It's because we've had 100 years of slavery and 100 years of a continuation of slavery in the form of Jim Crow. We still haven't recovered from that history and we have huge segregated neighborhoods where the black schools get fewer resources than white schools.
Now the Republicans are making it worse by cutting funding for elementary and high schools, cutting teacher salaries and taking away their job security. (And yes, the "moderate" Democrats, including Obama, have done the same.)
And some of the best people didn't become scientists and engineers because of how much it would pay. They did it because they wanted to do cool things.
Look at Ayn Rand's hero and model, Nikolai Tesla. He died broke.
Look at Akira Endo. He wanted to be like Alexander Fleming. He never made any money out of statins.
Or look at Alexander Fleming. He refused to patent penicillin.
One problem is that job opportunities in engineering fluctuate so widely. One year, the aerospace companies are paying top dollar for aerospace engineers, the next year, aerospace engineers are driving cabs.
One of the benefits of liberal arts degrees is that they give you a general knowledge that you can apply to a lot of fields. I knew lots of people with undergrad or even PhD degrees in history, philosophy, math, sociology, etc. who became computer programmers.
Up until pretty recently, a college graduate with any major could get a job teaching elementary or high school. It was a pretty good job, good salary, job security, etc. Now that's gone.
A relative of mine who is a Mexican-American female is now a science major at [big expensive school] which encouraged her to go there and assured her that, being hispanic and female, she would be able to get financial aid.
After she got there, it turned out they didn't have any aid at all. It's now a real financial problem and she may not be able to afford next year.
Please tell me exactly where females and hispanics studying science can get financial aid.
No vague generalities, please. We've looked. What did we miss?
You think people are basically good and reasonably logical, and if shown the facts will change their opinions. This is demonstrably false for most people, they're basically emotional and tribalistic, and will do or believe almost anything to stay a part of their chosen tribe/social group.
It also helps to have scapegoats, like unions, government employees or teachers.
Provide tuition-free education from kindergarten through college, thus eliminating the student debt crisis.
Forgive existing student debt.
Protect our public school systems from privatization
End high-stakes testing and stop punishing students and teachers for failures of the system in which they work.
Stop denying students diplomas based on tests.
Stop using merit pay to punish teachers.
HEALTH CARE
Provide complete, affordable, quality health care for every American through an improved Medicare-for-all insurance program.
Allow full access to all medically justified contraceptive and reproductive care.
Expand women's access to the "morning after" contraception by lifting the Obama Administration's ban.
Roll back the community drivers of chronic disease, including poor nutrition, health-damaging pollution, and passive dirty transportation.
Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit.
End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.
Ensure that consumers have essential information for making informed food choices by expanding product labeling requirements for country of origin, GMO content, toxic chemical ingredients, fair trade practices, etc.
You may be good at what you do and able to get what you want from your boss right now.
But the history of employment in technology is that people who are doing very well in the peak of their career, during the peak of demand for their skills, often wind up with their skills obsolete, struggling for work, and unemployable because of age discrimination once they get in their 50s or 60s. That's what happened to a generation of COBOL programmers. That's what happened to a generation of aerospace engineers. That's what happened to a lot of people.
And yeah, everybody tries to keep on top of his field and learn new, marketable skills. Sometimes it doesn't do you any good. Employers simply discriminate against older workers. Computer programmers filed dozens of age-discrimination lawsuits in the 1990s because they were fired because of their supposedly obsolete skills. They testified in court about how they had kept current with the new stuff, learned new languages, took courses, etc. Didn't do them any good. Some of them won damage suits, but the money wasn't enough to make up for not having steady work again.
And just like you, they all thought they were so good, they'd always have a job. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but if you're wrong, you won't have a very comfortable old age.
Europe is a big place, but here's how they do it in Germany.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/ Frederick E. Allen 12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable. How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.” There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.” Mund points out that this goes
against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany. At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems A tale of two systems By Kevin C. Brown Remapping Debate Dec. 21, 2011 American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive.... But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
Then, you need to target your skills and continuing growth towards something worth more $$ here in the US than rote coding which has become a commodity in the past decades.
You gotta learn to go with the flow and move to something more profitable.
There are an awful lot of pretty smart people that haven't been able to find skills worth more $$ here.
One of the nice things about the German economy is that it's the responsibility of the employer, and the government, to teach people new valuable skills. There was a story in I think the Wall Street Journal about a German welder who was laid off because his company's sales were slowing down. He got unemployment insurance that gave him about the same income he was getting when he was employed. And he was taking classes in advanced welding that would be valuable when the economy came back. The expectation was that his employer would hire him back when the market picked up, and he would stay with his new employer, using his new skills, until he retired.
Different industries have different economies of scale.
Remember tungsten-filament light bulbs? I once read a study of the world's light-bulb industry. They are/were made by integrated systems called ribbon machines. They were very expensive and produced light bulbs very quickly and cheaply.
One ribbon machine could produce the entire output of 60- and 100-watt consumer bulbs for an entire country. There was one or two ribbon machines in the U.S. (owned by GE, I recall). There was one in Hungary that supplied most of the Eastern bloc, and GE eventually bought that company.
A light bulb factory was a high-capital, high-volume low-cost facility. You couldn't compete against them without a huge capital investment. (GE also a distribution network. It's not that easy to transport light bulbs -- for example if you wanted to import them from Hungary.) The only competitive market was in specialty bulbs.
The Soviets loved economies of scale. They had one monster cotton processing plant in the Ukraine that processed the entire cotton production of the Soviet Union.
The steel industry also had big economies of scale. They had big fucking crucibles of molten iron. The Japanese beat us with continuous casting. The other way to make things cheaper is to change a batch process into a continuous process. That requires even more capital. After the Japanese beat the big steel US companies, there was a resurgence in the US of "mini-mills" which made specialized steels.
So it all depends. I'll leave it to you to think of industries that do and don't have economies of scale.
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes
against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
Health care expenses are something that are insignificant for most of us when we're young, but eventually become unaffordable for most of us when we get old. (The incidence of most major medical conditions increases exponentially with age.)
At the age of 30, unless you have a chronic condition, you don't really have serious health care costs. But if you start to develop diabetes or heart failure, or an autoimmune disease at 60 or 70, then $20,000 or $30,000 worth of health care can mean the difference between dying in 5 or 10 years and dying in 20 years.
The people who say that they're paying their own health care costs and they're doing fine are like the guy who fell off the roof of a 50-story building. As he passed by the 20th floor, he said, "I'm doing fine so far."
Under a single-payer system, we'd have to pay more, since we'd also be subsidizing the care for the unemployed, self-employed, and otherwise uninsured.
In the Canadian single-payer system, they pay half as much (in taxes) as we do (in taxes plus premiums) for care that has basically the same outcomes that we have.
As somebody else pointed out, we're already subsidizing care for the uninsured, through taxes.
All payment for health care comes from people, whether directly, indirectly via insurance using premiums paid by people, or even more inefficiently via government which uses taxes paid by people.
It is no secret that government is an incredibly inefficient redistributor. Therefore it is obvious to any thinking person that insurance companies could handle the same level of health care and charge less to do it.
It is no secret to anybody who has looked at the numbers that the government is more efficient at distributing health care than the private insurance industry.
When you pay a dollar in health care premiums, the insurance company takes at least 15 cents off the top for profits and administrative expenses. (Talk about inefficient.) They give 85 cents or less to your doctor or hospital, who spend at least another 15 cents managing the administrative expenses of private insurance. Overall, each dollar you pay for your premium buys you 50-70 cents in health care.
Social Security, in contrast, pays about 2-3% in administrative costs.
As a reality check, look at the real world. The Canadian government provides health care as good as ours for about half the cost in taxes than we pay in taxes and insurance. Look around the world, and every country spends less money than we do. (The closest, second most expensive is Switzerland, which has the system most like ours.)
There is no country in the world that you would want to live in that has a free market health care system.
Oh, you say, that's because we have an imperfect free market. If only the government would stop interfering with the health care system, we would have the best of all possible worlds.
That reminds me of what my Communist friends used to tell me -- Russia doesn't have real socialism. Under real socialism, life would be perfect.
The answer to you is that we will never have a free market. A free market is like one of those trans-uranium particles that exists for a tiny fraction of a second, and then transmutes into something else. In the US, the free market, to the extent it existed, has been taken over by the wealthy, and even if you could get rid of all the liberals and unions, the wealthy 1% would still run the country.
I challenge you to name one country in the world that you would like to live in that has a free market by your definition. Afghanistan? Somalia?
The whole point of a union is that you have more economic power when you negotiate with your boss together with the other workers than you do when you negotiate as an individual.
Now, if you want higher wages let me tell you what to do You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you. You got to build you a union, got to make it strong, But if you all stick together, boys, it won't be long. You get shorter hours, better working conditions, Vacations with pay. Take your kids to the seashore.
It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain Just why you got to ride on the union train. 'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay, We'll all be a-waitin' 'til Judgment Day. We'll all be buried, gone to heaven, St. Peter'll be the straw boss then.
Now you know you're underpaid but the boss says you ain't; He speeds up the work 'til you're 'bout to faint. You may be down and out, but you ain't beaten, You can pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'. Talk it over, speak your mind, Decide to do somethin' about it.
Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool To go to your meetin' and act like a stool. But you can always tell a stool, though, that's a fact, He's got a yaller streak a-runnin' down his back. He doesn't have to stool, he'll always get along On what he takes out of blind men's cups.
You got a union now, and you're sittin' pretty, Put some of the boys on the steering committee. The boss won't listen when one guy squawks, But he's got to listen when the union talks. He'd better, be mighty lonely Everybody decide to walk out on him.
Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous And they're paying you all starvation wages. You go to the boss and the boss would yell, "Before I raise your pay I'd see you all in hell." Well, he's puffing a big seegar, feeling mighty slick 'Cause he thinks he's got your union licked. Well, he looks out the window and what does he see But a thousand pickets, and they all agree: He's a bastard, unfair, slavedriver, Bet he beats his wife!
Now, boys, you've come to the hardest time. The boss will try to bust your picket line. He'll call out the police, the National Guard, They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card. They'll raid your meetin', they'll hit you on the head, They'll call every one of you a goddam red, Unpatriotic, Japanese spies, sabotaging national defense!
But out at Ford, here's what they found, And out at Vultee, here's what they found, And out at Allis-Chalmers, here's what they found, And down at Bethlehem, here's what they found: That if you don't let red-baiting break you up, And if you don't let stoolpigeons break you up, And if you don't let vigilantes break you up, And if you don't let race hatred break you up, You'll win. What I mean, take it easy, but take it!
Tests have to be validated to make sure they measure what they're supposed to measure, to make sure they're statistically valid, and to make sure they don't have any of the well-recognized problems of tests.
The NAEP is validated. The standardized tests used by schools to judge teachers are not validated. Even the testing advocates admit that.
If you want to do basic science, have scientifically validated tests.
The New York Times had a story about a probationary teacher in a middle school. Her students did very well, they were getting into New York's specialized science schools, their grades were good, and the principal wanted to rehire the teacher.
Yet, in the standardized test, she had been rated in the bottom 5% of all teachers. Under city rules, the principal couldn't rehire her.
However, her 5% score had a confidence interval between 0 and 52%. That meant she was either one of the worst teachers in the school, or in the top half.
How are your math skills? Do you know what a confidence interval is?
Test scores don't predict future academic success as well as family income.
I don't think there's even evidence that the standardized test scores (the ones used to evaluate teachers) predict future academic success. They've never been validated.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Tyson is the model minority. But there are dismally few black scientists and engineers. And it's not because they're not smart or don't work hard. http://www.ronsuskind.com/articles/cat_wall_street_journal.html
It's because we've had 100 years of slavery and 100 years of a continuation of slavery in the form of Jim Crow. We still haven't recovered from that history and we have huge segregated neighborhoods where the black schools get fewer resources than white schools.
Now the Republicans are making it worse by cutting funding for elementary and high schools, cutting teacher salaries and taking away their job security. (And yes, the "moderate" Democrats, including Obama, have done the same.)
And some of the best people didn't become scientists and engineers because of how much it would pay. They did it because they wanted to do cool things.
Look at Ayn Rand's hero and model, Nikolai Tesla. He died broke.
Look at Akira Endo. He wanted to be like Alexander Fleming. He never made any money out of statins.
Or look at Alexander Fleming. He refused to patent penicillin.
One problem is that job opportunities in engineering fluctuate so widely. One year, the aerospace companies are paying top dollar for aerospace engineers, the next year, aerospace engineers are driving cabs.
One of the benefits of liberal arts degrees is that they give you a general knowledge that you can apply to a lot of fields. I knew lots of people with undergrad or even PhD degrees in history, philosophy, math, sociology, etc. who became computer programmers.
Up until pretty recently, a college graduate with any major could get a job teaching elementary or high school. It was a pretty good job, good salary, job security, etc. Now that's gone.
A relative of mine who is a Mexican-American female is now a science major at [big expensive school] which encouraged her to go there and assured her that, being hispanic and female, she would be able to get financial aid.
After she got there, it turned out they didn't have any aid at all. It's now a real financial problem and she may not be able to afford next year.
Please tell me exactly where females and hispanics studying science can get financial aid.
No vague generalities, please. We've looked. What did we miss?
You think people are basically good and reasonably logical, and if shown the facts will change their opinions. This is demonstrably false for most people, they're basically emotional and tribalistic, and will do or believe almost anything to stay a part of their chosen tribe/social group.
It also helps to have scapegoats, like unions, government employees or teachers.
And a lot more.
EDUCATION
Provide tuition-free education from kindergarten through college, thus eliminating the student debt crisis.
Forgive existing student debt.
Protect our public school systems from privatization
End high-stakes testing and stop punishing students and teachers for failures of the system in which they work.
Stop denying students diplomas based on tests.
Stop using merit pay to punish teachers.
HEALTH CARE
Provide complete, affordable, quality health care for every American through an improved Medicare-for-all insurance program.
Allow full access to all medically justified contraceptive and reproductive care.
Expand women's access to the "morning after" contraception by lifting the Obama Administration's ban.
Roll back the community drivers of chronic disease, including poor nutrition, health-damaging pollution, and passive dirty transportation.
Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit.
End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.
Ensure that consumers have essential information for making informed food choices by expanding product labeling requirements for country of origin, GMO content, toxic chemical ingredients, fair trade practices, etc.
Ever hear of Medicare (which is responsible for about half our health care expenses)?
You may be good at what you do and able to get what you want from your boss right now.
But the history of employment in technology is that people who are doing very well in the peak of their career, during the peak of demand for their skills, often wind up with their skills obsolete, struggling for work, and unemployable because of age discrimination once they get in their 50s or 60s. That's what happened to a generation of COBOL programmers. That's what happened to a generation of aerospace engineers. That's what happened to a lot of people.
And yeah, everybody tries to keep on top of his field and learn new, marketable skills. Sometimes it doesn't do you any good. Employers simply discriminate against older workers. Computer programmers filed dozens of age-discrimination lawsuits in the 1990s because they were fired because of their supposedly obsolete skills. They testified in court about how they had kept current with the new stuff, learned new languages, took courses, etc. Didn't do them any good. Some of them won damage suits, but the money wasn't enough to make up for not having steady work again.
And just like you, they all thought they were so good, they'd always have a job. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but if you're wrong, you won't have a very comfortable old age.
Please don't write-in a candidate unless you mean it - it can cause extra work for the already-stressed poll workers.
Don't those poll workers get paid by the hour?
Europe, you say?
Europe is a big place, but here's how they do it in Germany.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes
against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems ... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
Then, you need to target your skills and continuing growth towards something worth more $$ here in the US than rote coding which has become a commodity in the past decades.
You gotta learn to go with the flow and move to something more profitable.
There are an awful lot of pretty smart people that haven't been able to find skills worth more $$ here.
One of the nice things about the German economy is that it's the responsibility of the employer, and the government, to teach people new valuable skills. There was a story in I think the Wall Street Journal about a German welder who was laid off because his company's sales were slowing down. He got unemployment insurance that gave him about the same income he was getting when he was employed. And he was taking classes in advanced welding that would be valuable when the economy came back. The expectation was that his employer would hire him back when the market picked up, and he would stay with his new employer, using his new skills, until he retired.
Different industries have different economies of scale.
Remember tungsten-filament light bulbs? I once read a study of the world's light-bulb industry. They are/were made by integrated systems called ribbon machines. They were very expensive and produced light bulbs very quickly and cheaply.
One ribbon machine could produce the entire output of 60- and 100-watt consumer bulbs for an entire country. There was one or two ribbon machines in the U.S. (owned by GE, I recall). There was one in Hungary that supplied most of the Eastern bloc, and GE eventually bought that company.
A light bulb factory was a high-capital, high-volume low-cost facility. You couldn't compete against them without a huge capital investment. (GE also a distribution network. It's not that easy to transport light bulbs -- for example if you wanted to import them from Hungary.) The only competitive market was in specialty bulbs.
The Soviets loved economies of scale. They had one monster cotton processing plant in the Ukraine that processed the entire cotton production of the Soviet Union.
The steel industry also had big economies of scale. They had big fucking crucibles of molten iron. The Japanese beat us with continuous casting. The other way to make things cheaper is to change a batch process into a continuous process. That requires even more capital. After the Japanese beat the big steel US companies, there was a resurgence in the US of "mini-mills" which made specialized steels.
So it all depends. I'll leave it to you to think of industries that do and don't have economies of scale.
First of all, Somalia is NOT libertarian in any way.
A free market is like one of those transuranium elements that lasts a fraction of a second before it self-explodes and becomes something else.
That's what happens in countries like Somalia. Take away the government, and armed gangs fill in the vacuum.
And if you want an example of a libertarian government, I suggest you look at the United States of American until maybe the mid 1800s.
A libertarian government with slavery?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes
against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
Unionized German workers are making industrial products and doing better than American workers.
Strange....the small business has been and still is the backbone of the US economy. It employs most of the people.
If you consider Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to be small businessmen.
I wonder how old you are.
Health care expenses are something that are insignificant for most of us when we're young, but eventually become unaffordable for most of us when we get old. (The incidence of most major medical conditions increases exponentially with age.)
At the age of 30, unless you have a chronic condition, you don't really have serious health care costs. But if you start to develop diabetes or heart failure, or an autoimmune disease at 60 or 70, then $20,000 or $30,000 worth of health care can mean the difference between dying in 5 or 10 years and dying in 20 years.
The people who say that they're paying their own health care costs and they're doing fine are like the guy who fell off the roof of a 50-story building. As he passed by the 20th floor, he said, "I'm doing fine so far."
Under a single-payer system, we'd have to pay more, since we'd also be subsidizing the care for the unemployed, self-employed, and otherwise uninsured.
In the Canadian single-payer system, they pay half as much (in taxes) as we do (in taxes plus premiums) for care that has basically the same outcomes that we have.
As somebody else pointed out, we're already subsidizing care for the uninsured, through taxes.
What a load of twattle!
All payment for health care comes from people, whether directly, indirectly via insurance using premiums paid by people, or even more inefficiently via government which uses taxes paid by people.
It is no secret that government is an incredibly inefficient redistributor. Therefore it is obvious to any thinking person that insurance companies could handle the same level of health care and charge less to do it.
It is no secret to anybody who has looked at the numbers that the government is more efficient at distributing health care than the private insurance industry.
When you pay a dollar in health care premiums, the insurance company takes at least 15 cents off the top for profits and administrative expenses. (Talk about inefficient.) They give 85 cents or less to your doctor or hospital, who spend at least another 15 cents managing the administrative expenses of private insurance. Overall, each dollar you pay for your premium buys you 50-70 cents in health care.
Social Security, in contrast, pays about 2-3% in administrative costs.
As a reality check, look at the real world. The Canadian government provides health care as good as ours for about half the cost in taxes than we pay in taxes and insurance. Look around the world, and every country spends less money than we do. (The closest, second most expensive is Switzerland, which has the system most like ours.)
There is no country in the world that you would want to live in that has a free market health care system.
Oh, you say, that's because we have an imperfect free market. If only the government would stop interfering with the health care system, we would have the best of all possible worlds.
That reminds me of what my Communist friends used to tell me -- Russia doesn't have real socialism. Under real socialism, life would be perfect.
The answer to you is that we will never have a free market. A free market is like one of those trans-uranium particles that exists for a tiny fraction of a second, and then transmutes into something else. In the US, the free market, to the extent it existed, has been taken over by the wealthy, and even if you could get rid of all the liberals and unions, the wealthy 1% would still run the country.
I challenge you to name one country in the world that you would like to live in that has a free market by your definition. Afghanistan? Somalia?
The whole point of a union is that you have more economic power when you negotiate with your boss together with the other workers than you do when you negotiate as an individual.
Talking Union Blues
Pete Seeger
Now, if you want higher wages let me tell you what to do
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you.
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, boys, it won't be long.
You get shorter hours, better working conditions,
Vacations with pay. Take your kids to the seashore.
It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train.
'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We'll all be a-waitin' 'til Judgment Day.
We'll all be buried, gone to heaven,
St. Peter'll be the straw boss then.
Now you know you're underpaid but the boss says you ain't;
He speeds up the work 'til you're 'bout to faint.
You may be down and out, but you ain't beaten,
You can pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'.
Talk it over, speak your mind,
Decide to do somethin' about it.
Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meetin' and act like a stool.
But you can always tell a stool, though, that's a fact,
He's got a yaller streak a-runnin' down his back.
He doesn't have to stool, he'll always get along
On what he takes out of blind men's cups.
You got a union now, and you're sittin' pretty,
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won't listen when one guy squawks,
But he's got to listen when the union talks.
He'd better, be mighty lonely
Everybody decide to walk out on him.
Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous
And they're paying you all starvation wages.
You go to the boss and the boss would yell,
"Before I raise your pay I'd see you all in hell."
Well, he's puffing a big seegar, feeling mighty slick
'Cause he thinks he's got your union licked.
Well, he looks out the window and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree:
He's a bastard, unfair, slavedriver,
Bet he beats his wife!
Now, boys, you've come to the hardest time.
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He'll call out the police, the National Guard,
They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
They'll raid your meetin', they'll hit you on the head,
They'll call every one of you a goddam red,
Unpatriotic, Japanese spies, sabotaging national defense!
But out at Ford, here's what they found,
And out at Vultee, here's what they found,
And out at Allis-Chalmers, here's what they found,
And down at Bethlehem, here's what they found:
That if you don't let red-baiting break you up,
And if you don't let stoolpigeons break you up,
And if you don't let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don't let race hatred break you up,
You'll win. What I mean, take it easy, but take it!
Television! That's what started the whole thing. Kids don't sit around reading books any more.
And the phonograph! Families don't sit around the piano singing songs any more.
If only we could shoot the dogs with the drones ...
Tests have to be validated to make sure they measure what they're supposed to measure, to make sure they're statistically valid, and to make sure they don't have any of the well-recognized problems of tests.
The NAEP is validated. The standardized tests used by schools to judge teachers are not validated. Even the testing advocates admit that.
If you want to do basic science, have scientifically validated tests.
The New York Times had a story about a probationary teacher in a middle school. Her students did very well, they were getting into New York's specialized science schools, their grades were good, and the principal wanted to rehire the teacher.
Yet, in the standardized test, she had been rated in the bottom 5% of all teachers. Under city rules, the principal couldn't rehire her.
However, her 5% score had a confidence interval between 0 and 52%. That meant she was either one of the worst teachers in the school, or in the top half.
How are your math skills? Do you know what a confidence interval is?
Test scores don't predict future academic success as well as family income.
I don't think there's even evidence that the standardized test scores (the ones used to evaluate teachers) predict future academic success. They've never been validated.