Daily Archives: 14 Oct 2011

Most Dangerous Jobs

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Taxi and CopOn a Last Word internet exclusive, Michael Moore makes a plea to the police officers of New York to join the Occupy Wall Street protests. Absolutely. He is right about this and I hope that some answer his plea. I have nothing particularly against the police. They are working stiffs just like the rest of us 99%. But then Moore said something that really bugged me. Actually, he said two things that really bugged me. Both fall under the same category: people very often defend the police (sometimes to justify their misbehavior) because of their supposed dangerous jobs and their low pay. Ha!

Did you catch the one about danger? “You have the most dangerous job in the country.” Sorry. Not even close. I am so tired of hearing this lie. Here is a list of the ten most dangerous jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the year 2009 (the numbers represent the number of deaths per 100,000):

  1. Fishing: 116
  2. Logging: 91.9
  3. Aircraft engineering: 70.6
  4. Farming: 41.4
  5. Mining machinery: 38.7
  6. Roofing: 32.4
  7. Refuse collection: 29.8
  8. Driving: 21.8
  9. Industrial machinery: 20.3
  10. Policing: 18.0

What most strikes me here is that taxi drivers are at number 8 (along with truck drivers). Unlike most of the other workers on this list, taxi driving is not much more than a minimum wage job. This relates to the thing Moore said about the police salaries, “You aren’t paid enough.” Nationwide, police officer recruits are paid $51,000 according to Indeed. This does not include overtime. And it does not include the excellent benefits that the police get. Perhaps most important of all: police salaries go up with time; this is the average starting salary. For example, sergeants are paid $71,000. (They all make a lot more where I live in expensive California.) Police officers commonly make two to ten times what a taxi driver makes and they have less dangerous jobs.

Police officers can and should be part of Occupy Wall Street. But can we please stop whining about how hard they have it? We all (all 99% of us) have it hard.

Normally I Say There Are No Stupid Questions

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Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman has an excellent post about Ricardian equivalence. What is Ricardian equivalence? It is an economic model that claims that any money spent by the government will be offset by money not spent by the private sector. Basically, it goes like this: if the government spends $100, the private sector will know that at some point that $100 will have to be paid back in taxes, so they will set aside $100 that they would normally spend. Unfortunately for the model and the conservatives who believe in it, the model depends upon such untrue assumptions as “[C]onsumers have perfect foresight, live forever, have perfect access to capital markets.” Krugman shows that even if you do accept this highly questionable model, government stimulus can still be used to help the economy. But then one of his commenters—CES from California—responds:

Or people just don’t think that the government spends money wisely…

I wish you would make a detailed list about where you think the government should be spending the additional $2 trillion you think it needs to spend to get us out of this liquidity trap. Without saying that, you’re just waving your hands around.

Just so you understand: although it would be nice if the government spent money on useful things, it doesn’t matter. Remember how World War II got us out of the Great Depression? Wars are not a good way to spend money; they don’t build infrastructure. And yet, even though much that government spending was effectively thrown away, it still got us out of the Great Depression!

Any more foolish comments CES?