Knowledge Workers and "Tacit Interactions"

Here's another log to throw on the globalization and free-trade fire. From the comments, it seems many of you are less than impressed with Shiller's attempt, and economist's attempts more generally, to define jobs that provide some protection against outsourcing and technological change. I disagree a bit - I think Shiller deserves some credit for addressing the question, he could have chosen another topic to write about, and it is difficult to go beyond very broad outlines when discussing such strategies. So I am going to persist in trying to make headway on this issue. This commentary on improving the productivity of employees involved in "tacit interactions," a commentary that implicitly says these jobs offer some protection against automation and outsourcing, may be helpful in that regard:

Coming imperative for world’s knowledge economy, by James Manyika, Commentary, Financial Times: It is 30 years since Peter Drucker identified “knowledge worker” productivity as the biggest management challenge of the modern era. But the late, great management thinker did not distinguish between types of knowledge work. ...  people who “think for a living” covers an extraordinary range of activities. Research scientists, foreign exchange traders, teachers, call centre operators and administrators – all are paid to think. Yet some of these jobs are routine, easy to automate and lend themselves to rules. Others, such as the highly interactive work of salespeople, lawyers and managers, are subtle, complex and difficult to codify.

Economists have tended to lump all knowledge work into one category. Since Ronald Coase ... introduced the concept of transaction costs in the 1930s, economic activity has been mostly divided into transformations (broadly the growing or making of things) and transactions (exchange of information, products and services such as transport, trade and most knowledge work). ...

However, in developed economies, transactions have grown to dominate economic activity – nearly 85 per cent in the US – due to increased specialisation of work, technology and globalisation. ... I believe the time has come to break down further the broad category of transactions in order to capture the distinction between routine transactions and interactions that rely heavily on judgment and context, which economists call “tacit interactions”.

An analysis of US Bureau of Labor statistics shows that the overwhelming majority of new jobs created in recent years in the US have been in occupations in which tacit interactions are the main component. Workers engaged in tacit interactions ... now make up 41 per cent of the US labour force. They have also enjoyed wage growth far in excess of the national average...

Corporations have spent the past half-century honing their ability to make things efficiently. But our research suggests it is increasingly difficult to differentiate on the basis of manufacturing efficiency. ... the performance gap between the best and worst performing transformation-intensive companies (such as mining or manufacturing) is relatively narrow.

In the 1980s, companies started to focus more on differentiation through increasing the efficiency of transactions, using management techniques such as business process engineering, supported by investments in IT. But, again, the spread of best practices makes it harder to achieve a durable ... performance gap between leaders and laggards in transaction-intensive sectors such as retail or airlines.

When it comes to tacit interactions, however, few companies have paid much attention to how they might differentiate themselves by increasing the productivity of interactions. Many executives ... are surprised to learn how much of their company’s value-added depends on tacit interactions and the number of employees associated with these activities. A telltale sign: in sectors where tacit interactions dominate, such as publishing, healthcare and software, the gap between the best and worst performing companies remains wide. ...

In contrast to transformations and transactions, which can be mapped and codified, tacit interactions depend on complex mixtures of judgment, problem-solving and information exchanges, often involving group behaviour that is difficult to replicate. However, to get the most from workers involved in tacit interactions, managers must abandon much of what they think they know about strategy, organisation and information technology. For example, since the days of Alfred Sloan, ... companies have resembled pyramids, with a handful of tacit workers (managers) at the top coordinating armies of workers engaged in transformations and transactions. This model needs to be rethought when tacit workers make up a large proportion of the workforce...

The way technology is used must change, too. The IT investment wave of the 1990s aimed to streamline and automate transactions. Everyday examples include automatic teller machines and online shopping. But one cannot improve the productivity of marketing managers or lawyers by replacing them with machines. Technology needs instead to support collaboration ... and serve up the information required to make the most of every interaction...

With due respect to Drucker, ... increasing the effectiveness of tacit interactions is ... the biggest management challenge – and perhaps the biggest opportunity – of the modern era.

I'll be curious to hear your thoughts, even the ones critical of economists, so fire away.

Comments

[spencer]

VERy, Very good. But need some time to think about it.

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Get into healthcare" one of the latest pieces of conventional wisdom. RNs can't be replaced. Well...

1) Cheap RNs can and are being imported from such places as the Philipines.

2) Soon in Ohio, a nurse aide with 60 hours of half-assed training will replace some of the duties of RNs in nursing homes (cheap, cheap, cheap), including handling most medications. This comes from the fundamental misunderstanding that a nurse just runs down the hall popping pills down throats. So why bother assessing the patient? Who needs judgment?

Everyone should be worried (and I won't make any more smart remarks about tenured professors, the boys at Cafe Hayek are unhappy with me about that).

[Mark Thoma]

I don't mind the comments about tenure. I made an explicit decision while still an undergraduate at a Cal. State to trade security for stuff, so the security wasn't free, but I get the point and I was fortunate to have the choice.

Also, I hope this blog manages to give something back in return for tenure, but who knows. I can say without a doubt that I wouldn't dare do the blog so openly, or would at least be a lot more careful about what I say, without the protection tenure offers.

[cm]

The "problem" is that most complex domains are beyond formalization, and are evolving (changing) over time, and often social/cultural interaction, group dynamics, and other "human affairs" are part of the picture ("soft skills"), and technical subject matter excellence alone does not cut it.

I observed an effort of ISO 9000 cert and SEI-CMM introduction in a software company. In the latter case, there was an "official" presentation of the virtues of process model, repeatability, predictability, etc., and a management version that somebody happened to share with me.

That management version spelled out explicitly that one significant purpose of documentation and the paradigm of executing paper-based processes was to become independent of individual "key" performers, and making workers exchangeable by essentially having the (business relevant) intelligence in the paper/computer, not in their heads. I presume this is consistent with "efficiency".

Not that we wouldn't have known this. But then, this will again work for things of a more "mechanical" nature that lend themselves to (simplistic) formalization, and not for the "tacit" variety quoted here.

[cm]

I take that back, I was a software group in a company producing machines, a large part of their function being implemented as software.

[anne]

Robert Shiller either has a curious selection of Yale students or is paying little attention. There are obviously problems in the American labor market, but competitively fine students appear to be much sought after and have lots of alternatives. An idea of a college student turning from medicine because of a worry that we are soon to be buying health care from Google is beyond absurd. From forestry to law, Yale students are surely doing fine. Then, from a personal perspective a parent of a conscientious student will find the student has interesting prospects. I would like to have even more emphasis on university education though, college and professional, and significant subsidies for tuition or no tuition at public universities.

[anne]

Could we afford substantial cuts in public university tuition with revenue sharing for the states? Surely; we could save $10 billion a month by leaving Iraq immediately, but since we are getting ready to go to war against Mexico I suppose the money will be spoken for :)

[Blissex]

But the best and most important ''tacit interaction'' jobs are those that depends more on who you are and whom you know than on commodities like skill and hard work.

That is ownership of ''political'' assets, such as government jobs and government licenses, old boys networks, exclusive club memberships.

Those deliver leverage that cannot be commoditized.

The university of Chennai can grant degrees, but it cannot grant Yale degrees, never mind the prestige and wealth of contacts that a Yale degree (and a Yale club/fraternity) delivers. The state of Tamil Nadu can welcome call centres and software workshops, but cannot give stock broker licences for New York.

Put another way in the new economy rents of positions will be the new big thing, they will be called ''tacit interactions'' :-).

[Bruce Wilder]

I'd like to demure against the libertarian/individualist premise.

The best overall advice, regarding your personal income is to be born in the U.S., Japan or Western Europe. The difference in income between being a hairdresser in Chongqing, China and being a hairdresser in Columbus, Ohio -- or a lawyer, or a college professor, or a factory worker -- is location, location, location.

What kills the income of the Chinese factory worker or the Indian software engineer is the overall level of productivity in the Chinese or Indian economy, and that is attributable to the consequences of systematic deficiencies in infrastructure and development. Successful isolation/insulation of a factory or an IT lab from the vagaries of the general economy can result in great gains in productivity, of course, and, consequently, return to the capital used to create that isolation. But, that is the exception, which should highlight the rule.

You want to have a good paying job in a prosperous, highly productive country? Contribute to, and support, creating a prosperous, highly productive country.

[Lord]

judgment, problem-solving and information exchanges

All these and more are subject to automation and elimination. All knowledge is capable of extraction and replication. This is the very purpose of education. Anything regular enough to be taught can be automated. Technology and outsourcing are means for doing so, even if it has not done so yet. There will always be new areas that are still being created, discovered, researched, and developed that are not yet formalized sufficiently to be automated, areas that change and move over time. The work for those in these areas is to formalize, automate, and commoditize these areas and expand to new ones. The successful will be the ones that do it and profit from it. The unsuccessful will be the ones that have it done to them and don't profit from it.

What is the job that can't be automated, who is the employee that can't be replaced? These are the very jobs that need automation the most, and the employees that need to be replaced the most, because business is about systems, reproducibility, quality, and efficiency.
The entrepreneur is about the only one that can't be. It is also the one that can scarcely be taught.

[dryfly]

From forestry to law, Yale students are surely doing fine.

And they have always done 'fine'... just look at Kerry & Bush.

But what about the rest of them? The kid whose parents bust ass so he can attend Minnesota State Mankato? Will he have the same opportunity as a kid from Yale... regardless of who the parents were & their connections?

The reason we had 'pyramid structures' (reference to Sloan in original entry) is because not every can be an executive chef... some will have to be cooks & others dishwashers, waiters & valet's... or the customers don't eat. The pyramid structure with 'silos of specialization' was the result of this reality... structure tasks people can do then find the people who can do them & execute.

And due to limited global competition & unionization everyone in the pyramid, in each silo, got something... some more than others for sure but it wasn't all or nothing.

Two things have ravaged the above model...

(1) global wage arbitrage made possible by high tech (internet) and low tech (containers) alike. The 'price structure' for the low levels of the pyramid are now heavily pressured by the price of the same task in Guangdong or Hanoi or Manila.

(2) The 'flat-lean' revolution... the elimination of layers pushing the organization to be as flat as possible and dismatling of the silos creates an organixzation with very little opportunity for middle managers & such. These firms are especially hungry for the 'tacits' mentioned above... but there really aren't many people able to do these kinds of jobs well or who are willing to do it forever (as in their whole career)... Because without levels above & new challenges most will never transition from their original entry level task set... very hard on a creative 'tacit' person's ego & psyche.

But I think the guy mostly has it right - at least his observations I believe are pretty much right on. However I don't see a 'solution' to society's problem in there anywhere. The message that "only executive chef's will do well so be sure you are one of the few executive chef's" doesn't produce a harmonious society.

::::

BTW - Mark, your blog is ass kick, even if you are a tenured prof... ;)

[anne]

Agreed completely, which is a reason I am increasingly interested in a dramatic lowering of public university tuitions, and expansion as there is need. Encourage then a strengthening of structural safeguards for workers and globalization has an entirely different feel.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=6454&u=99|5|...

Chestnut-sided Warbler Perched on a Branch
New York City--Central Park, Tanner's Spring.

We might not even have to go to war against Mexico.

[Blissex]

«Agreed completely, which is a reason I am increasingly interested in a dramatic lowering of public university tuitions, and expansion as there is need.»

There are several countries that offer reasonable and near free university education; in many or most of these the graduates become overeducated waiters and bicycle couriers, if they are lucky.

In many of these countries, like the UK or France, a university education in a non-prestige university is mostly useful to governments to persuade young people to spend 3-5 years of their working life off the official unemployment rolls.

What matters more is that there be graduate level jobs -- if there are, then people will have the incentive and the means to pursue a university degree. Granting university degrees is not the same as creating graduate jobs, and the viceversa works a lot better.

Unfortunately while the Yale graduates, with the inimitable prestige of their degree, are doing plenty well with the few real graduate jobs available, those that don't have Ivy League level degrees are competing with people across the world who have degrees that in the eyes of the employers are totally equivalent. Worker arbitrage ensues.

[billy]

I'm going to repeat my trite comments again -

Why do you think you deserve what you are paid?

Why should I overpay for teachers, doctors and nurses, when I can get those services at a fraction of the price by opening up competition in those professions by immigration? Should'nt the rest of the population be entitled to falling costs in education, and healthcare? Why is it a bad thing?

Why do you think your customers - students, patients etc - should be forced to pay you this much?

Frankly, this entire scheme - how to make more money by rigging the market - is immoral. It is all about how to limit choices to your customers. And an easy way to do that is by using geographical rents via immigration.

Bruce Wilder is correct - all that you have going is that you where born in a country where wealth is created, by a few people. And your high wages are made by restricting the choices of your customers.

Those who create wealth, can create it anywhere in the world. They dont worry about competition. It is those whose wealth is mainly due to the geographical accident of birth, who are worried that they will lose that advantage.

And please, not the " we'll become the third world" argument.
Prof Thoma knows better than that.

Why should the Walmart worker suffer an exorbitant cost for the best healthcare and education?

Or is this a discussion about how to maintain your rents? How to maintain this exclusive gated community?

[Bruce Wilder]

what dryfly wrote: . . . nod, nod, yes :)

One of the most informative books on economics I ever read was by W. Ross Ashby, "Introduction to Cybernetics". It is available, I believe as a .pdf download somewhere on the web.

He presents an analysis of control. It is unfortunate that economics does not pay more attention to control in the theory of the firm and production/productivity. The industrial revolution was partly about replacing muscle and animal power with coal and steam, oil and electricity; and, partly, it was about developing systems for controlling production/distribution processes at every level of detail. Ashby acknowledges that he has no model for hierarchical systems of control, so he is not much help on the central puzzle of ex-market economic organization. Still, fuzzy concepts like "tacit interaction" could be enhanced, if placed in the context of systems of production/distribution control. I also think we could arrive at a more realistic and balanced view of the role and importance of rents and power.

[dryfly]

Those who create wealth, can create it anywhere in the world.

And those with greater brute force can take it from them anywhere in the world... What is the only thing stopping this? People. A community of others with shared goals, interests and concern that protect each other through law. But law where there is no mutual interest doesn't get enforced... there's your 'oh puleezee, no third world' argument.

The world YOU describe is a world where I wouldn't stick my neck out for others. Better them than me. It sounds like a world where if billy is on the side of the road because somebody wanted a piece of his 'rents' maybe I leave him there, after all maybe somebody else in Bangalore is paying my meal ticket.

I've worked in small business most all my life... what my clients, suppliers, customers, contractors & occasionally employees (though in honesty I try not to have those - I try to work alone) get is of great interest to me. The deal has to work both ways or it is tenuous at best.

I once had a monstrous contract - so large I was worried the client would take it in-house rather than pay me... so I offered to reduce my fees. His reply 'Hell no, I want you to be as sleepless worrying about this project working as I am...' I stood to gain a lot - he even more. We were both sleepless for a while but it did work. We need more folks like him, not less.

BTW - he sold his business a few years ago. When he started his biz he was worth nothing, when he sold it he was worth about $20-30 million. After he closed the sale he went around and gave checks between $100K & $250K to the managers who had been with him through thick and thin (some longer than others - they got more)... there was no prior contract or quid pro quo... just a classy thanks. It's for guys like that I stick my neck out.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Anne: will the students be inbig demand when they are 50 years old.

Billy: I wish the world was as simple as you portray. If everyone else takes a pay cut after the immigration, who will buy whatever you make or sell?

[save_the_rustbelt]

Mark:

And your terrific blog makes you immune from any tenure criticism :-))

[Bruce Wilder]

"Bruce Wilder is correct - all that you have going is that you where born in a country where wealth is created, by a few people."

I am always either correct or correctable.

I don't think wealth is ever created by a "few" people. If it does tend to get concentrated in the hands of a few people, that's a correctable situation. I am no fan of John Galt or his sister, Jane.

Living in a society that works is a large part of the wealth of the U.S. Sometimes, we are like deer caught in the headlights, when we see what wages are like in Chinese manufacturing. What we do not see is what a small proportion "direct labor" wages are now in a lot of manufacturing. What we do not see is how electricity shortages and outages erode Chinese productivity, or how poor transport and the difficulty of obtaining tools, parts, supplies and manufacturing services still handicap many Chinese manufacturers. Productivity is very sensitive to error rates and disruption.

[Bill Waddell]

A couple of small points to raise ...

" But our research suggests it is increasingly difficult to differentiate on the basis of manufacturing efficiency. ... the performance gap between the best and worst performing transformation-intensive companies (such as mining or manufacturing) is relatively narrow"

The 21 or so manhours per car at GM and the 18 or so manhours per car at Toyota may seem 'relatively narrow' to some, but it is the difference between a $15 billion profit at Toyota and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy at GM.

There is, in fact, a huge gap between the most and least efficient manufacturers in just about every industry segment. The least efficient ones are the ones engaging most heavily in offshore outsourcing, attempting to compensate for poor management (that causes low efficiency) with low labor rates.

This, in fact, is where theories like Comparative Advantage and Absolute Advantage begin to fall apart. They are built on an assumption that 'cost' is known, or at least knowable, and consistent for every product in every country. In reality, cost, in the Toyota business model is a whole lot different from cost in the GM/Sloan business model.

Where is the lowest cost place to make a car for the American market? GM says take your pick - either China or Mexico. Toyota says Georgetown, Kentucky. The differences are that Toyota's cost is lower, and their method of calculating cost is much different.

In light of the fact that most offshore outsourcers are publicly traded, Sloan manufacturers; and in light of the fact that costs as perceived by the Toyota busines model are clearly more accurate; it seems obvious that mst offshore outsourcing is not the product of Comparative Advantage or Actual Advantage, but the product of poor management and faulty cost models.

It would be convenienet if the assertion that all manufacturers were about the same were true, then the theories would be applicable. But the efficiency gap between best in class and worst in class manufacturers is, in fact, huge.

Second ...

"since the days of Alfred Sloan, ... companies have resembled pyramids, with a handful of tacit workers (managers) at the top coordinating armies of workers engaged in transformations and transactions. This model needs to be rethought when tacit workers make up a large proportion of the workforce"

The Sloan model has never worked. It gave the appearance of working from 1945 to about 1975 when the U.S. Army Air Corps had seen to it that there were no factories in Asia or Europe to compete with the Sloan/American model. After Europe and Japan recovered from the War, no Sloan structured company has demonstrated that it can compete in manufacturing.

Flatter, process focused organizations are hardly some new, post-Sloan development made possible by the growth of people capable of 'tacit transactions'. The flat, horizontal model has been practiced by Toyota since 1950. Toyota acknowledges that they learned it from Ford (before Ford converted to the Sloan model)

The two most profitable manufacturing dynasties the world has known = early Ford and modern Toyota - have deployed a process-oriented model, driven by such tacit transactions, and they began long before Peter Drucker knew what a 'knowledge worker' was.

[reason]

This doesn't apply so much to the discussion as to what Mark Thoma wrote "I disagree a bit - I think Shiller deserves some credit for addressing the question, he could have chosen another topic to write about, and it is difficult to go beyond very broad outlines when discussing such strategies."

I once said in a job interview (I didn't think I would get the job so I was nerveless) "Employers employ you for what you know, not for what you are able to learn". I implied that I thought that was wrong. Unfortunately, that is today the case because managers are trained to think only for the next 12 months. However, this in the end is self defeating because we are what we become. So people are to a certain delivered to fate, and have little chance to influence their own life plan. Hence alienation.

We need to change the way of thinking of everybody in the business, colleges, employers and employees so that we have a system based on lifetime learning with the interests of all parties supported. I think people need to work less and study more - all through their lives. I think there is far too much emphasis on Macro today (including the Macro WITHIN a business) and not enough on what is happening to individual people and within individual markets and firms. How can people plan for a successful lifetime experience in an unstable and changing world? This should be THE political question today!

As regards the proposal under discussion, I agree up to a point. The problem I see today lies in the very overvalued opinion of themselves of managers. Take the example of a doctor's practice - who is the highly paid one the technician or the administrator? Yet both have important roles, and are interdependent. Computer systems have evolved from heirarchical organisation to self-organising peer-to-peer systems. Business needs to do the same. This is however not a new idea.

But see my first point - the managers just see employees as static objects, despite all the glib generalities they speak (like politicians) not as dynamically developing assets. But can this change happen in a world as unstable (both technologically and financially) as the world at present? It sure encourages short term thinking.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/opinion/16tue1.html?ex=1305432000&en=b0d4f041c3997cc7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 16, 2006

Border Illusions

President Bush's speech from the Oval Office last night was not a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform. It was a victory for the fear-stricken fringe of the debate.

These are the people who say illegal border crossings must be stopped immediately, with military boots in the desert sand. Never mind the overwhelming burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan, the absence of a coherent and balanced immigration policy, and the broad public support for a comprehensive solution. America must send its overtaxed troops to the border right now, they say, so a swarm of ruthless, visa-less workers cannot bury our way of life under a relentless onslaught of hard work.

Rather than standing up for truth, Mr. Bush swiveled last night in the direction of those who see immigration, with delusional clarity, as entirely a problem of barricades and bad guys. His plan to deploy "up to 6,000" National Guard troops to free the Border Patrol to hunt illegal immigrants is a model of stark simplicity, one sure to hearten the Minuteman vigilantes, frightened conspiracy theorists, English-only Latinophobes, right-wing radio and TV personalities, and members of Congress who have no patience for sorting out the various and mixed blessings that surging immigration has given this country.

Those on the other side of the argument have spent frustrating months making a quieter, more complicated case. Supporters of a compromise immigration bill in the Senate want a balanced approach that is both tough and smart. They, too, would add people and technology to enhance security on the Mexican border, which is now about as solid as a screen door. But unlike the House bill, which is fixated on enforcement, the Senate bill seeks to restore law and order in a variety of ways. It would, for example, shorten an immigration backlog by adjusting work and family visa quotas, tighten the enforcement of immigration laws in the workplace and put illegal workers on a path to assimilation and citizenship.

Mr. Bush gave lip service to aspects of comprehensive reform, but that part of his message was, as usual, delivered with a mumbling lack of conviction. He denounced "amnesty" again, but did not speak up forcefully enough for a citizenship path for the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants who, in huge national marches in recent weeks, have made their hunger to assimilate powerfully clear....

[anne]

Fear is what we are about, fear is what we wish, fear, fear, fear. We went to war in Iraq because fear was cultivated, and we stay in Iraq because we are told to be afraid. We fear China and India and Russia and Venezuela and Bolivia and above all else for the present we fear Mexico. Mexico, we are afriad.

[anne]

Ah, the weapons we were looking for all this time we really in Mexico. I understand. Mexico, we are coming!

[Blissex]

«Why should I overpay for teachers, doctors and nurses, when I can get those services at a fraction of the price by opening up competition in those professions by immigration?»

It would be a lot better if all were subject to the rigours of global competition.

However there are many jobs and activities, the best paying ones, whose rewards critically depends on government licenses, government connections, purchasing congresspeople, being friends of friends, and this not being at all to competition.

The percentage of immigrant doctors, lawyers, lobbyists or executives is curiously a lot lower than that of immigrant waiters, garbagemen, builders or cleaners, and maybe, or surely not, this is because it is much harder to break into one of those thoroughly protected profession...

People on high incomes curiously donate a lot more to political campaigns than poorer people, no doubt out of a sense of civic duty.

I may be wrong, but it is very large corporations run by very rich people that spend fortunes on lobbying Congress, no doubt out to benefit the country with superior advice.

High income or profits depend first and foremost on positions of rent, quasi monopolies, restraints on trade...

«Frankly, this entire scheme - how to make more money by rigging the market - is immoral. It is all about how to limit choices to your customers.»

Exactly! That's what CEOs, doctors, lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, Yale graduates, understand so well. Reduce competition for the good jobs to give themselves and their offspring an advantage, and increase competition as much as possible for the ''little people'', the ''bulk headcount''.

«Those who create wealth, can create it anywhere in the world. They dont worry about competition.»

This is a wonderful example of pure, delirious handwaving. The large numbers of ''wealth creators'' that go to Washington, take out their (company's) wallet and purchase help against competition may be invisible to you, but perhaps not to the rest of us.

[Live Wire]

Anne, you must not forget that on a philosophical level fear and conservatism are inseparable.

[anne]

Clever, Live Wire :)

"Fox Tries to Defuse Mexicans' Concerns Over Moving Troops to Border"

Another in the set classic headlines :) Mexico, we are coming!

[anne]

"Bush's Plan to Seal Border Worries Mexico"

For those wishing a complete set :) Be worried Canada, be very worried.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=6481&u=99|4|...

Hooded Warbler
New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Live Wire is a genius:

"Anne, you must not forget that on a philosophical level fear and conservatism are inseparable."

[billy]

>This is a wonderful example of pure, delirious handwaving. The >large numbers of ''wealth creators'' that go to Washington, take >out their (company's) wallet and purchase help against competition >may be invisible to you, but perhaps not to the rest of us.

Obviously you and I have a different definition of wealth creation.You think these people create wealth - I think thy just indulge in transferring wealth.

Other than that, I can agree with you

Dryfly,
>When he started his biz he was worth nothing, when he sold it >he was worth about $20-30 million. After he closed the sale he >went around and gave checks between $100K & $250K to the >managers who had been with him through thick and thin

My grandfather did exactly that He made a ton of money, far more than 20-30 million. He gave away _everything_ to his employees and charities. It was just another step for him in following Christ. [A few decades later, after being witness to how my father related to my granfather, I would contradict my own definition of wealth and say my dad was his greatest asset]

But you have not answered my point. What is it that justifies your current earnings? When someone else in India/China or an immigrant can _improve_ their standard of living by working for a fraction of your wages?

This is not a rhetorical question. Everyone thinks they are entitled to something because they are used to it. Losing entitlements creates resentment. In the end it leads to war - and under a war economy, the same changes become palatable.

Without answering this question, it is similar to debating the merits of the slavery economy without considering the basic moral question underlying that economy. Or like the founding fathers debating the finer points of equality and freedom - while leaving some humans out of the definition of 'people'.

So why not just generate understanding and bring about the changes without war?

[Richard]

While I do not have children, I do have nieces, and I do know what career path I would recommend to them.

I would encourage them to study whatever interests them strongly. But, if pressed harder, what I do currently: computer programming.

I do not doubt that there will be considerable outsourcing in the next few years. But labor markets have a way of overreacting, just as equity markets can overreact. And from all that I can see, the fear is great that ALL IT jobs will leave the country - a fear that is much overstated.

I believe that there will be shortages, once again, in IT, perhaps within the next ten years. Like Phillip Morris, a stock is permanently undervalued because it is heavily scorned, IT will have its ups and downs, but it will be mostly well-paid - precisely because it always seems to be on the edge of being run out of town.

[calmo]

Everyone thinks they are entitled to something because they are used to it.

billy, (such a joy to read your needling entry) I am not entitled to one single more key stroke in this comment.
Not one. (I am used to bloviating and I care not about extending [What a bother!] whatever entitlements I may have...no matter the punishingly vacuous length.) [No, we just say he is entitled to his typepad legislated length of commetary, no matter how inflamatory or brain-deadening it is to those who are blind to the Page Down button.]

So the pivotal (Lord might insist it is more: crucial) question, for billy, is:
What is it that justifies your current earnings?
which is a slight shift away from 'entitlement' and it's historical connotations, yes? Why should I continue to pay/receive wages that can be had for less? Am I a deathbed Christian/living Christian who disperses/receives wages indiscriminantly of productivity/love?

Thanks for the poke.