Posted in economy, politics, technology, tagged $2 dollar a day, 2012, 47 percent, accusations, American Dream, American way, Arab Spring, Australia, backbiting, badmouth, candidate, character defect, cohesion, community, competitive, Comptroller, consumer price index, consumers, country, crisis, culprits, David Walker, debt, deficit, democracy, Democrats, dialog, direction, division, Dong Tao, easy target, economy, efficient, election, emerging power, entitlement class, Europe, family, finance, financial aid, First World, free trade, fundraiser, future, gina rinehart, have nots, haves, help, incomes, individualism, insolvency, jobs, labor, lazy, living standards, low pay, middle class, minimum wage, Mitt Romney, money, nation, partisans, policy, political will, president, profits, pundits, questions, race to the bottom, raise all boats, real inflation, recession, Reform, regulations, Republicans, resentment, scapegoat, solution, stand together, sustainable, technology, Third World, threaten, trade for a new century, unemployment, unsustainable, USA, voters, wage loss, Wall Street, welfare state, West, whining, work, workforce, world markets on September 20, 2012 |
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She’s the world’s wealthiest woman you’ve never heard of and she’s saying something you probably wish you hadn’t: “Gina Rinehart, world’s richest woman, makes case for $2-a-day pay“,the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Australian mining heiress has a problem. The cost of running a mining operation in Australia cannot compete with Africans willing to work a continent away for $2 per day.
There’s a certain elementary logic to Rinehart’s argument. If the two nations are selling raw materials at vastly different prices because of vastly different costs of labor, her operation loses. In a worse-case scenario, it might not even make sense to go on operating. From Rinehart’s perspective, profit is the objective and benevolence is a job — never mind if the jobs she creates fails to compensate workers well enough to keep the lights on. She’s precariously positioned on that slippery slope so common to today’s political and trade debates: It could be worse: no jobs.
The world’s richest woman has a point. But it doesn’t pass the sustainable-future test.
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Posted in economy, technology, tagged Alan Blinder, American Dream, applicant, applicant tracking, apply, apply for a job, automated resume screeners, automation, biased technical change, bifurcation, body shops, buisiness, career ladder, cheaper, cloud computing, consumer demand, contingent labor, contractors, corporate, destruction, digital, double dip recession, economist, economy, education, efficiency, electronic, eliminate, fallacies, fewer, free trade, gross job loss, hiring, human resources, Internet, IT, job retraining, job seeker, jobs, just in time staffing, labor, machines, offshoring, on demand, outsourcing, overseas, plan, polarization, policy, prosperity, rebound, rebuild, recruiters, restore, resume, return to work, self-serve, skills, social networking, structural unemployment, temp work, the great restructuring, Third World, threatens, underemployed, unemployed, voters, workers, workforce on August 29, 2012 |
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It’s a presidential election year and by all counts the race is close. There is no question the post-recession recovery has been anemic at best. To call it a recovery is a stretch and the threat of a double-dip recession lingers. Whether anyone can really turn this lackluster economy around is anyone’s guess. Talk of the unsustainable $16T deficits looms large but specifics on job creation remain few.
It’s not just abstract conversation for the nation’s unemployed and underemployed.
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Posted in economy, notes on the human condition, technology, tagged advantage, affluence, Americans, animals, Apple, auto industry, best practices, bottom line, brand-name, buying power, capitalists, CEOs, China, Chinese, Coach handbags, coffee, conscious consumerism, consumer, controversy, corporations, cost effective, cost savings, country of origin, deindustrialization, Dollar, duties, dysfunctional, economy, efficiency, electronics, exploitation, export, factory, fair trade, Forbes, Foxconn, free trade, globalism, goods, Green, Honda, human rights, import, industrial policy, investment, iPad, iPhone, labor, level the playing field, local, loss, made in America, manufacturer, mark-up, market, marketplace, markup, MBAs, middle class, myth, name-brand, New York Times, non-GMO, outsource, overseas, PC, perils of a service economy, policy, premium, price hikes, private enterprise, produce, products, profitability, profitable, protectionism, race to the bottom, rational self interest, reconceptualize, relocalization, renegotiate, responsibility, shame, shifts, shop, shrinking, slave, social contract, solutions, Southeast Asia, standards, Steve Jobs, store-brand, suicides, sustainable, sweatshop, symbiotic, target market, taxes, technology, Third World, Toyota, trade, underpaid, US, vanity pricing, wealth, workers, zoo on January 31, 2012 |
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The secret is out: Apple has a worm inching its way through its corporate flesh. January was a tough month on the Cupertino, California company venerated for its innovation and vision.
The controversy emerged when an Apple contractor in China, a manufacturing facility known as Foxconn where many brand-name electronics are assembled largely by hand, made headlines when dozens of workers threatened to jump to their deaths over a labor dispute. Foxconn’s solution? Erect netting beneath roofs and windows.
It doesn’t end there. For 12-hour shifts, six-days-per week and a live-in lifestyle workers allegedly earn just $17, the New York Times reports. Forbes and PC Magazine added their own angle to the news. One such detail described a high-level manager who, at a Chinese zoo, asked a zookeeper to provide advice on how to deal with his workers, drawing a direct comparison between factory workers and undomesticated animals. It gets worse. A NYT piece, “In China, Human Costs are Built into iPad“, refers to two dozen accidental worker deaths that have occurred as a result of unsafe working conditions. Finally, in “This American Life” the narrator of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” recounts a first-hand meetup with underage Chinese workers, among scores of others who suffer permanent neurological tremors and ticks as a consequence of over-exposure to a chemical toxin.
For all the outrage, many argue such are the inescapable growing pains of a Third World labor force “coming up”. At one time, the United States, too, was known for worker exploitation, a chief reason child labor laws gained traction and unions became a bulwark against corrupt and abusive management practices. And yet, even at the height of the union movement in the US such organizations represented only a fraction of the workforce. Nonetheless, what began as labor negotiating with management to build a viable American middle class has transformed in recent decades to its polar opposite: a perception that unions destroy American prosperity.
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