Virginia Money

In the Chicken Little folk tale, Chicken Little becomes hysterical along with friends Henny Penny, Lucky Ducky, and Foxey Loxey when they all agree the sky is falling. In Virginia, delegate Robert G. Marshall believes the Federal Reserve Bank will bring financial hysteria with hyper inflation like Germany after WWI. He wants to protect Virginians by having a new Virginia currency. [Virginia-only currency one step closer to reality” 2/6/13] He got the Virginia legislature to allocate $17,440 to study a metallic-based currency for Virginia. He was quoted to say “This is a serious study about a serious topic. We’re not completely powerless.”

As every good capitalist knows the value of money is determined by the supply of it relative to its demand for needed transactions. Obsessive worriers like Delegate Marshall think money has to be a supply of something they can pick up and store: commodity money. In this worry Delegate Marshall acts like everyone else: the worriers all want their metallic base to be gold.

To protect themselves from inflation and rising prices with a metallic-based currency, Virginians will need to be able to exchange their inflation devalued currency for gold at a fixed price. If Delegate Marshall could exchange a unit of Virginia currency for an ounce of gold at a known price he would have gold that might hold its value, or rise in value, to protect from the rising price of cars, clothes and corn flakes that devalues his currency.

If Delegate Marshall was a little more curious he would ask himself how the Virginia treasurer happens to have an inventory of gold ready to exchange with a line up of worried citizens. If Delegate Marshall would ask himself how Virginia could remain ready to exchange gold at a fixed price if the market price of gold goes up, he might notice a problem with a metallic standard. After all gold is a commodity like cars, clothes and corn flakes, all subject to rising prices.

If the market price of gold starts to rise there might be someone who would show up at the Virginia treasury to exchange their currency for an ounce of gold to resell it for a profit at the higher market price. The line might be long and drain the gold out of the Virginia treasury ending the metallic-based standard.

I wonder why Delegate Marshall wants to worry so much about something that is not happening. Inflation rates are low, generally below two percent where they have been for over a decade. I wonder why Delegate Marshall wants to worry about the Federal Reserve Bank when it bailed out the rogues and scoundrels who engineered the financial collapse of 2008. I am certain though this piece qualifies as a study of the metallic based standard, which is why I expect to receive that $17,440. My bill will be in the mail shortly.

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A 2013 Job Review

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its January report showing a seasonally adjusted December increase of 155 thousand jobs. The increase for the 12 months ending December 2012 is 1.836 million jobs, a respectable, but hardly spectacular increase for the year. The job totals for 2012 will be subject to review and possible revision next month, but the end of the year totals gives an opportunity to make an assessment of job growth for the future.

During the recession jobs declined 8.78 million from January 2008 until February of 2010. After the turnaround beginning March 2010 jobs are up 4.78 million to just over 134 million for December 2012. If we have 26 months in a row with 155 thousand new jobs, America will have just over 138 million jobs, which will bring jobs in March 2015 up to jobs in January 2008.

Through the recession months government employment and the share of government employment in total employment continued to rise while manufacturing employment and the share of manufacturing employment in total employment continued to fall. Manufacturing had its highest employment in 1979 followed by nearly unbroken decline until the end of February 2010.

After March 2010 when jobs started to recover manufacturing and government service reversed their long term employment trends. Government including education lost 546 thousand jobs while manufacturing gained 526 thousand. In 2012 manufacturing gained 180 thousand jobs while government lost 68 thousand jobs.

The unexpected increase in manufacturing helped provide a higher job total for the year ending December 2012. The increase in manufacturing gives a reason to be optimistic for 2013, but unfortunately much of the other 2012 gains came in service sectors that also did much better than their long term trends. For example, wholesale and retail trade added 260 thousand jobs for the 12 months ending December 2012, but their average annual increase for the last 22 years including 2012 is 94 thousand. The last 12 years including 2012 did not have job gains, but losses that averaged 65.1 thousand a year.

Trade uses computing technology that holds down job growth, but other service sectors like finance, insurance and real estate also have long term trends with slow growth as a result of computing technology. In the process of recovery from the 2008 recession all of them did much better in 2012 than their long term growth rates. Finance, insurance and real estate gained thousand 80 thousand more jobs than their long term trends would suggest.

If all sectors of the economy in goods production, private service providing industries, and government return to growth at their long term trends then 2013 job growth will have only 1.475 million more jobs, 360 thousand below the gains for 2012. It will be a slow year for jobs if that happens.

If manufacturing repeats last year’s gain and adds 180 thousand jobs and government does not decline further, while the rest of goods production and service industries grow at their long term trend then 2013 with have 1.691 million more jobs; better but still 144 thousand jobs below the 2012 gains.

Health care has been a mainstay of job growth for two decades, but last year’s increase of 391 thousand new jobs was below long term trends. Health care will add 477 thousand new jobs by December 2013 if health care industry jobs grow at their 1990 to 2012 growth rate of 2.78 percent. Lately though, health care has slowed down and last year jobs were up only 2.15 percent for the year. The time to assume health care will contribute the largest share of replacement jobs may be coming to an end. Other sectors like manufacturing and professional services will need to play a bigger role in job growth if America can meet the job needs of the future.

The recent decision on federal taxes that was part of the fiscal cliff negotiations will not help job growth. The two percent reduction in social security taxes ends. Social security taxes go up 2 percent, but the new rate schedule for the personal income tax does not reduce rates enough for a reduction in combined federal taxes. Based on the tax rate changes published in the Washington Post wage earners earning up to $60,000 will pay as much as $1,000 more in 2013 than they did in 2012.

The fiscal cliff solution makes another year with 1.836 million new jobs a doubtful forecast. Americans will need more buying power to keep the job mill going another year. To match last year’s performance for 2013 will be problematic without a continuing recovery in manufacturing, and without an unexpected boost from another service sector or sectors. Expect less.

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Taxes and Entitlements

During the Presidential campaign candidate Romney had a speech secretly recorded where he told listeners that he could not expect to get votes from the 47 percent of tax payers who do not pay federal income taxes. In the speech Romney characterized that group of income-tax-free Americans as being “dependent on the government” and feeling “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

Americans have often worried about people who do not support themselves working. Back in the great depression after unemployment peaked at 25 percent President Franklin Roosevelt said in a speech of October 1934, “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. . . . We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination. . . . The Federal Government must quit this business of relief.” [quoted from The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933, Arthur Schlesinger, 1957, p 267-268]

It sounds to me like Mr. Roosevelt worried that Americans getting governmental assistance would become dependent on the government whereas Mr. Romney worries that Americans getting governmental assistance are already dependent on the government. Otherwise they sound like identical statements reflecting the cultural notion that work is uplifting and makes us free and independent.

Mr. Romney’s statements generated many comments. I am sure I read only a fraction of them but most of the comments I read assumed the 47 percent of filers who pay no income tax are low paid or unemployed people of modest means. Other comments discussed the matter in general terms without actually going to last year’s tax Form 1040 and doing some calculations.

When I did that I found a single person with one $3,700 exemption and a $5,800 standard deduction could earn up to $9,500 in 2011 with no income tax liability. A married couple with no children, two exemptions totaling $7,400 and an $11,600 standard deduction could have $19,000 of untaxed income. If the $9,500 or $19,000 earned was wage income then both single people and married couples would owe social security taxes.

I am not sure what share of the 47 percent include people with wages too low to tax, but many with higher incomes pay no tax because dividends and capital gains get special tax treatment not available to wage earners. In 2011 income composed of dividends and capital gains up to $88,000 for a married couple pay no federal tax at all assuming those who file take the standard deduction. For those who have itemized deductions above $11,600 untaxed dividends and capital gain can range much higher.

The exact same income earned as wages would pay $9,500 of personal income tax and $4,972 of payroll tax for a total tax of $14,472 and the payroll tax is 2 percent less than normal. Any combination of income with wages, dividends and capital gains pays less tax than the same income earned as wages.

Government programs that aide the poor and the poorly paid are now almost universally referred to as entitlements in the popular media and by politicians, but always in negative terms, as something to get rid of, or cut back. Get a job; work and be independent that is the message from Mr. Roosevelt to Mr. Romney. It might work better if wage earners were entitled to equal treatment in taxation.

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The Benefit and The Burden

The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform, Why We Need It and What it Will Take, Bruce Bartlett, (NY: Simon & Shuster, 2012), 258 pages, $26.00

In the opening sentences of the Introduction author Bruce Bartlett tells readers the Federal tax code needs regular attention like a garden needs weeding. Even though the present weedy tangle can only be changed by Congress, Bartlett hopes his book on “the fundamentals of taxation at the simplest level” will help inform the public in the debate.

Bartlett uses the introduction to tell readers he wants to be fair and so confesses a short list of biases. He accepts the need for Federal taxes to take a higher share of GDP and recommends taxing consumption to get it. He believes tax expenditures to be the equivalent of spending. He supports a Value Added Tax but not the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The book has 24 chapters, none of them long and each confined to a single topic or focus. Bartlett labels the first nine chapters, the Basics, and starts with a brief history of federal income taxes and the legislative process of getting a tax bill through Congress.

Chapter 3 reviews many definitions of income that sometimes include and sometimes exclude capital gains, rents, dividends and interest. Bartlett cites economist Irving Fisher who believed interest was not income but the discounted value between present and future consumption. Others have argued it should be consumption and change in net worth, meaning taxes on unrealized capital gains.

Chapters 4 through 8 explain the mechanics of marginal, average and effective tax rates and their affect on tax revenue, economic growth and the business cycle. While explaining the mechanics he finds the wealthy have low average tax rates and then contradicts Senator McConnell and others who claim that tax cuts raise revenue in the long run. The Bush tax cuts reduced federal revenues $2.8 trillion from 2002 to 2011.

Bartlett turns a dubious eye on tax incentives promoting saving and growth, which he suggests do not guarantee more savings, especially if the government has to use them to pay for deficits. The question of progressive taxes gets a 6 page review where he shows progressive rates schedules do not guarantee progressive taxes when there are many exemptions and deductions.

Chapter 9 compares U.S. taxes to other countries. Many other countries have a higher ratio of taxes to Gross Domestic Product than the U.S. He provides tables to compare growth rates with the ratio of taxes to GDP, which also demonstrates that low taxes do not necessarily mean high growth and vice versa. He chides Americans for their provincial views on taxes. Other countries tax consumption more than the U.S. and make use of wealth taxes and environmental taxes that Americans refuse to consider.

The second section of eight chapters identifies and reviews problems of United States taxes: tax expenditures and tax treatment of health care, housing, state taxes, charitable contributions, capital gains, corporations, and tax administration. The tax expenditure chapters take on a disgusted tone describing how current practice erodes the tax base and primarily helps the well to do who save more with deductions from income in high tax brackets.

Bartlett cites health care as the biggest tax expenditure that treats employer sponsored health care as a business expense but not taxable for employees. Where other countries tax their citizens to provide health care, our Federal government disguises their spending through a tax deduction to business. He gives a federal income tax loss of $184 billion and another $250 billion of loss in payroll taxes, although he does not cite his numbers.

Bartlett reminds readers that tax expenditures make things like health care and housing artificially cheap and encourage over use. Deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes do so twice by encouraging more home building and then encouraging local governments to pad local projects paid with property taxes home owners can deduct from their federal taxes, but no benefit to renters.

The last section of seven chapters looks at the future. Bartlett does some review of previous tax reform and reform proposals like the flat tax, a national sales tax proposal, the Herman Cain nine-nine-nine and a few more, but reminds readers that tax cuts alone are not reform. A whole chapter makes the case for more federal revenue, but readers get a big dose of pessimism and a summary of views on the consequences of unsustainable debt.

Two chapters outline the case for and against the Value added tax, but the material includes so many political objections along with a variety of pros and cons these pages reads like a digression or a diversion. Finally, it is on to the Bush Tax cuts and what to do. He gives a listing of the many Bush tax cuts and some archival background before totaling $3 trillion added to Federal debt and declaring the failure of the Bush tax cut policy. Bartlett also gives an unfavorable review of the anti-tax Republicans and Grover Norquist before declaring they will probably be able to prevent tax reform. He gets more pessimistic by suggesting tax reform will be delayed until we have a Republican president and a Democratic Congress.

The book provides basic information to understand taxes and the larger economic issues they raise, but the book is not elementary. Previous effort working and experimenting with the arithmetic of tax calculations for a variety of personal income situations should be considered a minimum prerequisite. All his chapters end with a long list of further reading that allow advanced study for those with the interest.

Bartlett has had a long career in taxes, especially in Congress where he helped draft the Kemp-Roth tax reform back in 1986, but his knowledge and experience do not make him optimistic. He makes recommendations to expand the tax base and raise revenue to meet the needs of spending that “can’t be cut,” but tells readers how and why entrenched political attitudes will prevent them. The book feels sour in a way that befits the public mood for a book published in the year of the fiscal cliff. The fiscal cliff will pass but for better or for worse I am certain the Benefit and the Burden will continue to be relevant, I’m afraid for quite a few years. In that we can be sure Mr. Bartlett will agree.

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The Fiscal Cliff and Social Security

Post election analysis has turned to discussion of economic issues put off before the election. Health care expansion will go forward and tax and budget disputes will be settled by default with the fiscal cliff, or by compromise in the Congress. A recent article by Robert J. Samuelson [“It’s the Welfare State, Stupid,” Washington Post, November 12, 2012] includes the claim that Social Security and Medicare are part of the welfare state that undermines incentives to work and devalues “earned success.” He thinks these shortcomings justify using Social Security as a target for cut backs in the fiscal cliff settlement.

In spite of the fact that all of us working for a living have to pay social security taxes under threat of IRS reprisal, the claim that Social Security recipients receive welfare subsidies requires explanation in light of the many changes to Social Security passed by Congress. Start with the steep Social Security tax increases Congress passed during the early Reagan years. Along the way the retirement age was raised and two full years of benefits were canceled, and then Congress started to force social security recipients to pay taxes on their benefits. In 2011 taxes start for single people who earn other income greater than just $25,000, and for joint filers at just $32,000. Recently there were unfavorable adjustments to the cost of living formula. The idea social security recipients receive welfare subsidies after as many as 50 years (50=67-17) of payroll taxes require financial examples and documented proof that Samuelson fails to give.

We might also remind Mr. Samuelson that the social security tax has an income cap at $110,100, meaning that those with very high wages have a tax preference: their tax rate drops to zero after the cap. While the rest of us pay 7.65 percent on all our wage income the wealthy get all wages over the cap exempted. If he thinks this preference should be eliminated as an unjustifiable subsidy to the wealthy he did not say.

Medicare and Medicare payroll taxes were added to Social Security in the Johnson Administration because more and more private insurance companies refused to insure retired people who lost their tax subsidized employer health care benefits. Now Samuelson suggests Medicare recipients are getting a subsidy they don’t deserve when all those receiving employer sponsored health care share in tax subsidized health care they do deserve.

After attacking Social Security and Medicare Samuelson concludes Social Security benefits undermine work incentive that “devalues” the work ethic. He tells readers “If eligibility were higher, people would work longer.” What Mr. Samuelson would find if he bothered to look at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey is that older people are already working longer, much longer, and they have been doing so for two decades.

Americans over the age of 55 entered the labor force at a growth rate of 3.49 percent per year over the years 1990 to 2011, a rate one and half percent above their population growth rate in the same years. Those from the ages of 25 to 54 entered the labor force looking for work at a growth rate of .68 percent per year for the years 1990 to 2011, a rate more than two percent below their population growth rate in the same years.

People entering the labor force at any age have no guarantee of finding work: they could find employment or be unemployed. Unemployed Americans over the age of 55 had an annual growth rate of 7.03 percent in the years 1990 to 2011, more than double the growth rate of those aged 25 to 54. If Americans at or near retirement age lack incentives to work because the benefits of Social Security make life so easy then Mr. Samuelson needs to tell us why so many people at or near retirement age keep working, or looking for work, so long and so hard.

Mr. Samuelson did not question if those over age 55, but not eligible for Medicare, keep working because they can only get affordable health care through a job. He did not question if the gradual end of defined benefits pension plans and replacement with defined contribution pension plans makes it harder to retire and gives incentives to work longer. He did not question why older Americans need incentives to work longer when younger Americans struggle to find self supporting jobs. The rest of us should question whether Mr. Samuelson wants to make excuses to cut Social Security, or find solutions that work for everybody.

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The Choice of a Masters Degree

There were 693,025 MA degree graduates for the year ending June 2010, the last year of complete data. The MA is still relatively small compared to 1.6 million BA degree candidates but the MA degree has the highest growth rate of degrees including the AA, BA, and Ph.D. From 1990 to 2010 it was 3.87 percent a year compared to the average for all degrees at 2.78 percent.

Completing a master’s degree can be a smart choice, but it is a different choice than entering and completing a BA degree. There are general benefits for the BA degree for all degree programs, but much less so for a master’s degree. The benefit of a master’s degree tends to be specific and attach to a career, and typically after a career is underway.

Education may be the best example because elementary and secondary teachers can begin a career with a BA degree, but most school districts publish pay schedules with step increases that depend on years of experience and education. Finishing an MA degree moves teachers to a higher pay scale and makes it easy to compare financial benefits with tuition. A master’s degree typically opens up other positions in education administration, counseling, and curriculum development as well. These advantages help explain why more than 26.3 percent of the 693 thousand master’s degrees for 2010 are in education.

The Masters in Business Administration ranks second with 25.6 percent of 2010 master’s degrees, just behind education. The MBA degree will surpass education in the near future because MBA growth rates exceed the master’s in education by a wide margin. The average annual increase reached 7,013 for the five years from 2005-2010, the highest increase for major degree categories.

Many start a career with a BA in business or in professions like engineering, information systems, architecture and design but return for an MBA degree after getting some on-the-job experience. However, part of the growth in the MBA results from the growth of the business BA degree itself, which reached 358 thousand in 2010. With so many BA business candidates compared to new jobs, finishing an MBA has become a strategy for narrowing the field of job applicants in the corporate job market.

Allied health professions hold third place with 69 thousand master’s degrees, 10.0 percent of the master’s total. A master’s degree in any health profession assures benefits in a health care career but even more than most master’s degrees the benefits do not transfer to careers outside the health care industry.

Master’s degrees in advanced nursing specialties had over 20 thousand master’s degrees in 2010, more than any other health profession. Nursing does not require a master’s degree, but nursing has a long career ladder with nursing specialties to pursue with master’s training: maternal nurse, pediatric nurse, critical care nurse, geriatric nurse and quite a few more. Other popular master’s degrees in allied health are 5,687 MA degrees in public health, 5,293 in health care administration and management, 4,244 in occupational therapy, 2,437 in audiology, and 2,056 in speech pathology.

Combined counseling and social work have just under 50 thousand master’s degrees, equal to 6.7 percent of the 2010 total. A career in a counseling specialty like mental health, education or family counseling requires a master’s degree and state license, which makes the master’s an entry degree. There were almost 24 thousand master’s degrees in psychology including over 7 thousand in just the counseling psychology specialty. Mental health counseling offered as part of allied health programs have another 6 thousand degrees.

Counseling work overlaps some with social work, an area where there were more social work master’s degrees than BA degrees: 19.6 thousand master’s degrees, 14.6 thousand BA degrees. Social workers provide support and assistance obtaining aid more than therapy or counseling, which lets the states be more flexible about license and credentials, but those planning a career in social work should expect to finish a master’s degree.

The four degree fields mentioned so far, education, business, allied health, counseling and social work, account for just over 68 percent of the master’s degrees in 2010. For people with careers in these fields a master’s degree will almost certainly be a smart choice.

Not all of the remaining 32 percent of degrees are as obviously connected to a career. These include 45 thousand master’s degrees in area, ethnic and cultural studies, multidisciplinary science, philosophy, history, social science, and visual and performing arts. There are another 17 thousand MA’s in English language and literature, foreign languages and literatures, liberal arts and sciences, general studies and humanities.

The 85 thousand master’s degree in the sciences: biology, life science, natural science, chemistry, physics, and in the professions: architecture, engineering, information systems, need the basic knowledge implied by a BA degree to enter these programs. For example, someone pursuing a master’s degree in engineering probably already has a BA in engineering and some work experience, which suggests they know what an MA can do for them.

A few master’s degree programs are tailored to those switching careers. Library science had 85 BA degrees and 7,448 master’s degrees for 2010, which makes it ideal for people from many other careers to start another. Public administration with almost 36 thousand MA degrees and theology with almost 13 thousand MA degrees have more master’s degrees than BA degrees also suggesting people enter these programs from other careers and backgrounds.

In the last few years many have finished BA degrees only to be plagued by delays moving into career employment. Some decide “I might as well go on for a master’s degree now while I wait to start a career.” That has a high risk to be a bad choice. It is not only expensive and diverts time and energy away from a job search, the many specialties and sub-specialties in master’s programs make it less likely that degree skills will match job needs, or advance a career to come in the future. To make a master’s degree pay and advance a career the evidence suggests the best choice is a career first, and a master’s degree later.

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The New Geography of Jobs

The New Geography of Jobs, Enrico Moretti, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 249 pages, $28.00

The New Geography of Jobs begins telling readers some anecdotal stories of people and cities that prospered and people and cities that did not. About midway into the Introduction we read “In this book, the focus is almost entirely on the forces that drive long-run trends.”

The book has seven chapters following the Introduction. Chapter 1 begins describing the long demise of manufacturing as staggering and “one of the most important facts in America’s economic history of the past six decades.” After a few pages the conversation turns to causes and what happened, but as the conversation moves along we read terms from economics like comparative advantage and the paradox of economic growth. As the chapter ends the decline becomes the inevitable result of markets, “The Tides of History.”

Pessimism turns to optimism in chapter two titled Smart Labor: Microchips, Movies, and Multipliers. The chapter starts with a story of Dominic Glynn of Pixar Animation studios as an example of talent and creativity that brings innovation and new jobs. Moretti tells readers the Internet sector has grown 634 percent in the past decade, but without telling us how many new jobs that created, nor providing a North American Industry Classification name or code that allows us to look up the government data he mentions.

As I read along I looked for ways to believe that jobs gains from innovation will be bigger than job losses in manufacturing, but I found more stories. Some are about innovators, some about places, others about economists who did studies, one about 300 percent growth of jobs in life science research, another about traded and non-traded sectors, and another about yoga, which became big business after actress Jennifer Aniston declared in People magazine that it “completely changed my life.” None of the stories helped me believe new jobs from innovation will meet America’s job requirements.

The next two chapters of eighty pages continue discussing people, companies, and new innovations in different cities. It starts with the success of Seattle and then on to Silicon Valley and other places. Several pages of charts associate cities with salaries and the percentage of workers with college degrees. Moretti finds a growing divergence of economic success among cities, which he associates with differences in life expectancy, family stability, political participation, and charitable giving.

Moretti labels successful hubs brain hubs that succeed from the benefits of agglomeration and thick labor markets, a term I never heard before, but he defines thick labor markets with a parable of Internet dating. In the parable one dating site has 100 women and 100 men, but another has 10 men and 10 women. Even though ratios are the same the “perfect” date is more likely at the bigger site. He concludes “Thick labor markets are better at matching employers with workers, and the ultimate match is closer to the ideal match.” With this we cannot disagree, even if we live in Paducah where the labor market may be thin.

Chapters five and six continue with short vignettes of success and failure and the inequality it generates for people and places. Moretti worries the lack of mobility and housing gentrification contributes to inequality and suggests moving vouchers for the unemployed. He wonders if there is help for poor cities like Flint and then begins a discussion of biotechnology and the benefits it brought to Cambridge, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area but he says “they were lucky.” They had “academic stars.” He wonders if universities can be an engine of growth but concludes “Overall my research suggests that the presence of a university is on average associated with a better-educated labor force and higher local wages.”

The last chapter wonders if America will prosper or decline, but predicts “cities with a large percentage of interconnected, highly educated workers will become the new factories where ideas and knowledge are forged.” After reviewing the returns to education back to 1964, the high cost of college, America’s low math scores, and the benefits of immigration, he ends citing Jane Jacobs from long ago and the process of destruction and regeneration, but no prediction on prosperity.

The book reads like an unedited transcript of cocktail conversation with topics and thoughts that zig n’ zag from one to another. Each paragraph turns into a new adventure. Questions raised in the text were seldom developed to any conclusion and the few that were often sound trivial. The text is sprinkled with economic terms along with superficial explanations that are unnecessary for economists but brief and inadequate for those who are not.

Despite dropping dozens of names and repeated references to data and studies there are no numbered footnotes anywhere in the text. Instead some notes at the back are listed by page number forcing readers to waste their time scanning notes to find if text was cited, or scanning text to find a note. Many notes have incomplete citations anyway: a title or author but no publisher, journal, page number or date. I am accustomed to standard footnote citations; I don’t believe in sources I cannot find.

I cannot recommend this book.

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