I've argued against the "union-busting" that Gov. Walker and the Tea Party movement pushed through in Wisconsin. My problem was that the legislation was not broad enough. Not just unions should be targeted. Executives and CEOs should be too. If there is a pay-cut in government or in a company, it should be across the board, with executives leading the way.
Walker may not have "won" in the long run but he had a point.
The point that he had is the need to enable companies to reduce salaries/wages when the company/economy is going downhill.
I think this might be done by enacting a law that permits companies to make across the board cuts in the pay of all employees, including all executives and board members, despite any contracts to the contrary, when the profitability of the company has gone down to zero.
Some years ago, I started thinking about a new way of paying employees. A base wage that eould not change, with bonuses for individual productivity, for team productivity, and in relation to the profitability of the company. Pay by formula. When hard times strike, employee pay is automaticaly reduced. The employee has to tighten his or her belt, but still has a job.
More of that would end the need for unemployment compensation.
As it is, employment/unemployment and compensation is very unfair. Production line employees get laid off when misfortunes hit. Engineers get laid-off with a nice nest egg in severance pay. And too often, the CEO gets a bonus or a new CEO is hired for a record amount. This is crazy. These companies are run with a total disregard to employee loyalty, and a blatant in-your-face statement about the differences between executives and line employees. There can be no loyalty in such a company. No teamwork.
You have to treat everybody alike or at least similarly. Except that cuts should be higher in the executive suite.
I've never believed in lay-offs. Permanent employees ought to be ... permanent. Not seasonal like migrant farm workers. Not as a pool that can be discarded or picked up as needed. But being permanent means too that they share in the fortunes and misfortunes of the company. That pay cuts occur immediately and automatically, according to an objective formula. It means employees have to realize that income will vary, that there are no automatic raises or cost-of-living increases.
Which brings up the unemployment picture.
With the 2012 election coming, some are saying that something has to be done about unemployment, that it is a problem that must be fixed. That someone in charge, like the president, needs to wave a magic wand and cure things. To a large extent they are wrong, pandering to misinformed popular opinion.
Many of those jobs lost will not be replaced. The companies that survived are leaner and meaner, doing more now with fewer employees. Less deadwood, fewer chair warmers and middle managers, more automation. Those jobs will not be coming back.
Then too, some companies and industries are gone.
Jobs continue to be exported. There is one area where the president and Congress can try to make a difference, by providing incentives for American companies to stay in America and disincentives (penalties) for leaving. Lower corporate taxes, for example, with high penalties for companies that attempt to fictionally move elsewhere.
International business competition is becoming a more level playing field. More competition from China, India and Brazil means some U.S. companies will be losing market share or going out of business, a trend that has existed for 50 years and will continue. In the very long run, Americans will be no more wealthy than folks in half the nations of the world. This is a statistical principle called "regression to the mean."
More and more, U.S. income and lifestyle will regress to the mean of the world as a whole. That is unavoidable.
All of which means that a lot of the unemployed will not be getting an equivalent of their old job back. They are going to have to settle for retraining, for a less expensive way of living. To find new goals and interests. There are no magic wands.
Any politician who doesn't tell us this is lying through his/her teeth.
Copyright 2011 by El Alacran and The Refracted Image
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Giffords and Thoughts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/12/gabrielle-giffords-photos_n_875498.html?icid=main%7Chtmlws-sb-n%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C215783
When you harm another being, you take a great deal onto yourself.
If you harm but do not kill, them you have to live with your responsibility for what the life of that being has become. This applies to Congressman Giffords, to those who were paralyzed or who have brain damage from an auto collision, and to deer wounded by a careless hunter.
When I was a sripling, I was very aggressive and as soon as I learned to make what we called a "negro-shooter" out of a forked stick and rubber bands, I started shooting at birds. Which did not make my grandfather, who taight me how to make such a weapon, very happy. Especially when I shot at and injured a bird. Then again, at Lake Colorado City, I threw a rock at a lizard and hit it, injuring its leg. Each trip back there, my mother or grandfather would remind me of what I had done and would point out the gimpy lizard. It's a lesson that most of us learn. Never well enough to stop us from doing harm carelessly.
Where this is seen most often is driving, where a vehicle hits another vehicle, pedestrian, or cyclist. Especially the later two, where brain and/or spinal cord damage occurs so easily.
The prescription is the same. We just have to think about what we are doing, always.
When you harm another being, you take a great deal onto yourself.
If you harm but do not kill, them you have to live with your responsibility for what the life of that being has become. This applies to Congressman Giffords, to those who were paralyzed or who have brain damage from an auto collision, and to deer wounded by a careless hunter.
When I was a sripling, I was very aggressive and as soon as I learned to make what we called a "negro-shooter" out of a forked stick and rubber bands, I started shooting at birds. Which did not make my grandfather, who taight me how to make such a weapon, very happy. Especially when I shot at and injured a bird. Then again, at Lake Colorado City, I threw a rock at a lizard and hit it, injuring its leg. Each trip back there, my mother or grandfather would remind me of what I had done and would point out the gimpy lizard. It's a lesson that most of us learn. Never well enough to stop us from doing harm carelessly.
Where this is seen most often is driving, where a vehicle hits another vehicle, pedestrian, or cyclist. Especially the later two, where brain and/or spinal cord damage occurs so easily.
The prescription is the same. We just have to think about what we are doing, always.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
If you are caught with your pants down, go into therapy
That's the Woods' fix, and the aptly named Weiner's too. I admire Schwartzenegger for not going that route for shrugging off blame, so far and not publicly, anyway.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Libya
Barack is acting like a g.d. Bush neocon, trying to remake the world in neocon fashion and attempting it on the sly.
Problem is this. What IS, is for reasons. If Saddam is in charge in Iraq or Mohammar in Libya, there are reasons behind that, a whole culture behind that. You don't just haul off and remove the top man and some generals and ministers and everything suddenly falls into place for an America-lovin' democracy. Don't work that way. If you are in the game in order to effect regime change then you are intimately embracing the tar baby and lobbing bombs around like a high-tech coward is not worth jack shit.
In the case of Libya, U.S. and western intervention was sold to the press and to the UN as the only way to protect lives. But at a certain point, when it comes to lives lost the toll behind our bombing and killing Libyans and the overall casuualty toll for extending the rebellion outnumbers the lives that would be lost from Qadaffy's winning over the rebels.
And suppose Khadaffi is out and the rebels in, what does that mean? Peace and enlightenment and democracy? Probably not.
Problem is this. What IS, is for reasons. If Saddam is in charge in Iraq or Mohammar in Libya, there are reasons behind that, a whole culture behind that. You don't just haul off and remove the top man and some generals and ministers and everything suddenly falls into place for an America-lovin' democracy. Don't work that way. If you are in the game in order to effect regime change then you are intimately embracing the tar baby and lobbing bombs around like a high-tech coward is not worth jack shit.
In the case of Libya, U.S. and western intervention was sold to the press and to the UN as the only way to protect lives. But at a certain point, when it comes to lives lost the toll behind our bombing and killing Libyans and the overall casuualty toll for extending the rebellion outnumbers the lives that would be lost from Qadaffy's winning over the rebels.
And suppose Khadaffi is out and the rebels in, what does that mean? Peace and enlightenment and democracy? Probably not.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
"The Undefeated"
Sarah Palin? "The Undefeated"? Really? Didn't she turn tail and quit her job as governor? But that's not fair:: she didn't quit; she left a boring unpromising low-paying job as a public servant in order to become a highly paid media star on flextime. Which was where she was before entering politics, a TV presenter.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
On Knowledge, Faith, Argument, Education
As for religion, why should we draw lines and say, "This is a matter of fact, which can be argued with, but this other gets into faith which we ought not to argue with"? Business is supposed to be reality-based, science, the same. Why not religion? Why not faith?
Who was it that said "The unexamined life is not worth living"?
IMO we each ought to question every aspect of our (and other's) beliefs, not just once but periodically, like housecleaning. It ought to be a part of high school curriculum to question everything, values, mores, theories of government, of religion, nothing excepted. In h.s. government class, there needs to be a part where students criticize democracy, capitalism, any established shibboleth. In science, have a segment where students have free rein to criticize any scientific tenet.
I am not saying that classes can be disorderly and anarchic, but that there needs to be a time and place for everything. Some facts can only be learned by rote. Other concepts need to be discovered. Some subjects call for creativity while others don't. Sometimes debate is useful. At present, IMO, schooling blurs the lines, so you have kids responding to a fact question by exercising creativity or giving an opinion; the real purpose of education is to teach kids to know the difference and to clearly distinguish between what they know and what they think they know and what is uncertain or arguable.
It is common to grade a test so that getting 90% of the questions right means getting an "A". What grade do you give an airline pilot who gets 90% right? Dead? Probably.
And there are so many areas in which our problem is thinking we know when in fact we do not. True ignorance is not in not knowing, but in not knowing you are wrong.
The most important thing to get out of school is to know what one knows and what one does not know, and to be able to distinguish what is definite and knowable from what is unknown or a matter of opinion.
It is creationists who say that biology classes ought to let students question the validity of evolutionary theory. Well, okay, nothing wrong with questioning. But talk about teaching students to question religion and those creationists get all het up and say that is off limits. Why? Can't take what you try to dish out?
Who was it that said "The unexamined life is not worth living"?
IMO we each ought to question every aspect of our (and other's) beliefs, not just once but periodically, like housecleaning. It ought to be a part of high school curriculum to question everything, values, mores, theories of government, of religion, nothing excepted. In h.s. government class, there needs to be a part where students criticize democracy, capitalism, any established shibboleth. In science, have a segment where students have free rein to criticize any scientific tenet.
I am not saying that classes can be disorderly and anarchic, but that there needs to be a time and place for everything. Some facts can only be learned by rote. Other concepts need to be discovered. Some subjects call for creativity while others don't. Sometimes debate is useful. At present, IMO, schooling blurs the lines, so you have kids responding to a fact question by exercising creativity or giving an opinion; the real purpose of education is to teach kids to know the difference and to clearly distinguish between what they know and what they think they know and what is uncertain or arguable.
It is common to grade a test so that getting 90% of the questions right means getting an "A". What grade do you give an airline pilot who gets 90% right? Dead? Probably.
And there are so many areas in which our problem is thinking we know when in fact we do not. True ignorance is not in not knowing, but in not knowing you are wrong.
The most important thing to get out of school is to know what one knows and what one does not know, and to be able to distinguish what is definite and knowable from what is unknown or a matter of opinion.
It is creationists who say that biology classes ought to let students question the validity of evolutionary theory. Well, okay, nothing wrong with questioning. But talk about teaching students to question religion and those creationists get all het up and say that is off limits. Why? Can't take what you try to dish out?
Monday, May 9, 2011
Stosselpoopery
Stosselpoopery as in nincompoopery.
What ever happened to John Stossel? I hadn't heard about him for years since enjoying his segments on a TV program called 20/20.
A link posted in a forum took me to a blog he has over on Fox Business. From ABC to Fox. Quite a fall. Drugs? Alcohol? Depression? Loss of motivation? We may never know. And that blog confirms it: the clever and insightful John Stossel is no more. He has joined the brain-dead at Fox. The Zombie Network.
Here's the blog post I'm talking about: http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/04/25/where-did-all-anti-war-protestors-go
It never occurs to Stossel that those who protested over Afghanistan or Iraq trust Obama more than Bush to bring those occupations to an early conclusion. But there's more than that to what Stossel terms "the anti-war movement."
For me, I opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and of Iraq from the outset, especiually the Iraq invasion. Why? Was I "anti-war"? Not really. What I was was "anti-roll-over-and-play-fetch," which was the role the Bush administration and overwhelming political correctness tried to force Americans into back in 2002-2003. We were to be the good doggies, and Cheney-Bush the ones who had us on a leash.
Ever had a tenacious salesman in your living room, one who simply would not leave until you signed his contract? A really, really, hard sell? And what does that tell you about the product the salesman is selling? That was the Bush-Cheney administration before invading Iraq. Quite obvious at the time that there was something wrong with what they were pushing, or else they would not have been pushing so hard. Obvious that we were being conned by all the scare tactics relating to 9/11 and al Quaeda.
And most everybody went along, almost all the "liberal media," Oprah Winfrey who basically talked down someone who wanted to oppose the Iraq invasion on her TV show, even in the senate and house. To oppose invading Iraq was to be ... unAmerican. Only a handful of well-known people dared speak up. The story of the emperor's new clothes updated to 2003.
So, I was anti-invasion, not anti-war. I was anti-occupation later, because the occupation was so horribly mismanaged in the early years, politicized, with positions parceled out to the party faithful on the basis of their support, not on the basis of ability.
At the same time, I did not favor full military withdrawal. I mean, if you bomb a nation back to 1850, do you just go away and leave them to rebuild by themselves? Don't you have a duty to stay and lend a hand?
The Chinese say that if you save someone's life, then you are responsible for them. I say that if you destroy someone's house and kill members of their family, and discover it all was a mistake, then you have a heavy burden of responsibility and that you can't turn your back and go home and forget about it.
Back to Stossel. He does not see the nuances in opposition to Bushgressions and Cheneycasualties. He struggles to string together words to throw like scraps of raw meat to ravening Fox-readers. RIP John Stossel.
What ever happened to John Stossel? I hadn't heard about him for years since enjoying his segments on a TV program called 20/20.
A link posted in a forum took me to a blog he has over on Fox Business. From ABC to Fox. Quite a fall. Drugs? Alcohol? Depression? Loss of motivation? We may never know. And that blog confirms it: the clever and insightful John Stossel is no more. He has joined the brain-dead at Fox. The Zombie Network.
Here's the blog post I'm talking about: http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/04/25/where-did-all-anti-war-protestors-go
It never occurs to Stossel that those who protested over Afghanistan or Iraq trust Obama more than Bush to bring those occupations to an early conclusion. But there's more than that to what Stossel terms "the anti-war movement."
For me, I opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and of Iraq from the outset, especiually the Iraq invasion. Why? Was I "anti-war"? Not really. What I was was "anti-roll-over-and-play-fetch," which was the role the Bush administration and overwhelming political correctness tried to force Americans into back in 2002-2003. We were to be the good doggies, and Cheney-Bush the ones who had us on a leash.
Ever had a tenacious salesman in your living room, one who simply would not leave until you signed his contract? A really, really, hard sell? And what does that tell you about the product the salesman is selling? That was the Bush-Cheney administration before invading Iraq. Quite obvious at the time that there was something wrong with what they were pushing, or else they would not have been pushing so hard. Obvious that we were being conned by all the scare tactics relating to 9/11 and al Quaeda.
And most everybody went along, almost all the "liberal media," Oprah Winfrey who basically talked down someone who wanted to oppose the Iraq invasion on her TV show, even in the senate and house. To oppose invading Iraq was to be ... unAmerican. Only a handful of well-known people dared speak up. The story of the emperor's new clothes updated to 2003.
So, I was anti-invasion, not anti-war. I was anti-occupation later, because the occupation was so horribly mismanaged in the early years, politicized, with positions parceled out to the party faithful on the basis of their support, not on the basis of ability.
At the same time, I did not favor full military withdrawal. I mean, if you bomb a nation back to 1850, do you just go away and leave them to rebuild by themselves? Don't you have a duty to stay and lend a hand?
The Chinese say that if you save someone's life, then you are responsible for them. I say that if you destroy someone's house and kill members of their family, and discover it all was a mistake, then you have a heavy burden of responsibility and that you can't turn your back and go home and forget about it.
Back to Stossel. He does not see the nuances in opposition to Bushgressions and Cheneycasualties. He struggles to string together words to throw like scraps of raw meat to ravening Fox-readers. RIP John Stossel.
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