My standings and awards predictions for 2016 went up last Saturday, in case you missed those. My one Insider piece since then was a draft blog post, co-authored with Eric Longenhagen, covering Jason Groome, Bryson Brigman, and more. We will have a top 50 draft prospect ranking up on Tuesday.
I held my usual Klawchat on Thursday, going a bit longer than normal because I was so busy answering your questions I lost track of time.
And now, the links…
- Best longread of the week comes from the Guardian, which explains how nutrition scientists pushed low-fat advice and ignored science for decades, even to the point of destroying the career of the first scientist to sound the anti-sugar bell. A Harvard professor is cited within the piece as demanding the retraction of a peer-reviewed article published in BMJ on the topic; I exchanged emails with him, and he said that the author of the article, Ian Leslie, was “clearly not interested” in hearing a contrary opinion.
- The NCAA isn’t just a group of corporate fat cats and millionaire coaches profiting off the unpaid physical labor of college athletes; it’s a giant wealth transfer from black to white.
- Amy Schumer’s “plus-sized is okay but I am not plus-sized” imbroglio got thinkpieced to death this week … but the A/V Club did do the subject justice by pointing out the damage of labeling women at all. Men don’t really face this – there’s “big and tall,” but hell, tall is considered good for men. (I am not tall; I’m 5’6″, very short for an adult American male, and trust me, I’ve long heard how this is not a good thing.) Why do women have to be plus-sized or minus-sized or whatever-the-fuck-sized at all?
- From the “look at this idiot” department: A vaccine-denier mom gave her newborn whooping cough. She regrets being an idiot now, apparently. If you think vaccines are not safe, you are wrong, and should listen to every reputable scientist and doctor in the world who says to vaccinate your kids.
- Eephus is a new sports-themed online magazine (do I even have to say “online” any more?) and one of its first pieces was by my friend Will Leitch, who waxes nostalgic over baseball boardgames.
- A great interview with culinary icon Alton Brown from Bitter Southerner.
- A state senator in Virginia wants Beloved out of public schools because it’s “smut,”, and he told a high school English teacher that he knew better than she did. Read his emails to see his ignorance at work, as he calls the greatest American novel of the last 40 years “vile,” “smut,” and “moral sewage.”
- Facebook now has a tool to report users who might be about to harm themselves and try to get them help.
- All this talk about the various laws raising the minimum wage to $15/hour led me to this takedown of a WaPo editorial criticizing the laws, in which the author contends (among other things) that the rise in wages for the lowest income bracket will lead to greater increases in demand, because when you have very little money, you spend each additional dollar you get.
- This JAMA editorial argues that we may be reaching the financial limits of pharmaceutical innovation. I think he’s half right, in that we are approaching that limit, but do not believe it will stop or even slow innovation, but must drive new price models. A fundamental problem of health care is that our demand for services that will improve, extend, or save our lives is essentially inelastic: You can raise the price and we’ll still want as much, and eventually we will simply pay everything we have if it means continuing to live.
- The chefs at Nashville’s wonderful izakaya and ramen joint Two Ten Jack read and respond to negative reviews in this funny 90-second video. I brought a group of writers to TTJ in December (Jess Benefield came out to chat while we were there) and had an unbelievable and very reasonably priced meal.
Keith, just want to say how much I enjoy this particular column. I love waking up after a tough week’s work and reading interesting articles. Thanks for doing this.
I’m not a huge Facebook fan, but I’m really happy about this new tool. It’s a great way to bring the conversation to more circles. When I talk to friends about my treatment for depression, I’m often shocked by how brave they think I am for sharing.
Hey Keith,
I read and enjoyed the Ian Leslie article the other day. Its commentary on knowledge creation in the academy was particularly on point, from my vantage.
Could you expand on the gist of your conversation with the Harvard professor about the article?
It’s still ongoing, sort of, and I never explicitly asked if we were on the record so I don’t want to put him in a bad spot in any way. He’s focused on the BMJ article and retraction letter rather than Leslie’s piece.
Love the Will Leitch article. Grew up playing Statis Pro Baseball with my brother for hours on end. Still have the original board after all these years. Hope to break it out again one of these years.
Keith – great post on the long article on nutritional guidelines. Really revealing and topical. I love your baseball stuff on ESPN but these links always have a few gems that I don’t find elsewhere. Thanks again.
Interesting how Nina Teicholz was recently removed from a nutrition panel:
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-agriculture/2016/03/teicholz-disinvited-from-food-policy-panel-stabenow-grassley-let-usda-fda-review-syngenta-merger-fda-to-release-food-safety-tests-on-cucumbers-213410
From that piece: “Teicholz said she was disinvited after other panelists said they wouldn’t participate with her.” I mean, if that’s true, it’s bullshit. She’s not Andrew Wakefield. It’s not clear she’s done anything to merit this ostracism.
Minimum wage laws are ineffective at addressing the root causes of poverty. You can’t just legislate that everyone make a basic level of income, as it will hurt those it was most intended to help. If you can’t deliver enough productive value to warrant being paid $15/hour (or whatever the min. wage being discussed is), you won’t be hired. It’s as simple as that.
So you’re saying jobs will remain unfilled, despite available (if underqualified) labor and consumer demand? I don’t buy it, and the available evidence from minimum wage hikes does not support the contention.
Yes, but if the value you deliver in a job isn’t worth 15 dollars an hour to your employer, and so he pays you, say, 8 dollars an hour because thats what its worth, then you end up not being able to sustain a standard of living that allows you to continue functioning as a complete member of society for very long, and what happens after that is you get government subsidies in one way or another. In other words, if the job doesn’t deliver enough value that your employer can pay you enough to live, then the job isn’t worth existing in the first place, and you and I end up subsidizing the employer by completing the wages he’s not paying… so the government should either demand that the employer figure out how to pay the employee enough that he’s got a living wage, or the government should shut the business down so it doesn’t have to subsidize its basic existence.
I guess I should add that technically you can legislate a basic income level for everyone if you add hiring mandates along with a wage floor. But then you’re planting the seeds to wind up with an economy that looks very much like Venezuela or Cuba. No thanks.
Did you see that Bruce Springsteen canceled his North Carolina show due to the anti-LGBTQ law? I don’t think you’re part of the Baseball Writer Bruce Springsteen Fan Club, but I thought you’d like to see that http://pitchfork.com/news/64689-bruce-springsteen-cancels-north-carolina-show-over-anti-lgbtq-law/
I did, I’m not, and I’m thrilled. I hope more artists and businesses follow suit.
One of the things I’ve always questioned about the NCAA and major D-1 schools is their claim that the revenue from football and men’s basketball support the rest of the athletic department. I don’t see a lot of evidence to support that claim. For one, with all the additional revenue that the College Football Playoff, Men’s Basketball Tournament, new tv deals, etc have brought in, I don’t see a lot of sports being added. One would figure that significantly more revenue coming in would mean more sports could be sponsored. Instead, I see a lot of that revenue being plowed back into football and men’s basketball with new and/or renovated stadiums and arenas, new practice facilities, head coaches and assistant coaches getting higher salaries, etc. I also see a lot of smaller schools offering just as many varsity sports as the big schools. My alma mater is a D-III school and it offers just one less varsity sport than the big, Power Five state school here. Football and men’s basketball aren’t revenue producing sports at the D-III level, certainly nowhere near the level D-I schools get.
I realize that this a pretty small issue in the grand scheme of things, that these other sports shouldn’t be treated much differently than the marching band or French Club. But I saw it stated almost as fact in the article you linked to.
There’s a lot of good writing going on at the Bitter Southerner, and I highly recommend everyone check it out. Yes, it very much has a regional perspective, but the “Bitter” is not literal — it began life as a Southern bartender mag.
“So you’re saying jobs will remain unfilled, despite available (if underqualified) labor and consumer demand?”
Yes and no. What I’m saying is that the number of jobs will adjust to the new wage paradigm. Those who are capable of delivering enough value to roughly meet the new wage floor will remain employed but expected to do more to earn the pay increase. Surplus labor from other fields will be utilized to fill any voids. You will also see increased automation to fill in the gaps. I have firsthand experience seeing how this plays out, and the evidence supports me in saying that businesses, as a general rule, don’t fill jobs and pay people more than the value they can deliver.
” I don’t buy it, and the available evidence from minimum wage hikes does not support the contention.”
I don’t care what you “buy,” all available evidence suggests that demand curves are, almost without exception – whether you’re talking about labor, automobiles, movie tickets, or Georgia peaches – downward sloping. That is to say that a higher price translates into a smaller quantity demanded. So if you raise the price of unskilled labor, the quantity of unskilled labor demanded in the market will decline in price.
Ah, we’re getting snippy now?
Demand curves slope down. The slope, however, varies for each curve, and typically varies along each curve (hence curve and not line). The research I’ve seen on the question of job loss due to the minimum wage is decidedly mixed, and ignores the question of what the appropriate balance is between maximizing total employment and ensuring that those who are employed are paid enough to remain employed.
“unskilled labor demanded in the market will decline in price.”
Sorry, this sentence should end as “will decline.” Ignore the “in price” remark at the end.
Not getting snippy in the least. With an undergraduate and advanced degree in economics – and achieving the highest accolade possible in the graduate department during my time there – and spending 9 years as a consultant seeing the real-world application of economic principles, I just have little patience for anyone I perceive to be dismissive of its basic tenets. I think as someone who understands the science behind vaccines and a few other things, you can appreciate what it’s like sitting back watching people say things about a subject that are highly questionable, at best, and quite possibly blatantly false.
Your last statement was more gracious – or at least far less dogmatic in acknowledging the research is mixed – and I appreciate that. I do think most of the research that is done is muddied by the fact that minimum wage earners represent such a small portion of the total employment mix, thus making it difficult to isolate any signal from all the noise with any degree of confidence. If you’ll notice, however, my original point does not address any link between the minimum wage and “total employment.” My statement was specific to how minimum wage hikes affect unskilled laborers and those trying to escape poverty who may struggle to do so if a price floor is instituted beyond what they’re willing and capable of providing in the market.
I have some academic background in economics too, although it does not compare to yours. When I said “total employment,” I didn’t adequately say what I meant – I was referring to total employment of this subset of all laborers, whether we consider minimum wage-earners, or unskilled laborers.
The existence of these jobs is not strictly a function of employers’ demand curves, as I think you’ve implied. Unskilled labor exists in lots of service industries, where consumer demand for the end product or service drives employer demand for labor. This consumer demand won’t go away with a wage hike; it may decrease if the employers pass through increased labor costs to consumers, but they do so at risk of selling fewer units. We have not seen many if any such pass-throughs in areas like food service, where we still see fast-food outlets selling items at prices that, if anything, don’t adequate reflect externalities of food production in factory environments.
I’m asking for evidence that these jobs are declining in markets where minimum wages are increased. I can understand arguments that, say, the minimum wage in Albany should not be the same as it is in Manhattan, because setting the same minimum should not be necessary to lift the lowest wage earners out of poverty in those two places. But there’s a lot of economic research out there that says lifting these wages either doesn’t put people out of work, or puts few enough of them out of work that the net benefit to society of making the remaining unskilled laborers more economically self-sufficient exceeds the cost of supporting the workers left behind.
I should add, too, that I’m not blindly advocating minimum wage hikes. I think the benefits outweigh the costs in large markets, where employers may have to pay more anyway because otherwise workers will not be able to live close enough to the workplace to take and keep those jobs. But the research is indeed a mixed bag.
Thanks for your feedback on the matter. I appreciate the time and thoughtful response.
Alton Brown may be an icon of Culinary TV.
But where can someone taste food that Alton Brown actually cooks?
Overbrook,
I’m not sure Brown has a restaurant. And, to be honest, I’m not sure it is a place worth visiting. I’ve used a number of Brown’s recipes. They are fantastic for learning technique and basics and understanding how to be a cook. But they tend to be fairly basic and mundane. Not bad… just nothing special. Now, maybe that is intentional. His role tends to be more teacher than artist. So perhaps left to his own devices he could develop more complex dishes on par with the best chefs. But what he puts out there is positioned differently.
When I use one of his recipes, I tend to elaborate on it to fit my personal flavor profile. Which I’m sure most of us do with any recipe we use, but I tend to find I need to do more with his because of the simplicity.
We just don’t know about minimum wage because, until recently, it was never actually tried at levels much above the poverty line. Let’s see how the $15 minimum works out. Per ECON 101, it should result in unemployment…but it really hasn’t before. And on the other hand, it will increase consumption (per ECON 101). The ? is inflation…. And if it is not accompanied by inflation then, logically, it should also reduce government dependence.
Glad some states are raising it. It’s more than worthy of a strong test run.
Depending on how you define poverty, and where poverty lines have been in the past relative to where they are now and what you can buy with the earnings from the poverty line, in many places 15 per hour really isn’t much above that line, either.
Klaw, you mentioned both Chicago and ramen in this chat. If you are in the city, I highly recommend Furious Spoon in Wicker Park. The ramen is excellent and they carry Surly Furious which is both appropriate and delicious.