waxymonkeyfrog's comments

If you think we should provide support mechanisms like activity centers for the unemployed, I think you'll love the fifth section of the piece where I say we should provide support mechanisms like activity centers for the unemployed!

I'm okay with disagreeing over the centrality of work. Some very smart people think that maintaining structured busy-ness is very important psychologically. Some people disagree. But it seems to me that we agree on many of the solutions, including a basic income and activity centers.

Unemployment clearly leads to degradation, both of cities (Youngstown) and of individuals.

The question I think we're debating is whether the flow of causality goes unemployment->poverty->social degradation (this is your case, I think) or whether unemployment leads to social degradation more directly, even among people who don't currently need money (so, removing the variable of poverty) because it's a terrible blow to esteem, purpose, and community. I think there is a lot of evidence for this claim; see the section Paradox of Leisure.

Sorry I didn't mean to suggest that at all. When I wrote "the ills of unemployment go well beyond the loss of income" that was my way of saying loss of income is the first-order outcome of losing a job, but there are more complicated effects to consider.

The reason I focus on the other effects is that, in deciding how government/culture might rearrange itself to replace work, I think it's critical to see that work is about more than money--and the benefit of work is about more than a paycheck. It is about esteem, flow, purpose, community, a sense of meaningfulness in life, and it's not clear to me that all of those things comes with a monthly government check; so it's useful to think of ways we could replace these values in the future.

Great point. This gets at the impossible endogeneity of the subject. Are the jobless miserable because they're poor, lonely, bored, or distraught? Well, perhaps they are lonely and bored because they can't afford to socialize. And perhaps they're distraught because they're failing to live up to a cultural expectation that, with more wealth and more redistribution, wouldn't exist. Etc etc.

One last thing, apropos of nothing except my stream-of-consciousness typing and the feeling that somebody might bring it up here, is that some people have pointed out to me on Twitter that I should have studied students or retired people, who both seem pretty happy and don't work. I don't accept the comparison. Students essentially have a job with school and a camaraderie on campus that the unemployed have lost when they lose the water cooler. (It is, perhaps, important to note that people choose to go to school in order to find a job, and what happens to college attendance if the expectation of full-time work takes a hit?) Retirees, for their part, do seem happy overall, but those with comfortable retirements are living on savings that they earned through work and they have the pride of having worked to earn their retirement. This is one of the hardest things about imagining the demise of a full-time workforce: Where else could this sort of pride come from?

Hi Falcolas, this is Derek Thompson, the author of the piece.

1. The quick answer is that we don't know how much of the misery of not working is from the financial shortfall of unemployment, vs the failure to meet a cultural expectation to work, vs some inherent need to feel productive, because it's just very hard to tease out the difference in reliable studies. How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a time when income is tied to work and there is a cultural expectation that everybody work?

That said, my best guess is that about half of the psychological misery of losing a job and being unemployed comes from the non-money stuff, like being bored and failing to meet a cultural expectation to work. (This is distinct from people who choose to stay home with kids, who have chosen to immerse themselves in an essential activity and often feel great pride -- and stress! -- in these jobs, even though they're not compensated with income). As I said in the piece:

"The post-workists argue that Americans work so hard because their culture has conditioned them to feel guilty when they are not being productive, and that this guilt will fade as work ceases to be the norm. This might prove true, but it’s an untestable hypothesis. When I asked Hunnicutt what sort of modern community most resembles his ideal of a post-work society, he admitted, “I’m not sure that such a place exists.”"

2. The fact that unemployed men seem to be less social overall suggests to me that their rise in leisure is about more than the daytime unavailability of peers. Because otherwise, wouldn't they just go drinking with buddies every night? This suggests, to me, some shame of being unemployed that leads to self-imposed isolation. In any case, the misery of unemployment suggests that we're just not very good, as a culture (and particularly men), at finding non-screen-based things to do with our time when work goes away.

3. Crime has fallen by A LOT in the last few decades so I didn't want to go too deep into predicting a rise in crime at a time when violent crime seems to be in structural decline. That said, for young, less educated black men, there are a variety of barriers to their participation in the labor force including racist bosses not wanting to hire them, an abundance of low-paying service sector jobs that seem feminine (they're in health care, government, and education), and the cultural and economic allure of the black market and gangs in some areas. This is a really short summary, but I think the allure of gangs and crime is very complicated.

4. One of the biggest differences between 1977 and today is certainly the decline in crime. Crime didn't spike during the Great Recession, surprisingly.

5. I thought that's what the piece was about! :) But seriously, the section labeled Government: The Visible Hand tries to address this question (or at least this question as I understand it) head on.

Joe, this is Derek, the author of the piece linked above. I think you make a good point. When I first heard Will explain "earning to give," a part of me considered it off-putting and radical, but I've come to see it as an expansive view of doing good, because I think there are a lot of people who (a) wouldn't be good at charitable work or (b) would be good at charitable work but are better at - and enjoy! - other work. For these people, it's inspiring to think they can make a huge difference, too.

There is always the question: What happens if you discourage too many wonderful, smart people from working at charities? And here, Will's answer would be, I think, that if that starts happening, then we should reevaluate the advice. But for now, I think, the earning to give philosophy carries tremendous upside for getting more people to think of themselves as essential contributors to charitable causes, no matter where they work.

Right, it's not just for seed capital, it's for ramping up. Like Case said, most job creation doesn't come from a couple founders in a small office or a 50,000 person multinational company. It comes from getting out of the small office.

But that's exactly it. It's not how well you can pay attention to A and B at the same time. It's about how fast your brain goes A to B and back to A without losing acuteness.

The latter. Germany is responsible for about $280 bill. But this is a fund. We don't know how much will actually have to be footed by the govt/people when it's all over. TARP cost much, much less than its first price tag. The bailout of Greece will probably cost mcuh more than today's price tag.

They say the same thing about not being able to sleep. Get up, stretch, do something small and deliberate to clear your head (like drinking a glass of water), and then come back after you've self-corrected.

Great/scary quote

Excellent point. My 'favorite' comment on the article page is the guy who says ads don't work very well, except for the majority of people, whom he calls "sheeple."

You can't say that ads don't work and also argue that most people are too mindless to ignore them!