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This review originally appeared in the January 2006 issue of Z Magazine. I'd forgotten about it until somebody today mentioned that it's the anniversary of most of the striking workers' demands being met (12 March 1912), and so today seemed like a good one to post this:




Watson's greatest strength is his ability to weave weighty research into a narrative that is lively and seldom ponderous.  There are costs to this approach, because the minutia of a strike's planning and execution are not always suspenseful, and so, as Watson strives to hold the reader's interest there are times when the sentences sound like the narration of "America's Most Wanted" and swaths of yellow from the journalism of 1912 seem to have seeped into the book's pages.  This is a minor annoyance, though, in a book filled with vivid portraits of ordinary workers and their families, and with precise, careful renderings of an age and culture.  Again and again, Watson brings the book back to the circumstances of the immigrant workers who started the strike, and he compares their lives to those of other workers throughout the United States, to the owners and administrators of the mills, to the politicians, to the police and the soldiers who were sometimes fierce combatants with the strikers, sometimes bewildered and beleaguered sympathizers.

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For this American, my favorite holiday has always been Thanksgiving. Why? I have an image in my mind of Native Americans and colonists meeting and sharing food together; they share knowledge and stories. In the midst of their concerns about each other, they found respect for each other. Their spirit of sharing is a great inspiration.

As an economist in this upside-down world of people stressing over their future and present, I find answers in that image of Thanksgiving. People eventually survive by sharing with each other as a community. The poor are fed. The sick are cared for. The struggling are helped, and communal ties are strengthened.

There is a term in economics, social capital. This term refers to the cultural interactions within a society forming cohesion, coordination, and cooperation that allow an economy to function better. An economy relies on people from diverse backgrounds talking, sharing concerns, negotiating, making plans, and working toward common goals. The social quality of their communication determines the true strength and potential of their economy.

When the Native Americans and the colonists met and shared, I see social capital being built. The society became stronger. People would be better able to have their needs met. There would be less conflict and more enjoyment of work. The societuy would be able to grow in potential.

The focus of my research as an economist is in the area of labor share, which is the percentage of the income from production that is shared with labor. I research how changes in labor share affect such things as potential production, employment, productivity, investment, and even monetary policy from a central bank.

In almost all advanced countries, even in China where labor share was already low, labor share has fallen in an exorbitant way since the turn of the century. What has been the effect of labor receiving less share of a national income? Potential output has fallen. Unemployment will be higher than before. Productivity growth will stall much quicker, or even fall as in the United Kingdom. Nominal interest rates from central banks will be stuck near 0%.

The fall in labor share represents a problem in the social capital of advanced countries. Labor is being excluded from economic development. Their concerns are not being heard, while corporate profits extend to new records. Labor’s wages are expected to fall in order for companies to be more competitive globally.

Stop. Take a moment of silence.

Acknowledge the growing problem of inequality, and return now to celebrate this holiday of Thanksgiving. Within this day exists the answers to our economic concerns. As societies, we only need to share more. And in sharing, we show our respect for the value of people within society.

The Navajo, or Diné, have a saying: “A man can’t get rich if he takes proper care of his family.” The wisdom embodied in this saying is immense. The wisdom not only assures the strength of each member of the community by building social capital, but it assures a stronger economy.

Now we need to answer the question: Who is family?

Here comes the true meaning of Thanksgiving: We are all family. The poor, the rich, the uneducated, the educated, the powerful, and the powerless, as well as those of different races and cultures. Families, friends, and strangers are invited into our homes to celebrate Thanksgiving. The abundance is shared and ties of respect are celebrated.

The extent to which a society can see everyone within the society as family determines the potential of their economy and eventually the quality of life. So Thanksgiving is a moment to celebrate how different people can embrace each other in a spirit of sharing. In that sharing, a broader vision of family is cultivated. In that vision, sick economies can be healed.

Featured image ‘Home to Thanksgiving’ litohraph by Currier and Ives (1867). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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By John Knowles

If you become wealthier tomorrow, say through winning the lottery, would you spend more or less working than you do now? Standard economic models predict you would work less. In fact a substantial segment of American society has indeed become wealthier over the last 40 years — married men. The reason is that wives’ earnings now make a much larger contribution to household income than in the past.  However married men do not work less now on average than they did in the 1970s.  This is intriguing because it suggests there is something important missing in economic explanations of  the rise in labor supply of married women over the same period.

One possibility is that what we are seeing here are the aggregate effects of bargaining between spouses. This is plausible because there was a substantial narrowing of the male-female wage gap over the period. The ratio of women’s to men’s average wages; starting from about 0.57 in the 1964-1974 period, rose rapidly to 0.78 in the early 1990s.  Even if we smooth out the fluctuations, the graph shows an average ratio of 0.75 in the 1990s, compared to 0.57 in the early 1970s.

The closing of the male-female wage gap suggests a relative improvement in the economic status of non-married women compared to non-married men. According to bargaining models of the household, we should expect to see a better deal for wives—control over a larger share of household resources – because they don’t need marriage as much as they used to. We should see that the share of household wealth spent on the wife increases relative to that spent on the husband.

Bargaining models of household behavior are rare in macroeconomics. Instead, the standard assumption is that households behave as if they were maximizing a fixed utility function. Known as the “unitary” model of the household, a basic implication is that when a good A becomes more expensive relative to another good B, the ratio of A to B that the household consumes should decline.  When women’s wages rose relative to men’s, that increased the cost of wives’ leisure relative to that of husbands. The ratio of husbands’ leisure time to that of wives should therefore have increased.

In the bargaining model there is an additional potential effect on leisure: as the share of wealth the household spends on the wife increases, it should spend more on the wife’s leisure. Therefore the ratio of husband’s to wife’s leisure could increase or decrease, depending on the responsiveness of the bargaining solution to changes in the relative status of the spouses as singles.

To measure the change in relative leisure requires data on unpaid work, such as time spent on grocery shopping and chores around the house.  The American Time-Use Survey is an important source for 2003 and later, and there also exist precursor surveys that can be used  for some earlier years. The main limitation of these surveys is that they sample individuals, not couples, so one cannot measure the leisure ratio of individual households.  Instead measurement consists of the average leisure of wives compared to that of husbands. The paper also shows the results of controlling for age and education. Overall, the message is clear; the relative leisure of married couples was essentially the same in 2003 as in 1975, about 1.05.

One can explain the stability of the leisure ratio through bargaining; the wife gets a higher share of the marriage’s resources when her wage increases, and this offsets the rise in the price of her leisure.  This raises a set of essentially  quantitative questions: Suppose that marital bargaining really did determine labor supply how big are the mistakes one would make in predicting labor supply by using a model without bargaining?  To provide answers, I design a mathematical  model of marriage and bargaining to resemble as closely as possible the ‘representative agent’ of canonical macro models.  I use the model to measure the impact on labor supply of  the closing of the gender wage gap, as well as other shocks, such as improvements to home -production technology.

People in the model use their share of household’s resources to buy themselves leisure and private consumption.  They also allocate time to unpaid labor at home to produce a public consumption good that both spouses can enjoy together.  We can therefore calibrate the  model to exactly match the average time-allocation patterns observed in American time-use data. The calibrated model can then be used to compare the effects of the economic shocks in the bargaining and unitary models.

The results show that the rising of women’s wages can generate simultaneously the observed increase in married women’s paid work and the relative stability of that of the husbands. Bargaining is critical however; the unitary model, if calibrated to match the 1970s generates far too much of an increase in the wife’s paid labor, and far too large a decline in that of the men; in both cases, the prediction error is on the order of 2-3 weekly hours, about 10% of per-capita labor supply. In terms of aggregate labor, the error is much smaller because these sex-specific errors largely offset each other.

The bottom line therefore is that if, as is often the case, the research question does not require us to distinguish between the labor of different household or spouse types, then it may be reasonable to ignore bargaining between spouses.  However if we need to understand the allocation of time across men and women, then models with bargaining have a lot to contribute.

John Knowles is a professor of economics at the University of Southampton. He was born in the UK and schooled in Canada, Spain and the Bahamas. After completing his PhD at the University of Rochester (NY, USA) in 1998, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and returned to the UK in 2008. His current research focuses on using mathematical models to analyze trends in marriage and unmarried birth rates in the US and Europe. He is the author of the paper ‘Why are Married Men Working So Much? An Aggregate Analysis of Intra-Household Bargaining and Labour Supply’, published in The Review of Economics Studies.

The Review of Economic Studies aims to encourage research in theoretical and applied economics, especially by young economists. It is widely recognised as one of the core top-five economics journals, with a reputation for publishing path-breaking papers, and is essential reading for economists.

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Image credit: Illustration by Mike Irtl. Do not reproduce without permission.

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By Elvin Lim

Something is afoot in American politics. There was a time when the rights of workers, even government workers, to collectively bargain, was taken for granted. There was a time when federal budget deficits were accepted as a necessarily evil but it was only a problem talked about and no one addressed. There was a time when it was political suicide to talk about extending the retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits. Whatever that is left of the political consensus of the last half-century is unraveling today into a cantankerous politics in which settled issues are now up for political re-litigation.

Democrats are on the defensive because they have never taken seriously the diversity of the Republican party, and have therefore failed to anticipate the insurgency of fiscal conservatism that began in 2009. They are fumbling to define a strategy to defend labor in Wisconsin because they have for so long been fighting a different enemy, neo-conservatism – which one might argue is a familiar cousin to liberalism in their shared commitment to budget deficits as an embarrassing but necessarily evil.

For so long relegated to second-place within the Republican fold, fiscal conservatism is today the pre-eminent breed of conservatism, sexier even than neo-conservatism. For so long presumed to be the heart of the Democratic party, labor knew not what to say when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker threw them a curveball, attacking the right to collective bargaining which had been entrenched for the last half-century. Democrats know how to protest wars, but they haven’t had to aggressively organize themselves to defend labor rights for half a century! Obviously, there are a many number of ways of making up a budget shortfall without attacking collective bargaining rights, but Wisconsin Democrats did not dive straight into articulating this odd connection. Instead, they appear to have conceded to the framing of the problem in fiscal terms (by accepting the Governor’s proposal that state employees pay 5.8 percent of their salary toward their pensions and 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums) and ended up restricting the range of argumentative exits left to them.

Successful political aspirants of the 21st century must understand the tectonic shifts which are occurring with increasing regularity in our politics. And politicians who are not nimble responders to the political cleavages of the day are condemned to fight the wrong battles. The reason why John Kerry lost in 2004 was because he was cast and perceived by a sufficient majority to be a flip-flopping pacifist. 2004 was not the time to challenge the wars abroad. (2008 was.) The reason why Democrats lost so many seats in Congress in 2010 was not because the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan weren’t going well enough, but because a new faction within the Republican party was able to bring domestic politics, and in particular fiscal issues, back on the national agenda.

For Democrats to stand a fighting chance in the congressional elections in 2012, they have to take the fiscal bull by the horns, even if it means renegotiating the relationship between the party and the clients of the Democratically-sponsored social-welfare state. Similarly, for social conservatives who want to advance their cause, they must piggy-back it on libertarian issues, as advocates for the de-funding of Planned Parenthood have wisely done.

Republican primary contenders should also note that seasons have changed. Dick Cheney is out, and Paul Ryan is in. There is a new issue du jour in town – though for how long, we don’t know – but it will likely be

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the effects of health-care reform. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

House Democrats have passed the health-care reform bill. Assuming Senate Democrats pass the accompanying reconciliation bill, this is a punctuating moment in the history of the American state, and a game changer for the politics of Elections 2010.

Since the New Deal, Democrats have embarked on a state-building enterprise. Democrats have expanded the functions of the state because they believe that individuals left by themselves and markets do not give us optimal levels of economic rights, civil rights, or health-care rights. Some Republicans were on board for a while, but today most see the accumulation of governmental responsibilities as the road to serfdom.

I am not sure that health-care reform takes us one step closer to socialism, but the Republicans are correct in their public statements that health-care reform will effect a major reconfiguration of citizens’ relationship with the state, and in their private sentiments that it is very difficult to roll back the state once it has been bloated. There was a time when bills calling for federal funding of roads between states were vetoed, when a federal income tax was unconstitutional, when investment banks were not regulated. None of these federal prerogatives are controversial today. Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama are correct that health-care reform is about the character of our country, though it might be fairer to say that it is about the evolving character of our country, because the developmental history of the expanding American state has paralleled America’s steady transition from pluribus to unum.

There are now 32 million new constituents of the (health-care) state, even if many will end up purchasing insurance from private exchanges. They are going to be committed to the state as wards are committed to their patron, and as seniors have come to love Medicare. Americans may not like the state, but our appetite for government tends to increase once we have been touched by its largess. Barring catastrophic implementation failure (because Medicare isn’t exactly a perfect program and it remains popular), the Democratic Party has just earned itself a sizable new constituency, not unlike what it did when FDR passed pro-labor legislation, or when the Republican Party handed out pensions to civil war veterans. At least some of these 32 million will go to the polls in November, and Republicans who have been fighting very hard to kill health-care reform know this. But because health-care reform has passed, Democrats have at least a fighting chance of keeping their congressional majorities when this seemed all but impossible a few weeks ago. For the first time since Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, the momentum is back in the Democrats’ court.

Barack Obama’s poll numbers are going to go up too. He lost many independents over the past year because he was seen to be too liberal, but he lost just as many  because he was seen to be incompetent in delivering change. When members of congress were chanting “Yes, We Can” on the floor of he House on Sunday night, we know that some of the old magic is back. He has done something that the last popular Democratic president, Bill

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Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America.  In this article, Zelinsky discusses the federal government’s promotion of common stock investments for 401(k) participants. He suggests that, in light of the Crash of 2008, that promotion constitutes misguided paternalism.

Even as we contemplate the financial carnage of the Crash of 2008, the federal government sends a strong, paternalistic and, ultimately, misguided message to 401(k) participants: Invest your retirement savings in common stocks.

Congress, in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA), directed the Secretary of Labor to promulgate regulations specifying the “default investments” to which 401(k) funds will be directed if participants fail to make their own investment choices. Under the regulations issued by the Secretary of Labor, a plan fiduciary obtains immunity from liability for a participant’s investment decisions only if the plan’s default investment constitutes a “qualified default investment alternative.” Among other requirements, a qualified default investment alternative must satisfy one of three mandatory patterns: a “life-cycle” pattern under which “a mix of equity and fixed income” investments changes for the individual participant as the participant ages, a “balanced” portfolio under which each participant has the same “mix of equity and fixed income” investments “consistent with a target level of risk appropriate for participants of the plan as a whole,” or a “managed account” under which an investment manager allocates a particular participant’s account to “a mix of equity and fixed income” assets.

When one cuts through the bureaucratic verbiage, a strong message emerges: 401(k) funds, particularly the funds of younger participants, should be invested in common stocks.

At one level, the PPA and the DOL regulations which implement it reflect a plausible investment theory, namely, that common stocks, for the long run, do better than do more conservative investments. The PPA and the DOL regulations also respond, in light of this theory, to two accurate perceptions about the 401(k) world: First, unless participants direct otherwise, 401(k) plans have historically placed participants’ resources into conservative, low-yield investments like money market funds. Second, 401(k) participants often fail to diversify their holdings out of these conservative default investments.

Hence, the PPA and the DOL regulations channel 401(k) funds toward common stocks by effectively requiring that at least part of passive participants’ accounts be invested in such stocks.

Surveying the wreckage of the Crash of 2008, this looks like misguided paternalism. Many investors who buy common stocks in the current bearish environment are likely do well in the long run. But, as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future success. And some, particularly smaller investors, may sincerely and (from today’s perspective) rationally prefer to avoid the volatility associated with common stocks.

There is, as we have just seen, a reason that the extra projected profit associated with common stocks is labeled a “risk premium.” The passive 401(k) participant who leaves his funds in conservative, low-yield investments looks more reasonable today than he did when Congress passed the PPA in the bull market of 2006.

A defender of the PPA and the DOL regulations could retort that they do not require participants to invest in common stocks, but merely send 401(k) funds to equity investments unless the participants direct otherwise. True. But the PPA and the DOL regulations nevertheless reflect a father-knows-best attitude, taking it as the federal government’s responsibility to privilege its preferred approach to investing and enshrining that stock-based approach in the law.

Before the Crash of 2008, such paternalism looked plausible. At an as yet unknown date in the future, such paternalism may look plausible again. Today, it looks misguided.

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This is the tip of the iceberg of a huge conversation, but I just want to get it started.

This week at the ABA publisher forums, the first evening was a session where publishers answered questions compiled from a number of booksellers. One of the biggest was, of course, what publishers are doing to make their industry more green.

I admit to being a tad disappointed by their answers up there on the dais -- most of them had to do with making their offices more green, like not using water bottles and not printing out emails. That's good, but obviously the question really refers to the huge impact of the massive amounts of paper used to create their product: books.

I jumped up and made an impassioned (and okay, slightly drunken) plea that publishers start talking about whether we can be proud of where books come from, in terms of both the environmental impact and the labor impact. If books are being made from paper from trees cut down in the Amazon and printed and bound in sweatshops in China, we need to know, and it needs to change.

Nobody really responded to my question/plea (they didn't exactly ignore it -- the conversation just moved on). I wasn't sure whether it's because it was a dumb thing to say, or they just didn't have an answer, or they didn't want to talk about it. In talking the whole thing over later in the week with my buddy Steve, who works both the bookselling and publishing angles, I've realized it may have been all of those. And I also realized how little I know about where the books in my store come from.

First of all, Steve set me straight on the sweatshop printer thing. Most books published in America, he tells me, are printed in American printshops, because it's still a skilled labor thing, not the automated factory monstrosity I'd imagined. In fact, you can usually find out where a book was printed right on the copyright page. I'd never looked. Some books, though by no means all, actually have the name and address of the printer on the title page, and most say "Printed in the USA" or words to that effect. I guess that doesn't guarantee no one's being exploited, but Steve says in his visits to printers everyone seems to take pride in their work and think of themselves as artisans.

(Some glossy art books are printed in Italy, he says, where they have better facilities for that sort of thing. And my boss says that some four-color printing does take place in China, where standards for labor and environmental responsibility are much lower than they are here.)

Well then, where do the trees come from?, I wanted to know, clinging to my righteous indignation. That we couldn't answer, though he promised to look into it.

But he did send me this bit from Publishers Weekly -- talk about impact. "The U.S. publishing industry emits over 12.4 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, or about 8.85 pounds per book." I'm going to have to read more about that in PW this week.

Clearly that number ain't good, and we need to change things if we can.

At the forum discussion, one bookseller (the clearly brilliant Arsen Kashkashian, head buyer at the Boulder Bookstore and proprietor of the blog Kash's Book Corner) asked whether publishers couldn't increase the price differential between returnable and non-returnable books. That would be an incentive for booksellers to buy non-returnable, which would mean fewer books returned to publishers. Returns often get pulped, destroyed -- massive waste of paper and energy. But would that result in fewer initial book sales, as booksellers are more wary of taking a chance on something they can't return?

Another suggestion (mostly posited by those outside the book industry I think) is the move to electronic books -- just get rid of that pesky paper altogether. While I'm intrigued by e-books, I think that's a false switch. Paper, at least, is recyclable and biodegradable (usually). While digital files don't have a carbon footprint exactly, the electronics to read them on are made with metals like mercury that don't go quietly back into the earth -- they're difficult to dispose of and sometimes literally poisonous. And electronics often come with "built-in obsolescence" -- they're designed to be tossed when the next big thing comes along, adding to the massive, scary amount of e-waste.

One thing some publishers are talking about is using paper from sustainable forests -- that is, those that are managed, replanted, not clear cut, and thus better for the ongoing health of the planet. And of course, there's always the option of printing on recycled or partially-recycled paper. But both of those options are more expensive than traditional methods, which might lead to jacking up the cost of the book itself, or a cut in profits to the publishers if not. So the move is happening very slowly, if at all.

All of these solutions are problematic, but it seems as though we've got to start thinking about it.

What do YOU think? Do you have knowledge to share about any of these factors or practices? What do you think makes the most sense for the book industry to do going forward? Any insights or thoughts would be much appreciated. It seems clear that this is the something we need to tackle as an industry, and something we should be better informed about as booksellers. I hope to talk more about this in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I feel lucky to work in an industry that's got enough idealists that we know we've got to do the right thing, even if it takes a little while to figure out what that is.

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The CNMI got a 50cent raise in minimum wage (to $3.55) last July 2007, and is set to have another 50cent raise (to $4.05) this May 26, 2008.

It comes as no surprise that our illustrious governor is trying to put the kibosh on this next incremental raise, and all future scheduled raises (50cents each year through 2015, until we reach $7.25, which will be the minimum wage in the U.S. set for year 2009). He lobbied heavily against the first increase, and effectively insisted on having the minimum wage law include requirements for a study by the Department of Labor on the effect of the raises.

And he is not alone--the representative to the U.S. Congress from American Samoa has introduced a bill to stop the incremental minimum wage increases, which also apply to them.

The U.S. Department of Labor has now issued its report, and the Variety and Tribune have each reported the governor or his spokespeople saying how this report completely vindicates their argument that raising minimum wage in the CNMI is harmful to our economy.

Thanks to Ken Phillips at SOSaipan for a link to the actual report, which I've linked to, also, here.



Ken's comments are also helpful in orienting a reader to the report's "findings."

CNMI Governor Fitial is using the age-old practice of "spin" to argue that the DOL's latest report supports suspension of the minimum wage hike. See, e.g. this Variety news story or this Tribune story.

The spin includes distortions of what the report actually says, what people in the CNMI think about raising minimum wage, and characterization of the report as reaching a conclusion against implementation of the next minimum wage increase.

1. According to the Tribune article, "Increasing the CNMI wage to $7.25 an hour, the report said, is comparable to raising the U.S. minimum wage to $16.50 an hour." NOT TRUE.

First of all, the report actually says "The scheduled increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 (by 2015) will likely affect at least 75 percent of wage and salary workers in the CNMI. By comparison, in order to directly affect 75 percent of U.S. hourly workers, the minimum wage would need to be raised to $16.50, the 75th percentile mark for wage and salary workers who are paid hourly rates."

What this means is that the CNMI has a much larger segment of its working population suffering from the low minimum wage than the U.S. does. In the U.S., minimum wage is truly a "floor" and many workers obviously earn more than the minimum, which is why it would take such a much larger increase to effect 75% of them. This is not an argument AGAINST raising minimum wage here, but only highlights the urgency and desperation of why we need these incremental raises.

Second of all, the report is comparing apples and oranges--or really today and many years hence. The CNMI is not facing a raise to $7.25 this year. We are facing a raise to $4.05 this May. NOTHING in the report tells us what that is comparable to in the U.S.


2. The governor reports a "broad concensus" against raising the minimum wage to the next level here. Jeff Flores has already spoken out here that he disagrees, and doesn't believe people here are uniformly against raising minimum wage.

It's time to show that the Governor is misstating the facts about what the people in the CNMI want. Every worker here who earns minimum wage of $3.55 who is in favor of raising their minimum wage to $4.05 should contact Mr. George Miller or any of the representatives on the House Committee on Education and Labor. Any other person, whether you earn minimum wage or not, who feels it's important to raise the CNMI minimum wage to $4.05 this May, can also express their views to the committee members. You can see the full committee roster here. Or you can just write or call: Democratic Staff, 2181 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, (202-225-3725).

3. The DOL report includes statements about the past that are informative, but nothing it says about the present effect of the minimum wage here or the likely effect another raise may have is at all reliable. The report itself denies reliability.

It notes that there are many adverse economic factors. In discussing the garment industry, the report says that lack of data make it impossible to distinguish among the various adverse factors as to which are having the greatest impact. (page 31)

Although the report paints a bleak picture and talks about how difficult having a raise in minimum wage is when times are tough, it also suggests that the tourism industry may rebound. If it had applied its own logic to this statement, this might suggest room for absorbing the impact of the minimum wage hike.

But most telling is this: "The CNMI does not yet have in place macroeconomic data collection and accounting-systems technology capable of generating information on total output and its components on a monthly or quarterly basis. As a result, there is not a way to provide objective measures of productive capacity, capacity utilization, employment, wages or unemployment rates...In the absence of complete and accurate macroeconomic data, there is no objective method to guage the level of aggregate economic activity, the level of employment it supports, or other important measures such as total personal income, consumption, savings and other metrics that explain the well-being of the population and the average citizen...The lack of such data are especially a barrier to assessing the current and future impact of the recent and scheduled increases in the minimum wage."

In other words--they're just guessing, and can't say anything objective.

The Governor's spin is nothing but more twist against what is fair and just--a living wage for workers.

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One of my favorite comic book series is getting extended! See press release below from DH:

Yo Ho Ho, a Samurai’s life for me . . .

Shiro and Yoshiko are like two ships forever taken in different directions by the wind. Their quest to be together has taken them from Japan to China to Paris to Egypt, where their reunions have been fleeting. And yet, they have pledged to belong to only each other, “If not in life, then in death.”

Samurai: Heaven and Earth Volume Three kicks off on the open sea, with star-crossed lovers, samurai Shiro and his love Yoshiko torn from each other’s arms after being reunited at the end of volume two. This time, Shiro crosses the open seas in pursuit of Yoshiko, who has again fallen into the hands of his arch-nemesis, the Spaniard, Don Miguel Ratera Aguilar. The journey takes them to the New World at the dawning of the golden age of piracy. Shiro is now a reluctant crewman on an English privateer during Queen Anne’s War, when colonial powers battled for supremacy in the Caribbean and the Americas. When he hears of a Spanish nobleman with a beautiful Asian woman at his side, Shiro knows his enemy, and his lover, are close at hand.

Shiro must enlist his crewmates in his quest, characters whose origins span both historical and literary pedigrees. Will this marauding, motley crew be just the allies Shiro needs to finally be reunited with his lady-fair, Yoshiko, for once and for all?

“Ever since the idea of Samurai: Heaven and Earth first occurred, this is the story we’ve wanted to tell, the one we’ve been pointing toward. Putting a samurai warrior amidst a crew of Caribbean cutthroats is the most fun you can have in comics, as far as Luke and I are concerned. I’ll gladly walk the plank if this isn’t the best volume yet,” writer Ron Marz said.

Acclaimed creators Ron Marz and Luke Ross reunite for the next volume of their historical epic. Samurai: Heaven and Earth Volume Three, a five-issue limited series, sets sail in spring, 2008. Each issue has a retail price of $2.99.

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Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Volume 2-Chapter 1: Enemies and Allies
Writer: Ron Marz
Penciller: Luke Ross
Colorist: Rob Schwager
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics


In a prior post, I raved about Samurai: Heaven and Earth and this next comic in the series is no disappointment.

The samurai Shiro is back and still hunting for his lost love Yoshiko. In Enemies and Allies, Shiro travels to Spain to find the Arab slavetrader that sold Yoshiko in the first place. He forces the Arab to join him on his quest for revenge against the Spaniard Don Miguel Ratera (funny last name - in Spanish a ratero or ratera is a thief) and in keeping his vow to find Yoshiko. Shiro tells the Arab of his vow that nothing on Heaven or Earth will keep him from her and together they set off to find them. Meanwhile, Don Miguel is keeping Yoshiko captive as they board a ship to Veracruz.

As in the other comics, there are flashbacks to Shiro's and Yoshiko's life in Japan and some of the images are so heartbreakingly lovely that you have to stop and catch your breath.

The artwork is astounding and I can’t say enough about it. The story has you on the edge of your seat and rooting for Shiro while the artwork has you right in the midst of bloody samurai battles, on the ship and in the beautiful gardens of Japan. Stunning, stunning, stunning!

Samurai: Heaven and Earth is simply magnificent.


Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Volume 2, Chapter 2: Land and Sea
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Luke Ross
Colorist: Rob Schwager
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Once again Ron Marz and Luke Ross have created a believable and stunning adventure.

In Land and Sea, the samurai Shiro along with the Arab he has forced into helping him hunt for Don Miguel Ratera and Yoshiko who have boarded a ship bound for Vera Cruz. The two leave Barcelona and board a ship headed for the Americas.

Once they are on board and halfway across the ocean, Shiro finds that the ship Yoshiko was on was captured and the people on it taken to Egypt to be sold. Frustrated at being stuck on a ship with no way out or to Yoshiko, he battles the crew and jumps ship taking the Arab along with him.

Meanwhile Yoshiko is sold to a pasha and taken away to a harem where she will live out her days. Don Miguel is also sold to the same pasha. Will he find a way to the harem?

It’s a marvelous adventure on the high seas and across the blistering desert sands. The art is amazing, especially the scenes on the ocean. I don’t know how they make the sea look so real but it’s fantastic. You get the feel of a stormy sea, big waves and movement. It’s incredible.



Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Volume 2, Chapter 3: Lust and Lies
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Luke Ross
Colorist: Rob Schwager
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

I am astounded by this series and can’t wait for the rest of it. Shiro the samurai has completely captured my heart and imagination.

In Lust and Lies, Shiro and the Arab have washed up on the desert shore. Because Shiro has saved the Arab’s life, he continues to help him as part of repaying his debt. There are again scenes of a loving life with Yoshiko in Japan as Shiro remembers the good times. The two set off to find where Yoshiko has been taken with Shiro determined to get her back at any cost.

Yoshiko is taken to the harem of the pasha and is able to communicate in French with the first wife. She learns that she will spend her life in the harem and is subject to the whims of the pasha. While trying to escape, she runs into Don Miguel who tries to force her to come with him. This is Yoshiko’s chance for revenge and she takes it. She will make Don Miguel pay for what he has done to her and Shiro.

One of the things that makes this series so visually arresting is the contrasts between worlds. On one page you have the burning sun of the desert, on another the cool gardens of Japan overhung with cherry blossoms and on another the inside view of a harem. Of course, the artwork is stunning and so realistic that you feel you’re inside those contrasting worlds.

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Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Volume 2, Chapter 3: Lust and Lies
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Luke Ross
Colorist: Rob Schwager
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

I am astounded by this series and can’t wait for the rest of it. Shiro the samurai has completely captured my heart and imagination.

In Lust and Lies, Shiro and the Arab have washed up on the desert shore. Because Shiro has saved the Arab’s life, he continues to help him as part of repaying his debt. There are again scenes of a loving life with Yoshiko in Japan as Shiro remembers the good times. The two set off to find where Yoshiko has been taken with Shiro determined to get her back at any cost.

Yoshiko is taken to the harem of the pasha and is able to communicate in French with the first wife. She learns that she will spend her life in the harem and is subject to the whims of the pasha. While trying to escape, she runs into Don Miguel who tries to force her to come with him. This is Yoshiko’s chance for revenge and she takes it. She will make Don Miguel pay for what he has done to her and Shiro.

One of the things that makes this series so visually arresting is the contrasts between worlds. On one page you have the burning sun of the desert, on another the cool gardens of Japan overhung with cherry blossoms and on another the inside view of a harem. Of course, the artwork is stunning and so realistic that you feel you’re inside those contrasting worlds.

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Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Volume 2, Chapter 2: Land and Sea
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Luke Ross
Colorist: Rob Schwager
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Once again Ron Marz and Luke Ross have created a believable and stunning adventure.

In Land and Sea, the samurai Shiro along with the Arab he has forced into helping him hunt for Don Miguel Ratera and Yoshiko who have boarded a ship bound for Vera Cruz. The two leave Barcelona and board a ship headed for the Americas.

Once they are on board and halfway across the ocean, Shiro finds that the ship Yoshiko was on was captured and the people on it taken to Egypt to be sold. Frustrated at being stuck on a ship with no way out or to Yoshiko, he battles the crew and jumps ship taking the Arab along with him.

Meanwhile Yoshiko is sold to a pasha and taken away to a harem where she will live out her days. Don Miguel is also sold to the same pasha. Will he find a way to the harem?

It’s a marvelous adventure on the high seas and across the blistering desert sands. The art is amazing, especially the scenes on the ocean. I don’t know how they make the sea look so real but it’s fantastic. You get the feel of a stormy sea, big waves and movement. It’s incredible.

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Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Volume 2 # 1
Writer: Ron Marz
Penciller: Luke Ross
Colorist: Rob Schwager
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics


In a prior post, I raved about Samurai: Heaven and Earth and this next comic in the series is no disappointment.

The samurai Shiro is back and still hunting for his lost love Yoshiko. He’s arrives in France after a dangerous ocean crossing only to be reunited for the briefest of seconds in the Hall of Mirrors before being wrenched apart by an evil Spaniard who is determined to have Yoshiko for himself. He takes Yoshiko prisoner and they sail away on a ship.

Shiro is sworn to avenge himself on the Spaniard and get Yoshiko back. He forcibly enlists the aid of the Arab slave trader who sold Yoshiko in the first place to help him find the Spaniard. They travel from Spain to Egypt and encounter many adventures including pirates on the high seas. Talk about your swashbuckling tales!

The artwork is astounding and I can’t say enough about it. The story has you on the edge of your seat and rooting for Shiro while the artwork has you right in the midst of bloody battles, on the ship, swimming for your life and walking across the desert sand. Stunning, stunning, stunning!

Samurai: Heaven and Earth is simply magnificent

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