Economics - General

Short and sharp ?

John Quiggin151 Comments

Writing in the Oz, Alan Moran begins a case for wage cuts as a response to recession with the claim

Until the 1930s, recessions tended to be short and sharp, and financial ruin was largely confined to the speculators whose exuberance had diverted capital into ventures where it was less than productive.

Much the same assumption appears to underlie the thinking of those who propose a return to the macroeconomic policies of the 19th century, such as the gold standard. Economic statistics for this period aren’t exactly comparable to those available today, but, such as they are, they don’t support the claim. In the US, for example, the longest-ever recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research was that of the 1870s (following the Panic of 1873, which in turn followed the US shift from bimetallism to a gold standard). As the NBER data shows, 19th century recessions commonly lasted for more than a year.

In Australia, the long and deep depression of the 1890s, and the substantial wage cuts imposed during that depression (with employers getting the full backing of governments) were a major factor in the formation of the Labor Party and the shift to a parliamentary, as opposed to a purely industrial strategy, for the labour movement.

151 thoughts on “Short and sharp ?”

  1. Terjep

    There are only 30,000 more public service employees Australia wide (wage and salary earners) than there were in 1983 (total in 1983 approx 1632000) whilst the population has increased from 14.6 million in 1980 to 19.1 million in 2000. There are lots of prior government industry sectors that have just vanished (Id bet at the ordinary worker end (eg the old bus conductresses or train station guards or ticket sellers) whilst middle managers are likely paid more to run committees and shuffle paper and costs, invent and implement user pays charges, and deal with media spin, that actually achieves very little in the way of helpful service provision to individuals or businesses). NSW state government accounts for almost all the 40,000 increase in public sector employees (and they cant get the transport sorted or the trains to run on time!).

    I note Mr Costa today in the Australian says a key thing to give back confidence is for NSW State Government to maintain its credit rating.
    I would like to ask Mr Costa – a credit rating is useful only if you intend to borrow – what better time to borrow and spend is there than now when unemployment is rising after a global financial meltdown? Its unbelievable, this mentality. But oh no – Mr Costa has his opinion piece in the Australian (perhaps Windschuttle should give him a job on with Quadrant), writing complete nonsense and probably collecting superannuation from his prior job of committee sitting.

  2. I really really can’t understand people going on and on over a gold standard. There just isn’t enough gold to underwrite the current money supply. It take very little thought or research to work that out.

    Perhaps they have a little gold at home and would love to see the price skyrocket as the limited resource is locked up in vaults.

    I have long failed to understand why anyone believes economic activity should be restricted to the availability of a scarce metal, why not ask for a currency based on Iridium and really slow things down.

    “Sorry mate; can’t do that for you because you have no Iridium back currency to pay me with”. Sound a bit silly doesn’t it, but it’s no sillier than saying things can’t be done unless you have a gold backed currency.

    The greens should take the whole thing up as a policy, they don’t mind the slightly irrational and the reduced economic activity would cut down green house gas production, probable work better than a ETS.

  3. The major problem with the proposal to cut wages is it is borne of the misconception that a recession means a cut in GDP. It does not. It refers to a decline in economic output, or real GDP. Outside of war Australia has not seen a decline in nominal GDP since the early 1930s.

    Why advocate cutting nominal wages in response to a decline in real GDP, all it would do is reduce community spending power with a resulting detrimental impact on demand. This is the last thing you want in a recession.

  4. Alana,

    Whilst you are looking at numbers please figure out the per capita real (ie inflation adusted) cost of government in earlier decades and then look at what we pay today. If we are paying more per capita then show me where we are getting more. If we are paying less then I’ll eat my hat.

    If the rising cost of government is due to increased public sector salaries then we should expect a reduction in headcount (ie higher productivity). However if wages rose and headcount dropped so that wages were justified through productivity then we would not expect the overall per capita cost of government to rise but merely remain static. The only real explaination for more expensive government (as measured by the per capita real cost) is that they are giving us more (ie we simply have bigger government) or they are wasting more (not a very favourable proposition). So which is it?

  5. Terje

    You are missing my point. I was counting the physical number of jobs in the public sector then and now. I am not suggesting we immediately hire another 100,000 public servants if they are going to get dressed up in suits, pay themselves in excess of 100,000 and sit on a committee inventing new key performance indicators for underfunded overcrowded understaffed underresourced hospitals. But by all means – hire nurses, teachers, road construction crews, bus drivers (and add the capital to replace the worn out bits). The government has abrogated its role to actually run in total (not PPS style disasters) decent services and its historically important role as an employer.

    The answer is wasting Terje – because they sacked the people at the bottom not themselves.

    But Ill check those other numbers.

  6. Terje – really are we getting more? Go to a uni classroom. How many in it? How many back then? Whos paying (the student)?. How about the Lectuer – does he have any help? Go to a hospital – if you can get a bed. Go to train – if one comes that isnt full it will be late and graffitied and shabby. Try to catch a bus – oops full again, and again and again. Try to catch a bus in a suburban street – no services there anymore. Try to catch a ferry – oops fast ferries gone. Find a non one hour parking spot to park a mile away from bus stop to catch a bus to work.

  7. Terje
    here is my response from 1901 to 2000 (from abs)
    as suspected declining since 1973 (about the time the mad monetarist / free market theorists started dominating economic policy which an OECD report says are not working that well

    http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1421/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=01%20Economic%20geography%20and%20economic%20performance%20in%20Australia.htm

    BUT which they seek to blame on the tyranny of distance – a problem – as far as I am aware – we have always had?.

    Unlike real GDP dollar values industry percentage shares should do the job Terje just as well (from abs).

    Government administration and defence

    The contribution of the government administration and defence industry to GDP has been relatively consistent at around 3.5% to 4.5% of GDP for most of the period covered. Government’s contribution peaked at 5.8% in 1930-31, around the start of the Depression (although data are not available for the World War II years where it can be expected to be higher still). Government’s share rose steadily from 3.4% in 1960-61 to over 5% in the period 1973-74 to 1982-83. From 1983-84 the Government share of GDP fell consistently to 4.0% in 1988-89. It has remained in a narrow band between 4.1% and 4.5% since then.

  8. Alanna – your focused on what we are getting and concluding that government is smaller. I’m looking at what we are paying and saying government is bigger. In theory it is possible that we are both correct.

  10. Alanna @ 48,

    It is true that in recent decades the share of GDP devoted to profits has increased, while the share of GDP accounted for by wages has declined. But there are a number of things that would account for this, including:
    – the aging population. As more people get older and leave the workforce they no longer are earning a wage, but they may have savings invested in the economy.
    – as more work is outsourced to independent contractors, this would increase the share of the economy devoted to profits and reduce that devoted to wages.
    – the share of the economy devoted to wages during the early to mid 1970s and early 1980s was artificially high, as this was during a period where sustained wage breakouts led to a recession. So the base point is at a time when wages were artificially, and unsustainably high.

    I would also point out that these statistics actually underestimate the real returns to labour as a share of the economy. Suppose someone who owns a small shop also works there to help save on wages and keep the business profitable. The money they make counts as profit. Yet much of it is actually a return on the labour they have invested in their business.

    So some of what statistics measure as profit is, in reality, actually a return on labour rather than a return on capital.

  11. “Experience from the age of Solon at least,and probably, if we had the statistics, for many centuries before that, indicates what a knowledge of human nature would lead us to expect, namely that there is a steady tendency for the wage-unit to rise over long periods of time and that it can be reduced only amidst the decay and dissolution of economic society.”

    J M Keynes – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, page 340.

  12. Alanna, one of the things not fully considered in your belief that government is getting smaller is the growth of the welfare state.

    In the early 1970s spending on social security and welfare represented about 22% of Commonwealth expenditures. Now they represent about 45% of Commonwealth expenditures. (I will try to find sources to verify this, but I think these are approximately right).

    So you have a situation where nearly half the federal government is now accounted for by simply redistributing incomes between different groups in society, rather than actually delivering services.

    If the welfare state continues to consume greater resources, it will tend to ‘crowd out’ other areas of government expenditure.

  15. The following webpage has some raw data from 1970-2000. See table A2. I think it is actuals rather than inflation adjusted. Assuming this is correct then you would need to inflation as well as for population to get a per capita figure.

  16. @ 53, I understand the difference between real and nominal GDP is that real GDP takes into account inflation to measure overall economic output whereas nominal GDP simply measures the GDP figure without adjusting for inflation.

    But I don’t see how this changes the argument about whether wages should fall in an economic downturn. If real GDP falls but nominal GDP increases, then wages should perhaps grow more slowly than inflation (i.e. real wages should fall, but nominal wages would still rise). Or if nominal GDP falls, then nominal wages should also fall.

    I don’t see how this actually changes much.

  17. Nick#62 says
    “Alanna, one of the things not fully considered in your belief that government is getting smaller is the growth of the welfare state.

    In the early 1970s spending on social security and welfare represented about 22% of Commonwealth expenditures. Now they represent about 45% of Commonwealth expenditures. (I will try to find sources to verify this, but I think these are approximately right).”

    Well Nick – that is a major concern of mine – if so many people need welfare it could well be because there arent enough jobs or enough hours of work available (even if they have a job).
    That is precisely my point. The government has turned its back on its previous role of being an active employer at lower levels of the labour force. If so many are needing welfare what is the economy (and economic policy) doing – sitting on its hands? Already unemployment is five times what is was in the three decades post war (five times – and that doesnt even take into account the large rise in underemployment and casual employment). Im not surprised at all the welfare bill has blown out.Id also like to know the amount of public capital formation over the past four decades.

  18. I also just read a survey of businesses by the ABS asking them to name the biggest impairment to innovation 2007 – overwhelming response “cant get skilled employees in any location” – overwhelmingly by a large percentage – but look what how the Government has starved Tafes and Unis! It is completely illogical. If you asked me for a policy to damage Business – Id suggest starve Tafes and Unis.

  19. Nick K # said
    “the share of the economy devoted to wages during the early to mid 1970s and early 1980s was artificially high”

    I know that Nick – wages multiplied in the 70s because of that horrible inflation and some wage pressure (real wages though? This is where it gets tricky) but even so wages dont seem to have benefitted from the 1990s on boom the way profits have.

  22. Well I had a quick look Terje – I think the word is wasting – taxing us more and spending less as a percentage of GDP over time and as for public net investment (its rather pathetic).

    As I suspected.

  23. P#70 – I think yes – and this can come about by bigger businesses exerting pressure for de-regulation of labour markets on compliant governments by promising job creation in the future but instead rewarding managerial staff excessively (rent seeking behaviour at the top of the labour market). It all comes down to getting the blanace of economic policy right and I dont think we have had it right for two almost three decades.

  25. “If we are paying more per capita then show me where we are getting more. If we are paying less then I’ll eat my hat.”

    Haven’t we had this discussion repeatedly?

    – Higher expenditure on aged populations due to an ageing population;

    – more expenditure on higher education because more people are attending unis and TAFEs.

    – higher expenditure on medical services to provide for new procedures and medications (and for the ageing population)

    – higher defence spending because front-line military equipment is rising in price faster than inflation.

  26. I’d be stunned if the government per capita expenditure had risen for higher ed (taing into account income earned) – academic salaries have fallen considerably (relative terms) over the last thirty years. Also staff student ratios have gone the wrong way (well, wrong if you care about education). A typical story would be three full time academic staff replaced by one part time staff member with an increase in student numbers.
    Of course I’m not taking into account the enormous increase in admin staff – whose job is to develop adminstrative tasks for the academic staff.

  27. Nanks – you are absolutely correct. larger classes, casuals in the teaching role by a large percentage, C’wealth grant expenditure has declined whilst students have risen something like 4.3 percent a year since 1988. Student staff ratios increased but still grossly understated for high volume subjects as averaged across lower demand subjects (furphy) Academic Wages down five percent over past almost decade as a percentage of uni expenses. Its ugly and the students mostly pay for these overcrowded poorly staffed noisy classrooms. Why dont they just re open the Hordern Pavilion and push them all in there with a screen. Thats the way higher ed is going. Awful.

  28. Ian#75 sa- more expenditure on higher education because more people are attending unis and TAFEs.ys ”

    False

  32. Thanks for the links Alanna – leaving academia is one of the few successful ‘big’ decisions I’ve made.

  33. Nanks, Commonwealth funding as a proportion of university revenue time has fallen over time – in other words universities are getting more of their revenue from overseas students and hecs and fees and charges and less from the Government but its still nowhere near enough especially (given the growth in student numbers) when class instruction overhwelmingly turns to casualisation and class sizes expand. Its disadvantageous to the student, does nothing to promote teaching experience, does nothing to attract young people into academia . Accreditation has a lot to answer for in this regard by overvaluing the research function of universities and undervaluing the teaching function and not finding the right blend between the two eg supporting new graduates into academia by providing a decent job with the right blend of teaching and researching roles while they complete their own postgradstudies (rather than casual insecure twelve week teaching stints on a breadline wage). This sort of support for further quals is the norm in many other government departments where employees are given (financial or time) support for studies whilst they are in full or part time employment . This was the case in unis pre 1990s. I believe this has contributed to increasing bifurcation between the teaching (casual) and research (employed) functions and increasingly removed researchers from the classroom (where casuals are) and acts as a disincentive to new young entrants . Its barrier to brains!

    (and as for admin expansion I wont go there – a costly layer of inconvenience that keeps academics with too few staff further sidetracked by trifles).

  34. I am about to spend some time looking for stats on Federal government expenditure on higher education.

    Before I do so, I’m goign to throw out soem general questions and observations about the reported increase in “welfare” (to employ an American expression whi9ch I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually appear in Australian budget papers and is fairly obviously used pejoratively) as a percentage of Federal government expenditure.

    1. Unemployment has fallen dramatically over the past forty years, hence any increase in “welfare”
    is either attributable to vastly higher payments to the smaller number of unemployed people or to increases in other forsm of welfare – such as aged pensions, invalid pensions and the baby bonus etc. There is at least soem anecdotal evidence that long term unemployed have been shifted onto invalid pensions.

    2. One of the major components of public expenditure back in the 70s and 80s was interest and principal repayments on the public debt. With the privatisations and debt repayments in the 1990’s and 2000’s, this component has effectively disappeared. That in itself would cause welfare tO increase as a percentage of public expenditure.

    3. Speaking of privatisation, some of the government agencies which have subsequently been privatised would probably have been included in government expenditures forty years ago. I’m sure
    Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank weren’t, I’m not so sure about other agencies like Medibank Private. for that matter, when was the Post Master General corporatised and turned into Australia Post?

    4. Another question: the Federal government claims the GST is a state tax which they collect on behalf of the states and pass on to them. AS such are GST transfers to the states included in Federal government expenditures. If not, then where GST revenue has replaced Federal payments to the states that were included in Federal revenues this would also have the effect of reducing reported Federal expenditures compared to the 1970’s and increasing the percentage of such expenditure attributable to welfare.

  35. While i would agree that there no point in waisting money on the middle (and up), i don’t think that there is any need for waist down the chain either. Trains run fine without ticket sellers at every train station and conductors on every chain. If we are gonna have bigger governement market -esque principles of marginal benefit should still apply. I am still sure their is plenty useful things which need to be done.

  36. Ian Gould. Unemployment average 1% in the decades following WW2. It rose with the inflation shock of the 70s. It rose with the depression of 81 – 83. It rose with the recession of 90-91. How can you say it has fallen over fgour decades and when the rate of underemployment (yes underemploymnent and casual positions accounts for less of a weeks work for many). To claim it has fallen for four decades is a nonsense.

  37. Ian#84
    The unemployment numbers need to be considered in light of the rise in underemployment (the ABS developed a new series for this) and the way it is counted is deceptive and if you measure it as fallen for four decades – you are measuring it from the period of a high unemployment in the 1970s arising from the inflationary shock. The unemployment rate was 2% in 1967 (1% in the 1950s) rising to 5.4% in 1975 and 7.2% in 79, 10% in 1983follo9wing early 80s recession, falling again and rising to 10.9% in 1993. It has been reasonably volatile over the decades since 1970 only falling from 10.9% in 1993 to 5.1% in 2006 (but this ignores the rise in underemployment) and was much much lower than currently in the postwar period to 1970.

  38. Thanks Alanna (27, 48, 54, 58, 50, 29, 51, 55, 56, 57, 59, 67) and Jill Rush (37) for having finally challenged Terje’s incessant carping complaints (26) throughout the years about our supposedly bloated public service.

    These claims have certainly flown in the face of my own experience since I lost my job as a research programmer at the ANU in early 2004. If the public service had indeed been as bloated as Terje had claimed I would have had no problem getting a public service job by now.

    These days hundreds of thousands of formerly skilled and valued employees no longer have the openings that the public service would have once provided if other careers come unstuck. So, instead, they must languish in unskilled and low-paid occupations until their retirement.

    It is evident that defenders of our extreme ‘free market’ system will lie about the reality in order to convince those, who have been made to pay the costs of the failed ‘free market’ ideology, will blame themselves.

  39. El Mono
    Trains might run fine without ticket sellers and train station guards but you forget that there are two less people in a job who earn income, spend money on private sector goods and pay taxes and may be on welfare. If unemployment and underemployment is trending up over the longer term with more people earning less income from less hours in the labour force, there are negative implications for growth and demand. I dont necessarily see the train guards and ticket sellers as waste. I see the ticket machine vandalism or assaults on train stations as an external cost of not having a train guard that could be prevented by paying an income which then returns as demand for goods and services. Once paid for, the ticket machine does not go shopping each week.

  40. I love JQs blog but Im new. Ill get over it soon. I just would really like it if economic policy advisers actually looked at the long haul (not 10 years, not 5 years, not 2 years but actually over 40 and 50 years to see if their policy settings are working). We have shrunk the range of industry contributions to GDP. The main industry that dominates all others (financial sector) at around 50% of GDP I think (someone check) and thats the one that has just taken a king hit from the GFC. How can that be good?

  41. Apologies for the grammatical error in my last post. The concluding sentence should have been:

    It is evident that defenders of our extreme ‘free market’ system will lie about the reality in order to convince those, who have been made to pay the costs of the failed ‘free market’ ideology, that they are at fault.

    A goal for any humane decent society should be to provide everyone with a fulfilling and adequately paid occupation.

    However, contrary to what Allana writes, I wouldn’t necessarily defend every job that once existed on the railways. As an example, I would advocate free public transport in order to do away with the unnecessary expense of enclosing railway stations, ticket machines, the inconvenience to travellers, etc, etc.

    If we threw off the shackles of neo-liberal ideology, we should be able to find ways to divide the necessary work amongst the people available to do the work. So, people who lost their livelihoods selling tickets and enforcing the fare system could be offered gainful employment elsewhere.

  42. Terjep#65 – you never put that second link in for per capita taxation from 1970. Ive got inflation rates. Population wouldnt be hard – we could look at a few points.

  43. Ian Gould says “Before I do so, I’m goign to throw out soem general questions and observations about the reported increase in “welfare” (to employ an American expression whi9ch I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually appear in Australian budget papers and is fairly obviously used pejoratively) as a percentage of Federal government expenditure.”

    I have to say that it becomes a bit tiresome when people want to nitpick over the most minor details of posts, or scrutinise every word for signs of evil intent. If I had used terms like “bludgers”, “scroungers”, “parasites”, “welfare queens” etc. then I could understand others objecting. But the phrase “welfare” is a reasonable term to use.

    I believe the official term is “Social Security”. Yet this is somewhat misleading, as in most countries Social Security usually refers to programs where there is some relationship between contributions and eligibility for benefits. On this basis, the only programs in Australia that could be classed as Social Security are perhaps workers compensation schemes. The term welfare is usually used to describe programs where there is no relationship between contributions and eligibility for benefits. In Australia, eligibility for most payments (like unemployment, disability, aged pensions, sole parent benefits, carers payments) is in no way tied to contributions or previous work history. Hence they are essentially welfare handouts, rather than social insurance programs.

    “One of the major components of public expenditure back in the 70s and 80s was interest and principal repayments on the public debt. With the privatisations and debt repayments in the 1990’s and 2000’s, this component has effectively disappeared. That in itself would cause welfare tO increase as a percentage of public expenditure.”

    During the early to mid-1990s the federal government ran substantial budget deficits and government debt increased.

    In the early 1960s only around 3% of working age people relied on government income support for most of their income. Today that figure is around 17%. Yet even this figure doesn’t include all those people who receive additional top-up payments from government (such as family allowances). It also doesn’t include the increasing number of elderly, and the costs of pensions and other support.

    That the welfare state has increased dramatically in size over the past few decades (but especially since the Whitlam government) is just a basic fact. It is not something that is reasonably up for dispute or interpretation.

  44. http://www.bca.com.au/DisplayFile.aspx?FileID=316

    This Business council of Australia paper appears to provide a useful overview of long-term trends in Federal government spending in Australia.

    I haven’t read the whole thing and would be skeptical of the BCA’s policy prescriptions but the overall snap-shot is interesting.

    Between 1962 and 2006 Federal government spending per person roughly doubled from ca. $6,000 per person to circa $12,000 in constant dollars.

    (Interestingly, the rate of increase went up significantly after the election of the Howard government in 1994 -see the graph on page 5.)

    In my next post I’ll look at where that additional money has gone.

  45. Is that figure correct, Allana?

    Except in tiny countries like Singapore or Hong Kong, how can a sector which contributes nothing of tangible worth, such as the finance sector, contribute 50% to a nation’s GDP?

    I suspected that the Australian finance sector was bloated, but that figure is insane.

    —

    It seems self-evident to me that an economy that produces nothing, except for digging up ready-made mineral wealth from underneath is unhealthy and unsustainable in the long term.

    In 1942, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. As a consequence the Japanese Army vetoed plans by the Japanese Navy to invade in March 1942 even before their setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea (“Armed and Ready – The industrial development and defence of Australia 1900-1945” (1995) by Andrew T Ross pp408-409). (See also “Can Australia ever be self-reliant for national defence?”, “The myth of the Howard Government’s defence competence”.)

    We have since lost that technological edge, it would seem to suit the narrow, short-sighted selfish agendas of land speculators, financiers and other members of Australia’s growth lobby who have gained control this country’s destiny. (See Masters Thesis by Sheila Newman of 2002 “The Growth Lobby and its Absence : The Relationship between the Property Development and Housing Industries and Immigration Policy in Australia and France” (PDF 2.6MB) downloadable form candobetter.org/sheila and from the Swinburne University).

  46. I dont defend every job Daggett. I was using the example of train guards to illustrate how such a job adds more than the ticket machine at a time jobs are needed and can actually help the economy (there will always be those who dont work in their job Daggett). I do defend the need for job creation by governments as well as the private sector (jobs to actually help the private sector) and I have never subscribed to the theory that either the public sector or the private sector has any greater claim to efficiency.

    But I do quite like the idea of free public transport. So if the government wants to do something really useful now it should start employing newly unemployed construction workers and get to and build it (not 5 years announcing it and 3 years trying to get a private operator and then 5 years arguing in court with the private contractor) after which we will pay double for it.

  47. “In the early 1960s only around 3% of working age people relied on government income support for most of their income. Today that figure is around 17%.”

    Do you have a source for this or is it just one of those self-evident facts?

  48. Dagget#94 Ian should source data from the ABS. I wouldnt take the Business Council of Australia’s word on what the government is spending per capita. ABS or government statistics more reliable. Business lobby groups push for smaller government and less regulation and more privatisation (without delivering sufficient of the eternally promised jobs) and thats part of the problem.

  49. In regard to the supposedly increased welfare budget, it needs to be acknowledged that much of the money spent is of little value to the recipients of social welfare payments.

    An example is the stupid courses that they force unemployed people to attend about how to write resumes and attend job interviews.

    One person who ran one of these courses years ago confirmed what I suspected, that is, that the true purpose of such courses was simply to make the experience of receiving unemployment benefits so unpleasant and demeaning as to cause many to think twice before approaching Centrelink.

    On top of that there is money wasted on punitive harassment of unemployed people in order to make them go through the motions of appearing to apply for 10 jobs per fortnight.

    There have been two occasions in my life, where, as a consequence, I have not approached Centrelink and, instead, lived off my own savings.

    Let’s also not forget that the rental subsidy of social welfare payments is, in fact, largely a subsidy to landlords and not the welfare recipient and (like the first home-owners’ grant) serves to increase housing hyper-inflation.

  50. Ian, I never claimed that every specific figure I quoted was a self-evident fact. I merely claimed that the more general reality that the welfare state has been increasing significantly in the past few decades is a self-evident truth.

    Hence, your comment @ 97 is an irrelevant snark.

    If you don’t believe me, a quick Google search should bring up approximate figures for levels of welfare dependence then and now.

Leave a comment