My cousins who grew up on the family ranches in Oklahoma were riding horses at age 5 and helping work cattle by age 7 or 8. Dangerous? Sometimes. Most farm kids I know were operating tractors by the age of 14. Dengerous? Sometimes. But that is the life.
Apparently when a rumor started circulating that youth doing 4-H projects would have to take a 90 hour federal safety training course the comments hit the fan, and DOL retreated.
Lesson: do not mess with farmers during an election year
The Department of Labor really oughta think before it talks. The SS Act distinguishes between spouses and children in describing covered earnings for agricultural employees. Used to be that wives and kids weren’t covered for FICA purposes, but now, they can be depending on the circumstances. All the dummies at Ag would have to do was state who is covered by their regs in the case of family farms. The regs could easily exclude small farmers’ spouses and children in regard to safety and other working conditions. Problem solved.
Meanwhile, corp. agriculture wants to hire child labor legally and already employs kids “informally.” Little kids pick strawberries with their mothers and fathers every day. That’s illegal, of course, in most states except for older kids with work permits. But, hey, saves on labor cost and no one enforces the labor laws.
Think of Florida around Belle Glade. Now, think of the tomatoes you eat that come from there. It’s highly likely the tomato you’re buying is picked by a kid under legal age. The Dept. of Ag wants to protect all farm workers from the dangerous chemicals and equipment used on farms today. Good idea, but that would create problems for corp. agriculture.
So, naturally, the thing to do if you’re a big corporation is pretend that small family farmers are threatened by these safety and other work regulations. Remember the Death Tax attack on family farms? Right. Same deal. Kids are always gonna ride horses at the age of five. I did and so did my country cousins. And, kids are always gonna be hanging out around heavy farm equipment like we did. (Couldn’t drive the big Deere, just the little Ford.) So, I don’t think this is what we’re talking about here. I think it might be more about R vs. D politics–and small farmers’ interests probably don’t enter in. I’m just cynical that way. NancyO
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote. http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above. When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight.In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe.In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains.New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases. Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones.???Nobody raised a peep.
My answer for everything from cops treating neighborhoods like sentenced prison populations to mad mayors is of course my same old, same old answer for every problem – from gangs (the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald, $15/hr minimum wage would add all of 3 1/2% direct inflation*) to nonfunctioning ghetto schools (the author of “Cracks in the Pavement” who spent nine years on the ground in five New York and Los Angeles poor neighborhoods says the schools there do not work only because the students expect nothing good waiting for them in the labor market so why try […]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote. http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above. When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight.In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe.In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains.New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases. Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones.???Nobody raised a peep.
My answer for everything from cops treating neighborhoods like sentenced prison populations to mad mayors is of course my same old, same old answer for every problem – from gangs (the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald, $15/hr minimum wage […]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote. http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above. When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight.In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe.In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains.New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases. Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones.???Nobody raised a peep. […]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote. http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above. When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight.In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter). At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe.In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains.New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases. Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones.???Nobody raised a peep.
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote. http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above. When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight.In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe.In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains.New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony […]
aside from you , i don’t think anyone out here ever heard of sector wide labor agreements.
and anyway don’t you know the unions are all corrupt, union workers are overpaid and refuse to do work not in their job description?
breaking the unions was the first step to getting the bosses back in control after the sixties scare.
meanwhile i am worried about those parents (and kids) in handcuffs on their way to being strip searched.
and yes, what’s wrong with the schools is that they don’t lead to anything. and fixing schools by turning them into prisons is another idea that’s been around for a long time. and tried. and tried harder when it doesn’t work.
gonna get worse. unless and until the people find a leader.
coberly, Correction: until someone tells the people what’s going on — median wage stagnant while average income doubles (since 1968 — 90-97 percentile incomes kept same share so not a matter of higher tech economy making lower tech jobs worth less) while the minimum wage dropped in half by early 2007 (what a mad, mad tragedy — but to our academic liberals this is the wan “inequality”, like “oh yea; something’s wrong”; no mad, mad urgency; it’d be a mad, mad urgency if somebody told the people): what I call America’s “post-apocalyptic labor market; sort like in the movie “Solyent Green” where the hero has no idea what kind of world went before.
And until someone mentions sector-wide labor agreements out loud.
These two should be the number one topic of national discussion.
I had referred the other day to Peter Dorman’s post at EconoSpeak regarding the varying interests of wealth holders and income earners. In that article Dorman makes the following observation concerning a convergence of the interests of the wealthy and the middle class.
“Similarly, many middle class retirees are highly dependent on the performance of their savings. In fact, this last example reminds us that there is a life cycle aspect to this divergence of interests as well as a class aspect, although the class influence is probably larger overall.” Dorman
About three decades past defined pension plans began disappearing and American workers were coerced through adjustments to the tax code to “invest their futures in America.” IRAs and 401 plans began to grow in earnest. Two economic phenomenon resulted. On the one hand huge inflows of new money began to flow into the equity markets. Values grew with increased demand, but also volatility grew with too much money chasing over valued assets. Not unlike the real estate bubble brought on by too much mortgage money coming into the financial industry in the late ’90s to early 2000s. On the other hand this new class of middle class investors became dependent of market performance for the maintenance of their retirement savings. The aging sector of the middle class suddenly finds itself in conformity with the ownership society, the One Percent. That is a significant factor in why people seeming to have dissimilar life goals and needs come to have similar ideologies.
But Jack, is this really true? “The aging sector of the middle class suddenly finds itself in conformity with the ownership society, the One Percent. That is a significant factor in why people seeming to have dissimilar life goals and needs come to have similar ideologies.” From what I have been hearing, “aging” middle class people are being harmed by the low interest rates which they consider a gift to banks and an attempt to force them to put their retirement money in greater risk than they planned.
not sure what you’re correcting. i agree with you.
talked to a young lady the other day. she was going door to door selling magazines. only that’s not what she said. she was “earning points” to get out of the inner city and not live on the welfare.
i told her that scam has been around for at least fifty years that i know about. she seemed crushed by the news and said my kind don’t care about her kind.
but actually i do. i knew that for her to be out there going door to door was a huge effort and i was sorry and angry she was being used. but i also thought that she was too fragil physically and emotionally to hold a real job. and i don’t think schoolin’ would help her much.
but there’s your problem. and it sure as hell is more important than bailing out the bankers.
Attaching folks to the interests of the wealthy class by selling them stocks and bonds has been part of the strategy of the “powers” since before George Jr started selling personal accounts to save you from the low returns of Social Security.
of course something went wrong with the stocks and bonds, but that has had no effect on the lie whatsoever. if something sounds good it must be true, damn your eyes.
No doubt the “middle class” stock owners will identify with the political interests of the wealthy class, but they can’t stop the wealthy class from shaking the tree from time to time.
I’m not addressing the intelligence of their behavior. I’m only noting, as I think Dorman did briefly, that aging middle class workers have been forced into the position of having only “rainy day” accounts to supplement their Social Security benefits. Whether the market works for them or not has become secondary to how they conceptualize their own best interests. No doubt that as Coberly characterizes the issue, and as I have implied, they’ve been sold a bill of goods and now find themselves at odds with the 99%. They listen when told that the Republicans will bring the Market back. They respond to better equity returns. It effects them directly in a way that defined pensions never did. Their savings and income are no more assured or secure. They are the mass of small investors who have become the source of the financial industry’s core profitability. ‘
coberly, If she and her husband could get $15/hr for any (two) job(s) her troubles would be over — which should be the way it is by 2012! Just ask LBJ as he spins in his grave — who as Senate majority leader was solely responsible for Ike’s $8.43/hr minimum ($1/hr adjusted) as well as his own $10.55/hr minimum ($1.60). Hubert Humphrey and friends were pushing for $10.54/hr ($.1.25/hr) in 1956!
And don’t forget; doubling the minimum wage would add only 3 1/2% direct inflation (see link above) — give half the work force a raise! — and 3 1/2% is how much we grow per capita every two years when not in recession — should be a complete no brainer!
i guess one thing no one can seem to remember is that those young people will be old people one day.
now, if this means that if you invest when young you have to bet on the side of the wealthy in order to protect your interests when old, even though it kills your interests when young, and perforce later when you are old, then…
raising some prices is not inflation. whatever we buy at prices depressed by exploiting the political weakness of labor is just us taking advantage of what is essentially slavery. the immediate beneficiary of the low wages is the boss… or maybe nobody if the low wages become the basis of competition. Getting a burger for a quarter less is not a significant advantage to you or “the economy.”
but meanwhile, the girl i described could probably not hold down a min wage job. mentally, physically, and something like morally (low level of some brain chemicals related to drive? and a cultural tendency to blame failure on the selfishness of others) simply incapable. i don’t know what “simple” cultures did about people like that… maybe with the right community the attitude would never emerge. she might be a it lazy in such a culture, or inept, but she’d probably be given something simple to do and held to it by a bossy grandmother.
i don’t know. but just raising the min wage is not going to help her. i don’t know how many more like her there are.
but yes, being in an economy where the “least of these” is abused and cheated doesn’t help her.
walking around knocking on doors all day is no fun. this girl was trying. so i don’t like to hear philosophers from fifty thousand feet say the poor are lazy.
Just FYI sector wide labor agreements are the German way of doing things along with worker reps on the supervisory board, a very different model than the US.
lyle, Yes; and invented (as far as I know) by post WWII (post fascist) German industrialists as a way to avoid a labor race-to-the-top (they got more; we want more). The welfare state was actually a compensation for this. So it is not mad leftist scheme. It just happens to balance the labor market perfectly — both sides can withhold their contribution to production until they get the right deal — avoid our race-to-the-bottom.
Wal-Mart had to pull 88 big boxes out of Germany — could not compete paying the same wages and benefits.
Thank you for being the first person on this blog to actually repeat the words “sector wide labor agreements.” It is only the only logical approach to rebalancing our American labor market, it is tested for over half a century and in first, second (Argentina) and third worlds (Indonesia). It is more than frustrating to have the only workable way back ignored by Americas doctors of economics while I — cab driver — can figure it out. ???
“thank you for being the first person on this blog to actually repeat the words “sector wide labor agreements.” to lyle who posted Yesterday, 8:15:47 PM PDT.
coberly repeated the words “sector wide labo agreements” Yesterday, 6:17:45 AM PDT
which might explain why i think no one actually understands what i say.
The Department of Labor had issued long and complicated draft regulations (http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20111250.htm) for youth working on farms, including family farms.
After a blizzard of negative comments the DOl surrendered (http://www.dol.gov/whd/media/press/whdpressVB3.asp?pressdoc=national/20120426.xml).
My cousins who grew up on the family ranches in Oklahoma were riding horses at age 5 and helping work cattle by age 7 or 8. Dangerous? Sometimes. Most farm kids I know were operating tractors by the age of 14. Dengerous? Sometimes. But that is the life.
Apparently when a rumor started circulating that youth doing 4-H projects would have to take a 90 hour federal safety training course the comments hit the fan, and DOL retreated.
Lesson: do not mess with farmers during an election year
The Department of Labor really oughta think before it talks. The SS Act distinguishes between spouses and children in describing covered earnings for agricultural employees. Used to be that wives and kids weren’t covered for FICA purposes, but now, they can be depending on the circumstances. All the dummies at Ag would have to do was state who is covered by their regs in the case of family farms. The regs could easily exclude small farmers’ spouses and children in regard to safety and other working conditions. Problem solved.
Meanwhile, corp. agriculture wants to hire child labor legally and already employs kids “informally.” Little kids pick strawberries with their mothers and fathers every day. That’s illegal, of course, in most states except for older kids with work permits. But, hey, saves on labor cost and no one enforces the labor laws.
Think of Florida around Belle Glade. Now, think of the tomatoes you eat that come from there. It’s highly likely the tomato you’re buying is picked by a kid under legal age. The Dept. of Ag wants to protect all farm workers from the dangerous chemicals and equipment used on farms today. Good idea, but that would create problems for corp. agriculture.
So, naturally, the thing to do if you’re a big corporation is pretend that small family farmers are threatened by these safety and other work regulations. Remember the Death Tax attack on family farms? Right. Same deal. Kids are always gonna ride horses at the age of five. I did and so did my country cousins. And, kids are always gonna be hanging out around heavy farm equipment like we did. (Couldn’t drive the big Deere, just the little Ford.) So, I don’t think this is what we’re talking about here. I think it might be more about R vs. D politics–and small farmers’ interests probably don’t enter in. I’m just cynical that way. NancyO
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote.
http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above.
When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight. In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe. In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains. New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases.
Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones. ??? Nobody raised a peep.
My answer for everything from cops treating neighborhoods like sentenced prison populations to mad mayors is of course my same old, same old answer for every problem – from gangs (the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald, $15/hr minimum wage would add all of 3 1/2% direct inflation*) to nonfunctioning ghetto schools (the author of “Cracks in the Pavement” who spent nine years on the ground in five New York and Los Angeles poor neighborhoods says the schools there do not work only because the students expect nothing good waiting for them in the labor market so why try […]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote.
http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above.
When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight. In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe. In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains. New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases.
Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones. ??? Nobody raised a peep.
My answer for everything from cops treating neighborhoods like sentenced prison populations to mad mayors is of course my same old, same old answer for every problem – from gangs (the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald, $15/hr minimum wage […]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote.
http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above.
When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight. In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe. In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains. New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases.
Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones. ??? Nobody raised a peep. […]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote.
http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above.
When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight. In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe. In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains. New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases.
Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones. ??? Nobody raised a peep.
[…]
I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today’s beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration — the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat. “I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop” is a typical quote.
http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html
Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above.
When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight. In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).
At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe. In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains. New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn’t even know.
The craziest example of “taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we’ll get to that) handled felony […]
ddrew
aside from you , i don’t think anyone out here ever heard of sector wide labor agreements.
and anyway don’t you know the unions are all corrupt, union workers are overpaid and refuse to do work not in their job description?
breaking the unions was the first step to getting the bosses back in control after the sixties scare.
meanwhile i am worried about those parents (and kids) in handcuffs on their way to being strip searched.
and yes, what’s wrong with the schools is that they don’t lead to anything. and fixing schools by turning them into prisons is another idea that’s been around for a long time. and tried. and tried harder when it doesn’t work.
gonna get worse. unless and until the people find a leader.
coberly,
Correction: until someone tells the people what’s going on — median wage stagnant while average income doubles (since 1968 — 90-97 percentile incomes kept same share so not a matter of higher tech economy making lower tech jobs worth less) while the minimum wage dropped in half by early 2007 (what a mad, mad tragedy — but to our academic liberals this is the wan “inequality”, like “oh yea; something’s wrong”; no mad, mad urgency; it’d be a mad, mad urgency if somebody told the people): what I call America’s “post-apocalyptic labor market; sort like in the movie “Solyent Green” where the hero has no idea what kind of world went before.
And until someone mentions sector-wide labor agreements out loud.
These two should be the number one topic of national discussion.
I had referred the other day to Peter Dorman’s post at EconoSpeak regarding the varying interests of wealth holders and income earners. In that article Dorman makes the following observation concerning a convergence of the interests of the wealthy and the middle class.
“Similarly, many middle class retirees are highly dependent on the performance of their savings. In fact, this last example reminds us that there is a life cycle aspect to this divergence of interests as well as a class aspect, although the class influence is probably larger overall.” Dorman
About three decades past defined pension plans began disappearing and American workers were coerced through adjustments to the tax code to “invest their futures in America.” IRAs and 401 plans began to grow in earnest. Two economic phenomenon resulted. On the one hand huge inflows of new money began to flow into the equity markets. Values grew with increased demand, but also volatility grew with too much money chasing over valued assets. Not unlike the real estate bubble brought on by too much mortgage money coming into the financial industry in the late ’90s to early 2000s. On the other hand this new class of middle class investors became dependent of market performance for the maintenance of their retirement savings. The aging sector of the middle class suddenly finds itself in conformity with the ownership society, the One Percent. That is a significant factor in why people seeming to have dissimilar life goals and needs come to have similar ideologies.
But Jack, is this really true? “The aging sector of the middle class suddenly finds itself in conformity with the ownership society, the One Percent. That is a significant factor in why people seeming to have dissimilar life goals and needs come to have similar ideologies.” From what I have been hearing, “aging” middle class people are being harmed by the low interest rates which they consider a gift to banks and an attempt to force them to put their retirement money in greater risk than they planned.
ddrew
not sure what you’re correcting. i agree with you.
talked to a young lady the other day. she was going door to door selling magazines. only that’s not what she said. she was “earning points” to get out of the inner city and not live on the welfare.
i told her that scam has been around for at least fifty years that i know about. she seemed crushed by the news and said my kind don’t care about her kind.
but actually i do. i knew that for her to be out there going door to door was a huge effort and i was sorry and angry she was being used. but i also thought that she was too fragil physically and emotionally to hold a real job. and i don’t think schoolin’ would help her much.
but there’s your problem. and it sure as hell is more important than bailing out the bankers.
Anna
you are right, and Dorman is wrong.
Attaching folks to the interests of the wealthy class by selling them stocks and bonds has been part of the strategy of the “powers” since before George Jr started selling personal accounts to save you from the low returns of Social Security.
of course something went wrong with the stocks and bonds, but that has had no effect on the lie whatsoever. if something sounds good it must be true, damn your eyes.
No doubt the “middle class” stock owners will identify with the political interests of the wealthy class, but they can’t stop the wealthy class from shaking the tree from time to time.
I’m not addressing the intelligence of their behavior. I’m only noting, as I think Dorman did briefly, that aging middle class workers have been forced into the position of having only “rainy day” accounts to supplement their Social Security benefits. Whether the market works for them or not has become secondary to how they conceptualize their own best interests. No doubt that as Coberly characterizes the issue, and as I have implied, they’ve been sold a bill of goods and now find themselves at odds with the 99%. They listen when told that the Republicans will bring the Market back. They respond to better equity returns. It effects them directly in a way that defined pensions never did. Their savings and income are no more assured or secure. They are the mass of small investors who have become the source of the financial industry’s core profitability.
‘
jack
yep. but dorman said divergence of interests, not divergence of perceived interests.
coberly,
If she and her husband could get $15/hr for any (two) job(s) her troubles would be over — which should be the way it is by 2012! Just ask LBJ as he spins in his grave — who as Senate majority leader was solely responsible for Ike’s $8.43/hr minimum ($1/hr adjusted) as well as his own $10.55/hr minimum ($1.60). Hubert Humphrey and friends were pushing for $10.54/hr ($.1.25/hr) in 1956!
And don’t forget; doubling the minimum wage would add only 3 1/2% direct inflation (see link above) — give half the work force a raise! — and 3 1/2% is how much we grow per capita every two years when not in recession — should be a complete no brainer!
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.00&year1=1956&year2=2012
i guess one thing no one can seem to remember is that those young people will be old people one day.
now, if this means that if you invest when young you have to bet on the side of the wealthy in order to protect your interests when old, even though it kills your interests when young, and perforce later when you are old, then…
ddrew
raising some prices is not inflation. whatever we buy at prices depressed by exploiting the political weakness of labor is just us taking advantage of what is essentially slavery. the immediate beneficiary of the low wages is the boss… or maybe nobody if the low wages become the basis of competition. Getting a burger for a quarter less is not a significant advantage to you or “the economy.”
but meanwhile, the girl i described could probably not hold down a min wage job. mentally, physically, and something like morally (low level of some brain chemicals related to drive? and a cultural tendency to blame failure on the selfishness of others) simply incapable. i don’t know what “simple” cultures did about people like that… maybe with the right community the attitude would never emerge. she might be a it lazy in such a culture, or inept, but she’d probably be given something simple to do and held to it by a bossy grandmother.
i don’t know. but just raising the min wage is not going to help her. i don’t know how many more like her there are.
but yes, being in an economy where the “least of these” is abused and cheated doesn’t help her.
btw
walking around knocking on doors all day is no fun. this girl was trying. so i don’t like to hear philosophers from fifty thousand feet say the poor are lazy.
Just FYI sector wide labor agreements are the German way of doing things along with worker reps on the supervisory board, a very different model than the US.
lyle,
Yes; and invented (as far as I know) by post WWII (post fascist) German industrialists as a way to avoid a labor race-to-the-top (they got more; we want more). The welfare state was actually a compensation for this. So it is not mad leftist scheme. It just happens to balance the labor market perfectly — both sides can withhold their contribution to production until they get the right deal — avoid our race-to-the-bottom.
Wal-Mart had to pull 88 big boxes out of Germany — could not compete paying the same wages and benefits.
Thank you for being the first person on this blog to actually repeat the words “sector wide labor agreements.” It is only the only logical approach to rebalancing our American labor market, it is tested for over half a century and in first, second (Argentina) and third worlds (Indonesia). It is more than frustrating to have the only workable way back ignored by Americas doctors of economics while I — cab driver — can figure it out. ???
ddrew2u
“thank you for being the first person on this blog to actually repeat the words “sector wide labor agreements.” to lyle who posted Yesterday, 8:15:47 PM PDT.
coberly repeated the words “sector wide labo agreements” Yesterday, 6:17:45 AM PDT
which might explain why i think no one actually understands what i say.
I owe you a dinner. Take food stamps? 🙂