Thursday, August 13, 2020

Yes, more on Netflix, Avatar and the New Yorker.-- controlling the narrative





As we said earlier, there's nothing especially unscrupulous about Netflix (certainly not by 2020 corporate standards), but if you want to understand how how companies manipulate the press, you would be hard pressed to find a better and more informative business to study.

A big part of that manipulation is controlling the framing. In this case making the story about Avatar and Netflix rather than Avatar and ViacomCBS.

Avatar was part of a spectacularly successful and profitable run of original animated shows produced by Viacom's Nickelodeon including Blues Clues, Dora the Explorer, Doug, Rugrats, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, The Angry Beavers, Invader Zim, The Fairly OddParents, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Danny Phantom, and the wonderfully strange SpongeBob (which has brought in over  $13 billion in merchandising revenue alone).

Avatar remains an active part of ViacomCBS with graphic novels, Blu-Rays, video games, merchandising, even streaming. Netflix shares rights with CBS All Access, but in the article by the New Yorker's Alex Barasch, the focus is elsewhere.


"And yet when “Avatar: The Last Airbender” arrived on Netflix, in May, it rose through the ranks to become the platform’s No. 1 offering" [As mentioned before, "rose through the ranks" completely misrepresents what happened. -- MP]

"The show is beloved by political commentators ranging from the Times’ Jamelle Bouie to The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, who pledged, following its arrival on Netflix, to “just do tweets about Avatar until November.""

"Last year, Netflix announced a new live-action adaptation."

"This year, as a showrunner in her own right, she succeeded in advocating for a more demonstrative queer relationship in “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” which now sits alongside “Avatar” on Netflix."

"The series first ran from 2005 to 2008 on Nickelodeon"

"When Korra and Asami officially became a couple, in the series finale, Nickelodeon ruled that the two were allowed only to hold hands—but the hard-fought moment made bigger strides seem possible to those watching"


For those keeping count:

Netflix references: 4

Nickelodeon references: 2

Viacom and CBS All Access references 0

Remember, Netflix has spends a tremendous amount of money on marketing and PR,

and based on the recent wave of Avatar/Netflix stories, a nice chunk of that is going to a show that Netflix neither owns nor has exclusive streaming rights to (somewhat similar to the situation with She-Ra). This is a great deal for ViacomCBS which gets big checks and sees its IP revitalized. It's also a not bad deal for Netflix, which associates itself with a cult favorite, gets great bang for its buck in terms of hype, and builds interest in its upcoming live action reboot.

For the rest of us, it's a useful reminder of how much of the news we read is both initiated and shaped by the people being covered.

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Whatever-day-of-the-week-it-is Tweets






Even with a visionary CEO?


Interesting what strikes a nerve.



This can't be healthy for a society.



Everyone does get what's going on, right? One political party has decided the only way to hold power and avoid responsibility is to openly and aggressively sabotage democracy.




Tesla, of course.


It's easy to get a really big sample size if you're flexible on other things.






One of these days, I'm going to start a long thread on the infantilization of the far right



There is something wrong with Twitter when this joke doesn't go viral.



And finally.
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Andrew Gelman is worth reading

 This is Joseph
Andrew Gelman has an important reminder:
Lots of doctors can do this sort of thing—lots of them are indeed excellent at evaluating research claims—but if so, I don’t think it’s the medical training that’s doing it. The medical training, and their practice of medicine, gives them lots of relevant subject-matter knowledge—I’m not saying this is irrelevant—but subject-matter knowledge isn’t enough, and I think it’s a big mistake when media organizations act as if an M.D. is a necessary or a sufficient condition for evaluating research claims.
This is so true in my experience; there are medical doctors who are preternaturally good at research, I work with some, but their high level of research is rarely correlated with their medical training, per se. It is usually a result of either extensive self-education as a life-long learner or having snuck in some research training along the way. I think Andrew is correct here and it would be a benefit to everyone if we recognized this fact and did not level unfair expectations on M.D.'s.
Posted by at 1 comment:

I just remembered, we've picked on the New Yorker's Culture Desk before





Thursday, June 18, 2015


The New Yorker's culture desk could use a fact checker

I recently came across an uncredited piece that drove my inner film geek crazy. About halfway into the review of Ace Records’s new compilation, “Come Spy With Us: The Secret Agent Songbook,” I came across this.

[emphasis added]
The world of spy themes doesn’t stop at Bond (or at Bond offshoots or Bond antidotes), and neither does Ace’s set. Lalo Schifrin’s immortal “Mission: Impossible” theme is here, along with the Challengers’ version of Hugo Montenegro’s “Theme from the Man From U.N.C.L.E.” Both of those illustrate the relationship not only between spy music and surf music—similar in instrumentation, similar in insistence—but also between spy music and the music of spaghetti Westerns.

...

There are far too many good selections here to list them all: Billy Strange’s “Our Man Flint,” Nancy Sinatra’s “The Last of the Secret Agent” (Flint and Sinatra would collaborate on the theme song for the Bond film “You Only Live Twice,” which isn’t on the set) [That should be "Strange and Sinatra," Derek Flint being fictional and all. It should also be noted that the version of “You Only Live Twice” that most of us are familiar with is by Barry and Sinatra. Billy Strange had nothing to do with it -- MP], and Matt Monro’s “Wednesday’s Child.”   
Billy Strange was an arranger and session musician now best remembered as a member of the legendary Wrecking Crew. Hugo Montenegro was a minor film and TV composer (other than I Dream of Jeannie, I doubt any of his compositions would register if you heard them) who was best known for cheesy but popular cover arrangements.

[The original link for this blog is dead now so I made the obvious substitution.]




Both released albums of covers of soundtracks of popular movies and TV shows. As far as I can tell, neither had anything to do with the original scores. Those came from composers such as Ennio Morricone, John Barry and, in this case, the man who wrote the theme for the Man from UNCLE and composed most of the music for the show's first season and who scored both Flint films, Jerry Goldsmith.

For movie people, Goldsmith is kind of a big deal:

Jerry Goldsmith has often been considered one of film music history's most innovative and influential composers.[8] While presenting Goldsmith with a Career Achievement Award from the Society for the Preservation of Film Music in 1993, fellow composer Henry Mancini (Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Pink Panther) said of Goldsmith, "... he has instilled two things in his colleagues in this town. One thing he does, he keeps us honest. And the second one is he scares the hell out of us."[65]  ...  In a 2001 interview, film composer Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma, The Hurt Locker) stated, "Without Jerry, film music would probably be in a different place than it is now. I think he, more than any other composer bridged the gap between the old Hollywood scoring style and the the [sic] modern film composer."[67]
For someone writing about film music, crediting Montenegro or Strange with a Goldsmith composition is the kind of mistake that makes you wonder how much of the writer's expertise came from the liner notes. Perhaps worse, it is such an easily avoidable error. Thanks to Wikipedia, it takes so little time to get the facts right.

In fairness to the author, some of the critical points are valid (such as the relationship between spy films and surf music. For example, check out the arrangement from this sequence from Our Man Flint,



But even good arguments are difficult to take seriously when they come with careless mistakes.

p.s. I didn't want to go full nerd in the middle of a post, but if you feel like releasing your inner spy geek, I recommend checking out these discussions of the various arrangements of Man from UNCLE themes (including the revelation that Goldsmith hated Lalo Schifrin's new arrangement).

p.p.s. I ran this past an actual authority, Brian Phillips. He pointed out another one I should have caught: "Though Bill Cosby starred in “I Spy” as early as 1965 (the brassy Roland Shaw theme is included)..."  The I Spy theme was, of course, by Earl Hagen who was, in Sixties television, also kind of a big deal [Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke Show, etc.].

Brian also questions whether the bassline to "Come Spy With Me"  is really James Jamerson.
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, August 10, 2020

More on that New Yorker Avatar piece -- timelines






Caveat1 : No disrespect intended for Avatar, a fine show well deserving of all of the accolades.

Caveat2 : As previously mentioned, the obfuscations and press manipulations of Netflix seem a bit quaint in this age of fraud and pump-and-dump schemes.



I hadn't meant to spend so much on Netflix's PR campaign for Avatar, but the company is such a wonderful fount of examples of the hype economy. It is not an entirely left-handed compliment when I say that no one works the press better, which makes reverse engineering their strategies and tactics so interesting.





First a bit of context:
The extended Avatar franchise includes an ongoing comics series, an animated sequel series, a prequel novel series, and a live-action film, as well as an upcoming live-action remake of the show by its original creators to be produced for Netflix. The complete series was released on Blu-ray in June 2018 in honor of the 10th anniversary of its finale, and was made available to stream on Netflix in the United States in May 2020, and on CBS All Access in June 2020.
Now check out this July 5th New Yorker article by Alex Barasch.(emphasis added):

A fifteen-year-old cartoon is an unlikely contender for most-watched show in America. And yet when “Avatar: The Last Airbender” arrived on Netflix, in May, it rose through the ranks to become the platform’s No. 1 offering, and even now it remains a fixture in the Top Ten for the U.S. The series first ran from 2005 to 2008 on Nickelodeon, and swiftly made a name for itself as a politically resonant, emotionally sophisticated work—one with a sprawling but meticulously plotted mythos that destined the show for cult-classic status. Last summer, after “Game of Thrones” flubbed its finale, fans and critics held up “Avatar” as a counterexample: a fantasy series that knew what it wanted to be from the beginning.

As best I can place it, the show started streaming around mid-May. That means less than two months, perhaps more like one month, elapsed between Netflix adding Avatar to its lineup and the writing of this story.

That is remarkably little time given everything that had to occur. The audience would need time to discover the show. A suitable interval would have to pass in order to have an accurate read on viewership.

Once a network or streaming service knows it has a hit, it takes a while to decide on how best to exploit it. PR firms move rapidly under great pressure, but we’re talking about multi million dollar campaigns of immense complexity. This sort of thing takes time. Strategy has to be decided on. Press releases written. approved, and circulated. Subtle pressure has to be applied to friendly journalists. And, yes, even in 2020 multiple news cycles have to pass.

All of which has to happen before a reporter for the New Yorker can comment on the latest cultural hot thing.

Unless...

The order of events was different. It is far more probable that Netflix decided they wanted a hit or at least the perception of a hit with Avatar as a way of promoting their live-action reboot. It wouldn’t be that hard of a sell. The show had a large and loyal following and was a long time critics’ favorite.Under these conditions if you push the hell out of the show and keep a heavy thumb on the recommendation engines, something that can be spun as a hit is a pretty good bet.

The rising through the ranks Barasch describes appears to have taken around 48 hours since it took less than a week from the time the show dropped for a wave of Avatar-is-#1 stories to hit. 


The response of search and social media was even more rapid, which actually started trending upward two weeks before the show became available (coincidentally the same pattern you'd see with a big PR and marketing build-up).



The bottom line here is that journalists are far too credulous about the narratives they are given and far too ready to accept astroturf passing for grassroots. This is fairly harmless when covering beloved old cartoons, not so harmless when reporting on politics.

Posted by at No comments:

Friday, August 7, 2020

I am contractually obligated to mention that it snows every year in the city of Los Angeles


NWS: Heat wave to bring possible record-breaking, triple-digit temps to SoCal through weekend

Posted: Jul 29, 2020

The National Weather Service warned of hot, dry conditions and elevated fire danger as a heat wave is expected to send temperatures soaring throughout Southern California beginning Thursday.

Highs into the triple digits are forecast in valley and foothill areas through Saturday, while the Antelope Valley could reach 106 degrees.

Coastal and mountain areas will be slightly cooler, ranging from 85 to 95 degrees across the region, forecasters said.

San Bernardino and Riverside are expected to hit 105 and 104 degrees respectively on Thursday, and 106 degrees Friday, while sizzling temperatures of around 120 degrees are anticipated in Palm Springs on both days. 


The good news is the heat wave has broken (according to the morning forecast, we didn't break eighty in North Hollywood yesterday), but it was still too damned hot.for a while there. One days like that (or more accurately, the nights between them), I find there's something relaxing about watching Les Stroud shivering through a Northern Canadian winter.








Posted by at 2 comments:

Thursday, August 6, 2020

"Everything looks worse in black and white"

And this looks really bad.










Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

"And he mortgaged the house..."


When you get to the part about the technology being proven, remember that the testing is entirely focused on the aspects of the technology that we know will work. The main part that has experts skeptical is the ability to make a hyperloop financially viable, and the only way to prove that is to give these companies billions of dollars and see what happens.
U.S. Department of Transportation releases framework for hyperloop development
Jul 26, 2020

Proposed hyperloop transportation systems, which developers say can move pods with passengers or freight through low-pressure tubes at more than 500 miles an hour, have received a key endorsement: validation by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao released a 22-page document Thursday called Pathways to the Future of Transportation that’s designed to encourage innovation and place new transportation concepts under a specific regulatory agency. The document was developed by the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology Council that Ms. Chao appointed about 18 months ago.

For hyperloop advocates, the important step was placing hyperloop proposals under the Federal Railroad Administration and making hyperloop projects eligible for federal grants to help fund projects.

“This is a turning point for the industry,” said Ryan Kelly, vice president of Virgin Hyperloop One, one of two developers proposing systems to link Pittsburgh with Chicago.

“It gives confidence to stakeholders that this is a priority. This is not a pipe dream.”

Virgin is working with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission on a system that would connect Pittsburgh to Chicago via Columbus in about 56 minutes at a cost of about $93. The agency has completed environmental and feasibility studies for the system, which likely would be built in sections from west to east and take about 30 years to complete.

“Just the Federal Railroad Administration alignment for hyperloop is a big announcement,” said Thea Ewing, director of transportation for the Mid-Ohio group. “That alone is a pretty significant message from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Once you get to this point and you don’t have an answer for who regulates you, you don’t know what to do. [The proposal] becomes a non-starter for whoever you’re talking to.”

Mr. Kelly said the other important component to Thursday’s announcement is making hyperloop projects eligible for federal funding. The Pittsburgh-to-Chicago proposal always has been pitched as a public-private partnership, but at a cost of more than $20 billion it would be difficult for local agencies to pay for the public share by themselves.

The report said that once the technology is proven, hyperloop projects could be eligible under four different funding categories that have a combined $2 billion available in the current fiscal year.


Monday, March 5, 2018


Hyperloop watch -- We are now reaching that part of the movie where the wife goes to the bank and realizes that her husband has given their life savings to the con man.


I know I've been harping on this for years now and I'd imagine regular readers are growing a bit tired of the ranting, but the standard tech narrative, the one that is still more or less the default for even sober news organizations like the BBC and NPR, is deeply flawed and genuinely dangerous.

The hype and bullshit and magical heuristics that dominate our discussion of technology and innovation aren't just annoying; they have a real cost. They distort markets, spread misinformation, lead to bad public policy, and starve worthwhile initiatives of both funding and attention.

No figure brings out the worst of these tendencies in journalists more than does Elon Musk. Musk, it should be noted, does have some major accomplishments under his belt as an administrator, promoter, and finance guy. With SpaceX and, to a lesser degree, Tesla, he deserves considerable credit for significant innovations, but even with his most serious projects, there is always a bit of the Flimflam Man present.

The Hyperloop has always been Elon Musk at his most substance-free. A 70s era B- senior engineering project dressed up with 3-D graphics and a cool name. Despite being thoroughly demolished by virtually every independent expert in the field, the "proposal" has generated endless and endlessly credulous press coverage. Hundreds of millions of dollars in financing have been lined up by Hyperloop companies with dubious business plans. And now you can add millions in tax dollars to that.



From an excellent Slate article by Henry Grabar.


For American lawmakers, funding public transit often feels like small ball. Politicians prefer to dream bigger. Earlier this month, transportation agencies in the Cleveland region and in Illinois announced they would co-sponsor a $1.2 million study of a “hyperloop” connecting Cleveland to Chicago, cutting a 350-mile journey to just half an hour. It’s the fourth public study of the nonexistent transportation mode to be undertaken in the past three months.

“Ohio is defined by its history of innovation and adventure,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who once canceled a $400 million Obama-era grant for high-speed rail in the state. “A hyperloop in Ohio would build upon that heritage.” In January, a bipartisan group of Rust Belt representatives wrote to President Trump to ask for $20 million in federal funding for a Hyperloop Transportation Initiative, a Department of Transportation division that would regulate and fund a travel mode with no proof of concept.

It’s hard to keep up: Last week, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission announced feasibility and environmental-impact studies for a different hyperloop route, connecting Pittsburgh and Chicago through Columbus, Ohio, to be run by a different company, Virgin Hyperloop One. The company—which fired a pod through a tube at 240 mph in December—is also studying routes in Missouri and Colorado.* Meanwhile, Elon Musk—who has obtained (contested) tunneling permission from Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan—pulled a permit from the District of Columbia for a future hyperloop station.

But let’s first look at the hyperloop [from our old friends, the incredibly flaky, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies -- MP] that Grace Gallucci, the head of the Cleveland regional planning association the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), told local radio could be running to Chicago in three to five years, and to the study of which the NOACA contributed $600,000.
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Tuesday Tweets

We've seen a number of costly failures in the coverage of the pandemic, but the failure to convey the difference in risk between indoor and outdoor interactions has been one of the worst.
And while we're on the subject...



Our weekly reminder that the economy did better in places that didn't prioritize the economy over containing the virus.


This is as bad as it looks.



Good Krugman thread



Our neighbor to the east.

“If you don’t have an underlying health condition, it’s safe out there,” Gov. Doug Ducey told Arizonans in late May, hoping to stimulate the economy. Those words were also a death sentence for Dad, a healthy and exuberant 65-year-young man ...” https://t.co/7RCkM8LL9J

Fallows lays it out.

There is no way to reconcile Tesla's valuation with a competitive EV market, particularly in Europe, but somehow news like this never seems to hurt the stock.


Brutal Tesla thread


Wages of Strauss, again

There is something tiring about this kind of layered stupidity.

The dominance of the NYT is not good for journalism or democracy. (and yes, I'm an LA Times subscriber)

When a party internalizes the lies it's been  telling.

I've long harbored the suspicion that Marc Andreessen isn't actually that bright.

Yeah...

The bizarre logic of owning the libs.

I started to make a joke about this about this but decided it would gilding the lily.



Cool


Posted by at No comments:

Monday, August 3, 2020

There's something almost quaint about discussing Netflix's business model in 2020


Netflix’s price earnings ratio may be high (>80), but at least it has a price to earnings ratio.

It can accused of being at opaque company known for deceptive messaging and suspect statistics, but we’re reasonably certain it has never committed fraud.

We can have mixed feelings about Reed Hastings but he has never suggested that the SEC should suck on any part of his body.

And finally, it’s not Quibi.

But while the business tactics of a Netflix may not be as over the top as those of Tesla, they are, in many ways, more instructive. We are still living in a hype economy and no company has been more dedicated, disciplined or adept at working that system than Netflix. While companies like Disney may spend more total, relative to revenue (we won’t even get into profits), Netflix leads the pack.

Take this New Yorker article by Alex Barasch

The Stunning Second Life of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”



In and of itself, competent and reasonably well researched (with very notable misleading point), but in the larger context, it demonstrates how effectively companies manipulate even the most respectable publications.

Here’s the familiar process:

1. NF had a popular and (more importantly) talked-about hit with its reboot of She-Ra. Though the show is a “Netflix Original,” the company doesn’t have any real stake in the franchise.

2. NF follows up with a live-action reboot of another old cult-favorite cartoon, Avatar (no connection to the Cameron movie). Once again, this is apparently a licensing deal with little to no substantial IP acquired by NF.

3. NF pours tens of millions of dollars into promoting the original show in addition to laying a heavy thumb on the recommendation engine and possibly tweaking their self-reported viewership numbers.

4. A range of influence is applied to journalists (none of which is by any stretch new or limited to Netflix), from the actually having the PR agents write the stories or trading puff pieces for exclusives to simply providing a veneer of newsworthiness (it's a big hit, everybody's talking about it) for an easy, click friendly story such as the Barasch piece.

5. But what’s remarkable is the extent that Netflix can count on even the legitimate journalists writing stories in the last category to follow the company’s narrative without question or deviation. Interesting example, Netflix features prominently in this article and readers could easily come away with the impression that this was exclusive to the platform, possibly even a property owned by the company. It's not.  It is a Viacom/CBS show also available on CBS All Access.

All of this raises the question of why Netflix has spent hundreds of millions, possibly billions promoting shows like Avatar, She-Ra, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Jessica Jones, and others which it does not own. That’s actually my favorite part of the discussion, but unfortunately it is also a topic for another day.
Posted by at No comments:

Friday, July 31, 2020

Does posting a TED talk show we're open minded or does it just mean we've lowered our standards?


How architecture helped music evolve | David Byrne


Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, July 30, 2020

"You know that theory, that the White House makes the man..."


I'm not drawing any analogies here, but the comparisons are interesting.








Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Paul Krugman has no shame -- Wednesday Tweets



























You'll want to unmute this one.


Posted by at 1 comment:

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Implosions don't normally work this way





One of the major failures of imagination we are seeing from almost everyone, including really smart commentators like Jonathan Chait, is the assumption that the basic political structure of the country, particularly that of the Republican Party and the conservative movement will remain more or less the same after the collapse.

A republican loss is far from a foregone conclusion (we live in an age black swans), but a major electoral setback does seem highly probable at this point, possibly a historic one. While this is becoming the consensus view, most analyst seem to be thinking of this as another V-shaped recovery. Trump will go away. Things will go back to normal. And the republican party of 2028 or even 2024 will look a great deal like the republican party of 2012. That may be possible, but I very much doubt things will play out that way.

The success of the conservative movement over the last few decades has been astounding. They have managed to build upon a generally unpopular platform and shrinking demographics and have nonetheless held a remarkably large chunk of political power. There is a tendency of political commentators to want to play armchair sociologist and construct elaborate theories about why various aspects of the movement emerged when the answer is that it was engineered to do so.

There is virtually nothing spontaneous here, nothing that demands explanation. No part of the base that has not been cultivated. There is nothing but Astroturf as far as you can see and if you try to explain it with the language and tools of grassroots, you’ll make a fool of yourself. These attempts to treat social engineering experiments as organic sociological phenomenon leads to analyst and pundits spending a lot of their time mystified at what should be obvious.

Why do main stream news organizations like the New York Times routinely let Republicans like Paul Ryan get by with obvious lies? Maybe it has something to do with decades of working the rafts, message discipline, and playing carrot and stick games with access. Why do members of the Republican base believe they are a persecuted minority living in a socialist nightmare, under attack by other religions and dangerous extremists? Perhaps it has something to do with one of the most massive propaganda campaigns ever attempted outside of a state run media.

Media, of course, is just one part of the system. There is voter suppression and other techniques for making sure that some people count more than others. There is the push to get as much money as possible and maximize its leverage. There is an emphasis on strategically valuable offices and elections, particularly those in years not divisible by four. There is an emphasis on party discipline. All of these components are interconnected and each supports all of the rest. That means that when one is successful, it makes it easier to succeed with the rest. Unfortunately for the movement, however, this same interconnectedness leaves the system vulnerable to cascading failure.

In 2020, almost every component of the system is under stress and most are starting to buckle. If things do start to collapse, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that nothing is certain.
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, July 27, 2020

Tales from the V-shaped recovery


 
Presented without comment.

Summer Concepcion writing for Talking Points Memo:
Kudlow expressed optimism that jobless claims will fall, saying that he thinks “the odds favor a big increase in job creation and a big reduction in unemployment.”

Kudlow went on to claim, without going into specifics, that most economists and Wall Street suggest that the country is in “a self-sustaining recovery” despite how states that have emerged as coronavirus hot spots “are going to moderate that recovery.”

Kudlow then continued painting a rosy picture by saying that it’s “very positive” because he still thinks “the V-shaped recovery is in place,” which will lead to a 20% growth rate in the third and fourth quarters.

Later in the interview, Kudlow doubled down on his rosy sentiment by saying that the economy is improving by “leaps and bounds” due to “more states that are reopening and doing very well.”



Zack Stanton writing for Politico
When the economist Betsey Stevenson looks at the pandemic-era economic crisis, she sees a long-simmering child care crisis that has suddenly surged to the foreground of people’s lives—and whose true scope we’ve barely begun to reckon with. Its potential to inflict lasting damage to the economy is enormous, and it’s getting short shrift in the recovery plans coming out of Washington.

“The work of recovering from it will not end just because we have a vaccine,” says Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan and former member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “We are making choices right now about where we will be as an economy in 20 years, in 30 years, based on what we do with these kids.”

Among those most likely to be affected are working mothers, who shoulder an outsize share of child care responsibilities, and have suddenly had far more work dropped in their laps. Women already need to make difficult choices between work advancement and their family roles, which can bring down their incomes over time; Stevenson expects the crisis to make that conflict sharply worse: “The impact of the child care crisis on women’s outcomes is going to be felt over the next decade.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that both parents work in two-thirds of families in which married parents have children — as do the majority of America’s 13.6 million single parents. For all of them, there are major long-term financial repercussions of dropping out of the labor market, even temporarily.

“When you talk about upward mobility,” she says, “this puts families on just a completely different trajectory that’s not about losing two or three years of income; it’s about being on a lower earnings trajectory for the rest of your life.”

And for anyone hoping a vaccine will allow a quick, healthy reopening sometime next year, she says: Don’t count on it. “We are letting the whole child care system erode in such a way that it’s not going to be there for us when we are fully ready to go back. You’re seeing child care centers that can’t stay in business. They can’t figure out how to reopen. They can’t keep their employees on staff. They’re letting people go,” Stevenson says.

“Once we are ready to have all the jobs come back and we’re really ready to recover, even though we’ll have opened the schools, opened the child care centers, the workers aren’t going to be there, the slots aren’t going to be there.”
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)