Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

What Merits This?

By BJ Bjornson

The facts tend to speak for themselves sometimes.

Fg2



... the most popular way to find a job is through family and friends. That holds true for all of us, but it is immensely more likely for the kids of the very rich. Look at this picture from a research paper that a colleague and I published in the Journal of Labor Economics (available here if you really want all the details).

The bottom line is that about 40% of us have at some point worked for exactly the same firm that at some point also employed our fathers. But if dad�s earnings put him in the top 25% these chances are above average, they start taking off if dad was in the top 5%, and reach the stratosphere for top earners. Almost 7 out of 10 sons of top earning dads had a job with his employer.

All parents want to help their children in whatever way they can. But top earners can do it more than others, and with more consequence: virtually guaranteeing, if not a lifetime of high earnings, at least a great start in life.


I won�t speak to the methodology of only looking at the male half of the species, though given the rather recentness of large-scale female participation in the workforce, I suppose you could make the argument that looking at the father�s employer is more appropriate for an intergenerational study at this point, though I'd say it�s a little less defensible to only focus on the son�s employment.

In any case, it does bring to mind this post by Glenn Greenwald on the �meritocracy� of the national media in the U.S., noting the hiring of Luke Russert, Jenna Bush, Meghan McCain, and Chelsea Clinton by major broadcasters. All, we are quite certain, based solely on their outstanding achievements in the field of journalism and never on anything so crass as their famous fathers� names.

Honestly, how could anyone look at all this and argue that the 1% all very much deserve their wealth due to the hard work and pluck they�ve shown?



1 comment:

  1. "noting the hiring ... by major broadcasters."
    Actually, all were hired by NBC/MSNBC, which is a bit of a telling point in itself.

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