
  It is true that anybody who has been watching the labor market over the past three years--and seen the remarkably large fall in employment coupled with the remarkably small rise in the unemployment rate--will know that what Paul Krugman wrote was completely correct: this recession looks small as measured by the rise in unemployment, but it looks large as measured by the fall in employment as a share of the population or the duration of unemployment. Anybody who has been watching will know that Daniel Drezner's fangs-bared attack is fake and loony.
  
  But the numbers of those who watch the flow of data out of the BLS are small. And the numbers of those who will read Drezner, and conclude that Krugman has written something wrong or questionable, are large.
  
  Misrepresent somebody as saying something they did not say. Attack them for it. And then accuse them of "distortions." Way to go, Dan: you're now at the loony hack level. You ought to at least try to be better than that.
  
  
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  What Krugman did write:
  
  Paul Krugman: An aside: how weak is the labor market? The measured unemployment rate of 5.9 percent isn't that high by historical standards, but there's something funny about that number. An unusually large number of people have given up looking for work, so they are no longer counted as unemployed, and many of those who say they have jobs seem to be only marginally employed. Such measures as the length of time it takes laid-off workers to get new jobs continue to indicate the worst job market in 20 years...
  
  
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Me, from last December:
  
  Look at what has happened to the U.S. employment-to-population ratio--estimated from the BLS household survey--over the past half century:
  
  [The graph here is omitted because it would fuck up the margins, but it's the one that I've linked to twice already and that bilmore has been resolutely ignoring]
  
  The employment-to-population ratio falls in each recessionary period.* Back in the old days, the rule of thumb was that the rise in the unemployment rate (in percentage points) was about five-thirds as large as the fall in the employment-to-population ratio (in percentage points). Thus the 1973-1945 recession saw the unemployment rate rise by 4.4% while the employment-to-population ratio fell by 2.4%. The 1979-1983 recessionary period saw the unemployment rate rise by 5.2% while the employment-to-population ratio fell by 3.1%.
  
  But in the most recent 2000-2003 recessionary period, the employment-to-population ratio has fallen by 2.7% while the unemployment rate has only risen by 2.1%. The old pattern would have led us to expect such a fall in the employment-to-population ratio to have been accompanied by a rise in the unemployment rate of not 2.1% but 4.5%. More than half of the additional people who would have reported themselves as unemployed in a previous big recessionary period... aren't. They're reporting themselves as out of the labor force instead.
  
  Why? What's happened to change the relationship between changes in employment and changes in the labor force? And what does it mean? (It's not the self-employed: this is from the household survey.)
  
  It might be the sheer length of the downturn: a longer downturn may induce more people to give up looking, and produce more discouraged workers out of the labor force. But the 1979-1983 period was also prolonged, and although I remember Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard worrying about how prolonged employment declines might discourage workers and produce a version of the European structural employment disease, it didn't.
  
  It is a mystery to me.
  
  
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  *The employment-to-population ratio also rises over time as discrimination against women is severely reduced, and women find jobs outside the home in amazing numbers in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.

It is a little bit pathetic the way conservatives swarm to attack Krugman. It suggests he's scoring points. He will win a Nobel Prize one of these days, which is not something you hear about, e.g., Luskin.

[Hank Chinaski]

I'll try and be smart, in the intelligent sense. You guys are pissing about each other's columnists. But I have a question. Is the amount of the disgruntled based on this?

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
But in the most recent 2000-2003 recessionary period, the employment-to-population ratio has fallen by 2.7% while the unemployment rate has only risen by 2.1%. The old pattern would have led us to expect such a fall in the employment-to-population ratio to have been accompanied by a rise in the unemployment rate of not 2.1% but 4.5%. More than half of the additional people who would have reported themselves as unemployed in a previous big recessionary period... aren't. They're reporting themselves as out of the labor force instead.

where do they report "out"? Is this in surveys by economic columnists? the labor dept.?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Where do they report "out"? Is this in surveys by economic columnists? the labor dept.?

I don't know off-hand and haven't looked. To be clear, that paragraph you quoted is from DeLong's blog.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Bilmore chose not to respond to that point, but instead refuted a claim made by Krugman -- made elsewhere, and not repeated here by anyone but him. So, to mix metaphors egregiously, he has his own little kabuki performance going, and is playing all the roles since no one is holding up the Krugman straw man for him. The main point: Markets are recovering nicely, the employment situation less so.

You're being intentionally dense, right? You're response brings to mind the "la la la I can't HEAR you . . ." debate style. The Krugman argument is simply his version of the common thesis being propounded all over, including here - and it doesn't hold water. You are merely seeking to define the relevant terms on an unquantifiable basis, so that you don't have to defend your argument that this recovery is jobless, except on an anecdotal basis. As for DeLong, I'm not sure he understands the difference between the household survey and the payroll survey.

[bilmore]

Damn, I missed this part.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
It is a little bit pathetic the way conservatives swarm to attack Krugman. It suggests he's scoring points. He will win a Nobel Prize one of these days, which is not something you hear about, e.g., Luskin.

No, he's scoring no points in any logical manner. It's simply infuriating that someone with his background and abilities can go so far over the deep end as to completely whore out his craft and intentionally misdirect and misinform in service to raw partisanship, and keep his slot with the NYT.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
The Krugman argument is simply his version of the common thesis being propounded all over, including here - and it doesn't hold water. You are merely seeking to define the relevant terms on an unquantifiable basis, so that you don't have to defend your argument that this recovery is jobless, except on an anecdotal basis.

Bullshit. The only knock you've made on Krugman is by referring to employment in the mid-1990s, which is not relevant to anything that anyone here is saying. You apparently don't have a response to anything that the rest of us are saying.

As for DeLong, I'm not sure he understands the difference between the household survey and the payroll survey.

Sure, I'll take your ipse dixit over his any day. What does he know? He's just a professor of economics at UC Berkeley and a former Treasury Department official. I'm sure he doesn't know the difference between the household survey and the payroll survey.

Have the sense to know when you're behind . . . .

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Damn, I missed this part.

No, he's scoring no points in any logical manner. It's simply infuriating that someone with his background and abilities can go so far over the deep end as to completely whore out his craft and intentionally misdirect and misinform in service to raw partisanship, and keep his slot with the NYT.

As David Brooks is hell-bent on proving, the format of a NYT op-ed column is a difficult one. This is really Matt Yglesias's point, not mine. Some people fault Krugman for failing to develop points that he simply has no room for in that context.

When I've seen sustained discussion of the critiques of him, his critics come out looking dumb. Witness, e.g., DeLong's fisking of Drezner. But often no one bothers, because who cares what Luskin is saying? As I say, however, I don't pay a lot of attention to Krugman.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
Interesting way to avoid discussion of the basis for the "jobless recovery" claims. I'm quoting unemployment numbers and trends, and you're denying that this is germane to the "jobless recovery" topic? The whole point was, originally, the employment numbers don't seem to be rising to a degree that implies a job recovery, followed by discussion as to why the published UE stats were misleading.

Yep. I suspect the best way to tell whether this is ultimately a "jobless recovery" is to look at the statistics (or "guesses" as Hank would say) of the net number of jobs created each month during the recovery. Or, is that just too simple -- folks?

The overall net numbers (recession plus recovery) aren't great for the administration so far (about negative net 2.5 million so far IIRC). We'll see how much that improves by November -- or whether at least Bush will be able to talk about "1 million new jobs created in the past year", etc.

Bilmore's basic underlying point is indiputable -- i.e that it is possible to stretch definitions dishonestly and thus blur the statistics and argument. Whether or not Krugman was doing that in the various pieces and columns discussed here is more disputable. It seems to me that in at least one piece, Krugman was talking about sophisticated concepts that are easy to twist.

It is dangerous to rely upon the bloggers' attacks upon and characterizations of Krugman as if they were gospel. The problem may be that Bilmore approaches anything written by Paul Krugman with much the same attitude that I approach anything written by Pat Buchanan -- prepared to hate it and to assume the worst.

S_A_M

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Sure, I'll take your ipse dixit over his any day. What does he know? He's just a professor of economics at UC Berkeley and a former Treasury Department official. I'm sure he doesn't know the difference between the household survey and the payroll survey.

Have the sense to know when you're behind . . . .

Obviously, I was being overly polite, rather than say that he seems willing to talk right past that difference in defense of his desires. Saying "he doesn't understand" just seems less aggressive than saying "he's lying by omission."

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
The problem may be that Bilmore approaches anything written by Paul Krugman with much the same attitude that I approach anything written by Pat Buchanan -- prepared to hate it and to assume the worst.

Pretty much spot-on. And I think we both have defendable bases for those attitudes.

[sgtclub]

http://home.pacbell.net/weidners/jot...gman_index.htm

For anyone interested, this is a link to an index of Krugman debunking articles writtne by the Krugman Truth Squad.

[sgtclub]

Someone please tell me how this is not just as bad as Lott's ridiculous statement?

"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized for joking that Mahatma Gandhi used to run a gas station in St. Louis, saying it was "a lame attempt at humor."

The New York Democrat made the remark at a fund-raiser Saturday. During an event here for Senate candidate Nancy Farmer, Clinton introduced a quote from Gandhi by saying, "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis."


http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/...0106_1188.html