You have been imprisoned twice for a total of 8 years for non-violent offenses, both incarcerations related to drug use, drug sales, and property theft. You are off drugs now. You had no legal employment prior to your first imprisonment, but landed a job when you left prison in 2008; unfortunately you were laid off in 2009 as the economy worsened. Unemployed, you succumbed to drugs again and committed the same crimes. You got your GED the second time in prison. A few gang-related tattoos are visible above your shirt collar, and there’s a scar on your face, the result of a prison fight that you did not cause. With a young child at home and a woman you love, you are determined to follow a different path this time. Your body and voice are strong, but your grammar is weak. You have…
Pennywise pound-foolish thinking
Imagine facing the following situation as the leader of your enterprise. Owing to years of underfunding and neglect, a physical asset that’s a basic driver of your competitiveness and productivity is deteriorating. By not repairing it, you’ve already experienced significant liability costs due to preventable deaths and critical injuries. Experienced engineers have publicly stated the situation will only worsen absent significant investment. In addition, not repairing the asset will further erode your company’s efficiency and deteriorate its competitive position in an increasingly global market. Furthermore, although cash flow is negative at present and your organization has far more debt than you want, you can borrow at close to zero percent interest rates and creditors deem your company as credit worthy. Additionally, the price of repair has never been lower owing to record excess capacity in the repair industry. If you do not repair…
A good-paying job has become a public good.
I hate being a pessimist. But if we continue to incorrectly view today’s problems through either a business cycle or deficit-reduction lens, our nation’s job generation will fall woefully short of what our nation needs and our children deserve. In moving from the closed markets of the Industrial Age to the open markets of the Information Age, the labor force grew from millions to billions. Unless physical proximity is required for an exchange – grocery stores, barbers, nursing– any service, product or product component can be produced offshore. Even a C student in Economics 101 could predict falling US real wages and a shortage of good-paying jobs. Welcome to the US in 2011. Despite enormous growth in GNP, wages and average family income are stagnant. Our distribution of income and wealth has dramatically worsened as Information Age winners leap past the losers. The…