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Sizzle without steak

By Owen Paine on Wednesday June 3, 2009 09:53 PM

Little Bobby Reich is the measure of the pwagmatic pwog elite's good intentions. In a multi-part post at his blog site recently, he recapped America's job mission as he sees it. Interestingly enough it starts with abject surrender:

"First and most broadly, it doesn't make sense for America to try to maintain or enlarge manufacturing as a portion of the economy.... Even if the U.S. were to seal its borders and bar any manufactured goods from coming in from abroad ... we'd still be losing manufacturing jobs. That's mainly because of technology."
Oh I see. A bunch of robo plants here, somewhere, scattered about among the world-class infrastructure he wants plays no worthy part in Bobby's greener America.

What a colossal fallacy. Yes, jobs are evaporating inside modern plants, but that hardly means modern plants ought not be built here.

"A century ago, almost 30% of adult Americans worked on a farm. Nowadays, fewer than 5% do."
Sure, dodo, but we still have a huge ag sector. Is this really possible, such wooden-headed crap?

No. Here's the real gimmick, embedded in mush:

"Stop blaming poor nations whose workers get very low wages. Of course their wages are low; these nations are poor. They can become more prosperous only by exporting to rich nations."
So Bobby wants to up lift the third-raters -- by offshoring our production platform. Bobby sez it's the only way they can be uplifted: a system of trans-nat profit slurries.

As Church Lady used to say, "how conveeeeenient."

But let us continue following the bouncing dwarf:

"When the U.S. economy gets back on track, many routine jobs won't be returning -- but new jobs will take their place. [They] are easy to overlook -- much of the new value added is invisible."

Invisible value-added? Yes here it comes, Father, as you knew it would -- the IP express:

"A growing percent of every consumer dollar goes to people who analyze, manipulate, innovate and create.

These people are responsible for research and development, design and engineering. Or for high-level sales, marketing and advertising. They're composers, writers and producers. They're lawyers, journalists, doctors and management consultants. I call this "symbolic analytic" work because most of it has to do with analyzing, manipulating and communicating through numbers, shapes, words, ideas."

Breathtakingly pompous, eh? Note the follow-up patronization:
"Symbolic-analytic work can't be directly touched or held in your hands, as goods that come out of factories can be...."
My God, he must have Jerry Springer's audience in mind.
"Whatever consumers buy these days, they're paying more for these sorts of tasks than for the physical material or its assemblage. On the back of every iPod is the notice "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China...."
And here's the punchline, you illiterate sponge folk:
"You can bet iPod's design garners a bigger share of the iPod's purchase price than its assembly...."
Now comes Walleye Junction. With one eyeball we gotta take in the future, 'cause
"America’s biggest challenge is to educate more of our people sufficiently to excel at such tasks.... In decades to come, nations with the highest percentages of their working populations able to do symbolic-analytic tasks will have the highest standard of living and be the most competitive internationally."
And here's what the other Reich eyeball is eyeballing:
'[The] biggest challenge we face over the long term... how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills."
I don't really need to hammer this home, do I? But I want to.

Two nations, two "biggest challenges", all in one.

The Up nation's biggest challenge:

"no other nation surpasses us in providing intellectual and creative experience within entire regions specializing in one or another kind of symbolic analytic work (LA for music and film, Silicon Valley for software and the Internet, greater Boston for bio-med engineering, and so on)."
And the Down nation's biggest challenge:
"[W]e’re in danger of losing ground because too many of our kids, especially those from lower-middle class and poor families, can’t get the foundational education they need."
Two nations, and "a yawning gap in income and wealth -- earning low wages with little or no benefits."

Comes now an very perfunctory Rx for biggest challenge #2, lifting the downer America:

"Unions could help raise their wages by giving them more bargaining leverage. A higher minimum wage and larger Earned Income Tax Credit could help as well.
" ... But then it's back to home court with a return to the panacea: more and better credentialing:
"Not all of our young people can or should receive a four-year college degree, but we can do far better for them than we're doing now. At the least, every young person should have access to a year or two beyond high school, in order to gain a certificate attesting to their expertise in a particular area of technical competence. Technicians who install, upgrade, and service automated and computerized machinery -- office technicians, auto technicians, computer technicians, environmental technicians -- will be in ever-greater demand."
Yeah, Bobby, especially if we build a new all-green robo plant production platform able to carry its weight in the world.

Then again, maybe Bobby has it all wrong. Maybe after we've destroyed the present production system and the Mittelstand earnings it threw off. as Bobby himself adds,

" -- eventually the dollar (might) drop so low that global firms will find it profitable to locate traditional manufacturing assembly (back here)in the United States. -- "
I could stop here, Bobby having gone full-circle like a gerbil in its wheel. But we've hardly hacked Bobby up enough about his absurd decades-old worship of our emergent legion of symbol whisperers. Fortunately, he admits to another twist here: "To be sure, symbolic analysts are popping up all over the world."

Yeah, Bobby, the Thirdies can build symbolians too, and for next to nothin' brother. But is Bobby daunted by this? Nope:

"... demand for symbolic analysts in the U.S. will continue to grow faster than the supply. Innovation creates that demand, and demand for it, in turn, generates more innovation.... It's simply wrong to assume a zero-sum game among nations. There is no finite amount of symbolic-analytic work to be parceled out around the globe. There is no limit to the capacity of the human brain to discover new problems needing to be solved, or to create better solutions to old problems. And no limit to the number of problems needing solutions."
That's as good place as any to leave off, as Rhodes Scholar Bobby launches himself toward H G Wells' greener pastures.

Comments (13)

hce:

After a long day's work lugging non-symbolic boxes around in a noisy, fumey 1989 Nissan pickup, I have to come home to THIS???

Well done, Owen! Five stars!! I'm ready for my favorite Chardonnay. . . for which I designed the label!

Peter:

Wow, I had no idea Bobby was still peddling this stuff. I guess once you go Bill you never go back.

JTG:

Follow the yellow brick road!

Sorry, I had to.

Double wow, in fact. So much for the last jot of sympathy I had for this fuckheaded moron. Talk like this makes one transfer that ejected bit of empathy over to those who thought hard-labor + re-education camps were a good idea. Reich oughta be sentenced to a lifelong basketball game, with bowling not basket balls.

mjosef:

In case this is my lost comment here (I am tired, beyond tired, of slapping together something that either gets kept at the gate and shredded into non-being, or lost due to some technical malfunction that has me blaming 1. aforesaid gatekeeper, or 2. myself, or 3. the SMBIVA audience,) allow me to say that having Michael Dawson regularly commenting here is the highest compliment you folks can get. His book, The Consumer Trap, is the best $25.00 I've spent recently. It was a privilege to read it. I am sorry if it has not engendered thunderbolts of appreciation, but it still should be read by all.

MJS:

mjosef -- I am sorry to hear the software is giving you grief. It's not something anybody is doing deliberately. I'll check to see whether there are any unposted comments from you and post them if so. Meanwhile, a reminder might be helpful -- if you "preview" your comment, you very annoyingly have to re-enter Hillary's name in order to post it at last. This is not a feature; it's a bug. Regrets for the annoyance.

MJS:

Bobby's picture makes me think of Alberich.

Phillip Allen:

Bobby's picture makes me think of Alberich.

Zwangfolge Plage, Müh ohne Zweck!

mjosef:

MJS-Thanks for clearing that up.
That was obviously a pathetic nursing of grudges on my part, fairly stupid for a grown man.
So I'm a moron.
Can I still be a symbolic analyst?

MJS:

Phillip -- I always thought Alberich's best line was "Habt acht vor dem nächtlichen Heer".

op:

Can I still be a symbolic analyst?

all the more so

op:

Al best line was actually

"they call me mr oberon"

hce:

Reich once wrote for The American Prospect, inside back cover editorials. I thought he was pretty good then, making bald-faced pitches for labor, universal health care, etc.

Wonder what happened to him? A "progressive" disease, no doubt.

Second the praise for MD. He's a mind on fire.

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