Read further on Mr. Carlson: letter to the editor by April King
TweetEditor: perhaps the Shoreview Post (“Get up to speed with Shoreview news“) should read further on Mr. Carlson’s website. For a person ambitious enough to declare his candidacy for the presidency in 2012 (see http://www.stevecarlsonforcongress2010.com/Steve_Carlson_announces_candidacy_for_President), Mr. Carlson has truly mystifying economic opinions. His central claim is:
“That’s right, Minnesota businesses face long-term workforce SHORTAGES because our businesses create jobs faster than the population grows, but they can’t fill them because of people shortages. [...]The Minneapolis Federal Reserve System has historically faced long-term labor shortages which place us at a disadvantage with the East and West Coasts for attracting business and jobs.”
http://www.stevecarlsonforcongress2010.com/Steve_Carlson_for_a_new_jobs_environment_for_Minnesota
I presume he’s talking about the long-term demographic trends toward a much older population in MN (although that isn’t exactly what he says); whatever he means about labor shortages, it’s somehow mixed up with “illegal affirmative action”:
“We have illegal affirmative action throughout throughout [sic] Minnesota employers. “Affirmative Action” is illegal except in those rare cases where a a specific company has made a showing that its specific job category has a history of excluding women or minorities.”
That quote is from the same URL above, which is his section on how producing jobs in MN requires ending our historic labor shortages. What the connection is remains unclear to me after several readings.
Mr. Carlson is sincere in his views, but he is sincerely confused; there can be no “labor shortage” in MN when there is 7% (at best) unemployment here.
Shoreview Post readers, if you want a conservative, vote for Collett. If you want a liberal, vote for McCollum. If you want an economic fruitcake with presidential ambitions, vote for Carlson.
April King Shoreview
No, April, it’s not just older persons or whatever theory you may have. The simple fact is, that many jobs go unfilled because employers can’t find the people to fill them. Just because someone is unemployed does not mean that every employer can hire them for their job.
And this fact creates an opportunity for Minnesota, because businesses in the 4th Congressional District can benefit from reductions in regulations and costs that are barriers to quick hiring of the right people.
One of the questioners at the Ch of Comm meeting said they could not hire the people they wanted because of uncertainty about the tax climate and I’m sure that doubts about consumer spending also prohibit hires.
This is much more complex than I think you make it, about old people, was that it?
And I have no doubt that illegal affirmative action programs which cause corporations to avoid frivolous lawsuits by hiring a woman every time they can, or something like that, do inhibit hires, since the forced hire may not be a productive worker, and a great cost.
April, you wrote, “there can be no ‘labor shortage’ in MN when there is 7% (at best) unemployment here.” So you conclude that since I do not share your reasoning, I must be “an economic fruitcake.” I think this is facile, and I think it does not help at all in the 2010 mid-term elections in Minnesota to divide the political world into just liberals, conservatives and “fruitcakes.”
Do you have a background in economics? There are numerous examples of this seeming paradox of positions going unfilled, but it is undeniably a fact of life. And I did a little more digging at the federal reserve site http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/ to further clarify for you this issue of illegal affirmative action.
Illegal affirmative action is rampant, where a firm, usually a large firm, decides that it will combat gender discrimination lawsuits by adopting requirements to favor women in hiring or other employment decisions in job categories where there has been no hiring discrimination historically. They then hire and retain large numbers of people who are not productive in any way but who help perpetuate this comparative worth bureaucracy and themselves (when you interview you have to know that employers have these kinds of people vetting the hiring decision behind the scenes, not judging your qualifications or likely performance if hired). But is it necessary and can we afford it during the great recession?
I found an article that I think is on point called “Down with the comparable worth bureaucracy” in the fedgazette Editorial at “http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3141
I agree. Comparing our practices to Eastern Europe, a fed vice president warned that “here in the United States, a major effort is under way to abandon the market in favor of bureaucratic decision-making” called comparable worth comparable worth. “Its proponents argue that it is needed to address inequities in pay between men and women. Proponents seem to be willing to give up advantages of a market-based pay system in order to get what they think is a fairer system.”
The article explains that “When basing pay on the market, the manager must answer a question. In setting pay for new hires, the question is: How much do I have to pay in order to attract a person with adequate skills to the open job?” He explains, the market determine wages the same way it determines the price for any good or service: by equating demand with supply. Demand for workers in a particular job is determined by how many workers all employers in a market want to employ at different wages, and that depends on the value these workers bring to the employers.
But a comparable worth system will, in general, be different from market-based wages, because this type of system does not consider the demand for or the supply of workers for a particular job. Instead, it bases wages on the attributes of each job. Obviously, April, this means that comparable worth systems cause companies to ignore supply and demand of labor–in a recession–and instead focus on their little internal committees protecting the new status quo of illegal affirmative action. Courts are ignoring this at the country’s peril.
The fed explains that “under a comparable worth system, a group or individual determines the relative value of different job types by awarding points to job attributes. Points—maybe from 1 to 10—are awarded for such things as education and training requirements, responsibilities over valuables, management and supervisory tasks, and long-term planning duties. The committee then adds up the points in some fashion for each job it evaluates and places jobs with similar point totals in a single job grade. The committee’s judgment is required at each step: which attributes to consider, how many points to award for each attribute, how to weight points for different attributes, and where to draw lines between grades.” This reminds me of the way communist China used to be, and I reject it.
I am saying that now, to get out of this recession, and to give just-in time hiring capability to our companies on the ground, Congress should quickly move against “comparable worth” systems and allow firms to hire who they need, for what they need and when they need them, at rates based on their own decisions, not the government’s. If elected, I would revisit Title VII to amend it if necessary to make clear that it is not an unlawful employment practice, not disparate impact, to adopt a market-based pay system, and reject a comparative worth system. That will help to grow the businesses, supply long-term employment to many more people and drive economic growth. Under current law, affirmative action is simply not legal where it is not directly tied to actual historic discrimination it is narrowly tailored to remedy.
I know my opponents Betty McCollum and Teresa Collett share an interest in pitting women, or as Collett calls it, “women’s liberties” against the free market system. It’s killing us to tie the hands of companies who want to make money and be productive, and this whole comparable worth bureaucracy, i.e. human resources departments loaded down with women working in committees manipulating these kinds of salary and hiring decisions are driving companies out of our labor market, drying up economic activity while at the same time creating massive unemployment. This is a variation on “illegal affirmative action” and I have seen cases where a huge company had a committee that announced that managers who passed up a woman when she could have been hired instead of a man faced a harsh review in his or her next performance review. I want to fight back against the man-cession because to compete internationally and just survive, we need to get rid of this pernicious social engineering and get back to basics. If you think that’s fruitcake economics, I hope you’ll study this issue further and consider the economic impact of your vote.
Not to belabor, April, but here is something from Bill Clinton that caught my eye on CNN, and this is from a Huffington Post interview (he did both interviews). He makes my precise point about the “posted jobs rate” versus the “hire rate” and says if that gap were closed to what it was in most recessions, unemployment would be under 7% (for the country) now. I’ve embedded the video on my website.
http://www.stevecarlsonforcongress2010.com/Steve_Carlson_for_a_new_jobs_environment_for_Minnesota
Mr. Carlson, certainly there are positions that go unfilled. But that is not the main reason, or even a significant reason, for our reduced GDP and unemployment problem. It indicates terrible problems in MN’s public education system and that of neighboring states, but it does not indicate that we could solve our jobless problem in that way. Yes, of course, our economic problems are complex–therefore why hinge your entire argument on this particular, small aspect of it?
Your ideas on the causes for our problems are just weird. I detest affirmative action and the money wasted on “HR” departments, but to accuse Collett of supporting discrimination in favor of women is to broadcast a falsehood, as well as to ignore much larger factors at work pulling down our GDP (starting with our public and private debt levels, monetary manipulation to serve fiscal ends, and moving on through rapidly changing and excessive regulations and misguided tax policies, just to get started).
So I could grant you all you say about “illegal affirmative action,” and still think you a fruitcake. Emphasis matters, and to make that point the centerpiece of your economic proposals suggests some kind of personal axe to grind that is distorting your views of the most important place to start on our economic problems.
7% unemployment is 7% unemployment, and if you buy the well-documented reasoning of John Williams at Shadowstats, it’s probably a lot higher than that, even here in MN. The fact that there are some jobs, and we just don’t have the people with the right skills to fill them (or even are prevented from doing so by pernicious HR mandates) does not get you very close to solving the real labor problems in our State or nation.
Well, April, apparently you believe that calling someone “weird” or “fruitcake” is a high form of argumentation. However, you should look at what Bill Clinton said, supra, was the “stunning statistic” that would have reduced the American unemployment rate to under 7% from 9.6%. He said “almost no one has talked about” it, but that is 100% exactly what I am talking about, and I am sorry you don’t have the honor to admit it. It detracts from your argument, because you can’t blithely ignore his assessment of a drop in unemployment of about 30% it looks like, from 9.6 to under 7 percent.
Regarding Collett, it’s a good point, that she has been silent on the issue of comparable worth. If I’m wrong in interpreting her silence she can address the issue and I’ll be glad to hear differently. In fact, I’ll make sure to bring it up with her in our next debate. However, she does pit “women’s liberties” against the rights of the unborn, and that is abortion on demand, and that is based on the very same reasoning used by the defeated Arlen Specter to say abortion is an economic life-style choice, meaning, work and money and status come before the duty to be a mother, and a father.
What you say could also be said of McCollum, that she has not directly addressed the issue of illegal affirmative action and its impact on job-killing and the “man-cession.” I hope they will address it.
Do you really detest affirmative action, because you benefit from it at every step? Anyway, listen to what the respected opinion of Bill Clinton is. Then you can also call him “weird” and a “fruitcake” on this point. I guess I take private sector job creation a lot more seriously than you do, and don’t blithely skip through it. This isn’t just an election issue to me. It’s a mission.
This isn’t a game. We need to take our country back.
Sorry, tried to embed Clinton’s interview so you could respond to it, but don’t have the authority. If you really care about this issue rather than simply attacking me personally, I hope you’ll come to my website posted above, and look at it there. Many of today’s lawyers and in fact judges, and certainly politicians, seek to hide from and avoid the truth, but this does nothing to advance the nation’s solutions to the “man-cession” or other serious problems which I am to address.
Regarding your “axe to grind” personal insinuation, the issue in my mind, thinking logically about the issue, is: what can we do about private sector job creation? You give a half-analyzed laundry list you must have learned in school, but you must realize you cannot control these factors. So the plain fact is, you just don’t care, and I’m fine with that, that is a big part of the problem, thoughtless presumptuous partisans. But I focus on what we can do here, now. And as I said in the debate (I’m sure you would have done much better, being so thoroughly rational and analytical) businesses need to be allowed to hire who they want, when they want, to do what they want and if those jobs had been filled when posted, as Clinton said, at the rate of past recessions, it would have dropped unemployment 30%. From your protected little perch that must seem just fine, but for the unemployed across this country, including homeless, your smug disregard is indefensible. It goes in the category of inconsiderate.
What public school do you go to?
First I want to thank you both for carrying on the debate within the comments of the Shoreview Post. The focus of the discussion has been on issues so although I don’t like the fruitcake and weird references I let them go. I hope the discussions continue on away from the name calling and back on the issues. Again, thanks for using the Post to share your views on the issues.
Very good. I have no axe to grind. I believe that there is a man-cession which is destroying families across America. I would like my opponents McCollum and Collett to address the impact of illegal affirmative action, comparable worth human resources practices and other time and cost barriers to hiring as a brake on private sector hiring. I have striven to present my principles for looking to something Congress can do to give employers the powers of just-in-time hiring. I did not think the appellations have been appropriate and I have tried in the gentlest way possible to discourage them. If there is more substantive discussion on the issues here I am willing to participate. And I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to discuss these in further debates.
Mr. Carlson, if I had learned my laundry list at the public school I go to, would that somehow invalidate the argument I make with them?
As it happens, I’m a 36-yr-old law graduate who spends nearly all her time sacrificing her law license on the altar of child-rearing. I assure you, affirmative action has done nothing for me, at least not since I left the work force to take care of kids and encourage my husband to do his part fighting the “man-cession.” I’m as traditional as they come–you can’t out-hand-wring me over the state of the American family or the trouble some men (particularly minority men) have getting jobs. I just think you’re almost totally wrong about the reasons why they can’t get jobs, and whatever role “illegal affirmative action” plays in the problem, it’s negligible compared to other factors (and are you saying that as an elected Member of Congress you’d have no say over the laws governing the Federal Reserve, the public debt, and the other items on my “laundry list” of things that matter more than the “man-cession?” If so, why would anyone elect you?)
Of course I detest affirmative action. That obnoxious policy makes it possible for people like you to get by with nasty insinuations that other people, like me, haven’t earned their way in life. Because of affirmative action, there’s just a shred of possibility in the minds of the readers that it might be true about anyone considered to hold minority status, so you get away with hinting it about particular individuals you’ve never even met.
I’m going to ignore the other snide half-insults and respond on just one point that might matter to random readers deciding for whom to vote. It is outright falsehood to say, as you did above, “However, [Collet] does pit “women’s liberties” against the rights of the unborn,…”
Since that is the exact opposite of what she says on her website,
http://www.collettforcongress.com/on-the-issues/life/
I presume you’ll be issuing a retraction of your past characterizations of Mrs. Collett as pro-choice and disrespectful of the rights of the unborn.
Well, I see you’re a Collett supporter and a lawyer. Hopefully by now you have heard that my idea that there is a significant gap between posted jobs and hires is widely shared. For instance, just three days ago, three economists shared the Nobel Prize trying to explain the seeming anomaly. They didn’t think all the things on your laundry list explained it away. And in fact according to the WSJ, “The research aids economists looking at the current state of the U.S. labor market, who are trying to understand why job openings are rising while the number of new hires is lagging.”
http://bit.ly/a44a5N
I know you’re a lawyer, but it’s still a little unfair to begin to label me a “fruitcake” for targeting this issue, when I had never even met you. You’re wrong, but you would be the first lawyer I ever knew to admit it. You obviously don’t know anything about economics. I’m just being straightforward, not snide. So I wish you could have been a little more civil to begin with. Anyway, thanks for revealing a little more about yourself, I was afraid I was talking with a precocious high school student and didn’t want to hurt your feelings.
I will repeat to you what I told Teresa on KSTP, that in my opinion, she as a woman does not have the right to define when life begins, it is the responsibility of the man as well as the women, and her ideas about pregnancy “discrimination” in the workplace should not be raised to endanger the life of the unborn. She implies that because such “discrimination” exists, this somehow justifies abortion in such cases. She is presumptuous to bring her own personal problems into the abortion issue. Life is sacred period, and I will not be issuing any retraction. In fact, in light of MCCL’s withdrawal of their support for Jim Oberstar over the same issue, I have updated my site on which I also discuss, and in fact quote and offer an audio recording of Collett’s statement on June 7.
http://bit.ly/adtIXS