the "jobless recovery"
 

this point:


is the jumpoff for this article from the march issue of atlantic:

How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America - Magazine - The Atlantic

the basic point is that the economic transition/crisis, the primary function of which from the outset was to be something that was declared to be over, is both revealing the consequences of the longer-term restructurings of the manufacturing sector and through the tightening of commercial credit, creating new and improved employment problems at the same time. but the unnerving aspect of what is surfacing-to-view is that this "recovery" appears to be "jobless" in the sense that....well, that's what the article is about and it's worth reading.

what do you think of this piece?
does it describe the economic situation in your geographical area?
has this affected you directly? how are you managing? how are people around you managing who are affected if you are not?

what do you make of the history leading to this "jobless recovery" business?

what do you think can or should be done to generate more work for more people?

Does it affect me personally? YES. As of last week I've been out of a job for a year. My entire career has been selling/providing technology to financial institutions. Banks are in deep shit and its affecting their buying decisions. And that is affecting the hiring decisions of their vendors. I've had four job opportunities that I was in the interview/hiring process that were eventually shelved and not filled. No faith in the recovery. I have a good friend in Orlando who is 62 and he lost his job (same industry) last week. At least he can take early retirement if he chooses. I'm 57 and a long way from that consideration. I've got one year left of cushion on a very reduced budget and then I'm in trouble, really in trouble. Part time employment isn't an answer at this point. It may become an option but that will only slow the rate at which I'm sinking. I'll still sink, just not as quickly.

I don't see the market changing soon. The stock market has rebounded, primarily because companies have downsized to match the realities but the job market is still in sad shape. I know a handful of others that have been out of a job for well over a year. All in their 50s. This is changing our lives drastically.

I fear that there may not be enough decent paying jobs to accommodate the new people coming into the market. One thing that might help is to allow people to retire at 55 or so with social security benefits to make room for younger workers.

Social Security already has a solvency problem; this will just make it worse.

To further drive that point home, I just got a letter from the SSA telling me I shouldn't rely on social security and now would be a good time to start saving on my own accord. In the letter they claimed by 2037 (at the latest) social security is only going to be able to pay out 75% of what a persons stated benefits are. Like I said, that was from the damn SSA themselves.

Maybe we should let the next flu 'epidemic' run its course, nothing will clear out some jobs like 15% mortality over the course of 18 months.

I jest. Sorta. :sad:

We can't afford to retire. Even if the program were to remain solvent with the added burden of additional retirees, most of us need to save towards retirement in our last decade of employment.

Jobless recovery = contradiction in terms. I hate to put it so simply, but there's really no two ways about it. Recovery is something which should take place across the proverbial board, including employment and income levels rising again. Until those things happen, the term recovery is quite simply incorrect. At best, we're currently in an inconsistent flux, where some areas are seeing recovery, some areas seeing stagnation, and even some areas continuing to deteriorate.

In the immediate future either things will remain as they were before and we'll continue to see periodic economic collapses as wealth distribution continues upward or there will be some unexpected change and we could at least stave off for the time being the next set of collapses.

This is an interesting but depressing article. I suspect that the author is right though. Between the offshoring activity of the past few years and what I think will be a fundamentally smaller economy due to the disappearance of easy credit, it's unclear how the economy can support a significant increase in employment in this country.

I think this decline has been going on for decades, and as the author points out, hidden by the boom years with easy credit. There has not been any significant manufacturing in this part of New York in years. Prior to living in New York, I lived in New England and watched the disappearance of manufacturing there. The company I work for closed down one location in New York about 15 years ago and the remaining locations are much smaller in size.

This is somewhat affecting me. My company has been offshoring work for a few years now. The team I lead was reduced by one person, by retirement. That person was replaced with people in India and I then additional people due to added workload. I expect my job will be gone within five years. I suspect sooner, but since the people India are not learning so quickly, maybe not. Currently, my finances are such that if I lost my job, I would be ok. If inflation rises significantly it might be a problem.

I honestly don't know what people around here do to make a living. The area is basically shopping malls and tourism. There's towns in the Catskills and in the area along the NY/PA/NJ border that used to be tourist areas that now have nothing.

What led to this? I think two things. First, the unsustainable expansion of the economy by credit. People and business borrowed heavily, counting on future growth. Like a Ponzi scheme, the economy can't expand forever, and everything blew up.

Second, the cost of labor and government regulations has made US manufacturing much more expensive than in other countries. Reliable transportation that made it cheaper to manufacture offshore and pay shipping costs than to manufacture in the US was a contributor. The same thing happened with the Internet, where anything that can be represented as digital information can be moved around the world in seconds.

What to do about it? Somehow labor and regulatory costs need to be brought in line with the rest of the world. Setting trade barriers to enforce that won't work. Less government regulation and fewer government mandates on businesses might be a good start.

if you really want to create actual economically positive jobs, then you need to do several things.

1) relax regulations so that new business in the manufacturing sector can be created.

2) encourage small manufacturing business by increasing small business loans for that specified area of business.

3) create or increase tax breaks and credits for however many jobs are created in these manufacturing sectors.

manufacturing has always been the pinnacle and mainstay of any economy. If you want to keep a steady or growing economy, you have to increase the manufacturing.

The only way we are going to recover from this is if the American people start living well within their means and stop living in excess. We as a people are probably the most superficial people on the face of the planet. We constantly buy shit we don't need and homes that are WAY bigger than we could ever possibly need.

I think it is a shift in society. I bought everything I need during the 'boom', and now do not need to spend any money. I have all the HDTVs I could want. I haven't bought a new computer or car in years. GM made a car that lasts too long and doesn't need repairing. I have reduced my fast food budget from $3,000/yr ($10/day) to $500. After I buy a new laptop later this year, I will probably not need to upgrade that for 10 years. I do free things for fun now.

I don't need to buy a new home, I like the place where I am living just fine. My whole goal is to reduce my monthly bills as low as possible, something the baby boomers should learn how to do again. They did it once as hippies, they can do it again.

And if I did lose my job, I have plenty of ideas of things to do on my own. I have not noticed any changes around my town to be honest. Traffic is just as bad, home prices haven't changed, and gas prices are still high.

and the Republicans have voted against every one of those measures over the past 14 months. It's all a political game right now; go on talk shows and blast Obama/the Dems for the bad economy and double digit unemployment rate, and then head over to Congress and vote down every bill that could create jobs, create loans, or ease the burden on the unemployed.

Rinse and repeat

You make valid points in terms of how people manage their finances and especially when faced with the realities of less-than-favourable employment stats. Here we have the Chinese with their double-digit savings rate, while in North America we have seen negative rates.

But there is the bigger picture, which I feel most tend to overlook. This isn't just about a shift in society at the household level; it's also a shift in the economic makeup on the national level, and society's refusal to shift along with it. Economies change, for the better and for the worse.

I find it rather curious that so many Americans want to reorganize and revitalize the manufacturing sector so badly when it was this very sector that was the most vulnerable in a globalized environment, where competition happens primarily on the level of labour cost. Can American labour compete with cheap Asian labour? Much of manufacturing is disposable, and much of this is due to cheap costs and low prices. If a "durable" good lasts only 2 or 3 years, so what? Buy another one. They're cheap enough. In a world of sub-$100 DVD players and "drive new every two" automobile ownership mentalities, what would you expect?

I don't see American manufacturing (or Ontario's even) returning to any "former glory." I think what's happened is inevitable. You have a nation with a high standard of living, and therefore a high cost of living, competing with nations with completely different standards. And a demand for cheaper goods (though not good or bad in and of itself) only drives the problem home. In a way, we did it to ourselves.

If we were so concerned about North America maintaining its competitiveness with regard to making shit, we should have kept in mind the costs and consequences of ensuring that we could continue making shit. You know, you have to perhaps buy the shit we make. If you don't want to pay a premium for locally made shit, whether it's just higher cost, or, perhaps, there is some sense that it's better quality, what do you do? You buy imported goods. This is no surprise, it's been happening for decades, only now such habits have come to a point: we no longer buy enough of our own shit. That, and exporting is difficult when so many make less money than you do.

So what do we do? We compete otherwise. We reorganize and revitalize our economy, not our manufacturing sector alone. How can we compete? With research & technology, various services, cultural products, and perhaps a type of manufacturing that makes sense to our competitive advantages (e.g. it's not easy competing in the electronics industry, so perhaps focus more on automobiles and the like).

Rather than pine for the former days of a manufacturing golden age, we have to wake up and realize that an economy is only as strong as its self-awareness allows it to be. You can't fit a square peg into a round hole. Do what makes sense. Do what you do well. Retrain, retool, regroup: become competitive where it makes sense.

We know jobs are a lagging indicator. A point I have been emphasizing is that there is a lagging cost to fiscal policy stimulus, if the economy fails to creates jobs or if there is jobs growth in 2011 and then a reversal around 2012 here is why:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

http://www.investors.com/image/A1sti...100305.png.cms



However, if there is a focus on the federal government creating a environment friendly to business and real job creation we will see real and lasting job growth. We control our destiny.

well, it's often a good idea to read the article cited in an op before you opine on it, ace, but whatever that's fine.

the article is more about outlining the magnitude of the un and under-employment phenomena that are out there (and in many cases here and out there are the same place) and the consequences psychological and social of not addressing these problems. because of the fact that much of the "jobless recovery"---a nonsensical term of course---is as it is as a result of structural transformations in the geography and organization of manufacturing, it is not a simple matter trying to figure out what solutions might be functional. there's probably a whole range of things that should be tried out some of which won't work, some of which will. but clearly "the market" aint gonna do anything to resolve the problems of excess human beings that "the market" has created in the first place. so this is a political matter. and as a political matter, it is something that the state should undertake to address. this sooner rather than later as well.

it's not a novel idea to think that the state could direct resources at industries, could underwrite new ventures, could divert money to do so from bloated and unnecessary defense spending...the state could be acting to ease commerical credit problems in order to spur expansion of existing businesses and all this within a general kind of new deal-like logic.

the republicans of course will stand in the way of anything like that because that's all they have to offer at this point, standing in the way of things, playing to news cycles, hoping that their reactive and reactionary politics these days will enable a kind of separation to be made between the republicans themselves and the economic ideology which enabled most of these problems to take shape, take hold, deepen and persist.

Your assumption that I did not read the article is incorrect.

I tend to focus on the key points that are most relevant. On this subject it is the question of job growth. I chose not to comment on the false premise that there is a new jobless era, other than to say we control our own destiny in this regard. The flaws in measuring real unemployment and under-employment are well documented and they have been consistent over time. Job growth being a function of real economic growth based on real demand per-capita increases, organic demand increases based on population growth, trade, and productivity can easily turn positive generating all the jobs we want. The choice is ours, it is in our control. There is not some hidden force dictating a "new era". So, my first response is to direct our focus on fiscal policy and the impact it may have in the next 2 to 3 years.

first off, it's fine to criticize or reject the premise of an article, but it's usually good form to indicate that you're doing it rather than post what appears to be a non-sequitor. just a note.

i'm not at all sure what actual information you're basing your positions on there, ace. what it sounds to me informs it is more market metaphysics.
for example: on what basis are you arguing, if you are doing that and not simply asserting, that because measures of unemployment are quirky that therefore there is no problem with unemployment? anything? because it flies in the face of empirical reality and most data that purports to describe that reality. or maybe you can explain away something like what's happening in detroit as being driven by something other than massive, sustained unemployment? for example.

The line I included from your post in my first post indicated that by 2014 there is good reason to believe the 10% unemployment rate will decline only a little. My post provided a reason why that may be true and then included an editorial comment about the rate being in our control.

I don't understand your comment about a non-sequitor.

If you do not accept the view that government can impact employment that is one thing, to pretend that underlying principles that govern markets, including labor markets, do not exist is something else. Given, that I am not clear on your actual position perhaps you can clarify.

Major shifts in employment are not a new phenomenon. The movers behind those shifts are well known. The dynamics of the current shifts in employment are also known, discounting the short-term nature of typical recessions, like the one we are in now, broadly speaking there are shortages and surpluses in various labor market segments. Detroit will never be the industrial power it once was, but far too many hold on to that hope, and government action, I argue, has contributed to the sluggish transition in Detroit to the "new economy".

I wonder if the Chinese will ever get sick and tired of being our slaves? Working for 2 bucks a day and a bowl of rice. When do they get pay back? Or is it that there are so many freaking people in China, they can just go out in the back woods and get more slaves to work in the factories.

Or maybe as the Chinese start to want to buy shit it will create a domestic market for their crap and the prices will increase.

My personal belief is that North Americans did it to ourselves. We all want cheap crap and huge bottom lines so that our share values go up. So they ship the manufacturing to China. Ironically, the union guys are the guys going to Walmart and buying the cheap shit figuring that they will never be affected but surprise, they are.

So they end up working at Walmart.

Only instead of generating wealth like they did when they worked in the Steel Mill for $20.00 an hour, now they're working at Walmart for $8.00 an hour and they're just moving shit around.

We used to build things in North America. Some of the best things in the world. Now we just buy crap that was made somewhere else.

What if that person got training to become a masseuse? They could make close to $30,000 with flexible hours and a virtual endless supply of potential clients.

http://www.salaryexpert.com/Masseur-...urvey-2242.htm

What if they became a nurse?

Nurse Salaries - Nursing Salary Surveys

Or maybe they could become powersellers on EBAY:

How Much Money Can You Make on eBay?

Oh, and if they work at Wal-Mart, they might start at $8 per hour as a part-time employee, but they could get a few raises, go full-time, get a few promotions and before you know it they might even start saving, buying stock in the company, contribute to their retirement, and enjoy a happy life having worked at Wal-Mart.

yes, because every part time worker at Wal Mart has that career path available to them.

nice work, ace. classic. so what you're saying here so far is that there's nothing about this current situation insofar as employment is concerned that's not understandable as normal for Magic Capitalism, that infinitely expandable and contractible imaginary system in which everything is always fine because the boundaries that we're talking about move in and out arbitrarily. so in this world, the 30 year pattern of fragmentation of what once were basic manufacturing operations is of no real consequence. it doesn't even register because now normal can be expanded to include that, no problem, because in the end normal is arbitrary. so looking at detroit, say, where housing values have collapse entirely because the fucking economy has more or less disappeared, what you're saying is:

1. this is normal.
2. what isn't normal is the fault of the government
3. the consequences are really the fault of the unemployed who can always get jobs at walmart.

so what you're offering is the same old conservative capitalism-cannot-be-a-problem so the problem is either the government or you. so exactly the same "thinking" that got us collectively here in the first place.

in general, we have the simple reality of the change of organization and by extension geography of manufacturing.
we have an educational system which has never caught up with these changes really, so which continues to produce an outmoded class profile, an outmoded labor pool. but conservatives dont care because they dont fucking live in the same neighborhoods as are really affected by this and besides its their fault anyway.

the effects of this had been forestalled by all kinds of goofball devices, not least of which was conservative economy ideology itself which functioned for 30 years as the lingua franca, the "washington consensus" blah blah blah---and about the consequences of this ideology, conservative economic ideology has nothing, at all, to say.

this is compounded by the consequences of the conservative-inspired debt bubble, an economic idea that has to have been put into place with one or another idea of the end times behind the scenes somewhere.

then there's the credit contraction--uh, yeah---in commercial lending that's in the way of anything like expansion of jobs so long as the private sector is the main source of money.

and we have a centrist administration that continues to act as though conservatives have fuck all to say about anything that's any different from the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

no wonder you prefer to pretend nothing's broken, ace.

It seems to me that a country's wealth must be generated from something other than performing services for each other. We can't all make a good living by delivering each other pizzas, giving each other massages, selling junk on eBay, or stocking WalMart stores, etc..

Transisting from manufacturing to service jobs may be a race to the bottom. Even those jobs will be harder to find if people continue to work longer. I sometimes wonder what society would do with all the surplus workers if we really eliminated all the unnecessary paper shufflers in government, healthcare, and industry.

Ontario's manufacturing industry was the hardest hit in Canada. For generations, Ontario has been a steady "have" province, but has been the talk of the nation as becoming a "have-not" as a result of their decimated sector.

Just yesterday, it was announced by the premier that there will be a new focus on education as an export: they want to boost enrolment of international students by 50% over five years.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. The post-secondary education industry in Ontario is strong, so the province is leveraging that to help pull it out of its economic doldrums. Boosting the enrolment like this will require more education-related workers, but it will also require indirect workers to support that sector.

It's not like the premier could have as easy a time convincing American auto manufacturers to make more cars. (He's already been doing that.) So he does something else. Changing times, changing strategies. Find out what you do well, and do more of it.

The key thing here is what the government will do to ensure the workforce is ready for these changes. There should be accessible programs for training, re-education, and other vocational support. If these types of programs are lacking in the U.S., that should be a pressing concern for just about everyone at this point.

---------- Post added at 12:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 PM ----------

This is what I'm getting at. Services need to be an export industry too.

see this is the problem, really. the idea that there can be a "recovery" of any kind with this type of unemployment abroad in the land is entirely absurd. the only viewpoint from which it makes sense is one that presupposes the activities of the stock market reflect the well-being of all, as if there is only one economic class in the united states and that understood along lines that the beginning of lake wobegone stories make fun of.

the underlying problems that the new geography of capitalist organization--which is not that new, but we're only waking up to it---include the increasing irrelevance of nation-states. one of the central problems created by this irrelevance is the limitations this places on a nation-state's abilities to act to assure its own socio-economic well-being. you'd think that faced with un-and under-employment numbers of **anything** like those outlined in the article that the united states would be acting, and acting quickly, to spur new job creation as a matter of great urgency...spot funding activity in economic sectors, supporting new start-ups, easing credit for expansion, mandating that technological infrastructures be modified so as not to exclude actual human beings from working---all this in addition to the public-sector oriented actions that i hear about but have so far seen nothing come of.


-----

addendum: let's say that there's a kind of scaling cycle characteristic of contemporary manufacturing concerns, that they move to a medium-scale and then end up fragmented, more often than not a distribution hub that remains viable through its control of intellectual property (god i hate that category)/patents and maybe assembly points, but **definitely** clients---and that these larger-scale fragmentations tend to conform to the new world order of a race to the bottom in terms of wages, working conditions, social responsibility on the part of suppliers etc...because supply pools allow from the endless replacement of suppliers one for the other, all context is stripped out of the relation of purchaser (firms, once-upon-a-time manufacturer) to supplier...so no responsibility at all really....anyway: you'd think that even if this were the case that such a scale-cycle exists that it'd **still** make sense for national governments to actively plan and/or fund smaller-to-medium size concerns in all kinds of areas as a way of generating employment and revenue and that maybe around this planning area new types of education could be worked out that'd make flexibility something more than a word you read in management literature.

there are things that can be done.

roachboy, problems of under- and unemployment are usually a greater concern on the left. So in the U.S., you have this kind of apathy for unemployment issues outside of it as an economic indicator. It's a different situation in Canada, you know, where you actually have left politics.

Not every Wal-Mart employee wants a career path. Some just want a part-time job. Those that do want a career path, it is available. All they have to do is work hard, learn new skills and let their desires be known.

---------- Post added at 07:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:30 PM ----------

You mock the fundamentals we learn in Econ 101, then you ignore those fundamental principles or what you consider "market metaphysics" - well here is some basic "market metaphysics" for you to chew on.

When the price of a good or service (labor) is kept artificially above equilibrium (i.e. - minimum wages, prevailing union wages, forced employer mandates, etc.) there will be a surplus of that good or service (entrenched unemployed or full employment defined as any number greater than 0%). The only way to address the situation is to remove the reasons the price is forcibly maintained above equilibrium, i.e. - the government creating an environment friendly to employers actually employing. You can play pretend games that there is a magical unknown force at work, and you can pretend there is some magical way to address unemployment without addressing the supply/demand/price question - but it is clearly fantasy. This is not complicated stuff.

what is equilibrium ace? i mean beyond that arbitrary intersection of supply and demand curves in those simple-minded diagrams from econ 101.
do any actually existing socio-economic systems tend toward equilibrium? of course they don't.
metaphysics, ace. it's a therapeutic exercise. it appeals to a sense of an ordered world. it doesn't appeal when you're looking at actual reality.


the is nothing at all to back up either clause here and still less to justify the leap from the first to the second.
in the present situation, you seriously believe that it is state policy that is the cause of unemployment rates at around 10% officially?

What else is there? We typically separate "goods and services" but isn't a "good" actually something that is of "service" to someone?


What is happening is that the "man" hours needed to produce something like a ton of steel has been greatly reduced, just like we went through a reduction in the "man hours needed to produce a bushel of corn. Society benefits by productivity gains, it frees up "man" hours to serve man-kind in other ways. This is a good thing. What is wrong with fewer farmers and more artists? Or, fewer steel workers and more masseuses?

No, it is a race to the top. We can be a nation that owns capital or we can be capital. Education is the key, a nation with the highest educated population will be a nation that owns capital, others will be employed. We need to shift the way we look at this stuff. Stop wanting a "job", want "ownership".

assuming that those who already have those jobs (asst. managers, managers, supervisors, regional managers, etc.) aren't clinging to their jobs in a bad economy. there aren't an infinite amount of "promotable" jobs in Wal-Mart or anywhere else. Hard work, desire, etc. aren't enough alone. Opportunity is a huge part of the equation

It is a "market metaphysics" argument. I think you know that. There is a theoretical equilibrium, but no human will ever be able to calculate it -because of the millions of variables in the market and the fact that it is infinitely dynamic. Is your question really about the underlying principle of the supply/demand/price relationships? I think you know, at best, all we could do is illustrate the point using a very simplified example, is that what you want?

I am curious, do you consider calculus, "metaphysics"?

---------- Post added at 08:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 PM ----------

Come now. Where do you want to go with this? I agree there will only be one CEO at Wal-Mart at a time, even though many in the company may be qualified. If I am one of those people, I may still have a very satisfactory career at Wal-Mart, or I might start my own company or go work for a competitor. With the proper skills, the choice is mine. That is my primary point, do you disagree?

yes, I disagree. hard work, wherewithal and gumption alone are not enough to be successful in any business, whether it be someone else's or your own. There are hundreds of factors out of your control that contribute to whether you can advance within a company

The only thing missing is a person actually being able to "add value". A person can work hard, not adding value - and the work is meaningless. To the degree we have people willing to work hard, but not knowing how to translate the work to "adding value" or something that is marketable is a problem. In one regard we may agree if you think a company will purposefully act in ways to minimize or prevent people they employ from having transferable marketable skills. Just like Apple doesn't want Itunes enriching other MP3 player companies they would prefer the employees they develop not go to work for Microsoft.

Every person has to understand they have to lookout for their own interests in the market place - it is a dog eat dog world. Those who don't want to compete, get exploited. But, that is their choice. In the end that is the point where we part ways.

Good point. As I recall, back in the 1960's there were those like Buckminster Fuller who speculated that in the future productivity increases would require fewer and fewer workers and society would have to figure out a way to distribute wealth to the masses. As the wealth concentrates at the top, I don't think it is realistic to expect them to support all the new artists and masseuses, etc.

i will say at the outset that i almost agree with a portion of a sentence that ace wrote in that last post. more once fistf ran it through buckminster fuller.

to my mind, the question that follows is: how do these artists live? you know, eat day to day? where's the funding come from? conservatives oppose funding for the arts for some reason...no doubt there's a preference for landscapes involving important people following through on their golf swing as opposed to formal experimentation or other stuff....but fact is that without funding---and trust me there's very little----being an artist is basically something you talk to yourself about as you go to your day job. so unless this idea of other kinds of labor being rendered unnecessary is accompanied by some proposals about how to make the lives of these new artisans viable, i think it's just more gas from the right.

but i'd prefer that there were far more money available for far more artists to have lives in which they can do far more work because they have time and access to resources than american cultural barbarism allows for now. and this is even more the case if the trend buckminster fuller pointed to turns out to be accurate.

The government should fund the arts; the funding should come from a progressive tax system.

i have alot of conversations with various of my circle who do the artist thing about the problems with getting funding for projects and the simple reality that if you are able to do the art thing full time chances are good that much of that full time is spent chasing other grants. but the logic of the funding system overall is that artwork is good but that enabling the people who make that work to live and/or have a decent life for making that work is really not a priority. the result is that being-an-artist is either an aristocratic game or its a patronage game. same as it ever was. but to suggest that a labor market which makes space of more artists without providing them anything remotely like a way to live is disengenuous.

but you read alot about some alternative notion of art making as an aspect of what the "new creative class" does inside this thing they call the "new creative economy.."which seems mostly something that allows art-related non-profits/mediating institutions to talk back and forth to each other and to generate more grant revenues for themselves. not a whole lot seems to get through them to actual working artists. the relatively few that do support actual art-making end up being inundated with applications.


the other main patronage system was academic institutions, but there are problems there as well over the past few years in particular.

so it means nothing to say this stuff. it's really another sector of maybe-economic activity that could be made into something really interesting and productive and positive that is none of those things at the moment and is unlikely to be any time soon so long as conservative views of state funding have any credibility. we really need a whole lot more social democracy.

---------- Post added at 05:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:10 PM ----------

I saw that bit about foreign students and I wondered, "Will it be at the expense of Canadian Students?"

When I went to McMaster in the late 80's in my faculty - Engineering, it was solidly Chinese students. Not 5%, not 10%, but probably 50% (at least in first year) I remember the trick of the day was for them to have their Landed Immigrant Status and avoid any sort of number restrictions on foreign students and the high cost that goes with.

Thing is - when they graduate, they virtually all leave the Country.

So we paid for their education in part (I was told at the time that we only paid 1/12'th of the cost of our education, the gov't paid the rest.

I don't think the Universities are currently set up to take so many foreign students. All that will happen is that they will take the place of the Canadian students, then leave when they graduate. The suspicious person in me figures this is simply a way for a broke province to get their higher education budget paid for.

As to the Auto Industry, I've thought about that and my line of thinking is that Ontario should be helping the Japanese manufacturers to locate here more so than the North American ones. Chrysler is dying no matter what anyone says. GM, well, the jury is outon them still. I know for a fact that Toyota would rather build cars in Canada than the US because our workforce is better educated (in the US, they have to have pictorials for their assembly line workers to put the cars together), and our health care system eliminates that huge cost burden.

People are still going to buy cars going forward, the only question is where are they going to be made.

At the end of the day, if North American consumers were more in tune with supporting local industry (as they do in Japan actually) we'd be better off.

---------- Post added at 05:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:22 PM ----------

Store Managers at Walmart actually make a pretty good buck.

Is NASCAR art?

I think the problem is that conservatives don't want tax dollars used to "support the arts", because generally "the arts" involve something conservatives don't like or things that don't actually need a government subsidy. But, as a conservative, I use my dollars to support what I like all the time.

So, what if snooty North Eastern liberals were being asked to support NASCAR with their tax dollars, what would their response be?

---------- Post added at 01:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 AM ----------

The human race has been realizing major steps in productivity gain since the dawn of human history, starting with developing the ability to generate food surpluses. When there have been problems with wealth distribution we have seen revolts, mass migrations and some cultures "leap frogging" the dominate culture, etc. This issue is not a new phenomenon.

Sorry for my poor attempts at subtle humor. I don't really think more masseuses is the answer to our employment needs, but the point is real - as the economy changes, people need to adapt. Our real problem is in education. We are ending up with people who are going to be permanently unemployed because they lack the skills in demand in the new economy. The increasing drop-out rates is a big problem. In the past a person like that could make a living - in the future (and to a degree now) they will not be able to find any kind of a job. Even the complexity of being a janitor has increased significantly in the past 20 years.

you cannot be serious.

If ace had any inkling of how the granting process works in the arts, he'd have a better idea of how it compares to the sponsorship-laden NASCAR.

Or maybe I'm just not getting his joke.

It's a joke, right?

No. Perhaps the point was missed.

"Art" is in the eye of the beholder.
"Art" that is worthy, will be supported by those who enjoy it.
Given, each person having limited resources, each person should make a personal choice where there dollars go in support of "art".

I have absolutely no interest in supporting ballet, European centered art museums, PBS, or modern art using bodily waste. The people who enjoy that should pay for it, not me. I also don't support public money used for things like sports stadiums.

How is the above position not clear?

{added} I will even go further. I think schools should focus only on core education. Extra activities like, sports, band, drams clubs, etc should be funded separately, by participants and those who want to sponsor such activities. If the tax burden was not so high, we might be surprised by the level people would support the things they love and want.

first you do some handwaving in the direction of "everyone's an artist now tra la" in that kind of inverted socialism way that retro-thinking folk seem to take some perverse glee in doing these days, then when you're asked "ok so if everyone's an artist now tra la how do you propose they live?" and you respond with some rightwing bromides about "snobby east coast liberals" and nascar, the reasonable assumption, ace, is that you're not talking about anything.

then when you try to clear it up, it turns out that such point as you were trying to make was just as disengenuous as i thought from the start.

This is getting to the point of being ridiculous from my point of view.

People make a living by selling what they do!

What don't you understand about that???

NASCAR folks have no problem getting sponsors and people to spend hundrds, even thousands of dollar to see a race during a weekend. Why can't your favorite "art", do the same??? Are they too snobbish to get companies and people to sponsor what they do???


You want to pretend there is not a social divide in this country that plays in the political arena? East coast, inside the beltway, over-educated, liberal v. Southern "cling to guns and religion", "pick-up truck driving", NASCAR loving conservative, is very measurable. Even our exchanges are rooted in this divide with a few subtle differences in some of the characteristics. So my question is, why do you persist on pretense? Why do you want things to be different than they actually are? Why do you fail to see what is real, obvious and so easy to be seen?

I doubt most reading this, see it as you do. Sure, I may be a bit more extreme than some - but I think they get it.

See, the thing is, people won't know what art they'll enjoy unless they have an opportunity to actually experience it. Much of art today would have difficulty being made because of the front-end costs of production. The business models that art operates on is completely unlike most mainstream business models. It's the nature of the beast, and as it happens, the government is one of art's biggest customers. If it weren't for government grants and tax credits, there would be no Canadian publishing industry, nor would there be a Canadian film industry. Much of this is a result of imports from the U.S. There is government monetary and public voter support for the arts in this way, as we'd rather not have this aspect of our culture be decided upon completely by foreign powers that be. This is just one example as to why art are supported like they are.

Also the granting process isn't just a handout. There are applications, requirements, audits, qualifications, and performance/operational minimums, etc. It's a part of doing business in the industry.

Unfortunately, it would be nearly impossible to have a completely hands-on democratic approach to deciding what gets spent on what.

Well it is now that you actually laid it out.

There is educational value in these things you would call "extra."

as someone who works professionally in the arts community, I find just about everything Ace is suggesting to be patently absurd.

You don't think arts groups TRY to get corporate sponsorship? OF COURSE THEY DO!!! But companies are unwilling to give money unless they can slap their logos all over it (something that would be a little awkward on a statue or a play).

Comparing NASCAR to art is ludicrous

the position ace is adopting is disengenuous in that it's not really about a coherent discussion concerning **his** claim that the transformations of the contemporary capitalist labor market are good things because they free more people up to "be artists"---this because it's obvious that he has nothing to say on the matter----it's more about a cheap rhetorical game in which ace tries to position himself (and the fact that he has nothing to say on the topic that he brought up) as being "of the people" in a stereotyped kinda way ("i'm a conservative i like nascar" as if all conservatives were like him) and by extension as someone who finds himself either being set upon by or setting upon "snobby over-educated east coast liberals" who think in terms of things like what art might possibly be (beyond "modern art using bodily waste") who artists might be and how these people might actually be able to live.

but it's pretty obvious: ace is arguing that by "freeing people up to be artists" what he really means is that people displaced by the reorganization of capitalism are superfluous and should be allowed to die off, preferably dying off while under the impression that they have been liberated from something, which would bring it into line with all kinds of charades american.

The first Broadway play I saw was Phantom of The Opera in the early 90's, because of the buzz and awards it won, I went to several other shows after that, including some of Webber's other productions - none were as good, but I have seen Phantom two other times. Phantom had broad appeal in its story and music.

Olga Korbut is the reason I watch Olympic and international championship gymnastics. Every two to four years there are similar stars who draw me to the sport. The drama and competition takes a back seat to no other sport. On the other-hand male gymnastics has very little appeal just like the WNBA has very little appeal to me, but the NBA does. Superior world-class performance stands out and generates broad interest.

Tiger Woods is the reason I occasionally watch grand slam golf tournaments, no one else and the sport has done anything to keep my interest - if he doesn't play I don't care what happens. He is the story.

Danica Patrick is the reason I recently watched some NASCAR, where that leads I don't know. She is the story.

My wife is the reason I had dinner at Spagos, Wolf Gang Puck' restaurant in Beverly Hills, and to this day we occasionally splurge on "fine dining". the over-all experience was good enough to get me hooked, in-spite of the costs. And trust me, I was prepared to tell my wife - "see I told you it would be a waste of money".

To me the tone of our comment suggests that I would never go outside my comfort zone regarding "art" because I don't know what I would enjoy or unless there is some kind of subsidy connected with it until I can gain an appreciation of it. That is a false premise. I have an awareness of the "art" that is available, and if it does not "hook" me, it is not because I don't know what I will enjoy, but has everything to do with the "art" focusing on the base level things that appeal to me regardless of form. And, there is absolutely no correlation with government subsidy and my gaining an appreciation of "art". All an artist has to do is ask me. I always enjoy a good story, simplicity, exceptional dramatic performance, underdogs over coming the odds, music with simple melodies -easy to dance to, and anything done by Clint Eastwood.

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Right. NASCAR is just cars going around in circles. The circles ballet dancers go around in are very different. A circle is not really a circle, is it? Of course not. But if I spend disposable money going to a NASCAR race, that is disposable money I ain't spending going to the ballet. Disposable income is not disposable income is it? Aaaaagh, this is so confusing....your "art" is "art", anyone who is not into your "art" just isn't into "art", is that it?

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Dude, your definition of "art" is far too limited. That is what is causing you to have problems with what I have posted.

I accept the fact that you don't understand my point and I accept that there is nothing further that I can do to help you understand.

right.

I'm not saying it was ludicrous because one is more "artful" than the other, but because they serve two entirely different purposes.

It's not Apples and Oranges, it's Apples and Astro-Physics

I really don't understood how people use the "apples and oranges" comparison thing now days. We can certainly compare and contrast apples and oranges, I don't get the point.

you can compare anything you want. in response, i can say that comparing the sponsorships of NASCAR and Ballet is ridiculous

I don't question your ability to say the comparison is ridiculous, I want to understand why you do.

Example: If a young person who has been kart racing and who has been seriously involved in ballet, and is exceptionally good at both, but now has to commit to one or the others, asks you for guidance - what do you say:

"I can not help you because a comparison of the two is ridiculous?"

I have to be honest here. I often reply to posts in a cynical or sarcastic manner because I think people are just screwing around with me regarding things that to me seem pretty obvious. As with our exchange on this issue, my initial reaction was to think that you are just screwing around with me. So tell me, if you are honestly willing, are you really saying that we can not compare and contrast NASCAR to ballet and take lessons from one and apply it to the other, to look at both and see their similarities rather than just focusing in on the differences, give a serious evaluation of one compared to the other, look at both as they reflect socioeconomic trends including the governing topic in this thread?

Oh, to my fans, I will return to being an a$$ for a number of other reasons shortly - there is nothing to be concerned about.:thumbsup:

[added} For East Coast liberals who may not know what kart racing is:


No government subsidies, but costs $$$$$

well for one, NASCAR is a commercial sport and most public arts groups are not-for-profit.

before the thread gets too mired in some absurd non-discussion about whether ace is able to construct a coherent argument about art funding or distinguish art-events from other events, fact is that if the article is correct there really should be concerted action from the state to expand businesses or create jobs in order to bail out folk who are not those in the hedge fund and/or insurance sector.

it is curious--or would be in a sane place---that the interests of capital are so obviously held to be more important than those of working people and no-one gets too riled up about it. right, we say. capital flows are more important than human lives. it is far more important that we think about rates of shareholder return than it is that we think about how regular folk make a living.

you'd think populist conservatism would be a contradiction in terms. markets obviously do not take care of people, they obviously do not assure socially optimal allocations of resources or opportunities. never have. never will. that the right has been able to establish a political environment for its incoherent notions of taxation as persecution and/or the state as that which is responsible for irreationalities in economic affairs remains amazing to me. i think it is the residuum of this incoherent worldview that stands in the way of anything being done to help regular folk to find work.

the conservative response seems to be to pretend there is no problem. that's always the conservative response---except when it comes to finding reasons to militarize class relations.

The conservative perspective (or at least the perspective seemingly held by fiscal conservatives) seems to require that problems be ignored. That's what "the free market" is all about. You let invisible hands guide things, and if things seem unpleasant, you cross your fingers and tell youself, "Well, this must be part of the invisible hand's divine plans." So what if people are losing their houses and their health, that's what the invisible hand does, and if we try to intervene, the invisible hand will punish us even more. It would be fucking insane to apply this type of hands-off faith to any other policy area.

Free market principles are often theology posing as economic policy.

This was actually a very interesting thread at the beginning, somewhere and I'm not sure where it's pretty much degenerated to a "nothing here folks please move along" thread.

Maybe my memory is fading in my incipient old age, but I seem to remember grousing about "jobless recoveries" coming out of every single downturn I can remember, dating back to '82-83. Jobs seem to be something of a lagging indicator - companies don't hire until they're sure the recovery isn't just a blip.

How do you think the "state" can do this?

People with interests in capital simply seek to preserve it and make it grow.
Working people or those charged with working on behalf of working people have an interest in their cause. One is not more important than another, it is simply an issue of where "interest" lies. The thought that those with strictly an interest in capital will look out for something else is, for a lack of a better word, foolish. Why does such foolishness in though persist?

How do you measure that? How did you come to such a conclusion? How do you get away with a comparison of capital to human life?

Because "rate of return" is universal and should apply to labor as well as employment of capital, the mistake is for labor to overlook this foundational measure. Without an understanding of "rate of return" and its comparative application in decision making, those who fail to employ "rate of return" are missing a valuable tool. How does labor make comparitive decisions without "rate of return" analysis. Do they use darts and go with random choice? Clearly the "regular folks" need better leadership, leaders who can think clearly.

What is simple, foundational, obvious, clear, simple, etc., is "conservatism" at the core, the reason it is not "populist" is because of the desires of the few to control the many through deception. Hence, we have people not getting an education because of the false liberal belief that some vague concept called the "state" will look out for them.

You don't think humanity has been in a market based economy since the days of the first trades conducted by pre-historic man?

Involuntary taxation is persecution. When the state has the police or military force to impose and collect taxes, not just for the costs to society but for the purposes of re-distribution (stealing from one man to give to another) that is worthy of concern, unless you are the beneficiary of such an exchange.

What I find incoherent are your views, as illustrated here.

What?

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Why go through the trouble of writing this without being specific. Your thoughts could be a "teachable" moment.

In regards to your "what?" question, roachboy means that when it comes to market problems, the right often declares there really is no problem...except when it comes to agitating members of one class against another class.

In regards to your statement about the history of market economies, if you *have* actually taken econ 101 then you should know the definition of a market economy. No, man has not been involved in a market based economy since pre-historic times and it certainly didn't develop when our pre-historic (or anyone else, for that matter) ancestors decided to share or barter (trade) goods. Each of those are distinct economic systems.


Finally, in regards to your bewilderment over how anyone can distinguish sponsorship of NASCAR from sponsorship of the arts, even though he wrote this in his original post so you must have missed it, the main problem is in the fact that NASCAR cars, tools, any merchandise can sustain logos plastered all over them without ruining the aesthetic for most people.

This is the case with all corporate sponsored activities, as far as I know, whether it be cycling, basketball, or even complete stadiums.

Would you have enjoyed your Phantom of the Opera outing as much if Lenovo, Coke, and Toyota logos were plastered all over the actors' clothes?

Also, I don't think the point was that if you aren't exposed to arts in education you won't learn about whether you enjoy them or not! The point was that all of those activities you learned to enjoy later in your life would not have had playwrights or chefs to make the things you want to consume if they hadn't been exposed to them as legitimate career trajectories when they were in school.

TFP never lets me down. I drop by, and it's like I never left. Roachboy with multiple insulting straw men and blatant misrepresentations. AceVentura3 with the patient of a saint.


Yes, those are the Republicans all right. Anti-business, and amazingly, against borrowing a trillion dollars for a health program no one has read. Or will be allowed to read. Pro tip: "Let's do something, even if it's wrong" doesn't work well in regard to medicine.

Good thing the dems would never engage in such shenanigans, like shielding Fanny and Freddie from any meaningful reform since 2001. Oh, wait ...


This is the most intelligent post of the entire thread. Obama and the Dems just can't get it through their heads that we are out of other people's money.

Well, that certainly sounds like a wonderful business model. How could such a productive system not pay for itself? I'm reminded of the guy on another forum who is unemployed and insulted because he can't find anyone who will pay him $40/hour to be a "game tester."

Yes, and other people's money should be used to support the videocassette industry as well.

Your failure to conceptualize his point is telling. In your view, other people's money should be used to prop up anything you like. Perhaps if you and your friends contributed more to what you profess to support, there wouldn't be a problem.

I choose not to view "Piss Christ" or a photo of a man with a bullwhip up his ass. Call me crazy.

Then perhaps (!) it is outside the proper scope of government.

Looks like those who want to see the play are going to have to pay for the privilege, then.


Yes. One is popular and self-sustaining. There must not be enough people in the world who wish to view the packages of a bunch of men in tights for several hours.

Yes, it is MUCH better to increase the service on the national debt to 80% of revenue.

If you haven't read the healthcare proposal at this point, it is your problem. The damn thing has been online for a very long time. People really should learn that they are not the world, and that "I haven't read it" is not the same thing as "no one has read it."

And last I checked, the administration that passed 32 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlements (medicare part D), through reconciliation no less, was headed by a republican.

politics are are more of the same. they are there to place blame and to never really focus on the main problem of the basic thing that Governments BE IT RIGHT OR LEFT are there for. to not infringe on our rights. the right is doing it, and so is our current administration. it is not the responsibility of our government to "take care of all" but to leave us all alone and we will be fine, but since we have been on this path for some time whether you choose to see it or not, is where we are at. the mistakes that our LEFT/RIGHT govt has done brings us to these issues brought up.

I read more and more of Roachboys posts and it seems he talks alot like our current administration where he says a whole bunch but it doesnt make sense to most. I am sure there are better ways to bring your posts to reach more people if it didnt sound so confusing. call me dumb i guess. but reading Ace's posts it screams" fundamentals" of what this country was built on. Freedom. basically in my own words. I do not have a great vocabulary but i state what I say, in my own way, which is what RB may be doing but darn me if I cant seem to really follow most of the time. I actually get excited when I can actually decipher his posts.

It almost seems as RB is pushing the lefts agenda since i see alot of "conservative" statements. and not just RB but others. Who cares who did what? they are part of the same team. its like wrestling. out front they seem like they are so different, but they are not. They just all have a job to do. to divide us.

I think we should focus what is fundamentally wrong or right for us. there is a problem with this country. and govt created alot of it.

The thing that seems to be missing here is that an investment in the arts does come back. I don't know the number on the arts in general but I do know that every Canadian tax dollar spent on film and television creates $10 to $15. This comes back in taxes, tourism, services purchased, etc.

I can also see how an investment in NASCAR by the government could result in this sort of payback as well. The government invested money in support F1 here and that money has come back many times over in tourism dollars and taxes.

Too many conservatives see money going out but don't get that even their precious free market gets infusions by way of subsidies and tax breaks that amount to the same sort of investments as what arts organizations are asking for.

So you thought you'd drop by and drop a few straw men of your own? Like this:

If you had even read my post you would have found that I endorsed a plan of paying the jobless to rape small business owners and publicly funding abortions with a 200% reimbursement plan. Geez, maybe if you we're here more than once every three months and didn't come around solely to tsk-tsk all us common folk with your brilliantly cutting political wit you would have caught the subtleties of what I had wrote.

Um, I'm not sure how that has anything to do with what I said, but w/e.... :rolleyes: I'd ask you to elaborate, but I can tell---even in my confusion---that you are way off base.

Hey, how about we focus on the extreme and marginal exceptions to the rule on everything? For example, I think the American military should be disbanded on the basis of its complete ineptness because of that last friendly fire incident (not to mention all those others).... :rolleyes:

You have no idea what you're talking about if you think "the arts" consists mainly of the things you've referred to.

Try this:
Similar ratios are found in Canadian book publishing as well.

Fancy that the next time you want to think in extremes.

I love waking up to see a great thread-shitting by Marv. His post is too nonsensical and insulting to even bother responding to

As a conservative I have no ax to grind with "rich" people, "poor" people, or anyone in between. My view is, let me do my thing and you do yours on a level playing field. I have no problems with providing assistance for children, the old, and the disabled, nor do I have a problem with temporary safety nets for people in financial difficult situations. You call that conservative view "agitating members of one class against another?"

I must have missed that day in class. Based on your view, when did humanity develop the first "market economy?" Where?


When I was a kid, my grandmother watched the Lawrence Welk Show, sponsored by Geritol (I will never forget, the sponsorship is plastered in my brain), she seemed to enjoy the show inspite of the blatant commercialization of Welk's "art". So, I continue to be bewildered.

I am also bewildered by his inability or unwillingness to address the question of what advice he would give a young person presented with a delimma between choosing a career in racing, perhaps leading to NASCAR and ballet. In-spite of the premise seeming to come from a Disney movie, I know many young people who may face these kinds of choices. The ability to compare is essential, I still don't get the point.

Also, as an "artist" I am surprised by the lack of imagination or the inability to see through the "noise" and see beauty in something like NASCAR as an art form. Andy Warhol, as an "artist" was not blinded by commercialism:

http://wwff.files.wordpress.com/2007...pg?w=205&h=274

This is clearly a case of a singular focus. Yes, NASCAR cars have logos, but that is what makes NASCAR unique. Just like an Andy Warhol print, in my view a NASCAR car is a work of art. I would not expect performers on Broadway to appear as a NASCAR car does. But, if $150 ticket was reduced to a $50 ticket and I had to endure a few sponsorships before the performance, I would want to save the money and I might be more inclined to see more Broadway. I am not sure how you folks don't see that.

Perhaps the problem is that some people can not sell what they believe in. Take NASCAR, basketball, football, rap, fire fighting, etc, have no problems getting young people interested and parents willing to spend time and money. Being real, we both know some activities prefer to be highly restrictive.

I don't really understand a lot of your points. I think it's because you're often so busy arguing against *anything* you view as oppositional that you just go off on weird ass tangents.

When Roachboy is talking about "the right" he's talking about the organized political party, not what you may or may not believe as an individual. Since he's made this point abundantly clear over the years, I didn't feel the need to reiterate it.

But since you asked, yes, harping on a "level playing field" is consistent with the gist of what he was getting at. The more you post, the more slips out that your ideas consistently regurgitate the Republican party's position so I wouldn't be surprised if you post some more that your comments would fit into the mold you're questioning.


It'd take less time to look up the definition of a market economy than sit here and try to trip someone up when you're clearly wrong. Since you've expressed a desire in the past to play the "I'm just a common foke who doesn't get big wurds spoked by dem norheastern liberuls" rather than an articulate and educated conservative, there isn't much point in me continuing to question whether you understand the defining characteristics of a market economy. If you don't actually know, and you really want to know, I'm certain you will figure out how to educate yourself on the topic.


I don't want to comment too much on this bizarre confusion you're having over the NASCAR vs. art sponsorship. It's not frustrating, just pointless.

And, except for fire fighting, all of the activities you listed are taught and encouraged in primary education and extra-curricular activities so your list confirms my point instead of refuting it. Go back and re-read the discussion between us if you can't understand how that is the case.

Ask for clarification.

I like to have my thoughts challenged and I like exchanges with people who are willing to stand toe to toe and defend their views. I go where discussions flow. When a view is presented that is nonsensical to me I often use an example to illustrate it. For example, I asked a simple question - Is NASCAR art? No one answered the question, but pretended the question was pure nonsense of its face. NASCAR is an art form. They could have simply answered the question and we would have moved on to the bigger issue related to the question in the context of the post. Instead there were personal attacks.

In the past I tried to dig into the notion of individual actions in relationship to collective actions. I do not see how one can understand one without the other. Roach has never responded to this line of inquiry although it has been presented to him on several occasions. Why?

I disagree with the idea of clarity in his points. I have often asked specific questions to help me understand his points, those questions go ignored. Why?

You call it "regurgitate", I have been told I am "disingenuous", etc, setting a certain tone. When asked I give the basis of my views. I am conservative, hence my point of view is consistent with that point of view. I have given examples of the books I have read that have influenced my views, I state my biases, I state when I am closed or open to new ideas, I acknowledge my weaknesses, I cite sources, I acknowledge when I don't get it, I ask for clarification, etc, etc, etc.. Like I said I want to be challenged


If it is so clear, explain it.

I have stated many times that I have a strong bias against people who come across as trying to be intellectually superior to others because of their "education", school, station in life, where they live, or the kind of coffee they drink. Obama is a perfect example of the type of person I have a bias against, sure occasionally I poke fun at these people, but I know I do it and I know why I do it. I also tell people about my bias. Are other as open with their biases. There is a reason why I used NASCAR as an example earlier, I was not surprised by the reaction, are you?

I think the confusion is in how some narrowly define "art". Once one takes a broader view one will see the point and understand.

I don't support public funds being used for "extra-curricular" activities. Schools should focus on basic education. Other activities should be supported by participants, parents, and people who want to use their money to sponsor or support such activities. People who love theater, should support programs for young people to get them involved in theater. It is sad that people want, but are not willing to make sacrifice. Thier first thought is to let someone else sacrifice.

Considering the amount of subsidies that have been used to build NASCAR tracks and the NASCAR hall of fame, I'd be a bit more careful about using it as an example of a self sustaining business.

I am feeling reckless.

Outside of the fact that I often get blamed for going off in tangents, look back and you will find this:

My response is tax dollars should not support NASCAR in any way including subsidies for tracks. Again, I ask what is the liberal response? Why respond one way for one form of "art", and another for a different form of "art"? My initial questions were pretty simple, and were not answered for some reason. Why?

i didn't answer because i didn't think your question interesting. i still don't. not only do i think it uninteresting, but it's also a threadjack. this thread is not about what you do or do not consider to be art. the thread is about the problem of an "economic recovery" that's producing no jobs to speak of. the issue here is not whether you, ace, can come up with some nitwit argument about nascar that you imagine provokes some fantasy "snooty liberals" but rather whether there are any coherent state responses to the "jobless recovery" and whether it makes sense to perhaps include funding for "the creative classes" about which there's been alot of blah blah blah generated in non-profit land as ways to potentially persuade state outlets to fund them---in ways that may or may not have any actual impact on the lives of working artists. frequently the money that goes into "art" non-profits goes mostly to fund the non-profit itself, so much depends on the exact entity. anyway, that is the topic of the thread ace.

if you want to pursue your "provocative question" about nascar, start another thread.

I think this is less a jobless recovery and more an outsourced recovery. It's not that the jobs aren't there; it's that they're going elsewhere.

The trend of outsourcing white-collar work has been increasing even before 2008. Now, with companies being more cautious, and even more looking at ways to keep costs down or even lower them, the opportunities for outsourcing certain operations and tasks is far more appealing. India and China have made several inroads with this kind of labour, expanding on their manufacturing base. What you're seeing is more than just call-centre operations. You're now finding services including editing/proofreading, administrative tasks, converting older technologies to new, etc.

The alternative would be to hire domestic temp/contract workers, which I think is another trend to look at. When you have a series of 3- or 6-month contracts making up a reasonable bulk of the "job recovery," how does this show up in the numbers? Does it dilute them?

You made a broad reaching comment about conservatives and supporting art, there was a response to your charge, presented with a question, and now you a charge of a threadjack? :no::no::no:


In your narrow world, you don't get it and I am sucker for continued engagement. I admit my folly as I have done in the past, my flaw has been both a blessing and a curse in my life - but at least I know what it is.

---------- Post added at 07:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:19 PM ----------

Again, looking at the reasons for job outsourcing, if the true value of a jobs is X and the price paid is X + Y with Y being an unjustified cost added by government - those employing will go where the cost is X or X + y (smaller y). The answer remains the same, reduce or eliminate Y, to grow employment. The Y is in our control.

Secondarily, if we have a growing population who do not have "white collar" job skills due to a failing education system, employers have no choice but to go where the qualified pool of people is. In the US we are developing to distinct classes, the employable and the unemployable. I argue government is contributing to this divide.

The notion that outsourcing is taking place because of the "unjustified cost added by the government" is non-sense. No matter how much you cut taxes costs in the US will not drop to levels found in China, India, and other popular outsourcing destinations.

eScholarship: What is Good for Goldman Sachs is Good for America The Origins of the Present Crisis

i have been considering starting another thread around this but figure the likelihood of folk reading a 70 page narrative economic history of the neo-liberalism which runs from the reagan period through the early phases of the current implosion are pretty slim. but the paper that's linked here, "what's good for goldman sachs is good for america" is really quite impressive and utterly, completely devastates the various conservative myths not only about the present conjuncture of imploding housing prices, credit disappearances and no jobs but also about the links between these phenomena and neo-liberal monetarist policy. which btw doesn't become the actual guiding ideology of the imperial formation that was until the clinton period. shows you what we sometimes say about the united states being a single party state with two right wings.

i see no particular reason to take seriously conservative hand-waving about economic history and the realities that play into it, and still less their hand-waving about what should be done to address it.

the article departs from a basic argument: capitalism since the 1970s has been plagued with extremely weak fundamental characteristics as a function of a crisis of overproduction/overcapacity. but the history simply builds out from there and returns to it. the data's here. there story is interesting. and you've maybe seen popular accounts that parallel this.

there's no mystery as to why there are no jobs accompanying this "recovery"...there never was any mystery about it.

but read the article if you like.
seems to me it might be a good idea to restart a conversation around a shared information set.
we'll see what, if anything, happens.

Seems like everything that is simple and basic to market interaction, to some of you folks is non-sense. You as a consumer buy stuff from other countries because it costs less, but you think it is non-sense for a large corporation to do the same?

no, US companies doing it makes perfect sense.

it's nonsense to think that the US can compete on the production level with these other countries.

No. It's nonsense to think that the difference in production costs between china and the US is due to taxes.

scuse me? you have proof that taxes on products and materials made in the US have no bearing on the final products cost?

Of course they have some bearing, but so do minimum wages, labor laws, etc.

Get used to it. "Local economies" are going the way of the dodo bird.

Yeah, you'd think that the bigger variance (and, therefore, concern) between U.S. prices and Chinese prices would have more to do with the variance between labour costs and currency values.

Unless, of course, you don't think the yuan is undervalued.

Read my words, certainly taxes are a cost, but "cost" includes much more than taxes.

First, do you believe government imposes costs on business?

If, yes, do you agree that some of those costs could be reasonable and serve a greater good?

Then do you agree that some of those costs could be unreasonable, not productive, wasteful, and not serve as a benefit to society, consumers, employees, taxpayers, or anyone? These are the costs I am talking about.

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The effect of a nation under-valuing their currency is to purposefully reduce the cost equation I presented earlier. If the value of labor is X and the price of labor in the US is X+Y , in my view what China does is X+y-C, with C being manipulating their currency below market values to increase export demand. However, on the other side of the "C" manipulation is the cost it imposes on the Chinese people, sure they benefit from increased export demand, but they pay for it by reduced living standards because they have to support the "C" manipulation below market.

Their standards are rising, though. They benefit from a burgeoning domestic industry. They make the cars they buy, etc.

Also, the personal savings rate in China is currently 30%. Compare that to 5% in the U.S. (previously zero).

China's imports are heavily weighted towards resources and commodities. They turn a lot of that over to building infrastructure, but I'm sure much of it is also turned around to exported manufactured goods...for a decent profit.

This, in addition to China also ramping up their own export industry as far as resources are concerned.

Sure, the standard of living in China ain't what it's like in North America, but it's certainly better than it has been and it's getting better.

I don't think the suppressed yuan is hurting them. I think it's helping them; that's why they're doing it.

My apology for not being clear.

There is a cost associated with China keeping the value of their currency lower than it should be. That cost is imposed on the Chinese people. That cost is only one component of a large string of variables that go into that nation's market interaction with the rest of the world and their national standard of living. They are subsidizing our consumption - those buying their products get a discount, and the people of China pay for that discount one way or another - but generally it is reflected in the national standard of living. There is no doubt their standard of living is increasing, but there are other factors in play.

China, by manipulating their currency, is making a long-term "gamble" (for lack of a better word). If they get the rest of the world "hooked" and committed to production from China as the rest of the world minimizes their ability to produce, they can effectively reduce competition and the possibility of competition gaining an exceptional ability to control prices in the markets they control, that -C turns to a +C with the rest of the world having limited or a sluggish ability to rspond. We need political leaders mindful of this kind of long-standing market penetrating strategy. We do have a few people in Washington putting pressure on China for their currency manipulation, my preference would be we put more pressure on China in this regard. I think this is a better approach to addressing outsourcing, and trade imbalances.

I'd never thought this would be that difficult to understand. No, I never said they have no bearing on the final product cost. But let's review:

Median wage in China: around 2000 dollars, year
Median wage in the US: around 39000 dollars, year

Minimum wage in China: around 124 dollars a month (this in the province with the highest minimum wage)
Minimum wage in the US: 7.25 an hour

So, again, the idea that outsourcing is caused by taxes is nonsense.

The comparison in dollars can be misleading. Chinese people don't generally buy goods and services in US dollars. On the surface it appears the median wage ratio of 19.5:1 would translate to living standards, but it may not. For example what is the cost to feed a family of 4 in China compared to the US? Is it still 19.5:1? What about the cost to shelter a family of 4, 19.5:1? Costs for other necessities? Then what are the things that are required in the US that may not be required in China. Then we could also look at taxes, perhaps after taxes (all taxes) that $39,000 per year is really $24,000 and that $2,000 may be equal $12,000 in benefits from national wealth based on the way the country distributes its wealth, I don't have exact numbers, I am just using some numbers to illustrate that the 19.5:1 ratio may be different than it appears on the surface.

Taxes is only one variable.

First, I reported the number in purchasing power parities.

Second, from the point of view of a company, what a salary does or does not buy is irrelevant. The investment decision is "x amount in the USA or Y amount in China?"

This is not true. Most companies have salary differentials based on geography and the cost of living in certain areas. In many cases it does not apply to their highest compensated people, but in order for a company to keep and retain talent in places like New York, San Francisco, LA, they have to sweeten the pot in terms of compensation and they do. When you look at the exodus of business from California the impact of the high cost of living for employees is certainly a factor among many others.

The high cost of living isn't totally due to high taxes. There are plenty of people/companies who take advantage of the high demand and short supply to create inflation as well.

The problem is that if demand goes up too fast or comes down too fast, society has more problems adjusting.

All of which make China a more desirable location, not less.

Personally, I would not live in China. If a company wanted me to work in China it would only be under short-term conditions at a very high price.

that's hardly the point ace. try to stay focused.

the fact is---again----that the fragmentation of production and its reorganization into supply pools linked by just-in-time style arrangments (which presuppose complex transportation systems) is a long-term process; it is one of the main features of "globalizing capitalism"--it is the what that is being globalized. capitalist production, capitalist exploitation if you like. which it is. all the more than previously because the brave new world of supply pools can make union busting or more repressive laws that prevent working people from organizing into a "competitive advantage" which is then justified by free marketeers in the north for whom exploitation is a good thing so long as commodities are cheap and the free marketeers themselves dont feel that they are being exploited. and it's all a force of nature in free marketeer world, not a result of choices that have and will continue to have disastrous social consequences for the metropole. which is where you and i live.

the main claim in the brenner piece i linked above is that the underlying characteristic of contemporary capitalism is quite feeble, driven nearly to inertia through over-capacity so through over production which is of course the recurrent problem with capitalism isn't it? results from the standardization of processes, yes? anyway, you have real economies that just cant motor themselves and this is a persistent feature. you have this in the context of a new spatial arrangement which is absolutely not in the interest of the metropolitan working class at all at all---the end of nation-states, the end of the politics of nation-states in some ways---it doesn't matter that alot of us conservatives have such a blinkered view of history that they do not even recognize what's been given away here without so much as a whimper--somehow they've been conned into thinking that the interests of capital and their own interests are the same, more or less, and this despite the fact that the contemporary crisis demonstrates that this is self-evidently NOT the case, just as the history of neoliberalism does.

brenner argues that in a way the first pure neoliberal administration was clintons.
one of the hallmarks of neoliberal monetarism has been a series of bubbles (dot com, credit, housing etc) that have been sold as if bubble activity represented the states of affairs in the real economy--which they in the main did not. but these bubbles resulted from actions undertaken by the fed which reassured itself (greenspan was great for this) with bromides like "the fundamentals of the economy are strong"---which of course they werent and aren't, but hey who needs reality that affects most people when you're hypnotized by the reality that affects the holders of capital. and besides, that's the only reality you see routinely on tv.

among the ideas was that these bubbles would translate somehow, trickle down, into investment in new economic activities and infrastructure....which of course they didnt. why would they?

by the end of bush 2 we had reached the end of a series of bubbles, including the epic housing one and its correlate in the mortgage-backed securities fiasco (strange how these bond rating firms still exist. how is that possible? standard and poor's? moody? what the fuck are these outfits doing still in business?) and the realities that these bubbles were either supposed to address (unlikely--didnt happen in any event) or obscure (now we're talking...republican reality management...dont like something? pretend its not there. remember what the "great communicator" did to control inflation in the 1980s? he stopped counting things that caused inflation in the index. its paradigmatic) are still here.

and conservatives STILL want to pretend there's no problem.

there was a "jobless recovery" under clinton i think...what links the two is that they both happened inside the same basic capitalist geography. american socio-economic policy has not caught up with this geography in large measure i think because the still-dominant pollyanna neoliberal ideology doesn't allow for frank confrontation with real social problems of any magnitude, particularly not if confronting them pushes you to conclude the obvious--that capitalism left to itself does not produce anything like optimized social outcomes.

there's alot more to the brenner piece, btw. it's worth reading.

Interesting. The Economist did a survey on worker happiness. Guess who placed first with an overwhelming majority? China. No western nation had above 45%.

I read the Brenner piece you cited, I have some issues with it and I do not accept some of his premises. The suggestion that there is a "contemporary" form of capitalism suggests that there is some underlying change in market behaviors in a contemporary setting as opposed to a non-contemporary setting. I agree that there are tools and methods employed currently that were not employed in the past, but in my view the "tool" is insignificant to the end result. In my view market behaviors have not changed.

The inertia of over-capacity, cycling to under-capacity, cycling to over-capacity, in my view characterizes the basic business cycle. In market behavior terms I think market participants seeking to maximize profits prefer to error on the side of wringing every available profitable dollar out of the market rather than leaving profits on the table. It takes some form of market collusion or some form of protectionism for this to be avoided - the primary problem with this is inefficiency which is a cost born by consumers or non-protected market participants.

I am not going to connect the dots to illustrate why my comment was on point contrary to your belief that it was not.

Efficiencies, productivity, drives down costs as it increases production capacity. There are risks, but the rewards have always historically proven far greater. I do not see over-capacity as the "boogey man" in an economy allowed to freely respond to changing market conditions.

How would he describe the economic policies, consumerism, and market capacity responses of the Roaring Twenties?

Let me leave it at that for the moment, by guess is that we have reached the limit, and we are about to go into...whatever you call it...but I call it looking at an issue in a broader manner to gain a better understanding of an underlying issue.

---------- Post added at 09:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:17 PM ----------

Why am I the one (sorta thinking out loud here)?

Historic example: O.k., remember when a guy like Saddam Hussein would win elections with 99.9% of the vote? Why?

Current example: The issue with GOOGLE and the Chinese government is about censorship. The Chinese government controls what the Chinese people see and hear, think that might influence survey results compared to nations with free flows of information?

Do I need to continue?

Eventually people are gunna head out to the streets and start asking people if they need some work done... just like I'm doing.

I get paid pretty well =)