Allison J. Pugh — What Happens at Home When People Can’t Depend on Stable Work

My research, involving men and women who experience varying levels of job insecurity, suggests that the dampening expectations they have for employer commitment requires them to moderate the kinds of feelings they allow themselves to have in the event of a layoff. This is especially true for less-educated workers, who are most likely to say they could lose their jobs in the next year.…

So when we talk about work today, we have to talk about it in the context of an unrequited contract, our collective acquiescence to the notion that work can no longer be counted on....

Wake-up from a sociologist. The psychological impact of job insecurity can be devastating, as is shown in health and suicide statistics such as cited by Anne Case and Angus Deaton.

JG to the rescue.

Harvard Business Review
What Happens at Home When People Can’t Depend on Stable Work

Allison J. Pugh is a sociologist at the University of Virginia and a 2016-17 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, as well as a 2016-17 American Council of Learned Societies Fellow

Are We Doomed? "Smart" Accounting: "The Optimal Level Of Demand Leakage Is Aggregate Suicide"

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Demand Leakage: (when we hoard initiative by sitting on it, rather than investing it)

A situation in which capital, or income, exits an economy, or system, rather than remains within it. .. In a two sector [economics] model, all individual income is sent back to employers when goods and services are purchased, and back to employees through wages and dividends. Leakage occurs when income is taken out through taxes, savings and imports.

So the following message, parroted nearly everywhere, is cringeworthy.

Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics To Increase Employee Saving

Save More Tomorrow (hereafter, the SMarT program) involves people who commit in advance to allocating a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings. This has been shown to increase retirement plan savings significantly. (hat tip John Lounsbury)

And they have the temerity to call it SMART. I guess some people are just born stupid smart.

Why, by their logic, if we save EVERYTHING, just think how rich we'd be .... and how well off (dead) the next generation would be (since we wouldn't have invested a single penny in their development)!

Weepin' Buddha on a decline! They know not what they do. 

It's not a question of forgiving them, but rather of surviving them.

An electorate is a terrible thing to waste. No wonder some wag named "Smart" retirement savings as Zombie Economics. It's essentially investing in the walking dead.

No wonder every process is too important to be left to the presumed process owners. If we listened too much to professional risk-managers, we'd avoid living.

ps: for those who missed the point;

My rant is not against saving, but against collectively saving too much, as a fallacy of scale.

We already know that that approach alone won't save us. We as a people can't "save" ourselves out of lagging aggregate income, any more than individuals (as an aggregate of cells) can stay in a race by holding their breath and saving oxygen.

"Suicide is NOT the Solution!" - Budget Cutting Is?

commentary by Roger Erickson

Army Post Bucks Trend, Sees Suicide Rate Progress

This article really forces comparison of individual and national-suicide.

First, do all citizens know what national-suicide is, and how to recognize it's warning signs, early on?  The therapies are analogous.  Distributed life-support for individuals, and distributed income-support for our economy.  This ain't rocket science.

Yet there is so much confusion - with people at every level of all institutions not knowing WHY they're doing what they're doing. Our distributed, national-situational-awareness is abysmal, which is, of course, exactly why we're floundering.

"Fort Campbell, which in 2009 led the Army in suicides, has spent the last several years taking what the Army sees as drastic steps toward suicide prevention education. In 2008, it became the first post in the Army to hire a suicide prevention manager."

[rge: Wow!  If the methods described are considered drastic, we really are in trouble.  In addition to their stated goal - reducing individual suicide rates - at least the DoD is accidentally reducing our chances of national suicide as well.  They're spending more, more widely, and allowing another bit of aggregate demand, by providing salaries for more psychiatrists. Whatever!  It may be incidental, but it's an economy-saving start.  They're spending more currency income into our economy, so we can at least use that circulating currency to denominate pent-up real demand.]

"In still another program, the post has assigned a pharmacist to monitor the post’s soldiers who have been prescribed four or more medications, including one psychotropic, to make sure they both still need the medications and are taking them properly."

[rge: Oh lord!  Yes, it's still more income for a token few more people, but is the solution to stressful situations really to simply stay in them, and take drugs?  How about drastically accelerating reexamination of both the situation and our response options, i.e., how individuals, groups and our entire nation can manage or re-shape the situation?  We COULD consider changing policy, a wee bit faster?]

'Coupled with the Army-wide “standdown” suicide prevention training days scheduled for this week, yet another program piloted at Fort Campbell in 2009, the steps toward prevention seem to be doing something that has eluded other Army programs -- working.'

Poll: Is Military Suicide Preventable?

[rge: Ok, I'd like to take an informal poll. Is national-suicide preventable? Please simply comment here with a vote NS: yes, or NS: no.]

"Military suicides are historically linked to the 90 days before a deployment and the 90 days afterward, Varney said. "

[rge: Hmmm.  You have to wonder if that claim would hold up historically, for national-suicide before/after disastrous policy choices.  Seems obvious.]

"Army ... health care officials and .. chaplain ... teaching soldiers to not only recognize the signs of suicide in themselves and seek help, but even more importantly, to watch for signs in their friends and reach out on their behalf."

[rge: For Pete's sake! How long will it take us to scale up that same skill regarding national-suicide?]

'“A keen observer can tell when someone is under [suicidal] stress,” Varney said. “We have to teach people to know the signs and tell someone when they see someone else exhibiting those signs. … People don’t want to get into each other’s business. But that’s not the solution.”'

[rge: So far, so good. Now, how about when an entire economy is under stress? Can we get people to LISTEN to our existing keen observers?]

'"The programs across post look to focus on prevention as well, with “the entire community working together,” said Laura Boyd, a spokesman for Campbell’s Blanchfield Army Community Hospital. They aim to teach every medical provider to spot the signs of suicide, and every leader and worker to intervene, regardless of whether they are in the mental health field.
Still, there is one group on the outside of most of the Army and Fort Campbell’s suicide prevention training efforts: military families.'

[rge: So, let me ask all of us US citizens. Why can't we scale up those simple practices noted here, so we can have have more people spot the signs of suicidal national policy - soon enough?]

'“We spend every day asking ourselves the question of how we can get the word out about all of these programs,” Varney said.'

[rge: How about improving distributed situational-awareness, and thereby start down the path to altering the root causality?  Isn't that called an adequately informed electorate?]
'“Essentially, we know what leads people to suicide -- it’s stress,” Varney said. “What we don’t know is who has the ability to relieve that stress.”'

[rge: ?? Sure we do! It's us. That's what social species DO!!! ]