Author: Curmudgette

For that matter what are the job prospects for any of us? A soft economic recovery and an increasingly level (or “flat,” to borrow Thomas Friedman’s  strange phrasing) global marketplace are rapidly reducing the options of American workers across a range of careers and vocations.  Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post asks “Will Your Job Survive?” Meyerson’s alarm bells were tripped by a disturbing report from Princeton University economist Alan Blinder. I hate to go all “Lou Dobbs.” But Blinder’s prognostication about the job market of the not too distant future should send a chill down the spine of any American concerned about the future of the US economy.

In the new global order, Blinder writes, not just manufacturing jobs but a large number of service jobs will be performed in cheaper climes. Indeed, only hands-on or face-to-face services look safe. “Janitors and crane operators are probably immune to foreign competition,” Blinder writes, “accountants and computer programmers are not.”

There follow some back-of-the-envelope calculations as Blinder totes up the number of jobs in tradable and non-tradable sectors. Then comes his (necessarily imprecise) bottom line: “The total number of current U.S. service-sector jobs that will be susceptible to offshoring in the electronic future is two to three times the total number of current manufacturing jobs (which is about 14 million).” As Blinder believes that all those manufacturing jobs are offshorable, too, the grand total of American jobs that could be bound for Bangalore or Bangladesh is somewhere between 42 million and 56 million. [emphasis mine] That doesn’t mean all those jobs are going to be exported. It does mean that the Americans performing them will be in competition with people who will do the same work for a whole lot less.

Meet the competition, or at least some of it.

It’s nearly five p.m. and factory workers at one of Vietnam’s largest industrial parks flood into the streets of Ho Chi Minh City’s sprawling outskirts. Some of the workers are clocking out, others signing in. Those who are done for the day cross the busy highway to buy groceries from vendors camped along the dusty street. Among them are employees of Danu Vina Corporation, who earn less than $2 for a hard day [emphasis mine] making stuffed animals that will be sold in the U.S. by Hallmark, Disney, and Starbucks.

The news from Corpwatch is that the Vietnamese are balking — and striking — over the low wages and poor working conditions. But the bigger news is the lengths to which US corporations will go to keep labor costs at a bare minimum and their determination to go where they must throughout the third world to find a work force poor and powerless enough to keep their stockholders happy.

But to remain attractive to foreign investment, government officials argue, Vietnam must provide the kind of cheap, docile labor force that foreign investors demand. But on paper, at least, Vietnam’s workers are supported by has some of the strongest labor laws in the world. Under the Communist system, workers in every factory are required to be represented by the official government union within a few months of opening.

“When foreign investors enter Vietnam, they must follow the country’s labor rules,” says security manager Long Nguyen. ”If they don’t, the Vietnamese government has the responsibility to enforce the law or expel the company. The government has to protect the worker. The unions that represent workers in factories of foreign and joint-stock companies are weak. They don’t have the strength to stand up to the management.

Since the influx of private companies started a few years ago, however, enforcement of policy has been lax. According to the International Labor Organization, only 10 percent of workers in the export sector are represented by a trade union and observers can’t remember a single case when a company has been forced out for breaking the law. So, most expect continued low wages and increasing numbers of wildcat strikes.

I have to admire the moxie of the Vietnamese labor force, but it’s quite clear that the multinational corporations who employ them do not. If wages of $55 dollars a month spook these conglomerates, how can Americans compete?

More good news from Meyerson:

Also dying, if not yet also kaput, is the comforting notion that a good education is the best defense against the ravages of globalization — or, as Bill Clinton famously put it: What you earn is the result of what you learn. A study last year by economists J. Bradford Jensen of the Institute for International Economics and Lori Kletzer of the University of California at Santa Cruz demonstrates that it’s the more highly skilled service-sector workers who are likely to have tradable jobs. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of jobs in the United States that require a college degree will rise by a measly one percentage point — from 26.9 percent in 2002 to 27.9 percent in 2012 — during this decade.

So perhaps it doesn’t really matter that our children isn’t learning. And they isn’t.

Apparently, a lot of our schools are turning out adults so undereducated it just isn’t cost effective to train them. Just last year Toyota withdrew plans to open a factory in the US because the workforce was too illiterate to employ. They’ve taken their business to Woodstock, Ontario. Explained Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association:

…Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun said.      

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

           

So failing schools and an inefficient health care system are costing Americans jobs. When do the benefits of unrestrained “free markets” kick in? The tide appears to be rising, yet so many boats are sinking.

In the pages of the Washington Post, George Will bemoans a Florida Supreme Court decision against vouchers for private schools; a decision that could deny 733 children the financial assistance to get out of their failing schools. Where, I wonder, is his sympathy for the thousands of other children in those same failing schools, who weren’t exceptional enough to qualify for the OSP voucher program? Such is the irony of our American “meritocracy.” The more “level” (or “flat”) we insist we’re making the playing field, the greater the ensuing inequity; and the more Americans are faced with a future of diminishing returns.

Crossposted from The Blogging Curmudgeon.

I’m worried about our food supply. No, I’m not terribly concerned that terrorists will contaminate our grain silos with bio-toxins. As with so many things, Americans have become our own worst enemies, when it comes to food. I stopped buying food in supermarkets, for the most part, years ago, because what sits on those shelves isn’t food. It’s processed chemicals with elements that may or may not be derived from organic matter. There’s no food in our food.

I do most of my grocery shopping in Whole Foods – a luxury that may force me to take out a second mortgage at some point – and Trader Joe’s. But what I saw at my local Trader Joe’s the other day has thrown my relationship with that store into peril. I’ve written them a letter. Here is the text:

Dear Lauree Bradley, Director of Product Information
Trader Joe’s Company
538 Mission Street
South Pasadena, California
91031-6270

During a recent shopping trip to Trader Joe’s in [location redacted], I observed a situation that imperils not only food quality but safety. I reported this situation to two store managers and my concern was received with total nonchalance.

I have been purchasing Trader Joe’s frozen chicken parts for years. On Friday, when I attempted to take a bag from the freezer bin, I observed that the bags near the top were completely thawed. Other bags were thawed to varying degrees. I assumed that the freezer was broken and informed the first employee I saw. He assured me that it was a natural result of the defrost cycle of the freezer and began to remove the chicken that was completely thawed and sloshing in its juices in the bags. I asked to speak to a manager.

The manager also assured me that the situation was due to the defrosting of the freezer and said she was sorry that I “had to see that.” She offered me a bag from the bottom of the freezer that appeared to be completely frozen. I said, no thank you. How could I tell what bags may have been reshuffled to the bottom of the freezer and refrozen? Depending on how completely that chicken has thawed, there is a serious risk of contamination, let alone the loss of quality caused by even partial thawing and refreezing. I was assured by the manager that it wasn’t a problem, because the frozen chicken sells so quickly. I disagree.

After purchasing the rest of my groceries, and heading for the car, I noticed that I had been overcharged 50 cents for a bottle of Marsala wine. I went back into the store and located another manager, who checked the shelf and conceded that I had been overcharged and would be refunded. I took the opportunity to inform him of my disgust over the condition of the frozen chicken. He also assured me that it was just part of the defrost cycle and that it wasn’t a problem, as the thawed chicken was removed when it was observed by staff or customers. This, I informed him, is not a system of regulation! He graciously refunded me the entire cost of my Marsala, which I now realize I have little use for, as I have no chicken.

I don’t know what disturbs me more; the fact that I observed perishables thawing in the freezer bins, or the fact that store managers exhibited so little concern over a potential public health risk. Those bins also contain frozen prepared meals, raw shellfish, and stuffed meats. Such items are far less forgiving of thawing and refreezing than meats alone.

I have a small child. As of now, I am not comfortable feeding her anything from a Trader Joe’s freezer bin. I cannot be as cavalier about her health — nay, her life — as the managers and staff of the [redacted] Trader Joe’s.

I am left with a number of nagging questions:

1. Was an episode of violent nausea I experienced a couple of weeks ago after eating a meal including Trader Joe’s frozen chicken caused by that chicken or some other factor? I consumed the rest of the bag without incident, so I assumed it was a fluke. Now, I’m not so sure. Perhaps I just got lucky.
2. How is it that my own freezer remains frost-free without periodically thawing out all my food, when Trader Joe’s freezer bins are incapable of the same feat?
3. Is the management of Trader Joe’s aware of the risk posed by food poisoning?
4. Can Trader Joe’s afford to eat the profit losses caused by spoilage of its frozen food — even if it is confined to those items eye-balled by staff and customers — or are those losses being passed on to consumers in the form of price increases?
5. Why do East Coast Trader Joe’s stores pale in comparison to the West Coast stores, in terms of inventory, customer service, price/value, etc? I realize that’s a separate issue. I just needed to get that off my chest.

If you were wondering how a nation of such vast wealth as the United States manages to produce 76 million cases of food poisoning per year, well, mystery solved. Let’s put that number into perspective shall we? From Wikipedia: the United States logs 26,000 cases of food borne illness for every 100,000 inhabitants. The United Kingdom sees 3,400 cases for 100,000 inhabitants, and France, 1,210 cases for 100,000 inhabitants. We are devolving into a third world country. We have a population so uneducated that two store managers, responsible for food handling, looked at me like I was a crazy person, when I pointed out that frozen food should not be stored in warm freezers.

And don’t expect government oversight to be the answer. Our government is too busy handing our port security over to countries with ties to terrorism and the writing of our legislation to the industries they are supposed to be regulating. We’ll have to rely on our new found religion of “free market fundamentalism” to work it’s corrective magic. John Stossel would probably tell me that Trader Joe’s has the right idea, because now they can charge 10 times the regular price for those packages of chicken they can guarantee were never thawed and refrozen.

This morning I received two emails about pending legislation that will further undercut the rights of consumers to know what dangers lurk in their food. H.R 4167 will actually negate state labeling laws, forcing them to comply with the more lax federal standards. This effort is being spearheaded by Congressional Republicans – you know, the party devoted state rights – at the behest of Grocery Manufacturers of America. (So call your Congressperson and by all means read this front page article by Geov Parrish.)

If you think federal labeling laws are sufficient, think again. Recently, McDonald’s “voluntarily” disclosed that their fries derive their flavor from wheat and dairy ingredients, to which some people are very allergic. I checked. It really is voluntary on their part, because the woefully insufficient labeling law — a law that doesn’t even require disclosure of allergenic substances in refined oils — provides an exemption for restaurants. Here’s my favorite part of the McDonald’s statement.

McDonald’s director of global nutrition, Cathy Kapica, said its potato suppliers remove all wheat and dairy proteins, such as gluten, which can cause allergic reactions.

Because everybody knows that potatoes come out of the ground just chock full of wheat and dairy.

For my part I swore off McDonald’s fries after learning from the movie “Supersize Me” that they don’t biodegrade. A jar of McDonald’s fries left sitting on a shelf changes little over weeks, months, and years. Perhaps it’s small of me but I’m a little put off by the idea of food that has a half-life longer than plutonium.

I write this with full knowledge that I may be sued for food disparagement. Many states now have laws to protect vulnerable corporations from citizens maligning their perishables. It was such a statute that Texas cattle ranchers used to punish Oprah for expressing her fear of mad cows. Oprah won that fight, and presumably a victory for speech, but that was before our political climate devolved into one of “first amendment zones” to protect the President from dissent If you haven’t noticed, corporate rights trump consumer rights in nearly every arena now. So it’s probably only a matter of time before publishing a letter of complaint to a grocer will land me in court. And if Oprah’s experience is any guide, I’ll have to hire Dr. Phil to help me “get real.” That’s an indignity I don’t know if I’d survive. I’m a strong woman but I have my limits.

Crossposted at The Blogging Curmudgeon.

Interviewer: Mr. Helpmann, what would
you say to those critics who maintain
that the Ministry Of Information has
become too large and unwieldy …?

Helplmann: David … in a free society
information is the name of the game.
You can’t win the game if you’re a man short.

— From “Brazil”

Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh makes this chilling assessment:

The Bush administration calls the war on terror “the long war.” But if we are to take the president and his aides at their word, it is more like a permanent war, one that by definition can never end…. And that means the extraordinary powers that George W. Bush has arrogated to himself “during wartime”–including the surveillance of Americans–could become permanent as well. It all sounds frighteningly Orwellian.

Then ironically deduces:

But the truth is that, for all the hue and cry over American civil liberties, we are a long way from Big Brother today. In fact, we could probably use a little more Big Brother about now.

Hirsh has a point. We have not perfectly manifested Orwell’s gravest fears. The dystopian vision we are rapidly devolving towards is more akin to Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.” In “Wanted: Competent Big Brothers,” Hirsh addresses an information gathering apparatus that can’t seem to find its ass with both hands. For all the pronouncements of “saving thousands of lives,” the Bush Administration has put in place a system drowning in data and producing almost no useful intelligence. That they might accidentally torture to death some poor Mr. Buttle, in place of Mr. Tuttle, because of a data entry error, seems to be a conservative prediction of just how dangerous their abuse of power can become.

Plastic surgery today?

Plastic surgery tomorrow?

We also learn from Mr. Hirsh that the very Orwellian sounding Total Information Awareness system, concocted by the felonious Iran-Contra figure Adm. John Poindexter, has survived it’s Congressional assassination attempt and is hiding in the Pentagon under the code name “Topsail.”

Hirsh is wrong that 9/11 has necessitated the consolidation of power in the executive branch. The “War on Terra” has simply provided cover for a power grab plotted by Mr. Cheney and his nefarious cohorts for some time. As John Dean explains in FindLaw:

Long before 9/11, Cheney was pushing this cause.

To understand Cheney’s position, he suggests that others “go back and look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-Contra report, [and] you’ll see a strong statement about the president’s prerogatives and responsibilities in the foreign policy/national security area in particular.”

If one does as Cheney says, as I have, what will be found is rather startling, to say the least.

Cheney has long held the view that Presidents can make the rules as they go along, though he allows that Congress has “the right and the responsibility to suggest whatever they want to suggest.” In Cheney’s world view, Congress does not make laws, just suggestions; at least none that apply to the President.

If we follow Cheney’s logic, the President can authorize wire taps of citizens, confine “enemy combatants” to indefinite detention, and allow poor Mr. Buttle, or some unfortunate Iraqi, to be tortured to death, according to his prerogative, even if Congress “suggests” otherwise.

This is a frightening amount of power to be amassed in any one man’s hands. It is a thousand times more frightening when one considers that the President who has demanded this kind of latitude is the President who waged a war based on cherry-picked intelligence, failed to act on a briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States,” failed to predict a hurricane that had already been predicted by the weather service, and could not foresee an ensuing disaster that had long been envisioned by the Army Corps of Engineers.

As the New York Times editorial board says in today’s paper:

We can’t think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can’t think of a president who has deserved that trust less.

Newsweek’s Hirsh is correct that the issue of this Administration’s incompetence is central to the debate over Presidential powers and intelligence gathering. What he fails to recognize is that any bureaucracy makes mistakes and that a system of checks and balances is necessary to protect the Mr. Buttles of the world from the consequences of human error, before they’re turned over to “Information Retrieval.”

Crossposted at The Blogging Curmudgeon.

Wushu is Mandarin for “arts of war.” Today in China there exists a standardized school of Wushu based on many of its historical martial arts disciplines. You can occasionally catch exhibitions on ESPN. It looks very impressive. Practitioners are capable of dizzying acrobatic feats. They wield traditional weapons. They chop at the air and each other in tightly controlled movements that look more like an exotic dance than a fight. Wushu exhibitions are visually stunning. But today’s Wushu has been emptied of its meaning. Lost are its deeper traditions and martial application. To serious martial artists, “wushu” is shorthand for spectacle without utility. The shiny weapons we see in exhibitions are hollow, light, and dull. Today the Shaolin monks, for instance, whose fighting styles are the stuff of legend, have been reduced to a cheap sideshow.

Wushu was neutered by the Maoist regime. The term was adopted by Chairman Mao and morphed from a fighting art into a physical fitness regimen. It became a tool of a statist regime intent on destroying all vestiges of traditional spirituality, culture, and independence.

Wushu is what came to mind as the Senate hearings for Samuel Alito unfolded.
For all their long-winded speeches and affected gravitas, Democratic Senators were never really fighting to stop him. If they’d really wanted to block his confirmation, they could have. They would have taken their case to the people and built some momentum for a real show-down on the Senate floor. Polls show that roughly a third of the populace was undecided on Alito. That’s what we call a “teachable moment.” Conventional wisdom says that the committee hearings were a dud, with opposing democrats unable to lay a glove on the staid, confident Alito. But if Senate Democrats couldn’t find a decent hook on which to hang Alito, how did the New York Times editorial board find so many?

Senate Dems would have you believe that this was an unwinnable fight. It was only unwinnnable because they were not fighting. They were exhibiting a kind of “sport politics” that Democratic Party insiders have come to excel in. They pander to C-Span cameras with a lot of sighing, grimacing, and verbal gymnastics, but when they cast their votes, they do so based on some vague perception of poltical safety.

The only real fight we saw in the face of this quiet killer came from the netroots, who shamed Kerry into backing up his rhetoric with action, and swamped the phone banks of waffling senators like Clinton, Feinstein, and Obama. But in the end, the last minute filibuster was a lot of filibluster. A little over half over of Senate Dems made a half-hearted attempt to stop our steady slide into one-party rule. What we saw yesterday was akin to an over-the-hill boxer taking a dive so he could still collect some mob money.

Establishment Democrats have long since ceased to be an opposition party. They are tools of a statist regime giving us all a good show, but stripped of any real power to stop a political juggernaut years in the making; one that would make kings of presidents and reduce Congress to a sad spectacle.

Crossposted at The Blogging Curmudgeon.