Traverse Machine

Fri Aug 25 13:30:50 CDT 2017

Is that why They are killing the working class with opiates? 

https://www.ft.com/content/24027d0e-4629-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8

> On Aug 25, 2017, at 12:54 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> yeah, well, you can be as ambivalent as you need to be....without the increase of them, the working class keeps falling behind...
> unless full democratic socialism is on the way..
> 
>> On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 12:20 PM, Lawrence A. Janowitch <Ljano at msn.com> wrote:
>> Mark,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Generally, I’m ambivalent about unions.  During the 1930’s and for a time afterwards they were critical counterweights to big manufacturing and big capital.  Sometime, around the late 50s to early to mid-60’s by my reckon they became frozen institutions that seemed a bit taken with their own political power and survival.  They reduced themselves from being a voice of the workingman to being another constituency for politicians and bankers.
>> 
>>  
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>> Part of issue, I think, is structural.  They make multi-year contracts with governments and management.  Those contracts are often based on seniority clauses (certainly sensible from their long term membership perspective) and job definitions that are based on former production tasks. 
>> 
>>  
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>> For example, I was an administrator at a now closed large state hospital, there were all sorts of needs to be met.  We carried on the books the job class “shepherd” (seriously!), that job got morphed into someone who oversees patients while they were outside.  (This was an old hospital, actually first mental hospital in the US – Boston State Hospital originally prior to the revolution called Addison’s Farm then New England Lunatic Asylum – fascinating history now lost.  – It’s now a housing development for middle class blacks). The original job involved sheep.  I’d get  into various union problems using these folks based on the fact that the job description didn’t line up well with the task. The union was also unwilling to change the job description because they felt it gave them more power.  I’ve heard similar stories from school, and hospitals, and certainly in government.
>> 
>>  
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>> A fundamental problem (although not all of it) is that the definition of “job” and the hire/ fire responsibilities (and processes aka seniority) a set for the length of the contract (usually years) and new contract negotiations are based on prior contracts.  All the players are locked into a world view which doesn’t account for the rapidly changing work environment (say, telecommuting, or shifting of staff for work/project teams or introduction of new technologies requiring skill sets that older workers don’t have, etc. – I have lots of stories of useless wastes of manhours in state government around Mental Health Services).  And budgets tied down so it is impossible to acquire more efficient technologies or workforce configuration.
>> 
>>  
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>> The Silicon Valley, Rt. 128, Research Triangle workforces and management have proven to be the most productive and innovative centers for growth but have very low union participation.  As I make my constant argument about accelerating change, I believe, that big labor as much as management and capital formation are all part of yesterday’s economic order.  Not tomorrows. 
>> 
>>  
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>> The accumulation of capital by the 10% is again a byproduct of structure of manufacturing (for now – it’s going change BIG TIME).  Think software, or medications, they cost a zillion dollars to produce for the first item, then the next cost less than a penny.  Seriously, what does it cost to copy a piece of software?  Or manufacture a pill? (Note: that both of these are highly automated production processes) That economic structure lead to an accumulation of capital into fewer hands.   Labor is important in assembly line manufacture (robots anyone?) or in distribution (FedEx, UPS, oh, wait, self-driving cars?) and personal care work (hospitals, nursing homes, and a few more – there’re lots of activities / innovations heading this way).  Labor’s role will diminish as will the capital accumulation role.
>> 
>>  
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>> We’re headin’ in a very different direction.  The graph is a snapshot of the current state of change.
>> 
>>  
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>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> Be well,
>> 
>> Lj
>> 
>>  
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>>  
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>>  
>> 
>> From: Mark Kohut [mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com] 
>> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 9:34 AM
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Fwd: Traverse Machine
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Look what other chart just showed up.
>> 
>>  
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>> https://twitter.com/resnikoff/status/901073556540243968
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>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> Date: Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 7:55 AM
>> Subject: Re: Traverse Machine
>> To: ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Pynchon-l <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> 
>> 
>> In Robert Reich's first movie, he had a few charts. One was of
>> 
>> the growth of GDP in America since WW2...
>> 
>> charted with the growth of
>> 
>> median income in Americas since WW2.......
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>> And a chart of union membership in America over that time. 
>> 
>>  
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>> I was in about 1977 that the growth of GDP slowly but noticeably started to outpace the growth of median income, which flattened over time. 
>> 
>>  
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>> It was at about that time that the fast decline of union membership started. (If I remember it was leaking away even earlier in the decade.) Reich pointed out how non-union wage growth also slowed. Union monetary achievements helped all workers. 
>> 
>>  
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>> I am working with a retired economist--one who was part of the leadership in founding 
>> 
>> the radical economists group of the 60s, early 70s. I am bringing his best book, The Money Mandarins
>> 
>> back into print with him, revised, updated, but the bulk of the analysis is the same since real predictive insight can be like that. 
>> 
>> He basically predicted all of the adverse effects of globalization on workers. 
>> 
>>  
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>> When I told him the above examples from Reich's film, he told me this, still baffled and self-surprised at it.He said that around that time, in his prime, he poured through scads of data--to see economic 
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>> trends, anomalies, truths....this was worldwide but he was working in Europe, unlike many American economists
>> 
>> so.......
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>>  
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>> This became unexplainably evident to him.....slowed growth and even a visible decline in economic value of wages WORLDWIDE (even as many of the most poor in major countries--China, India, for example---forged forward, as has steadily happened)
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>> which, according to classical head-in-ass econ theory, will always balance with new "creatively destructive" growth of
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>> new occupations...
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>>  
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>> On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 7:36 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> There’s also the fact that many traditional jobs are no longer very
>> well paid. The 1980s recession, timed with the beginning of the Reagan
>> years, was the beginning of a progressive destruction of unions in an
>> industry which had at a time been the centre of the most militant
>> labor struggles in the history of the American west. In 1978, a
>> forestry worker with no high-school diploma could earn up to 40% more
>> than the state’s average wage. Now, fellers can earn as little as $18
>> an hour.
>> 
>> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/23/logging-industry-work-employment-oregon
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> 
> 
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