I just finished Nick Eberstadt's book - Men Without Work. The book is about the approximately 10 million American males who are out of work and are an 'invisible' segment to policy makers and the general public dialogue. Former US Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard University Larry Summers reviewed the book and termed it an important issue to discuss that is vital for our future.
Here are some of my notes from reading the book:
- I found the data sets in the book compelling, memorable and thought provoking - particularly the data about the current decoupling between net worth, GDP and employment.
- However, the author's interpretations of the data sets are not so compelling and his policy prescriptions are non-existent!
- In my view, it is incorrect to interpret women entering the workforce in the 1970s as a zero-sum game, as the author does.
- He underweights the historically unprecedented retirement of Boomers in presenting unemployment data.
- He undervalues contributions of the new economy companies and the power of new technologies.
Here is the chart that makes the core point of the book:
It is not unreasonable to assume that this core insight is driving the politics that we saw in the recent Brexit, US and Italian voting and in the politics that is playing out across Europe currently.
As I had mentioned the book could be better in terms of policy prescriptions. If I were to prescribe policy, it would be some combination of i) smart infrastructure spending, ii) continued emphasis on role of technology in current affairs, iii) focus on the silver economy and iv) understanding systemic impact of our actions on the globe at large and inventing appropriate solutions (e.g. - cheaper desalinization).
As I had mentioned the book could be better in terms of policy prescriptions. If I were to prescribe policy, it would be some combination of i) smart infrastructure spending, ii) continued emphasis on role of technology in current affairs, iii) focus on the silver economy and iv) understanding systemic impact of our actions on the globe at large and inventing appropriate solutions (e.g. - cheaper desalinization).
An aside - I have been in so many panel discussions and round tables over the past two years, that while reading the book, I felt transported to an American Enterprise Institute think tank where the contributors Nick, Henry and Jared where discussing this important topic! (maybe I will look them up on YouTube...!)
The book is an easy read. I recommend buying it. It certainly provides a data set that is worth reviewing, even memorizing!
13 comments:
I agree the data is, for the most part, compelling and also that he is perhaps thinner on public policy solutions.
The main take-away – that there is a structurally very large swath of men who are normally in the age cohort of work, but for decades have constituted a growing cohort “not working” is news.
Identifying a fact-based reality of this kind, which is not part of the conventional conversation, is itself, I would suggest, a great value contribution to our national conversation on work and society in 21st century America.
While Nick has not fully gone the next steps of (a) “what this means” and then following such an analysis for (b) possible solutions, we thought his data presentation is an important contribution to getting the national dialogue started in a serious way.
And, of course, I fully agree that your point on “the retirement of boomers” must be a more robust part of the conversation, which will lead to different solutions as well.
Very interesting topic.
From your review of the book, I am getting a sense for the gaps in the author's logic.
Thanks for sharing.
I have three major points regarding the unemployment of people in general and the young in particular.
The first is the reluctance to change with technology changes. In an extremely rapid change in manufacturing technology as well as product base, any society which does not keep pace with it will have people unemployed.
Second, the second world war brought a tremendous work ethic and production of important goods skyrocketed.
But, the subsequent prosperity did dampen the enthusiasm for hard work.
The third, which is more complex is the feeling that the worker has to be paid his/her due irrespective of what the market dictates.
Workers perhaps do not realise that high manufacturing cost will not lead to profits for the companies which is their main goal.
I’m trying to tackle the same subject, but through the lens of populism/Trumpism. Your book review is quite helpful to this personal project. Helpfulness, of course, can also come from strong critiques… as, at a minimum, it saves one time, and maximally, they tend offer insights. And your insights are well founded. Nick is a bit of an ideologue.
So thanks.
Unemployment is a universal problem and causes vary from country to country.
In a heavily-populated country like India, the scale of operation of big companies has resulted in the loss of traditional jobs.
For example, with Tatas, Birlas ans Ambanis entering retail marketing, the street vendors and small scale Nadar shops have been thrown out.
While the latter were personalised with a happy relationship between seller and buyer, the large departmental stores are highly impersonal with no connectivity.
Great review.
I would add one policy prescription, retooling our education system to prepare people for the economy of today and the future with greater emphasis on STEM. Liberal Arts is important but people simply aren't qualified for the jobs of today like they were in the past (manufacturing)
Thanks for this recommendation-looks great. Will check it out!
Thanks for synthesis — saves me the task of reading it!
Nice review.
Thank you - saves me time. Have you read "Hillbilly Elegy"?
Thank you for prompting me about Hillbilly Elegy. Turns out that my wife had read it for her book group - so I was able to read it as well.
It does go well with 'Men Without Work,' as an anecdotal color commentary.
A few observations:
- Raj Chetty who is prominently mentioned in the book was a guest speaker at at one of my meetings that I attended earlier this year. Fantastic analysis. Here is a NYT story on Raj's work --
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility-shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?_r=0
- The Cracker Barrel anecdote was truly funny. I can relate to it. My version of that is The Ground Round (which is no longer in business). I would probably nostalgically go to it in South Jersey and my wife would be suitably horrified!
- I had a 'wait, just a second,' moment in the middle of the book, when Papaw teaches the author JD advanced high school math (I would have trouble doing that today with my son). That was a bit of a give away, that this family was more accomplished than meets the eye!
- My first job was at a General Electric manufacturing plant in southern Philly. One can imagine, the toughest possible neighborhood to find myself in as a young graduate, who was hired to automate jobs away! Yet, I will say that my relationships with union stewards, labor, supervisory management and local commercial establishments was just fine. My insight out of that experience was saving a plant and jobs, even if it meant that labor had to learn new skills (operating automated computer controlled machines) was paramount.
- The author 'JD', concludes that culture trumps economy (so to speak!). But I still hold that the opposite is true. For that, I would like to draw upon an E.O. Wilson analogy on ants.
In an experiment, an ant is put on sand in a glass encasing. The ant just runs around. Two ants, and still the same. But at some critical point, say 6 -8 ants, they start building an ant hill. And beyond that the more ants one adds, the more complex the anthill becomes.
Perhaps, analogously, by creating an economic base, the culture of hard work and social cohesion ensues. To use the example of the tile distributor in JD's book; one tile distributor in a town is not going to build the culture of hard work. It took the entire post-WWII industrial boom to create it.
Therefore, it occurs to me perhaps, that if we wanted to re-create that ethos, we will have to construct an economy for the 21st century by focusing on new technologies, new methods of doing business and leveraging the American DNA of mobility, optimism, adventure and innovation.
Great review! Love your insights!!
Regarding Hillbilly Elegy - your comment about the ‘trumping’ of either economics by culture or vice versa, I’ve come to the position that this is yet another of the false dichotomies that have bewitched the ideological mind. The left thinks economics rules all and the right, that culture does.
I think it fair to say that Adam Smith had a more limited notion along these lines. He looked at the rise of moral thinking as a result of the industrial revolution in England. He noted how market capitalism had a beneficial effect on the culture as it relates to the minor virtues (cleanliness, industriousness, honesty, dependability, etc.). And it resonates with you’re E. O. Wilson ant analogy:
We develop complex social codes and social rituals in order to prevent violence. Violence, suppression, and misery were all most of the human race knew until the day before yesterday, when the emergence of market capitalism taught us how to cooperate with one another and the Industrial Revolution gave us the means to do so on a grand scale. It isn’t Leviathan who prevents bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all] — it is manners, the rules of social intercourse, that keep us from poking each other in the chimp.
But notions like Spirit and culture don’t lend themselves to easy scientific analysis. And Marx felt that Communism isn’t ideology (theory) but science. And of course, if you’re a progressive who buys, knowingly or not, into this notion of human history, and that as both Hegel and Marx believed it would be ushered in by the state (after which it would wither away in Marx’s telling), then you need something like science for technocrats to determine how to fiddle with the gauges of society – a.k.a., economics.
And culture is a whole lot more squishy than economics. Though it must be said economics is a lot more squishy than progressives want to believe too. As we repeatedly see, though never seem to learn. Again, because the progressive zeitgeist that rules our age insists that economics rules everything.
And that’s why progressives always want to throw more money at any problem, even those that are largely driven by culture… such as education. The dirty little secret that progressives only whisper to themselves is that no matter how much money is thrown at inner-city schools, it’ll never address the real problem – that being the inner-city culture and its embodiment in the home.
Such thinking isn’t only found on the progressive left… it’s also found on the progressive right (Dubya). It was the delusion that economics trumps culture that caused George W. Bush to think that he could remake the middle east via liberalism – democracy and market economics.
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