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Of interest, ABC World News had a segment on yesterday called "Made in America" where home builders were shown a list of domestic suppliers (e.g. for nails) and many saying that they'd consider it and also that buying locally made products keeps jobs here. In addition, there have been several reports our recently pointing out that the lower half of American workers have taken it on the chin due to 30 years of globalization, which caused their jobs to disappear or their wages to stagnate.
And in the face of that, Congress is continuing to pursue policies that will not help labor, but will help international businesses.
Republicans say the sorry economy is all the government's fault:
Last night during the Republican debate, Gingrich had this to say:
... the first person to fire is Bernanke, who is a disastrous chairman of the Federal Reserve ...
... let's be clear who put the fix in: The fix was put in by the federal government.
I'm going to say one last thing. I want to repeat this. Bernanke has in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out one group and not bailing out another group. I don't see anybody in the news media demanding the kind of transparency at the Fed that you would demand of every other aspect of the federal government. And I think it is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that kind of secret power.
We are living in a destroyed economy for very learnable reasons -- very discernible reasons, inarguable reasons. It has been years since the evidence was procured. ... Everybody in that town knows what happened. Everybody in that town, including Karen Tumulty, knows what went on. They know it was Fannie and Freddie and they know it was the federal government imposing these rules on the lenders. They know it, and what infuriates me is that they continue with the lie.
And Hannity constantly references the Community Redevelopment Act.
So there you have it. It was the Fed, Fannie and Freddie, and the Community Redevelopment Act that caused the recession. Not the banks.
That will be the message in 2012 (although Romney probably will hedge)
Steve Jobs passing may be as good a date as any to mark ...
the end of the American Century.
Not to get into Apple fanboi stuff, but Jobs life and tenure parallels what may be the last gasp of economic satisfaction and superiority by the United States. First of all, Jobs grew up at a time when the states (especially California) were supportive of higher education. That brought forth the talent that, in Silicon Valley, got the computer revolution started. And then Jobs was part of the drive (by many others as well) that brought us much of the look and feel of so many electronic products that, for a while, were largely the province of American companies.
But that competitive advantage now appears to be over. Students have to pay much of the freight for a college education, a condition that is never good for a nation. The subsequent jobs risk going away to other parts of the world, which makes one wonder why bother with it at all. The rest of the world is catching up and is very hungry, and with unregulated globalization the competitive forces will be ferocious.
So maybe we can mark October 5, 2011 as an arbitrary - but reasonable - point in time when a distinctive American era ended.
In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don't Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?
I pose this question as a way to think about labor markets and macroeconomics. Some possible answers:
1. It's a supply problem. Nobody wants to be a personal servant. They think that their human capital will depreciate less if they remain unemployed.
2. It's a demand problem. The marginal product of personal servants is very, very low. As Don Boudreaux points out, the impersonal servant of the market delivers us much higher quality goods and services than kings were able to obtain from all of their personal servants.
3. It's a recalculation problem. Gates and Brin cannot figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers. They cannot even find a personal retainer who can figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers.
So why haven't personal servants replaced blue collar manufacturing jobs killed by cheap imports and white collar jobs lost to outsourcing? Clearly, when the economy tanks, people will do most anything for a dollar (pace item 1) and be cheap enough so that the marginal value will be positive (pace item 2).
Which really means that it's a problem of imagination. If it's true that "Gates and Brin cannot figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers" then those billionaires need help! What can we suggest for this duo - and their equally rich friends - do with hundreds of personal retainers? And why limit it to hundreds? Didn't the pharaoh have thousands of people toiling away? How about a Giza-sized pyramid for each billionaire? That would get this economy humming again. Let's do it!
It has the additional benefit of reestablishing clear class distinctions which we have sadly abandoned for about a century. A few extremely rich people. Lots of servants. No middle class. Paradise.
U.S. banking giant Citigroup Inc. said this week it would charge $15 per month for checking account holders who kept a balance below $6,000.
The firm's move comes on the heels of Bank of America's announcement this week that it would charge $5 for most debit card holders and sparked at least one desertion, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
Cheryl Holt of Burbank, Calif., said she was "on my way out the door right now … off to start a new account at my nearest credit union."
"Should have done it years before," she added.
Holt said she received a letter with an "absurd salutation," that said, "Customers like you have told us that what they want from their banks are simple options and great rewards. We heard you and are writing to let you know that we are making some changes to your EZ Checking Package."
That said, the bank dropped the $180 per year bomb.
... “Pan Am” romanticizes the past, whereas “Mad Men,” on AMC, takes pleasure in slyly mocking antiquated mores ...
“Pan Am” takes place in New York, Paris and London, and practically every scene is shot in lush, golden light. The series is a paean to a more prosperous and confident era; even an airline terminal looks like a movie dream sequence about 1960s heaven. [It really does.]
If only for the costumes and ’60s music, “Pan Am” is amusing to see at least once, but if it has any instructive benefit at all, it’s as a mood indicator for these times, not those. There have been plenty of series set in earlier times — “That ’70s Show” was set in the Carter administration, “M*A*S*H” took place during the Korean War. But usually period shows pick through the past to meditate on the present, whether it’s examining generational rites of passage or critiquing the Vietnam War at a safe remove.
“Pan Am” doesn’t say much of anything about the current state of the nation except that our best days are behind us.
Expect that to be a recurring theme this decade (and beyond?).
... world is now a challenge to white-collar workers. They have to compete with a bigger pool of cheap geniuses ...
It is also both a huge challenge and opportunity. It has never been harder to find a job and never been easier — for those prepared for this world — to invent a job or find a customer. ...
What is out and what is in anymore?”
Matt Barrie, is the founder of freelancer.com, which today lists 2.8 million freelancers offering every service you can imagine. “The whole world is connecting up now at an incredibly rapid pace,” says Barrie, and many of these people are coming to freelancer.com to offer their talents. Barrie says he describes this rising global army of freelancers the way he describes his own team: “They all have Ph.D.’s. They are poor, hungry and driven: P.H.D.”
Barrie offered me a few examples on his site right now: Someone is looking for a designer to design “a fully functioning dune buggy.” Forty people are now bidding on the job at an average price of $268.
There's your glorious future, according to Tom Friedman. Global non-pooled labor bidding against itself for tiny wages and no healthcare (at least in the U.S.) or retirement security.
Some conversions in political philosophy are understandable, but others, like Mamet's, are inscrutable. What caused him to make the switch? Not mentioned in the article is that Mamet's conservative rabbi gave him a bunch of books - by conservative hacks - and that material appears to have gotten the playwright to chance his views.
Excerpts from the NYTimes article, Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics by Matthew Avery Sutton
While conservatives are in the driver's seat these days, there was a significant Christian progressive movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it seems to have faded away. It's puzzling why that happened, although it may be related to the decline of mainline churches (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran).
"Understand this. If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States because Americans deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner."
"I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying."
They have a story taking the Obama administration to task, and excerpt an MSNBC article:
Obama Administration Set to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns 3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY
Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:
Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.
The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
The Atlantic's Megan McArdle ...
Here is the next sentence in the MSNBC article: (emp add)
The FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008 and currently only Armstrong Pharmaceutical's Primatene mist is available in the U.S.
This phase out was initiated by the Bush administration, a point the Standard hides from its readers. Typical.
