The current private sector shitty job index is 81:

The US Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) measures the ratio of what the researchers call "high-quality" versus "low-quality" jobs. The JQI is the weighted ratio of the "high quality" jobs that pay more than the average weekly wage and tend to have more hours per week, and the "low quality" ones that pay less and offer fewer hours. The index is averaged over the previous three months to cut out the noise and adjusted to ensure inter-sectoral comparability.

Right now the JQI is just shy of 81, which implies that there are 81 high-quality jobs for every 100 low-quality ones. While that's a slight improvement from early 2012--the JQI's 30-year nadir--it's still way down from 2006, the eve of the housing market crash, when the economy regularly supported about 90 good jobs per 100 lousy ones.

and also:

The JQI White Paper paints a grim picture. "The success of superstar companies like Google or Apple or Pfizer should not blind us to the fact that today Leisure & Hospitality is our largest sector with 14,7 million non-management employees. It's a sector that pays such workers $16.58 an hour and the average worker works just 25.8 hours a week - resulting in average weekly income of $428. (Benefits like health insurance in the sector are small to nonexistent.)"

This reminds me of something I got from maybe Apo, years ago, along the lines of how economists are loathe to think of public jobs as being part of the economy. There seems to be about 22 million people that work for either local, state, or the federal government. I bet those have steady hours and benefits.

Anyway. I've been informed recently of this Texas program, which is a plan to get 60% of the young Texas population with an advanced degree by 2030. Right now it's 24%. This is dumb on so many levels, and so it annoys me that people are taking it seriously. Mainly: 1. this isn't mysterious. It's a lack of funding for K-12 and higher ed, plus poverty. This mandate isn't going to get funded, and so it's not going to fund schools or address poverty. 2. Are they planning on building more colleges? Where exactly do they plan on putting all these students? Is the vision to do it entirely online and through dual-credit? 3. What, are the graduates going to drive Ubers when they get out? What jobs are they envisioning for their extra accredited people?

As they say, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Maybe just properly fund schools and regulate the shittiness of the existing work that needs to get done, and call it a day, hmm?

Trump sent over 100 tweets on Sunday. Let's say that works out to 5-10 tweets an hour. That's not actually that hard - go on a bender regularly where you go nuts tweeting and re-tweeting, with multi-part rants. But the idea that he kept up these benders all day long certainly gives the impression of a cartoon robot that's starting to short-circuit out, and keeps emitting zaps of electricity and random poofs of smoke.

Also, the first half of this article is good:

When Republicans impeached Andrew Johnson for obstructing Reconstruction in 1868, there was no broadcasting. There was no polling, at least not in the scientific sense of today. "Media" in America meant newspapers, which were largely partisan, but whose effect on the public was hard for politicians to gauge. The trial of Johnson was thus conducted by a relatively small political elite that, because they focused on the crisis, at least understood the facts.

The impeachment of Richard Nixon a century later was critically different, in part, at least, because the technology of culture had become importantly different....

...As the Watergate hearings progressed, Americans weren't just focused on the story: They were focused on the same story. The networks were different in how they broadcast news, but not much different....

The impeachment of Donald Trump will happen in a radically different media environment -- again. (In Clinton's impeachment, standing between Trump's and Nixon's, the effects were consistent but muted relative to today.)...

[T]he Civil War may well have been the last time we suffered a media environment like this. Then, it was censorship laws that kept the truths of the North separated from the truths of the South. And though there was no polling, the ultimate support for the war, at least as manifested initially, demonstrated to each of those separated publics a depth of tribal commitment that was as profound and as tragic as any in our history.

I mean, I'm no historian but it's useful for me to think of how dis-aggregated "facts" were leading up to the Civil War in order to get a handle on this idea that there's no consensus on reality anymore.

The second half of the article is a day-dreamy fantasy about what it would take to reverse course on this epistemological implosion.

Momo Chocho writes:

A court in the South American country of Suriname has convicted President Desi Bouterse in the 1982 killings of 15 prominent political opponents and sentenced him to 20 years in prison [...] In 1999, Bouterse was convicted by a court in the Netherlands in absentia of drug trafficking but avoided an 11-year prison term because he cannot be extradited under Surinamese law. In 2015, his son, Dino Bouterse, was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison in the U.S. after he admitted he offered a home base in Suriname to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Dino Bouterse had previously been picked by his father to lead a counterterrorism unit in Suriname.

Heebie's take: that is one bad dude. I don't think either of them should be president.

What gifts do you never want to receive again? I found this blog post interesting where the blogger is interviewing her mother-in-law about what grandmas do and don't want to receive.

Me: "So what do you NOT want?"

MIL (Suz): "Please, no more scented candles, picture frames (just send photos we can put on Facebook, we have thousands of frames). Which brings me to the thousands of photos--printed and digital. As we all eventually downsize, what to do? Even photo books take up too much room. How about the new device where you can watch photos on TV screen? Saw an ad, but can't remember who. Main point--no little tabletop junk."

My analysis: Alright. No more tchotchkes. That absolutely makes sense that after decades of collecting you have too much PLUS you are likely going to downsize so it just feels like a burden. BUT NO MORE PHOTO BOOKS???? The last one I gave them is on their coffee table for a reason! I'm going to call BS on this one, but I'm also not going to make another one. I LOVE photo books! WE look at ours all the time. I don't want to have to look at a device with the kids to relive memories. I don't believe her.

I can't think of any gifts that I get often enough to get sick of them, so that must mean I don't get many perfunctory gifts? My family has mostly fizzled out of gift-giving altogether for adults, and Jammies' family just sends each other links to the exact desired item. (Which seemed weird at first, but now I'm a big fan of it.)

It's easy to regift or give away a gift and still appreciate the sentiment, so I think the only kind of gift that would really feel like a burden is when the giver has placed a big emotional weight on you loving it and displaying it prominently. I can imagine that that particular thing happens extremely often to grandmothers.

CharleyCarp sends in:

[edited to add a spacer to push the tweet down to the wider part of the column. -HG]

got another capitalism greatest hit. i will give you one hundred thousand dollars if you can guess the brand by the end pic.twitter.com/bwfJJLabg4

— Ryan Simmons (@rysimmons) June 27, 2019

Heebie's take: what the utter fuck. My guesses - life insurance, college savings account or investment firm - would have made for unremarkable reveals. This is not that.

Notes:
- Sound is not required. It's just a wordless musical score.
- Spoilers allowed in the thread, so if you want to prove your chops, watch it first.