Generation Y and "Entitlement"

Amen Mr. Weinstein.

I have a PhD from one of the finest universities in the country and I've taught more classes than many tenure-track professors have, but after applying for 85 academic jobs in two years, I've come up empty. It's a simply terrifying experience for most of us on the market --we're generally far better qualified than our peers who graduated in the 1960s and 1970s were, but we're being shut out. I'll be writing more on the problems of contingent short-term labor in academia over the coming months, but they're pretty similar to the ones journalists and others of our generation face.

And Weinstein nails my attitude toward people who look at us in the 22-35 crowd with contempt:

This state of affairs does not exist because we're entitled and have simply declined to work as hard as the people that birthed us. American workers have changed from generation to generation: Since 1979, the alleged Dawn of the Millennial, the average U.S. worker has endured a 75 percent increase in productivity...while real wages stayed flat.

Any lecturer with a PhD. patching together a 4-4 course load across three different universities for $19,000 a year gets it.

As I've written, I'm one of the lucky ones -- no student debt, decent health, a soon-to-be spouse with a decent job.  I always wonder if I have the right to complain -- well, here's Weinstein's answer to that question:

So no, we shan't be doing as well as our parents, and no, we shan't be shutting up about it. If anything, those of us who have been cowed into silence because college-educated poor problems aren't real poor problems should shed our fears and start talking about just how hard it really is out there, man.

 So, complain it shall be, though with the awareness that some one is always worse off -- and an emphasis on effective action as well.

As usual, invoking Atrios' sentiment in the titles of his posts sums up the point pithily.

Saved by the Stimulus

Last night I went out to grab a drink with the fiance and a few of her friends. I met one of her college friends for the first time, and as we fell into conversation. She had an interesting personal story to tell about the impact of the much-maligned American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  of 2009 (AKA "the stimulus").

You see, she's a lawyer who now works for the federal government.  But she wasn't working when she graduated law school in the summer of 2008. She went to a top-50 law school and probably one of the 3 best ones in the south-central region -- so not tip-top, but solid quality. Insofar as law school prepares you to be a lawyer, this lady was prepared to be a lawyer. Over the next year, she applied for dozens of law jobs -- many in areas she didn't specialize in or had little interest in. But with the economy crashing around her, law work had dried up.

But in the spring of 2009, the Social Security Administration suddenly got an influx of federal from the ARRA to hire employees and improve administration -- about $1.1 billion (see page 6, footnote A).

Guess who got hired to work with disability claims?

Notice four things happen here. First, Fiance's College Friend (FCF) gets a job. Second, because FCF gets a job, she's able to go out more often for drinks at fine eating establishments in Houston, which helps those establishments stay in business and helps their employees get bigger paychecks and tips. That money then keeps accelerating through the economy. Note that those two things would happen even if FCF does nothing but look at cat pictures on the Internet and does nothing useful for society or Social  Security. But that's not the case, because third, she actually gains skills at a job that she seems to like and becomes more useful over time. And finally, skillfully evaluating disability claims means more efficient service for people filing claims and better value for taxpayers wanting efficient use of government resources.

Look, we can argue about how well the stimulus was targeted, or whether it was big enough, but it's actually full of millions of little stories similar to FCF's. And, as Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi (among others) have shown (see page 8 in particular, those stories cumulatively added up to keep the  unemployment rate about 1.5 percentage points lower than it otherwise would have been -- saving or creating roughly 2.7 million more jobs across the public and private sectors

Food for thought for policymakers, especially as I keep searching for a job.

Running

So I'm a runner.

For the last five months, it's been my freedom and maintained my sanity.

Two years ago, I started racing again. After a few 5ks, I set myself a goal to run a half marathon; it seemed a good goal -- long but not dangerously long, difficult but achievable, a challenging yet reasonable training schedule. 

In training, I finally discovered the true joys of distance running. I can try to explain it, but you really have to experience it. The physiological benefits are clear enough: you burn calories, improve muscle tone, increase lung capacity, strengthens the cardiovascular system. It also calms me and helps me focus on work. There's the sense of working toward a goal: with two half marathons under my belt, I have a quite respectable time (I broke 1:45 last June and am eying a late October race for my first real crack at 1:40 -- not setting the world on fire, but quite solid for a casual runner). Distance running also forces you to execute a strategy on the course in a way that running a 5 or even 10k really doesn't. It's a wonderful feeling when you successfully execute your strategy -- and break out from your pace group on mile 10.

But more than any of these things, running gives me autonomy. It gives me an identity. It gives me a purpose. It gives me achievements. All those things that unemployment takes away, running returns a measure.

The hidden costs of being unemployed

One of the disadvantages of being poor is that everything costs more. Because you can't put up a month's security deposit on an apartment, you're forced to pay out the nose for a a low-end motel that actually costs a lot more per month than a decent one-bedroom apartment (This book documents this unfortunate reality first hand).  Since the poor live paycheck to paycheck, they can't maintain minimum balances in their checking account and can't take advantage of the traditional banking system. Instead they're forced to "bank" with payday lenders who charge exorbitant interest rates for short-term loans, and even face large fees for the simple act of cashing their paycheck.

As discussed previously, I am by no means poor -- thanks in part to a previous career, supportive upper-middle class parents who helped me get through college, and a soon-to-be spouse who's taking care of pesky things like rent. However, I've made the lovely discovery that being unemployed offers some of the same hidden costs as poverty. Take for example my recent attendance at an academic conference.

In political science, as well as many other disciplines, attending national conferences is an integral part of being a successful academic. You can get your work noticed, get feedback on your scholarship, start to build up your CV and network with other academics. And most importantly for some one without a job, you can get job interviews, which can be your opportunity to stand out from the 50 to 150 other highly qualified applicants who want the same jobs you do.

But you have to get to the conference first. And attending the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association costs a considerable amount of money. First, you have to be an APSA member, which costs an annual fee. Then you have to register for the conference, which costs more. I needed to find a flight from Houston to Chicago and stay in the city for four nights to accomodate several interviews and a scholarly presentation. If you shop around, you can find quite reasonable hotel and flight rates, but I still paid roughly $600 for travel and hotel expenses to spend four days at the conference. Then you still need money for food and travel. You can minimize these costs by taking public transit (a $5 train ride from the airport and $2 bus ride to to hotel beats a $50 cab fare any day), but over four days it still adds up.

Here's the thing: most professors get many of these expenses reimbursed by their employers. As a part of their compensation package, they usually get an annual research grant that can be used for memberships in scholarly organizations and attendance at conferences. In political science, this often ranges from several hundred dollars at small liberal arts colleges to several thousand dollars at large research schools. Graduate students can often (though not always) tap funds to attend conferences as well, either through their professors or through their institutions. At my old school, grad students could attend one conference a year and get up to a $700 grant to cover it -- this little benefit got me about $1500 over three years (and three lines on my CV). Of course, privilege plays a role here too -- richer grad schools generally provide more funding for their grad students to attend conferences, as well as providing better pay and benefits.

Because I'm unemployed however, now I do research on my own dime. Somewhat perversely then, it costs me much more out of pocket to attend a conference than it costs my better-off-financially colleagues who could actually afford it.

I'm not complaining about APSA's management here. The organization tries to mitigate inequality through several mechanisms. First, they have a progressive membership fee structure -- members with higher incomes pay more, and unemployed members pay much less. They also have travel grants to help less well-off members come to the conference -- the $150 they awarded me essentially defrayed the costs of registration and my travel within Chicago.

But like affordable housing units and Head Start slots, there isn't enough aid to go around to all the deserving recipients, let alone fully defray their costs.

Again, please don't take this to mean that I'm putting myself on the same level as a person who needs a payday loan at 50 percent interest to make rent for the month (Remember that context is everything). But it is rather depressing to get a first-hand taste of how the structures that reinforce privilege play out in all sectors of the economy.

Privilege and unemployment (Yes, you CAN have one with the other)

So far this blog has been me reflecting (or perhaps in a moment of weakness, whining) about the difficulties I have faced as a newly minted member of the unemployed army of Americans. One of my goals with this site is to give a bit of insight into some of the challenges that unemployed people face. 

Here's the thing though: I'm unemployed, but I'm shielded from some of the worst aspects of it. I've got a lot of angst, diminished future career prospects, some short-term cash-flow problems, a possible gap in my health insurance (and annoying increased costs in any case) and social isolation.

You see, my Fiance's an MD.  She has a job, which pays quite well. In fact, we're above the median household income for Americans. We can afford good food, rent on a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood in Houston. We drive modest used cars, but we can put gas in them and travel around town without undue worry (repair bills have moved from minor to major annoyances, but they aren't savings account killers for us, or even for me-- yet)

Oh, and neither of us are struggling under a dime of student loans -- that's another trifling matter of $200,000 that's off our backs. Part of that is our own careful financial management; part of it was the luck to be born to loving, stably employed, upwardly mobile, generous parents who believed strongly in funding their children's education. Part of it is a strong public school system funded by taxpayers in Ohio and Michigan. It's wrenching watching my carefully hoarded emergency savings diminish, but I'm not staring at a mountain of debt to pay back.

The fact that we're both white and look a lot like an idealized successful American couple portrayed on TV (minus considerable muscle tone, make-up and eating disorders) doesn't hurt either.




The whole thing is kind of like being Dante traveling through the Inferno: I'm getting a taste of how bad everything is. It's depressing. It's terrifying. It's painful. It's isolating And that depression, terror, pain and isolation are REAL. But I'm just visiting Hell and I'm shielded from the worst of the suffering. Perhaps as I peer out from around Virgil's skirts, I can gain some wisdom and insight in to what the true suffering is; the hope is I can put it to use when I get out of this dreadful pit and can behold the stars again.

But here the metaphor breaks down; most of the unemployed end up so through no fault of their own. They get cast into this particular hell because they happened to graduate during a nasty recession, or happened to have a job in a struggling industry, or became a target for the budget ax in the public sector. No, most of the unemployed are innocent of the malice and sloth they routinely get accused of by some elements of our political system. And most of use feel like failures and want to work. We want to provide, we want to serve society -- it just seems that society doesn't have a place for us.

The final judgement is reserved for those with power who could help the unemployed (and the poor, oppressed, ill etc) ease their suffering, but fail to do so. Sadly, my new home state seems to have quite a few policymakers who fit the bill.

So as you read my musings, please keep in mind that I know paradoxically that I am incredibly lucky in my particular unfortunate situation.

On an Island -- unemployment and social contacts

Yesterday I wrote a brief note about how our jobs become a large part of our identity. The focus was on how a profession gives us identifying markers that underline our social status and mark us as interesting people.

But having a job or profession also builds our identities through giving us social contact as well. One of the toughest things I've found about living in Houston is that not only do I have few social contacts, but the fact that I'm unemployed makes developing social contacts an order of magnitude more difficult.

Below the jump, I discuss these dynamics in more detail.

Identity theft

In many unspoken ways, your job is a large part of your identity.

When you meet some one for the first time in a social setting, one of the first questions that often comes up is what you both do for a living. You might answer with the profession you're in ("I'm an engineer") or you might talk about where you work ("Oh, I work over at Dell"). Either answer stakes out in a simple sentence a large part of the story of who you are. After all, your job generally is the single thing you spend the largest amount of your waking hours doing. Your job also gives hints to a number of other aspects of who you are as a person: your schedule, your values, your politics, your social class, your higher vocation in life ("I'm a doctor -- I save people's lives")

 When you're unemployed though,  you lose that part of your identity, or at least the ability to easily convey it. That's tough personally. As I type this, I can say I'm a "scholar," but no one really knows what that means in a way that "I'm a professor at X university" does. The latter is translatable, while the former is opaque. I'm still the same (reasonably) intelligent, (hopefully) engaging, (occasionally) witty and (arguably) responsible person I was before. I still have the same experiences that make up much of who I am, but I've lost the ability to convey a lot of those experiences in an easy way. And the things that being "unemployed" do announce about me tends to set me on a lower level in the conversation.

It's not that your job is your whole identity -- nor should it be. However, your job not only signifies a lot about who you are, but also sets a foundation for who you might aspire to be -even if its diametrically opposed to what you currently do.

But right now, I'm not quite sure how to think about what I might want to do, because I'm not officially doing anything for a living. I'm stuck in a holding pattern while I wait for the phone to ring. 

And while you wait, you begin to question your place in the world, because without the identity and purpose a job often provides, you don't know how you fit in.

Without a job, not only is it more difficult to share who I am with everyone else, it's that much more difficult to understand who I am myself.

The joys of having health insurance

  
The title to this post might seem a bit snarky.  But it's actually serious.  Health insurance (and its close cousins, vision and dental insurance) are great things to have.

And I'm about to lose mine -- yet another of the perks of being unemployed.

Take what happened to me two weeks ago: I was flossing my teeth and minding my own business when I felt something grind at the base of one of my molars. Then, to my dismay, a large filling popped out in my hand.  After a few hours of panic, I found a local dentist who kindly fit me in her schedule and filled the tooth for me without incident (Thanks Dr. Johnson). I am currently covered by a basic dental plan that only covers the cost of preventative care, but also ensures that I only get charged the insurance company's negotiated price for a filling instead of the list price. The upshot for my wallet was that I spent $89 instead of $129 on a filling -- a cool 31 percent discount-- because large insurance companies have bargaining power that individuals do not.

The same goes for the prices for other health care services as well. Obviously, the larger the insurance company, often the better the price, which is why Medicare and the Veterans'  Health Administration (VA) tend to negotiate much better prices for services than private insurance companies.

Having insurance generally  means that you get a better rate, but more importantly it generally means that you get reimbursed for large medical expenses. If you suddenly have a heart attack, contract TB, get cancer, or get turned into a hood ornament by an SUV driver who thinks stop signs are optional, insurance picks up most of the costs by drawing on the premiums paid by healthy people around you. Hey -- you'd do the same for them; in fact you do all the time.

I'm still covered through my university health insurance for the summer  because I taught both terms last year (Thanks again Graduate Employees' Organization). That's about to run out. I'll be eligible to continue coverage through the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1986 (COBRA). I'll have to pay the full cost of the premium, but that will be much cheaper than going on the individual market, where insurance companies will look at my history of asthma and depression and jack my rates up accordingly -- if they'd cover me at all.

Now, I'll eventually be covered under my spouse's plan, but her insurance won't cover me until we get hitched. So COBRA it is. It's a heck of a lot better than nothing, but the $250 I'll be shelling out every month come at a time when money is, shall we say, tighter than it has been.

The reason I'm in this state, along with many other problems that plagues civilization, is crappy public policy. Follow me below the jump for more details...

The Trauma of Going to a Coffee Shop

When you have routine money coming in, there are a considerable number of things that you take for granted -- like being able to stop in to get a coffee at the local cafe, or eating dinner out at a cheap restaurant.  That calculus quickly changes when the paychecks stop.

I've never had much money in my adult life. For my first three years after college, I worked as a journalist running a tiny print paper. After that, I went to graduate school, where the money wasn't great either (though the fringe benefits were quite good -- thanks to the graduate employees' labor union). But in both cases, I had enough to think nothing of dropping $5 on a drink and a delicious concoction containing appropriate amounts of sugar and saturated fatty goodness a few times a week. Grabbing a sandwich for lunch or even an occasional splurge for dinner was no problem either, as long as I kept an eye on the overall budget. And with all these things, I was able to save a modest amount every month for the things that responsible people ought to save for. (Yes, I am extraordinarily lucky NOT to have any student loans.)

That changed about a six weeks ago. I haven't been to a coffee shop since the beginning of July. I only work at home and in libraries. I've paid for one very modest dinner out. I live within walking distance of several interesting museums, but unless they are free (fortunately, several are) I need to think long and hard before plunking down $15 to go inside.

I never spent much on myself, but now I have lost the ability to spend most of that.

 And it's not just spending money on myself -- you can't do nearly as many nice things for other people, either. You can't put as much money as you'd like down in the collection plate at Church. You can't surprise your fiance with a nice dinner out. You have to cut down on gifts for family members.

Two years ago, I budgeted for and sent $200 in donations to Partners in Health, a first-rate charitable and social justice outlet that has brought first-world health care to millions of people in developing countries. Recently, they called and asked if I'd be willing to make a small automatic monthly donation. I wanted to really badly, but I sadly had to tell them "no." I felt like a complete heel.

I want to think of myself as an open-handed person who doesn't have to think about money when important things are on the line. Now I'm realizing that the only people who have that luxury are the ones who already have money.

These are just a few of  the small ways in which unemployment saps your autonomy and your self worth. I'll be talking about more of those in the coming entries. And I'll be talking about the myriad ways that I'm shielded from most of the worst ones thanks to my relatively privileged position.