Don't worry, it'll all be sunshine and roses when the new commissioner is confirmed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.J._Antoni
> Antoni graduated from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary with a Bachelor of Arts.[3] He then graduated from Northern Illinois University with a Master of Arts[3] and later a doctorate in economics in 2020
How can someone get a doctorate in economics when they studied "Bachelor/Master of Arts"?
You can get a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science or a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at my alma mater, albeit from different colleges.
Maybe that art was the art of economics, which seems to be more subjective than actual painting.
While no longer using the Trivium and Quadrivium comprising the traditional Liberal Arts as the sum of the programs, the name of the degrees has been retained widely, and used for degrees in almost any field of study, even while some institutions also offer Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with other styles (particularly “of Science”). There is no consistent meaning or differentiation to the “of Arts” or “of Science” styles, though they may have signify institution-specific differences in curriculum at some institutions.
Now he is earning breath taking amounts of money by churning out power point documents so I guess his path was correct.
Some universities might only offer one despite having a few programs in fields where it is more common for degrees to have the opposite style; at one time, e.g., this was true of Caltech which only issued BS degrees for undergrad though there were one or two majors with very few undergraduate degrees issued in fields where BA would be more common at other institutions.
Also, this is his PhD thesis. It’s mind-boggling to me that this is apparently doctorate-worthy, I personally find this lacking even for a bachelor thesis:
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
As opposed to Bachelor/Master of Science, I presume?
If that's the case it because "<degree> of Arts" and "<degree> of Science" don't actually mean what a majority of people think they do.
In the US there is no inherent difference between BA and BS in fields that most people would think of as sciences (hard or social). What degree a given set of coursework earns is entirely up to the school. All of the following exist in the wild:
• BS is the only choice. (Caltech, for example. Even English majors--and yes, there is an occasional English major at Caltech--end up with a BS).
• BA is the only choice. UC Berkeley is an example in this category for math and physics.
• Both are offered, with identical coursework and requirements. You can have whichever you want. Some will even for a small fee give you two diplomas, so you can use whichever seems appropriate for the situation.
• Both are offered, from the same department, with different in-major coursework and aims. One may be aimed toward students aiming to go into research, and one toward those aiming to go into teaching, for instance.
• Both are offered, from different departments. For example, UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Sciences offers a BA in chemistry, and the College of Chemistry offers a BS in chemistry. Computer science can be taken at Berkeley in the College of Letters and Science for a BA, or in the College of Engineering for a BS.
• Both are offered, with the same in-major coursework, but differ in out-of-major requirements. So, the BA and BS would require the exact same science and math courses, but the BA has specific breadth requirements to produce a well rounded education, whereas the BS lets you take pretty much what you want as long as you satisfy the math and science requirements and any general requirements of your school.
Note: since this has "--"s and a list, I suppose I should mention that starting at "In the US" it is a copy/paste (with a minor tweak) of something I wrote many years ago when the question of BA vs BS came up, long before LLMs arrived. :-)
So his background in economics probably got him into an economics PhD program.
And his thesis seems to be the only paper he has ever published (unless you count any contributions to Project 2025?). He has one citation to his name, compared to the previous BLS commissioner:
> In reality, Antoni’s “education and vast experience” boils down to one scholarly citation of his Northern Illinois University dissertation on fiscal policy—from the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2021, during the time that Antoni worked there. McAntarfer’s own research, The Wall Street Journal found, earned 1,327 citations.
* https://archive.is/https://www.thenation.com/article/politic...
* https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/1n23ixd/ej_an...
Then we went through a decade of stupidly-low interest rates in the 10s, while the economy was doing decently well.
Maybe it was because of low interest rates. Though then you could argue capital just doesn't want to have to pay the price of operating in a borrowing environment where the average person can go down to the local bank, get a 90 day CD at 5-ish percent, and have a nice guaranteed source of steadily-growing rainy day cash, which, in turn, makes it less likely that they'll gamble it on stocks and bonds that capital holds most of its wealth in.
The Fed calls workers being able to push for significantly increased salaries an "overheated labor market".
https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-bulletin/ris...
"The same influx of immigrant workers that helped fill job openings also dampened wage pressures across the affected industries and states. At the industry level, sectors with some of the highest immigrant workforce growth, such as construction and manufacturing, saw the sharpest deceleration in wage growth (specifically, average hourly earnings) from 2021 to 2023."
They need to keep employment high and keep prices stable. Their main lever for controlling these two things is the prime interest rate. They kept that rate low for a long time. Capital now thinks that being able to get money for cheap is the norm. If it can't get money for cheap, well, that's a problem, because capital's mandate is to get more capital.
If you're being incentivized to keep prices low and employment high by this institution, while also trying to accumulate capital for yourself, you are more likely to employ people at lower wages in order to keep prices low instead of taking the hit in reduced capital accumulation to employ people at higher wages while keeping prices low. Furthermore, any sort of sane prime interest rate now seems high to capital, so that additional cost is also factored in as why costs must rise and wages must drop to keep the accumulation rate of capital as high as possible.
Is there anything wrong with accumulation of capital? In and of itself, no, but when you have people with net worths in the hundreds of billions of dollars making the decisions on how to allocate resources for their own continued benefit, well, you get a reduction in economic returns for the rest of the economy.
That's the "exists-in-a-vacuum" picture anyway. Stimulus, tariffs, a new war, or some other bullshit will change the results.