By Phil Izzo
As the U.S. struggles with the problem of persistent long-term unemployment, a study of incentives in the Netherlands suggests a stick is more effective than a carrot.
“Carrot and Stick: How Reemployment Bonuses and Benefit Sanctions Affect Job Finding Rates,” Bas van der Klaauw of VU University Amsterdam and Jan C. van Ours of Tilburg University, Netherlands, examine the effects of both positive and negative financial incentives on the long-term jobless in Rotterdam. In the early 2000s the city ran a program that provided reemployment bonuses for job seekers who were able to find a job and hold it for at least six months. At the same time, benefit recipients who didn’t actively look for work, or otherwise failed to comply with eligibility requirements, would be subject to a temporary reduction in their benefits.
“Our main findings are that reemployment bonuses don’t seem to have worked, while benefit sanctions increased the job finding rate significantly,” the economists write.
Van der Klaauw and van Ours note an earlier study in the U.S. that showed a positive effect from reemployment bonuses, but that bonus was focused on people that were unemployed for short periods of time. The Rotterdam study only looked at welfare recipients who are unemployed for more than a year, suggesting bonuses are less effective for the long-term unemployed.
Currently, U.S. lawmakers continue to debate whether to extend unemployment benefits. Some have suggested that the extension offers an incentive to keep the unemployed from accepting available jobs, while others argue that a dearth of jobs is the main factor keeping people on the unemployment rolls longer. The study doesn’t take a stand on whether to extend benefits, but it does suggest that monitoring recipients eligibility increases their chances of finding work.
“Our findings that a stick works while a carrot doesn’t may be related to present-bias of some workers,” the economists write. “To the extent that some welfare recipients are present-biased an incentive scheme that requires immediate search effort in exchange for delayed rewards in terms of a future bonus may not be an effective scheme. Benefit sanctions breaking the present bias by imposing immediate costs to lack of search effort might indeed be an effective and welfare improving scheme.”
Van der Klaauw and van Ours also point to previous studies that add one caveat: those who face benefit cuts also face reduced post-employment earnings. “Actual benefit reductions lower the quality of post-unemployment jobs both in terms of job duration as well as in terms of earnings. For unemployed workers the net effect of a benefit sanction on postunemployment income is negative. Over a period of two years after leaving unemployment workers who got a benefit sanction imposed face an income loss equivalent to 30 days,” they write.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Strategic default: It’s not just for middle- and lower-income brackets anymore.
In fact, one in seven homeowners with a seven-figure mortgage -- a million or more -- is “seriously delinquent.” At least that’s according to data crunched by First American CoreLogic for the NYTimes.
Below the $1 million mark, it’s one out of 12 homeowners.
As we’ve observed, skipping out on a mortgage gives you a lot of spending power you wouldn’t have otherwise... which may help explain how Nordstrom’s same store sales jumped 14% from May to June.
And why Tiffany’s CFO said recently, “Our customers in the U.S. are feeling more confident than a year ago.”
Heh. More confident they can game the system.
Below the $1 million mark, it’s one out of 12 homeowners.
As we’ve observed, skipping out on a mortgage gives you a lot of spending power you wouldn’t have otherwise... which may help explain how Nordstrom’s same store sales jumped 14% from May to June.
And why Tiffany’s CFO said recently, “Our customers in the U.S. are feeling more confident than a year ago.”
Heh. More confident they can game the system.
Most Americans Not Willing To Pay Higher Taxes For Public Employees, Entitlement ProgramsPosted
by Ronald A. Lau on July 7, 2010 at 1:00pm
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_bus...
19% would be willing to pay higher taxes to avoid layoffs of state employees, 69% would not
22% would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts in entitlement programs for low-income Americans, 63% would not
34% say they are willing to pay higher taxes to provide funding for public education, but 54% say they are not.
37% say they are willing to pay higher taxes to increase the number of police and firemen in their communities, 52% say they would not
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_bus...
19% would be willing to pay higher taxes to avoid layoffs of state employees, 69% would not
22% would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts in entitlement programs for low-income Americans, 63% would not
34% say they are willing to pay higher taxes to provide funding for public education, but 54% say they are not.
37% say they are willing to pay higher taxes to increase the number of police and firemen in their communities, 52% say they would not
Environmentalist Hypocrisy
Posted by Paul Chesser on July 8, 2010 at 3:16pm
That Big Oil (or whatever fossil fuel industry) funds free-market, limited government organizations and candidates (who also tend to fit into the global warming realism camp) is a familiar attempt to discredit them by watermelon groups and by the formerly mainstream media. Meanwhile those very same green socialist groups escape scrutiny of their own lobbying and relationships, because their bedmates give them no reason to suspect anything!
However, those of us who are curious have been poking around. Today the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives published a report I wrote that examines the hypocritical and possibly illegal behavior of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (known better as PennFuture). Among the findings:
While the organization condemns the natural gas industry for its lobbying against increased and selective taxation of its investments, PennFuture has received nearly $1 million during the last five years from alternative energy companies. These companies benefited from PennFuture's lobbying for corporate tax breaks and taxpayer-funded "economic development" funds for wind and solar projects in Pennsylvania. This practice has also allowed PennFuture to serve as a de facto lobbyist for those alternative energy companies, enabling them to skirt disclosure under state lobbying laws.
Even as PennFuture solicited volunteer and member assistance to pressure legislators to pass or oppose specific pieces of legislation, the group reported to the Internal Revenue Service that it spent no money on grassroots lobbying on four of its past five tax returns.
PennFuture's lobbying of state officials is also funded by the taxpayers. Since 2002, the group has lobbied for and received over $1 million in taxpayer money, which is then used to lobby elected and appointed officials for additional taxpayer money.
PennFuture doesn't seem happy with the report. President Jan Jarrett said in a press release:
We have forthrightly answered every request for information and every reporter’s questions. If there are errors in our accounting or reporting, we will correct them immediately.
“How can any of our activities be considered ‘secret’ when the primary sources for the Commonwealth Foundation’s ‘report’ are PennFuture’s own public documents, websites, and reports, and other public websites? PennFuture is committed to transparency. Unable to prove any malevolence, the author is reduced to launching a classic smear attack.
Hey Jan -- your activities are "secret" when you tell the IRS you have spent ZERO dollars on grassroots lobbying when the evidence clearly shows PennFuture engaged in such activities. ZERO dollars does not look like an error; it looks like deception.
How many other watermelon groups behave this way? I welcome tips.
That Big Oil (or whatever fossil fuel industry) funds free-market, limited government organizations and candidates (who also tend to fit into the global warming realism camp) is a familiar attempt to discredit them by watermelon groups and by the formerly mainstream media. Meanwhile those very same green socialist groups escape scrutiny of their own lobbying and relationships, because their bedmates give them no reason to suspect anything!
However, those of us who are curious have been poking around. Today the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives published a report I wrote that examines the hypocritical and possibly illegal behavior of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (known better as PennFuture). Among the findings:
While the organization condemns the natural gas industry for its lobbying against increased and selective taxation of its investments, PennFuture has received nearly $1 million during the last five years from alternative energy companies. These companies benefited from PennFuture's lobbying for corporate tax breaks and taxpayer-funded "economic development" funds for wind and solar projects in Pennsylvania. This practice has also allowed PennFuture to serve as a de facto lobbyist for those alternative energy companies, enabling them to skirt disclosure under state lobbying laws.
Even as PennFuture solicited volunteer and member assistance to pressure legislators to pass or oppose specific pieces of legislation, the group reported to the Internal Revenue Service that it spent no money on grassroots lobbying on four of its past five tax returns.
PennFuture's lobbying of state officials is also funded by the taxpayers. Since 2002, the group has lobbied for and received over $1 million in taxpayer money, which is then used to lobby elected and appointed officials for additional taxpayer money.
PennFuture doesn't seem happy with the report. President Jan Jarrett said in a press release:
We have forthrightly answered every request for information and every reporter’s questions. If there are errors in our accounting or reporting, we will correct them immediately.
“How can any of our activities be considered ‘secret’ when the primary sources for the Commonwealth Foundation’s ‘report’ are PennFuture’s own public documents, websites, and reports, and other public websites? PennFuture is committed to transparency. Unable to prove any malevolence, the author is reduced to launching a classic smear attack.
Hey Jan -- your activities are "secret" when you tell the IRS you have spent ZERO dollars on grassroots lobbying when the evidence clearly shows PennFuture engaged in such activities. ZERO dollars does not look like an error; it looks like deception.
How many other watermelon groups behave this way? I welcome tips.
Smearing Global Warming Skeptics
July 06, 2010
By Russell Cook
Meteorologist blogger Anthony Watts normally talks about the crumbling science of man-caused global warming, but recently he described an uninvited office guest demanding to know about his alleged "big oil funding." The charge that only the lure of big money causes people to question warmist gospel is old but, as it turns out, of highly questionable origin.
Al Gore typifies the central accusation in An Inconvenient Truth, pg 263:
The misconception that there is a serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans...
One of the internal memos prepared by this group to guide the employees they hired to run their disinformation campaign was discovered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan. Here was the group's stated objective: to "reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact."
Internet searches of the "reposition global warming" phrase show how viral it is. However, more searching reveals former Boston Globe reporter Gelbspan not only has never won a Pulitzer, despite uncountable times he's described as such, but he is also not the discoverer of the "campaign." Intensive investigation reveals only myriad ties to the phrase, but the actual 1991 internal PR campaign memo containing the phrase is never seen.
Gore's 2004 NY Times review of Gelbspan's then-current second book offered this praise:
Gelbspan's first book, "The Heat Is On" (1997), remains the best, and virtually only, study of how the coal and oil industry has provided financing to a small group of contrarian scientists...In this new book, Gelbspan focuses his toughest language by far on the coal and oil industries. After documenting the largely successful efforts of companies like ExxonMobil to paralyze the policy process, confuse the American people and cynically "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact."
Greenpeace director Phil Radford offers more praise in an article describing two people he worked with who most impressed him:
John Passacantando, the former director of Greenpeace, whose strategic instinct and track record of changing the political landscape on global warming has made it possible to imagine that solving the problem could be a reality. And Ross Gelbspan ... who ... uncover[ed] the scandalous cover up of global warming by polluting companies. Ross has been the lone voice ... that has inspired countless people, me included, to demand our country and our future back from the coal and oil interests behind global warming.
The article also says Radford worked for Ozone Action. Prior to 1996, their focus was ozone depletion. Ozone Action had just over/under $1 million worth of contributions per year in 1998, 1999, and 2000 under John Passacantando's leadership, who then merged his group into Greenpeace in 2000. Greenpeace archive records of a 1996 Ozone Action report (page 5, paragraphs 3 & 4) reveal:
...the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) stated their goal was to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)[.]"
According to documents obtained by Ozone Action and by Ross Gelbspan, several ICE strategies were laid out: the repositioning of global warming as theory, not fact.
The word "obtained" prompts questions about assertions that Gelbspan was the discoverer. Worse, Greenpeace/WWF activist Andrew Rowell cites the "reposition" phrase in his 1996 Green Backlash (second paragraph) while not saying where the "ICE internal packet" came from. NY Times reporter Matthew Wald's July 8, 1991 article reported:
The goal of the campaign, according to one planning document, is to "reposition global warming as theory" and not fact.
A packet of internal correspondence and other information relating to the campaign was provided to The New York Times by the Sierra Club, the San Francisco-based environmental group that favors taking steps to reduce the risk of global warming.
Curtis Moore, who cites Wald's article about the "reposition" phrase in his 1994 Green Gold, also refers to an interview of Simmons Advertising's Tom Helland. That appears to be the same Simmons contact "T. Helland" seen on page 13 of another set of Greenpeace scans, a fair indication that Moore saw the documents. And on page 14, there is a Simmons letter describing "what you'll find in this packet," the same descriptive word in Rowell's book note and Wald's article. Gelbspan refers to other 1991 articles breaking this story near the bottom of the page at his website. An obvious question is: Who discovered these documents?
That second set of Greenpeace scans contains something vastly more important on page 10: the document with the "reposition" phrase in its complete context. Of all the internet searches for the phrase, I found no others showing it in its entirety, or any linking to this Greenpeace scan. In Gelbspan's own hugely acclaimed 1997 book, no scan is shown. He simply says, "ICE documents in author's possession." Why is that? And what is the significance of yet another Greenpeace scan of an October 1996 Kalee Kreider e-mail to "D Becker" at the Sierra Club? That's probably Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program from 1989 to 2006. Kreider worked at Ozone Action just three months earlier, repeating the "reposition" phrase in a media release. Many now know Kreider as Al Gore's spokesperson.
It turns out that the attempted slander of global warming skeptics as tools of big oil is as poorly grounded as the theory itself.
By Russell Cook
Meteorologist blogger Anthony Watts normally talks about the crumbling science of man-caused global warming, but recently he described an uninvited office guest demanding to know about his alleged "big oil funding." The charge that only the lure of big money causes people to question warmist gospel is old but, as it turns out, of highly questionable origin.
Al Gore typifies the central accusation in An Inconvenient Truth, pg 263:
The misconception that there is a serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans...
One of the internal memos prepared by this group to guide the employees they hired to run their disinformation campaign was discovered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan. Here was the group's stated objective: to "reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact."
Internet searches of the "reposition global warming" phrase show how viral it is. However, more searching reveals former Boston Globe reporter Gelbspan not only has never won a Pulitzer, despite uncountable times he's described as such, but he is also not the discoverer of the "campaign." Intensive investigation reveals only myriad ties to the phrase, but the actual 1991 internal PR campaign memo containing the phrase is never seen.
Gore's 2004 NY Times review of Gelbspan's then-current second book offered this praise:
Gelbspan's first book, "The Heat Is On" (1997), remains the best, and virtually only, study of how the coal and oil industry has provided financing to a small group of contrarian scientists...In this new book, Gelbspan focuses his toughest language by far on the coal and oil industries. After documenting the largely successful efforts of companies like ExxonMobil to paralyze the policy process, confuse the American people and cynically "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact."
Greenpeace director Phil Radford offers more praise in an article describing two people he worked with who most impressed him:
John Passacantando, the former director of Greenpeace, whose strategic instinct and track record of changing the political landscape on global warming has made it possible to imagine that solving the problem could be a reality. And Ross Gelbspan ... who ... uncover[ed] the scandalous cover up of global warming by polluting companies. Ross has been the lone voice ... that has inspired countless people, me included, to demand our country and our future back from the coal and oil interests behind global warming.
The article also says Radford worked for Ozone Action. Prior to 1996, their focus was ozone depletion. Ozone Action had just over/under $1 million worth of contributions per year in 1998, 1999, and 2000 under John Passacantando's leadership, who then merged his group into Greenpeace in 2000. Greenpeace archive records of a 1996 Ozone Action report (page 5, paragraphs 3 & 4) reveal:
...the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) stated their goal was to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)[.]"
According to documents obtained by Ozone Action and by Ross Gelbspan, several ICE strategies were laid out: the repositioning of global warming as theory, not fact.
The word "obtained" prompts questions about assertions that Gelbspan was the discoverer. Worse, Greenpeace/WWF activist Andrew Rowell cites the "reposition" phrase in his 1996 Green Backlash (second paragraph) while not saying where the "ICE internal packet" came from. NY Times reporter Matthew Wald's July 8, 1991 article reported:
The goal of the campaign, according to one planning document, is to "reposition global warming as theory" and not fact.
A packet of internal correspondence and other information relating to the campaign was provided to The New York Times by the Sierra Club, the San Francisco-based environmental group that favors taking steps to reduce the risk of global warming.
Curtis Moore, who cites Wald's article about the "reposition" phrase in his 1994 Green Gold, also refers to an interview of Simmons Advertising's Tom Helland. That appears to be the same Simmons contact "T. Helland" seen on page 13 of another set of Greenpeace scans, a fair indication that Moore saw the documents. And on page 14, there is a Simmons letter describing "what you'll find in this packet," the same descriptive word in Rowell's book note and Wald's article. Gelbspan refers to other 1991 articles breaking this story near the bottom of the page at his website. An obvious question is: Who discovered these documents?
That second set of Greenpeace scans contains something vastly more important on page 10: the document with the "reposition" phrase in its complete context. Of all the internet searches for the phrase, I found no others showing it in its entirety, or any linking to this Greenpeace scan. In Gelbspan's own hugely acclaimed 1997 book, no scan is shown. He simply says, "ICE documents in author's possession." Why is that? And what is the significance of yet another Greenpeace scan of an October 1996 Kalee Kreider e-mail to "D Becker" at the Sierra Club? That's probably Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program from 1989 to 2006. Kreider worked at Ozone Action just three months earlier, repeating the "reposition" phrase in a media release. Many now know Kreider as Al Gore's spokesperson.
It turns out that the attempted slander of global warming skeptics as tools of big oil is as poorly grounded as the theory itself.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
In what is a rare and hopeful sign out of the UK – a nation that is notable for a societal script that has, until just recently, run parallel to that of George Orwell’s 1984 – the new government has launched a well-conceived web site that invites the public to nominate old laws that should be struck from the book.
Here’s an excerpt on the topic from an article that ran on the Metro.co.uk site…
Parliament invites public to nominate 'old laws' they wish to abolish
The public is being invited to nominate laws they want to abolish in what deputy prime minister Nick Clegg called a move away from ‘the old way of doing things’.
At the Your Freedom website people can propose ways to get rid of pointless regulation and red tape.
Mr Clegg said: ‘We are turning things on their head. The traditional way of doing things is that government tells people what to do. We are saying, ‘‘Tell us what you don’t want us to do’’.’
Letting dormant laws accumulate on the statute book sent out the ‘wrong signal’ and there was plenty of ‘old stuff’ that should be dropped, he told BBC Breakfast. The last government had gone too far in invading people’s privacy, he added.
‘Did that make us safer? No, it didn’t necessarily make us safer, so we’ve got to get the balance right.’ From today any minister who proposes a new regulation will also have to propose an existing law to be scrapped in a ‘one in, one out rule’.
The website is at: www.hmg.gov.uk/yourfreedom
Here’s an excerpt on the topic from an article that ran on the Metro.co.uk site…
Parliament invites public to nominate 'old laws' they wish to abolish
The public is being invited to nominate laws they want to abolish in what deputy prime minister Nick Clegg called a move away from ‘the old way of doing things’.
At the Your Freedom website people can propose ways to get rid of pointless regulation and red tape.
Mr Clegg said: ‘We are turning things on their head. The traditional way of doing things is that government tells people what to do. We are saying, ‘‘Tell us what you don’t want us to do’’.’
Letting dormant laws accumulate on the statute book sent out the ‘wrong signal’ and there was plenty of ‘old stuff’ that should be dropped, he told BBC Breakfast. The last government had gone too far in invading people’s privacy, he added.
‘Did that make us safer? No, it didn’t necessarily make us safer, so we’ve got to get the balance right.’ From today any minister who proposes a new regulation will also have to propose an existing law to be scrapped in a ‘one in, one out rule’.
The website is at: www.hmg.gov.uk/yourfreedom
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