Thomas Friedman: The New Untouchables ("You're just not that GREAT! You have to be SUPERworkers!")

[HughBeaumont]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?_r=1&em

Yet another line of massive claptrap from the laissez-failure's favorite mouthpiece.

“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. “This loss of competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-à-vis their real income. When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”

This problem will be reversed only when the decline in worker competitiveness reverses — when we create enough new jobs and educated workers that are worth, say, $40-an-hour compared with the global alternatives. If we don’t, there’s no telling how “jobless” this recovery will be.

snip

As the Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz explains it: “If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”

snip

Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top. So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.

I see. So what I'm reading is that our workers are at fault for the failings of our corporate leaders because they aren't ALL mega-IQ geniuses?

So the solution is for all of us to be innovative, creative and HARDER WORKING superbees?

So that whole "not wanting to work for wages that will put me under a bridge" thing or that "college isn't subsidized here" thing or that "Republican governments would rather spend money on war than education" thing or that "wages haven't kept up with the cost of living" thing has nothing at all to do with the ratshit pile that American workers are currently in?

No, it's because we don't work HARD enough.

:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

I don't know what's worse, that this guy gets a column, or that there are DUers who are inevitably going to agree with him.

[tonysam]

1. Friedman is another idiot

who doesn't know anything about public education, let alone the job market. It's the same "Nation at Risk" horseshit we were fed a quarter of a century ago.

[DJ13]

2. Propaganda: You're not worthy of more money for your work

The corporate whores are in full panic mode trying to keep a lid on their pillage of our country.

[MindPilot]

3. The seventies called; they want their paradigm back.

Who in their right mind would still be touting that robots-are-taking-your-jobs crap?

I just got out of a job that although it paid very well offered no opportunity to advance. No matter how much I begged and pleaded, I was not afforded the chance to do anything outside my little narrow band of duties.

Now I'm at that "low end of the top" but it sure as hell isn't because I didn't try to add the toppings; it's because the people I worked for wanted plain vanilla.

[KansDem]

50. Man, does this sound familiar!

I was not afforded the chance to do anything outside my little narrow band of duties.

No chance for "professional development." Although I'm in a position of (some) "responsibility," I can snore my way through the day :boring:

Something's got to change soon, and I'm working toward that change. Otherwise, on the day I die someone will have to tell me as I won't notice any difference!

[county worker]

4. "that there are DUers who are inevitably going to agree with him"

That is a nice way of killing debate ideas isn't it?

I think you didn't understand what is going on. Workers did not put themselves out of the market. The market has different needs and wants than many workers have.

It has always been that way. Most of us in offices do our work on computers. When I graduated from college there were no computers in the office. As they became more available we had to learn to use them or we put ourselves out of the market. That's what he is saying is happening I think.

[MindPilot]

11. That wave is over for the most part.

With a few exceptions--particularly in agriculture where new robotics technology is being applied to harvesting delicate tree fruit like peaches--most of the worker displacement by technology has already happened.

What we're seeing now is an entirely different displacement of well-educated people with foreign-subsided technically-trained people.

And you're right in one sense the "market" doesn't want well-educated people who think, create and invent. That's the big lie; what they really want is technically competent drones who will sit down shut up and do what they're told.

[county worker]

14. I am one of those that you describe.

I work in fiscal (accounting) dept of the county. I am called a cost analyst. Before this job I was a controller at a medical clinic. I made most of the cash flow decisions at the clinic with an annual revenue of $12 million.

Here in the county our budget for our department is also $12 million. I make no decisions anymore. They don't want any opinions from me. I just do what I am told. I make $30K more per year here than I did as a controller. I have a hard time dealing with the idea that I don't have the responsibility that I use to have. Yet I like the money and benefits and I don't have any of the stress I use to have.

[Romulox]

28. Who made "the market" into a god?

Especially when it is patently obvious that "the market" isn't self regulating at all. :shrug:

[JHB]

43. The Swindlers and the Most Ruthless.

Because when you throw out all the rules (regulations), that's who wins.

[HughBeaumont]

48. I'd sort of believe that if people with master's degrees weren't getting laid off.

To me, you get to your selected level of higher education, be it Bachelor's, Master's or PhD, that should be IT, DONE. You shouldn't be required to go BACK to school again and again on your dime. I could see if college were subsidized, but it's not. In fact, tuition's only going higher despite the fact that our wages haven't risen in real dollars since 1979.

The average individual doesn't have the spare cash to pay for multiple trips to college. Them's the facts. The reality that Thom Friedman lives in is a hell of a lot different from mine (you know, BESIDES the fact that his wife's family is wealthy).

I just find it hilarious that a guy who's pretty much never really had to work hard to get where he is in life, never really had to struggle, has networking skills and fell into all the right jobs, deems himself such an authority as to what American workers have to do to better themselves. Friedman always tends to ignore the giant-elephant factors of wage stagnation, astronomical college costs, unrealistic expectations of Corporate America, unrealistic odds of "Horatio Alger" type success and just plain-and-simple bad luck.

He also has astronomically incorrect assumptions about the implications of globalization:

Opponents of free trade charge that Friedman does not consider the purchasing power of domestic labor as a key driver in economic output. However, Friedman argues that when low-skill and low-wage jobs are exported to foreign countries, more advanced and higher-skilled jobs will be freed up and made available for those displaced by the outsourcing. He theorizes that as long as those whose jobs are outsourced continue to further their education and specialize in their field, they will find better-paying and higher-skilled jobs.

Really? Because . . . so far, not many jobs of ANY kind have been created at all . . .

[damntexdem]

5. They just need a place where everyone is above average.

Lake Woebegone must have a booming economy!

;-)

[JHB]

6. Luckily for Tom, peresonal contacts can't be computerized.

How's your portfolio been doing this last Friedman Unit, Tom?

[bullwinkle428]

7. Anyone listen to NPR's report on airline maintenance yesterday?

They talked about how most U.S.-based airlines have outsourced their maintenance to companies based in Central America, China and Africa. One scary point was that the repair manuals were only printed in English, and a number of the mechanics did not speak English... :scared:

Anyway, American Airlines still does most of its work out of a facility in Tulsa, OK (union employees), but their numbers have gone from around 700 to around 300 (to do an overhaul) in the last few years, and their timetable for repair work has been shortened considerably; i.e., they have to do much more work in a given period of time than they used to! I'm sure this gives Freidman a real thrill up his leg.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113877784

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113971588

[theHandpuppet]

54. The same kind of thing happened in the shipbuilding & repair industry

But it started long ago. During the 80's much of the U.S. commercial shipbuilding/repair industry began shifting contracts from established yards to cheaper, non-union facilities along the Gulf Coast. When even that wasn't cheap enough, much of the business went to Korea and other Asian facilities. It signaled the virtual extinction of a great American industry and loss of thousands of union jobs -- and they managed to do it without anyone noticing.

[mrsadm]

8. Friedman has ALWAYS been a a**hole - he has no knowledge of reality

If high tech companies can get programmers and researchers at 25% of what US or European workers get paid, it doesn't matter how many PhD's you have. Your job will be outsourced. I've seen this happen over, and over, and over. Guys with a list of patents thrown out the door. Friedman's a ignorant idiot.

[Hannah Bell]

15. his fat wallet requires such "ignorance".

[tonysam]

41. This gigolo married into a billionaire family,

so he is hilarious in writing about "working" at all.

[Occam Bandage]

9. His argument isn't that we don't work hard enough.

It's that foreigners are willing to work harder and cheaper than we are, so we need to have a better-educated society that nurtures creativity in the next generation if we want to maintain a competitive edge. He's not saying we need to work harder; he's saying that "working harder" isn't the solution, and that increasing creativity in education is the solution.

[JHB]

16. ...And how do we get there from here? What does that society look like...

...when all all the wealth created is being siphoned upwards instead of spread through the system that created it?

I think the implication of what he's arguing is more radical than he realizes.

[Occam Bandage]

19. I have no idea how he plans to get us there, and suspect he doesn't know either.

Friedman's the sort to reword obvious generalities like "we need an educated workforce," and not the sort to suggest anything useful about how to accomplish that.

[Hannah Bell]

17. argument assumes we're in competition--but we're not. it's the same corporations

exploiting workers across the globe.

owned by the same fat fucks, funded by the same scamming bankers.

[NNN0LHI]

21. Isn't very hard to get someone to work harder and cheaper than we do when their last job was ...

... working knee deep in dirty water in some goddamned rice paddy.

Doesn't take an article in the NYT to figure that one out.

Seems like a waste of ink.

Don

[Occam Bandage]

22. That is true, and that observation is about 90% of everything he's written in the last decade.

It's a pretty important observation, though, even if I don't usually agree with his proposed solutions to the problem. Right now we consume the bulk of the world's resources. There are many, many people standing in those rice paddies who want a piece of that pie, and who are willing to work to get it. We can't maintain our standard of living if we start getting out-competed, and the earth can't support civilization if everyone starts consuming at the level we do. Whether we turn protectionist or turn fully neoliberal, we are going to need to address this problem at some point or another.

[HughBeaumont]

23. Well, that's kind of hard to do when you have a nation that MUST be at war all the time.

War that Friedman cheerleads, BTW.

Education gets underfunded and they wonder why we're doing nothing above and beyond "By the Book". It costs too much money and the average person's getting priced out of something they need.

Corporations at the end of the day are STILL going to be about maximizing profit in any way possible. We can get all the education coming out of our noses and it's not going to matter because we're still not going to be cheap enough for the rulers.

[amandabeech]

30. Yes, and we are competing against mercantilist nations that will stop at nothing

to promote their countries at everyone else's expense. We do absolutely nothing about it. Witness the Chinese currency manipulation, and the Japanese who are past masters.

Tom Friedman is as dumb and UNCREATIVE as a beanstalk.

He merely recycles last year's Wall Street talking points.

The Times could get the same claptrap written at 1/4 the cost in Mumbai.

Toodle-oo. Tom!

[Raineyb]

34. Increasing creativity?

Is he expecting this from an educational and work system that grinds the creativity out of every soul it can in order to make sure the person is "orderly" and "not disruptive?"

Friedman is an idiot; always has been.

[Democracyinkind]

10. The world is still round, some minds still flat.

I will never forgive him for suggesting that a few thousand dead Iraqis are ok as long as the survivors get "superempowered" by acces to the internets.

[Donnachaidh]

12. Considering my kid was forced to read his FLAT book for a Social Studies AP class

I would have to agree -- We DO have an educational failure in this country. When they push his line of diarrhea as a TEXTBOOK?

[Marr]

25. Your kid had to read that tripe as a course textbook?

That's insane-- seriously?

[Donnachaidh]

29. yup.

Of course, his teacher was a RABID republican that didn't appreciate the fact that his student could actually argue with facts against this nonsense. He expected all his students to lap this up like milk. As far as I know, they still use that book in the class too.

[Marr]

37. I don't even know what to say.

I'd have difficulty coming up with a less appropriate book for the classroom. That's a radical political screed, not a textbook. I can't imagine the noises that would come from Republicans if some left wing equivalent was used as a text.

I hope complaints were lodged.

[Donnachaidh]

44. oh I made sure to become the thorn in the ass of both the teacher AND the

principal about that book.

And I made sure I double checked counter facts for my kid before each class. But we do live in Gingrich country, so that book is probably still in use.

[Nickster]

32. It's being used as a course supplement in my MBA class. Last night I almost threw the book at one of

the students who told me that it was a fallacy that globalization has driven down real wages in the US. I have to keep reminding myself that most of the people in MBA programs are going to be knuckleheads......Argh.

[Marr]

38. That doesn't surprise me so much.

For all the talk of "liberal universities", the business departments always seem to be chock full of Friedmanesque assholes. Present company excepted, of course.

[pscot]

13. Blame the victim

They ship opur jobs off shore, wreck the economy, suck up 90% of the nation's wealth and then have the gall to tell us it's all our fault, because we're stupid. If we let them get away with this crap, we really are stupid.

[mitchum]

18. Amazing that a man so ugly can be such a successful whore

[OHdem10]

20. The Free Traders always start crowing about Education when a

Trade Deal is around the corner. Be on the look out.

Seriously Education needs reform. No one will disagree.

However, It is difficult to convince kids to study hard when:

Jobs are transported out of the country. H-1B visas are
used to bring workers into this country at lower salaries
than our workers make. Our workers are dislocated in order
to give the H-1B Visa person a job at 1/2 to 3/4 the Americans
Salary.

My point is Our Leaders do everything in their power to make
getting an education seem pointless.

Not Protectionism. A little fairness and wisdom in formulating
Trade Policy and Planning.

[Marr]

24. Everyone can't be an innovator.

He's enjoying Randian daydreams when the real concerns are much more pragmatic. You cannot sink a majority of the population into hopeless poverty and expect them to play by the rules. That innovation he praises is fueled by a good standard of living for most people, and he's been arguing for policies that destroy *that* for years.

[KG]

26. this from a guy that's never done a days work in his life.

[Romulox]

27. This is the logic implicit in globalism. Most establishment Dems would agree with Friedman. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. He does have a minor point

our schools are NOT producing the same well prepared workers they once did.

But when you do not fund schools and attack educators every step of the way (Yes Friedman, that is you and your ilk) well you get what we call... unintended consequences.

[Feron]

33. Superworker unless you are a CEO .....

then you can drive the company into the ground with short-sighted plans like laying off employees for a stock boost and glide to safety using your golden parachute. Bonus points if you get the gov't to bail out your company.

Education needs to be improved no doubt. But ppl like Friedman are those that cheerlead against public schools and work to undermine them at every turn.

In short, Friedman can fuck right on off.

[salin]

42. post title +1

bonuses even when your company goes further into the red... because they had to pay that much to get "quality" ceos. Gag!

[KansDem]

51. Perhaps you really meant to say...

Friedman can SUPERfuck right on off.

[Octafish]

35. Friedman's never worked a day in his life.

Soon, he may have to, however.

Thomas Friedman's World is Flat Broke

[brentspeak]

36. Oh, I see. It wasn't corporate greed/offshoring that killed the jobs

it was really working people's "average-ness" that did the trick.

Friedman is globalization's own Animal Farm Squealer.

[suegeo]

39. I'd like training on how to toss a pie in someone's face. N/T

[Thickasabrick]

40. +100 For your comments !! Outstanding and I totally agree. nt

[midnight armadillo]

45. In friedman's world everyone is above average!

He's painting a picture of Lake Wobegone without the humor or intelligence.

("all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,")

[eppur_se_muova]

46. It's Animal Farm, and we are all Horse ... nt

[n2doc]

47. Tom the 'stache, I need another 6 months to become a superworker!

Maybe 12. I'll let you know in 6 months how it is going...

[HughBeaumont]

49. I think having the shoebrush mustache and a ton of connections helps a little.

[tonysam]

52. Friedman is a gigolo

There is no other word that accurately describes him. He has no business writing about employment issues when this guy doesn't even have to work.

[closeupready]

53. Eff him, Mr. "Just six more months in Iraq, that's the window, we'll turn the corner."

:puke:

[Initech]

55. I'm so sick of big business stomping over the little guy.

Fuck the "gotta constantly feed the machine" mindset. :grr:

[librechik]

56. "U.N.: U.S. workers are world’s most productive"

huh--I was sure it was because our greedy bosses just wanted to hire cheap labor

"U.N.: U.S. workers are world’s most productive
Americans also work longer than counterparts in rich states, report says

updated 1:45 p.m. ET Sept. 3, 2007

GENEVA - American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.

They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States “leads the world in labor productivity.”

The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609...."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20572828/


Come on, Friedman. At least do a little research before you start flapping your gums.

[Overseas]

57. Each of his new themes just vindicates my long-standing dislike

of this news chat guru cheerleading on behalf of multinational corporations.