Galapagos anyone?
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2012 10:47 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: Today's Jobs Report: More Jobs, Lousy Wages At 14:40 04/11/2012, you wrote: Ray, (SL) It would take a library to usefully address your first question and someone wiser than I am to provide an answer to the second. Will Darwin do? (SL) As you well know, power imbalances of any kind invite exploitation of the weaker by the stronger - in families, tribes, societies of any type. Sometimes change comes not from the revolt of the most desperate but from the efforts of those with their heads at least above water. If money becomes the major/sole way of staying afloat, and there is no way for some people to earn sufficient, it has always seemed to me only fair and just that the comfortable ensure, in a way that preserves dignity, that everyone has enough to live decently. This can only benefit any society. Darwinism precisely. And that precisely is what is happening. The mass of the population in all Western countries (what I call the 80-class) is producing fewer than replacement children. In truth, the bulk of the population is dying out -- probably due to an accumulation of stresses. The only sector that's growing is the rich/professional (20-class). It looks to me like a straight replacement of the existing population by one whose skills and education are much more highly correlated with the growing number of specializations of today. Keith It's good that you asked the questions. Sally ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Ray Harrell [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2012 2:52 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: Today's Jobs Report: More Jobs, Lousy Wages Sally, where do you think the cause and effect lies and what do you think is the answer? REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Sally Lerner Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2012 1:34 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] FW: Today's Jobs Report: More Jobs, Lousy Wages ________________________________________ From: Portside Moderator [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, November 02, 2012 8:56 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Today's Jobs Report: More Jobs, Lousy Wages More Jobs, Lousy Wages, and the Desertion of Non- College White Men From the Democratic Party Robert Reich November 2, 2012 http://robertreich.org/post/34831152302 The two most important trends, confirmed in today's jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are that (1) jobs slowly continue to return, and (2) those jobs are paying less and less. Today's report showed 171,000 workers were added to payrolls in October, up from 148,000 in September. At the same time, unemployment rose to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent last month. The reason for the seeming disparity: As jobs have begun to return, more people have been entering the labor force seeking employment. The household survey, on which the unemployment percentage is based, counts as "unemployed" only people who are looking for work. As I've said, you have to take a single month's report with a grain of salt because the job reports bounce around a great deal, and are often revised. Last month the BLS announced that 114,000 new jobs were created in September. Today the BLS revised that September figure upward to 148,000. Overall, the jobs trend is in the right direction. The President and Democrats can take some comfort. The most disturbing aspect of today's report is the continuing decline of wages. Average hourly earnings climbed 1.6 percent in October from the same time last year. That's not enough to match the rate of inflation - meaning that hourly earnings continue to drop in real terms. It's also the smallest gain since comparable year-over- year records began in 2007, before the Great Recession. Earnings for production workers - about 80 percent of the workforce - rose only 1.1 percent in the 12 months to October. That's way behind inflation, and the weakest wage growth since the BLS began keeping records on wages in 1965. The biggest challenge ahead isn't just to get jobs back. They're coming back. It's to raise the wages of most Americans. This isn't a new challenge. The median wage has been flat for three decades, when you adjust for inflation. Since 2000 it's been dropping. What does all of this have to do with the upcoming election? Plenty. Some of the biggest wage losses over the last several decades have been among white men who haven't attended college. And, not coincidentally, they're the ones who have been abandoning the Democrats in droves. Three decades ago, non-college white men were solidly Democratic. Many of them were unionized. They had jobs that delivered good middle-class incomes. But over the last three decades they stopped believing the Democratic Party could deliver good jobs at decent wages. Republicans have done no better for them on the wages - in fact many policies touted by the GOP, such as its attack on unions, have accelerated the downward wage trend. But Republicans have offered white non-college males the scapegoats of racism and immigration - blaming, directly or indirectly, blacks and Latinos - and the solace of right-wing evangelical Christianity. Absent any bold leadership from Democrats, these have been enough. ___________________________________________ Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. 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