When economists work for money, do they get dumber?

Posted on January 24, 2015 by mkevane

Let’s read the article from the Washington Post on Alan Krueger’s research paid for by Uber:

Uber drivers in many of the company’s major markets are making about $6 an hour more than their traditional — and professional — taxi-driver counterparts, according to a rare analysis of internal data the company released Thursday along with Princeton economist Alan Krueger. In Washington, the difference is about $4.60, in San Francisco it’s about $10 and in New York it’s closer to $15.  These gross earnings don’t account for the considerable costs drivers pay to deploy their own cars as modern-day taxis. But Uber argues that these numbers paint a picture of decent work in a shifting economy where tens of thousands of people — nearly half of them with college degrees — have recently found supplemental income and more flexibility doing a job that has long been the domain of immigrants and middle-aged men.  The analysis, drawn from internal figures as well as a survey of about 600 UberX and UberBlack drivers, offers the most extensive look at how fast the company has grown, who’s driving for it and how this work supplements their other employment. Krueger, who previously served as chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, contracted with Uber to write the analysis, along with the company’s head of policy research, Jonathan Hall.  The analysis shows that Uber’s drivers in the United States collectively received $656.8 million in payments from the company in the last three months of 2014 (that translated in October to about $17.79 an hour in Washington, and $30.35 in New York). The taxi earnings in comparison — which reflect net income, not gross earnings — come from Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics.

Wait…. Krueger and Hall in their paper compared gross earning of Uber driver with net earnings of taxi drivers and permitted the Washington Post to publish an article with lead sentence, “Uber drivers in many of the company’s major markets are making about $6 an hour more than … taxi-driver counterparts”?  Could that be true that they compared gross with net, or did the reporter take something out of context?  Fortunately the reporter provides the link to the report, and you can verify that is actually what they do.  And they baldly add a caveat: “Nonetheless, the figures [hourly wages] suggest that unless their after – tax costs average more than $6 per hour, the net hourly earnings of Uber’s driver – partners exceed the hourly wage of employed taxi drivers and chauffeurs , on average.”  Could they not have done a back-of-the envelope calculation of the costs?  Suppose you have to drive 15 miles in an hour to earn the $20 per hour they say Uber drivers earn.  That is, you drive about 30 minutes at average speed 30 mph.  Is that reasonable?  I have no idea.  (The Krueger report says drivers average 1.7 trip per hour in San Francisco.)   But 15 miles in a normal car, last year, would cost you $3.00, 3/4 of a gallon of gas maybe?  And auto depreciation is usually something like 10 cents a mile at least… so another $1.5.  So wait, now there is now a pretty small difference.  AAA actually has a little booklet about the cost of driving (fuel, depreciation etc). The lowest estimated cost is 40 cents a mile.  So  $6 if the Uber driver is going 15 miles for the fares in an hour.

Parenthetically and extra-heavy-dose-of-sarcasm: How much did Krueger ask to be paid in return for calling Uber employees “driver-partners”?  Yeah, right, I’m a “learning partner” and not a teacher.  How about this sentence: “These findings relate to a broader, more generalized demand by many individuals for workplace flexibility that favors alternative work schedules, family – oriented leave policies, flextime, and telecommuting arrangements over the standard nine – to – five work schedule in order to support a more family – friendly lifestyle.” The “findings” are that in the Uber world everything is fine.  To me, that sentence has to be worth at least $10,000… I mean, aren’t median wages falling?  But that’s OK, things are now family-friendly… oh wait, nobody lives in families anymore.  So lonely middle-age people friendly?  I’m sorry but as I read the report practically every sentence is begging for sarcasm.  How about this one: “This paper does not purport to have all the answers, but it represents a first step toward understanding the nature of work in the sharing economy by providing new evidence on hours of work, income, and the motivations and backgrounds of participants in an important segment of  the sharing economy.”  Sigh of relief. When I read the early paragraphs I actually thought it was going to have all the answers, because the co-author must be earning like $5m a year and so perhaps he actually has all the answers?  (He gives his work history on the first page, so he kinda tells us…)  Good to know there is still room for more research by the little guys.   Hey, I’m sorry, when you work for a company that calls itself Uber on purpose, you have to earn your compensating differential.

via Now we know how many drivers Uber has — and have a better idea of what they’re making​ – The Washington Post.

Posted in Teaching macroeconomics, United States | Comments Off on When economists work for money, do they get dumber?

Microsoft to acquire Revolution Analytics

Posted on January 24, 2015 by mkevane

I’m very pleased to announce that Microsoft has reached an agreement to acquire Revolution Analytics. Revolution Analytics is the leading commercial provider of software and services for R, the world’s most widely used programming language for statistical computing and predictive analytics. We are making this acquisition to help more companies use the power of R and data science to unlock big data insights with advanced analytics.

As their volumes of data continually grow, organizations of all kinds around the world – financial, manufacturing, health care, retail, research – need powerful analytical models to make data-driven decisions. This requires high performance computation that is “close” to the data, and scales with the business’ needs over time. At the same time, companies need to reduce the data science and analytics skills gap inside their organizations, so more employees can use and benefit from R. This acquisition is part of our effort to address these customer needs.

via Microsoft to acquire Revolution Analytics to help customers find big data value with advanced statistical analysis – The Official Microsoft Blog.

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The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham

Posted on January 23, 2015 by mkevane

I confess the book lost my attention in the final third.  I felt like I had understood enough, so I skimmed.  I enjoyed reading it, even though I do not ordinarily like American family drama novels (I live it, what’s the point of reading it?).  This is a quiet, meditative family drama.  Unusual in that the characters are regular intelligent people (rather than Franzen-Eggers types) leading everyday lives.  Their mental life is rich, but normally rich.  The writing is what makes you continue to read, because Cunningham has here a style that I found interesting and hard to put my finger on.  New York Times reviewer says Woolfian… I don’t know enough to say yes that is it… but I did appreciate that the writing style was complex and interesting.

The brothers have been close since their mother’s sudden death (golf, lightning) years ago. These motherless boys, so gifted in their youth, have become middle-aged without ever quite finding their vocations or making a go of their talents. Barrett, “who’d seemed for so long to be the magical child,” developed an array of “languid capabilities (he can recite more than a hundred poems; he knows enough about Western philosophy to do a lecture series, should anyone ask him to”), but never “the ability to choose, and persist.” Tyler, blessed with “athletic ease” and a “singular gift for music” as a boy, has become, at 43, “an unknown musician,” tending his dying girlfriend in a dingy apartment with slanting floors in the depths of ungentrified Bushwick.

via ‘The Snow Queen,’ by Michael Cunningham – NYTimes.com.

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Sarcastics United: Justice Scalia Is our Champion, Literally and Snootily

Posted on January 20, 2015 by mkevane

Justice Scalia might have a different objection. “I’m a snoot,” he once said.  “Snoots are those who are nit-pickers for the mot juste, for using a word precisely the way it should be used,” he explained.  Professor Hasen, on the other hand, used a broad definition of sarcasm.  “We’re talking about a combination of harsh language and irony,” he said. Many standard reference works agree, defining sarcasm to include hostile or contemptuous remarks.  But Justice Scalia would probably differ, based on a database search that revealed him to be a student of the question. He seemed to define sarcasm in a narrower way, as limited to saying one thing while meaning another.  The word sarcasm or a variant appeared five times in Supreme Court opinions since he joined the court, and he is the author of four of those opinions. (The fifth use of the word was in a quotation.) All four used the narrower definition.

In 1994, he rejected the argument that “modify” can mean “to change fundamentally.”  “ ‘Modify,’ in our view, connotes moderate change,” he wrote. “It might be good English to say that the French Revolution ‘modified’ the status of the French nobility, but only because there is a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm.”

via Scalia Lands at Top of Sarcasm Index of Justices. Shocking. – NYTimes.com.

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Another top economist (Sachs) disserves his readers

Posted on January 16, 2015 by mkevane

Jeffrey Sachs writes in an opinion piece (The War with Radical Islam by Jeffrey D. Sachs – Project Syndicate)

To be clear, Western actions do not provide Islamist terrorism with a scintilla of justification. The reason to point out these actions is to make clear what Islamist terrorism in the West represents to the terrorists: Middle East violence on an expanded front. The West has done much to create that front, arming favored actors, launching proxy wars, and taking the lives of civilians in unconscionable numbers.

Wait, let me understand. Being in a war, traditionally, is a justification for violence (what else is the justification for dropping the atomic bomb?).  Sachs says Islamic terrorists are in a war. He says “the West” is also waging that war (and indeed started it!).  So…. that’s a justification, then, is it not? But no, it is not a “scintilla” of justification.  Why write an article that appears, to any reasonable reader, to be offering a justification (that is, a reasonable explanation for why some people resort to violence in their interactions with other people), and then deny that it is indeed such a justification?

Maybe Sachs argument is: What to some people seem like reasonable justifications (they bombed a lot of civilians so we are in a war and are retaliating) are not really justifications at all.  War and violence are never justified.  Ever (scintilla, after all, is very small).  In that case, why claim that the war is not a scintilla of justification for the Islamic terrorists, and not also claim that Islamic terrorism (9-11 and human rights violations of Asad and helping anti-Asad rebel groups etc) is “not a scintilla” of justification for “the West’s” war?  In Sach’s world, the United States would just unilaterally withdraw involvement and disarm right away?  There is no “scintilla” of justification it seems for having any military at all.  Why even talk about “Islamic terrorism”?

Wow, glad I spent time reading such a carefully thought out and insightful op-ed.  Oh wait… maybe it was satire? That opens a whole new dimension of interpretation.

Posted in Development thinking, United States | Comments Off on Another top economist (Sachs) disserves his readers

Horrible writing from Larry Summers and Ed Balls

Posted on January 15, 2015 by mkevane

A report on wage stagnation in the United States, that I quickly perused, prompted the following question on style:  Why do so many prominent economists think that nobody cares what they write as long as they understand the general thrust of the writing?

For example, I know pretty much what this sentence from Ch. 3 of the report means:

Where these countries’ fiscal positions allow and where demand is weak, governments should consider making investments in their people, stimulating demand and addressing the challenge of stagnant wages.

Yet, as I think about the sentence… maybe the sentence does not actually mean anything. The sentence is a “pointer” to “see last U.S. budget when I was Secretary of Treasury” or “see last wishlist Pres. Obama articulated before a policy group in Washington.”  By not discriminating (which “investments” exactly? which “stimulating” exactly? and which “addressing” exactly?) the sentence really is vacuous.  The report is filled with similar sentences.

Indeed, no society has ever succeeded without a large, prospering middle class that embraced the idea of progress.

(You want to ask the authors: Is there really some society out there that embraces the idea of “not-progress”? That proclaims, “We would like to be increasingly worse off, please!”)

Does bad writing like this matter?  There are a number of possibilities:

  • Reports are opportunities to be on television, where discourses matter, so writing does not matter.
  • Writing does not matter because finer writing means can only appeal to a narrower constituency, and goal is to let everyone broadly aligned with the authors “read into” the report what they want.
  • Writing does not matter because the quality of writing does not substantially change people’s “reading” of report, so may as well economize on a scarce resource (good writing).
  • Bad writing is a virtue, because the authors do not actually know with precision what they want to say.  For public intellectuals, it is bad to state, with precision, that one has no position on an issue.

PS. Anyone want to disagree with this tautology (p. 69)?

As our societies become increasingly diverse, ensuring
that people of every race, ethnicity, gender, background, and faith participate and share in economic gains is not only a matter of fairness but also one of the most fundamental approaches to ensuring inclusive growth in our economies.

Rewritten:

Ensuring that people participate and share in economic gains is  one of the most fundamental approaches to ensuring inclusive growth.

Posted in Teaching macroeconomics | 3 Comments

Beautiful Darkness by Kerascoët’s and Fabien Vehlmann

Posted on January 6, 2015 by mkevane

This was on many lists of best graphic novel of 2014, so I ordered it for Christmas present for Sukie.  Very disturbing, but we had an intense discussion of what it “meant” where I got to be like a middle-school teacher and “scaffold” into deeper meanings, or even the “meaning” of a “lack of meaning.”  It is this: transistor radio:ipod::BD:Grimm fairy tale.  I can’t believe structuralist anthropologists used to waste time writing things like that!  But they did.  Anyway, it is a traditional folk/fairy tale, full of the random eating of children and shedding of skin and arbitrary death that old tales had (I once read all the collections of Sudanese folk tales available, so I do know what I am talking about, not just blathering).  At the same time an all-infusing spirit of wonder, nostalgia, innocence and hope, with a background of admiration for the authors/illustrators for conceiving and then bringing into being the work.  Not for everyone… so ask your local librarians to get it for you before ordering your own copy.  Here is the link to Beautiful Darkness by Kerascoët’s and Fabien Vehlmann.

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Pretty friggin sobering: Exploding wealth inequality in the United States

Posted on January 5, 2015 by mkevane

Exploding wealth inequality in the United States - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Since the housing and financial crises of the late 2000s there has been no recovery in the wealth of the middle class and the poor. The average wealth of the bottom 90 percent of families is equal to $80,000 in 2012—the same level as in 1986. In contrast, the average wealth for the top 1 percent more than tripled between 1980 and 2012.  [On the left hand axis in the graph: it is $14 million, more than 100 times greater.] In 2012, the wealth of the top 1 percent increased almost back to its peak level of 2007. The Great Recession looks only like a small bump along an upward trajectory.  How can we explain the growing disparity in American wealth? The answer is that the combination of higher income inequality alongside a growing disparity in the ability to save for most Americans is fueling the explosion in wealth inequality. For the bottom 90 percent of families, real wage gains (after factoring in inflation) were very limited over the past three decades, but for their counterparts in the top 1 percent real wages grew fast. In addition, the saving rate of middle class and lower class families collapsed over the same period while it remained substantial at the top. Today, the top 1 percent families save about 35 percent of their income, while bottom 90 percent families save about zero.

via Exploding wealth inequality in the United States – Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

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Early 2015 reflection on childhood

Posted on January 2, 2015 by mkevane

Yesterday at some point I remembered that when I was a kid I used to have a recurring dream that I could fly.  The dream usually started with my standing in our driveway.  We had two very large trees next to the driveway.  One was a tree we called a “rubber” tree because it had vines hanging down.  The other was (and still is) a giant.  I should know the names; I do not.  (Family, help here?)  Anyway, in the dream I would stand on the driveway, and slowly spread my arms.  Sometimes just a few gentle flaps and I would slowly lift off. Sometimes I would have to work harder. Usually there would be a short period of uncertainty: Would it work?  I think that in some dreams I was aware that I had flown in the past, but maybe that had been a dream, and so it would not happen now that it was “real.”  Sometimes there would be people looking (friends or siblings).  Most times I would start to rise… maybe occasionally I would falter and sink back.  But usually the flying turned into the same thing as swimming underwater.  The same movements would propel me through the air.  I would rise high above the big tree.  Sometimes I would fly all the way to school, about a mile away.  In my mind I could see down to the street below and the houses.

As the memory returned to me yesterday, I was like an addict.  Could it be possible to slow time, and I could experience in my brain that sensation of flying over and over again?  Even now, writing this, I am pausing and closing my eyes, and I can feel myself lifting off the ground.  The brief moment when part of the brain says that my arms have no lift, and the other part feels my body lifting up.

Anyway, I now unfortunately have a modern soundtrack to my flying dream (there definitely was no sound before).  Frankie Rose, “Pair of Wings”:

The remix here is OK:

And this acoustic version is sweet:

 

Posted in Personal Kevane life | Comments Off on Early 2015 reflection on childhood

Good editorial from the NY Times on the Fed’s current balancing act

Posted on December 28, 2014 by mkevane

The challenge for the Fed is to hold rates low without inflating bubbles. The way to do so is to control speculation through stepped-up regulation of banks and other financial institutions. Instead, the Fed has been inclined to ease up on regulation.On Dec. 19, it delayed a core provision of the Volcker Rule, a part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that bans speculative trading by federally backed banks. Under the rule, banks were supposed to sell their investments in private equity funds and hedge funds by July 2015. They will now have until mid-2017, and possibly until 2022, to do so. The rationale for the delay is that closing out their bets sooner might force them to take potentially destabilizing losses. It is simply not credible that banks need seven to 12 years to unwind their bets. The delay is yet another example of regulators who are captive to the banks they are supposed to oversee.Earlier this year, the Fed delayed another provision of Dodd-Frank — one that requires a bank to be downsized if it does not have a plausible plan for dismantling itself in the event of impending failure. When 11 large banks failed in August to submit such plans to bank regulators, the Fed gave them another year to keep working at it, allowing them to keep taking outsize risks with taxpayer backing.

via The Fed Fights Half the Battle – NYTimes.com.

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Books read in recent months… quick reviews

Posted on December 28, 2014 by mkevane

I have been terrible about recording what I have been reading and watching in the last few months.  So I thought as a way to start off 2015 without that hanging over my head I could just to a one line observation on each book. So here goes for the books.

  • English Passengers by Matthew Kneale.  Absolutely best book I read in 2014.  Enthralling throughout.  Manx crew takes a ship in 1857 to Tasmania.  Multiple points of view.
  • The Slap by Chris Tsiolkas.  I had been talking with an Australian librarian from Alice Springs at the IFLA conference.  We were talking about multiple point of view novels. She suggested this book and The English Passengers.  The Slap not quite as compelling, but I read it with interest. Recommended if you want a contemporary drama that stays close to familiar dysfunctionality.
  • Le Hollandais sans peine by Marie-Aude Murail.  Saw mention of this cute children’s book at IFLA.  Delightful.
  • Au Cinema Lux by Janine Teisson.  Read in French. Not sure if a translation or not actually.  I think was originally in Spanish.  Good short novel for 12 year olds.  Empathy? It’s got it.
  • The Martian by Andy Weir.  Given to me after father and brother read it. Two days to read.  Vastly enjoyable until the end, which I skimmed.
  • Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi.  Although I read it in under a week, somehow I never got into it. Was predisposed not to like: I find novels of cultural identity (Who am I really and why am I different from other people?  The answer is in something called culture or authenticity or recognition.) to be pretty slow-moving.  In fact, I do not think I could tell this novel apart in my mind from Ghana Must Go, a similar exercise.
  • The Time Traveller’s Wife  by Audrey Niffenegger.  Fluff. Read on vacation over Thanksgiving.  When you set your mind to reading fluff, it can be enjoyable.  But boy did this drag. Started jumping around like the time-traveller. Not even sure how much I read.  Realized after I had finished that Niffenegger has written the novel about the twin sisters that I never finished.  Still… very decent fluff. I like time travel novels and going backwards novels (in my mind the one by O’Faolain still the best).
  • The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman.  Got these at the library so no expenses involved. Holiday fluff. Extremely annoying fluff, but hard to just stop reading.  Something about both novels (I will not bother with the third) is off. The voice? The recycling of fantasy tropes? The admixture of smart and dumb?

Also a few things I have been watching that I enjoyed

  • Snowpiercer, on Netflix.  Great movie to watch after teaching back to back MBA classes.
  • Wallander, on Netflix.  I really liked it early on, but after the 5th episode I lost interest.
  • Broadchurch, on Netflix.  My sister recommended, but I was frustrated by the slow and moody pace. If I am watching a procedural I want procedure, not moody cliffs.
  • Boyhood, on airplane. Wonderful. not really something you watch a second time though.
Posted in Book and film reviews | Comments Off on Books read in recent months… quick reviews

El Amor by Ricardo Arjona… he is coming to San Jose… too expensive for me

Posted on December 24, 2014 by mkevane

El amor es la belleza que se nutre de tristeza,
y al final siempre se va..

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After grading, and after mother in hospital, time for holding your head high

Posted on December 21, 2014 by mkevane
Posted in Personal Kevane life | Comments Off on After grading, and after mother in hospital, time for holding your head high

Why could the ruble not have collapsed while I was teaching macroeconomics?

Posted on December 16, 2014 by mkevane

To try to stanch the bleeding, on Monday evening (the middle of the night Moscow time), the Central Bank of Russia announced a stunning interest rate increase. Its main deposit rate is now 17 percent, up from 10.5 percent when Russian banks closed for business Monday.It may go without saying, but a 6.5 percentage point emergency interest rate increase announced in the middle of the night is not a sign of strength. Rather, it is the kind of thing you see only in an old-school emerging markets currency crisis. And that is very much what Mr. Putin’s Russia is now experiencing.

via Vladimir Putin vs. the Currency Markets: What to Know About the Ruble’s Collapse – NYTimes.com.

Posted in Teaching international trade, Teaching macroeconomics | Comments Off on Why could the ruble not have collapsed while I was teaching macroeconomics?

Burkina Faso government suspends CDP and ADF-RDA

Posted on December 15, 2014 by mkevane

I hope in coming days there will be more clarification of exactly what the basis for the suspension is.

Burkina Faso’s transitional government on Monday suspended the party of deposed president Blaise Compaore and two allied political groups which had supported his attempt to cling to power….. Compaore’s Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) did not hold the three-quarters majority needed to approve the measures without a referendum.  However, days before parliament was due to debate the measures, Burkina’s third biggest party, the ADF-RDA, threw its weight behind the plan. The Ministry of Territorial Administration and Security, in a statement, accused the parties of “activities incompatible with the law creating the charter for parties and political formations.”

via Burkina Faso suspends ex-leader Compaore’s political party | Reuters.

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Time for transition authorities in Burkina Faso to actually demonstrate rather than promise

Posted on December 12, 2014 by mkevane

It would be nice to see their own declarations of assets made public and enable journalists to investigate, and to see the declarations of old regime members (their assets were supposed to have been declared).  Also, as REN-LAC says, what accounts (of whom? where? how much?) of old regime members have been frozen by authorities?  What are legal processes underway?

Le Réseau national de lutte anti-corruption l’a compris et elle « se réjouirait d’avantage s’il recevait les preuves de cette affirmation. Et il serait en outre de bon ton d’indiquer au peuple les montants et les banques qui gèrent ces comptes ». Quoi de plus normal. « La confiance n’exclut pas le contrôle », dit-on. La population a bien envie de connaitre les noms de ces dignitaires qui ont vu leurs comptes gelés. Si ces comptes ont été gelés, c’est certainement parce que l’argent était de provenance douteuse, de l’argent mal acquis. En la matière, on attend donc des poursuites judiciaires afin de « voir clair dans l’affaire ».

via Gel des avoirs des dignitaires de l’ancien régime : Le REN-LAC veut des (…) – leFaso.net, l’actualité au Burkina Faso.

Posted in Politics | Comments Off on Time for transition authorities in Burkina Faso to actually demonstrate rather than promise

Why I generally detest Hollywood movies

Posted on December 11, 2014 by mkevane

Family and friends always ask me why I typically refuse to go to most Hollywood movie, why I sigh heavily when I am watching them, while I roll my eyes in the dark, why I have nothing to say after viewing.  Finally I can exactly articulate why.  People like Rudin and Pascal are the ones charging me for the privilege of watching.  They are fake, humorless phonies, the kind of people that I hate giving my money to.  You should also stop giving them your money.  Read a book. I just checked out three at the library, for the holidays.

via Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal of Sony Apologize for Racially Tinged Comments on Obama – NYTimes.com.

Posted in Personal Kevane life | Comments Off on Why I generally detest Hollywood movies

Guardian podcasts: Anita Desai reads The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore and A.S. Byatt reads Penelope Fitzgerald’s At Hiruharama

Posted on December 8, 2014 by mkevane

I went for a run this morning and included a podcast of Anita Desai reading ‘The Postmaster’ by Rabindranath Tagore .   A quiet, meditative reflection on empathy (or the lack thereof). Very simple, very short. The Guardian’s selection is quite good.

Satyajit Ray turned the story into a short movie, available (un-subtitled) on YouTube:

Yesterday on a run I heard A.S. Byatt reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s  ‘At Hiruharama.’  The humor here more broad, but the theme of the story quite similar.  Formally, Fitzgerald’s is more complex, with multiple narrating voices embedded in the story.  And is quite clever in winking with the reader… you’ll know what I mean when you get to the part about “Throw Nothing Away.”

But both nicely build the sense of foreboding: something very tragic might happen.  They close on a smaller note.

Posted in Book and film reviews | Comments Off on Guardian podcasts: Anita Desai reads The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore and A.S. Byatt reads Penelope Fitzgerald’s At Hiruharama

U.S. recovery continues to be strong

Posted on December 5, 2014 by mkevane

The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 321,000 jobs in November — a much stronger number than expected — but perhaps even more significant was the biggest gain in average hourly earnings since June 2013. Hourly earnings rose by 0.4 percent in November, double what economists had been expecting….  At the same time, the number of hours worked ticked up by one-tenth, adding to pay envelopes…. The pickup in wage growth is coming as gasoline prices are plunging, providing a double boon for consumers and retailers with the holiday shopping season underway. For the year as a whole, the gain in jobs, with one month still to go, is shaping up as the best in 15 years.

via More Jobs and Higher Wages: U.S. Recovery Starts to Hit Home – NYTimes.com.

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Are TPP trade negotiations secret or not… an interesting issue

Posted on December 4, 2014 by mkevane

USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie disputes Weinger’s claim that the TPP negotiating process has been secretive. “The reality is that TPP negotiations have been more transparent and consultative than any U.S. trade agreement in history while maintaining the confidentiality appropriate for a government-to-government negotiation,” she said in an e-mailed statement. “Releasing internal deliberative documents would undermine U.S. leverage in negotiations and impair our ability to pursue the strongest possible outcomes on issues ranging from labor and environmental protections to market access for U.S. goods and services.”Guthrie also faulted the IP Watch lawsuit for “factual misrepresentations,” including what she described as “the inaccurate assertion to the court that only industry representatives have access to the draft negotiating text.”It’s true that some non-industry groups have access to the text. For example, there are advisory committees for labor unions and environmental groups. But the IP Watch lawsuit is focused on the TPP’s IP provisions. Guthrie wasn’t able to identify non-industry groups focused on those issues that have been granted access to confidential documents.Guthrie also stressed that USTR has worked extensively with Congress. “USTR has held more than 1,100 separate meetings on the TPP with Members of Congress and with their staffs, to make sure the people’s representatives know what’s being negotiated and get to shape the talks,” she said.

via Obama administration sued over its secretive trade negotiations – The Washington Post.

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