Archive for August, 2010

Inside the Third Wave: Knowledge Workers as an Engine of Economic Growth

by Editors @ Tuesday, August 31st, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Education, High Road Economics

Where the Super-Brains Are

 
By Richard Florida

SolidarityEconomy.net via The Atlantic Monthly

Last Friday, my list of America's Brainiest Cities ran over at The Daily Beast. Boulder topped the list, which comprised a mix of larger knowledge-intensive metros like Washington, D.C., Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Austin, and Seattle, and college towns like Ithaca, Charlottesville, Madison, Iowa City, and Durham, North Carolina, among others.

The map above, prepared by Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute, shows the performance of all U.S. metros on our Brainiest Metros Index developed with my colleague Charlotta Mellander. The index is based on three variables:

  • The share of adults 25 years of age and older with a PhD, master's, or professional degree (from the U.S. Census American Community Survey).
  • Computer scientists and mathematicians as a share of all employment.
  • Scientists (physical, biological, social) as a share of total metro employment (both from Bureau of Labor Statistics).

The Index weights all three variables equally and covers 339 U.S. metro regions.

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China’s Audacity in Paying Attention to the Toffler’s Three Waves

by Editors @ Sunday, August 29th, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics, New Left

China 2020: Double and Quadruple Happiness

by Frank Feather

SolidarityEconomy.net via Toffler Associates

Introduction

Frank Feather is a business futurist, with a remarkably accurate 30-year forecasting track record that often defies conventional wisdom. He is ranked as one of the “Top 100 Futurists of All Time” by Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of the Future. A best-selling author and dynamic keynote speaker, Feather was born in the UK but is now based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has consulted to companies including Ericsson, IBM, Ford, Nokia, and Shell. Continuously since 1984 he has been special adviser to China on economic modernization and market reforms, and he has seen many of his ideas implemented there. He previously worked for Barclays Bank, Toronto-Dominion Bank and CIBC.

Alvin Toffler

China’s Growth

China has a remarkable and unmatched 30-year track record of doubling and quadrupling its gross domestic product. In 1978, the country’s GDP was US$147 billion and falling, per capita income was only US$190 a year, and more than 250 million people were living in abject poverty. Adjusted for inflation, the country’s per capita output in 1977 was no higher than it had been in 1957.

Undaunted, China set itself some audacious goals. It aimed to quadruple its GDP between 1980 and 2000, something it had achieved by 1996. It then determined to double its output between 2000 and 2010. Again, the goal was achieved ahead of schedule. The country’s next goal is to quadruple GDP between 2000 and 2020 and to achieve “moderate prosperity.” China’s long-term 70-year goal, laid down in 1978, is to boost its per-capita GDP to that of medium-income countries by 2050, a goal which it will almost certainly surpass before the self-imposed deadline.

Wave-Like Economic Development

China’s overall economic strategy is simple. It is based on the “third wave” concept developed by the futurist Alvin Toffler in his book by the same title, published coincident with reforms in 1980. The book was translated into Chinese and read by every mainland Chinese politician and academic and “third wave” became part of the vocabulary. (more...)



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Why Not Add Another Weapon in Our Arsenal? Labor Veteran on Mondragon

by Editors @ Saturday, August 28th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Trade Unions

Why Can’t  American  Labor  Build

Its Own Cooperative ‘Mondragon’?

By Harry Kelber

SolidarityEconomy.net via Labor Talk

If you are looking for a model where  workers in a company are also the owners of what they produce, the finest example is the   Mondragon Corporation, a federation of  worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of northern Spain.


Founded in 1956 in the Basque town of Mondragon, the cooperative, now the largest in the world, has developed a new way to organize a company’s production that  is based on   workers’ rights and needs. It now has 40 enterprises employing 100,000 worker/owners,  manufacturing a large variety of products, from  washing machines to microchips,  from world-class bicycles to bullet trains, to building the titanium-covered Guggenheim  Museum in Bilboa, the Basque Country’s largest city.


The  Mondragon cooperatives  have developed a humanist concept of business, and a belief in worker participation and solidarity. There is no discrimination of any kind toward workers who are or become members.  In the General Assembly,  all workers take part in  policy decision, with each person having one vote.

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Solar Overtaking Coal Power As Less Expensive, Cleaner

by Editors @ Tuesday, August 24th, 2010. Filed under Environment, Green Industry

Breakthrough - Solar Now Cheaper than Coal

Their mission: to deliver cost-efficient solar electricity. The Nanosolar company was founded in 2002 and is working to build the world's largest solar cell factory in California and the world's largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. They have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt.

This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal. These coatings are as thin as a layer of paint and can transfer sunlight to power at amazing efficiency. Although the underlying technology has been around for years, Nanosolar has created the actual technology to manufacture and mass produce the solar sheets. The Nanosolar plant in San Jose, once in full production in 2008, will be capable of producing 430 megawatts per year. This is more than the combined total of every other solar manufacturer in the U.S.

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Ohio Solar: Build It, Flip the Switch and Let the Clean Power Flow

by Editors @ Sunday, August 22nd, 2010. Filed under Green Industry, High Road Economics

Largest Solar Field in Ohio is

Dedicated in Wyandot County,

Panels built in Perrysburg Twp.

Photo

The PSEG Wyandot Solar Farm north of Upper Sandusky has 159,200 solar panels and eight power stations housing transformers and other equipment. It is about 65 miles south of Toledo. ( SPECIAL TO THE BLADE/REBECCA CROSS )

 

By JULIE M. McKINNON
BLADE STAFF WRITER

UPPER SANDUSKY - In the same two Wyandot County-owned fields where crops once grew stands a $44 million solar farm that even on overcast days can produce power for 4,500 houses - an amount that doubles on sunny days.

And three-month-old PSEG Wyandot Solar Farm north of Upper Sandusky gives employees of First Solar Inc.'s factory in Perrysburg Township a chance to glimpse thin-film solar panels they build in action when visiting co-worker Dan Williamson of nearby McCutchenville.

"They just love seeing our end product, a working solar field," said Mr. Williamson, an eight-year First Solar veteran who works in maintenance.

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Getting Beyond Fossil Fuels: Europeans Going for Solar, Renewables

by Editors @ Friday, August 20th, 2010. Filed under Green Industry, High Road Economics
Solar panels at a plant in Freiberg, Germany. Germany is the world’s largest solar market
.
Europe’s Brisk Energy Transition
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

SolidarityEconomy.net via Bloomberg News

Europe’s evolution toward a heavier reliance on renewable energy is nicely documented in a report released this week by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency. The study, “Statistical Aspects of the Energy Economy in 2009,” provides a wealth of interesting detail without a lot of editorializing.

From 2008 to 2009 alone, the use of renewable energy in the European Union increased 8.3 percent. As I’ve reported as part of our continuing series, “Beyond Fossil Fuels,” some countries have made particularly great strides in this arena. Portugal now gets nearly 45 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, up from 17 percent five years ago.

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Shared Coops: Spreading and Controlling the Wealth at the Grassroots

by Editors @ Monday, August 16th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, High Road Economics, Organizing

A Different Kind of Ownership Society

Innovative strategies for cooperative local ownership

make it possible for prosperity to be shared as well as sustainable.

Wind turbines at dawn, photo by Brent Danley
Photo by Brent Danley.

By Marjorie Kelly and Shanna Ratner

solidarityeconomy.net via Yes! Magazine

Aug. 3 2010 - Drive across southern Minnesota near the city of Luverne, and you’ll see clusters of wind turbines poking up through the cornfields. Climb into one of these sleek, gleaming, white towers, and you’ll find sophisticated computer controls monitoring dozens of factors every moment (wind speed, pressure on the blades, and so on). Yet the way the turbines are funded and owned is just as innovative as the technology that runs them.

These wind developments were created by Minwind Energy, a limited liability company that is structured as a cooperative. Back when only corn was harvested in these fields, Minwind invited hundreds of local residents to make investments of $5,000 apiece, eventually raising $4 million to fund the turbines. In return, the residents became owners of the project—alongside the farmers on whose land the turbines stand.

With a policy that no individual can own more than 15 percent, the ownership design is aimed at spreading wealth widely and keeping it rooted locally. According to the Government Accountability Office, keeping a project like Minwind locally owned means that local communities get three times more economic benefit than if the project had absentee owners. Rather than flowing to Wall Street investors or major companies, the dollars generated by these wind farms will flow first through local communities, going to pay local workers, local investors, and local suppliers of all kinds. Wealth stays local.

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Oil’s Dirty Not-So-Little Secret: Why Electric Cars, Bicycles and High-Speed Rail Are Better and Cheaper

by Editors @ Saturday, August 14th, 2010. Filed under Economy, Environment

Gas Is Really Costing Us About $15 a Gallon

 

Calculating the true cost of

living in a country built on oil

 

By Mark Engler

TomDispatch.com

August 13, 2010  |  

This might be an opportune time to make a disclosure: I am a BP shareholder. Admittedly, I’ve never attended the company’s annual meeting, and if I did, I would have very little weight to throw around.

I own two shares of BP stock. I received my stake in the company as a Christmas gift in 1989, when I was 14 years old. The previous June, I had taken a "summer enrichment" course in the Des Moines public schools, designed as an introduction to the world of business. The teacher gave each of us in the class a modest hypothetical budget to invest in the stock market.

Earnest young capitalists, we made our picks and then followed the quotes in the morning paper. I invested heavily in Amoco and finished the summer feeling that my portfolio had done quite well. As a result, my younger brother decided that I should receive a real piece of the enterprise that was once John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. He conspired with my mom to get me an Amoco share for the holidays.

I’ve watched the oil industry as an interested party ever since. In 1998, my Amoco stock split, turning my one share into two. Then, a few months later, the company was acquired by BP. This "oil mega-merger," as the BBC called it, gave me a stake in yet another energy titan. It also allowed the combined corporation to shed 6,000 jobs, prompting its new chief executive, Sir John Browne of BP, to confidently assure the press that "he hoped the merger will increase pre-tax profits of the two partners by 'at least' two billion dollars by the end of 2000."

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Our Political Economy: Time To Hit the Re-Set Button

by Editors @ Friday, August 13th, 2010. Filed under High Road Economics, Politics & Elections

The Roadmap to a High-Speed Recovery

Forget a bigger stimulus or a smaller deficit

—we need to blow up the fundamentals of our economy.

By Richard Florida

Speaking at a health care reform rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, in July 2009, President Obama declared that the worst of the recession was over. “We have stopped the free-fall. The market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse,” he said proudly.

A year or so later, with midterm elections looming and an electorate that is as fearful and angry as any in memory, the stock market has risen, but even a breath of bad news can send it tumbling. As dismal as housing prices continue to be, they have yet to hit bottom in some places. Unemployment remains frozen at an overall level of nine-plus percent, and job creation has been anemic. If the crisis belonged to George W. Bush, the recovery has been Obama’s—and it has been a fragile and tentative one at best. Along with billions of dollars in stimulus payments, the president has spent down most of his political capital. So what is his next step?

That depends upon how serious Obama is about his legacy—whether he is looking to win votes for himself and his party in the short-term, or to lay the foundation for a durable new economic and social order that is only beginning to emerge but is required for sustained prosperity. The two goals are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they always compatible.

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US Looks Pitiful Next to China on High-Speed Rail

by Editors @ Tuesday, August 10th, 2010. Filed under Economy

China Developing 600 mph

Airless Maglev High-Speed Train

By Andrew Nusca

Aug. 9, 2010

High-speed rail just got a whole lot faster.

China is reportedly developing a high-speed train that will travel at 1,000 kilometers per hour, or approx. 621 miles per hour, through Maglev lines in airless tubes underground.

Researchers at the National Power Traction Laboratory of Southwest Jiaotong University reportedly toldBeijing-based Legal Evening News that they were working on a prototype “vactrain” with an average speed of 500 to 600 kilometers per hour (approx. 311 to 373 miles per hour.)

The researchers say the technology could be in use within a decade. In the meantime, a smaller model train may be introduced in two or three years, they said.

The technology at the heart of the train is Maglev, short for magnetic levitation, technology. A concept that’s been around for more than 100 years, Maglev tech entails the suspension of a train via powerful magnets to remove the friction present at the rails of conventional trains.

The catch with maglev technology is that there’s still friction from the air rushing past the train as it hurtles down the tracks. To date, the fastest Maglev train managed about 361 miles per hour — not much faster than a conventional high-speed train.

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Worker Coops Are Growing as a Survival Tool for Tough Times

by Editors @ Tuesday, August 10th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Organizing

Worker-Owned Cooperatives:

The Work We Do is the Solution

From grocery stores and bakeries to bike shops and day care centers, worker-owned cooperatives are gaining popularity across the country. Unlike the profit-at-any-cost capitalist model, co-ops put people and the community first, and are democratically run and collectively-owned, allowing all workers to participate and benefit equally.

According to Go.Coop, "more often than you probably realize, co-ops play a vital part of your everyday life." More than 47,000 co-ops in the U.S. serve 130 million people or 43 percent of the population. There are more than 3,000 farmer-owned cooperatives in the U.S. Almost 10,000 credit unions provide financial services to approximately 84 million members. Nearly 1,000 rural electric co-ops operate more than half of the nation's electric distribution lines and provide electricity to more than 37 million people. Food co-ops have been innovators in the areas of unit pricing, consumer protection, organic and bulk foods, and nutritional labeling. More than 50,000 families in the U.S. use cooperative day care centers, giving co-ops a crucial role in the care of children.

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Eating Meat vs. Soup: China, I-Pods and the Value-Chain of the Future

by Editors @ Sunday, August 8th, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics

Why Can't China Climb Up the Value Chain?

I-Pod Assembly line in China

August 05, 2010

By Liang Jun

People's Daily Online

China is to a large extent at the bottom of the value chain. Though its high GDP and export figures have aroused world envy, it is the huge multinational corporations like Apple and Toshiba that make more handsome profits.
A U.S. market research firm deconstructed an Apple iPod and studied the manufacturers, costs and profits of each of the parts and components. The final results show that for every 299 U.S. dollars made from the sale of an iPod sold in the United States, Apple makes 80 U.S. dollars, the costs of distribution and retail sales stand at 75 U.S. dollars and the other costs altogether total 144 U.S. dollars.


Out of the 144 U.S. dollars costs, for hard disk and display screen alone, added value of Japanese enterprises reached 93.39 U.S. dollars, with Toshiba accounting for the major part. The other costs include the fees of parts and components made by enterprises of the United States, Japan and South Korea as well as patent fees.
But China, which was actually responsible for the assembly of this iPod, earns a few dollars through processing.
Recently, most Chinese people felt proud upon hearing reports that China may have overtaken Japan as the world's second largest economy. But if we carefully analyze the figures of GDP and trade, we will find China is to a large extent at the bottom of the value chain.


We do not intend to inspire the public's anger toward companies like Apple and Toshiba, but a rational reader should reflect on why Apple had the lion's share of the big cake created by the iPod, while China only got the crumbs. In the context of globalization, there is no conspiracy of imperialism and no coercion of vessels and cannons. However, it is differences of status among countries in the international division of labor that cause the placement along the value chain.


In other words, Apple and Toshiba "eat meat" because they have the core technology, design and brands. We have to "eat soup," because we provide only cheap labor in the entire value chain.


Sure enough, "eating soup" is a kind of progress. Before China carried out reforms in 1978 and became the "world factory," we were isolated from the international division of labor and could not eat soup some times. Even now, many developing countries could not eat soup because they have no advantages like China in costs, size, efficiency and infrastructure.


But for China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion, which may have become the "world's second largest economy," eating soup is obviously not our ultimate goal. That's why we have to restructure and transform growth in the context of globalization. China must have its own ability to innovate, core technology and world-renowned fist-class brands.



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There’s a Lesson Here: Union Workers, New Skills and a Green Energy Future

by Editors @ Sunday, August 8th, 2010. Filed under Economy, Education, Trade Unions

The Power of One: Tracy Hall

Brings Renewable Energy

to Northwest Indiana


By Andrea Buffa
Apollo News Service 

 

July 22, 2010 - Tracy Hall of Munster, Indiana has been an electrician for 30 years. He is among the thousands of construction trades workers hit by the current recession, who have seen unemployment in the trades rise to almost 25 percent nationally. But Hall hasn’t had time to sit around getting depressed about the state of the economy. Instead, he’s spent the time when work has been scarce developing a new expertise. As the only union worker in Indiana who is certified as a solar photovoltaic installer by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, and a LEED Accredited Professional by the U.S. Green Building Council, he has become one of Northwest Indiana’s most knowledgeable renewable energy technicians.

(more...)

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Good News, Bad News Dept: Growing Numbers Favoring Socialism

by Editors @ Sunday, August 1st, 2010. Filed under Socialism, The Right

[Note from CarlD: Of course, Fox News notwithstanding, we socialists know very well that the current measures from the top have little to do with a workable socialism for the 21st century, or even a full-throated social democracy, and are more in tune with the cartoon below. Still, it's heartening to know, even with the limitations of this kind of polling, that the outer limits of those open to our militant minority is 30 percent, and even higher in key demographics. For those who are interested in studying what could be a 21st century socialism, I highly recommend David Schweickart's 'After Capitalism,' not to be confused with his longer and more technical 'Against Capitalism.' If you just want to see and hear him speak on the topic, just search on his name in YouTube. There's some older debates, plus a new 10-part series from a long talk by him given in Sweden, but in English.]


Seven in ten Americans think US transition

from capitalism to socialism bad move

 

2010-08-01 - About 7 in 10 American voters (69 percent) think that a transition from capitalism to socialism in United States would be a bad thing, according to a Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics Corporation poll.

Eighty-eight percent Republicans with household incomes of 100,000 dollars or more and 70 percent of those aged 55 and over are among those most likely to think it would be a bad move.

Smaller majorities of those living in lower-income households (59 percent), young people (57 percent), as well as just under half of Democrats (49 percent) agree.

34-56 percent voters think that the country is currently moving away from capitalism to socialism. Far fewer voters, however, approve.

Less than one in five voters (18 percent) think that it would be a good thing for the country to move away from capitalism and toward socialism.

Twenty eight percent of voters whose household incomes are under 30,000 dollars favour this option. Thirty one percent of them who are under thirty years and 32 percent Democrats approve this change. (ANI)



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