The NYT says American productivity is stagnant. Here's a theory why.

The New York Times observes that American productivity is stagnant, and considers three theories why.

During the 2008 recession, labor productivity soared. Was this because employers laid off their least productive workers first? Because everybody worked harder, fearful for their jobs? Or was it a measurement problem as government statistics-takers struggled to capture fast-moving changes in the economy? We don’t know for sure.

None of the Times' three theories use this armchair psychoanalysis to consider one obvious reason American workers aren't more productive these days:

It isn't friggin' worth it.

Since the end of the Great Recession, Americans have become more and more aware — aided by growing discussion of income inequality and movements like Occupy Wall Street — of two very salient points:

• For decades, American productivity has soared.

• During those same decades, worker wages have stagnated.

Here's The Atlantic, reporting in February 2015:

Though productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at a much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.

That increased productivity has been good for the bottom line of a lot of businesses, but it hasn't meant boo to most workers. (Top earners, though, have seen their income and wealth soar.) Why have Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump been so successful this  election cycle? Because a fundamental American promise — worker harder, you'll probably do better — seems to be broken.

I come from the news industry, where we've spent most of the last couple of decades under constant pressure to do more with less, more with less, more with less. At some point, there's no more to be wrung from less. And if giving more won't gain you more, why not just put in your time, clock out at the end of the day, and stress out a little bit less?

This isn't the kind of thing that economists measure, I don't suppose. But maybe productivity is declining because workers are tired of the cycle. Maybe they need incentives.

How can you vote for Hillary Clinton and call yourself progressive?

Good question. Easy answer. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. I think we all remember how that worked out.

OK. Time to go vote.

Gonna cast a ballot for Hillary, hope she defends the progressive gains of the last eight years, and pray she doesn't choose to needlessly invade a Middle Eastern country.

It's a gamble.

What Vox gets wrong about Mississippi's anti-LGBT law.

Vox's explainer gets a little too cute today in discussing state-level LGBT laws:

What if I told you Mississippi's law doesn't actually allow anything new?

Now, the new law does technically allow discrimination against LGBTQ people: It lets bakery owners, for instance, cite religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples seeking to buy a wedding cake. 

But even before the new law was passed, this type of anti-LGBTQ discrimination was entirely legal in the state, because neither Mississippi nor any municipality in the state included sexual orientation or gender identity in its nondiscrimination protections. So it was already legal for Mississippi businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people, whether they cited religious beliefs or just said they don't like gay or transgender people.

This is both true — and good on Vox for helping readers understand that gays don't have protection in many places — but also kind of missing the point.

No, gays didn't have that legal protection in many states. But it's also a relatively new thing to write into the law that certain types of discrimination will be explicitly protected by the state.

As much as anything, laws have signaling functions: In this case, they allow a specific group (Christians) to deny services to a specific group (gays) in a way that's pretty rare in the rest of our laws.

I'm on record saying I'd rather my gay friends and Christian friends find solutions that avoid big fights like this — there ought to be room for both sides to exercise their rights without it becoming a zero-sum game that nobody really wins — and Vox is right that discrimination against gays is often legal.

But the law was silent before. It now affirms the discrimination. The effect may be moot, but the signal is not. That's new, and it's troubling.

No, Curt Schilling is not a free speech martyr.

Some angry talk these days from my conservative friends about ESPN's firing of famed pitcher Curt Schilling after Schilling posted some anti-transgender comments to social media the other day. "Progressive America is sending a message," National Review's David French wrote. "In the institutions it controls, there is no distinction between the personal and professional. Keep dissent to yourself. All your words belong to your boss."

I don' think that's quite the lesson to draw here.

This is what Curt Schilling posted:

It's a distasteful, near-pornographic image — one that, even if it said something like AMERICA IS THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD or VOTE FOR BERNIE SANDERS might've caused most people a bit of faint-heartedness.

Now, understand too: Schilling had already been suspended last fall for THIS post:

Too me, the sentiment is objectionable without being pornographic. This is the incident I might've criticized ESPN about. But Schilling, at the time, very much affirmed ESPN's right and wisdom to take him off-air.

"I understand and accept my suspension. 100% my fault. Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part," he wrote.

So Schilling knew there was a line, and had affirmed his employer's right to hold that line.

I have no idea what Schilling's contract said, but if you're ESPN, you're not just paying Schilling for his opinions, but to express himself in a manner that's entertaining, insightful -- and, because it's a business, doesn't turn too many customers away at the door. Cause people to want to actually turn away from your product, and, well, you have a problem. ESPN is not in the business of supporting expression that makes it *harder* for the company to do business.

Listen: ESPN knew — everybody knew — that Schilling is a conservative when the network hired him. If it hated conservative expression so much, that move is impossible to imagine. It knew what it was getting.

So if Schilling had said something along the lines of: "I have concerns about sending my daughter to bathrooms with people who are born men and I support the North Carolina law," most likely he'd have his job, without changing the underlying substance of what he said. He might've caused an outcry; ESPN would've distanced itself from his remarks; maybe he'd have been given a warning of sorts. Bad enough, certainly. 

Instead, he chose to say it with one of the more grotesquely offensive, off-putting — and, yes, outlying — images possible. That there are consequences from his employer does not make him a free speeh martyr.

How to solve the problem of bathrooms and gender: Privacy for everybody!

My memories of sixth grade: Moving to a new town, starting middle school, and being herded into group showers with a bunch of naked boys I’d just met.

It’s not a pleasant memory. After a lifetime of being educated on modesty, I suddenly found myself thrust into the most immodest of situations: The requirement that we take showers at the end of our P.E. classes. The boy’s locker room at my new middle school was cramped and had one big shower with a half-dozen nozzle for considerably more than a half-dozen boys. Exacerbating the discomfort? Some of us were hitting puberty faster than others.

Some of us, like me, were hitting it a little later.

That wasn’t the only upsetting feature of the experience. There was the kid who, after showering, put his socks on before putting his underwear. Who does that? Worse yet: My experience with an older kid — I think he’d been held back at least once — who had, to my tender eyes, the body of man: He loomed over me, freakishly hairy in all the spots you’d expect, with muscles that God never quite chose to bestow upon me. Whichever nozzle I managed to claim, even briefly, was the one he decided should be his own.

Ever had to fight naked in the showers? There’s nothing good about it.

All this makes me think that we’re trying to answer the wrong question in the current debate over what bathrooms should be used by which people of which gender identities. The real question is this: Why do we expect people of any gender or orientations to place themselves in a situation where they might be regularly expected to see somebody else’s genitals — or be seen?

Why should anybody have to give up that privacy?

"How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk": Why I hope Bernie stays in the race a little longer.

The decision between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in next week's Pennsylvania primary has been a tough one for me — though my heart says "Bernie," my head says "Clinton," largely because I believe he can't deliver on his vision but that she can, at the very least, defend and cement Democratic gains of the last eight years.

But NYT Mag's story, "How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk" reminds me that I think she's shown some awful judgment on the foreign policy front, and it includes this — to me — chilling sentence:

Well then.

Here's my problem: That awful summation doesn't change my earlier assessment. But I'm not interested in supporting her hawkishness. What's a dovish lefty to do?

Root for Bernie to hang around a little longer, I think.

There's been some talk this week, after Clinton's win in the New York primaries, that Bernie should bow out for the greater good of the Democratic Party. I don't think that's true: Hillary stuck around in 2008 long past the point it seemed clear that Barack Obama would win the nomination, and he did fine in the general election.

The dynamics aren't quite the same this year, but: The longer Bernie sticks in the race and continues to attract significant support, the more Clinton gets the message — not all of us are on board with your entire agenda. It's something she needs to hear, I think.

In 2008, she lost the nomination when Obama ran to her left. Bernie's done the same thing this year and made securing the top spot more difficult than she imagined. Will that make a difference if she gets to the White House? I don't know. But it can't hurt.