Is Joe Hill finally dead? (The Ballad of Joe Hill)
by Bruce Webb
As I browsed through the news today it kind of struck me, not like a lightning bolt but more as an accumulation of blows, that capital was going for the final victory over labor. It was not just the realization that the corporatists and their enablers in both parties were willing to accept 9% plus unemployment long-term but offer no relief at all to the 99ers, but equally willing to accept an investment climate where employers simply will not hire even if they are sitting on piles of cash, because after all who knows and why should any individual employer take the first jump. But this article pushed me over the edge: Employers shrink pay raises, focus increases more on top performers
In other cases, employers can afford raises but are holding off to conserve cash in case the economy slips into another recession. They also are recognizing that they don’t have to offer pre-downturn-level raises because of an abundance of unemployed job applicants willing to work for less.
“The companies have the money to pay but they don’t need to pay it because the supply [of highly qualified unemployed people] is still there,” said Tim Namie, managing director of Manpower Professional’s Washington region.
Employers, Namie added, “are willing to roll the dice” that because of the tight job market, meager raises won’t prompt good workers to quit. And if the workers do leave, he said, employers figure they can find replacements willing to work for lower wages.
Gone is even any pretense that wages are somehow magically tied to “marginal productivity”, nope we are reverting right back to 19th century industrial standards where labor is simply replaceable. Don’t want a job that barely pays now? Well screw you, we’ll just hire a homeless 99’er at 10% less, after all it will allow him to pay for a couple of months in a rooming house. These sons-a-bitches are betting they can roll the dice and have it come up ‘1888’. Well a funny thing happened in those years right before the turn of the 19th century when the Gilded Age was truly golden and Robber Barons were building mansions and founding Colleges, a certain segment of labor decided they weren’t going to take it anymore, and things got kind of messy for the capitalists. And a few decades later we had the following ballad going around: (lyrics under the fold).
RandomPottins: blog of Charlie Pottins of the UK: Ballad of Joe Hill
On November 19, 1915, as working men were being sent to slaughter each other for rival imperial powers, working class hero and songwriter Joe Hill was executed by firing squad in the state of Utah.
In 1925, Alfred Hayes wrote a poem about Joe Hill entitled “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”, but sometimes just called “Joe Hill”. Hayes’s lyrics were turned into a song in 1936 by Earl Robinson.
It has been sung by Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, and by the Irish singer Luke Kelly. Probably the best known version today was sung and recorded by Joan Baez in 1969, and featured in the film by Joe’s fellow-Swede Bo Widerborg in 1971. Bob Dylan has said that Joe Hill’s story helped inspire him to write his own songs.But the lyrics as sung have sometimes varied, as the ballad was passed down over the years, sung at benefit concerts, and meetings, around campfires or in pubs.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.
“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”“The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,
went on to organize”From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where workers fight,
to defend their rights,
That’s where you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.
I am not a revolutionary, but on the other hand I am not here to turn my back on the IWW (Wobblies) or Harry Bridges who as head of the ILA (Longshoremen) led the 1934 San Francisco General Strike. The New Deal overall can be seen as the result of a Great Compromise, Labor agreeing to maintain a system fundamentally based on and controlled by Capital in return for a fair share of resultant productivity. And with fits and turns that compromise and deal held up for 50 years. Until in the 1980s Capital decided that with a determined effort they could just roll back the clock a hundred years and tell labor to stuff it, to work or starve.
I mean it is one thing to tolerate high levels of unemployment, it is another to deliberately set out to exploit it in the way outlined by that WaPo article today. Which btw proceeded, without any apparent indignation, to point out that local workers in the DC area had it relatively easy, those workers outside the military-intelligence-national security sectors not even getting Beltway and Wall Street wage increases.
Look no one wants to see violence in the streets, but history shows that it is not only the capitalists that have 2nd amendment remedies. Joe Hill may have more life in him than they like.
I more think the corprate world is doing what people did in 1932-1933 keeping money in a mattress because they are convinced that credit could freeze up again at any time. So having more cash means you can go longer before having to borrow or go chapter 7 (because no one is willing to lend for chapter 11). Its very much like the idea of keeping cash because the ATMs will no longer work and the bank will be closed. Depression folks tended to keep money around the house because they had seen the banks closed for up to 2 months.
Today given the close shave many companies had in 2008 keeping larger cash balances makes sense.
If there is no demand for a product a company won’t hire. The issue is that currently demand is down enough that with the improved efficiencies continuing to propagate thru the industry there is no need to hire to fulfill the demand (in general note that some auto folks are doing a little hiring).
Also as noted in earlier post the days of the unskilled factory worker who can be trained for a job in a couple of hours are gone, machines can for a few days work by the programmer do the same job.
As an example consider the new way oil is drilled, the old days of slinging the chain and manhandling pipe are replaced by a joystick and automated pipe handling systems and iron roughnecks. Ag could be more automated but the price of labor is not yet high enough.
—
Employers, Namie added, “are willing to roll the dice” that because of the tight job market, meager raises won’t prompt good workers to quit. And if the workers do leave, he said, employers figure they can find replacements willing to work for lower wages.
—
This could be another contributor to income inequality; during bad times, wages for most workers flatten, while management’s compensation falls less (if at all.)
I realize that’s the implied meaning of your post, but I don’t think this behavior is unique to this cycle.
After a few recessions those lost raises really start to add up, and I doubt that the expansions provide any sort of narrowing. So it’s a ratchet effect.
Well and good but it doesn’t quite explain why you are choking off wage increases to trained workers on staff with a proven record of productivity that is contributing to that current wad of cash in that mattress.
If Scrooge’s balance sheet is negative I can’t blame him much for not hiring on an assistant for Bob Cratchit, but if retained profits are booming I am not sure about the justification for forcing Bob into unpaid overtime on Christmas Eve.
Plus the idea that anyone in traditional manufacturing could be trained in “a couple of hours” is ridiculous. Or for that matter in traditional clerical. You can stick a monkey in front of a data entry terminal or a component assembly bench, training someone to actually accurately enter and calculate text in a paper spreadsheet or put together a machine are a lot more complicated. In most cases even a secretary or bank assistant had to go through either formal training in a secretarial school or a lengthy apprenticeship under watchful eyes before they were trusted to work independently. For that matter the skills needed even for such things as stoop labor picking fruit and vegetables or pouring concrete don’t come overnight.
Ag is highly automated already, those tasks that are still reserved for hand labor require a type of product handling and sight recognition that may forever be beyond the power of automation.
Perhaps it is things like a recent IRS required mailing we had to do, which was very expessive, and of zero benefit even to the recipients. That 12 page document, with a few IRS errors in it, put 3 job openings on hold because it costs millions to mail 12 page documents to millions of people. Never mind the fact that in focus groups people said they nver read that stuff, becuase it is too long and complicated.
The relation between productivity increases and Real Wage held up pretty well in the 50 years prior to the advent of Reaganomics and then the deterioration really set in with the advent of Bushomomics. A representative article is here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2007/05/it.html but any search on “productivity and real wages” will give you relevant hits.
What are you saying here? Are you claiming you have “millions of people” as customers? And that typos somehow cost jobs? Why on earth wouldn’t you have hired three people for your print shop/mail room in the face of this extra paper? This doesn’t make any sense at all as stated.
What a greta post ! Yeah, I feel it too.
But, Pride cometh before the fall ( as I listen to the craeativity and expression of the FDR society in the music of Creedence, Eric Clapton, the Guess Who, too many to acknowledge.
So what is to be done.
The problem is really the GW tax cuts. When the great society ensured that the aged (who were starving at the time) Social Securiy and Medicare, were comfortable, they bit the hand that fed them. Once they were starving. Now, they control 80 % of the wealth in US and only 1 in 12 live below the poverty line. At the same time, 1 in 4 of the children live below the poverty line and the Seniors vote as a block to support the Hillary Clinton/Walmart initiative and the GW Bush tax cuts. If you haven’t noticed the GW Bush tax cuts favor retirement income over wage income and the rediculous notion that children of the wealthy should recieve tax free dollars because they have wealthy parents.
Wallmart of course is all for shipping jobs to China or wherever. They were run out of Germany because they had to pay their fair share of the cost of social normalization. But America, for some inexplicable reason, finds it necessary to allow the mercantilist nations to ship product into our “fwee market” with no reciprocity necessary.
What dum bunnies we are.
“Look no one wants to see violence in the streets”
Speak for yourself.
I dream of a world where the laws of supply and demand are suspended. Hey! Look over there! Bruce Webb is walking on water!
Bruce,
In the 1970’s we began discussing labor as an asset. Knowledge, skills and abilities needed to be developed and retained, some one even discussed accounting standards and asset statements for employee retention tracking. That was when Volcker was making the dollar strong after years of guns and butter.
I have not done much in the HR world since, but my feel is that labor mobility is near zero due to the high unemployment and scarcity of demand for labor, the last few recessions dumbed down the middle management class, and so labor has become as it was in the 1890’s.
An interesting trend which I see in my recent work. Companies buy in to huge, and very difficult to customize IT solutions, sometimes called ERP. What these require is the company not only go with the software but adapt the functions and processes the SW uses. Cannot afford to change the code.
This leads to hiring Oracle or SAP pros, who are more mobile than company grown pros who used to use the company functions and processes. So, as high unemployment trashes employee mobility it is getting easier to fire someone and bring in a new Oracle e’xpert’.
Or ship the work to Mumbai.
Insecurity has replaced incentive.
Jay the argument put forth by the Freshwater Economists is that pay is fundamentally set by marginal productivity and not by some power imbalance between employer and employee and that the solution is to be found in training and education, often enough making it implicitly the employees fault for not having buckling down and gone to school.
Now this was always bullshit special pleading, history shows us clearly that wages have ALWAYS been set by a power relation and that employers, if they could get away with it would screw wages as close to pure subsistence as they could without any real attempt to tie that to underlying labor productivity at all. You can call that a matter of simple supply and demand if you like but pure labor exploitation is not enabled by some natural law, it exists where the social and political order allow it to be.
Historically too the way to push back on labor exploitation was for labor to exercise its own power through the twin forces of organization in the workplace and demanding rights through the ballot box. And we know there are alternative systems that work better for the democratic majority even if they don’t maximize national GDP.
The argument for laissez-faire in the twentieth century in democratic countries has been that it is not only the most efficient way to generate gross productivity but that it nets out favorably for all participants in the end and that therefore democratic majorities should trade short term advantages for that long term gain. But if there is no long term gain to be had, and capital says simply “screw you, if you want to eat, work!” then there are remedies to be had: heavy taxation on capital, stringently enforced minimum wage laws, mandatory work sharing via shortened work weeks. And if capital wants to bitch that those are not maximally efficient because it can’t extract the same disproportionate share of labor productivity that it has gotten used to then labor will reply “touch shit, maybe you shouldn’t have shattered the great compromise between labor and capital reached after the war by selling us all kinds of crap about ‘rising tides’ and ‘trickle down’ “.
Only a fatuous libertarian ass thinks that so called ‘laws of supply and demand’ should trump all notions of distributing productivity in relation to the respective economic inputs. That one tiny class of capitalists and its facilitators in executive and middle management fetishize return on capital over the general welfare does not make pure labor exploitation acceptable in a democratic society.
Your smug little dig is effectively a claim that employers not only can but should use 10% unemployment as an economic resource to gain a comparative pricing advantage. There is no reason in theory, practice or history that argues that workers should accept that without a struggle. In the period from around 1880 to the SF General Strike of 1934 or so, capital generally had a free call on governmental force in the form of regular police, hired Pinkertons and other goons, the various State Guards and at times even the U.S. Army to suppress labor demands and organizers, Joe Hill was just one of many victims of that power imbalance. But that automatic call on State police power is no longer in place, or perhaps has yet to be put back in place, for the time being workers can at least attempt to exercise their power through the ballot box.
For the time being. The WaPo article cited deploys numbers suggesting that even in an area doing relatively well (the DC area being soaked in new homeland security and intelligence spending) that employers are currently attempting not just to keep Real Wage stagnant but actively seek to roll them back. If you read the Ryan Roadmap, the closest thing the Republicans […]
Ilsm I don’t disagree, but that trend has been long-standing. What I haven’t seen until this recession is the emergence of a trend that is beginning to treat high unemployment as an exploitable resource in and of itself, or at least a willingness to admit it among the political and economic ruling class.
The Fed has a charter which directs it to target low inflation and high employment but in practice its focus over the last few decades has been almost exclusively on the former with upticks in labor participation or real wage more typically seen as warning signs of inflation rather than good news for workers. But even so it was nearly inconceivable that everyone concerned would simply accept structural unemployment above 6.5% in a system where there is no long term income support, no English style dole for the long-term or permanently unemployed and unemployable. And the problem this time around will not be food, you can keep yourself adequately fed for a couple of dollars a day, the problem is shelter, America simply does not have the same network of boarding houses and workingman SRO short term housing that it had in past decades, the kind of place where you can pay rent by the night or by the week with no demands for proof of credit.
I don’t know what is going to happen but the worse case scenario is as likely as not, a Republican takeover and a deliberate right wing attempt to adopt the left revolutionary technique of ‘heighten the contradictions’ in hopes of emerging out of the two or so years of economic and social disruption with a firm grip on power. The historical analogies are obvious but run you afoul of self-imposed Internet ‘laws’, so I’ll leave it at that.
If you want a classic example of the logical implications of supply and demand on the labor market you don’t have to go much farther than the company towns established by early coal entrepreneurs in PA ca. 1840. These guys figured out they could pay people even less if they built the tin shacks they slept in and sold them their daily bread at the company store bought with company scrip.
So they got into the tin shack and general store business as profitable sidelines to coal. Keeping the hungry people scared and obedient required a company owned police force but that didn’t turn out to be too big a problem for decades.
And for those who think my historical analogy is hyperbole please consider the plight of the modern wal-mart employee who probably can’t afford to shop anywhere else. Wal-Mart is already building a chain of in-store clinics to handle employee health care, can Wal-Partment be far behind?
It’s also important to note another dangerous trend that is unique to this downturn at least in my experience: The refusal to consider hiring the currently unemployed. By pre-selecting against workers who’ve already fallen out of the market (for whatever reason, why risk the possibility that they’re just not team players, eh?) the creation of a permanently unemployed underclass is already underway.
It was a required government mailing that cost millions of dollars to mail. That cost hit our budget, and to cover that cost we had to forego 3 FTE hires we had planned. So in summary this government regualtion killed three jobs. Is that clear?
As put in the big short the job of managment is to keep workers between dissatisified and disgusted with their pay. In other words to just pay enough that people don’t leave. (This applied to Wall Street in particular). This makes sense. Of course if you get to set your own pay its a different story.
Joan Baez, 1969 Woodstock. http://davidgardiner.net/The_Ballad_of_Joe_Hill.mp3
Jay, Please use your brain more often.
Bruce–The required mailings (to notify people that their SSN’s didn’t match the name in SSA’s records, for example) are commonplace in govt operations, frequently annual or quarterly, anyhow usually recurrent. They are contracted out and the contracts are paid for in advance in full. Errors in the notice require corrected notices under some conditions, so you remail the whole batch because you can’t tell who is affected by what error.
Also, you have to remember that to hire a civil service employee costs not only the wage value (2080 hours of pay plus FICA, FRS, time off and training.) So, every hire costs more than the monthly pay of that individual. That’s why federal top mngmt. prefers to pay overtime. It’s available as a line item and is usually interchangeable with actual employee (FTE) costs. It costs time and a half but does not entail more overhead costs (leave, benefits and so on.)
Now, McWop, you know as well as I do that those mailings are built into the annual budgets of all federal agencies. Which means that mailing was included in 2010’s budget somewhere in the soc’s in the general operating appropriation for. If it wasn’t, too bad for your agency.
This is no different from having to implement the law in your daily work. If you are in the govt, that is the job. No regs, no job. From an operational standpoint, there is a direct connection between shortfalls in the appropriation and inability to hire. But, regulation per se didn’t do this. Or, didn’t do it any more than it always does. Which, of course, is par for the course in govt. work. Right? Nancy Ortiz
Bruce, I’m over seventy, I do believe that you have hit it right in the post. Reading the back & forth, I wonder how many of these actually have experienced any of the ups & downs that are prevalent today. How many are under water? How many are unemployed? How many have lost their secure situations? How many have lived under the freeway overpass, eaten at the soup kitchen? The saying “Ignorance is bliss”, doesn’t hold water here. I might add, how many have had to face their wife & children across the diner table while they share what perhaps came from a dumpster down behind the local supermarket? Any one who thinks this is B.S., they I say your full of B.S.
The special tax notice is what I am referring to. It was updated by the IRS, and the mailing reuquirement came in last minute (and was a bit vague), and it was a gigantic 12 pages. It costs approximately $1 per person to mail. There are several other pending DOL notices that will also add to costs. Even when we plan it in advance, it does affect hiring. Many of these notices are ridiculous and not understandable by recipients with little education, or that do not even speak English. We have communications that cover the same material that are much shorter, and more effective at informing the end user.
You just totally don’t get it. You say it is all about jobs. Who gives us jobs. No One.
No one cares about small business people. It is all about jobs. I am a small business person. I am not moving forward with spending.
No one helps us. We don’t even exist on the radar. I am not spending because I don’t know what will happen. I will spend my money before the end of the year so the government does not take it away from me. I just don’t see a rosey future.
By the way my business has done very well in the first half of 2010.
People lack faith. Most are so gloomy they will not even believe good numbers.
this is not magic. It is all very logical and business people are seriously spooked by the economy.
What I haven’t seen until this recession is the emergence of a trend that is beginning to treat high unemployment as an exploitable resource in and of itself, or at least a willingness to admit it among the political and economic ruling class.
(cough) Reserve army of the unemployed. (cough)
By the way my business has done very well in the first half of 2010.
People lack faith. Most are so gloomy they will not even believe good numbers.
this is not magic. It is all very logical and business people are seriously spooked by the economy.
This incoherent set of statements suggests that your problem is that you’re just not a very smart businessman. But of course when your competitors drive you out of business because of your refusal to invest in yur business even when your results have been good, it will be somebody else’s fault.
Seconded
mcwop
not really.
you may have a point. but it is impossible to tell from what you said whether you really have a point or are just talking standard supply side poor mouthing.
McWop–Yes, and the same thing applies in every other agency every year. Of course, this stuff is expensive. And, of course, Congress doesn’t care. And, of course, the FTE allocation isn’t big enough whether the unanticipated notices go out or not. SSA has about 67K people now. I think IRS has more FTE than that. I think you’d be better off in talking to people outside of Treasury to remember other feds got it worse. For longer. No end in sight. etc. Just saying, as one who has spent years on end with no hiring authority and better than 150% productivity per FTE, your story just isn’t very sad. Nancy O.
mcwop
getting a little clearer. of course there is always waste. always government waste. and always private sector waste. part of life. part of business. if there was no friction i could get a thousand miles per gallon.
I was a unionized production worker for several years in the late-1970s. The job I held in the production of heavy paper and cardbaord packaging products migrated from the upper midwest to the mid-south. Our union was not able to organize in the south effectively. It wasn’t a matter of company intimidation – our leaders just could not relate to the workforce well enough to develop the trust needed to experiment with, what for the south, was the pretty unnatural act of unionizing. The distribution infrastructure in the south was robust enough by 1980 that there was no geographic penalty to moving production. My memories are pretty clear about the events. The managment directly challenged the union to demonstrate that the unionized work force was more productive and indirectly challenged the union to demonstrate that its ability to organize meant that the threat of strike would not be diminished by relocation. Events did not indicate that management misunderstood what the the answer to either challenge was.
Jay–Please pay attention more often. There are no laws in economics. Econ is not a science. And, Bruce doesn’t walk on water. He just isn’t taken in by Uncle Milty. NO
Norman–Well said. This isn’t about politics. It’s about reality. NO
Need a few posters with a little girl in a golden field of sunflowers in the background, a huge gray panorama of a closed steel miil on a gray November morning……………………
Almost like the Dems did to Goldwater.
Unfortunately, there is no one in the “red” side who looks as good as Goldwater.
But the pols are all bought as in the US congress.
Jay
what’s troubling here is your complete faith in “the law of supply and demand.” This turns out not to be a law of god or a law of nature. There is of course a relation between “supply” and “deman” and prices. But it is by no means a perfect relation. And a huge part of the business of being human is to arrange the supplies of and demand for “things,” like, say, oil, clean air, human labor… etc so that we can live decently. The worship of “supply and demand” as believed in by you and the people who teach you used to be called “mammon” and was reputed to be the way to hell.
Kramer
you may be right. but read Bruce’s post a little more carefully. “small business” has more in common with “labor” in today’s economy than it has with “big business.”
What do you do, if you have no inventory to meet demand?
What do you do, if you have no ione available to serve a customer?
How many customers do you turn away?
The Lord helps those that helps themselves.
The US congress you must buy.
When do you plan to manage your business?
The US government already supports the War Machine and several other command economy/welfare states to the tune of 13 or 14% of the economy, when can you pay for your cut?
Go on FEDBIZ link, and call a congress critter, write some checks, get quoted by Sara Palin, we already have a plumber find a genre, you should do just fine.
Bruce
wtih regard to housing, you might not see the connection here that I see:
NPR had a piece this morning bemoaning the fact that you can’t just get rid of excess housing. seems house prices are too low because of all the unsold houses. doesn’t seem to have entered anybodys head that low house prices should… could… lead to more people being able to afford to buy a house. on the contrary, people who paid too much for their house during the big housing boom are entitled to get their money back when they sell.
i can certainly sympathize with those home owners, but i was completely floored by NPR’s complete acceptance of the proposition that there are “too many houses.”
as for Joe Hill.
I know how you feel. But if it wasn’t for FDR Joe would never have been heard of again. The bosses have the power… except when government acts to limit it… to bring workers to their knees. every time. Even if they destroy the economy. The owners of capital would rather live in a poor country with a subservient working class, than live in a rich country where the workers can look them in the eye.
The answer to this has never been “revolution”… but a government that can maintain a balance. Of course when one side or the other controls government and prevents balance… then things are likely to get bad before they get better.
Well that was what the New Deal was all about: labor and capital cutting a grand compromise that would keep Marxism in check.
Not only are these new trends inviting a Marxist analysis they are risking some Marxist solutions, see sentiments expressed by Yuan and Bob above.
FDR saved Capitalism. And they never forgave him for it.
Peter Drucker said: The job of management is to make resources, and labor productive.
The reason there are heavy doses of contractors in DoD, intelligence agencies and homeland security is there are not be so many soldiers willing to spy on you and me.
Something about ‘supporting and defending’ and ‘lawful orders’ means they need more ‘for profit’ types to work for the corrupt establishment.
It works in defense aR&D and Investment, privatize the folks like me who usaed to say the “stuff is trash” and get glowing reports from contractors who accept the specs, even though the stuff is not working.
Profit trumps oaths and morality.
ilsm,
You know that’s not true. The reason we have so many contractors is that its a million times easier to fire them vs. GS types. It really is that simple. You can downsize the contractor staff in a heartbeat, at worst just wait out the contract and they go away. Most of the beltway bandit types work on 1-2 year contracts (mostly 1), and can be downsized with a vengence whenever the GS/SES types want to downsize. Of course your importance in the Fed Gov depends on your number of direct reports and how many dollars you control. So there is a perverse ’empire building’ incentive built in. (Not unknown in the private sector also).
Not everyone puts profits over morality. Hell I almost lost my first recompete when I pointed out to the customer that one of his ideas was totally infeasible and made even more enemies a little later with a detailed report on why the Airborne Laser program should be canceled and turned into a research project (there was no way it would ever be operational – unless Boeing could change the laws of Chemistry and Physics somehow…)
BUt I’ll repeat – we have contractors becuase they are easier to fire. Its that simple.
Islam will change
In the course of ‘researching’ a comment for another blog I can across a brief account of the 1934 SF General Strike whose success (relatively speaking) was tied to passage of the Wagner Act of the very next year. Whether you can call the later the direct consequence of the former there came an awareness that if we didn’t want America to descend into the kind of street battles that brought Europe to where it was by 1934 that we might want to come to some sort of consensus.
I don’t know enough about U.S. labor history to judge if the actions of the Wobblies and the Longshoremen were ultimately determinative compared to say the more mainstream organizing of the AFL and the CIO, but I think what Joe and comrades (and I use THAT word advisedly) taught us was that it would take more than some hired Pinkertons to shut off the demands of labor.
coberly,
Greenspan came out yesterday (that’s when I heard him on NPR) saying that house prices MUST stay high to avoid a double dip. He said that another fall of 6-8% would push another large wave of people into under-water martgages.
I’m seeing everyone in the administration trying to keep up the housing bubble prices at any cost. If that means bull-dozing housing so be it. NPR and Greenspan arn’t the only places I’m hearing this. Yet everything I see is we need housing prices to fall another 20-30% in the bubble areas to get back to historical trend lines. They are trying to save the speculators vs. people who were prudent, rented, and saved. Or people who bought modest house.
I’m starting to beleive that if housing prices drop much farthur, mailing in the keys may become commonplace – and loose the social stigma. This may cuase a real run on the banks…
Islam will change
Buff–Yep, easier to fire and cheaper that an FTE, as I pointed out. Main thing is that especially in the Clinton administration, you could actually increase the number of people doing government work without calling them government employees! And, that little trick put the Clinton administration well on its way to balancing the budget. Nancy O.
Ditto.
Bruce,
Marxism is not on the march anymore and neither is fascism – both internal and external threats that FDR faced. Huey Long is long gone…
Also, the US and world economy are very differnt today vs. pre-WW II. Or even post WW II when the worlds productive capacity had been destroyed except in the US…They are not even comparable.
What we are facing today is global wage arbitrage and neither party is willing to do anything about it. You want to help the poor? Get rid of the illegal imagrants that are inder-cutting the bottom of the labor pool. That 15 million or so right there. Of course neither party is will to do this (to use the talking points- Reps love cheap labor and the Dems see the illegals a potential Dem voters). Kill the H1B program. Make labor harder to find and you will raise their pay. (and lower the unemployment rate)
And of course curbing ‘free trade’ also off the table. Why set up shop in the US when I can build widgets in China or Vietnam for a penny on the dollar of costs in the US?
All I hear are a bundle of command economy, top-down solutions. What I don’t see (from either party) is anything helping small businesses grow and prosper. Its very hard to figure your ROI on investments (people or equipment ) in the current climate. And when in doubt most will pack their bed with the extra cash until they see customers being turned away – but not meeting demand is not an issue. The demand is not there.
The people in the US arn’t going to have violence in the streets. Most look at the riots we saw for the G20 as a bunch of holigans that should be arrested. Violence in the streets is not going to get you anywhere (but arrested and jailed).
Islam will change
Buff
sounds simple. i wonder how it works out. it seems to me we get contractors doing government work at inflated prices and lose the value of a stable job for some people who could learn to do useful work with a little planning. there is something to be said for “institutional memory” after all.
meanwhile those private contractors start taking over the government.
Anyone who wants violence in the streets is an idiot. have you guys any idea what a lot of violence will get you? Jailed…
Islam will change
ah, hell, Nancy
I walk on water. I live in Oregon.
that said, “the law of supply and demand” is true enough as far as it goes… or as far as it ought to go. the trouble is the true believers take it too far. so let me say again, the business of government is to arrange the conditions of supply and of demand, so that “the law of” supply and demand can find the “right” price.
for these bozos “the law of supply and demand” is like saying “the law of gravity…therefore flight is impossible.”
Bruce,
You see it exactly the same way I do – hence my response to yuan. But it [violence in the streets] ain’t gonna happen – unless the overclass overeaches and we get back to Great Depression levels of misery. Even then, the signs [AZ law for ex.] are that today’s labor class is more likely to be persuaded to look for scapegoats – resulting in more authoritarism, than to challenge their capitalist masters and push for more egalitarian, progressive – or, dare I say, “socialist” – solutions. As for the ballot box providing any relief, I don’t see it. Our “democracy” is a sham and the current political system is owned – lock, stock and barrel – by the “malefactors of great wealth”. The US middle class is in a death spiral and if and when it wakes up, it will be far too late.
buff
i was all set to agree with you, until the last sentence. if housing prices drop and those people mail in the keys, the banks will have to sell the houses at “supply and demand” prices. a real catastrophe for a free market based economy.
but your point about saving the speculators is very close to my point: we seem to have a government, and a media, and an economics profession… that is devoted to making the world safe for speculators. consider the bond market. (“The Big Short” mentioned above might be a fun intro to what brought us here.)
eric
well there’s your problem right there:
you moved South and invited Southerners to join the “Union.”
they nevah fergit.
and they never learn.
Friend Coberly–There are if what you mean by “too many” is “more houses than people are willing to buy at a price that’ll make the bank that owns ’em a profit or at least break even.” This is a good example of why supply and demand no longer have a clear relationship to each other. Clearly, there are lotsa empty houses. And, people waiting for the prices to go down the way it’s supposed to when you got a big supply and a small demand. They better not hold their breath. NPR was taken over by the Peterson gang a long time ago. You are not going to hear much by way of good information on practically any subject any more. The Gulf, you know, has been saved, you know. Nothing to see there folks! Nancy O.
Bruce
if it comes to that I know which side I am on.
I can’t tell if the fear of revolution makes capital more honest, or if it just makes them more stupid.
i suspect the latter. these people are just sure that the more independent labor is the more likely they are to invite themselves over for dinner. i think history shows just the opposite. but they likely remember the too little too late consessions made by the aristocracy just before the Bastille and blame “weakness” for their losses, forgetting that by then the handwriting was on the wall.
you can pick this up in their rhetoric if you listen for it. the kind of intelligence that makes big money is not well attuned to subtleties. they think in terms of grabbing what they can and defending it from all the other grabbers,,, and they definitely project their own morality on “the poor” and shudder when they count the numbers.
Back in the 1930s there was never a “great compromise” since people were just happy to have a job. Labor, big business, and the administration all went to bed together forming cartels and special privelaged groups; and never beating unemployment prior to the ramp up to WWII. Hoover raised taxes initially to kick of the great depression and FDR did it again to cause the depression’s double dip in 1938. Both Hoover and FDR had dreadful economic policy that lost us 12 years of economic growth. And history is repeating itself with before the stock market being blamed and today its housing. Hoover was idiot policy wonk and FDR was a grand manipulator who like today did not want to let a perfectly good crisis go to waste. The only positive economic policy that came from FDR was to end prohibition.
Supply and demand works in certain situations.
When it doesn’t work, like health insurance, the government will subsidize private products.
That will help not only the demand, but also continue to inflate too-expensive premiums.
The whole debate on health care reminds me why talk is cheap: because the supply exceeds the demand.
Don Levit
coberly,
Contractors, as Nancy O points out, are cheaper than FTE. On top of that lots of places cap the number of FTE you can have. There are still plenty of GS types left for institutional memory and the critical contractor specialists never leave either. Fo rexample, I saw a company loose its contract (not loose a re-compete, just get fired). 1 of their guys was a specialist with a specific, hard-to-find skill set/knowledge base/and security level, and he left on a Friday and was in the same job the next Monday just with a different company badge. (I tried to hire him but my Sr. management couldn’t move that fast – he got 3 offers anyways.)
BUt the real benefit is that you can downsize very quickly without going through all the GS nonesense. GS people are almost impossible to fire and even if their entire organization is eliminated, they have to be offered an equivelent job elsewhere – so you get people specialized in aircraft procurment suddenly working vendor contracts for the national parks. With all the problems that entails…
Islam will change
NO – Don’t get me started on the Gulf…
Right now the banks can’t sell them at a profit. And deffinitely can’t sell them to cover the inflated bubble priced loans they made on them. There is demand and there is supply, just we are artificially holding the price up (plus the normal friction in teh housing markets). If prices would come down another 20-30% you would start to see the market clear.
You would also see a bunch of banks go under also…that was Greenspan’s point. I just don’t see the Gov. being able to hold up prices for long enough, especially with little inflation.
Islam will change
View social disorder, if you like, as a leading or lagging indicator of significant social change.
Not as tool or method or cause but as symptom. Just correlation.
But I can’t remember many major periods of social revolution not associated with mass violence or threat of violence, state-directed or anarchic.
Avoiding it, at any cost, for the sake of stability will ensure stasis and perpetuation of unjust institutional structures. We are violent critters.
Let’s beat the spears into ploughshares.
Fascism is one answer to defeating violence in the streets, but maybe doing right by the masses will be better.
ilsm will not change
From Marginal Revolution:
Linky: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/negative-equity-in-underwater-homes.html
Let’s beat the spears into plough shares.
I agree, buff.
In my MSRP I look for a 30% reduction in residential prices before I would think a sustainable price level is achieved.
I have been in and out of this area for 25 years and my cash stays in the T Bills.
ilsm will not change
Well I don’t agree that fascism is dead, if you look at the actual operations of many of the countries of South, Central and East Asia including those bogeymen of the Right Iran and N. Korea but also many of the ‘Stans, Myanmar and China you can see the kind of integration of top level political and economic leadership into a kind of crony capitalism that reminds me very much of certain European countries before WWII.
As to Marxism, well it might not be on the march as such, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate some of Marx’s analysis of class and its relation to revolution. And history shows that when you collapse the proletariat into the lumpen-proletariat that the former learn all kinds of bad habits from the latter, of which street fighting is just one. If you think America is immune from some of the kinds of skinhead versus long hair street fighting, or immigrant versus nativist struggles that have on occassion roiled even the advanced economies of Europe then I suggest you take a new look.
Supply exceeds demand in health care? Then why do we have 50 million people without insurance and afraid to go to the doctor?
I am afraid I can’t even take this argument seriously, it shows a total disconnect from the world I know. I don’t have health insurance and it is not because I am some twenty-something Invincible. Neither was my friend Diane who was so worried about paying certain unreimbursed expenses of her husband (who was insured) she never go around to telling anyone she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Until she died last year and kind of gave away the game. Or ask the next server you encounter, or the guy running that food stand, whether they have an unlimited supply of health care that they need to be bribed by the government into using.
Nancy,
Cheaper than an FTE?
The civilian pay accounts are reduced but…..that is not the story.
In DoD acquisition the contractors’ employees are not cheaper, in fact most are in made up jobs they found through the guys who stayed in the ir old office after they retired. The contractors I see could not get classified to a GS rank for the work they do anywhere near the pay rates they get.
The FTE costs seems less in DoD because the contractors are paid from different appropriations or elements if in the OMA.
The payroll goes down but the lost service and the contract costs go up.
Let’s beat the spears into plough shares.
There is a reason the south had slavery and the north regarded labor diiferently.
What is hard to understand is why the poor whites defended the class.
And why it is somewhat similar in the 21st century.
Let’s beat the spear into plough shares.
I don’t know of anyone that’s afraid to go to the doctor or emergency room.
If you want to know what’s going on then take a walk around a hostpital and talk to people undergoing care for cancer. A significant number don’t have insurance and are in effect being treated as charity. It’s too bad your friend Diane had to die for nothing. I’m sure had you known you would have brow beat her into getting treatment for free and you may have even helped her by calling around to local hospitals, government social service agencies, and NGOs.
buffpilot,
Let’s beat some spears into plowshares.
First, in the 1960’s as money was sucked to southeast Asia and 70’s as Vietnam wound down there were RIF’s of federal/GS employees and they worked quite well. There are rules that work and can work quickly, as fast as recognizing that next years’ contractor budget is going down, if a unit loses slots they apply RIF rules prescribed by OPM. Not a bad thing just the “lazy old” Vietnam Vets got to stay which was not popular so the DoD has used RIF very sparingly. I had vet preference and no RIF in my line of sight, not that they didn’t get frustrated with me doing my job correctly.
Absolutely, it is easier to fire a contractor, when the contractor is doing the right thing for the taxpayer or the US constitution and the government guy is selling a piece of junk or violating the Bill of Rights. The contractor goes out the door and all left to her or him is tort litigation for wrongful discharge, which if the government guy is linked gets the US G as a co-defendant. I have seen case law on this.
I have seen contractors get fired by a phone call. Once for telling some AF field grader he was grossly negligent. The guy got unemployment so as not to go the tort route.
GS’ used to be there because they can look out for the taxpayer. That was because they were hard to fire, been this way since the 1880’s when it was discovered the US needed a civil service who could look out for the tax payers and not the interests who run the US G. Note that the National Security Personnel Act which attempted to ruin merit systems (1880’s) was repealed since the new perofrmance objective were so arcane as to make some GS 15 work actually be GS 5. And it attempted to make it easier to make it so experts who were not colluding could be attacked and harmed.
One reason they got rid of GS’ in R&D and procurement of weapons is we told them the emperor had no clothes. And being hard to fire all they could do is move us off the jobs and give us unproductive work. So in 1990’s they reduced the heck out of GS employees in R&D and acquisition. They threw out engineering processes as well. See Perry initiatives of 1994.
You can google USD AT&L HUman Capital Strategic Plan to see the need to rehire pros.
Contractors being easy to fire is exactly how the DHS and other intelligence activities are in a position to violate the Bill of Rights.
All the above is true.
“GS people are almost impossible to fire and even if their entire organization is eliminated, they have to be offered an equivelent job elsewhere – so you get people specialized in aircraft procurment suddenly working vendor contracts for the national parks.”
That statement is not based in fact. To bump into a position the RIF’ed employee, even if a vetrean, must be qualified, to higher standards than hiring a retired O-5 to do a make work unclassified contract “job”. And if there is a RIF the rules state when the employee is separated, based on the plan and budget of the agency. Hey, I was a supervisor and well aware of rights and prerogatives under OPM rules.
ilsm will not change
Another reason for so many contractors is that the military no longer does a lot of hotel type duties. Since the military are warriors they no longer do kp, nor are there many cooks ashore. (Ships are different), likewise maids in housing. Recall all the scandals about plumbing and electric in Iraq, basically the military hires its plumbers and electricians now, while when we had a draft an military labor was cheap, the military did it.
Actually that’s the key item do you tax the young men thru a draft to pay for the military, or do you tax all of society to pay for the contractors so that you don’t need a draft.
Essentially this is what the Log-Cap contract is all about logistical items that the military used to do itself. Take moving gasoline to the forward bases, in WWII the Red Ball Express of the Army did that today its KBR.
I think violence in the streets must be an option.
That is our ace in the hole, sort of like nuclear weapons.
Look, I’ve been married for 33 years.
And, never once have I thought of divorcing my wife.
Divorce, no.
Murder, yes.
Don Levit
ilsm,
It would be easier to follwo you if you would drop out all the comments on waste and fraud from your point and place them in a seperate paragraph.
And there are LOTS and LOTS of GS types out there. The fact that bundles of them are incompetant doens’t mean they shouldn’t be protecting the tax-payer. But most are just protecting their a$$. I have yet to see any GS type stand up for the tax-payer, and all have heavy incentives to spend every last penny of their budget (as you well know).
And RIFs don’t work very well. And are not politically popular – another reason for the growth of contractors. Its much easier to fire them (Oh, I said that already). The last RIF I remember was for the peace dividend in the Air Force (did the GS types get a RIF then?). That RIF went over like a lead ballon, was highly focused on what job you were in & what base you were at, and violated numerous promises made on how RIFs would be done (basically just re-wrote the law as needed). To point to one case – if you were an Electronic Warfare Officer with between 3-12 years in you basically had a 95% chance of being booted. I know of two bases were every single EW officer was RIF’ed in that age group (both bases were on the closure list). This was only months after the Colonels came by and said everything would be fine…morale for the AF went to crap for quite awhile.(I believe the Colonels didn’t know either how bad it would get, in their defense)
But the bottom line is we use contractors becuase they are easy to fire. All those contractors returning from Iraq go straight from Haliburton to the un-employment line. If they were GS types they would not be discharged so easily.
And yes I know OPM rules and my example was a little over the top – but not by much from what I saw in actual practice.
Islam will change
bob,
What are you going to protest? High unemployment? Great, lets start the WPA again and put all the unemployed working outside, doing manual labor for 40 hours a week for the pay we give a Senior Airman in the Air Force. Problem solved.
So what are they going to protest? Not living in a McMansion? But the left wants everyone to live in Soviet Style mixed use apartment squaler. Super high density, small footprint is good for you and is greener to boot. Problem solved.
Mass protest over Obama Care?? Not going to happen and we have the death panels to handle the costly patients for the good of Gaia. Problem solved.
Protest over the war? That’s so ’60s. If you want to ignore Iraq and Afghanistan (BTW we are still in both) its real easy. No chance you will go their without volunteering! Plus we have a Democrat President in Office so what ineffective & ignored protests are no longer needed since a Dem’s in office, which was the goal (I assume you got the memo, you really didn’t beleive Obama was going to cut & run did you?). Problem solved.
Protest over the Debt? That’s those rascist, fascist, old-fat-redneck-whiteman’s issue. No way your hipster will get near those types. Plus, Obama has shown that he totally agree’s with Darth Cheney that debt doesn’t matter! Problem solved.
So what again is going to start this violence? the G20 protestors were laughed at and ignored….
Yes, some over-the-top snark, but my point is the same. What will they protest? With a DEM in office?
Islam will change
Bruce,
Basically I don’t think we are even close to that. Unnemployment is not even close to depression levels. As I replied to bob upthread – what are you going to protest? We have a bug social and gov safety net out there.
And we are not facing either a fascist or Marxist threat internal to the US (which FDR was worried about) and not much of one external.
And I have no problem with rounding up and shipping illegal aliens back home. It’s well within the right of the US Government to do so. That we don’t is totally becuase we don’t fell like it. but then I’m not an open borders guy.
Islam will change
T.,
Your description and analysis of events of the “30s evinces a dramatic lack of knowledge of that time’s economic and political events and relationships. You do, however, provide us all with a more accurate view of your intention to distort events in support of your personal and unique opinions.
You will not be given free care if you walk into a doctor’s office. If you don’t have insurance they will bill you and if you are lucky will take payments but if you don’t pay your credit, if any will take a hit and they will send your bill to collections.
Some hospitals will write off your care, especially those who are currently or in origin religiously based, but mostly only if you are sick enough to be admitted through the Emergency Room. If you have evidence that most hospitals routine cover care for chronic but not yet critical care then bring it.
Jack,
You made a personal attack against me rather then argue a specific point. In some places this is frowned upon.
If you think that Hoover and then FDR did not raise the top marginal tax rates you are wrong. If you think anything that FDR did got unemployment below 13-14 percent prior to the run up to WWII you’re wrong on that too. The facts are in the data that have been presented so many times you can look them up on your own.
Liberals in the United States became afraid of FDR and turned against him after he tried to pack the courts and ram through his policies. The New York Times endorsed the republican in 1940 primarility because FDR was acting too much like his peers in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan.
The economy was on its back from 1929 to around 1940. That’s 12 years, 4 years of Hoover and 8 years of Roosevelt.
Do you agree that the termination of prohibition was a good move that created jobs. Obama might want to think about this and then move away from any oil drilling moratorium.
Lyle,
Good points, all the KPs etc. But I cannot remeber when maids in the Q wore uniforms and I am Vietnam Era.
Let’s beat the spears into plow shares.
Logistics is military economics, it is all resource allocations, risks and trade off. And we do see the result of the extensive fraud waste and abuse.
You are telling me about RIF’s among the B-52 aviator force and all the guys who got 15 year retirements, etc. That was when the BUFF’s went START and were cut up and or placed at DMAFB.
OPM does not regulate that, the DoD and services do.
I refer to events I have seen in the USAF acquisition business. In my agency in 1985 there were about 1 contractor for each two government persons (mix of military and GS).
About 5 years ago I did a study among logistics people, part of an Air Force human capital thing. I was an ILSM or managed groups of them for more years than you were a pilot. Integrated Logistics Support Manager.
ILSM’s are the guys that remind the theoreticians in R&D program offices that the things don’t fly without quality and reliability and the expensive, when you cannot get the design right, things that go into maintenance. We advocate things that don’t bite you until you fail OT&E which is all the time. But long story short in one command there were fewer than 10 government ILSM’s with about 84 contractors doing the job with NO ONE who could tell what they were delivering.
Because no one cared that the command delivered all its system to fial the suitability test.
THis is direct observation and I keep good notes.
Buff
the way things are going i am afraid what the people are going to be protesting is that they have no food and no house.
of course you can always “solve” that problem with welfare. but that will cost money. tax money.
the problem with today’s right is that they are penny wise pound stupid. of course that’s not the problem. they never even thought that far. they just want to win. spoils, you know.
Templeton
I didn’t think you were worth replying to. It is a sad fact of human nature that once you have a “theory of everything” neither god nor man can ever change your mind. People who were there during the depression have a rather different view than you have. In fact the Republicans ran on the version of events you believe. It didn’t win them very many votes. Now that everyone who has an actual memory of the depression is dead, the Big Liars can get away with telling people like you fairy tales.
Ilsm–Only about 30% of all households held slaves in the South before the Civil War. People at every social level were united in their view of society, however. No matter how poor they were, journeymen farmers identified with their rich kin. Slaveholding was the only way any poor man could ever hope to rise above the level of subsistence farming in which the majority of white people existed. When the planters decided to secede, their poor kin followed because they had no choice and because they feared the emancipation of the slaves would leave them a minority population. The combination poverty, lack of education, and racism could be counted on to produce this result. The South, as Coberly observes, seems not to have learned much in the years since Appomattox.
coberly,
My point still stands. What are they going to protest???? There is plenty of housing and food available and a robust safety net for anyone who wants it.
The perfect example is the anti-war left. The second Obama was elected they disappeared. Yet we are still in Iraq and still escalating in Afghanistan. Yet the anti-war left cannot even risk getting a sunburn on the mall anymore.
And did you catch Obama saying we will having 50,000 troops in Iraq after the withdraw? Another of my predictions made that was right on the money. Do you think any of the usual suspects will be able to get even 1000 people on the mall to protest Obama??? No a chance. As long as their is a Dem in office the looney left is effectively disarmed and ignorable. They won’t protest Obama.
So no one is going to to the violence in the street thing, and what few loonies might try they will be ignored just like the G20 protestors by the media. The Bachlorette will get more air time and viewers.
If their is a R in the office in 2013 then watch out, as the leftest will come back out. It won’t be about policy (as we have found out) but the party of the Presidency…for the left its about control and always has been. read 1984…
Islam will change
“Look no one wants to see violence in the streets, but history shows that it is not only the capitalists that have 2nd amendment remedies.”
Many pray for the day when the internal virus expose themselves in the streets carrying weapons. The silent majority eagerly awaits!