Re-lighting the political lamp, let’s commence with a crucial year in U.S. political history... by linking to a video that’s gone viral nationwide, “Capitalism Hits the Fan” by Professor Richard Wolff.
Now, from the title I expected something tinged a little pink. What I found instead was completely fascinating - and not really "leftist" at all. In fact, Professor Wolff passionately defends the general notion of capitalism. That is, a competitively creative marketplace that encourages entrepreneurial start-ups and innovation. A market that would please Adam Smith and continue the productive cornucopia that made all progress possible.
Huffington Post 3/19/2011
One of Wolff’s charts is incredible. It shows that real U.S. worker wages rose from 1945 till the 1970s in steady pace along with increasing worker productivity. Only then, in the 1970s, the rise in middle class wages stopped, despite accelerating increases in worker productivity and corporate profits.
How could such a de-coupling have taken place? Wolff shows this is not about “left vs-right.” It’s about capitalism shifting from a traditional American model to one that far more closely resembles patterns described by... Karl Marx. Wolff is very good at explaining causes. Like a wise economist, he eschews predictions and prescriptions.
I’m less mature. So hence, I deem the solution to be political. Moreover you can play a large role. Start by sharing this video. America’s salt-of-the-earth types know, deep down, that they’ve been betrayed. So far, they’ve been talked into blaming one group - civil servants - for absolutely everything. Well... also scientists, teachers, doctors, journalists... in fact, every bunch of “smartypants.”
But keep shining light. In time, some will realize that other power centers have been doing the most screwing... and benefiting. That awakening is what Murdoch fears, far more than British subpoenas.
=== The Ideal Bumper Sticker for 2012 ===
This is the year when author Robert Heinlein forecast that the U.S. would tumble into a vicious theocracy led by a fundamentalist, rabble-rousing preacher. Which leads us to this year’s tastiest piece of rebel propaganda that you could possibly put on the bumper of your car. SCUDDER IN 2012!
Most people pulling up behind you in traffic will experience flat-out, head-scratching puzzlement.
But for many, it will be a WikiPedia moment. When they get home, look up the name, and read about Heinlein’s dark future scenario, some will go “Oh, I see what that bumper sticker meant!”
Whether they nod in agreement or glower in fury, you’ll have made them read and think... and maybe even go pick up a little Heinlein!
Not bad for a simple bumper sticker.
==Looking Forward==
For 2012 and Beyond: Predict the future ofcomputing. Enter your best guess about what we can expect in the years and decades to come.
No doubt we'll be hearing enough dire, apocalyptic visions during 2012. Check out this lovely little epiphany...an optimistic (super!) look at the next forty years, written by someone who hasn't had the joyful spirit of ambition snuffed by grouches of right and left. Marc Millis offers a vision of humanity exploring and expanding into the solar system and beyond...
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Runaway Serfer
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com
Comments
R
first, automation is doing to assembly line work what it previously did to the farm. way back when, about half of americans worked in on farms. nifty inventions like the cotton gin, tractors, combine harvesters, and refrigeration put an end to all that. Oh - and those inventions brought cheaper, fresher, more abundant food to our homes.
now its happening with assembly lines. robots and computers weave textiles, assemble furniture, weld sub-frame assemblies on pickup trucks, and even bake bread. again, there has been an astonishing increase in quality - and features and content - while gas mileage has soared, reliability is off the charts, safety is astonishing, and cars have never been more affordable.
now to the second factor - the rest of the world, especially the 3rd world, is getting in on the act. just as america stole englands thunder after the revolutionary war for things like shipbuilding, food production, textiles, etc., much of asia, latin america, and africa has decided to join the modern era. people work at real jobs, instead of poking a sharp stick in the ground and planting rice or sweet potatoes.
of course, to the typical american/marxist who thinks we got screwed, domestic automation and foreign jobs which allow workers to feed their family and buy medicines probably seem like an unbelievable ripoff.
but i don't think there's any turning back, no matter how many clever charts are ginned up showing that unskilled factory jobs have flatlined in this country.
If you'd listened to the entire video, you'd have known that those facts of automation, information technologies, off-shoring are addressed. What's happened however, is that despite the fact that a car today is way more reliable than a car was thirty years ago, and that production techniques (and Chinese cheap labor) make a lot of things available you couldn't previously afford, if the end game is you have no job, or that your income hasn't risen in real terms in decades, you're no better off.
And if you are now indebted by your government to the same Chinese who make your cheap crap, but also made it so you're working for $ 8.50 an hour with no benefits, it would seem that the vaunted benefits which the "american / marxist" thinks a ripoff, may just be that, if the wealth of a very few who buy and sell those we entrust with making policies to protect the wellfare of ALL Americans, has been so disproportionately enhanced by those circumstances.
The issue is that while our American companies are offshoring this manufacturing (and while assembly line automation is making great strides, there are still plenty of reasons to have people on the line) the people that are benefitting are paying others a mere pittance of what the jobs cost here -- not because those people are cheap labor, but because there are economies of scale at work.
If a person in China makes a dollar a day and you pay him two dollars a day to work on an assembly line (which is NOT highly automated, because the Chinese have this thing about creating employment for their people oddly) you have just doubled his income potential. It's still not enough to allow that Chinese factory worker to buy what he's making.
Some of these wealthy businessmen make nothing but profit from this arrangement, but at the expense of the hundreds of laid off workers that would still be on the assembly line. And for what? More profit. The company would still have been profitable by keeping manufacturing here and keeping people employed here.
And with all this cheap labor, are cars cheaper to buy or more expensive? And with all this cheap labor, are cars really more efficient than they were thirty years ago? No.
I'll use a quick personal example. My 1986 Hyundai Excel got almost 40 MPG when I got it. It died 12 years later and I drove it like the proverbial Sherman Tank. I have a 2007 Hyundai Accent, which has a smaller engine, smaller headroom, smaller cargo space and has much less that came standard with the car and, bing bing bing, it gets 32 MPG. Okay, that's only 21 years difference, but my 1974 Plymouth Duster got 19 MPG at 70 MPH and it had a 5.3 L V8 engine, air conditioning, more cargo space, higher torque, more headroom, comfortable seats and looked cool to boot. It also carried four people in comfort and ease. My Hyundai? You could put two people in the back seat, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Cars have reduced their economy of fuel use since 1985. Car companies used to extol the virtues of 35+ MPG cars in 1985 and now, 26 years later, they are now once again extolling the virtues of smaller cars with smaller engines, less headroom and less comfort getting 35+ MPG.
That doesn't sound like progress to me. And the cars that do this cost more than the cars that did it back then. We have not been experiencing any sort of rampant inflation in all that time, so inflation cannot account for this.
Cheap labor in offshore market economies have reduced the cost of the vehicle by at least 30-40% in real terms, and yet, they're more expensive. As to reliability? I'm not completely convinced. How many cars are equipped with Anti-Skid Braking systems or, for that matter, have four wheel disc brakes?
But they have MP3 player compatibility, let's not forget the advances that allow us to take our bread and circuses with us on the road, too.
In a field as important as transportation, both personal and public, cargo and emergency vehicles, we have not advanced nearly as quickly as we should have, as we could have, but we have definitely seen the prices go up and the jobs to produce them go away.
But the companies "making" the products are still experiencing gains and profits and it's being translated into bonus' for execs who don't care if you, me, or any of thirty five million others in the US have a job. After all, they believe that we don't have jobs because we don't have the necessary work ethic, or that we made bad choices or weren't smart enough to merit a successful position in society. Think about that for a moment before you try to discredit the situation as only because American Workers aren't willing to live like a third world laborer with no education beyond what the company trains them to do or what they learned from mom and dad.
I think if we maintained manufacturing right here, enforced our trade laws, maintained a progressive tax structure and fought harder to hold onto our regulatory practices that keep the market more fair, we'd still be doing pretty damn good. If automation displaced too many workers, then we'd have had the capital and the wherewithal to come up with something else to do that would generate even greater gains.
It was thought that semiconductors would be king, but as a displaced worker in that field, I can tell you they shipped off all my work to Korea, Germany, China, Singapore and Georgia (the one in Russia's Federation of States.) I'm not talking about running a machine and carrying product from one machine to another. I am a highly trained and technically proficient skilled technician. I can't shift to another manufacturing job, because they're all being sent elsewhere.
Should I be happy that I can at least fall back on my old fast food skills from when I was 17, drive a car that gets almost as much MPG as my older car did, paid more for it, while I earn less, have no benefits and don't have any more savings for my hard work, effort and training?
Should I not feel like I got screwed?
Don't make the mistake of thinking it's only one thing that caused this situation. And if there is one thing, it was someone else's greed that did it. Watch the video and listen to the words. You'll find it highly enlightening.