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Lots of fuss lately about Toyota's troubles. ... I suppose there are two ways to look at it. 1) See, even Toyota's in trouble! Hah! ...2) Toyota is panicking and taking corrective action while there is still time as opposed to the Detroit/UAW traditional method of one step (or two, or three) too late. ... P.S.: I'm not saying that this too-little-too-late phenomenon is built into Wagner Act unionism. ... Oh wait. That's exactly what I'm saying. The Wagner Act sets up a clunky, rule-bound bureaucacy of tooth-pulling negotiation--especially when it comes to administering pain--that wouldn't have worked even in the WWII era of massive industrial behemoths if we'd had any competition. It certainly won't work today. ...
Of course, GM once tried to set up a subsidiary with a less clunky, less rule bound bureaucracy--with flexible shifts and profit sharing but many fewer work rules, etc.. The UAW killed it, lest all those efficiency-enhancing innovations spread to other GM factories (where they might have, you know, saved GM). That wasn't what unionism was all about, argued the UAW traditionalists. They were right. Paul Ingrassia has the grim details. [via Hit & Run via Insta]
Update: Fire Mickey Kaus helpfully documents kf's decade-long record of "fact-free-speculation" eerie prescience regarding the Plot to Kill Saturn. ...
P.P.S.: The Next GM/Chrysler Bailout (#2): Pelosi seems to be on board! [Detroit News]
Pelosi said Democrats want automakers to "thrive," and she hasn't ruled out additional support for automakers if they show that they are "viable."
Here's a striking chart suggesting why Bailout #2 might be needed sooner rather than later. ...Toyota is down 19%. But GM is down 45%. ... [via TTAC]
Update: Big Money's Matthew DeBord argues that "signs are actually good" for Detroit's Big Three because "[a]ll are seeing their market share increase," He's apparently referring to this chart, which shows GM's share rising (from about 18.8 percent in July to 19.46 in August to 20.87 in September) while Ford and Chrysler are essentially flat, Unfortunately, many more people bought cars in the cash-for-clunkers months of July and August, when GM's share was down. It doesn't do much good to have impressive market share in September if the market is puny. When you add up all the good and bad months in 2009 to date, in fact, GM's share has fallen from 22.3 in 2008 to 19.6 in 2009. Chrysler's down from 11 to 9.2, Meanwhile, Ford rose from 14.2 to 15.2 (and in the most recent three months is up at 16.4). Honda has gained a tiny bit and Toyota's share is flat. None of that convinces me that "signs" are "good" for GM and Chrysler. (It is suprising that Toyota hasn't capitalized on their distress, which may explain this.) ...12:21 P.M.
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A big 10-pt jump in relative support of health care reform in Rasmussen's latest poll, which either says something about public opinion or something about Rasmussen. Either way, it's good for Obama, since Rasmussen has been the most pessimistic of the health care pollsters.** ... Maybe everyone is calming down as familiar, boring Senate moderates take center stage. ... P.S.: But the Rasmussen progress is hardly enough to pacify the throbbing Congressional id--health care reform still loses by a 50-46 margin. ...
**--Update: Until this grim new FOX poll.. ...12:20 P.M.
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Always trust content ... : kf readers are not surprised Gourmet magazine is dead.. They're surprised that Bon Appetit isn't. ... 12:19 P.M.
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Id Watch: Hmmm. If voters oppose by a 64-34 margin a health care bill with individual mandates but no public option, doesn't that mean voters will oppose by a 64-34 margin any health care bill that is likely to pass? ... That would put Obama's reform up in Dick Morris' the-Democratic-party-isn't-a-suicide-pact range. .. .9:27 P.M.
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Fire Mickey Kaus finally earns his salary. ... 9:26 P.M.
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Hyperlocal videos: Here's a local news video (I assume web-only) about a burglary in the neighborhood of a friend of mine. It's pretty compelling if you live in the neighborhood. ... If not, not. ... But presumably there are lots of potential advertisers--supermarkets, restaurants, etc--who would want to reach even that relatively small local audience. ... 9:25 P.M.
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Paranoid's Corner--Come and Be Counted! Why Obama might want to reverse the Gran Salida: Why might the Obama administration want to raise the topic of possible immigrant mass legalization even if it's not going to happen this year? Even if you assume such talk encourages more people to come here illegally--in the hope of qualifying for the amnesty--or at least discourages illegals currently in the country from going home during the recession, what good would that do Democrats? Illegal immigrants can't vote. ... It's not as if there is a once-every-10-years Census starting up in which areas with more illegals will get more money and representation! ... From CNS:
The Census is used to apportion the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. There are 435 House seats that are divided among the states in proportion to their population, which is determined by the decennial census. States with more people get more seats in the U.S. House.
This means that a state harboring more illegal aliens can gain more House seats as long as the Census Bureau finds the illegal aliens and counts them. This also means that the illegal alien population resident in the United States during a census year has the potential to alter the regional and philosophical balance of power in Congress.
P.S.: Note that it doesn't matter, for this purpose, if press secretary Robert Gibbs knocks down aide Cecilia Munoz's talk of impending amnesty--as long as Munoz's message gets out to the "undocumented" immigrant community (and the potential undocumented immigrant community in Latin America and elsewhere). ... 1:33 A.M.
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Three obvious problems with Ramesh Ponnuru's op-ed making an argument against universal health coverage:
1)
For people with pre-existing health problems, for example, direct subsidies would probably be more efficient than rigging insurance markets to make sure they are covered ...
So for every potential illness, the government has to determine the amount of subsidy required. As you get older and acquire more illnesses, you acquire more and more subsidies, like barnacles. But why should someone with mild heart trouble get the same subsidy as someone with severe heart trouble? Won't insurers make money by figuring out ways to subtly discourage potential customers with the worse versions of subsidized illnesses? It seems simpler and less bureaucratic just to cover everyone, stick in a decent co-pay, and then pay the bills.
But Ponnuru has a second solution for "preexisting conditions:"
[I]n the long run, the option to buy renewable policies that people could take from job to job would keep most people from needing to face this problem.
A renewable policy the insurer couldn't cancel even if you got an expensive disease? That would be a policy you'd have to hold on to. It sounds like Ponnuru has solved the problem of employees locked into their jobs and replaced it with the problem of employees locked into their insurance companies. If you're stuck with one company, that would seem to defeat the purpose of private sector "competition." If, on the other hand, other companies have to cover you at a rate that ignores your "pre-existing condition," that would reintroduce all the market-distorting cost-shifting Ponnuru is trying to avoid, no? Maybe I'm missing something.
2)
An alternative approach would be to make it easier for people to buy insurance that isn’t tied to their employment. The existing tax break for employer-provided insurance could be replaced with a tax credit that applies to insurance purchased either inside or outside the workplace. At the same time, state mandates that require insurers to cover certain conditions, which make it expensive to offer individual policies, could be removed.
These two reforms would address most people’s anxieties about the health care system.
Not mine! My biggest anxiety is that when I need insurance I'll discover that my private insurance company has stuck in some fine print that cleverly gets them off the hook for paying to treat whatever condition I have. Ponnuru's system seems designed to maximize this anxiety, not eliminate it (since he specifically rejects the idea that the "government specify what constitutes adequate coverage.")
3)
The third complaint against free-market health insurance is that it wouldn’t cover absolutely everyone, because it would neither force people to buy insurance nor require the government to provide it. ... [snip]
For most people, though, especially those in the middle class, it would mean paying less for health insurance. Some people, of course, would still choose to go without it. But that would be their call, as it should be in a free country.
Their call? If they make their "call" against being covered, we aren't going to leave them bleeding on the sidewalk because they don't have insurance. We are going to give them medical care and pay for it ... somehow. Maybe, as Ponnuru claims, this "free rider" problem isn't as large in dollar terms as is generally assumed. But using the bracing language of liberty and individual responsibility seems inappropriate when the "choice" is really a choice to foist society with the cost. ... 1:33 A.M.
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All those broken windows were kind of cool ... The NYT celebrates the "golden, assaultive years" of subway graffiti. ... Doesn't the Times know that graffiti artists are "the performing spray can monkeys for gentrification?" ... 12:56 A.M.
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Fire Mickey Kaus misses joke! Hahahaha! Mickey Kaus one step ahead of Fire Mickey Kaus! Fire Fire Mickey Kaus! ... 12:43 A.M.
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So it was Begala and Carville's idea for the White House to go after Rush Limbaugh? Hmm. No one can read Bob Woodward's The Agenda and go away impressed with Begala's judgment. He's overcombative and underadaptive. And weren't he and Carville Hillary people? So why is Obama letting these underemployed publicity-craving operatives mess around with his Presidency? ... 4:18 P.M.
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Can't say Fire Mickey Kaus doesn't have me here. 4:28 P.M.
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I like the idea of Sen. Specter facing a challenge from the right in the GOP primary--it might encourage him to avoid supporting "card check." But couldn't Specter pull a Lieberman and run as some kind of independent? Wouldn't he have a good shot at winning? ... Update: The Hill reports that under Pennsylvania law Specter can't do exactly what Lieberman did, which is lose his party's primary and then run anyway as an independent in the general. He can run as an independent, but he has to decide beforehand to skip the primary and let the GOP nominate someone else. ... P.S.: When does he have to decide, though? Once Specter's committed to the GOP primary then the pressure is back on, no? ... P.P.S.: The Hill offers mixed opinions as to whether he could win as an independent. ... [Thks to alert reader J.] 4:05 P.M.
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Friday, January 9, 2008
OK, "Caterpillar" didn't make it. (No legs!) But give "Mr. Aflatoxin" time. The left is on the same side as kf on that one. ... 11:50 P.M.
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The kf Curse! It turns out that alleged CarCzar Designee Steven Rattner, endorsed in this space yesterday, has a large and embarrassing** conflict of interest. NY Post covers. ... More suprisingly, the New York Times picks up on the Post's sniping at Pinch Sulzberger's BFF. But only online (as far as I can see). Rattner's ... special status seems to continue in the print edition (although I won't know for sure until tomorrow)...
**--[Embarrassing?--ed He bought Blender!] According to the NY Post:
Cerberus [which owns Chrysler] recently notified Rattner and his group that they're in technical default of terms to repay a $125 million loan that he used to bankroll his $250 million purchase, two years ago, of sexy lad magazine Maxim and pop-music magazine Blender.
Guy who can't run Maxim wants to run GM! But he still wrote a great union-bashing article. ...11:25 P.M.
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Thrown into the Burris patch: What makes everyone so sure that Majority Leader Harry Reid was "beaten" and "outfoxed" in the matter of Roland Burris? He was beaten and outfoxed into having one more Democratic senator than he was counting on having. A few more of these beatings and he'll pass card check with 5 votes to spare. ... 10:00 P.M.
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Friday, January 2, 2009
New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones has found a way to make himself readable--limit himself to 140 characters at a time. Unfortunately it seems to be a stunt, not a hard technical limit. [Via Rachel Sklar] 4:16 A.M.
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Footnote to a footnote to a footnote: Those closely reading the complaint in the Vicki Iseman libel suit against the NYT (and who isn't, really) may notice a quote from Matt Yglesias on page 21, calling the Times' Iseman story "a pretty shameful attempt to set up a Kaus-like presumption of guilt." Q: What's that "Kaus-like" all about? A:Yglesias was almost certainly referring to this 2007 kf post, which isn't about McCain and Iseman but about John Edwards and Rielle Hunter. It argued that Edwards' initial denial of the National Enquirer's original story was too sharp and confrontational (he'd said it was "made up") which was "not necessarily a smart move for a politician in Edwards' position." Yglesias thought I had assumed Edwards' denial was b.s. (which of course it was). I claimed I didn't assume his guilt--that even if Edwards was innocent it would be unwise for him to directly attack his accusers, lest that spur them redouble their efforts and make it a two-day story or worse. I admit it was difficult to avoid assuming Edwards' guilt since I pretty much knew he was guilty.
P.S.--Yglesias wrong, so very wrong: In the event, Edwards' denial spurred the Enquirer to redouble their efforts and they nailed him. ... Meanwhile, Yglesias had argued: "No doubt by now we've had all the legitimate news organizations in the country looking into it and it seems that . . . nobody can come up with any evidence." It turned out, of course, that "legitimate" news organizations hadn't spent a lot of effort looking into it. ...
Whatever you do, do not let this man speak for the Center for American Progress Action Fund! ... 3:17 A.M.
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1) Immigrants are leaving Southern California. 2) Crime is falling in Southern California (contrary to criminologists' 'hard-times=crime' predictions).
Is there a connection? I don't know. But don't expect the Los Angeles Times to even ask. ... [Thanks to alert reader R.] :2:07 A.M.
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I missed "The Music of Seal on Ice" TV special. Did someone liveblog? ... 1:44 A.M.
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You're No LGM, or even FMK: Exhausted by 24 hours of nonstop mindless piece-rate sneering, Gawker's Alex Pareene resorts to one of the oldest tricks in the book! (But you'll have to be nastier than that to make me link, buddy!) ... 1:39 A.M.
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Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Enjoy your daily print newspaper. It's later than you think. ... 1:02 A.M.
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Magical Moment: One seemingly sure sign Obama is actually, really not going left, at least on economic policy: Robert Kuttner isn't sucking up!** Instead he's frankly anguished about the incoming economic team. ... P.S.: OK, there's a small, vestigial suck-up at the end. ...
**--For Kuttner's 1992 flattery of president-elect Clinton, click here, search for "epic." ...12:47 A.M.
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Monday, December 29, 2008
Fire Fire Mickey Kaus. They're falling down on the job. ... No wonder I still have this gig.
Update: They've been spurred into action, arguing
It's true that unions are poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth. They have also failed to cure cancer, and they haven't done anything to stop Russian aggression in post-communist Europe.
Now it's obvious unions are "poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth." Please tell it to Kevin Drum (and Paul Krugman). ... 7:26 P.M.
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Life in the Left Cocoon: Promoting the Southern, corporate, anti-UAW agenda, Kevin Drum says he's "open" to "good-faith efforts to address reform" of "mushrooming work rules." But he's still for greater unionization:
Conservatives flatly oppose anything that gives labor any additional bargaining power, full stop, and that doesn't leave much room for compromise. So unions it is. Especially in the service sector, they're pretty much the only idea on the table for seriously addressing low-end wage growth, and that means I'm for 'em. [E.A.]
The only idea on the table? How about restoring economic growth and creating a tight labor market, giving all workers (not just the unionized) greater bargaining leverage? That's the traditional Clintonite formula, no? To that you could add border control to ensure that competition from unskilled immigrants doesn't undermine leverage among lower-wage workers..... Drum goes on the cite Ezra Klein for the proposition that:
the last great leap forward for unions was during World War II, and the last great expansion of the American middle class followed in its aftermath. In contrast, the most recent expansions -- which have largely occurred in the absence of unions -- have benefited America's rich. [E.A.]
Huh? The biggest recent expansion, during the '90s, a) benefitted Americans at all levels, but especially average workers and b) occurred largely while union power was ebbing. The Clintonite formula worked. Maybe it can't be achieved again. Maybe it's flawed because (sorry!) the rich got richer too in the Clinton years. Maybe a return to Carter-era union power will be better still! But those are arguments Dems like Drum and Klein won't even deign to make as long as they keep reassuring each other that they not only have the best ideas around but the only ideas around. ...
P.S.: Klein also argues;
The countries with the world's highest growth rates -- the Nordic economies -- also have some of the world's highest rates of unionization. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland all approach 80 percent.
There's an argument that in countries with 70-80-90 percent unionization, unions have to be more responsible--union leaders know that any inflationary wage increases are going to be paid for by their own members (who are essentially everyone), and they know that any declines in productivity will hurt their own members (essentially everyone). Not only do they have an incentive to be reasonable, but they have the power to keep their own membership--say, those unions that could get bigger-than-average increases by striking--in check. But we aren't going to get 80% unionization. We're going to get 20-25% or 30% unionization, with unions that are powerful enough to cut good deals for themselves (and impose resulting price increases on everyone else), but not so large that they have to take everyone's interests into account. ... (This is point made by Mancur Olson and noted by Robert M. Kaus a year before Klein was born. Yikes.) ... 4:06 P.M.
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They Said It Couldn't Be Done! How to Make Caroline Kennedy More Boring: Caroline Kennedy's ragging of NYT reporters, for which she's now being pilloried, is of course one of her better recent moments:
NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?
CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)
DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?
CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here.
Kennedy's bristling at the embarrassing, sentimentalizing conventions of journalism (at Newsweek the question was always "what were you eating") and isn't afraid to invoke some undiplomatic truths (i.e. women's magazine's often run softball crap). Either she'll keep it up--in which case maybe there's something to the idea that she has the virtues of an independent outsider--or, more likely, she'll become even more safely platitudinous. ... 3:19 P.M.
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The Aribtrariness of Wagner Act Redistribution: Richard Posner makes an essential point usually overlooked by those on the left who instinctively support unionism in the hope that it will achieve some sort of just redistribution of income:
The redistribution of wealth that they bring about is not only fragile ...[snip] ...but also capricious, as it is an accident whether conditions in a particular industry are favorable or unfavorable to unionization. [E.A.]
Or, as Robert M. Kaus put it in very small type in 1983:
The "economic power" that the Wagner Act gives unions is determined by all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with the moral basis of a union's cause. Workers who work in a single location, for example,are easier to organize than workers who are geographically dispersed, even though the latter may work in sweatshops and the former in comfortable, lighted factories. Some industries are extremely vulnerable to strikes--industries that deal in perishable goods, for example, or industries (e.g. Broadway theaters) where you can set up a picket line that will intercept a lot of customers. In other industries, advances in technology have weakened the power of strikes, as petroleum and chemical workers discovered when they walked out and found that skeleton crews of supervisors could run computer-controlled refineries for a long time. Did the chemical workers deserve to be paid less simply because their industries had become more strike-proof?
This arbitrariness is not just a trivial side effect of the collective bargaining system. A truism within the labor movement holds that "the workers who need the unions the most don't get them." .... The answer of labor leaders to this dilemma is simple: more unions. .... But even if the law required unions in every workplace, there is no reason to think wage inequalities would shrink in any systematic fashion. Sol C. Chaikin, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, often complains about the "two-tier labor force" in the United States--but he is complaining about a disparity that exists within the ranks of organized labor. ... The Wagner Act gave Chaikin's union the power to strike. Unfortunately, fate did not give it any of the chance attributes that might enable it to use strikes to boost wages dramatically above their market levels. [E.A.]
If you organized the operators of drawbridges going into Manhattan, under the Wagner Act your union will be able to extract quite a premium by striking. If you organize fast food workers, not so much. I've never understood why leftish idealists ever bought into the idea that this is distributive justice. ... 1:12 A.M.
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
Two year-end TV roundups--by Tom Shales and by Inside Cable News. One of these guys is paid an incredible amount of money. And one of them phones in a list of usual suspects. ... P.S.: From the other one:
Unlike NBC’s very public axe wielding, CNN’s cuts came about suddenly as a bunch of on the air talent lost their jobs. Most notable loss; CNN veteran Miles O’Brien. CNN has yet to publicly account for all this talent loss, which flied in the face of the public posturing done by Jonathan Klein regarding how his network was in the money.
Jonathan Klein, dissembling? We're shocked. ... 7:00 P.M.
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Friday, December 26, 2008
Don't Blame Gettelfinger: Rand Simberg's anti-UAW-work-rule post was better than mine. He has horror stories, including his own--noting that there are too many floating around for them to be "merely anecdotal." (Another bit of confirming evidence: The union firms went broke! Non-anecdotally broke.) Simberg makes a point that's especially relevant now that the UAW is arguing that labor is only "10% of the cost of the vehicle."
And the rules don’t just affect productivity — they affect quality as well. When you can’t discipline employees for being absent without leave, when you have to bring in unfamiliar workers to fill in for them, when you’re missing half your plant during hunting season — yes, the stories about avoiding buying cars built on Monday or Friday in the fall are true — you can’t expect to put out a quality product, regardless of how well or poorly designed it is. You particularly can’t expect to do so when the union rules put all responsibility for quality and production on management, but give them no authority to manage the workers and provide the workers with no incentive to build a quality product if they lack the personal pride to do so. [E.A.]
Labor may only be 10% of the cost of the vehicle, but it's still going to be a vehicle nobody wants to buy if it's poorly made. ... Note: The UAW does make some high quality cars, especially at the NUMMI joint venture with Toyota in San Jose, where they threw out the UAW work rule book. Why couldn't GM successfully spread the NUMMI system to all its other plants? Ask the UAW. ...
P.S,: Here's a Business Week profile of the UAW president Ron Gettelfinger. Seems like a reasonable guy! But that's the point. Gettelfinger isn't the problem--I suspect, for example, that the UAW leadership knows pretty well what the problems are in its factories. The problem is the system, the American adversarial labor-management negotiating system, in which reasonable people doing what the system tells them they should do wind up producing undesirable results. Just as negotiating over work assignments means factories adjust too slowly to generate continuous efficiency improvements (which often involve constantly changing work assignments) negotiating ponderous 3 year contracts (in which Gettelfinger must extract every possible concession to please the members who elected him) means contracts adjust too slowly to save the companies from failure if market conditions change. From Business Week:
[T]here is a pragmatic Ron Gettelfinger as well. Three years ago, the automakers were in trouble, and he knew that without concessions there would be no jobs for his members to report to. When Detroit came looking for givebacks, Gettelfinger ultimately agreed to a contract that set back starting factory wages 30 years: New hires will begin at $14 an hour—half the wage for veterans and a pay scale not seen since the '70s. Plus, he has watched the Big Three cut some 80,000 jobs since 2005.
That also brings up a key criticism from Detroit's executives. Gettelfinger made those key concessions starting in 2005, but not until Ford and GM were reeling toward massive losses. The union has never given enough to get the companies ahead of the curve. "It's always a day late and a dollar short," says one former GM executive. [E.A.]
See also this interview, pointing out that the $14 wage scale for new hires hasn't had an impact because nobody new is being hired by the UAW's employers, who are shrinking, not growing. The obvious alternative to cutting the pay of nonexistent future workers would be to cut the pay of existing current workers--but they are the people the system tells Gettelfinger he needs to please. ...
Fifteen years ago, at the start of the last Democratic president's administration. incoming Labor Secretary Robert Reich famously said "The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace." Tactfully put. This fall, if not earlier, the jury came back. 5:19 P.M.
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What's Worse Than Camelot? Cuomolot! I should say that I'd certainly prefer Caroline Kennedy to at least one candidate for Hillary Clinton's seat. That candidate would be Andrew Cuomo. Caroline may be boring but she does not seem evil! (For some links on why I think Cuomo is a thuggish irresponsible opportunist, click here. I also had some unpleasant dealings with his self-promotion machine at HUD, when they were busy hyping and distorting some homeless statistics in order to get his name in the paper.) ... These are not the only two people in New York state, however. ... 4:30 P.M.
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