20 June 2018

Site Launch

What's intelligence? What's insight? I'd say a close enough definition is the ability to see a real world truth before there's measurement. This was how Einstein figured out special relativity; observing a bell tower from a tram. Some refer to this process as intuition. Others as real intelligence, vis-a-vis the artificial version.

Which brings me to a David Leonhardt from the last week. One of the bones I've had to pick with the Right, who know they're lying, is their assertion that small business was, is, and will be the savior of American economy. Orange Julius Caesar went on a tirade at a small business conference yesterday. All one need do, over the last three or four decades is see what has happened in one's town, city, or state. The Big get Bigger and the Small get crushed. As Leonhardt says, mainstream punditry, and analytics as well it seems, hasn't been measuring. So he set out to do so. Good on him. I already knew it, of course. But it's heartwarming to see my insight validated.
Today, companies with at least 10,000 workers employ more people than companies with fewer than 50 workers.

There's a, as the Brits put it, knock-on effect of behemothing (that's now a word) of American business. In times past, economists and other analysts have made the point that the blue collar middle class emerged due to the confluence (or symbiosis) of big business and big unions. Auto workers made a middle class living because The Big 3 had oligopoly power, and the unions had the legal clout to force a sharing of that power in a form of enforced profit-sharing. The workers got a share of the vig. So, between the Right Wing destruction of unions and off-shoring of jobs (no, China didn't steal them, American corps. sent them), the blue collar middle class no longer exists. And those knuckleheads are convinced that a big city con man will make it all better? Here's the first paper that came up in a simple search.

You really want to MAGA? Bring back strong unions. With more market power held by large corporations, there's more 'rents' to share with workers. "Vote for George O'Brian. Get poor Charlie off the MTA!"

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