Author: Art Diamond

Wealthiest Resident of Illinois Moving His Business to Florida for Lower Taxes and Less Crime

(p. B1) Billionaire Ken Griffin is relocating his hedge-fund firm Citadel from Chicago to Miami, the third major employer to announce the move of a corporate headquarters from Illinois in the past two months.

In a letter to employees Thursday [June 23, 2022], Mr. Griffin said he had personally moved to Florida—a state that doesn’t collect personal income tax—and that his market-making business, Citadel Securities, would also transfer. He wrote that he views Florida as a better corporate environment and though he didn’t specifically cite crime as a factor, company officials said it was a consideration.

Mr. Griffin has been the wealthiest resident of Illinois, so his departure will hurt state tax collections on both the individual and corporate side. It could also be a blow to Chicago’s philanthropic scene. Mr. Griffin has given more than $600 million in gifts to educational, cultural, medical and civic organizations in the area, spokesman Zia Ahmed said.

For the full story see:

John McCormick and Juliet Chung. “Citadel Plans to Relocate to Florida.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 24, 2022): B1-B2.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 30 [sic], 2022, and has the title “Ken Griffin Moving Citadel From Chicago to Miami Following Crime Complaints.”)

New York City Hurt as Wealthy Residents Move to Miami

(p. A1) When roughly 300,000 New York City residents left during the early part of the pandemic, officials described the exodus as a once-in-a-century shock to the city’s population.

Now, new data from the Internal Revenue Service shows that the residents who moved to other states by the time they filed their 2019 taxes collectively reported $21 billion in total income, substantially more than those who departed in any prior year on record. The IRS said the data captured filings received in 2020 and as late as July 2021.

Many new or returning residents have since moved in. But the total income of those who had initially left was double the average amount of those who had departed over the previous decade, a potential loss that could have long-term effects on a city that relies heavily on its wealthiest residents to support schools, law enforcement and other public services.

The sheer number of people who left in such a short period raises uncertainty about New York City’s competitiveness and economic stability. The top 1 percent of earners, who make more than $804,000 a year, contributed 41 percent of the city’s personal income taxes in 2019.

About one-third of the people who left moved from Manhattan, and had an average income of $214,300. No other large American county had a similar exodus of wealth.

Early in the pandemic, Sam Williamson, 51, a white-collar defense lawyer living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, first relocated to Utah, then to Long Island. After a return to the city, he and (p. A19) his family permanently moved to Miami last year when his law firm opened an office there.

“I love New York City, but it’s been a challenging time,” Mr. Williamson said. “I didn’t feel like the city handled the pandemic very well.”

. . .

Gergana Ivanova, 28, a clothing designer and social media influencer, said her decision to move to Miami was less about taxes. The pandemic made the downsides of living in New York City more noticeable, she said, including the lack of space in her tiny Queens apartment and the trash piling up on the sidewalks. She felt less safe walking around when the streets were emptier.

“It didn’t feel happy and positive like it used to,” she said.

. . .

The exodus to Florida was especially robust, and not just for the retiree crowd. In 2020, New York City had a net loss of nearly 21,000 residents to Florida, IRS data showed, almost double the average annual net loss from before the pandemic.

. . .

Zak Jacoby was the general manager of a bar on the Lower East Side when the pandemic hit. Throughout 2020, his employment status fluctuated with the city’s changing indoor dining rules, a stressful period that put him on and off unemployment benefits.

Mr. Jacoby, 37, flew to Miami in January 2021 to see a friend — and decided to stay permanently after getting a job offer at a local restaurant group. If there was another virus surge, he said, the state would be less likely to shut down businesses, giving him more job security.

“My mind-set was, Florida’s more lenient on Covid, and there’s going to be less regulation,” he said.

For the full story see:

Nicole Hong and Matthew Haag. “Exodus of New York’s Wealthy Leaves Lasting Costs in Wake.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 28, 2022): A1 & A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “The Flight of New York City’s Wealthy Was a Once-in-a-Century Shock.” The online version of the story says that the print version has the title “An Exodus of New York’s Wealthy Has Left Lasting Costs,” but my National print version has the somewhat different title “Exodus of New York’s Wealthy Leaves Lasting Costs in Wake.”)

On June 4th, Four-Inch Replicas of the Tiananmen Square Goddess of Democracy Statue Appeared at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

(p. 10) TAIPEI, Taiwan — For decades, a large candlelight vigil was held in Hong Kong each June 4, to commemorate those killed when Chinese soldiers crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

On Saturday, smaller crowds gathered in Taipei and other cities around the world — this time mourning not just the people slain 33 years ago, but also the fate of Hong Kong, where the smothering of dissent has put an end to the vigil in Victoria Park, the world’s most prominent public memorial to the victims of 1989.

“Now it’s about the two things together — Hong Kong as well as what happened on June 4,” said Francis Tse, a former Hong Kong resident who was one of about 400 people commemorating the anniversary in downtown Sydney, Australia. He and many others carried signs calling for the release of activists imprisoned in Hong Kong.

. . .

On Saturday [June 4, 2022], people who joined commemorations in Taipei, Sydney and London said they had also come to denounce the erasure of political freedoms in Hong Kong, as well as China’s draconian policies in two other regions, Xinjiang and Tibet.

“Now Hong Kong can no longer tell the truth and the real history, we must pass on this history even more in Taiwan,” said Henry Tong, a 41-year-old from Hong Kong who moved to Taiwan last year and attended this year’s vigil in Taipei. “Because of Hong Kong’s prohibition and suppression, it has blossomed everywhere.”

. . .

Over the past year, universities in Hong Kong have removed prominent Tiananmen memorials. In December, the University of Hong Kong took down the “Pillar of Shame,” a 26-foot statue by the Danish artist Jens Galschiot. A depiction of writhing corpses signifying those killed in 1989, it had been at the campus since the late 1990s, becoming a symbol of defiance against the Chinese authorities.

Since its removal, Prague and other cities have hosted replicas of the statue, and a smaller version was unveiled in Taipei on Saturday.

Another statue — modeled after the “Goddess of Democracy” erected by students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 — was removed from the Chinese University of Hong Kong campus late last year. In recent days, anonymous activists, determined to commemorate June 4 however they can, have left four-inch replicas of it around the campus.

For the full story see:

John Liu, Chris Buckley, Austin Ramzy, and Isabella Kwai. “Mourning Tiananmen’s Victims, and the Hong Kong That Was In Taipei [sic].” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 5, 2022): 10.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 30 [sic], 2022, and has the title “Mourning Tiananmen’s Victims, and the Hong Kong That Was.” The online version says that the print version has the title “In Taipei, Mourning Tiananmen’s Victims, and the Hong Kong That Was”, but my National print version has the title “Mourning Tiananmen’s Victims, and the Hong Kong That Was in Taipai [sic].”)

Lacking Government Approval During Pandemic, “State-of-the-Art Testing Machines . . . Weren’t Turned On”

(p. 12) The ethics manual of the American College of Physicians states that “the ethical imperative for physicians to provide care” overrides “the risk to the treating physician, even during epidemics.” Nevertheless, for most of human history, doctors often ran away in the face of widespread contagious disease.

. . .

When health workers stick around to treat patients, even at risk to their own lives, it is something to be celebrated, and the journalist Marie Brenner does just that in “The Desperate Hours,” an account of how workers at New York-Presbyterian, an academic health system, coped with the Covid surge in New York City beginning in the spring of 2020. The book details both medical heroism and corporate cowardice, prescient decisions and howling missteps, all against the backdrop of a swirling and mysterious pandemic that claimed the lives of more than 30,000 residents, not to mention 35 New York-Presbyterian employees.

Along the way we encounter some eye-opening anecdotes. Early on, New York City hospitals were faced with an alarming dearth of masks and a near rebellion by workers on the front lines. In response, New York-Presbyterian’s chief operating officer, Dr. Laura Forese, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, assured staff members that “masks would not be necessary” unless workers were in direct contact with infected patients. Though she was working off mistaken C.D.C. guidelines, it was “advice and regulation that countermanded every bit of common sense understood by public health officials since the Black Plague,” Brenner writes.

. . .

Yet state-of-the-art testing machines at New York-Presbyterian weren’t turned on because the leadership was waiting for the government to approve their use. When doctors and nurses complained, the communications office attempted to throttle them and even threatened them with demotions or dismissal. It is part of what Dr. Steve Corwin, New York-Presbyterian’s chief executive, calls “a failure of imagination on our part.”

The book has its share of heroes who buck the strictures of the system to speak the truth about what was coming (or had already arrived). No one was more heroic than Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, an infectious-disease modeler at New York-Presbyterian who raised the alarm about the pandemic in February 2020 but was largely ignored.

“This is going to be historically bad, rivaling the medical consequences of 1918, but far exceeding it in terms of global financial impact,” he warned his colleagues. “If we get through this, it will be the sort of thing that we will tell our grandchildren about.” Yet when Hupert showed his projections at a planning meeting, the medical school dean told him, “I think we will be all right.”

. . .

Compounding the disaster was that little guidance was coming from executives on how to navigate the crisis, including how to potentially ration beds and ventilators (which fortunately did not come to pass). “The amount of moral damage they did to a lot of people while they get paid millions of dollars is disgusting,” a critical-care physician says bitterly.

For the full review, see:

Sandeep Jauhar. “Plagued.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, July 3, 2022): 12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 19, 2022, and has the title “Facing Death During the Pandemic.”)

The book under review is:

Brenner, Marie. The Desperate Hours: One Hospital’s Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic’s Front Lines. New York: Flatiron Books, 2022.

Russian-Speaking Ukrainians Learn to Speak Ukrainian, in “Outraged Defiance” of Violent Russian Invaders

(p. A9) Since Russia’s invasion, a number of language clubs have opened in cities in western Ukraine. Teachers and volunteers are reaching out to millions of displaced people who have fled to the relative safety of western cities like Lviv from the Russian-speaking east — encouraging them to practice and embrace Ukrainian as the language of their daily lives.

An estimated one in every three Ukrainians speaks Russian at home, according to researchers, and many of them — outraged by the violence of Russia’s invasion — are enthusiastically making the switch as a show of defiance.

. . .

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine’s declaration of independence in 1991, the country experienced many waves of “Ukrainization,” said Olga Onuch, who researches the relationship between language and politics at the University of Manchester. President Volodymyr Zelensky was an inspiration for one of the recent waves, she said.

A former comedian, Mr. Zelensky grew up speaking Russian, but switched to Ukrainian in 2017 before running for office.

. . .

At a Yedyni language club, teacher Maria Hvesko argued that Russia had intentionally tried to erase Ukrainian culture in the east when one of her students, Victoria Yermolenko, offered polite opposition.

“This ‘Russification’— I don’t know if it was always intentional,” she said hesitantly.

Another reason, she argued, was rapid Soviet industrialization in the mid-20th century. This brought many Russian engineers and technicians to eastern Ukraine, as well as specialists from other parts of the Soviet Union, and they used Russian as a common language.

Ms. Yermolenko switched to Ukrainian out of political conviction. But she also did it out of consideration for the local residents of Lviv, concerned they would be pained to hear Russian spoken during these days of war.

“I’ve done a lot of — what’s the Ukrainian word for re-evaluating?” she asked, in Russian.

As her teacher offered a word, Ms. Yermolenko finished the thought in Ukrainian: “So, I’m re-evaluating. For me, it’s something quite drastic. It’s like turning my world upside down.”

. . .

Ms. Onuch, the professor, said there was little data yet to support the notion that Russia’s invasion had accelerated a switch. And for many Russian-speaking Ukrainians, she said, language was not so tied to identity politics before the invasion.

“Now, they’re thinking about it, and it starts meaning something,” she said. “Taking away that glimmer of Russian greatness, to switch over to Ukrainian, is a power. They are so powerless right now. This is the one power they have.”

Ms. Yermolenko framed her decision as a positive embrace.

“I don’t want to use Russian, not only because it’s the language of the occupier, but also because: Why not use Ukrainian? It’s so cool.”

For the full story see:

Erika Solomon. “Russian Speakers Decide To Use Ukrainian Instead.” The New York Times (Monday, May 30, 2022): A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 29, 2022, and has the title “For Russian-Speaking Ukrainians, Language Clubs Offer Way to Defy Invaders.”)

Officers in Russian Military Are Rewarded for Following Orders, Not for Nimbly Taking Initiative

(p. A1) This war has exposed the fact that, to Russia’s detriment, much of the military culture and learned behavior of the Soviet era endures: inflexibility in command structure, corruption in military spending, and concealing casualty figures and repeating the mantra (p. A7) that everything is going according to plan.

. . .

The scripted way the military practices warfare, on display in last summer’s exercises, is telling. “Nobody is being tested on their ability to think on the battlefield,” said William Alberque, the Berlin-based director of the arms control program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Instead, officers are assessed on their ability to follow instructions, he said.

. . .

Rampant corruption has drained resources. “Each person steals as much of the allocated funds as is appropriate for their rank,” said retired Maj. Gen. Harri Ohra-Aho, the former Chief of Intelligence in Finland and still a Ministry of Defense adviser.

. . .

“It is impossible to imagine the scale of lies inside the military,” Mr. Irisov said. “The quality of military production is very low because of the race to steal money.”

One out of every five rubles spent on the armed forces was stolen, the chief military prosecutor, Sergey Fridinsky, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official government newspaper, in 2011.

For the full story see:

Neil MacFarquhar. “Soviet-Era Tactics Hobble Russia on Battlefield.” The New York Times (Tuesday, May 17, 2022): A1 & A7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 16, 2022, and has the title “Russia Planned a Major Military Overhaul. Ukraine Shows the Result.”)

“Maverick” Chinese Entrepreneur Zhou Hang Dares Criticize Zero Covid Policy

(p. B1) China’s entrepreneur class is grappling with the worst economic slump in decades as the government’s zero Covid policy has shut down cities and kept would-be customers at home. Yet they can’t seem to agree on how loudly they should complain — or even whether they should at all.

. . .

Their approach, the equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, doesn’t make sense to Zhou Hang. Mr. Zhou, a tech entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, has questioned how his peers can pretend it’s business as usual, given the political and economic upheaval. Stop putting up with the ridiculous reality, he urged. It’s time to speak up and seek change.

Mr. Zhou is rare in China’s business community for being openly critical of the government’s zero Covid policy, which has put hundreds of millions of people under some kind of lockdowns in the past few months, costing jobs and revenues. He’s saying what many others are whispering in private but fear to say in public.

“The questions we should ask ourselves are,” he wrote in an article that was censored within an hour of posting (p. B4) but shared widely in other formats, “what caused such widespread negative sentiment across the society? Who should be responsible for this? And how can we change it?”

He said the lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities made it clear that wealth and social status meant little to a government determined to pursue its zero Covid policy. “We’re all nobodies who could be sent to the quarantine camps, and our homes could be broken into,” he wrote. “If we still choose to adapt to and put up with this, all of us will face the same destiny: trapped.”

. . .

Mr. Zhou, 49, is known as a maverick in Chinese business circles. He founded his first business in stereo systems with his brother in the mid-1990s when he was still in college. In 2010, he started Yongche, one of the first ride-hailing companies.

Unlike most Chinese bosses, he didn’t demand that his employees work overtime, and he didn’t like liquor-filled business meals. He turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and refused to participate in subsidy wars because doing so didn’t make economic sense. He ended up losing out to his more aggressive competitor Didi.

He later wrote a best seller about his failure and became a partner at a venture capital firm in Beijing. In April [2022], he was named chairman of the ride-sharing company Caocao, a subsidiary of auto manufacturing giant Geely Auto Group.

A Chinese citizen with his family in Canada, Mr. Zhou said in an interview that in the past many wealthy Chinese people like him would move their families and some of their assets abroad but work in China because there were more opportunities.

Now, some of the top talent are trying to move their businesses out of the country, too. It doesn’t bode well for China’s future, he said.

“Entrepreneurs have good survivor’s instinct,” he said. “Now they’re forced to look beyond China.” He coined a term — “passive globalization” — based on his discussions with other entrepreneurs. “Many of us are starting to take such actions,” he said.

For the full story see:

Li Yuan. “A Solitary Critic on ‘Zero Covid’.” The New York Times (Saturday, June 11, 2022): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 10, 2022 and has the title “A Chinese Entrepreneur Who Says What Others Only Think.”)

Spreading Smallpox Inoculation to Impress Voltaire

(p. A15) Dimsdale had been summoned by Catherine the Great to inoculate not only the empress herself but also her 13-year-old heir, the Grand Duke Paul.

. . .

As Lucy Ward dramatically relates in “The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus,” Catherine’s invitation was a high-stakes affair, a testament to Dimsdale’s writings on the methodology of smallpox inoculation and his reputation for solicitous care. His Quaker upbringing had encouraged a brand of outcome- rather than ego-led practice.

. . .

As devastating as smallpox was, for the empress herself and the grand duke who would succeed her to personally undergo inoculation was a risk to both patient and doctor. On the success side stood immunity from the disease, an almost holy example for Catherine’s people, and as-yet-untold riches for her nervous doctor. On the other side, not only the fact that all Russia would refuse the treatment if their “Little Mother” died, but also a disaster for Dimsdale and the son who had accompanied him. Geopolitics came into play too—if things went wrong, some would interpret it as a foreign assassination.

. . .

With a happy result for her and her less-robust son, Catherine sets about publicizing the success. Dimsdale receives the equivalent of more than $20 million and a barony. Bronze medals are cast of Catherine’s profile, reading “She herself set an example.” It helps that Catherine was competitive beyond reason: “we have inoculated more people in a month than were inoculated in Vienna in eight,” she wrote to Voltaire, determined to beat Empress Maria Theresa’s efforts.

For the full review, see:

Catherine Ostler. “BOOKSHELF; Inoculate Conception.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, June 23, 2022): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated June 22, 2022, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘The Empress and the English Doctor’ Review: Inoculate Conception.”)

The book under review is:

Ward, Lucy. The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus. London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2022.

Organic Strawberries Blamed for Hepatitis A Outbreak

(p. A21) Public health officials said they were investigating an outbreak of hepatitis A in the United States and Canada that is potentially linked to organic strawberries.

American health officials said the outbreak most likely came from fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo and H-E-B that were bought between March 5 and April 25.

The strawberries were sold at stores including Aldi, H-E-B, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Weis Markets, the Food and Drug Administration said.

. . .

In the United States, the F.D.A. said it had identified 17 cases of hepatitis A linked to the strawberries — 15 in California and one each in Minnesota and North Dakota. Twelve people have been hospitalized, the agency said.

. . .

Hepatitis A is a contagious virus that may cause liver disease.

. . .

Symptoms usually develop 15 to 20 days after eating the contaminated food and can include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, jaundice, dark urine and pale stool, the F.D.A. said.

For the full story see:

Michael Levenson. “Strawberries Linked to Hepatitis A Outbreak, F.D.A. Says.” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 1, 2022): A21.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 31, 2022 and has the title “Hepatitis A Outbreak in U.S. and Canada Linked to Strawberries.”)

Dr. Zelenko’s pre-Covid-19 memoir is:

Zelenko, Vladmir. Metamorphosis. Lakewood, NJ: Israel Bookshop Publications, 2019.

A highly credentialed Yale academic presented evidence of the promise of hydroxychloroquine for early outpatient treatment in:

Risch, Harvey A. “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients That Should Be Ramped-up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.” American Journal of Epidemiology 189, no. 11 (Nov. 2020): 1218–26.

Truckers Hurt If Union Dock Workers Strike to Add to Their Six Figure Pay, and to Block Efficient Technology

(p. B1) LOS ANGELES — David Alvarado barreled south along the highway, staring through the windshield of his semi truck toward the towering cranes along the coastline.

He had made the same 30-minute trek to the Port of Los Angeles twice that day; if things went well, he would make it twice more. Averaging four pickups and deliveries a day, Mr. Alvarado has learned, is what it takes to give his wife and three children a comfortable life.

“This has been my life — it’s helped me support a family,” said Mr. Alvarado, who for 17 years has hauled cargo between warehouses across Southern California and the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a global hub that handles 40 percent of the nation’s seaborne imports.

He weathered the blow to his paycheck early in the pandemic when he was idling for six hours a day, waiting for cargo to be loaded off ships and onto his truck. Now the ports are bustling again, but there is a new source of anxiety: the imminent expiration of the union contract for dockworkers (p. B5) along the West Coast.

If negotiations fail to head off a slowdown, a strike or a lockout, he said, “it will crush me financially.”

The outcome will be crucial not only for the union dockworkers and port operators, but also for the ecosystem of workers surrounding the ports like Mr. Alvarado, and for a global supply chain reeling from coronavirus lockdowns and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Inflation’s surge to the highest rate in more than four decades is due, in part, to supply chain complications.

The contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents 22,000 workers at 29 ports from San Diego to Seattle, and the Pacific Maritime Association, representing the shipping terminals, is set to expire on Friday. The union members primarily operate machinery like cranes and forklifts that move cargo containers on and off ships.

. . .

The negotiations have centered largely on whether to increase wages for the unionized workers, whose average salaries are in the low six figures, and expanding automation, such as using robots to move cargo containers, to speed up production, a priority for shipping companies.

“Automation allows greater densification at existing port terminals, enabling greater cargo throughput and continued cargo growth over time,” Jim McKenna, the chief executive of the Pacific Maritime Association, said in a recent video statement on the negotiations.

. . .

As he drove past the ports, Mr. Alvarado turned his truck into a warehouse parking lot, where the multicolored containers lined the asphalt like a row of neatly arranged Lego blocks.

It was his third load of the day, and for this round, he didn’t have to wait on the longshoremen to load the carrier onto his truck. Instead, he backed his semi up to a chassis, and the blue container snapped into place.

He pulled up Google Maps on his iPhone and looked at the distance to the drop-off in Fontana, Calif.: 67 miles, an hour and half.

It might, Mr. Alvarado said, end up being a four-load day after all.

For the full story see:

Kurtis Lee. “As Dockworkers Near Contract’s End, The U.S. Has a Stake.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 30, 2022): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “As Dockworkers Near Contract’s End, Many Others Have a Stake.”)

“More a Great Reshuffling Than a Great Resignation”

In the passages quoted below, Nobel laureate, and often-strident leftist Paul Krugman, modifies his views on the state of the U.S. labor market in an interesting and plausible way. I believe another part of the story, as Newt Gingrich has suggested, is that some workers may be following the advice of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, by in effect going on strike. So the Great Resignation may not entirely be a “myth.” More remains to be learned.

(p. 3) Have large numbers of Americans dropped out of the labor force — that is, they are neither working nor actively seeking work? To answer this question, you need to look at age-adjusted data; falling labor force participation because a growing number of Americans are over 65 isn’t meaningful in this context. So economists often look at the labor force participation of Americans in their prime working years: 25 to 54. And guess what? This participation rate has surged recently. It’s still slightly below its level on the eve of the pandemic, but it’s back to 2019 levels, which hardly looks like a Great Resignation.

What about early retirement? If a lot of that was happening, we’d expect to see reduced labor force participation among older workers, 55 to 64. But they’ve come rapidly back into the labor force.

A few months ago, it still seemed reasonable to talk about a Great Resignation. At this point, however, there’s basically nothing there. It’s true that an unusually high number of workers have been quitting their jobs, but they have been leaving for other, presumably better jobs, rather than leaving the work force. As the labor economist Arindrajit Dube says, it’s more a Great Reshuffling than a Great Resignation.

. . .

How can labor markets be so tight when payroll employment is still well below the prepandemic trend?

. . .

First, as the economist Dean Baker has been pointing out, the most commonly cited measures of employment don’t count the self-employed, and self-employment is up by a lot, around 600,000 more workers than the average in 2019. Some of this self-employment may be fictitious — gig workers who are employees in all but name but work for companies that classify them as independent contractors to avoid regulation. But it also does seem as if part of the Great Reshuffling has involved Americans concluding that they could improve their lives by starting their own businesses.

Second, a point that receives far less attention than it should is the decline of immigration since Donald Trump came to office, which turned into a plunge with the coming of the pandemic.

For the full commentary, see:

Paul Krugman. “The Myth of the Great Resignation.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, April 10, 2022): 3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 5, 2022, and has the title “What Ever Happened to the Great Resignation?”)

Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, mentioned above, is:

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957.