The Irrelevant Innumeracy of the Swarmed GOP Town Halls

Surely by now you've seen the stories about GOP congressmen, in deep red districts, being absolutely swarmed by angry constituents furious that they're not standing up to Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the buzzsaw attack on hardworking federal employees.

My thesis about this will be twofold. First, there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye. And second, it doesn't matter that there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye, and we should all behave like they're exactly what they appear to be.

Start with the first. The excitement over these protests relates to the sense that anger and outrage over Trump has expanded beyond the blue bubbles and is penetrating even dark red terrain. But the mistake here is something I alluded to in my How To Tokenize with Proportions post. A congressional district where a Republican won by, say, a 66-33 margin is by any measure a dark-red district. But it also is a district where one in three voters voted Democrat. One in three is a lot of people! In a congressional district of 750,000, it's 250,000 people! It is not hard to fill a high school auditorium, particularly if that 250,000 is feeling especially angry and activated.

It's an issue of framing, if you're generous, or innumeracy, if you're not: 33% doesn't feel very common, 1 in 3 feels very common. Politically speaking, the former is closer to accurate, which is why congressional districts where one sees 66/33 margins aren't typically treated as competitive.

But what innumeracy taketh away, innumeracy also giveth. The fact is that most people see a crowd of angry constituents filling an auditorium in a deep-red district and don't start doing math about how easy or hard it is to fill up the space given the baseline number of Democrats around. They just see the crowd. Politics is often a game of perception and of momentum -- people see others in their community and in their spaces expressing anger and fear and frustration, and it validates their own nascent feelings of anger, fear, and frustration. It makes them feel like they're not alone. It encourages them that these sentiments are common in their community, and that they're not weird or outcasts or loners if they feel them too. All of that starts to build a narrative conducive to resistance. And even if it doesn't mean the deepest-red congressional districts will flip blue in 2026, it gets that permission structure going that will make life very difficult for Republicans in more vulnerable seats.

So keep swarming. Keep yelling. Keep sharing those vids. Build up that narrative that people everywhere are mad as hell, and they're ready to fight. In politics, image becomes reality before you know it.

... That Magical Time of Year When a Worker's Thoughts Turn To Love

Various permutations of this essay by Miya Tokumitsu, which attacks the concept of "Doing What You Love" (DWYL), has been making the blogospheric rounds to much applause. Allow me to dissent. Tokumitsu does not do nearly enough to demonstrate a causal link between the DWYL mentality and erasure of the lives of working class. Indeed, if anything DWYL is a valuable contributor to our understanding of "work", including for the "non-creative" working class.

Summarizing and simplifying, Tokumitsu observes that there only certain classes of jobs, typically held by certain classes of people, which are even candidates to be a job one might "love". The vast majority of jobs, including jobs necessary for the maintenance of "loved" jobs, are not going to be particularly fun or intellectually stimulating no matter what we do. Therefore, DWYL is inherently classist: "labor that is done out of motives or needs other than love--which is, in fact, most labor--is erased." Meanwhile, DWYL encourages exploitation -- it is basically a way to make workers content with getting less in the way of tangible proceeds in favor of nebulous emotional satisfaction.

As someone who has in the past few years done both a job that I loved (in the classic DWYL form), and a job that, we shall say, does not fit into that category, I feel well-positioned to discuss this issue. And given that the latter job paid triple the former (loved) one, I can even speak to the trade-off between tangible and intangible job benefits.

But let's not start with me; let's start instead with the claim that DWYL is class-divisive and "erases" workers whose jobs are not candidates to be loved. Put bluntly, I'm skeptical that the wealthy need the aid of a mantra to forget about the life and working conditions of the lower classes. That's really more of the default setting. The alternative to caring about how workers feel about their jobs emotionally is not necessarily caring about what workers get out of their jobs tangibly -- it can very easily be (and historically has been) caring about neither. A similar critique can be leveled at her claim that if someone does not obtain profit from pursuing their passion, DWYL implies that the fault must be in their enthusiasm. While I've never actually heard that assertion made, I admit I'm never surprised at the capacity of some people to attribute any deficiency in the lives of the working class to their own deficiencies. Suffice to say, this tendency predates DWYL, it is not caused by it.

What DWYL recognizes is that the tangible products of a job are not sufficient to provide for fulfilling lives. One can be tangibly provided for at market rates and still not have "enough". In other words, DWYL is in many respects a (admittedly inchoate) statement about a substantive entitlements -- that we are not owed just whatever dollar amount our employer puts in our pocket, but some level of happiness, dignity, and respect out of our job. Those values should be included in our calculus of what workers are provided.

Indeed, some of her treatment of improved intangible working conditions strikes me as almost incomprehensible. She quotes Marc Bousquet as saying that the "loved" academic job environment actually presents a model for corporations:

How to emulate the academic workplace and get people to work at a high level of intellectual and emotional intensity for fifty or sixty hours a week for bartenders’ wages or less? Is there any way we can get our employees to swoon over their desks, murmuring “I love what I do” in response to greater workloads and smaller paychecks? How can we get our workers to be like faculty and deny that they work at all? How can we adjust our corporate culture to resemble campus culture, so that our workforce will fall in love with their work too?

From this analysis, she concludes "Nothing makes exploitation go down easier than convincing workers that they are doing what they love."

Reading the above, one would think that the way a corporation makes people love what they do is by casting an incantation or spiking the cafeteria with hallucinogenic drugs. In reality, to make workers happy by means other than a pay raise, one has to do things that make workers happier with their jobs. Those are real benefits, not chimeras -- I'd take my less-paying but more loved job over my less-loved, better paying counterpart in a heartbeat. The trade-off isn't infinite, of course, but all that demonstrates is that neither the tangible nor intangible proceeds of work are sufficient for self-fulfillment.

Which cycles us back to those workers whose jobs are not and cannot be made loveable. We should say here that almost any job can be made, if not loveable, than at least more likeable -- by being treated fairly and with respect, for instance, or by having some security such that one isn't not in constant dread of being tossed on the street. But even to the extent these jobs lie beyond true DWYL, the concept still matters because it provides a contrast to the prevailing counternarrative -- "the value of a honest day's work." That mantra, which by my lights is far more likely to represent the real competitor to DWYL (as compared to some sort of cross-class solidarity pressing for higher salaries for everyone), cares neither whether the worker is happy or whether they getting significant tangible returns -- value comes from working whatever job the market provides at whatever rate the market pays. I'm reminded of the archetypical 50s parent who, upon hearing that his son isn't happy at work, bellows that "You hate your job? I hated my job too! That's the point of a job!"



DWYL recognizes, at the very least, that the emotional side is important -- and anytime the American cultural zeitgeist recognizes any form of substantive entitlement as necessary for a fulfilled life, I'm inclined to jump on it. And to the extent we do view DWYL as a form of substantive entitlement and we simultaneously reckon with the fact that certain people are not (and likely cannot get it), that does provide a fulcrum from which those people can leverage a claim for greater tangible benefits as compensation. Of course, I'm not saying it's a guarantee that thinking about DWYL will cause wealthier Americans to recognize the deprivations faced by their working class peers -- as I said, wealthy Americans hardly need any excuse to ignore others outside their class. But attribute the lack of cross-class consciousness to DWYL is difficult to justify.

The bottom line is that the notion that we can view work solely through the lens of the monetary returns workers get doesn't cohere to how people of any class actually view their work. We don't just want "fulfillment" or "respect", but we don't just want a dollar figure either. It's obviously true that if one is being paid little, the marginal value of each additional dollar is going to be higher compared to additional "respect" or whatnot. But that doesn't change the fact that thinking about work in a way that's helpful to workers requires a holistic approach. DWYL matters because it is a recognition about what workers are owed, and any sort of public understanding of the proceeds of work that starts from what workers deserve, rather than what the market deigns to give them, is in my book a good thing

Weekend Roundup

I have been dialed in these past few weeks, and the blogging has suffered, I know. Not sure if things will pick-up or not in the upcoming days.

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Rick Santorum lets the economic cat out of the bag -- if it improves, Republicans suffer.

Republicans try, fail, to lift a consent decree barring them from voter suppression.

Sarah Palin says Obama pines for pre-Civil War America. I have to say, anytime someone says "obviously, even the most hardened conservative wouldn't say such-and-such", I immediately have very little trouble envisioning a conservative saying it.

My job is awesome. But lots of jobs stink.

Jon Chait postulates that "Bellgate" is just an instantiation of Jewish Republicans wild tendency to see Black anti-Semitism in every corner.

Econ on the Up and Up

The clownish character of the Republican primary field obviously can only help Obama's chances in 2012. But ultimately, the key factor in any re-election campaign boils down to one thing. The economy. In a bad economy, all sins by the challenging party will be forgiven. And that means that the best way for Obama to win reelection is for the economy to start improving.

And on that front, there is some very strong news flowing out of the December jobs report. 243,000 jobs added last month, with unemployment dropping down to 8.3%. Is 8.3% the most exciting figure ever? Nope. But it is a sign that the last few months improvements are no fluke, and dropping below 9% is a milestone.

Again, with 11 months before election day and each month being better than the last, the trend lines are looking good. It may be that Mitt Romney (or whoever the GOP nominates) will have to win on the strength of his policy and personality. Good luck with that.

The Laziest Nation on Earth

Most politicians go around telling folks that America "is the greatest nation on earth." A bit of patriotic puffery, perhaps, but not without some truth either -- our accomplishments, influence, and reach stand unrivaled across human history. But Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has a different perspective. America is "a nation of slackers" -- and that's why we have an unemployment crisis.

Now, since Rep. King is among the dimmest bulbs in Congress, I feel compelled to explain again that the unemployment rate only includes persons who lack a job but are still pursuing one (otherwise it would include, for example, full-time students, and that makes no sense). So the idea that unemployment is simply the result of people slacking off is -- in addition to insanely offensive -- not really possible to square with what unemployment measures.

How Do You Abbreviate Jamal?

Ta-Nahisi Coates labels this bit two posts in one. And, this being Ta-Nehisi Coates, both are fabulous, but I want to focus on the first. It talks about an NYT article about Black men in this economy explicitly deracinating their resumes in order to compete in the job market. The debate plays out implicitly as part of Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan's recent and already famous study, "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination" (94 Am. Econ. Rev. 991 (2004)), finding that, holding qualifications constant, persons with White sounding names (Greg and Emily) got more callbacks for job inquiries than those with Black sounding names (Lakisha and Jamal). So you see Black people with MBA's from the University of Chicago doing things like removing their participation in the African-American business students association, so as to not tip off employers to their skin color before it is absolutely necessary ("If they're going to X me, I'd like to at least get in the door first.").

As Adam Serwer points out, all this goes to the big lie in American society that racism is not only gone, but so far gone that being Black is an advantage nowadays. It is so obviously not true -- the empirical evidence is so overwhelming -- that it can be explained only as White folks trying to impute an unjust social order onto its victims. A study by Devah Pager Pager (The Mark of a Criminal Record, 108 Am. J. Soc. 937 (2003)) found that Black job applicants fared roughly as well as Whites with a felony conviction (again, holding qualifications even). That this effect is holding for even relatively elite Black persons (folks with MBAs, looking for management positions) is yet more support that class isn't all there is.

Ignoring Facebook

In response to the Obama transition team's version of demanding every scintilla of factual information about potential administration appointees, Matt Yglesias observes that eventually norms are going to have to change about the relevancy of a dumb college facebook photo. I've thought the same thing myself. Even today, interviewers can't be shocked! that their prospects might have drank in college. Indeed, they themselves probably drank in college. But there being no permanent electronic record of it, they can delude themselves into thinking they were more responsible about it. As the facebook generation begins to consist of the hirers, however, eventually a more realistic view is going to surface.

Or so I hope.

More Time

One of the interesting things that's developing as my generation enters the market is how we are dealing with the concept of time. On the one hand, having grown up perpetually wired, we are quite accustomed to being able to work at any time, in any place, whenever we feel like. The traditional model of being chained to the cubicle door does not work for us. On the other hand, we are not thrilled with the grueling, super-man schedules that are rapidly becoming the norm in the most high-flying, professional jobs. Our generation is not only more demanding of actually having time to start a family (and then be able to spend time with them), but it's willing to take paycuts to do it. These twin factors are pushing against the traditional 9-5 work environment in favor of flex-time arrangements. The irony is, this movement is occuring during a period of intense globalization which increases the value of those high-flyers who are willing to take on insane hours and workloads (and the hyper-competitive nature of the elite educational track has paradoxically increased the supply of those sorts of people at the same time as the overall trend of my generation has been in favor of more flex-time).

CNN had an interesting article up reporting that this trend appears to be expanding from its tradtional base though: claiming that many fathers in the workforce now want to spend more time with their families and are willing to slash their pay to get it. I say "beyond the traditional base" because the workers most associated with this pressure are a) young and b) women. In fact, I'd say that one of the most important contributions flowing from the normalization of women in the workforce is the pressure its created for more flexible and family-friendly work paradigms. The first generation of working women, mindful of their crusading status, had to play by the boy's rules and could not agitate for "special privileges" like maternity leave (at least not without sabotaging their career prospects). Today's women do not feel like they should have to make that choice, and though they've been deluged with "experts" telling them "you're going to have to", they've pushed back with admirable tenacity. They know that they've got skills needed by the best corporations, and they're flexing that economic muscle to demand better hours, better leave policies, and more flexibility. It's a victory for feminism that is also a victory for all workers, and we owe them tremendously for it (though of course, the battle isn't over yet).

One of the reasons I want to go into teaching is that it is the rare high-status job that really does seem to have the sort of flexible, creative work environment I crave. But even amongst the newly minted lawyer class, I've heard rumblings of a revolution. I know what the starting salary is for a BigLaw associate coming out of Chicago, and I know what the work expectations are like. I'd greatly trade less of one for less of the other. Easy for me to say because I don't plan on staying an attorney for long (if at all), but ultimately, it's a trend I see increasing in saliance, and one that may well explode in a veritable workplace revolution in the next decade.