According to an article published late Saturday night in Bloomberg Economics , an emerging consensus says the next downturn may need to be fought with direct and permanent injections of cash –- often called “helicopter money’’ -– and that central banks can’t deliver it alone. . .
That type of stimulus used to be taboo, in part because it risks eroding the independence from politics that monetary policy makers prize -- and President Donald Trump is already threatening.
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The new thinking says central banks can get in on this act too –- an idea, known in the jargon as fiscal-monetary cooperation, that economists are now trying to flesh out. It could solve problems, and maybe create some new ones, on both sides...
Although it was once the engine of American social mobility, meritocracy today blocks equality of opportunity. This structure, whatever its virtues, also imposes enormous costs. Most obviously, it is a catastrophe for our broader society—for the many (the nearly 99 percent) who are excluded from the increasingly narrow elite. Christopher Shay, writing in The Nationsays that Meritocracy is making us miserable Daniel Markovits explains to The Nationhow elite education is destroying the middle class and exacerbating inequality. __________________________________________________________ "Merit is a sham,” Daniel Markovits writes in the first sentence of his new book, The Meritocracy Trap. But, for Markovits, our system of elite education and glossy jobs is not fraudulent in the way many of us think. The main problem isn’t that Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or the Ivy League are greedy, blinkered, or inept. We don’t need to cleanse our meritocracy of undeserving people or upgrade our meritocrats; we need to dismantle the whole system. Even when it works, Markovits argues, meritocracy is a primary driver of inequality in America. . .
_________________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer Schuessler writing in The New York Timeson 09 September 2019
The Meritocrat Who Wants to Unwind the Meritocracy
In “The Meritocracy Trap,” Daniel Markovits delivers a fierce indictment of a system he says is undermining democracy and making everyone miserable.
NEW HAVEN — In 2015, the graduating class at Yale Law School, as custom has it, elected one of its professors to give the commencement address. And when the day came, the speaker, Daniel Markovits, got onstage and told the students, more or less, that their lives were ruined.
“For your entire lives, you have studied, worked, practiced, trained and drilled,” he declared.
And that rat race was far from over, at least if graduates wanted to maintain their, and their children’s, place in the “new aristocracy” of merit.
“To promote your eliteness — to secure your caste — you must ruthlessly manage your training and labor,” he said.
“To live this way,” he continued, “is, quite literally, to use oneself up.”
The speech turned the audience at the most elite of elite law schools on its ear (even if it likely knocked few off their post-graduation paths). And now Mr. Markovits is taking his message to the masses, with a big new book arguing that the meritocratic ideal has not only fed rampant inequality and hollowed out the middle class, but also threatens democracy itself.
_________________________________________________________________________________ Yale Prof. Daniel Markovits on Meritocracy: A Gilded Cage that Ensnares the Rich & Excludes the Rest
Published on Jul 7, 2018
Yale Commencement Speech in 2015
This structure, whatever its virtues, also imposes enormous costs. Most obviously, it is a catastrophe for our broader society—for the many (the nearly 99 percent) who are excluded from the increasingly narrow elite.
“Elite lawyers’ real incomes have roughly tripled in the past half-century, which is more than ten times the rate of income growth experienced by the median American. Moreover, this explosion in elite lawyers’ incomes is not an eccentric or even isolated phenomenon. Instead, it fits into a wider pattern of rising elite labor incomes across our economy. You probably know that the share of total national income going to the top 1 percent of earners has roughly doubled in the past three decades. But its perhaps less familiar that fully four-fifths of that increase comes from rising wages paid to elite labor. And it may be more surprising still to learn that the top 1 percent of earners, and indeed even the top one-tenth of 1 percent, today owe fully four-fifths of their total incomes to labor. That is unprecedented in all of human history: American meritocracy has created a state of affairs in which the richest person out of every thousand overwhelmingly works for a living.” “Elite lawyers’ incomes—including when diluted by sabbaticals from private-public service—will place you comfortably above the economic dividing line that comprehensively separates the rich from the rest in an increasingly unequal America. Perhaps most critically, your lawyerly skills will finance training your children—through private schools and myriad other enrichments—to thrive in the hyper-competition that you have yourselves, in effect, just won.
This, then is where things stand. We have become a profession and a society constituted by meritocracy. Massively intensified and massively competitive elite training meets massively inflated economic and social rewards for elite work. You, in virtue of sitting here today, belong to the elite—to the new, superordinate working class. This structure, whatever its virtues, also imposes enormous costs. Most obviously, it is a catastrophe for our broader society—for the many (the nearly 99 percent) who are excluded from the increasingly narrow elite. There is an irony here. Brewster and others embraced meritocracy self-consciously in order to defeat hereditary privilege, … but although it was once the engine of American social mobility, meritocracy today blocks equality of opportunity. The student bodies at elite colleges once again skew massively towards wealth.” “At Harvard College and here at Yale Law School, two places where students have skillfully and bravely compiled data that their universities suppress, as many students come from households in the top 1 percent as from the entire bottom half of the distribution. This structure, whatever its virtues, also imposes enormous costs. Most obviously, it is a catastrophe for our broader society—for the many (the nearly 99 percent) who are excluded from the increasingly narrow elite. . The excess educational investment over and above what middle-class families can provide that children born into a typical one-percenter household receive is equivalent, economically, to a traditional inheritance of between $5 [million] and $10 million per child. Exceptional cases always exist—as some of you sitting here prove—but in general, children from poor or even middle-class households cannot possibly compete—when they apply to places like Yale—with people who have imbibed this massive, sustained, planned, and practiced investment, from birth or even in the womb. And workers with ordinary training cannot possibly compete—in the labor market—with super-skilled workers possessed of the remarkable training that places like Yale Law School provide. American meritocracy has thus become precisely what it was invented to combat, a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Meritocracy now constitutes a modern-day aristocracy of a kind, purpose-built for a world in which the greatest source of wealth is not land or factories but human capital, the free labor of skilled workers.” “The social and economic caste order in which we are now embedded—including through our celebrations today—demands that you comprehend yourselves on instrumental terms. Your own talent, training, and skills—your self-same persons—today constitute your greatest assets, the overwhelmingly dominant source of your wealth and prestige. To promote your eliteness—to secure your caste, you must ruthlessly manage your training and labor.” Yale Prof. Daniel Markovits on Meritocracy: A Gilded Cage that Ensnares the Rich & Excludes the Rest. Credit: Yale Law School, "Tailspin - The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall—and Those Fighting to Reverse It" by Steven Brill
Your MesaZona blogger took the time (with high hopes) to go see a possible parking space transformation here at a Pop-Up event on Robson Street Friday afternoon - not once but twice. Once again there were more spaces than people!
Join us in downtown Mesa for our very own PARK(ing) Day. The idea is that we transform an existing parking spot into a micro-pocket park for the day and see how people use the space.
We will be on South Robson Street near Chupacabra Taproom. If you feel inspired, feel free to convert your own PARK(ing) space into a pocket-park.
It was supposed to have looked like this image to left that accompanied the invitation.
It didn't . . . for any number of reasons.
The good thing was the social interaction + chance opportunity to meet and talk with Rob Wozniak, who's seen in the opening image seated behind the blackboard sign. In other words, whatever Rob and the three other people did to get this off-the-ground worked for me! We had conversations
PARK(ing) Day is a worldwide event held on Friday September 20th where parking spots are transformed into temporary public parks.
How Park(ing) Day Went Global
by Benjamin Schneider
One tiny DIY parklet became a model for reclaiming streets around the world
For Park(ing) Day 2017, CityLab rode the wayback machine ... to learn how this global phenomenon came to be, and how it might just transform our cities.
The Dreamboyz Espresso coffee shop opened last week in Seattle, which features shirtless male baristas. The shop used to be a "bikini barista" shop called LadyBug Bikini, where female baristas wore bikinis. LadyBug Bikini closed due to a lack of business, but the store owners are hoping the change to shirtless men will draw a crowd.
The owners told KIRO that it was actually former LadyBug Bikini customers and employees that suggested opening a bikini shop with male baristas. The owners said they may open more Dreamboyz locations depending on the first store’s success.
You can follow Dreamboyz Espresso on Instagram here.
Some of the "Latter-Day Saints" among us have united to urge support from Congress in a Guest Opinion piece
USMCA agreement vital for Arizona economy
By John Giles, Jenn Daniels, Gail Barney, and Denny Barney, Guest Columnists
John Giles is the mayor of Mesa,
Jenn Daniels is the mayor of Gilbert,
Gail Barney is the mayor of Queen Creek
Denny Barney is the president of the East Valley Partnership
"It is no secret that trade policy has been a major priority for U.S. policymakers, business owners and workers this summer. At the top of the agenda is the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA).
If passed, the USMCA will bring much-needed certainty and help ensure continued growth for businesses in Arizona and across the country. . .
While NAFTA strengthened regional trade significantly when it was ratified nearly three decades ago and has resulted in stronger economic growth across North America – as demonstrated by the surge in cross-border investments and a tripling of U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico – it has become increasingly out-of-date and doesn’t address today’s needs for commerce and trade.
For instance, digital transformations that have taken place since 1990 have transformed our economy and the way we do business. . .
Ultimately, it would help expand our access to new customers and create a more prosperous and robust business climate for Arizona and the U.S. . .
If the agreement is not ratified, Arizona manufacturers could face up to $2 billion in extra taxes, compared to zero tariffs today.
Further, manufacturing jobs in our state are well-paying and provide career opportunities to middle-class workers.
In fact, the average Arizona manufacturing employee earns more than $82,000 a year in total compensation compared to less than $44,000 a year for other industries.
In total, more than 19,000 Arizona jobs rely on tariff-free trade with Canada and Mexico.
For the benefit of our workers, our businesses and our state’s economy, we need Congress to act and ratify the USMCA as soon as possible. . . " _______________________________________________________________
Take-away: the traditional revenue model of enrolling more students isn't supporting the new investments because of broader trends in the U.S., including a booming economy, a low birth rate and fewer international students. By the numbers: The U.S. has more than 700,000 open technology jobs, but universities are producing only about one-tenth that number of computer science graduates. U.S. colleges aren't producing enough graduates with the skills companies need. So corporations are partnering with community colleges and alternative credentialing programs to build worker pipelines.
What's happening: Tech companies in particular are helping design curriculums to ensure students graduate with the exact skills they need to walk directly into jobs.
In Phoenix, 10 local community colleges are working with Intel, Boeing, Apple and Cisco to teach specific skills so students can immediately work in emerging fields such as autonomous driving and blockchain-related businesses.
IBM has partnered with 19 community colleges to review curriculums, provide in-class expertise and apprenticeships to prepare students for "new collar" jobs in areas like cloud computing, cybersecurity and mainframes.
Facebook, Tableau and others award co-branded certificates with community colleges through startup Pathstream.
Alternative programs like those offered through the coding boot camp Lambda School are built around the skills Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others say they are seeking in employees.
_________________________________________________________________________________ What's happening: Investment in existing higher education facilities was at an 11-year high in 2018, according to a report last year by Sightlines that pulled data from more than 360 campuses.
Driven by ultra-low interest rates in recent years, colleges and universities borrowed a record $41.3 billion through municipal bonds (their principal source of debt funding).
