"Pulp and paper provide clues to jobless recovery"




Note: Emails are organized in the order received, with first received at the top.

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I'm not sure I get the point of this column. Are you saying that being compelled to treat Blacks and women in the workplace with respect has turned the White male worker into a wimp?

Or are you saying that since all workers, regardless of race or gender, have an avenue to punitive compensation for mistreatment by their employers, we are all harmed because that takes away an employer's incentive to hire? Or is it simply that employers would rather just hire 'take-no-prisoners' white males, but the meddling federal government, with its pesky EEOC, makes that untenable?

I really want to get it.

Garrett Rowe
Phoenix, Arizona
USA

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Garrett, the article was a bit messy (my fault). What I was trying to say was this: that although many of the workplace relationship matters addressed in the last forty years or so have been generally positive, then (your words): "...since...all workers, regardless of race or gender, have an avenue to punitive compensation for mistreatment by their employers, we are all harmed because that takes away an employer's incentive to hire."

Essentially, employees, more than ever, have become a necessary evil for which employers want to minimize the risk and the only way for them to do that is to minimize the number of employees.

Hope that clears it up.

Jim

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Hi Jim!

Saw in Nip Impressions that you are passing through this way in early March. I assume that per our earlier correspondence you will be stopping in for a Mill tour and a BBQ lunch. I am very much looking forward to your visit.

Thought I might pass on a couple of interesting things to see while in town - If your plans are flexible enough and you have any interest at all, both of these attractions are worth seeing.

1) The Kansas Cosmosphere - home of the original Apollo 13 capsule and one
of the largest collections of space stuff outside of the Smithsonian.

http://www.cosmo.org/

2) The Underground Salt Museum

http://www.undergroundmuseum.org/index.php

Let me know the exact dates you plan to be in the area and I will be sure to keep my calendar open.


Jim Kicklighter
Hutchinson, Kansas
USA

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Indeed I will, Jim. Looking forward to it.

Jim

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Jim,

I have tortured you with comments on economics for too long! A friend sent me the following youtube link that pretty much sums up the argument between Keynes and Hayek. I maintain that the difference in the capital investment perspective has important implications for our industry. For what its worth, GP follows Hayek since Koch bought them. Pretty much every other domestic company follows Keynesian investment thought. Anyhow, it is a satirical little video that condenses thousands of pages of printed textbooks to a few paperless minutes. You might need to copy the link to your browser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

Mike Ryan
Chillicothe, Ohio
USA

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Thanks, Mike. As a bonus, it starts in one of Laura's and my favorite hotels in New York--the Millennium Hilton, just across the street from Ground Zero. The picture here was taken from the restaurant on the second floor, just above the opening scene in the video.

At the far end in the opening scene of the video is the lobby bar, where Laura and I have finished many a pleasant day with a nice glass of port.

But I digress. The video is very good and does what you say.

Jim

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Hi Jim,

I just have to comment on your reference to the frog jumping half way to his destination with each successive hop, thus never reaching his goal.

This is known as Zeno's Paradox. Zeno was a Greek philosopher in the 5th century B.C. In the Zeno Paradox, a runner must reach the halfway point between point A and point B. But, before reaching that halfway point, the runner must reach the halfway point to the halfway point - i.e., the quarter point., and so on, ad infinitum. Zeno argued that since the sequence would go on forever, the runner has to cover an infinite number of finite distances, and therefore an infinite distance in total. Zeno concluded that this must, therefore, take an infinite amount of time and the runner never gets anywhere.

Diogenes the Cynic took an empirical approach by taking a few steps and pointing out that you can, in fact, move from point A to point B. Now we have a clash between logical proof and sensory evidence!

Consider the sequence of distances in Zeno's Paradox: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc. The increments get smaller and smaller. The sequence has an infinite number of terms, but a finite sum. Notice that as we add the increments the runner has moved we get: 1/2+1/4=3/4, 3/4+1/8=7/8, 7/8+1/16=15/16, etc. Notice that the denominator is a power of 2 and the numerator is always one less than the denominator. As we add more and more terms, we get numbers like 1,023/1,024, numbers that are getting closer and closer to unity. Thus Zeno was incorrect in his assumption that the sum of distances travelled is infinity.

Zeno's Paradox concerns the amount of time it takes to make the journey, rather than the distance covered. If the runner were forced to take smaller and smaller steps to comply with Zeno's sequence, he would indeed be in for trouble. But if he is allowed to move at a constant speed without considering Zeno's imaginary checkpoints, then the time it takes to travel a finite distance is also finite and, fortunately for all of us, motion from point A to point B is possible after all. Whew!!!

Steven J. Moore
Rhinelander, Wisconsin
USA

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