Steve Jobs passing may be as good a date as any to mark ...
the end of the American Century.
Not to get into Apple fanboi stuff, but Jobs life and tenure parallels what may be the last gasp of economic satisfaction and superiority by the United States. First of all, Jobs grew up at a time when the states (especially California) were supportive of higher education. That brought forth the talent that, in Silicon Valley, got the computer revolution started. And then Jobs was part of the drive (by many others as well) that brought us much of the look and feel of so many electronic products that, for a while, were largely the province of American companies.
But that competitive advantage now appears to be over. Students have to pay much of the freight for a college education, a condition that is never good for a nation. The subsequent jobs risk going away to other parts of the world, which makes one wonder why bother with it at all. The rest of the world is catching up and is very hungry, and with unregulated globalization the competitive forces will be ferocious.
So maybe we can mark October 5, 2011 as an arbitrary - but reasonable - point in time when a distinctive American era ended.
In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don't Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?
I pose this question as a way to think about labor markets and macroeconomics. Some possible answers:
1. It's a supply problem. Nobody wants to be a personal servant. They think that their human capital will depreciate less if they remain unemployed.
2. It's a demand problem. The marginal product of personal servants is very, very low. As Don Boudreaux points out, the impersonal servant of the market delivers us much higher quality goods and services than kings were able to obtain from all of their personal servants.
3. It's a recalculation problem. Gates and Brin cannot figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers. They cannot even find a personal retainer who can figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers.
So why haven't personal servants replaced blue collar manufacturing jobs killed by cheap imports and white collar jobs lost to outsourcing? Clearly, when the economy tanks, people will do most anything for a dollar (pace item 1) and be cheap enough so that the marginal value will be positive (pace item 2).
Which really means that it's a problem of imagination. If it's true that "Gates and Brin cannot figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers" then those billionaires need help! What can we suggest for this duo - and their equally rich friends - do with hundreds of personal retainers? And why limit it to hundreds? Didn't the pharaoh have thousands of people toiling away? How about a Giza-sized pyramid for each billionaire? That would get this economy humming again. Let's do it!
It has the additional benefit of reestablishing clear class distinctions which we have sadly abandoned for about a century. A few extremely rich people. Lots of servants. No middle class. Paradise.
U.S. banking giant Citigroup Inc. said this week it would charge $15 per month for checking account holders who kept a balance below $6,000.
The firm's move comes on the heels of Bank of America's announcement this week that it would charge $5 for most debit card holders and sparked at least one desertion, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
Cheryl Holt of Burbank, Calif., said she was "on my way out the door right now … off to start a new account at my nearest credit union."
"Should have done it years before," she added.
Holt said she received a letter with an "absurd salutation," that said, "Customers like you have told us that what they want from their banks are simple options and great rewards. We heard you and are writing to let you know that we are making some changes to your EZ Checking Package."
That said, the bank dropped the $180 per year bomb.
... “Pan Am” romanticizes the past, whereas “Mad Men,” on AMC, takes pleasure in slyly mocking antiquated mores ...
“Pan Am” takes place in New York, Paris and London, and practically every scene is shot in lush, golden light. The series is a paean to a more prosperous and confident era; even an airline terminal looks like a movie dream sequence about 1960s heaven. [It really does.]
If only for the costumes and ’60s music, “Pan Am” is amusing to see at least once, but if it has any instructive benefit at all, it’s as a mood indicator for these times, not those. There have been plenty of series set in earlier times — “That ’70s Show” was set in the Carter administration, “M*A*S*H” took place during the Korean War. But usually period shows pick through the past to meditate on the present, whether it’s examining generational rites of passage or critiquing the Vietnam War at a safe remove.
“Pan Am” doesn’t say much of anything about the current state of the nation except that our best days are behind us.
Expect that to be a recurring theme this decade (and beyond?).
... world is now a challenge to white-collar workers. They have to compete with a bigger pool of cheap geniuses ...
It is also both a huge challenge and opportunity. It has never been harder to find a job and never been easier — for those prepared for this world — to invent a job or find a customer. ...
What is out and what is in anymore?”
Matt Barrie, is the founder of freelancer.com, which today lists 2.8 million freelancers offering every service you can imagine. “The whole world is connecting up now at an incredibly rapid pace,” says Barrie, and many of these people are coming to freelancer.com to offer their talents. Barrie says he describes this rising global army of freelancers the way he describes his own team: “They all have Ph.D.’s. They are poor, hungry and driven: P.H.D.”
Barrie offered me a few examples on his site right now: Someone is looking for a designer to design “a fully functioning dune buggy.” Forty people are now bidding on the job at an average price of $268.
There's your glorious future, according to Tom Friedman. Global non-pooled labor bidding against itself for tiny wages and no healthcare (at least in the U.S.) or retirement security.
Some conversions in political philosophy are understandable, but others, like Mamet's, are inscrutable. What caused him to make the switch? Not mentioned in the article is that Mamet's conservative rabbi gave him a bunch of books - by conservative hacks - and that material appears to have gotten the playwright to chance his views.
