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Economic Scene: Pro-Baby, but Stingy With Money

July 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In December, Ross Douthat wrote an Op-Ed column for The New York Times titled “More Babies, Please,” which noted that the United States’ relatively high birthrates would give it an edge against aging rivals around the world.

But there is an odd inconsistency in conservatives’ stance on procreation: many also support some of the harshest cuts in memory to government benefit programs for families and children.

First Focus, an advocacy group for child-friendly policies, will release on Wednesday its latest “Children’s Budget,” which shows how federal spending on children has declined more than 15 percent in real terms from its high in 2010, when the fiscal stimulus law raised spending on programs like Head Start and K-12 education.

Some school districts have been forced to fire teachers, cut services and even shorten the school week. Head Start has cut its rolls. Families have lost housing support. And the 2014 budget passed by Republicans in the House cuts investments in children further — sharply reducing money for the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services.

Birth rates have dropped precipitously since the onset of the recession six years ago — to 63.2 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 2011, the lowest at least since 1920. The total fertility rate of American women — the number of children they will bear in a lifetime — fell to 1.9, the lowest in a quarter-century, well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population.

The abrupt decline has multiple causes, including less immigration from Latin America, where women tend to have more children. Bruce Sacerdote, an economist at Dartmouth College who has studied fertility, surmises that the deep recession and weak recovery produced enormous pessimism about the future, prompting many families to postpone plans to have children.

But perhaps the biggest factor affecting families’ decisions to delay childbearing, cut back on their numbers of children or even forgo having babies entirely is the cost of rearing them, either in money or the value of women’s time.

“It is all about the costs and the opportunity costs for women,” notes Professor Sacerdote.

After more than a decade of stagnant incomes, many families stressed by the rising cost of providing an education to their children appear to have concluded they are too costly.

Fertility can rebound. It has done so before. Birthrates plummeted in the 1960s and 1970s as women by the tens of millions opted out of their traditional role as housewives and mothers, went to college and got jobs — postponing and often forgoing what until then had been the classical American family of a single male breadwinner and a stay-at-home mother.

In economists’ terms, women’s “opportunity cost” of children rose. By the middle of the 1970s, the fertility rate of American women fell to just over 1.7 children from 2.7 a decade earlier.

But fertility didn’t continue to fall. By 1990, it had bounced back to around 2.1, the rate needed to stabilize the population.

In an important study, Professor Sacerdote and his Dartmouth colleagues James Feyrer and Ariel Dora Stern noted that families worked out a way for women to accommodate children and a job. In 1975, women performed three-quarters of the family hours devoted to child care, according to the Multinational Time Use Study. By 1995, they performed 60 percent.

In 2012, men in families with children under 6 spent 59 percent as much time as women performing primary child care duties, compared with 45 percent in 2003.

This shift in cultural norms within American families can explain why fertility in the United States is higher than in many other advanced nations — places like Japan, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong, where women still shoulder an overwhelming share of child care.

But though American families may have adapted better than others to women’s march into the labor force, the United States lags far behind in providing the government support that makes it easier for many couples to start a family.

There is widespread evidence that government assistance to families increases fertility. France’s generous child subsidies, for instance, have been credited with lifting that nation’s fertility rate above 2, from about 1.75 in the mid-1990s. A study in Quebec found that increasing benefits to new parents by 1,000 Canadian dollars increased the probability of having a child by 16.9 percent. One study in Sweden traced its higher fertility compared to other Scandinavian countries to government programs like paid leave and subsidized day care, which made it easier for mothers to work.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/business/economy/pro-baby-but-not-in-an-economic-sense.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Economic Scene: Pro-Baby, but Stingy With Money to Support Them

July 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In December, Ross Douthat wrote an Op-Ed column for The New York Times titled “More Babies, Please,” which noted that the United States’ relatively high birthrates would give it an edge against aging rivals around the world.

But there is an odd inconsistency in conservatives’ stance on procreation: many also support some of the harshest cuts in memory to government benefit programs for families and children.

First Focus, an advocacy group for child-friendly policies, will release on Wednesday its latest “Children’s Budget,” which shows how federal spending on children has declined more than 15 percent in real terms from its high in 2010, when the fiscal stimulus law raised spending on programs like Head Start and K-12 education.

Some school districts have been forced to fire teachers, cut services and even shorten the school week. Head Start has cut its rolls. Families have lost housing support. And the 2014 budget passed by Republicans in the House cuts investments in children further — sharply reducing money for the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services.

Birth rates have dropped precipitously since the onset of the recession six years ago — to 63.2 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 2011, the lowest at least since 1920. The total fertility rate of American women — the number of children they will bear in a lifetime — fell to 1.9, the lowest in a quarter-century, well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population.

The abrupt decline has multiple causes, including less immigration from Latin America, where women tend to have more children. Bruce Sacerdote, an economist at Dartmouth College who has studied fertility, surmises that the deep recession and weak recovery produced enormous pessimism about the future, prompting many families to postpone plans to have children.

But perhaps the biggest factor affecting families’ decisions to delay childbearing, cut back on their numbers of children or even forgo having babies entirely is the cost of rearing them, either in money or the value of women’s time.

“It is all about the costs and the opportunity costs for women,” notes Professor Sacerdote.

After more than a decade of stagnant incomes, many families stressed by the rising cost of providing an education to their children appear to have concluded they are too costly.

Fertility can rebound. It has done so before. Birthrates plummeted in the 1960s and 1970s as women by the tens of millions opted out of their traditional role as housewives and mothers, went to college and got jobs — postponing and often forgoing what until then had been the classical American family of a single male breadwinner and a stay-at-home mother.

In economists’ terms, women’s “opportunity cost” of children rose. By the middle of the 1970s, the fertility rate of American women fell to just over 1.7 children from 2.7 a decade earlier.

But fertility didn’t continue to fall. By 1990, it had bounced back to around 2.1, the rate needed to stabilize the population.

In an important study, Professor Sacerdote and his Dartmouth colleagues James Feyrer and Ariel Dora Stern noted that families worked out a way for women to accommodate children and a job. In 1975, women performed three-quarters of the family hours devoted to child care, according to the Multinational Time Use Study. By 1995, they performed 60 percent.

In 2012, men in families with children under 6 spent 59 percent as much time as women performing primary child care duties, compared with 45 percent in 2003.

This shift in cultural norms within American families can explain why fertility in the United States is higher than in many other advanced nations — places like Japan, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong, where women still shoulder an overwhelming share of child care.

But though American families may have adapted better than others to women’s march into the labor force, the United States lags far behind in providing the government support that makes it easier for many couples to start a family.

There is widespread evidence that government assistance to families increases fertility. France’s generous child subsidies, for instance, have been credited with lifting that nation’s fertility rate above 2, from about 1.75 in the mid-1990s. A study in Quebec found that increasing benefits to new parents by 1,000 Canadian dollars increased the probability of having a child by 16.9 percent. One study in Sweden traced its higher fertility compared to other Scandinavian countries to government programs like paid leave and subsidized day care, which made it easier for mothers to work.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/business/economy/pro-baby-but-not-in-an-economic-sense.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Brazil’s Growth Slowed by Decline in Consumer Spending

December 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A decline in consumer spending contributed to a slight contraction in the third quarter from the previous three months, according to Brazil’s statistics agency. Economists now see Brazil’s growth in 2011 slowing to 3 percent or lower, a sharp reversal from a booming 2010 in which the economy surged 7.5 percent, the country’s highest growth rate in two decades.

Fearing a deeper slowdown, Brazilian authorities last week introduced a fiscal stimulus package, including tax cuts on some appliances and food, intended to get consumers to spend again.

The package was a break from policies earlier this year when the authorities actively sought to cool an economy thought to be overheating. Consumer spending had been growing substantially, fueled by a surge in newly available credit, and the authorities repeatedly raised interest rates and taxes in an effort to slow it down.

But Brazil’s recent boom seems to have fizzled, at least for now, though financial markets reacted calmly on Tuesday to the growth report, reflecting sentiment here that the government still has various policy tools at its disposal to stimulate growth. The Bovespa index for the São Paulo stock exchange climbed 1 percent on Tuesday, while Brazil’s currency, the real, strengthened slightly to close at almost 1.8 to the dollar.

“Brazil differs from other economies that are facing structural problems, which suggests a long period of low growth,” said Rodrigo Telles da Rocha Azevedo, a principal at Ibiúna, an asset management company in São Paulo. “Brazil’s problem is more cyclical, giving us space for measures to reverse declines in consumption and investment.”

Brazil still boasts indicators that suggest that the economy is far from a crisis. Unemployment fell in October to 5.8 percent, a historic low, from 6 percent the previous month. The country also maintains $352 billion in foreign currency reserves, compared with just $54 billion at the end of 2005.

Still, concerns are emerging over domestic issues like insufficient infrastructure stretched thin by the economic growth of recent years and a labor force that lacks some of the skills needed by companies to proceed with ambitious expansion plans.

One megaproject in Brazil’s arid northeast, which would redirect the flow of the San Francisco River, seems in danger of becoming a massive white elephant, according to a report over the weekend in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, which published photographs of abandoned concrete works cracking under the sun.

The vigor of Brazil’s currency is another concern. While the real has fallen more than 10 percent against the dollar since July, it remains resilient. A strong real makes Brazil costlier than other countries, and it is seen as diminishing the competitiveness of industry here by making its manufactured products more expensive in export markets.

“Apart from the currency appreciation, imports of industrial goods have grown very fast,” said José Márcio Camargo, an economist at the Catholic University here. He said that contagion from Europe’s debt crisis was still less worrisome than the strong real and other domestic problems, including a high tax burden and poor infrastructure.

New concerns from abroad may also be on the horizon. China, Brazil’s largest trading partner, is showing some signs of cooling off, with new reports of weakness in manufacturing and services. Unlike Brazil, China is still growing at a healthy clip. But Chinese authorities have also introduced measures in recent days aimed at stimulating growth.

Elsewhere in Asia, India is facing slower growth and high inflation. And closer to home, Argentina, South America’s second-largest country and an important trading partner for Brazil, still has a growing economy but is struggling with capital flight as uncertainty persists over economic policies there.

Despite problems at home and abroad, Brazilian authorities remain sanguine about their ability to avoid a prolonged slump.

Finance Minister Guido Mantega said that stimulus measures introduced this month would quickly return the economy to growth, characterizing the disappointing figures as “temporary.”

“The condition is reversible,” he told reporters, emphasizing that salaries and the job market remained unaffected by the economic slowdown.

Lis Moriconi contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/americas/brazils-growth-slowed-by-decline-in-consumer-spending.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Economic View: Obama’s Jobs Plan Deserves a Hearing

September 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

INDIVIDUAL TAX CUTS WON’T WORK Rising gas prices and falling confidence have crimped household purchases, effectively preventing the payroll tax cut passed last December from raising consumer spending. Since such headwinds are likely to continue, the president’s proposed expansion of that tax cut won’t be effective.

This argument practically defines the term non sequitur. Other forces may well be depressing consumer spending while tax cuts for households are increasing it. But even if the net result is that consumer spending merely holds steady, it doesn’t follow that the tax cuts are useless. In their absence, consumer spending would likely fall, bringing output and employment down with it.

This discussion raises a legitimate question, however. Given the dismal state of the economy, is the president’s proposal large enough? It may not be. The economy is suffering from a profound shortfall of demand, and most forecasts call for only anemic growth over the next few years. The experts who have looked at the administration’s jobs package estimate it will
most likely raise growth by one to two percentage points. That would certainly help, but an even larger and more sustained package deserves consideration.

WE NEED A HOUSING PLAN, NOT MORE FISCAL STIMULUS The bubble and bust in house prices has left households burdened with too much debt. Until we deal with this problem — perhaps by providing principal relief to the 11 million households whose mortgages are larger than the current value of their homes — we’ll never get the economy going.

The premise of this argument is probably true: recent evidence suggests that high debt is holding back consumer demand. But it doesn’t follow that the government needs to directly lower debt burdens to stimulate job growth.

Recent research shows that government spending on infrastructure or other investments raises demand even in an economy beset by over-indebted consumers. Another effective approach is to aim tax cuts and government payments at households that would like to spend, but can’t borrow because of their debt loads (such as the poor and the unemployed).

History actually suggests that the “tackle housing first” crowd may have the direction of causation backwards. In the recovery from the Great Depression, economic growth, which raised incomes and asset prices, played a big role in lowering debt burdens. I strongly suspect that fiscal stimulus will be more cost effective at speeding deleveraging and recovery than government-paid policies aimed directly at reducing debt.

We should, however, be thinking hard about whether the president’s stimulus plan is the best one for a debt-heavy economy. It may be too tilted toward broad tax cuts, when bigger increases in government investment spending and more targeted tax cuts would promote faster growth.

THE COST PER JOB IS TOO HIGH Martin Feldstein, the Harvard economist, recently combined private estimates that the president’s plan would raise employment by about two million in 2012, with its cost of about $450 billion. His conclusion was startling: each job produced by the plan would cost about $200,000.

This calculation is attention-getting, but it’s misleading. First, many of the jobs would be in 2012, but not all. Infrastructure spending, for example, would be spread out over several years, so the total number of years of employment created over the life of the program would most likely be substantially larger than two million.

More fundamentally, the program wouldn’t just create jobs. Consider the proposed $140 billion for roads, bridges, school repair and teachers. Jobs are, in a sense, a side benefit. What we’re really getting is better infrastructure and more education for our children.

Then there’s the $245 billion in tax cuts. That money doesn’t disappear. It goes to households that can spend it on goods and services, and to businesses that can spend it on research and development and new machines. That added consumption and investment is a benefit, along with the jobs created.

The bottom line here is that we should be discussing which policies are likely to generate the most jobs while being valuable in other ways. We need to try to quantify the benefits of different government investments, and compare them with the benefits of private consumption and investment.

IT’S THE DEFICIT, STUPID People are concerned about the deficit, and this concern is holding back the recovery. Fiscal austerity, not more stimulus, is the answer.

This argument makes me crazy. There’s simply no evidence that concern about the current deficit is a significant factor limiting consumer spending or business investment. And government borrowing rates are at record lows, suggesting that financial markets are not worried about the deficit, either.

Moreover, as I discussed in a previous column, the best evidence shows that fiscal austerity depresses growth and raises unemployment in the near term. That’s the experience of countries like Greece, Portugal and Britain, which have embarked on drastic deficit reduction plans over the last two years. Cut the current deficit and you will raise unemployment, not lower it.

Like many other countries, the United States has two terrible problems: a devastating lack of jobs right now and an unsustainable budget deficit over the longer run. The right question is not whether we can reduce unemployment by lowering the deficit (we can’t), but whether we can make progress on both problems.

With 14 million Americans unemployed and no prospect of rapid recovery on the horizon, we really have no choice: we must take additional measures to create jobs. What policy makers need to discuss is which measures will be most effective in putting people back to work, and in hastening the day when government support is no longer needed.

Just as important, policy makers should be discussing how to make meaningful progress on the long-run deficit at the same time. We need a credible plan that phases in aggressive deficit reduction as the economy recovers.

The president has started a discussion about job creation. His proposal deserves a full debate based on facts, evidence and careful analysis.

Christina D. Romer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8e2cf71201f980ac32f47974d7cdadef

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Economix Blog: Weekend Business Podcast: Bernanke, the Budget and Steve Jobs

August 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Ben Bernanke’s speech at Jackson Hole, Wyo., was sketchier than it might have been about monetary policy but strikingly detailed about fiscal policy.

As chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Bernanke’s official purview is in the monetary, not the fiscal realm, of course. But in a conversation in the new Weekend Business podcast, Catherine Rampell says he seemed to be deliberately vague about the central bank’s own plans.

While he said the Fed’s full toolkit is available as needed, he didn’t spell out what the bank’s actions might entail. On the other hand, he said that short-term fiscal stimulus, combined with longer-term debt reduction, would do much to invigorate the economy.

In another podcast conversation and in the Economic View column in Sunday Business, Richard Thaler, the University of Chicago economist, says Congress has been much better at spending than at budget-cutting, which is part of what he calls a self-restraint problem.

Like people with a New Year’s Day hangover, many members of Congress find it easy to make promises if they needn’t fulfill them for months or years to come. In his view, imposing legal constraints on spending, through a balanced budget amendment or other means, is unlikely to compel effective action. Voters need to be willing to elect mature adults, who, in turn, need to exercise willpower to make better choices for the country, he says.

Steven P. Jobs, who is stepping down as chief executive of Apple, has had an enormous impact in many fields. In a podcast conversation and in the Unboxed column in Sunday Business, Steve Lohr discusses the qualities of Mr. Jobs as a role model. Above all else, he says, Mr. Jobs is an innovator, and his entire career may be seen as a relentless effort to improve the odds of bringing forth innovation, both for himself and in the organizations he has managed.

And the problem of illegal products passed off as health supplements is the focus of a conversation with Natasha Singer, who tackles the subject on the cover of Sunday Business. Federal authorities are struggling to stop the distribution of these black-market goods, which may endanger consumers’ health.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Catherine Rampell on the Fed (33:53); news headlines (25:04); Steve Lohr on Steve Jobs (22:13); Richard Thaler on Congress (15:49); Natasha Singer on black-market supplements (8:59); the week ahead (2:06).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this post.

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f434080d8000f43d378220ee5041036a

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Economix: Podcast: Debt Crises, Jobs, Gold and Hulu

July 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Sovereign debt crises continue to simmer on both sides of the Atlantic, but there was some progress, in Europe, at least.

In Brussels, European leaders revealed the rough outlines of at least a short-term resolution of the Greek debt crisis, Floyd Norris says in the new Weekend Business podcast. The plan involves a 109 billion euro ($157 billion) rescue package for Greece, and would force many investors in Greek debt to accept some losses on their bonds. But whether it can contain the contagion that has threatened the financial system in Europe and elsewhere is anyone’s guess.

In Washington, negotiators face an Aug. 2 deadline for raising the federal debt ceiling. Republicans in Congress have insisted that such action be coupled with spending cuts that would pare the budget deficit. President Obama said that the talks reached an impasse on Friday, but talks were expected to resume over the weekend. In a conversation on the podcast, Robert Shiller, the Yale economist, says that budget cutting is so much in vogue right now that we are in danger of neglecting the millions of people who remain without work, two years after the start of an economic recovery.

As Mr. Shiller writes in the Economic View column in Sunday Business, fiscal stimulus is an excellent remedy for a weak economy, but it does not appear to be within the realm of political possibility right now. Therefore he recommends balancing spending and taxing, and focusing on programs that will create jobs. The government, he says, need not get larger. It could function as a kind of investment banker, soliciting ideas from the private sector, and providing funding for projects that seem most worthwhile.

In the Strategies column in Sunday Business, I discuss the impact of the financial crises on the price and status of gold. While it is still well below its inflation-adjusted peak, set in early 1980, gold crossed the $1,600-an-ounce threshold last week for the first time. And a political movement to restore the gold standard has begun to stir once again — more so, perhaps, than at any time since the days of supply-side economics early in the Reagan administration. In the podcast, I discuss the possibility that this political revival might signal another peak for gold.

And in a separate podcast conversation, David Gillen and Brian Stelter talk about Hulu, the online video site sponsored by major television networks. As Mr. Stelter writes on the cover of Sunday Business, Hulu may be helping to define the future of television.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris (34:00); news summary (24:19); Hulu (21:35); Robert Shiller (14:13); gold (5:24); the week ahead (2:40).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this post.

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bc7898337fb618b9042f57e2890b98a0

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Talk: Larry Summers, Un-king of Kumbaya

May 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What do you see happening to those one in six?

There’s consequences for poverty. It has consequences for the government’s disability budget, crime, the ways in which children are raised.

You directed the National Economic Council until the end of last year. My understanding is that the head of the N.E.C. is supposed to dispassionately bring various economists’ opinions to the president. And yet Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, says that you ignore arguments you don’t like. Did you bend over backward to bring the president different views?

I said to the president when he asked me to do the job that I was a person who had strong views, and that I would make every effort to make sure that he was exposed to all perspectives and that each of those perspectives would be presented in as effective a way as possible. But if he wanted to maximize the feeling of kumbaya in the group, I wasn’t the right person. He responded that in this crisis he wanted me in this position, and that was good enough for me.

I have read that Christina Romer’s projection that we needed $1.2 trillion in stimulus wasn’t in the memo presented to Obama on the topic.

The president was told that there was no danger of doing too much fiscal stimulus, and that we should do as much as we could from an economic point of view. It was entirely clear in the meeting where this was discussed that a larger fiscal program would have larger multiplier effects. The constraints were political, and indeed the seriousness of those constraints is demonstrated by the fact that the ultimate bill that passed was between 70 and 80 percent as large as what the president sought.

What would the economy look like now if $1.2 trillion had been spent?

I think it’s an artificial question because there would have been all kinds of problems in actually moving $1.2 trillion dollars through the system — finding enough bridge projects that were ready to go and the like. But the recovery probably would have proceeded more rapidly if the fiscal program had been larger. That’s why we advocated a larger fiscal program than the one that passed.

You have been cast as the heavy in documentaries like “Inside Job” and on “Frontline” for sowing the seeds of the economic crisis during the Clinton administration. You were against regulating derivatives and in support of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which significantly relaxed how banks do business. Did they miss the mark by casting you in this light?

Oh, these are much more complicated issues than those kinds of movies can suggest. Canada, for example, is generally pointed to as a major regulatory success. But it’s got universal banking that goes considerably beyond the Glass-Steagall reforms that happened in the United States. The major accidents in the United States — Bear Stearns, Lehman, Fannie and Freddie — had nothing to do with Glass-Steagall. Did we 10 years ago foresee everything that happened with respect to derivatives? Absolutely not. Would I have acted differently with the benefit of everything that I’ve seen over the last 10 years? Of course. Is it plausible that the Bush administration, which was failing to act on all the rules that did exist, would have used any authorities with respect to derivatives in any of the legislation we dealt with? Exceedingly unlikely in my view.

On a recent birthday in the White House, you started singing a rousing chorus of “For he’s an unpleasant fellow.” You’re aware of — and were making light of — the fact that you occasionally rub people the wrong way.

I was probably making light of some newspaper stories that had appeared at the time. You know, in meetings, I’m more focused on trying to figure out what the right answer is than making everybody feel validated. In Washington and at Harvard, that sometimes rubs people the wrong way.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=623da5b013d85b8c2580ba41481a99a2

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Economix: Podcast: Stimulus, Shutdown and Executive Pay

April 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The unemployment rate in the United States is 8.8 percent. That’s unusually high this deep into an economic recovery. But why?

Has there been a sharp increase in what economists call the natural rate of unemployment, which, before the recession, had been generally thought to hover around 5 percent?

Christina Romer thinks not. She says the evidence indicates that the main reason for the current high unemployment is that the swings of the business cycle have been quite severe. And that’s because the financial crisis was so devastating. In the Economic View column in Sunday Business, and in a discussion in the Weekend Business podcast, she rebuts arguments that structural factors — like changing industrial composition or reduced labor mobility — have significantly changed the unemployment picture.

In her view, additional short-term fiscal stimulus — as part of a comprehensive package of long-term budget balancing — is the appropriate remedy. If she’s wrong, though, and if structural factors turn out to be more important than she thinks, she says the government should take action to retrain workers and match them with jobs. In any case, she says, if cyclical unemployment goes on long enough, it could become structural. Quick action is crucial, she says.

In another conversation in the podcast, Motoko Rich talks about the stakes for business in the budget dispute that led to the brink of a government shutdown. As that prospect loomed, she analyzed the potential effects of a government shutdown on individual businesses, the markets and the overall economy.

The wild card might be the reaction of the financial markets, which have recently weathered the Japanese disaster, turmoil in the Middle East and the continuing debt crisis in Europe. It would be hard to predict the consequences for the markets if investors lost confidence in the United States government’s ability to function with even minimal effectiveness.

Businesses have bounced back from the financial crisis, and, over the last year, the compensation of C.E.O.’s has soared, according to a study done for The Times by Equilar, a consulting firm in California. In an article in Sunday Business, and in a podcast conversation with David Gillen, Gretchen Morgenson says that before buying shares of a company, at least one professional investor carefully considers how much that company is paying its top executives. If the compensation is not linked closely to corporate performance, it may be a sign of other problems, she says.

When you see postings about your friends’ activities on social networks, do you ever feel distracted or even envious? The constant stream of information coming across mobile phones and browsers can be invigorating. But in the Ping column in Sunday Business, and in a podcast conversation, Jenna Wortham says it can also engender FOMO — the fear of missing out, an increasingly common complaint in the digital age. Shutting off your phone might help, if you can force yourself to do it. If you can’t, you might try not to look at the screen for a while — and find solace in the realization that many others are coping with these feelings, too.

The feeling of being left out while others prosper has moved some people to extreme action, as John Schwartz writes in a humor column in the quarterly Mutual Funds Report that appears in Sunday Business. Pimping and robbery — such routes to riches have tempted some people lately. But for most of us, scrimping, saving and investing are probably the way to go, he says in the podcast.

You can find specific segments of the show at these junctures: executive pay (30:46); business implications of a government shutdown (24:58); headlines (20:55); fear of missing out (18:48); John Schwartz on better plans for getting rich (12:41); Christina Romer on high unemployment (9:06); the week ahead (2:08).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this posting.

You can download the show by subscribing from the New York Times podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9488bbe6ce2efe3f8bb183b1aaebd2c4

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