Haunting the Web Since 1999
A Prelude to WALL-E: In The Atlantic, Derek Thompson looks at the coming robotic takeover of the job market, whereby 47% of jobs could soon be automated. I for one welcome our new robot overlords — all the more reason why we need to start rethinking a social contract founded primarily on having full-time, two-income employment. We’re entering a new phase of human existence — we’d best start preparing for it. (Bionic man image via here.)
Ex-Grayson staffer (and friend) Matt Stoller dissects the lack of political will for infrastructure reinvestment in today’s political climate. “Ultimately, of course, we will have no choice but to rebuild our infrastructure or risk social collapse…Meanwhile, the ideological fight is not over whether to spend more on infrastructure. It’s whether we should privatize what’s left.“
Proving Matt’s point is this thoroughly sad column by ex-Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, a man who until very recently was a senior advisor to the president. (Now, he works for a “private investment firm,” natch.). Says Klain: “Hoover Dam nostalgia is misguided…[I]t’s time to let go of the idea that a handful of marquee construction projects, even majestic and lasting ones, can solve our employment problem. Such endeavors alone didn’t bring us out of the Depression in the 1930s, and they won’t end our current predicament.“
Uh, is anyone actually saying that we should only do “a handful of marquee construction projects“? No, no, they’re not. They’re saying we should build big things, build small things, rebuild and repair things big and small, and otherwise put people back to work in any way possible. Where’s the vision? It’s going to take something a mite bigger and more audacious to get the economy moving again than an employer-side payroll tax cut.
“The outlook isn’t sunshine and roses: Rick Raymond, of the College Parents of America, notes, ‘Graduates are not the first to be hired when the job markets begins to improve. We’re seeing shocking numbers of people with undergraduates degrees who can’t get work.'”
According to a new poll conducted by Twentysomething, a whopping 85% of college grads are moving back in with their parents after graduation. They’re also facing the worst job market on record and holding a record amount of college debt.
In other words, it’s crisis time. Should we ramp up government spending and fashion 21st-century versions of jobs programs like the CCC, WPA, and NYA? Or should we cut public sector jobs and just concentrate on lowering corporate taxes? hey, Win the Future™ and all that.
In very related news, see also NYT columnist William Cohan on the same subject yesterday: “Not only did the government’s theory fail in practice — unemployment remains relentlessly and historically high and American businesses seem intent on hoarding, rather than spending, the $2 trillion in cash on their collective balance sheets — but it also lost a once-in-a-century opportunity to change the mores of a momentarily chastened Wall Street, which remains badly in need of substantive reform. This is more than a shame; it is prima facie evidence of how deep Wall Street’s hooks have been — and continue to be — into the powers that be in Washington (and vice versa).“
“In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.“
In related news, Nick Kristof offers a modest proposal for fixing education in America: pay teachers more. “When governors mock teachers as lazy, avaricious incompetents, they demean the profession and make it harder to attract the best and brightest. We should be elevating teachers, not throwing darts at them.“
“What is at stake in the long run? Two things, mainly, in my view. First, it seems to me that we as progressives need to make an honorable defense of the great legacies of the New Deal and Great Society — programs and institutions that brought America out of the Great Depression and bought us through the Second World War, brought us to our period of greatest prosperity, and the greatest advances in social justice. Social Security, Medicare, housing finance — the front-line right now is the foreclosure crisis, the crisis, I should say, of foreclosure fraud — the progressive tax code, anti-poverty policy, public investment, public safety, and human and civil rights. We are going to lose these battles- get used to it. But we need to make an honorable fight, to state clearly what our principles are and to lay down a record which is trustworthy for the future.“
In a hard-hitting address to the Americans for Democratic Action from last November, economist Jamie Galbraith puts the current situation of progressivism in perspective. His steely resignation may sound fatalistic, but it’s hard not to feel thus these days. “Recovery begins with realism and there is nothing to be gained by kidding ourselves…We need to lose our fear, our hesitation, and our unwillingness to face the facts. If we thereby lose some of our hopes, let’s remember the dictum of William of Orange that ‘it is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.’“
As you no doubt know by now, and like his White House correspondent’s dinner speech in 2006, the inimitable Stephen Colbert came to the Hill on Friday to deliver his expert testimony on the plight of migrant workers, a topic the media would otherwise have completely ignored in favor of whatever crazy thing Sarah Palin tweeted today.
For those making the ridiculous argument that Congress was horribly besmirched by Colbert’s satirical testimony, I have two words: Twain and Elmo. For everyone else, it was very funny and, as per Colbert’s usual m.o., spoke truthiness to power. “[I]t just stands to reason, to me, that if your coworker can’t be exploited, then you’re less likely to be exploited yourself. And that, itself, might improve pay and working conditions on these farms, and eventually, Americans may consider taking these jobs again.”
“‘You want to pull your hair out, you want to scream, you want to shout,’ said Stephanie Jones, 32, of Hyattsville, who lamented that she is only ‘killing trees’ with her 75 federal job applications over the past three years. David T. Ellwood, dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, describes it as a ’19th-century hiring system’ in which applications disappear into a ‘black hole.’ The process, ‘even at the best of times,” he added, “can take nine months or a year.’“
In a much-needed and long overdue move for anyone who’s ever used USAJobs.gov, the Obama administration moves to revamp and streamline the federal hiring process. “Although some government managers may like the current process because it weeds out certain applicants, calls for a hiring overhaul have come from across the spectrum, including unions, good-government groups, Democrats and Republicans.”