Should Congress extend the CARES Act supplemental UI benefits of $600 per week?
The CARES Act provided supplemental unemployment insurance benefits of $600 a week to all workers who qualify for benefits. These benefits expire at the end of July. Should these supplemental benefits be extended? Why or why not?
Congress should extend the $600-per-week supplemental unemployment insurance (UI) benefits.
Many Americans are relying on the supplemental UI benefits (as well as the $1,200 direct stimulus payments) to stay afloat. In June, the unemployment rate was 11.1%—lower than in April (14.7%) and May (13.3%), but still much, much higher than the February rate of 3.5%.[1] Many Americans were in precarious financial positions before the recession.[2] In June, Bhutta et al. (2020) found that “nearly half of families who lose their income for six months would not be able to cover their expenses due to low levels of liquid saving and standard UI benefits that do not fully replace income.”[3]
The cash assistance provided by the CARES Act is “keeping the economy from cratering further” (Nunn, Parsons, and Shambaugh 2020). Garcia and Smith (2020) articulate this idea well:
If people have money to spend on groceries, then the grocery store can afford to pay its own workers. And the grocery store will also order more food from farmers. And that means that the farmers will have money to order equipment from manufacturing companies and so on. Consumer spending is the lifeblood of an economy.
An economy is a web of relationships and forming such relationships is expensive. Consider, for example, the costs associated with hiring employees, vetting renters, and starting new businesses. The cash assistance provided by the CARES Act is keeping economic relationships in place. By doing so, it is setting up the economy to recover faster once the pandemic is over.[4]
Could $600 per week be so generous as to discourage people from working? According to Ganong, Noel, and Vavra (2020), “two-thirds of eligible workers can receive benefits which exceed lost earnings and one-fifth can receive benefits at least double lost earnings.”[5][6] Mitman and Rabinovich (2020) thus suggest “lowering [the supplemental UI benefits] as the economy starts to reopen” and replacing them with a reemployment bonus.
Perhaps Congress should have avoided supplementing UI benefits in the first place. Many European countries are subsidizing wages instead; this approach might maintain employer-employee relationships more effectively. Alternatively, larger direct stimulus payments (larger than $1,200) in lieu of generous UI benefits would avoid disincentivizing work.
However, at this point Congress should “stay the course” rather than engineer a new policy. Extending the CARES Act benefits is conceptually simple, and simple policies are more politically tenable as well as more likely to be implemented well.
The need for the $600-per-week supplemental UI benefits remains. These benefits should be extended.
Notes
[1] Unemployment today remains higher than it was during the Great Recession, when unemployment peaked at 10.0% in October 2009.
[2] Bhutta and Dettling (2018) estimated that only 76% of American households have $400 or more in liquid savings. Similarly, the Federal Reserve’s (2019) “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2018” found that 4 in 10 American families would be unable to pay an unexpected $400 expense out-of-pocket. Needless to say, households in such a precarious financial positions would likely need the $600-per-week supplemental UI benefits to meet basic needs.
[3] Bhutta et al. (2020) also raised concerns about equity: “Families working in industries with the highest unemployment rates in April . . . would be least likely to be able to cover several months of expenses . . . . Similarly, lower-income families and minority families tend to be less well-equipped to weather the downturn.”
[4] Cheng et al. (2020) studied current unemployment trends and found that:
Rate of reemployment decreases with time since job loss . . . . [E]mployment relationships are durable in the short run, but . . . employment gains requiring new employment matches may not be as rapid and may be particularly slow for hard-hit groups including Hispanic and Black workers, youngest and oldest workers, and women.
Similarly, Carroll, Slacalek, and White (2020) add that:
If the lockdown is short-lived, the combination of expanded unemployment insurance benefits and stimulus payments should be sufficient to allow a swift recovery in consumer spending to its pre-crisis levels. If the lockdown lasts longer, an extension of enhanced unemployment benefits will likely be necessary if consumption spending is to recover.
[5] Bhutta et al. (2020): “For a full-time worker who was earning the federal minimum wage prior to losing their job, the increased UI benefits would be nearly three times their previous weekly wages.”
[6] That number includes this author, and he personally finds the $600-per-week supplemental UI benefits to be a disincentive to work. But he decided to remain employed because UI benefits are limited and cannot be claimed indefinitely.
That experience matches up to an analysis by Bhutta et al. (2020): “Although UI benefits will generate an increase in income for many families experiencing job loss, this boost to incomes is temporary and families will . . . save the ‘extra’ income if they anticipate unemployment spells to last beyond July.” Bhutta et al. argue that “consumption expenditure declined over 13% in April even while personal income (including transfers) increased by 10%” because recipients of the supplemental UI benefits are saving any extra income.
References
Bhutta, Neil, Jacqueline Blair, Lisa J. Dettling, and Kevin B. Moore. July 2020. “COVID-19, the CARES Act, and Families’ Financial Security.” https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3631903. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631903.
Bhutta, Neil, and Lisa Dettling. November 19, 2018. “Money in the Bank? Assessing Families’ Liquid Savings using the Survey of Consumer Finances.” FEDS Notes. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Accessed July 21, 2020. https://doi.org/10.17016/2380-7172.2275. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/assessing-families-liquid-savings-using-the-survey-of-consumer-finances-20181119.htm.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. May 28, 2019. “Dealing with Unexpected Expenses.” Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2018. The Federal Reserve System. Accessed July 21, 2020. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm.
Carroll, Christopher D., Jiri Slacalek, and Matthew N. White. July 8, 2020. “Modeling the Consumption Response to the Cares Act.” ECB Working Paper No. 20202441. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3645999.
Cheng, Wei, Patrick Carlin, Joanna Carroll, Sumedha Gupta, Felipe Lozano Rojas, Laura Montenovo, Thuy D. Nguyen, Ian M. Schmutte, Olga Scrivner, Kosali I. Simon, Coady Wing, and Bruce Weinberg. July 2020. “Back to Business and (Re)employing Workers? Labor Market Activity During State COVID-19 Reopenings.” NBER Working Paper No. 27419. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27419. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27419.
Ganong, Peter, Pascal J. Noel, and Joseph S. Vavra. May 2020. “US Unemployment Insurance Replacement Rates During the Pandemic.” NBER Working Paper No. 27216. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27216. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27216.
Garcia, Cardiff, and Stacey Vanek Smith, “This Weekend's (Fiscal) Cliffhanger,” July 20, 2020, in The Indicator from Planet Money, produced by Darius Rafieyan, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/893297452.
Mitman, Kurt, and Stanislav Rabinovich. June 29, 2020. “Optimal Unemployment Benefits in the Pandemic.” CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14915. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3638019.
Nunn, Ryan, Jana Parsons, and Jay Shambaugh. May 13, 2020. “Incomes have crashed. How much has unemployment insurance helped?” The Brookings Institution. Accessed July 21, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/13/incomes-have-crashed-how-much-has- unemployment-insurance-helped/.
Rothwell, Jonathan. May 27, 2020. “The effects of COVID-19 on international labor markets: An update.” Middle Class Memos. The Brookings Institute. Accessed July 25, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-covid-19-on-international-labor-markets-an-update/.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. June 2020. “The Employment Situation—June 2020.” U.S. Department of Labor. Last Modified July 2, 2020. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf.
Interview for Department Newsletter
Fordham University’s Department of Economics interviewed me for their Winter 2020 newsletter.
Why did you choose to go into the MA program?
I wanted to change careers. Before grad school, I was a product manager at a tech startup in the publishing industry. In undergrad, I double-majored in creative writing and economics, which was the perfect combo for publishing. But startups are emotional rollercoasters - the highs are really high and the lows are really low - and my startup experience taught me three things:
I liked economics a lot more than I had previously thought.
When a business plan isn't working, pivot.
Be agile: make small changes and then learn from them.
We ultimately sold the startup - it was a success - and then I decided to go back to school.
How did you find balancing the program and working?
It took me a semester to find the right balance. Between classes and a part time job, I actually overcommitted myself my first semester. Professor Francis then helped me work out a more sustainable course plan.
What advice would you give incoming MA students?
Grad school is an opportunity to study a field you're passionate about, and I feel like it's more important to learn than to get good grades. Explore topics you're interested in. Find friends you can study (and party) with. Lastly, I think you can pick up general skills from each class. For example, Topics in Economic History taught me how to conduct academic research - a skill I've used in several other classes. Use the MA to acquire the skills to pursue your interests after the program.
What was your most memorable experience or favorite class?
I've enjoyed all of my classes, but my most memorable experiences have come from spending time with friends - collaborating on projects, studying together, and hanging out outside of class.
Termites in the Trading System by Jagdish Bhagwati
Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) undermine the global trading system. They divert trade away from efficient nonmember countries; impose costs on private enterprise; and take advantage of smaller nations.
Firstly, PTAs “divert trade from the cost-efficient nonmember countries to the relatively inefficient member countries” (49). The logic is simple: there are probably countries outside of the PTA that can produce at least some of the traded goods more efficiently than the PTA members can. In addition, PTAs lock countries into being trading partners. “In today’s world of volatile, kaleidoscopic comparative advantage” (60), a PTA member may lose their comparative advantage or a PTA nonmember may develop a significant comparative advantage over the PTA members. PTAs divert trade away from the most efficient allocation.
Secondly, the PTA “spaghetti bowl” is a drain on private enterprise (60). Businesses must expend significant resources “to discover the optimal sourcing” of components (69). The work is “particularly onerous for small enterprises” and “appallingly difficult for the poorer countries” (70). A 2005 Financial Times editorial elaborated:
Bilateralism distorts the flow of goods, throws up barriers, creates friction, reduces flexibility and raises prices. . . . While larger companies have a hard time keeping track, for small groups it is impossible. Bilateral agreements cause the business community to work below its potential. . . . If left unchecked, their continued growth has the potential to hinder the development of the global production system. (70)
Thirdly, the hegemonic powers use PTAs to take advantage of smaller nations. The US and EU frequently use their negotiating power to insert “‘values-related’ demands” into PTAs (74). These stipulations usually have to do with environmental or labor standards. Why is this bad? “Generally speaking, countries will have different sequences by which they approach different dimensions of labor standards” and environmental regulations (76). The values-related demands would be unlikely to be agreed to in multilateral negotiations; PTAs are “a strategy of ‘divide and conquer’” (81). Moreover, these demands are usually the product of domestic lobbying efforts (such as from the AFL-CIO) rather than altruistic intentions.
PTAs divert trade away from efficient nonmember countries; impose costs on the business community; and take advantage of smaller nations. PTAs undermine the global trading system.
Origins of the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana
Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke vs. Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy by Douglas A. Irwin
tldr:
Britain and America’s ascensions to hegemony illustrate the virtuous cycles of “power and plenty” (Findlay and O’Rourke xix). The Pax Britannica (1815–1914) and the Pax Americana (1945–present) were characterized by relative peace and relatively free trade between large parts of the world. This paper will focus the conditions that gave rise to each superpower’s dominance. British and American foreign policies shared some similarities: both countries created large free trade zones and both spent heavily on their militaries. They also both benefited from fortunate geographic locations. However, the motivations and economic policies of the two countries were diametrically opposed. The result, perhaps, was that global growth patterns differed significantly during these two periods. Regardless of the differences, though, wealth led to geopolitical power and geopolitical power brought further wealth—a virtuous cycle.
Full Summary
Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy by Dani Rodrik
Book Summary
Globalization must respect national autonomy. Globalization has failed to “deliver effective economic policies for growth and inclusion” (263) and it “has not lifted all boats” as its champions promised that it would (2). In light of this, the nationalist and populist backlash against globalization should not be surprising. Globalists assumed that globalization would bring widespread benefits, but the conventional wisdom on globalization was wrong. Economists bear some responsibility for this: they oversimplified models during public debates. Leaders should not respond to the backlash against globalization with protectionism. Rather, they should support policies that balance the need for international cooperation with greater respect for national sovereignty.
The conventional wisdom on globalization is wrong.
Countries can grow without liberalizing. China—the clearest counterfactual—has grown by pursuing “a variety of policies that violate current trade rules” (3). Rodrick also authored a 2005 study that found that “fewer than 15 percent of significant economic liberalizations produced growth accelerations, and only 16 percent of growth accelerations were preceded by economic liberalization” (55-6).
Free trade has losers—namely, low-skilled domestic workers. Standard economic theories on comparative advantage suggest that “trade agreements do not create jobs; they simply reallocate them across industries” (211)—often to other countries. Meanwhile, the “big winners” under globalization have so far been “financiers and skilled professionals” (2). Globalization has thus been a “key contributor” to rising inequality in developed nations (2).
Globalization has not deepened global integration. Today, national allegiances are stronger than both global or even local ties (21). Brexit and the Greek financial crisis also show that the European Union—an “unprecedented experiment” in multinational cooperation (46)—remains fractured, despite decades of economic integration. National sovereignty continues to remain important in this era of “hyperglobalization” (4).
Globalization does not necessarily spread Western values. Russia, Hungary, and Turkey, for example, are “illiberal democracies” (172): they hold elections, but their elections are neither free nor fair and their citizens (especially minorities) lack fundamental civil rights. Countries can be democratic without be liberal.
Manufacturing might not be a reliable and “rapid escalator to higher income levels” any longer (153). As manufacturing becomes more automated, the sector will demand high-skilled rather than low-skilled labor and developing countries will lose their comparative advantage. This could be a problem for “late industrializers” (153).
Globalization has not produced the benefits it promises because the theories about globalization are wrong.
Economists are responsible for these misconceptions.[1] Economists have made several mistakes:
Economists have long ignored politics. They “think of national borders as a hindrance” and “deride the nation-state [as] the source of the transaction costs” that inhibit free market operations (17). But ignoring politics has been a mistake. First of all, people are deeply patriotic and they resist attempts to “transcend national sovereignty” (64). Secondly, initiatives that benefit the global community—such as freer trade—often run counter to national interests.[2] Policies should account for this and economists need to incorporate political economy into their models.
Economists “often forget . . . that economics is . . . a highly context-specific discipline” (114-5). In public debates, economists have been “overconfident” and glossed over “real-world complications and nuances” (118, 123). However, “there is virtually no question in economics to which ‘it depends’ is not an appropriate answer” (115). Choosing the right model for a situation is an “art” and a “craft” to which the discipline has devoted little attention (146). In an upper-level economic class, “a direct, unqualified assertion about the benefits of free trade [is] transformed into a statement adorned by all kinds of ifs and buts” (120).[3] Economists need to be upfront about the limits of their models.
Economists have not advocated for policies that would compensate those hurt by trade agreements. They have been “dismissive of the distributional consequences of trade agreements—consequences that their own models predicted so well” (114). Again, economists failed to account for political economy:
“Before a new policy—say a trade agreement—is adopted, beneficiaries have the incentive to promise compensation. Once the policy is adopted, they have little interest to carry out the compensation they promised—either because reversal is costly all around or because underlying balance of power shifts toward them.” (206)
The result is that, in the U.S., adjustment assistance programs have fallen by the wayside. Promises to compensate those hurt by trade agreements “have very little credibility today” and “the time for compensation has come and gone” (206).
The backlash against globalization should not be surprising, and economists bear some responsibility for it.
Good global governance respects national sovereignty. The international community will need to cooperate in order to address twenty-first century challenges like climate change. Successful initiatives will balance international cooperation with respect for national autonomy. Rodrik proposes seven guiding principles:
“Markets must be deeply embedded in systems of governance” (222). That is, governments should take an active role in regulating markets.
“Democratic governance and political communities are organized largely within nation-states, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future” (223).
“There is no ‘one way’ to prosperity” (223).
“Countries have the right to protect their own regulations and institutions” (224).
“Countries do not have the right to impose their institutions on others” (224).
“The purpose of international economic arrangements must be to lay down the traffic rules for managing the interface among national institutions” (225). International regulations should “help vehicles of different size and shape and traveling at varying speeds navigate around each other, rather than impose an identical car or a uniform speed limit on all” (225).
“Nondemocratic countries cannot count on the same rights and privileges in the international economic order as democracies” (225). It is fair for countries to restrict trade with those that do not share their values (for example, countries that permit child labor or have inadequate environmental protections). Trade provides a natural incentive to liberalize.
Instead of blindly pursuing free trade, international arrangements should seek to foster fair trade.
Globalization has not delivered the widespread benefits its “cheerleaders” promised (3). The conventional wisdom about globalization was wrong. Economists encouraged these misconceptions by oversimplifying models during public debates and by failing to incorporate political economy into their models. Future globalization initiatives should balance international cooperation with respect for national sovereignty. Good globalization respects national autonomy.
Notes
[1] “Are economists responsible for Donald Trump’s shocking victory in the US presidential election? . . . [E]ven if they may not have caused (or stopped) Trump, one thing is certain: economists would have had a greater—and much more positive—impact on the public debate had they stuck closer to their discipline’s teaching, instead of siding with globalization’s cheerleaders” (i).
[2] “It is impossible to have hyperglobalization, democracy, and national sovereignty all at once; we can have at most two out of three” (5).
[3] Rodrik also argues that mercantilism may be a valid alternative to the classic comparative advantage theory of trade.
Globalize Gradually
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz vs. In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati
Countries should globalize gradually. Trade and market liberalization are fundamental drivers of economic growth. Liberalizing too rapidly, however, can be destabilizing—as the East Asian Crisis and Russia’s transition to a market economy show. The solution is a “gradualist” approach: slowly developing the institutions of an open economy. Despite the contrasting titles of their books, Stiglitz and Bhagwati agree that globalization can be good if pursued prudently.
Trade liberalization leads to growth. The empirical evidence “against an inward-looking . . . trade strategy is really quite overwhelming” (Bhagwati 61). The most comprehensive research on the subject comes from the OECD and NBER—two nonpartisan organizations who, in the 1960s and 1970s, published exhaustive studies of over a dozen developing nations (India, Brazil, Mexico, and more). Douglas Irwin’s case study of the McKinley tariff protection is another seminal work. The benefits of trade are well-established in economics. Articulating the theories is beyond the scope of this paper, but suffice it to say that “the most counterintuitive but true proposition in economics has to be that one can specialize and do better” (Bhagwati 61).
Rapid liberalization, however, can be destabilizing. At a minimum, “very rapid and large-scale trade liberalization” displaces “workers in import-competing industries” (Bhagwati 255). In the worst-case scenario, “hasty and imprudent financial liberalization” leads to crises and recessions (Bhagwati 199). During the East Asian Crisis of 1998, the “lack of banking and financial regulation[s]” enabled “panic-fueled outflows of capital” (Bhagwati 203, 200). The East Asian countries had exposed themselves to foreign capital flows before “their institutional practices had . . . been suitably modified for transition” (Bhagwati 203). Similarly, in Russia, “excessively rapid reforms” (Bhagwati 32)—“shock therapy”—precipitated the country’s recession in 1998.
Building the institutions of an open economy takes time. Developing nations usually lack the adjustment programs—such as unemployment insurance—that can help workers displaced by trade. On a grander scale, liberalization is more than simple deregulation; it requires “the establishment of the institutions that underlay a market economy” (Stiglitz 139). This “transformation of . . . social and political structures” takes time (Stiglitz 135). History shows successful countries have all liberalized gradually. China, by adopting a “gradualist approach” (Stiglitz 183), “averted” the East Asian Crisis and grew to become the world’s second largest economy (Stiglitz 126). Likewise, of the former Soviet Bloc countries, “Hungary, Slovenia, and Poland have shown that gradualist policies lead to less pain in the short run, greater social and political stability, and faster growth in the long [run]” (Stiglitz 188).
Trade liberalization drives economic growth, but, as the East Asian Crisis and the experience of Russia show, rapid liberalization can be destabilizing. “Great economists in the past”—from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes—“have uniformly been against shock therapy” (Bhagwati 253-4) Because the institutions of an open economy take time to develop, countries should globalize gradually.
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Book Summary
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) needs reform. The IMF has failed to both develop poor countries and provide stability during financial crises. The problem is the IMF’s institutional culture: the organization adheres to free market theories with “ideological fervor” and serves the financial community more than its client countries (Stiglitz 13). IMF practices have fostered the popular (and populist) discontent with globalization.
IMF policies are harmful. Stiglitz shows this through a careful country-by-country analysis of IMF initiatives since the 1980s. Three clear examples:
Argentina, despite studiously following IMF strategies, “has [had] double-digit unemployment for years” (27).
Kenya experienced “fourteen banking failures . . . in 1993 and 1994 alone” (32).
Russia’s transition from communism to capitalism was facilitated by the IMF. Before the
transition, Russia had a 2% poverty rate; “by late 1998, that number had soared to
23.8%” (153).
Countries that “explicitly reject” IMF strategies are often more successful (126). Two clear examples:
Malaysia did so during the East Asian Crisis of 1997 and experienced the shortest downturn.
China “averted” the crisis altogether by following policies “directly opposite” those advocated by the IMF (126).
The IMF has admitted mistakes in several of the situations above.
IMF policies rest upon debatable economic theory. The IMF’s standard policy prescription is the Washington Consensus: “fiscal austerity, privatization, and market liberalization” (53). Fiscal austerity—despite being an appropriate response to hyperinflation—is disastrous during a recession. Privatization and market liberalization are better policies, but the IMF pursues them with “excessive zeal” (64)—i.e., too rapidly. “Shock therapy” privatization leads to corruption and monopolies (141). Similarly, brisk trade liberalization squashes budding domestic firms, and financial market liberalization is destabilizing without a proper regulatory environment in place. (Stiglitz recommends a “gradualist” approach instead (141).)
The IMF reflects the “perspectives and ideology of the financial community” (207). Indeed, many of the IMF’s “key personnel” are alumni of or later recruited by financial firms (207). In addition to “market fundamentalism” (35), the IMF has embraced “Wall Street culture.” The Fund has a “prevailing culture of secrecy” and bullies client countries during loan negotiations (51). (Conditionality terms, for example, require a country to implement IMF political policies in order to receive funds.) In the end, many IMF initiatives—notably financial market liberalization and “bail-ins”—have benefited the financial community more than developing nations.
No wonder opponents of globalization see conspiracy. IMF initiatives since the 1980s have been harmful because they rest upon weak—or at least debatable—economic theory. The Fund has allowed the global financial community to overly influence its decision-making. The IMF needs reform.
Evernote: I had such high hopes
I've been an Evernote Premium user since 2009. I used it for reference material (in GTD parlance): journal entries; class notes; scanned PDFs and documents (at that point, the OCR capabilities were a Premium feature and the main reason I upgraded). Back in 2009, I also had a netbook running Windows in addition to my MacBook Pro; Evernote's omnipresence across software platforms was a huge selling point. As a college student, my work life was nomadic. If I wanted the check my email in between classes and hadn't brought my heavy laptop, then I'd use a public computer. Evernote's webapp was a helpful way to have my reference material always on-hand. Over the years, I've made almost 10,000 notes.
In mid-2016, I set up Evernote to be my task manager as well. I'd been using Omnifocus for years. It's robust and reliable and deservedly one of the gold standards in task management. But Omnifocus is also designed for GTD. I would filled out contexts for my tasks but I never used contexts. It always made more sense to me to work on projects with my end goal in mind. I switched to Evernote, then, because I knew the app was so flexible that I'd be able to set up a task management system more reflective of how I naturally worked. Also, Evernote's crossplatform capabilities were again a boon: I was pursuing jobs where I'd have to use a PC rather than a Mac. I'd be all set up on any new computer just with a quick install of Evernote.
But, almost a year later, I'm reverting back to using Evernote just for reference material. The main reason is that Evernote's iOS app is bafflingly unusable. It freezes when I'm editing notes and when I'm switching notebooks. The app lags whenever it syncs: I get the best performance when I switch into Airplane mode. I've complained to their support team countless times over the past few months; they once asked me to take a video of the issue for them. Right now, I'm getting an "Unable to sync" error whenever I try to synce the mobile app. One of my notes apparently has "invalid content"—I'll need to delete the note in order to fix the issue. It's a simple fix, but I need to be at my computer in order to do it. In the meantime, the error message pops up repeatedly—every few seconds—while I'm using the app and makes the app unusuable. I find myself using workarounds to get content into Evernote: it's faster to write an email and send to my "email to Evernote" address than it is to open the app and write a note. Evernote for OS X seems solid, but Evernote's iOS team is horrible.
A simple and cheap way to fix the performance issues would just be to have the app sync less frequently. If I'm using Evernote on iOS, then I can't be using Evernote somewhere—I can't be in two places at once. Why does the app sync every few seconds? The app could simply sync whenever I open or close it—and preferably have left it closed for a long enough period that it's clear I'm not just switching apps before returning to Evernote to finish editing a note. Best of all, changing the sync schedule requires almost no engineering time—it's not a redesign. I'm surprised their product management team hasn't suggested this solution, and I'm surprised their iOS QA team hasn't caught or surfaced these issues. They're clearly not testing with enough edge cases, such as the large databases their longtime users would be likely to have.
So I'm switching back to a dedicated task manager. So far, Things 3 is looking really good. I'll continue to use Evernote for reference material. I have so much content stored in it already that I can't switch without investing tons of time. I'm locked in.
Others have expressed similar sentiments:
Evernote, the Bug-Ridden Elephant by Jason Kincaid (This article is from 2014, but it received some publicity, especially when then-CEO Phil Libin responded. The article's still a top hit if you search for "evernote bugs" and it's criticisms remain true. Especially disappointing is that Kincaid's complaints the iOS still remain problems, despite Evernote's major 8.0 release in 2017. The Evernote iOS app just consistently sucks.)
Evernote's Redesign is Too Little, Too Late by Casey Newton on The Verge (2017)
Insights from Paul Graham’s Essays
When I was in college, my economics advisor suggested that I write summaries of all of the nonfiction books I was reading in order to help the information sink in. I was doing an independent reading project with him and the summaries I wrote became the first posts on this blog.
Now that I'm a product manager, I'm doing a lot of independent reading again. It's not that I don't read regularly — I do. Reading is one of my favorite hobbies and I tend to read 1-2 books a week. But most of the books I'm reading now are nonfiction books I'm trying to learn from in order to be better at my job. I don't want to forget the information I've read, and so I figured I'd revive the practice of summarizing my independent reading here.
First up: Paul Graham's essays.
Paul Graham runs the start-up accelerator Y Combinator, which counts Dropbox, Airbnb and Justin.tv among its early-stage investments. He's also the former founder of ecommerce start-up Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 1998 and may have been the first web application.
Graham's essays run the gamut from start-ups to public policy to programming languages to Silicon Valley culture to fundraising. Most of his essays are from the early-to-mid 2000s, so some of the specific technology trends he writes about can feel a bit dated now. But by and large his writing is evergreen, and his essays contain a surprising amount of career and life advice (and, let's face it: if you're working at a start-up, your career kind of is your life).
Here were my biggest takeaways:
“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” Actually, Reid Hoffman, not Paul Graham, said that. But while Hoffman coined the quote, Graham gives similar advice over and over again.
If you release early, then you can start learning from your users. On the other hand, if you launch only after you’ve executed according to a grand business plan, then you'll find out too late that many of your original ideas were flawed.Start-ups allow you to compress your working life into a few years. In a start-up, you work insane hours. But if you exit successfully after a few years, then you're set for life.
Of course, to try this, you need a fairly high tolerance for risk. Typically, only 1 in 10 start-ups succeed. But there's no better time to try than when you're in your 20s and don't have a family to support (or other life commitments).
Graham puts the turning point for most start-ups at "ramen profitability" — when the company is making enough money to pay the founders' meager living costs.Maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule. Makers need long, uninterrupted blocks of time to do creative work. A meeting in the middle of the afternoon can make the afternoon unproductive even if the meeting is just thirty minutes long.
Webapps allow you to release quickly, i.e., multiple times a day instead of every few months. Building Viacom as a webapp allowed the team to stay ahead of their competitors. Customers also loved calling about an issue and then seeing it fixed later that day.
(Side note on speed: Viacom was also built using LISP, a high-level and relatively obscure language. Graham writes how uncommon LISP was at the time — most software was written in C++ or Java. LISP's advantages as a programming language also helped Viacom outmaneuver their competitors.)Put developers in touch with users. At Viacom, Graham and other developers would take support calls from customers. Most companies — even small, 10-15 person companies — don't do this and instead protect their developers with a dedicated support team. But I like the idea: developers in touch with customers have better insight into their customers' needs.
Don’t die. The best way to succeed as a start-up is to simply not die. Stay scrappy.
Graham also has lots of advice for fundraising, if your start-up is at that stage.
What’s the ideal page size for designing fixed layout ebooks?
What are the ideal page dimensions to use when designing your fixed layout ebook?
It depends upon what your goals are:
Are you trying to fill the full viewport and minimize the screen space devoted to the reader "chrome" (e.g., the gray latticework background in iBooks)?
Are you going to be displaying one page at a time or a two-page spread?
Are you targeting a specific platform for the end product and will you be designing two different versions or the ebook? Or trying to create a single cross-platform design?
Are you just trying to get a rough sense of page dimensions to use so that you can make sure that the text is legible?
Are you trying to take full advantage of the latest devices or do you want to support customers with lower-end devices as well?
The core challenge you'll run into when designing a fixed layout ebook for multiple devices is that different devices have different screen sizes. The dimensions of the screen — as measured in pixels per side — are not as much of an issue as the aspect ratio which they create.
To calculate the aspect ratio for a display, divide the width by the height. For example, the iPad 3's screen is 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels. This works out to a 4:3 aspect ratio: 2048 / 1536 = 1.3 = 4/3. 4:3 is a very common aspect ratio: it's used for most television screens and computer monitors as well as for standard definition video.
The most common targets for a fixed layout ebook are the Apple iPad and the Kindle Fire devices. These two device lines, though, have screens with different aspect ratios and so it's impossible for a single design to work perfectly on both devices. The iPad screen is comparably fatter than the Kindle Fire screens; more precisely, the iPad screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio where as the Kindle Fires have a longer and narrower 16:10 aspect ratio. If you design a fixed layout ebook for one device, then the pages will be pillared or letterboxed when you port to the other platform.
It's also difficult to nail down a precise page dimensions to design for because different devices in the same line may have screens with different pixel counts depending upon their display resolutions. For instance, the iPad 3 is a retina device and the screen has twice as many pixels per side as the original iPad 1 and iPad 2. There is a similar relationships between the first generation Kindle Fire and the later-generation Kindle Fire HD devices.
Note that display resolution is independent of the aspect ratio. For the reader, the display resolution mainly affects how crisp and clear the image is. For the designer, the resolution is a consideration, albeit a minor one. Optimizing for a higher resolution device may cause text which is very small to become illegible if the ebook is read on a lower resolution device. On the other hand, optimizing for a lower resolution device may lead to a lot of empty, wasted space if the ebook is read on a higher resolution device. Usually the ebook can be developed in such a way as to minimize these discrepancies, so it's almost always better to design for a particular aspect ratio rather than precise page dimensions as measured in pixels.
If you do need to nail down precise page dimensions to design for, then you could use the below dimensions depending upon where your priorities or goals lie.
If you want to target the iPad, then design for page dimensions which have a 4:3 or 1.3 aspect ratio (for instance, of 1024 px by 768 px or 2048 px by 1536 px or similar).
If you want to absolutely minimize the reader app chrome on an iPad, use dimensions of 1900 px by 1470 px. Liz Castro has done some excellent work to figure out that these are the optimum dimensions to use the full available viewport on an iPad (the viewport would be the screen, minus the reader app chrome such as the menu bar at the top of the iPad and book/page UI).
If you want to target Kindle Fire devices, then design for page dimensions which have a 16:10 or 1.6 aspect ratio (for instance, 1280 px by 800 px or 1920 px by 1200 px or similar).
If you want a "cross-platform" design, then design for page dimensions which have a 16:9 or 1.7 aspect ratio, which is the standard HD aspect ratio internationally. Example page dimensions would be 1920 px by 1080 px or 2560 px by 1600 px or similar.
I generally recommend the larger of the two options for each goal because high resolution devices are becoming much, much more common and will likely become the norm soon (for instance, Apple opted not to support the iPad 1 and iPad 2 when it released the latest iOS updates). As mentioned, too, it's almost always better to design for a particular aspect ratio rather than precise page dimensions because further device optimizations can be handled by the developer.
The “Get Hit by a Bus Protocol”: How to Protect Your Company From Sudden Staffing Changes and Build a More Flexible Team
When I first started commuting to work by bike, I never wore a helmet. After a few weeks of nagging from my boss, though, I capitulated and bought a helmet.
This is what my boss said to convince me: "If you get hit by a bus, then the company's gone!” He was exaggerating, but the point was spot-on nonetheless.
If you work at a small company (say, around 10 people), you can easily become too integral to your team. It’s fantastic to take ownership of projects and responsibilities, but you want to make sure that the business can proceed smoothly even without your personal intervention.
Some may argue that making yourself essential to a company is great for job security, but I think that removing oneself from the equation is better for the company as a whole — and makes you a better employee. People are expensive. The less the business relies anyone's direct intervention, the better it can scale and the more sustainable it will be in the long run.
Having day-to-day operations directly dependent on any one individual is also just dangerous. Everyone needs a vacation, and everyone gets sick. There are also unplanned absences — maybe a relative gets sick, or maybe, ahem, you get hit by a bus.
At a start-up, staffing changes are inevitable. Someone may leave for a different job elsewhere and/or a new team member may come on board. You want your company to be able to roll with these punches without too much difficulty.
Below is my "Get Hit by a Bus Protocol” — the steps everyone should follow in order to make the team more flexible (for its own good).
1. Document everything
Document all regular processes and procedures: how to set up the office printer; how to handle your biggest clients; how to respond to customers on common problems; how to make widgets; how you make your day-to-day decisions. Document, document, document.
As production coordinator at Vook, I keep a 7-page Google Doc which has step-by-step instructions for how to keep our production pipeline moving even in my absence. It covers nearly every scenario: how to manage a cover design job; how to produce a fixed layout ebook; how to scan a print book. I try to detail the processes as clearly as possible — almost as if I were writing a program for a computer to follow. Algorithms (if X is the case, then do Y and Z) tend to be easy for people to follow and also give a good grounding for later automation, if possible.
When your documentation is strong, you can onboard new team members easily. It’s much faster to point a new team member to a wiki or knowledge database than to spend time on individual, in-person training. In-person training costs the time of both the trainee and the one doing the training. Documentation can provide the basics and also give new team member materials to reference later.
This advice applies regardless of the role you’re in, but developers also have an extra responsibility to be commenting their code for later human readability. Any developer worth hiring, though, should be doing this already.
2. Store materials in a centralized location
I have been too often frustrated by not being able to get the files I need to finish a project because they’re stored on a coworker’s computer. Agh! This wastes the time of both me and my time.
Project files and any supporting materials should always be stored in a location where other team members can easily access them. Download project files to work on them locally, but remember to archive everything at the end of the day.
There are a variety of tools for this: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box — the list goes on. At Vook, we actually use a custom-built dashboard which supports file sharing between both team member and our clients.
Just think about storing files to the cloud. This isn't the same as backing up — which you should be doing anyway — because it’s more about sharing and decentralization. Digital files are more permanent print than physical goods simply because it's so easy to make copies. So make copies! Nothing should ever, ever, EVER be stored locally only.
3. Take frequent vacations
Vacations force you to see how things go in your absence. Vacations are safe ways to test your team's flexibility — i.e., without anyone actually getting hit by a bus — and have the bonus of recharging your team and preventing burn out. If you've already put in place processes to make yourself inessential, then vacations will furthermore test how good of a job you've done.
I like to take psuedo-vacations: for 2-3 days before I'm actually away, I'll have another team member cover my role while I work on projects I've had on the back burner. This gives the person covering my position the opportunity to ask questions while I'm still there — the answers to which I will then document — and it makes me more confident that things will run smoothly in my absence.
4. Automate
All routine processes should be handled automatically. Automation is probably best practiced by backend developers. If you’re not a developer, though, think strategically about your work: what can be automated, and how could it be automated? Typically, the more specifically you can explain a project, the easier it will be for a developer to build. Then try to get the project into your team’s queue. Or, consider a low-tech workaround. Many applications have automation functionality built in. With a little digging, you can set up email auto-responders, IFTTT recipes, Mac Automator programs, Photoshop scripts, etc.
Software Is Eating the World
In short, software is eating the world.
—Mark Andreessen
Oldie but goodie. In 2011, Andreessen was talking about how software development showed more potential than hardware development. In 2014, post-Web 2.0, his comment is just as relevant but could describe how every industry from education to taxi services is being disrupted — and in some cases gradually consumed — by software innovations.
15 Ways to Screw Up an IT Project
Jennifer Lonoff Schiff has a great round up of project management patterns to avoid over on CIO. In brief, the list is:
Having a poor or no statement of work.
Not setting expectations up front.
Not securing management buy-in.
Using the same methodology for all size projects.
Overloading team members.
Waiting or not wanting to share information.
Not having a clearly defined decision-making process.
Not using a project management software system.
Allowing scope creep (or excessive scope creep).
Being afraid to say "no."
Not being a team player.
Poor communication.
Too many, too long status meetings.
Not caring about quality--the "good enough" syndrome.
Not learning from past project management mistakes
But make sure to read the full post for comments and explanations from project managers in the trenches.
Merlin Mann on Credibility
Building credibility can start with something as simple as this: I say what's gonna happen, and then it happens. And then I say something else is gonna happen, and then it happens. And I keep doing that over and over and over . . . .
If you say, "I'm going to estimate how much it's going to cost to do this project, and when we can have it done by to the level of quality you want," and then you do it — I mean, I don't care if that's one day's worth of work. If you do that over and over, dude, you are on another level.
Merlin Mann touches on a core description of project management in Back to Work Episode #127. If you're not already listening to Back to Work regularly, change that because you should be.
Service with a Smile (Just Not If You're Taking Your Bike on Amtrak)
This is the first day of my vacation: my girlfriend and I are going biking in upstate New York. The plan was to take the Amtrak to Syracuse. We'd check our bikes to get them onto Amtrak, and then from Syracuse we'd bike east along the Erie Canal.
Only a few minutes into the journey, though, and already we're off track. We arrived at Penn Station two hours before our train was supposed to leave — plenty of time to check our bikes, we thought. To get your bikes onto Amtrak, you have to partially disassemble them: you have to take off the pedals and then turn the handlebars partway in order to fit the bike into an Amtrak-provided box ($10 for the box, $20 for the handling). Disassembling the bikes proved to be harder to do than I thought. By the time we had them ready to ship, the woman at the baggage check informed we had missed the cut off to check the bags. By how much had we missed the cut off? A mere 8 minutes.
Once on board, we then were informed by a junior conductor that we couldn't sit in a clearly open two-seater by the window because he was reserving it for families. Instead we had to sit in a darker two-seater — no window — which was one row forward. I swear, this train car is half-empty and the two rows look identical to me. No flexibility at all.
I've taken Amtrak tons of times before and this is by far the worst experience. This reminds me that it is so key, when you're in a service business, to be investing in good people who enjoy working with customers. Every service has a set scope and there are always rules to adhere to — but at some point you have to understand the customer and know when those rules can be broken.
The junior conductor who wouldn't move us a seat back — to a window seat — justified his actions by talking about job security. He said he needed to adhere to the rules or he would lose his job. But it doesn't work like that. If your job is just interpreting a series of options within a defined rule set, then your job can be easily automated. A robot could do it. These Amtrak trains could be fully automated: purchase a seat online (just like purchasing a seat in a concert hall or for a play); scan your ticket at the door; and then walk to your designated seat. No human intervention required.
Amtrak, you can have that tip pro-bono.
But, truthfully, I like interacting with human beings. Some services can be automated to improve efficiency, but at some point you're going to be dealing with a human being. Either that human is the customer or — especially in a service-oriented business — it's the person doing the selling or performing the service.
If you're the person who's performing the service — well, I realize you may be coming off an 8-hour shift which probably started at 5 AM, and I realize you can't perform miracles. But, please, treat me like a human being and I will reciprocate.
This is a practice I take into my daily work. Sure, work is hard — but treating your customers, clients, and co-workers civilly goes along way. Personally, making a customer happy is one of the best parts of my day. Customers don't always say "thank you" — after all, the are paying me, so I don't really expect it. But when they do... Well, let's just say I save those emails. They brighten my day.
Finally, hat tip to two organizations who helped out during this fiasco:
TSA. Thank you to the TSA agent who saw us struggling with our bikes and walked with me to the hardware store to pick out a wrench. Above and beyond the call of duty on his part and a big thank you for the kindness.
Bicycle Habitat. As usual, these guys are awesome. Thanks to the mechanic who helped remove the pedals from my girlfriend's bike and let me watch while he did it. These guys always offer solid advice. Bicycle Habitat is my go-to shop — they have shops in Soho, Park Slope, and Chelsea — and if you're a NYC cyclist they should be your go-to shop, too. The Park Slope shop stayed open an extra hour last night to give me a last minute tune-up (and offered me some cold veggie pizza from their lunch — mmm). Thanks again, guys!
Pagination vs. Scrollability
Pagination is a necessary evil when you have too many items to easily show them all on one screen. Linear content flows—such as articles like this—should almost never be broken up into multiple screens. It’s better to show the full article on one long screen than to inflict the pain of additional steps on users when all they want to do is read an article, and thus stay within that one item.
Where pagination comes in handy is for listings, such as e-commerce category pages, search engine results pages (SERP), article archives, and photo galleries. Here, a user’s goal is not to peruse the full list, but rather to find a specific item and click through to that destination page.
Assuming that you can prioritize the list items, users are likely to find what they want close to the top. To focus users’ attention and improve response time, you can start by showing a fairly short list, and then offer pagination options for progressing further down the list if needed.
Users' Pagination Preferences and 'View All', Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, April 28, 2013
This one of the reasons I prefer to read ebooks in apps which offer scroll functionality. An infinite scroll is far more immersive. Pagination can be nice when reading on an E Ink screen (which would have a slower refresh rate than an LCD), but every page flip is a necessary evil and a slight interruption.
Why Apple Wins in Mobile
I took an introduction to iOS app development workshop this weekend. It was at GA and taught by some of the generous and talented developers at BitFountain.
If you've ever programmed before, you know how challenging it can be. I do mostly front-end work for Vook; ebooks, at their core, are just bundles of HTML and CSS. And when an ebook is broken on a certain device (which, for all intensive purposes, is just a browser), I've wracked my head for hours trying to find typos in my CSS or errors in my mark-up.
Enter the world of Xcode. Programming in Apple's development environment is a dream:
Libraries of quality code are pre-built for you. If you wanted, you could combine them like Lego blocks to easily form an entirely new program. All that's needed is the inspiration.
These libraries of code are not unique to iOS development; there are libraries out there for other languages as well. But, man, having them pre-loaded right into your software development environment is amazing.
Inline validation and auto-complete. Xcode tests your code as you write it and let you know at the moment you write a new line of code if you have a bug. Similarly, Xcode remembers the names of all of your variables--and of those in its pre-built libraries--and will begin to auto-complete them for you as you type. This does encourage you to use long and very verbose variable names, but... It makes TextMate or NotePad++ look like something from 1991.
iOS emulator. As soon as your code is done, you can compile and test right on your computer. This is amazing. With the front-end work I've been doing, I have to actually load a site into multiple browsers at multiple screen sizes and basically test everything manually. What a drag! There are some differences between the emulator and the actual device, but the emulator is good enough for you to quickly to get a sense of whether the new code you wrote seems to be working or you need to revisit the drawing board. Deeper QA can happen later.
UI. If you're visually oriented, you can drag and drop buttons and the like and then style them the way you want in the Storyboard mode. Xcode does the heavy lifting to create the correspond code. This is invaluable for designers who want to dip into app development.
It's no wonder, that iOS has been such a dominant mobile platform for so long. The Xcode software development kit (SDK) makes programming apps surprisingly easy and incredibly fun.
When you're trying to create a platform, building out robust tools for contributors is key. The easier it is for others to publish on your platform, the more high-quality content you will have and ultimately the more valuable your platform will be. It's a decentralized model: create the tools for others to contribute.
Blogs are Like Belly Buttons
Recently another writer asked a superb question in the Fiction Writers Guild on LinkedIn:
Blogs are sort of like belly buttons—everyone's got one. How do I get people to follow mine?
My response:
How do I get people to follow *my* blog? That's the question on everyone's minds. Standing out in social media is a tricky game.
Red Lemonade would be great because the community is young. You would have the first-mover advantage: you would gain followers simply because there are currently fewer other writers competing for your reader's eyeballs. The same thing happened with Twitter—the early adopters gained lots of followers simply by showing up.
If you do go the Wordpress, Blogger, or public-blog route, you could always cross-promote your posts. Every time you post a new installment, Tweet about in and post about it here. Make friends on Twitter and make friends among other bloggers who can give you a shout-out. Try to get the momentum going.
Instead of starting your own independent blog, try to piggy back off of another website's social cache. See if you can find a website willing to publish your novel in installments. For instance, if I were writing literary fiction, I would pitch my idea to The Millions, Granta, or the Paris Review—all of which have websites for which they need a regular stream of quality, original content.
Pitching to an online magazine is a new idea that I'm not sure many people have tried. What do you think? Would it be a good way to gain exposure?
Having a blog following is essential for the aspiring writer. Whether you're pitching to publishers or publishing yourself, your online following can translate into the sales that make your time investment worthwhile.
Designing for Growth by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Oglivie
Aside from a few well known graduate schools offering immersion education—notably Stanford's d.school and U. Toronto's Rotman School, there isn't a wide variety of readily available ways to gain a learning experience blending theory with technique.
That's exactly the design challenge taken on by Jeanne Liedtka, a professor at U. Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and Tim Ogilvie, CEO of the innovation strategy consultancy Peer Insight, in their new book Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Took Kit for Managers.
Pretty thorough review of Liedtka and Oglivie's book over on American Express's Open Forum.
Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk—Vook Edition
I just came across an advertisement for Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It! The book looks fantastic—it's definitely going on my to-read list—but even more impressive than the paper or ebook editions is this one from Vook:
Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk - Vook Edition
Head to the site to watch the trailer.
Vook is an innovative publishing start-up that produces, well, Vooks—books that blend video with text. From what I gather, short videos are interwoven into the body of the book. This seems ideal for Crush It!, because Vaynerchuk is such an engaging motivational speaker. Short YouTube clips of him at conferences can run alongside the text.
Other than that, Vaynerchuk's content—and the story of his rise to fame/fortune/success—seems similar to that of Tim Ferriss.