My tweet on why the world is becoming a much angrier place than what’s warranted by the usual factors.

Sir, Chris Giles writes “Britain is an angry place: furious about its politics, unsure of its place in the world and increasingly resigned to a grinding stagnation of living standards” “Anger and inequality make for a heady mix” March 1.

Giles analyzes the increasing discontent as a function of the economy, in terms of economic growth, inflation, income inequality, weak productivity and employment rates, whether existing or expected.

That is certainly valid but, sadly and worrisome, there is much more to the much higher levels of anger brewing than could seem be warranted by that. That goes also for the rest of the world. 

Sir, what is happening? Here is my own tweet-sized explanation of that.

“Shameless polarization and redistribution profiteers, sending out their messages of hate and envy through social media, at zero marginal cost, are exploiting our confirmation bias, namely the want or need to believe what we hear, up to the tilt. It will all end very badly.”

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2010/05/speakers-corner-speakers-have-moved-to.html

@PerKurowski

For social harmony, in our time, we need a big enough and a small enough universal basic income.

Sir, Chris Giles refers to a “1994 OECD study [which] contained a warning of the dangers in store for countries that failed to tackle problems in their labour markets. “It brings with it unravelling of the social fabric.” “Improve employment rates to tackle inequality” February 15.

Giles opines, “Flexibility and social protection is a winning combination for advanced economies. While it does not prevent all employment problems, whether you take a right-of-centre “work not welfare” attitude or a left-of-centre “a hand up not a handout” stance, in general the combination works.”

I agree! An unconditional universal basic income, large enough to allow many to reach up to whatever jobs are available, is “a hand up not a handout”.

And an unconditional universal basic income, small enough so as not allow many to stay in bed, is also “work not welfare”.

So what’s keeping an UBI from being implemented?

To begin there’s not sufficient recognition of the real conflicts, basically a class war, between those who having a job want better pay and those who want a job at any pay.

But, first and foremost, it is those who profit, politically and monetary, on imposing their conditionalties when redistributing tax revenues, who strongly oppose a UBI, since it, naturally, would negatively affect the value of their franchise.

PS. The Chavez/Maduro regimes are clearly outliers among the redistribution profiteers but just as an example I once calculated that the 40% poorest of Venezuela had received less than 15% from the Bolivarian Revolution than what should have been their allotment had Venezuela’s net oil revenues been shared out equally to all. On the other side many of the odious profiteers pocketed many thousand times what should have been their share.

@PerKurowski

Productivity, real salaries, employment rates, GDP should consider the increased consumption of distractions during work hours

Sir, Erik Brynjolfsson (and Andrew McAfee) writes: “If machine learning is already superhuman, why did we not see it in productivity statistics earlier? The answer is that its breakthroughs haven’t yet had time to deeply change how work gets done” “Machine learning will be the engine of global growth” July 27.

That is true, but we also need to realize that we have not done yet measured the effect of all the increased consumption of distractions during working hours.

In Bank of England’s “bankunderground" blog we recently read: “With the rise of smartphones in particular, the amount of stimuli competing for our attention throughout the day has exploded... we are more distracted than ever as a result of the battle for our attention. One study, for example, finds that we are distracted nearly 50% of the time.”

And on a recent visit to a major shop in the Washington area, thinking about it, I noticed that 8 out of the 11 attendants I saw were busy with some type of activity on their cellphones, and I seriously suspect they were not just checking inventories.

The impact of that on productivity, with less effective working time is being put into production, could be huge.

Also, going from for instance a 10% to a 50% distraction signifies de facto that full time or paid by the hour employee’s real salaries have increased fabulously.

And what about the real employment rate if we deduct the hours engaged in distractions? A statistical nightmare? Will we ever be able to compare apples with apples again?

And how should all these working hours consumed with distractions be considered in the GDP figures?

@PerKurowski

What if we in writing had to authorize phone companies to listen to our calls, in order to have access to phones?

Brooke Masters writes: “when I link our Amazon Echo speaker to my son’s Spotify account, I have no idea whether I am violating one of the thousands of terms and conditions he agreed to with his account. Furthermore, does that act give Amazon the right to send him advertisements based on the songs we play?” “Take ownership of the sharing economy” December 29.

She is absolutely right. The rights we seem to have to give up in order to gain access to social media and alike, though defined in small letters in thousands of unreadable pages, is one of the most undefined issues of our time.

Some questions:

Should the marginal cost for social media owners to access, and waste, so much of our limited attention span, be zero?

Should we be able to copyright our own preferences so that we at least can have something to negotiate with?

How much can we allow being distracted during working hours before our employer has the right to deduct our salaries paid?

How will such working hours distractions be accounted for in employment statistics?

How is all this free or very cheap consumption paid by used attention spans be accounted for, for instance in GNP figures?

Should social media owners be allowed to impose their own rules or should that not be subject to some kind of a special arbitration panel?

How our global differences be managed? Does a government that interferes with its citizens’ rights of access to social media have access to other web sites of other nations?

@PerKurowski

What does going from a 10% to a 50% level of distraction signify for full-time employees’ real salaries?

Sir, Sarah O’Connor writes “Males in well-paid full-time employment, earning 2.5 times the median wage, are now working slightly longer hours on average than two decades ago, according to the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank.” “Robots will drive us to rethink the way we distribute work” November 29.

In Bank of England’s “bankunderground" blog we recently read: “With the rise of smartphones in particular, the amount of stimuli competing for our attention throughout the day has exploded... we are more distracted than ever as a result of the battle for our attention. One study, for example, finds that we are distracted nearly 50% of the time.”

So if 50% of the time is now spend being distracted, and since those not employed full time are not equally remunerated for distractions, that of “earning 2.5 times the median wage”, could de facto be a serious understatement.

Sir, just think about what going from for instance a 10% to a 50% distraction signifies to full time employees’ real salaries. Fabulous increases!

PS. And what is its impact on productivity in terms that less effective working time is being put into production?

PS. Or what would the real employment rate be if we deduct the hours engaged in distractions? A statistical nightmare? Will we ever be able to compare apples with apples again?

PS. And how should all these working hours consumed with distractions be considered in GDP figures?

PS. Robots will not only drive us to rethink the way we distribute work. It also forces us to think about how to create decent and worthy unemployments.

@PerKurowski

FT, don’t scare or bullshit us, with that September and October labor data is indispensable for the Fed to know what to do.

Sir, Robin Harding reports that “Experts fear loss of October data could influence tapering policy” October 5. Boy if that is what we depend on for the Federal Reserve to act correctly, we are, as the somewhat vulgar expression goes, most certainly up shit creek without a paddle.

He also quotes an expert saying “It’s like flying blind”. Come on, the Fed is flying truly blind by not knowing what would be the real interest rates on public debt, net of the subsidies implicit in bank regulations which allow banks to lend to the public sector against much less capital than when lending to citizens. Compared to that blindness the labor data would be, also in a somewhat vulgar expression, chicken shit.

That the Fed, not having a clue about what to do, would naturally like to have that data in order to explain itself, well that is a quite different proposition.