Post by Sunday at midnight
1. Mark Whitaker
2. U.S. as example of world systems theory
3. There was a question in class expressing surprise about the U.S. economy's increasing loss of high-paying jobs. This was last week, when we were discussing Sassen's 'global city' argument as well as world systems theory views of developmental changes. Some were surprised that the U.S. 'core' (despite still being the largest 'country by GNP' which can be deceiving when it is the world's investment in U.S. financial centers instead of U.S. capital per se) would simply be a relay route of the world's external investment instead of representing U.S. economic strength.
I said I would post some recent data about U.S. economic demotion. This is from 2000-05--BEFORE the 2007 financial crisis:
"IN JUST FIVE YEARS, The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war...
Communications equipment lost 43% workforce.
Semiconductors/electronic components lost 37% workforce.
Computers and electronic products lost 30% workforce.
Electrical/appliances lost 25% workforce.
Motor vehicles/parts lost 12% workforce.
Furniture/products lost 17% of workforce.
Apparel manufacturers lost almost 50% workforce.
Employment in textile mills declined 43%
Information sector lost 17% of its jobs
Telecommunications lost 25% of its workforce.
Wholesale and retail trade lost jobs.
Bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%.
Computer systems design lost 9% of its jobs.
In only five years (under Bush's policies), US economy experienced a net job positions loss in goods producing activities--while importing about 8 million more people." This data was assembled from Paul Craig Roberts, ex-U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the 1980s, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Contributing Editor of National Review.
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full article:
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don't know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That's one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.
Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.
US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is "the envy of the world." Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs.
The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized "new economy" never appeared. [These Sassen described as the easiest to outsource internationally, given the information technology.] The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.
In five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes them over-qualified.
Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator. In the past unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs.
Unemployment benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the cycle when workers were laid off. Today the unemployment is permanent as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones.
Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. There are now hundreds of thousands of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university education.
Unless the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite of the facts, the US is experiencing a job depression [by 2005]. Most economists refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization. It was a win-win situation, they said.
They were wrong.
At a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited themselves. This is especially true for "free market economists" who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an example of free trade that was benefitting Americans. Where is the benefit when employment in US export industries and import-competitive industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility, free market economics is on the verge of another wipeout. [Prescient]
No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private sector jobs created over the five year period is 500,000 jobs less than one year's legal and illegal immigration! (In a December 2005 Center for Immigration Studies report based on the Census Bureau's March 2005 Current Population Survey, Steven Camarota writes that there were 7.9 million new immigrants between January 2000 and March 2005.)
The economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless number while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at the New York Times simply rewrite the Bush administration's press releases.
On February 10 [2005] the Commerce Department released a record US trade deficit in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit in Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US highly dependent on foreign provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing the export capability of the US economy. It is possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.
Polls indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping up fear and hysteria about Iran. [And now Obama is whipping up fear and hysteria about Iran.] The secretary of defense is promising Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle Bush's [or Obama's] solution to the job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for a bankrupt country?
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ReplyDeleteAlexandra Vorobyova
ReplyDelete"Planetary Boundaries? Go Ask the Romans"
This article is really interesting and pertinent because it brings together several things we've talked about: environmental crises (global warming et al.) and past society collapse (along with J.Diamond's book).
According to the article, a recent scientific discussion, 29 scientists divided all of the world's human-caused problems into nine categories, and found an ACTUAL QUANTIFIABLE "no-return" boundary for each of them. Their research has led them to think that the human race has already surpassed three of these boundaries, and are approaching many others.
The second part of this article talks about the application of the models designed by these researchers to past civilization (the Romans and the Mayans, among others) to evaluate their pertinence. This seems like a great way to really see the practical performance of theoretical models- however it is a bit hard to properly evaluate events that have happened so long ago.
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"The 29 co-authors, led by Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Center, subdivided the world's human-caused woes into nine areas reflecting planetary processes under assault, ranging from old favorites like climate change and the thinning ozone layer to shortfalls in fresh water and acidifying oceans.
For each process they hammered out an actual measurable boundary — a "safe distance from dangerous thresholds" — for a key process or state that essentially defined the problem. Examples are the percentage of global land cover converted to cropland or the amount of nitrogen removed from the atmosphere for human use. Boundaries for two of the nine — "atmospheric aerosol loading" (i.e. junk in the air) and chemical pollution — have yet to be determined. (...)
The scientists' data crunching determined that mankind has jumped the guardrails in three areas. First Worlders have been reading about two of them, climate change and loss of biodiversity, over breakfast for decades. The third is the nitrogen cycle, which when out of whack, among other things, pollutes water and generates additional greenhouse gases. (...)
"What if the climate, something called the 'Roman climate optimum,' ... throughout the Roman Empire was particularly stable and was particularly amenable to growing grains in southern Germany that didn't occur either before or after the empire? So, what influence did that have on the growth and decline of the empire, and what if the climate had been different? What if that period had extended? Would the empire have gone on longer or would it have collapsed anyway?" (...)
"We're sort of taking the Jared Diamond idea forward. We're kind of applying science to the task of helping us to learn from the past to help us build a better future."
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http://miller-mccune.com/science_environment/planetary-boundaries-go-ask-the-romans-1510
Sam Wijnants
ReplyDeleteNew Nobel Prizes
Yesterday ( 7 October) I went to a lecture of formal Nobel Prize for Chemestry winner professor Robert H. Grubbs. He emphasised the big role that outside forces play in a carreer: “Interactions with opportunities” and “Live at the right time”. But I thought, if circumstances are so important for a scientist, why aren’t they important for science and their growing in general? That’s what the following article is about: the rewarding of new sciences.
A group of scientists think that the Nobel Prizes need to be modernised. The current range of prizes is too narrow to reflect the breath of modern science. They argue that Alfred Nobel, when he signed his will in 1895, could not have anticipated threats such as climate change and HIV/Aids. The world in the 21st Century is a very different place from when the prizes were first given, at the beginning of the 20th Century. Solving the problems of this ‘new world’, such as there are HIV and global warming, need to rewarded. They make their argument strong considering Al Gore, who received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work towards highlighting the threat of global warming. The fact that he won the Nobel Prize for Peace makes clear that the categories need to be reconsidered: "The peace prize has become a kind of catch-all. There needs to be a specific prize associated with contributions towards sustainability".
(For article see other part of the blog, it was too big)
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Sam Wijnants (part II: New Nobel Prizes)
ReplyDeleteNew Nobel prizes are 'unlikely'
The will of Alfred Nobel provided the money for his prizes
Calls from a group of eminent scientists for new Nobel prizes look unlikely to prove successful.
The group had argued that the current range of prizes was too narrow to reflect the breadth of modern science.
The Nobel prizes are considered to be the most prestigious awards in science, and are limited to a few categories.
But a senior official from the Nobel Foundation has told BBC News that the categories were outlined in Alfred Nobel's will and would not change.
Ten scientists wrote an open letter to the Nobel Foundation to make their case.
Published in the New Scientist magazine, their letter said that many researchers were not being recognised because there were no awards for disciplines such as public health, environmental science or ecology.
Among the signatories was the former chief scientist to the UK government, Sir David King.
He argued that the world in the 21st Century is a very different place from when the prizes were first given, at the beginning of the 20th Century.
"We're faced with a whole bunch of new challenges simply not foreseen when the Nobel prizes were formulated," said Sir David.
Former US Vice-President Al Gore won a Nobel prize in 2007
"When Alfred Nobel signed his will in 1895, he could not have anticipated threats such as climate change and HIV/Aids."
The signatories, who also included Harvard University's Professor Steven Pinker and Sir Tim Hunt, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2001, called for the creation of Nobel prizes for the global environment and for public health.
Although the former American Vice-President Al Gore jointly received a Nobel Prize for his work towards highlighting the threat of global warming, Sir David King told Radio 4's PM programme that the fact it was the Nobel Prize for Peace showed the categories needed to change.
"The peace prize has become a kind of catch-all. There needs to be a specific prize associated with contributions towards sustainability," he said.
NOBEL PRIZE CATEGORIES PhysicsChemistryPhysiology or MedicineLiteraturePeaceEconomics
The Nobel Prize is now more than 100 years old, and is named after the wealthy Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel.
In his will, he had specified that scientists should be recognised in five categories: physics; chemistry; physiology or medicine; literature and peace.
The first were awarded in 1901 and are still considered the most prestigious recognition for academics.
A sixth category was approved in 1968 for economics, but it is officially called the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and is awarded in conjunction with Sweden's central bank.
That solitary change is unlikely to be followed by others, according to Michael Sohlman, executive director of the Nobel Foundation.
"We have different views to these scientists about the immobility of the prizes.
"They say in their letter than Alfred Nobel couldn't have foreseen HIV or climate change, but in both of these areas, prizes have been recently awarded.
"The prizes do cover what is going on," he told Radio 4.
Mr Sohlman added: "Anybody can wish for more categories, but the categories are there in the will. But the substance covered is developing and moving."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8285523.stm
http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=OL2G3OPA&subsection=173
Anna Maislinger
ReplyDelete"Organic agriculture worldwide"
After talking about Cuba I was wondering how organic agriculture is developing in other countries. I was surprised that Liechtenstein, Austria and Switzerland are the only countries in the world that have more than 10 percent organic land and shocked that 68 percent of the countries have less than 1 percent. This article gives an overview of organic agriculture worldwide. As there’s demand for organic product, especially in Europe and North America, organic agriculture will hopefully continue to develop rapidly.
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The main results of the most recent global survey on certified organic farming (data end 2007) show that 32.2 million hectares of agricultural land are managed organically by more than 1.2 million producers, including smallholders (2007).
In addition to the agricultural land, there are 0.4 million hectares of certified organic aquaculture. The area for wild harvested products accounts for 30.7 million hectares.
The regions with the largest areas of organically managed agricultural land are Oceania, Europe and Latin America. Australia, Argentina and Brazil are the countries with the largest organically managed land areas.
The countries with the highest shares are Liechtenstein, Austria and Switzerland. These are countries the only countries in the world that have more than ten percent organic land. 68 percent of the countries with organic farming activities have less than one percent.
About one third of the world’s organically managed land – almost 11 million hectares - is located in developing countries. Most of this land is in Latin American countries, with Asia and Africa in second and third place. Countries with the largest area under organic management are Argentina, Brazil, China, India and Uruguay.
Almost two thirds of the land under organic management is grassland (20 million hectares). The cropped area (arable land and permanent crops) constitutes 7.8 million hectares - a quarter of the organically managed land. Compared with the previous FiBL-IFOAM survey, there is a clear trend for cropland to increase. Relatively high shares for some crops have been achieved; organically managed coffee and olive areas reported, for instance, account for more than five percent of the total harvested areas, and in some countries the shares are even higher – 30 percent of Mexico’s coffee is organic.
On a global level, the organic land area increased by almost 1.5 million hectares compared to the FiBL/IFOAM data from 2006. Twenty-eight percent (or 1.4 million hectares) more land under organic management was reported for Latin America (including 0.9 million hectares of in-conversion land in Brazil for which no data had been available previously). In Europe, organically managed land increased by 0.33 million hectares (+ 4 percent) and by 0.18 million hectares (+27 percent) in Africa.
Consumer demand for organic products is concentrated in North America and Europe; according to Organic Monitor these two regions comprise 97 percent of global revenues. Asia, Latin America and Australasia are important producers and exporters of organic foods. Exceptionally high growth rates have led supply to tighten in almost every sector of the organic food industry: fruits, vegetables, beverages, cereals, grains, seeds, herbs and spices. With the financial crisis, Organic Monitor expects positive market growth rates to continue, albeit at lower rates than previous years.
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http://www.organic-world.net/world.html
Nicole Niedermeier
ReplyDelete„Almost 33% of California’s Pollution Particulate Now Coming from China Across the Pacific”
The article is about that California is doing its best to reduce air pollution in country by putting regulations on businesses, transportation etc. but still have an increasing air pollution in the atmosphere. And that is because China’s pollution is floating across the Pacific. So this will be a tough time working out such issues especially with China.
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“The California State government has put forth initiatives to reduce the amount of air pollution. Each year they seem to want to put more regulation on businesses, transportation, and trucking to reduce pollution. They do this based on the amount of air pollution that currently exists. What they've noticed is no matter how many more regulations that are stipulated the parts per million of pollution air particulates in the atmosphere is increasing.”
“The reality is it isn't coming from California businesses, or transportation. Oh sure, that is a source of air pollution, but it isn't the source is increasing or causing the problem. The real problem is the pollution in China which is floating across the Pacific Ocean and ending up over land in California. Californians are now breathing pollution from China. Interestingly enough, China says that they will work on their pollution, but they've done nothing drastic to control it and each year is getting to be more of a problem on America's West Coast.”
“Our federal government and politicians say; "China doesn't like to be told what to do," and that they've had a tough time talking to them about this issue. Apparently, our politicians are afraid, because they wish to keep spending money and China is the one buying the debt, allowing our government to spend more money. Apparently, they don't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden egg. But that goose is not giving up the golden egg, and it's leaving bird droppings around the world. I hope you will please consider this.”
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http://ezinearticles.com/?Almost-33%-of-Californias-Pollution-Particulate-Now-Coming-From-China-Across-the-Pacific&id=3024057
Christoffer Grønlund
ReplyDeleteOn Top of the World
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I know that we've been talking about this for quite some time now, but it is always nice to follow up on old stuff with new views. It is not a problem now, but it might be in 50-100 years. As the arctic researcher puts it "When you're actually looking out the window and seeing mile after mile of warm ocean water where there used to be sea ice that you once walked around on, it gives you the certainty that something major is going on there".
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Every 101 minutes or so, a Department of Defense imaging satellite circles the Earth, capturing images from the equator to the polar ice caps. It's that DOD drone (colorfully named the DMSPF-17) that monitors geologic changes, such as the decreasing size of the Arctic and Antarctic ice covers. The images it snaps are the ones most people see of the Earth's two white domes, which have been steadily diminishing for the past decade.
But step closer to the Earth—about 250 miles closer—until you're just above the surface, and the picture becomes more vivid.
Skimming over the top of the world feels a bit like being on a different planet, according Rick Steiner, a marine conservation researcher at the University of Alaska. For the past two years, Steiner has led research missions flying low over thousands of miles of Arctic seas for a handful of polar climate scientists, some of whom work for the federal government. He times the daylong voyage to coincide with the time of year when sea ice is at a minimum, the exact end of summer melting in mid-September, before the autumn cool begins to refreeze some of the water. Having lived in Alaska for 30 years, Steiner can tell you in personal detail how the minimum has shrunk from year to year. He calls the voyage his annual "bearing witness to the Arctic crisis" trip.
The crisis has been mapped out in precise detail in slide shows and research papers, with startling statistics. The past three summers have seen the lowest ice volume ever recorded, according to data released annually by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The sea-ice minimum in 2007 (1.6 million square miles) was the single lowest year, with nearly 40 percent less ice than the seasonal average recorded over the past three decades. And the problem is only expected to worsen. As the ice melts, it releases highly concentrated carbon and methane that is locked in the permafrost, creating an accelerating warming loop. An additional compounding factor is that dark oceans absorb more of the sun's energy than light-colored ice, which reflects a large portion of it. That means that the more ice melts over the summer, the more open ocean there is, which leads to more absorbed energy and warmer oceans, which means that less ice forms the following winter, which leads to even more open ocean the following year. Early this past summer, researchers thought 2009 would be even worse than 2007 in terms of melting, until a late-arriving wind from the equator brought cool air that prevented even more melting. NSIDC director Mark Serreze calls it a "small blip" on a downward-sloping line.
(more of the article - see the link)
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/216989
Sujin Kwon
ReplyDeleteFood, famine & climate change: India's scorched earth
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It's not only been 10 years since things have changed in India supposedly. When I was in India 2007 it was also better than now, they were maybe thinking something's wrong and changed but not as much as these days. Today they're suffering for serious drought and lack of food and water more than in the past. Even sugarcane they grow and consume every time that are also used as beverage, as fuel, as fertilizer, is in danger so they are not anymore able to get it as much as they want with the price they used to pay for it. I wonder why damages by climate changes are especially harmful and baneful to poor countries.
Oops I missed the article.
ReplyDelete--------
So – is this climate change? Few people we met knew the meaning of the term – they thought we were talking about the need to protect and regrow the forests, something that the NGOs in the area educate the farmers about. But everyone had stories to tell of changes in the weather, of the unreliable seasons, of rain that came too late, or too strong, washing away carefully planted fields in a single downpour. The extreme heat of summer is another common complaint. Peter Balaram, project director of Apps, a network of environmental NGOs training and organising the farmers of Anantapur, says that summer temperatures can be 10°C hotter now than in the past. Since they can reach 45°C, this makes work outdoors near impossible.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/11/food-climate-change-famine-india
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHyun-deok, Park
ReplyDeleteMalawian boy uses wind to power hope, electrify village
This article is about a Malawian boy who generates electric power using wind by himself. Although he had no good resources, he was able to build windmills. Like the Malawian boy and the documentary that we saw last class about Cuba's organic farming, ordinary peoples also can generate and power electricity. And then they will be able to supply electricity by themselves and they will have no need to be subordinated.
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"Everyone laughed at me when I told them I was building a windmill. They thought I was crazy," he said. "Then I started telling them I was just playing with the parts. That sounded more normal."
That was 2002. Now, he has five windmills, the tallest at 37 feet. He built one at an area school that he used to teach classes on windmill-building.
The windmills generate electricity and pump water in his hometown, north of the capital, Lilongwe. Neighbors regularly trek across the dusty footpaths to his house to charge their cellphones. Others stop by to listen to Malawian reggae music blaring from a radio.
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http://article.joins.com/article/cnn_e/article.asp?total_id=3810475
Young Han
ReplyDelete"Giant, Mucus-like sea blobs threaten our ocean and our lives"
The article introduces Mucus-like blob that floats around the Mediterranean Ocean, posing danger to marine lives and also human being. It is not just some nuisance as it used to be perceived as. It is a hot spot for ocean bacteria and viruses including deadly E. Coils.
The main cause of its outbreak is due to warmer climate which was caused by global warming. This blob can also kill fish as they carry viruses, but also by suffocating them.
This blob has existed over fifty years, but it had never prevailed like it is now. At the end of article, it reports that this phenomenon did not just stop at Mediterranean but now they can find it from North Sea to Australia.
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The study team discovered that the blobs are hot spots for viruses and bacteria, including the deadly E. coli. Coastal communities regularly test for E. coli, and its presence is enough to close beaches to swimming.
Study leader Donavaro said, "Now we see that … the release of pathogens from the mucilage can be potentially problematic" for human health.
"The study team discovered that the blobs are hot spots for viruses and bacteria, including the deadly E. coli. Coastal communities regularly test for E. coli, and its presence is enough to close beaches to swimming.
Study leader Donavaro said, "Now we see that … the release of pathogens from the mucilage can be potentially problematic" for human health. "
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs_2.html
Totally forgot to post it last week. Sorry for late posting!