October 2006

But, on the other hand... (Tuesday, 10/31/06)
President Truman once famously remarked that he wished he had a one-armed economist advising him.

It takes the same things in all fields to provide answers to empirical questions we can be sure about, whether we call our activities "science," "historical research," "journalism," or, for that matter, "economics." However, greater methodological compromises are necessary in some fields than others, and conclusions must be tempered accordingly.

Modern economics surely has strong empirical research elements and makes heavy use of data. Still, fully controlled experiments aren't possible in the field, which leaves sufficient ambiguity and plenty of room for interpretation. In fact, it's not unusual to find economists disagreeing entirely. Barbara Hagenbaugh finds that this to be the case when economists are asked about the American economy's future on into the middle distance.

China's migrant workers (Monday, 10/30/06)
It's difficult to say anything about China without going into scientific notation, or nearly. The Chinese government now estimates that there are 150 million migrant workers in the world's most populous country, as people continue to flood into the cities from the countryside in search of work.

To put things into perspective, the TOTAL American population in 1950 was about 150 million. Since that time, U.S. population has doubled to 300 million, but total Chinese population is estimated at nearly 1.4 billion. Moreover, India, which is the second-most-populous nation in the world, is expected to surpass China in total population sometime later this century.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Learn Spanish (Sunday, 10/29/06)
While it is true that native Spanish-speaking persons in the United States are likely to help their economic futures considerably by learning English, native English-speaking Americans probably should learn Spanish too, given that it has become the de facto second American language. For tens of millions of people in the Americas, Spanish is their native language--the United States, French and English-speaking Canada, and Brazil are major exceptions--and, of course, it's still the native language of the people who evolved Spanish from latin in a major Western European country.

Moreover, whatever their native language, Americans probably should choose to learn Arabic and Mandarin over French and German, given that these languages have become economically and politically important over wide regions of the world as French and German once were.

Housing prices drop the most since the early 1970s (Thursday, 10/26/06)
If you've bought a house recently and expect to sell it at a profit, you may have to wait awhile. Martin Crutsinger in Washington writes that a Commerce Department report indicates that domestic real estate prices have declined by the greatest amount in thirty-five years. Housing prices declined in September for the sixth consecutive month.

Nonetheless, even though foreclosures are on the rise in the U.S., Selena Maranjian reports that Americans still compare fairly well to many people in other countries with respect to home ownership. And, no, we don't know if all the countries on her list define "home ownership" in the same way. In the United States, a person often is referred to as a "home owner," even if s/he is the process of buying the house from its real owner, a bank or some other mortgage company. In cases such as these, it may be decades before the person actually owns the home, although s/he may live in it while paying for it.

Well, no, not necessarily happiness, but it may buy health (Thursday, 10/26/06)
Rich people may not be happier than those who are sufficiently affluent so as not to have to spend much time thinking about money, but both probably are happier than people living in poverty. So, can "money can buy happiness?" It probably depends specifically on what a questioner means.

On the other hand, Robert Frank examines the relationship between money and health, which is a different, but not entirely unrelated issue. Sick people usually aren't very happy about it, but being both poor and sick may be the least fun of all.

What's it to you? (Thursday, 10/26/06)
What's a college degree worth to you? As we've pointed out before, a degree is like a currency: it has value only if lots of people believe that it has value. In a society that greatly values symbols--sometimes more than substance--college graduates do tend to make considerably more money than people who aren't college graduates. According to a new report from the U. S. Census Bureau, a degree seems to be worth about $23,000 per year, on average. How much of this is a consequence of a person's actually knowing and being able to do something is unknown.

On the other hand, if employers ever acquire the ability to assess genuine competence on their own, rather than leaving it to the universities and their symbols, the value of degrees themselves may decline precipitously. In many places such as the United States, most of us are surrounded by free learning resources; it isn't necessary to pay a university big bucks--or any bucks--in order to learn most things nowadays.

However, social change usually doesn't occur rapidly, even when it makes sense. There are still lots of people who are willing to pay dearly for water in a bottle that is identical to the water that flows from taps at no cost whatever to the drinker.

New report has dire warning for humanity (Wednesday, 10/25/06)
According to the 2006 Living Planet Report from the WWF, the huge global population is consuming available resources at such a furious rate that it will need two planets' worth of natural resources each year by 2050, if present trends continue.

Of course, this sounds like the kind of extrapolation that can result in truly goofy assertions, as if a person in Arizona were to say, "If I continue at my present speed in the direction I'm heading, I'll drive into the Grand Canyon." Of course, that's a big "if," and virtually no one actually drives into the Grand Canyon.

However, while virtually all drivers "get it" and make the adjustments necessary in order to avert catastrophe, a point implied in the WWF report is that humanity can't make the necessary behavioral adjustments if it doesn't recognize the peril. Also, we've pointed out that such an enormous global population is a genuine novelty of very recent history. Never before has Earth been called upon to sustain so many people.

How recent? There are individuals still living who have talked to persons who were alive when global population was no more than 1 billion. Presently, though, there are more than 6 1/2 billion people on the Earth.

This is the kind of report that will be received by some people with great enthusiasm because it is consistent with their current ideology. Similarly, it will be scoffed at by others because it is inconsistent with their current ideology.

Both responses miss the point entirely. By definition, genuine knowledge of any kind is a matter of discovery, not invention and not simple social conformity. The relevant issues have to do with the WWF's research methods, and it is these, not their results or assertions, that we must first examine. Genuine scholars start with real questions, not conclusions. We must start as if we don't know, because unless or until we do WHAT IT TAKES to know, we really DON'T know.

At any rate, here's more on the 2006 Living Planet Report from Ben Blanchard in Beijing.

More on the new economy's churning (Tuesday, 10/24/06)
One of the characteristics of the new global economy is its labor market flexibility, which is not confined exclusively to international "outsourcing." In national economies, employers also are hiring and laying off workers in large numbers with the intention of creating a "just-in-time" work force in order to cope more readily with rapid market and competitive changes.

Part of the problem for workers caught in this "churning" is that benefits, such as health coverage and pensions, are still stuck in the old economy. It seems to be time for society to make health services and pensions more portable, so that workers can move from job to job or even from one occupation to another without facing personal and family economic devastation.

At any rate, here are a couple of today's layoff announcements: Jonathan Stempel writes from New York about Countrywide Financial Corporation's plans to cut more than 2,500 of its workers, while MSN reports that Canada's Bombardier plans to cut jobs in response to a decline in jet orders.

Some places you might want to work if you're a commuter (Monday, 10/23/06)
There is a tremendously funny scene in the movie, "Office Space," showing a worker stuck in morning traffic on his way to work. He looks over and sees a very old man with a walker moving slowly down the sidewalk, then looks back at the cars ahead of him. When he glances over at the sidewalk again, the old man and his walker are about a half block ahead of traffic.

Lisa Lambert reports from Washington that hi-tech firms seem to offer the best assistance to employees who commute.

The Feds fund "merit pay" for teachers (Monday, 10/23/06)
The Bush administration is awarding grants totaling $42 million to educators who raise student test scores. Some school district administrators believe that the additional money will be helpful in recruiting good teachers in technical fields in which many would-be teachers could earn more in the private sector.

During recent years, public education has been called upon to make up for the deficiencies of many other societal institutions and has been blamed for poor student performance, as if the schools and teachers are the only factors helping to determine a student's readiness to learn or degree of learning. Many of the most effective teachers chose their occupations when they were young children themselves, and regard their work as a calling, not a job.

A boomerang effect is possible, because there are educators who will feel manipulated by attempts to apply "piecework" industrial models to their profession, particularly after research shows clearly that piecework remuneration systems typically fail, even in industrial settings. Researchers in industrial and organizational psychology can explain to politicians, who tend not to understand what it takes to be right about anything, why these systems work so poorly.

We know gifted teachers who would tell school administrators or the government to go straight to hell if they were offered extra money with the intention of influencing the quality of their work, and might respond by leaving their professions altogether if it were not for their commitment to their students. There are people in business who tend to assume that everybody is in the same game with the same objectives, and that the world is composed of "winners" and "losers." To these people, the only reason for doing anything is to make money; money "legitimizes" work, in their view. They don't have a clue as to how human motivation works.

So-called "merit pay" models are consistent with findings from operant learning research on rats and other laboratory animals. It does appear to be true that we tend to get more of whatever is rewarded and less of whatever is ignored.

However, this research doesn't take into account the power of cognitive and social factors in human, as opposed to laboratory animal populations. For one thing, what is "rewarding" to an individual depends on that person's interpretations, not somebody else's. Also, contemporary research clearly shows that effective performance must be assessed, not only in terms of individual workers, but also in terms of groups and whole organizations. With humans, social factors can be far more powerful and influential than individual attributes.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (Friday, 10/20/06)
When you buy a package of light bulbs, you probably expect that they will be essentially like the last package you bought, and your expectations almost always are fulfilled. Such tremendous levels of quality control in manufacturing really are amazing, when you stop to think about it, and it's all because of that remarkably useful branch of applied mathematics that we call statistics.

A number of times over the past several years, we have advocated making the study of statistics a fundamental part of basic education, even at the secondary level. In modern life, we are surrounded by phenomena--not just in manufacturing--which are inherently statistical. To attempt even to describe or discuss these things without using statistical concepts is a little like trying to talk about modern pharmacy while leaving out all that inconvenient stuff about chemistry.

The American Statistical Association doesn't seem prepared to go as far as we would by insisting that statistics be taught to most high school students, but it is concerned about advancing statistics in college curricula. To this end, the Association has formed the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Conversations on the Constitution (Wednesday, 10/18/06)
The difference between having a written constitution and an unwritten constitution, as the United Kingdom has, is not as great as many people assume. The American Constitution "works," not because it is printed on parchment and stored in the National Archives building in Washington, D. C., but because American society "uses" it everyday and because more than some critical minimum of Americans carry pieces of it around in their heads. For instance, while the political comedy shows on television are often outrageous and unfair, the fact that they exist helps hold the First Amendment in place.

Discussing the Constitution can help preserve it as well. The American Bar Association wants to encourage conversations and give Americans more to talk about with its Conversations on the Constitution site.

Feel like one in a million? How about one in 300 million? (Tuesday, 10/17/06)
The U.S. population reached 100 million in 1915, 200 million in 1967, and 300 million today. To put things in perspective, the population of the United States is now about 10 times as large as it was during the Civil War, when it was smaller than the current population of California.

During the Washington administration, there were about 4 million people in the U. S. Could the Founding Fathers have foreseen America's current size?

Some certainly did; in fact, during the early years of American history, it was fairly easy to find influential people who expected, not only that the United States would quickly become a continental nation, but also that, eventually, it would--and should--occupy the entire North American continent. Several major politicians thought it would be a good idea to annex Mexico, and, of course, Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, made the deal with Russia to acquire Alaska. He probably didn't expect that the huge Alaskan territory would remain separated from the bulk of America by the vast region that is now made up on the western provinces of Canada.

During recent years, political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset predicted that those western Canadian provinces would eventually become part of the United States, given that most of their English-speaking people live within a few miles of the U.S. border and are significantly influenced by the American culture. However, the dismemberment of Canada seems further off now than it did a few years ago.

Incidentally, Abraham Lincoln seemed to expect that the American population would reach 300 million by mid-20th century.

America has another minority: married people (Monday, 10/16/06)
Well, no, our headline isn't technically correct, but it does seem fairly momentuous that, for the first time in history, a minority of American households are occuped by married couples.

However, before you begin speculating about changes in the culture which either mean that America is becoming more liberated or going to hell in a handbasket, depending on your ideological stance, it's probably useful to know that, like many other major sociological trends, the same thing has been happening across most of the North Atlantic. The marriage institution eiither has been fading or undergoing major changes in most Western European countries as well.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: National First Ladies' Library (Monday, 10/16/06)
There are a number of Presidential Libraries--even Lincoln has one in Springfield, Illinois now--but what about their wives? Are there libraries for First Ladies? Well, no, not "libraries," but there is one, and it is located in Canton, Ohio It is called the National First Ladies' Library. Actually, there are two locations in Canton, a library and a museum. If we ever reach a point where many of the presidents will have been women, we may need a "First Gentlemen's Library." If Hillary Clinton ever becomes president, the Clinton Library in Little Rock can double as a presidential library and a "First Gentleman" library.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Chronic Poverty Research Centre (Saturday, 10/14/06)
The Chronic Poverty Research Centre is part of the United Kingdom's Department of International Development and studies chronic poverty throughout the world. While the causes of poverty seem obvious and transparent to many people, particularly when it is found in a local area (e.g., "Those people are simply lazy"), in fact, poverty's root causes are anything but obvious and transparent. When a major portion of the Earth's population lives in chronic, grinding poverty, it's difficult to attribute the problem to individual motivation. In fact, the causes of poverty within particular communities within affluent societies are no more obvious.

Two-time big-time entrepreneur doesn't care much about money (Thursday, 10/12/06)
Stanford University graduate student Jawed Karim is one of a handful of entrepreneurs who have hit it big with YouTube, but it's not the first time. He helped develop and then sell PayPal too. But, as Miguel Helft reports, money is not the top thing on this multimillionaire's 27-year-old mind.

Incidentally, it's likely that many Americans will have to get a lot smarter and a lot better about a lot of things if the U.S. is not to undergo a major reduction in its overall standard of living as well as decline in a range of areas. For one thing, it would be good to lose the popular appetite for name-calling by applying such words as "brainiac," "egghead," "do-gooder," "tree-hugger," "geek," or "nerd" to people who already have many of the attributes necessary for economic and cultural success. The psychology of this tendency is fairly transparent, but it's not very functional or helpful.

Along these lines, America does have a values crisis, as many people have been claiming, and one of the most important has to do with a commitment to making use of the best and most reliable methods for developing answers to empirical questions of all kinds. Simply making up something isn't good enough, and accepting what somebody else simply has made up isn't good enough either.

Columbia's Phelps is the latest Nobel Laureate in economics (Monday, 10/9/06)
Many journalists insist on referring to Nobel Prize recipients as "winners," but they and the committee that makes the awards don't like that terminology. It's not a contest or a lottery, and it certainly isn't a game show. More properly, it can be said that an individual has "received" or has been "awarded" the Nobel Prize, not that he or she has "won" it.

So, the recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics for 2006 is Edmund Phelps of Columbia University for his study of the effects of macroeconomic policy. Here's more from Matt Moore in Stockholm.

Does WWW really stand for World Wide Waste? (Thursday, 10/5/06)
It seems as though the Web is everywhere. In fact, we can only imagine where you may be reading this right now. If you're at work, we don't know whether you should hit the button that usually replaces the game on your screen with that phony spreadsheet when your boss walks by or not. Actually, we would argue that keeping up with NewWork News should be an integral part of everybody's job, so keep reading without embarrassment, but remember that this is us talking, not your boss.

However, other online activities may not be so much job-related. Here's more from Elizabeth Millard on that new survey from Burstek.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Physician Assistant History Center (Thursday, 10/5/06)
Many people still seem to assume that physicians are the only ones who can legally write prescriptions. Well, no, there are dentists and veterinarians, or course, but there also are those people who may wear white lab coats with stethoscopes hanging around their necks when they see you about your ailment, but who aren't medical doctors either. Some are called nurse-practitioners and others are called physician assistants. The Physician Assistant History Center is about the latter.

Incidentally, while Doc Adams on the old Gunsmoke TV show may have provided all the medical services himself in Dodge City, a vast, complicated medical division of labor has developed in the United States over recent decades. Part of the reason has to do with how market systems tend to produce specialists and, thereby, elevate a society's standard of living. Think of how much less interesting and prosperous life would be if you had to do and learn to do all the things yourself that could benefit you--which couldn't be many--as was the case with our ancestors. Better to live in a modern, complex society in which you can benefit from the work of specialists of all types, from those who repair your car to those who analyze medical lab samples.

However, given escalating health-care costs during recent years, there also have been strong incentives for the medical community to push as many functions as low in the cost hierarchy as possible in order to save. For instance, they wouldn't want a highly-trained, expensive surgeon spending his/her time measuring people's blood pressure. Instead, people with far less training and far fewer skills can do things like that at far less cost. Similarly, there are many things that physician assistants can do just fine under the general supervision of a physician, and, of course, they are paid less for doing them.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: An Agenda for Harnessing Globalization (Wednesday, 10/4/06)
It has become a cliche in psycholinguistics, but it is none-the-less true: "Words don't have meanings; instead, people have meanings for words." It's also been clearly shown in experimental social psychological research that people tend to exaggerate the extent to which other people share their interpretations of things, people, and situations. The clear exception seems to be that people tend to exaggerate the uniqueness of their suffering.

So, it means that if we take time to systematically measure these things, words like "liberal," "conservative," "Christian," "freedom," and so on, are really like Rorschach Ink Blots which people tend to interpret in their own ways, while assuming that most others think as they do.

Another such word seems to be "globalization." You and I might agree on what it means to us, but why should we assume that other people have the same meanings for it? Brookings Institution scholars Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart wrestle with this problem and also provide an agenda for harnessing globalization.

Fox prepares to leave office as the U.S. Senate approves the building of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border (Sunday, 10/1/06)
It appears that illegal immigration from Mexico got a big boost about the time that the U. S. tried to lock down the border. Apparent reason: when Mexicans who had been crossing to work in the U. S. felt they might not be able to get home again, they started bringing their families with them. It seems to be yet another example of unintended consequences.

Mexican President Vicente Fox had hoped for a relaxation of the border again, but he will leave office in November with his hopes unrealized. In fact, the United States Senate has given its approval to the building of a 700-mile fence with the hope of gaining control of the southern U.S. border.