Skip to content

Entirely glorious ignorance

The P³ wants us all to know about the glories of full employment:

I think that definition of full employment can be updated now. It has, very obviously to allow for people to have the hours of work that they want and to be rewarded for doing so at what we now think is a living wage. But take those into account and Beveridge is the start point for an appropriate theme.

Well, OK, but Beveridge is starting a little far back. His definition – more job vacancies than unemployed – is reasonable enough. His agreement that unemployment will never be zero because it takes time to sort through job applicants, for applicants to sort through offers, is also obviously true.

At which the P³ demands that we all think hard about this and he’s going to come up with some answers.

The correct answer to which is that Chris Pissarides did think more about this, detailed exactly what that frictional unemployment was likely to be, thought through the implications of greater skill levels, greater specialisation, and what that might mean and so on. He even got the Nobel for it.

But of course the P³ has never heard of Pissarides and most certainly doesn’t update the 70 year old observations of Beveridge by the knowledge revealed by his work.

Because the P³ is ignorant of the subject he wishes to spout about.

9 thoughts on “Entirely glorious ignorance”

  1. Did they mention that credentialism means the vacancies will never match the applicants and there’s little can be done about it? Except import dodgy foreign credential-holders, of course.

  2. It has, very obviously to allow for people to have the hours of work that they want and to be rewarded for doing so at what we now think is a living wage.

    This sounds great to me. I want to work, say, two mornings a week, with 15 days annual leave. In return, a living wage of £1,000 pw after deductions would fund my needs and allow me a modest living. I’m single, hence the minimal requirements.

    I shall be angry if the arguments of neoliberals such as Worstall are preventing this.

  3. MC

    That did make me laugh out loud – we don’t often see the great Noel Scoper on here these days. He often used to archive Spud’s stupidity for posterity but my guess is it’s reaching the stage where server capacity is an Issue. Leads me to wonder if the whole output isn’t satirical!

  4. Pissarides’ first academic job after he got his PhD was at the University of Southampton. I’m not certain about the dates but I think that Murph could have been one of his students. Doesn’t seem to have learnt much.

  5. @NickinNeuch

    Pissarides was at Southampton 1974-76. Spud was born 1958. I suspect Pissarides left before Spud arrived. The impending arrival may have caused the departure.

  6. Bloke in North Dorset

    Slightly OT,

    I heard some distant wailing and banging of fists on a keyboard. I presume it was from an end of terrace in Ely after the occupant had heard about the new appointment at the BoE:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-bank-of-england-s-new-monetary-hawk

    “ Some of the snap reaction is focusing on Pill’s similarities to those who came before him. Despite resources being poured into diversity teams to recruit a mix of applicants, it was Pill who was selected, a former Goldman Sachs economist and most recently a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.”

Comments are closed.

Can you help support The Blog? If you can spare a few pounds you can donate to our fundraising campaign below. All donations are greatly appreciated and go towards our server, security and software costs. 25,000 people per day read our sites and every penny goes towards our fight against for independent journalism. We don't take a wage and do what we do because we enjoy it and hope our readers enjoy it too.