Archive for the 'Unemployment' Category

Note to Obama: Apple Products—and Any Others for that Matter–Will Be Built in the U.S. when U.S. Workers Own and Run the Factories that Build Them

by Editors @ Monday, January 23rd, 2012. Tags: , , , ,
Filed under China, Economic Democracy, Globalization, Socialism, Unemployment, Youth

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER
SolidarityEconomy.net via New York Times

Jan. 21, 2012 - When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

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Taking on the Military Keynesians

by Editors @ Sunday, November 27th, 2011. Filed under Economy, High Road Economics, Marxism, Unemployment, militarism

War: The Wrong Jobs Program

By Mark Engler
SolidarityEconomy.net via Foreign Policy in Focus

More than 40 years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama, before the collapse of Bear Stearns, and before contemporary debates about bailouts and debt ceilings, two authors, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, considered a tricky problem. In times of downturn, the government must spend to stimulate the economy. Yet getting the political establishment to agree on one particular program of spending seemed nearly impossible.

Baran and Sweezy phrased the conundrum as a question: "On what could the government spend enough to keep the system from sinking into the mire of stagnation?"

After assessing the political realities that steer America's power elite, they could find only one response. It was not what typically comes to mind when we think of economic stimulus or government-led job creation.

Their answer: "On arms, more arms, and ever more arms."

The authors did not approve of military spending as a strategy of economic development.

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Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy Boston:

by Editors @ Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011. Filed under Economic Democracy, Global Justice, Organizing, Unemployment, Youth

If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, the

Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow

By Noam Chomsky
SolidarityEconomy.net via AlterNet.org

Nov 1, 2011 - It's a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way, something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the groundwork. It would have been the fulfillment of a dream for him to be here with you.

The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it's spectacular. It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead -- because victories don't come quickly-- this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American history.

The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development -- even in dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectation that it's going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s, although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that we're going to get out of it, even among unemployed people. It'll get better. There was a militant labor movement organizing, CIO was organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we're going to get out of it.

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‘Obama’s a Cool President, But…’

by Editors @ Tuesday, October 11th, 2011. Filed under Financial Crisis, Organizing, Unemployment, Wall Street, Youth

Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Are Fed Up With Both Parties

SolidarityEconomy.net via AP

NEW YORK, Oct 6 2011 -- Their chief target is Wall Street, but many of the demonstrators in New York and across the U.S. also are thoroughly disgusted with Washington, blaming politicians of both major parties for policies they say protect corporate America at the expense of the middle class.

"At this point I don't see any difference between George Bush and Obama. The middle class is a lot worse than when Obama was elected," said John Penley, an unemployed legal worker from Brooklyn.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last month with a small number of young people pitching a tent in front of the New York Stock Exchange, has expanded nationally and drawn a wide variety of activists, including union members and laid-off workers. Demonstrators marched Thursday in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and Anchorage, Alaska, carrying signs with slogans such as "Get money out of politics" and "I can't afford a lobbyist."

The protests are in some ways the liberal flip side of the tea party movement, which was launched in 2009 in a populist reaction against the bank and auto bailouts and the $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

But while tea party activists eventually became a crucial part of the Republican coalition, the Occupy Wall Street protesters are cutting President Barack Obama little slack. They say Obama failed to crack down on the banks after the 2008 mortgage meltdown and financial crisis.

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Why Not Here? Brit ‘High Road’ Capitalist Exposes Why Wall St Neoliberals Are Deadbeats in Creating Real Wealth

by Editors @ Wednesday, September 21st, 2011. Filed under Green Industry, High Road Economics, Unemployment, Urban Problems

Richard Branson's 'Carbon War Room' Picks

Sacramento, Miami for Green Jobs Projects

By Dale Kasler and Rick Daysog
SolidarityEconomy.net via The Sacramento Bee

Sept 21, 2011 - A high-powered investment coalition assembled by Richard Branson, the eccentric British billionaire, is offering Sacramento a shot at hundreds of jobs through a $100 million energy-efficiency program.

Sacramento is one of two cities chosen by Branson's nonprofit Carbon War Room group for a privately financed effort to retrofit office buildings and other commercial properties. The other city is Miami; the program would total $650 million.

Announced late Monday, the deal could mean jobs for hundreds if not thousands of Sacramento construction workers. They would install double-pane windows, solar panels and the like on buildings throughout the city.

"This has the potential to be a huge economic boost for Sacramento," said Mayor Kevin Johnson in a prepared statement. "It represents real jobs, right now, and a chance to be a showcase."

If the deal is approved by the City Council next Tuesday, a Santa Rosa company called Ygrene Energy Fund would oversee the program and provide low-cost retrofitting loans to property owners. Ygrene is part of Branson's consortium and was chosen by city officials over two other bidders.

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Street Heat Against Finance Capital

by Editors @ Tuesday, September 20th, 2011. Filed under Economic Democracy, Financial Crisis, Organizing, Unemployment

The Wall Street Occupation:

A Sleep-In Protest in the Shadow of Power

By Manny Jalonschi
SolidarityEconomy.net via NYC Indypendent

Sept 19, 2011 - Surrounded by the headquarters of some of the world’s most powerful financial players, over two thousand protesters converged on Wall Street this Saturday. By the end of the second day, those occupying Liberty Park, formerly known as Zuccotti Park on Broadway and Liberty St., had settled in, partially helped by pizza, hot chocolate and blankets paid for and delivered by their supporters in New York City and across the country.

The Wall Street occupation began on Sept. 17 after months of planning and encouragement by Adbusters, who originally called for the occupation in response to a corporate-controlled political system that is no longer serving the needs of the majority of its people. They were soon joined by the hacktivist organization Anonymous in calling for a general people’s assembly. While the meetings leading up to the protest focused on dozens of smaller goals, Saturday morning, in the dozen or so people’s assemblies that broke down in Zuccotti Park now renamed Liberty Square, the protesters identified their key goals as liberating America from the death-grip of finance and creating a sustainable, just future for every member of the country. Specifics ranged from a progressive tax system, ending the wars and creating universal healthcare to more localized solutions like supporting and participating in a variety of worker owned cooperatives.

The protest began around noon in Bowling Green Park with approximately 3,000 people filing in from various ad hoc rallies across the Financial District — including a crowd that swarmed around the Wall Street Bull earlier in the day. The crowd then began marching towards 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza. While the group’s original goal had been to occupy the sidewalk in front of the building, the area was cordoned off and surrounded by more than 40 police cars and 80 police officers. Instead, the crowd, which had decreased to less than 2,000 by 3 p.m., marched to Zuccotti Park on the Corner of Liberty St. and Broadway.

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Green Jobs: How About Public-Funded Demand for Public Utilities?

by Editors @ Monday, August 22nd, 2011. Filed under Green Energy, Green Industry, Unemployment

Infographic Of The Day:

Do Green Jobs Really Exist?

By Cliff Kuang
SolidarityEconomy.net via Fast Company

Not only do they exist, but they just might provide jobs for those in manufacturing, and in middle America.

Color me cynical, but for a long time, I assumed that all the political blather about green jobs meant only one thing: They were fake. But according to this infographic by Column Five for solar-power company 1Bog, green jobs are very much real--and in fact might be one of the only places in this awful economy where a person can hope to get a decent manufacturing job.

Granted, we're not experiencing the hockey-stick growth you might expect from such a burgeoning field. As the top-most chart shows, the green economy expanded three times faster than the economy as a whole, in the decade ended in 2007. (Who knows exactly what that ratio looks like now, but we're betting that it's larger.)

If you look at the "Top Jobs in Renewable Energy" pie chart near the top, you get a pretty good indication of how many green jobs rely on proven technologies that can scale -- namely, hydroelectric, solar, and wind, trailed quite distantly by geothermal, wave energy, and all the other energy generators that seems to exist only on green-tech blogs.

But perhaps the most surprising part of the chart above is the kind of jobs that the green-tech sector is creating: These aren't positions for Ph.D eggheads and white-collar middle managers, but rather middle-class workers who just a decade ago might be been classified as blue-collar. Nearly 69% of all green-economy jobs are middle-class, middle-income positions -- compared to just 43% of all American jobs.

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