Macro Roundup

"...Shootings are surging this week in New York City, with 28 incidents and 38 victims reported since Monday — the day the NYPD disbanded its plainclothes anti-crime unit, The Post learned on Friday.....“This is what the politicians wanted — no bail, nobody in Rikers, cops not arresting anyone,” one angry law enforcement source said Friday.“All those things equal people walking around on the street with guns, shooting each other.”..."

Tina Moore, Larry Celona and Amanda Woods, "Shootings surge in NYC amid disbanding of NYPD’s plainclothes anti-crime unit,"New York Post, June 19, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/06/19/nyc-shootings-surge-after-nypds-anti-crime-unit-disbanded/

Shootings surge in NYC amid disbanding of NYPD’s plainclothes anti-crime unit

Shootings are surging this week in New York City, with 28 incidents and 38 victims reported since Monday — the day the NYPD disbanded its plainclothes anti-crime unit, The Post learned on Friday.

By comparison, the same week last year there were only 12 shootings for the entire week.

In the most recent reported shooting, at 4 p.m. Friday in East New York, Brooklyn, a 27-year-old man died of multiple gunshot wounds to his torso, face and leg in front of 640 Stanley Avenue.

A 17-year-old boy who was also shot there was in stable condition, police said.

“This is what the politicians wanted — no bail, nobody in Rikers, cops not arresting anyone,” one angry law enforcement source said Friday.

“All those things equal people walking around on the street with guns, shooting each other.”

The shooting spree includes at least five murders, sources told The Post.

One murder happened Monday at 10 p.m. on Franklin Avenue in The Bronx, where a 34-year-old man was fatally shot in the back and hip; a second shooting victim at that scene was hospitalized.

There was another slaying early Wednesday outside a Brooklyn party, where a well-liked Queens-based DJ, Jomo Glasgow, 35, was fatally shot in the torso in front of a house party on East 49th Street near Snyder Avenue.

The dying victim had managed to drag himself around the block before collapsing, police said. A second victim, a man in his 30s, was shot in the buttocks outside the same party.

Members of the NYPD’s anti-crime unit were reassigned to uniformed patrol duties on Monday — part of what Police Commissioner Dermot Shea called a “seismic” shift affecting some 600 cops.

The unit’s disbanding comes almost six years after one of its plainclothes cops killed Eric Garner with a chokehold, sparking the “I can’t breathe” rallying cry for police brutality protesters.

Here's what's happening to the NYPD's disbanded plainclothes unit

The week’s shootings include an incident from 3 a.m. Wednesday in Jamaica, Queens. A 29-year-old man there suffered a graze wound to the chest and a gunshot to the right shoulder.

On Thursday night alone, there were at least five shootings just in Brooklyn.

At 7:30 p.m. on Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York, a 30-year-old man was shot in the chin.

At 9:24 p.m. on East 93rd Street in Brownsville, a 36-year-old man was shot.

At 10:23 p.m. on Albany Avenue in Crown Heights, a 20-year-old man was shot in the arm and leg.

At 10:30 p.m. at Bushwick Avenue and Cornelia Street in Bushwick, a 27-year-old man was shot in the arm.

Just before midnight, at Marcus Garvey Boulevard and Gates Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a 20-year-old man was shot in the leg.

The shootings continued into the morning on Friday.

Traffic agents oppose separation from NYPD over safety concerns

At 1:30 a.m., a 26-year-old man showed up at Jamaica Hospital in Queens with a gunshot wound to the right foot.

At 2:40 a.m. Friday on the Upper West Side, a 20-year-old man was shot in the left heel at the Wise Towers housing project on West 90th Street.

There have been 97 shootings this month so far, compared to 89 for the whole month of June last year.

“…In 1958, nine months after I was born, Mom, Dad, Peg, and I left Trenton for a newly built split-level house in Cranford, New Jersey. My father was working for Western Electric, an arm of AT&T, first as a draftsman and then as an electrical engineer. He worked there until his retirement. One of his specialties was battery design. When I was growing up, I thought it sounded incredibly boring. Now I realize how important it is….”

Greg Mankiw, "Dorothy Theresa Sawchak Mankiw,"Greg Mankiw's Blog, April 17, 2020, http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2020/04/dorothy-theresa-sawchak-mankiw.html

Dorothy Theresa Sawchak Mankiw

My mother was born on July 18, 1927, the second child of Nicholas and Catherine Sawchak.

Nicholas and Catherine were immigrants from Ukraine. They came to the United States as teenagers, arriving separately, neither with more than a fourth-grade education. Catherine was from a farming area in western Ukraine. She left because her family wanted her to marry an older man rather than her younger boyfriend, who had been conscripted into the army. Her first job here was as a maid. Nicholas was from Kiev, where he had been trained to be a furrier. In the United States, he worked as a potter, making sinks and toilettes. When Nicholas and Catherine came to the United States, they thought they might return home to Ukraine eventually. But World War I and the Russian Revolution intervened, causing a change of plans. Catherine’s boyfriend died in the war. Nicholas and Catherine met each other, married, and settled in a small row house in Trenton, New Jersey, where they lived the rest of their lives.

Catherine and Nicholas had two children, my uncle Walter and my mother Dorothy. When my mother was born, her parents chose to name her “Dorothy Theresa Sawchak.” But because Catherine spoke with a heavy accent, the clerk preparing the birth certificate did not understand her. So officially, my mother’s middle name was “Tessie” rather than “Theresa.” She never bothered to change it.

Nicholas and Catherine were hardworking and frugal. They saved enough to send Walter to college and medical school. He served as a physician in the army during the Korean war. Once I asked him if he worked at a MASH unit, like in the TV show. He said no, he worked closer to the front. He patched up the wounded soldiers the best he could and then sent them to a MASH unit to recover and receive more treatment. After the war, he became a pathologist in a Trenton-area hospital. He married and had two daughters, my cousins.

My mother attended Trenton High School (the same high school, I learned years later, attended by the economist Robert Solow at about the same time). She danced ballet. She water-skied on the Delaware River. She loved to read and go to the movies.

In part because of limited resources and in part because of the gender bias of the time, my mother was not given the chance to go to college. Years later, her parents would say that not giving her that opportunity was one of their great regrets. Instead, my mother learned to be a hairdresser. She was also pressured to marry the son of some family friends.

The marriage did not work. With my mother pregnant, her new husband started “running around,” my mother’s euphemism for infidelity. They divorced, and she kicked him out of her life. But the marriage did leave her with one blessing—my sister Peg.

My mother continued life as a single mother. Some years later, she met my father, also named Nicholas, through social functions run by local Ukrainian churches. They both loved to dance. He wanted to marry her, but having been burned once, she was reluctant at first. Only when she realized that he had become her best friend did she finally accept.

In 1958, nine months after I was born, Mom, Dad, Peg, and I left Trenton for a newly built split-level house in Cranford, New Jersey. My father was working for Western Electric, an arm of AT&T, first as a draftsman and then as an electrical engineer. He worked there until his retirement. One of his specialties was battery design. When I was growing up, I thought it sounded incredibly boring. Now I realize how important it is.

My mother then stopped working as a hairdresser to become a full-time mom. But she kept all the hairdresser equipment from her shop—chair, mirrors, scissors, razors, and so on—in our basement. She would cut the hair of her friends on a part-time basis. When I was a small boy, she cut my hair as well.

I attended the Brookside School, the public grade school which was a short walk from our house. When I was in the second or third grade, my mother was called in to see the teacher. The class had been given some standardized aptitude test. “Greg did well,” the teacher said. “We were very surprised.”

At that moment, my mother decided the school was not working out for me. I was talkative and inquisitive at home but shy and lackluster at school. I needed a change.

She started looking around for the best school she could find for me. She decided it was The Pingry School, an independent day school about a dozen miles from our house. She had me apply, and I was accepted.

The question then became, how to pay for it? Pingry was expensive, and we did not have a lot of extra money. My mother decided that she needed to return to work.

She started looking for a job, and an extraordinary opportunity presented itself. Union County, where we lived, was opening a public vocational school, and they were looking for teachers. She applied to be the cosmetology teacher and was hired.

There was, however, a glitch. The teachers, even though teaching trades like hairdressing, needed teacher certification. That required a certain number of college courses, and my mother had not taken any. So she got a temporary reprieve from the requirement. While teaching at the vocational school during the day, she started taking college courses at night to earn her certification, all while raising two children.

My mother taught at the vocational school until her retirement. During that time, she also co-authored a couple of books, called Beauty Culture I and II, which were teacher’s guides. From the summary of the first volume: “The syllabus is divided into six sections and includes the following areas of instruction: shop, school, and the cosmetologist; sterilization practices in the beauty salon; scalp and hair applications and shampooing; hair styling; manicuring; and hairpressing and iron curling.” I suppose one might view this project as a harbinger of my career as a textbook author.

When my parents both retired, they were still the best of friends. They traveled together, exploring the world in ways that were impossible when they were younger and poorer. During my third year as an economics professor, I was visiting the LSE for about a month. I encouraged my parents to come over to London for a week or so. They had a grand time. I believe it was the first time they had ever visited Europe. When I was growing up, vacations were usually at the Jersey shore.

My father died a few years later. My mother spent the next three decades living alone. She was then living full-time at the Jersey shore in Brant Beach on Long Beach Island. The house was close to the ocean and large enough to encourage her growing family to come for extended visits. Two children, five grandchildren, four great-grandchildren. The more, the merrier. Nothing made her happier than being surrounded by family.

My mother loved to cook, especially the Ukrainian dishes she learned in her childhood. Holubtsi (stuffed cabbage) was a specialty. Another was kapusta (cabbage) soup. One time, the local newspaper offered to publish her kapusta soup recipe. They did so, but with an error. Every seasoning that was supposed to be measured in teaspoons was printed as tablespoons. The paper later ran a correction but probably to no avail. I am not sure if anyone ever tried the misprinted recipe and, if so, to what end.

During her free time in her later years, my mother read extensively, played FreeCell on her computer, and watched TV. A few years ago, when she was about 90 years old, I was visiting her, and I happened to mention the show “Breaking Bad.” She had not heard of it. She suggested we watch the first episode. And then another. And another. After I left, she binge-watched all five seasons.

As she aged, living alone became harder. When she had trouble going up and down the stairs, an elevator was added to her house. But slowly her balance faltered, and she fell several times. She started having small strokes, and then a more significant one. She moved into a nursing home. Whenever I visited, I brought her new books to read. Her love of reading never diminished.

This is, I am afraid, where the story ends. Last week, Dorothy Theresa Sawchak Mankiw tested positive for Covid-19. Yesterday, she died. I will miss her.

When the Israelis started airlifting the Ethiopian Jews out in the early 1990’s it was a major domestic controversy people didn’t want them - and the second generation is still underperforming:

"....Nevertheless, young Ethiopians still lag behind in the quality of their employment;only 19 percent hold jobs considered high-quality (the figure is 9 percent for the first generation).But when the Taub Center checked the kind of jobs Ethiopian Israelis with higher education obtain, it emerged that the gap has almost completely disappeared. Fifty five percent of Ethiopian university graduates are employed in high-quality positions, like the figure for the Jewish population in general. The salaries of Ethiopian university graduates are lower than the average, but that is because of their choice to study professions that are less lucrative, like teaching or nursing. This choice is connected to the fact that only a few in the community study for the five-unit matriculation exam in math...”

Meirav Arlosoroff, "Ethiopians in Israel: An Employment and Educational Success,:Haaretz, August 7, 2015, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-ethiopians-in-israel-an-employment-and-educational-success-1.5375832

While the Ethiopian community has a long way to go before they can close gaps, the direction is definitely the right one.

Thousands of Ethiopian Israelis have been demonstrating in recent months to protest their difficult situation. The figures show that Israelis of Ethiopian origin are indeed in difficult straits: The income of an Ethiopian household is 35 percent lower than that of an average household in Israel, only 5 percent hold quality jobs as opposed to 33 percent of Jewish Israelis in general, and half of Ethiopian-Israeli women and 17 percent of the men work in cleaning and kitchen jobs.

These figures stem from the great gap in education in the Ethiopian community. Only 20 percent have university education as opposed to 40 percent of the general population, mainly because only 53 percent of Ethiopian Israelis earn a matriculation certificate (compared with 73 percent of the population in general). What is more, the quality of matriculation certificates awarded to Ethiopian Israeli students is lower than that of others; only three Ethiopian high-school students sat last year for the five-unit matriculation exam in mathematics.

It is easy to understand the communitys protests against the backdrop of these figures. However, there seems to be a misunderstanding. In fact, it may be that the outbreak of protest shows the exact opposite - it is testimony that the Ethiopian community is growing stronger and has reached such a level of strength that it can loudly demand its rights.

That is, the figures should tell the story that the absorption of Ethiopian Jews in Israel has been a success in terms of education and employment. A recently published study by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel focused on comparing the situation of Ethiopian Jews to that of the Jewish population in general in Israel and to the Arab population.

According to the Taub Center studys figures, Ethiopian Israelis lag behind non-Ethiopian Israelis in most areas. But the study did not make do with just a general overview of the Ethiopian community. They also looked deeper within the community, comparing gaps between adults (those born in Ethiopia and who came to Israel at a relatively advanced age) and the second generation (born in Israel or who came at a young age and were educated mainly in Israel).

Here is where the picture of success emerges: A huge gap was seen between the first and second generations, a gap so great that it shows successful integration of the second generation in Israel.

For example, 90 percent of the younger generation has a high-school education, almost the same percentage as the Jewish population in general (93 percent) and three times the percentage of first-generation Ethiopians in Israel (36 percent). The rate of matriculation is only 53 percent, but that is almost four times the figure for the first generation (16 percent). The 20 percent of second-generation Ethiopian Israelis with higher education is almost four times the rate of their parents generation (5.7 percent).

Employment among Ethiopian Israelis - and here the figures apply to both generations because the second generation has only recently entered the Israeli workplace - jumped from 50 to 72 percent in 12 years. The most impressive leap is for women, from 35 percent to 65 percent in one decade. The percentage of Ethiopian Israelis working in janitorial services, by the way, has already fallen to only 5 percent.

Nevertheless, young Ethiopians still lag behind in the quality of their employment; only 19 percent hold jobs considered high-quality (the figure is 9 percent for the first generation).

But when the Taub Center checked the kind of jobs Ethiopian Israelis with higher education obtain, it emerged that the gap has almost completely disappeared. Fifty five percent of Ethiopian university graduates are employed in high-quality positions, like the figure for the Jewish population in general. The salaries of Ethiopian university graduates are lower than the average, but that is because of their choice to study professions that are less lucrative, like teaching or nursing. This choice is connected to the fact that only a few in the community study for the five-unit matriculation exam in math.

The Education Ministry speaks cautiously of relative success in special programs for the Ethiopian community - in the past decade alone, Ethiopian students received dedicated funding of 35 million shekels ($9.2 million). This educational investment, together with funding earmarked by the state for Ethiopian absorption in the areas of welfare and employment, is apparently bearing fruit.

While the Ethiopian community has a long way to go before they can close gaps with the Jewish society in general, the figures show that the direction is definitely the right one.

And by the way, the unfortunate figure that comes up in almost all areas of the Taub study is that Ethiopian Israelis are already pulling ahead of Arab Israelis. This shows that Israels problem of discrimination and exclusion stems not only from racism toward Israelis of Ethiopian origin, but toward Arabs as well.

Although 22% of Germans work part time vs only 15% in the US 20.7/(116.5 + 20.7)https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/part-time-employment

Simonetta Longhi, “Racial Wage Differentials In Developed Countries,” Institute Of Labor Economics, June 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Living_conditions_in_Europe_-_income_distribution_and_income_inequality

Elise Gould, "Stark Black-White Divide In Wages Is Widening Further," Economic Policy Institute, February 27, 2019, https://www.epi.org/blog/stark-black-white-divide-in-wages-is-widening-further/

Jeff Spross, "The Unexpected Truth About Americans' Work Hours," The Week, February 26, 2018, https://theweek.com/articles/756859/unexpected-truth-about-americans-work-hours

"Real Median Household Income By Race And Hispanic Origin: 1967 to 2017," U.S. Census Bureau, Accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/demo/p60-263/figure1.pdf

BLS Staff, "Labor Force Characteristics By Race And Ethnicity, 2018," U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics, October 2019, https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2018/home.htm

"United States Part Time Employment," Trading Economics, Accessed June 23, 2020, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/part-time-employment

OECD, "Hours Worked," Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Accessed June 23, 2020, https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

https://theweek.com/articles/756859/unexpected-truth-about-americans-work-hours

on average black men ages 25 to 55 worked about 1250 hours a year in 2018 vs 1750 for white men 1250/1750 =.714 40.3 median black income/.714 = 56.4/68.1 median white income = 82.8% …suggests the black/white wage gap after adjusting or gov benefits might be closer to 15%, although more household headed by women (who earn less than men on average) among blacks pushes the estimate the other way

https://www.epi.org/blog/stark-black-white-divide-in-wages-is-widening-further/

https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/365/pdfs/racial-wage-differentials-in-developed-countries.pdf

Asian 81.3/61.4 = 1.32 x 1.28 = 1.70

White 68.1/61.4 = 1.11 x 1.28 = 1.42!

Note Hispanics earn 50.5 divided by 61.4 = 82% x 1.28 = 1.05 times average German

2017 dollars 40.3 median black household income/ 68.1 white not Hispanic median household income = 59.2%. Average household income is 61.4. so 40.3/61.4 = 66% x 1.28 = 84% = us black/german. German minorities earning about 15% less than Germans so German minorities and US minorities earn about the samehttps://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/365/pdfs/racial-wage-differentials-in-developed-countries.pdfandhttps://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/demo/p60-263/figure1.pdf

Us worforce 78% white - (89% white Hispanic x 17% of workforce is Hispanic =15%) = 63% + 6% Asian = 69% white or Asian = 31% not white or Asianhttps://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2018/home.htm

Although the us average would be less than the white us average: 31% (approximates blacks and Hispanics) x 75% x X + 69% x X = 50.3; 0.92X=50.3; X= 54.5 x.75 = 40.9/39.4 = 1.04 us black disposable income vs German.

1.28 times the US black/white of 75% =.96 US black disposable income vs German disposable income,

Although part-time is probably lower for 25 to 55 yea olds, since older Germans work more than older Americans

.78 x.85= 66% fulltime German vs.85 x 80 = 68% full time Americans ages 24 to 55

Roland Fryer, "What the Data Say About Police,"Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-data-say-about-police-11592845959

Fryer on what his research says:“…There are large racial differences in police use of nonlethal force. My research team analyzed nearly five million police encounters from New York City. We found that when police reported the incidents,they were 53% more likely to use physical force on a black civilian than a white one. In a separate, nationally representative dataset asking civilians about their experiences with police, we found the use of physical force on blacks to be 350% as likely. This is true of every level of nonlethal force, from officers putting their hands on civilians to striking them with batons. We controlled for every variable available in myriad ways. That reduced the racial disparities by 66%, but blacks were still significantly more likely to endure police force.…. No matter how we analyzed the data, we found no racial differences in shootings overall, in any city in particular, or in any subset of the data.I have grappled with these results for years as I witnessed videos of unmistakable police brutality against black men. How can the data tell a story so different from what we see with our eyes?...”

His data suggests that an officer’s race doesn’t really have an impact on use of force:

“…We use four sources of data - none ideal - which together paint an empirical portrait of racial di↵erences in police use of force conditional on an interaction. The first two data sources - NYC’s Stop and Frisk program and the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS) - provide information on non-lethal force from both the police and civilian perspectives, respectively…The database contains detailed information on the characteristics of each stop (precinct, cross streets, time of day, inside/outside, high/low crime area), civilian demographics (race, age, gender, height, weight, build, type of identification provided), whether or not the officers were in uniform, encounter characteristics (reason for stop, reason for frisk (if any), reason for search (if any), suspected crime(s)), and post-encounter characteristics (whether or not a weapon was eventually found or whether an individual was summonsed, arrested, or a crime committed). Perhaps the most novel component of the data is that officers are required to document which one of the following seven uses of force was used, if any: (1) hands, (2) force to a wall, (3) handcuffs, (4) draw weapon, (5) push to the ground, (6) point a weapon, (7) pepper spray or (8) strike with a baton.6 Ocers are instructed to include as many uses of force as applicable…”

Here ae the levels of force the data records:

“…. Second, lower level uses of force - such as the use of hands - are both recorded in these data and more frequently used by law enforcement than more intense uses of force. For instance, if one were to use arrest data to glean use of force, many lower level uses of force would simply be considered standard operating procedure. Putting hands on a suspect, pushing them up against a wall, and putting handcuffs on them are so un-noteworthy in the larger context of an arrest that they are not recorded in typical arrest descriptions. Yet, because proactive policing is a larger and less confrontational portion of police work, these actions warrant data entry….”