Essays in Applied Labor Economics , Including Analysis of Economic History and Laws & Economics

In this paper, James Edward Curtis, Jr. (2018) compiles essays on applied labor economics, economic history, and laws & economics to address economic issues. James Edward Curtis, Jr. (2018) considers economic theory, summary empirical analyses, and government & social construct to challenge our comfort levels with the current status of unequal economic indicators and public policy.


Introduction
The Curtis Jr (2018) paper is organized according to the following table of contents I Economic Factors 1.1 Economic History I, Ethnicity, "Melting Pots and Social Slavery, October 1, 2003 1.2 Labor Economics I, Wages, Inefficiency versus Popularity", October 9, 2003 1.3 Labor Economics I, Wages, Four-Door Trap, December 20, 2003, revised January 14, 2004 1.4 Labor Economics II, Utility Functions & Time, Four-Door Trap, December 20, 2003, revised January 14, 2004 1.5 Labor Economics III, Education/Human Capital Theory, Four-Door Trap, December 20, 2003, revised January 14, 2004   The world has watched America grow, with a snicker behind our backs, even though they accept the leadership of America in the economic world arena.The snicker is not because of a lack of international competence or capacity for international efficiency gains but for something centrifugal: culture.America is a melting pot of different cultures: Anglo-English, Franco-American, Anglo-Irish, West European-Americans, Americans of Russian decent, Mexican-Americans, Caribbean-Americans, Americans of African descent, Native Americans, Indian Americans from Asia, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, etc.
The basis for consumption in all these different sub-groups is preferences and if America is comprised of all these different cultures, then what is the probability of full agreement on consumption decisions, at an aggregate level?Low.Therefore, aggregate consumption decisions are likely to reflect one culture more than the rest when the final decisions are informally made.This will leave many sub-cultures discomforted seeking alternative ways to express their cultural preferences.Therefore, there is either an incentive to homogenize cultural preferences at birth and segregate sub-cultures and allow them to operate in the international open market freely.
But what happens when these cultural consumption products are intangible indirect products, like degree of individual freedom/order, … desire for slave-like production/the role of religion, and the role of the oceans and the earth … in the happiness and productivity of individuals.
Therefore, how can a melting pot without homogeneity survive if these products are real, i.e., have a price and are measurable in terms of utility.This is the test of America may be facing now, with social enslavement political enfranchisement and economic products, and now the world watches the melting pot deal with another cultural war that is quiet, that abuses true meaning in the words and language, that hides motives and that hides "team-membership" in a warfare like any other.But this series of events is no Vietnam and twice as worse as the US Civil War because we have the lessons of Vietnam and Civil War to guide us, but many culturally-selfish individuals unfortunately choose to ignore them.And the world watches the great America deal with fundamentally locating its cultural heart; essentially, finding out what matters most to America, and across a plurality of sub-cultures.

Labor Economics I, Wages, "Inefficiency Versus Popularity", October 9, 2003
A fundamental flaw to all of this seems to be that liberal research on slavery production suggests that slave "owners" tend to overextend labor which leads to premature death and injuries, and, ultimately, no or less productivity, leading to lower revenue and profits.Yet they endorse enslaving … for medical, political, and economic consumption goods.Members of their team are defying their own rationality and behaving irrational in enslaving … For, their research implies that there should be a way to employ the potential slave for a wage, that is above the reservation wage of the potential slave, which is zero if all other employers collude in such a manner, and that the potential slave directly receives, to incentivize the potential slave to work that will provide more output than the output produced by slavery-ignoring the spillover effect of aggregate distaste for slavery that leads to no productivity in such form in the long-run and, eventually, a set of insufficient skills by the slave owners, represented economically by inferior, or change elasticity of labor and capital, once production with slavery has been forced to end, leading to higher long-run costs and lack of competitiveness with non-slave production states and, ultimately, government programs and state leadership that are likely to localized labor market participation.Wages, "Four-Door Trap", December 20, 2003, Revised January 14, 2004 An interpretation of research shows that young slaves experience catch-up growth relative to young non-slaves if underfed while young and/or are developing relative to non-slaves and fed at levels equivalent to non-slaves when developed, although this does not address selection bias-a reduction of the analysis to slaves who made it to development stages, since slaves tended to pass away earlier, on average, than non-slaves.Functions & Time, "Four-Door Trap", December 20, 2003, Revised January 14, 2004 Research … shows that utility can be time-separable, or not having consumption in any one period-through rigorous investment in education on minimal or no income, or, … participation in … wealth-creation …, by those who chose not to invest in education-can produce more happiness in, usually, the remaining periods where the income, wealth and consumption may occur.Economics III, Education/Human Capital Theory, "Four-Door Trap", December 20, 2003, Revised January 14, 2004 Applied theoretical research … analyzes human capital, or the impact of innate, unobserved ability and training, on wages, hours worked, investment choices, and even "choices" to commit crime, and empirical research that analyzes data, without measures of unobserved ability, on the capacity to "precisely" predict the contributions or "non-contributions" to observe socio-economic outcomes, and to observe the capacity to make group comparisons in predictions via possible methods like two-stage, first-difference, and/or cohort analyses in order to attempt to eliminate the potential bias due to unobserved ability.

Labor
Applied theoretical research … uses fixed-effect analyses to control for potential biases due to unobserved ability, given the possibly overly crude, inaccurate or the lack of complete availability of ability measures like SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and IQ scores, by assuming ability is genetically explained, (or by) using family and group panel datasets of (hopefully) theoretically-motivated/justified explanatory variables, including potentially more-questionable biological/genetic/DNA data in economic and social analyses over time, and in order to "precisely" predict the contributions (or "non-contributions") to observed economic and social outcomes and make group comparisons in predictions.
Note that this poses interesting, but possibly suspiciously-motivated questions, for individuals who have significantly progressed beyond historical family outcomes in terms of education and/or wealth.
Applied theoretical research … presents the theoretical-simulations, and empirical research on one-time and multi-period bets, for instance, on probabilities that falsifying the social enhancement of some members of a group, or providing asymmetric "information" to this group, secretly to an individual or sub-group, will lead to artificial categorization and potential exploitation of the members of the group that was not falsely enhanced.This categorization may be consistent with historical types of exploitation that occurs among groups that have been historically socially isolated based on labels of culture and race, possibly seeking individually internalize justifications from members of groups subjected to historical slavery and concentration camps, and possibly seeking a diminished desire to obtain financial restitution and formal apologies based on these internal revelations.Source: graph created by James Curtis, Jr. Religion & Science, "Four-Door Trap", December 20, 2003, Revised January 14, 2004 Theocracy-like activities, or leadership clinging to religious doctrines as a source of social order, are possibly engaged in identifying and shaping my personal preferences at expense of short-term potential professional productivity.

Laws and Economics II, Hierarchal Labor Structure, "A New Economy", December 24, 2003
It is possible that these social methods and secret society wealth creation methods … are products of a contemporary tri-level retro-technical international economy.
Consider an economy involving large land owners, managers and serfdom-slaves, the latter two, at least, which are a combination of labor and physical capital in the form of "humans" … whether the individual is a potential manager or serfdom-slave.
In this hypothetical economy, allow for the possibility of arbitrary pre-destination, for instance, via abuse of satellite and information monitoring technologies being used to predestine … managers or serfdom-slaves ... In this economy, talented and less talented managers and serfdom-slaves are welcome because each manager and serfdom-slave is used in a unique way to filter resources to large land owners.Therefore, economic efficiency, where total worker and larger land-owner surplus is maximized, may not be the primary objective of society, instead it is likely that economic effectiveness in transmitting resources to the large land owners is an appreciated social value, possibly at the expense of social efficiency.
Given the possibility of social inefficiency, the crucial social question becomes, assuming all large land owners are crude short-run profit maximizers, then: What is the desire of managers to manage serfdom-slaves?More specifically, what is the capacity of managers to adjust their desire and participation?For instance, is the utility of the serfdom-slaves in the utility function of the manager?Why or why not?Do issues like conflicts of interest in social governance statutes or the historical outcomes of historically similar social structures impact manager choices?Why or why not?

Laws and Economics III, Wealth Inequality, "Justice During Staged Imperialism: … Wealth Transfers by Exploiting Arrogance and Ignorance", January 4, 2004
It is possible that potentially abusive laws … are being employed in the United States … in a surfacely-chaotic manner, to target groups of individuals, who have made choices that are, arbitrarily, peculiar to those in concurrent leadership positions, or, in the eyes of some, individuals engaged in activities due to less visible constraints.It is further possible that these individuals are being targeted in purposeful stages, possibly in order to minimize the short-run and/or long-run possibilities of obtaining full accountability of possibly dated-organization and/or dated-actions by potential source motivators and/or source enablers of these individuals.Simultaneously, while possibly minimizing accountability, this source group may be discretely attempting to transfer questionably-obtained and/or legitimately-obtained resources from the targeted individuals to these source individuals.

Economic History II, Religion & Science, "Economic and Social Linkages to the African Slave Trade and
Modern 'Faith' Motivations", January 14, 2004 It is possible that the United States of America's northeastern founding fathers, in particular, envisioned God"s plan or purposeful organization of America as the source of potential manifested prophecy of faith in the centuries to come … especially given the adopted motto of the United States, "In God We Trust".It is also possible that the melting pot of European immigrants that eventually constructed the landscape and population of America were conscious of the manner in which prophecy was going to be ushered in: via the coerced existence and actions of potential involuntary subjects.Therefore, after unsuccessfully creating a critical mass/effective class of voluntary servants from poor European whites and after unsuccessfully attempting to create a class of involuntary servants among Native Americans, due to possible inability to withstand culturally-unique diseases from the European community, it is possible that Europeans engaged in the African slave trade, where members of African tribes/nations guided European slave traders through Africa to capture potentially the strongest and best slaves ...Moreover, it is possible that white southern slave-owners as well as white northeastern slave-owners freed some African slaves gradually prior to the mass Southern emancipation of slaves to develop a permanent underclass of black citizens that would become the semi-voluntary and involuntary subjects in (the name) of faith ... Early economic and social analyses … show large disparities in wealth and legal standing among pre-Civil War free blacks and whites … (Furthermore), large disparities among post-Civil War southern ex-slaves and whites were consistent with modern economic disparities among blacks and whites ... Therefore, potentially persistent lower average economic outcomes in the lives of blacks relative to whites has possibly coincided with a perpetual high probability of semi-voluntary participation in possible intra-cultural exploitation of members of their community for local, regional, national, and/or cross-cultural/international (arbitrage).Source: graphs created by James Curtis, Jr.

Economic History II, Religion & Science, Opportunity & Cultural Clashes", February 20, 2012
After reading an article on yahoo.com, the middle income group-skilled workers, many with property-seems under duress in the United States of America and worldwide.There are several studies showing the condition of wealthy individuals outperforming the condition of the middle income sector and the condition of the poor at the start of the 21st century, in the United States of America (USA), the country which once, most, endorsed the pursuit of happiness.
Similarly, churches with black congregations, churches with white congregations, and churches with beige congregations are popping up everywhere, powerfully preaching the words of God.Note that some of the church leadership at these churches, new & old, have taken a hard line of many issues that individuals struggle with on a daily basis by presenting culturally conservative aims based on their interpretation of parables in Biblical passages … "In God we trust" may have taken America further, politically & economically, than many other nations historically.But the conservative cultural squeeze on the quality of life of middle-income America could lead to diminishing outcomes, parallel to other economies, historically, which faltered by placing their weight on the backs of those (who made it great).

Economic History III, Ethnicity, Religion & Science, and Theory of the Firm, "Market/Government
Rationing", February 21, 2012 An intriguing dialogue occurred between a talk show host & an author, about the future of western civilization, based on the theoretical melting pot of culture in the United States of America & religious practices in the United States of America.The author questioned the sustainability of America when people immigrate to America and retain their culture.
This seems to be a coincidental continuation of expression thematic of this statement.A missing part of the author's argument is protectionism in America and the protection of big business in America, possibly coinciding with indirect "too big to fall" tags, leading to government bailouts of long term big businesses.
Note that many political scientists, economists, and politicians question the government-based rationing methods of more centralized governments around the world.But a deeper introspection into the possible bubble of big business funding of USA government candidates and indirect "too big to fall" tags of these businesses through government bailouts could lead one to believe that the country marketing the beauty of free markets to the world is actually the Alaskan neighbor of their criticism.
Economics III, Education/Human Capital Theory, Employment Inquiries and Wealth Outcomes,  December 8, 2017Consider the following serious employment inquiries/opportunities from 1987 to 2017, what is the expected wealth mean and variance of the entity with the employment inquires in Table Source: Table created by James Curtis, Jr.