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Teen Employment Isn’t Really Very Well Correlated With the Minimum Wage

by AlfredoMoffet Posted on January 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Via Tyler Cowen, here is a chart from Kevin Erdmann that shows raw teen employment figures during periods after the minimum wage was increased. What it shows, roughly speaking, is that in nearly every case, the trend rate of teen employment declined when a minimum wage hike went into effect. He asks: “Is there any other issue where the data conforms so strongly to basic economic intuition, and yet is widely written off as a coincidence?”

But but but…..what about the long-term trend? Between 1954 and 1970 the minimum wage went up steadily in real terms, and so did teen employment. Since 1980 the minimum wage has been declining steadily, and so has teen employment. Is it really possible that changes in the minimum wage would have immediate effects in one direction but long-term effects in the exact opposite direction?

Sure, maybe. But it doesn’t seem likely. In terms of short-term effects, what I mostly see are employment declines in 1973, 1979, 1990, 2000, and 2007. And guess what? Those are the dates of the last five recessions in the United States. What’s more interesting about this is that teen employment recovered from its immediate decline during the Carter and Clinton years, but didn’t recover during the Reagan and Bush years. (And probably not during the Obama years either, though the final results aren’t in yet.) Why? That’s an intriguing question.

Bottom line: Teen employment has dropped substantially since about 1980. But during that time the real minimum wage has declined from $8 to $6 and then gone back up to a little over $7. Maybe there’s a correlation there, but it sure isn’t easy to see. Whatever’s happening, the minimum wage seems to be a pretty small part of it.

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Teen Employment Isn’t Really Very Well Correlated With the Minimum Wage

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Map of the Day: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria

by Seymour89E Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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This map shows outbreaks of measles and mumps over the past five years:

It’s no surprise that Africa has been heavily hit, but why are the United States and Europe seeing so many outbreaks? Aaron Carroll explains:

All of that red, which seems to dominate? It’s measles. It’s even peeking through in the United States, and it’s smothering the United Kingdom.
If you get rid of the measles, you can start to see mumps. Again, crushing the UK and popping up in the US.
Both measles and mumps are part of the MMR vaccine.

Use of the MMR vaccine plummeted during the aughts, as vaccine-autism hysteria was spread by charlatans and the ignorati. Needless to say, this did nothing to affect the incidence of autism, but it sure had an effect on measles and mumps. To this day, though, I don’t think any of the vectors of this hysteria have so much as apologized. It’s shameful.

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Map of the Day: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria

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Study Says Comedians Have Psychotic Personality Traits—Here’s What Some Comedians Have To Say About That

by Bernie MacRos Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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If you’ve ever seen footage of comedian Bill Hicks taking on a heckler, you might have thought to yourself, “Wow, that was pretty psychotic.”

Well, according to a recent study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, you weren’t that far off. For the study, which is titled, “Psychotic traits in comedians,” researchers recruited 523 comedians (404 male and 119 female, most of whom were amateurs) from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The researchers determined that comedians scored significantly higher on four types of psychotic personality traits compared to a control group of individuals who had non-artistic jobs. The study focuses on two major categories of psychosis—bipolar disorder and schizophrenia—and examines impulsive non-conformity.

“The results of this study substantially confirmed our expectation that comedians would behave like other creative groups in showing a high level of psychotic personality traits,” the authors wrote. “They did so across all the domains sampled by the questionnaire we used, from schizoid and schizophrenic-like characteristics through to manic-depressive features.”

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Study Says Comedians Have Psychotic Personality Traits—Here’s What Some Comedians Have To Say About That

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Do We Write Too Much and Read Too Little?

by JustinaAshbolt Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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I don’t remember where I saw this yesterday—which might be a symptom of the very disease under discussion—but I wanted to pass along the following from Alan Jacobs:

One of the most reliable ways to sharpen your own thinking is to find out what other smart people have thought and said about the things you’re interested in — that is, to take the time to read. But the content-hungry world of online publishing creates strong disincentives for writers to take that time. Almost every entity that has an online presence wants to publish as frequently as possible — as long as the quality of the writing is adequate. And often “adequacy” is determined by purely stylistic criteria: a basic level of clarity and, when possible, some vividness of style.

….So writers tend to trust the first thoughts that come to them, rarely bothering to find out whether others have already considered their topic and written well about it — and in fact not wanting to know about earlier writing, because that might pre-empt their own writing, their publication — the “content” that editors want and that will keep readers’ Twitter feeds clicking and popping with links. In the current system everyone feels stimulated or productive or both. And hey, it’s only reading and thinking that go by the wayside.

Actually, in some circumstances it’s best not to know what other people are saying and thinking. In particular, there are times when I keep myself deliberately in the dark in order to avoid groupthink.

But that’s fairly rare. In general, I think Jacobs is right, and I’ve certainly found it to be a problem. When I’m in full-bore blogging mode, I just don’t have time to read anything longer than a thousand words or so, even if it’s something that I should read because it would inform my own thinking. Instead, I try to save it for later in the afternoon, which is when my writing pace slows down and I can spend more time reading longer pieces. But I’m only moderately successful at this, and in the end I find myself simply not reading enough these days. The pace of blogging interferes with my ability to slow down even when I’m not sitting at the desk and actively typing characters for a post.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with just chatting about stuff, and to a large extent that’s what blogging and tweeting and tumblring is. Nor is it a crime to repeat something that’s already been said. Some things are worth a lot of repetition. Finally, despite a lot of wailing to the contrary, it doesn’t strike me that the rise of blogging and social media has actually hurt the production of books and long form journalism much. It’s all still out there and it still gets read.

Still, this is something to be aware of. Ironically, it’s also something that’s been written about to death. But it doesn’t hurt to write about it again.

Original source – 

Do We Write Too Much and Read Too Little?

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Mother Jones Goes Old School. Really Old School.

by grycjanekg Posted on January 16, 2014

Mother Jones

And now for something completely different. A friend of mine has taken up stained glass as a hobby (you can see more here), and he recently made me a stained glass version of the banner at the top of my blog. It arrived yesterday, and it’s now hanging above my desk. Are you jealous yet? He even got a discount on the raw glass when the folks in the store found out what it was for. Turns out they’re fans of Mother Jones. All I need now to go along with it is an illuminated manuscript version of the blog itself.

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Mother Jones Goes Old School. Really Old School.

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WikiLeaks Exposes What Obama’s Secret Trade Deal Would Do to the Environment

by sipid34 Posted on January 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

WikiLeaks published a leaked draft of the environment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Wednesday, and environmental groups are lining up to take a swing.

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WikiLeaks Exposes What Obama’s Secret Trade Deal Would Do to the Environment

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Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

by TGEGreggjbxsfx Posted on January 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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A new report from the New York Fed offers a grim take on the job prospects of recent college grads. It finds that underemployment (i.e., working at a job that doesn’t require a college degree) has averaged around 40 percent for the past two decades, going down a bit during economic expansions and up a bit during recessions.

But if the rate of underemployment itself hasn’t changed very much, the nature of underemployment sure has. It’s gotten worse. Take a look at the thick lines in the chart on the right. They show what happens to recent college grads who can’t get college-level jobs. The number who get good non-college jobs has plummeted from 50 percent to 35 percent. The number in low-wage jobs has risen from 15 percent to 20 percent. And needless to say, these grads also have quite a bit more student loan debt than grads from the early 90s.

Getting a college degree is still worth it. But there’s not much question that today’s college grads have it tougher than previous generations did. And the 40 percent who don’t find good jobs have it the toughest of all.

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Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

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Conservatives Shoot Own Feet In Recess Appointment Case

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Can a president make a recess appointment if the Senate leaves town but declares itself in session anyway? The Supreme Court heard arguments on this question yesterday, and judging from the questioning, it looks like the answer is going to be no. Even the liberal justices seem inclined to tell President Obama that it’s up to the Senate to decide when it’s in recess, even if the recess is a bit of a sham. Jonathan Bernstein provides some of the background here.

Fair enough, I suppose. But it sure is bad timing for the conservatives who are pressing this case. After all, it doesn’t really matter anymore, now that Harry Reid has done away with the filibuster for presidential confirmations. Obama no longer needs to make any recess appointments because Democrats can just confirm his nominees in the usual way. That could change after the midterm elections if Republicans take back the Senate, but it probably won’t. And either way, the electoral landscape almost guarantees that Democrats will retain (or regain) control of the Senate in 2016.

In other words, effectively doing away with recess appointments probably won’t hurt Democrats at all over the next few years, but might very well hurt Republicans if they win the White House in 2016. Nice work, conservatives.

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Conservatives Shoot Own Feet In Recess Appointment Case

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Europe Going Wobbly on Carbon Emission Goals?

by cur07jqm Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Speaking of carbon emissions, the Financial Times reports that high energy prices are “undermining support” in Europe for rules that mandate increased use of renewable energy sources:

European commissioners are considering scrapping the targets for 2030 in a move that would please big utility companies but infuriate environmental groups….A proposed compromise, at the heart of discussions over the 2030 package, envisages that a renewables target, of up to 27 per cent, would be non-binding.

….This compromise for 2030, if accepted in the face of German opposition, would represent a significant change from the EU’s 2020 targets, which included binding goals that EU states should cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels and derive 20 per cent of their power from renewables.

A long, grinding economic downturn cuts energy usage in the short run, but reduces tolerance for higher energy prices in the long run. That’s what we’re seeing happen here.

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Europe Going Wobbly on Carbon Emission Goals?

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 13, 2014

by VeronicaHawks Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan watch the Afghanistan countryside from the tail of an aircraft after delivering bundles containing care packages, Christmas stockings and mail to soldiers stationed at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan Dec. 24, 2013. (US Army photo)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 13, 2014

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