We started the year with FIVE

[Arab Nights (imported)]

A lot of the downsides are very true, but I have to toss a few benefits in here also.

There might not be telephone operators, but I remember having a huge stack of quarters to call my Swedish lust back about 1970. I think I got 12 minutes to make my case. Cigarettes were $0.50 a pack and a Playboy was $0.75 from memory. Now when away I talk with my family for free on chat or $0.025/minute. I literally have helped my daughter do a homework problem from 11 time zones away because the cost is insignificant.

There might not be all the people developing photos, but photos don't take two weeks and cost an arm and a testicle and two trips to the photo shop and then another trip if you want enlargements. Photos are now essentially free as is communication. I can send my family emails daily with photos attached on what my day was like. Anytime I find something interesting, my boss has an email that night with photos. I take photos all the time and am still astounded at capacity of electonics to store and send them.

There might not be draftsmen like before, but I can make a professional presentation of the results to date in some garden spot and have it available for the London market the next day.

And I can be in an unheated rock house in that garden spot at 4000 m. and watch the Braves loose another one or watch the other guy's favorite soccer team from England or South America.

There are benefits and I do wish there was an easy solution to the downsides. If you want to cause a lot of misery, make a worldwide minimum wage and then watch all the social churning as the world adjusts to that.

[Paolo]

You want social churning? Make a worldwide LIVING wage and see what happens.

Therein lies the problem - everyone wants everything for nothing, so therefore, the employees who produce it don't get paid worth a damn. Then, whatever profit the company does make, goes right into some CEO's pocket.

That's part of the outsource problem - a lot of people in countries like the USA insist on being paid when they go to work.

[Dave (imported)]

I feel like I'm in a world arguing for the horse whip and horse buggy to return.

I do not have to make my decisions based on YOUR defintion of a "nothing" industry. I know lots of people making a decent living in IT jobs and computer jobs. And I see lots of benefits to an electronic desk. I happen to have implemented a paperless system as my last job at work (before I retired).

And if the truth be told, I made more than a living wage - like 80K a year. Anyone can do that too if they work hard for 30 years and deliver what the boss wants on time and improving each year.

[Paolo]

Well, Dave, that's your opinion and I don't fault you for it.

We're all entitled to one.

I guess one benefit of the electronic disaster that is our current world is that we can easily share these opinions now, instead of buying paper and a stamp and having a mail carrier paid to deliver it.

I'm happy for you.

[jemagirl (imported)]

On a side note: I actually feel like I am in a world actually headed for a return to the horse whip and buggy, and it seems to be happening much faster than I ever expected.

[Arab Nights (imported)]

You want social churning? Make a worldwide LIVING wage and see what happens.

A huge part of the world has a living wage. You can tell because they have a surprising amount of money socked away and no debt. And then there are the countries that have discovered credit cards and now . . . well. Maybe we need a non-credit card living wage and a credit card living wage. Determined by a committee. But wait, our living wage includes a car and a home. Theirs doesn't. Let pay them to get into those things. Oh no, the demand for those has now pushed up the prices on all that stuff so now we have to raise what had been living wages here to maintain our living standard. Hell. I am going to go have a beer. This is too complicated for me to understand.

[coinflipper_21 (imported)]

I feel like I'm in a world arguing for the horse whip and horse buggy to return.

I do not have to make my decisions based on YOUR defintion of a "nothing" industry. I know lots of people making a decent living in IT jobs and computer jobs. And I see lots of benefits to an electronic desk. I happen to have implemented a paperless system as my last job at work (before I retired).

And if the truth be told, I made more than a living wage - like 80K a year. Anyone can do that too if they work hard for 30 years and deliver what the boss wants on time and improving each year.

No one wants the horse and buggy to return. Horses are and always were a smelly, inefficient, surprisingly hazardous, and expensive means of transportation. Getting horses off the streets and highways was probably the greatest advancement to public health in the 20th century.

And, I'm not saying that I want to give up easier and more efficient ways of communicating and doing work. Adopting new technologies has given American workers an unequaled rate of productivity. (Notwithstanding the fact that we also work longer hours than everyone else except, possibly, Japanese middle managers.) Everyone should adopt new technology whenever it shows a true benefit. People in the US are leaders in ADOPTING new technologies to the workplace and their personal lives. (Although, sometimes, it has to be recognized that in the right situation, handling paper IS the appropriate technology. ) The problem is that US developers were the leaders in CREATING new technologies, and I have seen that lead steadily slipping away to other countries by the combination of short sightedness on the part of corporate business and opportunities slipping away from our young people.

IT is not my definition of a "Nothing" industry. I happen to be the vice president of a software development firm. Of necessity I have had to manage projects where the design was done here and the detail programming and testing done overseas. It works, for the moment, but where are the next generation of designers and project managers going to come from? You can't teach these skills in school, only outline the technique. They have to be developed by doing the detail work, finding out what it really takes to develop the parts of a system and integrate them, and working up. Where are the people that are getting this experience now?

It's not just that I see us loosing our edge in IT. There are many things that could be done to manufacture the goods that we need here, cleanly and efficiently, but for the last 50 years corporations have taken the short term view that it is cheaper to contract manufacture overseas rather than develop "clean and green" ways of doing it here. We have to look to the long range goal of maintaining a our technological, financial, and political leadership position in the world as China, and India become real world powers and Japan shakes off it's post-WW2 pacifism. That is not as far off as most Americans think. Maybe the wake-up call will be something as simple as Toyota dethroning GM as the world's premier automobile producer. We'll see.

[Blaise (imported)]

In spite of my driving a Ford truck and my upbeat respect for unions, I really don't care if General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler endure or fail. The automobile industry itself does survive in America, but in plants owned by companies headquartered in other places. These are just not traditional American companies.

I recognize that these companies have held unions at bay by offering wages and benefits comparable to union shop benefits. They also often produce better products though American companies are finally manufacturing some quality products such as the Ford Focus and the Chevrolet Malibu

Unions need to become part of solutions, not barriers to innovation and customer satisfaction. The unions associated with Boeing had better change their ways of thinking. They are doing great harm to Boeing even though their members do have some important compliants. But this is only one of many factors we need to change in our thinking about economics.

[coinflipper_21 (imported)]

In spite of my driving a Ford truck and my upbeat respect for unions, I really don't care if General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler endure or fail. The automobile industry itself does survive in America, but in plants owned by companies headquartered in other places. These are just not traditional American companies.

I recognize that these companies have held unions at bay by offering wages and benefits comparable to union shop benefits. They also often produce better products though American companies are finally manufacturing some quality products such as the Ford Focus and the Chevrolet Malibu

Unions need to become part of solutions, not barriers to innovation and customer satisfaction. The unions associated with Boeing had better change their ways of thinking. They are doing great harm to Boeing even though their members do have some important compliants. But this is only one of many factors we need to change in our thinking about economics.

I have been a union man and I have worked for what was then the largest totally non-union organization in the world (IBM). From my experience, the unions for skilled workers that function as self-policing craft guilds, as well as worker representatives, have no trouble getting what they want from management. When management knows that if they want to get the job done right the first time, all they have to do is hire a union man (generic term, no sexism intended) they have no problem negotiating with unions over wages and benefits. They balk only when they can't see any difference between hiring a union man and Joe Blow off the street.

Unfortunately, this does not work in all situations since there are some unionized jobs that do not lend themselves to union quality control. Many union leaders cannot bring themselves to perform the unpopular action of exercising quality control over their own members. (That would mean kicking an under performing member out of the union, and loosing their dues.) Of course, there is also company management that can be totally unreasonable.

There was one aircraft company that had no labor problems for years since they offered their workers better benefits and wages than the unions got anywhere else. They even provided a stage an microphones in their lunch areas for the use of union organizers. It gave their workers a good laugh. This didn't last, however, because of merger. Now they have to deal with the UAW and Machinists just like everyone else.

[Paolo]

They used to have a thing called "import tariffs" that kept foreign made goods in line...

A nice healthy tariff, of, oh, say $100 per item on anything made in China would be good for starters.