MessageThings were very much better, much easier, in the 1950s when I did my five years of undergrad work at UBC in the 1950s. Summer jobs at good rates of pay were much easier to get then than now. During my summer breaks, I worked as a top-rate boom man on the BC coast. Not only was the pay very good, but skipping from log to log was great fun. I went back to school with enough money to pay for tuition, room and board, and plenty of beer. I don't think life is like that at all for students today. In fact, I believe our universities are now as packed as they are because of the scarcity of good jobs for young people in the economy. To get a good job you really have to be good at something.
Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Harrell To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:26 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The rise of miserity In the 1960s when I went to college I was accepted at the most expensive private University in the state of Oklahoma. The Tuition was double the University of Oklahoma tuition. It was $900 for the year. I worked and put myself through college. Ten years later I went to Manhattan School of Music, the largest conservatory in the world, for graduate work and the tuition was $5,000 a year and I worked private teaching and put myself through graduate school. My student was just accepted this year at Manhattan School of Music and today's tuition is $35,000 for the year. I don't know who could work, as I did, and pay that tuition which doesn't include dormitory fees or food and still keep up their practice. Obviously you have to have affluent to wealthy parents, qualify for scholarships and have a second job. Half of the student body is Asian. I don't know whether Chrystia Freeland would have done the same in the tracking system of the old Soviet block or not. I do know a lot of Ukrainian and Russian immigrants who got exceptional training there and then when the wall fell came here and took hi tech jobs being better trained than the Americans and being bilingual as well. They networked better than the Americans and they cooperated with each other is spreading the jobs around. That was true at IBM and at Lincoln Center. The system was flawed from the beginning but the old assumptions sit on the talent and potential of the nation like an epigene on a diamond crystal. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 2:38 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] The rise of miserity Chrystia Freeland is herself a example of how someone from the low end of a modern society can transcend social layers and rise to the top of her field. Born to Ukrainian immigrants in the Peace River area of northwestern Canada, the most that might have been expected of her was that she would have become a clerk at a local bank or store. Instead, she wound up doing an undergrad degree at Harvard and then went on to Oxford as Rhodes Scholar. I first encountered her when she wrote about the Yeltsin years and the "loans for shares" scheme in Russia in her book "The Sale of the Century". Having read that, I can't for the life of me feel sorry for Khodorkovsky. But my point is that in the kind of open, fluid society that Canada was and may still be (one hopes) almost anything is possible. I've known lots of young people from impoverished and difficult immigrant backgrounds who were able to go to university and pursue good careers. I count myself among them. Things may be tougher now than when I was growing up. And yes we may indeed have elites that have larger powers than the common herd. But what we don't have is the kind of stratification that Europe has had to contend with since time immemorial and must still contend with even if it has become less important. OK, I'll read the Chrystia Freeland article now and see if she supports what I've just said -- or not. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Gurstein To: 'Keith Hudson' ; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' ; 'Arthur Cordell' Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 12:06 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The rise of miserity Without going into detail Keith your description below is highly highly GB-centric and applies neither to the US nor Canada nor anywhere else I'm familiar with... The point about Freeland's article was to show how disconnected from everyone else the super-elite has become... the upper middle class at least in Canada and to a degree in the US is a relatively recent phenomenon -- based on very very rapid economic and population growth post-WWII and until the last 20 years or so still had immigrant/agricultural/small town roots... Also, in Canada and the US you have significant regional issues--particularly in Canada with regional economies, elites, even cultures which don't fit in an easy hierarchy nationally. And that is intermixed with newly emerging ethnic groups who are proving to be very successful in some cases but who are also (in Canada) regionally based. The overall situation is much too complex to fit into neat formulae and again in Canada the short to mid-term economic prospects are fairly good although they differ significantly (along with their political fall-out) from region to region. M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:28 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'; Arthur Cordell Subject: Re: [Futurework] The rise of miserity Arthur, Perhaps my condensation of misery and prosperity is premature. Perhaps someone else will re-invent misterity when times are clearer! Historians tend not to dwell on the condition of the masses when an empire or a civilization is in decline (if that is what is happening now), but only on the follies or mistakes of the elite. But I think there's always been a middle-class. (It depends on what you in Canada call middle-class. Is it the same as Americans? What Americans call middle-class is what we in Europe call working-class -- or at least we did until recently. Anyhow, what I call middle-class is what Americans would call the professional-class or upper middle-class. So I'll call it U-class in what follows.) I think there's always been a U-class. In Medieval society the rich landowners and royalty always needed a small select band of advisors to oversee their serfs, to collect the rent, to control their soldier-guards and personal servants, to look after money and treasures, personal doctors and lawyers -- and, simply, but importantly (if a landowner was sensible), public opinion feedback in case some sort of rebellion might be in the offing. It was this U-class that grew enormously in the industrial revolution as many new individuals burst through as the new super-rich industrialists. I would say that in this country this was around 15% of the population about a century ago. I would say that this U-class is about 25% of the population now in an advanced country. In one sense most of this U-class are "merely" the highly-paid servants of the very rich, but culturally they are much the same. They send their children to the same highly select schools of the very rich and their young people go to the same select universities. (This is very clear in Europe and I think it's happening rapidly now in America, even if not in Canada yet.) A good example is given by Crystia Freeland who wrote the long article I posted earlier -- "The New Global elite". She herself is not rich but as a top-flight (and well-paid) journalist, she's comfortable when socializing with the very rich and can probably afford to send her children (if she has any) to the same schools as the very rich. Her children would grow up in the same milieu as the very rich and would possibly marry one of them. While the very rich don't have the same number of personal servants as they used to in pre-industrial days today's complexity means that they need even more meritocratic advisors. I would lump all these (the rich plus the U-class) together as one fairly homogenous elite class as against the masses with a distinctively different culture. (Of course, there's movement of individuals going on between them, and there are many "inbetweeners" but this is a relatively small proportion of the whole.) Keith At 08:49 05/01/2011 -0500, Arthur wrote: We seem to be going back to an earlier era. We can see the problems but there is no ideological road map to guide us out of the miserity So we see the problems, write about them, but at a loss to know what to do. Maybe universality and the middle class were really blips in the long road of history. Arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:28 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] The rise of miserity We're now living in a quantum world of superimposed states -- of Shrodinger's Paradox in which the cat is alive and not alive at the same time. Of inflation and deflation going on simultaneously. Of fabulous incomes for some but declining wages in real terms for most. Of enormous enhancements in efficiency but lower welfare for the needy. Of higher skills than ever before in history for some but of mass literacy and numeracy skills lower than a century ago. Of highly profitable multinational corporations but bankrupt governments. A new word needs to be coined -- "miserity". Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/ Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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