Constituencies

The Windy recently published a fascinating piece on the embattled Office of Thrift Supervision, which ostensibly regulates savings and loan banks but in recent years has been more notable for failing to identify problems in such companies as Washington Mutual, IndyMac, and Countrywide as they each went down in flames. It seems that OTS, which many in Washington would like to see abolished, has been gaining support from insurance companies eager to purchase failing thrifts in order to qualify for some of that $700 billion in bailout money.

What's interesting about this, for me, is comparing OTS to another banking regulator that's been making headlines recently, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. There are obviously many differences in what both agencies do, but one major difference is who they identify as their primary constituency: Whereas the FDIC, as the name implies, sees itself as protecting the interests of individual depositors, OTS is notorious for having "overly close identification with its banks," as the Washington Post put it in their investigation of the agency.

This question of constituency -- to whom a government office feels itself most beholden -- is a really important one and really underappreciated. Ezra Klein, for example, frequently draws attention to the fact that the Department of Agriculture sees itself as representing the interests of food producers -- i.e., farm states and agribusiness -- rather than food consumers -- i.e., everybody else. It's no surprise, then, that the USDA is more supportive of policies that subsidize food producers rather than ensuring that Americans are getting an nutritionally adequate diet.

Of Steel-Toed Boots and Solar Panels

So there's a tiff that went on this week between Joe Romm, on one side, and Robert Stavins and his fellow environmental economists, on the other, concerning Van Jones' green-collar jobs movement. Stavins starts off with this comment in the latest New Yorker:

“Let’s say I want to have a dinner party. It’s important that I cook dinner, and I’d also like to take a shower before the guests arrive. You might think, Well, it would be really efficient for me to cook dinner in the shower. But it turns out that if I try that I’m not going to get very clean and it’s not going to be a very good dinner. And that is an illustration of the fact that it is not always best to try to address two challenges with what in the policy world we call a single-policy instrument.”

To which Romm replies:

In short, whatever we do to address climate must not attempt to create jobs. And whatever we do to create jobs should make no effort whatsoever to get off our self-destructively unsustainable economic path. That would not be a Pareto optimum, I guess.

Seriously, Dr. Stavins, just because you haven’t figured out how to walk and chew gum at the same time, doesn’t mean nobody else can.

That's rather unfair, as Tim Haab and others have pointed out; it shouldn't be controversial to say that, conceptually, the problems of economic recovery and curbing carbon emissions are distinct, and may -- may -- require separate policy tools to address. That said, there's no reason why, if there is an overlap between the two areas, why we shouldn't tackle both at the same time. Starting a nationwide effort to install more energy-efficient insulation, windows, etc., for example, could be a significant boost to the construction sector, which just lost about 100,000 jobs in the last month alone. (See, e.g., the Center for American Progress' recent proposal to green the nation's stock of federally-assisted affordable housing.) It would certainly be a more sensible allocation of resources than, say, building more McMansions.

To me, there are two things that need to be thought about in regards to a green jobs agenda. First, there's the question of how many people can be put to work on projects that could qualify as "green" (besides energy-efficiency retrofits, things like mass transit and alternative energy development) within the time frame of the next two years. Economic stimulus plans don't work unless they're done rather quickly, and the number of infrastructure projects that can get started quickly (i.e., have had all their environmental impact statements done, have overcome any NIMBY resistance) doesn't appear to be all that great -- and that's before you divide it into "green" and "not-green" projects. To the extent that this country needs changes in its infrastructure that reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, funnelling stimulus money toward green projects makes sense as a down payment, as it were. But a down payment doesn't buy you a house.

The other thing about green jobs relates specifically to Van Jones' take on the matter: that greening houses and developing a clean energy infrastructure can serve to revitalize parts of the country, particularly urban areas, where jobs are scarce and crime is high -- "greening the ghetto," as Jones puts it. That's an excellent idea that shouldn't be forgotten, whether we're talking about infrastructure or carbon pricing or whatever. But two points of contention spring up: 1) Much like with renewable portfolio standards, there's a danger that trying to direct jobs to specific areas can be distortionary, in the economic sense -- what positive features do places like west Baltimore and southeast DC have as a labor pool for green-collar jobs? and 2) Are job opportunities enough to break the vicious cycle that many poor urban communities find themselves in -- or does an environment in which poor schools, high crime, high drug use, poverty, and unstable families feed on each other need more than jobs to turn around? Now, Jones has been working on this issue for a long time, so I won't presume to know more about it than he does. And there are concrete examples of what Jones has in mind, like the Oakland Green Jobs Corps. But even that has yet to be fully tested as being effective, much less scalable.

Again, I'm not against the idea of green jobs -- investing in a low-carbon economy has the potential to be a driver of economic growth well into the future, and we should try to have as many people share in that growth as possible. But I'm beginning to think of a green jobs agenda as more of an overlap between two separate policy domains -- climate change and poverty -- than as a pure identity. To use Stavins' metaphor, there are some things you can use in both the kitchen and the bathroom, e.g., soap and washcloths. But you wouldn't use a frying pan in the shower, nor would you use a plunger to make scrambled eggs.

Unemployment Blogging, Day 18

A brief update:

• I officially applied for unemployment benefits, and should be getting the first check next week. Actually, it's not a check, it's a prepaid debit card, similar to the cards used for food stamps, only there's no limit, of course, to what you can spend it on. And it seems you can transfer the money into your own bank account.
• The Pew Center for Global Climate Change rang me up yesterday regarding a position that would involve working on corporate energy efficiency issues. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to follow up that pre-interview with an actual interview.
• I just realized that the etiquette concerning blogging your job search is rather murky: If you talk about the places you've applied to and what sorts of interactions you've had, is that bad form -- even if you speak of it in fairly neutral terms?
  

Unemployment Blogging, Day 3

Christmas Eve, so of course there's nothing times nothing to do re: job hunting, so I am going to enjoy the holiday as best I can. May you do the same.

But of course I couldn't write a Christmas post without including this timeless holiday classic:

Why Chinese Food Is Like Linux

Fascinating talk by Jennifer 8. Lee about the origins of Chinese food in America -- and around the world:

Unemployment Blogging, Day 2

Part of the problem with being laid off just before Christmas -- besides the massive crimp it puts into your celebration of the holiday -- is that conducting the normal activities of a job search is stymied. First, you have parties to attend, food to prepare, last-minute gifts to buy, etc.; and second, pretty much every business is taking the next two weeks off or else operating on a severely pared-down schedule. Thus, my efforts to get back to working have taken on a "hurry up and wait" character.

Unemployment Blogging, Day 1

Or: What it feels like to be a statistic.

Being laid off, to paraphrase John Updike, is a sacred state; it clarifies the mind and pulls you out of the often stultifying routines of everyday living and working. It is also, as is the case with any contact with the divine, rather terrifying.

A synopsis: After graduating from the University of Maryland, I went to work, not at a government agency or a nonprofit (as you would expect for someone with a Master's in public policy), but at a grocery store. As a cashier. Granted, it was an organic grocery store, so it had some cachet, but that hardly helped to soften the blow of seeing all my job leads and interviews failing to pan out. It was, however, a living, something by which I could support myself until I got something better. This state of affairs persisted for seven months, during which I existed as if in stasis: neither moving on nor growing accustomed to my situation; wondering how long it would be until I would have a honest-to-god profession, not a job I could have done in high school; always chafing at the fact of never having enough money. Then, this past Saturday, I was let go. So much for my plans to turn my experience into a best-selling memoir; seven months isn't nearly enough time to establish the necessary street cred.

I take solace in the fact that I am young and well-educated, and supported by my family, my partner, and her family; that we are living through a world-historical economic crisis, which has afflicted the just and the unjust alike*; and that, as I've said, a drastic change in one's circumstances often forces you to respond more acutely than otherwise. For example, I seldom get as personal in my blogging as I am doing now; and perhaps making myself the subject of my own writing, alongside the old standbys of politics and culture, will be illuminating in some way.

Or not; I honestly have no way of knowing.

* I'll leave it to you to decide which of those categories I belong in.