Why Shouldn’t Dock Workers Earn More than the Pundits Complaining About Them?

And more from this week...

I take one Friday off, and my goodness do the links pile up… so we have no lengthy discussion of one-thing-to-read this week, just a lot of things for your consideration, both at American Compass and from around the web.

But if I had to pick one thing from the pile to focus you on, well, start here:

Re: The World Turned Upside Down… at City Journal, Mark Mills describes The Great Inversion

The quick end to the longshoremen’s strike thankfully brought to an equally quick end the performative outrage at the longshoremen’s demands, from people earning far more to do far less hard work. But are we headed for an era when economic commentators at libertarian think tanks will just have to get used to earning less than dock workers? Quite possibly. Mills does a great job considering the relevant trends and, along the way makes an importantly pro-worker-power point: “It would benefit longshoremen and others in similar trades to shift from opposing automation to embracing it, with this caveat: they need a bigger say in its implementation. That’s something management should also embrace.”

Bonus link: Most commentary on the port strike started from the entirely uninformed assumption that of course ports need more automation and of course the longshoremen are lunatic luddites to obstruct it… but now one of Understanding America’s favorite writers, Brian Potter, comes along and takes the time to ask, Do U.S. Ports Need More Automation? It turns out:

The ports that have adopted automation aren’t necessarily particularly efficient. Rotterdam was one of the first ports to automate (its first automated terminal opened in 1993), and today it’s one of the most heavily automated ports in the world, but its port performance ranking is just #91, one point above the comparatively less automated New York, and far below the un-automated ports of Charleston and Philadelphia (#53 and #55 respectively). Likewise, the U.S.’s most automated port, Los Angeles, comes in very close to the bottom of the worldwide rankings, while the top two ports on the list (Yangshan in China and Salalah in Oman) have just one and zero automated terminals, respectively.

Other analyses likewise point to a complex relationship between automation and efficient port operations. A McKinsey survey from 2017 found that while port automation reduced labor costs, it actually reduced port productivity between 7 and 15%, and the labor savings weren’t necessarily enough to justify the investment. A 2021 OECD report similarly found that “automated ports are generally not more productive than their conventional counterparts,” and a 2024 GAO report also noted that both U.S. and international ports found “mixed effects” on performance when adopting automation.

Read the whole thing! Or stop trying to pretend you know more than a longshoreman about port automation. Either works for me.

EVERYTHING HAPPENING ON THE COMMONS

Republicans’ Recurring Family Policy Fight: American Compass’s Sam Silvestro explores pro-family values within the American conservative tradition.

The New Right and the Fed: University of Vienna’s Anthony J. Constantini explains why the New Right should turn its attention to the Federal Reserve.

Mapping Out the 2024 Stakes: EPPC’s Henry Olsen connects the importance of a Republican House to a second Trump presidency’s economic agenda.

Old-Right Failures Are New Lefty Talking Points: American Compass’s Duncan Braid writes on the Vance-Walz debate, underscoring the path the Right should take.

And as for the American Compass Podcast:

• Last week, I spoke with journalist and best-selling author Sarah Smarsh about the forces pushing rural working-class voters away from the Democratic Party.

• This week, I talk with family policy scholar Ivana Greco about her research on what stay-at-home parents want. And bonus link, that research has just been published here: Invisible Labor, Visible Needs: Making Family Policy Work for Stay-At-Home (And All) Parents.

WHAT ELSE SHOULD YOU BE READING?

Re: Jobs Americans Would Do… Senator Marco Rubio laments How Mass Migration Undermined Men

A nice follow up from Tuesday’s main item, on how solving “labor shortages” through immigration consign marginal American workers to the sidelines.

Re: The Weed Limit… the New York Times reports that As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms

We’ve covered the problem of legalized gambling a lot here, may as well spend a minute on the disaster that is legal weed. Fortunately, the Harris campaign is on the case. One of the five key elements in her “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” is [checks notes…] “Legalize recreational marijuana and create opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry.”

Bonus embarrassment: Item number three is “Protect cryptocurrency investments so Black men who make them know their money is safe.”

As I noted on Twitter, I spent 3,000 words on my New York Times essay, “This Is What Elite Failure Looks Like,” and then she just goes and… tweets it out.

Re: Trade Bait… former U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer says Kamala Harris Should Tell the Truth About Her Record on Trade

Think what you will about President Trump, there’s no denying that his successful renegotiation of NAFTA as the USMCA was a win for workers. As Amb. Lighthizer shows: Republicans said this, Democrats said this, labor leaders said this… opponents, like then-Senator Kamala Harris, cited other objections. In her case, the issue was insufficient climate action. But now she’s out there trying to attack the achievement as bad for workers. One might admire Harris’s chutzpah, though that’s not a word she’d use herself… she’s trying to win Michigan after all.

Lighthizer’s history lesson also throws into sharp relief the problem with labor leaders who will gladly sacrifice pro-worker policy on the alter of Democratic Party politics. “Trump claims to be a champion for the auto worker, but when you look at the facts they show the exact opposite,” said UAW president Shawn Fain recently. “His USMCA has resulted in trade deficits getting worse, not better for auto workers.”

Re: Record Deficits… the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip profiles The Economist Whose Contrarian Streak Has Gotten Attention in Biden and Trump Camps

No fair highlighting American Compass’s favorite trade expert, Amb. Lighthizer, without highlighting American Compass’s other favorite trade expert, Michael Pettis. Turns out he also runs Beijing’s coolest punk rock club! That’s not a metaphor for trade imbalances… he “recalls one night spent with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. On another, The New York Dolls lapped up performances by young Chinese acts before taking to the cramped stage themselves at 2 a.m. He founded a record label, Maybe Mars.”

Bonus link: Pettis joined me for a wonderful podcast episode earlier in the year—still American Compass’s most-watched ever on YouTube, with more than 11,000 views. Add your own view here: Michael Pettis on Dollar Dominance.

Re: That Thing You Do... in the Wall Street Journal, Joanne Lipman pleads Stop Asking People ‘What Do You Do?’

In a rather dismaying piece of social commentary, Lipman complains that “for many of us, work isn’t just a way to pay for our lives; it’s how we define ourselves—and others.” As a result, “for people who have taken career breaks, four little words—‘What do you do?’—can provoke dread. It seems to conceal a bundle of judgments: What’s your social status? What’s your income? What’s your education? Are you worth my time to talk to?”

A sane person, noticing these problems, would suggest that perhaps we should recognize the folly of defining people by their job title or deciding whether they are worth talking to based on the social status and income of the job. But no, the solution here is to just never talk about it.

Fortunately, a sane person (me), has already written that piece. Look at this great opening line: “Among the latest fashions in bourgeois self-criticism is the lament that Americans start conversations with ‘so, what do you do?’” It also features one of my favorite cultural observations:

Look at the stories told by the popular culture. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series went routinely to shows with blue-collar characters, such as All in the Family, Taxi, Cheers, and The Wonder Years. An especially famous Wonder Years episode, “My Father’s Office,” told the story of Kevin learning about his father’s career path from loading-dock worker to distribution manager and that he had dreamed of being a ship’s captain. “You can’t do every silly thing you want in life,” Mr. Arnold told his son. “You have to make your choices. You have to try to be happy with them. I think we’ve done pretty well, don’t you?”

From 1992 to 2017, the Emmy went almost every year to a show about white-collar adults working in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, New York, or Washington, few of whom were raising children. The one exception is The Office, about paper salesmen in Scranton, but its primary vein of humor was the evidently miserable lives and meaningless jobs of its provincial subjects (none of whom seemed to have a family, either). In 2017, the seven nominations went to shows about an ad executive and his family in Los Angeles, professionals and their families in Los Angeles, an actor in New York, a young woman restarting her life as a nanny in New York, political operatives in New York and Washington, nerds in Silicon Valley, and rappers in Atlanta. Has a lineup starring characters male and female; gay and straight; black, white, and Hispanic, ever looked so little “like America”?

Folks, this essay has an embedded YouTube clip from The Wonder Years. It moves on to consider This Is Us and The Goldbergs. Continue reading…

Re: Dinner for Schmucks… the Wall Street Journal’s Douglas Belkin introduces us all to The Guru Who Says He Can Get Your 11-Year-Old Into Harvard

I could have just sent you into the weekend on a high note, but instead we’re ending here, with one of the more appalling things you could read this week. It’s hard to pick a worst bit, but for me, the most interesting part is just the extraordinary value destruction implicit throughout. A multi-billion dollar industry built on misleading young people, chewing them up, and spitting them out… and that’s just the universities! Seriously, though, it’s hard to choose between the people running these businesses, the university admissions officers, and the parents for worst actor in the whole drama. I do know for certain that it’s not good for kids, and that “the market” ain’t gonna fix it.

Nevertheless, enjoy the weekend!