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tomorrowusa · 3 months

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What's a MAGA zombie to do when the economy is not just good but is even improving beyond good?

The Department of Labor's stats for January, released on Friday, showed greater US job growth than expected AND a rise in hourly wages. The US economy added 353,000 jobs in January, almost twice as many as forecast, in “stunning” figures that led investors to slash expectations for interest rate cut in March. Economists had expected a 180,000 jobs increase for last month, according to an LSEG survey. Tom Simons, US economist at Jefferies, described the figures as “stunning numbers” that left him “near speechless”.

Not only were the January figures strong, but the November and December figures were revised upward based on data still being analyzed.

Friday’s jobs report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also showed that US workers’ average hourly wages grew 0.6 per cent to $34.55 — up 4.5 per cent over the past 12 months. Revised figures in the report indicated that the US had added 333,000 jobs in December, up from a first estimate of 216,000. The figure for November was also upgraded, by a more moderate 9,000 to 182,000.

Donald Trump once claimed that he created "the greatest economy in the history of the world." Typical Trumpian bullshit from the guy who told over 30,000 documented lies during his term.

Trump was the first president since Herbert "Great Depression" Hoover to leave office with a net loss in the number of American jobs,

In terms of percentage of jobs, Trump looks yet worse. Even G.W. Bush had a tiny increase – being saved by the fact that he left office before most of the effects of his Great Recession kicked in.

This Washington Post chart was published in January 2021.

Some people bizarrely think Republicans are better for the economy - but stats simply don't support that. The Republican economy is probably better for billionaires who got enormous tax breaks from Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.

A second Biden term would probably place him in the same territory as LBJ, Truman, and Bill Clinton for job growth.

#the economy #strong job growth #job creation #joe biden #bidenomics #january 2024 job stats #bureau of labor statistics #democrats #republicans suck at the economy #donald trump #trump is the only president since herbert hoover to leave office with a net job loss #vote blue no matter who #election 2024

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 11 months

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In a week when parts of the state are getting triple-digit temperatures and weather officials urge Texans to stay cool and hydrated, Gov. Greg Abbott gave final approval to a law that will eliminate local rules mandating water breaks for construction workers.

House Bill 2127 was passed by the Texas Legislature during this year’s regular legislative session. Abbott signed it Tuesday. It will go into effect on Sept. 1.

Supporters of the law have said it will eliminate a patchwork of local ordinances across the state that bog down businesses. The law’s scope is broad but ordinances that establish minimum breaks in the workplace are one of the explicit targets. The law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that established 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun. It also prevents other cities from passing such rules in the future. San Antonio has been considering a similar ordinance.

Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows. At least 42 workers died in Texas between 2011 and 2021 from environmental heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers’ unions claim this data doesn’t fully reflect the magnitude of the problem because heat-related deaths are often recorded under a different primary cause of injury.

This problem particularly affects Latinos because they represent six out of every 10 construction workers, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Unions expect heat-related deaths to go up if mandated water breaks go away.

“Construction is a deadly industry. Whatever the minimum protection is, it can save a life. We are talking about a human right,” said Ana Gonzalez, deputy director of policy and politics at the Texas AFL-CIO. “We will see more deaths, especially in Texas’ high temperatures.”

The National Weather Service is forecasting highs over 100 degrees in several Texas cities for at least the next seven days.

Heat waves are extreme weather events, often more dangerous than tornadoes, severe thunderstorms or floods. High temperatures kill people, and not just in the workplace. Last year, there were 279 heat-related deaths in Texas, based on data analysis by The Texas Tribune.

In 2022, Texas saw its second-hottest summer on record, and an extreme drought swept the state. This summer is not expected to be as hot as the weather pattern known as La Niña eases, which typically brings dry conditions to Texas, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said.

Still, climate change amplifies the effects of heat waves, said Hosmay Lopez, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studies heat waves. Climate change causes heat waves to stretch for longer periods of time, reach higher temperatures and occur more often than they would otherwise. The problem is especially pronounced in dry areas of the Southwest due to a lack of vegetation and soil moisture, which in wetter regions produces a cooling effect through evaporation.

At the same time, he added, increased urbanization across the U.S. — especially in places like Texas where cities are expanding — makes more people vulnerable to health dangers from extreme heat due to the “urban island” effect. Essentially, the combination of concrete and buildings, plus a lack of green spaces causes ground-level heat to radiate, increasing the temperature in cities.

“The impact of climate change on extreme heat is not only enhanced [by weather events] but also enhanced through social dynamics as well,” Lopez said.

HB 2127, introduced by state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, is perhaps Texas Republicans’ most aggressive attempt to curb progressive policies in the state’s largest, liberal-leaning cities. Under the new law, local governments would be unable to create rules that go beyond what state law dictates in broad areas like labor, agriculture, business and natural resources.

Beyond eliminating mandated water breaks for construction workers, opponents of the legislation argue that it will also make it more difficult for cities and counties to protect tenants facing eviction or to combat predatory lending, excessive noise and invasive species. Labor unions and workers’ rights advocates opposed the law, while business organizations supported it, including the National Federation of Independent Business, a lobbying group with more than 20,000 members in Texas. Abbott said it would “provide a new hope to Texas businesses struggling under burdensome local regulations.”

Supporters of HB 2127 say that local regulations on breaks for construction workers are unnecessary because the right to a safe labor environment is already guaranteed through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Water breaks are better solved by OSHA controls, argued Geoffrey Tahuahua, president of Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas. Tahuahua believes local rules impose a rigid scheme that, unlike OSHA guidelines, does not allow the flexibility needed to tailor breaks to individual job site conditions.

“They try to make one size fits all, and that is not how it should work,” he said. “These ordinances just add confusion and encourage people to do the minimum instead of doing the right thing.”

David Michaels, who was head of OSHA from 2009 to 2017, disagreed with the approach of HB 2127 proponents.

“Under OSHA law, it is employers who are responsible to make sure workers are safe,” said Michaels, now a professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health. “And we have compelling evidence that they are doing a very poor job because many workers are injured on the job, especially in Texas.”

Michaels pointed out that OSHA does not have a national standard for heat-related illnesses and issues citations only for over-exposure to heat after an injury or death, but not before that occurs.

“The better solution would be to have a national standard, but since we do not, local ordinances are very important for saving lives,” he said. “Prohibiting these local laws will result in workers being severely hurt or killed.”

Gonzalez, from the Texas AFL-CIO, disagrees with the idea that local regulations hurt businesses.

Mandated water breaks “were passed in 2010 in Austin and construction is still growing, especially in the state’s largest cities,” Gonzalez said. “It is simply false, an excuse to limit local governments’ power and an intrusion into democracy.”

HB 2127 does not impede the enactment of a state law establishing mandatory breaks for construction workers, and during the regular session, two bills were filed to that effect.

House Bill 495, authored by Rep. Thresa Meza, D-Irving, sought to establish 10-minute mandatory breaks every four hours for contractors working for a governmental entity. House Bill 4673, by Rep. Maria Luisa Flores, D-Austin, would have created a statewide advisory board responsible for establishing standards to prevent heat illness in Texas workplaces and set penalties for employers who do not comply with them.

Neither bill made it through the legislative process.

Daniela Hernandez, state legislative coordinator for the Workers Defense Project, said she hopes legislators will push for a state law mandating water breaks for workers. She added that she would not discard the possibility that cities sue to try to keep their water break ordinances.

“Without an ordinance or a law, there is no safeguard. There is no guarantee that the worker will have those water breaks,” he said. “We will keep fighting.”

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leaslichoma · 4 months

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Is overwork causing the declining birth rates?

Today I saw a headline from, I believe the Wall Street Journal, discussing how Chinese politicians are worried about the declining birthrate. While I could not read the article due to a paywall, this got me thinking about (as I have done many times before) why the birthrate has declined in so many industrialized countries.

One of the common things people suggest as the cause is that Employers do not pay people enough to have families and because of this people do not have them. However, I don't think this can account for everything. Employers have always had this incentive since the dawn of capitalism, but we did not see this pattern in earlier capitalist countries nor do we see it in many less developed countries. The capitalist must pay the worker at least the minimum to live and reproduce as doing otherwise is completely unsustainable.

What, then, is the value of labouring power? Like that of every other commodity, its value is determined by the quantity of labour necessary to produce it. The labouring power of a man exists only in his living individuality. A certain mass of necessaries must be consumed by a man to grow up and maintain his life. But the man, like the machine, will wear out, and must be replaced by another man. Beside the mass of necessaries required for his own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labour market and to perpetuate the race of labourers.

Karl Marx, Value, Price and Proft, Chapter 7

I think that the declining birth rates have more to do with the labor involved in child rearing. Women have entered the workforce but families cannot keep up with the labor of childcare and housekeeping.

I understand that similar arguments have been used by many conservatives and reactionaries. However, my analysis differs in the respect that I do not blame the feminist movements for this (something that is being believed by even many left-wing people) and I also want to elaborate more on the role of industrialization.

Confirming women have entered to workforce

First I want to confirm that women have indeed entered the workforce. Some people argue that women have always worked, and while there have always been women who worked, this does not mean it was the same kind of work in the same amounts, etc.

Table 5.1 Proportion of US women in the labor force, ages 16 and over, 1870-1920 Year | Women employed (%)

1870 | 14.8

1880 | 16.0

1890 | 19.0

1900 | 20.6

1910 | 24.0

1920 | 24.2

(Side note: notice how the number is increasing long before the second wave of feminism )

In November of 2023, 70.7% of US men and 58.8% of US women were in the workforce. In 2022, 61% of Chinese women were in the work force, and 73% of men participated. So now we're certain that women are participating in employment many times more than they were 100 years ago.

The modern family frequently expects the husband and wife to provide for each other and the kids with many mothers working as well as fathers. While it's true there were women who worked in the 19th century, they were fewer in number than today such that it wasn't seen as normal. Socialist writers of the time describe workers primarily as men who have wives who do not work under normal circumstances (though who may do so in times of crisis, etc).

Society overworks people

Society works people much more than necessary to provide value to the employer class. You may already be aware of how in the United States productivity has grown faster than wages. This is far from the first time things like this have happened. In the 1883 essay The Right To Be Lazy the author Paul Lafargue thought that society could make do with a 3 hour workday. He mentions that while Anglo-saxon women spend 70% of their time weaving, the industrialization of textiles did not cause women to work 70% less. Society has done this for every industry and keeps doing it, but we do not keep working less.

It is often said that work has decreased since the 19th century, but if we count all the women who previously did not work it may have stayed the same or actually increased. Finding out for certain would require good estimates on workforce participation of both men and women for a long period of time along with good estimates of total yearly work hours, and would likely change depending on the country. For a very rough estimate a modern couple might work 9 and 8 hours for a 40 and 45 hour workweek or total 85 hours, so if a Victorian working family has a father who is the sole breadwinner for less than 15 hours a day the Victorian family work work less total. Working hours varied in the Victorian era, with some factories working people for 14 to even 16 hours while others worked 12 or 10. The factories act 1847 effectively limited adults to 10 hours in textile mills, so it's entirely possible certain working class Victorian families worked less than certain modern working families. In Asia many people work a 9-9-6 work schedule, a number of hours right at home in the Victorian and Gilded age, so if both members of a couple work that much they are likely worse exploited than their Victorian counterpart.

Why this causes the declining birth rate

Working parents necessarily spend less time with their children. Women entering the workforce means that someone else has to watch their children and keep the house. However, if wages are not accounting for further domestic labor costs they will struggle to keep up with child rearing.

Many women feel that they are working two shifts, once when they go to work, and a second shift when they go home and must manage the household. Why would a women want to subject herself to more work? A full-time job and managing a household and the financial expenses of children is too much for many women and their families to comfortably handle. It is for this reason I believe many young couples are eschewing children.

Is the model of the family changing?

In the 19th century men were expected to be the sole breadwinner for their wife and children (though this expectation may not have been met at times). Today many women are working as well even if they have families. Men are often incapable of being the sole provider. The model of the family may be changing.

This new model of the family may provide easier exploitation for capitalists, as it may be easier for two people to tolerate 8 hour shifts than one person to tolerate a 16. However, this seems to come at the cost of a couple's willingness to reproduce. If capitalists believe this as the cause in the future they may try to go back to the old model, and discourage women from the workforce again while increasing hours for men and the women left in it. They may also try re instituting child labor to get more profit from the family, though this would come at the cost of the child's education which could be a bad investment for them in the long term.

Why feminism isn't responsible

We often see feminism, particularly the second wave, cited as the reason women have entered the workforce. However, this is not the case. In one of the top charts we can see the number of women in the workforce increasing long before the second wave of feminism. Something else must be the cause.

Feminism is a broad collection of ideologies that are sometimes at odds with each other, so blaming it broadly makes little sense. Some feminists, such as the International Wages for Housework Campaign, have argued that housework should be compensated which is a position that stands in exact opposition to this. Many feminists have commented on the "two shifts" problem working women face. Feminism is not responsible.

#economics #demographics #birth rate #feminism #statistics #marxism #capitalism #victorian era #work #labor #employment #unemployment

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egginfroggin · 7 months

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Oak please!

I was so confused for a minute seeing this, it took me a second to remember that I just reblogged an ask game.

(The ask game)

I'll be entirely honest, I'm having trouble remembering specifics from such a large time period, but I'd probably say that it was my mother telling me that relationships are something that you need to have self-confidence in.

I'd been lamenting the fact that my desire to work for and raise my own family (husband and kids) seems to be something that society looks down upon now, as several loudmouthed people seem to be of the opinion that being a wife and mother is a degrading occupation, while men in general seem to be becoming more and more suspicious of women as a whole and don't want anything to do with them out of fear and mistrust.

My mother basically said that I can't please everyone, and, knowing that I really do want to have a family in the future, that I should have self-confidence in my wish to have a family. Find a man to share my life with, and don't pay attention to the people who call motherhood demeaning.

So, do stuff. Do your own thing. Have confidence in your decisions. Don't be dumb, of course, but there's nothing wrong with being single or married, a parent or otherwise. Trying to please everyone will please nobody in the end, and you'll be miserable, besides.

#asks #cheerfullycatholic #thank you!#ask game #I have a whole rant I could go on related to those societal views I mentioned #but that would result in going into politics and all that kerfuffle #very heavy stuff #but really I do genuinely think that society has started to look down on women doing anything but working #and I find it ironic #because according to some people #slaving away for a boss who doesn't care about you beyond what labor and hours you offer #working towards a promotion or position that you statistically may not even ever get #is more meaningful and profound than working to support people who genuinely care about you #or staying at home to raise the next generation #like you do you #that's fine if you want to work #but it feels like there's this push towards women working working working working #and this push away from women being mothers #like wanting that is frowned upon. wanting to be a mother is frowned upon. wanting to raise children is bad now #but working 50 hours a week for a promotion I don't want? yas girl slay #sorry but I don't want to be ceo I don't want to be a manager I don't want to be anything like that #I just want to work my shift and help patients and not live on the streets #if you want to be a ceo then do it yourself #I am not a chess piece to be moved as you see fit #I am an individual and I make my own decisions #well the rant is in the tags now. thanks for the ask!

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rangerdew · 7 months

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its so hard not to despair at the way the illustration community treats the conversation about "ai art"

#disclaimer i am against “ai art” within the context of the public conversation on art theft and exploitative labor #but i once had a friend tell me statistics and machine learning and everything related to it were “boring”#which hurt. people draw a line between the artistic/soulful vs the technological/corporate #that doesnt exist in the way people think it does. much like how dead poets society creates this false dichotomy where the artistic are the #true arbiters of actualized living....we can't go on in society like this. how can we only subsist on art #or only subsist on “reason” and advancement #why must it be one or the other #i sound insane. i wish i could properly vocalize how i feel #anyway this is definitely a byproduct of existing only in deeply illustrative circles like im in an echo chamber i know i am

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adelphiaxo · 8 months

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i hate doing homework ;n;. at least it's a 3 day weekend at my school

#labor day #homework help #student #school #math homework #stats #statistics #i need to stop procrastinating #i procrastinate too much #procrastination

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archivyrep · 1 year

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Archivists are not librarians: Understanding the differences [Part 1]

Ura's supervisor, in Pale Cocoon, asks him if archives are just lies. A very depressing anime, but also connects to a lot of archives issues.

Often in popular culture, archivists are portrayed as the same as librarians, with the worst example being Jocasta Nu in the Star Wars franchise, with other examples including Wan Shi Tong in Avatar The Last Airbender and Emily Quackfaster in DuckTales. Samantha Cross, an archivist who runs POP Archives, a website for which this blog was inspired by, has noted this confusion is present in Amphibia, The Smurfs, and Castlevania with archives being confused with libraries, and vice versa. Even the self-defined library of George and Lance in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power would tend to, as Cross points out, lean more toward something that is a museum or library than a library.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Dec. 9, 2021.

Cross explained the confusion well in a April 2020 interview, saying she spends "a lot of time explaining what exactly it is I do because a lot of movies and television shows don’t understand my profession and treat it as synonymous with librarians." That is what I am going to try and do with this post, to the best of my ability. I know this post isn't truly about pop culture. I could care less about that because this is my blog and I'll write what I want on it, especially since this blog will be extremely scaled back next year as archives or archivists are not really popping up in anything I am watching. As such, I have been seriously questioning whether I should even keep this blog up or just discontinue it altogether, as I really want to keep this blog.

The SAA has broached this question in the past, saying that librarians and archivists both "collect, preserve, and make accessible materials for research, but they differ significantly in the way they arrange, describe, and use the materials in their collections. Materials in archival collections are unique and often irreplaceable, whereas libraries can usually obtain new copies of worn-out or lost books." But, there is more to the differences than this. It is possible, in today's job environment, that someone can have a hybrid position including qualities/responsibilities of being an archivist and a librarian at the same time. As such, in this post, I'm going to go through the generalities of each profession and note their job duties, while acknowledging that responsibilities of archivist can be different from each other, depending on employers, job circumstances, etc.

An archivist can work with paper documents, photographs, maps, films, computer records, manuscripts, and letters. They can also work with financial / legal documents, recordings of public speeches, electronic records, digital records, and reports. Finally, archivists can work with minutes, registers, sound recordings, websites, research data, and data sets. [1] These are just some of the types of records archivists can work with on a day-to-day basis.

A librarian, on the other hand, mainly works with materials like CDs, DVDs, e-books, books, and other materials, usually written. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook also describes librarians as creating and using databases with library materials, organizing library materials, helping library patrons conduct research, researching new materials and books, maintaining existing collections, and planning programs for different audiences. It is also noted that librarians teach classes about information resources, research equipment for purchase, train and supervise other library staff, and prepare library budgets.

Notes

[1] For this paragraph, see "What's an Archivist?" on the NARA website, "What are archives" from the University of Nottingham, "What are archives?" page from the SAA, "What are archives?" page from the UK National Archives, "What Archivists, Curators, and Museum Workers Do" section of the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, and "What are Archives?" page from Archives Hub are where I got this information.

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