Shake Up at the Musicians' Union

The sitting president of the national musicians' union just lost re-election. As anyone familiar with unions knows, this is unusual. It's a symptom of years of declining membership due to issues familiar with any union, as well as the larger problem of a dwindling live music scene. This has lead to factionalization, and less unity, as too often happens with workers during crisis.

Generally speaking, a lower financial reward means less time for people to devote to the craft. You have to go out and make a 'real living'. In other words, quality and creativity declines. After all, it is somewhat dangerous to be a starving artist in the United States; you're one accident away from bankruptcy or homelessness.

Ray Hair, president of AFM Local 72-147 in Dallas, Texas has won the election for President of the American Federation of Musicians over incumbent Tom Lee. Lee conceded the election this evening in Las Vegas at the AFM Convention. Hair was supported by groups including recording musicians who had opposed many of Lee’s proposals to make AFM recording more competitive including buyout videogame recording contracts....
One of the challenges Hair faces is balancing the interests of competing groups within the AFM. A union made up primarily of part-time musicians, the AFM also covers film and television recording and symphonic work. RMA recording musicians have made no secret of their concerns that the AFM is not looking out after their best interests, with Lee attempting to balance the needs of established full-time recording musicians against those recording musicians who have lost work due to recording work being outsourced to buyout locations including Seattle, London, and eastern Europe. The advent of real-time recording links to studios around the world via the Internet has created an even more competitive environment.(1)

1'Ray Hair Elected President of AFM at Vegas Convention' - Film Music Magazine

Stealing Skilled Labor from the Developing World Does Not Constitute a Growth Policy

The United States and other Anglo countries are adept at assimilation, and capable of being the giant sucking sound for skilled labor from the developing world. But contrary to many mainstream American economists views, draining skilled labor from the developing world does not constitute a growth policy. It acts as an outsourcing of the United States education system to countries that are much poorer, have less resources, and need skilled labor much more. It acts as a pressure release against increased funding and improvements in our own public education system. While it may be good for selected individuals, and certainly for business owners, as a net sum gain it is zero or less than zero. It limits the potential of Americans within the public education system, and enserfs developing countries to remittances and a subservient relationship with the developed world.

Road Tripping 2010

I am in the middle of a cross country road trip, my first in over a decade. While the scenery changes are interesting, the experience as a whole seems much less so than before. The U.S. has become very much homogenized into a series of fast food chain restaurants offering their fare of sodium and weight gain. In the same way, our regional differences and personalities seem to be smoothed over by a wash of commercialization. There is less in the way of idiosyncrasies and regional characters. I guess they are all dying off. True, one does not want any Easy Rider moments, but the country is developing a certain blandness to it.

Solar Power Grants

The government is handing out nearly $2 billion for new solar plants that President Barack Obama says will create thousands of jobs and increase the use of renewable energy sources.

Obama announced the initiative in his weekly radio and online address Saturday, saying the money is part of his plan to bring new industries to the U.S.

"We're going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America," Obama said.

In reality this is far too little. Private capital is sitting on the sidelines in the trillions . If the holders of private capital can't find a way to invest it - beyond swapping paper - then it should be taxed, seized, or borrowed at 1% interest through bonds, and used for infrastructure, education, and future growth industries.

This will necessarily have to be the future of all so-called advanced economies or they will be riddled with weak demand and high unemployment for perpetuity. We have over capacity in mature industries worldwide, and unprofitable technologies in growth industries, both of which discourage investment from private capital. Thus, the swapping of paper.

The establishment of public banks , perhaps with money created by the Federal Reserve, would also be nice. If Chase and Jamie Dimon can access it, why can't we ?

Back to the initial point: 2 billion is weak, pathetic, and window dressing.

1'Obama awards $2B for solar power, hails new jobs' - AP; Pace

Arnold the Brave

California GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday cut the pay of most of the state’s workers to minimum wage – $7.25 an hour – for the month of July.

It takes a real tough guy to kick the worker. Anything so that Arnold can continue go to nice banquets with California's billionaires.

The ruling class will be wistfully recalling a strong left that once pushed for a restoration of purchasing power to the middle/working class. You can't run a modern economy on yacht manufacturing and asset souffles. No wealth redistribution, no recovery. No recovery, then war.

1'Calif. employees cut to minimum wage' - Politico; Barr

Wage Arbitrage Within China

Foxconn is preparing to relocate its main production facilities from Shenzhen to north China in an effort to tap cheaper labor in the region, with the transition now in the final stages, according to reports.(1)

I spent far too much time with a group of boarding school liberals a summer ago. Their chief geo-economic insight (besides Bush/evil : Obama/great) generally centered on the idea that American workers were lazy, or lazy and fat. And China was the 'new boss' because of this.

The psychological fear, or affliction, of being terrorized by a new non-American boss is most definitely the concern of a very narrow group of pseudo-academics and meritocrats whose job rests on the dominance of the American ruling class. Courtiers to the king. For the rest of us, a boss is a boss.

But I wonder, would these same scolds now proclaim that some Chinese, those around Shenzhen, have also gotten fat and lazy ? Or maybe something a bit deeper is going on.

1'Foxconn preparing to shift main production to north China'- Marketwatch

Renting Whites in China

(CNN) -- In China, white people can be rented.

For a day, a weekend, a week, up to even a month or two, Chinese companies are willing to pay high prices for fair-faced foreigners to join them as fake employees or business partners...

And it is, essentially, all about the age-old Chinese concept of face. To have a few foreigners hanging around means a company has prestige, money and the increasingly crucial connections -- real or not -- to businesses abroad.

"Face, we say in China, is more important than life itself," said Zhang Haihua, author of "Think Like Chinese." "Because Western countries are so developed, people think they are more well off, so people think that if a company can hire foreigners, it must have a lot of money and have very important connections overseas. So when they really want to impress someone, they may roll out a foreigner."(1)

Most of Asia definitely has a love affair with whiteness and fair skin. One non-verbal way to distinguish an Asian-American woman from an Asian-born women is that Asian-born women (with money) typically lighten their skin with various types of products. Asian-American women are darker and just leave their skin tone natural. (Or as the proverbial Asian-born grandma might say "Too Dark".)

Discrimination by skin color is mostly an open fact of life in Asia, most definitely extending to opportunity and employment. This is in contrast to discrimination in the West, which exists, but which is more strongly dealt with through legislation and litigation. If the large peasant and working classes of Asia continue to see their incomes rise, and confidence gain, these and other rather backward social customs will face challenge. Strikes in China , turmoil in Thailand - these are probably just very small tips of a larger iceberg of political movement that will occur in the region over the next generation. And if developing Asia is too replace the U.S. as the consumer of last resort, it will need to occur. Economic gains must be equaled by political and social gains eventually. Capitalism and Freedom - though it should be underlined that this freedom broadens only outside the realm of control of capital and the means of production.

1'Chinese companies 'rent' white foreigners' - CNN

Amateurs versus Technocrats

Much ink has been spilt over a recent whine by a PhD economist at the Federal Reserve bank of Richmond. The crux of the whine is that he has a PhD, and people who don't are ignorant about economics.

Being in the working music field and holding advanced degrees in the subject, I have seen many sides to this debate, at least in music. Basically it should boil down to what a person does, says - and how they play - not what degree they hold. There is way too much emphasis on degrees as a measure of status in the U.S. at the moment, probably a function of our increasing class-based social stratification.

At any rate, a person with an advanced degree in music is quite used to be challenged by very well-informed amateurs on all fronts, from interpretation to history to what is 'good' and what is 'bad', even up to playing ability in some cases. It seems this is less true for other fields.

Microchip Implants Will Improve Productivity and Increase Safety

From a blog in 2030:

"Why don't government workers have microchip implants ? We need a chip for a job in the private sector... yet another case of favoritism for lazy bureaucrats."

"To improve the productivity of school teachers, they should be REQUIRED to have microchip implants. If they are not being responsible at home, not getting enough sleep or staying out late - IT IS HURTING THE CHILDREN !!!"

"Only irresponsible parents fail to implant microchips in their children at birth. The ability to track one's child in a dangerous world is sure to lighten the already heavy load of parenting."

A possible newspaper Editorial:

"Microchip implants are a reasonable solution to the problem of poor worker performance. With a harmless and painless application, workers can be assured that their peers are playing by the same rules as they are. Unions who resist this push towards increased productivity are only doing their own membership a disservice in an increasingly competitive world."
--
1'Microchip implant (animal)' - Wikipedia

Libraries Are Becoming Madhouses

I was hoping for an afternoon of intense quiet research, but it was impossible. Headphones at volumes loud enough for the room to dance to. Babies screaming up and down the aisles. A guy with his socks and shoes off, feet up on one of the tables. A tutor bellowing instructions. Phones ringing non-stop and conversations attended to at important volumes.

Either I'm getting old and cranky, or...

The Asian Wealthy

The wealth of rich Asians has surpassed Europe's millionaires for the first time as the region's stock and property prices rebounded from the global recession, a report showed Wednesday.(1)

Absent war of one type or another, expect to see Asia's wealthy also surpass North America's in due time. Wealth is primarily built in domestic markets. However, will it matter ? Most of the world's population lives in Asia, most of the wealthy should live there, but it is still a region of deep poverty. India's per capita GDP-PPP is an example, clocking in behind Iraq according to the IMF. Because of the internal poverty, India and China will never be able to project force the way Western powers can. And they will always have problems with 'brain drain', as well.

I expect the international political fault lines to remain very much as they are for quite some time, the only wild card being if there is not room at 'the top' to accommodate a burgeoning ruling class in Asia (how much larger can the G-20 get ?). In that case, things could get nasty very quickly.

1'Asia's wealthy surpass Europe's for first time' - AP

Fire McChrystal

Civilian authority of the military is a core principle of any democratic state, even one as compromised as the United States. The last thing we need is some of the sociopathic thugs in the leadership of the armed forces deciding they know what is best.