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Showing Original Post only (View all)Thomas Friedman, shill for the 1% and Corporate America: Average is Over. [View all]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html?src=me&ref=generalIn the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just wont earn you what it used to. It cant when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.
Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But theres been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs about 6 million in total disappeared.
snip
What the iPad wont do in an above average way a Chinese worker will. Consider this paragraph from Sundays terrific article in The Times by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher about why Apple does so much of its manufacturing in China: Apple had redesigned the iPhones screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the companys dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. The speed and flexibility is breathtaking, the executive said. Theres no American plant that can match that.
Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But theres been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs about 6 million in total disappeared.
snip
What the iPad wont do in an above average way a Chinese worker will. Consider this paragraph from Sundays terrific article in The Times by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher about why Apple does so much of its manufacturing in China: Apple had redesigned the iPhones screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the companys dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. The speed and flexibility is breathtaking, the executive said. Theres no American plant that can match that.
Hear that? It's BREATHtaking!!!
He's cheerleading executives that liken militaristic gross servitude in the name of winner take everything capitalism as they would describing a Van Eyck painting.
Thomas Friedman. Just when you think the Life Lottery Winner couldn't get any more shameless . . .
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Thomas Friedman, shill for the 1% and Corporate America: Average is Over. [View all]
HughBeaumont
Jan 2012
OP
I've learned long ago NEVER to listen to anyone named "Friedman" about economics.
HughBeaumont
Jan 2012
#9
Irony time: Friedman is a markedly AVERAGE writer for a paper that loses money. nt
Romulox
Jan 2012
#12
The only way people like Friedman can have this mindset is for them to think of the
snagglepuss
Jan 2012
#14