theatlantic | In the past, the most efficient businesses created lots of middle
class jobs. In 1914, Henry Ford shocked the industrial world by doubling
the pay of assembly line workers to $5 a day. Ford wasn’t merely being
generous. He helped to create the middle class, by reasoning that a higher paid workforce would be able them to buy more cars and thus would grow his business.
Ford’s success trickled down, as other companies followed his lead.
Automotive companies not only employed numerous well paid workers but
they created a large demand for other product and services that employed
millions more—steel, glass, machine tools, auto dealers and
dealerships, gas stations, mechanics, bridges, roads, and construction
equipment. The workers in those industries purchased homes, appliances,
and clothes creating still more jobs.
One reason we are failing to create a vibrant middle class is that
the Internet affects the economy differently than the new businesses of
the past did., forcing businesses and their workers to face increased
global competition. It reduces the barriers for moving jobs overseas. It
has a smaller economic trickle-down effect.
Doing some of the obvious things like raising the minimum wage to
fight the effects of the Internet will probably worsen the problem. For
example, it will make it more difficult for bricks-and-mortar retailers
to compete with online retailers.
Surprisingly, the much-vilified Walmart probably does more to help
middle class families raise their median income than the more productive
Amazon. Walmart hires about one employee for every $200,000 in sales, which translates to roughly three times more jobs per dollar of sales than Amazon.
Raising the minimum wage will also make it more difficult to bring
manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. The Internet is not the sole force
driving income inequality in the U.S. Our languishing education system
is a major contributor to the problem. But two things are certain: the
Internet is creating many of those in the ultra-wealthy 1%; and it
forces businesses to compete with capable international competitors
while providing the tools so that businessmen can squeeze inefficiency
out of the system in order to remain competitive.
If the government is going to be in the business of redistributing
wealth, a better approach would be to raise the earned income tax credit
and increase taxes to pay for it. Not only would this raise the income
of low paid workers, but also it would subsidize businesses so they
would be more competitive in world markets and encourage them to create
jobs. Since the minimum wage would not go up, moving jobs overseas would
be a less attractive alternative.
If policy makers want to attack income inequality, they must pay more
attention to the ways in which the Internet is affecting their
businesses. If we ignore the power of the Internet when making policy
decisions, we are in danger of allowing it to become the greatest legal
facilitator of income inequality in the history of the planet.
12 comments:
De Blasio meets with AIPAC: "Part of my job description is to be a defender of Israel."
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/01/29/348339/ny-mayor-holds-secret-meeting-with-israeli-lobby/
lol, then this buffoon needs to send some of NYPD's "finest" over to Jerusalem to stop, frisk, and regulate...,
Lamis Deek! Accept no substitutes....,
Interesting. My club has been doing VERY well. Our crossover success with the younger members of established families is almost unheard of in these parts. The patriarchs of these families take me to lunch and dinner regularly. The inside jokes and negative comments about those Blacks who imagine themselves with any sort of power are becoming even more common in our topics of conversation. (It seems that most of them have a white handler working with him/her behind the scenes.) Being able to sidestep the desire for the acquisition of status or power seems to make me a more desirable target. The thing is, my shit is already paid for and I don't need to have the latest and greatest the market has to offer. Being able to say, 'No' seems to be ones greatest value.
It seems the article's telling us that something's wrong with this country. Public school's purpose is cattle management. They'll tell you that in college if you didn't figure it out before then. If there's a group that hasn't been doing well for at least two decades, well that's part of the scheme. It's some shit to do with being a good citizen. The upper classes also don't want real competition. An educated population would have chased them out of town a long time ago.
"a 2005 study of over 20,000 adolescents found that third-generation Asian-American students performed no better academically than white students."
[Back in 1899, in Washington, D. C., there were four academic public high schools-- one black and three white. In standardized tests given that year, students in the black high school averaged higher test scores than students in two of the three white high schools. This was not a fluke. It so happens that I have followed 85 years of the history of this black high school-- from 1870 to 1955 --and found it repeatedly equalling or exceeding national norms on standardized tests. In the 1890s, it was called The M Street School and after 1916 it was renamed Dunbar High School but its academic performances on standardized tests remained good on into the mid-1950s.] -- Thomas Sowell
As long as these groups are able to keep critical components of their traditional culture intact they are able to progress. The more they attempt to assimilate into European American culture, the more difficult it becomes for them to keep progressing.
I'd say by the look on their faces JJ just got through wearing out, or at least tongue-lashing this scarecrow.
http://bit.ly/1ehQjVk
lol&smdh...., Bro. Makheru feels the spirit of my reaction to BD's latest, and raises a full notch of sheer moral and visual horror.
C'mon Tom..., open your mind up to the seductive allure of ascriptive hierarchy and "natural" rights. It's all about that breed dood. Crack open a little Robert E. Howard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Borak El Borak is described as shorter than other characters and he has a
slender figure. Nevertheless, he is described as "compact" and quite
strong. His defining physical ability, however, is the quickness that
inspired his pseudonym. El Borak describes his ancestry as Highland Scot
and Black Irish, he has black hair but has black eyes instead of the blue typical of the Black Irish.Let that stentorian fantasy from BD's youth seep into the cracks and crevices of your cranial dome-piece.
Then cap it off with the inimitable appeal of the Die Schwarze Sonne http://greyfalcon.us/ and the humid steampunk theosophical fantasy and mystery that that all entails...., This is Church to BD - and here you go pissing on the mysteries of his faith like some kind of fanatical Lutheran reformer.
BD I ground through that endless breastbeating a second time, and the guy does describe (not show) just a couple of studies that might at least address the question. If he isn't misrepresenting them, and if the studies themselves are any good. Post a link or two to actual articles if you want folks to pay any attention to this stuff.
Peer review is like judicial review: it probably makes things better on average but it is nowhere near a guarantee of case-by-case quality.
LOL I missed my calling, I have the urge to be a fanatical reformer. But it doesn't pay.
I think I know what goes on during church time.
http://youtu.be/5MQzc6SQk_E
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