Category: Labor Economics

Auntie Sewing Squad Made, and Distributed, 350,000 Free Masks

(p. C7) Kristina Wong is an in-your-face performer who, until this month, hadn’t performed for an in-person audience since March 2020.

. . .

While Wong was stuck at home in Los Angeles, she stayed busy leading the Auntie Sewing Squad, a volunteer group of mostly Asian American women she founded in March 2020 to make face masks for health care workers, farm workers, incarcerated people and others. She recruited 6-year-old children, her 73-year-old mother and others for the operation, which ballooned to more than 800 “Aunties,” a cross-cultural term of respect and affection for women, as well as “Uncles” and nonbinary volunteers in 33 states. Together, they distributed more than 350,000 masks.

“I feel like I got more done for the world by running a mutual aid group than as an elected official,” said Wong, a third-generation Chinese American from San Francisco.

. . .

In March 2020 your tour for “Kristina Wong for Public Office” was postponed. What made you want to start a mask-making group?

I was home without income feeling sorry for myself, and I stumbled across some articles that said there was a need for homemade masks. It started with me taking my Hello Kitty sewing machine and fabric and making a naïve offer to the internet: “If you need masks and don’t have access to them, I will help you!” But my ego wrote a check my body couldn’t cash, and within four days I was inundated with requests, so I started a Facebook group of people whom I knew could sew. We had Aunties cutting the elastic off their fitted sheets, the straps off their bras. It was a Robinson Crusoe situation.

Why did you call yourself a “sweatshop overlord”?

My first volunteers were all Asian women, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is the sickest moment, we are a modern-day sweatshop.” Our mothers and grandmothers did garment work — my grandmother and grandfather did laundry work as part of their rite of passage to America — and now we find ourselves doing this work again, for free, because the government hasn’t prepared us for this moment. So it was this gallows humor joke that I was the sweatshop overlord — also humor about child labor because I was ordering children around.

For the full interview, see:

Sarah Bahr, interviewer. “Kristina Wong’s Story: Sewing With Her Aunties.” The New York Times (Saturday, October 30, 2021): C7.

(Note: ellipses added; bold in original. The questions in bold are from the interviewer. The words under each question are quotes from Kristina Wong.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date October 19, 2021, and has the title “Kristina Wong’s Pandemic Story: Sewing With Her Aunties.”)

Musk Wants to Use His Billions “to Get Humanity to Mars”

(p. B1) In the negotiations over President Biden’s infrastructure bill, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Finance Committee, proposed the idea of a tax on billionaires specifically. Thursday morning, Mr. Biden announced his framework for paying for the bill, which promised additional taxes on the income of “the wealthiest 0.02 percent of Americans.”

Mr. Wyden’s proposed tax will likely never make it into law.

. . .

(p. B5) Elon Musk, in a tweet, seemed to come out against the proposal. “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” he wrote. It is fairly safe to say that Mr. Musk will never run out of money. A back-of-the-envelope calculation from Forbes’s real-time net worth tracker suggests that he could spend $1 million a year for 100,000 years and still have more money than Bill Gates, with an estimated $136.2 billion.

. . .

Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy Disney and a longtime critic of income inequality, said in an interview that she believes the immense displays of wealth by the country’s richest during the pandemic — particularly the ostentatiousness of last summer’s space race — helped foster a serious discussion about the tax burdens on billionaires.

. . .

In comments denouncing the proposed billionaire tax, Mr. Manchin described the ultrawealthy as people who “create a lot of jobs and invest a lot of money and give a lot to philanthropic pursuits.”

That was an implicit endorsement of the idea, often repeated in discussions around high-net worth giving, that regular people pay taxes while rich people pursue philanthropy, giving not to the Treasury but to their preferred causes. “My plan is to use the money to get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness,” Mr. Musk said in a subsequent tweet in response to the tax proposal.

“That idea that ‘it’s my money and I should decide what to do with it’ is very dominant, and it goes along with the culture of individualism that allows people to feel that they’ve done this on their own and haven’t benefited from social goods like roads and education and laws,” Professor Sherman said.

Ms. Disney, who is an active member of the Patriotic Millionaires, said she sees that thinking as a primary obstacle to raising taxes on the richest Americans. “Billionaires may be brilliant — and I don’t doubt Elon Musk’s I.Q. — but they don’t do anything on their own,” she said. She also questioned the prevailing wisdom among the country’s wealthiest that they know best and the government shouldn’t be trusted with their money.

“The last time I was in the Bay Area, I went walking in the marina and saw seven consecutive boats named after characters from Ayn Rand,” Ms. Disney said. “They need to come to their senses.”

For the full story, see:

Nicholas Kulish, Ephrat Livni and Emma Goldberg. “Billionaires Of America Are Thriving.” The New York Times (Friday, October 29, 2021): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 2, 2021, and has the title “Who Are America’s Billionaires, Anyway?”)

M.I.T. Tries to Silence Abbot for Defending Hiring and Promotion Based on Merit

(p. A1) CHICAGO — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited the geophysicist Dorian Abbot to give a prestigious public lecture this autumn. He seemed a natural choice, a scientific star who studies climate change and whether planets in distant solar systems might harbor atmospheres conducive to life.

Then a swell of angry resistance arose. Some faculty members and graduate students argued that Dr. Abbot, a professor at the University of Chicago, had created harm by speaking out against aspects of affirmative action and diversity programs. In videos and opinion pieces, Dr. Abbot, who is white, has asserted that such programs treat “people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.” He said that he favored a diverse pool of applicants selected on merit.

He said that his planned lecture at M.I.T. would have made no mention of his views on affirmative action. But his opponents in the sciences argued he represented an “infuriating,” “inappropriate” and oppressive choice.

. . .

(p. A14) This fight did not surprise Dr. Abbot, who described his own politics as centrist. A Maine native, he went to Harvard and came to the University of Chicago for a fellowship and became a tenured professor. He said he found in Chicago a university that remained a leader in upholding the values of free speech, even as he noticed that colleagues and students often fell silent when certain issues arose.

Dr. Abbot said his department had spoken of restricting a faculty search to female applicants and “underrepresented minorities” — except for Asians. He opposed it.

“Asians are a group that is not privileged,” he said. “It reminded me of the quotas used to restrict Jewish students decades ago.”

He spoke, too, of a lack of ideological diversity, noting that a conservative Christian student was hectored and made to feel out of place in an unyielding ideological climate. Last year he laid out his thoughts in videos and posted them on YouTube.

Loud complaints followed: About 150 graduate students, most of whom were from the University of Chicago, and a few professors from elsewhere signed a letter to the geophysical faculty at the University of Chicago. They wrote that Dr. Abbot’s “videos threaten the safety and the belonging of all underrepresented groups within the department.” The letter said the university should make clear that his videos were “inappropriate and harmful to the department members and climate.”

Dr. Abbot has since taken the videos down.

Robert Zimmer, then the president of the University of Chicago, issued a statement strongly reaffirming the university’s commitment to freedom of expression. Dr. Abbot’s popular climate change class remains fully subscribed. The tempest subsided.

. . .

WDr. Abbot, for his part, said he had tenure at a grand university that valued free speech and, with luck, 30 years of teaching and research ahead of him. And yet the canceled speech carries a sting.

“There is no question that these controversies will have a negative impact on my scientific career,” he said. “But I don’t want to live in a country where instead of discussing something difficult we go and silence debate.”

For the full story, see:

Michael Powell. “Science, Ideology and Politics Jostle in the Halls of Academia.” The New York Times (Thursday, October 21, 2021): A1 & A14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 20, 2021, and has the title “M.I.T.’s Choice of Lecturer Ignited Criticism. So Did Its Decision to Cancel.”)

Higher Stock Market and Unemployment Benefits Allow Many Workers to “Be More Picky About the Jobs They Take”

(p. A1) Fall was meant to mark the beginning of the end of the labor shortage that has held back the nation’s economic recovery. Expanded unemployment benefits were ending. Schools were reopening, freeing up many caregivers. Surely, economists and business owners reasoned, a flood of workers would follow.

Instead, the labor force shrank in September. There are five million fewer people working than before the pandemic began, and three million fewer even looking for work.

The slow return of workers is causing headaches for the Biden administration, which was counting on a strong economic rebound to give momentum to its political agenda. Forecasters were largely blindsided by the problem and don’t know how long it will last.

. . .

(p. A13) Ms. Eager, who is vaccinated, said that she had always been careful with money and that she built savings this year by staying home and socking away unemployment benefits and other aid. “My financial situation is OK, and I think that is 99 percent of the reason that I can be choosy about my job prospects,” she said.

Americans have saved trillions of dollars since the pandemic began. Much of that wealth is concentrated among high earners, who mostly kept their jobs, reduced spending on dining and vacations, and benefited from a soaring stock market. But many lower-income Americans, too, were able to set aside money thanks to the government’s multitrillion-dollar response to the pandemic, which included not only direct cash assistance but also increased food aid, forbearance on mortgages and student loans and an eviction moratorium.

Economists said the extra savings alone aren’t necessarily keeping people out of the labor force. But the cushion is letting people be more picky about the jobs they take, when many have good reasons to be picky.

In addition to health concerns, child care issues remain a factor. Most schools have resumed in-person classes, but parents in many districts have had to grapple with quarantines or temporary returns to remote learning. And many parents of younger children are struggling to find day care, in part because that industry is dealing with its own staffing crisis.

. . .

When Danielle Miess, 30, lost her job at a Philadelphia-area travel agency at the start of the pandemic, it was in some ways a blessing. Some time away helped her realize how bad the job had been for her mental health, and for her finances — her bank balance was negative on the day she was laid off. With federally supplemented unemployment benefits providing more than she made on the job, she said, she gained a measure of financial stability.

Ms. Miess’s unemployment benefits ran out in September, but she isn’t looking for another office job. Instead, she is cobbling together a living from a variety of gigs. She is trying to build a business as an independent travel agent, while also doing house sitting, dog sitting and selling clothes online. She estimates she is earning somewhat more than the roughly $36,000 a year she made before the pandemic, and although she is working as many hours as ever, she enjoys the flexibility.

“The thought of going to an office job 40 hours a week and clocking in at the exact time, it sounds incredibly difficult,” she said. “The rigidity of doing that job, feeling like I’m being watched like a hawk, it just doesn’t sound fun. I really don’t want to go back to that.”

For the full story, see:

Ben Casselman. “Economic Gains Hobbled As Labor Market Shrinks.” The New York Times (Wednesday, October 20, 2021): A1 & A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 19, 2021, and has the title “The Economic Rebound Is Still Waiting for Workers.”)

Amazon Hiring 55,000 Workers

(p. B3) Amazon.com Inc. said it is seeking to hire about 55,000 people globally among its corporate and technology ranks during a recruiting event set for Sept. 15, [2021] as the e-commerce giant continues a hiring spree begun at start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Seattle-based company is aiming to fill roles in cloud-computing unit Amazon Web Services, as well as in divisions such as Amazon Studios, advertising and its broadband satellite Project Kuiper. The open positions include more than 40,000 roles in the U.S. across 220 locations, including in New York City; Bellevue, Wash.; and Arlington, Va., where the company is opening a large corporate office.

. . .

The company employs about 950,000 people in the U.S. and has said it has made more than 450,000 hires throughout the country since the public-health crisis began.

For the full story, see:

Dave Sebastian. “Amazon Seeks to Hire 55,000 for Office, Tech Roles.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021): B3.

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

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 1, 2021, and has the title “Amazon Seeks to Hire 55,000 for Corporate, Tech Roles.”)

“The Best Recipe for Economic Growth Is” Freedom and Opportunity

(p. C3) Migration has been central to the American story since the beginning. In the early 19th century, New Englanders left the rocky soil of Massachusetts for the more fertile Ohio River valley. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, farmers fled Oklahoma for California. In the early 20th century, millions of African-Americans left the Jim Crow South to find work in the factories of northern cities. Through the 20th century, mobility was an American tradition: In every year between 1950 and 1992, according to the Current Population Survey, more than 6% of Americans moved across county lines.

In recent years, however, the engine of American migration has been grinding to a halt. People often move to get ahead, which makes mobility a reasonable measure of economic dynamism. So it’s a troubling sign that since 2007, geographic mobility has dropped by one-third, with fewer than 4% of Americans changing counties annually. The reason is clear: In the most prosperous cities and regions, insiders have figured out how to use regulations, laws and institutions to make life easier for themselves and harder for everyone else. In the process, they have made the U.S. a far less dynamic society.

. . .

Most important, we need to stop thinking of growth as a zero-sum game. Today, insiders worry about getting their share of the pie instead of growing the economy for everyone. The best recipe for economic growth is the traditional American one: freedom, combined with robust investment in opportunity for the least advantaged.

For the full commentary, see:

Edward Glaeser and David Cutler. “The American Housing Market Is Stifling Mobility.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, July 17, 2021): C3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 2, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

The commentary quoted above is based on the authors’ book:

Glaeser, Edward L., and David Cutler. Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Walmart Hiring 20,000 Workers

(p. B3) Walmart Inc. is hiring 20,000 workers for its supply-chain operations ahead of the holidays, highlighting the growing role of distribution and delivery as the retailer competes with e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc.

The new hires will be permanent positions aimed at supporting Walmart through the holiday surge and beyond, the retailer said Wednesday [Sept. 1, 2021]. The full- and part-time jobs range from order pickers, freight handlers and forklift operators to technician and management roles at more than 250 Walmart and Sam’s Club distribution and fulfillment centers and transportation offices.

For the full story, see:

Jennifer Smith. “Walmart Plans to Add 20,000 Workers.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Sept. 02, 2021): B3.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 1, 2021, and has the title “Walmart Will Add 20,000 Workers to Supply-Chain Operations This Year.”)

“Our Cities Protect Insiders and Leave Outsiders to Suffer”

(p. A15) Mr. Glaeser’s “Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation,” written with Harvard health economist David Cutler, shares the pleasing style of its predecessor, an engaging mixture of history and analysis. It has none of the triumphalism of its predecessor, however. In the move to social distancing that began in the spring of 2020, Messrs. Glaeser and Cutler see nothing less than “the rapid-fire deurbanization of our world.”

“Uncontrolled pandemic,” the authors write, poses “an existential threat” to the urban world. Nor is the coronavirus the only problem that cities face. “A Pandora’s Box of urban woes has emerged,” they continue, “including overly expensive housing, violent conflict over gentrification, persistently low levels of upward mobility, and outrage over brutal and racially targeted policing and long prison sentences for minor drug crimes.” These are not disparate problems. Rather, they “all stem from a common root: our cities protect insiders and leave outsiders to suffer.”

In Messrs. Glaeser and Cutler’s view, something has gone deeply wrong with how policy is set in many American cities. Insiders have captured control of how cities operate—and used that control to enrich themselves while providing limited opportunities for newer, younger residents. Consider Los Angeles. In 1970, housing costs in Southern California were much the same as those nationwide. By 1990, building limitations and strong demand had sent prices soaring in many coastal cities. The result: a massive redistribution of wealth from the young to the old.

For the full review, see:

John Buntin. “BOOKSHELF; Saving Our Urban Future.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Sept. 10, 2021): A15.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date September 9, 2021, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Survival of the City’ Review: Saving Our Urban Future.”)

The book under review is:

Glaeser, Edward L., and David Cutler. Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation. New York: Penguin Press, 2021.

Public Transit Subsidies Reduce Incentives to Innovate

(p. A4) The bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by the Senate this month is the latest effort to inject federal money into public transit agencies. But all that money likely won’t buy what transit really needs: more riders.

Unless ridership recovers from its pandemic-induced drop, agencies will again confront large budget deficits once the federal money runs out in three or four years, analysts say. That could mean service cuts and fare increases, according to transit agencies.

“As soon as the money stops flowing, transit agencies are going to be in the same position as they were before,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, a transportation policy expert at the libertarian-leaning Reason Foundation.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for instance, expects to use up its $14.5 billion allocation of federal aid by 2024, at which point it will face a $3.5 billion two-year shortfall.

. . .

Some experts say agencies’ financial struggles during the pandemic should prompt Congress to help fund agencies’ day-to-day costs.

. . .

Other analysts, however, say agencies need to find ways to adapt instead of living off federal subsidies.

“The problem with free money is it does not encourage innovation, and that’s really what transit agencies need to be encouraged to do right now,” said the Reason Foundation’s Mr. Feigenbaum. “It’s just postponing the reckoning.”

For the full story, see:

David Harrison. “Public Transit Is Flush With Cash, But Not Riders.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Aug. 23, 2021): A4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 22, 2021, and has the title “Transit Got Billions in Relief From Congress but Still Faces Deficits.”)

Chinese Proletariat Yells: “Evergrande, Give Back My Money I Earned With Blood and Sweat!”

(p. B1) When the troubled Chinese property giant Evergrande was starved for cash earlier this year, it turned to its own employees with a strong-arm pitch: Those who wanted to keep their bonuses would have to give Evergrande a short-term loan.

Some workers tapped their friends and family for money to lend to the company. Others borrowed from the bank. Then, this month, Evergrande suddenly stopped paying back the loans, which had been packaged as high-interest investments.

Now, hundreds of employees have joined panicked home buyers in demanding their money back from Evergrande, gathering outside the company’s offices across China to protest last week.

Once China’s most prolific property developer, Evergrande has become the country’s most in-(p. B7)debted company. It owes money to lenders, suppliers and foreign investors. It owes unfinished apartments to home buyers and has racked up more than $300 billion in unpaid bills. Evergrande faces lawsuits from creditors and has seen its shares lose more than 80 percent of their value this year.

Regulators fear that the collapse of a company Evergrande’s size would send tremors through the entire Chinese financial system. Yet so far, Beijing has not stepped in with a bailout, having promised to teach debt-saddled corporate giants a lesson.

. . .

As rumors rippled through the Chinese internet that Evergrande might go bankrupt this month, Mr. Jin and some of his colleagues gathered in front of provincial government offices to pressure the authorities to step in.

In the southern city of Shenzhen, home buyers and employees crowded into the lobby of Evergrande’s headquarters last week and shouted for their money back. “Evergrande, give back my money I earned with blood and sweat!” some could be heard yelling in video footage.

For the full story, see:

Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li. “Workers Had To Lend Cash To China Firm.” The New York Times (Saturday, September 20, 2021): B1 & B7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 22, 2021, and has the title “Evergrande Gave Workers a Choice: Lend Us Cash or Lose Your Bonus.”)

Users of “Free” Public Housing Wi-Fi Do Not Know How to Keep It Online

(p. 30) After months of back and forth, NYC Mesh got the greenlight to put a hub on the 24-story public housing tower in Bed-Stuy, along with two other developments in the Bronx and Queens. Four other small providers, including Silicon Harlem, were selected to wire up 10 other NYCHA developments. As part of Phase One of the Internet Master Plan, to which the city will direct $157 million, NYC Mesh installed free public hot spots around the exterior grounds of the projects; the other companies must provide residents access to Wi-Fi in their apartments for no more than $20 a month.

. . .

But the people who use the free hot spots in public housing or the family shelter in Brownsville don’t know how to fix the equipment or where to request a repair or report an outage on Slack. Indeed, all but one of the hallway routers in the shelter have been out for the last couple of months, and a number of new ones at the Bed-Stuy tower keep going offline.

For the full story, see:

Bliss Broyard. “Meet the Warriors of Wi-Fi.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, July 18, 2021): 30.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 16, 2021, and has the title “‘Welcome to the Mesh, Brother’: Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York.”)